#11 Apr 2019 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

liliesmultiverse · 3 months ago

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⋆ˊˎ-•̩̩͙- *̩̩̥͙ WHAT'S A GIRL GOTTA DO, A DIAMOND'S GOTTA SHINE... home reality intro!!

┊ ➶ ｡�� ° liliana amore evans [born sept. 10, 2004] is a world famous singer-songwriter, twitch streamer & actress. i was born in new orleans, louisiana to actor christopher robert "chris" evans & [redacted] as the 4th of six children and i am the goddaughter of scarlett ingrid johansson & anthony dwane mackie. i first started my career at just 7 years old first appearing on the showtime series shameless as maisie gallagher. at 14 years old i began streaming on twitch as a way to connect with my fans and it was during one of those streams that i announced the release of my debut album teenage dream. since childhood, i've been best friends with reneé mary jane rapp and we're constantly appearing on each other's instagram & tiktoks. she even sometimes joins my streams along with louis.

┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° my filmography

tv shows:

༉‧₊˚. shameless ; maisie gallagher (2011-2021)

༉‧₊˚. grimm (1ep) ; april granger (2012)

༉‧₊˚. stranger things ; isabella "bella" cassidy (2016-?)

༉‧₊˚. a million little things ; sophie dixon (2018-2023)

༉‧₊˚. pretty little liars ; imogen adams (2022-?)

༉‧₊˚. bridgerton ; hyacinth bridgerton (2020-?)

music videos:

༉‧₊˚. mean ; taylor swift

༉‧₊˚. that's not how this works (feat. dan + shay) ; charlie puth

movies:

༉‧₊˚. the greatest showman ; caroline barnum (2017)

༉‧₊˚. godzilla: king of the monsters ; madison russell (2019)

༉‧₊˚. godzilla vs. kong ; madison russell (2021)

༉‧₊˚. all too well: the short film ; her (2021)

༉‧₊˚. scream ; freya tatum riley, dewey & gale's daughter (2022)

༉‧₊˚. scream vi ; freya riley (2023)

༉‧₊˚. damsel ; princess elodie (2024)

༉‧₊˚. nosferatu ; ellen hutter (2024)

┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° my discography

༉‧₊˚. sweet angel [released dec. 3, 2020]

༉‧₊˚. divine feminine [released feb. 19, 2022]

༉‧₊˚. that's not how this works (feat. dan + shay & liliana evans) [released apr. 14, 2023]

༉‧₊˚. what was i made for? [released jul. 13, 2023]

༉‧₊˚. can't catch me now [released nov. 3, 2023]

༉‧₊˚. yours, never [released nov. 23, 2023]

༉‧₊˚. yours, never (deluxe) [released feb. 17, 2024]

༉‧₊˚. kisses at sunrise [released aug. 23, 2024]

༉‧₊˚. snowfall (christmas ep) [releases on dec. 25, 2024]

༉‧₊˚. kisses at sunrise (deluxe) [releases on feb. 14, 2025]

༉‧₊˚. mrs. [releases sometime between jan. 1-apr. 30, 2026]

┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° my family

༉‧₊˚. christopher robert "chris" evans [born jun. 13, 1977] is a world famous american actor. he was born in boston, massachussetts as the oldest of 5 children. he's most known for his role as steve rogers / captain america. when he was 13, his family moved to shreveport, louisiana where he met [redacted], who he immediately fell in love with. the two began dating at 15 years old and they got married in late 1996. shortly after their wedding, they moved to new orleans, louisiana and together they had 6 children including corbyn evans, liliana evans & walker evans.

༉‧₊˚. taylor alison evans [born dec. 13, 1989], known professionally as taylor swift, is a world famous singer-songwriter. she was born in west reading, pennsylvania as the youngest of 5 children. she began writing songs at just 11 years old and is one of the biggest inspirations for her niece, liliana evans.

༉‧₊˚. corbyn matthew evans [born oct. 4, 1998] is a famous singer-songwriter and former member of the band, why don't we. he was born in new orleans, louisiana to actor christopher robert evans & [redacted] as the first of 6 children alongside his twin sister [redacted].

༉‧₊˚. walker lee evans [born jan. 5, 2009] is an actor. he was born in new orleans, louisiana to actor christopher robert evans & [redacted] as the youngest of 6 children. out of all of his siblings, he is the closest to liliana.

┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° aaron perry johnson [born jun. 13, 1990] is a world famous english actor. he was born in high wycombe, england. his father left him & his mother when he was 2. when he was 4, his mother met a mexican man from guadalajara who aaron considers as his dad. his mother & the man got married after 3 years of dating and 11 months later, his younger half-sister gemma araceli flores was born. he is perfectly fluent in spanish & russian. i first met aaron on the set of percy jackson & the olympians while visiting my younger brother, walker, and i met him for the second time while filming nosferatu, where we became friends and he helped me break up with my shitty ex-boyfriend, asher ellis. he, along with reneé & louis, helped me get over my break up with asher and overtime we became closer. in late april 2024, we began going on dates but it wasn't until jun. 17 that we became official. we moved in together on oct. 13, 2024.

┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° my past relationships

༉‧₊˚. louis patrick james patridge [born jun. 3, 2003] is a famous english actor. he was born in london, england. he began acting as a young child. we first met when i was 13 years old and dated from jun. 28-jul. 21, 2019. we broke up because we knew we were far better off as friends and he's one of my best friends to this day. me, him & reneé are a very well-known trio. i even helped him get together with olivia.

༉‧₊˚. anna cathcart [born jun. 16, 2003] is a famous canadian actress. she was born in vancouver, canada. she's most known for her role as kitty song-covey. we first met in march of 2019 and began dating on oct. 11, 2019. we dated for nearly two years before breaking up on sept. 23, 2021 because we realized we'd both lost feelings for each other. we still speak from time to time and are on good terms.

༉‧₊˚. asher roman ellis [born may 6, 1996] is a famous singer-songwriter. he was born in dallas, texas. he began releasing music at 14 years old but didn't make his rise to fame until releasing his 2nd album in 2017. he appeared on the song my oh my in my 2nd album divine feminine and that's how we met. i quickly fell in love with him and we got together on apr. 19, 2022. for the first 6 months, he treated me perfectly but slowly he started acting differently, becoming verbally abusive and cheating on me without me knowing. it only got worse after i met aaron and asher tried demanding that i stop speaking to him but i refused. finally, on may 27, 2023 i broke up with him and moved in with renee.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Conspiratorialism and the epistemological crisis

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe! (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

Last year, Ed Pierson was supposed to fly from Seattle to New Jersey on Alaska Airlines. He boarded his flight, but then he had an urgent discussion with the flight attendant, explaining that as a former senior Boeing engineer, he'd specifically requested that flight because the aircraft wasn't a 737 Max:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/boeing-737-max-passenger-boycott/index.html

But for operational reasons, Alaska had switched out the equipment on the flight and there he was on a 737 Max, about to travel cross-continent, and he didn't feel safe doing so. He demanded to be let off the flight. His bags were offloaded and he walked back up the jetbridge after telling the spooked flight attendant, "I can’t go into detail right now, but I wasn’t planning on flying the Max, and I want to get off the plane."

