#Joseph R. Inton

[biglisbonnews]

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[greedandenby]

hi! would you say that sam reid has a good french accent/does a good job of speaking french?

Hi nonny!

Okay so. I'm always a bit loath to answer this type of question because i know how unbelievably hard it can be to learn a new language (having done it multiple times myself). So i'll try to be gentle 😅

Let's put it this way: Sam's French pronunciation is... inconsistent. Some of it is pretty good, some of it is... almost unintelligible to a French speaker (that being said, in some instances this is partly due to mixing and background noises). I don't know what Sam's knowledge of French is in the first place but i seem to remember him saying he wasn't a French speaker at all and that he learnt his lines phonetically. The problem with learning things phonetically vs. actually learning to communicate in that language is that you lose a lot of subtlety in intonation, or in the intention of what you're trying to convey, because you don't fully grasp what each word you're saying truly means in that language and how a native speaker would deliver it. I think this is what happened with Sam, and also Jacob, Delainey, Joseph and several supporting actors who are clearly not native French speakers, and who i presume also learnt their lines phonetically. And mind you, this is not me bashing their skills or anything. Again, that shit is HARD, especially when it comes to French, which is a notoriously difficult language to master and pronounce, particulary for English speakers (my British mum and uncle have lived in France for decades and they still have a bit of an accent). They're all clearly doing their very best and i respect them immensely for it. So, well done for that!

Whether or not they had a French consultant on set or not is something i'd like to know. Because if they did, they perhaps could've done a better job at tweaking things, not only for the actors' lines but also regarding small details in props and set design. But again, i realise that things can get hectic and rushed on a film set, so this is not me putting the blame on anyone in particular. It's a combination of complex factors. Hopefully production will give a bit more thought to this particular issue in s3, as a good chunk of it is likely to take place in France.

All of this being said, there's one actor i'd like to commend in regards to French, and that's Assad Zaman. He does a FANTASTIC job. I don't know if he was familiar with French before the show, but his pronunciation is near perfect. Obvs he still has a bit of a British accent but it's honestly very minimal. Most of it is spot-on, even the notorious French "R". He nailed it, which is ironic when you consider that Armand says in the show that his French wasn't that good because it's his 4th language or sthg 😅

Anyways, sorry for this very long-winded answer to a very simple question.

And Sam, i'm sorry baby, i love you and the entire cast to the rings of Saturn and back. And i volunteer to be your French coach if you'll have me 😅

[pamphletstoinspire]

The Vigil of the Nativity - December 24, 2020 (With Prayer)

Adapted from The Liturgical Year by Abbot Gueranger, The Vigil of the Nativity

Ascendit autem et Joseph . . . ut profittretur cutit Maria desponsata sibi uxore pregnant.

“And Joseph also went up . . . to be enrolled with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child.”–St. Luke, ii. 4.

“At length,” says St. Peter Damian in his sermon for this holy eve, “we have come from the stormy sea into the tranquil port; hitherto it was the promise, now it is the prize; hitherto labor, now rest; hitherto despair, now hope; hitherto the way, now our home. The heralds of the divine promise came to us; but they gave us nothing but rich promises. Hence our psalmist himself grew wearied and slept, and, with a seemingly reproachful tone, thus sings his lamentation to God: ‘But thou hast rejected and despised us; Thou hast deferred the coming of Thy Christ’ (Ps. 138). At another time he assumes a tone of command and thus prays: ‘O Thou that sittest upon the Cherubim, show Thyself!’ (Ps. 129) Seated on Thy high throne, with myriads of adoring angels around Thee, look down upon the children of men, who are victims of that sin, which was committed indeed by Adam, but permitted by Thy justice. Remember what my substance is (Ps. 138); Thou didst make it to the likeness of Thine own; for though every living man is vanity, yet inasmuch as he is made to Thy image, he is not a passing vanity (Ps. 38). Rend Thy heavens and come down, and turn the eyes of Thy mercy upon us Thy miserable supplicants, and forget us not unto the end!

“Isaias, also, in the vehemence of his desire, thus spoke: ‘For Sion’s sake I will not hold my peace, and for the sake of Jerusalem I will not rest, till her Just One come forth as brightness. Oh, that Thou wouldst rend the heavens and wouldst come down!’ So, too, all the prophets, tired of the long delay of the coming, have prayed to Thee, now with supplication, now with lamentation, and now with cries of impatience. We have listened to these their prayers; we have made use of them as our own, and now, nothing can give us joy or gladness, till our Savior come and say to us: ‘I have heard and granted your prayers.’

“But what is this that has been said to us: ‘Sanctify yourselves, O ye children of Israel, and be ready: for on the morrow the Lord will come down’? We are, then, but one half day and night from the grand visit, the admirable birth of the Infant God! Hurry on your course, ye fleeting hours, that we may the sooner see the Son of God in His crib, and pay our homage to this world-saving birth. You, brethren, are the children of Israel, that are sanctified, and cleansed from every defilement of soul and body; be ready, by your earnest devotion, for tomorrow’s mysteries. Such, indeed, you are, if I may judge from the manner in which you have spent these sacred days of preparation for the coming of your Savior.

“But if, notwithstanding all your care, some drops of the stream of this life’s frailties are still on your hearts, wipe them away and cover them with the snow-white robe of confession. This I can promise you from the mercy of the Divine Infant: he that shall confess his sins and be sorry for them, shall have born within him the Light of the world; the darkness that deceived him shall be dispelled; and he shall enjoy the brightness of the true Light. For how can mercy be denied to the miserable this night, in which the merciful and compassionate Lord is so mercifully born? Therefore, drive away from you all haughty looks, and idle words, and unjust works; let your loins be girt, and your feet walk in the right paths; and then come, and accuse the Lord, if this night He does not rend the heavens, and come down to you, and cast all your sins into the depths of the sea.”

This holy eve is, indeed, a day of grace and hope, and we ought to spend it in spiritual joy. The Church, contrary to Her general practice, prescribes that if Christmas Eve fall on a Sunday, the Office and the Mass of the Vigil should take precedence over the Office and Mass of the 4th Sunday of Advent. How solemn, then, in the eyes of the Church, are these few hours, which separate us from the great Feast! On all other Feasts, no matter how great they may be, the solemnity begins no earlier then First Vespers, and until then the Church restrains Her joy, and celebrates the Divine Office and Mass of most vigils according to the Lenten rite. Christmas, on the contrary, seems to begin with the Vigil; and one would suppose that this morning’s Lauds were the opening of the Feast; for the solemn intonation of this portion of the Office is that of a Double, and the antiphons are sung before and after each psalm or canticle. The violet vestments are used at the Mass, but the rubrics are less somber than on the Advent ferias.

Let us enter into the spirit of the Church, and prepare ourselves, in all the joy of our hearts, to meet the Savior Who is coming to us. Let us observe with strictness the fast which is prescribed; it will enable our bodies to aid the promptness of our spirit. Let us delight in the thought that, before we again lie down to rest, we shall have seen Him born, in the solemn midnight, Who comes to give light to every creature. For surely it is the duty of every faithful child of the Catholic Church to celebrate with Her this happy night, when, in spite of all the coldness of devotion, the whole universe keeps up its watch for the arrival of its Savior. It is one of the last vestiges of the piety of ancient days, and God forbid it should ever be effaced!

Let us, in a spirit of prayer, look at the principal portions of the Office of this beautiful Vigil. First then, the Church makes a mysterious announcement to Her children. It serves as the Invitatory of Matins, and as the Introit and Gradual of the Mass. They are the words which Moses addressed to the people of God when he told them of the heavenly manna, which they would receive on the morrow. We too are expecting our Manna, our Jesus, the Bread of Life, Who is to be born in Bethlehem, which translated means the “House of Bread”:

This day you shall know that the Lord will come, and in the morning you shall see His glory.

The Responsories are full of sublimity and sweetness. Nothing can be more affecting than their lyric melody, sung to us by our Mother the Church, on the very night which precedes the night of Jesus’ Birth:

R. Sanctify yourselves this day, and be ready: for on the morrow you shall see * the Majesty of God amongst you. V. This day you shall know that the Lord will come, and in the morning you shall see * the Majesty of God amongst you.

R. Be constant; you shall see the help of the Lord upon you: fear not, Judea and Jerusalem: * Tomorrow you shall go forth, and the Lord shall be with you: V. Sanctify yourselves, children of Israel, and be ready. * Tomorrow you shall go forth, and the Lord shall be with you.

