#to do with the 'you mad?' in the African American community that is an entirely separate thing. 'you mad' here means 'you crazy?'

[theinfinitedivides]

this is so random but i would love to hear your opinion on mydramalist as a fellow asian drama lover. because it’s obviously well known as a reliable wiki of sorts in dramaland but i beg to differ. (the only plus i feel being the summary and cast list for info)

i mean, i’ve not seen a single comsec w more than two brain cells as a whole? there’s always complaints about female leads rooted from misogyny, they are never happy about story progression, and i just find so many of them kinda dumb sorry lol. like zero media literacy to be found, insufferable arguments, etc. the star ratings are rly just given to popular dramas w high profile actors too.

and i personally find it disheartening that so many ppl end up referring to mdl when considering dramas because so many gems are then lost and not given appreciation.

anon. anon anon anon if you know the way i sat straight the f*ck up when i saw the notification and then read through this ask bc yes. yes to everything here that is exactly it. almost three fourths of what i've watched this year was either 1. not received well by the general MDL crowd (Moon in the Day. where is the taste brethren to not like MITD and not even for reasons that actually make sense), 2. received well but had a good chunk of people bitching in the comment section, or 3. received well but had the main point of the show (and its relevant characterization) go over their heads. (The Worst of Evil aka TWOE comment section, i am f*cking looking at you. i can count on one hand the number of people who understood what that show was supposed to be about) the one fourth that managed to escape was bc the toxicity did not reach the comment section and everyone was pretty f*cking civil. alas if only it could be like that all of the time

case in point for the ratings example, since we've already briefly tackled the lack of media literacy—j-dramas on MDL are notoriously rated much, much lower than either k- or c-dramas. half of the time that's bc there are less users watching (and rating) them therefore the average is lower but the other half it's bc people simply do not understand good media when they see it. don't get me wrong there's some freaky ass sh*t in the j-drama world that i would not touch with a Grinch level pole but to see MDLers out here talking about how slow j-dramas are and that nothing's happening. have you considered that you are either watching the wrong genre or you shouldn't be watching j-dramas in the first place bc their entire setup and general narrative framing arcs are not your style. have you even thought about that for six seconds or are you too busy expecting it to read like a typical tropey rom-com k-drama with your trending oppas. (no hate on my tropey rom-coms with [most of] said oppas, i need them when i don't want to think i just want to see sh*t on my screen and scream about hot people and the Hand Umbrellas in the Rain and the Back Hold when the male lead catches the female lead before she falls and you have the fifteen second focus on their faces just looking at each other)

and the misogyny. oh God do not get me started on the dichotomy that was the Cult, as we affectionatly called ourselves, on the feeds while THEE sageuk of the year My Dearest was airing (beloved show [that i still need to finish. JangChae i'm sorry ily life hates me like the mf it is 😭], beloved commentary on the feeds. they saw the vision on the feeds) vs the sh*tshow that was the landmine field of the comment section (the takes i saw on Gil Chae, Eun Ae AND Ryang Eum respectively.......... the misogyny wasn't enough we had to add the homophobia into the mix. buy one get one free deal fr fr). you mad man. that sh*t was insane there was a point i banned myself from scrolling farther than the cast section until the show finished airing. i kid you not on average they didn't have even half a braincell. maybe a quarter of a quarter of one. f*cked up just say you are not decent people and go

this is not to say that all of MDL is like this. i have gotten tuned into absolute masterpieces of content (and have tuned others, amen) bc of a comment comparing a show i'm watching to another one or a review being posted in the feeds about a film with less than 500 people interested. i have reconsidered my choice to not watch something after having spirited discussions in private messages discussing the pros and cons of the premise and whether they managed to get it done without f*cking sh*t up. i still contribute semi-regularly by adding relatively unknown actors and crew members to the database so they can get the credit due them. if you know where to look, you can get some good sh*t out of that place. problem is most users who are new to both the site and East/Southeast Asian cinema as a whole don't know where to look, and the cycle continues, and the ratings continue to be skewed/bloated and no one pays attention to the plot, if there even is any to pay attention to.

tl;dr: begging people to not let MDL be the be all end all for their drama recs a la 'well MDL doesn't like it so i won't watch it'. babe we have said MDLers complaining about how the ratings on Viki are too high but in my entire time watching dramas i've found that in the past two to three years the Viki ratings are making more sense than the MDL ones. sit with that for a sec. when you're done branch out and see the world (literally and cinematically), i promise you will be a better person for it

#inbox #q: anon #mydramalist #mdl #kdrama #not what i expected to see this Friday but i needed to see it #anon love this got a bit long i'm sorry i am just. Passionate about this subject as you can tell #honestly istg the only reason i still use MDL is to track my sh*t. plus i obsessively organized my profile page and i am not letting that #go to waste no ty #i feel like the Asian drama fandom over here on Tumblr are just. slightly more normal somehow. also you'll get f*ckingly long analyses #on shows that will have you face down on the ground shot in six different places taken apart etc etc #situations like these are when i'm grateful that Bollywood is not available on MDL bc the takes with even less than a quarter of #a quarter of a braincell that i would have to deal with then........... God loves me that's why it hasn't happened #also. the Caribbean seeped into this once again let me explain. 'you mad man' is a Dominican (DM not DR) phrase. it has nothing #to do with the 'you mad?' in the African American community that is an entirely separate thing. 'you mad' here means 'you crazy?' #or 'bitch you ain't serious'. could have also said 'you too have limyé' but that would need another paragraph by itself to explain #bc of the Dominican specific context and this is not the kweyol/patois class session today sksksksk

[breelandwalker]

Wolf Moon - January 24-25, 2024

Shake off the cold and sing to the sky, witches - it's time for the Wolf Moon!

Wolf Moon

The Wolf Moon is the name given to the full moon which occurs in the month of January. The name is said to be derived from the sound of wolves howling with hunger while prey is scarce in the midst of winter. Given that we now know that wolves howl mostly for communication, my personal opinion is that people huddled in their homes during a very dark and dangerous time of year probably noticed these sounds a lot more readily with little else to occupy their time as they waited out the winter, and thus were set to worrying about ravenous beasts invading their villages and farmsteads. (It's worth noting that wolves preying on livestock was a very real concern for most people outside major cities for many centuries, so this isn't entirely unfounded.)

The name also calls to mind the howling of the wind during winter storms, or whistling around the eaves during the long cold nights. And for those of us who might not have been careful with our spending over the holidays, I might cite a tongue-in-cheek reference to the wolves being at the door when those credit card bills come due.

[For those not familiar with the phrase, to have "a wolf at the door" is a saying that refers to some imminent hardship or disaster. In modern parlance, this is usually applied to poor finances or looming bankruptcy.]

This month, the moon peaks at 12:54pm EST on January 25th, so the moon will likely appear to be full on the nights of the 24th and 25th, depending on where you are in the world.

Some North American indigenous names for the month of January and its' moon are Cold Moon (Cree), Center Moon (Assiniboine), Severe Moon (Dakota), Ice Moon (Catawba), and Spirit Moon (Ojibwe). Other names include Mantis Moon (South African origins), Quiet Moon (Celtic), and Moon After Yule (Anglo-Saxon).

What Does It Mean For Witches?

As a new year dawns, it's time for rest and reflection before we set out on the next phase of our journey. While the cold weather lingers, take some time to sit by the fire, literally or metaphorically, and take stock of where you stand, what resources are available, and what you plan to do with them.

Check in with your near-and-dear following the mad rush of the holiday season as well. Make sure that friends, family, and community members around you are doing all right. Offer support and kindness where you can, but don't overextend yourself. It's your time to recuperate too, and it is good and healthy to set boundaries which allow time and space for yourself.

What Witchy Things Can We Do?

Winter is a prime time for storytelling. Back in the days before internet or television or radio, people would often read to each other or tell tales to pass the time. Consider re-reading a favorite book that inspires you or exploring some region of folklore or mythology you've been meaning to look into. If you have children who are of an age to enjoy stories, read them some of your favorites or introduce them to something new. Share stories and discussions with your witchy circle too!

While you're at it, take a moment to examine the role that folklore and stories play in your practice. If you subscribe to a particular mythos, be it through deities or just general belief, consider which parts of it resonate the most with you and why.

Consider also the lessons of the winter season - the necessity of rest between periods of growth and activity, and the role of death, cold, and darkness in the natural cycles of life. What do these things mean to you and your practice? Are they a source of fear or fascination? Do you come alive in the winter or bundle up and wait for spring? How can you best remind yourself to pause for breath as the year goes on?

And of course, the beginning of a new year is an excellent time for goal-setting and divination. You're making resolutions for your mundane life, so make a few for your craft while you're at it, and pull out your cards or runes or pendulum for a New Year forecast on how things might go.

Happy Wolf Moon, witches! 🐺🌕

SOURCES & FURTHER READING:

Bree's Lunar Calendar Series

Bree's Secular Celebrations Series

Wolf Moon: Full Moon in January, The Old Farmer's Almanac.

Full Moon January 2024: Discover the Wolf's Thrilling Spiritual Meaning, The Peculiar Brunette.

Moon Info - Full Moon Dates for 2024

Calendar-12 - 2024 Moon Phases

Image Source: What Is A Wolf Moon?, The Fact Site.

#witchcraft #witchblr #witch community #pagan #moon magic #lunar magic #full moon #wolf moon #lunar calendar

[booksandwords]

Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann

Read time: 2 Days Rating: 5/5

The quote: "I use Tumblr, which is probably the best support system for me right now. I mean, it's a super garbage fire of discourse sometimes, but really, we all just hyper-love everyone and everything and want our ships to sail, regardless of canon or what anyone else thinks. And there'll be posts with literally thousands of notes that'll make the rounds saying things like, 'If you're Black and ace, you're valid and I love you.,' which is really nice to read when you're not expecting it. You know the saying, 'love is love,' right? I've heard it thousands of times, but I've learned it, internalized it, because of the blogs I follow on Tumblr." — Alice

I'm on an aspec binge apparently. Two of my three of most recent books feature asexuality prominently, as does my next one. Anywho this one has been on my tbr for far too long, that is the prompt it's filling on my Dymocks Reading Challenge List. Quick review because I am so backlogged on reviews right now. To start with it is worth reading, especially for ace people.

I enjoyed Let's Talk About Love is uses friendship well, in that way that friendship is so, so messy. There is perfect ignorance of asexuality and the truth of it. Or at least the truth of Alice's experience. Alice biromantic (as with Upside Down that dual label is unusual) and maybe most importantly Alice is African American. Alice is fun and funny. Her personality is perfect for this kind of story. She will make you laugh and you will feel her pain. Love interest Takumi is a lot for the reader to deal with, because we see him through Alice's eyes. We never see him objectively. That said he's my type anyway nerdy, cute and charming as hell. His reaction to Alice and her truth is while not natural almost understandable given the lack of education on asexuality in the broader community (even among young people), that lack of education is part of the point. One of the things that Claire Kann wants to improve.

If I have any complaints about Let's Talk About Love it's that the ending feels a little bit rushed. It feels kinda like a few more pages would have made for a more comfortable resolution to Alice's relationships with Feenie and Takumi. There is something about Alice's narrative style. It feels like she is talking, not to the reader, to a friend. It's written with lots of brackets adding comments. The story does ultimately leave a lot of questions about Takumi's background and especially his family though in some ways this does fit due to his reluctance to talk about them. The twins, Megumi and Mayumi, are fecking adorable though. I'm not entirely sure who the intended audience is but it does feel like it suits the aces of all ages that came to terms with their sexuality on tumblr. There are quite a few of us, many of us older, many of us learning about our sexuality through the internet because there is little to no local support or queer education in high schools.

