#statistical study of elections

[learnwithmearticles]

French Politics Update

Since the 2024 French elections earlier this year, we left off with a more balanced National Assembly. Left-wing politicians became the highest population at 188 seats with centrist Emmanuel Macron still the president. The centrist party is not far behind with 161 seats and the right-wing party with 142.

Many networks at the time discussed the expectation of a hung parliament, as no one party holds the 289-seat majority.

Some things stay the same. In July, the National Assembly voted to keep centrist party member Yaël Braun-Pivet as speaker, winning by 13 votes. Additionally, many people have called for Macron to step down as President, but he will likely stay for the rest of his term until 2027. 

New PM

On the other hand, there have been major changes. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal resigned in July, and was replaced by Michel Barnier in September. He is a conservative, the leader of the 2016-2019 Brexit negotiation, and his appointment was met with much criticism from the left-wing parties.

Days after his appointment, over 100,000 people participated in protests across France. Many people view President Macron’s PM choice as disruptive to democracy, as the PM is most often chosen from the dominant National Assembly party.

Macron states that he made this choice based on the belief that Barnier seemed the most capable of dealing with political deadlocks, as is expected of the Parliament with no party holding majority.

I have to wonder, though, if this was also out of spite for the left-wing parties winning more seats than his centrist party. Barnier’s politics are expected to rely on joint support from the centrist and conservative parties. If the right or center opposes him on anything, he almost certainly will face loss after loss with his proposed policies. Will this lead France backward after the left finally gained some political power?

Barnier’s Address

Barnier delivered his first parliamentary address on Tuesday, October 1st. Summarily, he emphasized the hazard of French finances and debts, and the environment.

France is more than 3 trillion euros in public and environmental debt, which Barnier addresses first. His goal is to bring the deficit down from 6% of the national GDP to 5% in 2025, with the goal of under 3% by 2029.

His outline for achieving this is reducing spending, being more efficient in government spending (addressing corruption and unjustified spending), and taxes. He phrases higher taxes as a temporary measure, and states that large companies as well as the richest and wealthiest French people will be asked for exceptional contributions.

Barnier also addresses environmental debt. He plans to continue reducing GHG emissions, and for France to be more active in the EU and in the Paris Agreements, which push for countries to collectively act against climate change. He also mentions encouraging industry transitions in energy and recycling, encouraging nuclear energy development, and developing renewable resources of energy more, like biofuels and solar energy.

He has also conceived of a large national conference to act on the matter of water, the scarcity of which is an imminent issue for France.

Additionally, he plans to propose a yearly day of citizens consultations. In his idea, doors will be open for citizens for people of all levels of government to ask questions and start discussions and debates on various topics.

Another noteworthy statement from Barnier is that the pension reform bill voted on in 2023 might have to be changed, which received a loud reply from the audience.

As someone living in a country where an entire political party is built on denying factual evidence and realities, it is surprising to hear someone who does not deny climate change, and calls for equitable taxes to address debt.

About 30 minutes into his address, though, New Caledonia comes up. This is more in line with expectations of conservatives. New Caledonia is still a colonized territory of France, and a recent bill from Macron was going to disadvantage native Kanak people for the advancement of French loyalists on the archipelago. After fatal protests, the bill has been suspended before ratification, likely to be readdressed in 2025.

Also in conservative spirit, Barnier calls for stricter immigration policies in effort to meet “integration objectives”. France faces a cost-of-living crisis and an affordable housing shortage that has buttressed the right’s stance on needing stricter border measures.

Le Pen Trial

Also straining politics, especially for right-wing support, is recent news about popular right-wing figure Marine Le Pen.

On September 30th, Le Pen faced charges of embezzling European Parliament money. The right-wing party Rassemblement National is accused of filing false employee records in order to improperly use funds to pay members of the party. Le Pen is one of many senior party members involved in the alleged embezzlement.

This trial is expected to go on for seven to nine weeks, so the final outcome is some time away. But for now we can expect this will have negative impacts if Le Pen still vies for presidential election in 2027. It will likely also decrease citizen’s trust in the conservative party’s ability to make responsible economic decisions.

If found guilty, Le Pen and the other defendants could face up to ten years in prison and lose the eligibility to run for office.

After the 2024 shock vote instigated by President Macron, the French National assembly gained a left-leaning majority, though not enough for an automatic 289-vote majority. In most cases, this would mean a left-wing Prime Minister as well as a left-wing president, though that’s because the presidential vote is usually shortly after that of the national assembly.

Contrarily, Macron went with a conservative candidate that he believed to be stronger for the job. This increases the political unrest in the country, and increases the likelihood of delays and blockages in legislation development.

While the conservative Prime Minister has stated many intentions that people in the U.S.A. might call left-leaning, regarding climate change and tax targets, his appointment has upset many. His views on immigration, especially, contrast with most left-wing groups who want integration and safety for others. Overall, this decision from Macron calls into question his loyalty and dedication to the wants of the French people.

Additional Resources

1. New Prime Minister

2. Barnier on Borrowed Time

3. Le Pen on Trial

4. Barnier Address

5. Barnier Address Summary

[alyosita]

(muttering to myself) i hate research deadlines i hate research deadlines i need gay sex i hate research deadlines need gay sex

[catboybiologist]

Hate to be the annoying commie but the elections never mattered.

That's just statistically true, a study from princeton found near 0 correlation between the wants of the majority of the population and policy outcome.

It's just been beneficial for the ruling class to convince the average liberal that they have some sort of choice, and now they no longer care much about it.

Sure, trump is more openly fascist, but obama bombed Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia. Biden helped spark the war in Ukraine.

Both parties serve the same interests.

Idk like, you're way closer to realizing the lie of western democracy than the average liberal, you just need to abandon the notion you ever had any choice. It's not getting worse, it's been like this all along.

That's not what I meant. This is an independent axis of what I was talking about.

What I'm talking about is that Trump specifically has been flagrantly acting as if he doesn't give a shit about public approval anymore, which, combined with what is slowly coming out about possible election rigging, is making me slowly think that something is deeply wrong with the election system. I wasn't talking about what you're saying at all.

To respond to your point, though:

"both party" doomerism is a horrible mentality and tbh makes me think you're shielded from the effects of one party over the next. Fuck the democrats, of course they're not serving my interest... But they're damage control. At the very least. Were we headed for war with Iran no matter what? Yeah. Probably. I would've fucking hated it not matter what. Do I want someone with the mental capacity of an infant trying to hit a button on its new shiny toy with his finger over the nuclear button? God fucking no.

Saying "all sides are bad it's the ruling class all the way" is true, but do NOT use it as an excuse for political ignorance. Trump organized an order for an airstrike, without congressional approval, likely coordinating with Netanyahu over any government officials, with flagrant disregard for geopolitical effects, good or bad for anyone involved. If you can't accept the basic idea of "the American empire is horrible but Trump is uniquely negligent in top of that" then you just seem politically illiterate.

[yourreddancer]

Heather Cox Richardson 11.15.24

One of President-elect Trump’s campaign pledges was to eliminate the Department of Education. He claimed that the department pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” He promised to “return” education to the states. 

In fact, the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do. The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.

It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, including setting the rules under which colleges and universities can participate. But what really upsets the radical right is that the Department of Education is in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding, a policy Congress set in 1975 with an act now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was before Congress created the department.

The Department of Education became a stand-alone department in May 1980 under Democratic president Jimmy Carter, when Congress split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two departments: the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education. 

A Republican-dominated Congress established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of a broad attempt to improve the nation’s schools and Americans’ well-being in the flourishing post–World War II economy. When the Soviet Union beat the United States into space by sending up the first  Sputnik satellite in 1957, lawmakers concerned that American children were falling behind put more money and effort into educating the country’s youth, especially in math and science. 

But support for federal oversight of education took a devastating hit after the Supreme Court, headed by Eisenhower appointee Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional in the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. 

