#friendsgiving 2021

[silverlinedeyes]

Sarah Never Confirmed We’d Meet Az’s Mate In ACOSF

There’s been a theory floating around the fandom since right before ACOSF came out that Sarah confirmed we will meet Azriel’s mate in ACOSF.

This rumor started from a tweet on February 8 2021, right before ACOSF was published, that claimed:

Someone replied asking, she said that? And this user responded that Sarah said it in a live a while ago:

You can see she QRT’d a tweet from November 25, 2020, which was made during Sarah’s Friendsgiving live with Steph, ideallyinspiredreviews on IG. Here’s that originally tweet which discussed what Sarah said in that live:

So this person said Sarah “hinted that Azriel’s partner will appear in ACOSF.”

(NOTE: I don’t speak Portuguese so I’m relying on google translate here. I’ve been told Parceira also means mate.)

I watched the Friendsgiving live, which is still on Steph’s Instagram if anyone wants to go watch it. They discussed Azriel twice. Once at around the 25 minute mark where they talked about his sexual preferences and kinks. And then once at around 71 minutes. Here’s a clip of the relevant part of that discussion:

As you can see, Steph asks Sarah if Az is getting a book, and Sarah kind of nods and says she can’t confirm anything but that she thinks at the end of ACOSF it’ll be obvious who the next book is about. And then she talks about how excited she is for azriel’s journey.

That’s quite a game of telephone! It went from Sarah talking about Az’s journey (and essentially confirming he’ll at least be the MMC of an upcoming book), to Sarah hinted at his love interest appearing in the next book, to we will meet his mate in this book (ACOSF)!

Anyways, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, babes.

#azriel #fandom rumors and lies

[averyqueerchristmas]

I've been putting together this list of Queer Holiday films for a while now and I'm honestly surprised at the amount I have found. Now I haven't seen most of these, a lot of these have Queer side characters and not main characters (I'll be sure to mention which ones are which). I currently have over 40 Holiday films that feature a Queer character, I'll obviously not be watching all of them this year but I'll watch a good bit of them and post my thoughts about the representation and how much said Queer character is actually shown in the movie and whether or not it should be on this list. (Apologies if any of these are wrong, again I haven't seen most of these). I’ll add to this list if I find more. Obviously the ones you don't want to pay for you can probably find *ahem* elsewhere..

Some Of My Best Friends Are... - 1971 (I believe this can be found on Youtube) - Gay, Lesbian (Main).

Home For The Holidays - 1995 (Redbox, Amazon , you have to pay) - Gay (Main).

What's Cooking - 2000 (Tubi) - Lesbian, Gay (Main).

Holiday Heart - 2000 (Tubi) - Gay (Main).

8 Women - 2002 (DVD) - Lesbian, Bisexual (Main).

Tokyo Godfathers - 2003 (Tubi) - Trans (Main). (There is Transphobia in this but that doesn't put Hana down, she's great. In the Dubbed version she is voiced by a Trans Actress).

Rent - 2005 (HBO Max) - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual (Main).

Imagine Me & You - 2005 (AppleTV, Redbox , you have to pay) - Lesbian, Bisexual (Main).

The Family Stone - 2005 (Starz Subscription, Hulu Premium, Amazon Premium) - Gay (Main).

Regarding Billy - 2005 (Amazon , you have to pay) - Gay (Main).

Breakfast With Scot - 2007 (Vudu, SlingTV , you have to pay) - Gay (Main).

Make The Yuletide Gay - 2009 (Amazon Premium) - Gay (Main).

Everybody’s Fine - 2009 (PlutoTV) - Bisexual (Main).

Scrooge & Marley - 2012 (Vudu, Amazon , you have to pay) - Gay (Main).

Red Lodge - 2013 (Amazon , you have to pay) - Gay (Main).

Carol - 2015 (Tubi) - Lesbian (Main).

Tangerine - 2015 (Paramount+, Showtime Subscription) - Trans (Main).

Shared Rooms - 2016 (Tubi) - Gay (Main).

Anna And The Apocalypse - 2017 (Tubi) - Sapphic (Main-ish).

We Need A Little Christmas - 2017 (Youtube) - Lesbian (Main).

Lez Bomb - 2018 (Tubi) - Lesbian (Main).

