#it was ted cruz specifically

[thoodleoo]

had a dream the other day that america decided to bring back the poena cullei (death penalty where you sew someone up in a sack with a bunch of animals and then throw the sack into a river) but only for us senators and so every senate meeting just devolved into people shouting "THE SACK! THE SACK!" whenever ted cruz talked

#it was ted cruz specifically #i dont think dream ted cruz killed his parents i think people just didnt like him #also obama was there?? #tagamemnon #queueusque tandem abutere catilina patientia nostra

[anotherpapercut]

remember when the dems in the us legislature were like "if they overturn roe we'll riot" then they overturned both roe and Casey and Biden tweeted about it and that was basically it

#pack the fucking court you old bitch #jesus CHRIST #many paths to remedy this were laid out and instead the biden administration was just like 'we disagree' #forever bitter about when he won and some people refused to kiss his ass and the white libs on this site decided that was unacceptable #also literally nobody said anything when they ruled that candidates (specifically ted cruz) #could just accept large campaign donations AFTER theyve already won. just further legalizing full on corruption #uhh anyway pack the goddamned court before they overturn lawrence obergefell and griswold #one justice already hinted that they might actually come for brown v board. so prepare yourselves for that #sorry i forgot nancy pelosi also read a poem. god bless

[a-kinda-nerdy-girl]

Why does fled cruz open his mouth

#fled cruz #us politics #this is specifically about his cigarette comment recently but you can apply it to literally anything this awful man says #ted cruz

[serpenttailedangel]

I'm back in "reading scholarly articles by people advocating for major policy and education program change" mode and, subsequently, back in "disgusted by the amount of mask-off shit people just straight up say that you get called a conspiracy theorist for repeating to people who don't read this garbage even though these fuckers publish their insanity" mode. Presumably, these people expect that no one outside of their circles reads their stuff, so they can put it in ink. Although I guess it also helps that they use a lot of deceptive language and contradictions to try and snag people who aren't thinking too hard about what they read.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has a book available for free digital download in which they argue for some pretty insane shit (claiming to support academic freedom while also mentioning they want certain research subjects suppressed, wanting more politicized disciplines to have equal input to things like chemistry and biology in medical research, and new ranking for schools based on how well they comply with this guideline rather than the quality of their research or how good they are at teaching.) I tried telling someone about it IRL and they told me that whoever I heard about it from must have been lying. When I told them I was specifically citing UNESCO's official publication on their website, this person concluded that the only logical explanation was that the UN was hacked and someone wrote and posted a 100 page hoax paper for nebulous false flag reasons, and the UN has been unable to take the fake paper down and unwilling to release a statement saying it's fake for a year now.

But. like, in defense of the people who haven't read this stuff and also don't believe it when you talk about it, I've checked four different times to make sure that the author of Drag Pedagogy is an actual person affiliated with Drag Queen Story Hour events and not some intern Ted Cruz paid to write a false flag article. Sometimes shit gets so mask-off that I struggle to believe my own eyes.

[mariacallous]

China's government can use TikTok to spy on American users and push propaganda at alarming levels, senators who received a classified briefing on the social media app told Axios.

Why it matters: The senators were hesitant to give details about Wednesday's briefing, but said Americans would be frightened by TikTok's ability to access and track their personal data.

One senator said national security officials described how China can harvest user data and weaponize it through propaganda and misinformation.

Another lawmaker said they were told TikTok is able to spy on the microphone on users' devices, track keystrokes and determine what the users are doing on other apps.

The big picture: Senate leaders are weighing what to do with a bill that would force China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the U.S. The House passed the bill overwhelmingly last week after its members received a similar security briefing.

It's unclear whether the briefing from the FBI, Justice Department and the Director of National Intelligence office was a needle-mover for senators who may be skeptical of the bill.

What they're saying: Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told Axios the briefing's "level of detail and specificity was extremely impactful."

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said the briefing was helpful in "bringing some members up to date with the threats that China poses through TikTok."

"Their ability to track, their ability to spy is shocking," Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said.