Immediately, white southern lawmakers launched a campaign of what they called “massive resistance” to integration. Some Virginia counties closed their public schools. Other school districts took funds from integrated public schools and used a grant system to redistribute those funds to segregated private schools. Then, Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that declared prayer in schools unconstitutional cemented the decision of white evangelicals to leave the public schools, convinced that public schools were leading their children to perdition.

In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.

After Reagan’s election, his secretary of education commissioned a study of the nation’s public schools, starting with the conviction that there was a “widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The resulting report, titled “A Nation at Risk,” announced that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

Although a later study commissioned in 1990 by the Secretary of Energy found the data in the original report did not support the report’s conclusions, Reagan nonetheless used the report in his day to justify school privatization. He vowed after the report’s release that he would “continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers, educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of Education. Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”

The rise of white evangelism and its marriage to Republican politics fed the right-wing conviction that public education no longer served “family values” and that parents had been cut out of their children’s education. Christians began to educate their children at home, believing that public schools were indoctrinating their children with secular values. 

When he took office in 2017, Trump rewarded those evangelicals who had supported his candidacy by putting right-wing evangelical activist Betsy DeVos in charge of the Education Department. She called for eliminating the department—until she used its funding power to try to keep schools open during the covid pandemic—and asked for massive cuts in education spending.

Rather than funding public schools, DeVos called instead for tax money to be spent on education vouchers, which distribute tax money to parents to spend for education as they see fit. This system starves the public schools and subsidizes wealthy families whose children are already in private schools. DeVos also rolled back civil rights protections for students of color and LGBTQ+ students but increased protections for students accused of sexual assault. 

In 2019, the 1619 Project, published by the New York Times Magazine on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans at Jamestown in Virginia Colony, argued that the true history of the United States began in 1619, establishing the roots of the country in the enslavement of Black Americans. That, combined with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, prompted Trump to commission the 1776 Project, which rooted the country in its original patriotic ideals and insisted that any moments in which it had fallen away from those ideals were quickly corrected. He also moved to ban diversity training in federal agencies. 

When Trump lost the 2020 election, his loyalists turned to undermining the public schools to destroy what they considered an illegitimate focus on race and gender that was corrupting children. In January 2021, Republican activists formed Moms for Liberty, which called itself a parental rights organization and began to demand the banning of LGBTQ+ books from school libraries. Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo engineered a national panic over the false idea that public school educators were teaching their students critical race theory, a theory taught as an elective in law school to explain why desegregation laws had not ended racial discrimination. 

After January 2021, 44 legislatures began to consider laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or to limit how teachers could talk about racism and sexism, saying that existing curricula caused white children to feel guilty.

When the Biden administration expanded the protections enforced by the Department of Education to include LGBTQ+ students, Trump turned to focusing on the idea that transgender students were playing high-school sports despite the restrictions on that practice in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.” 

During the 2024 political campaign, Trump brought the longstanding theme of public schools as dangerous sites of indoctrination to a ridiculous conclusion, repeatedly insisting that public schools were performing gender-transition surgery on students. But that cartoonish exaggeration spoke to voters who had come to see the equal rights protected by the Department of Education as an assault on their own identity. That position leads directly to the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.

But that might not work out as right-wing Americans imagine. As Morning Joe economic analyst Steven Rattner notes, for all that Republicans embrace the attacks on public education, Republican-dominated states receive significantly more federal money for education than Democratic-dominated states do, although the Democratic states contribute significantly more tax dollars. 

There is a bigger game afoot, though, than the current attack on the Department of Education. As Thomas Jefferson recognized, education is fundamental to democracy, because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.

In 1786, Jefferson wrote to a colleague about public education: “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness…. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [the evils of “kings, nobles and priests”], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”

[themiddleofmichigan]

As a math major, I am simply enchanted by the idea of Neil Josten, Math Major. Please enjoy this collection of headcanons I came up with to cope with studying mathematics.

Neil is a pure math guy. There are two big camps of mathematics: pure and applied. Applied math is about applying math to other fields (physics, engineering, finance, etc.), while pure math is like math for the sake of doing math (read: a lot less employable). Neil picking the math major because he's good at math and kind of likes it is a very Pure Math thing to do.

Neil has a whiteboard, possibly multiple whiteboards. Whiteboards are the ultimate tool of mathematics. Sometimes Neil gets stuck on a problem for hours; hunched over his mini whiteboard, working through it over and over again. His fingers get covered in the expo marker residue and it leaves a black mark when he scratches his nose. Andrew huffs that he looks like a chimney sweep and rubs it off with his sleeve (he absolutely does NOT find it adorable, shut up, Nicky). Also, around exams Neil will drag Andrew to the library so he can do his practice problems on the Big Whiteboards. The other people in the library stare at them because this little ginger is filling multiple whiteboards with weird symbols and greek letters; Neil doesn't notice because he's oblivious, Andrew notices and it makes him a smug bf.

One time one of the Foxes asks him for help with their statistics homework and he gives it a shot, because how different could it be? They both quickly find out that he knows absolutely nothing about statistics. "What IS that?" "That's a matrix, it has the variances in it." "Well then why does it have an apostrophe by it?" "That means you flip it around." "That's TRANSPOSING and you notate it with a T" "Aren't you supposed to be some kind of math genius? Shouldn't you know how to do this?" "This isn't math, this is blasphemy."

Aaron has to take calculus for the MCAT and puts it off for as long as possible because he hates math. His TA for the course sucks and he struggles through it for weeks before Katelyn manages to convince him to ask Neil for help. Neil pretends to be annoyed, but he's secretly kind of looking forward to it because calculus is fun and it's nice to do math you already know for a change. When you're an upperclassman in a math degree, though, your brain gets warped by all the theoretical math, and it's hard to get into the mindset to teach something like Calc I. This leads to semiregular hostile tutoring sessions in the dorm, we're talking real Dad Trying to Help You With Your Math Homework at the Kitchen Table type energy. "BUT HOW DID YOU KNOW TO DO THAT?!" "It's a vector space, Aaron, I don't see what you're not understanding here." "A vector WHAT" Andrew chain smokes through these. He has to start leaving the dorm because he's pretty sure the calculus is going to drive him to lung cancer.

The statistics incident gives Neil a totally reasonable grudge against statistics. He eventually gives it up, but only so he can take an elective about sports statistics, because he has exy brain worms.

[dreamscapesofimagination]

I Can't Stop You From Running

Reminder: Chapter 1 of "The Good, The Bad, The Dirty" is out on Wattpad today! It is a detroit:become human fanfiction with Connor x human reader. You don't really need to know the game to check it out, please just give it a chance, DBH is my FAVORITE game of all time and I adore connor! was listening to Save My Soul by Jonah Kagen while writing this! I've been very busy and have also bren struggling mentally. I'm fine, I've had MDD and panic disorder for years and have a great support system, great meds, and have learned to handle them well. Due to the election results and now the inauguration I spiraled a bit and so all my extra energy went into getting myself back on track. Hoping to post more frequently!

Inspired by: the hands that cradled your face and tilted it upwards to kiss your forehead are soaked in unfathomable quantities of blood.

I don't know where the original is from, but it inspired me as I imagine even when displaying softness Alan can't help but think of what he's done.

--------------

You weren't sure why you had done it.

Your finger had clicked the 'call' button before your brain had slowed down enough to process what you were doing.

The images from your dream- your nightmare- rushed through your head, a kicked dog chasing its own tail again. And again. And again.

The ringing only caused your heart to hammer faster, and you quickly hit the end button.

Stupid, of course he wouldn't answer. It was two am, he was sleeping.

Your eyes focused on the shadows dancing through the window. Sleep was far from your mind, closer to an anxiety attack than sweet dreams.

What would they do when you became a Kyklos? Would they imprison you, study you? You figured Yuri would have few qualms about it, your only comfort being that Jiro seemed to like you enough to care.