Christmas Around The Corner - 2018 (Vudu, Amazon , you have to pay) - Gay (Side/Background).

Holiday Help Desk - 2018 (Amazon , you have to pay) - Lesbian (Main).

Season Of Love - 2019 (Tellofilms , you have to pay) - Lesbian (Main).

Let It Snow - 2019 (Netflix) - Lesbian (Main-ish).

Turkey Drop - 2019 (Youtube) - Lesbian (Main-ish).

The Postie - 2019 (Amazon , you have to pay) - Lesbian (Main).

City Of Trees - 2019 (Amazon , you have to pay) - Lesbian (Main).

Moonlit Winter - 2019 (Tubi) - Lesbian (Main).

Twinkle All The Way - 2019 (Amazon Premium) - Gay (Possibly Side but idk).

Ghosting: Spirit Of Christmas - 2019 (Hulu Premium) - Sapphic (Main).

I Hate New Year's - 2020 (Vudu, Amazon , you have to pay) - Lesbian (Main?).

A New York Christmas Wedding - 2020 (Netflix) - Lesbian (Main).

Happiest Season - 2020 (Hulu) - Lesbian, Gay (Main).

Will You Merry Me? -2020 (Lesflicks , you have to pay) - Lesbian (Main).

The Christmas Lottery - 2020 (BET Subscription, Hulu Premium, Amazon Premium) - Lesbian (Main)

Dashing In December - 2020 (Amazon , you have to pay) - Gay (Main).

The Christmas House - 2020 (Prime) - Gay (Main).

The Christmas Setup - 2020 (Hulu Premium, Amazon , you have to pay, if you’re in Canada this movie if free on CTV) - Gay (Main).

Friendsgiving - 2020 (Netflix) - Several Queer characters (Main).

Christmas With The Darlings - 2021 (Philo Subscription, FuboTV Subscription) - Lesbian (Side)

Christmas At The Ranch - 2021 (Tubi, Prime, Peacock) - Lesbian (Main).

The Syd Family Xmas Eve Game Night - 2021 (Apologies I don’t know where to find this, they have a website though) - Lesbian (Main).

Silent Night - 2021 (Amazon Premium) - Lesbian (Main-ish).

Christmas ...Again? - 2021 (Disney+) - Gay (Main-ish).

An Unexpected Christmas - 2021 (AppleTV, Amazon, Vudu , you have to pay) - Lesbian (Side).

A Picture Perfect Holiday - 2021 (Lifetime) - Lesbian (Side).

Christmas Is Canceled - 2021 (Amazon Subscription) - Sapphic (Side)

You Make It Feel Like Christmas - 2021 (Peacock Subscription) - Lesbian (Side).

Every time a Bell Rings - 2021 (Amazon Premium) - Lesbian (Main-ish).

Single All The Way - 2021 (Netflix) - Gay (Main).

The Christmas House 2 - 2021 (Amazon , you have to pay) - Gay (Main).

Under The Christmas Tree - 2021 (Hulu) - Lesbian (Main).

A Jenkins Family Christmas - 2021 (BET, Hulu Premium, Amazon Premium, you have to pay) - Gay (Main).

The Bitch Who Stole Christmas - 2021 (Amazon , you have to pay) - Gay (Main).

The Holiday Sitter - 2022 (Hallmark) - Gay (Main). (Releases Dec.11)

Merry & Gay - 2022 (AppleTV) - Lesbian (Main).

Spoiler Alert - 2022 (In Theaters) - Gay (Main).

Looking For Her - 2022 (Tubi) - Lesbian (Main).

A Christmas To Treasure - 2022 (Lifetime) - Gay (Main).

The Christmas Clapback - 2022 (BET+) - Lesbian (Side-ish).

Something From Tiffany's - 2022 (Prime) - Lesbian (Side).