R. Sanctify yourselves, children of Israel, saith the Lord: for on the morrow, the Lord shall come down: * And He shall take from you all that is languid. V. Tomorrow the iniquity of the earth shall be cancelled, and over us shall reign the Savior of the world. * And He shall take from you all that is languid.

At the Office of Prime, in cathedral chapters and monasteries, the announcement of tomorrow’s Feast is made with unusual solemnity. The lector, who frequently is one of the dignitaries of the choir, sings with a magnificent chant the following lesson from the Martyrology. All the assistants remain standing during it, until the lector comes to the word Bethlehem, at which all genuflect, and continue with bended knee until all the glad tidings are told:

The Eighth of the Calends of January. The year from the creation of the world, when in the beginning God created Heaven and earth, five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine: from the deluge, the year two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven: from the birth of Abraham, the year two thousand and fifteen: from Moses and the going out of the people of Israel from Egypt, the year one thousand five hundred and ten: from David’s being anointed king, the year one thousand and thirty-two: in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel: in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad: from the building of the city of Rome, the year seven hundred and fifty-two: in the forty-second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus: the whole world being in peace: in the sixth age of the world: Jesus Christ, the eternal God, and Son of the eternal Father, wishing to consecrate this world by His most merciful coming, being conceived of the Holy Ghost, and nine months since His conception having passed, in Bethelehem of Juda, is born of the Virgin Mary, being made Man: The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to the Flesh!

Thus have passed before us, in succession, all the generations of the world. (It should be noted that on this one day alone, and on this single occasion, does the Church adopt the Septuagint chronology, according to which the Birth of our Savior took place five thousand years after the Creation; whereas the Vulgate version, and the Hebrew text, place only four thousand years between the two events. This shows us the liberty which the Church allows us on this question.) Each generation is asked if it may have seen Him Whom we are expecting, and each is silent; until the Name of Mary is pronounced, and then is proclaimed the Nativity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God made Man. St. Bernard, speaking of this announcement, says: “The voice of joy has gone forth in our land, the voice of rejoicing and of salvation is in the tabernacles of the just. There has been heard a good word, a word that gives consolation, a word that is full of gladsomeness, a word worthy of all acceptance. Resound with praise, ye mountains, and all ye trees of the forests clap your hands before the face of the Lord, for He is coming. Hearken, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth! Be astounded and give praise, O all ye creatures! But thou, O man, more than all they! Jesus Christ the Son of God, is born in Bethlehem of Juda! O brief word of the Word abridged (Rom. 9: 28), and yet how full of heavenly beauty! The heart, charmed with the honeyed sweetness of the expression, would fain diffuse it and spread it out into more words; but no, it must be given just as it is, or you spoil it: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is born in Bethlehem of Juda!” (Second Sermon for Christmas Eve)

The Gospel of today’s Mass is the passage which relates the trouble of St. Joseph and the visit he received from the Angel. This incident, which forms one of the preludes to the Birth of our Savior, could not be omitted from the Liturgy for Advent; and so far, there was no suitable occasion for its insertion. The Vigil of Christmas was the right day for the Gospel, for another reason: the Angel, in speaking to St. Joseph, tells him that the Name to be given to the Child of Mary is Jesus, which signifies that He will save His people from their sins.

Let us contemplate our Blessed Lady, and Her faithful Spouse St. Joseph, leaving the city of Jerusalem, and continuing their journey to Bethlehem, which they reach after a few hours. In obedience to the will of Heaven, they repair to the place where their names are to be enrolled, as the emperor’s edict requires. There is entered in the public register Joseph, a carpenter of Nazareth in Galilee. To his name, there is, doubtless, added that of Mary, Spouse of the above-named Joseph. Perhaps they enter Her as a young woman, in the ninth month of Her pregnancy. And this is all! O Incarnate Word! Thou art not yet counted by men! Thou art upon this earth of Thine, and men set Thee down as nothing! And yet, all this excitement of the enrollment of the world is to be for nothing else but this, that Mary, Thy august Mother, may come to Bethlehem, and there give Thee birth!

O ineffable mystery! How grand is this apparent littleness! How mighty this divine weakness! But God has still lower to descend than merely coming on our earth. He goes from house to house of His people: not one will receive Him. He must go and seek a crib in the stable of poor dumb beasts. There, until such time as the Angels sing to Him their hymn, and the shepherds and the Magi come with their offerings, He will meet “the ox that knoweth its Owner, and the ass that knoweth its Master’s crib!” (Is. 1: 3) O Savior of men, Emmanuel, Jesus! We too, will go to this stable of Bethlehem. Thy new birth, which is tonight, shall not be without loving and devoted hearts to bless it. At this very hour, Thou art knocking at the doors of Bethlehem, and who is there that will take Thee in? Thou sayest to my soul in the words of the Canticle: “Open to me, my sister, my beloved!” (Cant. 5: 2) Ah, sweet Jesus! Thou shalt not be refused here! I beseech Thee, enter my house. I have been watching and longing for Thee. Come, then, Lord Jesus, come! (Apoc. 22: 20) 

Christmas Eve Prayer from the Liturgical Year, 1910

O Divine Infant! we, too, must needs join our voices with those of the Angels, and sing with them: Glory be to God! and Peace to men! We cannot restrain our tears at hearing this history of Thy Birth. We have followed Thee in Thy journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem; we have kept close to Mary and Joseph on the whole journey; we have kept sleepless watch during this holy Night, waiting Thy coming. Praise be to Thee, sweetest Jesus, for Thy mercy! and love from all hearts, for Thy tender love of us! Our eyes are riveted on that dear Crib, for our Salvation is there; and there we recognise Thee as the Messias foretold in those sublime Prophecies, which Thy Spouse the Church has been repeating to us, in her solemn prayers of this Night. Thou art the Mighty God–the Prince of Peace–the Spouse of our souls–our Peace–our Saviour–our Bread of Life. And now, what shall we offer thee? A good Will?

Ah! dear Lord! Thou must form it within us; Thou must increase it, if Thou hast already given it; that thus, we may become Thy Brethren by grace, as we already are by the human nature Thou hast assumed. But, O Incarnate Word! this Mystery of Thy becoming Man, works within us a still higher grace:–it makes us, as Thy Apostle tells us, partakers of that divine nature, which is inseparable with Thee in the midst of all Thy humiliations. Thou hast made us less than the Angels, in the scale of creation; but, in Thy Incarnation, Thou hast made us Heirs of God, and Joint-Heirs with Thine own divine Self! Never permit us, through our own weaknesses and sins, to degenerate from this wonderful gift, whereby Thy Incarnation exalted us, and oh! dear Jesus, to what a height!  Amen 

[justicecaballer]

jojo voice/speech hcs

giorno doesn't speak much, but when he does, it's in odd phrases. he's too polite, too formal -- and the sentences that fall from his lips have the cadence of a gilded ransom note, melded together with letter-wax and glue. it's strangely beautiful, but it is strange.

jotaro's speech could never be considered beautiful. his vocabulary is lifted from comic books and academic texts, but he hardly speaks long enough for it to matter. he prefers to be direct, efficient -- the fastest path between two points is a straight line. when he's caught off-guard, though, or when the subject is felt rather than explained, he starts and stops like a faulty engine. the variations in his tone are harder to hear -- a subtle bobbing rather than full-on waves, but at a sustained pace, it's quietly soothing.)

joseph speaks faster than he thinks. he's got a shotgun tongue and is just as loud -- cheeky, crass, and clever, when not completely obtuse. he rolls his rs and pops his ps and travels around the world with his flavorful intonation. joseph joestar is like popcorn. anyways

josuke speaks in a syncopated two-step, a quick-slow amble through conversation. the peaks and valleys of his voice are evenly spaced, and he's casual in a way that relaxes. he's a bad liar, and you can hear it -- everything is exaggerated in a displaced soundwave, the rhythm of it rubber-banding in a way that's easy to spot.

jolyne takes after her great-grandfather more than she does her dad -- in some ways. she blurts out her thoughts and makes crude jokes and rolls her rs like a growling pit bull. but she does appreciate the direct approach, rather than talking circles around others like joseph -- and, of course, she's inherited turns of phrases from her father, purposely or not. her voice can strike a chord the same way his can -- a way that commands.

jo2uke is blunt, but in a different sort of way than the others. it's inexplicably refreshing and without artifice, like the sudden rush of a sea breeze. his speech patterns are also strange, both in turns of phrase as well as lines of thought -- he jumps from topic to topic as if you're privy to the tracks changing in his mind.

johnny's tongue is sharp and dour, sarcasm a second skin. his voice is smoother than it is rough, but sometimes sand slips into the back of his throat whenever emotion gets the best of him. he speaks in a fairly even tone, leaning towards flat, at an unhurried pace. sometimes his voice skips, losing purchase on itself and dropping syllables -- but that’s not so bad as when it cracks.

jonathan’s voice is warm and resonant, vibrating from the chest. he isn’t loud, really, but his voice carries with ease. he speaks formally, polite -- but in a manner that’s unadorned and approachable. sometimes if he’s not being careful, words and phrases from his youth will slip out. they’re not exactly rude, but they’re more casual, a little rougher than what he’s practiced over the years.