I do still have some quotes to add. Beware most of these are from the second half of the book.

"Calm down. What happened?" "I just wanted to wear a cute costume, you know? And everything was great, but Feenie and Ryan left me and boys are awful when they're drunk and I can't even get drunk to drown my disappointed sorrows because Jesus knows it's not safe in there. And I'm just so "I just wanted to wear a cute costume, you know? And everything was great, but Feenie and Ryan left me and boys are awful when they're drunk and I can't even get drunk to drown my disappointed sorrows because Jesus knows it's not safe in there. And I'm just so mad I could spit." — This quote and the scene it comes from are so much to read. They are confronting in a way that is relatable for all women. I quite like it though. (Takumi and Alice, p.119-20)

"Can you sing? Because that sounds like something a siren would say. Warn me before you sing me to my death so your conscience can be clear." — I think that line may almost be on par with a fallen angel line for pick up lines. Though at least this is somewhat cerebral. (Takumi, p.223)

"Before, you said 'bisexual minus the sexual' but didn't add in a substitute. If you don't care about sex, what do care about?" — I like Alice's description of her sexuality. It is so simple but so accessible for those who aren't fluent in the ace world but at least know the queer basics. (Takumi, p.236)

"Sex is too much a part of everything, and I don't think it's reasonable to tell my partner I don't ever want to sleep with them and expect them to stick around. I'm not saying they wouldn't agree. I personally am not okay with asking. And I'm not saying I wouldn't want to try again someday, but I don't want them to have the expectation that I will. It has to be my choice and a lot of people don't respect that." — Alice

#asexuality #queer #book review #ktreviews #read 2022 #dymocksreadingchallenge #claire kann #let's talk about love #lets talk about love #booklr

[thedejaview]

My name is Deja Solo. I’m a 26 year old artist based in Salem MA. And for my entire life I have struggled with a whole list of mental health issues including Anxiety, Depression, BiPolar, and much more.

I’m both Spanish and African American, and experiencing mental health in these communities is wildly ignored. And even at a young age, I always associated with goth, rock and roll, hardcore, and emo culture. I remember in 8th grade feeling like the coolest kid ever, because the skater kids had asked if I wanted to skip school and go to the skate park.

And though it goes unsaid, one of the hardest things being both Spanish and African American, is that’s both of those communities tend to distance each other from one another, and I would often be ridiculed for not being “black enough” or not being “Spanish enough” and that my involvement with Goth and Emo culture was somehow a “white” thing.

I COMPLETELY rejected these sentiments. And if anything, the pushback I received for expressing myself, made me push even harder into, what I felt was, my truth.. (Had to really let them know it wasn’t a phase lol)

So a lot of my early years were formed by the communities I found myself in, and the music that lived there. This radically influenced me. And I remember the joy in my heart the day Linkin Park and Jay Z dropped an album, it was like a big middle finger to all the people who said those two worlds could never exist

I’m someone whose experienced bullying, racism, as well as violent and repeated abuse as a child, so in my adult life, I choose to mostly keep to myself, and the circle I trust. So music, has been and continues to be a constant light for me. And when it comes to healing, as much as I encourage others to seek out professional help as needed, I find an extraordinary amount of healing in creating, writing and preforming music. Some of my darkest moments in life were completely turned around by the right song, at just the right moment. So I’ve sought to do the same in my own creations, to offer a guiding light. A light into the world that’s tortured me and the world that’s healed me. A light into the many thoughts and ramblings of a kid who laughs at the time to come. A light into my madness that I call my spectrum of expressions. There’s been so many people who have told me I’ll never make it, or that pursuing music is a pointless dream, but I just know with all my heart and soul that this is what I was meant for. And I know that even if it’s just one person that is helped by my music, that I’ve accomplished my mission. And at the end of the day, I would much rather have a tight knit community of fans that know and love me, then to just be “famous”. I want to connect with real people in a real way the way the artists I grew up with did for me.

So this month I decided to drop a record in light of the mental health struggles I face, and in honor of those who have lost that struggle. I believe that despite my mental health, I still have a lot to offer this world, and if you can relate, I believe you do to, so let’s do this together 🖤💚🖤

The album will be called “Songs For The Broken: An Audible Memior” and will consist of 5 new songs. It’s coming to all platforms 2.23.23

Please share this with a friend 🙏🏾 every share brings me that much closer to living my dreams. And every like is a middle finger to the racist assholes and doubting voices who said a black emo kid would never make it

#emo #indie #indie alternative #emo rap #emo rapper #lil peep #juice wrld #xxxtentacion #emo blog #emo scene #black alternative #alt poc #alt rap #alternative #hip hop #my music #pop music #indie music #emo kid #black emo #aestehtic #alternative goth #goth aesthetic #goth music #black goth

[black-paraphernalia]

I am posting this next bit of information under Little Known Black History Fact because the WS in American are very good in  whitewashing the real truth of  history that really happen when it involves blacks in this country; which is always the case. They lie and deny that is what they do they do not want to admit Black History is American History, for this will put the spot light on the evilness of WS in America and how everyone from the White house to the Out  house is complicit. 

On the cusp of the 100th year anniversary or the Black Wall Street Massacre as horrible and sad it was the little know fact is this was not the first nor will it be the last. 

This history of Jim Crow enforced by the Klan provides context for a hard truth: In America, race riots are used to settle social discontent. The origin of race rioting begins with southern whites, resenting black advancement, attacked them to disenfranchise them of both the vote and economic prosperity.

Race riots were not born in the 1960s; they were born in the 1870s. The Meridian, Mississippi race riot of 1871, the Colfax Massacre in Louisiana in April 1873, the New Orleans riot of July 1866, the Memphis, Tennessee riot of May 1866, the Charleston, South Carolina riot of September 1876 and the Wilmington, South Carolina race riot of 1898, to name a few, occurred under the passive and sometimes direct hand of the local police.

The result: The ability of the former slaves to create intergenerational wealth — the key to all success in a capitalist nation — was systematically destroyed for generations.

From the late 1890s through the 1920s, white race riots continued. In the 1921 Greenwood Riot, the entire black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was known as the black Wall Street, was burned to the ground. And in the Rosewood massacre of 1923, the entire neighborhood of Rosewood, Levy County, Florida was similarly destroyed.

These and other white race riots (Red Summer of 1919) not only took black lives and wiped whole black neighborhoods off the face of the earth, they ended black economic wealth that could be passed to subsequent generations. It also caused displacement of black expertise and talent, thwarting its concentration and increase.

This economic decimation of black wealth and social stability was made worse by the Great Depression and blacks being denied full access to the various New Deal programs of the 1930s and the benefits of the GI Bill in the 1940s. Thus, during the first four decades of the American Century, blacks were subjected to white race riots and social policies that destroyed their wealth.

The point is that while whites were allowed to create intergenerational wealth and form wealthy communities both before and after the world wars, blacks were, as a matter of policy, prevented from doing the same. The policy outcome of a century of Jim Crow is systemic racism. 

Source: Morningcall.com  Your View: A history of white race riots in America By ARTHUR H. GARRISONTHE MORNING CALL-JUN 12, 2020

Here is a list of some of the countless massacres in the history of the United States. Look at the dates it was not something that happen way back the,. It happen in the past and the present and if we do not do anything to change it it will happen now and the future. STOP THE MADNESS!!!

Click on the below link for a extensive collection of information about each massacre

Zinn Education Project what you will not learn in the texts books

Most of these massacres were designed to suppress voting rights, land ownership, economic advancement, education, freedom of the press, religion, LGBTQ rights, and/or labor rights of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, and immigrants. While often referred to as “race riots,” they were massacres to maintain white supremacy.

One of the best explanations about why it is important for students to learn this history is included in the article (and related lesson) by Linda Christensen, Burning Tulsa: The Legacy of Black Dispossession.

A tweet thread by historian Stephen West shows how politicians fueled hate crimes during the Reconstruction era, with parallels today. Ursula Wolfe-Rocca writes about Red Summer of 1919, Remembering Red Summer — Which Textbooks Seem Eager to Forget

This list is not complete and definitive.

Black Paraphernalia Disclaimer- images from Google images

#black paraphernalia #black massacres #black lives matter #stop the madness #did you know

[historic-old-guard-lover]

How many languages and which of them would the cast speak if we’re going to be completely historically accurate ?

This a great question that I can’t quite answer, but I spent six hours researching to give it a shot. I think that there’s a broad range of plausible languages and you’ve got leeway to choose how many. The first part is that different people have different affinities for languages. Some people can speak ten different languages fluently (or near-fluency), while others will struggle juggling three different ones in their brains. The range in the languages can affect this, too: it’s easy to mess up between similar languages. I personally have trouble speaking Spanish because in the middle of the sentence, I’ll drop a French word without even realizing it. The same thing doesn’t happen to me in other languages like German, though. By the same token as I’ve discussed before, similar languages are easier to learn. Going from English to Russian with the Cyrillic alphabet? More difficult than English to French, which makes up about a third of modern English. These are languages that are still in the same family (Proto-Indo-European, PIE), though, so it holds nothing to the difficulty of going from English to a language like Mandarin.

I’m breaking this answer into two parts: 1) how many?; 2) which ones? and I’m going to get carried away because I’m me so it’s below the break to spare you if this comes across your dash and you’re not a nerd...

PART 1: What’s a realistic number for them to speak?

I think that each member of the old guard probably has a certain number of languages which they’re comfortable with, a few more that they can understand/get by in, and a few that they may only know phrases from. The number of each isn’t the same for everyone. The average human being is able to speak ~1.5 languages. The most talented polyglots can speak upwards of 50 languages, maybe one guy even spoke 65 (mostly I want to mention he loved translating the phrase “kiss my ass”). This hyperpolyglot, Kreb aka “Kiss My Ass” Stan, had his brain dissected after his death and it showed a lot of “abnormalities”. That leads neuroscientists and me to believe that being able to study and learn 65 languages is either 1) a major skill that rewired his brain because he was flexing it so much; or 2) very abnormal and facilitated by his brain differences. Since their powers don’t make them stop being limited by the human brain (they can forget), I would say that it is unlikely that one of them is fluent/near fluent/comfortable in more than ~65 languages.

Getting past twelve languages is considered a feat, so I think only Andy, Quynh, Nicky, and Joe could be anywhere near the upper-bounds of languages. Remember, these hyperpolyglots spend their entire lives studying languages and often need refreshers. The members of the Old Guard don’t have the luxury of reading grammar books all day, and they also have to remember a bunch of combat training. You can argue that a lot of fighting is “muscle memory” aka located in the cerebellum and nowhere near language processing areas, but there’s still things like math, navigation, etc. that they need to remember. I doubt they have a list of their safe houses just lying around. The older members can speak more languages by virtue of being around longer and having that time to learn, but if we’re being realistic they should probably speak no more than ~45-55 languages comfortably. This doesn’t mean that they only *know* that many, but the other languages would be more like bad high school Spanish in America than able to wax poetic. Aside: that Joe is able to be poetic in what is AT LEAST his fourth or so language is very impressive and we should talk about that more.

How Many Each Member is Maximally Proficient In/Knowledgeable Of at the end of the film/Opening Fire comics run:

Lykon (comics): proficient in ~15, knowledgeable of ~30*

Lykon (movies): proficient in ~45, knowledgeable of ~80*

Andy: proficient in ~50, knowledgeable of ~100**

Quynh | Noriko: proficient in ~51, knowledgeable of ~90**

Joe: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Nicky: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Booker: proficient in ~10, knowledgeable of ~30

Nile: proficient in ~2 (maybe 3), knowledgeable of ~5

*In the comics, he is younger than Andy and Quynh and I assume he dies young. In the movie, it is strongly implied that he was the oldest. The reason why his numbers are not larger, however, is because at some point there were fewer languages as humanity had not dispersed as much as it eventually did. He’s also long before written language which facilitates learning for most people. RIP Lykon.

