#manifestos to observe

[13thpythagoras]

yeah half of my blog is DIY healthcare because I can technically afford the monthly premiums but what am I getting? It's basically appendicitis / accident insurance, there's not much other value I see in western medicine. And if I do get appendicitis I'm headed to the Good Sam to plead a charity case, and if I get stuck with $80 k debt for appendicitis I'll just have to fight it. Paying the copays would probably be $20k anyway and premiums over the years, another $30k so what's a last $30k to bet I'll never need any of that bs?... I mean in Cuba they do this procedure for hundreds. I could fly NetJets to Mexico (and perhaps Mexico to Cuba) and get it done in either of those countries for a zero off the USA's cash price tag, but air ambulance Netjet with me inside dying of appendicitis doesn't sound too wise so medical tourism is still likely best left for preventative / elective procedures. (can I preventatively get my appendix removed lol)

But we have remedies to diseases capitalism can't crack because our remedies aren't constrained by the need to make a fascist-level-of-profit / monopolizer's-patent for big pharma.

Can we also unpack how Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine for free and gave it away? Can we unpack the incentives for innovation at work there?

Why was Salk driven to innovate while going total George Washington mode on the victory lap, giving away his fascist prize to the public in exchange for immortality as a truly magnanimous man of the people.

Could it be?

More than just money incentivizes human beings to innovate in medicine?

Could it be, that perhaps more than money drives human action towards saving each other's very lives?

I definitely can't say this for a hospital, or a pharma corp, but I would cross the road to save your life. I would try, I would take a risk to do that, I wouldn't stick my hand out for a $100k of oncology bills like the hospital would, or they tell you to "i dunno i guess just go die of cancer ya brokeass" is what western medicine says. Even if you pay those bills, they won't cure you; you still hear from your provider who wears a pink ribbon "cancer is an incurable disease."

Then what are you researching? lmao

If western medicine is religiously committed to the idea that cancer is un-curable, why the pink ribbons?

Why flood the "awareness channels" with "awareness PSAs" for the most-well known disease on the planet? Could they possibly be doing that to hide something from the public / Google results?

Why do we spend a trillion a year on research for something for which we're religiously opposed to there being a cure?

Nothing adds up until you accept the truth seen by Rick Simpson et al, that western medicine can cure cancer easily they just can't patent that cure. That's the real problem, they can't MONOPOLIZE the many cures to cancer; they cannot control that capital as fascists so they deny that it could even exist as a possibility. Holy gaslights Batman!

[how the critics sound]No! Big⛽️💡 pharma billionaires would never ever ⛽️💡gaslight us! No! no ⛽️💡no no ⛽️💡no ⛽️💡no ⛽️💡no! I had a very charismatic chemistry professor in college and he said cancer has no cure and I believed him, he was so handsome! Science is never wrooooong raaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! I refuse to believe ⛽️💡Pfizer ⛽️💡would ever choose profit over saving lives! [/how the critics sound]

[mayordeas-clone]

ok i’ll join in. here’s who i got on the TPTM quiz

(i am already aware of the deciphered text)

[im-a-goat-in-disguise]

maybe a heterosexual cisgender person shouldn't be telling trans people how they feel about a party endorsing transphobia. you cannot understand the way it feels to walk into a supermarket and see every newspaper call you a nonce because of your identity. regardless of how we will actually vote, it isn't your place to speak over us when we talk about our disillusionment regarding parties that are supposed to be 'left wing' throwing us under the bus to 'pander to the moderate right." what are trans people in rosie duffield's constituency supposed to do?

I am not trying or intending to speak "over" trans people. Is simply sharing my views on a matter overriding others? I wouldn't think so, but I could always be wrong. I am completely open to becoming more informed on this matter by trans people and others more educated on this specific subject.

