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robbed-ghost · 2 years

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Brad Wayne, but instead of finding out the other Wayne’s are the Bats, he just finds out random secrets that stem from them being Bats. Bruce spent a few months in a Himalayan monetary, Dick almost married Starfire, Barbara owns a whole clocktower, Jason designed super bullets, et cetra.

Ohhhh yes. Brad may be stupid but he’s not an idiot, he knows when something’s strange and he’s got a good enough memory to write down the stuff he hears. He really just thinks they’re strange and traumatized, however. When the family finally thinks he’s not going to connect the dots and decide to mess with him, they don’t realize he’d remember all of it and write it down to try and tell his guys about them what. Looking back at the list doesn’t make him confident that they’ll believe him, though.

- Bruce was penpals/chess buddies with the penguin

- Bruce isn’t actually an alcoholic he just wants an excuse to get away from conversation

- Dick owns a circus and was a cop. And a museum curator. And a male model (note to self just check his IMDB) probably indecision from his parents not being around?

- Dick grew up with an elephant and still visits it sometimes, so sad

- They all speak at least 5 languages (proof: Bruce and totally-not-Jason-Todd argued about ice cream in like Ukrainian or something and then switched to some kind of Asian language)

- Jason is also legally dead so maybe he’s a ghost or something but that doesn’t explain how he attends Shakespeare book club with Alfred. Maybe Alfred can see ghosts? PTSD?

- Tim is like 17 and runs some of the company but didn’t even really graduate school ??

- Damian has a pet cow and also grew up on a remote island

- Dick was engaged to Starfire TWICE

- Stephanie’s dad was Cluemaster (really bad spin-off of the riddler) which explains why she’s good at wordle

- Alfred has so many guns but Bruce doesn’t really do anything about it, something about Alfred having been a spy in the past? Dude can do makeup like no one’s business tho

- Damian has even more family on his mom’s side but won’t talk about them other than the fact that his brother’s name is Respawn, what kinda name is that ?

- Pretty sure Tim only knows how to make soup. Also his friend looks JUST like Superman it’s crazy

#dc #Brad wayne #Brad thinks he has to be the normal one to help them #to save them from themselves #he sees them fighting and he’s like D: while bruce is just like ‘they’re fine. leave them be.’#batfam #Brad thinks they’re all too traumatized to be normal and wants to be kind to them #they are but they’re also fucking with him #thank you for asking this I love asks and things in my inbox #I’ve probably missed stuff yes but the amount of facts about these characters that are independent of Bruce are terribly sparse #anything starting with ‘x but x’ is ideal I am holding you closely #writing prompt

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ilovescaredysquirrel2 · 4 months

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Troom Troom: A cute DIY channel that turned EVIL

We need to talk about the DIY Channel called "Troom Troom". They're still around in 2024 and still making content that's... weird! Just plain weird!

What makes me mad is that they started out as a normal DIY channel (probably mostly for kids) and there very first video was a girl teaching you how to make a rustic pumpkin decoration, how o paint it and put lace on it. She had a soft spoken voice with a Ukrainian accent, and then they got different narrators over time. The first two American-sounding narrators were okay as well, but then they got an A.I generated voice. I'll admit, I used to love their old videos, up until around the time that covid hit and they started to get weirder and weirder. The thumbnails were often worse than the actual videos themselves but if you look on their channel right now, you'd see the most disgusting thumbnails to put on a "family friendly" channel. At least their stuff doesn't have an exact target audience, but it's pretty obvious that it's not adults (maybe the oldest target audience is college age?). They used to mostly do school supplies and room decor as their DIYs, but then slowly turned into an "Elsagate" type of channel. hey used to do sa few DIYs that had popular characters (like their Shaun the Sheep doorknob hanger that they made back in the 2010s) but that was completely innocent. Recently, they started dressing up as characters and making the elsagate-type of content. I saw one where they dressed up as characters from The Amazing Digital Circus, and do you know how many kids enjoy The Amazing Digital Circus? Like I said, the thumbnails are the biggest problem though. I used to see cute school supplies, to weird lip ones but the videos were still wholesome, but their newest videos just went insane and have the most disgusting, perverted thumbnails.

I heard that they're from Ukraine and I feel bad that their country was at war, but before the war they started making really horrible content. Like, I don't understand why they just turned from an innocent girly DIY channel, to disturbing content with thumbnails that minors should never see. What I think happened is that another company bought them, because they went from good to evil within the 7 years of them being on YouTube. I'm assuming it's the same company that owned "5 Minute Crafts", because they had that same kind of content but now their stuff is down right fetishy. I hope this kind of thing gets investigated soon! I miss Troom Troom's old videos, so I don't want the channel to end, but I'd like to know what's up with their new content and why it's so weird now.

Anyway, I put some pictures on screen to show you the difference between channel content and in their main channel, and you can tell me what you thoughts are!

