#bizarre confluence of feelings

[cool-jpgs-of-wizards-with-swords]

oh fuck what

[brain-of-soup]

Excerpts on the relationship of Leopold and Loeb

From the Psychiatric Testimony

William White (psychiatrist and defense expert):

It was a peculiarly bizarre confluence of two personalities, each of which satisfied the needs of the other.

Bernard Gluek (psychiatrist + defense expert):

He [Leopold] told me of his attitude toward Loeb and of how completely he had put himself in the role of slave in connection with him. He said, "I can illustrate it to you by saying that I felt myself less than the dust beneath his feet," quoting from one of the poems of Lawrence Hope. He told me of his abject devo­tion to Loeb, saying that he was jealous of the food and drink that Loeb took, because he could not come as close to him as did the food and drink.

Dr. H.S. Hulbert

Each boy felt inadequate to carry out the life he most desired unless he had some one else in his life to complement him, to complete him. Leopold, on the one hand, wanted a superior for a companion. Loeb, on the other, wanted some one to adulate him for a companion. The psychiatric cause for this is not to be found in either boy alone, but in the interplay of their two personalities, caused by their two constitutions and experiences. [...] Their friendship was not based so much on desire as on need, they being what they were.

From Clarence Darrow's Summation For the Defense

These boys, neither one of them, could possibly have committed this act excepting by coming together. It was not the act for one; it was the act of two. It was the act of their planning, their conniving, their believing in each other; their thinking themselves supermen. Without it they could not have done it. It would not have happened. Their parents happened to meet, these boys happened to meet; some sort of chemical alchemy operated so that they cared for each other, and poor Bobby Franks's dead body was found in the culvert as a result. Neither of them could have done it alone.

Their coming together was the means of their undoing. [...] They had a weird, almost impossible relationship. Leopold, with his obsession of the superman, had repeatedly said that Loeb was his idea of the superman. He had the attitude toward him that one has to his most devoted friend, or that a man has to a lover. Without the combination of these two, nothing of this sort probably could have happened.

From the Hulbert-Bowman psychiatric report for Richard Loeb

Each secretly felt that the other was his superior mentally. Each felt that the continuation of this friendship would be extremely profitable to himself, and each felt that abandonment of this friendship would be very hurtful and possibly dangerous.

[...] they planned for each of them, namely [Loeb] and [Leopold] to have ahold of one end of the strangling rope and they would pull at the same time, so that both would be equally guilty of the murder. They did not seem to feel that this would give them a closer tie in their friendship. It was the sharing of culpability.

From the Hulbert-Bowman psychiatric report for Nathan Leopold

During the past two or three years [Leopold] has fitted his closest companion [Loeb] into this King–Slave phantasy. At first this companion had not seemed very good looking to him but after a while become the patient’s ideal of good looks. [...] he felt that his companion was much more brilliant and much more intellectual than he was.

Some time in 1922 or 1923 he made a table or chart for the perfect man. His companion [Loeb] received a score of ninety, [Leopold] received a score of sixty-two and his other friends received scores of about thirty to forty. “At this time there was an almost complete identification of myself with [Loeb]. It was a blind hero worship.”

It is of importance to note that in [Leopold's] relationship with [Loeb], there was this same relationship as in his phantasy, namely, that one individual was under the complete domination of the other [...] This idea of implicit obedience by one party and complete domination by the other, which has so dominated his phantasies for years, expresses itself in his actual relationship with his companion, so that an absolute, solemn pact is made, under which [Leopold] places himself absolutely under the commands of [Loeb], and they have a special code phrase to express this relationship whenever it is to be utilized (this phrase being “for Robert’s sake”).

[themuseumofwitchcraftandpaganism]

The Scourge of Demons by Jeffery R. Watt

Honestly, this book has been a challenge for me but that's because all the names are in Italian, and I keep getting them mixed up. It's definitely written at a more intermediate to advanced level, but I don't want that to discourage anyone from reading it. It's a super good resource on how accusations of witchcraft were handled in the Catholic church; I feel like most of the research out there is on Protestant and Puritan reactions. This book really highlights how completely different the Catholic legal process is in terms of witchcraft.

Summary:

"In 1636, residents at the convent of Santa Chiara in Carpi in northern Italy were struck by an extraordinary illness that provoked bizarre behavior. Eventually numbering fourteen, the afflicted nuns were subject to screaming fits, throwing themselves on the floor, and falling abruptly into a deep sleep. When medical experts' cures proved ineffective, exorcists ministered to the women and concluded that they were possessed by demons and the victims of witchcraft. Catering to women from elite families, the nunnery suffered much turmoil for three years and, remarkably, three of the victims died from their ills. A maverick nun and a former confessor were widely suspected to be responsible, through witchcraft, for these woes.

Based primarily on the exhaustive investigation by the Inquisition of Modena, The Scourge of Demons examines this fascinating case in its historical context. The travails of Santa Chiara occurred at a time when Europe witnessed peaks in both witch-hunting and in the numbers of people reputedly possessed by demons. Female religious figures appeared particularly prone to demonic attacks, and Counter-Reformation Church authorities were especially interested in imposing stricter discipline on convents. Watt carefully considers how the nuns of Santa Chiara understood and experienced alleged possession and witchcraft, concluding that Santa Chiara's diabolical troubles and their denouement -- involving the actions of nuns, confessors, inquisitorial authorities, and exorcists -- were profoundly shaped by the unique confluence of religious, cultural, judicial, and intellectual trends that flourished in the 1630s."

Where to read it:

Your local library!

Amazon - $27

AbeBooks - $31

Thriftbooks - $42

[void-botanist]

Wrapped Scenelets No. 95: splits

I'm writing scenelets for (most of) my Spotify Wrapped top 100 songs. Here's number 95, Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

━━━━━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━━━━━

The Confluence leaves seemed to intensify the sound of the wind, clattering together in a way the conifers at home never did, and throwing around the weird storm light with their shadows. It was easier to look out the window than it was to keep watching what was happening six feet away, to keep waiting and waiting. Tem stole a glance back anyway. Marietta was still making small talk with the nurses, though it was getting bigger the longer it went on. Probably Tem should be talking too, pretending that all this was real normal and they weren’t that worried. But they didn’t feel quite like they were in the room anymore. The worry and the panic surrounded their mind completely, and they were getting through it by just not thinking about it too hard. Not thinking about how their roots were still locked into Marietta’s, and would be until their sprout, Milo, finally split off their combined rootstock, however many more hours that took. Not thinking about the brace around Milo’s tiny body, covering so much that it looked like per was just a metal can with limbs and a head, the only thing standing between per and all manner of infection and injury. Not thinking about what happened if the brace wasn’t enough, and despite the doctors’ confidence, Milo died when per differentiated. Just thinking about the strange foreign leaves. The strange foreign wind, and the strange foreign shape of the window. Just how this was their first, and Marietta’s, and if per died, they would have to get out of this job. There was no way they could brave it again after that. It was honestly a wonder they hadn’t passed out from the stress yet.

They were half-rehearsing a worst-case call to their husband when they felt an odd creaking in their roots. Turning back to the room, they found the nurses all crowding around Milo, and Marietta watching them. Milo’s roots were lifting up, shrinking back from the rootstock. When Tem could feel the bizarre sensation of Milo standing on their roots rather than as part of them, per eyes opened. They felt per wobble and their heart stuck in their throat. But the machine connected to per brace said that per was breathing. Now Tem was too, coming halfway back into reality out of pure relief.