You're right, I cannot understand what it's like to be told I should be exterminated. I should also not be telling you how to vote. What I am adamant upon is that you do need to vote, at the very least. For somebody, for some party. And given the past few decades, I'd say it definitely shouldn't be the Tories. They've had their time and proven utterly incapable of running the country or doing what's good. If it comes to choosing between the Tories and Labour, I would personally choose Labour. You are free to vote how you want (not something you need my permission to do - I have no way of forcing anybody to vote for anything or anyone), but you do need to vote. Even if you don't want to vote for any party, a spoiled ballot is better than an absent ballot.

I know you may not have looked completely into this, but from what I can tell, Labour hasn't actually "adopted" the guidelines in any meaningful capacity. They haven't even been silent on the issue - many labour MPs have come out saying it's unworkable and pointed out how it threatens the lives of trans children. They aren't pandering, they just straight up don't have much they can really do in this specific circumstance. It's not a policy they can reverse right this second or can even vote against. Schools have been encouraged not to follow the guidelines but it's basically out of Labour's hands.

I can't give advice for specific constituencies, but having a look just on Wikipedia about Rosie Duffield's rapport of transphobic sentiments, I can see why you wouldn't be interested in voting for Labour, but I don't really see how not voting would be a better choice. The last Tory MP for Canterbury was adamantly against teachers even being able to talk about homosexuality, wanted abortion essentially torn down and was an avid brexiteer. I'm sure that wouldn't particularly be favourable for you either.

I really don't want to come across as antagonistic, but it does seem a bit strange you're simultaneously telling me I shouldn't tell anybody how to vote, and then promptly pry me for instructions on who to vote for. I'm not entirely certified how I can satisfy this ask by doing two mutually exclusive things.

At the end of the day, I'm not a grand arbiter of whom exactly every individual in the UK should vote for. All I ask is that you get out there and at least leave your mark in the ballot box. There is no real formal system that allows citizens to request a party change who they put up as a candidate for a specific seat, but you can join the people who already campaign for the labour party to do something more than investigate.

If you have any suggestions on how I could improve what I'm saying, or something I can do to not speak over trans people simply by speaking, feel free to shoot me an ask. My inbox will never be closed

[sisterdivinium]

I know I've already spoken a lot after @fulcrum-art-fox 's post (and by going on a tangent, too, I'm still sorry for that), but my mind remains stuck on Jillian (oops!) so here goes a bit more chaotic blabbering to go with what came earlier.

See, yes, there's a parallel between Jillian and the Holy Mother (and I had already touched upon it here and here as well), but what made me stop and think a little more was a passage I read recently in the Jansons' The picture history of painting:

"The Byzantine artist did not think of the Madonna as being at all like an ordinary, human mother. To him she was the Queen of Heaven, far removed from everyday life and beautiful beyond any man's imagination. And he has painted her the way he felt about her: not as a woman of flesh and blood but an ideal figure bathed in the golden light of heaven."

What stands out to me here is less the actual piece being examined (this, if you're curious) but the idea of being removed from everyday life, of being distant from the common people, being an ideal figure who isn't made of flesh and blood.

That's exactly what Jillian more or less sets out to do in s1 through the image she presents to the world.

But, contrary to the Madonna being painted by an artist following what the latter might feel about her, Jillian, the budding demiurge, creates this image for herself. The whites, the blue, the theatre of it all wouldn't be lost on a woman as intelligent as she is; her pregnancy was "a medical marvel", now she opens up the "world's first quantum portal"... Ava says doctor Salvius creates superpowers on the daily, but these feats could be seen as miracles... No wonder cardinal Duretti is invited to witness Jillian's triumph.

As this miracle-maker, this special specimen above the rest of humanity, there must be a (fabricated) distance in her dealings with people. She singles herself out when presenting her creation or revealing the footage of Beatrice destroying her security, she stands out from the crowd more as a pale, fearsome marble statue than as a normal human woman.

And, so distanced from others, she barely ever touches anyone else (barring Michael, of course) apart from a very light, almost reluctant tap to a subordinate's shoulder or a grip on Ava that is less about Ava herself and more about what advantages connecting her to the ark might ultimately present. Her touching Lilith for her temperature is likewise less about Lilith's well-being and more about Jillian's own plans for her, a touch with underlying, secret intent.