#troom troom #what's wrong with the world #my thoughts #elsagate

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itzjools · 6 months

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My The Amazing Digital Circus OC: Henry

Henry is my TADC OC. He’s a pencil. The cuts who are done by scissors are symbolising the self-h@rm the human version has done to themselves. He has a bag since he likes collecting random stuff like his human being. As well as his human being, who is very creative, has done an art project in school where he had to make a object into a human form. Now, the human being is a transman who is still transitioning so that's why the character still has eyelashes on one eye (I know every human has eyelashes but we all know that if a cartoon character has eyelashes that automatically makes them female). He's a German and half Ukrainian, loves music and his favourite pattern is checkerboard. He got his name from that name generator where Pomni also got her name (Pomni - 5 letters, Henry - 5 letters). His pronouns are he/they. They have ADHD, Anxiety -especially social anxiety-, has random twitches especially when anxious, human form has Hypersexuality and he's paranoid. I think that's all for now, might add a more precise description later. I’ll make videos of him on TikTok: itz_jools

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solgender · 2 years

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hi !! welcome to the gender circus <3 :-)

name : soleil / temperance, or anything else on my pronoun page !!

age : seventeen !!

pronouns : check my pronouns page !! generally it's they/them and like, a million neopronouns .

requests : check my bio to see if i take requests !! things i take requests for are : gender coining, flag design/redesign, pronoun lists (related to a specific topic/theme), name/pronoun validation, and combination flags !!

repost policy : i am okay with people reposting my terms WITH CREDIT !! cringe accounts may not repost my terms . my flags are free to use !!

more : i am physically disabled (ehlers-danlos + multiple comorbidities, undiagnosed seizure disorder, and more) and a cane user, as well as autistic, tourettic, and mentally ill. my special interests are the tv show bones (my fandom blog is @neurodiversebones ), forensic anthropology/bioarchaeology, and medicine !! i want to be a forensic anthropologist when i grow up, and plan on going to school for it !! i am jewish, and currently learning yiddish and ukrainian. i can name ever bone in the human body and i play nine instruments + i do vocal !!

#about me #pinned

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brookstonalmanac · 10 months

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Events 7.16 (after 1900)

1909 – Persian Constitutional Revolution: Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar is forced out as Shah of Persia and is replaced by his son Ahmad Shah Qajar. 1910 – John Robertson Duigan makes the first flight of the Duigan pusher biplane, the first aircraft built in Australia. 1915 – Henry James becomes a British citizen to highlight his commitment to Britain during the first World War. 1915 – At Treasure Island on the Delaware River in the United States, the First Order of the Arrow ceremony takes place and the Order of the Arrow is founded to honor American Boy Scouts who best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law. 1931 – Emperor Haile Selassie signs the first constitution of Ethiopia. 1935 – The world's first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 1941 – Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game, a streak that still stands as an MLB record. 1945 – Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico. 1945 – World War II: The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis leaves San Francisco with parts for the atomic bomb "Little Boy" bound for Tinian Island. 1948 – Following token resistance, the city of Nazareth, revered by Christians as the hometown of Jesus, capitulates to Israeli troops during Operation Dekel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. 1948 – The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane. 1950 – Chaplain–Medic massacre: American POWs are massacred by North Korean Army. 1951 – King Leopold III of Belgium abdicates in favor of his son, Baudouin I of Belgium. 1951 – J. D. Salinger publishes his popular yet controversial novel, The Catcher in the Rye. 1956 – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closes its last "Big Tent" show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; due to changing economics, all subsequent circus shows will be held in arenas. 1957 – KLM Flight 844 crashes off the Schouten Islands in present day Indonesia (then Netherlands New Guinea), killing 58 people. 1965 – The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France and Italy opens. 1965 – South Vietnamese Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo, a formerly undetected communist spy and double agent, is hunted down and killed by unknown individuals after being sentenced to death in absentia for a February 1965 coup attempt against Nguyễn Khánh. 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11, the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center. 1979 – Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigns and is replaced by Saddam Hussein. 1990 – The Parliament of the Ukrainian SSR declares state sovereignty over the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. 1994 – The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 is destroyed in a head-on collision with Jupiter. 1999 – John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, die when the aircraft he is piloting crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. 2004 – Millennium Park, considered Chicago's first and most ambitious early 21st-century architectural project, is opened to the public by Mayor Richard M. Daley. 2007 – An earthquake of magnitude 6.8 and 6.6 aftershock occurs off the Niigata coast of Japan killing eight people, injuring at least 800 and damaging a nuclear power plant. 2009 – Teoh Beng Hock, an aide to a politician in Malaysia is found dead on the rooftop of a building adjacent to the offices of the Anti-Corruption Commission, sparking an inquest that gains nationwide attention. 2013 – As many as 27 children die and 25 others are hospitalized after eating lunch served at their school in eastern India. 2013 – Syrian civil war: The Battle of Ras al-Ayn resumes between the People's Protection Units (YPG) and Islamist forces, beginning the Rojava–Islamist conflict. 2015 – Four U.S. Marines and one gunman die in a shooting spree targeting military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

