#immunity debt is not a real thing

[pandemic-info]

"Is anyone else's immune system totally shot since the 'COVID era'?"

Thread. Lots of informed comments, surprisingly.

The answer is yes: lots of peoples' immune systems are totally shot because that's what COVID does: attacks your entire body / vascular system / brain. It is not only respiratory. Long COVID is also a major issue with no reliable treatment.

And the idea that one should "exercise" their immune system by getting sick more is false, a misunderstanding of how immunity works.

[halorvic]

"Do not let anyone convince you that you need to get sick to be healthy."

[martyrbat]

i genuinely dont think people realize the impact of being poor and how it effects your entire life - even if you do become financially stable in the future

[albonium]

night time ramble

i haven't told my doctor about my adhd diagnostic last year because i'm scared he'll treat me differently afterwards or think i just have anxiety (which i do have a tiny bit but i've had mental health issues for a while now, i know how to differenciate what i feel thankfully). my previous doctor ignored all of my graves disease symptoms because she knew i have anxiety. i had lost 25+ kg, had arythmia, couldn't sleep, pooped about 234 times a day, had swollen red hands. she didn't even send me to a cardiologist or made me do a blood test. "it's just anxiety". i don't think smart watches are reliable when it comes to heart monitoring but mine kept telling me i had problems. it was all dismissed. "it's anxiety". untreated graves disease (hyperthyoidism) can have serious consequences if it's untreated. along with this i was so tired i could barely work and almost had car crashes, i drove through red lights bc of how sleepy i was.

so now i'm really worried about not being taken seriously if i even mention being slightly sad or anxious, let alone having adhd as a adult woman, which is so often dismissed. my life rn is really hard because of adhd i haven't found a single behavioural therapist that could maybe help me, even through i don't think organisation tips would help lol. i'd like to try a treatment but that would be dangerous for me because of other health issues aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

[a-local-idiots-shitpost]

Mc fakes their Death

Lucifer:

he was insulted that you thought this would work and if he didn´t know you would cheer when he would do the same thing he would have traumatized you for live

actually he doesn´t even think he could traumatize you for live even if he wanted to, you are immune to all types of bullshit from him and his Brothers

but you are going to hang for this, not because you tried to trick him… well maybe a bit because of that but mainly that the carpet is now ruined and they have to get a new one

and you are the one who has to help him with everything, he would have made you do everything but he doesn´t want to imagine how the House of Lamentation will look after this

he knows if he allows you to do one thing it will just spiral onwards from there

Mammon:

he fainted because he thought you died

and when he saw you he assumed your Ghost was there to hunt him and uh… he did the dumb thing and confessed to all the things he took from you

but in his defense he took your favorite shirt when he missed you and gave it back when he got you back!

aaaand now he´s embarrassed because you are still alive, now excuse him he has somebody else to rob and he doesn´t just say this because he can´t face you for all of eternity now

don´t tell them if you think this was cute, everything will just get worse and he can never look at you

Leviathan:

how could you do this to him!? he nearly thought you died for real and decided to spend the rest of eternity hunting him!

he has to give you credit for a well done fake body, it´s detailed to a concerning degree, you even got fake blood… at least he hopes it´s fake blood and not that you bleed somebody out for this

it sounds like something you would do though

but do you even know what you did!? if you really died he would have died of a heart attack and who would have looked after Henry then! He doesn´t trust any of his Brothers to do it which means you would have also killed Henry!

Weirdly enough he was more pissed about what could have happened than the fact you tried to fake your Death, he did offer to help you make an even better one though

maybe to scare Mammon to pay his debts...

Satan:

he was insulted that you think that shitty thing could fool him but he would gladly teach you how to make a convincing one

he has practice because he uses them to prank Lucifer or to get out of punishments

and just so he can get out of chores when he sees his feline friends that rarely works though

Lucifer tends to catch on pretty quickly and gives him more chores as punishment but it´s always worth it to him

but he needs your help first before he teaches you how to make a good dummy to fake your Death with

Lucifer took one of his book with the ridiculous claim that it´s “illegal” and “highly dangerous in the wrong hands”

actually now that he thinks about it he could combine the two and maybe he´ll give Lucifer a Heart attack that´ll finish him for good

Asmodeus:

he was insulted by the fact you gave the thing your own clothes

he can get past you trying to fake your Death because who hasn´t tried that during their life but he draws the line at you ruining your clothes

more importantly the clothes he got you! You could have chosen literally anything in your closet and choose the nice clothes he got you

you could have ruined the clothes Mammon got you instead, at least he has an excuse to go shopping with you again

you did always complain your closet was to full but to Asmo it´s completely empty

to be fair even with a filled to the brim walk in closet he would still say you don´t have enough clothes

Beelzebub:

you didn´t even get actual Human blood for this? your really bad at faking your Death

but he has to admit the fake body was pretty well made even if mixing syrup and red food dye was a bad thing to do for the Devil who can recognize Devils and Angels by their smell alone

but he wasn´t to angry at you trying to fake your Death, he was even a bit amused but only because he never actually thought you were Dead

if did at any point you actually died he would have been pretty angry with you

but he wasn´t so he invited you out for Ice Cream

a weird thing to reward you for but you´ll take it, the only thing that you have to do is support Beel when he wants more food

and maybe take some extra money with you in case he miscalculates his hunger

Belphegor:

he would have expected more from you, you didn´t even clone yourself! you just made a dummy and pushed it off a cliff

like that could have fooled him, he might not be Beel but even he picked up on the fact that wasn´t even real blood and just some fake one

and you didn´t even do a good job with it even from afar it barely looked like you even worse when he looked at it

as payback he´ll once again take over your room and teach you how to make a clone to better fake your Death with

it just showed him that you need more practice when you want to fake your Death

also it sounds like it would be a fun thing to prank Lucifer with

[stormsthatrage]

Hey folks. Real talk time. I've been seeing some discourse on the USAmerican side of tumblr that genuinely scares me, so I felt the need to put together a few reminders to hopefully spread around Tumblr. If you have the spoons, please create your own posts about these things so we can make sure as many people as possible are informed.

Tumblr staff did not just decide for themselves that certain accounts might be Russian trolls. US law enforcement agencies conducted a federal investigation, and found that Russian trolls were conducting Psy-Ops operations across multiple social media sites. The Russian trolls had the express goal of influencing the outcome of the 2016 election. If an account was banned for being a Russian troll, it was due to this federal investigation. It was not a false accusation from a tumblr staff member that didn't like what a liberal activist was saying.

It is highly likely that Russia has not stopped using this tactic.

Many of these trolls twisted the truth to split the Democratic party. I can't find it anymore, but there's an old post where you can literally see this in action. In the post, a Russian troll -- who had been pretending for a long time to be a liberal activist on tumblr, and was thus trusted by the community -- misquoted Hillary Clinton to make it seem like she was against free college and student debt forgiveness. The Russian agent quoted something Clinton said in a debate with Bernie Sanders: "I disagree with free college." Not included by the Russian agent was the vital context, in which Clinton argued for free and debt-free community college and public universities. This is the full quote the Russian agent didn't use, which was made in reference to private schools only: "I disagree with free college... I don't think the American people should pay for Donald Trump's kids to go to college."