It's almost as if touch is repulsive to her regarding these other persons, a risk to her carefully curated image, whereas her contact with Michael is affectionate and genuine, unrestrained by the "sainthood" of the genius given how it happens far from the public eye, from anyone she might want/need to impress, amaze or enthrall.

I had talked about the femininity of s1 Jillian as it helps her pull on a show, but there's something about her specific brand of it that is icy, that pushes people away. All that white, that immaculate appearance as if to dare others to try soiling it; where the Virgin Mary is a loving mother to be adored, Jillian Salvius concocts the persona of a terrifying creature not to be provoked, bathed not "in the golden light of heaven" but in the blue light of relentless scientific ambition.

We already know this facade comes crumbling down by s2, but what's interesting is that, as @fulcrum-art-fox's post points out, the consequences of this comparison to the Holy Mother persist. Jillian is no longer bedecked in blue and white, but she pays the price paid by Mary, unable to take action in order to protect her son from what befalls him.

Suddenly, this woman who constructed her own intangibility, her own sort of "divinity" by not being available to be touched by others, finds herself in isolation in a way she had not predicted -- set apart even when she might not want to be, kept away from her own son and from those others which at first she had so carefully kept at bay.

Which again might inspire us to wonder whether any of this is punishment for her presumption. Did she want to create miracles, stand above the lot of common mortals? Well, here are the consequences: you do not play at being the holy mother without the suffering that comes with it.

Maybe it's the blasphemy of it -- or maybe it's just the result of a very human arrogance which she has every opportunity to regret.

I had mentioned before how all of these ties between Jillian and the Virgin actually enforce themes of Michael standing for a redeemer -- the story of Mary is pretty much the story of Jesus. However, the story of Jillian can hardly be expected to be the story of Michael alone in a show that is so thoughtful regarding its female characters, so the future of WN must have something intriguing in store for her. If her role as Michael's mother has ended, her newfound connection to the OCS surely points at a new path for doctor Salvius.

Her relationship to touch alone is already different; if season one saw her wary of it, even protected from it, season two has her actually be touched by someone else, breaking through her "godly" defences. Lilith threatens her, Kristian appeals to her in what is a repulsive action, asking her to overlook what was done to herself and to her son in favour of Adriel's so-called revelations. Whatever walls she had built around herself are revealed as the illusions they truly are as they no longer shield her from others.

But there are two other instances of touch we can't ignore, moments that draw her into something different; not aggression, not cynical beseeching, but something else: we are given a desperation on Jillian's part and a rare, perhaps much-needed support on Mother Superion's. These are new, authentic moments of connection that also shatter the barriers her previous persona had erected and they hint at the possibility of novel dynamics. Jillian is no longer isolated as per her own design, but approaching someone else, being welcomed in turn, yanked painfully down from her self-created pedestal to walk the Earth as a mortal woman and no longer as a white, unblemished icon.

With Michael gone (if so he remains), Jillian might be freed of the ties to the Virgin -- built through her own efforts -- to be her own woman, surrounded by these others who propose another mode of existing, almost like Ava understood the notion of helping others through the OCS as well. Her role in the story isn't over, cannot be over: who is she when she is not just a mother or just the embodiment of her company? Who is she when participating in community instead of elevated to an artificial position above the rest that endangered her own sense of humanity? Who is she without the myth of her own design?

We eagerly await for how these new developments concerning her unfold...

[13thpythagoras]

class struggle manifests even in the solar energy space - billionaires like Bill Gates want to consolidate power, and they only advocate huge solar farms that destroy ecosystems, and yes Bill Gates is an open and loud critic of rooftop solar.

]The working class benefits from power to the people by distributing the energy amongst the masses. Rooftop solar doesn't affect birds and is literally power to the people, while huge solar farms do kill wildlife and birds, and represent power consolidation for billionaires.

I was talking to my dad about renewable energy and he was like “the only problem with solar farms is they take up so much space.”

