#is it a coincidence that i have like one week of academic instruction left

[starglow-xx]

posting after long time always feels good hehe

but like…if we follow the pattern, usually after putting something out i tend to disappear…

let’s hope that doesn’t happen but i can’t make any promises (*°▽°*)

[misiwrites]

Beyblade Week Day 1

joining @beybladeweek2021 late but i’ll probably be doing these belatedly all may so, whatever! it is what it is.

i’ve never participated in a fandom challenge with writing before, but i was feeling adventurous this time and the seasonal themes were just perfect for the 4kingdoms AU-verse (which is this), i haven’t been writing much anything in so long that i’m mega rusty and thought i could use the bey week to do some warm-up oneshots. these aren’t going to be particularly interesting because i’m really bad at doing oneshots actually, but i like the idea myself and. that’s the only thing that really matters. right. (i’m not even sure if AUs are allowed for the beyblade week?? but the rules didn’t say anything about it so /shrug)

the day 1 oneshot is a little story from takao’s childhood about how he first met kyouju. this was inspired by my own childhood memories as the youngest sibling when i just wanted to hang out around my big sisters because i thought everything they were doing was Cool Big Sister Stuff.

~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~

Firsts / Childhood / Spring

”Takao! I’m trying to read this! Leave me alone already, will you?”

A groan of disappointment. Reluctantly, Takao backs away from his older brother by the desk, shooting him a frown of judgment and betrayal. Now, a quick change of tactics: he figures that, just maybe, Hitoshi allows him to stay in the room if he zips his lips to his best ability.

Wrong. Two silent minutes pass in the small study room until Hitoshi bellows at his brother again, swinging an arm in the door’s direction.

“I’m serious, you can’t keep doing this when I’m trying to do my homework!”

“I’ll just watch and keep quiet, I promise,” Takao insists, giving his brother his best puppy eyes.

“I can’t focus if you’re standing there! Now get out!”

Takao’s frown deepens; with heavy feet and a heavy heart, he trudges toward the sliding door. He doesn’t like this recent change in his brother, all this emphasis on what Hitoshi refers to as “important stuff”. Just because he’s now seventeen. Acting all high and mighty, pretending to be so adult and so important, too adult and too important to play with his younger sibling.

“It’s a very important time for your brother,” their grandfather responded to Takao’s fraternal laments once. “In one year, he will officially inherit the crown of the Seiryuu-ou. There’s much for him to do to grow into the role of the king before his coronation.”

Important this, important that. What about having fun, wasn’t fun important at all? And fencing – surely instructing Takao with the basics of fencing has to be important? Hitoshi’s fencing skills are second to only their grandfather’s, and Takao cannot imagine – doesn’t want to imagine – anyone else teaching him the art of the bamboo sword. And now Hitoshi is “too busy” to teach him, all of a sudden.

“But I’m boooored,” Takao whines from the doors, balancing his weight on his heels back and forth.

“How about you go study something too for once? You really should be reading a lot more than you do, you know. I don’t want my little brother to end up being a dumb prince who doesn’t know anything about the way the world works.”

Takao’s nose wrinkles in disapproval. The word “study” smells like old paper and dust and boredom.

“It’s the Sowmoon holiday now! And what the hell would I study?” he barks.

“Don’t cuss. Anything – whatever interests you. How about the history of the city?”

“Bahhhh.”

“The history of fencing, then. I don’t know – go to the library, take a look at the books or whatever, just leave me alone. I don’t have time for this.” Hitoshi lifts the yellowish document in front of his face and disappears behind it. A wall has risen between the two brothers.

* * * * * *

In the country of spring and year-round greenery, it’s difficult to stay sullen under the tranquil blue of the Eastern sky. Moments later Takao is skipping down the road that leads to the town of Tsuno below, his child’s heart already ignited with new-found hope and aspiration, his feelings of frustration shed by the sturdy wooden gates of the Cherrywood Castle and he's moving on, literally.

At first, the idea was dull at best; reading sounds like just about the flattest thing he could be doing on this beautiful Sowmoon day, a warm breeze blowing through his indigo hair as he carefully hops from one cobblestone to the other… but, in the end, it’s the wish to please his brother that has won him over. Now a plan is taking shape in his mind, the idea swelling like a balloon by each step he takes down the road, and soon his head is racing with the ambition of studying as many topics as he can think of; he’s dreaming up scenarios of impressing his brother with all his newly acquired knowledge, his brain buzzing and his proud heart thumping with all the imaginary praise from Hitoshi… and, just maybe, he’ll then agree to do something fun with his cool and smart little brother again.

So caught up in his daydreams, Takao hardly pays attention to all the familiar townspeople greeting him as he passes by their wooden dwellings and shops and stalls, and he prances past several flocks of tourists lingering on the streets of Tsuno, too busy taking pictures of the cherry blossom trees in their rare blue Sowmoon bloom to notice the royal prince walking right past them. Even if they did see him, not many would pay attention to him; people from outside the city would never imagine a member of the royal Seiryuu-ou family strolling around in a simple hakama without making a scene; but in the royal capital of the Country of East, this was a mundane everyday sight, and Takao was a regular guest of the pastry stalls on the main street of Tsuno. The townspeople loved to pamper this bold and friendly little prince, who hadn’t yet been spoiled by the privileges of the royalty.

Takao reaches the tall glass doors of the main library, only to face the reality of the numbers painted on the glass panel. Five minutes to closing time. So caught up in the rollercoaster of his imagination as he left the Cherrywood Castle, checking the opening hours of the library didn’t even pass his mind.

“Oh, hello, Your Highness,” he’s greeted by one of the kimono-clad library workers who spots him. (The surprise is evident; Takao is not a usual guest in the library.) “How wonderful to see you here. Are you looking for something?”

“Well, yeah, for something to read… but it looks like you’re about to close.”

But coincidence is on Takao’s side today, for the clerk tells him that the library is staying open for one extra hour every day this week.

“The reading hall has been reserved by Professor, a local researcher – but I’m positive he won’t be disturbed by Your Highness’s presence.”

“Really? Okay.” Relieved and triumphant, Takao enters the old-fashioned yet admittedly curiosity-inducing depths of the city library.

He quickly comes to the conclusion that he has underestimated the number of books in the world. Expecting there to be one of each subject of his admittedly limited academic imagination, he is instead hit by an entire universe of paper and ink and covers and words. The map of the library layout alone is full of complex characters that Takao hasn’t yet come across in his schooling.

Dammit.

In the end, Takao finds himself pacing back and forth a narrow aisle of local history books, looking for one with a cover that sparks interest. Perhaps he cannot read all the text, but at least he can look at the pictures.

That’s when he notices another person sharing the space with him, at the far end of the hall, where the shelves have been moved to hug the walls to make room for a reading area in the middle and the ceiling seems to climb up impossibly high under the arch of a dome roof. This person is another kid, hardly older than Takao, and he’s not paying the prince any attention in return; the boy is glued to the screen of a laptop computer that sits on a table in front of him along with several books, one of which has been spread open. Every now and then, his fingers dance across the keyboard at a speed that Takao didn’t even know a computer keyboard could be used with; then the boy crouches over to take a quick glance at the open book before turning back to the laptop again.

A curious sight. For a moment, Takao is tempted by the allure of calling out to this strange boy, to ask him why he’s still there after closing hours. He decides against it and swallows his curiosity. If there’s one thing that his older brother has recently taught him, it is to mind his own business and not bother other people hard at work.

* * * * * *

The next day Takao returns to the library, a pile of books in his lap that he leafed through all night last night. Hundreds of pages of buildings so old they probably stayed up in the pictures with willpower alone – so old that Takao half-expected them to crumble and disappear by the turn of a page, leaving empty picture frame squares behind.

He came to the conclusion that Tsuno’s history was perhaps not the subject to start from.

Takao returns the books, decides to try and find something about fencing, a subject he’s already in some way familiar with. (Between the important-looking books, he secretly slips in a story about Southern pirates; this one he’s not going to tell Hitoshi about.)

In the hall with the dome ceiling, the kid with the laptop is by the exact same table again. Only the array of books next to him is a little different… maybe. Takao is nearly seized by his curiosity again, but something about the air around this boy holds the lingering scent of “do not disturb”, so he bites his tongue once more.

* * * * * *

How could even books about fencing slap him in the face with all this wall of text?! The following day Takao once again turns up at the library, to return his previous findings that had only briefly managed to capture his interest with images of old fencing gear that were not only ancient but, as he ultimately decided, very ugly and stupid-looking.

What about archery, the other national sport of the East? Takao finds it boring and repetitive compared to fencing, but since books about fencing turned out to be boring, did it mean that books about the boring sport were, in turn, more interesting? It makes perfect sense, in Takao’s eight-year-old mind.

However, as he makes his way to the library at the cusp of closing hours again, he no longer pays much heed to the books. Instead, his feet take him to the reading hall under the dome right away.

Sure enough, the kid with the big round glasses and a laptop in front of him is there in his usual spot, all alone. And again the boy’s fingers are hammering at the keyboard faster than Takao can form a coherent thought about computers, the strange machinery that originates from the technically advanced Country of West for all he knows.

It’s been three days now, and Takao can no longer hold back his burning curiosity. Eyes on the strange boy, he takes small sideway steps between the bookshelves, inching his way closer and closer, until he reaches the open reading area under the arched skylights above.

“Hey,” Takao says as he enters the boy’s proximity by the table.

The boy doesn’t do as much as raise his eyes from the computer screen.

“Is there something I can do for you?” he asks, still typing away. The tone of his high-pitched voice is just slightly aggravated but his choice of words oozes formality, a strange speech pattern for someone his age. It throws Takao off a little.

“Umm, I’ve seen you here every day this week and was wondering what you’re doing, that’s all. You know the library was already closed, right?”

After saying this, the thought then passes Takao’s mind that perhaps this kid never leaves the library. Perhaps he’s not even aware that he’s in a closed library. What if Takao is talking to a ghost, haunting this remote corner of the library all day and night? Or, maybe, he’s nothing but a product of Takao’s imagination?

The boy’s voice is now so blunt in response that these phantasmagoric thoughts immediately vanish from Takao’s mind.

“Yes, of course I know. The library personnel was very kind to allow me this one working hour without other people disturbing me. So really, I should be asking – what are you doing here?” Now the stranger’s hands finally leave the keyboard and he lifts his eyes to Takao.

A moment of confused silence. Then the boy’s face begins to resemble the colour of a strawberry.

“Oh!” he squeaks and jumps up to his feet, only to bow his head toward the floor. “Oh, Your, uh, Your Highness! I am terribly sorry for being so rude! Oh, goodness me, how could I…!”

“Wow, calm down,” Takao interrupts, startled himself by the suddenness of the boy’s reaction. “And raise your head – I don’t like people bowing at me, it makes me feel weird. More importantly, what you said just now – are you saying you booked this extra hour from the library?”

Hesitantly, the boy straightens his back, which doesn’t increase his height significantly; now that they’re standing next to each other, Takao notices how small the person he’s talking to is, his head barely on level with Takao’s shoulders.

“Yes, Your Highness,” he says. “I wasn’t aware I was sharing it with the royal family, though. How thoughtless of me.”

