#and i approve of this writing decision its just that they should have made their new hair not look horrible

[theageofcaravel]

Rose-Coloured Boy. - Jamie Tartt x F!reader

┊ ┊ ┊ ┊

MASTERLIST

Chapter I: Reeling Through the Midnight Streets

Plot: Jamie Tartt and Y/N have been best friends since primary school. The pair had fallen out once graduation hit, both of them going their separate ways; Jamie finally kicking off (pun intended) his football career, and Y/N finally walking through the doors of her cinematographer career. One day, they cross paths in the corridors of Nelson Road, Y/N getting the assignment to make a mini docuseries of one of the football clubs in England, hers being AFC Richmond.

Set during season 2 and onward.

warnings: swearing, mentions of food and alcohol

word count: 3,7k

an: HELLOOOOOO!!! im excited to write this, I'm so late to the Ted Lasso wagon, but here I am. I got the idea for this story when I was sat on my couch looking through Pinterest and then I made a board for it. This has also taken me a few days to crank out because I've second guessed the plot a couple of times but anyway, I'm watching Cody and Noel's Love Island series and its reminding me of that one episode in season 2. LMAO, enjoy <3!!!!

┊ ┊ ┊ ┊

Breathing in deeply, you closed your notebook. Looking up at your professor, you gently rapped your manicured nails upon your desk and eagerly waited to see which football club you were going to be assigned to. The hope in your chest wanted to get your hometown's very own club, having a plausible excuse to visit your home, without your parents getting under your skin.. 

"Y/N L/N," Professor Loughty called out your name, you quickly stood from your desk and grabbed your belongings. "Yes, sir?" you asked, an eager glimmer in your eyes. "you're gonna be in charge of AFC Richmond, I've emailed Miss Welton and have gotten the approval for you to leave right after I dismiss you, there should be a cab right outside for you. you're going to have to find which one is yours." 

With a solemn nod, you breathed in, "is there any way that I could have Manchester City, perchance?" all Professor Loughty replied with a shake of his head, "sorry, Miss L/N, all final decisions have been made." 

"Alright, thank you, professor." you nodded again. 

"You are dismissed." 

Making your way out of the classroom, you sighed disappointedly. All you really wanted was to spend time with your sister, Libby. Your built-in best friend, the person who you call often to just ramble, vent, or see how life on the other side is. 

A chime of your phone pulled you out of your thoughts. 

any updates?

Libby. So much for getting pulled out of your thoughts. 

yeah, got Richmond :/ BUT I promise I'll make it up to you. I'll visit soon. 

:( okayyy I love youu

"Y/N!" pocketing your phone, your attention was now averted from your patronising thoughts to that of your best friend. "Bee! Hey." you smiled and waited for your friend to fully approach you. 

"Who'd ya end up gettin'?" the Irish girl asked in her usual chipper tone. 

"Richmond, I wanted Man City." 

She scrunched her nose. "Mmm, ain't that the team with that American coach?" Bee added with a raise of her eyebrows. 

"Think so, so I guess it's not all bad.. could be interesting.." You spoke with a shrug which only earned you a light chuckle from the brunette. "Well, I'd certainly hope so. you have to be around him and the team for how long?" 

"'Til the end of the semester." 

Bee nodded at your reply. "sounds miserable." 

"Oh, piss off. Don't you have to write an album by the end of the semester?" you clapped back, causing Bee to only snicker with a shrug. 

"Yeah, but that's easy."

"Right, as if you haven't been in a song writing block for the past month or so." freezing in her place, Bee shook her head and glared playfully at the other. 

"Exactly. Anyway, I've gotta get going, gotta get my essentials." you said to Bee, embracing her in a hug. "See y'tomorrow?"

The taller girl nodded and walked away with a wave. "See ya, nugget." 

You shook her head, that nickname was never going to go away. Walking your merry way over to the line of cabs, you nervously talked to the first cabbie. "Um, which one is the one for Y/N L/N?" you asked and gripped your books close as if they were some sort of security blanket. The man behind the wheel grunted and pointed to the one behind him. 

"Should be that one down there, yeah." he replied and basically shooed the girl away. with a breath, you found the cab you were supposedly assigned and sat in the backseat. 

"Was ordered to head to your place, where to miss?" The driver asked with a kind smile in which you replied with your address.

┊ ┊ ┊ ┊

Unlocking your door quickly, you ran into your living room and grabbed your bag full of all the necessities you needed for the months ahead of you; camera, clip in microphones, etcetera. Richmond was only 30 minutes away, which, in hindsight, was better than having to travel four hours per weekend. 

With no second thought, you grabbed your water bottle and slung your bag over your shoulder. Taking one last look around, you let out a satisfied huff and headed back outside to the car.

"Alright, Miss L/N, we're headed to Richmond. s'about a 30 minute drive from here." the cabbie, who you learned that his name was Franklin, 'frank for short,' is what he told you, said. He was a nice old man, probably in his early sixties. He was good at keeping up the small talk, asking you about what it is that you’re going to be doing with Richmond. Telling you that before he was a cab driver he was a guitarist in a band, a small one at that. You both bonded over music, You telling him that your best friend is a singer and that sometimes Bee'll get you together to mess around because you have been playing the guitar since you were little but never really pursued anything musically because it wasn't of interest. 

Eventually Frank had pulled into Nelson Road, the drive seemed a lot faster than it really was because of how easy it was to talk. 

"Thank you, Frank. I'll see you at 5, right?" You asked and the older man nodded. "Have a good rest of your day." You saluted him and walked up to the doors of the stadium. Slinging your bag over your shoulder, you entered the building. 

Absentmindedly walking down the corridors, you looked around at the walls and folded your arms across your chest looking at the trophy wall; all the history and old photos of Richmond littered within it.

"Excuse me?" a voice spoke from behind you, startling you slightly. You were met with a grin from a lanky looking boy. "Are you lost?" he asked and you only shrugged.

"Guess you could say that." you chuckled awkwardly and lifted your shoulders. "Um, I'm looking for Miss Welton's office. Got lost in thought though." 

"Ohhhh, are you Y/N L/N?" the boy asked with a head tilt. In which you responded with a nod. "I can show ya where to go, follow me." he moved slightly before the other nodded and followed behind him. 

"Are you the.." you started, "kit... man?" knitting your eyebrows together and stuffing your hands into your jacket's pockets.

"Yeah, I am." he nodded and grinned and stopped at the door to Rebecca's office. "Well, this is it. I'm Will by the way." he said and stuck out his hand for you to shake. You took his hand thankfully. 

"Thank you, Will. It was nice to meet you. I'll see you around, yeah?" You waved him goodbye and gently knocked on the slightly open door. 

"Come in," a voice shouted, the nerves finally kicking in. Pushing the door open, you were greeted with a warm smile from probably the most beautiful woman you had ever seen. "Hello."

"Errr, hi." you awkwardly smiled, "I'm--"

"Y/N, I've been expecting you." Miss Welton cut the other off, that smile that she held never fading. "Come, sit." she gestured to the chair opposite from her desk. You nodded and set your bag on the floor. 

"Okay, um, hi." an awkward smile wavered over the girl's features. Rebecca leaned into her desk, automatically drawn to the way you were acting; that shell she knew she needed to crack.

"Promise I don't bite." the blonde jested which caused you to somewhat get comfortable. "Anyway, we're excited to have you. the boys have been raving about having a cinematographer here to film their every move." 

"Thank you for the opportunity, Miss Welton." 

"Call me Rebecca."

"Okay.. thank you for the opportunity, Rebecca." you corrected yourself which earned an approving nod and smile from the other. "I'll be here every other day after the school day, during the weekends, and during every game. Even travelling ones, I got the okay from my professors when we learned that this assignment existed."

Rebecca nodded, knowing said information but not wanting to interrupt the girl. "You don't have to start right away, if you want I can introduce you to the boys and everyone else." 

With a nod, you pushed herself up off the chair and reached for your bag. "you can leave that in here, we’ll be coming back in here to discuss everything needed.” 

┊ ┊ ┊ ┊

"This is where the boys have physio, you shouldn't have to come here." The pair chuckled and then Rebecca stopped by a blue door where chatter could be heard inside. "and this is the kit room, where the boys change and where the coaches offices are." 

“It smells like sweaty ass in here, just warning you.” the blonde jested, causing you to scrunch her nose. "Shall we?" she asked and you nodded. With a gentle knock on the door Rebecca peeked in. "Everyone decent?" she asked, to which all the boys replied in unison with a 'yes'. smiling contently, the taller lady pushed the door open and pushed you in front of her. 

"OI." she announced, "everyone this is, Y/N L/N, our cinematographer from the University of London." everyone cheered happily, most just yelling what sounded like mixes of 'LETS GOOOO', 'FUCK YEAH', and 'WICKED'. 

At the sound of a familiar name being called, Jamie looked up and went wide eyed. Holy fuck.  

Quickly standing up from where he was sitting, you both made eye contact. Brows knitted together, your eyes looked above his head, the words, ‘TARTT’ in big bold letters made you realise that your suspicions were correct. “No way, Jamie?” you asked and breathed out. 

The entirety of the room suddenly went quiet, or so it seemed. You apprehensively walked toward him, Rebecca watching you with a look of confusion. Maybe you were just a fan that he’s seen from time to time? No, that wasn’t the case and she knew it the moment you guys both stared at each other with some form of intensity from you and an apologetic look from him. You looked like you wanted to walk over to him and smack him across his face and he looked like he wanted to wrap his arms around you and tell you how sorry he was. 

“I–” Jamie started and made his way closer to you, you dryly chuckled. 

“No, I just got here, we can talk later.” 

He nodded at your cross response and backed away. You introduced yourself and learned everyone’s names, the coaches were in their office in some sort of meeting and Rebecca told you that you’d be able to meet them later. 

┊ ┊ ┊ ┊

Back up in Rebecca’s office, you both went over how you were planning on filming. Going over recording some of the boys separately in their element, interviews, etcetera. You also learned that Rebecca was really easy to talk to, like a best friend. 

“Alright, Y/N, I must ask,” Rebecca started, handing you a cup of tea. “Back in the locker room, what was that with you and Jamie?” taking the cup and bringing it to your lips, you sighed. 

“We go way back, we met back in primary school and we were attached at the hip up until high school. There were moments when our close friends suspected we were a couple.” You trailed off, “but once we graduated everything just kind of.. Fell off, we both went our separate ways. I tried to get back into contact with him but he would say that he was busy or he’d just flat out ignore me.” you looked over at Rebecca to see her eyebrows raised. 

“Sorry, that’s kinda personal innit? Haven’t known each other much.” you said and she just shrugged. 

“It’s alright, we’re gonna be getting rather close these next few months, it's a good start for now.” she responded to you, the worry that was on your face was slowly replaced by a warm smile. 

“Guess you’re right.” 

“‘Course I am, Y/N. ‘Course I am.” 

You chuckled and shook your head, taking another sip of your tea. “On another note, I’m quite excited for all of this. Richmond is already so .. nice. I felt welcome the moment I walked in.”

“It does that to you, wait until you meet Ted though, you’ll feel even more welcome.”

As if on cue, there was a gentle knock on the door followed by a man with a moustache walking inside with a beaming grin, “well, howdy y’all.” he greeted. You smiled up at him and stood from your seat, placing your halfway finished mug down on the coffee table. 

“Y/N, this is Ted.” Rebecca said. You stuck your hand out for him to shake. 

“Nice to meet you, Ted.” You said and he only beamed at you. 

“Welcome to the family, Y/N/N.” he replied, your eyes went wide at the sudden nickname. “Its okay if I call you that right? Only seems right with your name.” He chuckled and you nodded. 

“Only if I get to call you ‘Teddy’ or somethin’. What's Ted short for anyway?” You asked him, the shift in your demeanour from earlier was like you’ve been here for weeks. “Theodore.” Rebecca chimed in and you grinned over at her and crossed your arms over your torso. “Hmm, then ‘Theo’ will have to do.” 

Ted, or Theo smiled from ear to ear. “Glad to hear it, I’ll see y’around.” 

You waved the man goodbye and sighed happily. Rebecca stood up from her spot on the sofa and brushed her dress out. “Alright, so, now that we’ve gone over everything, is there anything that you need before you head out for the rest of the day?” she asked you and you shook your head to look down at your watch. 

“Nah, I think I’m good.” You said and walked over to where your bag was. “Didn’t even need this today, came over prepared.” chuckling lightly, you leaned down to pick it up. 

“Thank you again for being so warm and welcome,” you looked at Rebecca and held your hand out for her to shake it. She took your hand happily, “I’ll see you next week then, to start your work process?” she asked you and you nodded. 

“Mhm, yep, and I’ll have everything we went over.” you smiled at her and then bid her farewell. 

Walking out of her office and down the stairs you were met with a waiting Jamie, his phone in his hands in a way to distract him. When he heard your footsteps hitting the stairs, he pocketed his device and looked up at you. 

“You waited for me.” you said with a raised brow and he nodded. 

“Yeah..” he started and you stood in front of him. “I just wanted to .. dunno, apologise?” 

“For what? Leaving me alone to think you forgot about me for six years? D’you think I’m just gonna walk right into your arms and accept your apology?” you spat and he took it in. you looked like a wounded puppy and he just wanted to fling forward and hold you. To tell you that everything was gonna be alright and that he wouldn’t dream of doing that to you again. 

