#even if the execution is not always... great

[kifiles]

Prologue — A Cursed Seer

Series Masterpost

Paring — Gojo Satoru x Reader

Synopsis — Taken from home for a rare ability, a child is kept in isolation under the watch of powerful figures. Obedient on the surface while something far more dangerous lies beneath the silence.

Word Count — 1K

⚠️ Content Warnings — This chapter contains themes of child abduction, emotional trauma, parental grief, religious/cult-like confinement, psychological manipulation, execution (off-screen), poisoning, emotional deprivation (limited food, sleep), and existential dread related to fate and prophecy. Please proceed with care if any of these may be triggering for you.

Author's Note — This is coming out way later than it was supposed to, being the fact that i have had it completed for about a week now but between moving to a whole new state for college and having next to no wifi, getting this up is an achievement.

Happy Reading!!!

Please let me know what you think in the comments. Feedback is welcome and appreciated (now more than ever) ❤️‍🩹

— Kicomi 🩷

“I know not what I appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore… whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

— Isaac Newton

You don’t scream when they come for you.

They expect you to. They always expect screaming.

It’s tradition, after all. Children being ripped from their mother’s arms always scream. That raw, primal sound of loss, the realisation — of a life upended too soon. Torn from the warmth of sandalwood-scented halls and lullabies woven from cotton and comfort, only their mothers could provide.

There’s a ritual to the music of a stolen child: the breathless cries, the tiny fingers trying to clutch at anything to grasp, anything to not be taken away by the men in cloaks, the desperate grip on fate’s hem. The Elders know it well. Screams are the lullabies of their sacred work.

But you don’t give them that.

You smile was small. Soft. Serene.

And it rattles them more than any tantrum ever could.

One of the men — the eldest, his skin stretched thin and saggy, stops in his tracks. He has a son your age. Had, anyway. He left the boy behind as a necessary sacrifice before the Tanuma purge turned snow into blood.

“Why is she smiling?” he mutters, almost to himself.

“I’m smiling because I already saw this coming.” your voice light and airy, like bells caught on the wind.

The old one freezes. “How long have you known?”

You tilt your head, a slow, fluid motion, as though listening to something only you can hear.

“Since the thread broke,” you whisper, voice like silk unraveling in still water. “The one between me and my mother and father. It snapped — sharp and fraying. When love turned to grief. I saw it rise, in the air. A fracture. A wound. A crack across the sky where fate bled through.”

Your smile doesn’t waver. “And I knew then… what was coming could not be undone.”

A silence falls. Cold. Dreadful.

Fate Threads.

They realize what you are.

A prophecy made years ago. A cursed seer. A divine aberration. You don’t see the past or present. You see what matters most. How time fractures into consequence. How decisions tangle and tighten, like cords pulling a thousand ways toward the inevitable.

One path. One truth. No escape.

They’ve waited lifetimes for you. To keep you. To use you for their gain.

They have plenty names for you.

Shinra-no-miko.

Oracle of the Scarlet.

Fate’s Marionette.

But your mother called you Y/N. Her little girl.

And she screamed.

Hers was the only scream heard that day while your father couldn't even turn back to watch you leave.

They didn’t let you say goodbye. Didn’t let you speak again until you were beneath the bone-carved ceiling of Jujutsu High’s oldest sanctum, where spells etched deeper than memory, watched you from stone.

You sit in the temple doorway like you’ve done it a thousand times, legs folded like a priestess, posture rehearsed even though you've never been here before. Dirt speckles your white yukata. Leaves cling to your tangled hair. But your face... your face is calm. At peace. As if you were waiting.

And your eyes.

They don’t need covering like the cursed ones. No blindfold. No gauze. No ceremonial mask. Just pale silver, almost glowing in the dusk, like looking up at the moon through tattered clouds.

And there, in that cold, airless hush, they asked:

“What do you see?”

You don’t answer right away.

Instead, you lift your face to the unseen, head tilted slightly, eyes unfocused, as if the question was not meant for you at all, but for something higher. Something watching just beyond their reach.