Boeing, of course, is a flying disaster that was years in the making. Its planes have been falling out of the sky since 2019. Floods of whistleblowers have come forward to say its aircraft are unsafe. Pierson's not the only Boeing employee to state – both on and off the record – that he wouldn't fly on a specific model of Boeing aircraft, or, in some cases any recent Boeing aircraft:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/22/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever/#will-eventually-stop

And yet, for years, Boeing's regulators have allowed the company to keep turning out planes that keep turning out lemons. This is a pretty frightening situation, to say the least. I'm not an aerospace engineer, I'm not an aircraft safety inspector, but every time I book a flight, I have to make a decision about whether to trust Boeing's assurances that I can safely board one of its planes without dying.

In an ideal world, I wouldn't even have to think about this. I'd be able to trust that publicly accountable regulators were on the job, making sure that airplanes were airworthy. "Caveat emptor" is no way to run a civilian aviation system.

But even though I don't have the specialized expertise needed to assess the airworthiness of Boeing planes, I do have the much more general expertise needed to assess the trustworthiness of Boeing's regulator. The FAA has spent years deferring to Boeing, allowing it to self-certify that its aircraft were safe. Even when these assurances led to the death of hundreds of people, the FAA continued to allow Boeing to mark its own homework:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc

What's more, the FAA boss who presided over those hundreds of deaths was an ex-Boeing lobbyist, whom Trump subsequently appointed to run Boeing's oversight. He's not the only ex-insider who ended up a regulator, and there's plenty of ex-regulators now on Boeing's payroll:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/boeing-debacle-shows-need-to-investigate-trump-era-corruption/

You don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that companies have conflicts of interest when it comes to certifying their own products. "Market forces" aren't going to keep Boeing from shipping defective products, because the company's top brass are more worried about cashing out with this quarter's massive stock buybacks than they are about their successors' ability to manage the PR storm or Congressional hearings after their greed kills hundreds and hundreds of people.

You also don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that these conflicts persist even when a Boeing insider leaves the company to work for its regulators, or vice-versa. A regulator who anticipates a giant signing bonus from Boeing after their term in office, or a an ex-Boeing exec who holds millions in Boeing stock has an irreconcilable conflict of interest that will make it very hard – perhaps impossible – for them to hold the company to account when it trades safety for profit.

It's not just Boeing customers who feel justifiably anxious about trusting a system with such obvious conflicts of interest: Boeing's own executives, lobbyists and lawyers also refuse to participate in similarly flawed systems of oversight and conflict resolution. If Boeing was sued by its shareholders and the judge was also a pissed off Boeing shareholder, they would demand a recusal. If Boeing was looking for outside counsel to represent it in a liability suit brought by the family of one of its murder victims, they wouldn't hire the firm that was suing them – not even if that firm promised to be fair. If a Boeing executive's spouse sued for divorce, that exec wouldn't use the same lawyer as their soon-to-be-ex.

Sure, it takes specialized knowledge and training to be a lawyer, a judge, or an aircraft safety inspector. But anyone can look at the system those experts work in and spot its glaring defects. In other words, while acquiring expertise is hard, it's much easier to spot weaknesses in the process by which that expertise affects the world around us.

And therein lies the problem: aviation isn't the only technically complex, potentially lethal, and utterly, obviously untrustworthy system we all have to navigate. How about the building safety codes that governed the structure you're in right now? Plenty of people have blithely assumed that structural engineers carefully designed those standards, and that these standards were diligently upheld, only to discover in tragic, ghastly ways that this was wrong:

https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826

There are dozens – hundreds! – of life-or-death, highly technical questions you have to resolve every day just to survive. Should you trust the antilock braking firmware in your car? How about the food hygiene rules in the factories that produced the food in your shopping cart? Or the kitchen that made the pizza that was just delivered? Is your kid's school teaching them well, or will they grow up to be ignoramuses and thus economic roadkill?

Hell, even if I never get into another Boeing aircraft, I live in the approach path for Burbank airport, where Southwest lands 50+ Boeing flights every day. How can I be sure that the next Boeing 737 Max that falls out of the sky won't land on my roof?

This is the epistemological crisis we're living through today. Epistemology is the process by which we know things. The whole point of a transparent, democratically accountable process for expert technical deliberation is to resolve the epistemological challenge of making good choices about all of these life-or-death questions. Even the smartest person among us can't learn to evaluate all those questions, but we can all look at the process by which these questions are answered and draw conclusions about its soundness.

Is the process public? Are the people in charge of it forthright? Do they have conflicts of interest, and, if so, do they sit out any decision that gives even the appearance of impropriety? If new evidence comes to light – like, say, a horrific disaster – is there a way to re-open the process and change the rules?

The actual technical details might be a black box for us, opaque and indecipherable. But the box itself can be easily observed: is it made of sturdy material? Does it have sharp corners and clean lines? Or is it flimsy, irregular and torn? We don't have to know anything about the box's contents to conclude that we don't trust the box.

For example: we may not be experts in chemical engineering or water safety, but we can tell when a regulator is on the ball on these issues. Back in 2019, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection sought comment on its water safety regs. Dow Chemical – the largest corporation in the state's largest industry – filed comments arguing that WV should have lower standards for chemical contamination in its drinking water.

Now, I'm perfectly prepared to believe that there are safe levels of chemical runoff in the water supply. There's a lot of water in the water supply, after all, and "the dose makes the poison." What's more, I use the products whose manufacture results in that chemical waste. I want them to be made safely, but I do want them to be made – for one thing, the next time I have surgery, I want the anesthesiologist to start an IV with fresh, sterile plastic tubing.

And I'm not a chemist, let alone a water chemist. Neither am I a toxicologist. There are aspects of this debate I am totally unqualified to assess. Nevertheless, I think the WV process was a bad one, and here's why:

https://www.wvma.com/press/wvma-news/4244-wvma-statement-on-human-health-criteria-development

That's Dow's comment to the regulator (as proffered by its mouthpiece, the WV Manufacturers' Association, which it dominates). In that comment, Dow argues that West Virginians safely can absorb more poison than other Americans, because the people of West Virginia are fatter than other Americans, and so they have more tissue and thus a better ratio of poison to person than the typical American. But they don't stop there! They also say that West Virginians don't drink as much water as their out-of-state cousins, preferring to drink beer instead, so even if their water is more toxic, they'll be drinking less of it:

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/03/14/the-real-elitists-looking-down-on-trump-voters/

Even without any expertise in toxicology or water chemistry, I can tell that these are bullshit answers. The fact that the WV regulator accepted these comments tells me that they're not a good regulator. I was in WV last year to give a talk, and I didn't drink the tap water.

It's totally reasonable for non-experts to reject the conclusions of experts when the process by which those experts resolve their disagreements is obviously corrupt and irredeemably flawed. But some refusals carry higher costs – both for the refuseniks and the people around them – than my switching to bottled water when I was in Charleston.

Take vaccine denial (or "hesitancy"). Many people greeted the advent of an extremely rapid, high-tech covid vaccine with dread and mistrust. They argued that the pharma industry was dominated by corrupt, greedy corporations that routinely put their profits ahead of the public's safety, and that regulators, in Big Pharma's pocket, let them get away with mass murder.