“Right, right. Yeah, m’sorry ‘bout that.” he looked down at his trainers and nervously gripped his body bag’s strap. “D’ya think we could.. Dunno, go for a walk and talk ‘bout it all?” he asked you, a plea in his eyes. 

“I can’t. I have to go back to London, my cabbie is waiting for me.” you replied and rocked on your heels.

“What about when you come back?”

“Dunno, I don’t think I wanna hear some bullshit excuse as to why you left me in the dust.”

“Please, Y/N.” he pleaded, “we don’t even have to talk for long. If you decide that you don’t want anything to do with me or listen then you can walk away.” 

You sighed in defeat, “fine.”

He nodded, trying to hide the victorious smile on his lips but failing. 

“Wipe that smug grin off your ugly mug before I do it for you.” 

“Aye aye.” Jamie responded, that was the Y/N he knew all those years back, and you walked away with a sigh and a shake of your head. 

God this was so fucking weird. 

┊ ┊ ┊ ┊

Once the next week rolled around, you told Bee how you bumped into Jamie, whom you might’ve told her about once or twice.. Or a few times whilst drunk. Telling her stories about how you were, “sooooooo mad at him for ghosting me like that. I loved him ssooooo much and he goes and does that.”

At 10am, Frank pulled into the car park of Nelson Road and you bid him farewell when gathering your belongings. You walked inside, instantly greeted with that family-like haze. A smile wafted on your features, nodding in acknowledgement at whomever passed by. 

“Good morning, Y/N/N!” Ted said when you walked by him on your way up to Rebecca’s office. “Mornin, Theo.” you smiled at him and gave him a high five. 

The rest of the morning went pretty well – You and blondie, new nickname (Ted approved),  going over what you guys went over on your first day, you setting up everything you needed, using one of the meeting rooms as a place to have special interviews for the boys when the time came and making a makeshift desk of one of the tables for when you needed to edit or when you when you weren’t filming. 

When lunch time approached, Rebecca asked if you wanted to join her, but you told her that you wanted to make sure that everything was working properly because once everyone was back from the lunch break you were going to record the first of many parts of the boys’ training. She gave you a thumbs up and you were on your merry way to set up a camera outside. 

“Headed outside?” a familiar Mancunian accent asked you, you stopped in your tracks and turned toward the voice. 

“Mhm, yep.” You said, your change in demeanour going from steadfast wanting to get the hell out.

“Need help?” he asked you, a pleading look in his eyes. You looked down at the gadgets you had in your hands. Setting said things up on your own would not be easy, especially when you don’t have a whole crew to help you with lighting and every other necessity that came with filming.

With a defeated sigh, there was really no point in doing it on your own when the other offered help, you looked at him. “That would.. Be nice,” you started, trailing off, “but aren’t you supposed to be at lunch with the guys or somethin’? Don’t wanna be a bother or anythin’, I’m sure I can manage on my own.”

“Nah, s’no problem. Promise.” he placed his hand on his chest, “Not really hungry anyhow.” he nodded and stepped in front of you to open the door out to the pitch. 

“Thanks.” You said and smiled at him thankfully. He nodded and you looked around. 

“Hmm, hey, Jamie?” you asked, and he turned to you with his eyebrows up. “Where d’ya reckon would be the best spot to film?” 

He pointed to a spot beside where he said that Ted and Beard usually stand and watch, “You can practically see everything from here, but you might have to change directions of the camera every now and then.” 

You shrugged and leaned down to unpack your best camera for the outdoors, “that’s fine, its my job anyway.” you set up your tripod and turned your camera on. Looking into the lens, you adjusted the lighting. 

“So, Y/N..” Jamie said and stood in front of your camera with some sort of lopsided grin, “D’ya think we could do that talk right now?” 

You looked up and huffed, “dunno, are you gonna get out of my way?” he shrugged and moved from the focus. “What is there to really talk about anyway? You ghosted me for years. You didn’t even wish me a happy birthday, or send christmas cards.” With one final twist of your lens you stepped away and looked at Jamie who scratched his neck. 

“Yeah, don’t really have an excuse for that. Other than being a professional footballer ‘n all.”

“Yeah, but you still could’ve said something, that's not really a valid excuse.” you replied and gave him a stern look. “Remember what I said about bullshit excuses, Tartt?”

“Wait, no,” he looked at you with a panicked look. “There's really nothin’ that excuses me actions, but please know that I am sorry. I haven’t forgotten about you all these years, y’know.”

“Then why the fuck did you stay silent for so many years? I gave up trying to reach out to you after my twenty - first birthday. Tried seein’ if you wanted to come celebrate and maybe catch up and you NEVER responded.” you placed your hands on your hips and you could see the guilt written all over his face. 

“Yeah.” you responded, “but I’m an adult and I ended up forgiving and forgetting until the universe decided to have us cross paths again.” you half jested, Jamie’s lips curling upward just a tinge. “How about I make you a deal?” 

He quirked his brows up and you responded with a sigh. “I will forgive you.” you said and watched as his face changed from curious to excited. “If,” you paused, only egging him on, “you promise that it won't happen again, even after this project is done and over with.” 

Looking at him expectedly, the brunet stepped forward and engulfed you in a bone crushing hug, the only kind he’d give you after something good happened or after you had a meltdown in front of him. “Cross me heart, Y/N.” 

You smiled against his shoulder and hugged him back briefly, only to pull away and stick out your pinky. “Pinky promise me, James.” you said, the full name throwing him off slightly. He intertwined your fingers and you both leaned down to press kisses to your thumbs, sealing the deal. 

“Pinky promise.”

┊ ┊ ┊ ┊

Alright, STINKIES!!!!!! Let me know if you wanna be on the tag list n stuff!! I'll try to get a few more chapters out this week! They'll probably be a bit shorter, some fillers, some not, etcetera!! ANYWAY!! Thank you for reading <3

[anisecandy]

Have a snippet of Al and Vox being fluffy, domestic and vain.

I miscalculated while counting how should I do the perspective shifts to have an equal number of chapters with both Alastor's and Vox's perspective, so with a heavy heart I'm writing the chapter 3 of "5 times Alastor and Vox failed at sex..." in narration with focus on Vox. I'll have to redo the beginning of it, that's focusing on Al, but I thought I might show it to you guys. Because I like it. Even though you wouldn't know it, from how long I've kept forgetting about posting it.

"How about this one?" Vox said, taking out from his walk in closet a hanger with a white shirt. It was adorned with thin red lines and dark blue squares of various sizes placed in a well balanced rhythm. Alastor gave it a judgmental look, before returning to digging through the left side of the corridor.

"The colors are much too loud for a theater."

"Bah! What do you know! Theater is all about artistic expression!" Vox scoffed, despite still putting it away.

Reasonable decision, since Alastor wouldn't be caught dead matching to a geometric print. He took a step forward, spreading the fabric like curtains and reaching for the garments further to the back. While he found having an almost half of a room dedicated to clothing excessive, he couldn't deny enjoying digging through it. He felt a bit like a child in a candy shop, if half of the candy was cough drops. Vox may have known his cuts well, but there were few people who missed the mark in terms of patterns as badly as he did.

"Are your friends also keeping their clothes here?" Alastor asked curiously, upon finding a small section of dresses tucked by a wall.

"What-? Nah, Velv made those for me," Vox replied, setting aside a pair of vests he was comparing to present a 50's style light-blue dress. "You don't get to live together with those two without expanding your horizons a bit. Why? Something caught your eye, Liebling?

Alastor shrugged. While this was something worth committing to the memory for a later date, at the moment it wasn't what they were looking for. Plus, as nice as the dresses were, the idea of Vox straying to far from his own silhouette caused a possessive needling to rise in his chest. Well, maybe if it was in his exact same color palette. But neither dress was red.

"Suit yourself. So, what colors do you have in mind then?" Vox asked, rummaging through his drawer with ties.

"Just stick to three at most. And don't overdo it with the highlights." Alastor gave a classic cutsuit an approving look, before gesturing to its colors. "Avoid excessive brightness and you should be good. This, for example, is a lovely shade of navy blue."

Vox's smile stretched wide, and he dived into a drawer, before taking out a bow tie, just barely darker than the suit.

"If you like it so much, why won't you try it out yourself?" He said, walking behind Alastor and nudging him toward a mirror. "I'm already always wearing a red one either way. We might as well bring this home."

He placed the tie by Alastor's neck, currently lacking his own, after trying on a few garments he found himself interested in. It matched well with the pink of his dress shirt, but stood out harshly against his hair. Vox didn't seem to notice. As he looked in the mirror, whole lower half of his screen was nothing but sharp teeth, that almost pushed his crinkled eyes, full of devottion, out of frame.

"God, you're so pretty," he breathed, nuzzling a corner of his head against Alastor. "Lemme kiss you?"

A small shiver passed down Alastor's spine. Vox pressed the front of his screen into his cheek, playing an obnoxious, wet sound effect that made him laugh. A weak electric shocks that followed it and him closed his eyes, savoring the hot sensation of it. When Vox backed away, he placed a hand on his casing, allowing himself to caress it for a tender moment.

"You're quite a sheik yourself, mon cher," he said softly.

Then, he pushed him away, tugging the bow tie off.

"But this simply wouldn't do. It clashes with my outfit."

"Oh please," Vox huffed. "You haven't worn a single coherent thing since the day I knew you. Why start now?"

"Excuse me?" Alastor said with offense. "Darling, I dress exclusively in monochrome. What about that doesn't cohere?"

"Al, your coat is made out of like five different fabrics," he deadpanned.

"It's avant-garde! As that lady friend of yours would say, a statement piece."

"A hot mess, is what it is."

"I thought you favored innovation above all else."

"Well, a certain old prick got through my head that not all innovation is a change for the better."

Alastor scoffed, rolling his eyes, visibly torn between wanting to continue their bickering and application for the rare instance of Vox admitting to respect his way of thinking. Even if it was weaponized at the moment.

[mdhwrites]

The Owl House Fans Don’t Know What Colonies Are

So this isn’t actually me firing shots at the show. This is about the meta commentary people like to use to elevate the show and it’s one of the most laughable to me. That it’s some grand, anti-colonial story because Belos is a colonizer and Luz stands up for indigenous people as one of them! I’ll get into the colony side of it but on a basic level, it needs to be pointed out that Belos is an American, not British. The closest he could be is one of those sent out to colonize for Britain but he was literally too young to have been a part of that decision when it happened if that were the case and those who colonized America... were treated as part of a colony to Britain. So literally he was a part of the oppressed or he’s post The War for Independence and America was never a colonial power, ESPECIALLY NOT BACK THEN.

Secondly... Just because Luz isn’t white doesn’t mean she can’t technically fall into the white savior trope. The point of that trope is just to talk about how much it sucks when an outsider comes in, makes everything better and fixes all the problems. Luz still ostensibly does that while not being a part of the culture or using the culture and its people in order to save them. Her glyphs are unknown to everyone except LITERALLY THE GROUND THEIR STANDING ON. So... Yeah, she’s not some inspirational story against colonizers. I think you’d have to write a VERY different sort of story for an isekai to be anti-colonial like that frankly. Oh, and we can’t forget that she’s literally blessed by a god because she has a viewpoint to their son that’s different from the rest of the Isles, the indigenous people, and is then empowered to go kill the ruler, who ostensibly the people approve of and chose to be there, regardless of the lies to why, because she does not believe in his methods or beliefs.

Which, you know, for either anti-colonial messaging or anti-Christian Fundamentalism is kind of yikes.

But neither of these matter because The Boiling Isles is NOT a colony. Not even close. The definition that the fans use to say it’s a colony, ruled by an outsider effectively, would have made RUSSIA a colony to Germany while Catherine the Great was ruling it purely because Catherine was a German. If that does not immediately make you cringe, you need to listen.

So as far as how they are ruled, what are the Isles? Well, I bring up Catherine not just because of the pointed joke. See, her husband also wasn’t Russian. He was a German as well but adopted by Elizabeth of Russia. When he became Tsar, everyone hated him and his policies, especially military policies, so much that they overthrew him and chose Catherine.

That’s effectively what the Isles is. They chose Belos as their ruler. Yes, they were deceived as to why he should rule them but they did choose it eventually. As far as we understand, he wasn’t a conqueror and he wasn’t even a part of a coup like Catherine was. Instead, after terrible deeds and the like, he united the Isles under his coven system, brought an end to an age and moved on with his life. His policies, besides magic, are even progressive in some ways because apparently children had no protection before Belos and then he added child endangerment laws. He ostensibly made the Isles a safer place with his guards who could respond to monster faster. The EC in fact, from the fact that they don’t do anything actually evil, especially compared to the populace, until almost S2′s finale with Labyrinth Runners (And I guess you could include Escaping Palisman but there’s extenuating circumstances there, much like how Eda is petrified for breaking the law. There’s more gray in theory to it.) That’s not how you run a colony... That’s just how you run your nation.

But of course that’s the case because the Boiling Isles literally CAN’T be a colony. See, colonies were made as a part of the concept of the Policy of Austerity. Each nation saw themselves as needing to be self sufficient, able to produce EVERYTHING required for civilization, without foreign aid. As such, colonies weren’t oppressed because of religious doctrine, that was propaganda, but out of necessity to that policy. After all, if your colonies have a real economy, they have less to give back to the mother land. You can’t tax them as much, you can’t regulate their trade as much, you can’t make sure their natural resources are going to you.