Then you lifted one hand and pointed south. Toward the corner where the eldest councilman had sat on his woven mat for decades.

“You die in thirty-three days,” you whispered. “Your tea is poisoned. By a disciple you failed to protect. His anger is bitter like clove.”

A pause, sharp and horrified.

“Why would you say that?” another councilman hissed, as if your words had turned to ash in his mouth.

You only offered a small shrug, your voice calm, almost amused. “Because you asked.”

Silence followed — heavy and unnatural. A stillness bloated with breath, dread, and the sting of things foretold.

By morning, the disciple was dead. A quiet execution. Swift, without ceremony. They called it justice, though doubt lingered in their eyes. They weren’t sure whether to believe you, but caution, they decided, was safer than regret.

And yet — thirty-three days later, the councilman sipped his tea and never rose again.

He had brewed it himself, still cautious. From the same pouch.

They blamed the leaves. They blamed you.

But from that day forward, they never dared ask you a question so directly again.

✮✮✮

They kept you behind sliding doors that never opened from inside. In gardens without wind. Your world narrowed to sacred threads, gleaming and drawn taut through time. Days passed in silent footsteps, yours and the maids, kept only to keep you alive — not company, in whispered mantras. They fed you in fragments, afraid too much would dull your gift. Sleep, too, was rationed. Never enough to dream. Only shadowed prayers.

But you kept smiling.

Because somewhere, pulsing in your veins like a stubborn ember, you knew: Your fate wasn’t sealed. Not yet.

One thread glowed brighter than all the rest.

Wild. Unwritten. Shifting every time you tried to follow it.

You didn’t know his name.

But you knew one thing...

He was the only thread that could ever lead you out. The only one you wouldn’t want to cut. The only one you’d never lie to.

Even if it killed you.

Author's Note (pt 2) — Hope you liked it <3

I am open to receiving constructive criticism as long as you are nice about it and just any reviews in general, would be really helpful <3

This fic will be a series, so comment to be added to the taglist.

Thankx for reading 🩷

[the-haunted-star]

My humble thoughts on Fantastic Four: First Steps

(No spoilers)

Apparently the fourth time is actually the charm! Fantastic Four: First Steps is a breath of fresh air. It’s fun, heartfelt and visually unique. The story is simple but straightforward and doesn’t require a lot of prior MCU knowledge to enjoy making it a good entry point for newcomers. Some may feel the plot has some ridiculous and outlandish traits such as Reed’s plan to save Earth from Galactus but I feel it is very much in the spirit of the type of Stan Lee story you’d find in the early comics. There’s plenty of great winks, nods and easter eggs for comic fans to appreciate especially in the montage sequence early on in the film.

The theme of the Fantastic Four has always been one of family and I thought the film did a good job in establishing those familial dynamics. From the brotherly quips and barbs between Ben and Johnny to the marital affection and bickering between Sue and Reed. The sense of family bonds and camaraderie is strongly woven throughout the film.

I loved the retro-futuristic 1960’s setting of the film. Everything from the costumes to the designs of the gadgetry, the spaceship and the Fantasti-Car really added to the visual character of the film and helped set it apart from the main MCU Earth.

The cast is good but is gonna take me some time to get used to. Vanessa Kirby is the standout of the group and is embodies Sue Storm perfectly right from the opening scene. She felt very much like the leader of the team even more so than Reed. I felt Pedro Pascal was probably the weak link, I’m not saying his performance was bad but perhaps he just needs more time to really make the character his own. While I think Pedro encompassed the main traits of Reed well enough, he definitely played him in a more reserved, soft spoken manner compared to how he was portrayed in the comics where the character was more outgoing and assertive. Coupled with the fact that Pedro has also starred in other recent popular franchises like “The Mandalorian” and ”The Last of Us”, perhaps I’m just suffering from Pedro Pascal fatigue.