━━━━━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━━━━━

Scenelets wrapped taglist: @kk7-rbs

[nofourfol4]

i think finding the truly weirdest piece of art in a medium is less an exercise in extremity than an exercise in subtly- to an extent. if the weirdest piece of art is the one 'farthest' away from every other piece of art, then its incorporation of convention in a stream which theoretically maximizes that distance will place it off even that tattered path. so anyway, Maze of Justice

[screenshots from Cosmo (left) and Ota Owa (right) on youtube- not both images of the same part but it's about that different between the deco and layout lol]

while answering what the truly weirdest geometry dash level is i don't think i could do, i gotta say it's like at least top 5 or 10. it's the epitome of this confluence of convention and experimentation, starting life as a very unfriendly to even bot impossible maze scribbled under a blade of justice noclip, it eventually was decorated with by far some of the highest production value from the ILL community (certainly responsible for some of the strangest levels ever made already) until the much more successful TRUE SCHAFS (a surreal level in its own right, the surprisingly conventional megacollab stylings contrasted with the utterly unhinged ILL style gameplay, not to mention it being revealed for the first time near the end of a 5 hour, like, ILL community broadcast thing?) but that decoration half looking like entire boj parts stolen and overdetailed to the point of breaking them, but where the stolen objects, if there are any at all, start and end is incredibly hard to tell, giving almost like a B3313 or some such effect where it just looks Wrong. and of course, it's a red "remake"(?) of blade of justice, one of the blue levels of all time, especially since it comes from an era of especially red extremes. it's the kind of idea i'd find hours into deep meditation and wish i could make but not have the patience/colleagues for, it's probably the closest a geometry dash level has gotten to feeling like something you'd see in a dream if you have gd brainrot. the song helps too, a "remix"(?) of the song used in boj with some parts just taken directly from the song with minor edits and others being entire orchestral/sound design remakes that flatten the great song like how the decoration flattens the great level, but this bastardization works, because i actually like this level slightly more than blade of justice (and i quite like blade of justice!), it having produced something much more subtle than conventionally good but utterly fascinating

i haven't even really talked much about the gameplay either, greatly confounding this by, in the decorated mode, being almost completely uncorrelated with the structuring resulting in the icon in any showcase of it just haphazardly clipping around the level, the Maze in question requiring extensive knowledge of the game and analysis in the editor to even understand, a wave near the end being so hard to even bot it's been deemed impossible to do so (while still theoretically physically possible), and it not really reminding me of many other impossible levels, memory levels, or really even many levels in general. my lust for bizarre game breaking gameplay is a big reason i like it as much as i do but the deco is kinda mid so it's like a high 8/10 but i'm not sure a level this strange in this way even could reach higher for me, it's kinda a requirement for it to be slightly visually boring to be as bizarre as it is

[twilightichor]

Fair eyebrow rises with interest from where he stands, arms crossed over his strong chest. His silence indicative that he listens, his patience an encouragement to take his time to put his thoughts in order— for it is something he will need. The notion of faulty memories being everything he has to help him on the cause stirs intrigue within lunarescent knight, quietly making him wonder what must this man —young-looking as he is, not too older than him if he is such to begin with— have gone through in order to reach to that state.

Truth be said, for all the harshness he displayed to this man —and more than that he could've been, but he never gave him a reason to intensify that disposition—, never once he sensed a lie coming from him. If he were to rely on his instincts, on a sentience that he no longer reminisces if he had acquired with the passing of the years or if it was innate since his birth, the best descriptor that would suit him is broken. Fragmented.

Glacial sapphires descend upon the inteyvat the man holds betwixt his hands, so delicately that he would think that it holds special importance to the other. And so his words seem to confirm, albeit the reasons why that flower became so important to him are veiled in mystery about to be revealed.

A strong heartbeat paralyzes him momentarily, a call of his soul to recollect that which has already been lost to the natural course of the river of time. Stellar pupils quiver within celestial depths, roseate lips part in slight shock he doesn't bother to mask before fair features return to perfect stillness, unlike azure eyes that are still moved. As a rational individual Dáinsleif believes himself to be, it is hard to trust too much on that which has no reasonable explanation other than a gut feeling that proves to be more bothersome than it is helpful in moments when understanding evades him.

But something inside, very deep within calls for a paradoxical recognition that is possible to the Confluence Between Past and Future despite being unbeknownst of such fact or his stubborn logical mindset that sometimes gets in betwixt him and his real potential. There is a voice that reverberates with those exact words, as if he had already uttered them once— or at least, as if they fall in place like missing pieces joining together after a long time of absence from one another's union.

For this, he should not relent yet in his logical stance when it comes to such a bizarre situation. But oh, behold as his arms fall by his sides and he walks towards the man. He lowers himself on one knee to be at eye level with the inteyvat, and so gloved hands reach out before they stop for a fraction. Sapphire irises make contact with the man's ruby-aureate ones to ask for consent— he wouldn't dare trample over something that seems so precious to him. Only when he offers his consent he nears long fingers to one of the flower's petals to graze it lightly with his finger pads. Indeed, they are soft as any other that has never left Khaenri'ah to begin with. ◜...◞ By all logic, if he carried it with him elsewhere that isn't the premises of this kingdom and returned, it should've softened and turned to dust.

◜At this point, there should be no flower at all.◞ He murmurs under his breath, more to himself than meant for the other, who already knows what it would've happened if it were a regular flower. An inteyvat that was left behind when his soul departed from the Xianzhou... is that really possible? If it is, then there is only one man who would've witnessed the sorrow of their parting. And so his heart drums against his chest once that realization dawns on him, holding back trembling lips at the prospect that this is him. But he doesn't give in, he does not yet— not until this man passes one last trial, one that only he himself would know the answer of.

Ultimately do celestial irises look up at the man through albescent eyelashes after he swallows thick, an attempt to not be rash and stay rational still. ◜...Your name. May I know your name?◞ His voice doesn't hold the firmness expected of Twilight Sword anymore, nor his question is a demand, but a request to know— and a silent prayer, foolish it may be.

Yìng Xīng... is that... Is that you—?

Since Blade embarked in this foolish journey, he knew that achieving as little as some piece of information of the man that indirectly helped him so much when his mind was broken wouldn't be easy. First he would have to find a world he had no knowledge about and, if by some miracle he did, he would have to find the kingdom he vaguely remembered the other had told him about. After seven centuries since their separation, finding the man in question would be even harder, but at least he could try— and even with the certainty that the man standing before him is the one and only, he knew that it would be none the easier to inspire recognition in him.

He doesn't blame Dáinsleif for the harshness he uses to address to him. The words he's spoken are heavy and highly incriminatory if one were to give them that tint. Nor he would blame him if he didn't remember him at all. For he didn't and he probably never would if it weren't for those dreams, dreams he still doesn't know the degree of reality engraved on them. Reason why his head hangs low, deep in thought to what to say.

"I admit that my memory is faulty at best." Crimson eyes focus on the delicate flower he holds in his hands, and so they narrow. Now that some pieces align with what he had dreamed, there is no way to believe that it was mere dream.

If you were to pluck one and take it out of Khaenri'ah, the petals would stop growing and turn hard. Only when it finally returned to its home soil would the petals grow soft once more, and finally turn to dust... So the Inteyvat is a symbol for a wanderer far from home, signifying the tenderness of the homeland.

Even so, he's no fool. Just because some of these pieces do indeed align, that doesn't mean that everything will. But what else can he do than rely on what he learned from them, when the information he has to base himself on stems from them? He has no other choice but do a leap of faith.

And hope that at least this time— if only this time... it'll match with reality.

"...But I will never forget what I learned about this flower after spending so much time with it not knowing what it is or where it comes from, helping me in my darkest times." Midnight lashes close as he takes a deep breath, a silent summon of those words that so perfectly align with Dáinsleif's voice to reconstruct the description he's learned about it and thus repeat it to him. "If you were to pluck one and take it out of Khaenri'ah, the petals would stop growing and turn hard. Only when it finally returned to its home soil would the petals grow soft once more, and finally turn to dust... So the Inteyvat is a symbol for a wanderer far from home, signifying the tenderness of the homeland."

His eyes open, this time to face Dáinsleif directly. "Let me ask you this if you allow me: if I claim that I come from another world and I have this flower in my possession, how do you justify that it is not a form of incorporeality?"

[duhragonball]

Me too, Ren. Me too...

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

@tackytigerfic tagged me in the stats game, for which i am very grateful bc i love these games!

so i've written 119 fics across 11 fandoms, but i'm going to stick to my HP stuff just for the sake of a cohesive list. i'm also going to stick to fics with 1k+ wordcount bc drabbles feel like cheating a bit. also even all these have over 1k hits which is like!!! imagine a thousand people picking up your story off the shelf at the library or bookstore and reading it or even just quietly thumbing through it or thinking hmm i like the look of this and i'm going to take it home. and then they don't get to it. but still! it's kind of a staggering number.

Without Pretense (3.5K) harry and draco are friends but still dancing around whether they'll wind up dating. draco gets curious about harry acting strange one night, and after following him, discovers harry doing something bizarre but very harry. i have a soft spot for this story! i love all my stories really. obviously a lot of the emotional catharsis in this story comes from the release of tension between harry and draco (they DO get together in the end!) but also. this story is partly about how rootless harry feels as an orphan (and a Black orphan tbh!) and the silly, reckless, loving thing he does with that feeling.

Forth They Went Together (11.8K) so this is the 4th and final part of my moonrise series, and being part 4 of a 60K series is kind of a high barrier to entry to be fair. so i'm not surprised this fic has relatively fewer kudos. also it's a christmas story and i kinda feel like ppl don't like that? anyway, not super plotty. draco is a lycanthropy rights activist (and a werewolf) and a reform bill has just been passed granting lycanthropes some rights that have been denied them, in large part due to draco's work and his testimony to the wizengamot, and he's So Excited! this story is about the two of them basking in the love and light of their chosen family, really. there are also a couple of moments of sharp contrast between draco's chosen family and his family of origin. one of my favorite things in this fic is the relationship between draco and ginny! i love their stupid nicknames for each other. best friend shit. i also LOVE harry dressing up as santa (so does draco lol...)