#christmas #xmas #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqa #gay christmas #lgbtq christmas #winter #christmas eve #lgbtq shows #lesbian #gay #bisexual #transgender #pansexual #asexual #non binary #queer christmas #queer #christmas movies #happy december #merry christmas #november #snow #christmas blog #gay couple #lesbian couple #alphabet mafia #christmas shows

[austincharcoal]

Names of playlists I've made on Spotify, by year

2012: heyday jams heavy machinery indulgent cocoa riffs ands or buts it's only pop music skip / hop text message

2013: 21 DRUNK ST. xxxmas merry xmasx working on things No New Friends

2014: warmed rain your party, darling xxxx cheer

2015: emotivation thugga thugg xxxxmas spirit working on things ii liquid courage country western

2016: this feels like a nightmare buprenorphine 8mg 2016 jammin kurt ~ travis autoturnt up heavy summer 16 pop style summer 16 is this a party, i feel good friendsgiving

2017: summer 17 rap lamping in the dark reasons to bikeride sober after dusk " FALL '17 " WINTER '17/18

2018: xmas for sugarplum fairies (the good stuff) the children R we love you very very very very very very much art official 2018 shit was like a movie try to cover these live fast die etcetera claimin prego rhythm and poetry et al TO LIFE! LIFE 2.0.0 back roads to a party radio station

2019: giddy emo for a new america emo dewey decimal system summerpack becomes fallpack icepack for a burning winter love 2019 in the face i can see it emo lullabies for man babies and my other friends north peters colony road now i got the juice now im feelin loose wine pod songs on repeat are bootstraps real honest day's work (country)

2020: work work work work work do you wanna have a picnic singin a song in the morning pink sugar songs 2020 u know the fuckn vibes vote for hardcore cover these frank dhl & in my room Slow Yr Roll

2021: drake greece & laugh now posted by thomas low end bf etc. music blues is now kickin' in our year of 2021 diner jukebox from where the wind blow nunchucks lol god told me hit a lick you were a dream... the desire for light produces light

2022: DJ AUSTIN~~~ talk like a lick.. fallpack 2021 good at drugs sticker and that's on gospel cause yr sweeeet another go the dream police soup szn 1.5 soup szn 2 soup szn 3

2023: brunch szn 3 soup szn 4 guitar szn space heater? it's go time... bougie no. 4 - fleur d'oranger habanero bbq almond happy joyous free candied ginger fixing to be a moving picture 20 songs? waiting for the 2 how are ya man? propinquity 幕 arriving

[linus-wickworth]

Mailin facts S5-S7.

These are all the things we’ve found out about Mailin STRICTLY from old group texts.

She is the one who armed Nora with the kubotan when she went to meet Josh for the first time.

She has learned self-defense in a course.

Believes that sustainability > cost.

She worked in a second-hand store in S5.

She is on the football team with Finn.

Her Spanish pronounciation is great.

Mama Richter was worried about the camping trip in S5.

Brought the 3-4 person tent to the camping trip.

She skipped school even after everyone was Covid negative because she was still mad at the girls.

She has gotten drunk.

She loves to make schedules - very coordinated.

She stresses a lot when things aren't planned / loosely timed.

She is always very aware/concerned about costs/prices.

She paid for all the hoodies in advance, and ordered more stuff too. "Wasn’t super expensive but still fairtrade."

She started the Friendsgiving idea for Ava.

She is taking at least biology, German, and philosophy.

She has a patchwork family.

She lives with mom, but dad comes to pick her up sometimes.

She thinks their classmates were idiots if they didn't take the test answers.

She thinks self-made gifts are better than store-brought.

She has seen Riverdale, thinks it's cringy and killed her braincells (lol).

She as a full name worse than "Mailin Magdalena Marianne" and refuses to tell anyone her full name because she hates it.

She had space for Maike at home, and asked mama if they could take him but mama must’ve said no.

She wanted to ambush KM with her kubotan after she hurt Fatou (lol).

She was super apologetic about the stealing the answers and getting them in trouble, apologizing on multiple occassions and clearly feeling guilty.

She says it drives her really crazy when she feels like she's saying something wrong but doesn't know what it is.

Her/her parents paid for the $250 bill the girls had to pay and had Fatou pay her back (Fatou's insistence).

She did a lot of research about dyscalculia and even about insitutes near Berlin; also found the test place for Fatou.

She organized the school break in in S7 and was annoyed when Ava and Nora declined to come along.

She still had to be careful of covid around Christmas 2021. "Everyone is together at our place for the first time" and didn't seem happy about that.

She got the bar ready for the final dance and brought alcohol with her mom.

#druck #mailin richter

[3rddimension]

I really hope they do another Friendsgiving episode of eat it or yeet it. I think they only did one but I really enjoyed it bc we actually see Damien and Olivia talk to each other lmao (jk). And it was a pretty good idea overall and maybe Shayne could be in it 🤷‍♀️

Yeah they only did one during 2021 and it's such a fun one too!