“No, well, I kinda just walked in on my own, to be fair. So… you’re a researcher?”

“You could say so, I am indeed carrying out some research here. My name is Saien Manabu, but everyone calls me Professor.”

“Oh, wow. What exactly are you researching?”

“Right now I am writing a paper on the goddess cult of the Country of North. I know, it’s not exactly a topic that interests most children, but I find it so terribly fascinating…”

The mention of children – a nod to the fact that this boy, too, is a child just like him – makes Takao immediately feel more at ease. This person, albeit strange and overly formal and clearly too smart for his age, really is just a child after all. This notion alone is enough to make the kind-hearted and fairly simple-minded Takao like this boy more.

“Sure, that sounds cool,” he says with a grin. “Hey – you said you’re Saien, right? Like that ramen shop on the main street?”

“Yes, it is owned by my parents.”

“Well, it’d be real interesting to hear more about your research and all, but I’m kinda hungry, to be honest – the Saien noodles sound awesome just about now. How about we go there and then you tell me more?”

“Hmm. Well, I wasn’t making as much progress today as I wanted, in any case.” The boy, visibly at least a little relieved to get a break from staring at the screen, slams his laptop shut and tucks it under his arm. Then he flashes a friendly smile at Takao. “Very well, Your Highness. But my mother may pass out if I bring a member of the royal family to their shop all of a sudden, so please prepare for that.”

“Bah, just call me Takao, I’m not so into that formal stuff.”

“Alright, and you can call me Professor.”

* * * * * *

Once back in the Cherrywood Castle, Takao told both his brother and grandfather how much he’d learned about the Northern goddess Hiromi of time and space already; and from that day onward, Hitoshi never needed to refer to his younger brother as the dumb prince again, as Takao, who became a frequent visitor of the Saien family ramen shop both inside and outside business hours, never ran out of curious stories to share about all the things he learned from his new friend.

And while the royal Seiryuu-ou family wasn’t to stay together for much longer from the moment of this story, Takao and Professor remained best friends for many years to come.

[emotionalgirl101]

Question | Chapter 6

Words: 3,111

Genre: college au, angst, fluff

Pairing: SKZ x reader

Summary: Your best friend, Minho, had been refusing to introduce you to his other group of best friends for months now, with no explanation as to why. One night after getting drunk after work together, he gave in to your pleas. Oops.

Warning: Contains mature content (such as coarse language, violent themes, etc).

A/N: Sorry guys! I know it’s been so long, but since it’s uni break, I’m back for a while. I hope you like this chapter. I really like were the story is going and I hope you do, too! Also, shoutout to @omniligence for asking if I planned to continue writing. I honestly might have forgotten that I have the freedom to do it again. (longest chapter yet!)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7

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Thursday rolled around, and you weren’t exactly sure why, but you were dreading it. After all the antics of the past week, you were finally seeing Minho. It was kind of surprising it took you two this long to hang out. The last time you saw him was the morning after the drinking night with his roommates. Maybe that’s part of the reason you felt uneasy?

You had slept in his jumper again that night, but somehow remembered to wash it between now and then. You left it folded on the coffee table so you wouldn’t forget to give it to him when you got back from lunch. It was quarter past twelve, meaning he was due any second. You guys usually planned timing quite loosely, knowing the other would text you when they were on their way, or if anything came up affecting your plans.

You took the opportunity to fill in the small amount of spare time you had to check your work schedule. You had previously arranged to switch shifts with one of the girls that was going to a wedding on Saturday, and forgot to get the day off. Thus, your assigned Sunday shift had moved to a Saturday again. Specifically the afternoon. You texted Eunwoo this new found information. The two of you had been trying to find time for a girls night, and with the lack of a shift on Sunday, Saturday night sounded perfect.

As the message went out, Minho came in. You had left the door unlocked, but even if you hadn’t, you’d trusted him with your spare key. You’ve needed to use it once or twice since you met. Isn’t it strange how you can be closer to the people you’ve known for the shortest amount of time than those you’ve known your whole life?

He wandered over and fell into the couch with a relative amount of grace, stared forward, then rolled his head towards you. He just looked, and you read his mind. Bringing your legs up onto the couch, you moved to face him. “What’s up, Lee?” Slipped effortless from your mouth as you rested your head in your hand, arm propped up on the back of the couch. You analysed him. You knew his mannerisms better than your own, and this was the ‘something’s bothering me’ expression. Yes, he looked like that most of the time, but the detail that defined the difference was the emotion held in his eyes.

“So, something happened the other day.” He knew better than to trying to avoid telling you what was on his mind, and it seemed in this case he wasn’t planning to, anyway. After seeing half his apartment occupants over the past few days, your mind went to the other 8 boys he had for company. Was it about the prank they played on Felix? Was it something to do with running into them so much recently? Did something happen at the house? You couldn’t help the flood of questions that began to swim around in your mind. This happened often. You liked to joke that overthinking is your ‘hobby’.

“At the bar.” He deadpanned. His eyes stared into thin air. Your curiosity peaked. He continued. “My manager is acting completely different. He’s forgetting his shifts, ignoring the casual roster and being an absolute dick over all.” He shifted again, eyes meeting yours. You expected them to be filled with annoyance at his boss’ antics, but they held none. Instead, they were overflowing with concern. The room felt tense. He meant it. Something was off. He drew a sharp breath, then relaxed. He continued.

“It’s just not like him, you know? At first I thought it might be some guys threatening the bar. There are the usual shady guys that come in occasionally, but none of them have been giving off a bad vibe, and I haven’t seen anyone dodgy coming around the place. I just can’t figure out what’s wrong. It’s so unlike him. Like, do I say something or…” he trailed off. He didn’t expect you to answer. He just wanted you to listen. He needed to get it off his chest. Neither of you said anything for a while. Until you broke the silence.

“On a lighter note, I’m starving. Please can we go get food?” You stood up and began to grab your things. With a humorous scoff, Minho nodded, rising from his seat and picking up his jumper that he had noticed you left on the coffee table. “Where are we going?” He looked to you for instruction as he opened the door. You walked through the frame and waited for him to pull the door shut. He checked that the door did, in fact, lock when he shut it behind him, then lead the way to the elevator. Once he had called for it, you looked at each other and, as if on cue, spoke in unison, “Hirai”.

-

Hirai was your go-to Japanese restaurant. It was reasonably priced, some level of authentic and the half way point between your apartment and the boys’ place. You had stumbled upon it when you first moved in.

Minho went to order for the both of you. It was normal for one of you to pay for lunch and the other to pay for whatever dessert, snack or drinks you ordered later in the day. You took the opportunity to flick through your notifications. There didn’t appear to be anything noteworthy, so you were about to lock your screen when Facebook alerted you to a post on your university’s page. You weren’t one to go on Facebook. It was more of a way to find out about promotions from food places and occasionally tag friends in memes. You clicked the notification, and your mouth dropped as Minho took his seat across the table.

“It’s happened. Again!” You seethed, turning the screen to let Minho scan over what you’d just read. “Are they serious? They’ve been saying they’d close the place for months and now their backing out? Don’t they know the reputation the frat has?” He was just as annoyed as you.

One of the few boarding houses your university had a bad reputation, with dozens upon dozens of scandals from academic violations to vile crimes. The student’s had dubbed it ‘the frat’ as it was the closest thing the university had to a frat house. You’d only ever gone to one party there, and what you encountered put you off for the rest of your uni career. It was supposed to be shut down at the beginning of last semester, but with the majority of the guys living in the frat being well-off, their parents probably gave the university a nice payout to keep it’s doors open. It disgusted both of you. “I wish I had that much money.” Minho appeared to have also been running the situation through his head. “I’d be free of uni debt and-”  

“Become a crazy cat lady?” You giggled as he signed in annoyance, prodding his ramen with his chopsticks. “Shut up.” he mumbled under his breath, and you erupted into giggles again. He tried to stifle a laugh, but was cut off by a voice that was familiar to the both of you.

“Hyung? Noona?” You turn to be met with a beaming smile from Han Jisung, Changbin following closely behind him. You were pretty surprised, but it made sense to see the two boys there. It was close by and Minho probably would of told them about your little spot. It was just that you’d never seen them there before. The coincidence was uncanny. Your best friend’s roommates truely were everywhere lately.

You thought you heard an irritated sigh slip through your best friend’s lips, but convinced yourself you were hearing things. “Jisung, Changbin,” you smiled up at the boys, “What’re you doing here?” Minho said in unison with you, though his tone held a lot of annoyance in comparison. He mentioned on the walk that he had left to the boys having their own mukbang party, and that he wanted to spare you from Felix’s ASMR.

“The boys overcooked half the food, so we’re picking up Japanese instead.” Changbin replied, his voice relaxed and a small smile playing on his lips. Minho gave a small grunt, stuffing his face full of ramen to avoid the confused stare you sent his way. What’s up with him?

Before you could reply, Changbin spoke up again, “Will you be coming over again soon, Y/n-ah?”. You kinda just stared at Minho. He stared at his ramen. You rolled your eyes. “Hopefully! It was fun getting to know you guys. Plus, then I can be involved with the next prank on-”

“You know about that?!” Minho’s voice had raised considerably, earning a ton of strange looks from everyone around, including yourself and the the two boys standing beside you. He gathered his composure. “How?” He asked, feigning nonchalance.

“I was out with Eunwoo the other day. We found a cafe and it just happened to be the one Hyunjin and Jeongin work at.” The boy’s face was still plastered with shock and confusion, eyes big and round, looking at you. “Jeongin has a job?” He looked stunned that you knew something he didn’t. About his roommate no less.

There were eyerolls all ‘round. “You really don’t pay much attention do you, hyung?” Changbin smirked. You smiled at him, eyes briefly connecting with Jisung before looking back to Minho. He was beyond annoyed. “Can’t I just eat in peace?” He huffed, playing with his ramen.

“Yeah, that’s our cue to go. Hope to see you soon, though.” Jisung smiled and placed a warm hand on your shoulder, moving towards the restaurant counter. Changbin gave a nod, leaving you alone with Minho once again.

You just sat there for a second, staring at him. He looked up hesitantly after feeling your eyes boring into the top of his skull. “What?” He shoved more food in his mouth, opting to focus on the table rather than meet your eyes. You just shook your head, half smiling at the idiot sitting across from you. You brushed off his weird behaviour and went back to enjoying lunch with your best friend.

-

The both of you were walking around the neighbourhood aimlessly. Neither of you had anywhere to go after lunch, and it seems like Minho didn’t particularly fancy going home. Honestly, neither did you. So you did what you always did when you both felt like this. You wandered.

You’d made some great discoveries on trips like this, the little adventures you and Minho went on frequently after you met. That’s how you figured out he lived so close by. You were quite strategic when it came to moving into your first solo apartment. At least that’s what you’d like to think. Majority of it was dumb luck. You had moved into a relatively lively suburb. Busy enough to have some level of a community vibe, with restaurants and cafes and shops dotting every street. However, not so much that it was loud or filled with obnoxious people driving through or yelling at 2am on a Saturday night. You just happened to receive a job offer from one of those shops, and wandered past the bar a few blocks down one afternoon with Minho.