The Republican party often struggles to win the popular vote in presidential elections. It is in the Republican party's best interest to split the Democratic vote.

In order to win the presidential election, MAGA needs to get liberals to vote for third-party candidates or to not vote at all. Please do not let them trick you into serving their agenda.

A third-party candidate has not won the presidential election since the 1800s.

If you do not have the spoons to read news articles or watch multiple news channels, it is vital to be aware that you are especially vulnerable to propaganda on social media. You do not get the full story from tumblr posts. You do not get nuance on current events from tumblr posts. You may be being straight-up lied to on tumblr posts. Remember to take things with a grain of salt. Remember that a lot of propaganda relies on inducing outrage and strong emotional reactions.

If you are upset about the Gaza-Israel situation, and it is going to affect your vote, you must read news articles -- not tumblr posts -- about what Biden has done, what Biden has failed to do, and what Biden's opponents' plans and stances are. This is an area where the propaganda is going to be strongest, and if you want to do right by the citizens of Palestine and Israel, you have to research what's happening. Do not act based off of information from social media, because so much of it will be biased if not downright false. If you don't have the spoons to read or watch the news on these things, I urge you not to vote based off of just this issue, because it would be so easy to vote against your own morals if your only info is from tumblr. And if you think the situation is important enough to determine your vote -- well, then it's clearly important enough to research properly.

Again: In order to win the presidential election, MAGA needs to get liberals to vote for third-party candidates or to not vote at all. Please do not let them trick you into serving their agenda.

Anyway, please reblog or create your own posts on these topics. Let's work together and aim for herd immunity against propaganda.

[eldritchamy]

What the shit. Fighting a god in hand to hand combat as a gold dragon using immovable rods goes so fucking hard and it’s the backstory for a character that’s just in the main backstory???????? AMY???

You know how a lot of people, when making DND characters, make the mistake of having their level 1 PC have an elaborate backstory where they're super badass and already recognized as a hero?

When I made Ash I did the opposite. Her backstory is elaborate, yes, but in very mundane ways that inform her personality and how she perceives the world around her, and build up the logic of how she makes decisions.

I made everyone AROUND my PC a super powerful character who had done incredible things, and I gave Ash anxiety about it.

She feels, constantly, that she is inadequate by comparison. Her entire frame of reference is shaped by a bunch of women in her life that are outstandingly powerful, and she's just a quiet girl who makes leather goods and sells them for a living. She thinks of herself as the NPC in other people's more impressive lives.

Her mother, Lailah, is a nearly seven foot tall divine warrior created in Elysium to destroy Pit Fiends. She's an angel of lightning built like an MMA fighter, and she wields a weapon like piece of a lightning bolt (not stylized, I mean a real, glowing crackling arc of electricity that she holds like a staff and can be used like anything from a polearm to a spear to a whip, and when thrown it acts like a Lightning Bolt spell). She is built, both narratively and in game stats, to be an unkillable holy destroyer, capable of fighting MULTIPLE PIT FIENDS simultaneously, and winning. She's a CR 10+ magical creature (she's a homebrewed mix of Deva and Erinyes stat blocks with some unique flavor) with eighteen class levels, 16 in Zealot Barbarian and 2 in Fighter. She has a strength of 27 and a constitution of 25. She's designed to deal HUGE amounts of damage, tank unfathomable amounts in turn, NOT DROP WHEN SHE HITS ZERO HITPOINTS, and keep swinging until every devil in her way is a pile of dust, then use bonus action Second Wind to bring herself back above 0 so she doesn't incur the auto-death caveat on Zealot Barbarian's Rage Beyond Death ability. One of her attuned items is also the very simple uncommon item "Periapt of Wound Closure" which automatically stabilizes you at the start of your turn, thereby resetting the death saving throws she would theoretically have to make each time she gets hit below 0. Also, as an angel, she's innately immune to auto-death effects like Power Word Kill, which closes almost all loopholes that get around her build. She is UNSPEAKABLY badass. I ran a simulated round of combat with her once, and she could potentially one-shot a CR 15 Skittering Horror (228 HP) in a single turn. Her theoretical maximum damage output is like, 456 damage in a turn (granted this assumes all crits and rolling max damage).

So that's Ash's mom.

Aria is interesting. She was always strongly attuned to the forces of nature, and her magic grew quickly. Where Ash grew up with someone she knew would always be there to protect her from anything, Aria did NOT have that safety net, and spent her formative years learning to be more self-sufficient in terms of relying on her own power. So eventually she got sucked into an adventuring party consisting of herself (a tiefling Witch subclass with very strong druid flavor), a tiefling zealot barbarian, and a couple of elf twins who were an Arcana cleric and a Celestial Warlock. Sometime after they had made a name for themselves, they were tasked with stopping a suspected fledgling vampire who had been kidnapping girls and killing a bunch of people. When they arrived, they met Cass, who was very much NOT a new vampire. She was almost 150 years old and had been protecting women from abusers and overzealous debt collectors, and things had gotten a little messy with one or two of them, leading to a lot more attention than she normally got. They start off fighting Cass (Aria polymorphs herself into a dire wolf and lunges directly for the throat, which Cass found amusing and impressive) but realize in the banter that Cass wasn't the real problem, and she ends up being a sort of a lesson for the group in terms of whose word they trust and who they take jobs from (YES THE BACKSTORY'S BACKSTORY HAS NARRATIVE ARCS AND MORAL LESSONS THAT LEAD TO LONG TERM CHARACTER GROWTH OKAY I CAN'T HELP MYSELF). Cass, having a particular rapport with Aria, ends up joining their party as a dhampir Soulknife Rogue/Shadow Monk.

Yes, that's all backstory that I made up for an imaginary campaign that exists entirely as a set piece for Aria as one of Ash's story NPCs. This doesn't even touch on the fact that I liked Cass so much as a character that I gave HER an entire backstory of her own. I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM.

Anyway the team only makes a bigger name for themselves for handling things that other groups can't. Eventually, they just happen to be in the Tenth District when the War of the Spark happens (major established event in the MTG canon), and I basically added some extra "scenes" to it that didn't violate existing canon so I could have that be the climax of their imaginary campaign. One of Aria's partners was a new planeswalker at the time and her spark got harvested by the Dreadhorde, specifically by the god eternal Bontu.

Gods in Magic The Gathering aren't honestly that special? They don't seem to have THAT much power, all things considered. Ravnica's gods are mostly powerful magical animals, and in the most recent Magic Story one of their gods (Anzrag the Quake Mole) was captured in an "evidence capsule" (basically Magic's version of a Pokeball). The most powerful god in MTG is probably the Ur Dragon honestly, unless you count the Eldrazi, but that's a whole other conversation since neither of those actually have the "God" creature type.

Anyway, Bontu was one of the gods of Amonket (basically a plane based on ancient Egypt), which had been conquered by an Elder Dragon planeswalker named Nichol Bolas. HE was the one who actually killed all but one of Amonket's gods, and then another planeswalker named Liliana Vess (extremely powerful necromancer) raised them as zombies for his army, because Bolas had a ton of complicated leverage over her (magical contract that he could invoke to kill her if she betrayed him). So Bontu was a god zombie.