[josephhealan-blog]

Hello, my name is Joseph and I’m a rideshare driver

Like a scared, timid visitor to their first 12 step meeting, I stand here before you reader and declare in front of my higher power and the rest of you my inclusion in the growing population of drivers in the ride share era. I’m not embarrassed by my participation in this new modern phenomenon but you’ll see later in this initial post why I have framed it this way.

I don’t distinguish which company I drive for to protect them from any story I might share that could compromise their reputation. I have personally found them all to be mostly reputable and sometimes a challenge to work with. My journey is what it is and depends very little on which of the firms I am currently working for. I plan on encouraging questions but that’s one I will not answer.

Driving strangers, except for the time I picked up a former boss of mine, around my favorite city has been an amazing experience. If there is a color, gender, profession, age or any other type of human on the planet I’ve had at least one of them in my car. For 47 years I have lived in Atlanta or her suburbs and every shift I drive down a street I’ve never seen before and explore a neighborhood I’d never heard of.

What’s the blog for? Why the introduction that intones embarrassment or shame with this noble profession? I’ll get to that at the end of this inaugural post and I hope to take a deep dive into that very issue over time as well as share some of the odd ball characters and adventures I’ve been on with my riders. I’ve even had nights where I damn near feel like a superhero and plenty of rides I’d consider as some of my proudest performances as a human being.

As of the date of this post I have given 2,623 rides. There’s no count of actual butts in seats but that’s at least 3,000 men, women, children and a few dogs. We are required to carry service animals but a few good old fashioned pets have been along as well. To some that sounds like a lot but to veterans and the earliest drivers that started as soon as Uber came on the scene it’s a drop in the bucket. There are drivers out there now with over 30,000 rides and counting. I share my number not as a brag but as a reference point that I’ll update with future posts. I’ve learned a lot from those veterans at the airport lot, gas stations and the streets of Atlanta. We are everywhere. Pay attention if you never have the next time you stop for gas or visit a busy shopping center at the stickers in the front and back windows of cars.

Why the shame? The shame comes from many places. From society and otherwise wonderful people and from terrible human beings I’ve had the displeasure of driving in my car. I am a mid 40’s white male with a conservative haircut and I look like a typical dad or boss that would be cast on a tv sitcom. In a crowd of rideshare drivers I stand out a bit. I get second looks from riders in West End Atlanta that are not expecting me to show up and I get this question several times a shift, “what do you do for your real job?”. Real job. Driving strangers to new locations in one of our countries worst cities for traffic full of aggressive drivers is a job and one that requires focus, attention and customer service all while making sure you and your companions don’t die. I myself have been a victim of being embarrassed about my side gig, removing my window stickers while visiting someone or going on a job interview. I do not do that anymore.

My “real job” is in Finance and Accounting. I’ve been doing it for over 25 years and I’ll be doing it again as soon as I start a new contract assignment in a few weeks. I’m good at what I do and proud of my career and I’ve had the chance to work for and alongside many amazing people. But compared to my side gig, my “real job” is a piece of cake. Indoors all day, bathroom right there on demand, usually a fridge with food and coffee service. While I am on contract I sometimes drive 2 to 4 nights per week to help pay down bills and between assignments I drive long shifts up to 6 days per week. I can’t sit around at home and drive my wife crazy and I need the extra income to bridge assignments.

One night not long ago I picked up a young woman south of Atlanta in the wee hours of the morning and took her downtown to one of our large hotels. Conversation is not a given, I have a plan for a rider/driver etiquette post in the future, but this young lady was delightful and I appreciated her energy at the beginning of her day to help me get through the end of my day. As we pulled up I inquired about her job there in genuine curiosity, and based on her uniform with the hotel’s logo, I assumed it was a safe question. She very apologetically and quietly told me she was currently working in housekeeping but hoping for a better position soon. Not wanting to let the moment pass but not wanting to slow down her walk into work I said to her, “please don’t ever apologize to me or anyone else about having a hard job. You are up before dawn while others sleep and not only do you have a job with a great well known brand in the hotel industry, you also have ambition and a plan to expand and grow your career.” She smiled very gently, touched my shoulder and said “thanks man”. I’ll probably never see her again but I hope she’s doing well. I took my own advice and stopped apologizing for my job too.

Georgia State University is my alma mater and when school is in full swing the current students along with the other students in Atlanta area schools are heavy rideshare users. Students, from Clark, Spellman, Morehouse, State, Tech, Emory, Gwinnett and even as far north as Kennesaw have been some of my most interesting riders and have renewed my faith in the next generation with their amazing plans for their futures and the unbelievable things they are working on. I believe I’ve probably had a future scientist that will work for NASA and a doctor that will save a child’s life and a teacher that will pass that energy on to another generation of riders, but they’ll probably be in an auto piloted helicopter that will force me to find a new gig.

But not all students have been my favorite. At least one of them is one of my least favorite humans and I hope she will mature and have some life experience that will smooth out some of her sharper edges. It was an after work shift while I was on assignment so I was dressed like an accountant. I picked up two female GSU students for a fairly long ride from their dorm to a restaurant outside of the perimeter, 285 for any non-Atlantans that may one day stumble across this story. They weren’t particularly talkative at first but we started talking about their classes and their dinner plans. As they mentioned their career ambitions after school I shared that I had once in a previous millennia graduated from their school. One of the riders made one more unremarkable comment to close the loop on our polite small talk.

Her friend, however, was apparently unimpressed with me and said in a tone that might have been intended as a whisper but rang through the car like a church bell on a clear afternoon, “went to state and can’t even get a real job”. Her friend audibly gasped at the rudeness that had just been forced on hers and my ears and she reached up and touched my arm beside the seat. Her touch lasted a little too long but did very little to tone down the anger and disgust I was feeling. I had just left my six figure job to drive her to dinner and her absolute dismissal of my side gig of choice was so ignorant and short sighted that it shocked me. I hope she never knows some of the challenges and hurdles that my own choices and the random life changing tornadoes that happen no matter how well you plan that have landed me in a place where one job doesn’t quite make the ends meet. And even in great times I have found myself driving a few times a week to buy something special or extra or just to feel useful while my wife was busy and there weren’t any kids at home. My personal reasons for driving are of absolutely no consequence in relation to her comment and I gave the one and only rating of 1 star to a rider I’ve ever given that day. It means nothing to her and won’t keep her from getting rides in the future but it will keep her out of my car.

As a contract worker I am regularly interviewing for assignments and I am keenly aware of my online reputation. I toyed around with making this blog anonymous for the same reason that rude student was dissatisfied with my career path. But I decided to use my real name for two reasons. For one, if I come to your office for an interview I’ll be rocking my window stickers and I’ll probably be giving rides 5 minutes after I leave. And second, if you share the opinion of that rude student I don’t want to work with you. And I don’t have to. The good people of Atlanta that need a ride will carry me, just as I carry them, until I land a new gig and scale back my shifts.

Enough heavy stuff for now. With so many rides done I have funny stories, scary stories, gross stories and a few that might even be a little R rated. If anyone except my poor wife actually reads this blog, I hope you take away something positive and find it entertaining. If not then thank you tumblr for providing me a space to offload a lot of mental baggage in a way I might share with others one day.

Adios for now. See you in my rearview!

[darkworkcourier]

im 👀 at anything that combines johns neurosis over being good/bad and another character (dep? idk anyone else) with the endless well of patience and love required to break him of it, and i feel like you’d do him justice

oooooOOOOOOH i got u bb. i will try my best to nail it.

and since you sent this to my NSFW blog, i’m assuming you want this to be NSFW? if not, too late.