The thing is, all that is true. Look, I've had five covid vaccinations, but not because I trust the pharma industry. I've had direct experience of how pharma sacrifices safety on greed's altar, and narrowly avoided harm myself. I have had chronic pain problems my whole life, and they've gotten worse every year. When my daughter was on the way, I decided this was going to get in the way of my ability to parent – I wanted to be able to carry her for long stretches! – and so I started aggressively pursuing the pain treatments I'd given up on many years before.

My journey led me to many specialists – physios, dieticians, rehab specialists, neurologists, surgeons – and I tried many, many therapies. Luckily, my wife had private insurance – we were in the UK then – and I could go to just about any doctor that seemed promising. That's how I found myself in the offices of a Harley Street quack, a prominent pain specialist, who had great news for me: it turned out that opioids were way safer than had previously been thought, and I could just take opioids every day and night for the rest of my life without any serious risk of addiction. It would be fine.

This sounded wrong to me. I'd lost several friends to overdoses, and watched others spiral into miserable lives as they struggled with addiction. So I "did my own research." Despite not having a background in chemistry, biology, neurology or pharmacology, I struggled through papers and read commentary and came to the conclusion that opioids weren't safe at all. Rather, corrupt billionaire pharma owners like the Sackler family had colluded with their regulators to risk the lives of millions by pushing falsified research that was finding publication in some of the most respected, peer-reviewed journals in the world.

I became an opioid denier, in other words.

I decided, based on my own research, that the experts were wrong, and that they were wrong for corrupt reasons, and that I couldn't trust their advice.

When anti-vaxxers decried the covid vaccines, they said things that were – in form at least – indistinguishable from the things I'd been saying 15 years earlier, when I decided to ignore my doctor's advice and throw away my medication on the grounds that it would probably harm me.

For me, faith in vaccines didn't come from a broad, newfound trust in the pharmaceutical system: rather, I judged that there was so much scrutiny on these new medications that it would overwhelm even pharma's ability to corruptly continue to sell a medication that they secretly knew to be harmful, as they'd done so many times before:

https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timeline-the-rise-and-fall-of-vioxx

But many of my peers had a different take on anti-vaxxers: for these friends and colleagues, anti-vaxxers were being foolish. Surprisingly, these people I'd long felt myself in broad agreement with began to defend the pharmaceutical system and its regulators. Once they saw that anti-vaxx was a wedge issue championed by right-wing culture war shitheads, they became not just pro-vaccine, but pro-pharma.

There's a name for this phenomenon: "schismogenesis." That's when you decide how you feel about an issue based on who supports it. Think of self-described "progressives" who became cheerleaders for the America's cruel, ruthless and lawless "intelligence community" when it seemed that US spooks were bent on Trump's ouster:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

The fact that the FBI didn't like Trump didn't make them allies of progressive causes. This was and is the same entity that (among other things) tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr into killing himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

But schismogenesis isn't merely a reactionary way of flip-flopping on issues based on reflexive enmity. It's actually a reasonable epistemological tactic: in a world where there are more issues you need to be clear on than you can possibly inform yourself about, you need some shortcuts. One shortcut – a shortcut that's failing – is to say, "Well, I'll provisionally believe whatever the expert system tells me is true." Another shortcut is, "I will provisionally disbelieve in whatever the people I know to act in bad faith are saying is true." That is, "schismogenesis."

Schismogenesis isn't a great tactic. It would be far better if we had a set of institutions we could all largely trust – if the black boxes where expert debate took place were sturdy, rectilinear and sharp-cornered.

But they're not. They're just not. Our regulatory process sucks. Corporate concentration makes it trivial for cartels to capture their regulators and steer them to conclusions that benefit corporate shareholders even if that means visiting enormous harm – even mass death – on the public:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

No one hates Big Tech more than I do, but many of my co-belligerents in the war on Big Tech believe that the rise of conspiratorialism can be laid at tech platforms' feet. They say that Big Tech boasts of how good they are at algorithmically manipulating our beliefs, and attribute Qanons, flat earthers, and other outlandish conspiratorial cults to the misuse off those algorithms.

"We built a Big Data mind-control ray" is one of those extraordinary claims that requires extraordinary evidence. But the evidence for Big Tech's persuasion machines is very poor: mostly, it consists of tech platforms' own boasts to potential investors and customers for their advertising products. "We can change peoples' minds" has long been the boast of advertising companies, and it's clear that they can change the minds of customers for advertising.

Think of department store mogul John Wanamaker, who famously said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." Today – thanks to commercial surveillance – we know that the true proportion of wasted advertising spending is more like 99.9%. Advertising agencies may be really good at convincing John Wanamaker and his successors, through prolonged, personal, intense selling – but that doesn't mean they're able to sell so efficiently to the rest of us with mass banner ads or spambots:

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

In other words, the fact that Facebook claims it is really good at persuasion doesn't mean that it's true. Just like the AI companies who claim their chatbots can do your job: they are much better at convincing your boss (who is insatiably horny for firing workers) than they are at actually producing an algorithm that can replace you. What's more, their profitability relies far more on convincing a rich, credulous business executive that their product works than it does on actually delivering a working product.

Now, I do think that Facebook and other tech giants play an important role in the rise of conspiratorial beliefs. However, that role isn't using algorithms to persuade people to mistrust our institutions. Rather Big Tech – like other corporate cartels – has so corrupted our regulatory system that they make trusting our institutions irrational.

Think of federal privacy law. The last time the US got a new federal consumer privacy law was in 1988, when Congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act, a law that prohibits video store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/why-vppa-protects-youtube-and-viacom-employees

It's been a minute. There are very obvious privacy concerns haunting Americans, related to those tech giants, and yet the closest Congress can come to doing something about it is to attempt the forced sale of the sole Chinese tech giant with a US footprint to a US company, to ensure that its rampant privacy violations are conducted by our fellow Americans, and to force Chinese spies to buy their surveillance data on millions of Americans in the lawless, reckless swamp of US data-brokerages:

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1238435508/tiktok-ban-bill-congress-china

For millions of Americans – especially younger Americans – the failure to pass (or even introduce!) a federal privacy law proves that our institutions can't be trusted. They're right:

https://www.tiktok.com/@pearlmania500/video/7345961470548512043

Occam's Razor cautions us to seek the simplest explanation for the phenomena we see in the world around us. There's a much simpler explanation for why people believe conspiracy theories they encounter online than the idea that the one time Facebook is telling the truth is when they're boasting about how well their products work – especially given the undeniable fact that everyone else who ever claimed to have perfected mind-control was a fantasist or a liar, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA to pick-up artists.

Maybe people believe in conspiracy theories because they have hundreds of life-or-death decisions to make every day, and the institutions that are supposed to make that possible keep proving that they can't be trusted. Nevertheless, those decisions have to be made, and so something needs to fill the epistemological void left by the manifest unsoundness of the black box where the decisions get made.

