#Cogent University

[essektheylyss]

I understand the impulse to clown on Essek for walking around in Vasselheim with his recognizable voice with the Bright Queen's spearhead commander, and of course we could turn to the metatextual elements (the necessity of signposting the world for players on the part of the GM, the ease of using a familiar ally to introduce a relevant NPC and new point of contact) to dismiss this if we wanted, but I think it's more interesting—and funnier, as you'll see—to imagine this as simply an extension of the laws and logic that dictate the Mighty Nein as a narrative entity.

Fundamentally, the Mighty Nein within their campaign pursue personal and collective agency, often at the expense or in denial of political power. Where they do interact with more political forms of power, they evade its grasp upon them, most notably in their interactions with the war, but also while they engage with the Cerberus Assembly, the Cobalt Soul, and even the Revelry. The way they pursue agency, on the other hand, has far more to do with their own support of one another and their own individual power, especially where there is magic involved, and manifests in having the freedom to move and act as they wish in the world.

The culmination of this, as we know, is the mechanical ability in their final battle against Lucien and the Somnovem to manipulate the terrain of the battle map to their advantage with only imagination. At the same time, Jester and Caduceus can both call in free favors from their gods, one of whom is unlimited by the Divine Gate and in fact is far more governed by fey logic. Fjord has made three different divine pacts and is virtually unrestricted by any of them. Caleb's hallmark is an almost infinitely malleable home that almost literally seems to operate as a hammerspace, with a pinnacle dedicated to the potentiality of the universe, the application of which is one of his signature spells—against all odds successful in his initial goal, no longer fueled by guilt and grief, of bending reality to his will. It's narratively and thematically cogent that this be the calling card of the party as a whole.

The Mighty Nein are, in effect, dictated by Looney Tunes logic, and nothing else. They have been so successful in their pursuit of their own freedom that they no longer abide by the cosmic laws of Exandria, let alone the laws of physics or sense. So yes, from an external point of view, it does look exceedingly foolish for Essek to be traipsing around in Vasselheim under the Bright Queen's nose, but it's far more entertaining to argue that being a member of the Mighty Nein in fact simply confers the capability of ignoring the laws of reality without consequence when it's narratively convenient, characteristically interesting—or just really fucking funny.

[prokopetz]

Character who's become so cosmically enlightened by their esoteric studies that their brain has basically stopped working, like they can speak cogently about the deep mysteries of the universe but barely process what's happening in front of them, and it's 100% a kink thing.

[rcmclachlan]

what is whole foods? 👀

Fix-it in aisle 9! Tommy doesn't know what possesses him to go to this particular Whole Foods, but he hopes the folks watching the security feed are enjoying the show as his and Evan's painful attempts at small talk devolve into the world's slowest tour of the store while they whisper-fight every step of the way.

There's no cogent reason for him to go to the Whole Foods on S Grand, especially on a Thursday. The fact that it's only a 3-minute drive from Evan's loft is bad enough, but the avenue is and has always been a wide-awake nightmare. It's all metered street parking and people drive through the intersection like they're trapped in pinball machine designed by Jigsaw. He once almost got into a fist fight with some asshole in a BMW who came so close to colliding with him head-on that Tommy could read the fucking VIN number on the guy's dashboard. Also, the Vons down the street from his house has much better produce.

There's no cogent reason, and yet, after his shift ends, he climbs into his truck and brings up the address in Maps. The entire route there is green. On the way to S Grand, he doesn't hit a single red light, his Spotify shuffle plays only songs he wants to listen to, and somehow he manages to score the first parking spot closest to the building, which feels like winning the lottery. Normally he'd have better odds of hitting all six Powerball numbers.

His good luck continues as he walks into the store, which is blissfully devoid of human life, and he gets a cart with wheels that don't stick or squeak. He heads into the meat section and a song is playing over the speakers that takes him right back to the uncomplicated days of being 12 years old and hanging out in Jamal Tunstall's basement, kicking ass at Tekken 2 and gorging himself on pizza rolls, which his dad refused to let him have at home.