Here's a reference:

Well, Aria was a level 18 Witch at this point since this was the climax of their campaign, so she had access to the Shapechange spell, a 9th level transmutation that lets you become any creature with a challenge rating equal or lower than your character level. And the best candidate for that was an Adult Gold Dragon (CR 17). So Aria goes full berserk and stands up on her dragon hind legs and picks a fight with a dead god that she's determined to make deader, and has a Godzilla vs King Ghidorah standoff with her.

So how do you fight a god that can suck your soul out and instantly kill you with a single touch? You don't let it touch you.

What Aria did was basically inspired by this gif of a Wildebeest trying to charge at a lion:

Or this:

And to be clear, yes, I'm saying Aria was the lion in that situation. She basically did a big dragon threat display to get Bontu's attention, and used the Gold Dragon's weakening breath to give Bontu disadvantage on Strength checks and saves. Bontu charged at her, and at the last second Aria dropped to the ground and then shot back up, clamped her teeth around the god's throat, and used her weight to throw Bontu around and knock her off balance, and her superior strength to grab her by the wrists and wrestled her to the ground so she couldn't get a grip on Aria. She had every part of the god that could have killed her pinned, and used the claws of her wings to pull Bontu's armor apart and tear at everything she could reach while thrashing her around. It was Fen, the Arcana cleric, who thought to use Immovable rods to pin Bontu down so that even if Aria lost her grip, Bontu wouldn't be able to immediately one-shot any of them. So Athena (barbarian) and Cass (rogue/monk) as the two martial classes were the ones who got close enough to handle that while Fen and her sister (Gwen) used whatever holy magic they could to help from a distance.

Now CASS had a problem, because she's a DEX based martial class, not a strength based one. She needed a boost to be able to get this job done. So she drank some of Bontu's blood from one of the wounds Aria had left on her arm to give herself a burst of strength. Except. She had to get real close to do that. And Bontu managed to get a loose grip on her, and tried to suck out her soul.

The magic that makes Cass what she is is very old and very powerful. It binds her soul to her body in a much stronger way than any living creature, fusing the two together to prevent her from dying (i.e. by having her soul separated from her body; Cass can recover from almost any conceivable physical injury as long as there's life energy, in the form of blood, for the magic that keeps her alive to feed on and maintain the seal between her body and her soul). BECAUSE SHE WAS FEEDING ON THE BLOOD OF A GOD AT THE TIME, the magic holding her together basically fought against the magic that was trying to rip her soul out, and it had enough fuel to hold on until Aria's thrashing forced Bontu to let go. So Cass survived the Elderspell thanks to a very weird and unrepeatable set of circumstances (which allows something narratively impressive and legendary to happen without being gamebreakingly overpowered and violating the established rules of the world).

Because of how her magic draws energy from other things, though, there was a side effect: she also accidentally took in one of the planeswalker sparks that Bontu had harvested. So when Cass had healed enough for her soul to no longer be dislocated, her spark activated and she became a Planeswalker. (I imagine a soul is connected to a body mostly through the nervous system, because that's how a brain holds consciousness in it, so a "dislocated" soul is like something glued to every nerve ending in your body being pulled on with an enormous amount of force, trying to sever that connection; imagine trying to pull yourself off the ground when every nerve ending in your body is superglued to the floor by something akin to the Strong Nuclear Force. It SUCKED.)

The team ended up being forced to retreat because of Cass' injuries, so Aria didn't actually manage to kill Bontu personally (or die trying, which in her grief-rage she was fully open to). Right about this time, my bottle scene ends and Magic canon comes back into play: Liliana betrays Bolas and turns the Dreadhorde against him, and Bontu ends up being the one who bites him and rips out HIS spark. Due to the enormous rush of energy of consuming all of Bolas' stolen Planeswalker sparks (tl;dr he was trying to become a god), and with the added bit of lore that it was Aria's team that heavily injured Bontu just prior to this, Bontu exploded in the process.

This resulted in Ravnica playing a game of telephone in the chaotic aftermath of the War. Aria fought a god. She's still alive and that god is dead. Rumors spread and now Aria is misremembered as the one who killed Bontu. Half the plane thinks of her as the "god killer." All she wanted was to avenge her lover or die trying.

Neither outcome happened, and now she's credited with the very thing she sees as her greatest failure. And that trauma has haunted her ever since.

[gothyyy]

A/N: GENSHIN BOYS REALIZING THEY LOVE YOU (i really just wrote some of my favorites, if i missed your favorite character feel free to request it <3)

Pairings: Diluc, Venti, Xiao, Kazuha (separately) x GN reader

WARNINGS: series typical violence, bad english, OOC characters

-lowercase intended-

DILUC •

at first, you honestly annoyed him.

so how then did that annoyance turn to love? well, first it started when he realized that maybe you weren’t so annoying, so he’d tolerate you.

tolerance became affection and soon after that affection became love

i can’t call it enemies to lovers because you were never enemies. you were just close by his side at all time and didn’t leave when you noticed that he was slowly starting to open up to you

he realized he loved you when you asked to be a vigilante with him and fight the abyss. in that moment, your eyes shone brighter than all the stars in the night sky, and diluc realized he wanted nothing more than to stay by your side and for you to be his partner

VENTI •

i see venti as someone to fall in love very easily

even if he’s been alive for thousands of years, what did it matter how many heartbreaks he endured when you were right in front of him, an image of perfection in its purest form?

to see you happy and thriving is really the only thing that means more than the world to him

what was the need to learn to love this world he had to live in as a disguised god when all he really needs is for you to be right by his side?

he probably realized he was in love with you when you helped him steal lawfully gain possession of dandelion wine. sure it might be something meaningless to you, but to venti it held all the meaning an action as simple as that can possibly hold.

XIAO •

he’s an adeptus who has lived for thousands of years alone, what use does someone like him have for relationships?

of course he understands that not even adepti are immune to falling in love. while yes, there are people who simply aren’t romantically attracted to anything or anyone (WRITER SAYS ARO RIGHTS!!), xiao is not one of those people

in all honesty he was scared of getting close to you in fear that his karmic debt would transfer to you and incur the same suffering that he endured for thousands of years and eventually became immune to

you surely need not worry of demons in the night, as xiao made it his personal job to protect you before anyone else

he realized he loved you during the lantern rite festival. all the colors in the sky flying by were fleeting, just like human life itself. if life was a person or a being in general, it surely hates him. but you eased that pain, that ever growing hurt in his heart subsided when you were around.

KAZUHA •

kazuha my beloved

love at first sight isn’t real in his eyes, so he didn’t fall in love with you until you had told him of your hardships, and in return he had shared his with you

to him at least, understanding your troubles makes him more drawn to you. yet still, he was nervous to share the troubles that plagued his mind

but he feels so at ease around you, able to let go of the burden that weighs down on his heart, as free as the wind.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Michael de Adder :: @deAdder:: All the King's men

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 28, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 29, 2024

On Friday, in an interview with CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, Trump’s former attorney general William Barr brushed off the recent news that Trump, furious that the story he had taken refuge in a bunker during the Black Lives Matter protests in summer 2020 had leaked, called for the White House leaker to be executed. 