The film is light on the action at least compared to most other Marvel films but the action sequences it does have hit the mark well as they feature some genuine thrills, tension and a sense of grandeur. The first time Galactus makes his appearance is epic and fittingly awe-inspiring in scale and scope. It was a treat to finally to see Galactus done justice. Everything about him was perfect from the comicbook accurate design to his booming, larger than life voice.

Michael Giacchino who’s been responsible for a couple of Marvel’s more memorable scores including Dr. Strange and Spiderman: Homecoming delivers another solid soundtrack. The main theme for First Steps is light, recognizable and catchy.

I won’t spoil the mid-credit scene here but if you’ve been paying attention you probably know what it pertains to. While the tease in and of itself is exciting I thought it could have been executed a bit better. The second credit scene is unfortunately of the “skip it” variety. I think an extra stinger that followed up on the fates of Galactus and Silver Surfer would have been a more preferable coda to the film.

Overall, it's a very sincere and uplifting movie that channels the classic Jack Kirby and Stan Lee inspired spirit of the First Family’s early adventures. Go see it!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

[barbieandkento]

Some of your favorite fanfictions by your mutuals?

( ˶°ㅁ°) !! omg YESSS I've been waiting to be asked this so I could do this challenge/trend! didn't have time to do every single mutual, so i picked a few for the time being x

*** underage followers of mine please note some of these fics indicated in red are mdni fics ***

🪼⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🪼⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🪼⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🪼⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🪼⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🪼⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🪼⋆

bf!Sukuna by @bistrocatxx

sucker for bf!Sukuna fics in general and the way venus balances sukuna's slightly mean/standoffish manner with domestic fluff and soft dominance is just... chef's kiss

mine, eventually by @sixxels

oh this fic was one of my FAVE fics I first came across when opening this blog and i am so blessed to be able to have read this and to eventually become moots with this author. the way she wrote the slow burn, the quiet longing, the exposive confession, the real life dynamics of having a crush that becomes serious between two friends... obsessed.

party 4 u by @junuru

i will always have a soft spot for frat!gojo fics and this one is great not just because the charli xcx song associated with it is great but ivy is the queen of slow burn. the longing, the angst, the details.... perfection.

a single star is uttered (and i think of you) by @besidesjustmyamour

okay so jj is somehow a wizard because she knew i was a korean girl who reads/writes jjk fics and loves kpop, so this kpop!AU enemies to lovers fic featuring sukuna is literally M A D E for me. also helps that jj is a master at tension building. it's a monster 8k so i haven't finished it all, but can't wait to do so x

please, stay by @nanamisgirly

14.5k words??!! and a subversion of the bodyguard AU where the reader is the bodyguard??? pining gojo with angst and comfort and spice? what is there not to like it's amazing

sleeping beauty! by @favoritesupernova

shortie but a goodie. y'all know my fave jjk boy is nanami. and domestic nanami being all sweet and soft for his sleepy wife? perfection.

heaven is a bedroom by @prosypepper

holy shit where do i even start. the graphics for this fit like the graphic design is insane. the build up is insane. exes to lovers executed over drunk pent up feelings, slow angst, and explosive love i am just... amazed that someone could think of something like this. (give me your graphic design skills too!!!)

nanami taking care of sick!reader by @satorupi

oh sena sena sena this is just the most perfectly written domestic fluff i wanna bottle it into a feeling and inject it into my bloodstream each and every day!!! it lowkey made me wanna be sick so that nanami could take care of me, that's how much i adored the fic. bonus points for the creative and funny ending too hehe

[uoyiiii]

I've seen a thread about RC recently hiding the views of the most popular books and how that means the app has lost some of its popularity. There's some speculation in the comments, but I'm actually surprised no one mentioned the controversies as one of the reasons. It's like, do you except to repeatedly offend every single group you can think of and this not catching up eventually at all?