Sometimes it feels a little like the universe has never been particularly interested in giving him a W, but as Tommy picks up a package containing a reasonably-priced cut of pork belly that looks so perfect it might have been Photoshopped, he thinks that maybe the universe has finally decided to throw him a bone.

The clatter of a nearby cart makes him glance up, then his entire autonomic nervous system goes dark like his brain's blown a fuse.

Of all the ways he imagined seeing Evan again, standing in the meat section of the Whole Foods on S Grand on a Thursday night while DJ Kool shouts "when I say freeze, y'all stop on a dime" in the background never made the list.

wip titles game

[disneystheweekenders]

I made a decision early on [The Weekenders] that the characters were going to speak like adults. My thinking was, if you're going to write kids, write adults who have different interests, responsibilities, and resources. We didn't want to talk down to kids. We didn't want to dumb it down for kids. We wanted to give them full adult vocabularies and have them speak cogently about matters at hand, and I know there were some people who were concerned about that. And then one of the questions they asked when they did market testing about the show was, 'Do you feel these characters sound like you and your friends?' Universally, kids said yes. Because I don't know why… there's this tendency to want to dumb stuff down for kids. Kids don't like it.

— Doug Langdale on writing for The Weekenders

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:

A near-majority of American voters willingly reelected Donald Trump. This harsh reality is a collective moral failure, but it’s also not a choice made in sound mind. Consider that voters believed Trump’s first presidency was a roaring success and Joe Biden’s only term a Carter-level catastrophe. It’s an upside-down Bizarro World view that ultimately played a key role in dooming Kamala Harris.

Trump’s 2024 platform was rooted in an obvious lie — that the nation under Biden’s leadership is a flaming dumpster fire and everyone was much better off when Trump was president. Democrats challenged this false reality with facts, but they ultimately lost the messaging war. Their best efforts were no match for the most powerful weapons in Trump’s propaganda arsenal — a timid press and a right-coded social social media environment. Greg Sargent reports in the New Republic that the Harris campaign’s own internal polling revealed an alarming trend: “Undecided voters didn’t believe that some of the highest profile things that happened during Trump’s presidency — even if they saw these things negatively — were his fault.” According to exit polls, Trump decisively won the questions “who do you trust more to handle the economy?” and “who do you trust most to handle a crisis?” Of course, in reality Trump utterly botched the 2020 pandemic response, which researchers concluded resulted in 40 percent more deaths than necessary. And yet swing voters are willing to risk it all again in hopes of cheaper eggs and cruelty against outgroups.

Disinformation on demand

Legacy media shoulders significant blame for their “sanewashing” of Trump’s incoherency and deteriorating mental state. Voters believed Trump could fix a steadily improving economy despite his promotion of inflationary tariffs. The media even presented Trump’s rants as cogent discussions of economic theory.

It’s worth noting, however, that an NBC poll from April revealed that voters who received news primarily from legacy media (newspapers, cable news, etc.) still overwhelmingly supported Biden. Trump owes his victory in great part to low-propensity voters of all races, including young men, and those voters don’t necessarily form their views based on mainstream media reporting. Rather, far too many are stuck in an online social media bubble where they are delivered a steady diet of rightwing propaganda. The median age of a Fox News viewer is 68, and liberals have joked about the network “brainwashing” their conservative parents. But rightwing social media content has effectively targeted and radicalized younger people, who — unlike the typical Hannity-obsessed grandpa — can vote for the next several decades. TikTok, which Trump joined in June, has 170 million users in the United States, and according a Pew Research survey, more than half of them said they regularly get their news from the platform. That’s up from just 22 percent in 2020. This is a serious concern because the far right uses TikTok to advance unfounded conspiracy theories and outright lies.

[...]

Lower income Americans, particularly young people, do spend more of their income on groceries, rent, and gas. That’s why Republicans were so laser focused on the price of eggs. Unfortunately, there’s a dearth of liberal content countering the negative vibes. Of course, explaining the post-pandemic economic recovery is complex and requires more than a punchy one-minute video can convey. Although people might idly scroll TikTok all day, consuming 60-second quick hit videos like potato chips, they will balk at reading an extensive, well-reported news article. That’s too filling a meal.

