#Speeches and Statements

[youthchronical]

Trump to Deliver Speech to Justice Dept. After Triumph in Battles Against It

In June 2023, Donald J. Trump’s lawyers arrived at Justice Department headquarters, grimly scooped up visitors badges and were ushered upstairs to ask prosecutors for details about Mr. Trump’s imminent indictment over the hoarding of documents at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump never faced a trial and is now the president. Two members of his defense team have permanent department badges, because they run…

[high-voltage-rat]

I think it's fascinating that the quotes:

"Have you forgotten sir, we were at war? A fight with an alien race for the very survival of our species. I feel I must remind you that it is an undeniable, and may I say fundamental quality of man, that when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable."

"When you spend every day fighting a war, you to demonize your attackers. To you, they're evil, they're subhuman. Because if they weren't, what would that make you? What I'm trying to say... is I've been afraid to see you for what you really are. You're our brothers. Our sisters. And the things we've done to one another are unforgivable."

"These guys want to use us, take us away from our families, and send us all over the dad-gum galaxy just to test if their agents are ready for the big fight? Well... guess I'm interested in showin' em exactly what a big fight is all about! So I'm not ordering you to go. I ain't even asking. You do what you gotta do, Private."

came from the same series whose standard fare is lines like:

"What in the hell are you two doing?" / "We're being executed by our own men, sir." / "Cut it out."

"I only drink the blood of my enemies, and the occasional strawberry yoohoo."

"You always said I could sleep when I’m dead, Sarge, and guess what? I am dead. This purgatory is about to become purga-snore-y, yawn!"

...and both categories manage to be a poignant statement about the nature of war and what it does to the people in it.

[cameronhcwes]

ER (1994-2009) 12.11 — If Not Now

[szilverer]

y'know... for a setting that places so much importance in Language and does so many ice cool things playing with it (Correspondence/Discordance, Parabola & Irem, etc) i think there's a bit of a missed opportunity when it comes to the terms and words people use in their day to day life... like for example:

do you think radical revolutionaries would avoid words like "enlightening" in their vocabulary and flip them for LON-appropriate counterparts to signal their beliefs?

like substituting the word "light" with "blight". lol

similarly, pet names relating to light like "sunshine" kinda have a whole extra flavour tied to them, leaning into nostalgia, melancholy and/or danger depending on the people using it. irony, even

"honey" as a pet name also has extra connotations now and might actually bother some people instead due to the association with the drug...

do you think SMEN, taboo as it is, and seeking being a recognizable phenomenon even to the common londoner, would spawn swear words and insults? (imagine the weight of telling someone to Go Seek or Fall Down a Well)

the word "well" itself. well as an adverb, interjection, adjective. just. think about it. think about what it represents. idk something is happening to this word for sure

[wispforever]

halloween was scary this year

[jubileepizza]

I still remember watching children of earth ep 5 when it first aired, Gwen’s address to the camera about the doctor turning away in shame from humanity, cut with clips of children being dragged from their homes, has to be one of the most chilling episodes openers in television history

[witch-of-the-sands]

Thinking so hard today about how "I'm just a girl" got slowly transformed over the years from satirical feminism in No Doubt's "Just a Girl" to being a way to literally dumb down women. The hard conservative swing is hard conservative swinging but I see actual leftist women using phrases like this to just dumb themselves down and it hurts. It hurts terribly.

[anghraine]

It feels extremely silly that only today did I realize that pantry and panadería are slightly similar-sounding for a reason >_>

(The English word pantry is one of the many, many common modern English words derived from Anglo-French: in this case, panetrie, from Old French paneterie, "bread room" ... Spanish panadería also has a complex etymology, but all are related to Latin panis, "bread.")

[gayofthefae]

Let's recap why this doesn't work:

So Mike and El actually parallel their self-doubts pretty perfectly, which is why one outcome will work perfectly for both of them...but not this one.

El thinks that when they met she had her powers so he loved her. Now he doesn't love her after she's lost her powers. She thinks that that's all she brought to the table and now he's just performing his love for her that isn't real anymore.

Mike thinks that when they met he was able to take care of her and love her. Now he can't love her. He thinks that's all he brought to the table and now she'll leave him when she realizes that.

But don't worry! In the end Mike stays with El

After El got her powers back.

And El doesn't leave him! She stays with Mike!

After Mike told her he loves her

They were both scared the other would leave them if they didn't have something. So they went and got it back.

That isn't facing your fears. That certainly isn't treating them.

On the upside! The ideal situation for both of them is the same!

If Mike tells her he's lost romantic feelings for her and she does not leave him as a friend, it will confirm that she values him as more than just someone to make her feel lovable. If Mike tells her he's lost romantic feelings for her while she has her powers back, he can also explain the real originally reasoning - which he does have.

[thievesandtraitors]

There are few things I think about all the time, and one of them is the cold open rant Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) went on about America not being the greatest country in the world in The Newsroom; particularly his hilarious point of “if liberals are so fucking smart how come they lose so goddamn always?” Aaron Sorkin really did something with that statement because yeah, we’ve got a history of fucking losing

[gingermintpepper]

I spent something like six and a half hours in the hospital today so day 6 of my challenge is being further postponed but, in the lieu of not doing any drawing, I did end up rereading Ovid's Metamorphoses in between waiting and I just wanted to offer some of my favourite underrated bits.