And it made me think about a city and how much sun exposure all the rooftops in a city get and…why not just make the city it’s own solar farm by putting solar panels on every rooftop?

[goldengodcannibal]

There are interesting things to be said for the way a person's book wishlist looks.

[theredhairing40]

shakespeare's chaos

[justafriendofxanders]

wanna be clear i'm not trying to toot anybody's horn for 'queer rep' here. i'm just weirdly fascinated by straight men who have been ostracized in some way (ie. having nerdy or unconventional interests, identifying with their heart/head rather than brawn or traditional masculinity) and how they relate to queerness. often it comes out in the "open-mindedness" or "not bigoted" rhetoric which is, imo, another flavor of the 2000s/2010s enlightened atheism trend where social conservatism = lack of intelligence and intelligence = masculinity (or its substitute). anyway this is not a callout post or whatever. just observations

[finalgirlmorgue]

ᰔ・︴ Jason is cold ｡°✧

𝜗𝜚 Genre: Smut 𝜗𝜚 Warnings: nsfw, mentions of female anatomy 𝜗𝜚 Jason Todd x Iceberg lounge waitress 𝜗𝜚 PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REQUESTS 𝜗𝜚 Pussy eater Jason Brainrot -----------------------------------------------------------------------

𝜗𝜚 You're responsible for your own media consumption :)

Winter is cold, but Jason is colder. You thought you two had made notable progress. Maybe that was just wishful thinking. You had helped him before in a heated interrogation about some high profile criminal. In which he stood over you. Donning the sleek armor, helmet, and hood. Sharp jagged edges of his words, accusatory and calculated. He never touched you in those 6 minutes. Never raised a hand at you. A few words was enough to make you spill. To make you spill information you were not aware was stored in your brain. From then on you were his preferred server. His little spy who delivered everything he wanted to know. You sought his praise, you learned what he needed.

The clientele phased in and out. You brought out plates of caviar and daiquiris with olives and offered kind smiles and an ear to listen to the Gotham elite's rants about criminal life. Their troubles were yours too when they tipped you rent money for the week. You listened with an eye to their wallets.

That was a waitress's manifesto. Hospitality is an art form.

And so, when you saw the Red Hood that bleak night, all you could do was nod politely at him as he slid into a booth. He was a large man, he dwarfed the plush corner table that was supposed to provide privacy. You swerved in between servers. Dodging plates with drinks balancing delicately on them. You approached his table, sliding him a menu from under your arm.

"Hi there," You nodded curtly at him as you set the menu on the table. "Can I get any drinks started for you?" Your eyes glanced back to his face. He was watching you intently, like a shark scenting blood.

"I'll just have an old fashioned. Thanks."

You mentally jotted it down. It was common practice to memorize orders. professionalism was a highly respectable talent, especially in such a large venue. You moved off toward another group. A few tables away you noticed that he had not taken off his helmet or mask. But, his eyes kept following your every move until you disappeared into the crowd.

The slits of his eyes disturbed you the most. The mask dehumanized him. It was like talking to an unfeeling machine. The way he observed, how he held himself. A machine. There was no warmth in his eyes. You watched his fingers twitch, and the knuckles go white as his hands flexed around the curve of the table. He was capable of breaking someone like a Barbie doll.

When you returned with his beverage you set it down on a coaster, a bit of liquid splashing over the edge of the glass.

"Gonna take a few cents off for that?" He asked. Maybe it was a cruel attempt at humor. You didn't smile, still debating on his sincerity. Your eyes widened slightly and he chuckled beneath the breath. Like he knew what you were doing, panicking internally. You tried again, offering him a pleasant expression, "Apologies, Sir." You said. You waited for him to say something further, anything that indicated he would talk to you, but his eyes stayed on your own. He watched you silently until the silence got to be too much.

"They've got you trained like a dog."

"Sorry?…" You were staggered at the comparison but you tried to play along. "Like a dog," he repeated, "trained to obey orders. You're a yes woman for Gotham's Illuminati." He mocked. His fingers fidgeted, the gloves on his right hand slipping slightly.