According to a University of Oregon study, 40 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans surveyed said they’d become more conservative from their TikTok usage. Half of the Democrats surveyed said they’d grown more liberal, but a lot of far-left content on TikTok is downright alienating and can sound like MAGA’s idea of a strawman leftist. For instance, one user boasted that she “didn’t care” if liberal economic and social policies “hurt the economy,” thus conceding that those policies are in fact harmful to economic progress. TikTok’s artificial “vibecession” dominated the discourse, while abortion-related content was actively suppressed even while pregnant women were bleeding out in parking lots. Users of the platform resorted to disguising the word “abortion” as “aborshun” or “ab0rti0n” in order to reach an audience. TikTok has a longstanding policy against promoting abortion services, which it classifies as “unsuitable businesses, products or services.” However, TikTok, YouTube, and Meta have allowed users to spread and monetize anti-abortion misinformation. Studies have shown an interesting gender gap in where young people receive their news on social media: For most women, it’s TikTok, while most men learn about the world from YouTube, X, and Reddit, all of which have become havens of crude masculinity.

On YouTube, 56 percent of users are between the ages of 18 and 44. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit that researches extremism, conducted a four-part research project this year that determined YouTube’s algorithm consistently steers users to rightwing and Christian content. The algorithm does this even with seemingly apolitical search terms, like “male lifestyle guru,” which YouTube reflexively associates with conservative ideology. Rightwing news content was also more frequently recommended, including anti-vaxxer videos. As far back as 2019, both YouTube and Facebook’s autofill search boxes would return content that promoted anti-vaccine misinformation.

[...]

Why rightwing content has the edge

When Kamala Harris appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, host Alexandra Cooper told her listeners, “I do not usually discuss politics or have politicians on the show because I want Call Her Daddy to be a place that everyone feels comfortable tuning in.” Left-leaning podcasters/social media content creators often avoid politics for fear of turning off their right-leaning fans. Joe Rogan and Dave Portnoy at Barstool Sports don’t bother with such apologies when they have rightwing guests because it doesn’t compromise their brand. They are rightwing cultural influencers. Liberal podcaster Hasan Piker recently commented on the impact rightwing influencers have on young men of all races.

“There is a massive amount of rightwing radicalization that has been occurring, especially in younger male spaces. Everything is completely dominated by rightwing politics,” he said. “If you’re a dude under the age of 30 and you have any hobbies whatsoever, whether it’s playing video games, whether it’s working out, whether it’s listening to a history podcast or whatever, every single facet of that is completely dominated by center right to [the] Trumpian right. Everything they see is rightwing sentiment.”

Rogan and Portnoy might not present as overtly political as Walsh and Shapiro, but their edgy, hyper masculine personas are pure MAGA. Even billionaire CEO Elon Musk likes to present himself as a “disrupter,” an agent of change who boldly confronts the status quo. Anyone who’s seen the more popular indie films of the 1970s would realize how compelling this narrative is to young men. The subtle way that Rogan and Portnoy infuse politics into their personas presents a contrast with left-leaning social media content. The liberal TikToker or YouTuber who releases videos about home makeovers might endorse Democratic politicians during election season while wearing their “just voted” sticker, but rightwing influencers prime their audience on a daily basis. Young men marinate in a stew of rightwing sentiment and end up resenting the libs.

Stephen Robinson wrote in Public Notice a very valid case that a right-coded media environment gave Donald Trump the decisive boost to get elected, such as praising the disastrous Trump reign as a “success.”

Social media algorithms heavily favored right-coded and pro-Trump content, despite the never-ending whining about “censorship” from conservatives.

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

When I was a kid my grandma was my only close Jewish relative so I just assumed everything she did was universally Jewish (including the French language) and I'm still trying to figure out which are real- I know it could be a minhag and you wouldn't know, but have y'all ever heard that you have to eat something parve between eating meat and dairy? or was my grandma just trying to make me eat my vegetables before desert?

Rating: Who are we to argue with the wisdom of your mothers? 