Cadmus and Harmonia's twin transformations into snakes is so gentle? Cadmus goes first, transformed mid plea for his wife to caress him one last time before his face is completely covered in scales, then he rests gently between her boobs and wraps around her neck and shoulders like a big snake gorget. Harmonia follows him shortly and the two snakes intertwine with each other before gently slithering off into the bushes and I love that actually mwah mwah mwah (I also appreciate the sweet irony of Cadmus who slew a snake for his glory becoming a snake, toothless and gentle in the last of his days)

Everything about Perseus was hilarious. Like, I'm sorry - I've never done a lot of reading into Perseus but I did always remember the banquet massacre and the Andromeda rescuing and like, bro I know it's not meant to be funny but Perseus is funny. I think it's his politeness honestly? He goes up to Atlas and is like "hello kind sir, may I please stay a night in your lands? I've travelled an awful long way and I am weary and hungry. If you only accept noble guests, rest assured, I am of noblest birth and have completed the noblest of deeds. 🥺" and Atlas takes one look at him, has a That's So Raven vision about the one time Themis gave him a prophecy about a son of Jove stealing his apples and then told Perseus to kick rocks. So Perseus, like the well adjusted and noble individual that he is, turns Atlas into a mountain with Medusa's head. This is how a great many of Perseus' stories unfold. It is actually hysterical.

I am going to give a special shoutout to Athis and Lycabas who were two young lovers in attendance at Perseus and Andromeda's blood wedding. Athis died first - a skilled archer who never got to shoot and was burnt and bludgeoned across the face with a wedding brazier. When Lycabas saw that his dear friend's beauty was ruined, he picked up the fight against Perseus himself in Athis' name and was slashed to strips by Perseus' sword. Lycabas managed to drag himself over to Athis in his last moments and died beside him, so I thought that was a particularly touching bit of beauty in the otherwise extremely tragic blood wedding.

No one can ever make me feel bad for Niobe. In a lot of the Greek accounts I've read and heard, because they tend to be much shorter or references in a wider narrative, it's hard to really grasp how insanely disrespectful she was to Leto (not that her boasting she should be the goddess of motherhood to the actual goddess of motherhood isn't worthy of death and destruction enough) but Ovid really did go the extra mile to dig it home how far down her throat this lady put her foot because even at her sons' seven way funeral she did not stop boasting about how she was still glorious. I did find it interesting that the seemingly innocuous detail of Apollo killing off the boys first and then Artemis killing the girls was kept cross-culturally, I assume it's because boys were more auspicious than girls in both cultures.

The detail of Athena bonking Arachne constantly with a wooden box and her being transformed into a spider because she begged to not be bonked to death. Also very interestingly, in Ovid's account, it's not a clear victory for Athena against Arachne - she gets flustered at the depictions of her relatives' affairs and rips the tapestry up - the judges didn't actually get a chance to opine. This is in contrast to the contest the Muses sang about where their representative Calliope unilaterally won against the daughters of Pierus.

The account of Apollo and Marsyas was much shorter than I remember it being. I recall it being touted as one of the more vicious and visceral tales in Metamorphoses' collection but it included neither the details of Marsyas' contest against Apollo, nor Apollo's feelings (or even any dialogue from him!) throughout his peeling of Marsyas' skin. Instead it is wholly focused on Marsyas - on describing the physical gore of his exposed veins and contracting muscles and the grief of the rustic crowd as they mourned his loss - which is curious indeed since the entire theme of the poems of Book 6 is divine punishment and it is otherwise filled with rather full accounts of these contests and insults.

Byblis and Caunus made me want to reread Euripedes' Hippolytus for the twelve thousandth time. Caunus made the right call of course but I also very much hoped he would have a huge big speech about incest being bad instead of just smacking the messenger.

And lastly, for now, Jove's speech as Hercules lay burning atop his death pyre where he addresses the host of his gods and goes "Man, wasn't Hercules a great guy? Look, there goes all his mortal attributes burning away in the fire, now he is all my son and surely we are all in agreement that any divine son of mine deserves a place on Olympus :)" was very endearing. I always feel quite bad for Deianira because she truly didn't mean any harm by her gift and I've always wished for an account of Heracles/Hercules' death from her perspective. There could scarcely be a thing more awful, especially given how long and drawn out and incredibly painful Hercules' death was.

Lowkey, I want to take a day and compare Ovid and Euripedes' Medeas. They're both very different women and they both handle their situations very differently. Partially for my own vindication - I adore Medea and Jason equally and since popular fiction cannot speak about Medea without flattening her or making Jason completely monstrous, this is just one of those things I'll have to do myself sometime.

[youthchronical]

Opinion | Trump Is an Angry Little Boy on a Great White Horse

The magnanimous man is charismatic. Whatever you think of the man, Trump’s speech on Tuesday night was a political triumph. He made himself look dominating, energetic and in control, while the Democrats looked pathetic and weak. His followers loved it. Populations that feel betrayed and disrespected naturally go for leaders who radiate status, power and vitality. Of course one problem for Trump…

[charlestrask]

something that ive noticed about noels speech patterns through the podcast is that he will often say "i never [blank]" or "i don't [blank]" to mean "i don't regularly [blank]." he does this a lot but one instance off the top of my head is matt asking him something about coffee and noel goes like "i've never drank coffee." and then matt pushes him on that because of course hes had coffee before and noel's like "yes i've had coffee before in my life but drinking coffee is not something i do." not sure what this observation adds but i suppose its an extra consideration to things he says alongside his swiss cheese brain + occasional purposeful lying.

[genresubversion]

Love how many people recommend Statement Abnegation in the billford tag. Beautifully written fanfiction, the author is incredibly skilled. Made me more nauseous and afraid than any horror novel I've read in my life and it made me stop shipping billford until I calmed down. The dread that built up as I read it was exquisite and terrifying. I don't know if I can recommend it to anyone but it sure was an experience.

[gerrysroots]

Ok disembodied voice trapped in a computer with no way of communicating with the outside world or the other voice that got trapped after you both attempted to escape the Horrors.

[dietsnnapple]

guys she’s back but this is shady as hell