#i don't BELIEVE in the government

[finemealprompt]

DP x DC Prompt #42

Billy's pretty pleased with his ability to keep his secret identity a secret from the League. The only ones who might know are Batman and his crew, but that was to be expected.

So, he's a little surprised when he spots a new hero who has joined Justice League: Dark who looks a lot like his cousin. Like, a lot a lot. Give him black hair and blue eyes, and that's Danny ... Oh holy shit Phantom's Danny! When did Danny become a ghost?

Billy hopes Danny won't tattletale to his mom. That'd be a nightmare.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

putting my prediction on record now that the coming decade is going to see the rise of viral-marketed fancy at-home water filtration systems, driving and driven by a drastic reduction in the quality of U.S. tap water (given that we are in a 'replacement era' where our current infrastructure is reaching the end of its lifespan--but isn't being replaced). also guessing that by the 2030s access to drinkable tap water will be a mainstream class issue, with low-income & unstably housed people increasingly forced to rely on expensive bottled water when they can't afford the up-front cost of at-home filtration--and with this being portrayed in media as a "moral failing" and short-sighted "choice," rather than a basic failure of our political & economic systems. really hope i'm just being alarmist, but plenty of this already happens in other countries, and the U.S. is in a state of decline, so. here's praying this post ages into irrelevance. timestamped April 2023

[genderkoolaid]

this is the first paragraph in a TERF rant post about how porn helps the transfem deep state or whatever but it's just so funny to me. REVOLTING sex based cults (the first example being a religious group that famously attracted women and slaves). girl why are you picking a fight with bacchanalias do you have nothing better to fearmonger about

[the-ships-to-rule-them-all]

the level at which people are misusing the term "Never Again" in the far left absolutely infuriates me.

"Never Again" doesn't refer to the idea of no more genocides -- unfortunately people are evil and corrupt and seek scapegoats and destruction, there were genocides in the years following the Holocaust, there were genocides 10 years ago, there are multiple genocides going on as we speak

"Never Again" means we as Jews will pay attention to the warning signs, will not mindlessly allow antisemitism to fester and take over our communities, we will fight back. it means we will be proud. it means we will not let you hate us without a word of refusal.

"Never Again" is a warning for us, it is a reminder that what happened then can happen now -- is happening now. The Far Left doesn't get to use it against us. You don't get to turn our tragedies into hate-speech and antisemitic rhetoric.

Am Yisrael Chai

[day-at-rhodes-island]

Okay, so. I saw this outfit and immediately thought of Plume.

Then I was reading these lines:

And I thought I would look over her files, just to see if I spotted anything.

Yeah, this reads differently with a clearer picture of Laterano, and let me just say, It doesn't paint a good picture of Laterano's cultural norms.

The first time I read these files nothing really stuck out to me. It's an insular religious country and she was in the military. Things being regimented and ritualized is to be expected, and so is a general lack of awareness of other cultures. Sure, Plume didn't have a life outside of work, but that's not a particularly rare trait for a person to have.

What I missed the first time, was the references to an "aloof aristocracy", and the general framing of the traits being described not as Plume's but as a Laterano Guard's.

Why learn about the outside world if you're already living in paradise? What other pursuits could be more worthy of your time than defending it?

What I missed the first time, is that Plume is surprised that finding herself surrounded by foreign cultures is "not so bad."

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

when I took a month off work I was lowkey worried I'd come back and find everyone had been fine without me and I wasn't needed at all (because being terrible at every previous job I've had did some ✨damage✨ to my self confidence)

but that is not what happened

I have never encountered someone so fucking happy to see me as my boss' wife was on my first day back, her face lit up like it was christmas, she was practically jumping for joy because now that I'm back she doesn't have to do the ops team's fucking timesheets anymore

I have been told by one of the ops guys that my leave of absence had caused a genuine rift in the boss' marriage because his wife hated doing my job so much they were actively fighting about it

to be clear, his wife is lovely, she doesn't usually throw a shit fit about just anything, it was just that my job is just so fucking annoying that she hated every second of it, and that was the most validating shit I have ever experienced in my LIFE

and the reason she was pissed off at my boss/her husband about it is because he's too soft on his crew and doesn't make them all report their hours for the week

which, as you can imagine, makes building their timesheets extremely fucking difficult

it basically turns the whole process into a puzzle that I have to solve using roughly three different sources of information, one of which is the boss himself who isn't always easy to get ahold of when he's on a site

this puzzle is made even more difficult by the fact that a glitch in our form system keeps messing up the dates on the timecards, so I have to cross reference the time cards from the two (2) ops team members, who actually DO fill out their forms, with the roster, but my boss often changes the roster at the last minute without telling me or noting it down, so then I have to cross reference with the reports they have to submit for certain ongoing jobs because they'll have correct dates and also a list of who was present (if they were doing one off smalltime jobs that week I'll have no physical records and will rely entirely on the boss' memory to confirm dates and staff numbers, unless I can get ahold of one of the ops team members themselves and there's only one who will reliably communicate with me but only when he's not currently on a site)