We surveyed a range of family, friends, and acquaintances with different minhagim (customs related to religious observance, as distinct from halakha, the requirements of religious law). Some folks wait one, three, or six hours between meat and dairy. Some people say that it’s making the distinction between meals that matters, so if you sit at the Shabbes table all afternoon after a nice cholent lunch and you only clear away the dishes when it’s time for seuda shlisheet, you should not have a dairy meal, but if you have a pastrami with friends and then come home and want ice cream before bed, those are clearly separate things regardless of how many hours it has been. Some people say that you should just brush your teeth between meat and dairy so you don’t accidentally mix meat and milk in your mouth if you’ve got some meat residue between your teeth. However, none of the people we surveyed were familiar with the minhag you have described.

That said! It is still entirely possible that this minhag does exist somewhere— there is, as we said, a range of customs and traditions around this matter, and it’s hard to prove a negative. Furthermore, there is also a Jewish principle of following the practices of your elders when it comes to matters of minhag. It is for this reason that many Ashkenazi Jews today continue to avoid kitniyot on Passover, even though we no longer have the same concerns about mixing up our grains—we are simply following the traditions of our ancestors.

Additionally, there is a rule for eating something parve between dairy and meat, as in dairy first. Unless the dairy is a hard cheese, which takes longer to digest (at least according to the rabbis) you don’t have to wait at all, depending on your custom, but should eat something parve as a “palate cleanser.” See the second paragraph here.

If you assume that the foundational principle of all the various minhagim around eating dairy after meat are about maintaining the clear distinction between the two categories, eating something parve between them is a perfectly cogent position to hold.

And hey, it got you to eat your vegetables.

[tweedfrog]

Y'all I don't want to speak this curse into the universe but I very much fear the removal of Nettles is a symptom of a larger disease: HOTD trying to build daemon/rhaenyra into an actually loving relationship which imo isn't a cogent reading of Fire & Blood.

Like we got Alys saw trapping Daemon for about 4 straight episodes for which I am grateful but i think its eventually going to lead into "Daemon was wrong for kneecapping Rhaenyra's chances at getting to the Throne when she was younger and hindering her chances with his ego now" and not "Daemon has a pattern of behaviour when it comes to young less powerful women because he feels diminished as a second targaryen son in Westerosi society and claws back power by going for younger targets who rely on him/offer him uncritical praise".

Im gonna wait and watch I guess.

[gunebuggiesprompts]

Word of the Day dpxdc Prompt #12

July 16: Cogent

Since ghosts already exist in the DC universe, whenever Danny crosses over as Phantom, the Justice League is only surprised about Danny being visible, meaning he must be a powerful ghost.

Danny is there on a mission from Pandora to find one of her relics that ended up there, which could very well end the world.

So, Danny, who goes to the Justice League for help, is very surprised whenever they seem to already know what a ghost is and accept him. Then he figured out they are thinking about a different type of ghost existing in their universe, making them believe he is far more powerful than he truly is.

Danny decides that playing into the misinformation will be for the best, as if he hides him more and causes less damage to the universe as he searches for the item. Plus, the Justice League seems to be on board with him now whenever he explains that an item from the "dead" had arrived and needs to be found and given to him so he can return it without it harming the living realm, so the small white lie can't really be that bad. Can it?

It's just that Danny is sadly a terrible liar, and he doesn't know how long he can successfully keep this going.

[plaidos]

the british are so funny because no matter how much you can get them to accept & understand the idea that they just think some things are more logical because they grew up surrounded by it, they can still never apply that practically. celsius is the obvious example but have you ever watched a brit genuinely try and explain why they think basing the calendar off of the sun rather than lunar cycle, like in the chinese calendar makes any kind of sense? its literally like the patrick wallet meme

like you’re right this is a cogent and true criticism & it doesn’t hurt my feefees because i don’t have a paper thin sense of self in constant need of moral tending at the hands of strangers online. british people do do that u are right. it is just even more annoying when yanks do it because of the whole centre of the universe thing they have going on. like brits have a lot of problems with assuming their cultural preference is reflective of objective reality but never for a second do usamericans allow even the most white middleclass represented-by-the-cultural-hegemony brits to believe they are the centre of the universe the way yanks sincerely believe themselves to be

[palmtreepalmtree]

This is honestly still so shocking to me. As a California lawyer, I feel like it's difficult to understate the impact of John Eastman's fall.