#Events

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newsgola · 1 year

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For Ukrainian circus performers, future still up in the air

BUDAPEST: Nearly a year since fleeing Ukraine for Hungary amid the bombs and terror of Russia’s invasion, more than 100 young circus performers still hold intensive daily training sessions in Budapest while waiting to see what an uncertain future holds.The group, whose members are between the ages of 5 and 20, found a home with the Capital Circus of Budapest after leaving their circus schools and…

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cryptoguys657 · 1 year

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For Ukrainian circus performers, future still up in the air

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gamekai · 1 year

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For Ukrainian circus performers, future still up in the air

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762175 · 1 year

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For Ukrainian circus performers, future still up in the air

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fenrirswood-hq · 1 year

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meet SERAPHINE "SENA" DE BELAY-CANDELLA

Hey, isn’t that SERAPHINE “SENA” DE BELAY-CANDELLA. I thought they went away for the summer? Did you hear they might be a HUMAN. What I do know for certain is that they’re 30, and they’re AGILE and RIGOROUS. They’re originally from SEVILLE, SPAIN and have been in FENRIRSWOOD for 3 MONTHS living in SUNE’S HARBOUR. I wonder if they still work in CASINOS as a PROFESSIONAL POKER PlAYER. Best if they stay safe for now.

Growing up, Seraphine was surrounded by love as the daughter of an orphaned Ukrainian woman and Ethiopian adoptee. The librarian and art history professor made certain of it, but she always felt out of place in Spain. It was a pillar of lost identity that began well before her birth with her parents; it was a branch cut from its tree, yet roots sprouted from that twig. A strong foundation had been built before her story began, founded on acceptance, losses, discoveries, traumas, acceptances, and gratitude. Her parents put in the work for her. While her father had to learn to style his own hair, he taught her how to care for hers, and while her mother had no one to turn to about menstrual care, the same could not be said about Sepphie. Still, it was plain to see that her skin color was in the minority in Spain, and she had to live with certain views placed upon her.

Ballet seemed to exemplify that difference, but at the young age of 2, she never noticed it. She was merely another ballerina princess. It started with dance classes for mamás y bebés and developed into a big part of her childhood until it wasn't. The demand grew. The pressure. Never able to wear pointe shoes or tights that matched her skin tone, she grew up feeling unaccepted by her instructor and peers, and thus, feelings of inadequacy set in. Dread. Then, it grew to have been a while since Sepphie last enjoyed doing ballet. Instead, she burrowed in the library her mother worked, reading Lovecraftian tales. Dance wasn't at the forefront anymore. All of it came to a head at age 12. The Summer Olympic Games were on, and she oohed and ahhed at the gymnasts. There's where she found love in the sport, and the switch was made. It was right around the time her parents adopted her sibling.

Right as she found her footing as an older sister and gymnast, at 16, her father took up the career opportunity to teach at a top-ranking university in the UK and moved the whole family there. Here, she started to go by Sena, and it's where her love for the performing arts bloomed once more. It felt as though she had a clean slate. Still, during the summers, they'd return to Spain to visit her ever-loving grandparents for a week or two. After finishing secondary school and earning awards for her gymnastics, she went on to get her OND, but after being scouted, she left uni to join a traveling circus as an acrobat.

The atmosphere was unparalleled. It felt almost nostalgic, and a whole new world opened up to her, one of witches and werewolves. Oh my. Hints of their existence dripped and dropped, and before she knew it, nights would be spent playing poker with her circus family in their downtime. As her skill level increased, they'd groan whenever she joined, claiming it was her luck. Though, it was all about heuristics to Sena. Eventually, she began visiting nearby casinos, wherever the circus set up shop.

Years went on, and her heart began to race for a special someone. People would say it was only a matter of time, and maybe it was. They didn't plan to take their relationship to the next level, but they weren't exactly being safe about things either. They let nature take its course, and soon, she was expecting. The birth was a complicated one. It was a complete nightmare, and one week later, she and her partner left the hospital with empty arms and a deep wound. They became a balancing act after that. Deciding to give her body and mind some rest, she left the circus, her touchstone, and went full-in on poker. Sena numbed herself, playing it cool, but when she received a call about her sibling missing in Fenrir's Wood, her cage was rattled. Without hesitation, she packed her bags and moved into a hotel, visiting the nearby hospital for any sign of them.

Played by Ari. Portrayed by Berta Yázquez.

#nbh.sunesharbour #all.char #sp.human #st.nonlocal #adoption tw #death tw #abandonment tw #pregnancy mention tw #birth trauma tw #infant death tw #racism mention tw

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cloudedmist · 1 year

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I cried... Because I can totally understand the hurt...