And how would they react? Would they mourn? Would they move on, chalk you up as another casualty to be recorded as a statistic, lumped in with all the others studied in Anomalous Epidemiology?

A spike of cold fear stabbed through you as your phone rang.

You scrambled, grabbing it and answering.

"Hello?" Breath rushed from your body at the sound of Alan's voice.

"Hi, um. Sorry if I woke you, I just..." you squeezed your eyes shut in embarrassment, "I had a bad dream and uh. I just... needed to hear someone's voice."

A beat of silence had a whole new type of anxiety clawing up your throat. What the fuck were you doing?

"I was up anyway, couldn't sleep..." Alan's voice trailed off for a moment as if he were searching for something to say.

"I'm doing some paperwork. If you want you could come here?" his voice peaked in uncertaintly.

You found yourself nodding, though he couldn't see you.

"Yeah, I think I'd like that."

And so a routine was set. When you had a nightmare, you would call Alan. You discovered he seemed to sleep very little. He was doing paperwork, working out, working on a car, or watching old movies when you called.

He never pressed. Never asked you to tell him what terrors were haunting your sleep. Just quietly accepted your presence, allowed you the space to feel better. Before you knew it, you started falling asleep curled up on an old chair he had in his room.

He never pressed, never touched you. His presence was quiet, reliable- safe.

This night you were sat beside him as some old american movie played on the screen before you.

Tonight it was harder to shake the dread that had woken you.

You could sense the concern from all around you. You could see the paleness to your face, the dark circles beneath your eyes, the bitten cuticles, limp hair. Anyone who saw you would know you hadn't been sleeping much.

You worried the skin of your lower lip, gaze going through the television and beyond.

Alan could tell you were not there beside him.

"I get them too."

His voice was like a lighthouse, leading you safely from the storm of your thoughts, back to the safe harbour that was the space beside him.

You blinked at him, "what?"

He glanced at you before turning his gaze back to the tv.

"Nightmares. Most nights they wake me up. Hard to sleep when I know that I'll have one."

Your eyes dropped to your hands. Silence lapsed.

And then-

"I think I'm seeing what's going to happen to me."

Alan turned his head to watch you carefully.

"What do you mean?"

"I feel myself change in the dreams. I feel the most unimaginable pain, and before I know it I'm no longer in control of myself. It's like-" your voice cracked, tears falling before you had realized they had gathered in your eyes, "-it's like my soul is paralyzed, like my body was hijacked. I see the people I care about staring, screaming. And then I see their corpses. And I know, I know that I did it. I killed them."

Your chest heaved a sob as Alan stared at you.

And then you felt him shift.

He tentatively pulled you toward himself, wrapping you up in his arms, body stiff against you as if he was unsure what he was doing.

You gripped his shirt. allowing yourself to break apart. Weeks of little sleep and intense fear had made you fragile, and here you were, falling to pieces.

Feeling safe to do so because you knew Alan was there, and Alan was good at fixing things. He would piece you together again.

He held you as you cried. He never said it would be okay. He didn't speak.

After that night, much of your time was spent at Vagastrom. Other students noticed that something was different between you and the captain. Whispers sprang up, and try as you might, it was hard to deny that the air between you was different. Despite the way you both spent much of the night together, and how once quiet comraderie had become quiet talks about anything and everything (though you both avoided bringing up your nightmares again)- you would not admit how you felt, too afraid to lose the fragile friendship you had built, to scare Alan away.

You had gotten pretty good at ignoring the way your heart hammered everytime you saw Alan, as if it were trying to break free from your chest and fly to his hands, knowing it would be safe with him. Knowing it was his.

There wasn't enough time for that, anyway. The way things were going, your curse would not be lifted. Getting all of the ghouls to cooperate was akin to herding cats- though even that would be easier given the intelligence of the campus cats.

It was hard to blame them. They each had their own pasts, and had their own ambitions. You found it odd that your fate had been placed in their hands anyway- were the faculty incapable of figuring this out? More and more you expected that saving you was not the goal of Darkwick, as if they had a vested interest in you becoming a Kyklos.

You turned to your side, trying to force the thought from your mind.

Tonight, Alan had to go on a mission. You had been assigned to assist Yuri in an experiment- which had turned into Yuri ordering you and Jiro to collect some specimen from Jabberwock (much to the dismay of Haru, though he seemed a bit happier when Jiro mentioned that they just needed a blood sample, and had no intention of harming the creature). By the end of the day you were tired, irate, and thinking about how much you would like to wring Yuri's neck. You had looked forward to crawling into bed and sleeping, nightmares be damned.

And yet, sleep would not come.

Your fingers twiddled at a loose string on your blanket as you stared into the room, begging your brain to shut down for the night.

Groaning, you sat up, accepting that you were unlikely to sleep for the forseable future. You padded down the stairs, deciding that maybe a cup of tea would help your mind quiet.

Your eyes stared listlessly at the electric kettle as it boiled.

A knock at the door broke your disassociation, a startled yelp leaving your lips before your heart settled.

With quiet steps you krept to the door, opening it and gasping as you took in the ghoul before you.

Alan was disheveled, and covered in blood. Blood that you assumed was not his due to the lack of any major visible wounds.

He stared at you for a moment, jaw working as if he were trying to say something, eyes wide like a frightened animal.

Your hand grasped his, feeling the blood stain as you pulled him inside.

He put up no resistance, seeming to deflate once he crossed the threshold.

Wordlessly, you led him to the bathroom. You unbuttoned his vest, tossing the stained article into the tub before doing the same with his shirt.

You turned the sink on, wetting a cloth once it was warm and beginning to run it over his bloodied knuckles.

All the while, Alan watched. Your only sign that he was coming back to himself was the slowing of his breaths.

And finally, "I don't deserve you."

It was quiet, as if to himself.

You paused, watching him carefully, holding still as if he would dart at any moment, sink into himself and draw away from you.

His eyes finally rose to you, meeting your gaze with his own, empty devastation behind lifeless amber eyes.

"I'm... I'm not good," he choked out, staring at you, unblinking.

"All I can do is hurt," Alan shifted to move away from you, pull his hands away.

You tightened your grip, and the ghoul froze, as if he didn't have the strength to pull away.

Showing you how little he actually wanted to leave.

It was the first time you had seen Alan look so fragile, as if he would crumble at the slightest brush of wind. Fall apart at your voice.

"Alan," your voice was gentle, carefully drawing him back, back to you, away from the doubts that plagued him.

"You are the one who comforted me every night, who never expected me to be okay or to talk about what's going on," your hands moved to cradle his face, thumbs trailing over his cheekbones.

His eyes fluttered closed, savoring your touch.

"I-" before Alan could speak, you brushed your lips against his, effectively stealing his breath as his eyes flew open, staring at you.

And then he surged forward, pressing his lips to yours in a desperate kiss.

You felt dampness on your cheeks. unsure if it was from your tears or his.

There you sat, clinging to one another as if you'd drift apart otherwise, lost in the space of infinite loneliness.

[eybefioro]

I have many conflicting feelings about women's day. Not because of the meaning and the discussion, of course, but about how people "celebrate" it. I'm sorry, but even if I ignore the fact that I am trans (mostly closeted but alas), I don't wanna be congratulated on being a woman.

I'm not saying that celebrating being a woman is bad. It is very good in fact, and a way of rebelling too – I've seen enough videos of gender reveals where the dad is mad the baby is not a "boy" to know how much just being a woman is still frowned upon. What bothers me is that the celebration feels imposed, not coming from the women, and hiding the real meaning of this day, ofuscating the discussions we should be having.