Before Trump, John Eastman was a fixture of the California legal community. He was the Dean of Chapman University's law school for years. He was regularly interviewed in local media to get the conservative legal viewpoint, and even though I almost always disagreed with his positions, his reasoning was usually cogent and thoughtful. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for fuck's sake (this is not a thing that stupid, sloppy, or thoughtless people can achieve or do--you can have bad and seriously wrong opinions, sure, but you can't be thoughtless).

I swear though, it sometimes feels like the entire conservative base has been captured by some kind of mania. He continues to insist that his prosecution is politically motivated. Even as his own witnesses collapsed on the lies he continues to peddle:

Testifying in Eastman’s defense was Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who has stated the election was stolen. But at the trial, Gableman admitted that his own 14-month inquiry into the election failed to prove that fraud cost Trump the election.

Another Eastman witness, John Yoo, a longtime friend and a Berkeley Law professor, testified that Joe Biden had won the White House “fair and square” and that Pence had “unassailable grounds” in refusing to reject electoral votes.

I mean, I guess at this point he just has to go all in on the lie. He allegedly says that his legal fees are going to cost him between $3 to $3.5 million and he's raised something like $500k for his legal defense.

But this doesn't sound like someone who is lying. It sounds like someone in a fucking cult:

[Eastman] said the bar trial was “extraordinary and unprecedented” but gave him a chance to present wider evidence of election fraud than had been previously aired. “It was eye-opening for a lot of people about the amount of illegality that we exposed during that trial,” Eastman said.

My dude, the Judge issued a 128 page ruling that found you guilty of 10 out of 11 counts of misconduct. Exactly what did you expose except your own ass?

Eastman portrays himself as a battling patriot who has been subjected to “false narratives and calumnies.” He said he is the victim of “lawfare,” an attempt to silence unpopular views with legal machinery.

“We are in a rather significant fight, and for whatever reason, I am the lead point of the spear in that fight, and I am taking it on, as I think my duty as a citizen requires,” he said. “We’ll do what it takes.”

My god, someone needs to fucking deprogram this guy.

Anyhow, this continues to be insane to me.

[moonshynecybin]

you had a fantasy au forever ago… how does marc find out vale loves him

i for one. always believe rosquez is just as horny as it is tortured and just as stupid as it is horny. i think it’s this fraught thing where after a LONG saga of trying to keep marc safe and worrying about him (marc is captain of the guard/general!!! it’s his whole job to keep VALE safe but vale thinks about any scenario where marc sacrifices his life to save him and it feels like open HEART SURGERY…) and after trying to ease him into a more bureaucratic role as “advisor” (luca voice comma dryly. pecco already does all that. you are teaching him things a consort knows. you do realize that. it’s important to me that you’ve realized that.) by involving him on strategy and policy he i think. entirely without thinking through the emotional implications wherein. decides marc needs to get married to him. truly the only way he can make marc safe the only way he can physically keep him off the battlefield the only way he can. marriage is a political and transactional enterprise to him and he SHANT fall in love anyways so whatever. get married to marc present his most cogent military mind as unequivocally allied with him and keep marc from killing himself 8000x problem solved. the small ruthless part of him also is like. marc cannot leave me and stage a coup with our neighbors to the west if he is legally bound to me :) forever :)

(i would say they have a break up in this universe because vale is a lil insecure about marc’s ability to rule slash uccio meddlings but. it all brings glory to vale here. it’s all under his banner. that’s part of what he liked about marc to begin with… now if marc came from another noble house?? late stage royal parentage reveal??? then shit would get cwazy)

and he lays this all out to our capricorn moon queen marc marquez who sees the logic here and despite KNOWING it’s a bad idea because he is ass over teakettle in love with vale he ALSO sees this as like. the ultimate way to keep vale safe. he can contribute the same way he does now and he knows he’ll never have all of vale but at least he’ll have SOME of him… be able to produce an heir… so he says yes and vale’s like cool. chill. married as work associates. cool.