[daddybiff]

BEWARE OF DINOSAURS

I first want to thank those of you who have interacted, reached out, commented, supported us and even offered ACTUAL constructive criticism. I even want to thank those who are “uninterested” or just “offering advice” for the entertainment.

Last week, I sent an email to our friend T, offering him a chance to discuss this and come to some type of agreement or understanding regarding the issues at hand. Several days of silence and a valiant but failed attempt by his loyalist goons (think Boris and Natasha and Fearless Leader going after Rocky and Bullwinkle) to interfere, intimidate, bully, what have you…

I figure it is time we do this, so why don’t we set the stage?

To start, T can be found on Fetlife (once his well deserved suspension is over) under the name.  ‘T-Rex_Ties.’

I met T in August 2020 at a small gathering of kinky folks at @dirtylittlebookworm (who will be referred to as Miggs) house. T and I connected immediately as fellow fans of the same sports team and similar interests in video games and sci-fi. After another gathering over Labor Day weekend and more friendly connecting, Miggs and I invited T and his spouse (B) to an outdoor COVID friendly concert on Halloween. That evening, following the concert, we ended up at T and B’s home where we had a bit of an impromptu play session.

Following a friendsgiving party and bonfire with all the other kinksters, our friendship was growing. We became very close with T&B over time and into 2021. We went out to dinner a few times and got together multiple times to play privately in the first several months of 2021, as COVID tensions began to ease. These play sessions were actually handled quite well in the sense that many things were discussed and noted at great length, including boundaries and limits. Eventually, we even had a running Apple note of the rules in play and at the request T&B, usually had what they liked to call a “debrief” some time after.

T&B were very much a daily part of our lives, including a group chat that was often active on a daily basis. Unfortunately, a sudden and tragic death amongst the extended group of kinksters in April 2021 put things into a tail spin. Though we wouldn’t actually realize it was in a tail spin for a few months. In the immediate aftermath of this death, T started to show his true colors. Miggs and I went on a spring break trip with her family the day after the death. The person who passed was not someone Miggs and I were close with, but had come to respect and enjoyed interacting with. I came back from our trip early for work and had planned to attend the wake and/or funeral, but Miggs would not be back in time. I unfortunately did not make either due to work and my also getting sick. Miggs and I feel that in some sense this was not missed by certain people, specifically T. Shortly after all this took place T contacted me to inform me that there would be a gathering of the friends who had been there to support the widow in the aftermath and some of our friend’s family, but that we would not be invited and he wanted to give us a heads up. He explained that the widow had wanted to limit this to just people the family had met and that he didn’t want Miggs to misconstrue or assume any meaning to this.  I thought this was rather strange and frankly unnecessary as Miggs was not one to concern herself with such things. I didn’t think much of it till later, as this was something we would come to learn is T’s modus operandi.

Over the next couple months, T developed an infatuation with the bond created amongst that group of friends through the subsequent trauma bonding. Calling it something akin to a “cosmic-bond through grief” or at times referring to it as “serendipitous”. I am paraphrasing but whatever was actually said was just as weird. T had only known our late friend for maybe a year and half, but you would think it had been decades. T would begin to talk about an idea or vision he had for a house/family dynamic amongst our group. If you’re not familiar with this term or idea in kink/BDSM, I simply don’t have the time to explain, just know I am not a fan of it. This idea had somehow formulated through his obsession over some writings or beliefs of our late friend. T would try to work this into convo at different times and on several occasions, we made it clear that concept and the idea of being poly (another idea T&B were exploring) were not something of interest to us. We made it clear we wished to keep things non-romantic. This is where things began to spin…

TO BE CONTINUED

#story of t

[bright-and-burning]

top 5 days of the year!