(also, i’m almost sorry for how long this got. almost.)

- - -

The Deputy is a thing to be cleansed. John knows this, the same way his family must know. Sin rests on their shoulders like a pet, content to just sit and be coddled, and the Deputy allows this to happen. They are not pure; they are tainted, and at this point, it doesn’t matter if John drowns them in the baptismal waters, if he claws word after word into their flesh, only to rip it from them, down to muscle and bone, down to the very atoms that construct them. 

He’s pondered this for weeks now, and after their escape from the bunker (and oh, how Deputy Hudson will be punished for that!), John keeps himself awake, his heart palpitating, his mind searching for how the situation could have gone so wrong. His is a righteous path. It is a path set by Joseph, who has been nothing but right since he found John. Joseph has laid out the divine future before his family, and aside from a few minor mishaps, it’s all gone to plan. So how, how could the Deputy have twisted everything so monumentally? How could they throw a wrench into perfect machinery?

Hell followed, Joseph had intoned. Hell is apt, because that is what the Deputy leaves behind.

If the Deputy is not stopped, is not cleansed, then the duty will fall to Jacob or Faith. Joseph will know that John failed. It’s Pride, John imagines his brother whispering to him, a knife like a precious relic in his hand. Pride goeth before the fall. And John, my dear brother, you have fallen quite a distance.

John imagines the burn on his skin, the electric circuitry of P-R-I-D-E; each letter forming a hot current of the agony of purification. He knows the sensation intimately, has held it close to his heart like a prayer. 

And God and Joseph as his witnesses, he will make the Deputy know that pain.

- - -

His chance comes one black night, when the moon turns its face away from earth and leaves only a cold shadow. Holland Valley is swallowed by this darkness, but John feels as though the brightest ray of sunlight is falling upon him. Providence, at last. 

The Deputy is his after a lengthy altercation. There was a great deal of shooting on a ridge overlooking some out of the way rest area. Sparks of gunpowder lit the air like fireflies, and the smell of burning saltpeter turned the air acrid. But John had breathed it in like holy incense, relishing in its sting. There had been a shout about a hundred yards up the ridge, and then one of his men had brought down the unconscious body of the Deputy. They were limp and lifeless over the man’s shoulder. When they were dropped down at John’s feet, it was an offering that any saint would have rejoiced over. 

Now he watches them with interest, this God-given gift. Here, in a boathouse, under sickly yellow light, they look the type of the martyr. Beaten, bruised, bloody. It’s all so beautiful. He wishes he could capture the image forever, but an icon is not meant to be worshiped. His fingers feel as if they are tipped in static for his need to touch, to mar them, to carve a saint out of the bones of a sinner the way he knows he can. 

When they wake, he wishes he could swallow the very breath they gasp out. 

He’s gotten wiser this time. Joseph would be proud (and God, does he hope he would), with how securely they’re bound to the chair. They’re bound in straps and cables, held in place by knots of an expert hand. Even if they were to try what they did in the bunker and escape while still in the chair, the only way they could fall is into the water, and then the cleansing waters will steal their life away. John wants to laugh at the poetic beauty of it all. The only thing he hasn’t bound is their mouth, because he wants to hear the sounds of their Atonement as he carves it into them, as he pulls their Confession from their very ribs, scream by scream. 

They peer up at him with bruised eyes, wide and frightened and wondering. 

“Oh, Deputy,” John says slowly, walking around their chair in order to see them at every angle. He smiles, watching their fingers twitch, the muscles in their arms jump. “You won’t get very far this time. I won’t even offer an apology for that, as our last meeting was so rudely interrupted by your selfishness.”

It had been selfish. To leave behind his gifts, their own chance at being cleansed! 

Although, to be fair, they had so readily volunteered. They had said Yes, even when the words trembled on their lips, and their eyes had locked on Hudson as if she were the only reason for the cause. No matter. Yes was the operative word.

He reaches out, brushing some of the hair away from the Deputy’s face. They stay still, eyes following his hand, only to flit back to his face. “I’ll be gentle,” he promises. “I won’t forget that you said Yes. You do remember that, don’t you?”

They stay silent, but their eyes tell them all he needs to know.

Yes.

Yes.

His smile grows. His hands brush over their hair the way a parent might comfort a child. Might, because John has only ever known hands that meant to harm. He will show the Deputy something different. He will show them the hands of one under the power of the Father who will not harm his Child, no matter how far they’ve fallen from the potential of grace.

“You still have a chance,” John murmurs to them. He leans in so he can smell them. They smell like gunpowder, sweat, and blood. He can smell Wrath, the burning scent of war and death, and it just confirms what he’s known all along. “You can atone here, in this place, and finally find the peace you’re searching for. That thing you hunt, that you pretend that you’ll find in the carcasses of those you’ve killed?” He laughs, reaching up and running a thumb along their cheekbone, smearing a rust-red streak of blood. “You call it peace, but you won’t find it out there.”

He stands up, lifting his thumb to his mouth to lick the blood away. It may be the Deputy’s, or it may be one of his own Followers. It doesn’t matter, especially in comparison to the wide-eyed stare the Deputy gives him, like they’re trying to decide if he’s the manifestation of a dream or not.

He turns away, walking toward a rusting yellow toolbox, full of fishing tackle and random bits of hardware. But the object of his pursuit is a red-handled fishing knife, the blade like a gentle swoop of metal, meant to slice away scales and open the bellies of cold, dead-eyed creatures. He takes it with a flourish, switching it from his right hand to his left and back again. When he turns around to face the Deputy, their eyes fall to the knife. 

“I’ll give you a moment to consider your Confession,” John says. He gives them a smile like he might have given when he was a lawyer. It’s an almost sickening expression, all charisma and calmness. I’m here to assuage your fears and anxieties, it says. I’m here to tell you that you will succeed, no matter the obstacles.

But the Deputy just keeps staring, rather like they’re judging him. 

“I don’t have to,” they say at last.

John almost falters. Almost. 

“Come again?” 

He sees a shift in their shoulders; a shrug bound in bungee cord and duct tape. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought a confession was something I had to choose to do,” the Deputy says, as casual as they can. It’s as if they’re discussing the point over dinner. “I know that by your estimation, I’ve sinned. But any church can tell me I’ve sinned and it won’t matter unless I come to them willingly with a confession prepared.”

John grips the handle of the knife tighter, but his smile stays fixed. “And haven’t you? You were on that ridge, after all. You’ve repeatedly come into my territory with your sins bared.”

Another shrug. “You could say that, but it wouldn’t be true,” they parry. John hates how calm they sound. His fingers itch to slice silence into their throat. If they sense danger radiating from him, they resolutely refuse to acknowledge it. “Confession wasn’t my intent. I mean, if Holland Valley is your… I don’t know, divine dominion, or whatever you’d call it? Hell, you can sin in a church if you want to. I could commit adultery, worship false idols, disobey my family, and it wouldn’t matter unless I came to you explicitly and said that I wanted to confess. Right?”

He doesn’t confirm their question. He doesn’t, because it’s wrong. They are a sinner and they’ve fallen into his hands, and it’s his ordained job to rid them of the cancerous thing inside of them, by whatever means necessary.

John grits his teeth, and his smile turns into something more predatory. He gets up close to them, the blade of the fishing knife hovering just over their chest. He can see the even beats of their heart through their shirt. “You will confess,” he promises. “I’ve told you that before, and I’ll say it again. Your sins are a black mark upon your soul, and you will say Yes a hundred times more until each sin is scoured from you.”

“Then that’s a threat, and not a confession. Kind of one-sided, John,” the Deputy replies. It seems as if John was holding a chainsaw to their neck, they would say the same thing. Then, their brows furrow in something that bares a close resemblance to pity. “Just because you were taught one kind of lesson doesn’t mean that the same lesson applies to everyone. Or that the lesson was right in the first place.”

He almost stabs them then and there.

Instead, he’s in their space, blade pressed up against their neck. He hisses in their face, watching their eyes dart about, trying to find one thing to focus on. The blade nicks them, and a tiny droplet of blood snakes down their neck until it soaks into the collar of their shirt. They don’t flinch. “I have given you time, and I have given you the very extent of my patience. Like it or not, you will confess. You will give me every last syllable of your sins, and you will mean it all down to the last word.”