it’s all this emotional distancing/repression/denial that plays out into what they THINK is a business transaction until it’s the NIGHT OF. and they have to go in there and consummate their MARRIAGE. and vale lays marc out on their fine silken marriage bed and kisses his scarred arm and asks him if it’s okay and watches the way marc’s eyes squeeze shut when he pushes inside of him and the way he shivers when vale’s presses his mouth to the junction of his shoulder and his neck. the flex of his stomach the splay of his thighs the way he’s looking at vale like he’s something new. something that no one has ever seen before… feeling things no one has ever felt before (marc marquez may very well believe valentino rossi invented the prostate orgasm here) and THATS when vale thinks. uh oh !

[nibelmundo]

Whatever has once been thought can be suppressed, forgotten, can vanish. But it cannot be denied that something of it survives. For thinking has the element of the universal. What once was thought cogently must be thought elsewhere, by others: this confidence accompanies even the most solitary and powerless thought.

Theodor W. Adorno, and Lydia Goehr. Critical Models : On Resignation (2005, 293)

[weaselandfriends]

Anora (film)

There was so much hand-wringing prior to the Oscars this year, centered not around the eventual winner but rather a loser: Emilia Perez. Emilia Perez seemed like prime Best Picture upset material, combining two classic Academy darlings: The socially conscious "issues movie" (presented in a way noncontroversial to upper middle class liberal audiences) and the gimmicky throwback genre film (after Chicago 2002 and The Artist 2011, we're due for the Academy's once-a-decade pick in this category). Crash 2, the video essay circuit called Emilia Perez again and again.

Crash 1, of course, was controversial not just for its own mediocrity, but for the much better film it shockingly beat: Brokeback Mountain. This snub itself seemed to carry sociopolitical implications, a rejection of the then much more controversial arena of LGBT issues in favor of the tried-and-true racial issues touched on by Crash. Unlike Emilia Perez, nobody actually expected Crash to win until it did. Also unlike Emilia Perez, Crash actually won.

Emilia Perez is an interesting case because the anxiety over it winning was not predicated on it beating a better movie, but simply because people felt like Emilia Perez was self-evidently bad. There wasn't a particularly clear frontrunner in opposition to it, and certainly not one as universally beloved as Brokeback Mountain, nor one that seemed to embody a more authentically bold political stance. Anora is in some ways a nonpolitical film. It is "about" sex workers, but they (including the main character, the titular Anora) are depicted with minimal interiority, minimal emotional grandiosity. In fact, Anora as a film seems to reject emotional grandiosity altogether, something that I find more antithetical to the Academy's typical modus operandi than any specific political issues that are or are not on display. While the reviews for this film seem to be in lockstep in regards to "what the film is" ("It's Pretty Woman meets the Safdie Brothers," I have seen said in some form about 50 times, which itself speaks to a difficulty grasping Anora for its own sake), the film that more immediately leaps to my mind as a point of comparison is the Best Picture winner from 1971, The French Connection, a similarly raw and realistic-feeling film that refuses to even try to get into its characters' heads and ends similarly anticlimactically.

The title itself, Anora, puts its main character (who demands to be called Ani) at a distance from the audience. This distance renders her mercurial; she transitions from virulently defending her husband against the goons who come to annul the marriage to becoming one of the goons herself, prowling around town with them and effortlessly sliding into an uneasy solidarity in search of said husband. Her basic motivations are similarly unclear: Is she motivated by love or money? One of the few cogent character details regarding this question involves her wishing to spend her honeymoon at the Cinderella suite at Disney World; most reviews I've read of Anora latch onto this singular clear statement and rehash it to describe the film as a "Cinderella story". This widespread uncreativity in the film's criticism strikes me as reflective of how difficult to grasp it is, how those speaking about it can only really describe it in relation to other elements of superficial similarity. If that's true, though, where does the acclaim come from? What are people really getting out of Anora?