“I work there.” The boy lazily pointed. You nodded at first, not particularly interested in filling the void in the conversation. Then you realised just how close it was. “Wait. I live near here. My work place is a few blocks back, and I live that way.” You gestured in the general direction of where you vaguely thought the apartment building was. “Huh,” a smirk took place on his lips, “you’re only a few minutes away. My place is further up this way.” He nodded in the direction you were headed. That’s probably a contributing factor to how you guys grew to be so close. It was just easy.

“This is new.” Minho exclaimed, snapping you out of the memories you were reminiscing upon. Your head jerked to see what he was looking at. What was once an old antique shop that had been closed for months was now a bright, pastel-themed bubble tea shop. You exchanged a look, both shrugged and walked in, because why not? Minho grabbed a menu for you both to look through. The amount of flavours was overwhelming, but neatly categorised for your convenience. Something you were grateful for.

Minho decided quite quickly. He tapped your arm, gesturing for your card. You were so wrapped up in your own thoughts you forgot it was your shout. He took a step into line as you tried to figure out how all the toppings, ice and sugar levels worked at this place. You finally settled on a flavour you guessed you’d like and were willing to try. Minho had ordered. He handed over your card, giving you a sly smile as he spun around towards a seat in the waiting area. What is he on? You rolled your eyes, approaching the counter.

You had to stifle a blush. The guy standing opposite you was attractive, but he seemed unaware to it. His smile was almost blinding. It was hard to concentrate on anything else. Was this why Minho looked at you like that? Did he know you were gonna have a crisis because the guy behind the counter was inhumanely attractive? Your thoughts were cut short.

“Hi,” he beamed down at you, “what can I get you?” You smiled back, somehow feeling more at ease with his focus on you. You surprisingly managed to get through your order without making a total fool of yourself. He looked at you the whole time, listening intently and nodding every so often. Only after you’d finished did he start inputting your order. You stood patiently.

“You haven’t been here before have you?” He said with a knowing tone of voice. He looked up at you briefly, still filling in your order. You hadn’t expected him to start a conversation. “U-uh, no. My friend and I just found it while we were wandering around.” You were hoping you managed to smooth out your words enough for him to miss the tremor in your words. He looked up from the screen at you again, and the smile he gave seemed a little less pure. “Well, I’m glad you did.” He smirked slightly.

He told you the price, gesturing to the EFTPOS machine between you, asking your name as you tapped your card. “Y/n” you smiled back once you knew the transaction went through. The embarrassment of your card randomly declining was the last thing you needed. He just nodded to himself, taking note. He handed you the order number. “It shouldn’t be too long,” and just like that, he set to work on your order. Your head was spinning from how charming this guy was, but it wasn’t in a like ‘I’m a player’ type way, more of a ‘I’m just a genuinely friendly guy’ way. You shook the thought out of your head. No point to get your hopes up. You’d probably never see him again.

Minho was smirking at you. “Shut up!” You mumbled under your breath and hit his folded arms. You knew he was teasing you. It was probably obvious how flustered you were. To him at least. You were about to ask him why he gave you that look before, but were cut off by the same voice that served you moments ago.

“Number 2, number 3” His eyes met yours with a small smile. Minho stood up to get your orders, taking both numbers with him. You waited by the door, expecting Minho to be on your heels by then. You were taken aback when he was still at the counter. They’re talking? Since when was Minho so friendly with random people he just met? By this point, you were beyond confused.

“The hell is going on with you today?” You pushed once you were further down the block. Minho just sipped on his tea, feigning innocence, “What do you mean?” You gawked at him, channeling all your exasperation through your eyes. It was to no avail. He acted sheepish, ignoring you, eyes looking ahead. “Do you like it?” Referring to your drink.  

You took a sip, nodding back at him. “It’s actually really good. Want to try?” You went to offer but he waved his hand. “I’m good. I like mine.” You shook your head, giggling at his antics.

“Can I try?” You went to grab the cup, but he manoeuvred it out of your reach. He was protecting it like it was his firs- born child. “No~,” he whined, “it’s mine~” Boy, was he melodramatic. After seeing you pout, he rolled his eyes and gave in. Handing it over, you took a sip. “That’s nice. I like mine better, though.” He laughed. “Of course you do. I’ll try it if we go back.” You nodded in agreement. He practically snatched the cup out of your hands. You could almost hear him saying ‘that’s enough!’ Inside his head. A giggle broke through your lips, rolling your eyes in sync.

He stopped walking, placing his tea on the window ledge of the building you were passing by. He had been holding the jumper this whole time. It surprised you that he managed this long without getting aggravated at the inconvenience. He tied it around his waist, stopped, then retied it so one sleeve came over his right shoulder, and the other one from underneath his left arm. He paused again, reevaluating the whole situation. You burst out laughing. “Shut up.” He whined, tying it around his waist again. “You should’ve left it.” A statement equivalent to ‘I told you so’. He began walking again, giving you a light shove as he spoke, “Just drink your tea.” You didn’t miss the knowing curve of his lips. You were satisfied with your victory.

With a meaningless sigh, you filled the small silence by examining your tea. Looking down at the label, you made a mental note for when you go there again to order the same thing. That’s when you noticed it, and a smile crept onto your face. There was something different on your label, scribbled in black ink.

The name ‘Jaemin’, followed by a 10 digit number.

“What are you smiling about?” Minho cocked an eyebrow your way.

“Nothing.” You sung, smiling down at the pavement as you made your way home.

>>

——————————-

Side note: Teehee Dreamies are featuring in here too~

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

“We Wargamed the Last Days of Brexit. Here’s What We Found Out.”

Digital Elixir “We Wargamed the Last Days of Brexit. Here’s What We Found Out.”

Yves here. It seemed fitting to post again on Brexit, if nothing else to commemorate, if that’s the right word, Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister of the UK Wednesday afternoon.

It’s not a good omen that the EU has felt compelled to debunk Johnson’s campaign claims about Brexit that have been taken up again by allies. From the Guardian:

Boris Johnson’s claims that crashing out of the EU with no deal would be less painful because of a series of “side deals” that the UK has already done with Brussels have been dismissed as “rubbish” by the EU….

Iain Duncan Smith referred to 17 side deals on the table while the former chancellor Norman Lamont told Sky News hours after Johnson won the Tory leadership contest that “there is no such thing as no deal” as there were “all sorts of side deals that were done”.

A senior EU official described the claims of side deals as “pure rubbish”, pointing out that the so-called deals are unilateral positions taken by the EU alone to keep the basics functioning on their side of the border.

Michel Barnier felt compelled to remind Johnson that the Withdrawal Agreement was the only deal on offer:

We look forward to working constructively w/ PM @BorisJohnson when he takes office, to facilitate the ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement and achieve an orderly #Brexit. We are ready also to rework the agreed Declaration on a new partnership in line with #EUCO guidelines.

— Michel Barnier (@MichelBarnier) July 23, 2019

Other EU leaders were more pointed. From the Independent:

The EU has shot down Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan within moments of his appointment as Tory leader, in the latest sign that the bloc has no plans to make concessions.

In an intervention timed to coincide with Mr Johnson’s election announcement, Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s first vice president, told reporters in Brussels that the EU would not renegotiate the deal reached with Theresa May.

Another EU commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, also warned that politicians like Mr Johnson were undermining democracy with “cheap promises, simplified visions, blatantly evident incorrect statements”.

A new article at Politico takes up the theme that EU leaders see Johnson as a joke:

After years of laughing at him, Europeans simply don’t take Johnson seriously. At this stage, it’s difficult to imagine what could change their minds.

While Europeans may take delight in lampooning Donald Trump, they also respect (and fear) the power of his office…

But no one’s afraid of Johnson.

Though the U.K. remains a key strategic player within Europe, that reliance cuts across both sides of the Channel. Following the seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker by Iran last week, for example, the U.K. responded by calling for a European naval force to protect sea routes in the Strait of Hormuz.

When it comes to the economy, the U.K. is far more dependent on the EU than vice versa.

That’s why Europe’s response to Johnson’s threat to leave the EU come what may on October 31, deal or no deal, has been a polite yawn.

Corbyn has promised a “surprise” no confidence motion (huh?) but it’s not clear his fellow MPs would be keen to have elections now, given how badly Labour has been polling. Bloomberg reports that Johnson said he won’t call a snap election.

To elicit further reader input, we’re posting yet another Brexit piece that has us scratching our heads. It described how the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) and the ERSTE Foundation in Vienna set up a large team that was diverse by background, nationality, and political views, to “wargame” Brexit.

What is frustrating is that the effort got so much right in terms of how it assigned roles and set parameters, but got one part disastrously wrong: that Brexit is a default, and the Government has to either sign the Withdrawal Agreement, ask for an extension, or revoke Article 50 to prevent an October 31 departure. By making Parliament the focus of the wargame, the exercise had the effect of getting the participants to see Parliament as in charge when it isn’t.

This is consistent with the fact that Parliament isn’t taking steps sufficient to prevent a crashout and seems to be kidding itself about the effectiveness of its gambits to date. Only legislation instructing the Prime Minister could do that. Mere motions or the blocking of particular avenues, like keeping the Government from proroguing Parliament, aren’t adequate. The fact that MPs aren’t objecting to the normal summer recess or the expected September break for party caucuses is a sign of unseriousness.

If Johnson were clever and determined to have his Brexit, he’s minimize but not entirely eliminate Parliamentary time for Brexit. Of course, MPs could try to add a “no crashout” amendment to another bit of legislation. Could Johnson schedule any “must have early on” bills for early in the session, before enough MPs realize only legislation can stop a no deal if that’s what Johnson wants or winds up stumbling into?

As you’ll see, the wargame results in vote for a second referendum. It’s hard to see that happening by the end of October, or even year end, if for some reason the UK asks for an extension and the EU agrees to a short one. And it’s hard to see a second referendum solving anything. The tacit assumption is that UK voters will reverse themselves, but what if they don’t? And I’ve yet to see how to formulate second referendum questions to get at what “Leave” means.

And statements like this don’t help the second referendum cause. It comes off at too close to saying a second referendum result reaffirming Leave would not be acceptable:

By Luke Cooper, a Senior Lecturer in International Politics at Anglia Ruskin University and a Visiting Fellow on the Europe’s Futures programme at the IWM in 2018 – 2019. He is currently writing a book on the crisis of the European Union. @lukecooper100. Originally published at openDemocracy

Scenario planning plays an important role in modern politics. Political contestation is the art of out-manoeuvring opponents. By attempting to anticipate the moves they will make in response to events and problems, party leaderships or factions plan for possible eventualities. They seek to defeat the other side by outwitting them strategically. Simulation games are aimed at helping these efforts by building up a picture of how their opponents behave.

Interpretive Hypotheses

Such games can hone strategic thinking, but they are, of course, necessarily imperfect, ‘probabilistic’ exercises. However well scenarios are prepared for there will always be too many variables for us to ‘know’ the future. There are simply too many possible events and factors that might occur, and interact in unique, complex and contingent ways, for us to be entirely sure what the actual course of history will be. E.H. Carr made this point in his famous text, What is History? Carr argued that, by the middle of the twentieth century, historians had abandoned determinism and were now more modest in their goals. ‘Content to inquire how things work’, as he put it.[i]

Rather than believing the goal of an enquiry into the past was to achieve certainty about the course of events in the future, Carr instead proposed a method based on hypothesis and interpretation. For Carr a good hypothesis constituted a ‘tool of thought, valid in so far as it is illuminating, and dependent for its validity on interpretation’.[ii] The logic of this principle was simple. History does not follow a strict determinism. But neither is anything possible. Drawing on Carr we might say that any study of a political process requires interpreting the mix of interests and circumstances in order to illuminate how exactly it evolves over time. Carr serves as a useful frame for a simulation game exercise.