1. NYE!!! my extended family usually does our big winter holiday gathering on NYE, with competitions and a themed food thing (that is also usually competitive bc we are freaks) and so on (although as my and my siblings and cousins get older i’m reaaaally pushing for us to move the big night to like. the 29th or 30th. bc i looooove a party i love getting dressed up and going out with friends and doing like. normal people NYE. and i’ve only ever done nye w friends as opposed to family once, and it was 2020-2021 so mega covid lol)

2. friendsgiving/thanksgiving. thankgiving’s a like fucked up holiday in origin, but i am a big fan of hosting and gathering and a believer in food as love so you know i was out here in college baking 9 pies for a 60 person friendsgiving. also apple pie is my favorite thing Ever so its just the perfect excuse to have too much, and at my family’s like brunch (we dont do dinner, and brunch is Perfect. eat wayyyy too much food, go home for a nap, wake up and eat leftovers) we always end up talking abt awful things LOL. not in the way the memes are abt racist relatives, like as in we always end up on like. true crime type topics. like why are we discussing that unsolved string of murders in the area over bread rolls and cranberry relish.

3. some day in early may, like . may 5th. when you can lay out in the sunshine and everything feels amazing and the flowers have bloomed but you’re not quite at the sweltering heat of summer, so you can lay out on a blanket in the grass and read or draw or work on stuff without feeling stinky or sticky by the end of the day

4. st patrick’s day. the thing i miss most about college (aside from. the community. my friends. lol) is the wildly themed house parties, where you’d scramble to put together an outfit that combined like, the mafia and disney (an actual theme. i shit you not. we called it mickey mouse mafia house and it went sooo hard. i dressed as silvermist the like tinker bell fairy if she was also a mob wife. i had a friend dress as belle from beauty and the beast except she then strapped a nerf gun on). and st patrick’s day in america especially in college towns and ESPECIALLY where i live has a similar vibe of like. let’s put on themed clothes and get trashed. not as weird w the theme unfortunately but still

5. max fewtrell’s birthday. jk jk, i guess rewind a day and go w my birthday. i’ve had pretty uh universally horrific birthdays since i was like 11? but it’s one of my favorite times of year, the weather is lovely, and everyone’s looking for any excuse to go to the beach, so if it wasn’t associated w my birthday it would be brilliant (hence me saying max’s). i’m trying reeeeaally hard to just will power my way into good ones in the future tho

#ask #ask meme

[blossomsworlds]

previous experiences - pre ND

I always wanted to succeed with law of assumption. For two whole years I had known about it. Desperately trying to master it. But a lot of their "concepts" just never made sense.

I remember back in October of 2021 I had wanted to manifest my crush and I confidently believed he liked me and I would constantly tell myself that. I was literally delusional for a month. November 2021 came and I thought it was pretty pathetic to still like him after a month of him not reciprocating anything. So I decided to accept that he just was not going to like me and we were just going to stay friends since he didn't see me like that. I accepted that we were never going to date.

SPOILER: we dated

A key thing in LOA is that you must accept your desire to be true and I desperately tried believing this having had experiences like this.

I wasn't crazy obsessed with him. I liked him a lot but I completely gave up this idea. I let go. I really liked him as a friend and I would still flirt for fun (nothing serious). So in Nov 2021 we had a Friendsgiving and he ended up coming.

*He actually didn't want to come and only came with his friend because his friend wanted to get back with his ex.* But me and my friend plotted this because my friend knew I liked him but before the Friendsgiving even happened I had already accepted this idea.

He ended up coming and I talked to him a lot of the time LIKE I SAID it was innocent flirting. I didn't flirt or do anything with the intention of making him like me.

We were practically together most of time and he was super touchy with me to the point where he would hold my hand for TOO long when he asked to see my nails. After this I thought he 100% liked me and he did!

I was openly pursuing him since middle of Oct 2021 to middle of Nov 2021. He also knew this. This wasn't a secret. I told him I liked him and would always flirt. It wasn't until after that Friendsgiving where he had told my friend that he did like me back and we began our romantic relationship from there.

To reiterate, this experience and so many other experiences similar to this have never made much sense using the law of assumption concepts. Once I found non dualism, I felt immense peace because of the fact that it resonated so beautifully. It made sense instantly why experiences like this happened. If I truly accepted that I was moving on and I accepted that he just didn't like me then he should have continued to not have any interest in me but he didn't! I accepted the situation for what it was without any expectation.

#non dualism #non duality #awareness #consciousness #acceptance

[teenmomcentral]

Love is in the air for Farrah Abraham, but it isn’t out in the open. 

The fired Teen Mom star is currently in a relationship with a man she met on OnlyFans back in 2021. While the two communicated on the subscription-based (and mostly NSFW) site years ago, the lover of all things cosmetic procedures and general misuse of the English language claims things only got serious between her and her new man after they ended up matching on a dating app this year. 