I cried while watching the Ukrainians celebrating the exit of Russia from Kherson. Why? Because I can totally understand the hurt. The hurt and pain and sadness when an aggressor comes into your life to steal, and do everything to bring you down. When an aggressor resort to stories, allegations, and lies to destroy your life. That exactly is what Callistar Chen Zhi Bin is doing. A liar behind his fake smiles, and manipulative actions. I only wonder how many more are tricked by his vile intentions every day. From my experience, he commits a new crime or wrong at least once every 3 months.

Ive tried to get him clean from all the nonsense of his life many times before, but 3 months is the MAXIMUM, before he will surely find someone to trick, manipulate, or get into a fight. So I am very sure, many are continuously being tricked by him. Skip school by claiming MC > within 3 months, new crime/wrong starts> Illegal escootering > within 3 months, new crime/wrong starts> Smoking > within 3 months, new crime/wrong starts> sneaking out of house to collect cigarettes > within 3 months, new crime/wrong starts> sneaking out of house to escoot till next morning then skipping school > within 3 months, new crime/wrong starts> sneaking out of house after 12am to sleep at a friend’s house > within 3 months, new crime/wrong starts> sneaking out through the night to sit in a BMW owned by a grown person > within 3 months, new crime/wrong starts> punching me until I bleed, and my fist sore with blood > within 3 months, new crime/wrong starts> getting into affray > within 3 months, new crime/wrong starts> finding a new girl to get money and free things from > within 3 months, new crime/wrong starts... The above are the basic things I remember, and I counted the months as they went by. These are the events I caught, and mention about... Other smaller things like throwing a wallet at me, hitting me hard on the back with a hard box, stealing around $4K of my money, squandering thousands of dollars by manipulating his needs... are not mentioned yet. But I am very certain that some how, now as he lies to the police, as he creates stories and lies to play them like circus clowns walking around his fingers, he will be let off easily. Because he has found ways of pretending innocence. He is manipulative (probably a learnt expert after observing his divorced mother lie every single day - he knew that... but genetically grew into it... so the loop of lies and abuse continues in him..). I believe the police will fall for any of his tricks in the current case, and in cases that happen in future. Such is the life... The innocents are oppressed, the aggressive and the liars are trusted upon.

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royalchildreneurope · 2 years

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Prince Jacques of Monaco and Princess Gabriella of Monaco attend a charity show for the benefit of the Ukrainian Circus School, at The Princess Grace Theater in Monaco -April 16th 2022.

#prince jacques #princess gabriella #monegasque royal family #monaco #2022 #april 2022 #ukrainian circus school #royal children #my edit

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afeelgoodblog · 2 years

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#036 - The Best News of Last Week - April 18, 2022

📚 - Now I really wanna start a "Banned Books Club"

1. Pink Floyd have reunited to record their first new material in 28 years, a protest song against the Ukraine war.

David Gilmour said the song was a show of "anger at a superpower invading a peaceful nation"

Hey Hey, Rise Up! features David Gilmour and Nick Mason alongside long-time Floyd bassist Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards. But the song is built around a spine-tingling refrain from Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the band Boombox.

2. Major solar breakthrough means energy can be stored for up to 18 years

Dr Kasper Moth-Poulson and his team have found a novel way to store solar energy. In 2017, scientists at a Swedish university created an energy system that makes it possible to capture and store solar energy for up to 18 years, releasing it as heat when needed.

Now the researchers have succeeded in getting the system to produce electricity by connecting it to a thermoelectric generator. Though still in its early stages, the concept developed at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenberg could pave the way for self-charging electronics that use stored solar energy on demand.

3. Homeless 17 Year Old Living Under Bridge Who Surrendered 4 Month Old Puppy So It Would Be Taken Care Of Reunited With Dog

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A homeless teen who surrendered his dog to a Mississippi animal shelter because he couldn’t care for her has been reunited with his dog. We’re told the teenager has a place to stay now and was scheduled to reclaim Jada and take her to their new home Friday.

“He left Jada there with a bag of dog food.” - This broke me. He's homeless, doesn't even have a tent anymore, and he still has dog food.

This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation ❤️

4. Book banning efforts are inspiring readers to form banned book clubs

Book banning -- or at least, book banning attempts -- appears to be having a resurgence. The American Library Association recorded 729 challenges to library, school and university materials and services in 2021, the most since the organization began tracking those attempts in 2000.

And while attempts to remove those books from library shelves or classrooms haven't all been successful, the efforts themselves have garnered interest in banned books from readers across the country.

That was the impetus for the Banned Books Book Club. Nicole Cardoza, the company's founder and CEO, said that young readers had increasingly been asking for resources on how they might engage with books being targeted for removal.

"This conservative pushback is actually generating a lot of interest in books that might not be something the average student is being exposed to otherwise," she said.

5. Wildflower believed to be extinct for 40 years spotted in Ecuador

A South American wildflower long believed to be extinct has been rediscovered.