Homing (8.6K) this is another christmas story! i do kinda feel like ppl don't rlly like reading christmas stories in this fandom? and yet i'm working on another one (which isn't actually about christmas but it'll be kind of holidayish)(i digress). draco gets disowned by his parents for refusing to marry astoria (his best friend) and astoria and harry conspire to have him stay with harry at grimmauld place. there are some letters back and forth between draco and astoria which is always fun. draco is a pianist who plays at a muggle gay bar, which i love. my spouse noted that i (who have a complicated relationship with my homophobic parents) keep giving draco a clean break in my stories. changing for the better is exquisite and painful, and not everyone you wish would come with you always does.

The Joy of Bleeding (6K) draco has just lost his estranged mother, and through a confluence of factors, harry is the eldest member of the Black family and has to assist with her burial, as draco no longer has the legal right to. oh also harry is draco's ex boyfriend who's still in love with him. this is another story about loving the people who are there for you and loving the people who fail you. draco's chosen family rallies around him, and everything sucks and hurts so bad but there are beautiful and sublime things too. i'm not going to say what the opening scene is because i think it's better unspoiled, but i really liked that choice.

Solarium (10.3 K) this is part 2 of moonrise, my werewolf draco series. i wrote this in 2020 and it shows! harry gets cursed through handling a cursed artifact at grimmauld place (where he and draco happen to live) and winds up in the hospital for a few weeks, struggling to throw off a sleeping curse. he's miserable and bored and his mind is foggy and he's scared he'll never be the same again. and also he doesn't want to move out of grimmauld place -_- draco is so worried and loves harry so much and is so fucking frustrated with him for not taking the obvious precaution. they figure it out, though. i really like the scenes with hagrid in this story. nobody includes hagrid for some reason, but he's So Important. also love the very last scene. more about how harry's relationship with his background so to speak, as a Black orphan (all my harry potters are Black; just remember that when you read my work!) i'll include a snippet bc i just can't resist

thanks again for tagging me, @tackytigerfic!!!! i love these games! i'm not sure who's already done this but anyone who wants to play should play and feel free to tag me so i can see your work!

[ultrahpfan5blog]

The King's Man - a weird tonal misfire

I am honestly a big fan of Matthew Vaughn. I remember loving Kick Ass and then X-Men: First Class was my favorite X-Men movie when it came out. Then I watched films like Layer Cake and Stardust, both of which I enjoyed. Then Kingsman came out and that just solidified my love for his work. Kingsman 2 was the first time where I thought he stumbled. But even though I wasn't a big fan of the film and overextended his hand a bit, there was still enough to like to make it passable. So I was interested in The King's Man as an origin story for Kingsman. Having seen it, I ended up finding it to be a puzzling misfire.

The film really is a bizarre confluence of tones. On one hand we have a period action film which fictionalizes events of World War I, on another hand we have an over the top spy film with characters like Rasputin, the Shepherd and his agency, the Kaiser etc..., and then thirdly we have a pretty grim WWI film in the middle of it. Any of these tones individually could work, but together they are just a mishmash that makes no sense. It honestly feels a little uncomfortable at times because the WWI section of the film is pretty gritty and brutal and realistic, and then they are fictionalizing real life horror events and characters like Lenin, Rasputin, Kaiser, and even Hitler as part of one big conspiracy. The two tones don't work well with each other. That's really the primary, but very big problem with the film. Because the film feels so different from act to act, there is no natural flow. Whereas the first Kingsman hit a right balance of the over the top spy and great action, Vaughn hasn't really been able to hit the balance in this universe since with Kingsman 2 being a little too over the top and ridiculous and The King's Man being overly serious and dramatic at times.

There is some good stuff. Taken individually, the war sections are pretty harrowing and some of the action set pieces are pretty good. The fight against Rasputin is quite fun. The climactic sequence is also quite enjoyable. I would say that the film could have been a good period action film, a good WWI drama, or a good over the top spy film, if Vaughn had just committed to that particular aspect.

The performances are all solid. Ralph Fiennes is an excellent lead. Gemma Arterton and Djimon Honsou as Fiennes' primary backup are both excellent. Harris Dickinson is solid as Conrad. Rhys Ifans is clearly having a blast as Rasputin as is Tom Hollander in a triple role as King George, the Tsar, and the Kaiser. Matthew Goode delivers a weird performance with an over the top scottish accent that I'm not sure was meant to be funny or to be menacing. Actors like Daniel Bruhl, Aaron Taylor Johnson, and Charles Dance are mostly wasted. In the end, its a watchable but rather bizarre tonal misstep. It sets up a sequel that I doubt will happen given the BO result of this film. Overall, a 5/10.

[leaping-in-london]

Subjectivity of Spaces & Places

One of the most difficult writing prompts for me to wrap my head around is the idea of natural and unnatural spaces. What makes something natural or unnatural? I think we can all agree that a body of water with land billowing on either side is a natural space. What we might disagree on is the beauty of such a sight and whether or not we would want to be next to such a body of water.

This picture is a beautiful space (to me). The foot sticking out of the right side interrupts the beauty and the purity of the image begins to wane. It is also a wonderful metaphor for how man interrupts and collides with nature (a conversation for another time . . .).

All over London, you see this confluence of purposeful creations with relics and rust - leftovers from time. There's a beautiful symbiosis between the two--again this is my opinion--and each time I see this symbiosis, I am struck by how malleable time is.

In the image immediately above, in one of the side streets in Canterbury, you'll find Victoria Grace Bridal, a rather old building, next to an IT store (you have to zoom in to see it). At Kew Palace, the Mad King George III's house is built on top of another house. If you go underneath, you find a completely different house style. It's all quite bizarre and, in my definition, these can be deemed unnatural spaces. That, again, is a matter of perspective.

The idea of monsters is another subjective concept. Who are the monsters in London? The torturers from several hundred years ago would be near the top of that list, but did you know that the number of people actually tortured to death was a relatively small number? The smallness of the number does not mitigate the horror of what was inflicted on those poor people.

One of the most prolific monsters was Jack the Ripper, but were his crimes really even close to some of America's notorious serial killers? Ever hear of Ed Kemper? What about John Wayne Gacy? These are real monsters AND we have romanticized their crimes. Their victims have become that freaky thing under the microscope that we all feel like we have to look at.

Though we can agree to a large extent on the categorization of weird and freaky spaces and places, outliers will always make questions like this impossible to objectively answer.

(Week 2, #2)

[the-iron-orchid]

See, that’s what was so weird! Like @vesuvian-disaster​ and I both reblogged it a couple of times and... crickets, even from The Squad, which was bizarre

Logical brain: Huh, there must be some confluence of timing and lack of visual impact that caused it to be missed (confirmed, thank you guys!)

Illogical brain: Clearly I suck and nobody cares lmao

Given everything else I’m dealing with right now, Illogical Brain had the upper hand for a while there 😳 

Please don’t feel bad about it! 💓

[lifeonashelf]

...INTERLUDE...

Come to Vegas! We can make out, gamble, and forget all our troubles.

This is quite possibly the greatest text message I have ever received. Four days later, I hit the road.

I have never driven to Las Vegas by myself. Once I complete the journey I can’t fathom why this is, because despite the extended sprawl of nothing between us, Vegas isn’t nearly as far away as I picture it in my mind. I arrive in 3 hours and 17 minutes (which, oddly, is the exact figure Google Maps gave me when I checked the route before leaving my apartment—this is even more astonishing when you factor in that Google not only calculated my precise rate of speed for the entire trek, but evidently also predicted that I would be pulling off the road for seven minutes to have a cigarette at a rest stop just outside Baker). On the way, I listen to two volumes of a 10-disc playlist I made a few months earlier. When I burn mix CDs for myself, they are ridiculously schizophrenic—crossing the state line, I hear Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, my favorite track by the death metal band Gorefest, and then “Cool For The Summer” by Demi Lovato in immediate succession, and I sing every word to each of them. Needless to say, it is an awesome drive.

Everything proceeds smoothly when I arrive. The Gold Coast has my lodgings ready for me two hours prior to the posted check-in time and they are able to accommodate my request for a smoking flat. I take my bag up to the 9th floor, set up my laptop at the table by the window, and then smoke a cigarette in my room just because I fucking can. I purposefully skipped dinner the night before so my stomach would be prepared to maximize the possibilities offered by the hotel’s Ports O’ Call Buffet. I tear that shit up, then head to the lounge to play a bit of video poker and get a cup of coffee—the machines at the bartop are not kind to me; that cup of coffee ends up costing me sixty dollars. Such is Vegas.