This is actually part of why the Puritans are the founders of America. They were annoying to the British so rather than dealing with them, they sent them to this weird, new world so as to bring back resources and get out of their hair. That’s also why Americans were treated maybe not quite as poorly as other colonies but we were still DEFINITELY a colony. We did not govern ourselves. Instead, Britain appointed our leaders and chose our policies. Otherwise, you know, we would have just gotten rid of the ludicrous tax on tea instead of throwing it into the harbor.

And if we want to talk more metaphorically about colonies... What culture did Belos push upon the Isles? Colonies would be made to adopt home cultures because that’s how the home country saw as the best way to rule and the best way to make the colony bend to the will of the homeland. If they act like British people, they will accept British rule more.

Except our one glimpse at the Isles is that they already look like they have the same fashion and architecture and commerce even as a Victorian era man. The architecture of the Isles literally doesn’t change between the past and the modern era, something the show actually does point out itself. Bonesborough as has a lot of the same buildings HUNDREDS of years later, there’s just more of them now.

Worse yet, the Titan is not Belos’ own religion. Ostensibly, it should be the Isles religion but they, reasonably, don’t know the Titan is alive. Belos theoretically doesn’t seem to either? Maybe? It’s inconsistent. But he establishes prisons instead of simply hanging those who do not conform in the present day. If they wanted to lean in on him bringing Puritan culture, there would have been a genuine purge of most of the Isles because of its rampant greed, self interest, art, stories, etc. that the Puritans were just very against because if it wasn’t about God, it died.

Again: The Puritans were so extreme, with such a stick up their ass, the BRITISH kicked them out of their country.

All of that would have hurt the fantasy though, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t be some effectively idealic fantasy setting. Even the dangers Luz faces aren’t the worst and a real fantasy fan would be sad to see them be gone because then you don’t get that bit of menace that comes from a good fantasy world. More oppression, more change, more shifting to an anti-magic world like Belos theoretically should have been for (remember: He only asks that you join the Coven system. He barely cares what you do with the magic after that) then you lose that part of the isekai fantasy.

It’s actually part of why Belos being a human, his statement of “You think I want conquest” being that he just wants murder, actually makes the show less interesting. Evil emperors are a dime a dozen. Any isekai protagonist would expect to be pointed in their direction and shot off like a rocket. A genuinely complex ruler though who is having to deal with balancing humanity with his religion and his duties as emperor? That would have been a GREAT wake up call to Luz to stop assuming things based on tropes.

Belos would have had to be more of a part of the show and a character in his own right for that. Or for any of this really. We would have to see how Belos contrasts against a member of the Isles more and he really doesn’t. Serving in his own interest? Got plenty of villains like that in the Isles. Not caring about murder or enslavement for his methods? Yep, that’s pretty normal, including Odalia frankly. Lies to get what he wants? I mean, fucking LUZ does that!

But he is the bad guy because he’s the evil emperor and no amount of backstory or supposed meta narrative is going to fix that fundamental, thematic failing.

==========

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

[moosemonstrous]

I never write in the second person, but it seemed to fit, so 🤷

Ghost Rider Pacific Rim AU - Yegor Ivanov's edition

Say, you're in charge of security on a large, well-appointed quasi-military base housing twenty thousand people - mostly J-techs and their families, but also a sizeable assortment of soldiers, scientists, medical staff, relief workers and support crew. It's the most stable job you've ever had. The general populace is just so grateful for the giant robots you deploy to fight the ever-nastier demons crawling out of The Breach, you barely have to pay any attention to actual security part of it. Your subordinates haven't reported a single issue they couldn't deal with themselves in years. The eggheads fight between each other to secure your approval. You have the respect of the international leaders for keeping Hong-Kong off of their priority list. Somehow, in this beautiful, messed up world you managed to carve yourself out an existence most people can only dream of.

And you got there by making a hard decision once, ten years ago. Eli Morrow was a dangerous psychopath and once his usefulness ran its course, it was your responsibility to put him down. Sometimes, one man has to pull the trigger for the good of the many, and that day you pulled the trigger. Figuratively. It was a regrettable situation, but you don't really regret it, because you gave Eli every chance under the sun to pull himself together.

You said it broke your heart, to see what he did to his brother, but secretly you were relieved. You've done many terrible things together, before the monsters stopped being just men in a different uniform. You had a good handle on Eli for so long, you almost forgot that rabid dogs will bite their master's hand given half a chance. If it hadn't been poor Alberto, it would've been you.

You didn't believe for a second Beto's kids turned up on base purely by accident. Call it fate, or karma, or whatever you want, you can't pretend seeing a mirror image of a young Eli in your own damn hangar doesn't strike a chord deep in your chest. It's not a pleasant sensation.

You have no idea what their mother told them - she was smart enough to get out before all hell came loose, so maybe she was also smart enough to keep her mouth shut. The younger one is a non-issue, at least. You forgot he had the--the whatsit, some condition the medical was working on, the hook you had on the Reyeses to keep them on base. You should dig into the files, see if the same hook will work on the older one.

And you need all the hooks you can think of, because you fucked up. You panicked and figured, well, he doesn't know his old man's jaeger is a goddamn death trap kept only because it would be more expensive to take it apart. He doesn't know it killed every recruit to ever step a foot in it. And he's as sentimental as his father was, all wide-eyed at the sight of the machine making up a good portion of your nightmares.

Only Robbie Reyes is a little too much like his uncle, too, because he doesn't. Fucking. Die.

The whole K-Sci department is very excited, of course. The techs aren't. You should've timed yourself better, made sure Canelo and the rest of the old guard were off-shift when you brought Robbie to The Charger. Now they're watching your hands and lowering their voices whenever you step into the hangar. You can't make the problem disappear without someone starting to ask questions. You need to be smarter than that.

If you can't get rid of him, you must learn to control him. He's no Eli Morrow - and you kept a lid on that can of worms for nearly a decade, from boot camp through black ops to TJP. One scowling teenager is nothing. He needs a strong hand and a little misdirection, that's all.

He watches you too, though. Like he already knows. He can't--can he? How? Who would've told him?

That broken eye of his is tripping you up, that's all. A strong hand, and a promise of medical support for the younger one - you will have him asking 'how high' before the next demon is due.

Besides, piloting jaegers is such a dangerous job. Anything could happen out in the sea. You can live through another regrettable loss. You don't think you can live through whatever Robbie Reyes is planning when he looks at you like that.

[eretzyisrael]

By Hillel Fuld on X/Twitter

This is really really huge news.

The morally bankrupt organization called the United Nations just approved a decision calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. They want Israel to take Ramadan into account and stop the war. Ya know, the same way Hamas took our holiday into consideration.

Ok, that’s not news. The UN has always been a moral disgrace. The UN are a bunch of Jew hating low lives.

What IS new is that the U.S., our so-called ally, did not use its veto power to cancel the resolution.

This is an unprecedented diplomatic disaster that is so significant, it might very realistically be the beginning of the end of the friendship between Israel and the United States.

Now, to some people, this might be a surprise, but it isn’t a surprise to those people who have been paying attention.

Whoever thinks/thought that Biden cares about Israel or the Jewish people, you are clearly not paying attention.

Biden could not care less about us.

Now let me tell you how this plays out.

In the short term, this is genuinely scary for Israel. Without our U.S. ally, we are basically totally diplomatically isolated. Yes, there are still one or two countries that kinda have our back, but without the U.S., we are alone.

Scary.

But let’s take a few steps back and look at today’s news from a historical perspective.

We just celebrated Purim.

The comparison between Haman and Hamas writes itself. I’ve already spoken about that.

But the comparison between the evil king in the story of Purim, Achashverosh, and the most powerful leader today; the leader of the free world, Mr. Joe Biden wasn’t 100% clear.

Are they really comparable?

Well, today we have our answer and it’s an unequivocal yes!!

The king in the story of Purim didn’t care about the Jews. He agreed to annihilate them. But then, when his wife pleaded for her people, it says that Achashverosh went into the garden to contemplate.

Till now, Biden has been in the garden contemplating whether to choose the unpopular but moral choice of standing with the Jews or join the mob and scapegoat the Jews.

Today, Biden has made a clear decision to abandon his ally.

So what happens next?

Netanyahu has said he won’t send the delegation that was supposed to leave to Washington. He’s canceling that. As he should!

The rift between Israel and the U.S. will only increase and eventually, the relationship will disappear completely.

The United States of America was good to the Jews for many years, but it’s now the end of an era.

You might look at this decision not to veto the UN resolution as something small and insignificant. You would be dead wrong! This is a massive change in policy.

So what happens when an empire turns on the Jews?

The Jews try even harder to assimilate and prove that they are no different, but to no avail.

If you thought antisemitism was bad till now, you ain’t seen nothin yet. Now, those Jew hating lunatics have the backing of their government, a government that’s calling to reward the Hamas rapists and pedophiles.

Now, as far as the war goes, Israel will obviously not listen to the UN but that’s not the point. The point is, the kid who was being bullied in school but had protection from one of the big guys in the class, is now alone and the bullying is about to get a lot worse.

So then what?

Here’s the script that’s repeated in every generation.

The Jews are comfortable. They reach the top of the society. They assimilate. Antisemitism begins to show its face. They assimilate more (I think we’re up to about 72% assimilation now.). The Jews think that if they assimilate, the hatred will stop, when in reality, the opposite is true.

The more we assimilate and tell the nations how much we are just like them, the more they respond “No, you’re not. You’re not just like us and we have a tool to illustrate that. It’s called antisemitism.”

Then things get really bad, really fast.

We have some hard years ahead of us.

The good news? Every single empire, with zero exceptions, that came after the Jews, is now extinct.

Turns out that siding with the enemies of the Jews is a really bad strategy.

This won’t happen tomorrow or next week, but the United States of America will now join the long list of empires that came after the Jews and disappeared.

Here’s a partial list of those empires:

Babylonian

Roman

Assyrian

Persian

Greek

Soviet

Nazi

Today, America took its first meaningful step toward joining that list.

Again, I doubt this decision in the UN will be taken seriously by Israel, let alone implemented, but that’s really not the point.

Today, the love affair between Israel and the U.S. is showing very real signs of an imminent break up.

Now, something else will happen once that breakup is complete, in addition to the U.S. losing its world dominance.

Israel will be independent and will manufacture its own military equipment. Now, that’s a scary thought. If you knew how much each iron dome missile costs, you’d understand why that’s scary.

The F35 jets, the M16 rifles, and almost all other equipment, down to actual ammunition, originates in the U.S. Without that partnership, Israel is going to have to figure out how to bank roll all of this.

But we’ll figure it out.

We are a nation that stood alone throughout history. Any time we depended on anyone else besides ourselves and our God, things didn’t end well.

So we’ll break up, we will ramp up our military manufacturing, and we will finally understand that we can’t depend on the U.S. or any other country to defend us. We can only depend on ourselves, our army, and our God.

With this fragile friendship that we had with the United States, we were kidding ourselves into thinking we can bank on it. We can’t and that became clear today.

The Torah describes the Jewish people as:

הן עם לבדד ישכון ובגויים לא יתחשב

A people who dweels alone and does not take other nations into consideration.

Finally, this is true. We are going to dwell alone and we will no longer look to our fake friend for protection. That’s it. Those days are over. The end of an era.

The good news is that we know how this ends and it’s a happy ending, at least for us, not so much for America.

Today's ceasefire vote was supported by the UK too. How shameful.

The bottom line is that Israel will stand by its promise of never again with or without the US. The U.S. turned Jews away in The Holocaust, and they are now turning their back on the Jews yet again.

This news is highly disturbing, on the one hand, but it’s also a call for celebration. We knew this was going to happen. We expected it. Or at least those who know history expected it.

If this came true, the rest of the script will come true and the prophecies are now one step closer to reality.

Dear President Biden,

You should be ashamed of yourself and you have now secured your place in the history books as the first President to fully turn his back on the Jews. Yea, Obama was pretty bad, but this move today, is the final nail in the coffin of the U.S. Israel relationship. Congratulations, you are a coward and a weak leader who will regret today’s decision for as long as you live.

Dear the United Nations,

You never miss the opportunity to remind the world how immoral you are but you’re not just immoral, you’re also unimportant and irrelevant. Go take your Jew hatred elsewhere. You fulfilled your role in this world by giving us our state. Now you can disappear into the history books. No one will miss you.

And to all the countries that voted in favor of this repugnant resolution, you are weak and pathetic. You know what Jews around the world did yesterday? We celebrated the fall of an evil enemy who tried to annihilate us. That enemy was eliminated along with his ten sons and all those who supported him. We will celebrate your downfall too and it’s around the corner.

Folks, this is one huge step closer to the plot unfolding and the Jews coming out victorious.

Don’t worry, today’s news changes nothing other than the realization that we can’t depend on America or anyone else. Hopefully this will make us look inward, strengthen ourselves from within, and turn to God asking Him to give the IDF the strength to achieve complete victory.

Thank you, President Biden for finally taking off your mask. Now we have the clarity we need to do what we need to do.

As for you and your empire, enjoy it while it lasts because your end is near.

Very very near.

This monumental (not in a good way) decision makes me sick. Biden makes me sick. He is no friend of Israel’s and we need to stop pretending he is. That show is now over!

[mariacallous]

The Biden administration’s decision to transfer dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, or DPICMs, to Ukraine as part of a new assistance package has provoked a series of diplomatic rebukes from Washington’s long-standing allies and security partners, including Britain and Canada, which reiterated their opposition to the weapons banned by 123 countries.

U.S. President Joe Biden conceded that it was a “very difficult decision” to send DPICMs, better known as cluster bombs, to Kyiv but defended the transfer to CNN, saying: “This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it.”