Gasteranthus extinctus was found by biologists in the foothills of the Andes mountains and in remnant patches of forest in the Centinela region of Ecuador, almost 40 years after its last sighting.

Extensive deforestation in western Ecuador during the late 20th century led to the presumed extinction of a number of plant species, including Gasteranthus extinctus – the reason scientists gave it that name.

6. Wildlife Sanctuaries Welcome Lions, Tigers Rescued From Circuses

Four Bengal tigers and four lions have been rescued, after much of their lives were spent in circuses and tight living quarters, as part of two rescue operations. They will now live in wildlife sanctuaries in South Africa.

In the case of the tigers, two of the Bengal tigers had been part of a circus, but the traveling circus operators asked a local farmer in San Luis, Argentina to watch after the animals temporarily. But the circus never returned. The tigers later had two cubs, and the big cats spent over 4 years together in a metal train carriage.

7. ‘Historic’: global climate plans can now keep heating below 2C, study shows

For the first time the world is in a position to limit global heating to under 2C, according to the first in-depth analysis of the net zero pledges made by nations at the UN Cop26 climate summit in December.

Before these pledges it was more than likely that at the peak of the climate crisis there would be a temperature rise above 2C, bringing more severe impacts for billions of people. Now it is more likely that the peak temperature rise will be about 1.9C.

. . .

That's it for this week. Until next week, You can follow me on twitter. Also, I have a newsletter :)

Subscribe here to receive a collection of wholesome news every week in your inbox :D

#best news of last week #pink floyd #wildlife #banned books

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trouperhksworld · 4 years

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BOHDAN

WAS BORN IN WEST UKRAINE IN EARLY AGE OF 9 YEAR'S OLD STARTED LEARNED IN MUSIC SCHOOL UNTIL FINISHED AND GRADUATED IN BACHELOR OF MUSIC IN RIEVNE MUSIC COLLEGE WEST UKRAINE. AFTERWARDS PERFORMED CONCERTS THROUGHOUT UKRAINE AND IN NATIONAL HONORED CHAPEL BANDURA IN CAPITAL OF UKRAINE CITY OF KIEVE AT YEAR 1988.IN YEAR 1991 I'VE PERFORMED IN NATIONAL ACADEMIC CHOIR OF UKRAINE NAMED G.G.VERYOVKA AS ARTIST INSTRUMENTALIST IN ORCHESTRA AT THE SAME YEAR I HAVE TOUR CONCERT UKRAINE AND ABROAD;IN ENGLAND,BRADFORD FESTIVAL,DURBY THEATER. IN YEAR 1997 WORK IN UNION COMPOSER OF UKRAINE,PRODUCER DIRECTOR OF SHOW COLLABORATING WITH DIFFERENT ARTIST; CIRCUS,MUSICIANS,SINGERS,DANCERS,IN 2002 MOVE TO HONGKONG PERFORMING VERSATILE REPERTOIRE OF ACCORDION, PIANO~KEYBOARD, GUITAR, IN DIFFERENT HOTELS,SHOPPING MALLS, INDOOR AND OUTDOOR EVENTS, AND PERFORMING AS WELL SOME HOTELS IN MACAU AND CHINA. PERFORMING MUSIC WITHIN 25 YEARS ALREADY AND MORE YEAR AHEAD.

Varieties of Repertoire : European Music ( French, Italian, German, Greek, Ukrainian etc...) styles : Jazz, March, Polka, Gypsy, Flamenco, Latin - Jazz, Bossa - Nova, Blues,

Ballroom ( Waltz, Rhumba, Samba, Tango, Bolero, Mambo, cha-cha-cha, Cuban Rumba, Merenque Music, Foxtrot, latin - American )

REGARDING OTHER ITEM'S AND INTEREST I DO TEACHING MUSIC AND COMPOSITION, PARTICIPATING ACTING FORIEGN MOVIES AS WELL. For more Details contact us at [email protected] or 51305778

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dillydedalus · 4 years

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october reading

books. i read ‘em.

the bird king, g. willow wilson ugh i’m disappointed with this - i expected it to be more about the fall of granada, rather than just taking that as a jumping-off point for a very slow story of how fatima (concubine to the last andalusian sultan) and her bff hassan (magical mapmaker) escape from lady inquisitor luz to a magical/legendary island. that’s more of an expectation mismatch, but i also found this just a bit boring and confused, didn’t like the characters or the emotional moments. 2.5/5

lanark: a life in four books, alasdair gray y’all... this is a weirdo pomo mess which gray himself describes as ‘a portrait of the artist as a frustrated young glaswegian’ (instant love), it’s about duncan thaw growing up in post-war glasgow (not a good place) and lanark, sans memories, finding himself in the city of unthank (probably The Bad Place), where the sun hardly ever shines and people grow dragonskin, but really it’s about art & cities & politics & scotland & hell. it’s completely nuts & has a chapter where the protagonist meets the author in the process of writing and there’s a chapter-long sidebar detailing all instances of plagiarism in the book (incl. the lack of influence from robert burns, more sinister than all plagiarism). it’s a bit flabby in places & could stand to be a 100-200 pages shorter, but damn. 4/5