Mind you, I enjoyed the film. It's funny. It's fantastically watchable. It looks great. But what does this mean as a reflection of the Academy? The French Connection was a herald of the exploding New Hollywood, auteur-driven post-Hays works that rejected the studio system of the past decades. The French Connection's aggressive ungraspable nature appeared, at that moment, freshly postmodern, an indication of what film could become as avant garde art rather than mass market crowd pleasers. Anora is, definitively, not fresh; it is Pretty Woman meets Safdie, it is Cinderella, it is only defined by preexisting works it bears some superficial similarity to. So why are we here? What does it mean that this film, which is all about Russians but refuses to even acknowledge the obvious hot button political issue surrounding Russia right now, won over the overtly political Emilia Perez? Anora is the better film. The much better film, even, to the point that from a simple cinephile viewpoint I would have found it a travesty if Emilia Perez won (though my film of the year is The Brutalist). At the same time, this depoliticization and desentimalitization of the Academy strikes me as odd at a time where politics seem to be an inescapable maw sucking up everything and everyone without remorse. An escapist impulse, even, carrying people along on a wild slapstick journey, where there is perhaps some statement here about class and the commodification of people and sex workers but if so it is sketchy, vague, vastly open to interpretation. This ambiguity makes for stronger art (in my opinion), but it has historically been antithetical to mass audience approval. Anora has existed before this, in some other form, but it hasn't won Best Picture like this before. It's not the art that has changed, but the audience; I can only wonder why that is.

[vague-humanoid]

The belief that Israel’s actions amount to apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide are “worthy of respect in a democratic society”, an employment tribunal has concluded in a landmark decision.

In February the tribunal ruled that Prof David Miller was unfairly discriminated against when he was dismissed by the University of Bristol over allegations of making antisemitic remarks, in a decision the Union of Jewish Students said set a dangerous precedent.

The tribunal has now published its 120-page judgment setting out why Miller’s beliefs warranted protection under antidiscrimination laws.

Passing the ruling, the employment judge Rohan Pirani said: “Although many would vehemently and cogently disagree with [Miller]’s analysis of politics and history, others have the same or similar beliefs.

“We find that he has established that [the criteria] have been met and that his belief amounted to a philosophical belief.”

Miller, who lectured at the university on political sociology, told the panel he thought Zionism was “inherently racist, imperialist and colonial”.

He added that Zionism was “ideologically bound to lead to the practices of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide in pursuit of territorial control and expansion”. But he told the panel that his anti-Zionism did not equate to opposition towards Jews.

[transfem-tomgirl]

I feel like I'm somme alternate universe boy's manic pixie dream girl sometimes, a girl who only exists in his mind to be his sexual fantasy, a set of traits more than a cogent person.

[changedmyminditsnicehere]

I was honestly so overwhelmed by the response to my last fic post. The Sandman fandom has been so welcoming, I wanted to write something again - I've never been this inspired! This is still a little rough I fear, but I hope however it finds enjoys it!

AO3 link here for people who prefer to read it there!

---

When Dream had slammed his way into the bathroom at minute 46 - approximately - of Hob's shower, and minute negative 14 since Dream was supposed to have left - definitely - he had done so with the one clear and cogent goal in mind. What that goal had been, he was slowly being forced to admit, he had no idea.

"Morpheus? That you? It better be you mate, I am not dealing with a home invasion in the scud." Hob sounded impressively cheery for someone considering facing criminals in the nude. Morpheus was trying not to consider not to consider what it would be like to be tackled by a naked Hob. Morpheus was, despite the incredibly see-through shower curtain, trying not to consider what Hob looked like naked.

One could argue that, as he was barging in on his flatmate's post-rugby shower, he should have expected said flatmate to be somewhat naked. It wouldn’t even be the first time Hob had been somewhat naked in front of Morpheus. They had shared accommodation, university and onwards, for five years now and Hob was hardly shy. He had a habit of stripping on his way to the shower after particularly enthusiastic rugby matches. Morpheus would perish before being seen, as Hob was apparently so willing to be, dripping with sweat, flushed with exertion and panting heavily as he maniacally pulled his muddy clothes off. The first time this vision graced him, Morpheus had thought he might perish anyway. Morpheus had hoped that by regular exposure to this post-match divestment, he might have built up a tolerance that would allow him this brief escapade. A foolish hope it seemed.