The day is uneventful, by Las Vegas standards. I drink more coffee, I gamble some more and win back my sixty bucks, I write a bit, I watch some basketball. But I am really just killing time. Because the passing hours are merely a preamble; the woman who sent me the text message which acted as the siren song for this trip is in the same town as me, and come “around 7ish” we will be in the same building.

She’s here on business. ___ is a reality television producer, and has been dispatched to Sin City to film the upcoming season of the show Hell’s Kitchen. I have not seen her in over two years, even though she only lives 30 miles from my apartment in real life and driving to Nevada is in fact way more effort than I would normally have to exert to visit her. But our real lives are rarely able to intersect. Besides, I love Las Vegas. And there’s something undeniably enchanting about the prospect of walking beside a beautiful girl amidst a panorama of brilliant dramatic neon and exotic stereoscopic night-sounds. Being in Vegas is like being in a movie, and the character you get to play has way more fun than you do when you’re not on-screen. Compared to my daily existence, and the daily existence of anyone who does not live here, the milieu of Vegas feels like an ethereal dream. That’s why it’s the perfect place to rendezvous with ___; being around her is so intoxicating that it feels much the same.

Our history spans nearly two decades. It is as complicated and messy and wonderful as any history I have ever shared with anyone. I cannot possibly recount all of it here, though I will tell you some. I lost a girlfriend when ___ and I became close because that girlfriend clearly identified that we were mutually attracted to each other. I would have never cheated, but my relationship imploded because I aggressively refuted her well-founded apprehensions and pretended like she was acting crazy for even insinuating I was drawn this person who I would 17 years later drive 230 miles to visit at the whim of a late night text. As a result I broke the heart of an incredible woman who deserved far better, and she broke mine by dumping me. Twenty-four hours subsequent, I was on a park bench making out with a girl who I swore up and down was merely a platonic acquaintance, and I was officially a liar.

I was 23 years old. I was also far more charming and attractive than I am now, and in the mindset to actively explore the positive corollaries which arose from that confluence. I spent a few years kissing a lot of girls because I was single and I was in my early twenties and it’s a good idea to kiss as many girls as you can when you’re single and in your early twenties because you won’t get to kiss too many more after that. Despite the sagacity I demonstrated by accurately predicting this, I was an unadulterated fucking idiot when it came to ___. I am horrified by my conduct throughout everything that ensued between us, and I will forever be haunted by the what-ifs brought about by the consequent brazen stupidity I exhibited.

From the moment we began groping each other at Cahuilla Park in Claremont, ___ became sort of a surrogate for the girlfriend I had sacrificed, a proxy upon whom I could bestow both the passion that had been extinguished and the anguish that had been stoked after the break-up. ___ did not kill my relationship, I killed it by being a callous asshole. But I think subconsciously I blamed her anyway (for having the audacity to enter my life and be the extraordinary girl she is, I suppose); that was far easier than owning up to the fact that I had acted like an irredeemable piece of shit toward the girl she supplanted. My pride and my heart were wounded and I couldn’t take it out on the person whose inescapable-in-hindsight decision had caused those injuries since she was no longer taking my calls. So I took it out on her replacement instead. And over the course of the several tumultuous months that followed, I proceeded to meticulously break the heart of another incredible woman who deserved far better.

I have never handled anyone as poorly as I handled ___. She was a dazzling and unequivocal gem, yet I treated her like she meant nothing to me at all. The mere thought of her being with anyone else drove me mad, yet instead of telling her this I told her time and time again that she could never have me all to herself and continued dating other people to underscore my assertion. More than once, I brought her to tears by stating in no uncertain terms that I never wanted to see her again, only to call her the very next night and ask her to come over as if that conversation never happened. I wasn’t simply emotionally abusive to ___, I was utterly fiendish to her. For every year of my life leading up to that one and every year since, I have been proud to conduct myself as a true gentleman, so I will never understand how I was even capable of hurting anyone as persistently and comprehensively as I hurt her. Rest assured, I didn’t understand it at the time, either. Nor did I understand why no matter how awful I was to her, she still saw the best in me and held out hope that I would come to my senses and acknowledge the singularly special thing that was standing right in front of me.

Unfortunately, I realized far too late that the reason ___ did so was because she was deeply in love with me. And I also realized far too late that I was deeply in love with her.

By then I had done about as much damage to her psyche as one person could do to another. Though she wouldn’t know it, my comeuppance was delivered by the next woman I entered into a failed relationship with, who put me through a lot of the same things I put ___ through and came up with several novel doozies of her own for good measure. ___ and I remained in sporadic telephone contact, though we rarely saw each other in person. Bizarrely, this had the upshot of emphasizing the indissoluble strength of our bond, since none of the interactions we had were stilted by our silence and distance—every time we came together, I felt as close to her as ever and she clearly felt the same.

Over the years, we’ve had numerous conversations about what happened between us. I wish to keep those private, but the essence of what has been expressed is that despite everything she considers me one of the people closest to her in the world. She also told me that “Perfect” by The Smashing Pumpkins is her song to me; I listen to it often, even though those beautiful and devastating lyrics always bring tears to my eyes.

Of course, along the way I finally did what she desperately wished I would have done 17 years ago. I came to my senses and acknowledged the singularly special thing that was once standing right in front of me. I made overtures to that effect on a couple of occasions when we once again found ourselves simultaneously single, but they were way overdue. She said she did still love me and always would, but the wall I forced her to build to shield herself from me had grown too tall and sturdy to tear down. A tacit understanding developed between us: we would be friends for the rest of our lives, but I had confused and harmed her enough for one lifetime and she was not willing to give me any chance to add to that abominable legacy. It’s a verdict I had no choice but to accept because it was a much better one than I deserved; she would have been undeniably justified in never wanting to speak to me again.

I know ___ has never wholly resolved the chaos of emotions I stirred within her, neither the amorous nor the angry. Some cuts are too deep to be sutured, and those tend to leave scars. Truthfully, I think she despises me as much as she adores me; she just adores me too much to let the other side win out most of the time. But this paradox is entirely fitting because our entire relationship is a paradox, a saga of two satellites which have shared each other’s orbit since they were launched and create a blinding explosion when they collide. Last night, she kissed me in the lobby of the Golden Nugget casino and we melted into each other just like we did that first time in Cahuilla Park, seventeen years erased by the touching of lips. When we came up for air, she wrapped her arms around me and buried her face against my chest and said, “god, I hate you,” with so much love in her voice that it made my stomach swim. It was the perfect thing for her to say in that moment, both because it is absolutely true and because it is the absolute opposite of the truth.

We had a delightful night on Fremont Street, both of us properly investigating that very cool region of the city for the first time. We had some drinks and we listened to some music and we played some poker and we held hands as we walked the promenade. For a few hours, we got to be the couple both of us wanted to be at one time or another, just never at the same time; we even fought like a couple for part of that span, since the resentment and pain she’s had to bury deep within herself to continue accepting me into her life despite my previous sins still gets triggered from time to time when we speak of the past. Regardless, I wouldn’t have changed a second of it. The night was absolutely magical, because ___ is absolutely magical.

But the spell of Las Vegas gets broken once you realize that nothing there is real. There’s an axiom people use to justify all manner of debauchery they engage in while visiting Sin City: “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”  Tonight ___ is out with a large group of people who esteem her, and I am alone in a smoky room sitting at my laptop, which is a lot closer to what our individual non-Las Vegas lives look like. This artificial vacation existence in which we were united as one happened in Vegas and will stay in Vegas, because it has to. Because, truthfully, the life she built for herself without me is much richer than the life I built for myself without her. Tomorrow morning I will get in my truck and exit this city of lights to travel back across a stretch of barren desert the length of two mix-CDs, and after I arrive home I will spend the next interminable number of days and nights sitting at my laptop in a room that is less smoky than this one but no less lonely. Meanwhile, tomorrow morning ___ will continue to work her fascinating job and then she will leave the country on some adventure, and no matter where she is and what she’s doing, she will be surrounded by people whose company is far more gratifying to her than mine ever could be.  