Speaking as a British Lebanese conflict journalist, I have seen firsthand the impact of these horrific munitions on the civilian population of my own country, with unexploded submunitions causing death and injury decades after these weapons were last fired. It was partly Israel’s use of cluster bombs in the 2006 Lebanon war that pushed states to draft the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), banning the use, transfer, production, and stockpiling of cluster munitions.

This is a treaty I have long advocated for, and I took pride in Lebanon becoming the first Middle Eastern state to ratify the CCM in 2010. In more recent years, I have documented countless instances of Russian war crimes using cluster munitions against civilian targets in Syria and the devastation these indiscriminate bombs have on human life. Yet I find myself reluctantly supporting the Biden administration’s decision.

I understand the impact these weapons have on civilian populations better than many of the decision-makers in Washington and, in an ideal world, still wish that the United States, Russia, and Ukraine had signed and ratified the CCM and eradicated all remaining stockpiles.

But we don’t live in that world. Not only has Russia used cluster munitions extensively in its invasion of Ukraine, but it has repeatedly used these indiscriminate weapons on civilian targets, which amount to war crimes under international law.

With a heavy heart, and in a decision that weighs heavily on me as both a journalist and a human rights activist, I must put my own ideals aside and support the decision made by the White House. I stand respectfully in disagreement with my allies and colleagues working in the human rights community, including at Human Rights Watch.

This was not an easy decision to come to but one I made based on my professional assessment of the war in Ukraine as it stands at the time of writing. Under these strict and deeply tragic conditions, I believe that it is both militarily necessary and morally justified for Kyiv to receive these weapons.

The 21st century has seen largely asymmetric, low-intensity conflicts and insurgencies, and as such many of the signatories of the CCM could not ever imagine finding themselves, as Ukraine is today, fighting a 20th-century trench war. It is admirable that so many states opted to ban these weapons outright, but just as they could not ever imagine finding themselves in Ukraine’s position, many, too, fail to understand the existential nature of Ukraine’s struggle or the consequences for the Ukrainian people should that struggle fail.

While I agree with the vast majority of the arguments made regarding any use of cluster munitions, in the context of the war in Ukraine I have come to the same conclusion as Jack Watling and Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), who laid out their arguments for approving the transfer of DPICMs in a recent commentary.

It helps to fully understand why so many states have banned these weapons. DPICMs are not inherently more dangerous than other conventional weapons used on the battlefield. There are far more deadly and devastating weapons used in conflicts across the world that are not banned by international conventions, such as the Russian “bunker buster” KAB-1500L-Pr and the U.S. GBU-43/B MOAB, called the “Mother of All Bombs,” notably employed by former U.S. President Donald Trump in Afghanistan.

There are three main arguments against sending U.S.-manufactured DPICMs to Ukraine, and they are strong ones often made in good faith by principled people. Broadly speaking, they are related to three areas: the indiscriminate nature of submunitions, failure rate and unexploded ordnance, and arms proliferation.

Firstly, there are many different types of cluster munitions, with four main delivery methods: tube-launched (e.g., artillery shells), air-dropped container, aircraft dispenser, and conventional missiles. Given that Ukraine is currently only requesting and receiving 155 mm DPICM artillery shells, we can ignore the other types of cluster munitions also banned by the CCM as being irrelevant to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Unlike traditional artillery shells, which explode on impact, DPICMs disperse dozens of submunitions, spreading the explosive impact across a wider area.

They are, by their very nature, indiscriminate, in the same way firing a shotgun from a distance is, causing damage across a widespread area from just one artillery shell. It is this characteristic that makes these weapons such powerful tools on the front line against entrenched concentrations of infantry. It is also what makes their use in civilian residential areas, as Russia has done throughout this war, undoubtedly a war crime.

Given how Kyiv has prosecuted this war since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022—taking care to avoid collateral damage, trying to protect the lives of Ukrainian troops, and respecting the Geneva Conventions with regard to Russian prisoners of war—Kyiv’s usage will be far different from Russia’s. I think it is reasonable for Washington to conclude that it can trust the Zelensky government’s word that it will not use these weapons to commit war crimes on its soil or on Russian soil, which would answer the first argument against providing DPICMs to Ukraine.

The next major issue, and the strongest argument against these weapons existing at all, is unexploded ordnance. Cluster submunitions have a failure rate, which means that sometimes they do not explode on impact. Instead, they can lie dormant on the ground for years until they are disturbed by an unsuspecting civilian, leading in many cases to serious injury or death.

While all munitions have a failure rate, and unexploded ordnance remains a significant problem even in post-conflict regions that have not seen the use of cluster bombs, the sheer quantity and small size of cluster bomb submunitions mean that even DPICMs with very low failure rates can render large swaths of land where these weapons have proliferated uninhabitable without extensive demining operations. Children are particularly vulnerable to picking up unexploded submunitions in post-conflict areas.

This alone is a strong enough reason to advocate for a total ban on DPICMs, but in the context of their continued existence and their widespread proliferation during the Russo-Ukrainian war, there are clear military and humanitarian justifications for providing an exemption for Kyiv.

The context of the war as it stands in the summer of 2023 is critical to understanding why these justifications exist.

To begin with, large parts of Ukraine’s territory are occupied by Russian troops, stretched across more than 745 miles of an active front line. The tens of thousands of square miles of land in between those military forces is currently uninhabited, covered with trench lines, and littered with months of unexploded ordnance from the most intense artillery war in Europe since World War II.

There are no civilians in these areas; in fact, some have been bombarded so heavily that there are barely even any trees. While Russia clearly failed to conquer Kyiv in 2022, it has no intention of abandoning the areas it has occupied since last year, and it is heavily dug-in, hoping that the current lines of control at the very least become the new de facto borders of Ukraine.

While unexploded ordnance will be a significant problem for these tens of thousands of square miles of Ukrainian land for years to come, regardless of the outcome of the conflict, it will only become a threat to civilian life once the people themselves return. But if Ukraine fails in its goal to push Russia out of the land it currently occupies, these areas will remain permanently unoccupied, scarred by many more years of warfare.

This is not only a possibility; this is Russia’s overall goal in this phase of its war against Ukraine—to create new realities on the ground and to prevent Ukrainians from ever returning. Without a decisive Ukrainian military victory over Russia, there will be nobody left in these areas for unexploded ordnance to impact.

The final argument against the transfer of DPICMs is that by ignoring the CCM, the United States and Ukraine risk legitimizing the use and proliferation of cluster bombs in conflicts throughout the 21st century. My response to that is simple: The consequences of legitimizing a Russian fascist victory over Ukrainian democracy would be far worse, and that catastrophic scenario is significantly increased if Ukraine cannot overcome its artillery deficit.

That deficit, of both artillery and ammunition, is the gravest and most pressing issue for Ukraine and the reason Biden cited for sending the weapons. Ukraine already has an artillery disadvantage against Russia. Artillery ammunition stocks in the West among Ukraine’s partners have rapidly dwindled, and the failure to ramp up production of ammunition to meet Ukraine’s needs has resulted in a bottleneck for the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Ukrainian forces cannot advance without artillery, and they are running out of artillery ammunition to build on their advances, with no alternative supplies to replenish those stockpiles available anytime soon. The arguments made by human rights groups against Ukraine receiving DPICMs do not reflect an understanding of that shortage. If Ukraine had an unlimited supply of 155 mm ammunition, then perhaps this situation would not have arisen at all. And perhaps, as Biden implied, when the supply of 155 mm ammunition is no longer running critically low, further such transfers will not be necessary.

Furthermore, as Watling and Bronk wrote in their commentary, DPICMs are far more effective than traditional 155 mm shells at clearing the kinds of entrenched positions Ukrainian forces are coming up against right now. Every inch being fought for here in Ukraine costs Ukrainian blood to liberate, and every trench that can be effectively cleared using artillery saves the lives of Ukrainian troops. In response to the transfer’s announcement, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said as much: “The more losses we inflict on them the more lives of Ukrainian people we will be able to save.”

Ukraine is experiencing significantly more artillery ammunition shortfalls than Russia, and DPICMs can have a decisive impact on a critical stage of the conflict over the next few months. There are no readily available alternatives to their use, and the risk of collateral damage from Ukraine’s stated intention of use is fundamentally low.

Reznikov made it clear that Ukraine will not use DPICMs in inhabited areas, that it will keep strict records and logs of their use, and that it will undertake extensive demining operations to deal with unexploded ordnance in areas liberated from Russian occupation. It is reasonable for Ukraine’s international allies to trust that Kyiv will use these weapons responsibly and that it can be trusted to protect its own population from the unintended collateral damage of unexploded ordnance. Even without these transfers, these areas will need to be extensively demined.

The consequences of refusing Kyiv’s request for DPICMs during an artillery ammunition deficit, however, cannot be overstated. Ukraine is facing an existential threat from a Russian genocidal war of conquest, and the best way to protect Ukrainian civilians going forward is to provide Kyiv with the weapons it needs to win this war against its much more powerful foe.

While I empathize with the Western capitals criticizing the Biden administration’s decision, from the military context of this war the consequences for Ukraine of not overcoming this artillery deficit are too terrible to be ignored.

The signatories of the CCM are not powerless to change the situation facing Ukraine. The first thing they can do is dramatically ramp up the domestic manufacturing of 155 mm artillery shells to finally solve the ammunition shortfall. The next thing they can do is start pledging the billions of dollars and the years of support that will be required to assist Ukraine’s postwar demining programs. The last is to finally start understanding that Ukraine’s fight for its survival is existential and that questions about what a postwar Ukraine will look like are completely irrelevant if there is no postwar Ukraine.

[beardedmrbean]

An organiser of a "white party" in Sri Lanka has apologised after the event sparked a backlash online.

The event's advertisement specified a white dress code, but also had a line saying "Face control: White" - which was largely interpreted to mean the event was open only to white people.

An organiser later said the event was "a bad idea", adding that it was meant to bring together expatriates.

The party, which was due to take place last Saturday, was cancelled.

Backlash against the event was swift, with many on social media calling it "disgusting" and "racist".

"I know not all expats are like this... but this sort of thing should be stopped fast and stopped hard," said one local restaurant owner.

"How dare they come to a brown country and ban the people of that country," another social media user said on Facebook.

Writing on Instagram under the handle geo_ecstatic, a man who said he was an event organiser, said there was "no malice or racism" in planning the party.

"We wanted to meet expats who have been living here for a long time and love Sri Lanka. The team... supported me and a joint decision was made to quickly organise a party," he said, adding that he has since had to leave the country after receiving a barrage of abuse and threats.

"I didn't expect this to be such a sensitive moment for a huge number of people. I admit that it was a bad idea... and I understand that we created it ourselves out of our stupidity. I deeply apologise to everyone whose feelings were hurt."

The event was due to be held in the Sarayka Lounge in the southern coastal town of Unawatuna. The venue later posted a statement saying the party had been cancelled, adding that its staff team " did not conduct a thorough-enough check" and have "severed ties" with the event planners.

"We have never supported and will never support various racist statements or organisations," they wrote.

The organiser as well as the owners of Sarayka Lounge are believed to be Russian citizens.

Rupasena Koswatta, president of an Unawatuna entrepreneurs' association told BBC Sinhala many Russians have moved into Unawatuna, a coastal city just 5km (3.1mi) from Galle, in the last two years.

Many of the tourism businesses there are now owned by Russians in the area now known by many as "Little Moscow".

The Russian Embassy in Colombo later released a statement saying it "strongly condemns all forms of racial discrimination and nationalism" and urged citizens residing on the island to follow its laws and respect local customs.

Later on Sunday, Sri Lanka said it had ended long-term tourist visa extensions for Russians and Ukrainians. More than 288,000 Russians and nearly 20,000 Ukrainians have travelled to Sri Lanka since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, according to reports. But the country's President Ranil Wickremesinghe later reportedly said the decision was made without prior Cabinet approval.

[dumbestthingiveeverheard]

Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard: 8/4/2023

Fifth Place: Asa Hutchinson

As Asa Hutchinson continues his Presidential run, the writing on the wall--which was always against him--has become so clear that the only person who doesn't think he should just drop out is, well, Asa Hutchinson. However, another reminder of his failure of a campaign can be found on The Hill, which today ran the headline "Hutchinson says he’s ‘close to halfway there’ in reaching GOP presidential debate threshold." If he is in a race for the presidency or a race against Spongebob is currently unclear.

Fourth Place: John McWhorter

His New York Times column "One Sentence Does Not Define a Curriculum" goes after the critics of Ron DeSantis's recently approved educational standards in Florida, noting that much of this complaining is about a single sentence.

However, from the tone of coverage of this passage, one might suppose that it was a central plank in the curriculum. Instead, it was but one passage amid hundreds of others, which constitute an almost exhaustive coverage of the gruesomeness of slavery in the United States. Taken together, they are such an informed recitation of our racist past that it is almost surprising DeSantis would approve them.

This is an amazing rebuttal of the people who believe that sentence is the only thing in the entire curriculum, although given I have yet to see anybody make that claim I would call this nothing more than strawmanning. Unless something about the wider context of that statement changes its meaning, bringing up that most of the document is fine (as if we'd accept an A for effort regarding how children are taught about history) is just nonsensical. To put it another way: Although he is right that this one sentence being bad does not make the entire curriculum racist (something which nobody is claiming), that does not make said one sentence any less racist.