My take is, RC rose in popularity for these reasons; First, it was accessible in the russian language, as well as some other languages, unlike the rest of the western VNs. This opened up a part of the fandom that wasn't available to the other VNs and also had nowhere else to go, since a good amount of these fans prefer reading stories in their native language. Second, it brought something unique. Morally grey characters and red flags that other western apps were too afraid to write. There were also real consequences to the choices. Also even to this day I still think it has the most beautiful art out of every VN I've come across so far (iirc the Storyscape art was also great, but it was cut short). And finally, it came during a time when there was a gap in the VN audience. Choices was falling apart, Storyscape and Lovestruck were shut down, (I won't even include Chapters and Episodes because they always sucked). So this audience was looking for another app to launch into.

The Russian market is super loyal to the russian authors and we can see that from the top ten in the most popular stories section. But this audience is also getting saturated, while a part of it is drifting away naturally, like it always happens with VNs or entertainment media in general. This is why apps need to find a way to branch out of their usual audience to make up for these losses. Adding more diversity is one of the biggest ways. The apps need to find something that their competitors don't provide. But how is a new audience going to stay when the app is still designed to essentially only serve one type of fans, while the rest of the fans will have to push through SA, racism, homophobia, misogyny, or misrepresentation of religions? Or when the app keeps apologizing only to turn around and do the exact same thing? So all of this ends up seem more like a deliberate outrage marketing.

And then there's writing, when some of the authors prefer adding a 6th male side character as a li in the attempts to boost the book's popularity instead of actually improving their writing. Yes, this formula might work, but at the same time this strategy still only serves one part of the fandom, which at some point might even get tired of it as well. It doesn't help with readers that actually seek better stories and more respectful and balanced representation. I've also seen people blaming the new slice of life stories, as if back then there weren't stories like SBTR or STW or Q30D that were flops. Or as if it wasn't the audience themselves who kept asking for less supernatural stories and more of something different. The problem with these new books is that they've failed to bring in the audience that actually seeks them, due to bad writing. And not just that audience, but a wider part of the fandom too, because even the mainly supernatural fans want variety. Maybe they can improve, but right now some authors are not equipped enough to write compelling stories. And I also do believe that even the most popular authors of this app might have struggled if they had to pick up a non supernatural genre book. Only Yim's book seems to be promising in the slice of life parts right now, without having to rely on other mechanics to make up for it.

TLDR: over reliance on the same tropes that only serve the same audience and the natural saturation of that audience. Bad execution of the stories and the types of lis that are meant for a different audience.

[russell-crowe]

i have been listening to quite a bit of U2 today and now the age old question of "which member is actually my fave?" has resurfaced

[zomboyfren]

Save me... Imagining animatics of my s/i to songs I like... Save me

[saaltskies]

i was gonna share my xenoblade thoughts the next day because i was full of them but very tired however it is the next day and i forgot how to thought

[alastair-1205]

My hot take in fandom is that not everything has to be a family dynamic. People can just be friends sometimes. Brothers in arms doesn't HAVE to mean actual brothers every so often.

Like I fucking love a good found family, but sometimes I wanna see stuff where people aren't referring to each other with familial titles all the time to cement the fact that "See guys, they love each other PLATONICALLY and not any other way becasue they're family now so it'd be weird". Like just let them be buddies who just...never like each other romantically.

The by proxy hot take here is that making everyone family is lowkey becoming like the "she was a girl he was a boy do I need to say anything else" but violently and very pointedly in the complete other direction lmao.

[tariah23]

The only compliment that I can give Oku is that he made Inuyashiki… it’s not even all that but the story wasn’t bad and the MC was delightful. It’s nice and extremely rare to have Middle Aged-elderly characters play MC’s in the shounen, thriller genres tbh so that was what attracted me to that series to begin with and he was just a kind older guy. Wasn’t a creep or anything since Oku is a weirdo who likes making all of his male characters rapists/ major perverts in general. His writing is ass 👎🏾. But the old guy (well, he was like in his 40’s-50’s from what I’m remembering since his cancer had aged him I think and he looked to be in his 70’s…)

[luckydicekirby]

pour one out for the last saturday me and claire can spend complaining about dff to each other--

[letstrywritingmaybe]