The two of them are silent, save for their breathing. John’s is heavy and rushed through his lips, while the Deputy breaths slowly through their nose. Their scent is a tangible weight upon him, marking them, and John wants to–

Damnit. He wants to–

The sharp ping! of a bullet hitting corrugated steel brings him out of his trance, biting through the red haze of his anger. There are shouts on the other side of the boathouse’s walls, and John stands up straight, snarling in frustration. He picks up the radio from beside a workbench. “What is going on out there?”

The transmission is garbled at first; just unintelligible shouts through static. “It’s– Resistance forces– coming through the–” The radio cuts out there with another sharp tattoo of gunfire, some of it hitting the boathouse like hail. 

In fury, John rounds on the Deputy who doesn’t seem perturbed. They smile like a saint standing among the condemned. “Jess was up there on the ridge,” they explain. “No one caught her.”

Jess Black. The Huntress. He can imagine her going through the underbrush, as silent as a cat, following the capture party to the boathouse before radioing for backup.

John wants to rip the woman apart with his bare hands, or save her for whatever Jacob wishes to inflict.

Then, the Deputy laughs. They tap their feet against the cracked concrete floor and smile at him like they’ve shared a joke. “I’d start running, John,” they say. “Jess has got it out for you, and she’s probably going to have to wait in line behind the people she’s called.”

He looks between the door and the black water of the boathouse port, leading out to a dark forest and at least five hundred yards in a freezing current to anything resembling civilization. On the other side of the door is a dead contingent of his people, and what is probably a living wall of angry Resistance. John is proud of what he has and what he’s done, but he hasn’t come this far due in part to any idiocy. He knows when a situation has gone sour.

John swears, loudly.

He brandishes the knife at the Deputy one more time. “This isn’t over,” he hisses. “You know it isn’t.”

Pity again. He wants to cut the look from their face like the scales from a fish. He hates it.

“I know,” they say.

Something metallic buckles against the door, and John turns in time to see the hinges struggle against whatever’s impacted it. He grimaces and throws the knife aside before jumping into the water. The cold steals his breath, but he steels himself against it and kicks off the algae-coated stone below him. 

While he swims away, he can still hear the Deputy’s laughter in his head.

- - -

Joseph finds out about the failed Confession within the day. He doesn’t pay a visit to John, but his words from a phone call are enough to haunt John. They follow him into his restless sleep, and what he dreams he manages to have are full of the disappointed stare of his brother, the flash of anger hidden behind amber lenses.

“Your sin blinded you, brother,” these phantoms of Joseph whisper. In the dreams, cold hands cover John’s eyes and his mouth, keeping him from confessing in desperation. “You have allowed yourself to be consumed by that which you’ve sworn to atone for. I expected better, John.”

More voices fill the black void hidden in those hands. “Sin is born and festers in idleness,” says his mother. “Confess! You know what you’ve done!” says his father.

John feels the searing of sin into his flesh. Pride for expecting it to go well, that a meager company of people could contain the Deputy. Wrath for his unchecked anger. Sloth for failing to stop the Deputy and the Resistance. And Lust for–

He opens his eyes, met with the same cold darkness of his bedroom at the Ranch. His chest is heaving, sweat a cold sheen on his skin. The stinging of atonement is absent, merely a phantom pain. 

The yawning emptiness it leaves behind, however, is very real. 

John stares into the darkness, thinking, wondering not for the first time how everything could have gone so wrong. We’re righteous, he thinks. We’re doing the right thing. We’re doing what Joseph’s commanded.

But he thinks of the Deputy, and how things have been going so right for them as well. It makes him think of one of Joseph’s lessons, after he had seared PRIDE into John’s flesh the first time. Joseph had pressed his forehead against John’s, his breathing so calm and slow, his hands on John’s shoulders as blood stained his fingers.

John says now what Joseph said then, “God will not strike down the righteous and good. He will allow some sacrifice, but He will never take the lives of those whose cause is just.”

Some sacrifice. John thinks about the piles of bodies smoldering in mass burn pits and rotting in graves of dozens. Each and every Follower was given a similar lesson about their cause. Each believed that God and Joseph would protect them, because they were all meant to reach Eden’s Gate together.

But God has spared the Deputy and their people as well, and they’re the antithesis of Joseph’s mission.

The void’s edges are cracked like broken glass, and John strays away from it as much as he can.

He hardly notices his hand travelling downwards until he feels his own fingers slip beneath the waistband of his boxers, reaching up to grasp his cock with his thumb sliding up over the head. Lust has been one sin that he can’t quite shake, and he feels it commingling with his Wrath, his Greed, his Sloth, his Pride. It takes the form of the Deputy, as beautiful as the image of the Devil is supposed to be. He sees them in his mind’s eye, as sinful and tainted as they can be, but with this halo of righteous light, this corona of goodness and mercy. Hell takes on the shades of Heaven, wears it like a mask, and kisses John’s skin with it.

His hand trembles on his cock, but he strokes himself regardless, eyes rolling back in his head.

He imagines the Deputy’s hand on him, their strokes slow and methodical. Their lips press with the weight of a shadow on his shoulders, his neck, his jaw. They whisper terrible, evil things into his ears. The unspeakable fills his head as they work him closer and closer to the precipice of something flawed and filthy; to the absolution of wickedness realized.

They are Legion personified, but instead of swine, they press the demons into John’s flesh. Their words are an incantation, an act of witchcraft, a forbidden thing that John cannot fight. Their tongue draws symbols of darkness on his skin while their fingers press a tight ring around his cock, a mimic of things to come. They kiss their way down his body, leaving trails of cold hellfire down his skin. Then, they consume him like the flames of the ungodly, their mouth forming a seal over his cock, swallowing him down like a libation.

He moans into the darkness, writhing and arching off the bed. 

John is an open receptacle for the devilry they give him. He is wide open and vulnerable; he is spread out before them, ready and waiting. “Yes,” he whispers to them, to this phantasm of corruption and death. “Fuck, yes.”

The Deputy licks him obscenely, sucks him off, uses their hands in some form of dark art to coax him closer and closer to that cliff. You would jump for me, they whisper, their voice low like the growl of a demon. His precum is a shine on their bottom lip, under fangs set in a wide grin.

He nods, desperate. “Yes, yes. Oh God, I’d–”

God’s name in vain. They laugh and take him into their mouth, into their throat, soft and warm muscles fluttering against his length. They hum and moan and it’s all hellish music in his ears. The song is played louder and louder through the circuitry of his veins and capillaries, deafening when it reaches his arteries and plunges like a blade into his heart.

He comes harder than he’s ever come in his life, his mind going white as he teeters over the edge. And the herd, numbering two or three thousand, plunged into the sea, he thinks, and hysterical laughter sparks like fire from flint in his chest. For a moment more, he thinks he sees the Deputy, crowned in starlight, smiling beatifically at him from the end of his bed. They are beautiful and clean and perfect, and they’re gone in a blink of an eye. John is left alone in the dark room, his spend rapidly cooling on his hand and his stomach, patches of it cold and wet on the fabric of his boxers.

He feels stunned and hollowed out. He feels all those holes he had spent years attempting to fill, all reopened and emptied of their useless weight of cargo. 

“God will not strike down the righteous and good,” he whispers again, clinging to each word. “He will not…”

The Deputy has never been struck down, but John has. 

Silence. There is only the soft hiss of the air conditioner and the faint rattle of the wind against the walls.

“Fuck,” he whispers to nothing at all.

- - -

A radio call comes the next afternoon, as John sits on the balcony of the hangar. The wind bends the tops of the pines in the distance, and he watches them with eyes still heavy and gritty with exhaustion. Sleep evaded him for the better part of the night, and when it managed to succeed, his dreams replaced Joseph with the Deputy, and became too complicated to rest through.

A soft electric chirp draws him out of his haze, and he barely musters the strength to give the go ahead to the other party. He half expects it to be Joseph, threatening arrival and inevitable chastisement. John has already gotten a bottle of hydrogen peroxide ready for what he knows must be coming.

“John?”

The voice of the Deputy is almost enough to make John drop the entire contraption. He fumbles with the speaker, adrenaline hitting him right where he needs it. However, the radio chirps again before he can reply.

“Hey, I don’t even know if you can hear me right now. I’m just kind of taking a chance here, but…” They trail off, hesitant. John wants to encourage them to speak, but doesn’t want to risk interrupting them. The memories of last night are too fresh. He wants to savor every word that comes from their body. “I think I’m… I’m ready to confess.”

Silence.

Chirp.

