xstrudelx-blog

[snackugaki]

surprise my other hobbies are window shopping and fashion

[sdrose93]

Tom 🥰😍😍

[latenightsundayblues]

i love how you draw adam. he really is a sopping wet rat

*twirls hair* you think sooooooo

[thebreakfastgenie]

Some man on twitter took the opportunity of someone literally celebrating Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 90th birthday to push the "Ginsburg should have retired and this is her/Democrats' fault" line and unfortunately I have some time on my hands so you're getting this rant from me again.

First and foremost, putting the blame on a dead woman when there is a living man who is more directly responsible for losing control of the Supreme Court is profoundly stupid and while I doubt it's consciously misogynistic it does reflect a society that holds women responsible for everything.

I don't know how many times I can say this, but we didn't lose the court in 2020, we lost it in 2018 when Anthony Kennedy retired and Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed. A 6-3 conservative majority is certainly worse, but the Dobbs decision, for example, would have been the same.

You don't get to blame Democrats or Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the fact that you dismissed the importance of the Supreme Court in 2016. Whatever you think should have been done in 2014, you knew what the reality was in 2016. There was already an open seat on the Supreme Court during that election.

If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, Antonin Scalia would have been replaced by a liberal justice, likely Merrick Garland, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have been replaced by another liberal justice. Anthony Kennedy would either have remained in his seat or been replaced by a moderate or liberal justice. The tentative 5-4 liberal majority we had prior to 2016 would have become a tentative 6-3 majority with a solid 5 liberal votes. This Supreme Court would not have overturned Roe and would not be threatening policies like student loan forgiveness and affirmative action. That is the court we would have if 50,000 people in three states had voted for Hillary Clinton.

Instead, Donald Trump appointed three Supreme Court Justices and there is a solid 6-3 conservative majority that will continue handing down horrible decisions that are nakedly political and barely even bother with constitutional justification. At the moment we're basically waiting for a couple of them to die and hoping there is a Democratic president and senate when it happens.

I think the position that Ginsburg should have retired in 2014 is heavily influenced by hindsight, but even accepting that it was a good idea, it's not as simple as people who began believing it in 2020 make it sound. First of all, I cite 2014 because Democrats lost control of the senate that year. This argument relies on Democrats seeing that loss coming. Even if they could do that, Democrats did not have filibuster-proof majority in the senate in 2014. At the time, senate rules required such a majority for supreme court confirmations. Harry Reid had only recently changed the rules to allow all other federal judicial nominations to be confirmed with a simple majority.

It's easy to forget now, but the level of Republican obstructionism during the Obama administration was unexpected. The rule change came about because there were so many judicial vacancies. Unfortunately, not all of them were filled even after the rule change, which allowed a number of Republican appointments during the Trump administration. I didn't have a position on senate rules in 2012-14 because I was in high school, but my position now is that I support ending the filibuster.

I think it's very clear that Republicans will simply change the rules to benefit themselves anyway the second they have power, so Democrats are not gaining anything by preserving the filibuster. However, I reached this position with the benefit of having observed Mitch McConnell's actions as Majority Leader between 2015 and 2019. Democrats in 2012-14 did not have that benefit. I don't know how predictable this Republican behavior was, but it's certainly not the same as having observed something that already happened. If Mitch McConnell had not already changed the rule for Supreme Court confirmations in 2017 in order to confirm Neil Gorsuch, I would have urged Democrats to do it in order to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson. But I don't know if it's fair to expect Democrats to have done so in 2014.

It's also worth remembering that the open politicization of the Supreme Court is fairly recent. It's been obviously political at least since the 1980s, but for quite a long time both parties kept up a pretense that it wasn't. It's easy to see why Democrats might not have expected Republicans to keep a seat open for an entire year rather than even give a Democratic nominee a hearing.

I think "in hindsight, things would be better if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had retired in 2014 and Harry Reid had changed the senate rules so Democrats could confirm a replacement" is a reasonable take. But it's academic. There's no point in assigning blame. And Democrats clearly did learn from this, because Stephen Breyer retired and was replaced by Ketanji Brown Jackson.

And, once again, whatever you think should have happened in 2014, we all went into 2016 knowing exactly what did and did not happen. Few people were saying Ginsburg should have retired at that time, and even those who were would not have been justified in not voting for Hillary Clinton, or discouraging others from supporting her, or downplaying the importance of the Supreme Court.

[give-grian-rights]

can someone tell me why im being abnormal about a character i've barely touched the content of. like yay yippie i watched like 20 hours of you. there's fucking 80 years of content get me OUT OF HERE?