The hours we spent holding hands on Fremont Street were unreal. But they were also so real that I am still reeling from the aftershock of our latest satellite collision. Our relationship, both the real and the unreal, befits that manner of contradiction. I don’t think ___ and I are still in love with each other, but I do still love her in a way that I have never loved anyone else. I have committed unconditionally to other women in her absence and redistributed the connection we share into a more manageable framework, but whenever there is no one in my life I can’t help but recognize that there very well could be if I hadn’t once been a soulless beast to someone who was merely pleading for me to appreciate them the way they sincerely deserved to be appreciated. ___ is without a doubt one of the most phenomenal and inside-out beautiful human beings I have ever known and I cannot conceive of my life without her in it, yet I still to this day find it difficult to face her. Every moment I spend with ___ feels like a gift, but those moments also sting in equal measure, because she is a walking reminder of me at my absolute worst.

I don’t think she has ever truly forgiven me. I’m not sure she really ever could, or should. Nothing I do today can undo what I did yesterday. I know that no matter how exhilarating it feels to look into her gorgeous and soulful eyes after we kiss in a glittering alternate universe, there are times when she looks at me and only sees a man who likely hurt her worse than anyone else she has ever known. I know there is a part of her that will always love me, but I also know there’s a part of her that wishes she had never even met me.

While I can only suppose what the world might look like if I had treasured her instead of trashing her all those years ago, I am positive that it would look far better and brighter than it does now. I’m aware that even if I had done the right things then, it’s improbable we would still be together today. Very few relationships go that distance, and despite our exceptional chemistry, ___ and I are not effortlessly compatible. I wouldn’t change a single thing about her, but there are unchangeable things about me I know she could not abide and no one should have to. She detests smoking; I enjoy smoking more than I enjoy most other things. She dreams of spending her days traveling and exploring; I dream of sitting in my easy chair and watching blu-rays.

She thinks I was worth falling in love with; I think strongly otherwise.

I don’t specifically wish ___ and I were together now. Yet therein lies another paradox. Because I got a little glimpse of what that might look like last night on Fremont Street, and it looked amazing. But that wasn’t real, that was Las Vegas; what happens there stays there. It was a magnificent movie, but that’s not what our actual lives look like. We could make out, we could gamble, but we could never forget all our troubles—no matter how much she loved me then and loves me now, I will always be one of hers.

So maybe what I do wish is that I could really be the person she was holding hands with in that unreal fantasy, the person who kissed her with abandon in the lobby of the Golden Nugget, the person she gazed at with unbridled tenderness during that joyful interlude when both of us were able to shelve our past and exist solely and safely in our present. The person she hoped I would become before I shattered her hopes by becoming a monster. Regrettably, untethered from our mutual orbit, I grew to be someone else entirely, someone with numerous regrets he can never completely atone for, someone she will always measure with a watchful and skeptical eye to protect herself. Someone who can never be anyone else except who he is. And that person simply would not be capable of making ___ as happy as she deserves to be, because he already had his chance to do that and made her miserable instead.

Besides, he can barely make himself happy most of the time.

 ###

 The trip home is an inexorably depressing conclusion to every great vacation—you’re doing the exact same thing you did when you set off, except there isn’t anything to look forward to when you arrive. Fittingly, an unseasonable rain is coming down when I hit the 15 Freeway. The water-dappled windshield and the desolate unfolding highway ahead evoke another cinematic scene, perhaps a montage in which the central character takes a long drive to think heavy thoughts. At the risk of becoming a cliché, that is exactly what I do.

My mix-CDs play on, the music blurring past with the miles. I hear “Wonderwall” and I hear “Stairway to Heaven”, which are two songs that everyone should listen to extremely loudly on the open road at least once in their life. Seaweed… Tiamat… Purity Ring… My Chemical Romance… P!nk… The Dillinger Escape Plan... Fleetwood Mac… Each one of them imparts a decisively fantastic tune, but this time I’m not singing along. I am instead blinking away tears as it dawns on me exactly how much I am leaving behind in Las Vegas. Not the money I lost at the video poker machines, but the luminous girl I wagered at the age of 23 when I made a much more foolish gamble than I could have ever imagined and ended up losing the most precious thing I never had. The fortune that I lose over and over again every time ___ and I part from each other and return to the real world.

I discover that her hold on me, this cosmic magnetism we share, has not diminished with time. And I discover that the axiom is not absolute—not everything that happens in Vegas stays there; some things follow you all the way home.

That night on Fremont Street, she told me that she will never be completely over me. At least that makes us even in one respect.  

Though the imprint I left on her heart was shaped like a bruise, there will always be a piece of mine that is the precise shape and size of ___. That piece belongs to her, and though it is a woeful consolation prize, it is the only one I will ever have the opportunity to give her.

But it does come with a vow: forever and always, whenever and wherever we meet, in Las Vegas and in real life, I promise we’ll be perfect.

 May 9, 2019        

[bustedbernie]

During 28 years as a state and federal prosecutor, I prosecuted a lot of sexual assault cases. The vast majority came early in my career, when I was a young attorney at a prosecutor’s office outside Detroit.

A year ago, Tara Reade accused former Vice President Joe Biden of touching her shoulder and neck in a way that made her uncomfortable, when she worked for him as a staff assistant in 1993. Then last month, Reade told an interviewer that Biden stuck his hand under her skirt and forcibly penetrated her with his fingers. Biden denies the allegation.

When women make allegations of sexual assault, my default response is to believe them. But as the news media have investigated Reade’s allegations, I’ve become increasingly skeptical. Here are some of the reasons why:

►Delayed reporting … twice. Reade waited 27 years to publicly report her allegation that Biden sexually assaulted her. I understand that victims of sexual assault often do not come forward immediately because recounting the most violent and degrading experience of their lives, to a bunch of strangers, is the proverbial insult to injury. That so many women were willing to wait in my dreary government office, as I ran to the restroom to pull myself together after listening to their stories, is a testament to their fortitude.

Even so, it is reasonable to consider a 27-year reporting delay when assessing the believability of any criminal allegation. More significant perhaps, is Reade’s decision to sit down with a newspaper last year and accuse Biden of touching her in a sexual way that made her uncomfortable — but neglect to mention her claim that he forcibly penetrated her with his fingers.

As a lawyer and victims’ rights advocate, Reade was better equipped than most to appreciate that dramatic changes in sexual assault allegations severely undercut an accuser’s credibility — especially when the change is from an uncomfortable shoulder touch to vaginal penetration.

►Implausible explanation for changing story. When Reade went public with her sexual assault allegation in March, she said she wanted to do it in an interview with The Union newspaper in California last April. She said the reporter’s tone made her feel uncomfortable and "I just really got shut down” and didn't tell the whole story.

It is hard to believe a reporter would discourage this kind of scoop. Regardless, it's also hard to accept that it took Reade 12 months to find another reporter eager to break that bombshell story. This unlikely explanation damages her credibility.

►People who contradict Reade’s claim. After the alleged assault, Reade said she complained about Biden's harassment to Marianne Baker, Biden’s executive assistant, as well as to top aides Dennis Toner and Ted Kaufman. All three Biden staffers recently told The New York Times that she made no complaint to them.

And they did not offer the standard, noncommittal “I don’t remember any such complaint.” The denials were firm. “She did not come to me. If she had, I would have remembered her,” Kaufman said. Toner made a similar statement. And from Baker: “I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct (by Biden), period." Baker said such a complaint, had Reade made it, "would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.”

►Missing formal complaint. Reade told The Times she filed a written complaint against Biden with the Senate personnel office. But The Times could not find any complaint. When The Times asked Reade for a copy of the complaint, she said she did not have it. Yet she maintained and provided a copy of her 1993 Senate employment records.

It is odd that Reade kept a copy of her employment records but did not keep a copy of a complaint documenting criminal conduct by a man whose improprieties changed “the trajectory” of her life. It’s equally odd The Times was unable to find a copy of the alleged Senate complaint.

►Memory lapse. Reade has said that she cannot remember the date, time or exact location of the alleged assault, except that it occurred in a “semiprivate” area in corridors connecting Senate buildings. After I left the Justice Department, I was appointed by the federal court in Los Angeles to represent indigent defendants. The first thing that comes to mind from my defense attorney perspective is that Reade’s amnesia about specifics makes it impossible for Biden to go through records and prove he could not have committed the assault, because he was somewhere else at the time.

For instance, if Reade alleged Biden assaulted her on the afternoon of June 3, 1993, Biden might be able to prove he was on the Senate floor or at the dentist. Her memory lapses could easily be perceived as bulletproofing a false allegation.  

►The lie about losing her job. Reade told The Union that Biden wanted her to serve drinks at an event. After she refused, "she felt pushed out and left Biden's employ," the newspaper said last April. But Reade claimed this month in her Times interview that after she filed a sexual harassment complaint with the Senate personnel office, she faced retaliation and was fired by Biden’s chief of staff.