“I think both of us are ready to confess, Deputy” says John. His words jump out before he can reign them in. “Somewhere a little more secluded, though.”

He can almost picture them smiling, saintlike, lovely.

“Yeah,” they reply. “I’d like that. Confessions are meant to be private, after all.”

[miamindmusic]

"Insane In The Ukraine" has Darrell Kelley Going To War With Russia

Darrell Kelley sounds the battle cry against Vladimir Putin and Russia's decision to invade the Ukraine region. "Insane In The Ukraine" harks back upon the iconic Cypress Hill title of their hit, "Insane In The Membrane". Calling out the country, and the man who leads it, for the horrendous war crimes currently being committed on a daily basis inside the former Soviet Union satellite country, he pulls no punches. And this activist artist is not alone. Through several passages in the piece, the American president, Joseph Biden, whose voice is heard intoning the repeated phrase of "Who in the Lord's name?" which was sampled from one of the USA elected leader's more recent speeches concerning the Russian invasion.

After last month's launch of Darrell Kelley's iconic "Won't Die For Spotify Remix" had him in a battle to the death with a few music streaming platforms that resulted in him pulling the track from both Spotify and TuneCore, his label, Viral Records, issued the following statement. "Mr. Kelley felt the value of his artistic and spiritual soul far exceeded any amount of money or fame, these two platforms could ever provide for him. We at Viral Records entirely support his decision and commend his integrity in dealing with this freedom of speech issue and artistic control. Even after other such major label artists, like Neil Young who has since backtracked on his decision to remove his entire music catalog from Spotify. Darrell Kelley has, and will continue to, stick to his guns on that dire matter"

This week the "Insane In The Ukraine" single was submitted to all major digital and retail platforms. It's being distributed globally by his record company to all major digital retailers and streaming platforms on the internet who have heard and joined his battle call against Putin's tyranny. A North American radio and press campaign was then immediately launched to promote "Insane In The Ukraine" and to get the word out about this travesty and threat to not only human life and property, but to world peace at large and what now looks like the beginning of WWIII. Mainstream Top 40, Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop, and Adult Contemporary format radio stations were serviced with the single. Additional personal appearances will be announced in the coming weeks. To learn more go to www.darrellkelleyofficial.com. An EPK is provided upon request to all members of the media by contacting the representative listed below.

Media Contact: Stevie B Mia Mind Music Phone: 800-843-8575 Email: press@miamindmusic.com

[upalldown]

Jessie Ware - What’s Your Pleasure?

Fourth album from the English R&B pop star working with producers Benji B, James Ford (Simian Mobile Disco), Midland, Joseph Mount (Metronomy), Matthew Tavares

9/13

On her new album, Jessie Ware sounds like the host of the kind of party you heard about in ‘70s Manhattan—velvet banquettes and powdery surfaces, mink coats and cigarette holders, and club names that were enigmatic numbers, or—post-gay liberation and pre-AIDS—sincerely promised sanctuary, paradise. You can imagine Ware taking a scene newcomer under her wing, detailing the venue’s clandestine corners, advising which watered-down liquor to avoid—and anyway, don’t you deserve champagne?

Disco has been a shared obsession of late for both chart juggernauts and Ware’s own peers, but her reverence for the era may be the most literal, down to her flash-lit portrait on the album cover, the spitting image of Warhol’s iconic polaroid of Bianca Jagger. Here, Ware is a lycanthropic party girl, coming alive under the mirrorball with breathy flirtations over disco-funk and vibrant Hi-NRG, recreated deftly by chief producer James Ford. Her wonderland is, to quote Fran Leibowitz’s one-time description of Studio 54, made for “sex and dancing.” (Ware says as much of the record herself.)

Over the Italo disco daydream of a title track, Ware presents a dessert trolley of options for, ahem, “dancing sideways.” “Come on now push/Press/More/Less,” she sighs over neon-streaked synths.“Step Into My Life,” co-produced by Ford and Kindness, is a masterclass of orchestral funk, with Ware insisting “I don’t wanna talk, no conversation.” “Save A Kiss,” an outlier, extends the album’s palette to kinetic electropop, which Ware’s voice floods with romantic yearning.

In a recent interview, Ware described What’s Your Pleasure? as a celebration of her flourishing confidence. It has less of the soul-searching of Ware’s previous album Glasshouse, yet zooms in on a lighter facet of her personality, and is threaded with a camp sense of humor that reflects disco’s frivolity as well as the cheekiness that is all over Ware’s Table Manners podcast but has been largely missing from her recorded music. Her airy vocals feel like secrets whispered, confidences offered, recalling Diana Ross’s supple quiver over Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards’ beats and, in “Mirage (Don’t Stop),” coming close to Donna Summer’s orgasmic rapture. The strutting chorus of “Read My Lips” doubles down on the song’s oral innuendo with kissy sound effects, bringing to mind Anita Ward’s disco classic “Ring My Bell.” The rubberized bass jam “Ooh La La” is a riot of saucy ad libs and tooting car horns, and the frothy, Jellybean-esque “Soul Control” centers on the delightful frippery “We touch and it feels like: Woo!” It is a joy to hear Ware sounding so relaxed.

Disco music never liked to consider what happens when the music stops, but Ware allows a little of her signature psychodrama to creep into the nocturnal escapades she describes, and the flecks of ennui make the highs even higher. Over the darkly pulsing synths of “In Your Eyes,” Ware is racked with insecurities. “Would you follow me, with no guarantee?” she asks, before allowing herself a rare belting vocal. “Adore You,” produced by Metronomy’s Joseph Mount, commits what on paper might seem like a cardinal sin: it Auto-Tunes Ware’s pristine voice to a robotic murmur, the kind that could soundtrack a lonely android searching the cosmos. But her intonations (“Lean in...move slow”; “don’t go”) reshape the song’s mood with every syllable, in a nuance that makes the smallest shifts feel seismic.

The critic Douglas Crimp had a name—“boogie intimacy”—for the particular frisson you have while dancing with a stranger. “It’s usually limited to dancing together for a while before you each dissolve back into the crowd,” he wrote. That attitude seems to have galvanized Ware, too, on an album where she sounds bolder, looser — and frankly, more fun — than she has in a near-decade. “Last night we danced/And I thought you were saving my life,” she sings in “Mirage (Don’t Stop),” an evocation of communal movement as well as a mantra for the artistic rejuvenation that Ware finds in the groove. Her delivery is exquisite and carefree, suggesting an earned wisdom that a kiss is just a kiss, a touch is just a touch, and next Saturday night probably has more of both in store.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jessie-ware-whats-your-pleasure/

[biofunmy]

Biden Escalates Attack on Facebook Over False Political Ads

WASHINGTON — A 30-second video ad that ran on Facebook this week falsely accused former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. of blackmailing Ukrainian officials to stop an investigation of his son.

“Send Quid Pro Joe Biden into retirement,” a narrator in the ad intoned.

The video wasn’t released by the Trump campaign, which has produced ads on Facebook with similar accusations in recent weeks. Instead, it was made by an independent political action committee, or super PAC. And it was allowed to run on Facebook with false information, in violation of the social network’s policies on misinformation, the Biden presidential campaign wrote in a letter to Facebook on Thursday.

In the letter, which was viewed by The New York Times, the Biden campaign acknowledged that Facebook had a policy of allowing all political leaders’ speech and ads to remain up because the company considers them to be newsworthy. But the ad by the super PAC was not from a politician, the Biden campaign wrote, so it needed to be rejected.

“This is a most basic test,” Greg Schultz, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, said in the letter. “The ad contains transparently false allegations, prominently debunked by every major media outlet in the country over recent weeks. It should be rejected.”

The letter exposed another vulnerability for Facebook as it struggles to tackle misinformation in the political ads that are flooding its site ahead of the 2020 presidential election. And it showed that Mr. Biden is escalating a battle against Facebook, blasting it in the letter for selling “the tools to target certain segments of the population with lies.”

The Biden campaign’s letter was delivered on the same day that Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, delivered a vigorous defense of free expression in a speech in Washington. In the address, which drew strong rebukes from Democrats and civil rights leaders, Mr. Zuckerberg argued that even falsehoods from a politician were important for public discourse.

But Facebook had promised that any other political ads would be submitted to fact-checking. The Biden campaign said that should have included the ad from the super PAC, the Committee to Defend the President.