The Brexit Simulation

A group of us recently participated in a simulation game to model the future of the Brexit process. By assuming different roles amongst the forces in conflict over the future of the United Kingdom, we hoped to gain a greater understanding of the process and what might come next. We solicited the help of Richard Barbrook, an academic at Westminster University, and director of Digital Liberties, a UK-based cooperative that has pioneered the use of participatory simulations to anticipate political scenarios. His book, Class Wargames, applies the ideas of the French situationist, Guy Debord, who advocated the use of strategy games as performative, even theatrical, exercises to understand one’s political opponents and their strategic thinking. Barbrook designed the game, which he called, Meaningful Votes: The Brexit Simulation.

Collaborating on this initiative with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) and the ERSTE Foundation in Vienna we assembled a group of participants in Vienna comprised of civil society, journalists, academics and intellectuals.They were a mixture of nationalities, from Austria, the Balkans, the United States and Britain, and held a plurality of political views from left to right. For mainland European participants the game provided an opportunity to empirically rationalise a crisis that many had found inexplicable; for example, the refusal hitherto of the British parties to find a compromise on Brexit in Parliament is highly alien to those used to the political systems with a culture of building consensus (often with proportional representation), that exist in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. Each participant took on the role of a faction within Parliament with the game beginning after the defeat of the heavy defeat of the First Meaningful Vote on 15 January 2019.

Simulating the Factions

As Brexit has radically disrupted the existing British party system, the factional roles assumed by players did not tend to align with a particular party leadership. Instead different Tory and Labour factions were represented within the game. Each player had a series of votes allocated in the British Parliament. Larger factions had two different vote allocations: ‘waverers’ and diehards. They could potentially cast these votes in different directions. Another element of the game design lay in a consciously British-centric approach. An assumption underpinning the game was that the EU side would act as, in gaming-terms, a ‘dummy-player’. This refers to when an actor is present within a scenario, who does not face choices that affect the overall arc of the decision pathway. With modifications to the Withdrawal Agreement persistently ruled out by the EU, had players assumed this vantage point they would not have faced any choices. As a dummy-player, the umpire thus articulated the position of the EU-27 states at key decision-making points across the game.

Following the playful spirit of Debord’s legacy, this really was a game.Players accumulated points in relation to different votes passing and goals being reached. Some had hidden objectives that were revealed at the end of the game, identifying a potential conflict between the public statements of factions and their underlying motivations. The ‘winner’ had the most points at the end of the game.

Towards ‘No Brexit’

So what happened? And what did we learn from this exercise?

The outcome of the game eventually resolved itself in a new referendum. By this stage the game had moved into the near future of early autumn 2019. The cross-party negotiations had failed to reach a breakthrough acceptable to both leaderships. Softer members of the Tory Brexit Delivery Group then split away from the party leadership, crossing the floor to support a new referendum. Interestingly, this came as a surprise to the game designer, Barbrook, who had anticipated a stalemate and a further extension of Article 50 at the end of October 2019.

If this suggests the game had a Remain bias, other moments in the scenario serve to refute this. At an earlier moment in the game a majority emerged in Parliament in spite of opposition from Labour and the Remain parties, for the kind of technological solution to the Irish border question favoured by the ERG as an alternative to the troubled ‘Irish backstop’. Assuming the dummy-player function, the EU then intervened via the umpire into the Parliamentary scenario to rule out an agreement without the backstop. With Parliament then voting against leaving without a deal, the political factions were confronted with the same problem they have at the current time.

The crux of this decision is ultimately a narrow one: few options are still available to parties, making the outcome relatively straightforward to model. Leave on the deal May has negotiated with the EU, which is unpopular with Brexit voters and with Labour Remain voters who would like a second referendum. Or negotiate changes to the UK-future relationship document (the Withdrawal Agreement will not be reopened by the EU) to make the Brexit deal softer, making it more palatable for the Labour Party but even less acceptable to Brexit voters and Brexiters in the Tory party. As the changes are not legally binding on a future Tory prime minister even a Labour Party leadership wishing to ‘deliver Brexit’ has little incentive to support such a deal. This leaves only two further choices. Hold new elections in the hope they might produce a balance in the Parliament more conducive to striking a deal. Or, move towards a new referendum, which includes the opportunity to remain in the EU.

Globalisation, Brexit and Strategic Choices

The outcome of the game is not an exact prediction of events in the near future. One player’s calculation that at a certain stage the mainstream of the Tory party will have to try and ‘move on’ from Brexit by peeling off towards a referendum is what Carr called an interpretive hypothesis. It will be tested in the months ahead.

Rather the game offers an insight into the interests that will shape this and the core contradiction underpinning the process: that there is not a tangible, pragmatic form of Brexit acceptable to the people that want Brexit. The vote in the game for ‘technological solutions to the Irish border’ was analogous with, though not identical to, Parliament’s vote on the 30 January 2019 for the ‘Brady amendment’, which mandated the government to seek changes to the Irish backstop as a condition for passing the Withdrawal Agreement. Having passed by 317 votes to 301, Theresa May hailed it as demonstrating a ‘substantial and sustainable majority’ for leaving the EU. When the EU insisted on the Irish backstop, the refusal of the hard Brexiters and the DUP to compromise forced a logic of events that points increasingly to ‘no Brexit’.

“We Wargamed the Last Days of Brexit. Here’s What We Found Out.”

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[stellarbisexual]

you want reddie prompts??? i'm so terrible with coming up with ideas but maybe college reddie, something a little smutty and a little fluffy

Richie’s not really one for napping; he’s not really one for sleeping in general, subsisting on coffee and gummy worms and Nerds rope and his own “joie de vivre,” as he likes to put it.  But he loves to help Eddie nap.  And powering through the end of their final semester of college has required a lot of naps.  All Eddie has to do is come shuffling into the kitchen where Richie’s snacking or the living room where Richie’s reading with that sweet look on his face, and Richie’s swift on his feet.  

He shuts all the lights in all the rooms, pulls the blackout curtains in their bedroom closed, lights a lavender-scented candle on the bedside table, and turns on Eddie’s white noise machine, Eddie falling into their bed with a grateful sigh.  Richie shuts the bedroom door, climbs in after him, and wraps both arms around him, pulling him in nice and tight, and presses his mouth to the back of his neck.  Eddie’s usually good for about forty minutes like that (no more or he’ll wake up cranky and kind of headachey).  He’ll stir on his own, and Richie, still awake, will welcome him back to consciousness with a gentle squeeze and a kiss to his shoulder.  

The last few weeks, though, forty minutes is often not nearly enough, Eddie perpetually sleep-deprived and a little faded.  Alarms are necessary, and when those fail, Richie has to urge Eddie out of bed or off the living room sofa, as much as he doesn’t want to.

It’s the day before the first draft of his final chapter is due, and Eddie snuggles more deeply into the crook of Richie’s neck as his iPhone tinkles.  

Richie pushes his fingers gently through Eddie’s hair.  “Come on, shortcake, you’ve gotta wake up.”  He kisses his temple, trying to soften the blow.  “You told me to not let you sleep more than an hour.”

Eddie groans.  “‘M awake.”  The finish line of his thesis has happened to coincide with a serious case of senioritis for Eddie.  Even though he’s almost done, he can see the light at the end of the tunnel, he kind of regrets agreeing to do a thesis at all.  All he wants right now is to do the bare minimum so he can graduate and start his life with Richie, one in the real world, with jobs and vacations and maybe a dog–and, more importantly, no more fucking papers.

He sucks a kiss into Richie’s neck and inches up the hem of his t-shirt.  “I’m very awake.”  He slinks down the mattress, pressing open-mouthed kisses down the center line of Richie’s stomach, tongue slipping out to taste the hair leading down to his boxer briefs.  

Richie shakes his head with a deep sigh.  “Sneaky, baby.  I know what you’re doing.  It’s not going to work.”  Eddie’s vicious little mouth starts sucking a bruise into his left hip, and he grabs his chin, fixing him with a look.  “You have to finish that chapter.”

Eddie makes his eyes ultrawide.  “Right now?”  He unbuttons Richie’s jeans and hooks his fingertips into the waistband of his boxer briefs, pulling it down just enough so he can nuzzle into the dark, dark hair there.  

“Jesus,” Richie breathes.  “You’re evil, Eds.  You’re pure evil.  You know I can’t resist your sweet, sweet lovin,’ and you’re totally taking advantage.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Eddie says, scraping his teeth over Richie’s sensitive skin, making his hips rise off the mattress, and sliding his small, tidy hands up his sides.

Richie quickly takes him by the shoulders and flips him.  “You gave me explicit instructions to wake you up at three and make sure you go to the library and go to your carrel and finish that chapter.”  Before Eddie can protest–with his hands or his mouth–Richie reaches under his shirt and starts tickling him.  “You said, and I quote, ‘I’ll probably try to sway you with my magic dick, but under no circumstances–’”

Eddie shrieks and giggles.  “That’s not what I fucking said!”

“‘–Under no circumstances are you to let me seduce you as a means of procrastination.’  That’s what you said.”  Richie palms his cheek and kisses him sweetly.  “Remember last month?  You were up the whole fucking night and just barely made it to your meeting with your advisor because you were editing to the last fucking second.  Because you paraded around in those little green shorts that drive me fucking bonkers–”

Eddie’s eyes light up.  “I can get them from my drawer.  They’re clean.”

“No.”  Richie threatens to tickle him again.  “You are getting that adorable little ass out of bed, and you are going to the library.  Right now.”

Eddie makes a face, going limp underneath him.  “Fine.”

Richie smiles wide, kissing him, though Eddie’s unresponsive.  “You’re gonna love me so much for this later.  I promise.”

“Okay,” he pouts, hauling himself onto his feet, toeing his shoes back on and already heading for his backpack by the bedroom door.

Richie grabs his hand, pulling him back for a second.  “I’ll have dinner ready when you come back.”

“You’re going to cook?  That sounds more like a threat than a gift.”  Eddie pushes Richie’s hair out of his face, looking incredibly grateful despite his words.  