Leaving a job after refusing to serve drinks at a Biden fundraiser is vastly different than being fired as retaliation for filing a sexual harassment complaint with the Senate. The disparity raises questions about Reade’s credibility and account of events.

►Compliments for Biden. In the 1990s, Biden worked to pass the Violence Against Women Act. In 2017, on multiple occasions, Reade retweeted or “liked” praise for Biden and his work combating sexual assault. In the same year, Reade tweeted other compliments of Biden, including: “My old boss speaks truth. Listen.” It is bizarre that Reade would publicly laud Biden for combating the very thing she would later accuse him of doing to her.

►Rejecting Biden, embracing Sanders. By this January, Reade was all in for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Her unwavering support was accompanied by an unbridled attack on Biden. In an article on Medium, Reade referred to Biden as “the blue version of Trump.” Reade also pushed a Sanders/Elizabeth Warren ticket, while complaining that the Democratic National Committee was trying to “shove” Biden “down Democrat voters throats.”

Despite her effusive 2017 praise for Biden’s efforts on behalf of women, after pledging her support to Sanders, Reade turned on Biden and contradicted all she said before. She claimed that her decision to publicly accuse Biden of inappropriately touching her was due to “the hypocrisy that Biden is supposed to be the champion of women’s rights.”

►Love of Russia and Putin. During 2017 when Reade was praising Biden, she was condemning Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s efforts to hijack American democracy in the 2016 election. This changed in November 2018, when Reade trashed the United States as a country of “hypocrisy and imperialism” and “not a democracy at all but a corporate autocracy.”

Reade’s distaste for America closely tracked her new infatuation with Russia and Putin. She referred to Putin as a “genius” with an athletic prowess that “is intoxicating to American women.” Then there’s this gem: “President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with gentleness. His sensuous image projects his love for life, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity.”

In March 2019, Reade essentially dismissed the idea of Russian interference in the 2016 American presidential election as hype. She said she loved Russia and her Russian relatives — and "like most women across the world, I like President Putin … a lot, his shirt on or shirt off.”

Believe all women?Now that Reade has accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, never mind.

Pivoting again this month, Reade said that she “did not support Putin, and that her comments were pulled out of context from a novel she was writing,” according to The Times. The quotations above, however, are from political opinion pieces she published, and she did not offer any other "context" to The Times.

Reade's writings shed light on her political alliance with Sanders, who has a long history of ties to Russia and whose stump speech is focused largely on his position that American inequality is due to a corporate autocracy. But at a very minimum, Reade's wild shifts in political ideology and her sexual infatuation with a brutal dictator of a foreign adversary raise questions about her emotional stability.

►Suspect timing. For 27 years, Reade did not publicly accuse Biden of sexually assaulting her. But then Biden's string of March primary victories threw Sanders off his seemingly unstoppable path to the Democratic nomination. On March 25, as Sanders was pondering his political future, Reade finally went public with her claim. The confluence of Reade’s support of Sanders, distaste for the traditional American democracy epitomized by Biden, and the timing of her allegation should give pause to even the most strident Biden critics.  

►The Larry King call. Last week, new "evidence" surfaced: a recorded call by an anonymous woman to CNN's "Larry King Live" show in 1993. Reade says the caller was her mother, who's now deceased. Assuming Reade is correct, her mother said: "I’m wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? My daughter has just left there after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him."

As a prosecutor, this would not make me happy. Given that the call was anonymous, Reade’s mother should have felt comfortable relaying the worst version of events. When trying to obtain someone’s assistance, people typically do not downplay the seriousness of an incident. They exaggerate it. That Reade’s mother said nothing about her daughter being sexually assaulted would lead many reasonable people to conclude that sexual assault was not the problem that prompted the call to King.

Reade’s mother also said her daughter did not go to the press with her problem “out of respect” for the senator. I’ve never met a woman who stayed silent out of “respect” for the man who sexually assaulted her. And it is inconceivable that a mother would learn of her daughter’s sexual assault and suggest that respect for the assailant is what stands between a life of painful silence and justice.

The "out of respect" explanation sounds more like an office squabble with staff that resulted in leaving the job. Indeed, in last year's interview with The Washington Post, Reade laid the blame on Biden’s staff for “bullying” her. She also said, “I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him.”

►Statements to others. Reade’s brother, Collin Moulton, told The Post recently that he remembers Reade telling him Biden inappropriately touched her neck and shoulders. He said nothing about a sexual assault until a few days later, when he texted The Post that he remembered Reade saying Biden put his hand "under her clothes.”

That Reade’s brother neglected to remember the most important part of her allegation initially could lead people to believe he recounted his Post interview to Reade, was told he left out the most important part, and texted it to The Post to avoid a discussion about why he failed to mention it in the first place.

In interviews with The Times, one friend of Reade’s said Reade told her she was sexually assaulted by Biden. Another friend said Reade told her that Biden touched her inappropriately. Both friends insisted that The Times maintain their anonymity.  

On Monday, Business Insider published an interview with a friend of Reade’s who said that in 1995 or 1996, Reade told her she was assaulted by Biden. Insider called this friend, Lynda LaCasse, the “first person to independently corroborate, in detail and on the record, that Reade had told others about her assault allegations contemporaneously.”

But Reade alleged she was assaulted in 1993. Telling a friend two or three years later is not contemporaneous. Legal references to a contemporaneous recounting typically refer to hours or days — the point being that facts are still fresh in a person's mind and the statement is more likely to be accurate.

The Insider also quoted a colleague of Reade’s in the mid-1990s, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her she had been sexually harassed by a former boss. Reade did not mention Biden by name and did not provide details of the alleged harassment.

In prior interviews, Reade gave what appeared be an exhaustive list of people she told of the alleged assault. Neither of the women who talked to Business Insider were on that list.

The problem with statements from friends is that the information they recount is only as good as the information given to them. Let’s say Reade left her job because she was angry about being asked to serve drinks or because she was fired for a legitimate reason. If she tried to save face by telling friends that she left because she was sexually assaulted, that’s all her friends would know and all they could repeat.

Prior statements made by a sexual assault victim can carry some weight, but only if the accuser is credible. In Reade’s case, the statements coming from her friends are only of value if people believe Reade can be relied on to tell the truth, regardless of the light in which it paints her.  

►Lack of other sexual assault allegations. Last year, several women claimed that Biden made them uncomfortable with things like a shoulder touch or a hug. (I wrote a column critical of one such allegation by Lucy Flores.) The Times and Post found no allegation of sexual assault against Biden except Reade's.

It is possible that in his 77 years, Biden committed one sexual assault and it was against Reade. But in my experience, men who commit a sexual assault are accused more than once ... like Donald Trump, who has had more than a dozen allegations of sexual assault leveled against him and who was recorded bragging about grabbing women’s genitalia.  

►What remains. There are no third-party eyewitnesses or videos to support Tara Reade’s allegation that she was assaulted by Joe Biden. No one but Reade and Biden know whether an assault occurred. This is typical of sexual assault allegations. Jurors, in this case the voting public, have to consider the facts and circumstances to assess whether Reade’s allegation is credible. To do that, they have to determine whether Reade herself is believable.

I’ve dreaded writing this piece because I do not want it to be used as a guidebook to dismantling legitimate allegations of sexual assault. But not every claim of sexual assault is legitimate. During almost three decades as a prosecutor, I can remember dismissing two cases because I felt the defendant had not committed the charged crime. One of those cases was a rape charge.

The facts of that case made me question the credibility of the woman who claimed she was raped. In the end, she acknowledged that she fabricated the allegation after her boyfriend caught her with a man with whom she was having an affair.

I know that “Believe Women” is the mantra of the new decade. It is a response to a century of ignoring and excusing men’s sexual assaults against women. But men and women alike should not be forced to blindly accept every allegation of sexual assault for fear of being labeled a misogynist or enabler.

We can support the #MeToo movement and not support allegations of sexual assault that do not ring true. If these two positions cannot coexist, the movement is no more than a hit squad. That’s not how I see the #MeToo movement. It’s too important, for too many victims of sexual assault and their allies, to be no more than that.  

[docgold13]

Kill and eat every billionaire. I don't give a fuck how good they are. They steal wealth from the rest of us. If I'm being serious tax them without mercy. Fox has defended rich Republicans for years. But now Carlson is flipping the script. Saying rich liberals are secretly running things but billionaire president is blameless. This truly is a bizarre appropriation of rhetoric. I understood many poor people thought of Trump as a good boss but then to admit most rich are evil except him? Weird.

Yeah, Fox News is fucked up and that Carlson guy stands out as an especially deplorable cad. I’ve only read about him and scene bits... but could never stomach watching an entire episode.