In an emailed response to the Biden campaign on Friday, which was viewed by The Times, Facebook’s head of global campaigns, Katie Harbath, wrote that the ad was now inactive. If the ad ran again, she said, it would be submitted to fact-checking.

Facebook declined to comment further.

A week ago, an ad placed by the Trump campaign made similarly false corruption accusations about Mr. Biden. At the time, Mr. Biden’s campaign also sent Facebook a letter asking for the ad’s removal. Facebook refused, saying the ad was from a political leader and thus in the public interest.

That decision was criticized by the Biden campaign and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat from Massachusetts, who has promised to break up Facebook if elected president. Ms. Warren later posted a deliberately false ad on Facebook about Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Trump, daring the company to take it down.

The super PAC’s ad this week opened with a silhouette of Mr. Biden in front of an image of the White House. A narrator in a foreboding voice claimed the former vice president had blackmailed and threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine to stop an investigation into a company associated with his son Hunter.

Six versions of the ad were targeted to Facebook users in South Carolina, Iowa and Massachusetts, according to Facebook’s ad library. All versions are no longer active.

For years, Facebook has been assailed for unevenly enforcing its content policies across its family of apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. The company often reacted to problematic content that surfaced and made seemingly arbitrary decisions to reinstate or remove a given post.

In one of the best-known incidents, in 2016, moderators took down the Pulitzer Prize-winning image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the 8-year-old girl who was photographed fleeing napalm bombs during the Vietnam War. Because Ms. Phuc was naked, the image was removed from Facebook for reasons of child pornography. When Facebook was told about the news value of the image, it was allowed to remain.

Facebook does not permit certain types of material, such as pornography and posts that could incite violence, including hate speech and “dehumanizing” language.

The issue of what Facebook allows and does not allow on its site is unlikely to die down.

At a campaign event on Friday evening in Norfolk, Va., Ms. Warren took a couple of more shots at Mr. Zuckerberg. As she talked about breaking up big tech companies, she said, “Yes, Mark Zuckerberg, I’m looking at you.”

When Ms. Warren discussed a wealth tax in her speech, she again brought him up. “And Mark Zuckerberg, I’m still looking at you,” she said.

Cecilia Kang reported from Washington, and Mike Isaac from Boston. Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting from Norfolk, Va.

Sahred From Source link Business

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[killingthebuddha]

The State of Alabama recently executed a Muslim man after denying him the right to have the religious counselor of his choice, an imam, present at his death.

Alabama routinely allows a Christian chaplain to attend death row inmates at the moment of their executions. But in Domineque Ray’s case, his request to have an imam by his side as he died was rejected at the state level and then rejected again in a terse 5–4 decision by the Supreme Court (Dunn v. Ray). In the words of Justice Elena Kagan’s fiercely worded dissent, “to justify such religious discrimination, the State must show that its policy is narrowly tailored to a compelling interest. I have no doubt that prison security is an interest of that kind. But the State has offered no evidence to show that its wholesale prohibition on outside spiritual advisers is necessary to achieve that goal.”

Kagan’s exasperation is understandable because the case is preposterous. Ray did not contest his sentence. He merely asked for the bare minimum of time for his chosen spiritual advisor to receive the training necessary to formally attend at his death.

In the wake of Ray’s hasty execution, religious freedom advocates have followed Kagan in arguing that the decision amounts to the establishment of Christianity as a state religion. I agree with the critics. But the Court’s ruling does not just inscribe Christian majoritarianism into law. It also continues a longstanding practice of rendering America’s religious minorities invisible to the law. The anniversary of an earlier Supreme Court case involving Japanese American Buddhists aptly demonstrates this point.    

On February 21, 1927, the Supreme Court affirmed Japanese Americans’ right to educate their children in extracurricular Japanese language schools (Farrington v. Tokushige), in addition to the children’s attendance at the (English-speaking) locally operated public schools. Compared to the infamous 1944 Korematsu v. United States decision that found the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans constitutional, the relatively obscure February 1927 decision seems like a feel-good legal win for a wrongly vilified and widely misunderstood ethnic minority. But behind this apparent victory lies a complicated story regarding American religious freedom, Buddhism, and debates over immigration that sound eerily similar to contemporary controversies about travel bans, border walls, and executive orders.

Here is that background.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a huge number of Japanese laborers emigrated to Hawai`i. Japanese workers staffed the lucrative sugar industry there, earning paltry wages that allowed white sugar plantation owners to pocket enormous profits. Although a 1907 “Gentlemen’s Agreement” between the United States and Japan had curbed Japanese immigration as a way of assuaging white Americans’ fears about rapid demographic change, the practice of recruiting Japanese “picture brides” for male Japanese laborers contributed to a quickly swelling Hawai`i-born Japanese population. Since the American empire had officially incorporated the Territory of Hawai`i in 1900, birthright citizenship law guaranteed these second-generation Japanese (nisei) not only the right to vote, but also the right to own property.

When a flood of patriotic sentiment known as “Americanism” swept the United States during WWI, white landowners began claiming that nisei posed a dire threat to the delicate caste system of racial and religious difference that undergirded Hawai`i’s plantation economy. Equating Japanese “mikadoism” (emperor worship) with Buddhism and Buddhism with Japaneseness, these white elites argued that ideologically unassimilable nisei threatened whites’ fragile hold on Hawai`i’s valuable real estate. Because Hawai`i’s future prosperity demanded that Japanese Americans stay in their “proper” place as docile workers, they argued, Buddhism had to go.   

These fears about labor, religion, and American values erupted in local debates about education. In January 1919, College of Hawai`i Professor of Biology Vaughan MacCaughey argued that Buddhist-run Japanese language schools interfered with the crucial project of cultural assimilation: “The variety of Buddhism dominant in Hawai`i is medieval, ultra-superstitious and intensely Japanese. Mikado-worship and veneration of antique superstitions are prominent features of the system. Its inimical effects on the efforts of the public schools toward genuine Americanization are obvious, even upon cursory examination,” MacCaughey wrote in the education journal School and Society. “The ideals and political life of the United States depend ultimately and absolutely upon the Christian American home,” he continued. “True Americanization can not bloom in a Buddhist Oriental household. Hawai`i can not be American until she truly Christianizes her population, and makes dominant the Christian home.”

Little in MacCaughey’s published research suggests that he was an educational expert, although his ideas were generally consistent with the contemporaneous assimilation tactics of mainland Native American boarding schools that aimed to “kill the Indian … and save the man.” Despite his lack of expertise, Governor Charles J. McCarthy appointed MacCaughey as Superintendent of the Territorial Department of Instruction shortly after the School and Society piece appeared. MacCaughey immediately invited a team of experts from the Department of the Interior to survey the islands’ school system, with the objective of developing a rationale for eliminating the Buddhist-run language schools once and for all. Though the report’s torturous diction was infelicitous, MacCaughey must have been particularly happy with one line: “Although the commission recognizes the inherent right of every person in the United States to adopt any form of religious worship which he desires,” the authors intoned, “nevertheless it holds that the principle of religious freedom to which our country is unswervingly committed does not demand that practices and activities must be tolerated in the name of religion which make the task of training for the duties and responsibilities of American citizenship a well-nigh hopeless one. The commission, therefore, … [recommends] that all foreign-language schools be abolished.”  

Eliminating the schools outright was politically impractical in a territory where Japanese people held a degree of social clout even if they did not hold the reins of political power. The white-dominated territorial legislature got around this issue by establishing onerous restrictions on the schools that technically allowed them to exist but made it virtually impossible for them to operate. Teachers now had to pass an ideological purity test, parents had to pay an exorbitant annual tuition fee, and pupils were not allowed to register until they had received a minimum amount of “proper” patriotic education in Hawai`i’s English-language public schools.  

Even as these legislative changes made it difficult for schools to operate, Hawai`i’s white elites stirred up fears that Japanese language schools served as training camps for little insurgents who threatened not only Hawai`i, but mainland America as well. In November 1921, for example, former Governor McCarthy complained in the Los Angeles Times that Japanese people would soon supplant whites as the dominant landowners on the archipelago: “A Japanese boy born in Hawai`i and therefore an American citizen is … taught by his parents and also in the Japanese foreign language schools that his first duty is not to America but to Japan. This allegiance is doubly strong in that it is interwoven with and fostered by the national religion [that is, Buddhism] of which the Mikado in his heaven-born descent is the head.” A graphic included with McCarthy’s article depicted the archipelago’s shifting demographics by showing a Japanese laborer towering over other ethnicities, while a simple map of the Pacific showed how Hawai`i might serve as a forward base for a Japanese invasion of the American mainland.