**I’m not saying that Quynh is smarter than Andy, just that she comes after written language and it should be slightly easier for her to pick things up. I’m giving Andy access to more languages, however, because PIE alone covers Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. More on this later.

PART 2: Which languages would each of them speak?

I’ve covered this question a little in a previous post that was broadly about proto-indo-european/Andy-centric (check it out if you want), but I’ll give a broader survey of each character here.

A Quick Aside on Lykon: We don’t know enough about this character, and the fact that the comics and movie diverge so sharply does not help at all. I’m going to headcannon that he was from Eastern Africa, where most archaeologists agree that modern humans first appeared in the Horn of Africa aka modern Ethiopia and Somolia and neighbors, and predates Andy by ~3,000 years. For future purposes below and assuming a birth date for Andy in the range ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE, this puts his birth at around ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE. This is wild speculation, however. Maybe the early immortals should be spaced by warfare types (Stone Age, Bronze, Iron, Steel?) or maybe they pop up once a cultural region reaches a certain historic point or maybe they just sorta pop up and then live for six or seven thousands years. I’m working off the last assumption because it’s the simplest. The only thing I’m certain of is that Greg Rucka probably didn’t sit down and think this pattern through. If I’m wrong, oh well. I’m mad at him for all his historical inaccuracies. With dating from ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE, I’m having trouble finding a name for the cultures that scientists/historians know were living there at the time. It’s probably because the region has been continually occupied since the first humans, which one can safely assume makes abandoned and undisturbed sites hard to fine.

A Quick Aside on Quynh | Noriko: I like the film better, so I’ll be working with Quynh. If there’s enough interest, I can add on Japanese for Noriko. I’m going to date Quynh to be ~1,500 years after Andy (maybe this should be the new date system, before Andy “BA” and after Andy “AA”). This puts her in the time range of ~3,500BCE - 2,500BCE which could place her in either the Đa Bút neolithic culture of modern-day Vietnam or the Phùng Nguyên bronze age culture of modern-day Vietnam. Those names are archaeological in nature, based on the location where sites have been found and dated to those ranges.

Other Origins: Because we have diverging cannons, I’m going to just state the backgrounds that I’ve assigned. Joe is from 1066CE with a background in the Arab-controlled Maghreb (more specifically, modern-day Tunisia and Northern Algeria). Nicky is from 1069CE with a background from the Italian maritime republic and city-state of Genoa. Booker is from 1770 southern France. Nile is from 1994 Chicago in the United States. Andy is from ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE in the Caucasus (modern-day Georgia and Azerbaijan) or the South Western Eurasian Steppes, probably the Shulaveri-Shomu culture assuming that location.

The first language everyone learned, their “mother tongue” or “native language” is one that they definitely speak. It’s the language that they think in and would be hard-pressed to lose. This even includes now-dead languages, because, again, it’s the one that they learned to think with. Of course, it is possible to lose a language when you have no one to speak it with if you wanted to do something tragic, but I think that these things are too deeply ingrained for it it to happen by accident.

What Each One’s First Language Would Be:

Nile: American English, possibly African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) at home

Booker: Provençal/Occitan, possibly “standard French” (school and other places outside the home)

Nicky: Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize

Joe: Tunisian Derja/Tunisian Arabic/Tunisian, and possibly one of the dialects of the native Zenati language group based on where more precisely you place him

Quynh: Proto-Viet–Muong (which isn’t well documented because it’s so old)

Andy: Proto-Indo-European (PIE), but if you’re curious the Classical Scythian Language for which she is probably named is only off by a factor of 10 (4000 vs 400 BCE) *cue distressed sighing*

Lykon: Proto-Cushitic (also suffering a lack of documentation from being old as heck)

Other than their first languages, what else they learn depends on where they go. People learned languages back then for the same reasons that they do today: to communicate (and to read, after the invention of writing). 

Additional Confirmed or Likely Cannon Languages:

Nile: Spanish because of the American school system for sure. French is listed on the IG account, but she probably speaks only Spanish or French to a degree of fluency, definitely one better than the other. Very Basic Pashto, which we see her use some obviously-memorized phrases with in the film.

Booker: The IG promo things asserts that he knows (modern, standard) Italian and Greek. Why not? He also probably knows Spanish depending on where more specifically in southern France he is from. He’s probably also picked up on at least Very Basic Arabic from Joe and Nicky, but actually learning the language would take commitment from him. He also clearly speaks English.

Nicky: Other Italian dialects, and it would be fairly easy for him to have picked up modern Italian. He definitely reads Latin. If he was from a wealthy family, he probably also speaks Greek. If he was from a trading family, he probably speaks the trading pidgin of Sabir. The IG account confirms Arabic (vague, but okay I’ll be generous and say modern standard Arabic) and Romanche (they meant to write Romansh). I think Romansh is poorly chosen to characterize him in Northern Italy, but I’m feeling generous. He also clearly speaks English.

Joe: He definitely speaks standard Arabic to have been able to communicate with other Arabic-speakers in Jerusalem.  Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize because of the love of his life, which also means he probably picked up modern Italian at some point. The IG account confirms Farsi (they call it “Persian” *cue screaming*), which works if he was a merchant who traveled far to eastward on the Silk Road...and if you go with the comic cannon makes more sense. I’m going to say that he speaks the Mediterranean trading pidgin Sabir because of his location in Tunisia. If he was from a wealthy merchant family and could afford schooling, he probably learned Greek and maybe also Latin. There’s a good chance that he knows conversational-levels of other native Zenati languages thanks to colonialism discouraging their usage. He also clearly speaks English.

Quynh: We don’t actually know if she speaks English, but it’s safe to assume she does speak at least some of it. She’s probably learned Vietnamese and Mường because of her mastery of their proto-language. Because I see her returning to modern-day Vietnam to fight the Chinese colonization, I think that she might know Cantonese or Mandarin. Based on her travels with Andy, I’d like to propose Greek, Latin, and Mongolian. I’m sure that Andy and her share a language, but who knows which one they were each speaking when they met!

Andy: The IG account says “all,” but I’ve discussed this elsewhere (*major eye rolling*). She almost certainly picked up Scythian and Greek based on her chosen name. Latin isn’t as likely as you’d think, but is possible. I’d like to think that she’s also partial to learning Russian (or some earlier form of the language), Mongolian, and Armenian. Based on her travels with Quynh, I imagine that she speaks Cantonese or Mandarin and Vietnamese or Mu’o’ng. There is some mystery language shared with Quynh, too. She also clearly speaks English.

Lykon: I really don’t know enough about him to hazard any guesses. He should share at least one language in common with Andy and Quynh. If his date of death is ~2,000- 1,000 BCE like I’m supposing, there’s a good chance that he only speaks one or two currently-named languages. Sorry, OP.

#asks #lovely anon #linguistics #neuroscience #the old guard #andromache the scythian #andy #quynh #noriko #lykon #yusuf al kaysani #joe #nicolo di genova #nicky #sebastien le livre #booker #nile freeman #nile

[aion-rsa]

Best Female Spy Movies & TV Shows to Watch After Black Widow

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Black Widow is out, bringing the women-led spy genre to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film follows Natasha Romanov in the time between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War as she works to bring down the Red Room, aka the Soviet-affiliated program that took her as a baby and brainwashed her into becoming an assassin. While the women-centric spy drama may be new for the MCU, it’s has been one of the most prolific and entertaining action sub-genres over the past few decades. If you’ve watched Black Widow and you’re looking for more taut and emotional spy thrillers to check out, we have some TV and film suggestions for you…

Hanna

Many have seen the 2011 action feature directed by Joe Wright and starring Saoirse Ronan as a girl assassin raised in the wilderness by her spy father Eric Bana, but the TV series based on the film is even better. Currently moving towards its third season, the Amazon Prime series has so much more room to delve into the nuances of the film’s premise, especially in its second season, which moves completely past the events of the movie. While the first season leans into the coming-of-age themes inherent in Hanna venturing out into the world for the very first time, the second season chooses to delve further into the spy drama of it all, expanding the series’ focus to center some of the other teen super soldiers born into the same program Hanna was rescued from as a baby. If you would have liked to learn more about the other Widows Natasha and Yelena are working to save in Black Widow, then Hanna is the show for you.

Atomic Blonde

Stylish and featuring some of the best fight scenes this side of John Wick (the film’s director David Leitch, also worked on John Wick), Atomic Blonde stars the incomparable Charlize Theron as a spy tasked with finding a lost of double agents that is being smuggled into the West on the eve of the Berlin Wall’s collapse. Like Black Widow, Atomic Blonde only has so much narrative time to delve into the complexities of this set up and setting and, maybe sensing it won’t be able to do them justice, instead leans into the aesthetic and action of this world. It works, thanks in no small part to performers like Theron, James McAvoy, and Sofia Boutella, who bring to life the stress, violence, and desperation of this intersection of place and time far better than its script.

Queen Sono

American and British spy dramas often have white westerners traveling to other, poorer nations for missions, depicting a real-life colonial power structure while rarely interrogating it. Queen Sono, billed as Netflix‘s first African original series (it is a South African series, specifically), is a spy drama that centers Black characters and community in fun and powerful ways, bringing the familiar tropes of the genre to what will probably be a new setting for most American viewers. Queen Sono follows South African spy Queen (Pearl Thusi) as she works to balance her dangerous and clandestine missions with her personal life. Funny, emotional, and action-packed, Queen Sono is a must-see for any spy drama lover looking for something new—and it’s a damn shame Netflix won’t be moving forward with a second season.

Alias

To me, Alias will always be the original. The female-led spy drama was on network television when I was a teenager, and its combination (especially in the first season and a half) of fierce fight sequences, tense spycraft, and character-driven drama made it my favorite show. Like Black Widow, Alias is grounded in family drama, most especially the father-daughter relationship between Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) and spy dad Jack Bristow (Victor Garber), but later bringing in other familial dynamics as well. The series starts as your classic double agent story, as Sydney decides to take down the agency she works for after they have her fiance killed, but, in classic J.J. Abrams style, the plot really spirals out from there—for better and worse. Airing for five season and more than 105 episodes, if you’re looking for more family-driven spy drama, Alias is the show for you.

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Deutschland 86

All three “seasons” of this excellent German-language Cold War spy series that follows an East German boy forced to become a spy in West Germany are worth watching, but the second installment, set in 1986, gives us viewers many more lady spy characters to be impressed by compared to the original Deutschland 83 story. Main character Jonas remains the protagonist of this tale, but his Aunt Lenora, probably the best spy in the entire show, takes an even bigger role in Deutschland 1986 and the subsequent Deutschland 89, as does her lover/partner Rose, a South African operative working for the African National Congress and played by the MCU’s Florence Kasumba. Throw in Jonas’ baby mama Annett, back in East Germany working as a junior intelligence agent, and the mysterious  Brigitte, and you have a second season teeming with complex and cutthroat women spies.

