#and americans are already like way over represented in terms of black people in my country if that makes sense

[loki-zen]

I have a sort-of new job! I’m going to a new library and it will be my library (just me! the librarian!) and this is Exciting

also a bit weird given that i’ve been with the organisation a hot minute and don’t technically have a permanent contract yet but Oh Well

also it looks like it’s all very STEMmy, which is a bit out of my comfort zone. we adapt ^-^

so anyway, i know you guys are nerds, can anyone think of any notable figures in STEMmy subjects I can highlight for black history month? preferably British, but doesn’t have to be - not American though if i can help it

edit: duh mary seacole im an idiot

[the1975attheirverybest]

the point about throwaway terms is very fucking valid like i am fucking sick of seeing stuff about intrusive thoughts when it is just impulsive like intrusive thoughts are like "what if i poured boiling water on my cat" (not a literal example but that kind of thing) and they fucking suck and you feel horrific not just being silly and goofy

but i think the thing about gen z not being able to define itself it interesting as well because with social media there is no one thing you sit down as a generation and watch or take part in. there isnt really a top of the pops or a similar culturally defining piece of media other than say tiktok. but its also very easy to look at tiktok and see it as the face of gen z when i find most of the time it represents a small demographic of rich americans as opposed to the majority of gen z. like as a British person social media is very clearly dominated by americans

i also think there is something to be said about criticising gen z for being critical of older generations but consuming the media when we as a generation have been constantly harped on for being shit, have dealt with social media and being conscious of every political happening all at once from the age of 12, the housing crisis, brexit, the shortcomings of the education system, covid, and i could probably go on but all before even leaving school? and yet we are the generation that gets the piss taken out of us? like yes we fucking suck but also like come on. im not trying to say look at us we have it so hard because we didnt deal with world war two or the cold war or the 2008 financial crisis or 9/11 but we were also like 14 and witness to war nearly being started because of twitter and laying in bed at 15 watching black people being violently murdered and 16 trying to sleep after being told on the internet that if we dont post about everything happening ever you are a bad person, but our problem is not being able to define ourselves culturally? or trying to find an alternative to the present by looking back to the past that has been glorified by previous generations? like i dont think i can explain how mentally damaging waking up to find out that a bill allowing oil drilling in the arctic which will destroy the earth has been passed but still having to get up, go to school and pretend that fucking a levels matter before having any sort of life achievements is

sorry if this comes off as preachy but im just a little tired of older generations being seeming incapable of empathy sometimes - 🐸

No, you’re right! I mean, it’s very easy for us older folks who have done most of our growing up already to look back and say “they should be doing X or y” when….if that were true then we wouldn’t have “failed” before y’all even came along, haha. I think when we criticize gen z, there are two types of criticism:

1) where it’s just old people being afraid of change. Like, espcially socio-politically. It’s clear that the systems we have no HAVE FAILED CATASTROPHICALLY otherwise there wouldn’t be a recession, so much fascism etc. and it’s time for something radically different and older people don’t get the urgency of that as much as younger people do. Which is a cheap kind of criticism. Like, if you won’t support the kids then get the fuck out of their way. Cuz they’re gonna change the future with or without you. You’re just making it slower/harder for them.

2) criticism that recognizes some gen z movements as overcompensation or over correction of something that we ourselves have tried to fix before. It’s no huge secret that every generation develops its beliefs, aesthetic preferences, political ideals, etc in response to what came before it. Not just gen z. We millennials did it, too. And so did gen X and boomers…I think all the way back to at least the Reagan administration, here in the US anyways, things have been…on the downhill HAHA. and each generation tries to do something about. Then the next one comes along and is like “alright they tried X and failed, what if we try Y?” And sometimes we recognize the younger generations mistakes cuz we have made them, too and we just wanna be like “bro, no, no. Trust me. That’s not gonna work. You’ll see it when you’re older and you’re looking back at the generation after you too.” Those criticisms, I think, are fair. And might even help future kids if they listen.

But, at least for me, and I won’t speak for my entire generation or for those before me, my criticism doesn’t mean I don’t empathize. One of my fav Notes tracks is “People” purely because of the “stop fucking with the kids.” Young people have always been the face of change. They are usually the demographic that votes one party in and the other out. Conservatives always win only when they oppress the youth and appeal to the fear of old people. They’re on the edge of fashion, art, pop culture. So, I know better than to be dismissive of young people! Never! It’s just, sometimes I see the mistakes happening and I’m like “ohhh noooo stop before it’s too late” haha.

[choicesenthusiast]

Representation at Pixelberry: The Follow-Up

One year ago, on June 15, 2020, Pixelberry released a statement regarding representation at the company. Here is the LINK to the original blog post, and here was MY RESPONSE. Oh, how naïve and optimistic I was. It contained a list of goals and promises they hoped to accomplish within a year. Well, a year has passed, and here is my attempt to hold PB accountable. I'll be going over the five main points of their representation plan and if they achieved what they promised. All criticisms are about content released after June 15th. Long post beware, but I'm not putting it under a read more because I feel like it's important for all to see.

1. Commitment to diversity of Love Interests - FAIL

We’ve already been moving towards having Love Interests have customizable skin tones. We will continue to do this with some stories, while also having some characters with clear ethnic identities. At the same time when we have multiple love interests of different ethnicities, we are aiming for those Love Interests to have equal game time.

"LIs with customizable skin tones" mean they come in three flavours: white, black, and ambiguously Asian/Latinx interchangeably. So far I have rarely seen an LI as connected to their culture/ethnicity as Rafael Aveiro, and he just talked about his Vovo's food if he ever were on screen. They had many chances with the other OH LIs as well. Even Ayna Seth and Tatum Mendoza were confirmed to be Indian and Filipino, respectively, though FA gets a little leeway, as it was set in a fictional west-European continent.

As for equal game time? I'm sure the biggest example we can all think of was the mess that was Open Heart 3, which was written during the hiatus (which only existed because they were going to straight up kill Rafael in Book 2). Game time was not equal among LIs, and the white male LI was heavily favoured. PB also continues to pay female LIs dirt by giving them no screen time. In addition to that, LGBT+ players, who are consistently underrepresented, receive one (1) unprepared pride month survey, prpbably only because someone asked them about it on Twitter.

This is the meat and potatoes of everything because it's what they're outputting to their audience. It's what the people see. Given that things haven't been going so well lately in this department, consider this promise a big fat fail.

2. More authentic and diverse hairstyles for people of color - QUESTIONABLE

Our team will focus on providing more authentic and representative hairstyles. We are prioritizing these hairstyles outside of our normal book processes and will introduce them in new books as they are ready.

While, yes, they have added two new hairstyles in WEH, they also just took Jade Bonet's hair and recycled it for LoA F!MC. PB recycles all their hair more often than not.

3. More diverse book covers - QUESTIONABLE

This is an initiative we started in January of this year. As a result the number of Black, Latinx, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, mixed, and other characters on new book covers increased from 35% of characters in 2019 to 60% characters in the first half of 2020. However, the number of black characters is still not high enough this year. More are already scheduled for books later this year. We will make sure that Black characters are well represented on our covers in the future.

"Diverse" does not just mean by race, but also gender, sexual orientation, etc. FA has the only recent MLM cover. And don't tell me that the FA and LoA covers are any different from each other. The only black characters on covers are Zoey Wade (QB), and Black!Gabe Ricci (LoA) and Bastien (WB), which aren't even their canon races unless you choose them to be. This is the case for many single-LI books, such as Cassian Keane (W:ABR, which technically premiered on Mar. 16, but the sentiment is the same), Sam Dalton (TNA), and Dakota Winchester (WEH). Not to mention the customizable/multi LI books like DS, RT, BaBu2, MTFL, etc. Majority of these covers are just cishet couples delicately cradling each other's bodies or whatever. And we're not even gonna get into how PB literally put the Open Heart LIs in order of their favouritism on Book 3's cover.

4. Writers/Staff - QUESTIONABLE

We will be engaging in professional training on historical and current racism for our writers to ensure more of them have a better understanding and more context for views of diverse characters in Choices. We will also create a program that gives more authority to people of color in the studio to advise writers and artists on more authentic portrayals in both writing and art of black, brown, and minority characters.

A story with a Black-led cast is something I have asked for in the past, but failed to follow-up on. We will very likely start this with a Black-led cast story led by Chelsa, one of Pixelberry's Black writers.

We will increase the number of diverse writers we source for new stories, starting with hiring more Black and Latinx writers to lead the charge.

For all teams at Pixelberry we will actively work to bring in more Black and Latinx candidates with the goal to increase the number of Black and Latinx employees at Pixelberry. Although Pixelberry is over 50% female, on teams where females are not at 50% we will actively work to source more female candidates.

This promise seemed like a copout from the start because we have no way of knowing who works on what at PB unless we very meticulously stalk their LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever. We have no solid statistics except for what they feed us. I do know, however, that they recently let the Ms. Match writers go and were hiring for external writers, but there really is no way of knowing what's going on behind-the-scenes with their 112+ employees, and of course there would be NDAs involved. We are yet to see a book with an all-Black cast, and receive rare development updates with new books. Actually, I think a really good way to promote diversity is to do staff showcases on their social media. Just a way to show the public who's responsible for what. Writers, game devs, the art team, etc. Don't think it'll happen, but it's always a good idea.

5. Donations - QUESTIONABLE

Pixelberry will also be making $100,000 in donations to Black Girls Code, the Black Writers Collective, and the Latinx Writers Collective at Techqueria. Rather than as a lump sum, we will be making these donations over the course of a year to remind us that we are not making short term changes, but are committed to long term sustainable actions. We’ll also be donating up to an additional $100k from profits for this week, 6/15-6/21.