Farrah has yet to reveal the identity of her latest love interest, nor has she posted any videos or photos in which her man’s back isn’t to the camera or his face hasn’t been strategically cut out of the shot or covered by an emoji. However, she insists that the relationship is very real and not a ‘for-pay’ situation, as some of her haters have suggested.

The self-proclaimed Number One Celebrity In Our Nation reportedly entered into this business deal relationship after training with a dating/relationship coach over the course of three months in order to overhaul her past dating habits. Farrah claims she’s shooting for a drama-free dating experience with her employee new boo, and even made the mystery man sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for good measure. 

Though Farrah isn’t sharing the name of her boyfriend at the moment, she told TMZ that he’s sober, isn’t a public figure, works in “tech, business sales and marketing,” and that the two of them are close in age. The mystery man also reportedly purchased a home near Farrah after the couple made their relationship official in late September, though he has yet to meet Farrah’s family–- presumably including Farrah’s 14-year-old daughter Sophia–- and is not set to do so until later this month. 

Just last week, Farrah posted a series of clips to Instagram in which she referenced “Friendsgiving” along with the hashtag “#turksandcaicos,” seemingly confirming she and her guy spent the Thanksgiving holiday together on vacation.

Farrah’s post was met with countless comments from people questioning the authenticity of her posterior new relationship, largely due to Farrah’s decision to hide her man’s face, as well as her historically terrible track record when it comes to dating. Many also accused her of being an escort and her man of being a “John” who was paying Farrah for her time.

“No way did she actually find a man who is capable of dealing with her craziness,” one person wrote. 

“Is he a paid date?” another asked. 

“Finally got a new boo for a week or two,” someone else wrote. 

“Wonder what he paid you for the weekend?” a different comment read. 

Multiple people also noted the irony of Farrah’s song choice for the post, “Agora Hills” by Doja Cat, which features the line, “I wanna show you off.” 

“Proceeds to not ‘show him off’ lol Jesus Christ..,” one comment read, to which Farrah replied, “its called privacey.”  (Obviously, Farrah is still keeping her ability to spell correctly and use proper punctuation under wraps, too.)

UPDATE! On Thursday, Farrah beamed into TMZ to address her haters’ speculation that her new man is actually a “John” (aka client) and that she is being paid to spend time with him.

“There are no illegal activities going on in my life, or in my family’s dynamic,” she said in a video interview, later adding, “For the record, this is a boyfriend situation and no illegal activity. And it’s sad that I even have to correct people on this.”

Farrah then committed The Number One Sin In Our Nation and compared herself to Queen Dolly Parton.

Farrah stated that she is modeling her on-the-down-low relationship after Dolly’s relationship with her husband Carl Dean. (Dolly and Carl have been married for 57 years but Carl has made very few public appearances and prefers to stay private.)

“It’s kind of like Dolly Parton in a way,” Farrah said. “I love her relationship with her husband. I think that’s healthiest for me and for whoever I’m getting to know. Maybe I’ll never reveal who I’m talking to, even if I ever get married one day. I just feel like I need privacy.

“I always feel like there’s some kind of threat towards having a happy, healthy, loving relationship in my life, from ‘Teen Mom’ days.”

Farrah also addressed Jenelle Evans‘ recent comment that Child Protective Services (CPS) needs to do a welfare check on Sophia.

“I think the CPS stuff needs to stop,” the Backdoor Teen Mom said. “Again, my motherhood has always been, like, threatened by very negative, made-up things from haters. It’s really sad that I’ve had to learn the hard way in the past about going on trips or anything with any boyfriend I’ve ever had, that like CPS would be called or anything like that while I’m gone.”

Farrah then seemed to take another swipe at Jenelle, who is the middle of a CPS investigation with her husband David Eason.

“I’m loving that I don’t have to deal with a CPS crisis all the time, just by trying to have a normal dating life,” she said. “I welcome all the hate now and I just love that my dating life is more private.”