“I remember him being very mad about that. I actually don’t remember him saying ‘executing,’ but I wouldn‘t dispute it, you know,” Barr said to Collins when she asked him about it. “The president would lose his temper and say things like that. I doubt he would’ve actually carried it out.”

Collins followed up, asking if Trump would call for executions on other occasions. “He would say things similar to that on occasions to blow off steam. But I wouldn’t take them literally every time he did it,” Barr answered.

Why not? Collins asked. 

“Because at the end of the day, it wouldn’t be carried out and you could talk sense into him,” Barr said. “I don’t think he would actually go and kill political rivals and things like that.” Barr said he intends to vote for Trump. 

“Just to be clear,” Collins said, “you’re voting for someone who you believe tried to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, that can’t even achieve his own policies, that lied about the election even after his attorney general told him that the election wasn’t stolen.… You’re going to vote for someone who is facing 88 criminal counts?”

“The answer to the question is yes,” Barr said. “I think the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement and the Biden administration.”

The contention of the former attorney general—who had been responsible for enforcing the rule of law in the United States of America—that a man who has demanded the execution of people he dislikes is a better candidate for the presidency than a man who is using the power of the federal government to create jobs for ordinary people, combat climate change, protect the environment, and promote health and education, illustrates that Republican leaders have abandoned democracy.

In November 2019, in a speech to the right-wing Federalist Society, Barr ignored the Declaration of Independence, which is a list of complaints against King George III, to argue that Americans had rebelled in 1776 not against the king, but rather against Parliament. In the modern world, Barr argued, Congress has grown far too strong. The president should be able to act on his own initiative and not be checked by either congressional or judicial oversight.

That theory is known as the theory of the “unitary executive,” and it says that because the president is the head of one of the three unique branches of government, any oversight of that office by Congress or the courts is unconstitutional, although in fact presidents since George Washington have accepted congressional oversight. 

The theory took root in 1986, when Samuel Alito, then a 35-year-old lawyer for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, proposed the use of “signing statements” to take from Congress the sole power to make laws by giving the president the power to “interpret” them. In 1987, president Ronald Reagan issued a signing statement to a debt bill, declaring his right to interpret it as he wished and saying the president could not be forced “to follow the orders of a subordinate.” 

In 2004, when Congress outlawed the newly-revealed U.S. torture program at remote sites around the world, President George W. Bush issued a signing statement rejecting any limitation on “the unitary executive branch.” In April 2020, to justify his demands for states to reopen in the face of the deadly pandemic, Trump told reporters, “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total….” Now, in 2024, Trump’s lawyers are in court arguing that the president has criminal immunity for his behavior in the White House, possibly including his right to order the executions of those he sees as enemies. 

As Republicans have embraced unlimited power for the president, they have also turned against the right of American citizens to have a say in their government. Beginning with so-called ballot integrity measures in 1986, they embraced methods to knock voters off the voting rolls. That policy intensified after Democrats passed the so-called Motor-Voter Law in 1993, making it easier to register to vote. 

After voters nonetheless elected Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, the Supreme Court handed down the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, permitting unlimited donations to political campaigns, and corporate money flowed into them. In that same year, Republican operatives launched Operation REDMAP to elect Republicans to state legislatures ahead of the redistricting required after the 2010 census. Operation REDMAP resulted in extreme partisan gerrymandering that would make it virtually impossible for Democrats to win elections even if they won a majority of the vote. 

Then, in 2013, the Supreme Court decided Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That law had required states with a history of racial discrimination to get clearance from the Department of Justice before they changed their voting laws. The court said that preclearance was no longer necessary. Within hours of the decision, Republican-dominated states proposed new laws that discriminate against voters of color.   

In 2019, Barr explained to an audience at the University of Notre Dame the ideology behind the strong executive and weakened representation. Rejecting the clear words of the Constitution’s framers, Barr said that the U.S. was never meant to be a secular democracy. When the nation’s founders had spoken so extensively about self-government, he said, they had not meant the right to elect representatives of their own choosing. Instead, he said, the founders meant the ability of individuals to “restrain and govern themselves.” And, because people are willful, the only way to achieve self-government is through religion. 

Those who believe the United States is a secular country, he said, are destroying the nation. It was imperative, he said, to reject those values and embrace religion as the basis for American government. 

The idea that the United States must become a Christian nation has apparently led Barr to accept the idea that a man who has called for the execution of those he sees as enemies should be president, apparently because he is expected to usher in an authoritarian Christian state, in preference to a man who is using the power of the government to help ordinary Americans.  

Saturday night, journalists, politicians, and celebrities gathered for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an annual fundraiser for the White House Correspondents’ Association, which protects press passes for journalists who regularly cover the White House, assigns seats in the briefing room, funds scholarships for aspiring journalists, and gives awards for outstanding journalism. It is traditionally an evening of comedy, but last night, after a humorous speech, President Joe Biden implored the press to take the threat of dictatorship seriously. 

“I’m sincerely not asking of you to take sides but asking you to rise up to the seriousness of the moment; move past the horse race numbers and the gotcha moments and the distractions, the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics; and focus on what’s actually at stake,” he said. “Every single one of us has…a serious role to play in making sure democracy endures….  I have my role, but, with all due respect, so do you.” 

George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week apparently took this reminder to heart. “Until now,” he said in the show’s opener on Sunday, “[n]o American president had ever faced a criminal trial. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment for retaining and concealing classified documents. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment or a state indictment for trying to overturn an election, or been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two other states for the same crime. No American president ever faced hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments for business fraud, defamation, and sexual abuse….

“The scale of the abnormality is so staggering, that it can actually become numbing. It’s all too easy to fall into reflexive habits, to treat this as a normal campaign, where both sides embrace the rule of law, where both sides are dedicated to a debate based on facts and the peaceful transfer of power. But, that is not what’s happening this election year. Those bedrock tenets of our democracy are being tested in a way we haven’t seen since the Civil War. It’s a test for the candidates, for those of us in the media, and for all of us as citizens.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[wifeglor]

14, 21 for maemag, 22 for gap pussy

hi hi!!! (From this list)

14. What are your favorite smut tropes?

I feel like you know them already :D But hmmmm more seriously... I think in general, I have "will think about something I initially found off-putting too hard and decide actually it is hot/fun/wtv" disease, so this would be a long and very inclusive list. I love a good power dynamic in smutfic (good in the sense of a fine vintage, not moral good), whether it's like a fun thing a sweet couple is playacting, an underlying reality for a ship, or outright dubcon/noncon. Obviously "power dynamic" can fit a billion tropes, but I love very many of those tropes for that underlying reason lmao. Also, I love when there's a lot of emotion, be it DRAMA, or angst, or hurt/comfort, or anything else. Obviously those strike different notes and it depends on the story, but like while I think it can be less "sexy" than pure porn I LOVE SO MUCH reading a good like "magical healing dick" conclusion to an arc of longing and woes. It's an orgasm of the SOUL. Or "magical healing baby spawned from magical healing dick," I am Not Immune to this (it's about the Cherishing). Also, I love those ppl on AO3 who are out there writing the most fucked up (affectionate) monsterfucking oneshots ft. worldbuilding with their original characters and original universes--doing Eru's work. ALSO I remember once upon a time being judgy about omegaverse and laugh because wow that really didn't last long on my part as soon as I opened those fics and realized there was longing inside.