For many people – millions – the thing that fills the black box is conspiracy fantasies. It's true that tech makes finding these conspiracy fantasies easier than ever, and it's true that tech makes forming communities of conspiratorial belief easier, too. But the vulnerability to conspiratorialism that algorithms identify and target people based on isn't a function of Big Data. It's a function of corruption – of life in a world in which real conspiracies (to steal your wages, or let rich people escape the consequences of their crimes, or sacrifice your safety to protect large firms' profits) are everywhere.

Progressives – which is to say, the coalition of liberals and leftists, in which liberals are the senior partners and spokespeople who control the Overton Window – used to identify and decry these conspiracies. But as right wing "populists" declared their opposition to these conspiracies – when Trump damned free trade and the mainstream media as tools of the ruling class – progressives leaned into schismogenesis and declared their vocal support for these old enemies of progress.

This is the crux of Naomi Klein's brilliant 2023 book Doppelganger: that as the progressive coalition started supporting these unworthy and broken institutions, the right spun up "mirror world" versions of their critique, distorted versions that focus on scapegoating vulnerable groups rather than fighting unworthy institutions:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

This is a long tradition in politics: hundreds of years ago, some leftists branded antisemitism "the socialism of fools." Rather than condemning the system's embrace of the finance sector and its wealthy beneficiaries, anti-semites blame a disfavored group of people – people who are just as likely as anyone to suffer under the system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_is_the_socialism_of_fools

It's an ugly, shallow, cartoon version of socialism's measured and comprehensive analysis of how the class system actually works and why it's so harmful to everyone except a tiny elite. Literally cartoonish: the shadow-world version of socialism co-opts and simplifies the iconography of class struggle. And schismogenesis – "if the right likes this, I don't" – sends "progressive" scolds after anyone who dares to criticize finance as the crux of our world's problems as popularizing "antisemetic dog-whistles."

This is the problem with "horseshoe theory" – the idea that the far right and the far left bend all the way around to meet each other:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/26/horsehoe-crab/#substantive-disagreement

When the right criticizes pharma companies, they tell us to "do our own research" (e.g. ignore the systemic problems of people being forced to work under dangerous conditions during a pandemic while individually assessing conflicting claims about vaccine safety, ideally landing on buying "supplements" from a grifter). When the left criticizes pharma, it's to argue for universal access to medicine and vigorous public oversight of pharma companies. These aren't the same thing:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/25/the-other-shoe-drops/#quid-pro-quo

Long before opportunistic right wing politicians realized they could get mileage out of pointing at the terrifying epistemological crisis of trying to make good choices in an age of institutions that can't be trusted, the left was sounding the alarm. Conspiratorialism – the fracturing of our shared reality – is a serious problem, weakening our ability to respond effectively to endless disasters of the polycrisis.

But by blaming the problem of conspiratorialism on the credulity of believers (rather than the deserved disrepute of the institutions they have lost faith in) we adopt the logic of the right: "conspiratorialism is a problem of individuals believing wrong things," rather than "a system that makes wrong explanations credible – and a schismogenic insistence that these institutions are sound and trustworthy."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/black-boxes/#when-you-know-you-know

Image: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/nrcgov/15993154185/

meanwell-packaging.co.uk https://www.flickr.com/photos/195311218@N08/52159853896

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic #conspiratorialism #epistemology #epistemological crisis #mind control rays #opioid denial #vaccine denial #regulatory capture #boeing #corruption #inequality #monopoly #apple #dma #eu

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is-wonder-mainline-yet · 8 months ago

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Not yet (October 20, 2024)

It has now been one whole year since the release of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and it still has not been added to the "history of Super Mario" page.

Here are some stats on how long other games took to add, based on checking the Wayback machine:

New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe: 602 days (Jan 11 2019 - Sep 3 2020).

Super Mario Maker 2: 434 days (Jun 28 2019 - Sep 3 2020). There's a bit of a gap in the Wayback machine after May 10 2020 so it's possible these were actually added earlier, but since Sept 3 also coincides with changes in the (much better archived) main page I suspect that date is correct.

Super Mario 3D All Stars: 196 days (Sep 18 2020 - Apr 1 2021)

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury: 49 days (Feb 12 2021 - Apr 1 2021)

Honorable Mention: Super Mario Odyssey: 40 days (Oct 27 2017 - Dec 5 2017).

This doesn't really count, as the history page did not exist prior to Mario Odyssey's release date. If I counted other games that had released prior to the existence of this webpage, obviously the highest count would be Super Mario Bros.: 11736 days (Oct 18, 1985 - Dec 5 2017)

It seems like they add games 2 at a time, though the site hasn't really been around long enough to establish a solid pattern. Maybe we'll see Wonder on there by the next time a new Super Mario game is released!

#mario dot nintendo dot com slash history #super mario bros wonder

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inevitably-johnlocked · 2 months ago

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Hey Steph

How are you? Long time no see 😅

I haven't really read any Johnlock fics the last couple of months, and so I haven't been on your page in quite some time 🫣.

Now I miss my favourite fan couple and really want to go back in reading about them.

So, do you have any suggestions of recent fics that are a must-read or any must-read fics really?

Thank you for your work in this fandom. You're a gem.

Hugs Seven

Hi Lovely!!

I feel you there on the "haven't been here in awhile" lol. I haven't read many new Johnlock fics lately so sadly most of my recs will be pretty old in this regard (I've been reading a lot of other ships the past couple years oooops) BUT I love this fandom so much soo just to be a curator of happy things makes me happy hee hee. I'll cycle back to Johnlock again soon, I'm just on a rotation of my fave old fics LOL.

THAT SAID, here's my past lists for read agains and bookmarked fics:

Top 30 Read-Again Fics (March 2019)

Top 30 Read-Again Fics Pt. 2 (Sept. 2019)

Fave Read-Again Fics (10) (Dec 11/20)

Top 20 Fave 40K+ w. Fics (April 2017)

Ten Fave Short Johnlock Fics (Easy Reads April 2018)

25 Fave Johnlock One Shots (April 2018)

Top 10 Fave Fics (September 2018)

Top 20 Bookmarks of 2018 (March 2019)

Another Top 10 Fave Fics (June 2019)

Top 25 Fave Non-Ao3 Fics (Nov. 2019)

Top 25 Fave Non-Ao3 Fics Pt 2 (Apr 2022)

Top 25 Fave Non-AO3 Fics Pt 3 (May 2023)

Top 25 Bookmarks of 2019 (Dec. 29/2019)

Top 30 Bookmarks of 2020

Top 25 Bookmarks of 2021

Top 20 Bookmarks of 2022

Top 35 Bookmarks of 2023

Top 20 Comfort Fics (Feb 2022)

Top 30 Fave Angst Fics Under 10K

25 Fics for Fic Rec Bingo

10 Current Fave Multi-Fandom Fics (June 2023)

Top 30 Fave Whump Fics (Feb 2025)

Feel free, friends to add some more recent fics to this post! I'll get around to it soon when I get my free time back; I've added it to my "to make" list LOL

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these fics!!

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #fave fics #my fave fics #read again fics #fic masterlist #top lists

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 months ago

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Hocus Potus. http://Newsday.com/matt :: Matt Davies

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 13, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Apr 14, 2025

This evening, lawyers for the Department of Justice told a federal court that the administration does not believe it has a legal obligation to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States, despite a court order to do so.