#teen mom #teen mom 2 #mtv #jenelle evans #farrah abraham #news

[xprojectrpg]

This Day in X-Project - November 26

PHASE 2

2015: Thanksgiving. Felicia posts to Instagram from the Hardy clan Thanksgiving. Gabriel thanks Miles for inviting him to Thanksgiving lunch. Rogue texts Tandy to catch up with her and Julian to tell him to look after Tandy. Tabitha texts Alison to let her know she missed 3 phonecalls from her dad while volunteering. Felicia texts Warren to let him know that she saw him and misses hanging out and recommending they build a pillow fort soon. Quentin and Jean-Paul steal food, avoid people, and uncomfortably flirt.

2016: Maya wonders if it's too early to celebrate the death of Fidel Castro.

2017:

2018: Betsy makes a post offering up some clothes her brother got for her.

2019: Kitty posts about magical portals in Chicago, how her mom wants her to hang around for Hanukkah, how her mom is good at encouraging guilt, and the reason Friendsgiving is a thing.

2020: Thanksgiving.

2021: Alani posts an update after a long Thanksgiving volunteer shift.

2022: Kyle is confused by a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book by Chuck Tingle that Doug keeps sending him links to. Matt posts about his fathers’ holiday decorations multiplying.

#this day in xproject #plots #plot #xprpg #xproject #phase 2 #rpg #rp

[anothersebastianblog]

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't celebrate the holiday either / past evidence suggests he celebrated occasionally (with Margo's family and at Benz' Friendsgiving, iirc) /

I dont think he celebrates on his own or because he wants to, not only thanksgiving but any celebration... meaning.. I think he goes to the gatherings of course but he goes because his loved ones are there, not because he cares about celebrating. I mean, with ale was his first (and last apparently) Christmas tree in 20 years.. 😐 and them he said he spent new year in 2021 alone at his apartment, so.. the guy doesn't care 😅 same with Easter, we've never had proof or whatever of him celebrating the western Easter but he did celebrate the orthodox one, his culture, so I really think the gringo holidays are "meh" to him

The Christmas thing was so sad btw

It’s my most favourite time of the year

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 21, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Yesterday the United Auto Workers ratified their new contracts with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis. The new contracts include wage increases of at least 25% over the next 4.5 years, cost of living increases, union coverage for electric battery plants, and the reopening of a closed plant. “These were just extraordinary wins, especially for those of us who’ve been studying strikes for decades,” Washington University labor expert Jake Rosenfeld told Jeanne Whalen of the Washington Post.

Union president Shawn Fain told Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, “It’s a sign of the times…. In the last 40 years…working class people went backwards continually…. There’s this massive chasm between the billionaire class and the working class and…when those things get out of balance, we need to turn it upside down. When 26 billionaires have as much wealth as half of humanity, that’s a crisis….”  

Fain said the automakers strike was “just the beginning…. Now, we take our strike muscle and our fighting spirit to the rest of the industries we represent, and to millions of nonunion workers ready to stand up and fight for a better way of life.”

President Joe Biden, who stood on the picket line with UAW members, congratulated both the auto workers and the companies for their good faith negotiations. “[W]hen unions do well, it lifts all workers,” he said. In the wake of the agreements between the UAW and the Big Three automakers, nonunion automakers who are eager to prevent unionization, including Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, and Subaru, also announced wage increases. 

Following a tradition normalized in the 1980s, Biden also pardoned the turkeys Liberty and Bell yesterday, marking the unofficial start of the holiday season. The birds will move to the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences where they will become educational ambassadors for a state where turkey production provides more than $1 billion in economic activity and more than 26,000 jobs. 

At the ceremony, Biden urged people to “give thanks for the gift that is our nation.” He offered special thanks to service members, with whom he and First Lady Jill Biden shared a Friendsgiving meal on Sunday. 

Falling prices for travel and for the foods usually on a Thanksgiving table are news the White House is celebrating. Gas prices have dropped an average of $1.70 from their peak, airfares are down 13%, and car rental prices are down about 10% over the past year. 

According to the American Farm Bureau, the price of an average Thanksgiving dinner has dropped by 4.5%. The cost of turkeys has dropped more than 5% from last year, when an avian flu epidemic meant nearly 58 million birds were slaughtered (this year, growers have lost about 4.6 million birds to the same cause). Whipping cream, cranberries, and pie crust have also dropped in price. 