There has been no proof, no receipts, no evidence from PB that they have donated anything to anyone, and as far as we're concerned, their word doesn't mean anything. No news or updates news about it. I would love to believe that they did something, but as you can see, I've become quite the pessimist. BWC still uses PB's old logo (like, pre-Choices) on their sponsors page, and the last interaction they've had with BGC was in 2013. They don't even follow each other on Instagram. In fact, BGC received a huge donation from MacKenzie Scott, formerly Bezos last July. Yes, that billionaire Bezos, and that got coverage from them. Obviously donations don't need to be for publicity, but in this case I think it's important there should be proof. Again, it's really hard to tell with these behind-the-scenes things, but given how PB loves to gloat and hates to keep promises, we can assume that none of this happened.

~~~

So, what's the takeaway? That PB's fallen down the drainhole of shitty content and empty promises and has no intention of climbing out as long as they still make that bank? Seems counterproductive, because good representation gets good feedback and income. They pump out bad books with barebones "representation" if you can call it that, then drop their precious merch and pretend all is fine and dandy. But just as I suspected one year ago, none of this matters, because people forget things, and people move on, and shit gets swept under rugs. Yet, here I am, yelling at a company in a post I for sure doubt they'll see. Because if not me, then who?

@playchoices Your move. It's been your move for a year now. When will you actually make it?

[young-dumb-and-vaccinated]

The Sommelier (Hannigram x Female!Reader) pt. 21

Hannibal and y/n go after Chase and uncover a much larger operation than they could have imagined. 

@dovahdokren @deadman-inc-bikeshop @lov3vivian @wisesandwichshark @scpdragon 

Trigger warnings: racism, mention of sex trafficking, religiously-motivated sexism/paternalism, American evangelism

Faced with the reality that you could die or worse, you wanted to go out with a bang. You wanted to take Borrasca down with you.

Hannibal checked the phone while you took stock of the weapons. Between the shotgun you just bought and the handgun in your car, you had enough firepower to have a chance at making it out alive.

You loaded the guns into your car. That way, if you were stopped, the licensing and registration would be consistent. Your car, your guns. Then there was the cover story. Newlyweds, on a hunting trip through the mountains.

"He's on Cactoctin Mountain." Hannibal announced, carefully scrolling through the information on Will's mangled phone.

You shut the door and put the key in the ignition. "Great, that's about an hour and a half, we should be there by sunrise."

“It’s the same mountain as Camp David.” He added. “Now, is that symbolic or--?”

“Or is he just too stupid to realize it’s a bad idea to headquarter a sex trafficking operation on the same mountain as the presidential retreat?” You finished. 

Hannibal gave you a smile, as if to thank you for filling in with what he was too polite to say. “I’m inclined towards the latter.” 

“Oh yeah.” You nodded. “Absolutely the latter.” 

“Regardless,” He said, examining Will’s array of apps. “We have time to browse the contents of Will’s phone for any relevant information.”

“Good idea.” You agreed, pulling on to the street. “Check his notes and his camera.” 

“It looks like he was recording the questioning when he and Jack Crawford approached Pastor Armitage.” He observed. 

“That’s great.” You exclaimed. “Play it. Maybe it’ll give us something to go off of.” 

The audio was grainy, but at max volume, you could make out two distinct voices. One belonged to Jack, meaning the other had to be Pastor Armitage. 

“Calvin Armitage, my name is Jack Crawford and this is Will Graham. Can we have a few minutes of your time?” 

A short silence followed, during which Jack presumably showed his badge. 

“Of course. We here at Holy Eternal Shepherd support our officers of the law.” Armitage said. “If you’re here about the blue lives matter potluck-” 

“I’m sorry, let me be more clear.” Jack interrupted. “We’re from the FBI. Sources have indicated that Chase Mulvaney was employed at this church and we’d like to ask you a few questions.” 

After an incriminating silence and the sound of a closing door, Armitage spoke again. “Can I get you gentlemen anything?” 

“No, thank you.” Said a cordial, but annoyed, Jack. “Mr. Armitage, what do you know about the Ministry of Truth?”

“Wait, hold up.” You interrupted. Hannibal paused the playback. “Is that an Orwellian reference?” 

“That would not surprise me.” He conceded. “We already know he doesn’t understand satire.”

“The Ministry of Truth is a nonprofit that keeps the lights on around here.” Armitage answered. 

“You have a very strange definition of the term ‘non-profit’.” Will added. “According to their most recent tax records, they funneled over ninety million dollars into this place.” 

“We are very blessed.” Armitage said, dismissively. “It’s because of the Ministry of Truth that we don’t rely on our congregation for funds. We want to allow our family the luxurious spiritual experience they deserve at no cost.”

“But you still accept donations, do you not?” Jack probed. 

“Well, there are extra expenses when you serve so many people.” Armitage rationalized. “The donations are really just investments into our community. Mission trips, vacation bible school, youth groups and the like.” 

“Camp Big Brother one of those?” Will asked. 

You and Hannibal shared a look of disappointment but complete non-surprise. 

Armitage clicked his tongue. “Well, it’s a wonderful program for young Christian women and girls. About two hours from here, secluded, a perfect place to get away from the city to relax and focus on god’s true design for womanhood.”

“That sounds lovely.” Jack said without any real sincerity. “And they employ predominantly female teachers?” 

“Err.. no.” Armitage answered. “Hence the name ‘big brother’. It’s a male-led program. Jesus says that men are to act as spiritual guides for the fairer sex.” 

“I see.” said Jack. You could hear the contempt in his voice. 

Armitage grew defensive. “Are you here to judge us for our religious practices? Because last I checked, the Free Exercise clause says-” 

“I’m familiar with the constitution, thank you.” Jack stopped him. 

His defensiveness turned accusatory. “Then why has the FBI sent agents to judge our expressions of faith?”  

“Because Camp Big Brother doesn’t exist.” Jack countered. 

A third long, incriminating pause followed. “Come again?” 

“There are no records whatsoever of a church mission under the name Camp Big Brother existing anywhere in the country.” Jack explained. “The property does not exist outside of the walls of this church.” 

“I thought you came to talk about Chase Mulvaney, Agent Crawford.” Armitage’s voice rose. “Whom, for the record, does not represent our faith. A real Christian-” 

Jack cut him off. “I’d rather you not change the subject, pastor.” 

“You are a guest in my church-!” 

“Just tell us where Camp Big Brother is.” Jack’s voice hardened. “Tell us what Mulvaney is doing to those missing girls.” 

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” 

“Sir, if you continue to deflect,” Jack warned. “I’ll have you arrested for obstruction of justice or worse.” 

The click of a revolver filled the air. Both Jack and Will withdrew their guns in response. Another long pause. 

“Hello, police?” Armitage said, faking fear. “A large black man posing as a federal agent is harassing me. He has a gun.” 

“This is ridiculous.” Jack said, though not without a twinge of nervousness. “Put the--” 

The recording abruptly ended in the middle of the sentence. You realized you’d been sitting at the same stop sign with your turn signal on for who-knows-how-long. You made the turn, then pulled off to the side of the road and put the car in park. You searched your entire vocabulary for words that weren’t just ‘fuck’. 

“Fuck.” You said, failing entirely. 

“I’m not surprised that this is bigger than Chase.” Hannibal replied, always one to approach fear with logic. “But that means it’s bigger than us.” 

“You’re right.” You nodded, reaching for your phone. “Which is why we need a fail-safe.” 

Hannibal tilted his head. “Did you have something in mind?” 

“Yep.” You said, fingers flying across the phone. “Could you send me the address?” 

Within seconds, you received the address and just as soon sent it off. A few minutes’ silence passed before getting a message back. “There we go.”

Hannibal glanced at your phone. “What’s the plan?” 

“I asked Charissa to call me before she leaves for work at noon.” You said, putting your phone on the dashboard. “If I don’t pick up, she’ll send the address to Jack.” 

“That’s a true friend.” Hannibal raised an eyebrow. “Seeing that she didn’t even ask you why.” 

You put the car into drive. “I’m sure she already knows.” 

[feelingbluepolitics]

We Must Handle the Truth

There's no question that the management of Donald trump will be an issue of on-going global importance. Knocking him from his (alleged) official perch is only the first step.

The more crucial steps must follow, because trump will retain his influence and his supporters, and they will do whatever he hints that he wants, even up to treasonous attacks, assassination attempts, and mass murders.

We must be clear. There is no cozy "look to the future and heal" pretence of an option in our present situation. This is aside from the fact that taking that Pollyanna path repeatedly --from Watergate to Reagan to Bush-- helped to criminalize and radicalize the Republicon Party into the danger they are today.

Shame, honor, and true patriotism have become vestigial on the Right. Their criminal administrations and elected representatives keep getting away with what they do because we embolden them each time with a blind eye.

That is not how justice works. The blind eye of justice means that no one, no matter how powerful, is exempt. The time to work on that is January 20, 2021, and we are far overdue. Politicians, corporations, tax cheats, polluters: we still have laws, for all of trump's and his administration's destructive efforts.

We sully our government offices and endanger our nation by not requiring accountability to the office and to the people, over and above any present occupant. Where we are blocked by pardons we must still have thorough public investigation. That is not a waste of time for lack of a prosecutorial path. It is existential. It's the accountability we cannot do without. It's the foundation of the future laws we need to draft and pass to safeguard this country.

Pardons become entirely corrupt when we acquiesce to them blocking investigation. Democracies survive on information and truth, combined. We are where we are now in part because we still have corrupt actors left-over from Watergate active in our politics.

What are we to do about trump? That isn't initially, or perhaps ever, all about pardons, or state versus federal charges, or orange jumpsuits. In this instance, ironically, the potential solution is all about trump. This is where an examination of how trump interacts with the rest of the human world can guide us.

He forms specific categories of relationships which are actually invariable, because he is permanently shallow and unperceptive. Because trump the consumate narcissist is always the center of every relationship, and because he is, without introspection, forever fixed in all his defects, all of his various relationships fall into the same patterns within their categories. Here they are:

1) The Strongmen. Shades of daddy Fred trump, these are aspirational relationships teaching the type of utter control the core pathetic trump would like to wield. But because of daddy, trump is conditioned to the "love me, admire me, and be useful and loyal or I will harm or destroy you" format, but on the weaker side.

This is why we have seen trump pushing the United States of America into eagerly obsequious deference with respect to Russia, North Korea, and Turkey, and also pandering to Saudi Arabia's power which is additionally derived through vast transactional wealth.

But we cannot and do not want to transform America or Biden into this Strongman mold, because then it will have been pointless to remove trump.

2) The Assets. This category comprises trump's immediate family members and all Republicons in office, from Mitch McConnell to Kevin McCarthy, and from Michigan’s Republicon Senate members to, potentially, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. This category also extends to trump's supporters, mostly as a collective.

These are the flipside of the Strongman category, where trump gets to play the opposite role. These people are tools, who work constantly to remain in good standing with trump, rendering obsequious deference and servitude as a matter of advantage but also, essentially, as a matter of status survival.

trump is a horrible antagonist or enemy.

This, by the way, is exactly the relationship this country cannot continue to allow with trump, as a matter of national security.

3) The Targets. We know who they are. They caught trump's wrathful attention. Some of the targets are personal to trump to varying degrees, while some are a matter of expediency, or are demonstrated examples, or are, so far, peripheral.

But everybody knows trump will never stop -- that is the personna he cultivated-- unless a Target person has something of value to make them an Asset again. (This is why trump is called purely transactional, in combination with having no beliefs, no morality, and no honesty.)

Fauci, and Birx, (who for a while pulled off a mommy-style interaction with trump as he tried to impress her with nifty genius like injecting bleach), are in a no-man's land, transitional between Asset and Target, in part because trump doesn't like attention on covid if he can help it.

We don't know exactly what trump will try to inflict on Mary trump for writing her book, but we've already seen a variety of attacks against Bolton, Kelly, and Michael Cohen, along with innumerable others. (It isn't just books. It's that these people did not keep flattering, and obey.)

He ousted from political power Jeff Sessions, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker (White House as "an adult day care center"), and Mark Sanford, of "the Appalachian Trail." He can do the same to any other individual Republicon, because as a group, they are all too backstabbing, dishonorable, greedy, and cowardly to unite against him.

Certainty we have seen trump's behavior with respect to Fox Gnus, the Clintons, and Obama.

This is the relationship this country cannot allow itself to fall into with trump. But how possibly to prevent it?

For that, we look to another category of trump's relationships.

4) The Survivors. Of those not in the Strongman category, there are few people who have survived relationships with Donald trump and who can get trump to do favors for them -- to do what they want.

It is dangerous idiocy to call them trump's "friends," by way of explaining their leverage and longevity. The key is leverage.

Rudy Giuliani :

- A "very, very good relationship" with trump.

- "I've seen things written like he's going to throw me under the bus. When they say that, I say he isn't, but I have insurance."

- "I do have very, very good insurance."

Giuliani's insurance is knowledge; some knowledge about trump gives him leverage. The leverage has to represent knowledge that trump fears exposure of or consequences for. Giuliani doesn't fear being otherwise loose-lipped, or even crazy, and his relationship with trump is currently letting him pull in $20,000 a day for "legal work."

Roger Stone :

"[trump] knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn't."

This leverage allowed Stone to openly demand clemency from trump regardless of any amount of political capital it could potentially cost.

The succession of wives, too, possess whatever personal knowledge, likely far more powerful than negotiated pre-nups and settlements, which ensure the notorious litigious deadbeat abides willingly by contractual terms.

As a nation, we need to survive trump. We have observed what works. But as a nation, we must address the issue of trump just a bit differently. Unlike Giuliani, Stone, or even Putin’s special holds over trump, we must:

1) Investigate trump extensively. Entirely. Turn him inside-out. And then,

2) Make the findings public. This is where a nation, a government of, by, and for the people in a country ruled by law and not kingdoms or cults, differs from defensive black-mailers or manipulative foreign spies.

This part, making public everything that doesn't actually threaten our national security to reveal, is necessary to harden both our resolve and our democracy, and to peel off whatever of trump's support that we can, and to deter the next trumpian assaults, whether by trump or the people who will try to follow the path trump has scorched into the fabric of our nation.

Public reveals are also a safety measure. There is vast potential for corruption otherwise. But then,

3) Keep every single trump-related criminal prosecution -- legitimate, of course, because we are not trump -- on the table. That is the leverage.

That's how to survive trump. There must be no more talk of how investigating a former *resident will turn us into a "banana republic." In a so-called banana republic, powerful government officials pressure others, either to carry out vendettas, or favors of protection by "looking the other way". Government is bent toward personal exploitations. Been there. Done that these past four years under trump and Republicons.

They have actually installed what can be termed "a deep state," notably for the first time, and sane Americans must know its extant. Fcuk their cries of victimization and oppression of the Right. The only difference is, when we investigate, there are actual violations, crimes, and scandals, with evidentiary proofs; when conservatives investigate, it's fundamentally bullsh*t-and-paranoia based.

A "banana republic" is exactly what we are attempting to rescue our nation from. With all the recognition that the Right has systematically unmoored from truth, and the terrible dangers that threaten as a result, from a stupid civil war born of propaganda, to climate devastation, as much truth as we can discover is what we need.

Knowledge is power. With trump out of the White House, we can get it. We must have it.

[tlbodine]

When the Timeline Split

2016 was a crazy year. 

My perspective on it, like anyone else’s, is colored and clouded by my own experiences, like the personal tragedy of an unexpected job loss. Things had been strange and bad in the world before, of course, an ebb and flow of tragedy. But four years ago, somehow the world shifted cataclysmically, irrevocably, into a dark new timeline. 

I remember early in the election assuming that the race would come between Hilary Clinton and Jeb Bush. I was not thrilled at the prospect. I was researching other candidates, taking the quiz I have relied on for previous elections, and discovered Bernie Sanders -- someone whose ideals aligned almost perfectly with my own, something I’d never seen before in a candidate. I didn’t know that “Democratic Socialist” was an option, but that sure as hell described me. 

And for a brief while, it looked like he might win. 

I remember the Idaho caucus. I remember the, “Holy shit, this could actually happen!” feeling. I indulged myself in imagining a future where all of the things I cared about were addressed -- socialized healthcare, student debt forgiveness and free education, green new deal, tax on the wealthy. 

It was the last time I have felt true and genuine hope. More than four years ago, today, was the last time I thought about the future and imagined it could be good. 

Donald Trump seemed like a joke candidate at first. Good for a laugh. Good for a meme. 

I remember the exact moment that changed for me. I was at the gym, a 6am workout before my commute. The news was on, the television above the treadmill, some morning show where they were talking ad nauseum about whatever new impropriety Trump had done. I thought: Holy shit, the media is going to hand this man the election. They cannot help themselves. He’s like catnip to them. They’re giving him all the free publicity in the world and he’s going to win because of it. 

And, of course, that’s exactly what happened. 

A rash of celebrities died in 2016: Alan Rickman, David Bowie, Gene Wilder, Prince, Ron Glass, Glen Frey -- many others besides. 

It became something of a dark joke. When Glen Frey died, everyone was posting "Hotel California" on social media in tribute. I was irritated (couldn't they have used one of the Eagles songs that Frey actually sang? "Take It Easy"? "Tequila Sunrise"? Come ON!). My best friend and coworker, who shared two hours of commute with me every day, decided that "Hotel California" was simply The Song You Played when a celebrity died. We played it with gentle irony for every celebrity death, even Fidel Castro. 

The celebrity deaths set a strange, grim tone for the year. We joked: They’re leaving before things get any worse. Eventually, we started to believe it. 

Mass shootings were reported seemingly every week, but all of them were dwarfed by then-record-breaking 49 deaths in Pulse Night Club, a hate crime of unfathomable size. 

But perhaps more than anything, 2016 was weird. 

Pepe the Frog, a cartoonish internet meme, became a Nazi dogwhistle. 

Bernie Sanders became an unwitting meme lord, probably with the help of 4chan trolls and Russian hackers. 