The 29-year-old Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. about 2011 when he was 16 to escape threats from a gang that was terrorizing his family. He settled in Maryland with his older brother, a U.S. citizen, and lived there until in 2019 he was picked up by police as he waited at a Home Depot to be picked up for work as a day laborer. Police transferred him to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After a hearing, an immigration judge rejected his claim for asylum but said he could not be sent back to El Salvador, finding it credible that the Barrio 18 gang had been “targeting him and threatening him with death because of his family’s pupusa business.”

Ever since, Abrego Garcia has checked in annually with ICE as directed. He lives with his wife and their three children, and has never been charged with any crime. The Department of Homeland Security issued him a work permit, and he joined a union, working full time as a sheet metal apprentice.

On March 12, ICE agents pulled his car over, told his wife to come pick up their disabled son, and incarcerated Abrego Garcia, pressing him to say he was a member of MS-13. On March 15 the government rendered Abrego Garcia to the infamous CECOT prison for terrorists in El Salvador, alleged to be the site of human rights abuses, torture, extrajudicial killings. The U.S. government is paying El Salvador $6 million a year to incarcerate the individuals it sends there.

On March 24, Abrego Garcia’s family sued the administration over his removal.

On March 31 the government admitted that its arrest and rendition of Abrego Garcia happened because of “administrative error” but said he couldn’t be brought back because, in El Salvador, he is outside the jurisdiction of the United States. It also accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang and said that bringing him back to the U.S. would threaten the public.

On April 4, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. no later than 11:59 pm on April 7.

In her opinion, filed April 6, Judge Xinis wrote that “[a]lthough the legal basis for the mass removal of hundreds of individuals to El Salvador remains disturbingly unclear, Abrego Garcia’s case is categorically different—there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal.…. [H]is detention appears wholly lawless.” It is “a clear constitutional violation.” And yet administration officials “cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person—migrant and U.S. citizen alike—to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the 'custodian,' and the Court thus lacks jurisdiction.”

The administration had already appealed her April 4 order to the Supreme Court, which handed down a 9–0 decision on Thursday, April 10, requiring the Trump administration “to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador,” but asking the district court to clarify what it meant by “effectuate,” that release, noting that it must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

The Supreme Court also ordered that “the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.” Judge Xinis ordered the government to file an update by 9:30 a.m. on April 11 explaining where Abrego Garcia is, what the government is doing to get him back, and what more it will do. She planned an in-person hearing at 1:00 p.m.

But the administration evidently does not intend to comply. On April 11, the lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, said he did not have information about where Abrego Garcia is and ignored her order to provide information about what the government was doing to bring him back. Saturday, it said Abrego Garcia is “alive and secure” in CECOT. Today, it said it had no new information about him, but said that Abrego Garcia is no longer eligible for the immigration judge’s order not to send him to El Salvador “because of his membership in MS-13 which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

There is still no evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13.

Today, administration lawyers used the Supreme Court’s warning that the court must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs” to lay out a chilling argument. They ignored the Supreme Court’s agreement that the government must get Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador, as well as the court’s requirement that the administration explain what it’s doing to make that happen.

Instead, the lawyers argued that because Abrego Garcia is now outside the country, any attempt to get him back would intrude on the president’s power to conduct foreign affairs. Similarly, they argue that the president cannot be ordered to do anything but remove domestic obstacles from Abrego Garcia’s return. Because Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, is currently in the U.S. for a visit with Trump, they suggest they will not share any more updates about Abrego Garcia and the court should not ask for them because it would intrude on “sensitive” foreign policy issues.

Let’s be very clear about exactly what’s happening here: President Donald J. Trump is claiming the power to ignore the due process of the law guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, declare someone is a criminal, kidnap them, send them to prison in a third country, and then claim that there is no way to get that person back.

All people in the United States are entitled to due process, but Trump and his officers have tried to convince Americans that noncitizens are not. They have also pushed the idea that those they are offshoring are criminals, but a Bloomberg investigation showed that of the 238 men sent to CECOT in the first group, only five of them had been charged with or convicted of felony assault or gun violations. Three had been charged with misdemeanors like petty theft. Two were charged with human smuggling. In any case, in the U.S., criminals are entitled to due process.

Make no mistake: as Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson recently warned, if the administration can take noncitizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, and then claim it is helpless to correct the error either because the person is out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction, it could do the same thing to citizens.

Trump has said he would “love” to do exactly that, and would even be “honored” to, and Bukele has been offering to hold U.S. citizens. Dasha Burns and Myah Ward of Politico reported Friday that former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince is pitching a plan to expand renditions to El Salvador to at least 100,000 criminal offenders from U.S. prisons and to avoid legal challenges by making part of CECOT American territory, then leasing it back to El Salvador to run.

When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says, “The president's idea for American citizens to potentially be deported, these would be heinous violent criminals who have broken our nation's laws repeatedly," remember that just days ago, Trump suggested that a former government employee was guilty of treason for writing a book about his time in the first Trump administration that Trump claimed was “designed to sow chaos and distrust” in the government.

Here’s the thing: Once you give up the idea that we are all equal before the law and have the right to due process, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that some people have more rights than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality before the law with the idea that some people have no rights, you have granted your approval to the idea of an authoritarian government. At that point, all you can do is to hope that the dictator and his henchmen overlook you.

At least some people understand this. The president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, Sean McGarvey, received a standing ovation when he said to a room full of his fellow union workers: “We need to make our voices heard. We’re not red, we’re not blue. We’re the building trades, the backbone of America. You want to build a $5 billion data center? Want more six-figure careers with health care, retirement, and no college debt? You don’t call Elon Musk, you call us!... And yeah, that means all of us. All of us. Including our brother [International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers] apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand to be returned to us and his family now! Bring him home!”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Hocus Pocus #Matt Davies #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Building trades Unions #unions #due process rule of law #deportations #immigration #political cartoons #Abrego Garcia #El Salvador

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vintagelasvegas · 6 months ago

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Franklin Motel / Ferguson's Motel / Ferguson's Downtown

The motel at 1028 Fremont St. was built by brothers John T. and Albert Franklin. There was a business called Jim’s Fruit Market was on corner of Fremont & 11th when the Franklins bought the property. They broke ground on the motel in Aug. ‘45. A. L. Worswick, H. S. Bradley and R. M. Finlayson designed the structure. The U-shaped, 32-unit motel was open by 1946. In the mid 50s, the 2-floor unit on the front, right was added, and another L-shaped wing was added behind the hotel for a total of 67 units.

In Apr. ’60, the Franklins sold the property to Jack & Irene Ferguson, who operated the motel with sons Donald and Larry. The motel operated as Ferguson’s Franklin from ’60-63. The name Ferguson’s Motel coincided with the installation of the new Ferguson’s Motel neon sign, circa ’63, designed by Jimmy Dix, fabricated by YESCO.

The Fergusons sold the property in 2012 to the Downtown Project. The motel was closed, and the 50s-era addition in the back of the motel was partially demolished. After a years-long adaptive reuse project led by Jen Taler, the original U-shaped complex reopened as Ferguson’s Downtown in 2019.