McWhorter also makes this note:

It’s important also to note that the principal purported gaslighter was himself Black. The person responsible for the infamous passage, according to fellow group members, was William Allen. He is an academic and also a Republican, but, as challenging as it can be to perceive this in our times, that party affiliation does not automatically render him suspect on matters of race.

Although it is true that Allen's political party does not make his statements on race any less correct by default, the mention of him being black seems to come with the implication that his race adds validity to his statements, which is equally untrue. People of color can have stupid, uninformed, and bigoted opinions on issues related to racial minorities just as everybody can, because idiocy knows no race.

Third Place: Mark Levin

Speaking of idiotic things said about slavery, Levin made a rather moronic comment about the Trump indictment yesterday:

We were reminded last night by an Israeli, Caroline Glick -- born in America -- who said one of the great legal minds in Israel who she spoke to said, you know, in the United States, the Dred Scott decision, which was decided in 1857 - the impact of that decision took a few years to really settle in. It served as the foundation for the Civil War.

And here I was thinking it had to do with the South--who agreed with Dred Scott v. Sanford--attempting to leave the union after the election of an abolitionist President.

This is one political party trying to destroy another. This is one political party trying to monopolize elections, federal law enforcement, and the entire justice system. And if they get away with it, it's over. It's over.

Of course, nobody is trying to destroy the entire Republican Party, what they are attempting to do is imprison Donald Trump because, you know, he broke the law.

Second Place: Mike Huckabee

Mother Jones has an article out on his recent children's book The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change, and although I will not cover every error they documented, I will show you my personal favorite:

The visuals used in the guide are even more blatantly misleading than its text, [Glenn] Branch [deputy director of the National Center for Science Education] noted. One graph, titled “Thousands of Years of Carbon Dioxide Levels,” spans 400,000 years ago until “present day,” and is summarized with the conclusion, “looking back in time, carbon dioxide levels have always gone up and down.” But the data the graph labels as “present day”—peaking at a little over 280 parts per million—actually represents levels from 2,300 years ago, around 391 BC, Branch pointed out. The vast majority of the carbon dioxide driving climate change has been emitted only since the Industrial Revolution, with atmospheric CO2 concentrations currently over 420 parts per million, higher than any data point included on the graph, which has a scale that only goes up to 300 parts per million.

This man seriously confused 391 BC with the present day.

Winner: Marjorie Taylor Greene

Regarding the Trump indictment, Greene said this "feels like communism" which is an economic system that has nothing to do with the ability to charge one's political leaders and usually results in authoritarian states where such a thing is impossible.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, you've said the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

[opinated-user]

Lily is so weird to me because she just insists on deep throatng ceos and corporations and throwing regular workers under the bus for poor decisions. Like it's the reporters fault that Disney is always claiming to have their first gay character, even though the company could easily make their own media posts correcting them. It's the designers who released the new pokemon game early despite that not ever being their call, but instead the higher ups in the company. She never brings up how the ceo of blizzard is one of the worse out there, or the real sexual predators that worked in the company, but instead wants to beat the lady who wrote her fictional wifu wrong with a rock. Its Suagers fault for SUs shitty realse schedule not the network. Like it's really weird to me that this woman who prides themselves on being super progressive apparently hates workers and either straight up defends or ignores the real people in power.

All I can think is that, remembering her posts about other breadtubers, and complaining that instead of blaming everything bad on racism they blamed things on class struggles, she somehow came to the conclusion that corporations really aren't that bad and people are just lying about how little say they have when working for them. It's also easy to see that her lack of ever having a job outside YouTube has severely impacted what she feels workers can get away with. Like she believes if they get told do something they don't agree with they can/should just say no, as if that's a thing they can do. So instead of it being the higher ups fault, it's the lower ranking people's fault for not standing up to them. It's really a gross mindset, kinda victim blaming mindset.

i have been informed in the past that apparently she worked on a fast food restaurant some time ago, but otherwise you're right on point, anon. there's only one thing i want to remark and is this: "Like it's the reporters fault that Disney is always claiming to have their first gay character, even though the company could easily make their own media posts correcting them." if someone out there believes that the reporters just made those articles without any input from the company or their marketing team then they don't understand what marketing is. companies hire those writers to write about their movies, products, etc. if you have ever been on youtube and see an ad break of the youtuber suddenly explaining all about a new service or product they want you to try out, it's basically the same thing. they could not write anything that Disney doesn't want them to say, it would literally be impossible without there being some big consequences for whoever it was responsible for the mistake. the publisher gets paid by the company, the company recieves more potential costumers, the website where the article is written gets clics. it's a perfect arrengement for everyone. the only outlayers are indie publications and random reviewers just talking about the media, but if the article was on any kind of official publication then it was most certainly agreed upon before hand. someone had to approve that, just like sponsors have to approve the ads youtubers do before the video is published. this is already a known fact when it comes to most movies of big companies or trendy products, but when it comes to disney it's absolutely absurd to suggest that they wouldn't do this. disney as a company has spend 5.5 million dollars on advertisement last year alone. they had the resources, the time and the people to make Strange World into a success and they didn't because they didn't want to. when the movie with a main queer character of color fails they get to say "well, at least we tried!" and move on to keep making cisheteronormative movies that they'll promote to ensure that those are wins for the company. meanwhile LO'll either completely ignore the movie ever existed or insist that the movie was bad by itself so of course nobody cared for it. she's a capitalist at heart so when she sees a big company like Disney of course her first instinct is to praise it first, because something right and smart they must be doing to be on the position they're in. workers, on the other hand, don't have that power so that must mean they're doing something wrong and it's actually their fault.

[kessielrg]

[Zelda] Please, Protect the Arts: Part 1

Notes: I have an outline for this story, but I don’t know how I’ll pace out when I write the chapters proper. I won’t be uploading this to AO3 until it’s finished either way (I think), so please enjoy it now. There is not a particular version of Link and Zelda in mind, I just want to play with the characters a bit. Link is partially mute.

Rating: K

Word Count: 1,593 words

Next | AO3

- - -

There were two things that Zelda disliked: people who used their strength to hurt others, and when her father listened to lobbyists with money instead of the people any new law actually effected. That being said, Zelda kept a close eye on the politics her father was involved with. He would sometimes joke that she was the only campaign manager he’d ever listen to. 

And, like most politicians, he was lying. 

Zelda’s father only listened when she was truly annoyed by a certain law, and he only truly followed her advice when he got enough citizen approval to follow through. By then it was too late to change the other politician’s minds as well, leaving the bill to usually go in favor of the wrong party. It was frustrating. It made Zelda wish she never went into politics herself.

She would though.

She was too furious with the world not to.

The notes from the last state-wide conference sat on her father’s office desk. Zelda hadn’t meant to spy on them. She had actually come into his office to get a spare pencil. Her father kept a lot of spare pencils in his desk drawer- enough so that it was the only thing allowed in that particular drawer. The Manila folder with the conference notes didn’t seem important at first, and Zelda had almost dismissed it. It wasn’t until her eyes caught the word ‘education’ that Zelda took a double take.

Curiosity soon became her enemy.

“You can’t let this arts grant -or lack thereof- go through!” Zelda demanded as she stormed to her father.

The poor old man, who sometimes wished he had his daughter earlier to better keep up with her energy, turned his gaze away from the chessboard to Zelda instead. He gave her a tired smile to counter her unbridled anger.

“I’m afraid that decision is not entirely my own,” he reminded her. “If anything, it’s out of my hands. That decision mostly rests with the board of ed.”

Zelda slammed her hand down on the chessboard as she looked her father dead in the eye. “You know that’s a lie.” she seethed. “Especially when you know as well as I do that the wording points toward one particular school.”

Her father gave a heavy sigh, and left that at his only answer. Zelda followed his gaze to where she had accidentally knocked over a knight. Peering over it was the queen, just two moves away from creating a checkmate.

. . .

When Zelda was mad, she went to the library. It had been a way her mother taught her to manage her anger. A place where silence had to be maintained. A place where you could transfer that anger to a protagonist that kept making terrible decisions in the first act of a fantasy trilogy. A place where things could be alright in the end, as long as you had the patience to see it through.

If only real life could work like that.

Zelda and her father had come to an ultimatum; if she was able to convince the board of education that the art program should resume its regular funding (or receive more), then he promised he’d make sure the budget cut wouldn’t go through. Zelda had accepted the challenge without thought. It wasn’t until she got to the library that she realized she had essentially signed the budget cut bill herself. The young woman let out a whining sigh to herself as she thumbed the spines of the books she passed. She didn’t know how important the arts were to properly support them. She herself had only taken music lessons for the school credit and not from genuine interest. Even then, she had no idea on how it applied to her life after- other than a feeling of fleeting satisfaction as her fingers fluttered over a well cared for harp.

Thinking of music and budget doom almost made her tune out the sounds of a wind instrument being played. When it did register, it took Zelda a few moments more to realize she wasn’t simply thinking the tune. No, no, no. Someone was actually playing music in the library. Partially furious at the breech of silence she had been told was mandatory, Zelda went after the sound.

Her search brought her to the very back of the library. Residing there were study rooms. Sitting in one of them was a boy not much older than she was, and he was gently playing a tune on a small, handmade, wooden ocarina as he looked over the thin book he was reading. The sight immediately made Zelda recoil. How on earth did he sneak a music instrument in, however small it was, and how had no one told him to stop yet?

“He’s pretty good, isn’t he?” a voice asked from behind her, making Zelda jump. Her fingers accidentally knocked against the study room door as she whipped her whole body around. It was just a librarian. Zelda offered up a rather guilty smile in return.

“It’s a bit disheartening to see him practice here.” she admitted. “Is there no room for him at the music center?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” the librarian mused, “But he’s welcome here regardless.”

Zelda nodded in understanding. But something egged at the back of her mind. She realized what it was soon enough.

“You don’t know his name?”

For this, the librarian gave a rather sheepish shake of their head.

“It’s never come up.” they admitted.

“Never?”

“Never.”

Zelda now gave the librarian a funny look. How was it possible to never know a patron’s name? At the very least it would have been on the library card…

The librarian caught on to her expression pretty quickly.

“He doesn’t talk.” the librarian went on to amend. “At least,  not very often. He just comes in every Friday, sits right there in that room (it’s got better sound protection from what I’ve heard- gets booked for meetings often because of it), and just plays away from whatever sheet music he’s brought in.”

“Really?” Zelda questioned. She turned to look back at the boy- her blood ran cold in seeing that he was staring right back at her. Apparently, the sound proofing wasn’t that good either way.

The two kept eye contact for what seemed like forever. The boy’s dark blue eyes held a sort of hidden wisdom; as if he saw a lot of things but were never part of them. Zelda wondered what stories he could tell. She wondered what kind of gossip he knew.

“It looks like he’s taking a break now.” the librarian then noted from over Zelda’s shoulder. “You might be able to go in and talk to him if you want.”

“I think I might.” Zelda nodded, not once turning her gaze away from the boy.

Her body moved on its own. One moment Zelda was aware that she was outside the study, and the next she was sitting down opposite of the boy. In his hands was the ocarina still. And surely enough in between them on the table was sheet music. In trying to figure out which piece it was, Zelda noticed a familiar logo. It was the same as the school that the budget cut bill would affect. A part of Zelda’s chest tightened.

“You go to the Hylian School of Arts?”

The boy looked at her, blinked, then casually looked down at his sheet music. He looked back up at her again with a nod.

“You must come from a pretty affluent household.” Zelda mused. She was prodding, she knew it, but she had to see what this boy knew. “HSOA is very thorough with its application process.”

To her surprise, the boy shook his head.

“A scholarship then?”

For this, he nodded, and part of Zelda already understood why.

“If you don’t mind,” Zelda went on, “Can I have your name? There is a rather broad budget cut planned for your school, and I promised my father (a local representative of the state) that I would create an argument against the board of education to keep that funding. If I knew your name, we could work together to build a case. What do you think?”

The boy thought about it longer than Zelda was anticipating. Eventually, she started to ruffle through this sheet music for a blank page. Unceremoniously ripping off a generous piece from the corner, the boy withdrew a pencil that had been inside a backpack hidden under the table and wrote something down. Zelda wasn’t able to see it until he handed it to her.

‘Wednesday, 1:00pm. Room 115.’

“This isn’t your name.” came Zelda’s first, very confused, remark.

The boy smiled at it- it carried notes of mischievousness and a special kind of cockiness. He got up from his spot, gently placing the ocarina down in doing so, and gestured for Zelda to follow him. Zelda raised an eyebrow, but did so anyway. Together he led them out of the study room and back through the library. The boy’s path seemed certain as they reached the kids’ section, but faltered as he searched the rows for something in particular.

A small noise resembling an ‘ah-ha!’ escaped his lips before he pulled a book out. He gave it to Zelda with a careful look of contemplation. He studied her reaction as she looked over the title: Rumpelstiltskin.

“Oh, so you think you’re funny, do you?” Zelda soon snarked at him. 

His only response was a wide, boyish grin.

[readingaway]

Worst Reads of 2022

time for some negativity! I’m just going to list the books I absolutely hated this year and give a short explanation of why I hated them.

1- Disfigured by Amanda Leduc

Literally the best part of this book is the description. The contents never get deeper than that and the book utterly failed to really investigate or explore what Leduc claimed to be writing about. Much of the text is taken up by autobiographical details and biographical details about other writers. 