But plenty of grocery prices are still rising, and Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) has taken on the issue, documenting how “corporations are making record profits on the backs of American families.” In a public report, Casey noted that from July 2020 through July 2022, inflation rose by 14%, but corporate profits rose by 75%, five times as fast. A family making $68,000 a year in 2022 paid $6,740 in that period to “corporate executives and wealthy shareholders.” In 2023, that amount will be at least $3,546. 

The report notes that the cost for chicken went up 20% in 2021 as Tyson Foods doubled their profits from the first quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022; Tyson has been ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and restitution for “illegally conspiring to inflate chicken prices.” PepsiCo’s chief financial officer said in April 2023 that even though inflation was dropping, their prices would not. He said “consumers generally look at our products and say ‘you know what—they are worth paying a little bit more for.’”

President Biden has launched a campaign to push back on corporate profiteering, including cracking down on the practice of so-called junk fees—unexpected hidden costs for air travel, car rentals, credit cards, cable television, ticket sales, and so on. (The airline industry collected more than $6.7 billion last year in baggage fees, for example.) 

But Tony Romm of the Washington Post explained on Sunday that corporate lobbyists are warring with the Biden administration to stop the crackdown. An airline lobbyist testified at a federal hearing in March that changing the policy would create “confusion and frustration” and that there have been “very few complaints” about the extra costs for bags. The same lobbying group told the Department of Transportation that the government had no data to “demonstrate substantial harm” to passengers. A lobbying group for advertising platforms including Facebook and Google agreed that the Federal Trade Commission had failed to present “sufficient empirical evidence” that junk fees are a problem. 

Much of the fight over the relative power of ordinary Americans and corporations will play out in the courts. Those courts are themselves struggling over the role of money in their deliberations. After scandals in which it has become clear that Supreme Court justices—primarily Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, but a real estate deal of Neil Gorsuch’s has also been questioned—have accepted gifts from exceedingly wealthy Republican donors, the court on November 13 finally issued its own ethics guidelines. 

That code of conduct echoes the obligations of judges in the rest of the U.S. court system, but it takes away the requirements for behavior imposed on the lower courts, and—crucially—it has no methods of enforcement. Legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick noted that the code appeared to be designed to assure the American people they were confused about the need for an ethics code. It appeared, Lithwick said, to be “principally drafted with the intention of instructing us that they still can’t be made to do anything.” 

The Supreme Court has been packed with lawyers from the Federalist Society, established in the 1980s to push back on what its members believed was the judicial activism of federal judges who used the Fourteenth Amendment to defend civil rights in the states. Federalist Society lawyers were key to creating legal excuses for Trump to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election, and yet the society has never addressed how their people have turned into such extremists. 

In the New York Times today, leading former Federalist Society lawyer George Conway, former judge J. Michael Luttig, and former representative Barbara Comstock (R-VA) called out both the Federalist Society for failing to respond to the crisis Trump represents, and “the growing crowd of grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency.” 

They announced a new organization to replace the corrupted Federalist Society, a significant move considering how entrenched that society has become in our justice system. The Society for the Rule of Law Institute, made up of conservative lawyers, will be “committed to the foundational constitutional principles we once all agreed upon: the primacy of American democracy, the sanctity of the Constitution and the rule of law, the independence of the courts, the inviolability of elections and mutual support among those tasked with the solemn responsibility of enforcing the laws of the United States.” The authors say that the new organization will provide a conservative voice for democracy and that they hope to work with much more deeply established progressive voices. 

For now, the Biden administration continues to try to rebalance the economic playing field. Today the Treasury Department announced the largest settlements in history for violations of U.S. anti–money laundering laws and sanctions. Cryptocurrency giant Binance, which handles about 60% of the world’s virtual currency trading, settled over violations in transactions that laundered money for terrorists—including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda, and ISIS—and other criminals, and violating sanctions, including those against Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the occupied Crimean region of Ukraine. 

Binance will pay more than $4 billion in fines and penalties.

At the same time, the Justice Department obtained a guilty plea from Binance chief executive officer Changpeng Zhao, a Canadian national, for failing to maintain an effective anti–money laundering program. Zhao amassed more than $23 billion at the head of the company; he will pay $200 million in fines and step down. He could face as much as 10 years in prison, but his sentence will likely be less than 18 months.

U.S. officials say this is the biggest-ever corporate resolution that includes criminal charges for an executive.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#the economy #UAW #federalist society #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #economic equality #working class #paycheck to paycheck

[quotes121sworld]