Reality check: Such warnings from federal officials so far haven't been enough for senators to fast-track the bill.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that it would take longer than the eight days it took for the bill to clear the House because that's "just the way the Senate works."

The legislation has been referred to the Senate Commerce Committee.

Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), a member of the committee, said the TikTok legislation is "something we should move faster on, not slower."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

To save the news, ban surveillance ads

Tonight (May 31) at 6:30PM, I’m at the MANCHESTER Waterstones with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Ian Forrester.

Tomorrow (Jun 1), I’m giving the Peter Kirstein Lecture for UCL Computer Science in LONDON.

Then it’s Edinburgh, London, and Berlin!

Big Tech steals from the news, but what it steals isn’t content — it steals money. That matters, because if we create pseudo-copyrights over the facts of the news, or headlines, or snippets to help news companies bargain with tech companies, we make the news partners with the tech companies, rather than watchdogs.

How does tech steal money from the news? Lots of ways! One important one: tech steals ad revenue. 51% of every ad dollar gets gobbled up by tech companies — primarily the cozy, collusive ad-tech duopoly of Google/Facebook (AKA Googbook). If we can shatter the market power of the concentrated ad-tech industry, news companies would go back to getting 80–90% of the ad revenue their reporting generated, which would pay for more reporting.

There’s lots to like about fixing ads. For one thing, a fair ad marketplace would benefit all news reporting, not just the largest news companies — which are dominated by private equity-backed chains and right-wing billionaires who have repeatedly shown that any additional revenues will go to pay shareholders, not more reporters. Fair ads would also provide an income for reporters who strike out on their own, covering local politics or specific beats, without making themselves sharecroppers for Big Media.

One way to fix ads would be to break up the ad-tech “stacks.” Googbook both operate impossibly conflicted ad-placement businesses in which they bargain with themselves on behalf of both advertisers and publishers, with the winners always being the tech companies. The AMERICA Act from Senator Mike Lee would force ad giants to divest themselves of business units that create conflicts of interest. It’s popular, bipartisan legislation — and I do mean bipartisan; its backers include Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz! I wrote about the AMERICA Act and the role it will play in saving news from tech for EFF’s Deeplinks Blog last week:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

This week, I’ve got a followup on Deeplinks about another important way to unrig the ad market: banning surveillance ads:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

Even if we break up the ad-tech stacks, ads will still be bad for the news — and for the public. That’s because the dominant form of digital ads is “behavioral advertising” — the ad-tech sector’s polite euphemism for ads based on spying. You know these ads: you search for shoes and then every website you land on is plastered in shoe ads.

Surveillance ads require a massive, multi-billion-dollar surveillance dragnet, one that tracks you as you physically move through the world, and digitally, as you move through the web. Your apps, your phone and your browser are constantly gathering data on your activities to feed the ad-tech industry.

This data is incredibly dangerous. There’s so much of it, and it’s so loosely regulated, that every spy, cop, griefer, stalker, harasser, and identity thief can get it for pennies and use it however they see fit. The ad-tech industry poses a risk to protesters, to people seeking reproductive care, to union organizers, and to vulnerable people targeted by scammers.

Ad-tech maintains the laughable pretense that all this spying is consensual, because you clicked “I agree” on some garbage-novella of impenatrable legalese that no one — not even the ad-tech companies’ lawyers — has ever read from start to finish. But when people are given a real choice to opt out of digital spying, they do. Apple gave Ios users a one-click opt-out of in-app tracking and 96% of users clicked it (the other 4% must have been confused — or on Facebook’s payroll). The decision cost Facebook $10b in the first year. You love to see it:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html

But here’s the real punchline: Apple blocked Facebook from spying on its customers, but Apple kept spying on them, just as invasively as Facebook had, in order to target them with Apple’s own ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The thing that stops companies from spying on us isn’t the strength of their character, it’s the discipline imposed by regulation and competition — the fear that they’ll get fined more than they make from spying, and the fear that they’ll lose so much business from spying that they’ll end up in the red.