2 - Namesake (Fable, #2) by Adrienne Young

This was especially disappointing because I’d quite enjoyed Fable - in-so-far as I can enjoy most YA adventure fantasy-romance, and Fable was very typical of its genre. But Namesake? What the hell was the point of this duology. I have to ask. What was the point Ms. Young? More importantly, you do understand that in your chosen genre of YA fantasy adventure the protagonist needs to do something.

But wait a second I need to go over another detail before I get back to the insanely weak plot and characters. The worldbuilding. It sucked. In Fable I put up with it, there was some nice imagery. But with all the other issues in Namesake I couldn’t ignore it. Young uses the same tired costuming tropes where, in one scene, the MC is forced - forced I say! - to wear a pretty dress to a party which involves a horribly uncomfortable corset. (What undergarments was she wearing before?) But that’s barely even an issue compared to, for example, that there is exactly one alcoholic drink in the entirety of this fictional world and it is called rye. That’s it. Rye rye rye. He was drinking rye, she was drinking rye, they were drinking rye. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had originally been rum and the editor made Young come up with something else to call it because rum would be too stereotypical or whatever. The rye thing is a pretty good example of the weak worldbuilding without getting too far into the plot. But I would also note that there is no clarity in what the climate is like, or the various cultures. Oh yeah. I guess there’s some magic in this story and some people have the ability to read or sense gems somehow, and it is only used for tension in a couple scenes and doesn’t matter to the main plot.

And back to the plot, which sucked. As a general rule, the main character of a story needs to do something. There are other important things about plots and characters, such as that a main character should want something, and that this drives the plot. The MC here does, at least, want something: her father’s love. What she does do over the course of two books is all about gaining her father’s approval or love, or it’s about helping her love interest. Just typing that makes me realize that somehow this duology failed the sexy lamp test with its main character. Fortunately it’s been almost a year so I won’t write more but seriously. This book is so bad. It’s soooooooooo bad.

3 - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

I love the 90s adaptation of this book and so was excited to read listen to it, at last. That was a mistake. The first section of the book, up until Edmond escapes prison is good. It’s tense and you can really feel and understand why he’s so angry and set on revenge. The rest of the book.... his revenge is too intricate, there’s too much moralizing and talking. The revenge isn’t even satisfying. There’s a time gap between the escape and Edmond’s return to Marseille and he picks up this Greek slave girl who is kind of his adopted daughter but then becomes his love interest. He screws Mercedes over. The movie changed almost everything from the point of the escape and that was the right decision. There’s no satisfaction or great romance in the novel.

4 - Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

So, I wasn’t a fan of American Hippo because it turned out that the novellas were not, in fact, fun and were instead gritty westerns. I figure that’s more an issue of my not reading the description carefully enough. This, I was unsure about and I just wish I hadn’t picked it up. It might have been good, but it’s missing so much worldbuilding/ information. I cannot buy into a story where somehow, at the time of the real american civil war, there’s instead this very fascist government over all the white people and there’s a secret society of people ferrying folks from the east to the free, rebel-held west. And that the headquarters of this rebel stronghold are in Utah. And the place names are the same. You cannot actually expect me to believe that there is a Provo, Utah not twenty years after initial colonization that is a glorious safe haven for free speech and being gay and nonbinary. I also don’t recall there being much about race or colonization in this story despite it being set, again, at the time of the real american civil war and with the group the audience is supposed to be rooting for heading for safety in a very recently colonized place.

*addendum, apparently this story is actually supposed to be “near-future.” But the worldbuilding issue remains the same. There’s nothing in this novella to 1) make it clear when this is supposed to be set, 2) make it clear or even possible to guess what has happened to bring about this “near-future” dystopia. I’ve read other, similar stories that also involve a near-future dystopia set in the US that give enough detail for that described future to be plausible. (Ex, The Handmaid’s Tale, or Civilwarland In Bad Decline.) This novella does not give enough information for me to even visualize the story, much less understand the essential question of “how did we get here?”

5 - How to Write a Mystery, edited by Lee Child

There were a lot of bad essays

6 - Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

I wrote a review of it which you can read here.

7 - The Once and Future King by T.H. White

So yeah. I would like to stuff a sock in Merlyn’s mouth and duct-tape it shut and shoot him out of a cannon. That’s a bit extreme, but so much of this text was taken up by his patronizing, philosophizing, when he wasn’t going on racist rants and making up colonial manifestos. Such speeches rang especially hollow with the hindsight provided from the last several decades since the books were being published. There were other issues I had with the book, such as abrupt time skips and glossing over important details or constantly referencing other authors so that in order to understand this excessively long book, one must already be familiar with the preceding major works of arthuriana.

[lovemesomesurveys]

Do you have a specialty dish that you're really good at making? I used to make a pretty good bowl of ramen, ha.  What video games did you play when you were growing up? Mario Bros, Spyro, Sonic, and Crash Bandicoot.  Are you good at making big decisions alone or do you tend to seek approval from others? I usually talk about it with my mom and see what she thinks and then spend a lot of time thinking about it. Depending on what it’s about, I also look up info about it or read opinions from others online.  Does your town or city have good public transport, or is it easier to drive? Most people drive, but we have buses as well.  What was the last cocktail you drank? I don’t remember. I haven’t drank in like a decade. 

Are you good at keeping running counts and tallies in your head? It’s better to write it down.  Does your country have its own edition of Big Brother? Yeah.  How often do you take a nap during the day? I take naps most days.  What social media platforms do you use? Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat... does YouTube and Pinterest count? Are there any foods you hate the smell of but like the taste, or vice versa? Hardboiled eggs can be smelly, but I like them.  Do you have a dishwasher? Yep. Who do you live with? My parents, brother, and doggo.  Are you listening to anything right now? I’m watching a YouTube video.  What is one of your favourite sitcoms? Roseanne.  Do you make to-do lists? Yeah. And other types of lists as well. I’m definitely a list gal.  If you could magically become fluent in any language, what would it be? Spanish. I can only speak it a little.  Have you ever tried vegan ice cream? Yeah. I don’t like the ones made with sunflower oil or coconut.  What pet names do you use for your friends/loved ones? lol my family and I call each other “boob” and “boobala.” What pet names do you like to be called? I like more unique and fun ones than the typical “babe” “honey”, etc.  What was the best concert you've ever seen? The Green Day concert was pretty awesome. Honestly, I think concerts are just fun in general, I’ve always had a good time at the ones I’ve been to. It’s just has a special feeling.  Do you have any hobbies? I like to spend time online, read, color, watch TV, watch YouTube videos, do word searches, and make bracelets.  What is your favourite pasta shape? Penne and thin spaghetti noodles.  Have you ever developed your own film? No. When was the last time you stayed in a hotel/motel and where was that? Back in March. We stayed in a beachy, touristy town. What breed was the last dog you saw? My doggo is a German Shepherd/Lab mix.  Do you watch the Super Bowl? Nope.  What's your favourite Disney movie? Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh, A Goofy Movie, and Toy Story.  What's the most stressful job you've ever had? I’ve never had a job. What was the last text message you received? My Nana always sends me the daily devotional from the book she has.  Should you be asleep right now? If so, go to bed! No, it’s only 2:42PM. I am tired, though. 

[aitian]

Mon 01/29/24 1:57am

it's been more than a year. damn. couldn't write all year bc i have been so ashamed & traumatized.

back in school for electrical engineering & honestly i hate it. at least im (slowly) learning some useful things from within the massive amounts of bullshit. when does this end...

if i could have seen into the future, i would be so ashamed & sad to know what im doing now. maybe i wouldn't have made it to today. maybe i would have just done better. what a mess.

it's a bit painful to relive but here are the facts:

terrible teaching job. rude, dirty, sick. kids were funny. one kid won the spelling bee (we would practice together in the hall) & told me she wanted to be an artist. one kid never talked & had bad spoken english but wrote a rly good reflection essay abt boarding schools & american education (postscript "im hungry"). one kid told me stories abt learning to drive a motorcycle with his dad in DR & bragged to all the other kids that i was a great help for his high school application. that is all.

went to taiwan w the roomies. it was ok. really beautiful, wish i saw more of the mountains & oceans

terrible nonprofit job. abusive, useless, malicious. spent a lot of time studying soc*alism w chinese ch@racteristics & material origins of class society. honestly developed some optimism for human progress. fired for working too many hours & representing the org extremely well on a panel where the other panelists and audience really lifted up my perspective. everyone respected my work except the narcissist clowns. i met a nice friend named alan. that is all.

went to china, & felt saved & relieved to see people standing up. this time there was much less air pollution, especially near the coastal cities. luoyang had a bit more, but the city was a giant network of parks. i counted five rows of trees on each side of the streets. my uncles are so smart with critical analysis of history, human progress, world politics, and local affairs. sigh... feels bad to be treated like a dog in this backward country. i realized that i need training that prepares me for the realities of this strange world.

applied to school for electrical engineering. studied python & calculus in the meantime-- & thank god i did... i honestly felt good abt the decision, knowing that i need to develop myself if i want to survive in this world.. & i have reasons or energy to do it instead of waiting for death. is that the end of depression?

hung out w adele, erica, & tracy a bit bc they were all in town for the holidays. i missed my friends. they were rly nice to me.

started school in january. it fucking sucks. ppl r so stupid & rude. ridiculous. im tired & angry every day. i am running a huge marathon full of sloppy, impossible problems that take hours longer than they should. overworked & mad every day.

some reflections i guess..

emmy has been really hands-off with my life. idk if they dont have ideas or dont want to step in, or they r just observing what happens. idk. i dont feel like emmy approves or disapproves of anything. maybe relieved when i escape the shitholes i dug myself into. i hope emmy can help me become someone i feel proud of. i helped emmy apply to masters programs but idk if its the right step for emmy, & they dont have strong reasons honestly. they got accepted by the committee a few days ago. sigh.. i desperately want emmy to have my back.

im back to being so depressed. unsure abt what im doing, feeling doomy abt past present & future. will things get better? im in trouble if i need to tell myself that to cope w the present. im stronger than i was before, i think....

hang in there, love.

[milf-murdock]

Last Kiss (Part 1)

Simon “Ghost” Riley x F! Reader 

A/N: So the first prompt won, hahaha. Simon thinks his S/O went down in a plane crash in a mission gone wrong, only to find out upon return that she made it. The relief causes Ghost to finally confront his feelings about you and how much you mean to him.  This is my first time writing for Simon, and I’ve never played Call of Duty, but damn the chokehold this man has me in. I was a little lazy with the research, so we’re gonna need to suspend some disbelief for a minute here, okay? This really got away from me, so I’m going to make a part 2 with the promised smut + feelings confessions.  Warnings: some angst, implied reader death (but she’s fine!!!), happy ending I promise :,) Some minor description of injuries (bruises, cut lip) Reader call sign is “Ace” because for her first few months in the military she was pretty much always in some kind of ace bandage for one injury or another (this may be based in my real life experience lol).

“It’s a relief mission,” you stated, clicking on the map that was projected in the briefing room. “This storm is hitting hard and fast, and if we can’t get these supplies to those people before it hits…” You let the others fill in the rest of the sentence on their own. 

“It’s too dangerous,” Price argued, his brows furrowing in concentration as he studied the report. 

“We’re the only option, Captain,” you countered, your eyes flicking to a familiar masked face at the table. Simon hadn’t said one word since you filled them in on the briefing. “There’s no other group as close as we are. If we don’t act now, those people will die. They have no supplies–no food, no clean water, no medical supplies.”

Price opened his mouth to object further, but you pushed on. “The flying conditions are suboptimal to say the least, but two small planes should be enough to bring all the necessary supplies and get us there and back in time to beat the storm. It’s a tight window, but we can make it. I know we can.” 

At this point, Simon finally looked up and met your eyes. 

“No.”

The word was solid. Decisive. Not open for discussion.

“I’m not asking for permission,” you seethed. “The mission has already been approved from higher up. I’m heading out within the hour.” 

With that, you slammed the laptop shut, considering the briefing over. You stormed out the door, eager for some fresh air and to step away from the men continuing to bicker amongst themselves. You made it all of five steps before a familiar hand found its way to your elbow, pulling you aside. 

“Listen to me,” the hoarse, gravelly voice that provided so much comfort to you most days served to just work you up even further. 

“No, you listen to me,” you snapped, taking a step closer to him. A familiar fire blazed in your eyes, and Simon hated how much he enjoyed it. “I don’t know why all of a sudden you think I can’t handle myself, but let me just remind you I’m really fucking good at what I do.” 

“This has nothing to do with whether I think you can do this,” Simon couldn’t help the frustration that edged its way into his tone. “I just want you to be safe. There is so much potential for error in these calculations. I mean, we’re talking about the fucking weather for christ sake. And this ‘window’ you guys have come up with? There is no room for error there. This plan is insane.”

“I know that, Simon.” You couldn’t help the bitterness that laced your voice. “I helped come up with the damn plan.” 

“But I also know that I am the best pilot we’ve got, and the only hope for those people. So I’m sorry that apparently you don’t think I can fucking handle it. But I’m going. And that’s final.” You turned on your heel to storm off again, and to your mild surprise, Simon didn’t stop you. 

Simon stood there and watched you walk away, trying to fight the war of emotions going on inside of him. Frustration that you wouldn’t listen. A tinge of pride at your commitment to your mission. And a sinking nervousness that had his stomach feeling like it was lined with lead.

“Damn stubborn woman,” he muttered before turning and heading back to the briefing room, half hoping he could still talk some sense into Price to stop this, while also knowing you were damn well going to do what you wanted. 

You took one more final look over the supplies before giving everything the final approval and hopping down from the cockpit. “She looks good to go,” you commented, giving the aircraft a hearty smack. Your partner, Dameron, did the same. 