the memory police, yoko ogawa (tr. from japanese by stephen snyder) very atmospheric, quietly disturbing magical realist(ish) book about an island on which sometimes certain things (birds, roses, ribbons, fruit) just disappear, with the inhabitants losing their memories and emotional connection to the thing. the disappearances seem to occur randomly and on their own, but the memory police makes sure that no disappeared items remain and that those who can still remember also... disappear. really liked the quiet slow dread building here, the mysterious workings of the disappearances, and the interplay between the main story and the novel the narrator is writing while worrying whether words too will soon disappear. 4/5

trick mirror: reflections on self-delusion, jia tolentino collection of nine essays about roughly, life & self-image & politics in the social media age (and its predecessor, the reality tv age), gender politics and uh scams and self-delusions. many of these essays felt vaguely like things i’d read before online (& i might have) & didn’t offer anything completely new but i liked the examinations of big wedding culture, and her take on the ‘difficult woman’ archetype of millenial feminism. tolentino in general is an engaging, sharp writer, and even when she’s writing about familiar topics, she often puts an interesting spin on things. 3.5/5

here in berlin, cristina garcía and the anglophone-berlin-books saga continues. a cuban-american woman with a mild personal crisis goes to berlin (as people w/ personal crises so often do) and there collects a variety of snapshot stories from berliners (by birth or choice or accident), mostly about world war 2 and the latin american diaspora in berlin. some of the snapshots are p interesting or bizarrely funny but mostly they retread the same ground (history, trauma, collective & personal responsibility, commemoration etc) without really saying anything new (except the connection garcía makes between the nazis and south american dictatorships). there’s also a pretty annoying attempt to create authenticity by peppering in german words and phrases which sometimes aren’t even appropriate or spelled correctly* (get a german proofreader you cowards i’ll do it for free... like wtf is ‘volkenbrot’). 2/5 *i ordered it used and got an ARC, so maybe some of these issues were fixed for the final version but lmao. volkenbrot.

wilder girls, rory power this is annihilation as YA, set on an island called raxter where a mysterious illness called the tox has taken over, transforming the wilderness, the animals (deers grow canines y’all), and most of all the girls at raxter boarding school. the narrator’s eye has fused shut & something is growing under it, her friend has grown an extra spine, other girls have gills or claws. less fortunate girls (and most of the teachers) just die. there was a lot i liked about this, especially the tox and the ambivalent relationships the girls have to their changed bodies, but the last third just... eh. also, like, i like tumblr monster-girl poetics as much as the next person, but this is really overdoing it. 2.5/5

nach mitternacht (after midnight), irmgard keun KEUN HYPE TRAIN!!! this one’s super interesting because it’s the first novel keun wrote in exile, published 1937 and set at around the same time. the protagonist, sanne, is a naive and politically uneducated 19-year-old who is repeatedly & very dramatically confronted with the political reality she lives in, first when her aunt denounces her to the gestapo and later when her boyfriend franz is arrested. for most of the (very short) novel, sanne is observing and not quite understanding the increasing legal discrimination against jews, culture of paranoia and denouncement, and glorification of fascist ideology, which makes for a very disturbing reading experience, especially with the reader’s retrospective knowledge, but the climax is truly nightmarish & devastating. 4/5

children of god, mary doria russell the sequel to the sparrow, which i read & loved earlier this year. in this one, emilio sandoz, still in recovery from the trauma of his first trip to the planet rakhat, is forced to return there (bc the pope thinks it’s god’s will lol) and finds the planet changed after decades (space travel makes time weird) of revolution and civil war. i liked this but it’s not as good as the sparrow, the characters (except my man emilio) aren’t as interesting & well-developed and the dual timeline structure isn’t as well-executed but hey. there’s some closure for emilio & that made me hella emosh. 3.5/5

the wilful princess & the piebald prince, robin hobb a novella telling the true (?) story of charger farseer, the piebald prince, a historical figure that has great influence on the six duchies of fitz’s time, especially regarding the treatment of the witted (people who can magically bond with aninmals) and how fitz is framed & reviled as the ‘witted bastard’. this was cool & i enjoyed how it twists the story, but it’s not worth reading if you haven’t read the main series. 3/5

the inheritance, robin hobb/megan lindholm collection of short stories by hobb under her two pseudonyms - i mostly skipped the lindholm ones (sorry), but the three hobb ones were really really good. the first is about the first expeditions into the rain wilds (i love the cursed shores so much & wish there was a full trilogy about the first settlers there), the second is about bingtown & wizardwood, the third is about how sometimes you gotta kill your abusive ex & if you’re lucky, your cat will help you do it. it’s great & the cat is called marmelade. 4/5 for the hobb stories only

