#with that quote from Harry in 2020 of him taking sign language classes and that video from Lou in 2021.... i'm so soft and fond for this

[hoovesandfloorpaws]

Part 2

"I mean, now we’re back into this territory again...

Poor mic:

*crowd makes noises* Interviewer: “We have some frisky people!” Harry: “I like New York!” Louis: :> face Harry says something to him, kinda covers his mouth, and thu-duhmm there's the thumb on knee. Is this still sign language masterpost appropriate? Who knows. (video [from 2012])

Check the interview if you’d like, but there’s little to no context to grasp onto as they’re all involved in some kind of inside joke, but let’s just appreciate how Liam and Niall both notice the leggy thumby thingy that they’re doing again after: 

Louis likes making [the] thumbs up, now I gotta wonder if it’s a coincidence that keeps happening when talking about certain subjects.

It’s celebrity crushes time again. He just said that Susan Boyle is “my girl, so stay away”, oof, then Niall starts talking about Demi, Louis does the thumbs:

then it’s Harry and Louis just picking another actress again, and then, we’re robbed of this out-of-view moment:

Someone’s compilation [video] of the “sweetheart” sign as a placeholder until I take the time to find more:

And the only time they used it properly:

which here, seems to be used to tease Zayn’s arm around Liam? Maybe?

Little shits.

But other times:

it’s cute.

And what about a 2015 thumbs up? Yeah, let’s get into some 2015 thumbs up!

If we weren’t already in it, now we’re getting into some real reading into things waters. It’s probably nothing. If it is the sign, it’s so subtle we can’t say for sure, but wouldn’t that have been exactly the point? So let’s entertain the thought for a second:

Here during Steal My Girl (video), there’s quite some signing (to change the mic/sound) and thumb upping (like Louis’ hand on the mic in the gif as well, [...] if you wanted to be subtle about it, that's not how you would do it), but the part where he walks back a bit is the undeniable one. It’s just before Liam sings “kisses that cream” (Excuse me Liam, isn’t it supposed to be “kisses like cream”? Why can I not find a single video of this band that doesn’t include some possible innuendo?). But again, you’d have to revisit more footage to see if there’s a pattern or if it’s a “idk what to do with my hands” performance thing.

Meanwhile Niall and Liam are also “signing things”. Are they playing air baseball? Thought I’d include that, too.

Let’s finish off with some 2012 ones:

--

[adding this video, because it's a sweet mini compilation made in 2022:

Louis and Harry making up their own words in their own sign language is so them (●´ω｀●)]

It’s a sign language of the times

Or: absolute king shit.

EDIT JULY 9TH 2021: FRESHLY EDITED BECAUSE SOMEONE JUST DID A SIGN LANGUAGE VIDEO AND I’M NOT OK

This post serves as a collection of Louis, Harry, or both using sign language. Unfortunately I don’t know sign language myself, and I don’t know if they (attempted to) use ASL or BSL, but I’ll do my best. Reading comments of those who do it’s clear that some of these signs are not recognized, so either they modified/made up a version only they would understand or we’re just reading into things as we do. If you know sign language and happen to find this post please don’t hesitate to correct me! 

Let’s start off megastrong and show that both of them actually know sign language these days.

Here Louis says “let’s do a few photos” so logically that’s probably what he signs as well.

~I have no idea what Harry says here~

Keep reading

[newstfionline]

In wide-open 2020 presidential field, Democrats are road-testing messages

By Michael Scherer, Washington Post, May 12, 2018

The future of the Democratic Party has been booking late-night TV gigs, waking up for morning drive-time radio and showing up at watering holes in rural counties to try out new material.

Before the start of a 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, at least 25 candidates--mayors, governors, entrepreneurs, members of the House and Senate--have hit the road to workshop their vision, experiment with catchphrases and test policy ideas that could keep President Trump from winning a second term.

Many deny that their actions have anything to do with a coming presidential run, but they unmistakably play off the chords of campaigns past, seeking a way to break through a political maw that has been focused more on the latest actions of the president and the coming midterm elections.

“I don’t want to speak to Democrats only,” says Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who recently appeared on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to riff on the Founding Fathers’ vision of patriotism and love. “I’m talking to us as Americans, about how this is a moral moment.”

In front of policy conferences and campaign rallies for congressional candidates, former vice president Joe Biden has been updating his own paeans to the middle class, repeating his thematic refrain that “America is all about possibilities.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has broadened her calls for people to “fight back,” and Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) has demanded that “we must speak truth.”