I don’t believe in deleting fics, cause I know how it feels when I go back and look for a specific fic by a beloved author to find that it’s gone. But man some times I think about rewriting and changing my old works, cause I like to think I got a little better at this writing thing. Specifically the memory loss fic, that one haunts me all the time, I had no idea what I was doing it was more let’s just finally finish this so I don’t have to worry about it anymore (and here I am still worrying about it). Look I know it’s over done, but there’s just so many things you could do with losing your memory (and how devastating it was but I’m a fluff lover so we don’t do that here… although… just had a sad idea that will not help my case in not being a Ran hater *sigh I hate the canon ship not her okay) It’s probably why I was so fixated on Lo Lo Love Me, and a counter part that I may never write. Point is, I think about writing/fixing the memory loss fic, but make it Shiho this time, but only because I hate seeing my queen suffer. I always say I hate angst, and I do, but thinking about how alone Shinichi was despite growing up in far better conditions than Shiho to now being alone again cause the only other person who knew all about his time as Conan and experienced it with him forgets it all? You can only repress yourself for so long, losing your partner, losing a part of yourself changes a person.

[reasonsforhope]

By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.

Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.

This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):

Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):

Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.

But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:

Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.

Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation

Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.

Meditation

Martial arts

Sports in general

Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)

Woodworking

Cooking

If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers

Things can be easier. You might always have a disability around this (I certainly always will), but it can be easier. You do not have to be this stuck forever.

[yesornopolls]

The article is under the cut because paywalls suck

This is an edited transcript of an audio essay on “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:

Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. … All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer, and it’s got to — Michael Kirk: What was the word? Bannon: Muzzle velocity.

Muzzle velocity. Bannon’s insight here is real. Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.

Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.

Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him.

Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.

Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team. It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.

But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.

What Bannon wanted — what the Trump administration wants — is to keep everything moving fast. Muzzle velocity, remember. If you’re always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one. The impression of Trump’s power remains; the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is missed. The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. Don’t believe him.

You could see this a few ways: Is Trump playing a part, making a bet or triggering a crisis? Those are the options. I am not certain he knows the answer. Trump has always been an improviser. But if you take it as calculated, here is the calculation: Perhaps this Supreme Court, stocked with his appointees, gives him powers no peacetime president has ever possessed. Perhaps all of this becomes legal now that he has asserted its legality. It is not impossible to imagine that bet paying off.

But Trump’s odds are bad. So what if the bet fails and his arrogations of power are soundly rejected by the courts? Then comes the question of constitutional crisis: Does he ignore the court’s ruling? To do that would be to attempt a coup. I wonder if they have the stomach for it. The withdrawal of the Office of Management and Budget’s order to freeze spending suggests they don’t. Bravado aside, Trump’s political capital is thin. Both in his first and second terms, he has entered office with approval ratings below that of any president in the modern era. Gallup has Trump’s approval rating at 47 percent — about 10 points beneath Joe Biden’s in January 2021.

There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump’s aim is to bring the civil service to heel — to rid it of his opponents and turn it to his own ends — he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring the high-performance management culture of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab.

But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak. Trump does not want to look weak. He remembers John McCain humiliating him in his first term by casting the deciding vote against Obamacare repeal.

That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.

The flurry of activity is meant to suggest the existence of a plan. The Trump team wants it known that they’re ready this time. They will control events rather than be controlled by them. The closer you look, the less true that seems. They are scrambling and flailing already. They are leaking against one another already. We’ve learned, already, that the O.M.B. directive was drafted, reportedly, without the input or oversight of key Trump officials — “it didn’t go through the proper approval process,” an administration official told The Washington Post. For this to be the process and product of a signature initiative in the second week of a president’s second term is embarrassing.

But it’s not just the O.M.B. directive. The Trump administration is waging an immediate war on the bureaucracy, trying to replace the “deep state” it believes hampered it in the first term. A big part of this project seems to have been outsourced to Elon Musk, who is bringing the tactics he used at Twitter to the federal government. He has longtime aides at the Office of Personnel Management, and the email sent to nearly all federal employees even reused the subject line of the email he sent to Twitter employees: “Fork in the Road.” Musk wants you to know it was him.