Which is why we need a legal ban on ads, not mere platitudes on billboards advertising companies’ “respect” for our privacy. The US is way overdue for a federal privacy law with a private right of action, which would let you and me sue the companies who violated it, even if no public prosecutor was willing to go to bat for us:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

A privacy law that required companies to get your affirmative, enthusiastic, ongoing, specific, informed consent to gather and process your personal data would end surveillance ads forever. Despite the self-serving nonsense the ad-tech industry serves up about people “liking relevant ads,” no one wants to be spied on. 96% of Ios users don’t lie.

A ban on surveillance ads wouldn’t just serve the public, it would also save the news. The alternative to surveillance ads is context ads: ads based on what a reader is reading, rather than what that reader was doing. Context-based ad marketplaces ask, “What am I bid for this Pixel 6 user in Boise who is reading about banana farming?” instead of “What am I bid for this 22 year old man who recently searched for information about suicidal ideation and bankruptcy protection?”

Context ads perform a little worse than surveillance ads — by about 5%:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/29/taken-in-context/#creep-me-not

So presumably advertisers won’t pay as much for context ads as they do for behavioral targeting. But that doesn’t mean that the news will lose money. Because context ads favor publishers over ad-tech platforms — no publisher will ever know as much about internet users as spying ad-tech giants do, but no tech company will ever know as much about a publisher’s content as the publisher does.

Behavioral ad marketplaces have high barriers to entry, requiring troves of surveillance data on billions of internet users. They are naturally anticompetitive and able to command a much higher share of each ad dollar than a contextual ad service (which would have much more competiition) could.

On top of that: if behavioral advertising was limited to people who truly consented to it, 96% of users would never see an ad!

So contextual ads will show up for more users, and more of the money they generate will land in news publishers’ pockets. If context ads fetch less money per ad, the losses will be felt by ad-tech companies, not publishers.

Finally: publishers who join the fight against surveillance ads won’t be alone — they’ll be joining with a massive, popular movement against commercial surveillance. The news business is — and always has been — a niche subject, of burning interest to publishers, reporters, and a small minority of news junkies. The news on its own is a small fry in policy debates. But when it comes to killing surveillance ads, the news has a class alliance with the mass movement for privacy, and together, they’re a force to reckon with.

My article on killing surveillance ads is part three of an ongoing, five-part series for EFF on how we save the news from tech. The introduction, which sets out the whole series, is here:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The final two parts will come out over the next two weeks, and then we’re going to publish the whole thing as a PDF that suitable for sharing. Watch this space!

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Manchester, Edinburgh, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: EFF's banner for the save news series; the word 'NEWS' appears in pixelated, gothic script in the style of a newspaper masthead. Beneath it in four entwined circles are logos for breaking up ad-tech, ending surveillance ads, opening app stores, and end-to-end delivery. All the icons except for 'ending surveillance ads' are greyed out.]

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/2023/05/31/context-ads/#class-formation

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #class formation #ad-tech #context ads #news #gdpr #big tech #eff #monopoly #how to save the news #link taxes

[ruhua-langblr]

Holiday Gifts for Language Learners~

Here are some ideas for language learning enthusiasts this holiday season!

(Some specific examples will be focused on Chinese/Korean as the target language. None of the links are affiliate links. amazon is linked to out of convenience, but there are usually other places that these things can be purchased at!)

Books!

There's a lot of textbooks out there that approach language learning from different perspectives. Textbooks can often be expensive, so checking out used book stores is a great idea! I really enjoy Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar and this used copy in very good condition is so much cheaper than the original price! Also, TTMIK's latest books are currently on sale!

While on the subject of books, there are so many options for reading in foreign language! For lower level learners, graded readers are a great choice as you can find books at your current level that can grow with you! For example Tales and Traditions has four volumes of short stories and myths in Chinese, with each volume increasing in difficulty. Abridged Classics like this series from Sinolingua Press or this Journey to the West series.

For advanced learners, buying novels in your target language is also a great choice! Soo and Carrots has collected Korean novels recommended by members of BTS.