The image comes from the November 6, 1921 issue of the Los Angeles Times.

To challenge the anti-Japanese offensive, prominent Honolulu-based Buddhist priest Imamura Yemyō wrote deftly argued tracts in both English and Japanese stressing that the American promise of religious freedom extended to Japanese Americans and guaranteed their right to maintain the language schools. In his 1921 Japanese-language tract On the American Spirit (Beikoku no seishin o ronzu), for example, Imamura acknowledged that the Constitution granted others the right to freely critique Buddhism, but he exhorted his readers to mobilize the American principle of religious freedom in fierce defense of their faith.

His readers listened. Led by Honolulu-based newspaperman Fred Kinzaburō Makino, with white attorney Joseph Lightfoot’s fees partially funded by Imamura’s own Buddhist sect, Japanese American parents of language school students filed a case against Governor Wallace R. Farrington in December 1922. The plaintiffs, led by one T. Tokushige, easily won their case at the Territorial Supreme Court and then again at the Ninth Circuit and federal Supreme Court. But the territorial and circuit courts bypassed the issue of religion entirely, focusing instead on the government’s “compelling interest” to maintain order on the islands. The Ninth Circuit court, for example, explicitly addressed the question of whether the territory’s “police power” (that is, the power to suppress potential insurrection) superseded citizens’ constitutional rights. It did not mention religion at all.     

When Japanese Americans finally won their case at the Supreme Court on February 21, 1927, they did so without the help of religious freedom. The court upheld Japanese Americans’ right to run language schools as they wished. But, in keeping with the decisions by the Territorial and Ninth Circuit courts, the Supreme Court ignored the religious animus that drove territorial education policy, reaffirming Japanese Americans’ place as second-class citizens who did not actually deserve religious freedom. Buddhists are generally not maligned today the way they were in the 1910s and 1920s, but it is easy to see similarities between this earlier case and our present moment. The Supreme Court’s tersely worded order this month refusing to temporarily stay Domineque Ray’s execution made no explicit reference to his religion. But the American ideals of religious freedom and disestablishment were clearly at stake. Although the historical circumstances of Dunn v. Ray and Farrington v. Tokushige are quite different, it is clear that the court’s silences and omissions concerning religion continue to relegate some American minorities to the hinterlands beyond the land of the free.

*

This essay is based on chapter three of the author’s Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming April 2019).

[joneswilliam72]

Songs Of The Week feat. SASAMI, AUGUST 08, Weyes Blood, Pecas, Samia and more

SASAMI - 'Free' (featuring Devendra Banhart)

From the opening guitar squeals and the intonation of SASAMI singing "I'm sure this happens all the time," we're immediately in the scene of a heartbreaking conversation between incompatible people. He's older and has "a good thing back at home," she's maybe a bit more naive, stating "I don't care what tomorrow brings," but the fact is that it's got to end, as painful as that can be. Devendra Banhart's vocal coils itself around SASAMI's smoothly, perfectly offering up the spectre of this attractive older person who's pulling away. Mid-song, those guitar squeals leer up again, portraying the roiling emotion of the moment, only to be forced back down. By the end of this excoriating scene, SASAMI seems to have reached some kind of acceptance, singing "you don't know what it means to be free," and leaving the listener to hope that she'll find a happier conclusion in the near future. - Rob Hakimian

W. H. Lung - 'Simpatico People'

As the opener of their debut album, 'Simpatico People' quickly sets out W. H. Lung's intentions: they're taking us on a trip into a cavernous studio creation that has the claws and muscle to become a fierce live force. 'Simpatico People' is kraut-indebted, beginning as a lightly hovering jam, before hitting its stride and chugging along on arpeggiating synthesizers throughout. This is the fuel that is burnt by propulsive percussion and some scorching guitar lines that push the track well out into the far reaches of space. The track is so hypnotic and exhilarating that you'll be 8-minutes deep without even realising, at this point Joseph E. is repeating "Am I on my own? Am I on my own?" as he's so far into the void that no other life is apparent - but any listeners to 'Simpatico People' will be right there with him, having been hauled into this realm by W. H. Lung's musical sorcery. - Rob Hakimian

AUGUST 08 - 'Blood On My Hands' (feat. Smino)

To say something is "a mood" is a meme that seems well past its expiration date, but there's hardly a better way to describe the haunted R&B of August 08. On "Blood On My Hands," his new collab with St. Louis MC Smino, August 08 finds him stuck between two loves and shouldering a burden that increases with time. Smino's tight verse and the thumping, echoey production courtesy of Sad Money make this as good of a reason to go for a pensive night walk as any. - Brody Kenny

Peter and Kerry - 'They Know God (But I Know You)'

Outside of some unintrusive keyboards and minimal vocal effects, the arrangements are stripped to Leatham's voice and gently rolling pianos with the sound bare enough you can literally hear the keys being pressed. Leatham has always possessed a stirring and gorgeous voice and in these settings, it flourishes untethered. A far cry from their comparatively restless debut, the added focus, and breathing room reveal how much their collective songwriting has grown. What's also gratifying about it is, despite how much time has passed since we last heard from them, Peter and Kerry sound as if they were here all along. - Jerome Monroe

Neon Prayers - ‘Incomplete’

What begins as a piano-backed ballad morphs into a droning electronic number, maintaining its dramatic flair. At two-and-a-half minutes in, cogs begin whirring with kinetic energy, losing speed every measure to entropy. It is a chrome ride, dwelling on feelings that can launch a downward spiral of thoughts. Eventually, the spinning slows for good and we are carried to the outro, which provides no extra comfort. - Zoë Elaine

Light Conductor - 'Light Conductor'

Amidst rippling piano and refracting percussion, a surging current of guitar cuts to straight to the point, like rocket boosters suddenly engaging for a return journey. The joy at the moment of departure is captured in the vocals (featuring Young Galaxy's Catherine McCandless), which radiate like ultraviolet beams across the sky. With the all-clear given by the 'Light Conductor', the band is ready to escape our atmosphere. - Rob Hakimian

Weyes Blood - 'Everyday'

New track 'Everyday' is Weyes Blood's record of the tricky trail through the world of modern dating. Her voice is radiant in its weariness at the endless longing, but 'Everyday' takes that dejection and spins it into gold through the brightness of '70s organs and choral backing vocals, ascending and descending through an utterly jovial chorus. Even though she runs through a series of disheartening encounters with prospective partners, she still maintains a positive perspective, assuring us that "true love is making a comeback." The winsome sound of Weyes Blood's new song is a true tonic for the modern blues, in which we "need love everyday". - Rob Hakimian

INTER ARMA - 'Citadel'

Last seen on UK shores supporting everyone’s favourite crossover black-metal band, Deafheaven, Inter Arma's reputation has grown and grown over their last couple of LPs, especially since their 2016 masterwork, Paradise Gallows. This week they announced their fourth record, Sulphur English (out April 12 via Relapse Records), and unveiled 'Citadel;’ a song that thrillingly embodies the terrifying inferno that roars across the new album's cover.

Inter Arma have always skilfully juggled the stylistic signifiers of various sub-genres of metal, to the point that they’re basically a genre unto themselves. On 'Citadel,’ we get the funereal chug of sludgy doom, the growl-and-riffageddon of death, the relentless blast beats of black, and the shredding, balls-to-the-wall soloing of good ol’ heavy metal. All in service of a song that in frontman Mike Paparo’s own words serves as a “clarion call to [himself] about overcoming depression.”

Every Inter Arma song feels you’re on some mystical ship captained by a bellowing madman, at the mercy of the push and pull of stormy seas; with its swaying rhythm and relentless violence, ‘Citadel’ is no different, except this time, the goddamn ship is on fire. - Andy Johnston

Honourable Mentions

Why you should listen: Because it feels like you're trapped in a dream.

Why you should listen: Because it feels like walking through a newly-discovered city at night.

Why you should listen: Because it feels like the song you hear in a movie where someone overcomes all the odds to win.

Why you should listen: Because it feels like the song you hear in a movie after you hear the song above.

Why you should listen: Because it feels like a glass of rum underneath a neon sign that says 'HUGE VIBE'.

Why you should listen: Because it feels like familiar ground yet entirely unique.

Why you should listen: Because Taliwhoah's voice is so damn good.

from The 405 http://bit.ly/2tp4KV7