Nikita

This highly underrated spy series ran for four action-packed seasons on The CW before totally sticking its landing in 2013. Technically an adaptation of the 1997 La Femme Nikita TV series, which was in turn an adaptation of Luc Besson’s 1990 action film of the same name, Nikita quickly surpassed both originals to become one of the best female-led spy stories of all time. Starring Maggie Q as the titular Nikita, the series began after the former spy has vowed to take down the secret agency that trained her, known as the Division. Our story begins when Nikita plants her protege, Alex, within Division, with a plan to work together to take the agency down. Of course, going undercover comes with its own emotional and ethical complications, and Alex may not know all that there is to know about her mentor Nikita, and Nikita’s role in Alex’s tragic past. With a stellar supporting cast that includes Melinda Clarke and Xander Berkeley, Nikita was far better than it needed to be and, if your a fan of the action spy genre, is definitely worth watching.

Killing Eve

Maybe it was the Russian accent, but Yelena has mad Villanelle vibes in Black Widow, and I mean that in the least psychopathic way possible. Unless you live under a rock, you’re probably aware of this BBC America series starring Sandra Oh as a bored MI-5 agent and Jodie Comer as the spy-assassin she becomes obsessed with catching, but if you haven’t yet checked it out and are looking for another female-driven spy story with plenty of banter, then Killing Eve is the show for you. The second season gets a little rocky, but with a riveting season three and the announcement that season four will be the show’s last, now is the time to jump on the Killing Eve bandwagon.

Little Drummer Girl

In terms of tone or style, Little Drummer Girl shares little with Black Widow—it’s much more geopolitical thriller than superhero action—but I’m including the British spy series on the list because it does share a star with Black Widow. Yelena’s Florence Pugh plays an aspiring actress named Charlie who is recruited by Mossad to infiltrate a Palestinian group planning an attack in Europe. Based on a novel of the same name by acclaimed spy author John le Carré, the six-episode series is directed by Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook and co-stars Michael Shannon and Alexander Skarsgård, and the talent is not wasted. The miniseries delves much more into the ethics of spycraft than Black Widow is able or comfortable doing, asking difficult questions about how violence and manipulation are used and justified across national lines. If you’re looking for a spy drama that isn’t afraid to ask the tough questions, then Little Drummer Girl is for you.

Gunpowder Milkshake

OK, this one is more of an assassin drama than a spy drama, but the cast is too good not to include it on the list. Starring Doctor Who‘s Karen Gillan and Game of Thrones‘ Lena Headey as a pair of daughter/mother assassins, Gunpowder Milkshake is another action thriller that is all in with the familial dynamics. Past the two stars, Gunpowder Milkshake also features the iconic Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett, and Carla Gugino, rounding out the cast of action women. The film doesn’t drop on Netflix (in the U.S.) and theaters (elsewhere) until Friday, but you’ll be ready.

The post Best Female Spy Movies & TV Shows to Watch After Black Widow appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[yourdailykitsch]

Taylor Kitsch, an actor known for his roles in such Hollywood productions as "Battleship: Battle for Earth" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", is starring in the new Canal + series "Defeated". In an interview, the actor reveals what he remembers from history lessons, what connects the series' story with the modern world. He also explains why, according to him, every person should visit the former concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Taylor Kitsch started his adventure in Hollywood as a "hottie" - an actor associated with a great body and beautiful face. All because the first role that brought the popularity of the former model Abercrombie and Fitch was the character of naughty lover Tim Riggins in the cult series "Friday Night Lights".

Kitsch did not avoid tough moments in his career - for example, when the $ 250 million John Carter, his first such big role, suffered a disgusting box office failure. But the Canadian knew this taste already - after coming to the USA, he was homeless for some time before finding a job.

For years, he has been successfully playing in big titles and alongside big names. Oliver Stone ("Savages"), Ryan Murphy ("Heart Reflex"), roles alongside Chadwick Boseman ("21 Bridges"), Michael Shannon ("Waco"), Michael Keaton ("American Assassin") and Rihanna ("Battlefield ), the HBO series "Detective," starring Vince Vaughn and Rachel McAdams. Meanwhile, Kitsch finds his way to charity, especially for children.

From 1 January 2021, we will watch him in  "Defeated" . There he plays the role of Brooklyn policeman Max McLoughlin, who in the summer of 1946 is sent to Berlin, which is divided into four spheres of influence. Its task is to support the emerging police structures in the rubble. But upholding order in a space of brutality and lawlessness and clashing political forces - French, American, British and Soviet - will not be easy. Especially since Max does not know that he is used as a pawn in the game to open the Cold War, and somewhere in the maze of Berlin rubble lurks his brother Moritz, a self-proclaimed Nazi hunter who will stop at nothing ...

In addition to Kitsch, the main roles will be: Nina Hoss (local policewoman Elsie Garten), Sebastian Koch (criminal known as Engelmacher, Al Capone of post-war Berlin), Logan Marshall-Green (Max's missing brother, Moritz) and Michael C. Hall (consul Tom Franklin ).

The "Defeated" takes place in Berlin, right after the war. When you decided to play Max McLoughlin, did you have any knowledge of what the situation in Germany was like then?

The seres begins six months after the end of the war. I have the impression that this is a moment that is missing in the educational process - we learn a lot about the war itself, but about what happened immediately after it, for example, I had no idea. The plot of "Defeated" is made up, but our director Måns Mårlind (co-creator of the hit series "Bridge over the Sund") constructed it on the basis of many true stories. I have the impression that fact and fiction are perfectly balanced here. In the process of preparation, he gave us many documentaries and articles that helped to build an idea about the climate of the city from 1946. Discovering the next details of the story was fascinating for me.

Your work gives him a chance to get to know the world, its history, extraordinary places and people. Do you appreciate it?

This is the best part of my job! With each new production, I have a chance to immerse myself in its world and get to know it thoroughly. It could be a war movie like "Survivor", a story about a cult leader ("Waco"), the world of a detective ("Detective") or the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, as in "Heart Reflex". When I was an aspiring actor learning to act in New York, I never imagined that I would be able to live and work like this. Train with Navy Seals or meet Larry Kramer [American playwright, writer and activist for LGBT rights - ed.]. I am very lucky!

Prague, where you shot "Defeated", is a cult city for many Polish filmmakers, due to the famous FAMU school, but also a popular, atmospheric excursion destination. How was your time there?

Lovely. He will refer again to the privilege of working like this: six months in such a wonderful place, it is almost immoral! The only downside was the tight schedule so I didn't discover all the nooks and crannies that I had on the agenda. Fortunately, my driver, a guy in his fifties, was a great-grandfather from Prague, very talkative, and from him I learned the most interesting things - stories about the adventures of my ancestors and friends! Besides, in Prague, if you want to take a history lesson, you go out twenty meters in front of the front door - and it's already getting started. We shot in the summer, before Covid. We had an international team - Czechs, Swedes, Russians, Germans, French ... In use - not only behind the scenes, but also on the set - several languages ​​simultaneously. Really, the only problem for me was my diet. Flour, red meat, stews ... I don't really like to eat like that. At least the beer was delicious, really amazing! In general, I really liked the culture of drinking and eating outside, these gardens, the community ... wonderful thing.

Due to the fact that the film was made in Europe, you had the opportunity to see places related to the war with your own eyes. What made the greatest impression on you? I was lucky, although it is not quite an adequate term that during the shooting we managed to visit the site of the former Auschwitz camp. Of course I knew, I had read about concentration camps before, but this direct contact with the site was invaluable, it gave me a clear idea of ​​what happened. It is difficult for a man to believe what he sees around him. He's standing right next to him, yet he doesn't quite believe it. The space made a huge impression on me. I did not realize how huge Birkenau was, how perfectly organized the entire extermination was. This architecture, the surrounding houses, barracks. Someone designed it, thought over the function down to the smallest detail, and during my visit, I had the chance to trace how and where the whole process took place, step by step. I was standing there and it felt like I was choking, my whole body ached. Such experiences helped me a lot to bring my character to life. Max did not survive the camp himself, but he appears in a place marked by this tragedy, the tragedy of World War II, it affects him. I wish everyone could visit this place because it is a life changing experience.

Movies set in the past can be a perfect mirror for what is here and now. What analogies do you see between that reality and today's world? - Division, the dictate of fear, fear of the unknown, of otherness. Different ways to work through your trauma. These are all threads that connect the "Defeated" space with our reality. For my character, especially the experience of trauma resulting from family history, from the relationship with my brother, becomes the key. They both underwent a similar shock, but their reactions were completely different. I found it very interesting. Max is still hoping for a change, Moritz, as the saying goes, "the platform is gone". They have a completely different perception of one and the same event. Again, it is also a very contemporary thread - one event, situation, and extreme different opinions about it.

Your hero comes from Brooklyn, after you came from Canada, you spent a lot of time in New York. What is so special about the atmosphere of this city that gives it such a "mythical" status? For me, it has always been, I fully agree! Scorsese's "Streets of Poverty" has always been such a cinematic quintessence of New York, with its excellent Keitel and DeNiro. This film is set in the 1940s, which is the present day of Max. He was my point of reference in terms of the accent. Those years were difficult, the inhabitants struggled to make ends meet, and that also had to affect my character's character. Besides, New York has a chic character, New Yorkers feel proud of their roots. It's also something that Max defines.

And you had to transfer this New York feeling to Berlin ... ... to the razed Berlin, which for Max becomes, in a way, another space of trauma, personal again, but this time much more intense.

For this role, you had to master not only a Brooklyn accent, but also the German language. It was difficult?

I had an amazing accent teacher from Berlin, Simone. My rock! Fortunately, Max is an American who speaks German poorly and not a German, because if I had to play a German, I would have had a nervous breakdown! German is a damn hard language, especially for someone who wasn't exposed to such sounds when growing up. I learned everything phonetically. Sometimes I was "suspended" during the scene and then I was saved by Nina [Hoss, a great German acting and screen partner of Kitsch - ed.]. In my career, I have had to play with a South African, Texas, New York accent ... I've learned that there is no such thing as an optimal effect, someone is always dissatisfied. I focus on the vision agreed with the creators and I stick to it. Language is an amazing link between the actor and the protagonist, gives a unique insight into his state of mind and view of the world. I definitely prefer to play the character with an accent than to speak as usual. It's a great transformation tool. The arrangement of the lips, the appearance of the face, and the term are changing. In "Waco" my character, the guru of the sect David Koresh, had an unnaturally high, soft voice, which immediately made the viewer feel differently.

We associate you with American hits, but you are, like Ryan Reynolds or Ryan Gosling, Canadian. Do you feel like an American, or is Canada a state of mind after all?

I started my adventure with the USA when I was 20, I came to school. Now I'm forty, so I've spent half my life here. Madness! Over time, I have grown into this space, I have settled down and I feel at home. I'm talking to you from my home in Austin, Texas. But at the same time, I'll always be Canadian. I go there often, visiting my family and familiar places. Maybe I'll go back one day, who knows?

You've had moments in your career that turned from a promise of triumph to failure, such as the high-budget John Carter, who failed at the box office. Do you have something that you already know: "I'm avoiding this"? I don't have things that, as a rule, I don't do or know that I will never do. But there are some that I don't like. These include radical weight changes. My dear friend must have gained twenty-five kilos for a small, independent film. The first week was great because you eat what you want, then depression started, joint problems, sugar jumping ... I never put my back, but I lost weight. I lost a dozen kilos for the role in "Waco", before that for the "Bang Bang Club". It's fucking hard and very exhausting, especially the older I get. My body and head hate it! Also, until Scorsese calls with some great proposal, I say: enough.

#taylor kitsch #Shadowplay #interview

[kreolls-blog]

Yoongi really should adress this jim jones thing. I don't think it is a mistake at all. I have mad respect for him and his work ethic and his passion for music.... but that was a wrong move... and for people who say that he does not know.... I don't agree with you for the simple reason that he wouldn't put something on his songs just to put it. It's Min Yoongi we are talking about. He thinks deeply about songs he makes and the content he produces. Even more when it is his own personal work.