[bunnyboy-juice]

spent the first hour and change at work deleting some old files and am having a grand ol time laughing at myself for not realizing i was a lesbian sooner

[rowniebow]

and they were roommates | peter parker x male!reader | 1/7

summary: peter parker and y/n y/l/n are roommates, and if there's anything to know about them it's that they hate living together.

pairings: tasm!peter parker x male!reader

cw: lil bit of blood in this one. yk, casual spider-man owies

word count: 1.3k+

an: dunno how long this will be or where i will go with it! but im goin'

masterlist ⭒ next

⭒

"no, i think i'm gonna move out. i can't take it anymore!"

only a slighting hum came from the speaker of your phone.

"i’m serious!"

"you've been saying that for the last six months."

"yeah, and i'm gonna do it! it's like, three in the morning and he still isn't back yet! he does this every night. what the hell could he be doing until three in the morning every night?"

"have you, i don't know, bothered asking him?"

"that- i- it-,"

"maybe you should ask."

"no! i've never like- seen him when he comes home. i just hear him. how am i supposed to bring it up that i've been hearing him come home so late every night for the last six months?"

"more like how are you going to bring up that you've been waiting up for him to come home every night for the last six months."

"dude-"

"dude! i'm so tired. please, just let me go to sleep."

"y-yeah, fine, whatever. isn't it only like twelve for you?"

"that's still late! you wouldn't know 'cause you stay up till sunrise waiting for your damn roommate!"

"no i don't-!"

"goodnight, y/n!" you gaped at your phone while it merely flashed a 'call ended' sign at you. you couldn't help but let out a groan as you let the phone fall from your hands on to the bed you had been laying upside down on.

you glared at the opposite wall of your room where your desk appears to be attached to the ceiling from your angle. your room illuminated from the light pollution of new york. the light filtered into every crevice of your room. you already had difficulty sleeping but the light never ceasing to stop in this tiny two bedroom apartment made it ten times worse.

your eyebrows furrowed and your eyes sharpened as you could hear your roommate clambering around your shared apartment. you listened to him hiss in pain after a loud thud, which you could only assume was him stubbing his toe for the third time that week.

you listened to his door (that sat directly across the hall from yours) creak shut despite his efforts to make it home quietly and you finally turned yourself right up and flopped on your bed. you let yourself fall asleep, finally, with furrowed eyebrows and a frown plastered on your face.

⭒⭒

peter parker sat on the other side of his door, huffing and holding his side, while he listened to your bed creek and groan. annoyance was plastered all over his face.

the walls in this place were too thin.

he hated that he could hear your every move and that, even without super hearing like his, you could hear every move of his.

he was well aware of you being up late every night. he could hear the blankets rustle and your disgruntled hums of annoyance.

he wished, to the very bottom of his heart, that you would just go the hell to sleep!

he rolled his eyes and pulled the skin tight suit off of himself, wincing as it stuck to the bloody gash in his side.

he peaked his head out of his bedroom door, eyeing yours to make sure it was fully shut, then ran as silently as he could to the bathroom across the floor plan of the apartment.

he looked himself in the mirror: his glazed eyes held heavy bags, his shoulders were crunched up from the stress of his night's endeavors, his hair was tousled and flat from the mask sitting on his head for hours.

he eyes his side in particular, though. it was as if a chunk has been scraped out of his skin. it had started healing already, the blood clotting fast as ever, and the bruising had begun to form.

he went to touch the surrounding area of his gash, only to flinch back from the sharpness of his round finger.

he dug through the mirror-cabinet to find the cleaning alcohol he always kept stored. he grew more and more frustrated as he pushed aside your medicine bottles and childish, all-too-expensive band-aids with cartoon characters on them that he hated so much.

he was near yelling out and waking you up and making you show him where you had moved his stuff to, until he looked down and found it sitting on the back of the toilet, right next to an opened package of your childish, all-too-expensive band-aids with cartoon characters on them.

his frown softened a bit at the sight of your band-aids (that he knew you often only bought because you found them cute) being used for once. he rolled his eyes, however, and snatched the bottle up and continued to mind his business, muttering complaints in his mind.

⭒⭒⭒

peter left his room the next morning to find you in the kitchen of your shared apartment, headphones on, and humming a tune that he recognized too easily from how often he heard it from you, from your room, from your phone, or from his own mind at this point. your favorite song that you always had on repeat was stuck in peter's mind and he was sure one of these days he would snap and throw your phone out the window of your third story apartment.

he watched your head bob to the beat as you flipped a pancake on the skillet. you turned around, jumping at peter's figure.

"jesus, peter!"

"sorry," he mumbled, taking a seat at the small island that fit no more than two.

"do you want anything to eat while i have it out?"