"Well, I enjoy my work.." And now you had his full attention, looking at you expectantly, waiting for you to elaborate. "I've met a lot of interesting people."

"Honesty, If you would." He cut you off abruptly. He seemed amused by your answer. You took a deep breath and spoke.

"While it is… stressing," You admitted. You wanted to tell him that you had been through more stress than the average college student, and you had also faced far more threats than Gotham's most notorious mobsters, "it's nice knowing the ins and outs of it all." His lips quirked up slightly at this admission. But his attention turned to the rest of the restaurant. The diners seemed oblivious to your conversation, the noise drowned out by the music. No one seemed interested in what you had to say, save for the occasional patron who had heard the comment.

The Red Hood tilted his head towards the bar where a bartender was mixing cocktails. They looked delicious and colorful even as the light reflected off the glass surface. "Let me see if I can make you feel better." He rose gracefully from his seat and made his way towards the bar, taking care not to step on anyone as he passed. You followed him.

"Oh I can't drink on the job-" You began.

"Then don't. This will only last 5 minutes." He interrupted, waving off your protest. You followed to the bathrooms behind him, Hood entering first. After a few seconds, he came back and gestured you inside. Inside was a small area, dimly lit but clean and modern. With sinks that looked more like counters. On the opposite wall there were mirrors. Hood motioned at the counter. Not getting the message he grabbed you by your waist, pulling you forward and hoisting you onto the cold marble. You squeaked, your thighs sliding against the smooth surface as you landed on your ass. When you caught your balance, Hood was already moving across your thighs, his hands reaching into your pants. Your mouth went dry as you stared. He yanked at your zipper, your body jerking in surprise. You gasped, as you watched the black fabric slide downwards. Hood pulled off the slacks and threw them into one of the sinks.

He pushed his thumb into your underwear, pulling roughly at the cloth. "wait--" you managed to mutter between gasps. "H-Hold on. The.. um- door." You stalled.

"Locked tight. I checked." He assured you. A smirk twitched at the corner of his lips. He dropped down to one knee, spreading your thighs farther apart as he pulled the masked down, shielding his lower half from view as his mouth was buried in your cunt. His tongue flicked out, tasting your wetness as he worked you open, gliding deeper each time. You whimpered as he nipped at your clit gently, tugging the sensitive flesh in the process.

"Oh god… this is so- a lot.. so much-"

You squirmed in embarrassment. He smirked at you as you struggled to find some sort of control. He continued to flick his tongue against your clit, making you pulse against the leather of his glove. A warm wet spot formed in his palm. Hood paused, licking his lips as he eyed your pussy hungrily. "I thought I was overworked.." He murmured. His thumb traced a line down your inner thigh until he reached the apex of your thighs. You arched up towards his mouth. You were panting now, "You seem tired."

"Mmm.." you mumbled and you could hear the grin in his voice

"Can't fuck you to sleep, not unless you clock out early." He teased, using his other hand to hold your hips tightly. "Call this a private service."

You nodded. As his tongue lapped at your pussy again you felt a rush of desire shoot up your spine, a shudder coursing through you. He pressed his face against the moist heat, letting out a groan. He slipped two gloved fingers inside you slowly as you moaned. You arched your pelvis into his touch. One of his hands slipped free from your thighs, resting over your knee, pushing them apart. You felt hot and feverish, sweat dotting your forehead, making your hair damp and sticking to your skin.

"should be paying me." He mumbled against your pussy, vibrations thrumming from his lips. He thrust one finger deeply into you. It sank all the way to the hilt before he withdrew it. You cried his name. That was all it took for you to lose the control you had over yourself. All of a sudden you couldn't think straight. All of a sudden you felt your muscles spasm as orgasm slammed through you in waves. You gasped loudly as you rode out your climax, your whole body shaking. Your legs fell open, allowing his nose to poke at your clitt. It felt slick with spit and your juices. He rubbed it against your folds, leaving a trail that tickled your sensitive tissue. You moaned quietly as he lapped up the salty moisture dripping down your folds and thighs. He licked at his finger before wiping it across his lips.