Some depressing things from Brasil, my country (cw: there will be statistics about violence, rape and assassinations):

Women could only vote and be voted for in 1932. This is yesterday. Women still didn't have the same political rights and duties as men until 1965. Funny(sad) thing is that it was during the dictatorship, so in reality no, women couldn't express any political power at the time. [1]

Only 15% of the elected people are women. Only 33% of the candidates are women (the minimum percentage established by the law is 30%). [1]

In 2024, every 6 minutes one woman was raped. In that year, 1467 women were killed for being a woman/gender reasons. [2]

Women gain 19,4% less than men. This also varies due to colour and position (women in manager positions are 25% less paid than their male counterparts), of course. As you can imagine black women and black men are even less paid than white women and man, and are also less often employed. [3]

Women work more. Women are always working. In a study, 83% of the women said they had a "double shift work journey"; they have their day (paid) jobs, but arriving home they need to take care of family members (not only children! Men not often take care of their parents and other family members) and house chores. Another study points out that from the 7 million women between 15 and 29 yo that don't study or work, 36,5% don't do so because they need to take care of family members and house chores. [4]

Last year, one trans person was killed every 3 days (122 people). From those, 117 were trans women. 66% of the victims were younger than 35 years. Most of them were black and poor. [5]

In 2023, the emergency hotline was called 848 036 to report domestic violence, with 258 941 records. [6]

What I want to say is: don't congratulate people for being women. DON'T FUCKING SAY HAPPY WOMEN'S DAY. (if you wanna celebrate being a woman please do, that's not what I mean). VOTE for women in the next election. Help your sisters, mothers, friends. Share the house chores equally. Fight for women's rights in your workplace (and yours too). BELIEVE VICTIMS.

DON'T FUCKING LET CAPITALISM TRANSFORM THIS DATE IN A CASH GRAB. DON'T FORGET THE FEMINIST FIGHT.

DON'T LET CAPITALISM WIN THIS FIGHT.

DON'T LET CAPITALISM MAKE YOU FORGET THE FIGHT.

Sources under cut

It took me five minutes to found this info. I poorly translated the headlines here but everything is in in Brazilian Portuguese ofc. I highly recommend you to search stuff from your country.

[1] "Women's right to vote in Brazil turns 92" agencia senado - https://www12.senado.leg.br/noticias/materias/2024/02/26/direito-ao-voto-feminino-no-brasil-completa-92-anos

[2] "Country breaks record for femicides and registers one rape every six minutes, according to the Security Yearbook", o Globo - https://www.google.com/amp/s/oglobo.globo.com/google/amp/brasil/noticia/2024/07/18/pais-bate-recorde-de-feminicidios-e-registra-um-estupro-a-cada-seis-minutos-indica-anuario-de-seguranca.ghtml

[3] "Women earn 19.4% less than men, according to the 1st Salary Transparency Report" gov.br - https://www.gov.br/trabalho-e-emprego/pt-br/noticias-e-conteudo/2024/Marco/mulheres-recebem-19-4-a-menos-que-os-homens-aponta-1o-relatorio-de-transparencia-salarial

[4] "Eight out of 10 women work double shifts with household chores and caregiving, says survey" g1 - https://www.google.com/amp/s/g1.globo.com/google/amp/economia/noticia/2024/03/09/oito-em-cada-10-mulheres-vivem-dupla-jornada-de-trabalho-com-afazeres-domesticos-e-cuidados-diz-pesquisa.ghtml

[5] "dossier: murders and violence against trans people", 2024 - https://antrabrasil.org/assassinatos/ || cnn - https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/nacional/brasil-e-o-pais-que-mais-mata-pessoas-trans-e-travestis-aponta-dossie/

[6] "Domestic violence against women increases by 9.8% in Brazil, according to the Public Security Yearbook", exame - https://www.google.com/amp/s/exame.com/brasil/%25E2%2581%25A0violencia-domestica-contra-a-mulher-cresce-98-no-brasil-aponta-anuario-de-seguranca-publica/amp/ || brazilian yearbook of public security - https://forumseguranca.org.br/publicacoes/anuario-brasileiro-de-seguranca-publica/

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

jesse duquette

* * * *

DOGE in retreat, and the power of persistence.

May 31, 2025

Robert B. Hubbell

[Join me for a Substack livestream Saturday, 9 am PT / Noon ET]

DOGE is in retreat. Not defeated (yet), but in retreat, nonetheless. Still, the writing is on the wall: DOGE is on track to become a monumental failure of historic proportions.

DOGE is in retreat because we persisted.

Our fight is not over, not by a long shot. But we must not let this moment pass without acknowledging the lesson from DOGE’s retreat—that an essential ingredient in reclaiming democracy is the simple act of not giving up. We must not quit or surrender to exhaustion, despair, or cynicism.

We must continue to persist, abide, and keep the faith. A key component of MAGA’s plan is to break our spirit, exhaust us, and make us look away because we are overwhelmed. We cannot allow that to happen.

We must pace ourselves, maintain perspective, take breaks when necessary, and do our part in proportion to our abilities, resources, and other commitments. But we must do our part, nonetheless.

Because we persisted, DOGE is in retreat, and on balance, it has been more of a failure than a success. True, the damage it inflicted will echo for a generation, and DOGE has managed to inject its retrovirus into the immune system of the federal government.

While many commentators emphasize that DOGE is “not over” and proclaim the “successes” of DOGE by reference to the damage it inflicted, I think those are the wrong points of emphasis for two reasons.

First, the “measurement date” for determining the success or failure of DOGE is not May 30, 2025. Just as DOGE is “not over,” neither is our resistance. But on May 30, 2025, the tide shifted. DOGE is in retreat while the resistance is rising.

The actual measurement date for evaluating the successes and failures of DOGE is a date after the last legal challenges have become final and “We the people” have had the opportunity to express our views of DOGE at the ballot box in congressional and presidential elections.

Second, many commentators are conflating “damage inflicted” by DOGE with “success.” Damage inflicted is not a proper measure of success—because that damage was inflicted on human beings whose safety, health, and financial security was devastated by DOGE. Those human beings are not lifeless statistics with no agency. They can vote, speak, protest, and become politically active.

Any assessment of the “damage” inflicted as a measure of DOGE’s success must include the downstream political consequences of that damage. If the political cost of short-term, illegal budget cuts is loss of control of Congress and the presidency, it is hardly fair to say that DOGE was a success because it was able to damage government programs and agencies for a limited time.

By almost all measures, DOGE was a failure in the short and long term.

By reference to its own goals, DOGE was a colossal failure. It sought to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. DOGE’s tracker site claims that it “saved” the federal government $175 billion. But that “savings” is a mirage because it does not account for current and future losses due to government inefficiency and reduced revenue collection by the IRS. A study by the The Budget Lab at Yale estimates that cuts to the IRS will result in $350 billion in reduced tax collections over the next ten years—an amount that is double the alleged “savings” by DOGE.

Most of DOGE’s “cuts” have been declared unconstitutional or illegal in dozens of federal lawsuits. Those lawsuits are not final and will take years to become so. But many commentators are evaluating DOGE’s “success” by assuming that its changes to the federal government are legal and permanent. They are neither. To suggest otherwise ignores the holdings in nearly 100 federal lawsuits.

DOGE sparked a fierce resistance movement that is growing every day. That movement is flexing its muscle in special elections, town halls, and consumer boycotts that are causing some of the nation’s largest corporations to feel the reflected pain inflicted by DOGE.

Elon Musk and Trump are heading for an ugly divorce in which both will lose. Musk made many enemies in the Trump administration, and they are beginning to exact their revenge. On Musk’s official last day as a special employee of the government, the NYTimes ran an anonymously sourced article that portrayed Musk as a drug-addled, out-of-control user dependent on extreme doses of legal drugs to make it through the day. See NYTimes, On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama. (This article is available to all.)