I tried to explain this process to boss' wife before I left and, looking horrified, she asked me 'is there no way to streamline this?' I replied 'this is streamlined'

as far as I'm aware, as long as I've worked there, there has only been a handful of times people were paid incorrectly, and it was because I was not given correct information by the boss, in the time I was gone, his wife told me that she had incorrectly logged several pays because of this broken ass system

so, as you could imagine, my ego is through the fucking roof right now, I am GOOD at this bullshit job, I took an impossible system and made it work, I am playing on hard mode and killing it, in a field I had zero experience in before taking this job other than a natural inclination for organising and scheduling

and to be clear, I love this job, the boss is too soft on his staff but he's a good guy, he makes us all feel valued and appreciated, he paid me above my award rate, he's absurdly accommodating, and I have an insane amount of freedom to do what I want with company files

I may be working with a bullshit system but I can take naps in the office whenever I want and tell my boss off when he's being too soft (one time his wife literally started clapping when I told him off for sending clients their reports before they'd paid for them) and I get to control when I work, and whether I work from home or the office (which is GREAT when my back flares up)

I might not get many hours (only 16 hours per week) because the company is so small and I run out of things to do because I've streamlined everything (boss literally called me TOO EFFICIENT), but he'll give me those 16 even if I spend half of it playing solitaire and watching youtube

so just, yeah, it feels so good to be confident in my work, to feel valued and appreciated and like I'm actually successful at something after being handed dud jobs for years that I wasn't cut out for, and now knowing that what I'm doing is actually genuinely hard but I've been doing it anyway without fail, makes me feel good!

so tldr; taking a month off work taught me I have phenomenal job security because if my boss ever fires me his wife might actually fucking kill him

[ffcrazy15]

Hey– hey guys?

HEY GUYS??

You know the guy who fired all of Twitter's staff and broke the damn site and it's now infested by bots?!

The guy who's contemplated turning off Ukraine's internet access—the internet access they use to coordinate their defense against Russian invasion—because he's getting friendly with Putin?!

The guy who, it just came out, tanked X-formerly-Twitter's value by over seventy percent?!

Hey yeah so Trump wants to put THAT GUY in charge of AUDITING THE ENTIRE GOVERNMENT.

MAYBE.

AND THIS IS JUST A SUGGESTION.

MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T LET THAT HAPPEN.

[lastoneout]

Like every time Luffy's on an island there's a 70% chance he's going to overthrow the local government before he leaves but yeah sure he'd totally love and support the police.

[singingcicadas]

"Rodimus joining the Autobots in Autocracy and being supportive of Optimus makes no sense and is just an example of successful Autobot propaganda b/c he's been exposed to Autobot crimes his whole life and the Autobots forced him to bomb Nyon" will forever be a wild take to me cuz his complete reasoning process is pretty clearly spelled out in the comic? It's like, the main focal point of his entire screentime in Autocracy. For Rodimus there's never been any confusion about the perpetrator behind the "Autobot crimes". There’s Zeta’s crimes and there’s Orion. With a massive distinction between the two. With said distinction being extremely important, because one the first things he says to Orion is literally:

And why does he believe that Orion's different? Because of Orion's speech to the Senate.

Guess what was in that speech:

The origin of the Autobot name. Orion's idealized vision of the freedom and autonomy that the name was meant to represent. Rodimus knew what the true Autobot values were intended to be before the government took the name for their own purposes, and he identified with those values enough to straight up put his life into Orion's hands:

Not just his own life. Everyone in the Acropolex. Everyone in Nyon. Betting on nothing but Orion's conscience. Why would he do this if he didn't already believe Orion to be a good person worthy of a gamble on his trust? If he didn't believe that Orion still held true to his words in the Senate? He knows that Zeta's out for his blood, that Zeta cares nothing about his citizens except bleeding them dry. He's always known the true depths of government atrocities, he lived in the worst of it his whole life. It's why he wired the whole city with bombs as contingency, he always knew it would come down to something like this. But if he thought that Zeta and Orion were no different for their part in the "Autobot crimes", then why would he take Orion to the Acropolex, to see the most vulnerable suffering of their people, and expect him to care enough to side with them against his own government?

Even on the brink of being forced to destroy his own home he's still very aware of who's the real enemy here. After their meeting he's certain that Orion's Autobots are on his side, it was their diversion that bought them enough time to get himself and the few he could out of detonation range. Zeta wants to kill all of them; they're all victims here. Rodimus never blamed Nyon's destruction on anyone other than Zeta, least of all Orion's group.

Imo this... is a completely appropriate and empathetic response to Rodimus' grief? like he does make leadership sound all doom and gloom but it is an accurate reflection of Rodimus' feelings (as well as his own) and he's telling Rodimus that it's okay to feel that way b/c he feels like that too!