The email offers millions of civil servants a backdoor buyout: Agree to resign and in theory, at least, you can collect your paycheck and benefits until the end of September without doing any work. The Department of Government Efficiency account on X described it this way: “Take the vacation you always wanted, or just watch movies and chill, while receiving your full government pay and benefits.” The Washington Post reported that the email “blindsided” many in the Trump administration who would normally have consulted on a notice like that.

I suspect Musk thinks of the federal work force as a huge mass of woke ideologues. But most federal workers have very little to do with politics. About 16 percent of the federal work force is in health care. These are, for instance, nurses and doctors who work for the Veterans Affairs department. How many of them does Musk want to lose? What plans does the V.A. have for attracting and training their replacements? How quickly can he do it?

The Social Security Administration has more than 59,000 employees. Does Musk know which ones are essential to operations and unusually difficult to replace? One likely outcome of this scheme is that a lot of talented people who work in nonpolitical jobs and could make more elsewhere take the lengthy vacation and leave government services in tatters. Twitter worked poorly after Musk’s takeover, with more frequent outages and bugs, but its outages are not a national scandal. When V.A. health care degrades, it is. To have sprung this attack on the civil service so loudly and publicly and brazenly is to be assured of the blame if anything goes wrong.

What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.

I had a conversation a couple months ago with someone who knows how the federal government works about as well as anyone alive. I asked him what would worry him most if he saw Trump doing it. What he told me is that he would worry most if Trump went slowly. If he began his term by doing things that made him more popular and made his opposition weaker and more confused. If he tried to build strength for the midterms while slowly expanding his powers and chipping away at the deep state where it was weakest.

But he didn’t. And so the opposition to Trump, which seemed so listless after the election, is beginning to rouse itself.

There is a subreddit for federal employees where one of the top posts reads: “This non ‘buyout’ really seems to have backfired. I’ll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell. But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible.” As I write this, it’s been upvoted more than 39,000 times and civil servant after civil servant is echoing the initial sentiment.

In Iowa this week, Democrats flipped a State Senate seat in a district that Trump won easily in 2024. The attempted spending freeze gave Democrats their voice back, as they zeroed in on the popular programs Trump had imperiled. Trump isn’t building support; he’s losing it. Trump isn’t fracturing his opposition; he’s uniting it.

This is the weakness of the strategy that Bannon proposed and Trump is following. It is a strategy that forces you into overreach. To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself. And there’s only so much you can do through executive orders. Soon enough, you have to go beyond what you can actually do. And when you do that, you either trigger a constitutional crisis or you reveal your own weakness.

Trump may not see his own fork in the road coming. He may believe he has the power he is claiming. That would be a mistake on his part — a self-deception that could doom his presidency. But the real threat is if he persuades the rest of us to believe he has power he does not have.

The first two weeks of Trump’s presidency have not shown his strength. He is trying to overwhelm you. He is trying to keep you off-balance. He is trying to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Don’t believe him.

You can listen to this conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.

[lady-bog]

I absolutely love that Zelda doesn't have a sword in Echoes of Wisdom, since ot would ignore her personality just to make her a reskin of Link

[vergess]

Alright, it has been over 24 hours, the guy who killed Mr Claim Denied is not going to be caught.

But this will probably not be an isolated incident, because the US governing bodies aren't going to feel motivated to fix the actual problem over one assassination.

With that in mind, this is a great time to familiarize yourself with the US legal concept of "jury nullification," aka "if it shouldn't be illegal, you shouldn't be punished."

The US has a proud and beautiful history of using this as the final say of the people against misapplication and abuse being called "law." Even before the country was founded, in the colonies, this was used to spare the lives of people being put to death for flagrantly spurious reasons.

When, not if but when, this happens again and the next or third or 17th assassin gets caught?

Their verdict is non-guilty.