Moreover there is no way he does not know who jim jones is and just putting it like that without having done prior researches like he found it through a youtube recommendation and just pop it in his song. The dude is in his late twenties and knows how to do proper researches. The first thing you read about Jim Jones is the massacre. Not the fake ethics and valors of " wanting to regroup white and black people together" of his Peoples Temple cult. Nope. The first thing you read next to his name is the suicide of 900 people including 304 children and 70% of the victims at least being African-Americans. He manipulated and brainwashed innocent people who had faith in this. He hired private detectives to stalk people who could be influenced in joining the cult. He moved to Guyana and used the corrupted state to his advantage to bring people without a visa. 1200 People were living in Guyana with him being manipulated in a cult that praises an "authentic socialist society with no racism and respect for old people". But what really happened is that the members being mostly poor old and young african-americans were being drugged, famished, sexually abused and forced to work from morning to night 6 days a week. It was slavery without the shakles and then pushed to kill themselves for the cult. And more way more messed up things. Seriously the few things you read about this is sickening to the core....

I aknowledge that in the rest of the world Jim Jones is not as known as some other psycopaths( I personally did not know about him until few months ago). However it does not mean that the issue is not there and we can disregard everything as lack of knowledge. We are in 2020, we have access to knowledge at the end of our fingertips. Tap Jim Jones name and the facts are there.

If Yoongi has a real reason to use it he should adress it. If he made a mistake he should own up to it. But people should stop trending jim jones and should spend their time trending on the black lives matter hashtag instead. Sorry but the last thing the African American community should see right now is the name of a psycopath who used hope from african americans in majority to manipulate, torture and kill them trending.

I don't think armys should defend or cancel Yoongi because this just brings a mess and not encourages an explanation. They should instead really encourage and push Big hit and Yoongi to release a real statement to adress this issue with honesty and a well written explanation. Even more with what is going on lately for the African-American community. I know that he released it and it turned out to be unfortunately an even worse timing. But it is a bigger reason to truly release an explanation. If I were him, an artist who has such a wide and broad international audience and decided to chose to use a content that sensitive, I would have said something beforehand to warn people even without the current context. But now with the current context I personally think it is necessary to do so.

Sorry if my english or my phrasing is not that great and my thoughts are all over the place. Moreover I did not do deep researches on jim jones. Just know the basis by reading few things from here and there few months ago. Therefore I am not familiar with his entire mindset psychology or background. Just the massacre and the cult luring thing. If I missed some things feel free to tell me. Finally English is not my first language and I did not organize my ideas and thoughts before writing this. I just wrote it in one go.

I honestly just voiced my opinion and I do not encourage hating or agressivity or delusion but instead encouraging an explanation while maintaining respect and still showing the need for a quality statement to be released.

Thank you for reading this and sorry for the long post.

#min yoongi #bts #sorryforthelongpost

[mikeo56]

If you believe in democracy, if you believe in science, if you believe in justice and workers' rights, well...you can just hold your breath

1. Donald Trump is, at his core, an authoritarian leader who does not believe in democracy.

In a democracy we can and will have strong differences of opinion on issues. As you well know, there are ideological disputes within the Democratic Party, and there are certainly very major differences between Democrats and Republicans, progressives, moderates and conservatives. But, up until the Trump administration, no president (except for Obama, Bush, Bush, Clinton, Reagan and many others) has ever undermined the very tenets of American democracy and tried to move us into an authoritarian society.

No president has ever suggested delaying an election because he is behind in the polls. No president has ever stated that he might not voluntarily leave office and accept the results of an election. No president has ever viciously discredited and undermined the election process warning, without fact, of massive voter fraud. Trump's admiration for authoritarianism becomes apparent as he has ruptured our relationships with long-time democratic allies around the world while embracing right-wing authoritarian leaders in Russia, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, the Philippines and elsewhere.

(No people have ever been stupid enough and apathetic enough to elect such a piece of brainless pigshit.)

2. Donald Trump does not understand or respect the Constitution of the United States. (and most cops swear an oath to it having never read it with no clue what’s in it.)

Donald Trump, emulating demagogues throughout history, believes that he is above the law and need not follow the dictates of the Constitution. He was impeached because he has shown absolute contempt for Congress and the separation of powers. He has waged an unprecedented war against the concept of a free press and "fake news," and has repeatedly referred to the media as "an enemy of the people." He has violated the right of Americans to peacefully protest and is "normalizing" the use of federal agents to patrol and make arrests of American citizens in communities throughout the country.

3. Donald Trump is a pathological liar. ( - welcome to America, Bernie!)

We cannot have anything resembling a stable government when we have a president who lies all of the time and when nothing he says can be trusted. According to a recent report, he has made more than 20,000 false or misleading statements since he has been president.

4. Donald Trump does not believe in science. (And neither does many other politicians and many Americans...US of Duh!)

From the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump has rejected the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and our leading scientists, which has led to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and the highest per capita death rate of any major country.

And, as he's done for years, Trump continues to ignore the scientific community when it comes to the existential threat of climate change. Instead of transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel, he has pushed policies which result in more carbon emissions.

5. Donald Trump's policies benefit his billionaire friends, while attacking the needs of working families. (He’s had a lot of help from both sides of the aisle)

During his 2016 campaign Trump claimed that he would stand with the working class and "drain the swamp." He lied. He has appointed more billionaires to important positions than any other president in history while giving massive tax breaks to the very rich and large corporations. At a time of obscene income and wealth inequality, he continues to try to throw over 20 million Americans off the health insurance they already have, and do away with protections for pre-existing conditions. While the rich become much richer, his budgets have repeatedly called for huge cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, education and nutrition programs.

6. Donald Trump is a racist. (- Donald and about half of America)

From the start of his 2016 campaign, until today, he has tried to divide us up based on the color of our skin or where we were born. He has strongly supported voter suppression efforts which make it harder for African Americans to vote, and consistently made ugly and disparaging remarks against African American leaders. Recently, he bragged about an executive order which makes it harder for minority families to move into the suburbs.

7. Donald Trump is a xenophobe. (Trump is many things that could be described with a psychiatric multisyllabic term. You should have left it at racist.)

Trump has tried, as all demagogues do, to demonize immigrants and blame them for society’s problems. He has used hateful and disgraceful rhetoric to try to dehumanize an entire group of people, and has used the power of the federal government to mistreat and terrorize immigrants at the border and in our communities.

8. Donald Trump is a sexist. (I think I would have mentioned Trump’s recent get-free-soon card to Ghislane Maxwell alongside some pictures of the bastard with his dumbfuck daughter in his lap.)

Not only has Trump led the effort to deny women the right to control their own bodies and defund Planned Parenthood, he has — throughout his adult life — made disparaging and condescending comments about women. It is not surprising that some of his ugliest attacks have been against strong women leaders like Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto.

9. Donald Trump is a religious bigot. (- nah, christians are racists, supremacists and conservative and they need him and they are expedient. Donald really doesn't give a fuck about any christians or jews. He’d turn on them like a mad dog, if it suited him.)

One of the first things Trump did after taking office was sign an executive order for the discriminatory Muslim ban to prohibit people from several Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the United States. He has used the office of the presidency to demonize the Muslim community and to try to divide us up based on our religious beliefs.

10. Donald Trump is hostile to the LGBTQ community. (small shaft, so sad)

During his administration, Trump has waged continued assaults on the rights of LGBTQ people. He recently rolled back health protections for transgender people and previously banned them from serving in the military. He has also reversed protections that defend LGBTQ people from discrimination in the workplace and at school.

11. The Democrat Party is the same kind of shit as the Republican Party.

 Lying Joe Blow Biden, will enact the same fascist neoliberal anti worker, no health care policies as Trump but because Joe has dementia he’ll keep his mouth shut and won’t embarrass everyone as much. And, of course the useless DNC can and will mindlessly and insanely pretend to be our savior...

12....we’re fucked.

#2020 we're fucked #trump #biden #bullshit #extinction

[msblackriver]

I Worked With a Future Racist Cop at a Popular Asian Restaurant

When I worked at this popular Asian chain restaurant (y’all have heard of it). I witnessed the beginnings of a white racist cop. It actually was the most racist environment I've ever been in. During my 6 month stay there, I heard many racist remarks and unnecessary identifications of someone’s skin color. I did not for the most part say anything until one day I did. I admit I probably should have said something much sooner but I've always been non confrontational and for that reason I allowed them to make me uncomfortable every day. The vast majority of the server staff there was Asian, and the level of prejudice was beyond belief. Where waitresses would constantly complain when they got a “brotha sista” table, “brotha sista” was their way of saying ‘black’, they called white people simply “american”, see any problems here? The majority of the servers participated in these conversations.

Most days it was this type of prejudice I would witness, “why you give me all the brotha sista?” they would complain to the host. 3 of the 4 hosts were black or mixed, 2 of them were the sons of the GM who was Japanese, their mother was black. I was told that certain hosts worked with certain waitresses and gave them better tables which of course meant white people. The GM’s kids seemed used to hearing this stuff. I never saw them participate in it but it seemed they were good friends with one of the worst offenders, they were also teenagers.

The person I am today would not have waited nearly as long to say something, and probably would not have worked in a horrible environment like that for that long. But I also have to accept that was who I was. I was someone who didn’t speak up when I should have. I was at times triggered and highly uncomfortable but I was silent, by being silent they may have assumed that I was okay with it or that I wasn’t black? I somehow was not black to them I was “other”, this is part of the reason I had a fly on the wall experience I believe? My appearance to some is not ‘their’ definition of black, I am East African and some East Africans have this sort of response from people, as we generally don’t look African American. For many people if you don’t fit this mold then you aren’t black to them. This explains why it may of been said initially but my silence is what kept it going.

The sad truth too is that when you don’t say something people will just become more and more comfortable, and their offenses gradually become worse and worse; this is human behavior. This I guess is why one day they were able to have such a disgusting conversation within earshot of me.

The staff was mainly Asian and Hispanic, with a few Black, Indian, and White employees.

The reason they didn’t want the “brotha sista” was because they didn’t tip. There is some truth to this as I found out after working there but still… You gotta take the L sometimes as a waiter/waitress, also if you know that your restaurant is a popular spot for black people, I just don’t see what’s the point of complaining every time you get a black table. The Minneapolis was about 18% black at the time. Of the diners in the restaurant I would say about 30% were black, we knew this, accept it and move on.

One black woman asked for her ice cream before the food, and that really set off the top server, “Stupid black girl! she want her ice cweam befo’ da food.” Why did she have to point out her race? Entirely unnecessary and suggested that she thought black people as a whole were stupid. The same woman later on in a moment of understanding how what she said could be offensive said that they “didn’t want the black customers because they didn’t tip, if they tip it ok, Mexican don’t tip either, Asians don’t tip either but they cheap so cheap they don’t even go out to eat so we don’t worry about them, they don’t come here.” So there you have it, it was strictly about the money, but still not o.k. to profile your customers based on the color of their skin. There were a few, very few who did not participate in all this bullshit but the majority of them did.

In the beginning I thought I should call John Quinones so they could do an undercover expose for ABC. One day they really pushed it over the edge. The atmosphere was uncomfortable for me but made it very comfortable for the two white boys there. Now that racist shit was bad coming from the Asians but sounded even worse coming from the white boys, it may not be right but this is just how I felt. Again it was the daily “brother sista” talk, they moved in and adapted to the lingo “oh God” they would say disappointed “more brotha sista.”