It is no coincidence that the Times’ article on Musk’s drug use appears above-the-fold on Page One, just below the article reporting that Trump and Musk are “parting as friends.” We must assume that Musk’s enemies planted the story with the Times to serve as the equivalent of the proverbial Mafia visit to a local store by two goons who casually observe, “Nice place you got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”

As Trump's agenda continues to unravel and the economy worsens, Trump must find someone else to blame. Musk is the logical target. On Friday, Trump foreshadowed his future betrayal of Musk by attacking Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, blaming Leo for the spate of federal court rulings that Trump's executive orders are unconstitutional. See NYTimes, Trump, Bashing the Federalist Society, Asserts Autonomy on Judge Picks.

Trump used particularly harsh language to condemn Leonard Leo, the person who single-handedly guided Trump's judicial picks to produce the Dobbs decision (overturning Roe v. Wade) and Trump v. US (granting Trump presidential immunity). Per the Times, Trump wrote,

I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use the Federalist Society as a recommending source on judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ��sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.

Ouch! If Trump can savagely attack Leonard Leo after all that Leo did for Trump, Musk should be preparing for a bruising battle with Trump. Indeed, there are signs that Musk understands that he is on dangerous ground and has begun to make preemptive attacks on the reconciliation bill.

See Financial Times, Elon Musk criticizes Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill, (Musk said he is “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, which increases the budget deficit . . . and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing”) and The Hill, Elon Musk criticizes Donald Trump bill over abrupt end to energy tax credits. (Musk said cutting electric vehicle credits was “unjust.”)

If the endpoint of the DOGE effort is a political bloodbath between Trump and Musk, there is no universe in which the DOGE efforts can be called successful.

I am aware that my views are in the minority, and I expect to receive plenty of emails from readers telling me that other commentators are highlighting the damage inflicted and the permanency of DOGE. I have read and viewed those comments and respectfully disagree.

To repeat, DOGE is in retreat, not defeated. It will take persistence and hard work to root out DOGE’s remnants from the federal government. The pain inflicted by DOGE is real and lasting. But virtually all its work has been declared unconstitutional by district court judges, and the Supreme Court will have the final say.

I am not underestimating DOGE. But I believe that others are underestimating the persistence and determination of the American people.

When the final history of DOGE is written, it will be recorded that the American people prevailed because they refused to quit or surrender to exhaustion, despair, or cynicism.

The battle is ongoing. Let’s not tarry over disagreements about the final judgment on DOGE, but instead internalize the lesson that DOGE is in retreat because we persisted.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[pastanest]

Spencer Reid x gender neutral!reader

A/N: inspired by this tiktok - I heard y’all wanted some more shrimp reid content?

gif from an unnamed source on google so if it’s yours please let me know and I’ll credit!! ♡

Turn It Right Around

To suggest Spencer was dreading the arrival of the newest member of the team, would be an understatement. He forced himself to wori earlier than the rest of the team, with the sole intention of sitting at his desk, anxiously bouncing his knees beneath the table and staring at the glass doors that would grant him no more than a few seconds to adjust to the sight of the new member of the team before he would be expected to introduce himself. The young genius had determined that getting to work early was far better than risking arriving at a point where the new team member was already there, had already introduced themselves to the rest of the team, and in doing so, made a spectacle of his own introduction. That was a fate worse than death.

With each member of the team that arrived for the day, Spencer’s heart jumped. He was anxious about having to meet someone new, having someone else to explain his weirdness to, someone else to misunderstand how his mind works and someone else to cut his rambles off short when they inevitably got sick of whatever statistic or piece of trivia he had elected to verbalize; those were his biggest concerns, all culminating under the umbrella term of one fear in particular: what if the new member of the team simply didn’t like him?

The rest of the team had settled at their desks and begun to relax, gossiping about who the new arrival could be, what they might be like. Spencer was too anxious to partake in their theorizing, but when he fixed his gaze back on those glass doors, his heart that had previously been jumping periodically, skipped a beat entirely.

You. With a bright smile and kind eyes, immediately greeting everyone with excited introductions, and Spencer scrambled from his desk, his heart having migrated to his throat. Your smile traveled from person to person, encouraging their smiles in return, until your kind eyes landed on Spencer, and he felt his heartbeat in his suddenly clammy palms.

“Hello! It’s lovely to meet you, I’m (Y/N)!” You introduced yourself to him, and he nodded, concluding in a microsecond that your name was the most beautiful he’d ever heard, regardless of the number of other people he’d encountered who may have shared your name. It was yours, then.

“H-Hello, it’s, it’s uh, lovely to meet you, too, I’m Doctor Spencer Reid.” He introduced himself in return, stammering and blushing and wiping his sweating palms on his trousers before he held a hand out for you to shake, much to the shock of the rest of the team, who shared equally wide-eyed glances.

“Spencer. Good name.” You complimented, shaking his hand gently, and Spencer was stunned to detect no malice or sarcasm in your voice at all. Did you like his name, too? He wondered if you could feel his erratic heartbeat as you shook his hand.

“Thanks. Yours is nice, too.” Spencer managed to say back to you, giving you a shy smile.

The rest of the team had given the two of you some space, almost afraid to burst whatever bubble had formed around you and made the resident genius float in such a way.

“Thank you, Spencer.” You answered, blessing him with a soft smile of your own.

Momentary silence was too much for Spencer, and he quickly blurted out the first thing that came to his head. “D-Did you know a Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin study found that by talking with people and processing their social cues, you wake up those parts of your brain which allow for better cognitive function? I-In fact, the study found that with as little as ten minutes of contact and conversation with a new person, brain stimulation led to improved mental cognition. You are basically giving your brain a workout and expanding the ability to learn to accept new ideas and change preconceived notions.” Spencer was speaking quickly, perhaps too quickly, and his face flushed. Despite feeling more confident in his ability to talk to you when he was reciting information he had memorized, that confidence shattered under the - ironically - preconceived notion that you would, like everyone else he encountered, be bored, or worse, disturbed by his sudden outburst of knowledge.

Much to Spencer’s absolute awe, though, the soft smile on your face only widened, and you looked up at him with stars in your eyes.

“That’s so cool, Spencer!” You began to say, and you parted your lips to continue speaking, just as Aaron Hotchner called for everyone to join him at the round table. You glanceed back up at Spencer with that same smile, sending his heart soaring. “If you’ve got any more facts like that, I’d love to hear them, but for now, we’d better get going.”

Spencer nodded. “Yeah, I’ll, uh, I’ll be right there. You go on ahead.” He urged, and you nodded back at him, disappearing up the stairs.

Taking a deep breath in an effort to compose himself, Spencer headed for the coffee machine in the staff kitchen, but on surpassing two steps in that direction, he abruptly turned back on himself and speed walked over his desk. There sat the cup of coffee he had already made, 10 minutes prior. Picking it up, he quickly made his way to the round table to join the rest of the team, mentally scolding himself, until he saw your smile again, waiting for him.

After all, who can blame his eidetic memory for misplacing the information of having already made himself a coffee, in the midst of his heart leaping out of his chest and running towards you?

[pro-birth]

Both the 2023 study and the 2010 study conclude the same thing: a need for more and better education of doctors about the effectiveness of Fertility Awareness Methods. In the 2023 study, of the 29 respondents who “do not include FABMs in contraceptive counseling,” 12 (41%) cited their belief in FAM’s ineffectiveness to be a factor in their decision. Of the table listing reasons given for not recommending FAMs, this belief is by far the most cited reason. How many FAM-unfriendly doctors would change their tune if they had learned accurate statistics about FAMs in medical school? 

On the other hand, even those supportive of FAMs don’t have all the correct data. Less than 25% of the doctors who do recommend FAMs to their patients correctly identified the typical use effectiveness rate of these methods. This is a warning for those of us who staunchly support FAMs, to get our facts straight and not sugarcoat the difficult sides. It does no justice to our family and friends to sell them on a family planning method that requires work and dedication, without being honest about what that work and dedication look like in reality...