unholy land, lavie tidhar alternate history + multiple realities + high-concept pulp - lior tirosh, a pulp author (it’s meta) returns to his homeland, the jewish state palestina, established in east africa in the early 20th century, and there becomes involved in... rival plots to destroy/stabilise the borders between the worlds, not only between this alternate one and our real one, which tirosh seems to occasionally slip into, but all the million others, including one where the moon broke. love the concept, but this is so vague & confusing on so many points and the ending so abrupt that i was left kinda frustrated & unsatisfied (also bc we never find out much more about the world where the moon broke). 3.5/5

tigermilch (tiger milk), stefanie de velasco german ya book about two teen girls growing up in a poor neighbourhood in berlin. nini’s father is absent, her mother depressed, while jameelah’s father died in iraq and her mother is worried that they might be deported, and their bosnian friend amir’s sister is dating a serb. it’s some pretty harrowing stuff & it’s good to see Issues (TM) addressed in german ya in a way that doesn’t feel super didactic & preachy, but ultimately i’m really not the target audience here. 3/5

sea monsters, chloe aridjis

weirdo brainy dreamy novella about a girl in 80s mexico running away from mexico city to the beach because she’s looking for ukrainian circus dwarfs (???). i liked a lot about this (atmosphere, poetic & mythical allusions, a lot of the writing, the depictions of mexico city and the weird beach culture are both really cool) but a lot of the time this was so dreamy that i just kinda zoned out. 3/5

i am currently reading emma by jane austen bc i forgot about my monthly austen project until the last few days of the month lol & one of the hugo long list anthologies. the one with the cool fox on it.

#the books i read #long post

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go-redgirl · 4 years

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Top 8 Reasons Trump Already Won Impeachment

Whether the senators put the trial out of its misery this week or drag it on for months, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Here are the eight big reasons Trump won impeachment.

1. Trump Didn’t Commit An Impeachable Offense

It’s an obvious point, but the most important point.

Impeaching President Trump has been the stated goal of the Resistance since his inauguration. The main effort toward impeachment was through the investigation of a false and dangerous theory of treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

Even with a limitless special counsel appointed to achieve that end, the Russia collusion hoax ended with not a single American found to have colluded with Russia, not to mention anyone close to Trump, or Trump himself. A mini-effort to get impeachment going — on the special counsel’s murky near-findings that Trump had objected too strenuously to being falsely accused of treason — also fell apart.

Other impeachment efforts for, among other things, mean tweets, went nowhere. With time running out, the Resistance cobbled together what was always a weak theory regarding a phone call with the Ukrainian president.

At first the alleged crime was supposed to be a campaign finance violation, then bribery, then extortion. It ended with two articles of impeachment, neither ofor an actual crime, and one a more or less laughable claim that the president can’t use courts to defend his rights.

The other was a complicated argument regarding abuse of power that required not just hiding all exonerating evidence but the worst possible construction on what remained. It was such a weak argument that not a single Republican in the House fell for it and three Democrats declined to go along with their own party.

The range of opinion outside the Resistance about the phone call between world leaders ranges from it being, in Trump’s words, “perfect” to merely good or fine to not good. Resistance members tried to put forth the claim that the call was none of these things but impeachably bad. Even with the help of a compliant media, there is simply not enough consensus around this extreme viewpoint to justify even censure, much less bipartisan agreement toward impeachment, much less a removal from office.

Trump’s avoidance of a crime or any real break with public trust is the single biggest factor in his acquittal.

2. Terrible Decision-Making By House Democrats

With a histrionic media and political base spending the last few years demanding impeachment, House Democrats surely had hoped that President Trump would do something justifying an impeachment inquiry. They undoubtedly were not pleased when the best they had to work with was Trump asking for help investigating Ukraine’s known 2016 election meddling or investigation into Biden family corruptionin Ukraine.

So they started with a weak hand. But they failed to follow a good process. They didn’t have the House authorize an impeachment inquiry until late in the process. This decision made it unlikely that the many early subpoenas they sought would be deemed valid by a court of law if contested.

They refused to have courts validate their subpoenas, refused to let the GOP call their own witnesses, and suppressed information that was not helpful to their impeachment cause. Of the 78 days of the impeachment proceedings, they denied the president any right to counsel or due process for 71 days of them.

In general, the procedure was rushed and information that could have helped them seem more credible was never sought or acquired.

3. Democrats Failed to Get a Single Republican on Board Their Impeachment Scheme

It is nothing short of amazing that not a single Republican member of Congress joined with Democrats in their impeachment effort. There are plenty of Republican members who either dislike or even loathe the president. But even they didn’t find the impeachment to be credible.

The Resistance was also failed by its NeverTrump wing. That wing had pushed Justin Amash to dramatically leave the Republican Party earlier last year. He published his op-ed as to why and promptly lost any sway with anyone other than the tiny NeverTrump movement.