“No.  I’m going to order the best takeout you’ve ever had, baby.”  He pushes his face into Eddie’s neck and makes like he’s gobbling him up.  He gives him a push.  “Go be a little academic badass.  The shorts and I will be here when you return.”

tag list: (lmk if you want to be added!) @reddie-to-fight @hurleyhugo 

[orbemnews]

Cash Walks Company America rethinks political donations Large companies typically donate to each political events and say that their assist is tied to slender problems with particular curiosity to their industries. That grew to become more and more fraught final week, after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and a few Republican lawmakers tried to overturn Joe Biden’s win within the presidential election. A flurry of firms have since reviewed political giving by way of their company political motion committees. Some huge banks are pausing all political donations: Goldman Sachs is freezing donations by its PAC and can conduct “a radical evaluation of how individuals acted throughout this era,” a spokesman, Jake Siewert, instructed DealBook. JPMorgan Chase is halting donations by its PAC for six months. “There will likely be loads of time for campaigning later,” stated Peter Scher, the financial institution’s head of company accountability. Citigroup is placing all marketing campaign contributions on maintain for 1 / 4. “We wish you to be assured that we are going to not assist candidates who don’t respect the rule of legislation,” Candi Wolff, the financial institution’s head of presidency affairs, wrote in an inner memo. Some firms are pausing donations to particular politicians: Marriott stated it would pause donations from its PAC “to those that voted in opposition to certification of the election,” a spokeswoman instructed DealBook. Blue Cross Blue Protect, Boston Scientific and Commerce Bancshares are taking an identical, focused strategy to donation freezes. The e-newsletter In style Info is monitoring the responses of those and different firms that donated to lawmakers who challenged the election outcome. A pause is just not everlasting. The suspensions coincide with the primary quarter after a presidential election, which is often gentle on fund-raising anyway. Efforts by some firms to pause PAC donations to all lawmakers — those that voted to uphold the election in addition to those that sought to overturn it — are elevating eyebrows. And firms can nonetheless give to “darkish cash” teams that don’t disclose their donors however typically increase far more cash than company PACs. Right here’s an intriguing query: Will firms ask for his or her a refund? Ken Gross, a accomplice on the legislation agency Skadden, stated he hadn’t seen proof of that, however he famous that the pauses could also be extended, relying on “how the mud settles” on potential impeachment proceedings and the character of the debates over Mr. Biden’s cupboard nominees. Company PACs aren’t the one teams below scrutiny. The Republican Attorneys Normal Affiliation is taking warmth following stories {that a} fund-raising arm, the Rule of Regulation Protection Fund, urged individuals to march on the Capitol. A number of firms instructed DealBook that they had been reviewing their assist of the group, although none stated they deliberate to chop ties. (Most famous that they supported attorneys basic from each events, a difficulty Andrew addressed in a column final yr.) A consultant for the affiliation stated that it and the Rule of Regulation Protection Fund “had no involvement within the planning, sponsoring or the group of Wednesday’s occasion.” Right here’s what we heard from among the huge company donors to the group: “We’re appalled and condemn these actions within the strongest potential phrases and have communicated that to R.A.G.A.,” stated John Demming, a spokesman for Comcast, which donated $200,000 final yr, in line with Documented. The corporate would search “assurances that they take steps to make sure that nothing like this may occur once more,” he stated. Randy Hargrove, a spokesman for Walmart, which donated $140,000, stated: “As we conduct our evaluation over the approaching months, we will definitely issue final week’s occasions into our course of.” Ann Moore, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola, which donated $50,000, stated: “We constantly re-evaluate our memberships, and we’ll proceed to take action with final week’s occasion in thoughts.” In different fallout: The P.G.A. of America stated it will not maintain its signature championship on the Trump Nationwide Golf Membership in Bedminster, N.J.; the social app Parler, in style amongst conservatives as a substitute for Twitter, went darkish this morning after Amazon minimize it off from computing providers; the cost processor Stripe banned the Trump marketing campaign from utilizing its providers; YouTube blocked Steve Bannon’s podcast channel; and the debate continues over tech giants’ affect over public speech. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING U.S. states battle to roll out coronavirus vaccines. New York abruptly loosened its pointers, after medical suppliers had been pressured to discard doses due to difficulties discovering certified sufferers. Florida’s distribution plans are in disarray as demand far outstrips provide. And federal officers are being criticized for supplying syringes that can’t effectively extract all of the liquid from vials. Chicago takes warmth for its plan to reopen public faculties. Greater than 6,000 college students are set to return as we speak, however a significant proportion of the town’s academics aren’t anticipated to point out up, as their union argues that the plan doesn’t defend their well being. The voting machine maker Dominion sues a Trump ally for $1.3 billion. Dominion accused Sidney Powell, a lawyer who pushed baseless election conspiracy theories in regards to the firm, of defamation. The lawsuit, the corporate stated, is supposed to “set the file straight.” Investigators look at the most recent Boeing crash. The airplane concerned, which took off from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta and was stated to be carrying 62 individuals, was a workhorse mannequin, the 737-500, with a good security file. Crypto’s wild journey continues. Bitcoin fell 11 % in a single day, whereas Ether and different high cryptocurrencies plunged as effectively. Some analysts speculated that buyers had been locking in income after the value of Bitcoin doubled over the previous month. Jay Timmons makes a press release Amid the flurry of company condemnations of final week’s violence on the Capitol, one stood out. In its assertion, the Nationwide Affiliation of Producers referred to as out President Trump immediately and urged Vice President Mike Pence to contemplate eradicating him to “protect democracy.” The Instances’s Jim Tankersley, Peter Eavis and DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch obtained the again story of the unexpectedly extreme assertion, maybe the starkest signal of company America’s break with the Trump administration. As soon as a dependable conservative ally, the commerce group has hosted Mr. Trump at annual conferences, labored carefully along with his administration on deregulation and tax cuts, and gave Ivanka Trump an award final yr. N.A.M.’s president, Jay Timmons, has lengthy ties to the Republican Occasion, and beforehand served as chief of employees to Senator George Allen of Virginia. What modified? Fairly doubtless, the explanation that the group was in a position to communicate out so forcefully final week was that Mr. Timmons did not ballot the board’s membership earlier than issuing the assertion (he declined to say whom he did seek the advice of). When The Instances reached out to the corporate’s board members, most referred to their very own vaguely worded statements condemning the violence. Few would touch upon N.A.M.’s name for the removing of Mr. Trump. Mr. Timmons has develop into more and more dismayed by the Trump White Home, and when his father died from Covid-19 final month, he launched a press release by way of N.A.M. by which he blamed “careless” conduct by individuals inspired by “nationwide leaders” who weren’t urging masks or different precautions. After a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, “it was a transparent and current menace to our democracy,” Mr. Timmons instructed The Instances. “I believed it was vital to talk up.” The week forward The Home is anticipated to vote as quickly as Tuesday on impeaching President Trump for a second time. However the Senate gained’t take up a trial till at the least Jan. 19, in line with Senator Mitch McConnell. Home lawmakers may also vote on a decision calling on the cupboard to take away Mr. Trump by invoking the twenty fifth Modification. Right now, the Paycheck Safety Program reopens for small-business debtors, by way of a choose group of group lenders. Additionally as we speak, American inventory exchanges will delist Chinese language firms focused by a Trump administration govt order (and American banks are dropping linked funding automobiles in Hong Kong because of this). Large banks start reporting their newest earnings, with Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo releasing numbers on Friday. A busy week for I.P.O.s is anticipated to see firms increase greater than $4 billion, together with greater than $1 billion for Playtika and debuts for Affirm, Petco and others. Unique: Former WWE execs introduce a brand new fund George Barrios and Michelle Wilson — the previous co-presidents of World Wrestling Leisure who abruptly left the corporate a yr in the past — are saying their subsequent venture as we speak: Isos Capital Administration, an funding agency centered on media, leisure and sports activities. The thought was hatched in the summertime. Mr. Barrios and Ms. Wilson are veterans of the sports activities and leisure enterprise, together with greater than a decade at WWE. “We really feel actually happy with all the things that was completed throughout our tenure, so we’re excited in regards to the subsequent chapter with Isos,” Ms. Wilson instructed DealBook. After WWE, they each thought-about a number of alternatives — together with C.E.O. roles — however determined as an alternative to proceed working collectively. An business in flux. The brand new fund will goal firms in any respect levels of improvement, in industries which can be present process speedy technological shifts. “There are areas — whether or not it’s video gaming, e-sports, sports activities betting — that may drive fan engagement, and that digital transformation will actually develop into the car to make that occur,” Ms. Wilson stated. As cash has poured into the house and deal making has picked up, the fund’s founders consider their expertise and contacts set them aside — at WWE, for instance, they led the corporate’s aggressive worldwide push. “Capital is vital, but it surely’s fungible,” Mr. Barrios stated. “What Michelle and I carry is experience, credibility and a world community.” THE SPEED READ Offers Barry Diller’s IAC pledged a further $1 billion to assist MGM’s takeover bid for Entain. However Mr. Diller stated he was skeptical of MGM’s possibilities of success. (Bloomberg, FT) The funding agency World Infrastructure Companions agreed to purchase Signature Aviation, a private-jet servicing firm, for $4.6 billion, beating Blackstone and Carlyle. (Reuters) Dr Martens, the famed boot model, plans to go public on the London Inventory Trade. (FT) Politics and coverage The tax invoice of huge U.S. banks might rise as a lot as $11 billion a yr if President-elect Joe Biden rolls out his marketing campaign’s company tax proposal. (Bloomberg) Nellie Liang, a former high economist on the Fed, is reportedly a high contender for a key Treasury Division put up. (WSJ) Mr. Biden’s selection of Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island for commerce secretary is “particularly encouraging,” given her file on balancing capitalism with social equality, writes Mike Bloomberg. (Bloomberg Opinion) Tech There’s a growth for start-ups launching nanosatellites. (WSJ) Amazon and Walmart more and more determine that it’s not definitely worth the money and time for patrons to return some objects for refunds. (WSJ) Better of the remaining “The Lies We Inform Throughout Job Interviews” (WSJ) The pandemic has created a scarcity at sperm banks, giving rise to an underground fertility financial system on Fb. (NYT) We’d like your suggestions! Please e-mail ideas and strategies to dealbook@nytimes.com. Supply hyperlink #Money #Walks

[newstfionline]

I skeptically tried practicing gratitude. It completely changed my life.

Leslie Turnbull, The Week, July 20, 2017

A few years back I worked in a university building that also housed an entire department full of psychologists, all of whom seemed to see us administrative types as perfect guinea pigs for their latest theories. I learned to be wary of answering seemingly casual questions in the elevator. If an eager graduate student showed up in my office bearing a tray of pastries and asked me to pick one, I’d cast a chary glance and ask “Why?” before grabbing the apple fritter.

So one day, when someone from the Psychology Department posted instructions in the bathroom exhorting all of us to “Think about five things for which you’re grateful every day for a week!” my response was frankly suspicious. I did the math. Five things a day for seven days is a lot of brainpower to expend without so much as the promise of an apple fritter.

I wandered into the office of Heidi Zetzer, the director of our school’s on-site Counseling and Psychological Services Clinic and a Very Smart Person.

“What’s with the gratitude thing?” I asked.

You don’t ask an academic a question--even a simple one--unless you’re prepared for a lengthy answer. Heidi perked up, and I sat down. That’s when I first heard the term “positive psychology.”

For the longest time, Western psychologists and psychiatrists focused on treating clients’ problems. Traumatized? See a counselor and talk about what happened. Depressed? Have your shrink write a prescription. Hysterical? Paging Dr. Freud.

In the late 1990s, a notable group of researchers, led by Martin Seligman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and the late Christopher Peterson, posited a different approach to mental illness and maladies: What if practitioners focused on individual clients’ strengths and resiliency, rather than their negative experiences and wounds? What if “happiness” could be actively learned?