Caught on tape? Not guilty. Witnesses too? Not guilty. Killing failed and there's a victim ID? Not. Fucking. Guilty.

Every person who kills a healthcare executive is acting in self-defense against people who want them dead first. Anything else is irrelevant.

The jury always gets to decide on Not Guilty, even when presented with perfect evidence of "guilt."

Nullify, nullify, nullify.

[drchucktingle]

BEING AN ASSHOLE AS A BRAND

lots of authors have been posting great pieces of advice for up and coming buckaroos and i agree with so much of it. GREAT RESOURCES right now so i thought i would add my own. usually i use words like scoundrel but for meanings sake i will just be direct: dont make being an asshole your brand

let me preface this by saying it should be taken with HUGE grain of salt, you can do whatever you want buckaroo its YOUR art and your personal expression. to be honest i often refrain from ‘advice’ because id rather simply tell what works for me, but i feel like this one is pretty universal.

i am in incredibly rare position to have come up in TWO MAJOR CREATIVE INDUSTRIES and reached ‘traditionally published’ or ‘major film studio contract’ level completely separate from each other, without connections between, and this is ABSOLUTELY a massive factor in the buckaroos who trot long term

there is always a sort of incoming class of buds who rise up, and inevitably a few of them will seem to WANT to make enemies with everyone around them the second they have even the smallest voice. i UNDERSTAND in the sense that we have these legendary jerk artists in our culture. HOWEVER

1 those artists generally let their asshole flag fly AFTER they reached the top and 2 if not, it was a different time, there is simply not enough money in the creative fields for major creative entities to tolerate talented up and coming assholes. it is FINANCIALLY a different timeline now

EVEN SO you can point to a few old big timers who are notorious assholes but i would say its important to consider JUST HOW BIG WOULD THEY BE IF THEY WERE ALSO KIND. what if they were that talented AND watched out for their buds? heres what happened to the 'jerk brands' i trotted up with personally

every single one of them got intoxicated by the identity of being mean or ‘just tellin it like it is’ and then fell directly onto their face. the only ones who escaped were those who started that way on the trot up and IMMEDIATELY pulled it together and stopped and changed course

i know it might seem obvious to many reading this but you would be SHOCKED how many buds thinks it is a COOL IDENTITY to cultivate. some will probably subtweet this haha but listen bud, the directors you trash SEE IT. publishers DONT NEED TO TOLERATE TALENTED ASSHOLES ANYMORE THERES NOT ENOUGH MONEY

important reminder that i am talkin on artists who are PUBLICLY assholes, who trash talk their classmates or their fans. the ones who EMBRACE THIS IDENTITY as a sort of flag to wave because it gets them attention. theres plenty of SECRET assholes who find success, unfortunately. that is other topic

it is also important to say that FIGHTING THE POWERS THAT BE or protesting the scoundrels of the world is not being an asshole. KINDNESS CAN BE STRONG AND DIRECT AND POWERFUL. we need kind, strong buckaroos these days. it is not a weakness to love, and you should speak up for those who need it

so what can be done? what happens if you are reading this post and thinking ‘oh heck i can feel myself falling into asshole trap?’ well as a first reminder you can do anything you want bud, HAVE AT IT because i am not telling you this for MY sake, but if you want some actual advice id say this:

just being kind is MUCH easier than it seems, it only takes a little effort to reach out to your buds, to help, to encourage, to assistant, to talk about how much you liked someones film or song or book. jealousy or frustration are NATURAL feelings, but you dont have to let them run the show.

you MAY have to mourn the times an author couldve reached out for a book event that never happened because you turned them into an enemy. or a record executive read the stuff you said in some interview and pulled the soundtrack slot that was waiting for you on their desk. but IT IS NEVER TOO LATE

YOU can turn those feelings into fuel instead of venom, and GUESS WHAT it will genuinely be great for your art. LOVE is such an incredible driver, even when its manifested from anger or darkness. it takes some work, but i believe its worth it for your heart AND your prospects as an artist. LETS TROT