"There we are~." He purred. You shivered as his fingers stroked over your sex.

Reblong + Like if you got this far or Jason dies again

[13thpythagoras]

30 million loyal friends would be 6 x larger than the world's largest military, you'd be the biggest mob boss in world history

take the friends yo, eat the rich together, arrest Dubya et al and put them on trial, split their estates, create UBI, fund science. Thrive. 30 million dollars is dogshit compared to 30 million loyal friends

[necrotoxicated]

I just can’t be happy in the society or the reality I live. Due to long process of existential thinking, observing the society I live and some other things happened in my life… I have come to the point where I feel nothing but hate against humanity and human race.

— Pekka Eric Auvinen, in his manifesto

[evanchantingpeters]

How I met Evan Peters (Fanfic - Part 1)

Pairings ─ Evan Peters x Y/N (fem reader)

Genre ─ Smut/fluff, Romance

Summary ─ Y/N is fresh in East Hollywood, LA. After a major life overhaul, she’s ready to dive into a new chapter. So, when she hits the town for a night out with friends, she unexpectedly crosses paths with none other than actor Evan Peters. Y/N tries to keep her cool and act all nonchalant, but damn, Evan’s interest throws her for a loop. Their first meeting? Total tension and flirtation, hinting at an evening full of surprises.

Disclaimer ─ In Part 1 of the series, the main characters are introduced, setting the stage for the encounter of Evan and Y/N to unfold and the sexual energy between them to build up. Things get super steamy and smutty in Part 2.

Warnings (for Part 2) ─ Obscene language, semi-public, dry humping, oral (both receiving), fingering, overstimulation, handjob, nudes, handjob, nipple teasing, spanking, vaginal sex, rough sex, extra smutty—you guys know the drill :)

Word count ─ 3.8K

18+ > If you’re a minor, do NOT read!

@evanchantingpeters — All rights reserved. Please do not modify, translate, or plagiarise my content.

You step out of the shower, steam stirring around you as you wrap your hair turban-style in a towel. The anticipation of a proper night-out since you made the bold move to quit your job in Europe and pursue another life in the US tingles in your veins. It feels like forever since you’ve let loose, and tonight promises to be nothing short of epic.

Plopping down onto your bed, you grab your go-to jar of coconut body butter from the dresser. You squeeze a generous dollop onto your palm and rub your hands together. The creamy texture blends in as you work it onto your skin, leaving it smooth and oh-so-soft.

As you immerse yourself in your ritual, you hear the familiar buzz of a FaceTime call. Glancing over at your bedside table, you see “Ad💗,” your friend’s name (Adria for full) glowing on the screen. You pick up your phone, still coated in moisturiser, and her face pops up. A look of desperation is written all over her features.

“Hey, girl! What’s up?” you chirp, propping the phone on your desk to finish off your pampering session.

She lets out a dramatic groan. “Send help,” she whines, her voice tinged with panic. “I’m having a meltdown over here. I swear, I got nothing to wear.”

You can’t help but giggle at her faux-crisis. “First-world problems, brain rot,” you tease, sneaking a peek at the heap of clothes behind her. “I see you’ve got quite a selection to pick from.”

Adria pouts, swatting playfully at the camera. “Nah, these don’t count. I need everyone to be ‘she ate and left no crumbs.’ What’re going for tonight? I need some inspo!”

You chuckle sympathetically, holding the phone aloft as you pivot to show her your fit for tonight laid out on your bed. “I’m going for less is more—my thrifted mini satin dress and racing black leather jacket with my military boots and white tube socks for a touch of sass.”

She gives you a strained smile as she takes in your outfit. “Ahh, you pull off that casual vibe effortlessly, babe.”

You flip the camera back to you, shrugging nonchalantly, “I’m casual and proud!”