People reported sightings of scary clowns all over the country. 

Liberal friends started fighting each other out in the open on social media, and sometimes in person, during the most divisive primary election I’ve ever witnessed. 

The internet filled with conspiracy theories about Russia and Iran and inevitable war. 

“This is Fine Dog” became the rallying symbol of the year for many -- a dog cheerfully ignoring the room on fire around him. 

On May 28, 2016, a silverback gorilla named Harambe was fatally shot in a zoo after a child got into his enclosure. There was a brief ripple of genuine controversy surrounding the zookeeper’s decision. Some misanthropes wondered whether the life of a human was, necessarily, always more valuable than the life of an endangered gorilla. Fueled almost certainly by racism and the ironic edgelord culture of the internet, Harambe became a meme -- Justice for Harambe! Dicks out for Harambe! 

Given the backdrop of Black Lives Matter protests that had already been taking place across the country, and the ongoing murder of black people by police, it seems self-evident that the Harambe meme was a racist dogwhistle. Not everyone who shared it was probably aware of that -- but it had a meanness there at its center, a cruelty, the hint of a dark equivocation between a 17-year-old gorilla and, say, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. 

In hindsight, for me, I think Harambe’s death was the moment when something in the fabric of our social reality snapped. 

Nothing so fully encapsulates the exact tenor of modern discourse -- irreverent, nihilistic, performative, and absurd. 

Of course the society that joked about a dead gorilla would elect Donald Trump as president. 

Today is May 28, 2020. Four years to the day since Harambe. 

Today is the third day of nationwide riots and looting as black communities protest the death of George Floyd, who was pinned by the neck to the ground for seven minutes by a police officer, while other officers looked on. Floyd’s abuse and death were captured on video, but the police have not been charged with any crime. 

Years of peaceful protest have amounted to nothing, and so things have reached a fever pitch. As we speak, a police precinct in Minneapolis is on fire. 

It is May 28, 2020, and 100,000 Americans have died from a global pandemic.  40 million people are out of work. The country was brought to a halt, shutting down helter-skelter in an attempt to keep people safe, and no long-term plan was enacted during that period for re-opening. People return to work now, putting themselves in danger. 

The president refuses to acknowledge these deaths in any meaningful way. He complains, instead, that this pandemic is unfairly hurting his campaign. He claims that no one has been treated more unfairly. 

Black people make up 13% of the population but represent 25% of deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Today is May 28, 2020, in the midst of the deadliest pandemic in a century, with nationwide protests and riots, and President Donald Trump signed an executive order to threaten social media, because Twitter put a “fact check” link beneath one of his tweets. 

[theshedding]

What Haiti's past tells us about the meaning of Resistance & “Revolution”

One of the realities of American education (public or private) is that the already abbreviated history of Black people in the United States is completely non-intersectional and without recognition of the larger international African diaspora with respect to (1) Black liberation or (2) American and New-world European colonial history. For instance, it is not commonly recognized that proportionally-most Black people from Africa who arrived in the “New World” due to the Atlantic Slave Trade did not live in North America but in the Caribbean, South and Central America. That is to say, if you were enslaved (or newly freed) outside of Africa at any point from the 16th through late 19th century outside of Africa, you would’ve had a one in three (or four) chance of living in the United States. Ask your average Black person on the street about this and it’s news. Ask your average non-Black person on the street about this and it’s even more surprising news. And why wouldn’t it be? Due to highly racialized educational systems, steadfast commitment to Black marginalization, indifference and/or Black & indigenous marginalization, most Americans who don’t actively seek this information have very limited knowledge about critical historical events. The American Revolution and details are reduced to incoherent romanticized narratives about English tea and “tyranny”. The Civil War is also vague and obtuse in its descriptions of Southern animus and economics. “Reconstruction” is a word that, admittedly, I did not learn (or had forgotten about) until an adult...and as a young person I fancied myself more knowledgeable than most about Black History through extra-curricular history lessons, elders, activities and educated parents. Even I was unaware of the sequence of Black history, resistance and triumph on critical historical events in Black American history.

Fast forward to the 2016 Presidential Election, the word “Revolution” and phrase “We need a Revolution!” was flagrantly thrown around and abused in public discourse by young (and older) people who undoubtedly grew up with the same biased and negligent public educational system I had grown up with and (in many cases) profoundly less extra-curricular historical exposure and education. As a culture, we would then start to see real gains in the #BLM movement and the zeitgeist towards radical change and structural reforms from race to finance and public safety. I was quite happy to participate in the resurgence of a resistance movement, especially one centering itself around issues of Black liberation. It’s what I’ve been around most of my life. What I wasn’t comfortable with however, was the use of the term “revolution” to describe it. At least not by White people (there’s a reason for that) and/or by younger people (of any color/ethnicity) who also undoubtedly had been steeped in the vapid romanticism of ‘revolutionary’ history taught to us by our primary and secondary US educational indoctrinations. 

I have been in formal activism and education personally 30+ years now. Make no mistake, I absolutely support of “change” in our society, particularly towards social justice and Black liberation. And I have no wish to exclude White people or any other ethnicity from being enthusiastic activists or communicators of social/economic/political justice. That’s not my point. What my case is however, is that I’ve always been uncomfortable with the careless use of the term “revolution” in our national political conversations about race, justice, history and radical change. Particularly if that term is being appropriated for something other than racial equality of Black or indigenous people in this country. Historically, “revolution” has been inextricably tied to some aspect of Black resistance in the new world. To update the term in a way that erases or obfuscates deep racial inequities makes me uncomfortable in its lack of this historical context. Aside from that appropriative term however, the use of the sub-category or phraseology “radical change” in connection with “revolution” is problematic for its own reasons; ‘radical change’ and ‘radical ideas’ have become erroneously conflated terms in this way. Historically speaking, radical ideas have always endured much longer than the actual moment of revolution and change itself. In my lifetime there have been a number of “radical” changes; cigarette use and public smoking, seatbelts, recycling, eco fuels, Black people being on television and not talking “jive”, Gay/Bi and Trans people simply existing while not living a sad, diseased-ridden and isolated life, smoking weed and pre-existing conditions in health care are all things which were massive structural changes in society that took lifetimes to negotiate, deconstruct and implement. The idea came way before the actual change. And every one of those ideas were not radically “changed” in any one moment or by any one person. Instead those changes represented a patchwork of efforts by nameless, thankless individuals, organizations and multiple leaders whose work at times overlapped in various ways. Many of whom died or had to leave their advocacy before their desired change could be realized. Simply saying “radical change” and/or conflating change with charismatic leaders, “revolution” and politicians without acknowledging radical ideas, radical people (plural) and radical efforts over long stretches of time is a betrayal of history, the people working to change and correct it and those who have worked to correct it, for our sake.

On this day, January 1st, 2021, the 217th anniversary of the dissolution of Saint Domingue and the beginning of Haiti (Áyitì), the very first ever Black republic in the European/Western colonial world, named in honor of-and deference to-the indigenous Arawak/Taino “Indians” of the Caribbean, the process of what change really looks like is as profound as it ever was. Most of us have not studied this history in any appreciable detail-Black people included. Many might be surprised to know that Haitians came to Philadelphia, Charleston (S.C.) and New Orleans as a direct result of what happened in the late 18th and early 19th century and that there are Black and White Americans living there right now with traceable ancestry to this Caribbean island and the revolution that occurred there (until earlier this year I wouldn’t have known that either). Despite what Kanye West said, Black people did not ‘choose’ inferiority, slavery and colonial oppression. In fact, they resisted it and plotted revolution from the moment they boarded ships in West Africa. Especially in places like Haiti where many of the Africans arriving were literally soldiers, prisoners of wars and being replenished every 5-7 years because of the high death and production rates. There were hundreds of rebellions and revolts of enslaved Africans in the New world during the Atlantic Slave Trade; Haiti’s is just one of many. But Haiti’s is the largest, sustained revolt, with the most cultural, political and economic implications for its White, Black/African & African descended people -and- as people living in a “new” world trying to reconcile what it means to live together in a land post-slavery, post-European colonialism. To this day its people are a living testament to how difficult that work of Anti-Black resistance is in a global economy built around the presumption and instance of Black inferiority. The “project” of this revolution is yet unfinished.

Therefore in 2021, anyone studying, protesting, manifesting and politically agitating against our current socio-economic-political structures in America needs to study the Haitian Revolution in as much detail as possible. It is one of the biggest examples of how intricate, dynamic, long-suffering and difficult it is to actually perform “radical change”. During the pandemic I began (re) introducing myself to this subject by reading books, watching documentaries and listening to lectures outlining the layers of narrative involved in what would be come the Haitian Revolution; Macandal, the three “Commissions”, the Tricolor Commission, “Declaration of the Rights of Man”, the determinative links of the French Revolution, “Code Noir”, André Rigoud, British blockades, Spanish regiments, the “Coloureds”, returns to the plantations for Africans only, not “Blacks”(e.g. caste systems), trade embargos, Toussaint, Dessalines, etc....all confirming what was already apparent: change is hard, long and often takes generations.

If you are currently fighting for something, or against it, know that not one person or one act can or will likely “radically” change the reality. A “revolution” is a term not to be used lightly. When we de-romanticize it and “dig” into it we can begin to see more clearly how ugly and non-inevitable it’s results truly are. History tells us so-and we can learn from this history in a way that informs our present-day activism and fight towards justice of any kind, for any person, any ethnicity. Commit yourself and learn from those who have done it before you and recognize that the past will always be relevant to the present in resistance and change. 

Below are some great resources start to learning more on the Haitian Revolution👇🏿:

“Revolutions” (Apple Podcast, a immensely detailed lecture series!) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revolutions/id703889772?i=1000358493623 PBS, “The Black Messiah: Macandal” https://youtu.be/cHIEYx2_C9Q “Haiti and the Atlantic World Reborn (New York Historical Society)” https://youtu.be/dpbLMkAJFtE “Noam Chomsky, Modern-Historical Political Commentary” https://youtu.be/e1JWr03P9W8 “Haiti Journal, 100th Anniversary of US Occupation” https://youtu.be/pILrdFJ683M

Happy New Year, Happy Haitian Independence Day and most importantly, Happy learning!!! 🤩🥂

[aliveandfullofjoy]

So I was reading about the first Oscars ceremony, and it had a division between Outstanding Picture and Best Unique & Artistic Film, where Unique & Artistic was apparently meant to be an equal to Outstanding Picture but dedicated more for prestige artistic works. The next year, the two categories became one from then on, and Outstanding Picture was the only top prize. (If any of that is wrong, blame wikipedia.)

If the split had remained, and there was a more commercial-y movie top prize and a prestige art top prize, what are some notable movies that suddenly pick up wins?

okay wait........ this is a brilliant question and i am ashamed to say i’ve never really given it much thought until now.

idk if you’ve seen wings and sunrise but they’re both pretty great and they do represent wildly different kinds of filmmaking. while it’s safe to say Wings is the more commercial film, it has great craftsmanship behind it and it very clearly created the template for accessible, capital-i Important, and well-made best picture winners to come. 

and, full transparency, sunrise is one of my, like, top 15 favorite movies, so i’m hella biased, but that movie is a gorgeous and strange and thrilling piece of work. the title “unique and artistic film” is impossibly vague, but watching sunrise makes it very, very clear that it fits that bill for that category. and while we’ll, of course, never know what might have happened if that category had continued, it’s tempting to think that all the winners in unique and artistic film would be of sunrise’s calibre, but knowing the oscars... that’s clearly a fantasy, lol. while sunrise is a wildly inventive and artistic film, it’s important to remember that it was fully on the academy’s radar -- janet gaynor won best actress in part for her performance in the film, and it also won best cinematography. so while it’s tempting to think the academy would always recognize a truly unique and artistic achievement every year, in all likelihood, they probably wouldn’t stray too far from the movies that were already on their radar. 

so for this thought experiment!!

it’s probably safe to assume every best picture winner has to go in one of the two categories. there are only a handful of winners that stick out as maybe missing out on the big win in this new system, but only a handful. 

so uh. this is way more than you asked but i got hooked. here’s what i think might have happened if the two best picture categories had stuck around. as i was working through the years, it became clear to me that, unfortunately, in a lot of years, the unique and artistic film would likely end up going to the more overtly “prestigious” films, such as the song of bernadette or the life of emile zola, while their far better and more commercially viable rivals (casablanca for bernadette, the awful truth for zola) would win outstanding picture. the actual best picture winners have an asterisk next to them. what’s also interesting to consider is the importance of the best director category: most of the time, a split in picture and director will tell you what’s clearly the runner-up. those years, usually, give you a good sense of how the two awards would shake out.

Outstanding Picture / Unique and Artistic Film

1929: The Broadway Melody*; The Divine Lady 

1930: The Big House; All Quiet on the Western Front* 

1931: Cimarron*; Morocco 

1932: Grand Hotel*; Bad Girl

1933: Little Women; Cavalcade*

1934: It Happened One Night*; One Night of Love 

1935: The Informer; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (** this is one of the few years i think the actual BP winner, Mutiny on the Bounty, would miss out; The Informer was clearly the runner-up for BP with wins in director, actor, and screenplay, while Midsummer was seen as THE artistic triumph of the year, and with its historic write-in cinematography win, there was clearly a lot of passion for it)

1936: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; The Great Ziegfeld*

1937: The Awful Truth; The Life of Emile Zola*

1938: You Can’t Take It With You*; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Grand Illusion (** this one’s tough... Grand Illusion made history as the first non-english movie nominated for BP, and it clearly had a lot of support, but Snow White was such a monumental moment in Hollywood, and the academy clearly acknowledged that with its honorary award)

1939: Gone with the Wind*; The Wizard of Oz (** this is one of the first years with a clear runaway favorite for best picture, which makes guessing the way the other award would go very difficult! i’m leaning towards Oz purely because of its technical achievements, but i’m not confident about that choice at all.)

1940: Rebecca*; The Grapes of Wrath 

1941: How Green Was My Valley*; Citizen Kane

1942: Yankee Doodle Dandy; Mrs. Miniver*

1943: Casablanca*; The Song of Bernadette

1944: Going My Way*; Wilson

1945: The Bells of St. Mary’s; The Lost Weekend*

1946: The Best Years of Our Lives*; Henry V

1947: Gentleman’s Agreement*; A Double Life 

1948: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; Hamlet*

1949: All the King’s Men*; The Heiress 

1950: All About Eve*; Sunset Boulevard

1951: A Place in the Sun; An American in Paris*

1952: The Greatest Show on Earth*; The Quiet Man 

1953: Roman Holiday; From Here to Eternity*

1954: The Country Girl; On the Waterfront*

1955: Marty*; Picnic

1956: Around the World in 80 Days*; Giant

1957: Peyton Place; The Bridge on the River Kwai

1958: The Defiant Ones; Gigi*

1959: The Diary of Anne Frank; Ben-Hur*

1960: Elmer Gantry; The Apartment*

1961: West Side Story*; Judgment at Nuremberg

1962: To Kill a Mockingbird; Lawrence of Arabia*

1963: Tom Jones*; 8½ 

1964: Mary Poppins; My Fair Lady*

1965: The Sound of Music*; Doctor Zhivago

1966: A Man for All Seasons*; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

1967: In the Heat of the Night*; The Graduate

1968: Oliver!*; 2001: A Space Odyssey 

1969: Midnight Cowboy; Z 

1970: Airport; Patton*

1971: The French Connection*; The Last Picture Show

1972: The Godfather; Cabaret

1973: The Sting*; The Exorcist

1974: Chinatown; The Godfather, Part II

1975: Jaws; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*

1976: Rocky*; Network

1977: Star Wars; Annie Hall*

1978: Coming Home; The Deer Hunter*

1979: Kramer vs. Kramer*; All That Jazz

1980: Ordinary People*; Raging Bull

1981: Chariots of Fire*; Reds

1982: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; Gandhi*

1983: Terms of Endearment*; Fanny and Alexander

1984: Amadeus*; The Killing Fields

1985: Out of Africa*; Ran

1986: Platoon*; Blue Velvet

1987: Moonstruck; The Last Emperor*

1988: Rain Man*; Who Framed Roger Rabbit

1989: Driving Miss Daisy*; Born on the Fourth of July

1990: Ghost; Dances with Wolves*

1991: The Silence of the Lambs*; JFK

1992: Unforgiven*; Howards End 

1993: Schindler’s List*; The Piano 

1994: Forrest Gump*; Three Colors: Red 

1995: Braveheart*; Toy Story 

1996: Jerry Maguire; The English Patient*

1997: Titanic*; L.A. Confidential

1998: Shakespeare in Love*; Saving Private Ryan

1999: The Cider House Rules; American Beauty*

2000: Traffic; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (** this is another year where i think the actual BP winner, Gladiator, might have missed out. it was a tight three-way race going into oscar night, and if there were two BP awards, i think this consensus might have settled, leaving Gladiator to go home with just actor and some tech awards.)

2001: A Beautiful Mind*; Mulholland Drive

2002: Chicago*; The Pianist

2003: Mystic River; The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King*

2004: Million Dollar Baby*; The Aviator

2005: Crash*; Brokeback Mountain

2006: The Departed*; Babel

2007: No Country for Old Men*; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

2008: The Dark Knight; Slumdog Millionaire*

2009: The Hurt Locker*; Avatar

2010: The King’s Speech*; The Social Network

2011: The Artist*; The Tree of Life

2012: Argo*; Life of Pi

2013: 12 Years a Slave*; Gravity 

2014: Birdman*; Boyhood

2015: Spotlight*; The Revenant

2016: La La Land; Moonlight*

2017: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; The Shape of Water*

2018: Black Panther; Roma (** again, i think Green Book gets bumped out in this scenario, i think Black Panther is precisely the kind of movie that benefits from an award that’s seemingly more ~populist~ while Roma easily snags the unique & artistic prize)

2019: 1917; Parasite*

2020: The Father; Nomadland*

but of course i have no idea at all, and most of these are just my gut reactions lol. what a fun question!

[tricktster]

Is TST for the satanic temple