The new positive psychologists wrote books and spoke at conferences, promoting the theory that ancient practices and modern science could be combined to enhance the lives of patients. As president of the American Psychological Association (APA), Seligman chose positive psychology as a yearlong theme for the APA.

Supported by solid research and ultimately confirmed by numerous longer-term studies, the field had burgeoned by the time I learned about it. “The gratitude thing,” as I had called it, was but one small and simple element of the practice. Kind of like training the brain to focus on joy, my friend Heidi explained.

“It’s only a week,” she urged. “Try it.”

I did. And guess what? It worked.

Every day for a week, I found five distinct things for which I was thankful. They had to be different every day. I couldn’t get away with just being grateful for my wonderful husband. But I could, suggested Collie Conoley, another colleague and noted positive psychologist, express my gratitude for specific aspects of a certain person each day.

He’s a great cook.

He always puts our family first.

He’s a stone-cold fox.

By the end of that week, I found myself slowing down a little. Taking time to notice things I might have walked past before, like a monarch butterfly or a bunch of students laughing together in the quad. One good thought led to another. These kids are so smart. And optimistic. It gives me so much hope for the future!

Fast-forward about a decade--to an ugly race for the American presidency that left many of us on all points of the political spectrum feeling sullied. And on a personal note, a surfing accident knocked me on my back and required two painful operations with what felt like an interminable period of recovery.

I was pretty bummed. And I was not alone--my psychologist friends confided they were struggling to keep up with the demands on their practices wrought by general malaise. It was just so easy to fall into a slump.

Then I remembered “the gratitude thing.” After a few busy years, I had fallen out of the regular, conscious discipline of thankfulness.

By sheer coincidence, right when I was at the nadir of my own depression, I read a glowing review of business executive and lecturer Sheryl Sandberg’s latest book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy.

In it, Sandberg--a tragically young widow--outlines how the practices I’ve come to identify with positive psychology helped her emerge from the crippling morass of grief and reclaim a measure of joy in her life. I thought, If she can do it, so can I.

I started looking for my five moments of gratitude in each day. Like riding the proverbial two-wheeler, it wasn’t hard to get back in the swing of it once I got started.

I am surrounded by love.

Friends brought meals every day this week.

My oldest son took his vacation to come and help out at home. He took me to all my medical appointments, and made me laugh by titling his spring break, “Driving Miss Leslie.”

An unexpectedly wet spring and the quiet kindness of a colleague with a green thumb made sure my plants stayed alive until I could care for them again.

... and he may be more gray than not, but my wonderful husband is still a stone-cold fox.

Life will never be perfect. I still see news stories that distress me. The traffic in my city is maddening. I wish I could speed up my recovery. But with just one simple exercise, I’m rediscovering the serenity of that old prayer: accepting the things I can change, working without complaint to change what I can, and being wise enough to know the difference.

And all it took was a little gratitude.

[247krp]

— Rejoice, little lambs! We have recovered our own Park Sunyoung, spotted prancing about in the Southwest Side. I  remember seeing her with The Gents and Ladies back in high school, but I’m not here to spill yesterday’s tea. So straight to the rundown: can you say intelligent and caring? Apparently now she spends time as a florist for Mirageu and a part-time make-up artist for Albee Theatre, and keeps skeletons buried at Prague Tower, 701. But those won’t stay hidden for long, if you and I have any say on it. Welcome back, Lost Girl; we missed you so.

In case you don’t remember the devil’s name, here’s to refresh your memory:

“ —— I’m not falling BEHIND or running LATE “

always with a smile on her face, always ever so helpful. her life is either somehow amazingly choreographed by some unknown forces or she just has her rose – tinted glasses on. permanently. few people can understand how she maintains her kind attitude, especially in a society like cheongnam high. nobody -not even the clique around her- could be sure if she was just good at acting, or if she’s somehow innocent to the harsh reality of life. but we know better: when she thinks no - one’s looking, a melancholic look drifts over her eyes, her ever - present smile fading just for a moment. but if anyone approaches her, the mask is instantly back up. ah, an open book with pages still glued tightly together, it seems. her usually calm demeanour & understanding nature hides tall walls she keeps around herself.

Nevermind the memory lane though, the present is always the ripest fruit:

“ —— I’m not standing STILL I’m lying in WAIT “

present day luna seems to have come to terms with her tragic past, working at mirageu flower - shop after finishing her double degree in visual design and communications. she also occasionally works at albee theatre as a make-up artist. luna is still as secretive as ever, posing to be as perfect as the flower arrangements she creates. her interest in the arts shine through in her work, whether it be working with the flowers to carefully applying make - up for the theatre’s actors. as a co - worker, luna is dedicated to her jobs & manages tasks flawlessly. if only she could manage her love - life as well. the girl hasn’t seemed to be looking for anyone unless we count her hopeless attempt at a relationship back in cheongnam- now that’s still a sore subject for our dear luna.

But we are nothing if not open books – my job is to ensure you get to the best pages:

“—— her mother was a GENIUS, her father commanded RESPECT “

perfect. she was perfection. because her family was. luna  sat atop a throne of gold and platinum her family’s blood sweat && tears built for her. ever since she was born, she lived in luxury. growing up, luna was happy && carefree, being the daughter of the boss of a major company in south korea. nannies and butlers catered to her every need, private tutors could only grit their teeth and smile at the antics of the young heir. having access to a seemingly endless library && armed with a thirst for knowledge, for wisdom, for more, luna read everything from children’s picture books to encyclopedias, fantasy novels to factual accounts of history. her natural intellect was nurtured by her mother, who taught her to be kind and considerate even as life gets hard. her father was somewhat absent, but was loved dearly by luna anyways. he taught her the value of power and respecting those who deserve it, not demand it.

“—— death doesn’t discriminate, between the SINNERS and the SAINTS “

she attended only the best pre - school and primary school in the area. the teachers would always laugh and joke to her parents that she was so smart that she didn’t even need to be tutored. her parents were proud of their little angel, who would make her debut to the public eye when she turns 18 and take over the company when the time comes that her parents cannot. and that time comes sooner than anyone expected. when she was walking home from school with her mother, they were caught in the crossfire of a mafia fight breaking out in the streets. people were screaming and panicking everywhere && the two were separated in the crowd. that would be the last time luna sees her mother alive. it was on the news the next day, how the wife of such a large business’ owner was shot dead in a “tragic accident … coincidence … my condolences”. the world lost its colour. luna didn’t attend school for weeks, locking herself up in her room and only appearing at mealtimes. her mother’s death had a huge impact on her father, which reflected in his business deals. he decided that she was to be sent overseas for the rest of her education.

“——when they died, they left no instructions, just a LEGACY to PROTECT “

luna spent the next few years of her life in america, living with family friends of her mother at first then moving out into her own apartment. she attended a local school and had to learn english as fast as possible. as a result, she spent most of her lunchtimes && breaks in the school library. this meant she had virtually no friends, and spent her primary school years in isolation. but her hard work paid off, and she attended a high – ranking junior high. she encountered even more bullies there, constantly being teased about her accent and appearance. it was because of them that she decided that she would simply best them in academics && brains. luna was the best in her class in mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology & economics, an achievement previously unheard of in the school. soon, most people paid her grudging respect, and the bullies died down to glares across the cafeteria at lunchtimes and snide whispers of “teacher’s pet” in classes && corridors. however, tragedy struck her life again when she hears of the news that her father committed suicide from the grief of losing his wife and his business crumbling. the news of her acceptance in cheongnam high was bittersweet. she said goodbye to her foster family and the few acquaintances she had made and hopped on a plane back to the country where she had no-one left for her.

“—— history has its EYES on YOU “

after she returns to korea, luna had to make the choice of keeping her father’s business or not. she decided that the pressure of managing the company would be too much to do alone & she wished the company’s legacy to stay with her parents. cheongnam was both a blessing and a curse. she found a group of people who would tolerate her && she was decent in her classes. as long as she stayed under the radar of gossip girl, getting through high - school should be easy. or so she thought.

[c04n]

The Culture War in Communication Studies by Terry Newman

Communication studies is a broad field, encompassing verbal, written and non-verbal sub-categories.

(...)

It was American Jewish scholars fleeing Nazi Germany who essentially founded the field of communication studies (Frankfurt School)

(...)

Communication studies became a subject of popular interest at various points during the 20th century, usually coinciding with points when people were coming to terms with new media technologies. Some of the major scholars in the field included Marshall McLuhan (“The medium is the message”); Jean Baudrillard, who argued that humans were losing their sense of meaning thanks to the “precession of simulacra”; Jurgen Habermas, with his examination of the “bourgeois public sphere”; and Neil Postman, who warned that we were “amusing ourselves to death.”

(...)

In its early days, the communications discipline was dominated by rhetoricians. But in the post-war period, it was transformed by the larger academic trend by which even the liberal arts were expected to employ scientific methods of truth-seeking.

(...)

Intercultural communication entered the discipline during the 1970s and 1980s, which included the late adoption of the Frankfurt theorists whom Murkherjee mentioned in her origin story.

(...)

BOOM : That’s one of the problems with an event designed around a pre-formed, ideologically prescribed template: An observer who isn’t already on board with the premise can experience it as propaganda.

(...)

BEE-BOOM : After the pre-conference, I was left wondering what I had just experienced. Was this an academic conference—or just an airing of professional grievances from people who just happen to have academic jobs?

(...)

Weeks after the conference, in early July, I discovered that two former presidents of the National Communication Association had resigned from the NCA, with one noting that the communications field had become infested with practices such as public vilification, demands for loyalty oaths, and forced public confessions—all under the guise of promoting diversity, inclusion, equity and justice.

(...)

In June, Baylor University professor Martin J. Medhurst, Distinguished Scholar and editor of the interdisciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs, made known his disagreement with the Executive Committee’s approach.

(...)

That article’s stated purpose, as with the pre-conference of the same name, was “to decenter white masculinity as the normative core of scholarly inquiry.” But it contains no explanation as to why scholarship that isn’t focused explicitly on race should be dismissed as “white” or “masculine.”

(...)

OMG

Moreover, how many students of colour are there in communications undergraduate programs to begin with? It’s perfectly true that communication studies was, until recent decades, an almost entirely white field in the West—in large part because universities themselves were usually very white places. But that has changed. In Canada, it’s been obvious for decades that visible minorities have made enormous inroads, especially in the hard sciences. I know this firsthand because I worked my way through my communications studies as a teaching assistant in the Engineering department, and was able to compare the student populations. Because many immigrant groups understandably prioritize high-paying fields such as engineering, medicine and computer science, more esoteric fields such as communications have remained, in relative terms, bastions of privileged whites who can afford to attend non-professional programs. Is this evidence of discrimination? Or is it just a case of students of colour concluding (quite sensibly) that they’d rather educate themselves in real-life job skills rather than watch privileged white people find new and creative ways to accuse one another of racism?

LAST SENTENCE

(...)

an ironic pledge given that the instances of intimidation I observed on the Communication Research and Theory Network mailing list and related social-media pages consisted mostly of casual anti-white racism and jokes about the deaths of older, whiter DS awardees.

REVERSE RACISM HERE WE ARE :)

(...)