“Then let’s get after it. Time’s a tickin,” Dameron threw a smile and a wink your way, which was met with your own considerable eye roll. You two were the best of the best, and as such had flown on countless missions together. He was one of your closest friends, and you knew immediately he was the right man for the job. 

Just as you turned around to climb back into the cockpit, you saw a flash of a skull mask in your periphery.

Simon was making his way to you. 

You toyed with the helmet in your hands, trying to look anywhere but at the mask and those deep brown eyes. 

“I’m glad I caught you before you left.” 

You made a noncommittal sound, taking your bottom lip between your teeth and buffing out an imaginary spot on your helmet. 

“Look, I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I don’t believe in you. I’ve flown with you. Believe me, I know you’re a fucking excellent pilot. I just–” he cut off, swallowing hard and looking away. “Fucking hell,” he muttered under his breath. “I just worry. That’s all.” It wasn’t easy for Simon to talk about his emotions. Especially when it comes to you. It’s all just such foreign territory, and this whole worrying about someone else thing? That was definitely uncharted waters. 

As much as you hated to admit it, hearing Simon admit to caring about you this way, and caring about your safety this much, it warmed something in you. 

You two hadn’t really put much of a label on this thing between the both of you. It was so much more than just the frequent hookups. But in this line of work, and with the background you two had, everything else just went unsaid. There didn’t seem to be much point in establishing anything else, not when you weren’t sure what the next day would bring. 

Your eyes drifted up to meet Simon’s and you immediately felt yourself getting lost in those mesmerizing brown eyes, clearly filled with worry. You tried to commit every last detail to memory. 

“I’ll be back before you know it, Ghost,” you winked, trying to force yourself to remain relaxed and confident and desperately trying to hide the fact that your heart felt like it was going to beat out of your chest because of that look in his eyes.

You took a step closer, one hand held on to your helmet and the other reached up to trace the outline of his tactical vest. You glanced up through your eyelashes, a devious smile on your face and you hoped it matched the confidence you were trying to project. “And when I get back…” you trailed off, sliding your hand up to toy with the hem of the balaclava at his collarbone. You inhaled a shaky breath, which immediately betrayed the calm facade you were trying to front. “Well, when I get back, I expect you to show me just how happy you are to see me.” 

It took everything in Simon not to groan at your touch. “Come back safe to me, darling, and I’ll show you exactly how much I missed you.” 

With a quick glance around to make sure the coast was clear, Simon lifted up the very edge of his balaclava, just enough to expose his strong jaw, a hint of blonde stubble catching your eyes. Simon took your jaw in his free hand, pressing a strong kiss to your lips. 

You drank in his taste. His scent. Committing it all to memory. 

With a final pat on his tactical vest, you put your signature confident smirk back on your face before taking a step back and placing your helmet on your head. 

“See you soon, Ghosty,” you teased your favorite nickname for him before turning and climbing back up into the cockpit, taking a decent amount of satisfaction in knowing how good your ass looked in your flight suit. 

“This is Ace to base, over.” Your aircraft gave another shutter beneath you and you fought for control. 

“This is base, we copy.” You could barely make out the words through the static. The storm came in so much faster than you had expected, and you were navigating through the worst of it. 

Another jolt came, this one even stronger, and suddenly your dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree. 

“This storm is hitting hard,” you gritted out into the microphone. “I’m not able to hold it.” You grunted as the plane shuttered again. You were fighting a losing battle here. 

“I think we’re going down,” you finally admitted, trying your best to maneuver the plane for any possible successful crash landing.

Simon and the rest of the 141 squad were gathered around the transmitter, eagerly awaiting updates. Johnny was going on about some story, clearly trying to provide some comedic distraction, but all Simon could focus on was the live update of the storm heading directly for you. Dread settled in his stomach. He was thankful for his mask hiding much of the worry in his face, but he couldn’t stop the anxious bouncing of his right leg. Every minute felt like an hour. 

A firm hand found its way on Simon’s shoulder. 

“Aw, It’ll be okay, Ghost,” Soap’s thick Scottish accent was surprisingly comforting to Simon, though the man routinely drove him crazy. “Ace is the best pilot we have. She’s going to be fine,” Soap continued.

Finally, your voice came through the speakers.

“Ace to Base, over.”

Simon jumped to his feet, his heart racing. The audio was spotty, your voice slightly distorted and cutting in and out, but he didn’t care. The relief that flooded through him at just hearing your voice. It was instantaneous. And then,

“Storm–hitting–hard–”

Immediately, his blood turned to ice. Something was wrong.

“–not able — hold it—”

“–going down–” 

Simon felt the blood drain from his face. 

No. No. No, this wasn’t happening. 

Simon couldn’t breathe. 

He couldn’t think. 

He couldn’t do anything but stare helplessly at the transmitter, replaying your last words on a loop in his mind, a dull roar filling his ears. 

A pair of strong hands grabbed his shoulders, breaking the trance and pulling him back to reality.

“Simon.” Price’s voice was authoritative, an unspoken order to keep it together. 

“Simon,” he continued, just a hair gentler. “This isn’t her first crash landing. These things happen.” 

Crash. Landing. The words were like a physical blow, and Simon felt the air empty from his lungs again. It felt like his chest was caving in on itself. You were gone. 

“Simon, you need to listen.” Another firm squeeze on his shoulder, and Simon brought his eyes up to meet Price’s. “If anyone can get through this, it’s her.” 

The captain’s words loosened Simon’s chest just enough to where he felt like he could at least get in another gulp of air. 

Simon took a seat, staring intently at the transmitter as if he could will your voice to come through the speaker. He was vaguely aware of the rest of his team gathering around him to offer him more words of encouragement, but all he could focus on was you. Your last moments together. The fight. His chest tightened at the thought that one of your last moments together was spent fighting over whether or not he supported you. 

Then he began replaying that last kiss, consciously trying to remember every last detail. The smell of your shampoo, the curve of your hips in that flight suit, the taste of your lips. The look in your eyes. It was the same look you gave him every time he took off the mask and made love to you. No Ghost, no lieutenant. Just Simon. And you. 

It took everything in him not to collapse right then and there. 

Shortly after your transmission, contact was lost with the other aircraft. It was nothing but a waiting game now. 

The hours dragged on in agonizing waves.

The sound of an approaching aircraft had everyone out of their seats and rushing out to the landing zone. Ghost followed in a daze, completely disconnected from his body. He didn’t dare hold on to hope that you were still alive, but he had to see. He had to confirm it. He stayed at the back edge of the group, ready to take off and process his grief in the privacy of his own bunk.

It was Dameron’s plane. The cockpit opened up and Simon watched as the man climbed out. 

His heart threatened to cleave in two. It was too much to take in. His world started spinning. 

“Hey, you’re all not gonna believe what I picked up on my way,” Dameron’s cheerful disposition didn’t waiver for a second. Before Simon could even process the words, he watched as you stepped out from the obscured co-pilot seat in the cockpit. 

The air emptied from Simon’s lungs. His knees felt weak. 

You climbed down, that same confident smirk still on your face as you took in a hug from Soap. 

“You guys didn’t think you’d be getting rid of me that easily, did you?” 

Your laugh is what finally snapped Simon out of it. He was instantly on the move, feet heading straight for you. You caught sight of him as he pushed his way through the crowd. He was a hard man to miss with his general size and of course the signature mask. That look in his eyes though…wild…almost feral. Your smirk was gone. 

Simon closed the gap between you in two more steps, not hesitating for a second before taking your face in his hand and flipping up the bottom edge of his balaclava. 

And then his lips were crashing into yours. Unlike the sweet, chaste farewell kiss, this kiss was dripping with need, relief, passion. And Simon didn’t get a damn who saw. 

His hands slid from your jaw to your waist and with a grunt he pulled you up into his arms, never breaking the kiss. Your legs wrapped around his waist, your hands cradling his face, deepening the kiss. 

In the background you could hear the whoops and cheers of the 141, along with some playful jabs of “get a room you two!” 

You pulled back from the kiss breathless, your eyes desperately searching his for some kind of understanding. 

Simon gently set you back down on your own two feet, making sure to pull the balaclava back down. 

That kiss had stolen your breath, and much to your embarrassment, you suddenly felt very unsteady on your shaking knees. Ghost’s gloved hand was quick to reach out and steady you. 

“Easy, sweet girl,” he murmured. 

The comment had your cheeks feeling flushed, although you could also probably blame that on that fucking kiss. You don’t think you’ve ever been kissed like that before in your life. 

“Fucking hell, what a kiss, Ghost,” you gasped out, just quiet enough for him to hear. 

You heard the slight rumble of a chuckle deep in his chest before his covered lips pressed a kiss to your forehead.

Masterlist ✧ Ask Box

[newss-mediaa]

Paul Smith fired

Paul Smith, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mineral Development Company Botswana (PTY) LTD (MDCB) has been fired with immediate effect. MDCB is wholly owned by the Botswana Government. It was formed in August 2015 to help government manage all its mining assets. The company is mandated to provide effective management and optimisation of the government mineral investment portfolio in the mining industry.

Smith’s relationship with almost all the stakeholders and his principals is said to have been wanting. This led to many of them complaining, among them a key stakeholder, De Beers, who is said to have threatened to act if nothing was done. BG News can reveal that Smith received his marching orders via a letter from Minister of Mineral Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security, Advocate Sadique Kebonang on Wednesday. Kebonang’s decision was informed by MDCB board recommendation that Smith should be fired. The board made the resolution at its Monday meeting. Kebonang confirmed to BG News that he has fired Smith. “The MDCB board had a meeting on Monday and made a recommendation that Smith must be fired which I have acceded to”.

Signs clear Signs that Smith was not going to last in his lucrative job which is believed to carry a package of between P2 and P3 million per annum have long been visible. Late last year, the board summoned him for a disciplinary hearing where he was asked to show cause why he could not be fired. Kebonang saved him when he asked to hear both parties to try and reconcile them. Smith’s disciplinary process started with the Board writing a letter and giving him 10 days to respond. It was not clear who constituted the Disciplinary Committee that summoned Smith, but what is clear is that the date of hearing was set for first week of December 2016.By then the Board wanted Smith to go because he had allegedly acted outside the mandate of the Board in some occasions, or disregarded their recommendations. At other times Smith allegedly kept or failed to share vital information with the Board, but instead passed it to higher authorities without approval from the Board. He has allegedly compromised the reputation of the Board in the way he deals with other stakeholders, such as the former BCL Board which he allegedly did not give the best cooperation. Amongst those who were reported to be unhappy is Debswana Board following their series of meetings late last year.

The decision But the decision to fire Smith started to build up when government decided to sell the BCL mine assets to the Emirates Investment House (EIH) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) following his alleged lack of cooperation and ‘disrespect’ for his employers and key stakeholders at large. He allegedly tried to frustrate Minister Kebonang’s efforts to have the due diligence process on BCL mine done by EIH. That’s when Kebonang put his foot down by ordering Smith to cooperate with the process or face the chop. Government shares recalled from MDCB

It is said his general conduct led to Minister Kebonang to recall all government shares from MDCB allegedly because many stakeholders were complaining about Smith’s conduct during official meetings. Reliable sources told BG News that Kebonang wrote letters to all stakeholders amongst them Debswana, Diamond Trading Centre (DTC) Morupule, Soda Ash Botswana, as well as a South African based Company holding government shares on De Beers, informing them about his decision to recall government shares from MDCB. BG News has it on good authority that the BCL shares were transferred to MDCB just a day before the company was put on provisional liquidation. All along the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development had been refusing to do so advancing reasons that they could only make the transfer once Parliament had sanctioned the move. When Smith took office in February 2016 his immediate task was to work closely with BCL management to oversee a process of streamlining the mine’s operations. By then government and, or MDCB had engaged consultants to see how best to deliver the shares because of cost implications. The first assets to be transferred were Morupule Coal Mine and BCL.

Mokaila and Smith Smith was appointed by the then Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources, Kitso Mokaila. Briefing Parliament then Mokaila said his ministry has engaged consultants to provide transactional advisory services for the transfer of these assets, which he added was expected to be completed before the end of the second quarter of 2016. He revealed that Debswana Diamond Company owns MCM, a joint venture between De Beers and government.It's said that in due course Smith started to overrule everybody including the board a matter that later led to two seasoned and fierce Batswana administrators - Dr Akolang Tombale and Ms Dora Moremi- resigning their positions from the BCL board as chairman and deputy respectively. The last person to resign who allegedly could not stand Smith’s attitude is the MDCB board chairperson, Regina Sikalesele-Vaka. Smith’s conduct allegedly brought differences between him and Mokaila, and may have contributed to Mokaila redeployment to the Ministry of Transport and Communications MDCB Head of Corporate Communications Esther Norris, confirmed via a media statement on Wednesday that Sebetlela Sebetlela has been appointed as Caretaker Chief Executive Officer in the interim period.

By: Sam Henderson

[mariacallous]

In the hours after the January 6th insurrection, executives at Twitter had to decide what to do about Donald Trump’s account. On one level, the decision seemed straightforward. The President, having been voted out of office, had repeatedly insisted that a fair election had been stolen, summoned what would become a violent crowd of his supporters to Washington and directed them to the Capitol, where they tried to forcibly stop the official tally that would remove him from office. Trump had communicated much of this effort on Twitter itself; accounts had been suspended for far less. But on another level the situation was murkier. Twitter had developed an overlapping network of formal rules and internal review boards that governed its use, and had chosen to largely exempt public figures from the scrutiny it directed at most accounts. This choice had insulated Trump from punishment in the past. Why, exactly, should this time be any different?