That was pretty much what it was until one day I overheard the worst conversation I've ever heard. The 3 of them sat there discussing the previous day, it was the 2 white boys and an Asian woman (the top Server). Mathew’s father had come to the restaurant the night before and was seated with black people, he complained and asked to be moved because “they were so loud and stupid.” This was all said with a laugh and received laughter from the other 2. “Yeah my dad does not like black people”, again said with a laugh and everyone was just very amused. The restaurant was community style seating which meant you could be seated with another group of people if you had less than 8 in your party. The conversation continued and it took an even worse turn where Mathew says that his dad told him that he should be a cop and work in Texas, “there you can beat the shit out of black people and get away with it.” I could not believe what I was hearing, my blood was boiling now, a few minutes later I confronted him.

“What you were saying a few minutes ago is not cool.”

He looked caught off guard, his eyes were wide.

“Are you a racist?” not sure why I asked.

“Um no i’m not, my dad is.”

“Well whatever you believe you can talk about it at home or with your friends but you can’t talk about that shit here at work.”

“I’m really sorry, I’m not a racist my dad is.”

He apologized a few times, he was nervous, the asshole piece of shit felt bad for being called out. I sat at a table and vented, my Filipino coworker put 2 and 2 together and understood

“so when I work with you, you don’t like what I say about black people either.” She looked at me waiting for me to respond.

“Well” I said, “you shouldn’t talk bad about black people in front of black people”

“but honey why you mad you not black you half and half.” She felt what she said was o.k. because she assumed I was “half and half”, which is untrue. Her racist ass thought that a person that wasn’t full black would and should undoubtedly denounce their blackness completely. She felt guilty as she should, she was actually one of the better ones there (sad I know). I was clearly upset and it now made them uncomfortable, funny isn’t it how that works? whereas I was uncomfortable everyday. I looked over to my right gesturing towards some of our Hispanic co workers

“i’m not gonna talk bad about Mexicans in front of them.” She so quickly and eagerly wanted to correct me and make me the bad guy, “but see they don’t like that either, they not all Mexican some of them are Salvadorian.” She was telling me something I already knew, the fact though is that some of them were Mexican, and I just used that as an example. She was so desperate to make me wrong to make me the same as her because she thought the whole time that what she said was cool. The funny thing is I never even called her out, she called herself out. I was talking about the white boy and what he said, she basically turned herself in. Even if I mistakenly called a Salvadorian a Mexican that isn’t racist that’s just ignorant, that doesn’t mean there is necessarily hate behind that, she was gas lighting to save herself. Here I was upset and she is there accusing me making me more upset.

Unfortunately this type of racism and prejudice is very common, fortunately for many of them they will not be in positions that determine the fate of black people. Their racism will not go beyond an unwelcoming demeanor in the area of which they live and work. Not offering the same level of service and good citizenship to customers and co inhabitants of their city based on a persons perceived race. Speaking negatively of other races when they feel they are not around. For a few they will enter positions where they can cause more severe harm like ‘Mathew’ who was considering joining law enforcement. I wish I remembered his last name so it would be easier to look him up, but I pray he did not join the force.

#racism #cops #racistcop #twincities #minnesota #diningwhileblack

[thecompletebookworm]

The apocalypse just keeps getting worse

If you’re American, you’re probably aware of George Floyd’s murder at the hand of the police.  If you’ve been following me a while, you know I grew up in the Twin Cities suburbs (and am living there now despite calling Chicago home the last 3.5 years because of Corona).  Below the cut are some of my stream of consciousness thoughts regarding some of the escalations in protests today. 

I live a town over from where one of the police officers lives and everything shut down this afternoon to avoid being looted.  My dad was at the pharmacy picking up his meds and they only let people stay long enough who were already in the store in the pharmacy line because for some not having the meds would be a case of life and death.  My friend (a 18 year old “essential worker”) was working to secure our local grocery store before shutting down early for the day.   

And I’m scared, numb, angry.  I don’t know.  I’m feeling a million things at once.  I’m immunocompromised so it’s not like I can go join any protests.  But I’m not sure I would even if that wasn’t the case, and I feel bad/guilty because of that.  I’m still grieving for Floyd and the community, for the fact that African Americans have to live in fear due to the color of the skin and the racist system that protects bad cops.   I’m angry too.  I don’t know who couldn’t be angry right now.  And I’m obviously most angry at the system, for letting Floyd’s death happen from changing a trip to a corner store to get details from the cashier about a fake $20 bill to a tragic death, for not charging the murderer and his accomplices right away, for treating peaceful protestors like criminals.  But I’m also angry for a whole lot of other reasons that make me feel selfish.  I’m mad at the protestors despite them wearing masks, because we still are a massive corona hot spot.  I’m mad at how looting a store feels like the only way to get attention (a looting which started because protestors were teargassed and then denied entry into a store so they could buy milk).  I’m mad at this god-for-saken year because it just keeps getting worse.  And I’m mad at myself because I’m scared.  I’m scared because the looting and the violence just seem to keep getting worse.  The entire Twin Cities seem to be so close to breaking out into complete chaos.  Different areas have protests as the officers are from all over in addition to downtown near government offices.  Floyd’s community is holding a vigil.  It just seems like a match has been lit and there’s enough animosity and kindling to burn this entire area to the ground. I’m scared because even if justice is served in this case, I don’t think it’ll be the complete overhaul we need.  I’m scared because this is an election year and despite a very Blue history (Democrat since 1932 with the exception of Nixon and Eisenhower), Trump seems determined to change that and we’ve relied too heavily on white progressives who might see these protests as an affront on their way of life.  I’m scared because I know that any large gathering of people, regardless of goal, can spread corona like wildfire and I don’t think we have the capacity to handle this wave.  

I’ve been following the news on police brutality since Ferguson.  I’ve watched how the story too often plays out, even if I haven’t seen the videos because frankly, I can’t handle it.  There’s only so much death, brutality and racism I can absorb before I feel like I’m breaking.   And I realize I have privilege, I’m white.  I can try to work to elevate minority voices and change the system from the inside all I want.  But at the end of the day, I don’t have to constantly second guess everything I do.  And even when there was the Philando Castile shooting (in 2016 which was also fairly close), it didn’t feel this real, this bad.   So I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or how I should feel but everything certainly feels like a mess right now. 

#George Floyd #Police Brutality #tags are mostly so people don't have to be forced to see this who need to avoid being re-traumatized #so please let me know if there is anything to add to avoid triggering anyone #protests #looting #violence #racism

[anunvalidcritic]

WATCHMEN (series) EP2

(DISCLAIMER: MY OPINION IS MY OWN AND CAN BE DEEMED INVALID TO THOSE WHO DON’T CARE FOR IT.)

We ended off on a big cliffhanger so let’s see where we’re going to be taken from there...

                          MARTIAL FEATS OF COMANCHE

Look at all those typewriters

Oh shit, so we’re German alrighty then. I speak German as well.

“Hello, boys, what are you doing over here? Fighting the Germans? Has it ever done you any harm, of course, some whites folks lying and any  Asian Americans papers told you that the Germans ought to be wiped out for the sake of humanity and democracy. But I ask you boys; what is democracy? Do you enjoy the same rides as the white people do in America? Are you rathered treated over there as second class citizens? Can you get a seat in a theatre where white people seat or can you even ride in the south in the same streetcar as white people? And how about the law; is lynching and the most horrible cruelties connected there with a lawful proceeding in a democratic country. Now all of this is entirely different in Germany. Colored people have mighty fine position in business in Berlin and other German cities. Why then fight the germans you have been the tool of the egotistic rich in america and there is nothing in the whole game for you but broken bones, horrible wounds, and death. To carry the gun in service of America is not an honor but a shame throw it away and come over to the German line and you will find friends who will help you along.” - GERMAN SOLDIER/YOUNG AFRICAN AMERICAN SOLIDER/YOUNG & OLD WHEELCHAIR MAN

Sorry for the long monologue above but it was to powerful for it not to be posted. 

damn she just rolled him away as if they weren’t just at a crime scene

breathe ANGELA breathe

damn 105 and still alive .... wow

“He had skeletons in his closet.” - WHEELCHAIR MAN

His name is now WILL

Well ANGELAs heading back to the crime scene

“Oh I read it I just don’t believe it.” - NEWSPAPER SALESMAN

I bet there looking at those wheelchair tracks right now...

LOOKING GLASS really just came into that car and the first thing he asked if he had any food. 

MEMORABLE DIALOGUE

LOOKING GLASS - “Was he high?”

LADY KNIGHT - “He might’ve done some blow.”

LOOKING GLASS - “Sounds like quite a party.”

LADY KNIGHT - “My kids were there.”

LOOKING GLASS - “Your kids.”

LADY KNIGHT - “...Fuck you, you shiny fuck. What are you interegating me now?”

LOOKING GLASS - “Why would I interegate you?”

LADY KNIGHT - “Cuz you’re a cold motherfucker glass.”

LOOKING GLASS - “Then why am I crying under here.” 

This was quite intense for that short amount of town. 

So they’re just gonna touch his body without gloves on at all???

FLASHBACK

ANGELA and CALVIN are dancing and it’s Christmas Eve. 

“There’s somebody in our house.“ - ANGELA

WOOOW this dude is bold af

SHE FLEW BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MY GOD!!!!!!!!

She was out for 3 days!

JUDD and ANGELA having a little heart to heart after being fucked up by the same group of people.

They’re the only 2 people in the force that survived... 

THE WHITE NIGHT

PRESENT

She looks like she wants to break some shit.

“So are you coming or are you fucking breathing?” - RED SCARE

That NIXON statue kinda threw me for a loop lol

Why the fuck would you throw a glass bottle at the police??? (like Ik your mad but damn.)

I think it’s safe to say that ANGELA let some of her anger out on that man...

AYYE HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. 

WILLIAM’s DREAMLAND THEATRE (his parents owned the theatre)

MEMORABLE DIALOGUE

ANGELA - “Can you take a rain check?”

KIDS GRANDPA - “I can take a real check. *ANGELA proceeds to pull out her pocketbook and writes a check* ...Must be satisfying putting those Redfordations to work.”

ANGELA - “Get the fuck off my porch.”

lol, that little girl said, “keep walking before I stab you in the butt.”

Those Martian Blocks are pretty fucking cool.

TOPHER SHOOK

Is that Orville Peck playin’ in the background??

(he lowkey looks like he can be on the show...)

Ig I would’ve knocked that shit over to if I didn’t like the information I just received.

                                   AMERICAN HERO STORY

“WARNING: The Federal Communications Commission has determined the following content to be emotionally harmful. Young children should not view this content under any circumstances. Even if supervised by a Parent or Guardian the views and opinions expressed, including the depictions of persons of color and members of the LGTBQA+ community do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government. This program contains graphic language, violence, nudity, misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, hate crimes, and depictions of sexual assault. Be advise.”

TOPHER just seatin’ there lookin’ at the screen can it start already. 

LOOKING GLASS keeps that mask on at all times. 

Who tf is that talkin’ about getting shot in the head and washing up onto the Boston Harbor?? Do sounds like BATMAN.

 At least he didn’t knock that little kid upside his head. 

WOAH THAT MOTHERFUCKER SHOT HIS FUCKING EAR!!!

ROFL THE WAY THIS DUDE CAME IN THROUGH THE WINDOW

DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD YOU HAVE TO thROW A CANNED FOOD ITEM IN ORDER FOR IT TO HAVE AN IMPACT LIKE THAT!?!?!?

I have to say that this man is very skilled with a shard of glass

Okay, so you’re just going to continue to shoot the rest of bullets into one of your accomplices??? *make it make sense*

Wow ok, so we're going all out with the headbanging then??