From what I’ve seen, however, Carlson has put forward some seriously bold-faced white supremacist ideology. Not even veiled in dog-whistle format... just outright white supremacy. I don’t know how anyone could watch him and not come away believing him to be anything other than a nazi demagogue.

It kind of feels like Fox just tooled around becoming slowly and gradually racist, anti-metropolitan, anti-intellectual... while also offering spun up news favoring conservative policies and agendas. Thus creating this weird confluence aligning conservativism with neo-fascism.

Yet the transition occurred so gradually that it kind of boiled the frogs alive so to speak. Viewers didn’t realize they were being subjected to propaganda until it was too late.

[aunti-christ-ine]

As much as I dislike Biden, this guy makes a very good point.

...several of them, in fact. 

____________________________________ 

Why I'm skeptical about Reade's sexual assault claim against Biden  

     by Ex-Prosecutor  MICHAEL J. STERN 

A former staffer to Joe Biden in the early '90s has accused the presidential candidate of sexual assault. Here's everything you need to know about it. 

During 28 years as a state and federal prosecutor, I prosecuted a lot of sexual assault cases. The vast majority came early in my career, when I was a young attorney at a prosecutor’s office outside Detroit. 

A year ago, Tara Reade accused former Vice President Joe Biden of touching her shoulder and neck in a way that made her uncomfortable, when she worked for him as a staff assistant in 1993. Then last month, Reade told an interviewer that Biden stuck his hand under her skirt and forcibly penetrated her with his fingers. Biden denies the allegation. 

When women make allegations of sexual assault, my default response is to believe them. But as the news media have investigated Reade’s allegations, I’ve become increasingly skeptical. Here are some of the reasons why: 

►Delayed reporting … twice. Reade waited 27 years to publicly report her allegation that Biden sexually assaulted her. I understand that victims of sexual assault often do not come forward immediately because recounting the most violent and degrading experience of their lives, to a bunch of strangers, is the proverbial insult to injury. That so many women were willing to wait in my dreary government office, as I ran to the restroom to pull myself together after listening to their stories, is a testament to their fortitude. 

Even so, it is reasonable to consider a 27-year reporting delay when assessing the believability of any criminal allegation. More significant perhaps, is Reade’s decision to sit down with a newspaper last year and accuse Biden of touching her in a sexual way that made her uncomfortable — but neglect to mention her claim that he forcibly penetrated her with his fingers. 

As a lawyer and victims’ rights advocate, Reade was better equipped than most to appreciate that dramatic changes in sexual assault allegations severely undercut an accuser’s credibility — especially when the change is from an uncomfortable shoulder touch to vaginal penetration. 

►Implausible explanation for changing story. When Reade went public with her sexual assault allegation in March, she said she wanted to do it in an interview with The Union newspaper in California last April. She said the reporter’s tone made her feel uncomfortable and "I just really got shut down” and didn't tell the whole story. 

It is hard to believe a reporter would discourage this kind of scoop. Regardless, it's also hard to accept that it took Reade 12 months to find another reporter eager to break that bombshell story. This unlikely explanation damages her credibility. 

►People who contradict Reade’s claim. After the alleged assault, Reade said she complained about Biden's harassment to Marianne Baker, Biden’s executive assistant, as well as to top aides Dennis Toner and Ted Kaufman. All three Biden staffers recently told The New York Times that she made no complaint to them. 

And they did not offer the standard, noncommittal “I don’t remember any such complaint.” The denials were firm. “She did not come to me. If she had, I would have remembered her,” Kaufman said. Toner made a similar statement. And from Baker: “I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct (by Biden), period." Baker said such a complaint, had Reade made it, "would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.” 

►Missing formal complaint. Reade told The Times she filed a written complaint against Biden with the Senate personnel office. But The Times could not find any complaint. When The Times asked Reade for a copy of the complaint, she said she did not have it. Yet she maintained and provided a copy of her 1993 Senate employment records. 

It is odd that Reade kept a copy of her employment records but did not keep a copy of a complaint documenting criminal conduct by a man whose improprieties changed “the trajectory” of her life. It’s equally odd The Times was unable to find a copy of the alleged Senate complaint. 

►Memory lapse. Reade has said that she cannot remember the date, time or exact location of the alleged assault, except that it occurred in a “semiprivate” area in corridors connecting Senate buildings. After I left the Justice Department, I was appointed by the federal court in Los Angeles to represent indigent defendants. The first thing that comes to mind from my defense attorney perspective is that Reade’s amnesia about specifics makes it impossible for Biden to go through records and prove he could not have committed the assault, because he was somewhere else at the time. 

For instance, if Reade alleged Biden assaulted her on the afternoon of June 3, 1993, Biden might be able to prove he was on the Senate floor or at the dentist. Her memory lapses could easily be perceived as bulletproofing a false allegation.  

►The lie about losing her job. Reade told The Union that Biden wanted her to serve drinks at an event. After she refused, "she felt pushed out and left Biden's employ," the newspaper said last April. But Reade claimed this month in her Times interview that after she filed a sexual harassment complaint with the Senate personnel office, she faced retaliation and was fired by Biden’s chief of staff. 

Leaving a job after refusing to serve drinks at a Biden fundraiser is vastly different than being fired as retaliation for filing a sexual harassment complaint with the Senate. The disparity raises questions about Reade’s credibility and account of events. 

►Compliments for Biden. In the 1990s, Biden worked to pass the Violence Against Women Act. In 2017, on multiple occasions, Reade retweeted or “liked” praise for Biden and his work combating sexual assault. In the same year, Reade tweeted other compliments of Biden, including: “My old boss speaks truth. Listen.” It is bizarre that Reade would publicly laud Biden for combating the very thing she would later accuse him of doing to her. 

►Rejecting Biden, embracing Sanders. By this January, Reade was all in for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Her unwavering support was accompanied by an unbridled attack on Biden. In an article on Medium, Reade referred to Biden as “the blue version of Trump.” Reade also pushed a Sanders/Elizabeth Warren ticket, while complaining that the Democratic National Committee was trying to “shove” Biden “down Democrat voters throats.” 

Despite her effusive 2017 praise for Biden’s efforts on behalf of women, after pledging her support to Sanders, Reade turned on Biden and contradicted all she said before. She claimed that her decision to publicly accuse Biden of inappropriately touching her was due to “the hypocrisy that Biden is supposed to be the champion of women’s rights.” 

►Love of Russia and Putin. During 2017 when Reade was praising Biden, she was condemning Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s efforts to hijack American democracy in the 2016 election. This changed in November 2018, when Reade trashed the United States as a country of “hypocrisy and imperialism” and “not a democracy at all but a corporate autocracy.” 

Reade’s distaste for America closely tracked her new infatuation with Russia and Putin. She referred to Putin as a “genius” with an athletic prowess that “is intoxicating to American women.” Then there’s this gem: “President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with gentleness. His sensuous image projects his love for life, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity.” 

In March 2019, Reade essentially dismissed the idea of Russian interference in the 2016 American presidential election as hype. She said she loved Russia and her Russian relatives — and "like most women across the world, I like President Putin … a lot, his shirt on or shirt off.” 

Believe all women? Now that Reade has accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, never mind. 

Pivoting again this month, Reade said that she “did not support Putin, and that her comments were pulled out of context from a novel she was writing,” according to The Times. The quotations above, however, are from political opinion pieces she published, and she did not offer any other "context" to The Times. 

Reade's writings shed light on her political alliance with Sanders, who has a long history of ties to Russia and whose stump speech is focused largely on his position that American inequality is due to a corporate autocracy. But at a very minimum, Reade's wild shifts in political ideology and her sexual infatuation with a brutal dictator of a foreign adversary raise questions about her emotional stability. 

►Suspect timing. For 27 years, Reade did not publicly accuse Biden of sexually assaulting her. But then Biden's string of March primary victories threw Sanders off his seemingly unstoppable path to the Democratic nomination. On March 25, as Sanders was pondering his political future, Reade finally went public with her claim. The confluence of Reade’s support of Sanders, distaste for the traditional American democracy epitomized by Biden, and the timing of her allegation should give pause to even the most strident Biden critics. 

►The Larry King call. Last week, new "evidence" surfaced: a recorded call by an anonymous woman to CNN's "Larry King Live" show in 1993. Reade says the caller was her mother, who's now deceased. Assuming Reade is correct, her mother said: "I’m wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? My daughter has just left there after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him." 

As a prosecutor, this would not make me happy. Given that the call was anonymous, Reade’s mother should have felt comfortable relaying the worst version of events. When trying to obtain someone’s assistance, people typically do not downplay the seriousness of an incident. They exaggerate it. That Reade’s mother said nothing about her daughter being sexually assaulted would lead many reasonable people to conclude that sexual assault was not the problem that prompted the call to King. 