At that precise moment, Twitter’s C.E.O. and co-founder, Jack Dorsey, was vacationing in French Polynesia. On the morning of January 7th, he e-mailed employees, saying that it was important that Twitter stick to its prior policies. But in the course of the morning things began to change. Shortly before noon, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s Global Head of Site Integrity, sent a message to a colleague. “GUESS WHAT,” Roth wrote. “Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.” The new policy, Roth explained, established an escalating system of five strikes, through which repeat offenses could lead to a permanent ban. “Progress!” Roth’s colleague wrote back. That afternoon and evening, executives at the company went back and forth trying to figure out what this approach meant. Notably, Roth confirmed that the “public-interest exception” had been suspended in Trump’s case. Beyond that, the course was not yet clear: for now, Twitter would wait, and see what the President would do.

We know the details of these internal conversations because of the ongoing publication of the Twitter Files, a serial investigation into the way the company has managed sensitive public issues, commissioned by its new owner, Elon Musk. Not long after Musk bought Twitter, in October, he reached out to a few prominent journalists, each of them at least broadly sympathetic to Musk’s view that Twitter’s past moderation decisions reflected its own entrenchment in the liberal establishment, and were therefore effectively suppressing conservative and other dissenting views. Among them were Matt Taibbi, the gonzo political writer, formerly of Rolling Stone; Bari Weiss, the ex-Times Opinion writer; the environmental-policy wonk Michael Shellenberger, who made his name by opposing the climate left; and the investigative reporter Lee Fang, of the Intercept. These writers had reputations already, but, even so, to receive a summons from the wealthiest person in the world must have been thrilling. “At dinner time on December 2, I received a text from Elon Musk,” Weiss wrote recently. “Was I interested in looking at Twitter’s archives, he asked. And how soon could I get to Twitter HQ? Two hours later I was on a flight.”

Musk set at least one condition: that the reports be published first on Twitter itself. Because of this, and because the journalists he chose tend to write polemically and have fierce online cliques of supporters and opponents, the Twitter Files have arrived pre-factionalized. Conservatives have cheered their publication, while many progressives have either ignored them or rolled their eyes. But as they have been published over the past several weeks, the files have been at once among the most interesting and the most complicated journalistic documents of the Trump era: complicated in that their tone is often propagandistic and their evidence frustratingly partial but interesting in that they show how various political actors sought to influence a period in global politics (beginning, roughly, with the Syrian war and continuing through the pandemic) defined by fights over communication and information. The files cut a haphazard tunnel, in other words, through one of the richest substrates in politics, and readers are left to try to bend, squint, strike a match, and dig through it to try to figure out how exactly information on social media was managed during this era—and, crucially, whether that era has ended.

Trump tweeted twice on the morning of January 8th. At nine-forty-five, he wrote, “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” He followed that with a shorter post an hour later, saying, “To all those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” Several public figures (among them Michelle Obama) had called that morning for Twitter to permanently ban the President, and by the afternoon there was also some public pressure stemming from the company itself: the Washington Post published a joint letter from more than three hundred employees demanding that Trump be removed from the platform. The trust and safety team, though, scrutinized Trump’s morning tweets for violations of its standards and saw nothing wrong. “I’m not seeing clear or coded incitement in the DJT tweet,” one Twitter official wrote. “No violation of our standards at this time.”

But Vijaya Gadde, the company’s general counsel, asked another team to consider the same tweets, and one member of that team offered another way of viewing them: praising the “75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me” needed to be read in the context of January 6th. “He is the leader of a violent extremist group who is glorifying the group and its recent actions,” the team member wrote. The argument wound on, but eventually this gloss—that Trump’s obnoxious but also facially anodyne tweet demanding respect for his supporters was in fact inciting violence—won the day. About six hours later, following an all-hands meeting, the company announced that Trump was banned from the platform indefinitely, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

Two years later, Trump is still not back on the platform. (Musk invited him to return in November, but the ex-President declined.) The Twitter Files suggest that the company made a subjective determination, some might say a commonsensical one—that Trump had gone too far—and then found a legalistic rationale for doing what it wanted. Of course, businesses do things like this all the time, but in a company that had come to play such a central role in convening global political speech, this whiff of arbitrariness was bound to set off alarms. As noted by Bari Weiss, who authored the installment of the Twitter Files on Trump’s ban, heads of states around the world objected. Angela Merkel’s spokesperson called the decision “problematic.” Emmanuel Macron told an audience that he didn’t want to live in a world in which these decisions were made by “a private player.” Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident politician, called it “an unacceptable act of censorship.”

Interestingly, a critical note was struck within Twitter itself. The company’s C.T.O., Parag Agrawal, who was soon to take over from Dorsey as C.E.O. (Musk fired him last October), wrote to a colleague, “I think a few of us should brainstorm the ripple effects [of Trump’s ban].” His message reads as if Agrawal thought Twitter might have bitten off more than it could chew. He wrote that evening, “Centralized content moderation IMO has reached a breaking point.”

Certainly, Twitter was practicing quite a bit of what Agrawal called “centralized content moderation.” Consider the case of Jay Bhattacharya, mentioned briefly in another installment of the Twitter Files. From the early days of the pandemic, Bhattacharya, a health-policy professor at Stanford, was one of the most prominent intellectuals calling for more lenient COVID restrictions in the U.S. and abroad. (Together with Martin Kulldorff of Harvard and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, Bhattacharya was one of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration of October, 2020, which argued that ending lockdowns for all but the most vulnerable would allow countries to quickly achieve herd immunity.) Bhattacharya detailed his views in many ways—he gave talks to other experts, spoke on television, wrote op-eds—and he tweeted. As Weiss revealed in a Twitter Files dispatch in early December, Bhattacharya was at one point placed on a “trends blacklist,” a tool meant to keep even viral tweets from appearing on Twitter’s “trending” search bar and intended to limit an account’s over-all reach without visibly restricting it. Weiss suggests that the decision was likely made by a small group of senior Twitter executives.

Now, Bhattacharya is not the guy who got the pandemic right. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed in March, 2020, he claimed that COVID was only one-tenth as deadly as the flu; in January, 2021, he argued in the Indian newspaper ThePrint that a mass vaccination program in that country would do more harm than good. We should be glad that most governments did not take this advice. You could also make a case that declining to include a tweet in the “trending” section is a pretty mild course of action, amounting to a decision not to promote: if the Times opinion editors had passed on Bhattacharya’s op-ed before the Journal accepted it, no one would accuse them of suppressing free speech. Bhattacharya’s account currently has more than three hundred and fifty thousand followers; he was never suspended. Still, he was making a sincere policy argument, as experts and pundits have done on op-ed pages for as long as there’s been a free press. This wasn’t “misinformation.” Why would it be seen as so dangerous that it needed to be suppressed?

The backbeat of the Twitter Files is a heightened sensitivity to the power of information. Three weeks before the 2020 election, the New York Post published a splashy story implying, without much evidence, that emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop revealed that he had connected a Ukrainian businessman with his father. Twitter reacted by suspending the Post’s account and also by suspending the accounts of people who promoted the story, among them the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. (“At least pretend to care,” a Trump campaign staffer fumed to his Twitter contact, lobbying for her reinstatement.) As New York magazine’s Eric Levitz detailed, the story was wildly oversold. But ban the Post? Pharmacies did not respond to the Hunter Biden story by pulling the Post from their shelves; bodegas did not turn to an all-Daily News lineup. Something about the technical ease of online suppression made it more likely to happen.

The most eyebrow-raising revelations in the Twitter Files, documented mostly by Matt Taibbi and Lee Fang, concern the extent to which the F.B.I. and the Pentagon were interested in controlling what was seen on the platform. According to Taibbi’s reporting, there were more than a hundred and fifty e-mails between Roth and the F.B.I. from January, 2020, to November, 2022. Some of these seem to have been more or less normal investigative queries, but many were requests that the company take action to restrict accounts that the F.B.I. had flagged for supplying misinformation. As Taibbi pointed out, some of these requests were absurd—one concerned a parody account of the pro wrestler the Undertaker, which primarily tweeted about soiling himself. (It was banned the same day.) The F.B.I. also flagged cases where the “misinformation” was obviously a joke: “I want to remind republicans to vote tomorrow, Wednesday November 9,” @fromma, the subject of an F.B.I. request to Twitter, tweeted. Down a different archival tunnel, Fang discovered that Twitter had long been coöperating with the Pentagon to help the U.S. government amplify accounts (often in Arabic or Russian) with friendly, and sometimes manufactured, perspectives. You don’t have to be an especially cynical reader of American history to realize that, if there is a new tool that allows for “centralized content moderation” of political information, the F.B.I. is going to take an interest in it. Still, in this context, “centralized content moderation” sounds downright Orwellian.

The big disappointment of the Twitter Files is that their authors seem uninterested in alternate points of view. Across thirteen installments so far, I could not find a single instance in which the reporters tracked down named Twitter officials and asked them for an explanation. (The perspectives of Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde are simply not included.) When the authors characterize internal company communications as reflecting a progressive point of view and provide a couple of screenshots as examples, the reader has no way to check that the characterization is fair. This problem matters especially when it comes to the Twitter Files’ central political claim: that these decisions and relationships reveal a political agenda—anti-Trump, pro-Fauci, for the promulgation of liberal and establishment ideas and the suppression of conservative ones. This is basically what Elon Musk meant when he described what he was fighting, annoyingly but memorably, as a “woke-mind virus.” It is also what has inspired his special brand of hyperbole. “This is a battle for the future of civilization,” Musk tweeted, on November 29th. “If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.”

After a careful read of the Twitter Files, I don’t think that the evidence suggests a coherent political agenda. It is certainly true that Twitter executives donated, overwhelmingly, to Democratic candidates for public office, and it seems equally true that they expressed mostly progressive views on social media. (In 2017, Yoel Roth tweeted that there were “ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.”) But in most cases, if not all, there were debates within the company over what to do and on what grounds—which usually raised questions of both politics and corporate policy, as in the back-and-forth over banning Trump. When the F.B.I. made requests of Roth, he was sometimes compliant and sometimes resistant: “I’m frankly perplexed by the requests here, which seem more like something we’d get from a congressional committee than the Bureau,” he wrote to his team. It’s true that the big decisions tended to go against conservatives, though it’s also true that in the Trump era Republicans were putting much more pressure on social norms. It’s not the case, though, that Democrats invariably cheered Twitter’s actions. During the New York Post fiasco, the progressive congressman Ro Khanna e-mailed senior executives at the company to raise concerns that Twitter was suppressing free speech; when Twitter shrugged off an effort to get it to police Russian propaganda on the site, in 2017, the Democratic senator Mark Warner denounced the company’s response as “frankly inadequate on every level.” Two accounts were flagged as possible foreign misinformation bots by a national security agency. “Nothing looked particularly violative,” Roth wrote. “Some clearly Russian though, but also included an account for a house rental in South Carolina?”

The most interesting voices in the Twitter Files are often those of employees whose names are blanked out presumably because they aren’t major figures. They are mostly not trying to impose a progressive agenda or to help right-wing ideas go viral. Generally, they are asking for up-the-chain clarity: “Thoughts on how to handle this one?” “Why isn’t this POTUS tweet a violation of our COVID-19 policy?” “Due to a lack of technical evidence on our end, I’ve generally left it be, waiting for more evidence.”

If the problem were a runaway progressive corporate culture, then it should have ended with Musk’s takeover. The billionaire came in, late last fall, with guns blazing: Twitter’s internal bureaucracy was going down. Agrawal, Roth, and Gadde were all out; he fired half its staff and started making decisions with a “war room” of a half-dozen longtime allies and friends. But pretty quickly the Musk experience, which began with promises of a less censorious approach to speech and a more robust public square, turned hypocritical. Musk tweeted an excerpt of an academic paper of Roth’s that concerned underage access to apps like Grindr; a wave of threats accusing Roth of being a “pedo” forced the former Twitter executive and his husband to flee their home. Not only did Musk suspend a Twitter account, operated by a college student, that published public data tracking Musk’s private plane; he also briefly suspended the accounts of a half-dozen or so journalists who reported on the suspension. This week, the billionaire publicized a new edition of the Twitter Files, by the COVID-conspiracist journalist Alex Berenson. This installment focussed on the efforts of a prominent public doctor, Scott Gottlieb, to lobby Twitter to limit anti-vaccine propaganda. Musk tweeted about the series, “Some conspiracies are actually true.” Even if you believe—and I don’t—that Musk took a progressive thumb off the scale when he acquired the company, all he has done since is stick his own thumb—bigger and clumsier—on it.

Musk could have made different choices. He could have opened the files to more journalists, with broader perspectives, rather than a group that largely shared his view. They, in turn, could have taken the time to write as investigative reporters rather than commentators, and might have begun with material other than the company’s response to the Hunter Biden story—a preoccupation of Republican politicians but far from the most compelling element of the archives. Rather than try to handle suspensions with a small group of allies, Musk might have appointed an independent body to assess such sensitive matters. The choices Musk did make suggest another aim—not neutrality, but counterbalance. If progressive ideas had been too amplified, he would now amplify conservative ones. Everything in the Twitter Files has had this see-saw quality, in which the only response to excessive partisanship is partisanship on the other side. In this way, the Twitter Files have been trapped in the style of Twitter itself. ♦