“Who am I, when I was little every time I would look into the mirror I saw a stranger starring back at me. He was very very angry. Hot, vibrating electricity with no place to ground it.” - HOODED JUSTICE

this dude is dramatic af lol but this is his story I’ll let him tell it...

SENATOR JOE truly is an ol’ country boy with that accent rofl

And ANGELA is down for the count

LOL she played that shit off well

Night vision goggles ok ok that’s cool

She found something.....

OH FUCK NO BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So this man is pretty every day on repeat like it’s Groundhog’s Day or something. 

“When is a lie not a lie?“ - OZYMANDIAS

“When it’s acting.” - MAID

HA, he was rude af to MR. PHILLIPS

So there recreating the seen of how DR. MANHATTAN came to be...

OZYMANDIAS is one crazy mothertucker....

...tiny weiner...

.... wtf they all look alike.... oh that dude really died!

How long has WILL been in the bakery??

nvm not that long apparently lol

LOL he didn’t have to throw that shell from the boiled egg like that

This dude really does have “friends in high places” but he didn’t mean for her to literally check CAPTAIN JUDD’s closet smdh

------------

This episode was quite delightful and I’m ready to see what the next episode has to offer. Until then clean your hands, be careful of who and what you’re around, and don’t get so down in the dumps.

#watchmen #regina king #tim blake nelson #martial feats of comanche #jeremy irons #yahya abdul-mateen ii #don johnson #louis gossett jr. #jean smart #andrew howard #tom mison #sara vickers #hong chau #frances fisher #lady knight #looking glass #ozymandias #angela abraham #angela abar #mirror guy #cal abraham #pirate jenny #hbo series #watchmen the series #watchmen series #doctor manhattan #superheroes #comic books #dylan schombing #lady trieu

[maswartz]

IN THE PROGRESSIVE COLLEGE TOWN where I live, one sees a lot of “Bernie” bumper stickers on a lot of Subarus. Probably these are remnants of 2016, when the Independent from Vermont masqueraded as a Democrat, dividing the party and hobbling Hillary Clinton’s campaign just enough to fuck up the final tally. Although I held with HRC then as now, I don’t begrudge anyone who supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries four years ago, when we first became acquainted with the ugly font and awful shade of blue on his campaign merch. But to support him today, after Trump, after Mueller, is akin to insisting, on Christmas 2019, that despite ample evidence to the contrary, Michael Jackson is innocent, because you really dig Off the Wall.

“Don’t they know?” I scream when I see these Bernie stickers. “Don’t they realize who he really is?” Apparently not. But then, to them, and to most on what Sean Hannity might call the “radical left,” Bernie is not a person as much as an ideal: A sort of liberal Santa Claus who will come down our collective chimney to deliver free healthcare and free college, and, with the aid of his ineffable North Pole magic, break up the banks, slay the patriarchy, eliminate racism, end income inequality, and tax corporations into insolvency—all while raising the minimum wage for his workshop elves. How he plans to actually accomplish any of this he only hints at—Bernie rarely deigns to answer process questions and usually gets grouchy when pressed for details—but it all sounds so wonderful we want to believe, just as we every year insist that yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Unfortunately, the flesh-and-blood Bernie Sanders, if elected, would not have the requisite power to fulfill his lofty promises—any more than the tipsy Macy’s Santa will leave the mall on a sleigh driven by flying reindeer. Bernie is a real person, and he is deeply, perhaps fatally, flawed. He would be a horrible candidate in the general election—like, McGovern-in-’72-level bad—and, more urgently, his nomination would ensure that, whoever won, the White House remained in Russian hands.

The Bernie extolled by the bros is a myth, just like the Trump that MAGA adores—just like Neverland, and just like Santa Claus. We need to face some cold, hard truths, before Sanders scolds and finger-wags his way to a second term for Donald Trump. We cannot permit this egomaniacal fraud to spoil yet another election.

Bernie is a socialist—but of the Union of Soviet Socialists variety.

Hey, there’s a reason Santa Claus wears red!

Bernie is a self-styled “socialist” who has bought, hook line and sinker, the Stalinist propaganda about Marxism and the glories of the Soviet Union. This was understandable if you were Dalton Trumbo in 1947. After all, the governing philosophy of communism is “let’s share everything so there is no want,” which is kind of appealing, especially next to the “fuck you, pay me” mantra of unvarnished Trump-variety capitalism. Seven-plus decades later, alas, the naïveté borders on delusional.

From the Young Peoples Socialist League to his membership in the Liberty Union Party, which sought to nationalize (and not just “break up”) the banks, to his time at the Kibbutz Sha’ar Ha’amakim, which extolled Stalin—who slaughtered more people than Hitler—as “Sun of the Nations,” to his hanging a Soviet flag in his Burlington mayoral office, Soviet boosterism is the thruline of Bernie's career.

Bernie took his wife to the Soviet Union for their honeymoon, as one does. For years, he extolled the virtues of the USSR. Rather than grok that it’s all KGB-fed propaganda and lies, he’s been a staunch Bolshevik apologist for his entire adult life.

I mean, the guy has a dacha, ffs.

Look, our healthcare system is flawed. I’d love some sort of universal coverage like they have in every other developed country. But the best person to promote the de facto nationalization of the healthcare system is not a Soviet apologist who once wanted to nationalize the banks, too.

Bernie is unpopular with Black voters.

To be fair, Sanders (likely) really does want equality and all those nice things he talks about. Good for him. The problem is that his vision of “socialist” utopia is absolutist and focuses too much on the (white, male) working class that he, like his beloved Marx, idolizes and idealizes.

Despite some high-profile Black supporters, Bernie remains unpopular with Black voters, particularly Black women. This, and not “the rigged DNC,” is why HRC kicked his ass in the primaries. Could it be that Black voters have made Bernie as a BS artist? Those are his initials, after all.

The failure of the United States to properly examine and make amends for slavery contributes mightily to the country’s enduring racism, on which MAGA feeds. Not to even discuss reparations is madness. Unsurprisingly, Bernie does not understand this:

Marcus H. Johnson@marcushjohnson

Bernie Sanders thinks reparations is "just writing a check" instead of a redress for state sanctioned terrorism, violence, and being shut out of the economic, political, and legal systems for 250+ years. How is reparations "just writing a check," and free college not?

Aaron Rupar@atrupar

Bernie Sanders on reparations on The View: "I think that right now our job is to address the crises facing the American people in our communities, and I think there are better ways to do that than just writing out a check." https://t.co/FXso34iSbs

March 1st 2019

470 Retweets1,065 Likes

To win the resounding victory necessary to defeat Trump and the Russian hackers threatening to sabotage yet another election, overwhelming African-American voter turnout is essential. Black voters are more likely to turn out in big numbers for Joe Biden—especially if he runs with Kamala Harris, as we K-Hivers hope—than yet another elderly New Yorker who makes pie-in-the-sky promises he can’t possibly keep.

Bernie is lazy.

Sanders spent the early part of his career flitting between low-paying odd jobs:

He bounced around for a few years, working stints in New York as an aide at a psychiatric hospital and teaching preschoolers for Head Start, and in Vermont researching property taxation for the Vermont Department of Taxes and registering people for food stamps for a nonprofit called the Bread and Law Task Force.

Then as now, he was more given to talking the talk than walking the walk. In 1970, the 30-year-old Liberty Union Party socialist was kicked out of a Vermont commune for not doing his share of the work. His days there were instead spent in “endless political discussion.”

Sanders’ idle chatter did not endear him with some of the commune’s residents, who did the backbreaking labor of running the place. [Kate] Daloz writes [in her history of the commune] that one resident, Craig, “resented feeling like he had to pull others out of Bernie’s orbit if any work was going to get accomplished that day.” Sanders was eventually asked to leave. 

Eventually, Bernie found a career that would allow him to talk a big game but accomplish precious little: politics. For the decades he’s been in Congress, his record is pretty scant. Seven bills in 28 years, including two that name post offices, is nothing to write home about (unless you’re writing home to one of those post offices)—although Sanders has been a quiet champion of gun rights for most of his Congressional career, as well as a dependable “nay” vote on Russian sanctions, so I guess there’s that.

But hey, I’m sure a guy who has avoided labor as assiduously as possible for 78 years will magically turn into a workaholic as an octogenarian. That heart attack no doubt jump-started his engines. Speaking of which…

Bernie is old, and he just had a heart attack.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t actually a heart attack. Maybe it was just a life-threatening cardiac issue that required emergency surgery. We don’t know, because Sanders has not yet released his medical report. But he has promised to do so, just as he promised to release his taxes and then waited a million years to make good. Will he bring the receipts before next week, as he said he would?

The Speaker's Basilisk⚖️@PelosiLegatus

Why hasn’t @BernieSanders released his medical records yet? He just has a heart attack three months ago, which he lied about. What is he hiding from the American people? Why is the press so afraid to dig into his dishonesty?

December 23rd 2019

173 Retweets444 Likes

Even if his medical report checks out, I mean…there’s ageism, and then there are actuarial tables. A President Sanders would turn eighty in 2021, his first year in office. That would make him the oldest first-term president by a significant margin. He can’t live forever; in that way, he’s not like Santa Claus.

Bernie is a misogynist.

That Bernie Sanders is some sort of radical feminist, a paradigm for how men should be in the post-Third-Wave world, is almost as ridiculous as his stubborn refusal to comb his hair.

Before he launched his political career, he was a deadbeat dad. Remember, Bernie was a graduate of the prestigious University of Chicago, in an era when college degrees were relatively rare. Instead of putting food on the table, he was running quixotic political campaigns as the standard-bearer of a barely functional party. As Spandan Chakrabarti writes:

In 1971, Vermont was debating a tenant’s rights bill. One of the testimonials to Vermont’s State Senate Judiciary Committee came from one Susan Mott of Burlington, who said the legislation did not go far enough in prohibiting discrimination against single mothers and recipients of welfare benefits. Mott had one child and was on welfare. That one child…was Levi Sanders, Bernie Sanders’ son. Which begs the question, why did Bernie Sanders’ (former?) girlfriend and his son have to be on welfare? Where was the University of Chicago graduate’s considerable marketable skills? What was 5-year-old Levi’s father doing that he couldn't afford to support his own child? It turns out he was too busy coming in third with single digit votes.

To be fair, Bernie did bring home a little bit of bacon writing stuff like this:

A man goes home and masturbates [to] his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.

A woman enjoys intercourse with her man—as she fantasizes [about] being raped by 3 men simultaneously.

Even if those lines were intended as a provocative rhetorical flourish to be shot down later in the essay, I mean…what feminist ally would write something like that?

And then there’s the more recent sexual harassment issues that seem to be pervasive in his campaign offices. He missed one of the Russian sanction votes because he was busy dealing with it:

The only one to miss the vote was Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. He was meeting with women who had accused his 2016 presidential campaign of sexual misconduct, his spokesman, Josh Miller-Lewis, told CNBC.

As if to confirm his misogynist bona fides, Sanders this month endorsed the candidacy of Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur, no feminist ally—before the bad optics forced him to reverse course:

“As I said yesterday, Cenk has been a longtime fighter against the corrupt forces in our politics and he’s inspired people all across the country,” the Vermont senator said. “However, our movement is bigger than any one person. I hear my grassroots supporters who were frustrated and understand their concerns. Cenk today said he is rejecting all endorsements for his campaign, and I retract my endorsement.”

That Cenk is running for the California seat vacated by rising star Katie Hill, a victim of criminal revenge porn who was shamed into stepping down, makes the gaffe even worse.