2. iTalki!

I've been using iTalki for the past couple months and I've really enjoyed it! It's great to learn from a native speaker now that I'm out of a classroom environment, but still actively pursuing a higher degree of Chinese as well as starting Korean. They have a lot of deals on packages and prices vary between teachers, so it's easy to find something in your budget! I do have a code for $5 (AC6AGf0) for new users.

3. Notetaking!

For traditional notetaking, I think these translucent sticky notes are great for taking notes that aren't a hassle to erase, while still showing the text that you're commenting on! I also love to put relevant stickers on my notebooks. Lots of fun options like 我不知道，加油 salamander, 자고 싶어, many Korean words of encouragement,and the Ted Cruz meme 这个人吃了我的儿子。

Digital notetakers might enjoy this goodnotes journal! It's highly customizable to whatever language you might be learning. I have two versions of it in my goodnotes, and each uses different pages for Korean and Chinese. Goodnotes itself is also a great gift if you want to upgrade from free or a yearly subscription to total ownership!

4. Language Learning Apps/Sites!

I try to work within the free world as much as possible, but there are some things worth paying for! Reading apps for Chinese like Du Chinese, or my favorite, Readibu are super helpful! Readibu is free, but the paid option has a lot of great features!

Also for those missing TTMIK after they added a paywall to a lot of content, a membership to their courses would be great!

5. Movies and TV!

Besides the benefit of immersion, learning a language is also about learning another culture. Right now the Criterion Collection is 50% off at B&N until December 4th!

For TV, getting a subscription to a site like Viki or iQiYi is a great gift as they have new shows from many asian countries!

#langblr #mandarinblr #gift ideas

[therealtruthalways]

BREAKING🚨 Rep. James Comer says six banks, including JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, submitted over 170 suspicious activity reports to the Treasury Department regarding the Biden family, alleging their involvement in money laundering, human trafficking, and tax fraud.

The American banks also raised concerns about wire transfers received by the Bidens from foreign state-owned entities, notably from the Chinese government, allegedly for the purpose of money laundering and tax evasion.

The foreign wires were found to be directed towards Biden's business associates before being funneled through 20 shell companies associated with the Bidens. Subsequently, the funds were distributed among various Biden family members.

SARs are vital documents that financial institutions must file with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) when they suspect any cases of money laundering or fraudulent activities.

Rep. Comer highlighted one specific SAR linked to a $3 million wire from China to Biden's business partner, Rob Walker. This money was received in an inactive account that had maintained a $50,000 balance for ten years before the significant wire transaction from China.

Within just 24 hours of receiving the wire, Walker initiated incremental payments to several Biden shell companies, eventually disbursing funds to four different Biden family members.

Comer explained that concealing the source of money through the use of shell companies to deceive the IRS is considered money laundering and racketeering.

He noted that if the funds were intended for legitimate purposes, they could have been wired directly to Hunter Biden, but instead, they were routed through business partners and various companies with no clear legitimate purpose.

Senator Ted Cruz asked, "So the Chinese Communist government was sending the money?"

Rep. Comer replied, "Yes."

"If Hunter Biden was doing something legitimate for China, they could have just wired the money to Hunter Biden, but they didn't," he explained.

"They sent it to a company called Robinson Walker. Then they wired it to a company called Owasco. Then they wired it to another company called Bohai. These companies don't do anything with the money."

Senator Cruz responded, "It's just a bucket to pour the water in, then a bucket to pour it into somewhere else?"

Rep Comer said, "That's exactly what it is and it was organized. This is like organized crime."

When the corporate media foolishly asks where is the evidence that the Bidens committed crimes?

American banks have submitted hundreds of suspicious activity reports on the Biden family, alleging their involvement in human trafficking, money laundering, and tax fraud.

Congressional investigators have obtained bank account records and wire transfer statements on twenty shell companies owned by the Bidens, which were allegedly used for laundering illegally obtained money from China, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and Kazakhstan as unregistered foreign agents.