21. Share a smutty headcanon about [character(s)]. (Maedhros/Maglor)

Wow who are these characters I've never heard of them before...

I feel like I need a whole essay to try to get out all my thoughts about them and it wouldn't entirely make any sense, but I think the one-headcanon version is like. Maglor longs to be claimed by Maedhros and please Maedhros and be absolved and loved and worthy & this translates well in his brain to being penetrated. Maedhros longs to feel like he can effectively take care of Maglor/make Maglor happy (something I think he has real despair and doubt about, but the resigned despair and bitterness that he can't correlates to how much he WISHES to) and also that his control issues/endless responsibility-taking are Working Actually And Perfectly Good & this translates well in his brain to penetrating Maglor (which is on unspoken offer from Maglor whenever Maglor is in the same continent and Maedhros is still breathing). Much love. I think that dynamic remains in play between them regardless of the sex act but this sure is my preference for them.

22. Share a DVD commentary on [one of your smut fic/smutty scene from a longer work]. (Mapmaking, known in my google docs folder as "gap pussy")

YEAHH okay. So this one has been lurking almost a full year (I think) as a handful of incoherent notes in my notes app, which sort of sketched out a lot of the dirty talk and action. This was very convenient for finally sitting down and writing it!! Which I had a lot of fun doing; every fic of mine for smut week has been pure self-indulgence. This fic owes a spiritual debt to Death and Taxes, an amazing russingon fic by TheLionInMyBed that was formative in my Maedhros thinking like... very early in my entry to Silm fandom stuff. I just loved Maedhros combining his politics and strategy (never turned off!) with sex and romance in such a blatant, funny, affectionate-but-instrumental way. Also, I've been making "Maglor's Gap " jokes since like. Forever, so it was bound to happen sometime.

The actual "strategy" on Maedhros' part here (aka the policies he wants Maglor to enact) is purely styrofoam porn setup and maybe doesn't really make sense, but I figured that's not what we're here for so I didn't pay it too much mind. What I did want to come through in that aspect of the story was Maedhros' affection for Maglor (kinda understated I think in this fic, but he doesn't want Maglor to die in like, say, dragonfire, and he will do all he can to prevent that. He wants Maglor to be as secure as he can, even though maintaining the siege/leaguer & his own trust & strategy mean Maglor is at great personal risk in this critical position) and Maedhros' tendency to taking leaderly responsibility (he's aware of the risk and that he's asked this of Maglor, & Himring will help out the Gap).

Also, in my head this is a spiritual sequel to my magnum opus Thine Ever, Makalaurë, despite the fact that in between these 2 Gap-era moments, Maglor by miracle of Yavanna's touch gained a pussy. This is a period I associate with a lot of hope for them and a sort of renewing of ties, testing and forging of Maglor's devotion and Maedhros' reliance on it, and Himring!Maedhros=sexiest Maedhros. I'm finding it really fun lately to write humor and dirty talk, both of which are kinda new terrain for me, so that's been delightful on my end. New terrain... ha

[autisticsupervillain]

It's Fictional Throwdown Friday!

This Week's Fighters...

Oz vs Heaven Ascension DIO!

Conditions:

Speed Equalized. DIO has fully absorbed the Holy Corpse

Scenario:

Oz plans on asking Vera to the Prom. Vera agrees on the condition that Oz do her a favor. Vera got herself indebted to a mysterious cult and has no intention of actually paying them, so she enlists Oz to get her out of this debt. Oz decides to accomplish this by assassinating the cult's god, DIO.

Analysis: Oz

Ask yourself this: what does the ultimate embodiment of fear look like? What nightmarish, unholy abomination coukd inspire the phobias of all mankind?

Stop thinking, because you're wrong. Fear looks like a shy, awkward high schooler who is desperate for a date to prom.

Well, okay, high schooler is being generous. In the Monster Realm, everyone who goes to High School is 21 at the youngest and today's combatant is actually older than time itself. Meet Oz, the inky-dark embodiment of fear himself. His primary concerns in life are, as you might expect, passing his classes and getting laid, as is the same with everyone at Spooky High. How Oz ended up in this situation is actually rather ambiguous. It's implied that their origin story might be similar to Zoe's, that being that they were an eldritch abomination created by The Nothing meant to destroy all life who eventually saw the beauty of life and choose to live as a regular person, but the details are currently unclear and this is only our closest guess.

What is clear, however, is that Oz's otherworldly power hasn't diminished any, despite their more mundane occupation and goals. They still posses an extraordinary wealth of abilites worthy of a timeless god. Firstly, Oz is remarkably difficult to put down. Not only have they been unaffected by damage done to their soul, but they can regenerate from fatal injuries as well. They can regrow severed limbs, regenerate vital organs, and even revive from being completely ripped to shreds, provided that someone stitches them back together.

What's more, they're remarkably durable to match. His stomach can contain the Totem of Z'gord, which is powerful enough to cause earthquakes all across the school, he can trade punches with Damien, who survived punching the sun, and was completely unaffected by the game itself crashing, able to act to reverse the problem even as reality comes crashing down around his ears abd his friends and narrator are corrupted beyond the ability to even move.

See, Oz has something of a Deadpool thing going on... or maybe Gwenpool more specifically. He is, to a certain extent, aware that he's in a video game and a stort and can leverage that to his advantage on occasion. For example, he can interact with characters from seperate video games entirely (even if he can't actually see them, do to their character models not existing in his game), he can move outside the boundaries of the game map to exit reality, and even turn the game off and on again at will, reducing reality to nothing and then restoring it with a thought. This awareness does not equate to perfect immunity, however. He ultimately can never escape the game and the revelation of such gives him an existential crisis in one of the endings, though he can interact with the world outside it some degree, such as interacting with the narrator or creating a website in the real world that can interact with the audience.

Even when they aren't breaking the laws of the game over their knee, Oz still has some absurd powers in their arsenal. They are fully aware of the fact that they have plot armor, which is what gets them into their constant unlikely shenanigans in the first place. They can give this plot armor away to other people, making it so no one will pay any attention to them and they'll be ignored by any major characters as unimportant. Then, they can steal this plot armor back just as easily. He can become one with the entire universe at will, becoming everywhere at once, and can summon abstract concepts to fight on their behalf. This concepts csn be anything, from the concept of Biology to the concept of they themselves, and these concepts can destroy other abstracts, erasing the ideas they represent from existence. For example, he once summoned the concept of Biology and had it kill the concept of math, erasing math from existence and making it impossible to calculate anything. And canceling math class.

So, if Oz is this powerful, how does he struggle with anything? Well, because it's a dating sim, really. None of this really matters as far as getting a date to the Prom is concerned and all of his powers are only useful if they help with the current social situation. Why did he become one with the universe? To get inside a really high monsyer truck, of course. Why did he destroy the concept of math? To get out of math class. Hell, the school has a backup generator to restore the concept of math if it's destroyed, so no one really cares long term. Why did he hone his mind to make it immune to horrors that otherwise drive men mad? To go on a date with Zoe inside a realm that does exactly that, naturally. Does it matter that's he's unaffected by demons altering the fabric of reality? If that means they can join his rave then sure!