One of the most important texts in the history of communications was Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, originally authored (in German) by Frankfurt theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in the 1940s. (...) this idea of communications scholars as a sort of special priestly class, uniquely resistant to the effects of propaganda, was a hubristic conceit that survives within the field to this day.

(...)

Whether or not this conceit was ever fully justified, the #CommunicationSoWhite controversy now has made a mockery of it: The scholars I observed at that May event, like those I see calling for heretics’ heads on campuses, now traffic in the same sort of ideologically-driven propaganda that giants of the Frankfurt School warned of. They deliver lectures without evidence, elicit applause for coarse attacks on broad swathes of the population, and use social media to scream at the people they’re instructed to scream at.

[richmeganews]

DC's Trumpiest Congressman Says the GOP Needs to Get Real on Climate Change

No one will ever mistake Florida’s Matt Gaetz for a left-winger. The 36-year-old been deemed by GQ “the Trumpiest Congressman in Trump’s Washington,” a figure infamous for his cable news appearances and aggressive, sometimes trollish statements. He’s described Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump as “infected with bias,” defended the president’s comments that some developing nations are “shitholes,” and said “if we really cared about safer streets, we would build the wall and secure the border” at a hearing that was interrupted by the father of a slain Parkland student.

Gaetz holds orthodox GOP views on a range of issues from abortion to guns, but unlike Trump and the majority of leading Republicans, Gaetz is a firm supporter in climate science, thinks “history will judge very harshly those who are climate deniers,” argues renewable energy and electric cars can be great for the US economy, and told VICE in an exclusive interview that the fossil fuel interests who contribute to his campaigns are “buying into my agenda, I’m not buying into theirs.”

In recent years a small but growing number of Republicans have broken with the party line on climate change by supporting or introducing legislation to lower US carbon emissions. Some of them have come from competitive districts and support market solutions like a price on carbon emissions; many of these relatively moderate Republicans were voted out of office during the 2018 midterms.

Gaetz on the other hand is an unrepentant “best buddy” to Trump and hails from one of the most conservative districts in America. He is not at all keen on carbon pricing but thinks in an era in which leading Democrats are pushing the Green New Deal, Republicans need to get come up with a convincing plan to fight climate change. He recently explained to VICE over the phone what that might look like.

VICE: You’ve been called the Trumpiest congressman in Washington. What do you think the left is getting wrong about Trump? Matt Gaetz: What the president’s biggest fans appreciate most about him is that he is a disrupter. On the left, the people who seem to be appreciated most right now are the disrupters. I was talking to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the floor maybe a week and half, two weeks ago, and I said we have more in common with each other than either of us do with the middle because we share a desire to change a broken system and we want to change it for different reasons. But there’s a common acknowledgement that Washington sucks and the decision-making process is corrupt, and that there is no real opportunity to create collaborative solutions in a system that is largely designed to make the elected leaders valets for special interests.

You’ve come out and said climate change is real, humans are contributing to it, which normally wouldn’t be such a radical statement, but it does put you at odds with many Republicans. It’s really not a radical statement. Climate change isn’t something people get to choose to believe or not, it’s happening.

So what’s your sense of how that separates you from the more mainstream Republican establishment? I don’t know. I don’t like pondering questions like that. I mean, look, I make my bones in Congress providing sound arguments. I argue on television. I argue on social media. But I did not get elected to Congress to argue with a thermometer. So I don’t really care what the political or inter-Republican-secret-handshake-club ramifications are of my views. I can tell the earth is warming based on overwhelming scientific evidence and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’ve released like 300 years of carbon in the last several decades. That probably had something to do with it.

What’s your sense of the Green New Deal? I know you’ve called it a “Green nightmare.” Yeah. I mean it’s not an actionable plan. It’s not realistic. You can’t go do the Green New Deal. It’s a set of aspirations that don’t really bring us to sensible action. For me it sort of raises the question of what our greatest opportunities are to tackle climate change. I don’t think that America’s regulations will proliferate around the globe as fast as our innovations will. So I think that if we embrace a regulatory-centric approach to climate change, we will not reduce pollution, we will merely export it.

I do think that there are a lot of policy proposals that need more oxygen from all sides of the political spectrum. If we got more efficient with electric grid capacity, we would substantially reduce our carbon footprint and people would be likely to copy us.

If we become better with carbon capture technology I think we can start a global trend toward carbon awareness. I think that nuclear power needs to become more accessible, particularly in the developing world. And if we lead with nuclear innovation here, that can create access to cleaner energy in places driving a lot of our pollution.

There are countless examples. I think we need to deregulate hydro power. I think that if you look in America where energy is cheapest and cleanest, hydro power is contributing greatly to those conditions. We have not even come close to unlocking the full potential there. There is legislation in the Congress to deal with these things. But unfortunately we spend so much time on the shiny objects. We rarely get to the technological innovations that are not partisan in any way, but that can improve our environmental situation.

Regardless of where you sit politically, stuff like electric cars and renewable energy are pretty popular. Do you have any sense of how to really scale that up in the US and export that? Yeah, we gotta get tough on China. Part of China’s national strategy is to crush American innovation through theft and cheap production. They did it with solar. This is not an academic exercise. Solar innovation was largely driven by the United States and US innovators. China stole the tech and didn’t have the upfront R&D costs, produced it for cheap in China and dumped it in the United States. Most solar that you can buy in the United States in the commercial space is now made in China, and the result is we hollowed out American innovators. And so I think one way to scale up those efforts is to get real tough on global intellectual property protection.

It looks like China is attempting to do the same thing now with electric vehicles. Yeah, well, of course they would. It worked with solar. Did you expect them to rob the larder successfully and then never come back? I think in a lot of ways our trade policy is going to be far more instructive on global climate change efforts then trying to unilaterally disarm the American economy through a Green New Deal that is neither an action plan nor realistic.

What do you think about carbon pricing? Some Republicans say this is consistent with conservative principles. Let me for the sake of argument grant that premise that trading on the marketplace is generally a conservative concept. Just because something is conservative doesn’t always mean that it will work because here we have substantial externalities. If we began carbon pricing in the United States, I see no evidence that anyone in the world would copy that. And so I don’t think that that would create a mood for innovation here because I think the pollution would just be exported.

What’s your sense of how other Republicans might be shifting their views on climate? I mean we can believe the climate deniers or we can believe our eyes. We have to calculate different elevations for bridges because of rising sea levels. We have to plan for climate resiliency in our state budget, because we have sunny day floods. I don’t think we enjoy the luxury of an academic debate about whether or not climate change is happening.

What I’m getting at is, how do you pull the party more to your perspective? The Green New Deal is not a plan and it’s not realistic, but it’s also currently unopposed in the marketplace of ideas around climate change. Critics of the Green New Deal like myself should be challenged to present a “Green Real Deal.” You know, a plan that embraces the innovation opportunity in our country that’s realistic about the challenges we face globally and then leans hard into the science of clean energy. And I’ve had some very productive conversations with Republican and Democrat colleagues about what bills have been introduced in the last congress and in this Congress that would constitute a Green Real Deal. And it’s my hope that Republicans will be out there in the marketplace of ideas with a plan we can stand behind. (Gaetz is currently working on legislation called the “Green Real Deal.”)

Do you think Trump has any interest in this? I know that there are senior officials in the White House that understand the risk associated with climate change. And I think it’s incumbent upon the Congress to legislate and if we’re able to put together some ideas that don’t harm the American economy, but that jumpstart some real solutions around climate change, I’d be hopeful that I’m able to get an audience with the president on those ideas.

Progressives often argue that the reason Republicans aren’t interested in climate change is because they’re all bought off by fossil fuel companies. What’s your sense of that? People engaged in energy exploration have donated substantial sums of money to my campaign. And my sense is that when people donate to me, they’re buying into my agenda. I’m not buying into theirs, but I can’t speak for my colleagues.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Geoff Dembicki is the author of Are We Screwed? How a New Generation Is Fighting to Survive Climate Change. Follow him on Twitter.

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[dorisphamus]

Prosecuting Boris Johnson over “Brexit lies” would be an ill-conceived publicity stunt

A 28 year old Norfolk man called Marcus J Ball is trying to bring a crowd-funded private prosecution against Boris Johnson. He says that Mr Johnson lied while campaigning for the Leave campaign in the Referendum. Since he was at the time an MP (and until 9th May 2016 also Mayor of London) he was the holder of a public office. Mr Ball believes that lies told in the campaign mean that he has committed the offence of “misconduct in public office,” a serious criminal offence carrying an unlimited fine and potentially life imprisonment.

Ball: Private Prosecutor

You can see his video here, in which he introduces himself as a “private prosecutor” and explains his case in more detail. Some will find it inspiring and rush to contribute to his prosecution fund. Others – and not just Boris Johnson political supporters – may be somewhat irritated by Mr Ball’s rather gloating tone, which they may find rather unseemly in a prosecutor.

He estimates the case will cost £2M.

Mr Ball has left East Anglia and moved to London in order to pursue his dream. His mission, he says is:

“… to set a legal precedent in the UK common law that prevents political leaders from lying to the public in future.”

So far, he says has raised over £145,000. Some of this is used to pay himself a salary, some has been used to pay the lawyers: one firm of solicitors and two Queen’s Counsel, to advise him. The first, David Perry QC, advised him that his case did not stand much chance, so he asked for a second opinion from another, Lewis Power QC, who has, apparently, advised that “there are reasonable prospects for convicting Boris Johnson.”

Johnson

However clever his arguments, and he has put together a superficially persausive case, I don’t think for a moment that he will succeed, and more importantly I think he is seriously wrong to bring the case at all.

To explain why, we need to look at the case and the law in more detail.

First, an outline of the facts, as Mr Ball sees them.

Boris Johnson held public office during the referendum campaign which began on 15th April 2016. He was Mayor of London until 9th May, and an MP throughout the whole period. There is no question that these were “public offices.”

Next, Mr Ball says he lied during the campaign. With the instincts of a good prosecutor he is concentrating on the simple and memorable statement that “we send £350M a week to the EU.” It was not true, he says, because it failed to take account of the “Fontainbleau abatement,” the agreement whereby Britain’s notional gross annual payment of £18B (or about £350M a week) was reduced by £5B to £13B (about £250M a week). Importantly, says Mr Ball, the £5M was not a sum sent back from Brussels (a rebate), it was never sent at all (an abatement). What’s more, given the number of times the £350M figure was corrected, Mr Johnson must have known it was not true. So it was, he says, a plain and simple lie to say that £350M a week was sent to the EU.

Clearly it was a lie about a very important issue, and dishonesty of that sort by someone holding public office constitutes, he says, the offence of “misconduct in public office.”

These are uncharted legal waters. I am not aware of any case in the democratic world in which a politician has faced prosecution for lying about a matter of public policy, although plenty have done so.

So we need to have a more careful look at the law.

Misconduct in public office is a common law offence. That means its ingredients are not set out in any Act of Parliament, they must be deduced from case-law. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. There are still quite a few common law crimes, notably murder, some types of manslaughter and perverting the course of justice. It does not necessarily mean that their definition is any less clear than that of statutory crimes.