It is merely a happy happy happy coincidence, but don’t take that to mean that they don’t have my full-throated support and admiration.

Since you kids are on tumblr, I’m guessing a lot of you already know that The Satanic Temple (TST) is not, in fact, a group of people who worship Satan. For those of you who might (understandably) have TST confused with an an actual Satan-worshipping entity, rest assured - supporting TST requires no actual Satan worship - or anything worship, it’s a “non-theistic religion.” 

So, you might be wondering, what’s the point of a purported Satanic church that explicitly does not believe in, nor worship, Satan? 

Great rhetorical question! Thank you for the invitation to geek out! In this essay I will explain why The Satanic Temple is an incredibly clever maneuver to protect the individual rights and liberties of people in the United States of America, and why you should all, regardless of religious belief, stan them. I am sorry! This is going to be a long one! I’m going to use a page break!

(Apologies if anything I say here is really basic obvious stuff that you already know. I will probably cover some familiar ground, but I didn’t get taught about any of this in high school beyond a few throwaway paragraphs in a textbook, so I’m writing with an audience of ‘me in high school’ in mind.)

As you know, the founding fathers did some pretty wild shit when they decided on what the United States of America was going to look like, and among the wildest was the decision that America would not have a state religion. I cannot express to you guys how significant this decision was in shaping American culture... soooo I won’t try because it’s beside the point and this is already going to be way too long. All you really need to take away is the following:

The U.S. constitution provides both that religion and government are to be kept separate, and that the free exercise of religion is a fundamental individual right, and those portions of the constitution have pissed a lot of people off over the last 244 years.

So there’s actually three parts of the bill of rights that are in play here. In the First Amendment, we have the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion [The Establishment Clause], or prohibiting the free exercise thereof [The Free Exercise Clause]; or abridging the freedom of speech [...]”

These clauses were the only part of the Constitution that touched on religion until the 14th amendment was ratified in 1868. For those of you who are curious about the timing of a new amendment in 1869 and are as bad with significant dates as I am, the Civil War ended in 1865, and, as such, it’s worth noting that the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to guarantee equal civil and legal rights to Black people. I am not the first person to note that uh, we are clearly still working on that.

Anyway, for our purposes, the pertinent part of the 14th amendment is the Equal Protection Clause:

“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Okay, very broadly, here’s what each clause actually does:

The Establishment Clause says that the US government cannot sponsor any religion, or involve itself in religion to the benefit of one religion over another. 

The Free Exercise clause says that the US government cannot stop someone from holding a religious belief (or force them to adhere to another religious belief)

The Equal Protection Clause prohibits discrimination on the basis of religious belief

These all look pretty great on paper, but in practice, enforcing them has been wildly hit or miss. I’m going to discuss why, so I’ll say up front that none of this should not be construed as an attack on Christianity. Religious faith is intensely personal, and I want to emphasize that I am in no way advocating for adherents to the Christian faith to be unable to practice that faith. I am a sincere advocate for everyone to be able to freely practice their own religious beliefs (or lack thereof), and that’s exactly what’s at issue here - when one religion is positioned above all others, anyone who does not believe in that particular religion is impacted detrimentally.

So with that caveat in place, it’s important to recognize the following: the United States is, and has always been, a majority Christian nation. 65% of Americans identified as Christian in 2019, which is a historic low. Even ten years back, it was closer to 85%. In accordance with the demographics of the US, Christianity is, if anything, over-represented in US government. 85.4% of US congressmen identify as Christian. 82 out of the 100 senators identify as Christian (I’m not counting members of congress or the senate who identify as members of the Church of Latter Day Saints in those numbers). Furthermore, every single president has identified themselves as Christian - the spiciest America has gotten in re: the religious beliefs of a POTUS was JFK, who was, you know, Catholic.

This is important, because it directly impacts how we interpret what “separation of church and state,” “free exercise of religion,” and “nondiscrimination on the basis of faith” actually mean. When a country is predominantly comprised of people who share the same faith, that faith becomes part of the shared cultural concept of national identity: even though the US is, in practice, relatively diverse in terms of ethnicities and religious faiths (as far as countries go), if you ask someone on the street to imagine an American, they are probably going to imagine a white dude who loves Flag and also Jesus. That national identity is reflected in the country’s chosen representatives, and in return, in the legislation passed by those representatives and the behavior expressly condoned by the government as a whole. The end result of all of this is that in the United States of America, Christianity and the exercise of government frequently intersect.

Take the late forties and early fifties. WWII is over, and two global superpowers have emerged that are at diametrical positions; there’s our old capitalist pal the US in one corner, and in the other, the godless, socialist menace of the USSR. I’m being silly and hyperbolic here, but not about the godless bit: the USSR was officially an athiest state, and the government forcibly converted its citizens to atheism. So, the US squints at this and swings hard in the opposite direction; this is a Christian nation, we are sticking “under god” in the pledge of allegiance, we are putting Ten Commandment sculptures in front of our courthouses, we are mandating prayer in school, and if you have an issue with any of that, you are not a patriotic American.

Some of that stuff from the 50s still exists today (“under god” is still kicking around), but a lot more of it is essentially outlawed thanks to the branch of government that I haven’t mentioned yet, the federal judiciary. How this played out was essentially that someone would be impacted by state-sponsored Christianity, they would sue, and their case would eventually be appealed up to the level of the Supreme Court, who would look at the Constitution, admit that it’s pretty unequivocal about the whole separation of church and state thing, and bar the state sponsored religious practice at issue, or at the very least ensure that the state was not sponsoring one faith to the exclusion of others. So, to return to our ten commandments in front of the courthouse or nativity scene outside of a government building; (I’m really simplifying things here but this is the gist) the court has repeatedly decided, those are fine, as long as you give fair play to any other religion that wants to erect their own religious display there too. It’s either that all religions have an equal opportunity to be represented, or no religion does.

I know, this is supposed to be about why The Satanic Temple is cool. We’re getting there.

Let’s jump ahead to the early 2000s. Bush Jr. is president, thanks in no small part to massive evangelical Christian support, and those evangelical Christians have some demands: they want schools to teach creationism, they’re gunning directly for reproductive rights, and they have had enough of this whole gay nonsense. A lot of legislation gets passed during the Bush era that gives the Evangelical base what they want, and among those big evangelical wins was on teaching intelligent design in schools. This didn’t happen everywhere, but some states basically said that intelligent design could be taught alongside evolution in public school science classes, and that evolution and intelligent design had to be portayed as equally valid theories.

Obviously, a lot people were upset about this, because... well, it’s science class. Among the people who thought this whole thing was bullshit was a guy named Bobby Henderson, who wrote an open letter to the Kansas Board of Education in 2005. Referencing the Supreme Court decisions I discussed earlier (either all religious beliefs get equal play or none of them do), Bobby demanded that along with evolution and intelligent design, Kansas schools devote equal time to teaching the creation story of his religious faith, and if any of this is sounding familiar, that’s because Bobby described his religious faith as “Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.”

The memetic potential of this argument was basically designed for the internet era, and it wasn’t too long before purported adherents to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was filing lawsuits that challenged all sorts of government practices that obviously skewed Christian. They were making classic reductio ad absurdum arguments; if it was ridiculous that the government should promote the message of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a given sphere, it was equally ridiculous that the government should promote the message of other religious faiths in that same sphere.

The whole pastafarian movement had one major weakness, however - it was expressly, deliberately silly. Nobody could mistake a Flying Spaghetti Monster argument to be made in good faith, and the courts used this to basically ignore FSM challenges that would otherwise be valid. Here’s what the Nebraska federal district court decided in the big Flying Spaghetti Monster case, Cavanaugh v. Bartlet:

“The Court finds that FSMism is not a ‘religion’ within the meaning of the relevant federal statutes and constitutional jurisprudence. It is, rather, a parody, intended to advance an argument about science, the evolution of life, and the place of religion in public education. Those are important issues, and FSMism contains a serious argument, but that does not mean that the trappings of the satire used to make that argument are entitled to protection as a ‘religion.’”

That’s the Pastafarian problem in a nutshell. They had great points, but they weren’t actually a religion, and that left the courts free to disregard their arguments by saying that they lacked standing. “Standing” is legalese for the concept of who is able to bring a lawsuit based on a particular act or law. This sounds esoteric, but it makes logical sense: If your neighbor gets hit by an ice cream truck, is injured, and is now hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole for medical debt, he has standing to sue the ice cream truck driver. He suffered an injury that was caused by the ice cream truck driver, and the court has the ability to direct the ice cream truck driver to pay for his medical bills and pain and suffering etc. If you, on the other hand, decide to sue the ice cream truck driver because they ran over your neighbor, well, did you actually get injured? Would it being about any sort of justice if the ice cream truck driver had to pay you money? If the answer is no and you try to sue anyway, the court’s going to kick that lawsuit out.

Constitutional challenges often die because the person suing doesn’t have standing to bring the case. Remember how I mentioned earlier that “one nation under god” is still in the Pledge of Allegiance? A case about that actually got all the way to the Supreme Court, before it was tossed out for lack of standing - the problem was that a student’s father had brought the lawsuit, instead of the student herself. Likewise, the Flying Spaghetti Monster cases usually went nowhere because the courts would say “okay, you’re claiming that this law is trampling on your right to practice your chosen religion, but your religion is deliberately ludicrous. Your holy book was published in 2006 and heavily features a beer volcano. You don’t actually believe in any of this, so you haven’t actually suffered the harm that you’re claiming this legislation caused.”

So, uh, how the hell does an athiest challenge the constitutionality of laws like the FSM movement tried to without just getting tossed out for lack of sincerity?

Okay. Okay. We’re finally here. Let’s talk about The Satanic Temple.

In 2013, after witnessing how the FSM movement failed to accomplish meaningful change, Lucien Greaves realized that even though the basic concept of what FSM was trying to accomplish was solid, the issue was in its execution. If you wanted to challenge laws that unconstitutionally favored Christianity, you couldn’t be joking around about your fake religion; you had to play it absolutely straight.

What Greaves came up with is incredibly clever. He set about constructing a new religion for the purpose of using the FSM playbook without falling into the same judicial pitfalls. He made sure that the new religion would constitute an actual belief system in the eyes of the law, which involved identifying the mission and core articulable tenents of the religion. I’m quoting them both below because they’re cool as hell:

The Mission of The Satanic Temple

“The mission of The Satanic Temple is to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense, oppose injustice, and undertake noble pursuits.

The Satanic Temple has publicly confronted hate groups, fought for the abolition of corporal punishment in public schools, applied for equal representation when religious installations are placed on public property, provided religious exemption and legal protection against laws that unscientifically restrict women's reproductive autonomy, exposed harmful pseudo-scientific practitioners in mental health care, organized clubs alongside other religious after-school clubs in schools besieged by proselytizing organizations, and engaged in other advocacy in accordance with our tenets.”

The Seven Tenets of The Satanic Temple

1. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.

2. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.

3. One's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone.

4. The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.

5. Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.

6. People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.

7. Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.

Tenets aside, though, this next bit is what just delights me to my core with how crafty it is: Instead of making up his own religious text and history, he went directly to the Bible and said (I’m paraphrasing) “the historical foundation of The Satanic Temple is the exact same as the historical foundation of Christianity. We share the same holy book, and our faiths are grounded in the same tradition. Here’s the only difference: We believe with all sincerity that the character in that book who said ‘hey, try the apple, the pursuit of knowledge is worth rebelling against authority for’ is actually the good guy in the story, and although we are not a theistic organization, it is our sincere religious belief to comport ourselves in the manner espoused by the literary character Satan.”

Holy shit, guys. Holy shit, that is smart. He set up his religion so that you couldn’t attack it for being fake without also attacking Christianity for being fake! Simultaneously, he designed a religion that would reliably produce the perfect reductio ad absurdum argument- you want to display your ten commandment statue on public land? Okay, chill, but per the Constitution, we get equal play, so if you want those ten commandments, you’d better be cool with them sitting right next to our 3000 lb bronze statue of children gazing adoringly up at Baphomet:

Oh, wait, you don’t want to have that statue on government property? Cool. Totally fine. Just take your ten commandments slabs away too, and we’ll call it a truce.

The Satanic Temple exists to protect individual constitutional rights. Regardless of your own religious sentiment, it’s hopefully easy enough to see how incredibly shitty it would be to have your elected government promote religious beliefs that you do not share, to have religious sentiments that you find abhorrent expressly condoned by the government, or to have your own rights of expression and against discrimination constrained by a government that expressly santions only the religious beliefs of the majority, in spite of the concepts expressed in the United States Constitution. The only way to challenge an unconstitutional law is to sue, and it takes a lot of time, effort, and most of all resources to see a constitutional lawsuit through. Organized religion and government entities have a much easier time defending those cases than an individual does in suing them; by supporting The Satanic Temple, you’re directly evening the odds.

P.S. I know I talk a big game about how cleverly The Satanic Temple was designed, but you know how you can tell that it’s actually brilliant? The IRS granted it tax exempt status as a religious entity in 2019. Yup. Even with the IRS directly under the thumb of Donald J. Trump, a man desperate to maintain evangelical support, the IRS finally had to concede that they could not find any reason why The Satanic Temple shouldn’t be treated the exact same way as any other church. Angry that a Satanic entity doesn’t have to pay taxes on its income? Well, buddy, get ready to learn what megachurches get away with.

[demonologist-in-denim]

Ageism Among “The Boys”

There were a lot of things, inside and outside the show, which contributed to Crowley being killed off at the end of season 12 and Mark Sheppard being removed from the cast, but one that I’ve never seen discussed is ageism.

Beyond being a demon and having a complicated past with Team Free Will, Crowley and the actor who played him, Mark Sheppard, did not “fit the part” when it came to most people’s conception of “the boys.” Whenever the April 2020 Entertainment Weekly Team Free Will photo shoot come across my feed, I am reminded that Mark was older, shorter and not consistently as in-shape as his co-stars. He was the “odd man out” of the four in terms of what has been normalized to be leading-man-quality appearance in American television. That his character took on an increasing significant in the show came up against this real-world bias, on the part of the network and – let’s be honest – likely among some of the fans.

Whenever someone in the fandom refers to Crowley as the creepy “uncle” to the Winchesters, I wonder “why uncle?” Because he is presented as older, because the actor playing him is older than the ones playing the Winchesters. If Crowley had presented as the same age as the Winchesters – if he had been played by a younger actor – he might have been referred to as “that weird cousin” or in later seasons as “the black sheep” among the brothers. And before anyone says “but Crowley was centuries older than the Winchesters”, remember that Castiel was many millennial older than Sam and Dean. Despite this, Castiel was still considered, within and outside of the show, to be on par with the Winchesters in terms of age. And that is because of the age and the physique of the actor playing him.

This largely has to do with the beauty standards for male actors. While more lenient than the beauty standards for female actors, those imposed on male actors also revolve around cultural standards of peak sexual attractiveness. Twenty to forty years of age, broad-chested with some suggestion of muscle building, a height range of around 6 feet / 182cm, a strong chin line and a full head of hair – these are the male beauty standards in America, and doesn’t even take into account the media’s preference for certain features and bone structure over others.

Add to this the element of grouping as understood in visual anthropology – that is, the presentation of people together as a cohesive unit for one purpose or another. In instances where diversity is best, we see a cast like the one on The Good Place, or Community, or to a lesser extent Brooklyn Nine-Nine, where the cast represents the idea of people from disparate backgrounds coming together in a common cause or circumstance. In a show like SPN, where diversity is (at best) a secondary consideration, the make-up of the cast is meant to represent a unified front against an external force (humanity against demonkind and the supernatural), requiring similarity in the group. When a group, or in this case main cast, is composed of four people – all male and white, to begin with – to have one of them differ too much, and in a way that society already deems unappealing, is considered to be unbalanced.