Reade’s mother also said her daughter did not go to the press with her problem “out of respect” for the senator. I’ve never met a woman who stayed silent out of “respect” for the man who sexually assaulted her. And it is inconceivable that a mother would learn of her daughter’s sexual assault and suggest that respect for the assailant is what stands between a life of painful silence and justice. 

The "out of respect" explanation sounds more like an office squabble with staff that resulted in leaving the job. Indeed, in last year's interview with The Washington Post, Reade laid the blame on Biden’s staff for “bullying” her. She also said, “I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him.” 

►Statements to others. Reade’s brother, Collin Moulton, told The Post recently that he remembers Reade telling him Biden inappropriately touched her neck and shoulders. He said nothing about a sexual assault until a few days later, when he texted The Post that he remembered Reade saying Biden put his hand "under her clothes.” 

That Reade’s brother neglected to remember the most important part of her allegation initially could lead people to believe he recounted his Post interview to Reade, was told he left out the most important part, and texted it to The Post to avoid a discussion about why he failed to mention it in the first place. 

In interviews with The Times, one friend of Reade’s said Reade told her she was sexually assaulted by Biden. Another friend said Reade told her that Biden touched her inappropriately. Both friends insisted that The Times maintain their anonymity. 

On Monday, Business Insider published an interview with a friend of Reade’s who said that in 1995 or 1996, Reade told her she was assaulted by Biden. Insider called this friend, Lynda LaCasse, the “first person to independently corroborate, in detail and on the record, that Reade had told others about her assault allegations contemporaneously.” 

But Reade alleged she was assaulted in 1993. Telling a friend two or three years later is not contemporaneous. Legal references to a contemporaneous recounting typically refer to hours or days — the point being that facts are still fresh in a person's mind and the statement is more likely to be accurate. 

The Insider also quoted a colleague of Reade’s in the mid-1990s, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her she had been sexually harassed by a former boss. Reade did not mention Biden by name and did not provide details of the alleged harassment. 

In prior interviews, Reade gave what appeared be an exhaustive list of people she told of the alleged assault. Neither of the women who talked to Business Insider were on that list. 

The problem with statements from friends is that the information they recount is only as good as the information given to them. Let’s say Reade left her job because she was angry about being asked to serve drinks or because she was fired for a legitimate reason. If she tried to save face by telling friends that she left because she was sexually assaulted, that’s all her friends would know and all they could repeat. 

Prior statements made by a sexual assault victim can carry some weight, but only if the accuser is credible. In Reade’s case, the statements coming from her friends are only of value if people believe Reade can be relied on to tell the truth, regardless of the light in which it paints her. 

►Lack of other sexual assault allegations. Last year, several women claimed that Biden made them uncomfortable with things like a shoulder touch or a hug. (I wrote a column critical of one such allegation by Lucy Flores.) The Times and Post found no allegation of sexual assault against Biden except Reade's. 

It is possible that in his 77 years, Biden committed one sexual assault and it was against Reade. But in my experience, men who commit a sexual assault are accused more than once ... like Donald Trump, who has had more than a dozen allegations of sexual assault leveled against him and who was recorded bragging about grabbing women’s genitalia.  

►What remains. There are no third-party eyewitnesses or videos to support Tara Reade’s allegation that she was assaulted by Joe Biden. No one but Reade and Biden know whether an assault occurred. This is typical of sexual assault allegations. Jurors, in this case the voting public, have to consider the facts and circumstances to assess whether Reade’s allegation is credible. To do that, they have to determine whether Reade herself is believable. 

I’ve dreaded writing this piece because I do not want it to be used as a guidebook to dismantling legitimate allegations of sexual assault. But not every claim of sexual assault is legitimate. During almost three decades as a prosecutor, I can remember dismissing two cases because I felt the defendant had not committed the charged crime. One of those cases was a rape charge.  

Reopen the Biden campaign: Ramp up social media and name a vice president now. 

The facts of that case made me question the credibility of the woman who claimed she was raped. In the end, she acknowledged that she fabricated the allegation after her boyfriend caught her with a man with whom she was having an affair. 

I know that “Believe Women” is the mantra of the new decade. It is a response to a century of ignoring and excusing men’s sexual assaults against women. But men and women alike should not be forced to blindly accept every allegation of sexual assault for fear of being labeled a misogynist or enabler. 

We can support the #MeToo movement and not support allegations of sexual assault that do not ring true. If these two positions cannot coexist, the movement is no more than a hit squad. That’s not how I see the #MeToo movement. It’s too important, for too many victims of sexual assault and their allies, to be no more than that. 

Michael J. Stern, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, was a federal prosecutor for 25 years in Detroit and Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter:  @MichaelJStern1

[animebw]

Happy Sugar Life: Series Reflection

Happy Sugar Life was not a show I was expecting to like as much as I did. Right from the outset, it feels almost doomed to collapse into schlocky, edgy garbage just by virtue of how unsettling its base construction is. A psychological thriller centered around a teenager in love with an eight-year-old, and everyone is some degree of mentally traumatized to the point of making creepy-ass faces around every corner? Come on, I’ve seen Elfen Lied and Future Diary and all the rest, I know where this is going. And yet, it quickly became clear to me that I didn’t actually know where Happy Sugar Life was going at all. It constantly threw me for loops I wasn’t expecting, going in directions I never could have predicted, and presenting its bizarre confluence of fucked-up components in ways that made them legitimately fascinating and compelling. By the time I reached the end, I realized I had completely underestimated pretty much everything about it. Despite all evidence against its favor, this show actually knows what it’s doing, and it manages to earn your trust piece by piece as you slowly come to realize just how damn good it is at accomplishing what it sets out to do. Nothing is accidental, everything has a purpose, and by the time everything finally clicks together, you realize you’re in the presence of the rare horror anime that actually manages to get under your skin while still having something powerful to say.

Happy Sugar Life is a show defined by the contrast between sweet and bitter. Everything from its narrative to its presentation exists at the crossroads between saccharine and savage, kind and cruel, hopeful and hopeless. Its characters are all desperately broken people who are trying with all their heart to pull themselves together, both for their sake and for the people they care about. The impacts of generational trauma leave lasting scars on families and legacies that are all but impossible to scrub away, yet the scarred try all the same. The moe-cute character designs warp and distort under the cool, almost dreamlike blue color palette, at once sensually alluring and eerily disquieting. And whenever the madness really starts kicking up, the jagged shifts in animation style and sound design leave you reeling in your seat, clenching your teeth in anticipation for when the next ball drops. This is one of the tensest anime I’ve ever experienced, a chilling exercise in holding your breath as untold horrors of human misery whisper right at the edges of the screen. At times, it grows so uncomfortable you almost want to look away and spare yourself the agony.

But no matter how hard you try, you keep getting drawn in all the same. Because despite this darkness, you can’t help but hope for the light to shine through at the end. The characters’ struggles to overcome their worst tendencies are difficult, agonizing struggles, but you can’t help but hope for them all the same. You hope for them to overcome their failures, to fight against the darkness in their souls and become more complete people. It weighs the light and shadows against each other and asks you to keep the faith that despite how broken and despicable they can be, there’s still something worth fighting for buried underneath the pain. It’s a fascinating, often unsettling, often riveting portrayal of humanity at its worst fighting to be stronger than its worst, to shake off the scars that define them and build something better from the ashes. And even if almost everyone’s tale ends in failure, that hope still peeks through in the light of the rising sun. Not every story could make me care so deeply for a pedophile, a stalker, an abuser, and an abuse victim with the same level of compassion and empathy. Not every show could turn such edgy, hardcore angst into such a compelling character study. And once you get over that initial uncertainty and allow yourself to take this show on its own unique wavelength, it proves a shocking powerful experience that you won’t soon stop thinking about it.

Of course, I’d be lying if I called Happy Sugar Life a flawless ride. It’s lanky and ragged in places, with some characters who feel half-realized (hello again, Shoko) and others who feel like they deserved different, more thoughtful ends. And despite how well it handles its material, this show still requires a high tolerance for casual insanity, which I imagine will be the make or break for most people. But if you can jive with the tune it’s playing, I think you’ll find yourself getting swept up in its dance faster than you expected. And so, while I’d probably consider it at the low end of shows I’ve given this rating to just by virtue of how bizarre it is, there’s enough that fascinates and delights me about Happy Sugar Life that I’m willing to give it a score of:

7/10

And that’s another show complete! Thank you all for joining me, and I hope you stick around for the show that will take its place:

The Count of Monte Cristo (Gankustuou)

And the hits don’t stop coming. See you next time for the start of a new adventure!