What matters is his social stats. Luckily, Oz has plenty of those two. He can start a rave of over 200 people in seconds, trick two angels into thinking he's God with his ventriloquism act, and become chairman of an international corporation in a single day. And if their stats aren't high enough for some reason, they can just rip them out of you, either by eating your organs, mocking you until your social skills become his, or just by enhancing his own character traits with magic spells.

There's also their outright weaknesses. First of all, Oz is willing to do almost anything to get laid or impress their friends, including basically all the bullshit mentioned above. They are a desperate people pleasure with a really bad case of both depression and social anxiety, so the opinions of others mean a lot.

Despite that, however, they are every bit the eldritch monstrosity you would expect from the embodiment of fear in raw power if not in personality.

Analysis: DIO

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if the bad guy won? Have you ever worried about what sort if hellish nightmare world they'd create if they ever got their way? Worry no longer, for this villain created a paradise Over Heaven.

Dio Brando, or just DIO these days. The vampiric monsterous dog Killer we all love to hate. This particular version achieved his dream of a World Over Heaven, turning his home reality into one that worshipped him. Truly, an egomaniac's idea of paradise. And, of course, it wasn't enough. When DIO learned of worlds beyond his own, he began plotting a way to conquer them all, starting with the main timeline.

Given that this is just Dio 2: Electric Boogaloo, everything within DIO's standard moveset is still here. He is still a vampire and has all those same powers with seemingly none of the weaknesses. And he still has his time stopping Stand: The World, which non-Stand users cannot see or harm. However, you may notice that The World looks a bit different then normal and that's where all of this starts to change.

The World has evolved into The World Over Heaven, becoming much stronger than it's canonical counterpart in the process. As such, DIO now has access to numerous reality breaking warping powers, many of which make his old arsenal completely superfluous. While his healing factor is still there, it hardly matters when he can just warp away any serious injuries he sustains. He can still hypnotize you with a glance or with his hair, but why would he when he can simply corrupt you into serving him, altering your morals and loyalties as he needs. Hell, while he's at it, he can give you some new perks, such as bestowing his own ability to travel across time and the multiverse to his new followers.

The few old abilities that are still useful have likely been enhanced to an even greater degree, such as his time stop, whereas whole new abilities have been added to the fray to make DIO even deadlier. The main of which, from which all of his other powers stem, is his Reality Overwrite ability. This power allows his stand to Overwrite the reality of anything it physically touches with its hands, allowing it to instigate all sorts of effects. For example, it can nullify the powers of other Stands, wipe people from existence, and devour the souls of targets to boost its own power.

In a sense, The World Over Heaven is the polar opposite of another powerful Stand, Golden Experience Requiem. Giorno himself, GER's user, has even observed as much. GER functions by setting the actions an enemy takes against it's master to zero, making it so that any attack against it's owner never happens at all. It basically removes the cause from effect to render its enemy helpless. The World Over Heaven was still able to nullify this ability regardless, implying it might have a resistance against causality manipulation, though GER's exact limits are so vague that it's difficult to mark down exactly what this means.

DIO can even apply this effect to a cosmic scale, using it to create the Over Heaven Area, a vast cosmological body containing numerous stars, meaning its power so great it can at the very least create entire solar systems at will.

All of this is only further amplified once DIO absorbs the Holy Corpse, becoming the Son to DIO's Father and TWOH's Holy Spirit. The various remains of Jesus Christ himself, the parts of the Holy Corpse are known to great the ability to see far into the future, communicate telepathically, and resist being transmuted into mindless dinosaurs.

Furthermore, the full corpse completely upgrades DIO's Stand, allowing it to warp reality without requiring physical contact (as evidenced by him corrupting Jolyne without touching her and warping the entire universe into a massive stary sky), granting DIO perfect control over the entire world.

Or it would have, if DIO hadn't forgotten one important detail. As they say, history repeats, and DIO has once again forgotten that Star Platinum was the same kind of Stand as his own. As such, when he upgraded The World Over Heaven, Star Platinum, Jotaro Kujo's Stand, evolved to become Star Platinum Over Heaven. As such, Jotaro now had all the same powers that DIO did, allowing him and his daughter to once again kick DIO's ass and return their world to normal.

Regardless of his failure, Heaven Ascension Dio stands tall as the one version of Dio Brando to earn the title of GOD.

Throwdown Mashup:

Throwdown Breakdown:

Alright, God against God, pound for pound.

For starters, a big advantage for HA DIO is that Oz can't see Stands, allowing Over Heaven to flank and attack at leisure. While this is a pretty devastating disadvantage to be at against a JoJo's character, it is not an automatic loss. The major thing in Oz's corner is his various resistances, which would check a lot of DIO's automatic win conditions. For instance, I don't think DIO could just warp Oz out of existence, as not only has Oz been unaffected by smaller scale distortions to reality but he was unfazed by the game crashing and even getting turned on and off completely, meaning he resists Existence Erasure on a universal scale.

However, Oz's resistances are not omnipresent against all the hax DIO can throw at him. Can they resist getting corrupted and having their mind bent to his will? Yes, they've resisted both of those things before, from Zoe's mind screwing dimension and a glitch completely corrupting and crashing the entire game respectively. Can they resist getting sent back in time or having their soul destroyed? No. This means that DIO would have numerous options to win with.

Oz, on the other hand, has plenty of win conditions as well. Summoning an abstract concept to kill DIO down to the very conceptual level, for instance, is something that DIO both wouldn't expect and can't counter. He's never been shown to directly effect the very concepts that govern reality like Oz can, so saying he can Reality Overwrite it is presumptuous.

I do want to clarify that I don't see Oz turning reality off and on as a win condition due to how it works. It's either the game is on or it's not on. When it's off, Oz doesn't have a reality he can exist in or interact with and when it's turned back on DIO will be there again. At most, it'll throw DIO through a loop because he's going to remember briefly not existing and get thrown off by that. Though that might back fire because it would convince DIO to take them more seriously.

What I think ultimately makes this Oz's game is stalling tactics. Not only is stalling with superfluous bullshit something Oz tends to do anyways, but he has more options to wait DIO out until he can play that one trump card. For example, they can give DIO their own plot armor, meaning he'll see them as completely irrelevant (well, moreso than he already will) and ignore them completely, granting Oz plenty of time to come up with a plan and later steal that plot armor back. Or they could merge with the entire universe to force DIO to try and steal the soul from all of it simultaneously, which isn't something I'm convinced he can do, nor can he punt Oz to another universe or back in time while in this state because, well, they're the universe. Are these perfect counters? No. But they're more of a buffer than DIO has, which is to say, none at all.

If DIO gets his, he just has The World Over Heaven warp away any damage done, which isn't something he can do against getting killed conceptually. Oz's methods on the other hand can slow down what DIO has to offer. And sense this is DIO we're talking about, a perfect combination of overly cautious and massively egotistical that means he drags out fights a lot, Dio likely isn't going to land the strikes he needs before Oz, say, merges with everything and nullifies his win conditions or kills him conceptually.

Of course, Oz is then going to have to explain to Father Pucci why his god no longer exists and I'm not sure the ventriloquism act is gonna save them this time. But that's a matter that's outside the realms of this debate.