What about Jack? It goes without saying that Alex Calvert is younger than his co-stars. And in the eyes of American culture and beauty standards, being young is always something be considered appealing. Introducing a younger main character might have even been a calculated choice on the part of the showrunners, beyond the arc of the story, to balance out against the increasing age of Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. In the later seasons, had Crowley possessed a meatsuit that better suited the biased standards of attractiveness, specifically in regards to age, we might have seen more support for the character, in terms of storyline, shipping in the fandom, and overall inclusion as one of the boys. He would have better “fit the mold” on a network that highlights glossy youth and plays to a culture’s insecurities about growing older. But that would have been an admission on the part of the show that ageism plays a role in the development of their characters and in their branding and in their hopes for viewer demographic. Additionally, if the showrunners had simply replaced Mark Sheppard with a younger actor for Crowley, the backlash from the widening, increasingly-conscientious fandom would have been harsh – and just. Easier to write out the older member of the foursome and introduce a younger one in his place.

Quietly downplaying, dismissing as a potential love interest, or refusing to write characters played by older actors as main characters when the arc of the story naturally carries them in that direct is ageism in action. It is worth asking, if Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles had been willing to continue the series for another five years, seven years, ten years, and had a story worth telling, would the network have agreed? Or would the Winchester’s actors have come up against the same barrier? Because who wants to watch Sam and Dean “age out” of their own lives? Better for them to die young and attractive, than make the socially-unacceptable, embarrassing mistake of getting old, right?

[wecantseeyou]

a word on color - how line of duty series 6 uses wardrobe color to frame narrative (pt 3)

Author’s note: this is Part 3 of this essay. For Part 1, read here, and for Part 2, read here. I apologize for the mad low-quality screen grabs in these posts, but the streams I have access to are not good, and the BBC makes it damn hard to use a VPN to access content. This part covers episode 4, because it’s already clocking in at 3k words (and the whole thing is over 10k). Will do my level best to have an analysis of 5 and 6 done by tonight’s episode, but timezones are a bitch. Again, American here and therefore likely missing cultural context. Also again, fully unedited.

Thank you for so many kind words on the other posts. Anticipate a conclusion of sorts to this essay on Monday (if I can get my hands on a stream quickly).

EPISODE 4

Episode 4 opens in the middle of our favorite type of scene - an MIT briefing. With Buckells’ arrest, Jo has been made acting DSI, and she makes her debut in a navy suit with a green sweater over a grey shirt. She notes that they have to consider evidence trails that have been overlooked, and as she says they have to look at a potential burglary, note the cut to Ryan. Jo then invites Kate, wearing her now classic orange and navy striped sweater and navy suit, up to go over the information recovered from the missing files regarding the robbery. After the briefing, Kate asks to look more at the firearms used in the robbery that derailed the Banks arrest, which Jo agrees to and offers to file the correct paperwork. 

Jo’s outfit in this scene is indicative of the truth behind her actions. The score and framing of the shots in this scene are intentionally made to make the viewer suspicious of Jo, but in reality the suspicion should fall on Ryan. Despite the danger to herself, Jo is encouraging the transition of the inquiry toward the robbery because she knows there is a thread of truth there. One could assume she has no choice but to continue down this path because of AC-12’s investigation into Buckells, but given her position of authority she could have continued to stonewall the investigation and didn’t. While she may be forced to interfere later, she’s setting the MIT investigator’s on the right path.

Kate’s outfit, per usual, plays into her combined desire for justice and her allegiance to Jo. She’s a good detective - she knows there’s a connection between the botched robbery and Gail’s murder, and she knows it’s the firearms. Jo also demonstrates that she’s on the straight and narrow by generating the action, further confirming to Kate that she was right about her boss. 

Next, we see Ryan the Bent Bastard Pilkington watching Jo walk into work, a mirror of the multiple instances in previous episodes when Jo was watching Kate. The audience is supposed to make this connection, of course, to play into suspicions against Jo, but there is a key difference here. Jo actually sees Ryan watching her - he wants her to see it. When Jo was watching Kate, she always made sure to look away, even when Kate had clearly seen her. Those looks weren’t a threat - they were Jo wrestling with something, which we begin to see more clearly in this episode. 

Donned in her best blue coat and a blue scarf, Kate meets Hastings to discuss Pilkington. Ted wants to bring him in immediately, but Kate doesn’t think it’s time yet and convinces him not to. They briefly discuss her move to MIT and how his behavior affected her decision to transfer, which she admits is true. Up to series 5, Kate tends to have a fairly black and white morality with a very strong sense of justice. It’s what makes her such a good undercover operative. It’s why she can have the moral high ground in her conversation with Ted and he agrees with her - she’s often right.

AC-12 interviews Buckells, and because Jo has expertly taken advantage of his vices, ambition, and stupidity, the former DSI is arrested for perverting the course of justice. (By the by, this is an incredible legal term, much better than obstruction of justice, the US term.) Steve, as always, pushes him hard, but doesn’t seem to fully buy into everything he’s being accused of. This is actually shown in his outfit, a grey suit with white shirt and green tie. The green tie, while a cool color, shows that he is not fully aligned with AC-12 in this moment. 

We see this disagreement spelled out in the narrative text immediately afterward. Kate and Steve meet at night in a car park, and Steve shares his belief that Buckells isn’t the man they're after. Kate disagrees, believing that Buckells plays the stupid card on purpose. Steve also floats his suspicions about Jo again, which Kate quickly shoots down. Steve thinks Jo is manipulating Kate and pulling the wool over her eyes, but Kate thinks it’s Steve who might be reading too much into things. Steve is in the same outfit he wore during the Buckells interview, and Kate is in her navy coat. In this case, Steve’s outfit represents his disagreement both with AC-12’s view of Buckells and with Kate’s view of Jo. Meanwhile Kate’s outfit represents her surety that Buckells is bent and Jo is anything but. 

Later, Kate and Lomax go over the firearms reports between the robbery and Gail's murder. They believe the guns were workshopped, and are therefore untraceable, but Kate has an idea: talk to one of the robbers about their guns. Kate’s genius is on full display, putting her on the path toward the truth, and her outfit reflects that: a navy suit with a blue shirt buttoned all the way up.

Kate, still in her all blue ensemble, and Lomax interview one of the suspects from the armed robbery at the bookie about the firearms they used, and discover the boys were offered a set of workshopped guns that they refused. To Kate, this confirms an OCG connection between Gail Vella’s murder and the armed robbery. Jo, dressed in a grey suit and black turtleneck, watches the interview from another room, anxiety plain on her face.

That anxiety stays on Jo’s face all the way through to when she’s peering through the bushes by Farida’s house, where Steve rolls up to chat with Chloe in a navy suit. Chloe shares that forensics have picked up many DNA samples from Farida’s home and are sure to have results soon. I genuinely can’t make out what Jo is wearing in this scene, so I won’t jump to conclusions and analyze further.

After visiting the crime scene at Farida’s, Jo returns to her home in a grey coat, yellow sweatshirt, and red shirt. As she sits at her table, she removes a blue scarf from around her neck. She checks the OCG messaging service from her last message, and is worried by the lack of response. Her desperation gets the better of her - she wants out. She angrily says so, and when there’s no response throws the laptop to the floor.

The choice to put a blue scarf on Jo that she removes is a very deliberate act. As she shits down at the computer, Jo must put away her true nature and her good heart to engage with the OCG. She is literally removing her sense of justice, leaving only her corrupt actions - the yellow sweatshirt and the red shirt. But there she sits, in her blue-draped home. Trying to push her true self away is not enough - her heart wins in the end. She can’t keep betraying herself and the people she cares about anymore.

But she knows it isn’t that easy.

Meanwhile, AC-12 calls Kate in to update her on surveillance placed on Ryan Pilkington, who is following Jo. This startles Kate, and tells them she was with Jo at the time Ryan was following her. This piques Steve's interest, but he doesn’t immediately comment on it. He does however suggest Ryan is actually meeting with Jo, not spying on her, but Kate shoots him down again. "You got evidence of that?" she asks. This hostility toward her former partner catches Ted's interest. Kate thinks they should warn Jo about it, but Hastings disagrees because they lack information and doesn’t want to risk tipping off Jo if she and Ryan are working together. 

The clothes in these AC-12 team meetings are interesting, because they place both Kate and Steve on the side of truth. Kate in her blue jacket and grey shirt, Steve in his navy suit and grey shirt. They’re wearing mirroring costumes in part to highlight their disagreement - visually connecting them in the face of their growing tension about Jo’s loyalties. But their coordinated looks also serve another purpose: they’re both right. Yes, Jo is working with Ryan in the sense that Ryan is present at MIT to intimidate Jo into continuing to do the OCG’s bidding. And no, Jo isn’t bent, at least not intentionally - there is goodness in her heart despite the ways in which her actions have gone against that, and Ryan is a threat to her well-being. Our favorite detectives may be at odds, but at the end of the day they’re on the same page.

There are a number of Steve scenes here, but all you really need to know is that he’s going to save the world via waistcoat.

Kate following Hastings’ instructions last about as long as it talks the gaffer to say ‘I’m in the business of nicking bent coppers.’ She and Lomax inform Jo about the results of the interview with the armed robbery suspect, who described seeing weapons like the one that killed Gail Vella at the workshop. Kate dismisses Chris, and speaks to Jo on her own, and interestingly specifies that it isn't personal, it's work. She mentions her apprehension about Ryan, and warns Jo that Ryan has been spying on her. Jo asks how she knows, and Kate, the good UCO she is, lies and tells her she saw him at the pub herself. Kate implores Jo to be careful and heed her warning about Ryan, saying, "look Jo, I don't want to worry you, but it's a trust issue." Cue Jo putting her hand on Kate's arm in a callback to the handhold (which Kate reciprocated). Before we can really see Kate's reaction, she pulls back as officers approach where they’re standing.

Despite Kate directly contradicting AC-12’s orders concerning warning Jo, her navy suit and blue shirt tell us that she’s doing what she believes is right. As we’ve seen time and again, Kate doesn’t believe that Jo is bent and that Ryan is a threat to her safety, and as I’ve discussed before, she is right. Her decision to tell Jo also gives her an out - one which Jo attempts to use later, with sadly no success. Jo’s black turtleneck and grey jacket both shows how Kate has misinterpreted Jo’s relation to Ryan (though not his threat), and the conniving part of her personality. Jo is an incredibly calculating individual, and she knows Kate has just given her an excuse to get rid of Ryan, both helping herself and keeping up appearances that she isn’t associated with the OCG. 

A quick word on the arm touch here - Jo is again doing two things here. Jo is walking doublespeak. Her words have two meanings, her clothes have two meanings, her actions have two meanings. The arm touch is a nonverbal thank you to Kate for telling her. It’s also the first act of intimacy between the two women since Jo began to pull away after the reservoir incident. This is Jo offering an olive branch for a problem Kate isn’t even fully aware exists. 

Immediately after Jo and Kate’s conversation, we see Jo sitting in her office, watching Ryan. She calls him in, and lets him know that she's going to have to let him go due to budgetary constraints, though she'll keep his commendation originally from Buckells. As I mentioned before, Jo saw Kate's information about Ryan to be a way to get rid of him, both protecting herself and validating her in Kate’s eyes. But of course, nothing is that simple. He gives the most chilling look back at her, calm as can be, and thanks her. 

Kate looks on, and reassures Jo with a nod that she's done the right thing, which the boss tentatively returns. Kate is pleased because Jo listened to her warnings, but Jo is terrified because whatever she knows she’s made a mistake.

Back in AC-12 land, Chloe and Steve interview Jimmy Lakewell, who agrees to be an informant. Cue the OCG ambush and Steve sniping someone from several stories up with just a handgun while laying down (I don’t usually have to suspend my disbelief quite so much for this show…). There isn’t much to say about this part beyond Steve wearing the traditional AC-12 cool tones.

Later, Jo returns home for the night, still dressed in a grey suit jacket and black turtleneck, and just as she’s about to walk in, the Bent Bastard puts a gun to the back of her head. “It’s that easy, Jo.” This is the first time the audience directly sees the threat to life that Jo is under from the OCG. Before this, we’ve mostly just seen the consequences to her personal life, through Farida, and her clear discomfort with her own actions. Now we see what actually makes her so fearful, the reason for car park panic attacks and 5 locks on the door - if she doesn’t do the OCG’s bidding, she will die. 

It’s the confirmation the show has been teasing all through this point, in Jo’s clothes and apartment, but intentionally obfuscating through tense music cues and intimidating camera angles. Jo is not bent because she’s a bad person - she’s doing bent things to save her own life.

Back at the Hill, Jo is waiting outside for Kate to come in. She’s standing above Kate on the stairs wearing a grey coat, navy suit, and grey turtleneck. Kate approaches wearing a cream sweater and her navy coat She asks for an update on the armed robbery inquiry, which hasn’t progressed particularly far. Kate takes the opportunity to ask about Ryan, and Jo tries to tell her he's fine and that there aren’t any OCG links. When Kate pushes, Jo threatens the DI by mentioning her own suspicious behavior when it came to the incident at the reservoir. "Drop it, Kate. That's an order."

This scene is notable in a few ways. First, this is the second time where Kate and Jo have disagreed and Jo has pulled rank to end the discussion. The first time was after the Terry Boyle interview where he nearly revealed who the real killer of Gail Vella was. In both instances, Jo knows Kate was on the right track but uses her position as the boss to stop her. This is quite different from the Jo who wants to see Kate at the weekend. Second, I want to comment on the camera work here. When the two meet on the stairs and discuss the firearms tracking, they remain in the same shot walking together. Once Kate brings up Ryan, they stop walking and move into over the shoulder framing. This serves to visually represent the way tension is increasing in Jo and Kate’s relationship. When we first met them, they moved together, often in sync (“great minds”). Now, we more frequently see the shots separating the two women, showing the growing distance resulting from Jo’s actions and Kate’s instincts. (COVID-19 shooting protocols probably also add to this, but we can’t theorize otherwise because we don’t know how the look of the show would’ve been under different circumstances.)

The other thing to note here is, of course, the wardrobe choice. Now, one would expect that as the tension grows between the two women and Jo continues to put walls up to distance herself from Kate, their wardrobes would reflect that. And in some smaller moments, they do. But for the most part their wardrobes when together remain much the same. In fact, this scene puts Jo in a very similar turtleneck to the one she wears in her first scene with Kate, and Kate is wearing the exact same yellowish sweater. Jo, dressed in cool tones again, is playing the part of the bent cop, keeping Ryan in MIT and threatening Kate. But as we know, there’s more to this than meets the eye. She’s keeping Ryan around after he threatened to kill her, and she’s threatening Kate to keep her away from Ryan - to protect her, in Jo’s own twisted way. Meanwhile, Kate is concerned for Jo’s safety, clearly evident in her just barely warm toned sweater, but she’s confused because she knows for a fact that Ryan is bent - why would Jo keep the man who’s been following her around? What is she missing? This detective’s instinct in Kate, the one that tells her Jo is good and not bent but something is wrong, is encapsulated in that navy coat, the uniform of AC-12.

We then see another piece of the puzzle that the show has been hinting at for some time, though is still not revealed in this episode. Chloe comes to Steve with the DNA results from Farida Jatri’s house and she’s confused. Steve, dressed in his level best navy suit, light blue shirt, and red tie, reads on and a look of shock comes over his face. Going slightly out of order in what is the final scene of the episode, Steve and Chloe bring this news to Hastings and it’s revealed that Jo’s DNA was a partial match for another DNA sample, one of a known criminal. Thus it’s revealed that Jo Davidson is in it a little deeper than anyone could have suspected.

The preceding scene is at the Hill, where we see Jo standing outside looking off into the middle distance with a blank stare. She’s wearing an outfit we’ve seen her in numerous times so far, perhaps most notably with Kate for the first ‘date’ at Frederico’s - a navy suit with an orangish brown sweater. She seems lost in thought when the door opens and Pilkington walks out to her. He asks if he’s heard the news about the dead inmate at Blackthorn prison - James Lakewell. A look of recognition passes her face as she asks, “What was the cause of death?" And in a truly terrifying callback to episode 2, Ryan responds, "Being a rat, ma'am." 

Now, this threat from Ryan is interesting. It’s the second threat in as many scenes between the two, and it’s quite a bit different from a gun to the head. Obviously, Ryan is playing the role of the dutiful OCG plant, an ever-present eye on Jo’s actions, but the fact that he’s warning Jo against being a rat specifically raises an eyebrow. Though we don’t have immediate textual evidence here, and neither does Jo, I actually think this is a warning about her relationship with Kate. We see this fairly clearly in the next episode with the OCG’s fear of AC-12’s investigation and Kate’s role in it, and I think Jo suspects much the same. In the next episode, Jo is not merely distant with Kate, she’s openly hostile to her more than once. She isn’t just stepping away from Kate, she’s full on pushing her away. I believe that has to do with this warning from Ryan - she can’t let her relationship with Kate put her life in danger, and she can’t let Kate fall into the same fate.

This explains many of her actions in episode 5, and the central dilemma that leads to the fateful lorry park.

[smokeybrandreviews]

Fly By Night

Black people don't care about Superman but making him Black in the next series of films, isn't going to solve that the problem. It's his upbringing, the cultural touchstones which define him. Clark Kent is intrinsically White. He looks White, definitely, but he was raised in Kansas, too. That's a Heartland State, places notorious for their aggressive intolerance and laughably disproportionate ethnic breakdown. Eighty-four percent of the people who live there are White and, while that's a stark cry from, say, Idaho's Ninety percent, only five percent of the populace is Black. How the f*ck can Clark BE full-on Black; ethnically, mentally, and culturally, when he's surrounded by so much White?

The short answer is that he can't. He doesn't have those values or experiences. How can he? He'd be part of five percent in two million. What is that? One hundred thousand, spread out across an entire state? I mean, at that point, he's more Kansas than he is Black so what does "fighting for truth, justice, in the American way" mean to someone from Kansas? A State as Red as a baboon's ass? A State where Trump won fifty-seven percent of the vote in both 2016 and 2020? A State that seems to support the same people that refuse to accept Joe Biden won that race, even after several recounts on their terms, several court cases lost to their judges, and a whole ass attempt to overthrow the government because they didn't like all those L's piling up? Never mind the question of raising a demigod with those incredibly problematic "values", how can a Black person come up in that level of racial animosity, cultural alienation, and abject disdain based solely on how he looks, possibly be all of America's Superman?