Adria rolls her eyes with a teasing glint. “Okay, but what about makeup? You gotta glam it up… you know the LA sparkle! That’s how we do it in East Hollywood, at least!”

You scoff, shaking your head. “Nah, I’m feeling the au naturel look. You know I suck with makeup big time—I’d probably end up looking like Pennywise.”

Rather than rehashing your “Why makeup should be banned” manifesto, you choose to dig further into the evening’s plans. “So, who else’s joining us tonight, Ad?”

She rattles off a list of names, both female and male—some known, others unknown—and you nod along. “Gotcha. I’ll be ready by 10.”

“Perf. I’ll swing by to pick you up then. Buckle up for a wild night, biyyyatch!” she exclaims, wiggling her brows at you.

You let out a choked laugh as you observe her grimacing. “Alrighty, catch you soon!”

Once you hang up, you slip into your outfit and let your hair fall loose, fluffing it up for a bit of volume. No need for fancy blowouts tonight—you’re all about that breezy, air-dried look.

With a spritz of perfume and a final check in the mirror, you grab your essentials and head out into the dazzling city lights.

As you strut into the club with your gang, the uplifting beats hit you like a wave of energy. The nostalgic tunes of early 2000’s R&B thump in your chest, urging you to groove with every step. You all weave through the sea of nightclubbers, the party mode building up inside you like a pressure cooker ready to explode.

“Let’s hit the bar!” Tommy, one of the guys and Adria’s boyfriend, shouts over Missy Elliot. You all nod in agreement, eager to keep the high spirits flowing with some booze.

You slither through more partygoers who dance erratically, all while juggling their drinks. Some move smoothly to the rhythm, while others simply jiggle around out of tune.

Neon lights flash and strobe, casting an electric glow over the bartender as he polishes a row of whiskey glasses with cool confidence. A cheeky smile plays on his lips as you hop onto an empty stool before him.

“What can I get you started?” he roars over the music, his voice cutting through the din.

“Coronas all around,” you holler, matching his tone with equal fervour. You hand him a wad of cash chipped in by everyone.

“Coming right up.” With a flick of his wrist, he expertly pops the cap off the bottle, sliding them your way with a wink.

“Thanks,” you mouth, shooting him a grin before heading back to your friends with a tray.

You take a long, satisfying gulp, the crisp taste of beer quenching your thirst. With your beverage in hand, you pace to the dance floor, your friends in tow only metres away.

Your hips swing in harmony with the melody, and your feet glide effortlessly across the ground. Heads turn and whispers follow your path. Some even reach out, uttering unintelligible words, or brush against your shoulder as you pass by.

Ignoring the distractions, you grab Adria and Jasmine, dragging them into the heart of the dance floor while the rest of the group forms a circle around you. The music engulfs you, momentarily sweeping away the grim memories of your pre-relocation life.

With each song that blares through the speakers, your body twists and twirls with fluid grace, each move perfectly timed to the tempo of the music. In that moment, you feel more alive, more liberated than ever before.

As time trickles by, the music continues to pump and the lights swirl around you. You notice Joseph, the lone blond dude in the squad, inching closer and closer to you as the night stretches on. 

“Heyo, Y/N! How’s it going?” he greets you with a tap on the shoulder, his voice rumbling near your ear.

“Hey! All good now. How’s you?” you retort with a tight-lipped smile, bringing your Corona to your lips for another sip.

“Now that I’m chatting with you, much better!” he quips back, a hint of mischief in his tone. “How are you liking the States?”

Just as you’re about to respond, joyous screams erupt from Adria and a couple of other girls from your group, catching your attention. Before you can fully process what’s happening, Adria dashes toward you and jumps into your arms, nearly knocking you off balance.

“Girl! Are you on Molly or something? What’s going on?” you mock, smoothing out your dress on the cleavage before you start flashing whoever’s at close vicinity.

“Omg, you won’t believe it!” Adria squeaks, frantically clapping her hands.

You raise an eyebrow, intrigued. “Try me.”