"i can cook for myself when your done. thanks." peter refused to meet your eyes and the action caused you to roll your own.

even when you made efforts to be civil the man refused to reciprocate.

you truly didn't know where you two went wrong in your roommate relationship. when you first met, it was awkward, but it was kind and gentle nonetheless. small hello's and goodbyes would be exchanged throughout the day. peter would accept your cooking in the morning.

but, somewhere along the line, you both grew consistently frustrated with the other.

peter hated that you loved music and always had a song playing or were humming one.

you hated how he tended to flick his pencil in his fingers when he was thinking.

peter hated how you only knew how to make breakfast foods, and any other food was a risk of burning the building.

you hated how he slept on the couch often, night and day, despite the fact that you're hardly ever wanting to sit on it since you had a comfy chair you preferred.

every action taken irritated the other.

⭒⭒⭒⭒

after you had left for your work, peter made his way over to the horribly small kitchen.

he gritted his teeth at the sight of your unwashed dishes in the sink. the pans you had used failed to even be rinsed off, all the grit and char still sitting happy on the skillet.

"god forbid he picks up a sponge, jesus." he groaned under his breath.

he turned to grab the dish washing supplies that sat in the island counter cabinets, only to find a plate full of still warm turkey sausage, eggs and pancakes sitting on the counter with a fork and syrup next to it.

he found a sticky note in your messy, rushed handwriting sat next to it.

ran out of time, i'll clean after work.

he scoffed at the sticky note.

another thing he hated about you: how you left notes all over the apartment for him.

he dumped an ungodly amount of syrup over his pancakes (something you had pointed out on one of the first days of you two living together: "that-that's a lot of syrup." you had nearly choked on your bite at the sight. "you have none on yours," he said in equal disbelief).

he sat at the island in silence, begrudgingly eating the pancakes you had made him, and waiting until the clock strikes it's time for him to make his way to his own job.

⭒ next ⭒

[electricpurrs]

actually no yeah the early 2000s isnt much of an excuse i think the guys at rooster teeth just have a really lame sense of humor

[dragon-giggles]

Underrated movie

[yellowloid]

thinking about that "there's nowhere for me to hide" quote that's been going around and the fact that it's actually the opposite. i know he's mostly talking about writing and yes when it comes to am he's the one doing (most of) the lyrical work on records as opposed to tlsp where him and miles are 50-50 and they have a whole different creative process than he does with am. but when it comes to being on stage, performing with am is actually the time he hides most. perhaps exactly because he's up there alone as a frontman, hence the need to "protect" himself by putting on a persona, a mask that can be conveniently taken off once he's hopped off stage (a theme that has been widely explored in the last albums, but really it's been there his whole discography - including obviously tlsp with the bourne identity and also his solo work with songs such as hiding tonight). but when he's up there on stage with miles, and miles is "up there singing with [him]", he says it gives him somewhere to hide because that 50-50 ratio that comes with writing translates to their stage presence as well. however one could argue that it's that same equal ratio that makes it so that he doesn't, in fact, hide at all when it comes to tlsp performances, and especially eycte era ones. because the knowledge that not all attention is on him, but rather distributed equally on the both of them, added to the reassurance that having miles there gives him, results in what is maybe his most genuinely maskless behaviour, of which we've seen countless examples during the 2016 tour. and although one could also say that that one, too, could partly be a persona in and of itself, the point still stands - he might be hiding in different ways depending on whether he's up there as the am or tlsp frontman, but being two halves of a whole with miles certainly didn't give him more of a hiding place. on the contrary.

[egg-emperor]

of all 21 characters in the volleyball event in Rio 2016, Eggman is literally the best at receiving

yeah I bet you are 🥴 he always loves to receive instead of giving to others in all areas of life ;)

[abessive-art]

going through WTNV weather playlists and finally realizing like 80% of my music taste originated from those songs.... truly the podcast ever...

[sdrose93]

This man is so freaking fine 😍😍

[starry-studies]

I made this blog many years ago now, when I was struggling to graduate first highschool, and then college. Both were an insanely uphill battle for me- I struggled with the social aspect and the academic aspect, later finding that I qualified for a diagnosis for not only ADHD but also autism, and after three years of waiting, I finally got prescribed medication in the last semester of college.

Medication is like not having to search everywhere for your keys before being able to leave the house and start the car. I would have gotten where I did without it too, but without it I would have had to expend so much energy that it would have burnt me out- I would have suffered more. I am very lucky that my symptoms present themselves in a way where this much is possible, and I am so incredibly lucky to have access to something that helps even that.

This is all to say that after struggling to graduate highschool, failing and dropping out of college after 3 years, working and saving up for a year, repeating my third year and finally finishing my fourth, I'm graduating with a 3.5 GPA in engineering. And fuck it, a Masters sounds like a pretty good next step.

[kaibaspuppy]

hes so fucking cute i can't stand it

[supercantaloupe]

never watched that franklin exposition show but seeing random contextless discourse posts about it occasionally cross my feed is always a. pardon the wordplay. distant ship passing on the horizon moment