...Fortunately, FACTS is an important organization driving significant change in this area. They now offer two online electives “for medical and health professional students to learn more about modern Fertility Awareness-Based Methods (FABMs), the evidence for their effectiveness for family planning, and their role in women’s health.” Both electives are approved through Georgetown University’s School of Medicine. FACTS Executive Director Dr. Marguerite Duane is also the director of the new Center for Fertility Awareness Education and Research at Duquesne University College of Osteopathic Medicine. 

[pinkacademiaprincess]

Hiiiii! what extracurricular activities do you do?

Renaissance Woman: Being Well-Rounded via Extracurricular Activities 👩‍💼🧠🎨🏅

hi, ty for the ask! i’ve done many different extracurricular activities through the years. in high school i did dance, choir, ceramics, and i took elective classes in coding/ statistics. in college i’ve joined a book club, various accounting/ business organizations, honors program, research, and i take extra courses in interesting subjects like psychology and sociology. i’ve also worked part-time most of the time since i turned 16.

if you’re wanting to decide what kinds of extracurriculars to do, i’d say to try to make it a variety. and pick things that you are actually interested in doing and will be able to truly commit to. don’t spread yourself thin and don’t make yourself do anything you reeeally don’t want to do.

i try to have a mix of the following:

physical activities

a sport or exercise class is a great form of extracurricular activity because it keeps you active. depending on the activity it also develops your teamwork and collaborative skills. you can also build strong bonds amongst your teammates/ workout buddies. find something you truly enjoy & can see yourself committing the time to!

academic & career advancers

this can include clubs based on a field of study/ career path, academic/ business organizations, educational electives, practicing a relevant skill, and so on. these are useful if you’ve got a career path or field in mind and want to learn more about it. if it involves a group setting you can find like-minded people with the same goals. these types of programs also provide tools, resources, & guidance for success.

hobby/ fun

some of the most fulfilling extracurriculars may be something you just enjoy as a hobby. for me this was things like choir, ceramics, and other arts. i enjoy artistic stuff as a creative outlet to help relieve stress, and although i don’t want to be a professional singer or sculptor, i still highly benefited from those activities. they spark creativity and force you to use different parts of your brain.

money-making

i definitely consider having a job to be an extracurricular activity since it can go on your resume/ college applications/ etc. any job will help you build useful skills. if you’re in a position where you don’t need to work, i wouldn’t recommend getting a job tho, especially if you’re a student bc your time could be spent on your studies. i recommend seeking other extracurricular activities through your school instead if you have time.

[mariacallous]

The breadth of falsehoods circulating in the months and days prior to Election Day in the United States was breathtaking in both scale and creativity. It was, as the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Jen Easterly said, an “unprecedented amount of disinformation.” Voters were treated to videos masquerading as FBI-generated or CBS reports that warned of security threats and voter fraud, while other videos falsely depicted mail-in ballots that favored Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump being destroyed, or an alleged Haitian immigrant voting in two counties. Fabrications about Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris drew from a seemingly bottomless well, ranging from false allegations that she was involved in a hit-and-run incident to her being allied with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. This was on top of saturation levels of preelection disinformation campaigns involving Haitian immigrants, hurricane relief efforts, and so much more.

Oiled and revved up in advance of the Nov. 5 election, though, the disinformation machine abruptly died that evening. Trump had urged voters to get him a win “too big to rig”—harkening back to his persistent lie that victory was stolen from him in the 2020 election—and voters delivered.

Now that there is a lull, we must ask some critical questions. First, does disinformation—while upsetting, annoying, or even amusing—matter in influencing outcomes? Second, with a second Trump term, what is the future of the disinformation machine? And if disinformation continues unabated and even flows across borders, what can be done about it on a national and transnational level?

Some researchers argue that disinformation has little effect in changing behavior. The argument often hinges on empirical studies demonstrating that such content typically gets relatively low exposure and is viewed and shared by a fringe already motivated to seek out such content.

There is, however, robust evidence to suggest that in the specific instance of the 2024 U.S. elections, disinformation did change behavior, in that an alternative reality took hold in voters’ minds and influenced their choices. Voters who demonstrated being misinformed about key issues, such as immigration, crime, and the economy preferred Trump. Consider the example of immigration and crime: Looking at 2018 felony crime offending rates in Texas, native-born U.S. citizens committed around 1,100 crimes per 100,000 people, compared to 800 by documented immigrants and 400 by undocumented immigrants. Analysis of similar data across all 50 states suggests no statistically significant correlation between the immigrant share of the population and the total crime rate in any state. This and numerous other sources of data consistently show that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born U.S. citizens across various crime categories and over extended periods. This contradicts a dominant narrative around a “migrant crime wave,” spread primarily by Trump and his surrogates. Approximately 45 percent of Trump supporters said immigration was one of their three biggest issues; most Americans, meanwhile, believed that illegal immigration was linked to higher crime rates.

With a second Trump term ahead, it is worthwhile to ask what we might expect from a disinformation machine that was so helpful in bringing such an administration to power. This was a machine designed to generate false narratives built to exploit fear and anxiety at scale, using fabrications that may build on a kernel of truth or resonant with some people’s beliefs or actual experiences. It identified malevolent actors to be defeated as part of the calls to action. In order to spread disinformation further and enhance its credibility, operations involved consistent repetition of narratives and their amplification in political rallies through social media and alignment with the financial and political incentives of other influential voices. Where does the Trump reelection disinformation machine go from here now that its primary job is done? Designed to increase confidence in the leader and the regime, disinformation systems have a distinguished tradition of flourishing under autocratic administrations, from Octavian’s Roman Empire to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

There are five galvanizing issues to watch for in the next turn of the disinformation crank.

First, there will be a need to undermine the credibility of media outlets considered unfriendly to Trump. This objective will, of course, get plenty of support from “friendly” media like Fox News and the New York Post, but, most significantly, from Elon Musk—a close ally of the administration. Musk and his platform, X, are frightfully effective in creating and disseminating narratives.

Assuming the Musk-Trump alliance has a meaningful shelf life, consider the “Musk effect” itself. Analysis from the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that at least 87 of Musk’s posts on X in 2024 were false or misleading, and they had 2 billion views in total. None of those posts were accompanied by a Community Note, a user-generated fact-check. To add to his influence, Musk, who has said he’s a “free speech absolutist” and is selective about the content moderated on X to serve his own purposes, is now charged with minimizing government bureaucracy; he will likely work to ensure that regulations intended to moderate content—as long as they are not unfavorable to him—are held to a minimum. We should not expect to see any major legislative overhauls, such as a rollback of Section 230—originally part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996—that protects digital platforms from being held liable for content they host, as it would severely hamper the free-wheeling content environment at X that Musk has created. This would be a change of position for Trump, as he did push for such a rollback in his first term.

Second, putting Musk aside, a scan of the remaining names put forward for Trump’s cabinet reads like a who’s who in the annals of disinformation. Consider just three: first, Tulsi Gabbard, who is nominated to be director of national Intelligence. She has a track record of being partial to propaganda from the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and has even declared a QAnon conspiracy theory about a U.S.-funded bioweapons lab in Ukraine to be an “undeniable fact.” Second, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated to be the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. He has peddled ideas that are outright false—such as childhood immunizations causing autism—and questionable, like that excessive fluoride in drinking water can lower IQ. Pete Hegseth, nominated for secretary of defense, has already gone a step further by calling for the word “misinformation” itself to be stripped from the public lexicon as soon as possible. Each of these three substantive federal agencies will need their disinformation machines to be humming and ready to go, given the individuals who might be in charge.

This would lead us to their boss’s playbook of false narratives, repetition, amplification, and targeting opponents and critics as “enemies.” The Washington Post found that Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims, or around 21 fabrications a day, during his first term. As noted earlier, repetition of falsehoods is a core operating principle for Trump, and it has been shown to work: There is a demonstrated correlation between the number of times Trump repeated falsehoods during his presidency and misperceptions among Republicans. Given this record, we ought to count on him escalating his reliance on these strategies—and especially on repetitive disinformation—as a strategy for governance.