Photos: Franklin Motel | Fergusons Motel

Franklin bros built six more motels, the Lucky, Valley, El Rancho Boulder, City Center, Golden Inn (demolished), and Orbit Inn (demolished).

Below: The earliest postcard of Franklin Motel, circa 1946; Postcard of Franklin Motel in the '50s; Three images of Fergusons Motel in the '70s – photos by David Lee Waite.

Sources: Largest Auto Court Shapes. Review-Journal, 8/4/45; Franklin Motel Sold. Review-Journal, 4/17/60; Franklins Build Motels. Review-Journal, 10/31/64; Franklin Motel to Fergusons: Family Legacy Preserved. DTLV, 11/3/17.

#1946 #Franklin Motel #Fergusons Motel

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xpic-mike-adult-mature-content · 1 month ago

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DO ANGELS WET NAKED IN HEAVEN as THEY WATER HERE ON EARTH?

an Rx peek a boo (1400)

tumblr fuente: gradexmovies Jul 12, 2024 # (Alguien tiene que ceder, en España, en España) #marilyn monroe

tumblr fuente: actress-playground Una cruz cuelga en el valle entre sus (véalo usted mismo). Teresa Mary Palmer (nació el 26 de febrero de 1986) es una actriz australiana. Destacada "scream queen", es conocida por sus papeles en películas de terror, así como en proyectos de otros géneros tanto en Australia como en Estados Unidos. Wikipedia

tumblr fuente: gacougnol Jul 15, 2024 fotos artisticos del photografo #patrice delmotte

tumblr fuente gacougnol Jul 30, 2024 foto artisticos photografo #Constantine Gedal

tumblr fuente: haunted by story telling por artista fotografo Arthur F. Kales ~ Desnudo femenino en la ribera del rio de 1916 view on wordPress Source: unregardoblique.com

tumbler fuente: henk-heijmans Apr 12, 2024 sin titulo - por el artista fotografo Constantine Gedal, Russian #Constantine Gedal

tumblr

Phoebe Cates tumblr source perceval23 Aug 23, 2024

Phoebe Belle Cates Kline (nació el 16 de julio de 1963) es una actriz estadounidense retirada que apareció en las películas Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Remlins (1984), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Drop Dead Fred (1991) y Princess Caraboo (1994). WikipediaWikipedia

Zooey Deschanel (29) in Gigantic (2009) tumblr source actressplaygroundxxx perceval23 Aug 22, 2024

Gigantic es una película estadounidense de comedia y drama de 2008, dirigida por Matt Aselton y protagonizada por Paul Dano, Zooey Deschanel, John Goodman, Edward Asner y Jane Alexander. La historia está basada en la niñez de Aselton con el deseo de que sus padres adopten a un niño chino. La película fue filmada en Nueva York y Connecticut. Tuvo su estreno mundial en el Festival Internacional de Cine de Toronto de 2008 y fue lanzada en Estados Unidos el 3 de abril de 2009.Wikipedia

#maria de nati tumblr fuente erofilmgifs Aug 13, 2024

María Díaz (Madrid, 11 de junio de 1997), más conocida como María de Nati, es una actriz española conocida principalmente por sus participaciones en series de televisión, especialmente en El secreto de Puente Viejo (2015-2016), La víctima número 8 (2018), Madres. Amor y vida (2020-2022) o Entrevías (2022-2024). También ha participado en las películas Que Dios nos perdone (2016) y El reino (2018) de Rodrigo Sorogoyen y en las comedias Si yo fuera rico (2019) de Álvaro Fernández Armero y El buen patrón (2021) de Fernando León de Aranoa.

#1400 #marilyn monroe #Teresa Mary Palmer #artistic photographer #patrice delmotte #Constantine Gedal #Arthur F. Kales #Phoebe Belle Cates Kline #Zooey Claire Deschanel #maria de nati #Rx peek a boo #2025-05-25

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goatpaste · 1 year ago

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What influenced your artstyle? Are there any artist that you took heavy influence from? Has it always been the same artists, or, if your artstyle looked different way back when, different artist throughout the years?

ohhh yeah no my art style has changed a lot through the years! its funny because it used to be a lineless style for awhile! then it fluctuated to lineart, now its back to mostly the lineless!

I think my art really came into its own in 2019 when I played Smile for Me and discovered @/yugsly art style and fell in love. their my biggest inspiration, I admire all their work and take a heavy inspiration from them for sure

Here lets do an exploration of my Deviantart Galleries all the way back to 2011-2019 just for a quick evolution timeline lol

this is just some fun highlights, feel free to explore my ancient accounts (and apology for whatever 11-19 year old sammi be saying on there lol) [x] [x]

Random cat1 (Aug 28, 2011), my very first upload to Deviantart/online artist space

Early Uploads of my Fursona (Mar 15, 2012) (Jul 15, 2012)

the short while when my fursona was a ponysona (Jun 26, 2012) (Jul 14, 2014)

Art from 2013 (Jan 14, 2013) (Jul 29, 2013) (Dec 31, 2013)

Art from 2014 (Feb 3, 2014) (May 17, 2014) (Sep 10, 2014)

Art from 2015 (Jun 3, 2015) (Jun 17, 2015)

Art from 2016 (Jan 14, 2016) (Apr 23, 2016) (Jul 25, 2016) (Dec 31, 2016)

Art from 2017 (Jan 21, 2017) (Feb 15, 2017) (Jun 28, 2017) (Aug 28, 2017) (Dec 7, 2017)

Art if 2018 (Feb 10, 2018) (Mar 22, 2018) (Oct 24, 2018)

Art of 2019 (Jul 25, 2019) (Jul 25, 2019) (Aug 4, 2019) (Oct 2, 2019) (Oct 8, 2019)

#long post #sorry lol #i wish i could post more but i have a 30 image cap lol

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bubbloquacious · 2 years ago

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Effortpost registry

Kernels and Injectivity; 19 jun 2025

The Topology Game; 2 apr 2025

Graphs as presheaves 4: coverages; 13 feb 2025

The general linear group as a Hopf algebra; 31 oct 2024

Zariski topologies; 14 oct 2024

On integer multiplication and endomorphism algebras; 2 sep 2024

Recommendations for learning category theory; 28 mar 2024

The hairy ball theorem and stably free modules; 11 feb 2024

Topological connectedness and generalized paths; 24 nov 2023

Graphs as presheaves 3: subobject classifiers; 19 oct 2023

Effortpost registry; 18 oct 2023

Graphs as presheaves 2: limits and colimits; 11 oct 2023

Hydrogen bomb vs. coughing baby: graphs and the Yoneda embedding; 7 oct 2023

Extending the D ⊣ U ⊣ I adjunction sequence; 23 sep 2023

The Riemann rearrangement theorem and net convergence; 18 sep 2023

Thoughts on the axiom of choice; 18 feb 2023

Topological spaces and simple graphs as neighbourhood spaces; 15 feb 2023

What is a space?; 10 jan 2023

The exponential function applied to sets; 24 dec 2022

On nilpotent eigenvalues; 23 dec 2022

But IS the empty space connected?; 11 nov 2022

Monads monads monads; 8 nov 2022

Calculating what the triangle identities mean for a bunch of adjunctions and being amazed when it works every time; 7 nov 2022