“Morpheus?” "Mn." Hob let out a whistling breath. "Good good. I'm not up for naked tackling today." "...hmn" "You okay out there?" "I am just getting my pomade." "God yeah sorry, dinner with your sister right? Didn't mean to take so long, sorry mate. I'll be right out." There were many things Morpheus needed right now, including a cold shower and maybe a furious wank. He did not need the image of Hob stepping out of the shower, droplets of water on his chest just asking for Morpheus to put his lips to Hob’s beautiful chest hair and lick them up. His sister was going to mock him mercilessly. The first time Morpheus had witnessed Hob’s approach to personal modesty post-rugby, she hadn’t even waited for him to sit down before laughing in his face and flagging a waiter down to request two glasses of their cheapest prosecco. They were, she had told him, going to celebrate her darling little brother finally catching on.

"It is okay. I will leave now." "No no, it's fine, we're all adults here." The shower curtain was already pulling back. Morpheus considered fleeing. He could move in with his sister, probably. She would let him sleep on her couch and only mock him slightly mercilessly while he planned his move to the remotest desert spit he could find.

And then there was Hob. All of Hob. In all his evenings waiting for and fearing the advent of Hob's Sweaty Striptease, Morpheus had never once dared to imagine what it would look like going in the other direction. If Hob were moving towards him, rather than up the stairs.

He might not be breathing. He wondered if passing out might be the least embarrassing way out of his current predicament. Probably not, unfortunately. Hob was… so much. Hair slicked back, broad chest, his chest hair swirled into patterns Morpheus tried to focus on, make sense of, so as not to let his gaze descend any further.

“Morpheus? You in there?” Morpheus looked up carefully. He was trying so hard not to glance down. Hob was looking at him, significantly more amusement in his eyes’ than Morpheus thought he might have for someone leching at his chest hair. “You okay? You’re looking a bit red, is the steam getting to you?” Hob seemed utterly unaware of his inner turmoil. He reached out, as if to measure his temperature with the back of his hand.

Morpheus could not explain why he did it, except to say that he did not think he could withstand Hob’s hand on his face while he stood there, naked. Why he thought grabbing Hob’s hand and simply holding it would be better than whatever mortification he would no doubt commit should Hob touch him, he did not know. But now they stood, hands clasped at chest height. “... I do not know why I did that.” Hob’s smile was changing. Gone was the cheerful blandness and in its place was not the censorious disapproval Morpheus feared, but something slower, warmer. Hob looked, Morpheus would almost say, pleased with himself.

“Don’t you? You seem to be concentrating pretty hard.” He grinned. “See something you like? Don’t like?” Morpheus frowned in denial before he could consider how incriminating it might be. “Oh, definitely like.” Hob sounded incredibly smug. “You know, when your sister suggested stepping it up a notch, I didn’t actually plan for full frontal nudity. That seems like a second date sort of event really.” “A … second date event?” “Unless, that’s not what this is?” Hob’s grin dimmed and Morpheus couldn’t let that happen. “Only, you seemed pretty interested but you never actually did anything, I kind of hoped that meant it might be more than just, just,” Hob rushed. “You would like a second date… with me?” Morpheus interrupted. “Well, I’d like a first date ideally, but if I can guarantee a second one off the bat, that would make me very happy. What about you? Would you be happy with that?” Hob’s hand was clasping Morpheus’ back now. “I would be… very happy with that.” “Oh, oh good. Thank god. I was worried I’d made myself look like a right knob and I would have to move out and fake my own death. How does tonight sound? Dinner? After you see your sister? Too soon? I can do whenever. God, I do sound like a knob don’t I?” “Lunch.” “Lunch? We can do lunch. When works for you, tomorrow? No, that’s a school day - you want to wait til next weekend? I can wait.” He did not sound like he could wait. “No, lunch today. Now. I will tell my sister I am indisposed.”

Hob’s laugh was beautiful.