This evidence is supported by hundreds of thousands of emails, tens of thousands of text messages, photographs, audio recordings, calendar statements, and ten years of data from Hunter Biden's laptop, which the FBI took into its possession in 2019.

@MarcoPolo501c3 published a comprehensive "Report on the Biden Laptop," documenting 459 alleged crimes involving the Biden family and their associates, including 140 business crimes, 191 sex crimes, and 128 drug crimes.

A $1,000 reward is offered for any verifiable corrections, but thus far, no crimes have been disputed.

In addition, credible IRS whistleblowers have accused the Justice Department of obstructing the Hunter Biden investigation by blocking felony charges, search warrants, and interviews while preventing any investigation of the President and his family.

Furthermore, just yesterday, a judge highlighted an unprecedented lenient deal offered by the Justice Department to Hunter Biden, which would result in no felony charges or jail time for tax fraud and lying on a gun form.

This DOJ deal would have also granted protection to the First Son from any future prosecution related to illegally obtained money from foreign nations as an unregistered foreign agent.

What is more corrosive and destructive to our nation than a politicized Justice Department that applies different legal standards depending on whether one's last name is Trump or Biden?

[truthdogg]

This article is from 2018, but it’s extremely relevant today, because of how influential David Barton has been over the past five years since it was written. The change in tone from the right has shifted in that time as more and more of Barton’s followers have taken office and implemented his ideas.

One of the key elements of his phony mythology, for starters, is that the founders were divinely inspired evangelicals, and that they cannot be criticized whatsoever. From the article:

“It's also telling that so much of this revisionist American history is about blending Christianity with a very specific form of American (usually white) nationalism. Figures like Barton blend the idea that America is a "Christian country" with the idea that the only critiques of the Founding Fathers - that, say, they owned slaves or contributed to racial inequality - come from "politically correct" historians seeking to discredit America's great history for political ends.

“The founders double as hero-saints to Barton. Central to the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation is the idea that America was founded unproblematically; that only a return to this mythologized past will somehow solve perceived problems of structural inequality. "Real" America, in other words, is above criticism.”

This is the entire basis of DeSantis and others’ “anti-woke” and “anti-CRT” philosophy.

Further, watch out for any elected official claiming the US Constitution is divinely inspired. Whenever you hear it, you’re hearing a Barton-following Dominionist who should not hold political office.

And here the article explains just why so many Republicans are no longer hiding their complete & utter disdain for democracy itself:

“…Barton is among those who believe the ultimate goal for American government should be a Christian theocratic state, which is necessary to properly usher in the apocalyptic End Times. Dominionism takes many forms, …(n)evertheless, its fundamental principle is the same: Christians must work toward a theocratic state in which Christians are in control. Or, as current congressional candidate (and fellow Barton enthusiast) Rick Saccone said in an interview last year with Pastors Network of America, God wants Christians “who will rule with the fear of God in them, to rule over us.” ”

If you don’t recall, Saccone fortunately lost that election as well as the one after. (Thank you, Pennsylvania!) But others like him continue to win. Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz are notable Dominionists, and even Donald Trump has publicly embraced these ideas. This worldview they share isn’t undermining their support; it’s why they have any. Republicans’ strongest supporters are with them because of these views, while so-called moderates like Mitt Romney, Adam Kinziger & others continue to lose party support. This is exactly why influential pastors like Robert Jeffress and David Jeremiah are such avid Trump campaigners, because they believe in Christian authoritarianism and believe that Trump can (and will) make it happen.

We need to be very clear about this. Today’s Republicans are mostly Barton-inspired fanatics at all levels, especially locally. This is why after Tennessee Republicans ejected Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, they were caught on tape claiming that they were personally at the forefront of a “war” for control of the nation.

Base Republicans believe this nonsense. That’s why the very next thing the Tennessee legislature did after that recording was made was vote to allow unlicensed concealed carry, because they want their soldiers armed if and when they are voted out of office. If you look at the collateral damage of their war—our now-daily mass murders—it’s easy to see what impact their belief is having. The fear and distrust these killings create serve their goals as well, as those are critical ingredients for any authoritarian regime.