At the end of the day, JJabarams wanting to make Clark a Black man in this next run of films, is just a tone deaf, performative, dog whistle for all the little Blue Checkmark, fake woke, twatter asshole to fellate themselves over. I don't know a single Black person who is gassed that Clark will look like us. Dude basically represents everything wrong with America, to us. Clark is an out-of-touch White guy, born with unheard of power he didn't earn, imbued with a f*cked up savior complex, raised on a steady supply of zealous Patriotic ideals which borders on straight up Nationalism, in the cultural vacuum of Smallville, Kansas. Turning him Black without fixing that origin is tantamount to throwing Blackface on some White actor to play T'Challa instead of casting Chadwick Boseman. Imagine how THAT should would have gone over with the Blacks. Exactly.

You can't separate Clark from his cultural identity as the Whitest motherf*cker not from this Earth. You can't. It literally defines his entire worldview. Clark's Whiteness is intrinsic to who he is as a person. However, there are alternatives to that which ring truer to a Black Superman, to the Black experience, one of which has a dope ass backstory. Val-Zod, son of THAT Zod, took up the mantle of Superman in nu52 Earth-2. That version of the character could work because his race is intrinsic to his character on both sides; The Kryptonian and the Earthling. He is vague enough of a character to play around with content wise but recognizable enough for literally everyone to not lose their sh*t over Blackfacing Clark. Another lesser known option, the one i would personally pass on, is Kalel of Earth-23. He's a blank slate because no one remembers anything about the dude. Calvin Ellis' last appearance was in 2009 so, you know, have at it, i guess? Both of these options are much better than forcing a White Kent into a Black Peg.

I'm not usually one to be so uppity about bent characters, be they gender or race. They're just another take on an established fandom and i think that's great, as long as that alteration is respected and adapted into the character properly. Superficial sh*t like turning all of the ginger characters into Black people, just because they're going to be onscreen in some form or another, is f*cking ridiculous to me. Sometimes it doesn't work out all that well, like Iris West in the DCEU. Kiersey Clemons had, like, a minute of screentime in The Snyder Cut so why the f*ck was she even in there? I get you need to establish her as part of The Flash's lore but wait for his actual film if that's all we're going to see of her. Other times, it works very well, like with Mary-Jane and Zendaya. That case was a little more tricky as, at the time Homecoming was in development, Marvel didn't have the rights to the Mary-Jane character so they had no choice but to create Michelle. She's a brand new character who fills the role of MJ but in a completely unique, standalone, fashion. I adore that chick. She and Pete have this adorkable energy together, chemistry attributed to Zendaya and Holland. Ms. Coleman really sells MJ as a proper “MJ” and that's because her MJ is her own “MJ”. And, while we're on the topic of Spider-Man, Miles Morales is exactly how you racebend an established character with any hope of success.

Mile Morales is the blue print you need to follow in order to make your ridiculous reach at altering such an established persona, in such a drastic way. Miles is, from top to bottom, Black as f*ck. Every ounce of that character resonates with the culture. Early on in hi genesis, it was a little iffy but, as the character has grown, his swagger and identity has become much clearer. It's more defined and rings truer to what we, as Black people, see in the world. Hell, his movie, Into the Spider-Verse, is arguably the best Spider-Flick ever made and it is properly Black as f*ck. From the swagger, the cultural language, the music, the animation style, the tagging; All of it is too Black for words and the country ate that sh*t up. I saw SO much of US in that film and it really lent itself to giving comic Miles the boost necessary to really come into his own. Not to slight his Puerto Rican heritage at all, you get a bit of that, too, but, for all intents and purposes, society at large sees Miles as Black and Spider-Verse leans into that, heavy. Because Miles has no choice but to so as well. Pete had a lot more going for him growing up in Queens thank Clark's halcyon experience in f*cking Kansas, so he was already accepted in the community. You don't do the numbers Spider-Flicks consistently do at the box office without them Black dollars, but Miles was whole ass embraced by the culture. No one is mad at kid now that he is finally himself in the suit. He's not a legacy, he is a Spider-Man. That's how you do it. That's how you make racebending such an intrinsic character to the American zeitgeist, work. You don't dress Michael B. Jordan up as Clark and tell me he's my Superman. That's a lie and everyone is going to see through it. Everyone already has. You don't need x-ray vision for that.

[timac-extraversal]

Four Racial Futures

(TIMAC #003, ~3,800 words, 16 minutes)

Summary: Four alternative paths to the current dominant left/liberal racial vision for future America are discussed, including an underestimate of the size of the white population, Castizo Futurism, Landian Hyper-Racism, and changes in society's understanding of developmental psychology.

Epistemic Status: Political speculation.

-☆☆☆-

‘Majority Minority’ America? Don’t Bet on It John J. Miller, Wall Street Journal (2021/02) [paywall]

“The surge in mixing across ethno-racial lines is one of the most important and unheralded developments of our time,” says Mr. Alba, a professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He rattles off facts and figures: Today, more than 10% of U.S.-born babies have one parent who is nonwhite or Hispanic and one who is white and not Hispanic. That proportion is larger than the number of babies born to two Asian parents and not far behind the number of babies born to two black parents. “We’re entering a new era of mixed backgrounds,” Mr. Alba says.

The census apparently counts those who identify as both white and non-white as 'non-white,' which may be undercounting the number of people who are likely to identify as 'white' in the United States. Sociologist Richard Alba argues that assimilation is bidirectional, but proceeding apace.

The infamous Razib Khan chimes in on Twitter:

The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream [link] haven't read this book but summary supports my exp./priors in 21st century.

"When they marry, 72% of Asian-white women and 64% of Asian-white men take white spouses. The government nevertheless counts them and their progeny as nonwhite." i have a blue-eyed blonde-haired 1/4th japanese friend. she probably doesn't realize she's counted as nonwhite

fwiw, my half brown kids 'identify' as tan. but if they were forced to pick a race and others were forced would choose white more than anything else

On the one hand, we have the largely implicit left-wing theory that if there is no majority race, there can be no organized oppression by a majority race. On the other, the implicitly-left-wing theory that if there are many mixed-race people, it will become too difficult to organize by race - identifying people on the basis of race will be harder and people will have split loyalties.

Either might fail on its own. If people are naturally prone to politics by race and ethnicity, then a lack of a clear supermajority in a majority-minority country may lead to shifting ethnic coalitions, with no group feeling that it's in a comfortable position of power. Even within a mixed group, there might be selection in some specific direction, such as colorism, which is currently its own category of discourse.

On the other hand, it's apparently possible that some form of unironic 'Multiracial Whiteness' could "win," either from widespread adoption of 'white' as a norm even if whites were a minority, or by a supermajority ending up 7/8ths 'white' and the definition of 'white' expanding to match...

[Quora] What is Castizo Futurism? Renatto Belerofonte (2020)

Among the right-wingers, there is also a joke that "the Alt Right is a hispanic movement." And just as there is Afro-Pessimism, there is a 'White Optimism' in the form of "Castizo Futurism," as Quora user Renatto Belerofonte describes better than I could:

Castizo Futurism comes from the idea that the future of whites in the United States and Latin America is not as dire as white supremacists that believe in white genocide think it is. White Identitarians traditionally organize their societies through Hypodescent (the idea that the offspring of an union between two conflicting classes adopts the social standing of the lower class involved) [...] An example of hypodescent would be the One Drop Rule.

[...]

Castizo Futurism is basically the adoption of Hyperdescent by American White Supremacists, the idea that whiteness is a malleable condition that can morph according to the material and historical conjuncture of society. If Hispanics in the US suddenly stop being “non-whites” and start to be perceived as “mostly mestizos and castizos that are already predominantly European with various degrees of native blood” then you can conceive the prospect of “whitening” them overtime. If Mestizos can become Castizos (which according to White Supremacists is the cut-off at which you start to manifest European behavior and appearance) then there is the possibility that White Genocide can be reversed.

As Renatto writes, "if you look at non-anglo societies this paradigm is not the case [...] Spanish, Portuguese and French societies in America believed that you could 'become' white through generations of intermarriage..."

Human beings grow old and wish to create a legacy in their environments. For some people, this is children. For others, it is activism. Suppose you tie your self-identity to a great confrontation to overcome "whiteness," and then just as you saw the traditions of your ancestors as something outdated to be overturned, most of an entire generation simply ignore you and decide that they are now white.

Who, exactly, is going to stop them?

Of course, there is no guarantee that this will happen, but at the same time, there is no requirement that it won't.

One of the great advantages to adopting relatively liberal methods and tactics is that you aren't obligated to pin your hopes on demographic triumphalism - if the future goes a bit off-script, that isn't necessarily a problem. And it may well go off-script; one of the characteristics of the future that I have tried to express in my blogging is that, for most of us, it will be unexpected.

Why does the old conventional racism use hypodescent? Old conventional racism might claim to be based on thinking in terms of evolution, but it isn't necessarily. Often it proceeds as if race is primordial, trailing back into the mists of time. Why embrace hyperdescent now? In part, because 'white' was something that emerged once through evolution and selection, and it's implemented as a statistical distribution of heritable traits (even if those heritable traits are solely appearance). As long as those traits exist, it can simply be recreated if the appropriate conditions arise.

[Landian] Hyper-Racism Nick Land, Xenosystems.net (2014/09, arch. 2015)

Speaking of statistical distributions of traits, there are some pessimists that argue that intra-European political preferences are heritable and conserved.

But even those 'within-white' preferences, should they exist, may end up scrambled...

Assortative mating tends to genetic diversification. This is neither the preserved diversity of ordinary racism, still less the idealized genetic pooling of the anti-racists, but a class-structured mechanism for population diremption, on a vector towards neo-speciation. It implies the disintegration of the human species, along largely unprecedented lines, with intrinsic hierarchical consequence. The genetically self-filtering elite is not merely different — and becoming ever more different — it is explicitly superior according to the established criteria that allocate social status. Analogical fusion with Cochran’s space colonists is scarcely avoidable. If SES-based assortative mating is taking place, humanity (and not only society) is coming apart, on an axis whose inferior pole is refuse. This is not anything that ordinary racism is remotely able to process. That it is a consummate nightmare for anti-racism goes without question, but it is also trans-racial, infra-racial, and hyper-racial in ways that leave ‘race politics’ as a gibbering ruin in its wake.

"The problem with ordinary racism," Nick Land writes, "is its utter incomprehension of the near future."

If the conventional racists view race as primordial, as something that can only be either preserved or lost, and the would-be Castizo Futurists view race as something that can change over generations, then the Transhumanists are the most radical. Transhumanists tend to view the body mechanically, as a system of parts, each of which could potentially be replaced. This is the view on the macro level - they would support growing new organs in vats and transplanting them - but it's also true on the micro level. To a Transhumanist, a gene is not the same thing as a person who has it, and a gene is not in itself sacred any more than the radiator on your car is sacred. (Alter someone's genetics unwillingly, however, and you might find far more stern disagreement - not unlike the violent disagreement you might get if you broke into someone's car and stole their radiator.)

Someone once described Americans as 'temporarily-embarassed millionaires.' For temporarily-embarassed cyborgs, much of contemporary race discourse is just not very impressive. For Liberal Transhumanists, a man who has inherited frail leg bone genes is not an inherently unworthy being, but is merely someone who has not yet received robot legs - just as they are human beings who have not yet received anti-aging pills. And if some men have sturdy leg bone genes instead? Rather than a threat of enduring hierarchy, those genes represent potential untapped capital that could be used to raise the standard of living (from the typical subjective perspective).

In the famous animated franchise Ghost in the Shell, the lead character has an entirely synthetic body, except for her brain. If this were possible (and at this point, we don't know that it is, though we're continuing to experiment in fields like tissue engineering), one might describe a society capable of it as "also trans-racial, infra-racial, and hyper-racial in ways that leave ‘race politics’ as a gibbering ruin in its wake."

Are there risks involved with this mindset? Certainly. But many of the basic criticisms will ring as hollow to transhumanists as basic conservative criticisms ring hollow to many left-wing and liberal readers.

This future is not yet etched in stone, but on the other hand, an article in Nature published in 2020 argued that...

Together, these findings suggest that there are, at present, no known insurmountable hurdles to the eventual development of safe and effective clinical applications of genome editing in humans. […] Therapeutic genome editing will be realized, at least for some diseases, over the next 5-10 years.

Part of what makes contemporary race discourse so unimpressive to transhumanists is that it fails to integrate Crispr or PGD-IVF into its moral imagination. Right-wingers are said to look backwards, and left-wingers and progressives to look forwards. But while the right-wing WrathOfGnon would encourage readers think on ancestral time scales by physically building villages out of traditional materials (a view which, right or wrong, is consistent), a number of Progressives fail to imagine beyond the next fifteen years.

...or perhaps they do. Can children consent to what's considered a genetic disease (such as Tay-Sachs, which is quite lethal)? Would having kids the old-fashioned way come to be seen as a low-class activity for rednecks and religious fundamentalists? There are ways in which genetic equity is at odds with genetic freedom.

It's also possible that they are simply technology pessimists, maintaining multiple rings of protection in case technology should fail to pan out this century. Though if this is their perspective, perhaps they should consider the potential dangers of their current rhetoric as well.

Contrary to the Liberal Transhumanists, for someone like Land, everything is highly competitive evolution.

genomic manipulation capabilities, which will also be unevenly distributed by SES, will certainly intensify the trend to speciation, rather than ameliorating it.

I take issue with Land, here. Not just morally (though he writes "this blog generally seeks to spread dismay whenever the opportunity arises"), but in practical terms.

Every time we edit a gene, we risk an off-target result, which may cause disease. The tradeoffs for early genetic engineering favor focusing on monogenic disease, the sort of situation where your choices are to risk genetic engineering or experience near-certain death by age 30. Many traits like intelligence or general health, should they be genetic, are likely highly polygenic. Hypothetically, a rich man could pay for a thousand edits, but this would only work with a relatively mature technology where the rate of error is very, very low.

Something closer to the opposite of Nick Land's idea might come to pass, in which sharp negative points are eroded away except for a few populations such as religious conservatives, including the literal Amish, and medical skeptics, paid for by big institutions like insurance companies and public health authorities. In twenty years, the likes of L0m3z, a right-wing Twitter contrarian, may write about the coming "Planet of Midwits."

As for Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis In-Vitro Fertilization, although it is currently being used for preventing the transmission of Huntington's Disease (if you have $35,000 to spare), the gains from embryo selection for other traits can be more limited than people might expect.

[Video] The Glenn Show: The Dark Matter of Developmental Psychology Glenn Loury & James Heckman, BloggingHeads.tv (2020/12)

GLENN: I'm talking to one of the great economists working on human development. What are you up to at the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago?

HECKMAN: Well, one of the great issues of course, always, is exactly how do you improve the lot of human beings. Namely, how do you measure what improvement is, what are the relevant life skills, and then how do you develop those skills? What's the proper role for social policy, and I don't mean just governmental policy, I mean social policy? There are some very strong interventions, evidence for interventions, showing how if you tell parents a certain amount of information that they lack, it can have huge effects on their children. And the same is true of interventions that occur in adolescent years. Human potential is not being fully utilized. [...] I've been working on this not only in the US, but in several countries around the world - a lot of time spent in China, recently.

[...]

HECKMAN: And then gradually society has become more and more cognitively focused. Well that sounds good. When Governor Clinton was governor of Arkansas, well all of these well-meaning officials were talking about how to improve schools, what do they talk about? Nate scores - reading, writing, and arithmetic. They don't talk about character formation. They don't talk about self-control, executive functioning, the way you can help govern your life. [...]

HECKMAN: One of the main lessons of this body of work, and I'm proud to have contributed to this, is in showing the power of social and emotional and personality skills in shaping lives. Skills that can be actually cultivated, and skills that can be cultivated not just at the beginning of life, but through adolescence especially.

What evidence is there? Aside from more contemporary study in his own field, Heckman mentions discusses the Perry Preschool Project, a topic which comes up sometimes when one is looking into this field. While increases in IQ scores failed to stick, the experimental group had improvements in other life outcomes such as earnings, home ownership, and lower risk of incarceration.

HECKMAN: ...but the way you take the kid to the next step matters a lot. You've got to do it with some patience, and with some empathy - some attachment. And so there's a whole subject matter in child development psychology which we're looking at now - we actively are exploring.

HECKMAN: By the way, I don't want to pretend this is all completely known. This is what makes the work that I'm doing now so exciting. Because now we're measuring these interactions, week by week. This is now not in the US, it's in western China, one of the poorest areas. We can see how the interactions between the parent and the child are leading to the growth of skills on the part of the child. [...]

HECKMAN: This was something that was tried in Jamaica some 40 years ago. I'm working with a group of people with a study that's still ongoing outside of Kingston, Jamaica. It's called the "Reach Up and Learn" study in Jamaica. The China study is patterned after that study. [...]

So the research the Heckman is focused on is not limited to a particular race, country, or culture.