Nevertheless, it has not received anything like the attention from the higher courts that crimes like murder have done. Indeed, as a recent Law Commission consultation paper pointed out, the offence “fell largely into disuse between the late 18th century and the beginning of the 21st.” The result is that the ambit and reach of the offence are distinctly fuzzy around the edges. As the Law Commission puts it:

“The offence is widely considered to be ill-defined and has been subject to recent criticism by the Government, the Court of Appeal, the press and legal academics.”

That said, it has received quite a lot of attention in recent years (it was, for example, much used, with results that can politely be called mixed, in the Operation Elveden trials arising out of allegedly corrupt relationships between News International journalists and police officers). Its scope was considered in most detail in a case unmemorably called Attorney-General’s reference (No.3 of 2003) [2004] EWCA Crim. 868.

The facts of the Attorney-General’s reference were far removed from an allegation of a politician lying. They arose out of an allegation that police officers had failed in their public duty by “wilfully failing to take reasonable and proper care of an arrested person in police custody.” In fact the arrested person had died whilst in custody and the officers had also faced a manslaughter charge. The trial judge had ruled that they had no case to answer on either charge, but the Attorney-General brought the case before the Court of Appeal to ask for a more detailed and authoritative ruling on what the crime of misconduct in public office actually entailed. Somewhat reluctantly – because judges are generally unwilling to give broader rulings than demanded by the facts of the actual case they are considering – the Court agreed to give it. It is the closest we now have to an exhaustive definition of the law on misconduct in public office, although as with any authority it has to be understood against the background of the facts of the case itself.

After ranging over case-law going back to the sixteenth century (since you ask, Crouther’s case (1599) 2 Hawk PC 116 where a constable was indicted for “failing to make a hue and cry after notice of a burglary committed in the night,” a case which ought to terrify Police Commissioners who decree that scarce police resources are better devoted to logging online insults than making a hue and cry after burglars), the Court came up with the following definition:

The offence is committed when

“1. A public officer acting as such

2. wilfully neglects to perform his duty and/or wilfully misconducts himself

3. To such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder

4. without reasonable excuse or justification.”

So now we can see the legal outlines of Mr Ball’s case. There is no doubt that Mr Johnson was a public officer, if not as a Mayor then as an MP. If he wilfully told a lie that was surely misconduct, and the public should be able to trust their political leaders not to lie, particularly about something as important as leaving the EU. If it was in fact a lie, it is hard to see any reasonable excuse or justification for it.

Mr Ball has done a great deal of research, and his 97 page Brexit Justice Case Summary contains a comprehensive summary of the law, as well as a great deal of detail about (for example) when Mr Johnson repeated the £350M assertion, why it was not true and why he must have known it was not true. Once you get into the details things don’t appear quite so simple. I can’t say, for example, that I would much relish explaining to a jury the difference between a “rebate” and an “abatement,” or the accounting practice that involves notional sums of money being first included in and then deducted from EU budgets because of an agreement made by Mrs Thatcher decades earlier. It is all a long way from bodily fluids and fingerprints, but fortunately Mr Ball is unlikely to instruct me, even as the second of the two junior counsel that he thinks his case requires. On the face of it he has put together a pretty convincing argument that the £350M per week statement was intentionally misleading, if not an outright lie.

However, it is of course not enough merely to show that a person lied while holding a public office. He must also have lied while “acting as” an office holder. If, for example, Mr Johnson were to have lied to his wife about his whereabouts that would be a lie as an individual, not as an MP.

This requirement takes Mr Ball into more difficult territory. Mr Johnson was an MP while campaigning, but it was not his position as an MP or Mayor that enabled him to campaign. People who were not MPs were also campaigning during the referendum. Nor was he under any legal duty to campaign. These are significant points when the offence has often been explained in terms either of not carrying out or breaching a public duty imposed by the office. Mr Ball deals with the point in great detail in his 97 page document, largely because it seems to be an area on which he disagreed with Mr Perry’s advice (from which he quotes in part, while asserting “privilege” in respect of other parts). He points out, for example, that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority paid expenses to MPs to reimburse them for travelling on referendum related business, an indication he argues, that an MP would have been acting “as a public officer” when campaigning. On the other hand IPSA’s discretionary practice cannot possibly be determinative of a question of law.

It is perhaps no coincidence that there has not – sa far as I am aware – been a single prosecution over a politician lying about a matter of public policy in an election campaign. For hundreds of years it never occurred to anyone that the offence of misconduct in public office might apply to such cases. In fact, the courts have rightly gone out of their way to protect freedom of speech during elections. That is not to say the law could not develop to encompass such behaviour, the common law can be very flexible, but it would unquestionably be a radical new departure.

It would also be a departure in a new and profoundly unwelcome direction. Even before the Human Rights Act imposed a positive duty on courts to have regard to freedom of expression, the general direction of the criminal law during living memory has not been to extend but to restrict the ambit of speech crimes. Although plenty still exist, and although some “hate crimes” have been created by Parliament, over the last fifty years antique and common law criminal restrictions on freedom of speech have either ceased to be used or have been abolished. Obscene publications and displays, for example, are very rarely prosecuted now, unless they involve children. Lady Chatterley saw to that. Blasphemy and its unlovely twin blasphemous libel had a brief revival in the hands of Mary Whitehouse and her counsel, the sinister John Smyth (during the period he was prosecuting Gay News over a poem he was getting his kicks from caning evangelical Wykehamists in his garden shed), before being abolished by S.79 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. Criminal, obscene and seditious libel, were despatched by S.73 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. In S.33 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 abolished the absurd offence of “scandalising the court” in England and Wales (it meant being rude about a judge), although it may linger on, I’m not quite sure, under the quaint description of “murmuring the judges” in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Mr Ball wants to develop the law in the opposite direction and to bring the criminal law into the very centre of political debate.

If the law was as Mr Ball believes it to be, it would mean every MP’s speech, and every slogan in a political campaign, would potentially be a matter for the police to investigate; indeed, they might be accused of “misconduct in public office” if they failed to do so. It would have a chilling effect on debate: get a fact wrong and your opponent will demand your arrest, and even if the police refuse, you will run the risk that a single issue activist will bring a private prosecution. Fanatics for one cause or another would be delighted to use the criminal law, or the threat of it, to silence their political opponents. In the battle for crowd-funding, the justice of a particular case will matter less than its popularity, or perhaps more to the point the ability of the prosecutor to mobilise his or her supporters on social media.

Those most in the firing line would not necessarily be minorities – after all Boris Johnson was in the majority – but inevitably it will be those promoting minority opinions who are most likely to be targeted.

What Mr Ball, with respect, does not seem to have appreciated is that a politician lying in a public debate about a matter of public policy is in no way comparable to the types of cases that have, until now, been understood to be covered by the offence. Almost without exception, office holders prosecuted for misconduct have done things secretly or at the very least not publicly. Part of the essence of the offence in practice has been either the private neglect to perform an official duty or the covert abuse of an official position for a personal or improper motive.

Politicians debating policy, on the other hand, are not doing anything private or covert or underhand. By definition they are making their points – good or bad, honest or dishonest – publicly, where they are scrutinised by their opponents. Of course they are constrained by law to some extent: the civil law of defamation, for example, and the criminal law of the Public Order Act. Mr Ball himself refers to S.106 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, which makes it “an illegal practice” to make “any false statement of fact in relation to [a] candidate’s personal character or conduct” if done for the purpose of influencing the election; but that is a tightly restricted, non-imprisonable, statutory offence, not a general prohibition on dishonest statements in debate. The law dates from 1895 and there are very good reasons why Parliament chose to restrict its scope to statements of a personal nature, as explained by Thomas LCJ in R. (on the application of Woolas) v. Parliamentary Election Court [2010] EWHC 3169 :

“It was as self evident in 1895 as it is today, given the practical experience of politics in a democracy, that unfounded allegations will be made about the political position of candidates in an election. The statutory language makes it clear that Parliament plainly did not intend the 1895 Act to apply to such statements; it trusted the good sense of the electorate to discount them.”

Of course politicians ought not to lie, but the place to refute dishonest political arguments is in debate, not in a police station interview under caution, or in the Crown Court years later. Indeed, the very idea that political arguments should be “policed” by the state is alarming.

In fact, of course, the £350M claim was refuted in the referendum campaign as often as it was made. The Remain campaign and numerous journalists again and again pointed out that it was false and explained why.

If Mr Ball were correct then Boris’s crime would be one of arbitrary and inconsistent application. It would catch some politicians but not others in some campaigns but not others. It would extend an already difficult law into a new area and in doing so it would create a legal dogs’ dinner.

The referendum campaign, for example, was unusual for political campaigns because Mr Johnson remained an MP and thus an office holder throughout; in an ordinary election campaign Parliament has been dissolved and there are no longer any MPs. Thus, if Mr Ball is correct, a lie told in a referendum campaign could be a crime while the same lie told in an election campaign would not be.

In an ordinary election other anomalies would exist. Although MPs cease to hold office when Parliament is dissolved, ministers continue to do so. Thus, in an election campaign the same statement might land one candidate in gaol (if he or she were a minister) but could be said perfectly lawfully by others. If an election is held next month Mr Johnson – who would no longer be an MP – would be free to lie through his teeth (and would be certain of being listened to), while a junior minister in the Department of Trade and Industry of whom no-one has ever heard could be arrested for saying exactly the same thing. The fact that a suggested interpretation of the law would have an arbitrary and capricious effect is a good argument for assuming that the interpretation is wrong.

Of course it could be said that this law already creates anomalies. That is true, and as the Law Commission has recently said:

“The offence is widely considered to be ill-defined and has been subject to recent criticism by the Government, the Court of Appeal, the press and legal academics.”

That it is already a bad law is not an argument for developing it to make it even worse. It is, if anything, an argument for preventing its further extension.

Mr Ball says he wants to bring about “a beginning to the end of lying in politics.” Like a youthful Nicholas Parsons he says he wants to do so not just in Britain, but “to other common law jurisdictions around the world.” Relying, a little ironically given his mission to end dishonesty in politics, on the CIA World Factbook he suggests that convicting Boris could effect the laws of a whole string of countries, including Australia, India and the United States as well as the frigid and virtually uninhabited atoll of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and the bleak Pacific prison island of Nauru.

Gytviken, South Georgia Picture Gregory “Slobirdr” Smith

I think it is very doubtful that the reverberations of his crowd-funded prosecution will ever effect the law of South Georgia, let alone that of the United States.

Private prosecutions are still unusual in English law,where most prosecutions are brought by the Crown Prosecution Service. They are open to abuse for many reasons, one being that private prosecutors often lack the objectivity necessary to handle the great responsibility that bringing a prosecution entails. Judging by his video, for all his cleverness, objectivity may be an attribute that Mr Ball lacks. Fortunately there is a well-established procedure for the Director of Public Prosecutions to take over and discontinue a private prosecution, either if there is no reasonable prospect of conviction, or if prosecution is not in the public interest. Should Mr Ball decide to start this prosecution one of the first things the new DPP, Max Hill QC, should do after he takes up his position next month is to take it over and close it down. It is an ill-conceived publicity stunt and an abuse of the criminal law.

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from All About Law http://barristerblogger.com/2018/09/14/prosecuting-boris-johnson-over-brexit-lies-would-be-an-ill-conceived-publicity-stunt/