If we don’t start paying attention to this poisonous religious & racist rhetoric, we will not be able to stop not only our daily violence, but the coming violence as well. January 6th is going to look like the tourist visit Republicans claim it was. This is urgent. The change in right-wing rhetoric from this 2018 article to today’s full-throated endorsement and implementation of its ideas should make that very clear.

#us politics #republicans #dominionism #white nationalists #Christian nationalists #woke #ron desantis

[rae-gar-targaryen]

Blurb Requests are OPEN!

Starting now through Monday, June 19, send me some prompts and I’ll write a five to ten sentence blurb based on it! Help me shake the rust off on my writing (and write for a few new characters!)

You can either: Send me any NSFW headcanon you have, and I’ll write a blurb. 

Or -- send me a prompt from THIS list, and I’ll write a five-sentence blurb. 

Or -- send me a word to build the blurb around. Any word you can think of. The more evocative the better!

Any super-cute scenario you like? Send it! (NSFW is OK, but not required!) 

Who I’ll write for: 

TASM!Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield)

Any of the TGM characters (Rooster, Fanboy, Javy, Phoenix, Hangman, Payback, and Bob)

Fanboy x Cielo specific requests

Kendall Roy, Stewy Hosseini (Succession)

EZ Reyes, Angel Reyes, or Coco Cruz (Mayans MC) 

Jamie Tartt, Dani Rojas, or Roy Kent (Ted Lasso) 

Any Danny Ramirez character (Fanboy, Joaquin Torres, Ash, Gabe, etc.) 

Any Ben Barnes character (The Darkling, Billy Russo, etc.) 

Joel Miller and Tommy Miller (TLOU) 

Cassian Andor (SW)

John Wick

Don’t see your fav up here? Just ask! If I can write it, I’ll give it a go! 

Tagging some lovelies: @withahappyrefrain @joaquinwhorres @mxgyver @mortwig @joannasteez @inklore @gretagerwigsmuse @arctvrvs @spiderispunk @bobfloydsbabe @ryebecca @petcr3 @its-gita-time   @drew-garfi @phoenixhalliwell @ohmagawd-life @flightlessangelwings

#requests are open #send some prompts! #tasm!peter parker x reader #rooster bradshaw x reader #mickey garcia x reader #fanboy garcia x reader #mickey fanboy garcia x reader #javy machado x reader #natasha trace x reader #jake seresin x reader #bob floyd x reader #kendall roy x reader #ez reyes x reader #angel reyes x reader #coco cruz x reader #jamie tartt x reader #dani rojas x reader #roy kent x reader #joaquin torres x reader #billy russo x reader #the darkling x reader #joel miller x reader #tommy miller x reader #cassian andor x reader #john wick x reader #danny ramirez #fanboy x cielo

[triflesandparsnips]

Off the back of your RPF post (which I wholeheartedly endorse, support, etc), why do critics totally forget the concept of public personas? We all have them (see any social media account, work!You versus friends!You, etc), so why are people being so precious about RPF being the Nice and Accurate Representation of someone?

note 1) Once upon a time, I [very stupidly, in retrospect, but fuelled entirely by morbid curiosity] dipped into some RPF about two people I had worked with and, naturally, it was in no way like the people involved. Of course it wasn't. Because the people in real life are sometimes pathologically shy or have a really terrible sense of humour or don't give a damn about the character they're playing, but get paid a lot to sound like they do. The exact opposite is also true.

You are 1000% right that the critics who spout awful nonsense about reading/writing RPF totally miss the part where the people in RPF do not exist because we as fans do not know strangers' personalities.

But also...

note 2) there's a reason famous people generally keep stuff like that at arm's length because, really, can you imagine someone shipping you with Jan from Accounts and then reading about it? No? Exactly.

Yikes. Sorry. This wasn't meant to come off as a rant, more a co-sign to what you wrote! Just wanted to reach out and agree. I've no need/desire for you to respond if you don't fancy it :)

(Also, sorry Jan from Accounts, I'm sure you're lovely, I just don't have the spoons for that kind of relationship)

Yes! ABSOLUTELY.