“This is like taking the play to Topeka and New Haven to see what works before you even get to Broadway,” said David Axelrod, a former strategist for President Barack Obama who hosts would-be candidates for public forums at the University of Chicago. “The season hasn’t opened.”

At stake in the rehearsals is nothing less than the future of the Democratic Party, which has yet to congeal around a positive vision. Party leaders privately talk about the next two years as a potential pivot point for what it means to be a Democrat.

“The Democratic trajectory right now is more uncertain than it has been since I started in politics in the ‘80s,” said Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic strategist at NDN, a think tank. “And I think no one has a leg up.”

The questions are big ones--of style and policy--that can only be answered in the story told by the candidate who eventually captures the party’s imagination.

Some promote a vision of a youthful future, while others speak of their own wizened experience. Some use the language of the private sector, while others have begun to promote guaranteeing public-sector jobs for all unemployed Americans. Some speak of class as the defining American divide, while others focus first on racial and gender inequality. Some are brawlers ready to take on Trump, while others pose as healers to call the country back to better angels.

They have begun to grapple with the sense that Trump’s presence has erased all of the old rules, even for Democrats, and that the party should consider looking outside the standard roster of governors and senators--perhaps to a business executive-entertainer like Oprah Winfrey, who has so far resisted calls for her to run, or a mayor.

The potential candidates preach both national and party unity, decrying the “false choices” between appealing to white Midwestern voters and the more diverse and urban Democratic base. But in the next breath, they sometimes demonstrate how many different routes there are to reach that goal of restitching the Democratic coalition ripped apart by Trump.

“The economy doesn’t have a good answer for people who haven’t gone to college, and it hasn’t had an answer for a long time,” said Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden, who will host at least 10 potential candidates Tuesday for a policy conference. “Trump proved a wrong answer beats no answer.”

Mayors and governors have been talking up their liberal records of innovation in the states, aiming to contrast their competence to the dysfunction of Washington. “We have demonstrated that a policy ecosystem of progressive economic development works,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has been traveling the country as chair of the Democratic Governors Association. “We have blown up the Republican trickle-down message of Donald Trump.”

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., who is working on a book due out next year, has anchored his pitch in a broad vision of Democrats as “the party of everyday life”--a good job, health care and education included. “We’ve got to realize that a lot of this has to do with style,” he said. “That should be fairly obvious--we have a president who doesn’t even have an ideology, only a style.”

Others like Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper have begun to speak about the failures of past administrations, as the party struggles to identify an economic message in an age of low unemployment, strong market performance and continued kitchen-table insecurity.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who hails from Youngstown, has argued for a focus on the economic threat of China, while cautioning against new government programs that displace the private sector. “We can be hostile to monopolies, oligarchies and concentrations of wealth,” he said. “But we can’t be hostile to capitalism.”

After the 2016 election, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced that he had been “humiliated” that the Democratic Party could not appeal to the white working class, “where I came from.”

Since then, he has tried to focus more on healing the rifts that emerged between him and minority communities. It has been a sometimes rocky road, such as when he awkwardly described Obama as a “charismatic individual” during a speech in Mississippi on the anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Warren has also been reaching out to the black community in an effort to stamp out the impression, left from the 2016 campaign, that the financial regulatory issues at the core of her life’s work are not a central cause of minority communities.

“I know I haven’t personally experienced the struggles of African American families, but I am here to say that no one can ignore what is happening in this country,” she said in a recent address to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, which began with a discussion of housing policy and ended with her calling out, “Can I have an ‘amen’ on that?”

Several potential candidates, including Booker, Gillibrand, Harris and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) have signed on to a bill that would create a pilot program, offering guaranteed jobs paying at least $15 an hour in 15 high-unemployment communities. Sanders has said he is working on his own version of the same program.

Others have charted more moderate paths. “I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason we’re in trouble,” Biden said in a speech May 8 at the Brookings Institution, in which he proposed free community college tuition, limits on worker noncompete clauses and efforts to broaden the geographic reach of venture capital.

Most of the potential candidates, including other outsiders such as entrepreneur Mark Cuban, have said they will wait until after the midterm elections to make any announcements about their 2020 plans. “It’s not about Donald Trump,” Cuban wrote in an email explaining his view of the coming campaign. “He is who he is and everyone knows who he is.”

Others, such as Hickenlooper, say they really don’t know if they are ready to put their families through the two-year strain of a campaign. For the moment, they still have time to work that out.

“What did St. Teresa say?” Hickenlooper asked rhetorically, referencing a quote often attributed to the saint. “‘There are more tears shed over answered prayers.’”