This Throwdown's Winner is...

Oz!!

[pandemic-info]

‘Immunity debt’ is a misguided and dangerous concept | Financial Times

Anjana Ahuja November 23 2022

There is no evidence that an individual is worse off for having avoided earlier infection

The discussion swirling around immunity debt shows how easy it is for a plausible-sounding theory to circulate as misinformation. In this case, misinformation risks promoting the unfounded assertion that infections are clinically beneficial to children, as well as feeding the revisionist narrative that Covid measures did more harm than good.

Read the whole article on Financial Times.

[baking-brad]

something i think about a lot is the moment in el camino when ed tells jesse that he "made his own luck"

because to me, that's an unbelievably fucked up thing to say to a person who's gone through what jesse has. no crime on earth is bad enough to make that kind of luck.

but what kind of person is ed? what kind of clients has he seen in his life? who was he before he was the disappearer? we get a clear picture of his code of business, but what is his code of ethics? what motivates him? it seems like he's not completely devoid of desire to help people, otherwise he wouldn't bend the hard boundaries he's set for his own safety and provide his service to jesse, but it's way down the list below "get paid" and "do a job" and "don't get caught." what kind of life do you have to live to become someone who is not immune to human suffering, but who can still look into the face of suffering itself and say "you made your own luck?"

maybe it's something he's said to many crying would-be clients over the years. maybe he took pity on someone once and got burned. maybe he had to build up stronger walls to keep it from happening again. maybe he says it to everyone, maybe it's as rote as "have a nice day" for him. he's a man of business. he's here to do a job, and the job costs what it costs. maybe "you made your own luck" means "your tears don't work here, figure something else out."

or maybe he really means it. maybe he's simmering with hatred every time he meets a prospective client. maybe he takes their money and secretly hopes they all end up dead or in jail. never does anything to push things in that direction, because that would jeopardize him and the business, but wishes that every one of them gets destroyed by hubris. maybe. but i find this harder to square with the ed who reads jesse's letter to brock with real emotion in his eyes.

maybe he really believes in the carceral system, and he sees jesse's time in the compound as him paying his debt to society in some twisted way.

or maybe he believes there's freedom in making your own luck. maybe "you made your own luck" is a curse, but also a blessing and a promise. "not many of us get to start fresh." but jesse does.

(and what does ed mean when he says "not many of us get to start fresh?" is there history there? longing? what does ed wish he could drive through snow-covered trees and leave behind?)

maybe ed watches jesse disappear and sees someone who gets to make new choices, new luck, and who finally gets to decide for himself what that means. maybe he just wishes it. or maybe he really believes it.

[docholligay]

This is literally in the top menu of Penzey’s site, I’m so glad I made them a prize for my birthday contest, they are OUT HERE FOR BLOOD. I want to point out this is a major company with tons of physical stores that does, in fact, have something to lose.

\About Republicans

As we’ve now said on our first-ever About Us page on our website, there’s something unique about humankind’s relationship with spices that time and again have caused spices to be a driving force for change. We live in a time calling out for change and for solutions to the very real problems our country and our planet face. There’s two very different futures ahead for us totally dependent on whether we solve these problems or not. With so much at stake we feel obligated to use the unique position spices hold in our lives to try to help promote the solutions to these problems as best we can.

Watching the slow decline of the Republican Party over the last half century, and the steep decline/bottom falling out over the last decade, it can be easy to see the nonsense that has overtaken the party as pretty much random. Once you start seriously looking at the problems America and the world face and who and what are standing in the way of solving those problems, it quickly becomes clear there is nothing random to what the Republicans are promoting.

The Republican departure from conservative values and embrace of what, from a distance, looks a whole lot like insanity didn’t happen by chance. All of it has been intelligently crafted with the goal of preserving the position of those who profit from the inhumanity that is at the very roots of pretty much every problem we are facing. From the environment, to racism/discrimination, to health, to saving our democracy at home and growing it abroad, half the time Republicans are intentionally blocking the solution to the problems we face. The other half of the time they are the problem we face.

The truth of our time is we’ve arrived at the point where there’s no way to respect the nonsense the Republican Party is promoting and have any hope of overcoming the problems we as a nation and we as a planet face. Given the choice between saving America and planet Earth or saving the feelings of Republican voters, we are choosing to side with saving our country and our world. I’m sorry it’s come to this.

And no, there is no HATE!!! in any of this. There is a whole lot of propaganda at the heart of much of how Republican voters have been steered away from conservative values to what they now seem all too happy to vote for. The thing to remember about propaganda is that it doesn’t just misinform, it also works to make people immune from the truth by convincing them any facts that counter their propaganda are nothing more than HATE!!! But we really have no hate for Republican voters. None at all.

I actually like and respect most of you guys. Sure, there are a growing number that are there for the racism, but I still believe the majority of you have good hearts that want to help and do the right thing. I know you to be trustworthy, and honest, and funny, and caring, and good souls. The problem isn’t what you are, the problem is what you are now voting to support. You guys have been turned around.

Remember when your distrust of big city types, and your deep rooted beliefs in paying your debts, respecting your marriage, raising kids willing to serve, honoring your word, and going to church every week had you voting for Donald Trump over Joe Biden all because Biden’s son had a computer? Or how you couldn’t vote for Hillary because she was over-prepared and used emails? I know that to you your actions seem rational and in keeping with your values, but when it comes to voting you are now consistently voting in people who are the exact opposite of you and the values you hold dear.

What does any of this mean? Going forward we would still be glad to have you as customers, but we’re done pretending the Republican Party’s embrace of cruelty, racism, Covid lies, climate change denial, and threats to democracy are anything other than the risks they legitimately are. If you need us to pretend you are not creating the hurt you are creating in order for you to continue to be our customer, I’m sad to say you might be happier elsewhere.

If on the other hand you still want the best spices and don’t need us to respect what you now vote for to be our customer, Hooray! We are happy to have you here, but know that we will, on a regular basis, try to wake you up from this dream that has you believing there is anything conservative left at all to what the Republican Party has become. We can and will work without Republicans to solve the problems we face, but it sure would be nice to get back to a time where Republicans were equal defenders of equality, the environment, and democracy. We look forward to that day.

Thanks for reading.

Thanks for being here,

Bill

[abidethetempest]

mega 3-in-1 rise and fall retrospective post!

(because i forgot to do them for the last three chapters..... oops) literally one person i think is cool liked my post about bringing these pack and I am Not Immune to peer pressure so I decided to do the ones I missed right away lmao

Chapter 10

As I said in the authors note on this chapter, this one was hard for me. Mainly because I was writing it while working on my conlang and then I got too excited abt the conlang and kinda forgot to write the chapter,,,,, I honestly can't remember if there was anything cool or important I wanted to highlight for this one. Rereading it now, I don't see anything to point out in particular. I mostly had fun writing Risen being kind of a menace with her lack of self preservation, and having Erikses go into mom-mode at the end.