Defining the Lebesgue integral as a net limit; 27 jul 2022

Rambles about describable sets; 28 oct 2021

Functions with cycling derivatives; 30 aug 2021

Why the rationals have zero length; 31 may 2021

An infinite cardinal valued random variable; 30 may 2021

A field-based functor; 20 mar 2021

Generalized sides; 13 mar 2021

Rambles about metric convexity; 22 feb 2021

Wiggle function convergence; 28 jan 2021

Rambles about infinity; 5 sep 2020

Generalized golf; 24 jun 2020

Rambles about continuousifying series; 10 may 2020

Rambles about being closed under exponentiation; 7 may 2020

Rambles about the groups that come with fields; 3 may 2020

A compilation of donutified functions; 17 mar 2020

Rambles about arithmetic functions; 24 jan 2020

Graphing real functions on a torus >:); 29 nov 2019

#math #pinned post #effortpost registry

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hsslilly-blog · 10 months ago

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This is a masterlist of Claire-related posts/edits/art. This follows a somewhat chronological order of events, with the first link being the earliest point on her timeline (so far). Only plot/character development posts. I’ve organised it in three different parts: pre-Hollywood U, throughout the game's timeframe, and post-Hollywood U. My timeline for Hollywood U has her freshman year in September, 2012, and her graduation in May, 2016. Most of it is canon compliant but I change things I dislike to fit my interpretation of events. This list will be constantly updated/modified.

General

• Claire Swanson OC tag • Claire Swanson inspo side blog • Claire’s introduction post (03/10/24) • Claire’s ref sheet (04/25/24) • Swanson/Stewart family tree • Claire’s playlist • Claire's Letterboxd list (09/19/24) • Claire’s filmography (03/25/25) • Claire lore dump (10/18/24) • Claire design notes (11/18/24) • Claire Swanson Week (02/08/25 - 02/14/25)

Web Weaves

• Death and Eros (Is it not confusing?) • Dream Girl Evil • But my Father; my beloved and most wretched Father? • Cemetery Sweetheart

Pre-Hollywood U (feb/1990 — sep/2012)

• Claire's First Holy Communion (1997) • Newspaper clipping of Claire’s first big role (apr/2002) • Claire and tennis (2005) • Claire and her father in Lucerne (2006) • Claire and Werner Swanson (2007) • Claire and Sebastian's photobooth photograph (feb/2008) • Claire and Donna by Sebastian (mar/2008) • Claire's early modelling career + The Swansons (2008) • Claire’s Myspace profile page (sep/2009) • Claire and Sabrina at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (feb/2010) • UC Berkeley's Insect Expo: Claire's butterfly showcase (2010) • I'm only here for your entertainment (2010)

Hollywood U (sep/2012 — may/2016)

• Welcome to Hollywood (U) (2012) • Hollywood U outfits, part 1 (nd) • Hollywood U outfits, part 2 (nd) • Claire as Frankie for Chateau Marmont (2013) • Claire’s driver’s license (ago/2014) • "Clash at Sunset" credit cards (jan/2015) • Claire for Vogue: "What's In My Bag?" (july/2015)

Post-Hollywood U (may/2016 — present)

• "Ticket to Ride" film poster (july/2016) • Claire for Vogue: "Ticket to Ride" (aug/2016) • "Out of Time" Letterboxd page (2017) • Claire at the 70th Cannes Film Festival (may/2017) • Claire for Vogue, marie claire, NYLON and Vanity Fair (2017) • Claire for wonderland.: "Your Toxic Valentine" (2018) • Claire’s Films Credit Cards (2017-2019) • Claire’s Wikipedia Article (2019) • "Wild Flowers" film poster (2019) • Claire Swanson Dress Up Game (2019) • Claire at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival (may/2019) • Claire’s Award List (up to 2020)

#oc: claire swanson #hollywood u #hwu mc #masterlist #updating as we go

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bobbie-robron · 1 year ago

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I can’t believe I’m gonna have to put up with a mini-you for the rest of my life.

11-Apr-2019, episode 2

#robron #robert sugden #aaron dingle #liv flaherty #a nod about natalie the surrogate #sebastian the handsome genius vs evil genius #aaron and his swimmers #taking a loan out to cover some of the expenses #getting ready just in case #lucky kid… if only 😔#last two scenes in episode 2 #20190411 #201904 #robron episodes 2019

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lurksunderthebed · 2 years ago

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Ghoap Analysis/Meta (1?)

The Evolution of GhostSoap Redux

Continuing thoughts on how Ghost and Soap's relationship has changed over the course of mw(19), mwii(22) and mwiii(23)

Spread out amongst several posts. This will be long 😅

(Part 1)

BEWARE SPOILERS TO MWIII(23) !

I've had time to settle my thoughts on Ghostsoap in mwiii (23) and this will go more into depth of the re-contextualising of Ghost and Soap's relationship in mwii (22) from the verdansk mission: "Flashpoint".

Flashpoint is set 4 years to mwiii(23). The game places it as April 6, 2019. This is important to us because it sets a different potential first mission (meet cute lmao) between the two and thus changes the tone of their interactions in mwii (22)

So let's set up a timeline with the available dates. Thankfully, the game sets some very concrete dates for us. Not all missions are included.*

2019

Flashpoint - April 06, 2019

First canonical appearance of SAS Ghost and Soap

Ghost provides sniper cover for Soap

Price/Soap capture Makarov and transport him to a helo with Ghost and Shepherd

There's a failed interrogation by Ghost and Soap.

Makarov implies he has met Ghost before and thought him dead at an airport

2019 Mw(19)

Piccadilly - Oct 25, 2019

First canonical appearance of SAS Gaz

Gaz is attached to Met Counter Terrorist Police. This implies he has worked largely in his career in conjunction to the Police. It's unknown whether he met Soap or Ghost before.

First meet of Gaz and Price to combat terrorists in London

Old Comrades - Oct 31, 2019

Gaz meets Nikolai

Interrogation scene. Arguably strengthens Gaz and Price's relationship

Into the Furnace - Nov 03, 2019

Last mission, they kill general barkov

Credit Scene - Nov 03-04, 2019* (hypothetical)

Laswell and Price form task force 141

Price seconds Ghost, Soap, Gaz. This implies that Price has worked with Soap and Ghost on missions for x amount of years. It's Gaz who was the surprise recruit.

2020 Cod Warzone

Season 2 - Mar 2020

First appearance of 141 Ghost

Unknown amount of 141 stationed in Verdansk. Ghost asks for backup.