Regarding note 1: Anon, I KNOW THAT FEEL. There are Folks on tumblr here and also In Various Public Spaces that I definitely work with and/or exist alongside in the same work community, and what fans (or, in some cases, just people outside that work community) believe those Folks are like in Real Life is... deeply inaccurate. But what few things they do "know" are "facts" that have been specifically shared as part of the persona! And where there are gaps in the persona (similar to where there are gaps in a piece of media), fans will add their own emotional narrative logic to try and fill in the blanks-- and the folly comes (as anyone who goes ALL IN on a piece of fanon or personal heartcanon) from believing that the shit you made up is somehow actually true.

And regarding note 2: YES ALSO ABSOLUTELY. Like, let people make their own terrible decisions because they are goddamn adults and/or let them curate their experience with the help of their actual friends. We can't know what these Public People want to do! We can't know what they're okay with! STOP SHOWING UP IN THEIR LIVING ROOM, FFS.

John Oliver has a delightful story about reading Daily Show slash RPF that he got from a friend (or so he says, in the middle of a comedy show, which is also a crafted work that could be full of lies for the sake of the narrative). In his comedy narrative, he wasn't into it! But even assuming it's all true, it was his choice to continue reading, and his choice to turn it into a comedy routine. Because he is an adult who gets to make that choice.

2010s bandom, on the other hand, was a cornucopia of RPF because the bands publicly talked about or referenced reading fic about themselves (to the degree that a common fic warning was "Stop googling yourself, Gabe"). They also got to make that decision! Fans got kind of uncomfortable about it! Bandom looked into the void and the void looked back and said "That was hot."

(Meanwhile, if you continue to believe John Oliver's comedy routines, he also discusses the ramifications of googling yourself, but by god, it's still his choice to make.)

(...And because of these choices he and his writing team on Last Week Tonight have been able to do some truly fantastic shenanigans, including, for instance, collecting digital data from Congress using ads for "Ted Cruz erotic fan fiction". So like. Even personal tragedy can lead to Art, so jot that down.)

Finally, Zach Kornfeld from the Try Guys (which hey if we wanna talk about the difference between personas and reality, ahahaha) specifically discusses what it means to be reliant on the parasocial relationship between audience and creator:

You know, look, the parasocial relationship is the only reason I'm here. It's the people who watch me, I owe them everything and I wanna give them everything. But there has to be boundaries you create. It's a really tricky thing. I also don't want to abuse that relationship. I think it's really easy to look at your audience and go, like, "We're friends," and "Come on, you love me, support me." We're not friends. You don't know me. I'm lying to you all the time. I'm curating what I give you. I'm trying to make myself look as good as possible. The job of a creator is to be as broadly likable as possible all the time.

And like... yeah. YEAH.

RPF is fiction. From the top to the bottom, from the beginning to the end. And the moment you think any of it actually touches on the """truth""" of a real person, you are the one making things fucking weird.

#talking to my anons #RPF #fandom #writing #jfc

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

[dvdmzjr]

There are too many to mention, but I'd specifically like to say EAT SHIT to Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, Todd Young, Mike Braun, Josh Hawley, and Lindsey Graham. And hopefully in about a month I'll be permitted to say GET FUCKED to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

#US Senate #2022 midterm election #Maroon Tsunami

[nancydrewwouldnever]

Ok it's me again: The person who has never thought more than a second about Chris Evans. And I have a question.

What exactly do you mean by political engagement? And what happend about in regards to his image that caused this reaction from all of you.

Like I'm missing the biggest parts in this story and yet I'm entertained 💀

LOL, okay. First, thanks for coming back! Second, get ready for a wild ride.

So, back after the 2016 election of Trump, Chris Evans suddenly got very politically opinionated on Twitter. Some thought it was the effect of dating Jenny Slate, some thought he was just really pissed off about Trump. Either way, his new politically engaged tweets and snarky takes on Trump earned him a lot of new fans.