The "you faced an impossible situation" bit is just stating the plain truth. Orion isn't condoning or condemning Rodimus' decision, it's not his place to do so. He wasn't the one forced into making the choice, Rodimus was. Rodimus made his choice and now has to live with it. Orion could only offer understanding. like idk what else he could have said, it's not even his place to offer absolution, because even though Rodimus feels guilty he doesn't regret anything. When he defended himself to Bumblebee he used the exact same words Orion did: he did what he had to do.

If the trust he placed in Orion before in the Acropolex was a wild bid in the face of desperation, then the trust that he's placing in Orion now—admitting his guilt and grief, showing vulnerability—is purely of his own choice. To which Orion reciprocated by revealing the weight of his own burdens. This is the kind of interaction that friends share. Which means they're friends now. Is it so unreasonable for Rodimus to want to follow the leadership of a friend, someone whose speech against the Senate that he'd admired, someone who he believed to be different and proved himself as worthy of his trust, someone who he fought beside and saved each other's lives and shared his desire for peace?

Claiming that Rodimus would be averse against joining the Autobots due to their past complicity in crimes under Zeta is vastly misunderstanding his character b/c he's not the type of person who thinks like that. Like for one thing he'd never let historical grudges get in the way of progressing towards a better future (think Lost Light and Megatron). It also completely misses the point of his scene with Orion in the Acropolex, which is about believing the best in people and making the right choices going forward when presented with past mistakes. Also Rodimus isn't stupid he's well aware that Zeta's Autobot cause and Orion's Autobot cause are two completely different things. The first thing Optimus did after becoming Prime was to renounce the old government. Being an Autobot under Optimus would be restoring honour and integrity to the name. if anything that should come off as extra appealing to him cuz he likes restoring stuff like Cyberutopia and the Golden Age.

"Rodimus should join the Decepticons" makes even less sense. Rodimus does come onscreen as an established Decepticon sympathizer but if you think about it his contact with Decepticons is limited to them providing him with weapon supplies. It's a vendor-patron relationship and their goal is to overthrow the government with propaganda keywords being "freedom" "equality" "emancipation" of course he would be a sympathizer. It's a noble cause if looked at from afar. But once the events of Nyon happens he's suddenly forced to get all up and close with Megatron and his higher-ups. and what does he see.

This is how Megatron fought Zeta:

This is what Megatron did to Orion:

This is how Decepticons treat their allies, right after announcing public amnesty:

This is Megatron's opinion of Zeta, after everything he did:

This is Megatron's idea of entertainment:

After seeing all that, isn't it perfectly natural for Rodimus to arrive at this conclusion regarding Megatron and the Decepticons:

Oh my god I can't believe I ever trusted these thugs.

Now that he's seen for himself that the Decepticons are the opposite of freedom, Orion trying to arrest Swindle at the beginning of the comic would have made sense to him. He now gets why they were fighting the Decepticons so hard.

That's basically the whole thought process for Rodimus joining the Autobots. The logic's pretty sound. There's no "Autobot propaganda" involved anywhere. Rodimus was the one who sought Orion out to make him choose his side. Rodimus was the one who rescued the Autobots from Megatron. Rodimus was the one who asked to join. The Autobots never tried to recruit him.

[hope-ur-ok]

Something I really don't understand are the assumptions people on the side Israel seem to hold about everyone who is free Palestine, I.E. that we don't think the hostages should be returned or that we think all Israeli citizens deserve to die for the crimes of their government. Like I'm sure there are people who think that, which is gross and frankly unacceptable, but the fact that they approach everything said in support of Palestine from that angle isn't okay either. All that they are doing is trying to simplify everything in a way that makes Israel the indisputable victim and everyone who opposes them into an antisemitic monster when the reality is that most of us just believe in the value of ALL human life and don't think more than 23,000 peoples lives are acceptable collateral damage. Like we just think that Palestinian civilians should have basic access to food, water, healthcare, and shelter and should not be facing arrest just for being Palestinian as if that somehow makes them inherently dangerous, where are you getting the batshit assumptions from in statements like that?

[chicago-geniza]

Trying to make writing a practice again and regain access to the consciousness I had when I wrote obsessively, to the exclusion of all else. What compelled me to write? The answer is of course suicidal ideation and finding my environment excruciating so if you're willing to do time theft, public school does prepare you to be a "working" "writer"

[mishkakagehishka]

"You're a tankie!" my carrd's dni literally starts like this

[queer-reader-07]

just out here reminding myself that the core of my belief system is faith in the human story

[constantineshots]

[stevieharringtonwifeguy]

i saw someone talking about murray and wayne and im. they're perfect. at a barbecue for the party and murray's like half a bottle of vodka in ranting about the government to this random guy he doesn't know who hasn't said anything the whole time, and then murray takes a breath and wayne's like 'yeah obviously the governments up to something. have you heard about-' and starts talking about another conspiracy and murray's just sitting there like wow. i've found my soulmate.

[mindmxtters]

on a related note I desperately need a pre-meteor au where the team somehow are already friends and get their paws on some prescription-grade gummies and it goes just about as poorly as you can imagine