Chapter 11

Aster

oh hey look that guy again. i'm sure he's not gonna cause any problems at all :)

no but in all seriousness, I do really like writing about Aster and how Risen feels about him. It's cool to have him be seen as a very real threat, esp in a game where as the player I feel like this unstoppable murder machine 90% of the time. Risen also has to worry about the lives of the House, who are most definitely not going to get back up if Aster kills them like she does. She's already prone to paranoia when it comes to him, so tapping back into some of her fears after a few chapters of relative peace was refreshing. (For me, anyway, I'm sure it sucked for her.) Excited to show you guys her growth as a character thru dealing w Aster and also to get to the more exciting bits of this arc.

I Wish Erikses Was My Mom

need I say more? Erikses is kind of my favorite character (okay maybeeee she's tied with Aakse tbh) and I just love writing her interactions with Risen. I was concerned that it would feel like her relationship with Risen moves too quickly from "tentative ally/mentor figure" to "i have been adopted this nice crab alien" but I eventually came to my senses and realized this is my fic and I can do whatever I want.

I do honestly feel like this was the right time to have them get closer, and not just because I want to write cute bonding times. I'll probably elaborate on this more in that sidefic I have planned; Erikses is someone who has always wanted to be a mentor and parent figure but it simply never worked out until now. Now Risen is suddenly thrust into her life, and Erikses has come to care about her beyond the initial "honored guest who I owe a great debt to" dynamic.

Writing that hug healed my soul. Erikses is best mom confirmed.

Chapter 12

all caught up now!

The Nightmare

ehehehe I bet I got some of you with that little fakeout huh >:3c sorry not sorry. It wasn't in my outline, but I felt like I wanted to show that, even tho Risen got some nice comfort from her alien mom Erikses last chapter, she's not instantly cured of all fear. But now she has Erikses in her corner if she ever needs someone to remind her its still gonna be okay.

Traveling Songs

A thing that has been in my brain since almost day 1 of this project is the idea of group songs being big in Eliksni culture. Traveling songs are specifically meant to bring good luck on your journey and keep everyone entertained (and awake) during all that damn walking. Also the sound of large groups of people singing together just does something to my brain okay.

Erikses, let me see what you have? A knife! NO!

Everybody's favorite scribe stabs people in her free time, go queen. This cultural detail is another one I've been kicking around for a long time. I think it came more out of the Long Drift than Riisborn Eliksni culture. Everyone needs to know how to fight, because the universe can be an incredibly cruel and hostile place, especially after the Whirlwind. Even scholars like Erikses traditionally are trained in some kind of weapon, tho their skills are usually more focused on self defense.

Risen Can Change Her Knives Now?

This is not a Risen-specific ability! (Actually none of her abilities as a Guardian will ever be hers alone, just a matter of skill, age, and practice.) I headcanon that Guardians can change the form of their Light-based summons (Hunter knives, Titan hammers, Golden Gun, Dawnblades, etc.) to fit their own personal tastes or fighting style. Within reason, ofc-- a Golden Gun will always be a gun, but maybe some Hunters make it a sniper instead. Risen wants her knives to look like Erikses's and in a quiet environment, with time and focus, she can do it. This is a lot harder during a fight, but practice makes perfect.

Embroidery <333

Once again, R&F is secretly just me gushing about every fiber art I know/want to learn forever. Embroidery is one I want to learn real bad; I do cross-stitch already a tiny bit, so I think I could do it in theory, but it just looks like magic to me ughhhh so cool.

Erikses choosing to share her art with Risen is a significant act in Eliksni culture, and somewhat formalizes their teacher-student relationship (we have not gotten to my cultural concept of iksabas yet but when we do I will have so much yelling to do about Erikses and how she makes Risen a member of her family thru the act of sharing her language and her craft with her).

whew okay thats a long boi in the soup but there's three chapters worth of retrospectives!

[inoppositionflorien]

So anyway I can't think of anything to talk about so I'm going to complain about the gold standard and explain why it's a terrible terrible terrible idea (I assume everyone already knows this, what with the gold standard fundamentally being a libertarian talking point and them as a general rule being wrong about all economic things, but I'm going to talk about it anyway)

So anyway the gold standard is a terrible idea, especially compared to fiat currency. There is the idea that a gold-backed currency is more stable and harder to devalue. These are both untrue. It is not just prone to, but is by default in, a state of deflation, as a limited currency supply is stretched ever wider across a population. Deflation is the opposite of inflation, of course, but it's actually much worse. It makes debts larger in real terms. The money you have is worth more, but 40% of people are in more debt than they have money. This would make their situation much worse, while rich people would become even more obscenely rich. Further, the highly restricted money supply means there's no way to respond to economic crisis effectively. Money can't be injected into the economy through government programs easily without changing the formal value of gold because each unit of currency is based on some amount of gold.

Well that sounds immune to easy devaluation right? Surely there can't be hyperinflation right? Nope. In California and Alaska and everywhere else that had a gold-backed currency during a gold rush, a cup of coffee cost five dollars. Those gold rushes were in the 1800s and early 1900s. That's nearly 50 times the price that they would have otherwise been because the huge gold injection destabilized the currency.

"oh it's so rare to have a sudden injection of gold nowadays though" I hear the objection? Well, California in particular is about to have a flooding event in the central valley, which will bring a lot of gold into the area. Climate change is increasing the frequency of these flooding events. This is true of most Gold bearings places. Gold is going to get injected massively, every few years. The currency will experience rapid inflation and deflation in unpredictable cycles! Yayyyy

Moving on.

Gold is, itself, a fiat currency. You can't eat gold, and it has very limited use cases. These are common arguments against the gold standard and they are all good. However, they also take the idea of a currency backed by something as fundamentally desirable. It is not. A fiat currency is not backed by trust in the government any more than a gold backed one is (do you trust the government to give you your gold?) In fact, like literally everything else, fiat currency's value comes from what you decide it's worth to you. The gold, or water, or electricity, or hour-of-labor or whatever it's being backed with is extraneous to the actual value of the currency, it is adding a little box to the money that says "trust me, I stabilized the value of a commodity somehow even though that's actually impossible to do, and I forfeited the right to do monetary policy also!"

The gold standard and any other currency standard was and would be a disaster for everyone but the rich. This is why goldbugs like Forbes and Cryptobros want to bring it back in some capacity. It benefits those who are already rich, and punishes those who are in debt or poor.

"what if the mint prints a billion trillion dollars and money is worthless" what if I ate a live hamster? But seriously, hyperinflation is destructive, yes. But the fact is, the economy is about three times as stable today as it was under the gold standard. (That is, economic crashes are smaller usually, they're shorter, and it's longer between them.) "But I never recovered from 2008/2020/1997" maybe you didn't. That's because most of the economic recovery benefited the rich in all recent recoveries. The fact is, the same situation was much worse under the gold standard. Rich people rarely took a hit at all during those times, whereas everyone else suffered greatly. The Great Depression was one of the first economic crises to actually hit all classes, and the response to it was to treat the currency like it was still on the gold standard, which made things exponentially worse.

That is why the great depression is remembered, and not the panic of '21, '89, or any of the other huge economic collapses before then that happened all the time. The people who wrote about those were the few rich people who took hits. The Great Depression had many people of all classes take hits, and then had monetary policy based on the ideas of the gold standard (massive spending cuts by the government) happen, causing the crisis to last until World War II. The gold standard is a terrible idea, makes rich people richer, poor people poorer, and it limits options for restabilizing an economy. It should never be brought back.