Fourth, with several disinformation-centered narratives influential in getting Trump to the White House, their lives will have to be extended as the administration swings into action to follow-up on campaign promises—for example, as deportation procedures against undocumented immigrants are launched.

Finally, it is essential to consider the intentions of foreign governments, which may use the Trump model to manipulate their own citizens. Russia has been the most energetic in its disinformation campaigns during the United States’ 2024 election season, from the falsehood about Harris being involved in a hit-and-run incident, to hurricane-related falsehoods, to bomb threats on Election Day. But there are many others in the fray with elaborate disinformation machines—including networks of bogus social media accounts, websites to spread divisive content, third-party actors, and fringe groups—that are ready to go. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the three governments most active in creating and spreading disinformation in the United States are Russia, China, and Iran. All three steadily increased their disinformation campaigns in the months leading up to Election Day. One can expect the dynamic to follow that to be an arms race: If the U.S. government itself invests in disinformation, foreign governments will attempt to keep pace —and even view it as implicit permission to do so.

With this sobering outlook, it is natural to ask: What should be done? The regulatory and legislative establishment is likely to be compromised, so other actors will have to step up—these include major digital platforms, independent watchdogs, the media, civil society organizations, and regular citizens.

The most critical are the digital platforms as they have the greatest leverage; they must reverse their recent trend toward reducing content moderation teams and cutting resources for fact-checking, labeling, blocking, or demoting messages that run afoul of posted standards. The COVID-19 pandemic created a “infodemic” emergency and a sense of urgency for the platforms to be proactive and ramp up content moderation to stem the tide of misinformation. Even though many of the attempts were found wanting and flawed, most of the major platforms did take specific actions—defining policies, being transparent about their criteria, taking steps to remove or moderate violators, and nudging users to check out trusted sources. There is evidence to suggest that messaging from trusted sources had a positive effect on users’ quality of knowledge and how they behaved based on such information. A second Trump term needs to be viewed as an emergency of parallel proportions.

For their part, watchdog groups, the media, and civil society must amplify their voices when they see false narratives and counter them not just with boring statistics but engaging fact-based narratives to reeducate and inform. Local media, in particular, has a role to play in bringing credible fact-based news to ordinary citizens. Watchdog groups across different countries should collaborate with digital platforms to identify sources of false or malicious content and develop early warning signs of international interference by state and non-state actors and proxy groups. Once again, the lessons from the pandemic might come handy in considering the role of multilateral bodies—just as the World Health Organization (WHO) implemented strategies to combat COVID-19 misinformation, with mixed but generally positive results, similar bodies can be set up to coordinate across multiple actors and across geographies.

Finally, ordinary citizens will need to take the time to become responsible consumers of media—for their own good. And, as their lived realities diverge from false narratives in circulation, they might become more discerning and wary in seeking out information sources. As a recent study found, citizens do become more discerning consumers of digitally transmitted information when there are sustained mitigation and education efforts.

It will, no doubt, be a long road ahead. While we can expect a deluge of disinformation along the way, we cannot let it become the new normal.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

i have a silly question and was wondering what your thoughts might be. iirc ace's best subject is listed as magic analysis (elective) class. and in the beginning of book 7 when sebek is screaming in the cafeteria, ace mentions that he shares that elective class with sebek. what /is/ Magic Analysis Class?? like. what's the field of study?? my brain can't really think up a concept, are they analyzing the construction of magic spells?? their rate of success?? is it like a magic statistics class?? i have no idea but i was curious if you had any idea

We have some clarification as to what Magic Analysis (or Enigmics, as it is sometimes called in EN) is in Ace's third birthday card (the Broomquet series). It's not yet out in the official localization, but I can summarize the related information for you ^^ The class appears to be very math focused, with some sample questions being “Express the strength of this fire magic as an equation", “Express phenomenon A using this magical formula,”, and “Derive the power of magic B using this equation" (fan translation provided by mysteryshoptls). Ace cites Magic Analysis as being a class he enjoys because all he needs to remember are formulas, and he still gets partial credit for some problems.

So in short, it's definitely math-based but not statistics. Magic Analysis seems closer to algebra, trigonometry, calculus, or general mathematical logic. Maybe a physical science.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Zachary Pleat at MMFA:

The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board, fresh off calling out President Donald Trump for backing down for minor concessions when he delayed his announced tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports, is now explaining to Trump that implementing his tariff vision would devastate the U.S. auto industry.  Industry and economic analysts agree that Trump’s various proposed tariffs would greatly harm the U.S. auto industry, after Trump dubiously warned during the 2024 presidential election of a “bloodbath” in the industry if he wasn’t elected.

Trump warned of a “bloodbath” in the auto industry if he lost the election, but the industry was in great shape under Biden

In March 2024, Trump sparked a controversy by saying during a campaign rally: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”  Trump’s campaign and media defenders claimed that Trump’s comment was about the auto industry rather than another instance of his violent rhetoric. Even then, Trump was lying. The auto industry was in excellent shape during the Biden administration. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that more people were employed in auto manufacturing late in the Biden administration than at any time since December 2006, with a peak of about 1.03 million Americans employed in the industry under Biden. BLS data also showed that wages throughout the auto industry reached record highs under Biden. Additionally, Trump’s first-term steel tariffs “hampered the U.S. auto industry, sparking the loss of thousands of jobs,” according to PolitiFact.

A Wall Street Journal editorial warned “Trump’s tariffs will punish Michigan”

On February 25, the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote of a new study that shows how Trump’s tariffs will “damage the U.S. car industry, even as the economy slows and uncertainty spreads.” The Journal continued: “If the goal is to harm U.S. auto workers and Republican prospects in Michigan, then by all means go ahead, Mr. President.” 

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial boardpointed out that Donald Trump’s soon-to-be imposed tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports could be destructive to the automotive industry (and the economy as a whole), and the “bloodbath” comments if he lost could end up happening anyway with him as “President.”

See Also:

The Guardian: Trump threatens to sue media after Wall Street Journal editorial criticizes tariffs

[one-world-many-stories]

blog introduction + about me

In recent years, the dehumanization of refugees and immigrants has become impossible to ignore.

In the United States, families fleeing unimaginable horrors such as war or immense oppression have been met not with safety, but with completely cruelty. In a country that prides itself on being the "land of the free", nonetheless. Rather than being taken to shelter and safety, children are torn from their parents at the border, locked in cages, and referred to as “unaccompanied alien minors,” as if their humanity was secondary to their immigration status. Political leaders have continuously fed into the hatred, calling immigrants “animals” and describing them as a “national security threat.” In recent months, President elect Donald Trump described Haitian refugees as "They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs." These words, repeated again and again, have justified policies that treated these families as less than human, as though their suffering didn’t matter.

In Europe, it is no different. Refugees escaping war and persecution find themselves trapped in refugee camps like Moria, where the conditions were so poor that one humanitarian aid worker called it “a place of sheer hopelessness.” Politicians didn’t hold back their disdain. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, called refugees “Muslim invaders,” while others described their boats as carrying “human meat.” When we hear words like that, it’s no surprise that so many people turned a blind eye to what was happening. Refugees were left to drown in the Mediterranean or sit for years in squalid camps, waiting for help that never comes.

What makes all of this even more devastating is how refugees and immigrants are so often reduced to numbers, and thus dehumanized even further. The stories of who they are—what they’ve endured, what they’ve lost—are rarely told. Instead, we hear statistics: thousands detained, hundreds drowned, millions displaced. But behind each number is a human being. A mother clutching her child as they cross a river in the dead of night. A teenager leaving behind everything they know for a chance to live without fear. A father who would do anything to provide a better life for his family. Their stories matter, but we rarely hear them. After all, it's easier to ignore suffering when it doesn’t have a face.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

It is this reason that has inspired me to create a Tumblr blog that addresses this problem. Through seeing and learning about these people that we've so often reduced into numbers, we can fully understand their troubles. And by welcoming them with empathy and kindness rather than cruelty and oppression, we can treat them as the humans that they are.