HECKMAN: It turns out that a lot of parents don't really know how to parent. And what do I mean by that? They don't have a clear idea what a normal growth trajectory is for a child, what a child can do. And they often don't understand how powerful they are in shaping the life of the child. So you give them that kind of information. Nobody's being forced to do anything. Just empower people. Almost every caretaker of a young child really wants that child to succeed. [...] When they are told this information, they act on it.

Asian Americans live longer than non-hispanic white Americans, and have a higher median household income. [1☆][2☆] While there is some racial tension between white and asian Americans (see, for instance, ongoing 'cultural appropriation' arguments and other discourse), it's generally considered less of an issue than disparities between the country's white majority and black Americans.

Could parental information and mentoring programs reduce disparities in the United States, even if they aren't resolved? And could this turn down the heat on race discourse?

For instance, at $76k median household income, white households make about 77% of what asian households do. Black American households make about $45k, or about 60% of white American household income. At 77%, they would make about $59k, not far off from the $56k of hispanic households.

What are the potential downsides? The most likely way for the program to fail is for it to have no effect or, at worst, a modest negative effect. [3] It isn't incompatible with an ecological view of human society. It would cost money, but probably not much more than another couple years of additional schooling.

Given the modest downside risk, what are the potential upsides? If the reports on the Perry Preschool Program are accurate and the effects can be replicated, there are a large savings to be had, mostly from the reduction in crime. [4☆]

But can the effects be replicated? The sample size for the Perry Preschool Project was relatively small. As far as Early Childhood Education programs go, the effectiveness of Head Start, which provides more than just preschool and is "based on a 'whole child' model," is disputed. [5☆][6☆] However...

Two older "high-quality" preschool programs mentioned frequently in the research literature are the HighScope Perry Preschool program from Ypsilanti, Michigan, and the Chicago Child-Parent Center (CPC) program. These programs include parent education and support and thus differ in significant ways from the type of preschool programs offered by Head Start, as well as the more recent "high-quality" programs. They are also much more expensive on a per-capita basis. Both the CPC and the HighScope Perry Preschool programs were started in the 1960s, and researchers have carried out long-term cost-benefit analyses for both programs. These analyses conclude that better long-term outcomes more than pay for their higher program costs, mainly in the form of higher career income and lower rates of criminal behavior.

- Armor & Sousa [6☆]

By 2018, the "Reach Up and Learn" program Heckman was speaking of had been expanded to 9 other countries, with varying degrees of effectiveness depending on its implementation. [7☆] (Though its associated US domain has expired.) Heckman's own study is, as one would expect, positive about the effects - and was published in Science.

Early childhood education increased earnings by 25%, enough for growth-stunted children to completely catch up to the earnings of the non-stunted comparison group. The control group remained far behind. In fact, average earnings from full-time jobs were 25% higher for the treatment group than for the control group. Ninety-eight percent of treated children had been employed at age 22, with 94% in full-time jobs.

Jamaica is not America, and interventions that worked under conditions in Jamaica might be less effective in America. However, if it could be achieved, a 25% increase in median income would put black American households at roughly $57k annual income, just above hispanic households, and within striking distance of the $59k target.

A nutritional intervention was also attempted, however, although "Other studies have shown cognitive benefits from nutritional supplementation in the first 24 months," Heckman wrote, "The nutrition supplement for the child was often shared with the family, so it may not have been sufficient to produce better outcomes."

And the nutrition angle might be worth looking into - the study cited (preceded by an analysis, by one of the same authors, of 13 studies on the subject) by Scott Alexander in Society is Fixed, Biology is Mutable showed that vitamins didn't do much for well-nourished kids, but that a minority of undernourished kids may have benefitted greatly.

-☆☆☆-

[1☆] As of 2014, asian Americans lived about 86 years, hispanics about 83 years, and non-hispanic whites about 79 years.

[2☆] In 2019, asian households had a median household income of $98,174 US to white non-hispanic median household income of $76,057. (It should be noted however, as shown in this Wikipedia article that is easier to read than the government data it cites, that household median incomes for groups within "white" or "asian" are not all the same.)

[3] Heckman's program and attitude suggest that an ideological explanation of how we got here isn't included, just an assumption of lack of access to resources by impoverished parents, whether that's in Jamaica, Peru, or China. This suggests the program lacks a loop where program failure just means that the program wasn't tried hard enough.

[4☆] Updating the Economic Impacts of the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program (2005)

At a 3% discount rate the program repays $12.90 for every $1 invested from the perspective of the general public; with a 7% discount rate, the repayment per dollar is $5.67. Returns are even higher if the total benefits--both public and private--are counted. However, there are strong differences by gender: a large proportion of the gains from the program come from lower criminal activity rates by the treatment group, almost all of which is undertaken by the males in the sample. The implications of these findings for public policy on early childhood education are considered.

[5☆] Wikipedia collects a number of studies both for and against.

[6☆] The Dubious Promise of Universal Preschool David J. Armor & Sonia Sousa, National Affairs (2014/01, arch. 2014/01)

[7��] Reach Up: how a Jamaican early childhood intervention swept the world APolitical.co (2018/04)

[swanlake1998]

Article: Gabe Stone Shayer Is Creating an African Narrative Ballet in a Locale That’s Not Only Dreamy, but Informing the Work Itself

Date: April 23, 2021

By: Lydia Murray

American Ballet Theatre soloist Gabe Stone Shayer's latest project will inspire some serious travel envy. From March to April of this year, Shayer has been an artist in residence at Palm Heights Grand Cayman—a resort in the Cayman Islands—where he is choreographing an African-themed narrative ballet, performing solos that will become part of the upcoming piece, collaborating with Caymanian artists and teaching dance classes to guests.

The hotel's residency program is designed to cultivate artists, athletes and writers with ties to or interests in the Caribbean, aligning with Shayer's goals to honor his African heritage and increase the visibility of Black stories in ballet. Due to the islands' strict COVID-19 safety protocols and low number of cases, he's been able to safely create in an environment reminiscent of the pre-pandemic era.

As only the second ballet dancer to participate in the program—the first being San Francisco Ballet corps member Kimberly Marie Olivier, who had told Shayer about the opportunity—his feedback will help develop the residency for future dance artists. During his mandatory 15-day quarantine upon arrival, Palm Heights built a studio for him and future dance residents.

Dance Magazine spoke with Shayer about his new work and what it's been like to live and create in the Cayman Islands.

Lydia Murray: How did you decide to pursue this residency?

Gabe Stone Shayer: I saw an opportunity to create a space for performing artists to have a concentrated residency experience. Besides helping develop it, it was a perfect opportunity to start workshopping a bunch of choreography and a bunch of ideas that otherwise, especially during COVID, would be very difficult to find the studio space, the time, the works to really curate what I was trying to make happen.

Lydia Murray: What impact has living and working in that environment had on your creative process?

Gabe Stone Shayer: What's vastly different is I'm on a very small island that has very good control over their COVID protocol, so it's practically COVID-free. You get tested before you get on the plane, you have to get tested off the plane, and you have to get tested right after your quarantine ends before you can leave your room. The protocol is extreme, but it makes for a very free environment. We're as close to normalcy as you can get. I have the freedom to not think about this extra hurdle of not being able to get close to someone, or not being able to use a studio without this, that and the other thing. It gives me the expansive feeling of being able to reach anything that I'm putting myself out there for.

Lydia Murray: Can you give an overview of what you're working on?

Gabe Stone Shayer: For a while, I've been thinking about the idea of this project to honor African and Black narratives through classical ballet. I feel like ballet needs to do a million different things. One, of course, is to update things. Be socially conscious, and hopefully be sustainable one day in terms of costuming. But a big thing is championing Black and brown cultures and narratives through stories that people haven't seen before on a ballet stage, or in the proscenium of a theater like the Metropolitan Opera House.

I had the idea to either shape an African narrative, or make up an African narrative, or take a piece of folklore and turn it into some sort of fairy-tale piece that shows the beauty, the strength, the elegance of African cultures—specifically Ghanaian culture, because that's what I'm closest to. I'm part Ghanaian, and it's what I know. But hopefully in the future, expanding that into other cultures, as well.

Lydia Murray: What has it been like to be a Black American artist of Ghanaian heritage, creating an African narrative ballet in a location with such a large Black population? Does that have any impact on your mindset or anything else about creating this work?

Gabe Stone Shayer: I think it does. I'm really excited about it because, for me, it feels like the first time I'm going to be doing something that is in the vocabulary of ballet, that is a story about my ancestry or connected to my ancestry, and really shows more colors to ballet than just the German, the French, the Italian stories. It gives way to other narratives that will hopefully involve and make a new community interested in watching ballet and seeing themselves more so than just by face, but by story and by content, as well.

It's great to see what inspires the people who are here, and what the culture derives from. It's a very, very, very mixed island in terms of culture. It's very international. But a lot of the people here have some lineage from West Africa, which is serendipitous, because a lot of these African stores or places where textiles are made lean towards West African and Ghanaian.

I've been essentially curating my costume with a woman who makes adinkra symbols. It's a Ghanaian symbol that represents different strengths within people. One symbol may represent being cunning, or power, or strength, or love. These symbols are, a lot of times, printed on cloth or clothing to signify what you identify with. I found two textiles that this woman made with a power symbol on them, and made them into my costume.

Lydia Murray: You've mentioned wanting to fuse ballet with fashion and pop culture, which you've already done with creators like Alicia Keys and Dapper Dan. In addition to working with the textile designer, are there any interdisciplinary collaborations we should expect to see here in music, costuming or otherwise?

Gabe Stone Shayer: I'm working with a few designers who are under the umbrella of Vogue Talents. It's a program for up-and-coming designers and artists and collaborators to get together. I met them through a mutual contact at Vogue Italia, and they sent me down here with their clothing. The brand is called Corban Harper.

I consider cuisine an art form, and displaying this West African work is also a part of a larger evening. I talked with the executive chef here, Jake Tyler Brodsky. He's done a lot of research into what West African food is and how to shape it for his menu, and, in turn, we created a collaborative evening where people were able to learn about West African culture through all of their senses by tasting new foods and watching me dance.

Lydia Murray: On The Dance Edit Podcast, you mentioned wanting to make a ballet about Mansa Musa [a 14th-century king of Mali] or the orishas [Yoruba deities]. Will we see any of those themes in this piece?

Gabe Stone Shayer: For this work, I thought that I would want to do a bit more in-depth research before putting a real name and face to what I'm doing. So I've just made it about an African king/chief. It's more vague; I could play with it a bit more. The narrative of the solo is of a young king coming to power and having to take control of his kingdom, but with the humility that he has, it's daunting to take the reins. But he fully leans into it.

Lydia Murray: What are your plans to present this work in the future?

I'm planning to workshop more of this piece through the coming year. I am probably using my nonprofit company, Creative Genesis, to film dances on location again when I'm back in America, and to workshop more of the ballet and flesh out the storylines for the rest of the characters. I'll hopefully work with The Guggenheim at some point to do Works & Process. And hit all of those points in New York to present the work and find people who want to see it come to fruition.

[funknrolll]

Focusing on Prince and the song Avalanche: Lesson learned or....??

Hi my music lovers, today we are celebrating the birthday of the undisputed music legend and virtuoso: Prince Rogers Nelson. Since all that is happening these days, I wanted to offer you guys the chance to reflect on these crucial issues. Therefore I chose to focus only on one song in Prince's vault: Avalanche. In my opinion, this piece is quite relevant to what is happening these days. I really hope I do Prince justice. I hope we can learn something from this article and the lesson Prince taught us. Should there be anything, I missed do not think twice to let me know or contact me. Enjoy the article.

In 2002, Prince released One Nite Alone (Solo Piano and Voice by Prince). As the title suggests, the only accompaniment in this album is the piano. Today I want to offer you the chance to reflect on the song Avalanche. Avalanche. The message delivered with this song is compelling, and the lyrics were magistrally written. Moreover, as many people know, Prince was an avid reader and an extremely educated person who had a vast knowledge not only about music but also about history, in this case. Indeed, with these words, the Artist is referring to some historical events to create one of the most MONUMENTAL protests songs in music history. Before I explain this total MASTERPIECE, I need to mention some crucial points. I will never stress enough about this. We all know that Prince was a black man. However, the fact that he, in some interviews, said things like "I was brought up in a black and white world. Black and white, night and day, rich and poor. I always said that one day I was going to play all kinds of music and not be judged for the color of my skin, but the quality of my work" or quoting his song Controversy "I wish there was no black or white" etcetera... It does not mean he was not conscious and aware or proud of being black. This does not mean that he was not aware of what black people had and still have to endure and go through. Indeed, Prince was extremely knowledgeable of everything that I mentioned, and he was proud of being black, and this is something significantly present in his music, in his sense of style, in his words, lyrics, music videos, concerts, and movies. I'm making this point because I have overheard too many people accusing Prince of not embracing his blackness or even being biracial as the new york times erroneously claimed. None of these things are true. I also heard that the Artist was not aware of what black people had and still are going through and that his music was not "politicized enough." This is another big fat lie. This song is proof. Therefore, before writing and describing this MONUMENTAL song, I thought I needed to re-emphasize this significant point. By the way, Prince's mother was NOT Italian. She was a beautiful black woman. Furthermore, as already mentioned, Artist had extensive historical knowledge and was also conscious and aware of how black people have always been exploited and treated. Moreover, Prince was accustomed to speaking his mind and saying what he meant, and just by reading the superlative and poignant lyrics, we could see that the Artist was quite straight-forwarded in writing this piece. Indeed:

He was not or never had been in favor

 Of setting are people free

 If it wasn't for the thirteenth Amendment

 We woulda been born in slavery

 He was not or never had been in favor

 Of letting us vote, so you see...

 Abraham Lincoln was a racist who said

 "You cannot escape from history "Like the snow comin' down the mountain

 That landed on Wounded Knee

 Nobody wants to take the weight 

 The responsibilityHear the joyous sound of freedom

 The Harlem Renaissance

 Hear Duke Ellington and his band

 Kick another jungle jam

 Ooh, do you wanna dance?

 Who's that lurking in the shadows?

 Mr. John Hammond with his pen in hand...

 Sayin' "Sign you're kingdom over to me

 And be known throughout the land!"

 But, you ain't got no money, you ain't got no cash

 So you sign yo name, and he claims innocence

 Just like every snowflake in an avalanche...Like the snow comin' down the mountain

 That landed on Wounded Knee

 Nobody wants to take the weight 

 The responsibility 

This masterpiece begins with a quote taken from the 4th Lincoln-Douglas debate held in Charleston, South Carolina, on September 18, 1858. Lincoln opened his discussion with these words: 

"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the (slur)  and white people. [Great Laughter.] While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me, I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something regarding it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of (slur), nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And since they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man is in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

This was just the beginning of the speech Lincoln gave, and the words bolded are the exact beginning of the song by Prince (disclaimer: I replaced the racial slurs with this (slur) since I do not want any slurs on my platform). Moreover, as we can see in this song, the Artist was calling out the former President Abraham Lincoln for being racist. As you can see from this speech, HE REALLY WAS A RACIST. Moving on with the speech, Lincoln also said that he was not against slavery, and therefore he did not want to abolish it. Additionally, Prince mentioned the thirteenth Amendment. Before I report the Amendment, I believe it is important to contextualize it. What I am about to write will show one more time that Lincoln was a stone-cold racist, unlike many people were taught in schools. So, during the Civil War, the South USA (which economy was unfortunately still based on slaves working in plantations), wanted to keep a balance of free and slave states to maintain its political power in Congress. Southern slaveholders feared the loss of control for many reasons, including a rational fear that if Northern abolitionists had eventually swayed their representatives to vote to abolish slavery, the South wouldn't have had the votes to stop it. So, on September 22, 1862, President Lincoln warned the Confederate states that if they did not rejoin the Union before January 1, 1863, he would free their slaves. If they had timely surrendered, he would not have issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Therefore, on January 1, 1963, Lincoln "proclaimed" the "end of slavery." Bear in mind that this was as much an act of political/military strategy rather than moral courage.

Additionally, the Emancipation Proclamation freed only slaves held in the eleven Confederate states that had seceded, and only in the portion of those states not already under Union control. Slavery was left untouched in the loyal border states. The Proclamation also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon the Union (United States) military victory.  The actual abolition of slavery was achieved when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865. The first section of the Amendment declares, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.". In addition to everything mentioned, the second segment of the speech I bolded is about the right to vote. Eventually, the Artist ends these verses accusing Lincoln of being racist, saying that it is not possible to escape from history. I must say that Lincoln really was A RACIST, and we have always been taught history the wrong way. I also must say that despite the abolition of slavery, black people were never really free, for racism was and still is one of the biggest plagues not just in the USA but all over the world and what we have seen until now is the proof.