Season 3 - Apr 2020

Armistice dissolved

Price and Gaz show up to help Ghost

Implied- unknown amount of 141 to Verdansk (possible meeting of Soap and Ghost)

Season ? - Dec 2020

Price kills Zakaev

First appearance (via call) of 141 Soap asking for backup in Verdansk

Price, Ghost, Gaz, Farah etc backup Soap who is somewhere else in Verdansk getting pinned down by enemies

2022 Mwii(22)

Strike - July 15, 2022

Ghost calls an airstrike on Ghorbrani with the aid of Shadow Company

Hindsight - Aug 12, 2022

Shepherd/Shadow Company loses American missiles to terroists

Kill or Capture - Oct 28, 2022

Ghost gets assigned Soap as his sergeant for Al Mazhrah mission to kill or capture Hassan

They find American missiles instead

Cartel Protection - Oct 30, 2022

Ghost/Soap meet Ale/Rudy in Las Almas

They fight the Mexican army under control of the cartels

RV with Graves/Shadow Comp.

El Sin Nombre - Nov 01, 2022

Soap infils cartel mansion

Valeria is revealed as El Sin Nombre

They take her into custody

Dark Water - Nov 02, 2022

Boat/oil rig mission with Shadow company

Missile launch averted by Ghost, Soap and Graves

Alone - Nov 03, 2022

Graves and Shepherd betray 141/mexi bros

Ghost and Soap get out of Las Almas

RV at ale's hideout with Rudy

Prison Break - Nov 03, 2022

Ghost, Soap, Rudy break out ale from prison

Meet up with Price/Gaz

Ghost Team - Nov 03, 2022

141 with mexi bros take back mexi bros base

Soap and Rudy "kill" Graves

Countdown - Nov 04, 2022

Stop missile launch in Chicago

Ghost and Soap kill Hassan

2023 Mwiii (23)

Operation 627 - Oct 13, 2023

Makarov breaks out of prison

Reactor - Nov 10, 2023

141 find out that Makarov escaped

141 assaults konni base

Price finds chemical weapons (almost died)

Payload - Nov 11, 2023

141 split up to stop missile launch of chemical weapons

They fail to stop 2 missiles to Russia

Oligarch - Nov 12, 2023

Ghost/Soap island mission to find Makarov's financier

Interrogation of Milena for Makarov's location

Frozen Tundra - Nov 14, 2023

141 ambush konni convoy

Find Shepherd was Makarov's prisoner

Interrogate him on Makarov's location

Gora Dam - Nov 16, 2023

Ghost/Soap split up to stop chemical weapons in Verdansk

Trojan Horse - Nov 21, 2023

141 split up in London tunnels to stop Makarov from using chemical weapons in subway system

So now that's done. I've mostly ignored Farah and Alex and focused on Price, Ghost, Gaz, Soap and Nikolai as it pertains to relationships within the core group of Price/Ghost/Gaz/Soap.

What can we make of this ?

Well, a couple things.

We can now say that from 2019 to the events of "Kill or Capture" in 2022, Ghost and Soap have most likely worked together on missions before. The timeline shows that they at least had to have met in Dec 2020 in Verdansk as Soap had called for backup to Price and group.

That makes it actually at least 3 years of knowledge of each other prior to mwii(22). So a total of 4 years + potentially at the start of mwiii(23).

It also shows us how quickly their relationship changed from the Alone mission in '22 despite the 3 years of prior knowledge they had since '19.

Let it be said that it took 1 week, ONLY 7 DAYS!! to change Ghost and Soap's relationship. 7 days out of a total at least 3 years total.

Ghost started at not even bothering to name Soap in 2019, to presumably basic Soap/Mactavish/sergeant for the next 3 years.

Cut to the events in mwii(22). Lets say beginning at "Kill or Capture" and finishing at "Alone" and suddenly Ghost ends up having made up his own personal nickname that no one else can use for Soap in just those 7 days.

I posit that this was in part due to "Kill or Capture" in '22 being the first mission that Soap has directly worked under Ghost's command.

This is all hypotheticals and guesswork so take it as you may.

Assuming Ghost was mainly a solo mission sort of guy, let's also assume he mostly helped as sniper overwatch if he ever had team missions (like in Flashpoint). Most 141 missions have him taking that position as well, so it's safe to say he is support most of the time.

Given that assumption, it's also likely that Soap and Ghost had to have interacted mainly on comms and any physical meeting would be restricted to transport via heli or otherwise.

It's possible Soap and Ghost have worked together on a more physical basis (aka Ghost leading Soap on a squad), but given how much Ghost seemed to be testing Soap in "Kill or Capture" I find that somewhat unlikely.

In 2019 we see how brusque Ghost is with Soap. It's very likely that Ghost was largely monosyllabic with Soap pre or post missions to Flashpoint.

Considering Soap's propensity to chatter in 2022 and 2023, it's also very likely Soap annoyed the hell out of Ghost on comms. Lol.

This could explain why Ghost was so dismissive of having Soap as his sergeant in "Kill or Capture", despite working together 3 years ago.

I, and arguably most of fandom had theorised that "Kill or Capture" was the first mission that Soap and Ghost ever had together. And we weren't quite right, but we weren't completely wrong either.

With Flashpoint, it's obvious now that was not quite true. It even suggests in it that Ghost and Soap had worked together prior to even that, as there was no formal introduction between the two.

This dramatically changes how Ghost's dialogue and Soap's to a lesser degree can be read in mwii(22) and implies much much more if you consider how they interact with each other in '23.

So why does it matter when Ghost and Soap's relationship started?

With mwiii(23) we can now definitively tell when Ghost and Soap's relationship changed. We now have a rough basis of a timeline and we can track down the differences between '19 -'22 and then '22- '23. Its important because we can see how their relationship deepens and how it changed within a span of 3 years, 7 compelling days and 1 heartwrenching year later.

For all that mwiii(23) was lax with explicit Ghostsoap moments, it's rich in how much context we gain to their relationship. We see how Ghost changes and how his relationships differ between 141. It's an interesting and compelling look at both Ghost and Soap's characters.

In this discussion I separate this analysis into 3 parts. Part 2 will cover the implications of "Flashpoint" on mwii (22), with discussion line by line. Part 3 will most likely go over comparisons a year makes from the events in '22 to '23. (This might be subject to change as I get further into the analysis)

Onto Part 2.

#ghostsoap #cod mw3 #cod mwiii #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley #soapghost #ghost x soap #simon riley #call of duty #meta #analysis #soap x ghost #soap mactavish #soap cod #mw3 spoilers #cod mwii #call of duty modern warfare

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inevitably-johnlocked · 23 days ago

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hey stephy!

i wanted to ask if you have some fics that are just, really, really well-written? i know it's subjective, but maybe you can still recommend me some?

length is not that important, but i do prefer longer works

thanks!

Hey Lovely!

OH GOSH this is SUCH a loaded question hahahhaah. One, because it's been a LONG time since I've read a Sherlock fic (I've been fandom hopping lately) so I don't really have anything new that I've read recently, and two, because I tend to consider "well written" as "these feel like the show characters, I'm enjoying it" so honestly I tend to just... keep choosing the same stories haaha. And often my idea of well-written seems to not be what others think *shrugs*

That said, I think it's best for me to rec my fave fics lists for this ask:

Top 20 Fave 40K+ w. Fics (April 2017)

Ten Fave Short Johnlock Fics (Easy Reads April 2018)

25 Fave Johnlock One Shots (April 2018)

Top 10 Fave Fics (September 2018)

Top 20 Bookmarks of 2018 (March 2019)

Another Top 10 Fave Fics (June 2019)