NeverTrump has long demonstrated trouble with strategic thinking and impulse control, so following their advice and leaving the party in a snit was an unforced error. Had Amash stayed with the party, the Resistance in the media and Democratic Party would have been able to make much more use of him.

4. Inexplicable 1-Month Delay In Sending Impeachment to the Senate

A main argument in favor of impeaching President Trump was that the situation, whatever it was supposed to be that day, was so dire that it required his immediate removal from office. The House Democrats couldn’t afford to wait a matter of months until a new election would be held and Americans could decide whether the “perfect” phone call was in fact so bad that it required the first removal from office of an American president in history.

Impeachment and removal had to happen immediately, they claimed. But then after voting to impeach the president, perhaps sensing the problems caused by a weak case and hoping for more information to come to light, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi inexplicably sat on the articles for a month. It killed whatever momentum the Resistance had and made a mockery of the whole process.

5. The Defense Team Was Amazing

Instead of turning things over to the effective Republicans who had handled the impeachment process so well on the House side, President Trump instead opted to put together a powerhouse collection of attorneys uniquely suited to address an audience of senators and the American people.

Even among their class of politicians, senators have an extremely high view of themselves and their office. Every senator’s ego must be stroked. They don’t want to feel upstaged, spoken down to, or lectured.

Patrick Philbin, Trump’s deputy general counsel, exemplified the defense team’s deliberate choice to put in front of senators someone who had encyclopedic knowledge of the law and this particular case, someone not there to make a name for himself. Philbin’s humble and bookish demeanor was neither bombastic nor flamboyant as he calmly explained the facts of the case and their significance. The other members of the team were also well chosen to argue their points.

6. Grating and Juvenile House Managers

By contrast, House Democrats picked impeachment managers who seemed perfectly calibrated to annoy and grate on those handful of senators whose votes were up for grabs. Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler were the leaders of a group that repeated their highly partisan talking points and used hyperbolic and loaded language. The media loved it, but it went over like a lead balloon with the non-Resistance senators.

The House Democrats accused senators of being cowards who were complicit in a cover-up. They suggested that the senators were unable to vote properly because President Trump would put their heads on pikes if they didn’t vote to acquit. They refused to answer specific and direct questions about whether the whistleblower worked for Biden, was involved in any decisions regarding Burisma, or about his interaction with Schiff’s staff. Even the Washington Post — even the Washington Post — gave Schiff four Pinocchios for lying about his staff’s secret collusion with the whistleblower.

At some point, the difference between the competent and highly skilled attorneys on the White House team and the bumbling and somewhat mediocre team of House managers was so pronounced it was almost embarrassing. It was as if one side belonged in front of the Supreme Court and the other failed to make the finals at a middle school debate tournament.

7. Kavanaugh Smear Operations No Longer Work

Along with the delay of the articles of impeachment, the House managers deployed a slow drip of supposedly damaging information. First they put Lev Parnas out as a “bombshell” witness who would bring Trump down. Parnas is indicted for various crimes and is something of a hustler and influence peddler who worked his way through Washington and supposedly had some type of negative information about Trump.

While the argument that Rudy Guiliani shouldn’t have been working with him in any way has merit, it’s a difficult argument to make while walking hand-in-hand with the same individual. Senate Minority Leader went so far as to invite Parnas to be his guest at the trial, which made the scene look more like a circus than a deliberative effort.

Late this week, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel issued a press release saying that he had been given information from a disgruntled former employee of Trump’s in mid-September to look into the firing of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, suggesting additional witnesses needed to be called. A good time to release this information — if it needed to be released, that is — would have been four months ago or during the House’s impeachment proceedings.

These tactics of deploying information late to create “bombshell” news stories are losing their effectiveness post-Kavanaugh. Republican senators — perhaps with the exception of Mitt Romney, who didn’t even learn this lesson after he was called a racist, hair-raping woman murderer during his presidential bid — are finally wising up to the operation played by the media and Democrats.

8. Media Malfeasance

The media always owned this impeachment process. Pelosi did her best to avoid impeachment but the media all but forced her into it. They championed it every step of the way and provided help, including the blocking of arguments against it.

For instance, although it’s fairly standard to name whistleblowers and to do journalism figuring out who key players are, many in the media decided to help Democrats keep from having to answer questions about his role with the whistleblower. They steadfastly avoided looking into him and his motivations or how that might have affected the entire proceedings.

Each day provided evidence that the media didn’t just want Trump impeached and removed from office, but desperately wanted that. There are videos of scrums of reporters fighting with Republicans over their case, but none of them fighting with Democrats. Republican senators are hounded by reporters to pressure them to change their vote, but Democratic senators don’t receive the same treatment.

It didn’t help that in the midst of the circus, a CNN host and his panel were openly yukking it up about how Republicans are all stupid.

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