Moreover, in the next verses, the Artist mentioned the Harlem Renaissance. For those who do not know that was, I will give a quick explanation of it. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, literary, and intellectual movement that fostered a new black cultural identity. This movement flourished in Harlem, New York, after World War I and ended around 1935 during the Great Depression. The movement raised significant issues affecting the lives of African Americans through various forms of literature, art, music, drama, painting, sculpture, movies, and protests. Voices of demonstration and ideological promotion of civil rights for African Americans inspired and created institutions and leaders who served as mentors to aspiring writers. The Harlem Renaissance arose from a generation that had lived through the gains and losses of Reconstruction after the American Civil War. Sometimes the parents or grandparents of those who lived during that historical period were slaves. Many people who lived in the Harlem Renaissance were part of the Great Migration. They moved out of the South into the black neighborhoods of the North and Midwest of the USA. African Americans sought a better standard of living and relief from the institutionalized racism in the South. Others were people of African descent from racially stratified communities in the Caribbean who came to the United States hoping for a better life. Uniting, most of them were their convergence in Harlem, New York City. Furthermore, Harlem was the center of a musical evolution that uncovered amazing talents and created a unique sound that had yet to be paralleled. Jazz was the newest sound, and it attracted both blacks and whites to go to nightclubs like the Savoy Ballroom to hear artists like Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Miles Davis. Jazz was a result of the Harlem Renaissance, which originated from the musical minds of extraordinarily talented African American people. The genre includes traits that survived from West African American music, black folk music forms developed in the New World. In his song, Prince was indeed referring to jazz music and one of its most relevant and most brilliant artists: Sir. Duke Ellington. In the next lines, we see the Artist mentioning John Hammond. Hammond was a white talent scout, record producer, and music critic. This is another excellent example of how history has been distorted. Indeed, if you look upon the net, you will find that this man fought against segregation and racism. However, if you read Frank Kokofsky's book, John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s, you will learn the truth about the political economy of white domination over black music. In particular, Kokofsky focuses on the relationship between John Hammond, Columbia Records, and the Artist Bessie Smith. Indeed, as Kokofsky writes:

"The first and most important point to emphasize is that, as author Chris Albertson reveals in his biography of Bessie Smith, Hammond signed the singer to a series of contracts with Columbia Records that gave her a small, fixed fee for each performance she recorded and no royalties. Such contracts were apparently standard practice with the executive, for Billie Holiday unequivocally stated in her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues: 'Later on John Hammond paired me up with Teddy Wilson and his band for another record session. This time I got thirty bucks for making half a dozen sides.' When she protested about this arrangement, it was, according to her, a Columbia executive named Bernie Hanighen – and not John Hammond – 'who really went to bat for me' and 'almost lost his job at Columbia fighting for me.'" 

Hear the joyous sound of freedom

The Harlem Renaissance

Hear Duke Ellington and his band

kick another jungle jam

Ooh, do u wanna dance?

Who's that lurking in the shadows?

Mr. John Hammond with his pen in hand...

sayin' "Sign ur kingdom over 2 me

and b known throughout the land!"

But, u ain't got no money, U ain't got no cash,

So u sign yo name and he claims innocence

just like every snowflake in an avalanche. 

This situation is quite familiar, isn't it? Perhaps Prince had heard or read about this, and therefore he decided to add this fact to this masterpiece.

 Last but not least, another relevant part of this song is the chorus. Indeed, with this brilliantly written chorus, Prince is referring to the massacre of Wounded Knee, where more than 350 Native-American were killed. Indeed, On the morning of December 29, 1890, Chief Spotted Elk (Big Foot), leader of a group of some 350 Minneconjou Sioux, sat in a makeshift camp along the banks of Wounded Knee Creek. The group was surrounded by U.S. troops sent to arrest him and disarm his followers. The atmosphere was tense since an order to arrest Chief Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation just 14 days earlier had resulted in his murder, prompting Big Foot to lead his people to the Pine Ridge Agency for a safe haven. Alerted to the band's Ghost Dance activities, General Nelson Miles commanded Major Samuel Whiteside and the Seventh Cavalry to apprehend Big Foot and his followers, and the regiment intercepted them on December 28, leading them to the edge of the creek. While confiscating their weapons, a shot pierced the brisk morning air. Within seconds the charged atmosphere erupted as the Indian men rushed to retrieve their seized rifles, and troopers began to fire volley after volley into the Sioux camp. From a hill above, a Hotchkiss machine gun raked the tipis, gun smoke filled the air, and men, women, and children ran for a ravine near the camp, only to be cut down in the crossfire.

More than 200 Lakota laid dead or dying in the aftermath, as well as at least 20 soldiers. Although the story of the Wounded Knee Massacre is well-known, its causes and effects are still an enigma 125 years later. For 19th century Americans, it represented the end of Indian resistance and the conquest of the West. For Native-American, it represented the utter disregard of the U.S. toward its treaty responsibilities, its duplicity, and its cruelty toward Native people. In the 20th century and beyond, Wounded Knee continued to fuel controversy and debate. Notably, what is particularly controversial was and is the impetus and intent of the government that day, the role of the military, and the conflicting ways the tragedy is remembered today. Indeed, from this story, we can see how Prince gave his listener another example of how racism was a persistent plague.

Like the snow comin' down the mountain

that landed on Wounded Knee

Nobody wants 2 take the weight-

The responsibility

Moreover, as I said, the Artist with this MAGISTRALLY written lyrics educates his listener on how racism has always been a persistent, prominent, outraging, and horrifying plague that is still going on today. In addition to that, we can notice Prince's deep and broad historical knowledge, which is something incredibly fascinating and mesmerizing. Moreover, the arrangement of this song, the instrumental and the vocal delivery is among the finest and most poignant he has ever done. Indeed, the Artist with this masterpiece delivers an extraordinarily intimate and intense but yet POWERFUL performance. In my opinion, even though the only instrument played is the piano, its arrangement is outstandingly complex. The blues genre the Artist opted for, also could not have been more following the whole meaning and purpose of the song. Furthermore, the Artist's incredibly broad vocal techniques are perfectly accompanying the meaningful message of the song. Prince, with his ability to shift from a beautiful falsetto to an extremely low chest voice to eventually change to a powerful head voice during the last chorus, is putting into sounds magistrally and vividly a poignant lesson we are still struggling to learn.

Thank you for your attention.💜 Peace. G💜

[sickslickman]

Welcome to the Table States

Been thinking of doing this for a while, just a cast list for Welcome to the Table by main, major recurring, minor recurring, and guest spots. Let me know if I missed anyone. Also I don’t know sports teams worth a damn, so if I don’t name the state’s jerseys as they should be, that’s why.

Main cast:

(These are characters that premiered in the first episode and appear in most if not all of the episodes. Note: unless otherwise mentioned, all characters in this series are portrayed by Ben Brainard)

DC: The District of Columbia. Runs the meetings. Acts as the leader, but occasionally the shady side of politics comes out of him. Trying desperately to keep his sanity amid the virus, BLM, and everyday American life. His appearance goes from wearing a polo shirt to a suit and tie. Appears in every episode.

Call: “I’m about to do something drastic!”

Florida: The Sunshine State. The Mr. Hyde to DC’s Dr. Jekyll, he is all for absolute chaos and fun over order and following guidelines, and basically comes to the meetings solely to ruin DC’s day. Knows how to call every state because everyone eventually moves to Florida. His appearance is usually a tank top, shorts and a bucket hat. Believes that the coronavirus is a hurricane (or a tropical storm, it varies from day to day). Appears in every episode.

Call: “Duval!”

Texas: The Lone Star State. Usually represents everything the conservative side stands for (guns, politics, religion, women’s rights, big government, you get the drill). His appearance is a red button down shirt and a black cowboy hat. Appears in most episodes.

Call: Sing lines from “Who Put All My Ex's in Texas” by Willie Nelson

California: The Golden State. Usually represents everything the progressive liberal side stands for (abortion, anti-police, anti-fascism, anti-confederacy, BLM, you get it). His appearance is hipster based with beanie and thick-framed glasses. Appears in most episodes.

Call: “Hey Human Torch!” (Unknown if that’s official call or if it just worked because of the wildfires currently ongoing in California)

New York: The Empire State. Tends to be gruff, abrasive and sometimes hostile with his arms almost always folded. Politically is sort of the middle ground between Texas and California; mostly would rather be doing anything else. His appearance used to be a winter coat and hat but has since switched to a Giants jersey. Appears in most episodes.

Call: Unknown at this time, but does react when someone claims their pizza is better.

Major Recurring:

(These are states that make frequent appearances and/or have a strong presence)

Louisiana: The Pelican State. Florida’s best friend and main partner in crime. Very laid back. Only character that speaks with a Cajun accent. His appearance was initially a bucket hat and suspenders with no shirt, but has gradually shifted to wearing LSU gear. Loves daiquiris and gators. Appears in most episodes. His premiere episode is the most watched episode of the series.

Call: “Who dat? Who dat?”

(Note: At this point he has appeared in as many episodes as the main cast, considering bumping him up to main.)

Georgia: The Peach State. Always acts like he just got out of bed, and is almost never seen without a mug of coffee. His appearance has gradually shifted from pajamas to Panthers gear. About as chaotic as Florida, but more out of being dim-witted than out of desire for chaos. Appears in many episodes.

Call: Unknown at this time

West Virginia: The Mountain State: The only state to appear in the pilot episode that is not a main character. Appears very infrequently. His appearances usually involve following coronavirus guidelines and his usage of the word “f***.” Initially dressed in Amish clothing, he has since changed to a Mountaineers football shirt and hat.

Call: Unknown at this time

Washington: The Evergreen State. As the American spread of the coronavirus originated in Seattle, he is almost always coughing but passes it off as “allergies.” Usually wears a dark short-sleeved button down and hipster glasses with ear buds. Appears in several episodes.

Call: Unknown at this time

Massachusetts: The Bay State. Appears frequently and loudly. Has a love-mostly-hate relationship with New York. Tends to be a very abrasive and loud voice of reason. His appearance has gone from a Celtics jersey to a Bruins one.

Call: “Is that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck?”

Utah: The Beehive State. His appearance is a dress shirt and tie and he usually carries a Bible. He is a Mormon and very religious. Has an antagonistic relationship with Florida, who constantly belittles him and inquires about his multiple wives (which Utah does not do anymore). Appears semi-frequently.

Call: “I wish someone were here to tell me about my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!”

Kentucky: The Bluegrass State. Usually wears a dress sweater and carries a picture of Governor Andy Beshear with him everywhere. Tends to be a voice of reason and one of the least problematic states at the table, which is surprising given who his senator is. Appears semi-frequently.

Call: Pronounce “Louisville”

The Carolinas: Both make frequent and strong appearances, and both have a rough relationship with Florida. Both wear T-shirts reflecting their states.

South Carolina: The Palmetto State. Likes to remind Florida of the Jameis Winston crab legs incident. Gets annoyed if you say his barbeque is trash. Loves college football and is always talking about Clemson.

Call: “Carolina BBQ is trash!”

North Carolina: The Tar Heel State. Although he has only appeared in the series fairly recently, he has already become a recurring character. Loves barbecues and basketball. Tends to get hit with a lot of natural disasters.

Call: “It’s bo time!”

Colorado: The Centennial State. Wears a blue T-shirt and a ski hat with goggles. Is usually high all the time and constantly talks about weed. Appears semi-frequently.

Call: Howl like a wolf

Alaska: The Last Frontier. Has only appeared a couple of times but has made a strong impression. Wears an “Alaskan grown” shirt and winter hat. Speaks in a slow but patient voice. Likes to be left alone. Has a friendly rivalry with Texas on account of size. Is a little weird but friendly enough.

Call: None. He is always there. Like Batman.

Minor Recurring:

(These are for characters that are more like supporting characters. Note that although several of these states have had episodes focusing on them, their overall presence is less than that of the major recurring)

Indiana: The Hoosier State. Has only appeared twice. Has trouble coming to terms with Mike Pence’s alleged homosexuality. Not much else notable about him.

Call: Sing the Indiana Jones theme (Although he would prefer “Hoo hoo!”)

Pennsylvania: The Keystone State. Appears semi-frequently but is mostly a slightly less abrasive New York or Massachusetts. Wears an Eagles jersey in most appearances. Constantly asking for a drink. Constantly asking people to choose between Wawa or Sheetz.

Call: “We are!”

Wisconsin: The Badger State. Wears a giant foam Swiss cheese hat on his head. Is perpetually drunk. Argues in favor of the rights of the people (although not always in the best ways). Hates Illinois and especially the Bears.

Call: “Anyone need anything from Quik Trip?”

Illinois: The Prairie State. Mostly just known for Chicago and not much else. Wears a Cubs jersey and hat. Seems rather old fashioned and does not like alcoholics. Everyone in his state seems to hate each other. Hates Wisconsin and has arguments with New York in regards to who makes better pizza.

 Call: Unknown, but seems to react to someone insulting the Bears.

Ohio: The Buckeye State. Loves skyline chili and wine at two o’clock. Begins just about every sentence with “ope.” Used to dress like a rapper wannabe, but now dressed in Ohio State gear. Hates Michigan and given the chance would kill him himself.

Call: “O-H!”

Michigan: The Great Lake State. Wears a Lions jersey and hat and brings a bottle of Vernors with him everywhere. Hates Ohio and wants to beat Ohio State at football.

Call: “Liberate Michigan!”

New Mexico: The Land of Enchantment. Appears very infrequently. Speaks Spanish on top of English. Is intelligent to a degree but will throw down if necessary. Mostly talks about cultural things. Wears a blue hoodie-looking sweater.

Call: Unknown, but responds when someone claims to have better green chili.

Mississippi: The Show Me State. Claims to be the “Harvard of the South.” Carries a water bottle with him wherever he goes. Gets into arguments with California over Confederate momentos.

Call: Unknown at this time

Alabama: The Cotton State. Mostly appears in the weekly recap videos. Represents the philosophies of the Deep South. Not much else known about him.

Call: Unknown at this time

Arizona: The Grand Canyon State. Appears mostly as a semi-frequent character in the weekly recap videos. Not much else is known about him.

Call: Unknown at this time

Missouri: The Show Me State. Appears semi-frequently in the weekly recap videos. Not much is known about him other than he likes barbeque and has a feud with Kansas over Kansas City.

Call: Unknown at this time

Oklahoma: The Sooner State. Appears mostly in the weekly recap videos but has made other appearances too. Tends to be rather sarcastic and blunt, but is prone to overreaction at times. Hates Texas.

Call: Unknown at this time

Tennessee: The Volunteer State. Appears mostly in the weekly recap videos. Tends to be high-pitched and melodramatic.

Call: Unknown at this time

Oregon: The Beaver State. Appears mostly in the weekly recap videos. Was very active during the BLM protests and was vocal against the use of police brutality and unmarked abductions.

Call: Unknown at this time

Minnesota: The North Star State. Appears mostly in the weekly recap videos. Was very active during the BLM protests and in support of defunding police and reallocating resources. Tends to be a voice of reason.

Call: Unknown at this time

Connecticut: The Constitution State. Has only appeared a few times in the weekly recap videos. Tries to avoid dealing with Florida as much as he can.

Call: Unknown at this time

Maryland: The Free State. Wore a T-shirt in early appearances but is now decked out in crab gear in recent ones. As abrasive as a northern state, but with as much pride as a southern one. Early episodes had a running gag of Maryland’s issues regarding coronavirus tests.

Call: “Anyone have any Old Bay?”

The Dakotas: Appear infrequently. Only have about thirty-six people among both of them.

North Dakota: Has only appeared a couple of times. Not much is known about him.

South Dakota: Has appeared more often than his brother, but usually only talks about the Sturgis Bike Rally. Also is trying to fight meth.

Call: “Who’s the better Dakota again?” (will call both of them)

Iowa: The Corn State. One of the biggest running gags in the series is that no one seems to know where he is or how to get in touch with him. Tends to come and go from meetings whenever he sees fit.

Call: Unknown at this time

Background characters:

(Characters that only appear once or have no real significance to the series)

Nevada: The Silver State. Has only appeared once. Dresses like a Vegas dancer.

Rhode Island: The Ocean State. Has only appeared once to discuss his name change.

New Jersey: The Garden State. Has only appeared once. Doesn’t like it when New York keeps visiting him.

Wyoming: The Equality State. Has only appeared once when Florida insulted his name.

Nebraska: The Cornhusker State. Has appeared a couple of times but has had no real significance.

Kansas: The Sunflower State. Has only appeared a couple of times. Tends to feud with Missouri over Kansas City.

Idaho: The Gem State. Has only appeared once(?).

Arkansas: The Natural State. His only real appearance was in the poker episode when everyone told him he couldn’t play on account of he never shuts anything down and can’t weigh in with anything.

Delaware: The First State. Has only appeared twice. Like the state itself, nothing of significance has yet been noted.

Virginia: The Old Dominion. Has only appeared a couple of times, and his only notable role was in the mask debate.

States that still have not made an appearance:

Montana

Vermont

Maine

New Hampshire

Hawaii (Note that Brainard has stated he wishes to find a Hawaiian native actor to play this character.)

Other characters in this series:

CDC: The Center of Disease Control. Originally played by Ben Brainard, the role has since been taken over by comedian Drew Lynch. An overworked, underappreciated man who tries to get the states to adhere to coronavirus regulations. He has a bad stutter and has not slept in weeks. He may be being kept alive purely on coffee and good intentions.

International DC: Played by Elana Rose. Has only appeared once. DC’s sister and the international relations part of the federal government. She’s not very good at her job and tends to act very “mean girl.”

Mother Nature: Played by Liz, aka “lozclaws”. The goddess of earthling weather. Has an on-again off-again relationship with Florida.

Claire: Also played by Liz. Mother Nature’s...roommate? Mother? Not entirely sure. Tries to be a voice of reason to a pair with very little reason between the two of them.

The National Guard: The national army. Has only appeared twice, once to bodyguard Maryland, the other to discuss the BLM protests.

The 3rd Amendment: The third amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Only appeared once. It was very confusing.

Virginia: Kentucky’s sign-language interpreter. Only appeared once. Was deeply offended by Florida (as we all are).

Greg the Sound Guy: The guy who handles the audio and holds the mic boom for the show. Only appeared twice. Probably doesn’t get paid enough.