Bernie is not a Democrat.

Of all the idiotic narratives spewed by the “Bernie bros” about 2016, the most asinine was that the process had to be rigged because the DNC clearly preferred Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders. Um…why would it not? Just as a New York Yankees fan club would want its leader to be a ride-or-die Yankee fan rather than a waffler who rooted for either the Bronx Bombers or the Red Sox depending on which was doing better that year, so the Democratic National Committee wants an actual Democrat to be its nominee. Duh.

And this was not any nominee. HRC was practically funding the operation herself, to help with the down-ballot races Bernie could give a shit about. Anyone can scold the country about big banks and wage inequality, but to actually, you know, govern requires working well with other people, a skill that seems to have eluded Sanders for the last 30 years.

Alas, the incorrigible Senator has learned nothing from 2016. He’s still playing the hackneyed “rabble-rousing outsider” card:

The Hill@thehill

Sen. @BernieSanders: "We are going to take on the Democratic establishment."

December 22nd 2019

426 Retweets1,930 Likes

The election of 2020 is, or should be, a referendum on Trump. It’s not about taking on the Democrats. That sort of internecine divisiveness is exactly what Putin wants. Which makes perfect sense when we consider that…

Bernie is (at a minimum) a Useful Idiot for Putin.

The bots go on the offensive whenever I tweet that Bernie is a Useful Idiot for Russia. But he is Useful, in that he operates as a divisive force in the Democratic Party, which aids Putin. And he’s certainly an Idiot, in that he doesn't realize the damage he’s done. But does he really not know?

The Mueller Report makes it clear that Russian IC was helping the Sanders campaign. Either Bernie didn’t realize this, and is an idiot, or he did realize it and played along, and is a traitor. Either way, the guy who hired former Paul Manafort chum Tad Devine to run his campaign cannot be trusted with standing up to Putin and the powerful forces of transnational organized crime, no matter how passionate his anti-Wall Street screeds.

(Sidenote: Tad Devine is now peddling his Kremlin-y wares for Andrew Yang, which perhaps explains Yang’s recent remark that he is open to granting Donald Trump a pardon. This, needless to say, is disqualifying).

Put it this way: Are we sure that a Nominee Sanders—an almost-eighty-year-old who just had a heart attack—would not pick the Russophile cult member Tulsi Gabbard as his running mate? The “anti-anti-Trump Left,” as Jonathan Chait calls it, is alive and well, sharing, “in addition to enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders, [a] deep skepticism of the Democratic Party’s mobilization against the president.” So: traitors, basically. Would not Sanders, if given the chance, throw meat to this rabid fan base, if only to generate more adulation? Do we really trust the judgment of the guy who can’t ensure that his own campaign headquarters is not a hostile work environment?

Bernie still, years after the fact, cannot understand that he contributed to HRC’s defeat—just as he can’t see that his ideas about the Soviet Union and communism have been debunked. He doesn’t have it in him to realize, much less admit, he was wrong. And why should he? As long as well-meaning people—especially young people; especially young women; especially pretty young women—keep “feeling the Bern,” he will continue to happily soak up the attention, like the insufferable narcissist he is. Why Millennials support the guy instead of OK-Boomering him to oblivion is a head-scratcher. Maybe it’s because he was born two months before Pearl Harbor and is therefore older than the Boomers?

Bernie Sanders is the Trump of the Left. Repeat: Bernie Sanders is the Trump of the Left. He’s an egomaniac who believes his own hype, like Trump. And like Trump, Bernie is selling snake oil; we just happen to like his brand of snake oil. He’s a bad mall Santa, promising everyone a pony, when all he can deliver is a lump of coal. And make no mistake: far from assuring a worker’s paradise, his nomination would bring about the end of the republic.

It’s not a “revolution.” It’s a con job. And it’s got the full support of the Russians.

#bernie sanders

[padawan-historian]

The Female Game: An Analysis of the Stormborn Dragon

SPOILER warning for Season 8, Episode 1-3 and more of a SPOILER WATCH for Season 8, Episode 4 (no plot related details, but . . . a teaspoon of character and tone vibes from the episode).

Now I know we are still wrapping our heads around what we witnessed last night on Game of Thrones. But there was one discussion that caught my attention – Daenerys character development (or lack thereof) and how women are represented on the show:  

i hate that ambition in women is always used as a bad trait.

All her hard work and talk of breaking the wheel for nothing. All this talk of her being different and just and “see you for who you are” for absolutely nothing.

They should rename season 8 to “the tale of how we trashed a character’s development, made her an army of haters, just so we could make Jon Snow a hero: A study on Daenerys Targaryen.”

they really are setting up “Mad Queen” Dany and I’ll be honest, I don’t blame her at this point.

If a man acted that way it would be perfectly fine.

every single woman on game of thrones deserves better.

Ever since Game of Thrones graced the stage seven years ago, a number of fans, critics and activists have voiced concerns about the way the show portrays violence (especially sexual violence) towards female characters. However, those concerns have slowly evolved into larger conversations about the way these heroines are portrayed in comparison to power. Westeros – and most of the known world in the show – are under a patriarchal system. Men have inheritance rights, new wives join their husbands’ families and male children are given precedent over their older sisters and female relations in the line of succession (they call this primogeniture). Attempts at female rule are rare and even more rarely achieved without a healthy dose of fire and blood (search The Princess and the Queen on YouTube for more context and a juicy history lesson!).

Suspicion and hesitancy towards female rule is common in our real world (i.e. 2016 election) and is, unfortunately, not a new phenomenon. Prominent theologian, wrote in his 1558 piece, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women, that, “To promote a woman to beare rule, superioritie, dominion or empire aboue any realme, nation, or citie, is repugnant to nature, contumelie to God, a thing most contrarious to his reueled will and approued ordinance, and finallie it is the subuersion of good order, of all equitie and iustice”(Knox).  Across Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism there exist exclusionary mindsets in regards to women in power dating back to antiquity. However, there are also examples of women overcoming the restrictions and barriers of their societies, such as the prominence and elevation of women within certain patriarchal systems (including Egypt, the Tang Dynasty of China, the Mongolian Empire and beyond) . Even today, within many Native American and West African communities, femaleness is connected to spiritualism – unseen forces are often defined as female, such as goddesses and masked spirits, and are often interpreted by priestesses, prophetesses, healers, fortune tellers, and female shamans. However, the dominant culture that defines our 21st century world is, largely, patriarchal and continues to prosper through the oppression of women – and, to an extent, men. 

Power is power – and there is power in subjugation.

(Sidney Note: The glass ceiling metaphor should be viewed with some context – as should my statement above ^^ While times have changed and we now have female executives, college presidents, directors, governors, ambassadors and presidential candidates there are still inequities that exist. The metaphor implies that women and men have equal access to entry- and mid-level positions (Eagly and Carli). They do not. Rather than a ceiling to break through, women often have to struggle through a labyrinth, a maze filled with dead ends, false leads and towering walls. The labyrinth is even more suffocating for minority and marginalized women.

But back to the Game of Thrones universe . . . While most of the main characters have divided the fan base at some point in time (remember how we used to hate Cersei and then we felt bad and now . . . we kind of hate her again?) the discourse around Daenerys has been relatively consistent. While some see the Dragon Queen as an entitled, power-hungry tyrant slowly turning into the Mad Queen, others view her in a more sympathetic light. Daenerys – like many women – exist within a labyrinth. At the end is the Iron Throne. But the roads, for much of her life, were determined for her. Her (thankfully) deceased brother Viserys sold her in exchange for military support. Even after his golden death, Dany was still trapped in the maze, struggling to navigate the seemingly endless corridors. She has been raped, abandoned, deceived and . . . perhaps, most damning of all, she has been wrong.

Dany has made some questionable choices throughout her reign and while this is nothing new when it comes to GOT characters, what is new is that she is in a position of considerable power. Besides Cersei and, at one time, Grandma Olenna, Daenerys is one of the most powerful women in the series. Her dragons carry the weight of nuclear weapons and, after taking several fiery walks, hatching (or incubating) three ancient creatures an liberating a city from the chains of slavery . . . well, you can see why she thinks her destiny is to sit upon the Iron Throne.

Recently, the discourse about the portrayal of women in cinema has lit a fuse within the feminist movement. While I will say that some people tend to over analyze the actions of every character - relating them back to contemporary issues, it’s no state secret that female characters are often held to a very unhealthy set of standards:

Be strong, but not emasculating.

Be desirable, but not whorish.

Be charming, but not condescending.

Be ambitious, but not too ambitious.

The criticism about her representation in the show I think comes from a place of genuine concern. These fans want her to succeed because, seven hells, this woman has been through A LOT. And while there is a dose of sexism in the discourse, I do think that some of the backlash towards the show and creative team is unwarranted.

Daenerys Stormborn is NOT the protagonist in the traditional sense. She is a principle character who is heavily featured in both the books and Martin’s 5 novels. If you look at the charts below, people (who are more tech savvy than me) created comparison charts to help determine principle characters:

You may not like that Jon is painted as the hero or that Tyrion is featured prominently, but EVERY character has faced failures and loss in this series.

The freedom to lead is not freedom from failure.

No character is entirely good or entirely bad – Dany included. From white savior to female icon, Daenerys has been a polarizing character since season 1. She has made choices that, even when justifiable, were not . . . the most diplomatic solutions. She has a temper. She can be impulsive. But she is also affectionate with her friends. She is nurturing towards her dragons (in the books, her ancestors used whips to direct their dragons). She is also a queen . . . living in a patriarchal system that Aegon Targaryen established almost 300 years prior. She is single handedly trying to undo 300 years of patriarchal feudalism. That’s a pretty ambitious goal!

While Westerosi politics are similar to our own, they do not have cemented democratic institutions. The Night’s Watch is probably the closest example we have of a meritocracy (rule by merit or ability). The majority of the kingdom falls under the rule of one monarch who distributes semiautonomous authority through bonds of vassalage.

Change requires sacrifice . . . and compromise.

When was the last time you saw a high fantasy where, at one point, there were 5 women in positions of power? The closest moment in European history where that was a thing was when Catherine the Great of Russia, Madame de Pompadour, the Mistress of the King of France, and Empress Maria Theresa of the Holy Roman Empire combined their forces to fight against Fredrick II of Prussia during the 7 Years War (Fred was kinda a misogynist and coined the phrase The League of the Three Petticoats to describe the three women). Even in early English history, women who fought for power, like Isabella of France and Margaret of Anjou, were dubbed as she-wolves or reckless, power-hungry queens. Hmmm . . . sound familiar?

Now Dany does have a temper. But so did Robert Baratheon. She can be impulsive. She has a sense of entitlement, as do most monarchs and presidents. She is compassionate, loyal to her friends and nurturing towards her dragons (in the books, her ancestors used whips to direct their dragons). She likes to be in control, but she is also willing to listen to others. But she does get angry and she does have insecurities. She is also a human and – like most humans – she is a bundle of idiosyncrasies, conflicting ideas, blinding anxieties and soaring dreams.

Are there problems with the series? Yes.

Have female (and male) characters been portrayed in ways that are questionable? Yeah.

Would a more socially conscious director craft a different narrative or create a more dynamic story? Maybe.

Are you still gonna watch the next episode this Sunday? Most likely.

If you look for flaws, you will find flaws – because, this story was not created by you. So write your own story, whip up a fanfic or make a headcannon!

And besides, there are plenty of real world issues surrounding women that you can (and should) put your energy towards.

#wow + beyond #wow analysis #game of thrones #got analysis #daenerys targaryen #feminism #women of wonder and beyond #writing #character development #fantasy writing