My goal for blog posts is to do a mix of informative readings, as well as present the stories of real life refugees and immigrants through interviews. As I begin to post, I encourage others to submit their own stories and photos.

For a little bit about me: my name is Dania and I am a student at the University of Indianapolis, studying International Relations. While I was blessed with being born an American citizen, I am Iraqi and my parents are refugees who fled the country following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I have seen first hand how countries and livelihoods are destroyed, so people face no choice but to flee, even if their home is beautiful and beloved to them. I hope to one day use my degree for a career in International Development and transform third-world countries into beautiful, livable places. Because, in the words of the British-Somali poet Warsan Shire, "Nobody leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark."

[aizawashuichi]

Ref: this post.

I wrote some tags, but they were a bit messy, because I was not exactly in the right headspace (Romanian elections + having to study). In any case, I just want to ramble about crime statistics and Matsuda saying, “There has been a dramatic decrease in the number of violent crimes committed worldwide, especially in Japan.”

This is not meant to give an answer or anything. I tried to give it some structure (probably failed), but it’s just to see the absurdity of the Death Note world.

First, I just want to talk briefly about Ohba’s faulty logic and then I’ll get into the main thing.

Light says, “It’s been six years since Kira appeared. War is a thing of the past, most of the worst criminals have died, and the world’s crime rate has gone down by 70 percent.”

That is not possible. First of all, it has already been well documented how the death penalty, which this is in the end, is not really effective to deter people from committing crimes. People that want to commit crimes will commit crimes. People that do not want to commit crimes may commit crimes. And this is regardless of a God who doesn’t even know their name unless it appears on the news, internet or in some public database of criminals just for Kira.

Confidential information on criminals may have started to flood the internet, but surely not the one of a man who killed his wife in a small rural village of central Africa o Eastern Europe or Middle East, unless they were weirdly technologically advanced from 2005 to 2010. Digitalization wasn’t as common as now, so I think it’s safe to assume that people committing crimes in some not so well-known region of the world, where technology is very limited or restricted, wouldn’t reach Kira.

Other than this, crimes happen everywhere: in extremely secure and strict prisons; in public, where everyone can see them; in situation that would make people so obviously guilty. Fear comes and goes, unless someone lives in a constantly stressful environment (which the death note universe seems not to be). People will adapt to this and get smarter at hiding.

We don’t know the rate at which Light and other Kiras killed, but even if Light alone killed one person per minute, that’s 2.628.000 people in 5 years. There were around 11 million prisoners worldwide in 2004. And, at least in the US (using it because it’s the one country that I can easily find stats of), there were almost 700k individuals admitted in prison in 2004. By the time, they kill 700k people, other 700k people will show up. Maybe, there is a decrease in this figure, but not that much, because a lot of people might be entering after a long trial.

Light didn’t obviously spend that much time killing people, because he had to keep up appearances. Misa maybe did, but at one person per minute is highly unlikely. She too has to act as if she’s not Kira. The same goes with Takada and Mikami, who also came way later. They didn’t kill enough in my opinion to create some sort of exponential fear in people that would paralyze them.

Moving on. He says “war is a thing of the past” but there are reasons to have wars and civil wars that would outweigh any fear of being killed by Kira. Especially grassroots revolutions. Then, I already mentioned this, but crimes of passion, of necessity and accidental ones… Those will not be stopped by fear. Death Note assumes people just constantly think about him, which can’t be the case, because that would mean that every murder, every crime, is premeditated. Also, for having a character with such a big ego, it surely doesn’t account for other people that might be the same and either don’t believe they’ll get caught or actually challenge Kira to kill them by committing as many crimes as possible.

There is also the dark number of crimes. How much are they? Nobody knows. Also, because of Kira’s activity, they may start to underreport other crimes.

Generally, it seems to be just the logic of the DN universe that what Kira does has the outcome Light desires. That is not realistic. Also, yes, I am not counting Kira’s crimes as crimes. That is a whole issue of its own, but since it follows Light’s journey and he sees his actions as retributive justice, those will not be seen as crimes.

Now.

Task force… Task forces?

To me, it seems highly unlikely that this kind of thing would only have one Kira task force. Yes, they cooperate with L and that’s why it’s the main one, but it feels almost impossible that no other country has an appointed group of policemen to work on the same case, to meticulously record data, to come up with their own hypothesis. We only see L work with the FBI and briefly with the Interpol, but what about each country? Why do these governments not care enough to put in that type of work? Why didn’t they coordinate different task forces around the world to have a full picture of the phenomenon?

L might not care because he’s looking to find this supposedly person (not group) in Kanto, but the police doesn’t know that yet. Yeah, one person is in Kanto, but is this the doing of only one person?

Standardization and crimes stats in general.

What Matsuda said is technically wrong not because Kira’s crimes are violent crimes and deterring people is not that easy, but because there is no global standardization for crime statistics. You can’t just say there is a decrease in crimes, when you don’t have the full data of the year. By the time Matsuda says that, there is no country that has readily available information useful for this kind of interpretation. They just have those who died in prison by heart attack.

What if crimes were extremely low all year but if you count Kira’s crimes, that trend is the same as the previous year. Having a few weeks of low violent crime activity doesn’t mean there is a decrease. That’s not how you read a trend. Those are rough numbers you are considering out of context. If you don’t count Kira’s crimes as such and the trend stays low, then you can’t say it’s his doing. Could be a lot of reasons, that you will infer on at the end of the year or in January of the next one.

If crimes are high and Kira kills prisoners (seen as a crime) that for some reason create a sort of deterring effect, what Kira does will make up for that and keep the trend high. If you don’t see them as crimes, as the manga says, it’s Kira’s doing, but still, you are assuming there is a deterring effect (highly unlikely, especially at the time Matsuda says that – almost two weeks after Light picks up the death note) and that is going to be the trend until the end of the year. Will it? The most there can be is a sort of stagnation because it’s a new situation, and then activity will start again.

How do they get this information anyway?

Are we just going to assume every and each country is willingly cooperating with a task force in Japan, giving them pretty important information about their own justice system? The number of criminals in prison does paint a picture of a country, actually.

And what about cross-country communication? Is it just that easy? Is the NPA the best organization in the world and the only one to have a top tier global communication channel? How is that even possible, since it’s a domestic agency? Okay, maybe they have a Ministry or accredited statistical agencies to do all that work for them, but 1. standardization, again and 2. the amount of time to create it would be insane and the bureaucratic procedures to even have 5 countries be actually capable of real time communication, with all the necessary precautions and whatnot, would be a nightmare. Even if they created a standard procedure for Kira’s killings, what’s the criteria? Can you really say it’s enough? Can you really be sure everybody would be ready to give you that kind of information when you need it? How could they do that without their own domestic task force?

Now, about Kira’s crimes specifically.

Saying that crimes rates went up because of him is also technically wrong if you don’t have all the data for the period (for sort of the same logic as went down), but also can you really be sure it’s Kira or actually just heart attack?

Yeah, we know it’s him and if everyone just assumes every heart attack is because of him, then yes. Crime rates went up, but this is not how stats work. I am repeating myself and I know I sound annoying, but they can’t be sure it’s all because of him. The only thing they can do is gather all the information they have over some months and then calculate a margin of error based on the heart attack frequency before Kira, which needs a lot of work, a lot of coordination and a lot of time.

So, nobody can be sure of anything. Not even Matsuda. He’s just uniformed, naïve and a bit hopeful, but the narrative is beyond wrong.