For some reason around 2017 he got the brainwave to start a political website that would help people be better informed voters. This website is called A Starting Point - ASP for short. The gist of the website is that politicians from both sides of the aisle give short insights into their takes on different topics/issues. So, he spent time originating this website with two partners between 2017-2020, and doing in person interviews with politicians between 2019-2020 for the website. It started getting him in hot water with fans, because he started being seen in photo ops with all kinds of people, including the likes of Ted Cruz and other icky Republicans.

In the interim, he also started reining in the political opinions on Twitter that people enjoyed. He became more cautious because of ASP, because of wanting engagement with both political parties. People started missing Political Chris.

Now, he's totally absent from Twitter, both politically and non-politically. Many people are unfollowing him there because they specifically now question his "woke" bonafides. They question if it was all just another PR rebrand that he's now tired of.

#ask #ASP

[titleknown]

Do you think Section 230 is pretty much going to be passed? I've been thinking about leaving the internet completely over this.

...Well, like many things, the answer is "It's Complicated,"

Firstly, for the most part, efforts to screw up Section 230 aren't direct repealing all of it so much as carve-outs that majorly weaken it, in ways that could still deeply screw up free speech.

The recent Kids Online Safety Act/EARN IT Act is being pushed for, and while it's not in committee, given the former was sent to the Commerce Committee last time and the latter to the Judiciary Committee, they're probably gonna send it next time, and you're probably going to want to call your senators if they're in said committee to tell them to kill those bills.

The membership of the Commerce Committee:

Maria Cantwell, Washington, Chair

Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota

Brian Schatz, Hawaii

Ed Markey, Massachusetts

Gary Peters, Michigan

Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin

Tammy Duckworth, Illinois

Jon Tester, Montana

Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona[a]

Jacky Rosen, Nevada

Ben Ray Luján, New Mexico

John Hickenlooper, Colorado

Raphael Warnock, Georgia

Peter Welch, Vermont

Ted Cruz, Texas, Ranking Member

John Thune, South Dakota

Roger Wicker, Mississippi

Deb Fischer, Nebraska

Jerry Moran, Kansas

Dan Sullivan, Alaska

Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee

Todd Young, Indiana

Ted Budd, North Carolina

Eric Schmitt, Missouri

J.D. Vance, Ohio

Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia

Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming

The membership of the Judiciary Committee:

Dick Durbin, Illinois, Chairman

Dianne Feinstein, California

Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island

Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota

Chris Coons, Delaware

Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut

Mazie Hirono, Hawaii

Cory Booker, New Jersey

Alex Padilla, California

Jon Ossoff, Georgia

Peter Welch, Vermont

Lindsey Graham, South Carolina, Ranking Member

Chuck Grassley, Iowa

John Cornyn, Texas

Mike Lee, Utah

Ted Cruz, Texas

Josh Hawley, Missouri

Tom Cotton, Arkansas

John Kennedy, Louisiana

Thom Tillis, North Carolina

Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee

So yeah.

I may as well add, If you've got the misfortune to be calling a Republican, be sure to bring up how KOSA will be used as a way for Big Government to spy on people via mandated age verification, and how EARN IT will be used to censor conservative speech.

That'll get the bastards attention. And no matter what you do, don't shut up about it, because silence means the fuckers win, just look at FOSTA/SESTA...

...Tho, in better news, the questioning in those Supreme Court suits tackling Section 230 seem to show that the justices are at least reluctant to try and do much to 230, very specifically because of how much it could fuck up.

Which begs the question, if even these fucking demons know why fucking with Section 230 is a godawful idea, what excuse do these senators have?

Point is, the efforts to undermine it aren't all at once so much as gradual and insidious. Call your senators folks, and stay vigilant.

#kosa #earn it #section 230 #internet freedom #important #signal boost

[maraposting]

i could not imagine how difficult it must be to be bi and also be the kid of ted fucking cruz 

we dk what specifically happened but i hope she’s okay

#leftism #america #politics #ted cruz