“Ahh, my fangirling is through the roof right now! Evan Peters is here,” she cries out, bouncing up and down, squeezing your hand tightly.

You furrow your eyebrows in confusion. “Who?” 

“Evan Peters, Y/N! The hottie from American Horror Story… Kai Anderson, Cult? Kit Walker, Asylum? Seriously, don’t these ring any bells? Umm… Dahmer? Come on—you’ve watched that series!” she insists, her voice pitch rising as she tries to jog your memory.

A flicker of recognition crosses your face as your friend’s description sinks in. “Oh, right, Evan Peters,” you concede with a faint smile. “I remember now…And?”

Adria’s eyes widen, her mouth falling open in disbelief. “And?? He’s in the same space as us, breathing the same oxygen, Y/N!”

You shake your head, trying to inject a dose of reality into her Hollywood-induced haze. “Okay, but let’s be real here. He’s a mega star, so totally out of league. I mean, we’ve got about as much chance with him as a blue whale does with climbing Mount Everest,” you quip and fold your arms, narrowing your eyes at her. “And you’ve got a boyfriend, in case you forgot.”

Adria’s enthusiasm deflates slightly as she’s reminded of Tommy. “It’s not the same,” she protests sheepishly, fiddling with her bracelet. “You know how celebrity crushes work. How can I not crave Evan when he’s graced the world with his Tate Langdon role?” 

You can’t help but laugh at her delirium. “Ugh, Adria, it’s giving obsession and borderline restraining order from Peters if you keep this up. Let’s just focus on having a blast tonight and drop the celebrity fantasies, okay?”

A couple of hours melt away, and the energy of the dance floor begins to wane. Most of your friends retreat to a nearby table to freshen up. But not you. With two others by your side, you’re on a mission to keep the party alive, letting the music guide your body with a fierce determination.

Mid-twirl, though, your eyes snag on something unexpected—a figure lingering at the fringes of the dance floor, his attractive gaze burning into you like a laser beam, sending a bolt of lightning down your back. It takes a moment for you to register who it is, but when you do, your heart kicks into overdrive.

Evan Peters.

You try to play it cool, biting down on the inside of your cheek to stifle the grin that’s itching to break free. You try to pass it off as just a coincidence, a trick of the light or a delulu figment of your imagination, but when you steal another glance in his direction, you find his eyes still trained on you. This time around, he offers a timid smile.

Your throat feels like it’s swallowed a golf ball as you sense his eyes fixed on you. Desperate to shake off the sudden self-consciousness, you rummage through your tiny shoulder bag for your phone. Your fingers jitter as you feign interest in your screen, scrolling aimlessly through your main menu or typing out gibberish in your notes app.

But even as you try to stay composed, his stare weighs on you like a ton of bricks. Are you tripping? Feeling more awkward and exposed than ever (you don’t have Evan Peters laying eyes on you every day), you motion to your friends that you’re heading to the restroom. Anything to escape the spotlight, even if it’s only for a sec.

This time, you bulldoze through the crowd, head low, with the toilets being your last glimmer of hope for salvation. Or so you think. Just as you’re about to slip away, a warm, soft hand gently closes around your wrist, halting you in your tracks.

Every muscle in your body tenses as you slowly turn to confront the person obstructing your way. And there he is, Evan Peters in the flesh, standing before you with an enigmatic grin playing at the corners of his lips.

Your heart leaps into your throat when you face him, every nerve in your body suddenly on high alert. Your mind races a mile a minute—Is this real life? Did you manifest this? Is Evan Peters actually in front of you?

Fuck, Adria’s right. He’s hot as hell, you ruminate, feeling your breath clutching in your throat.

Before you can even gather your thoughts, he greets you with a seductive rasp. “Hey.” His eyes seal with yours in a way that makes your knees turn into jelly.

I just saw you and heard you in person, Evan! Scrap everything I said to Adria. Forget the restraining order. Just slap the handcuffs on me, and do whatever you want... Erhm, I mean, take me into custody cause staring at you should definitely be illegal.

You freeze, unable to tear your eyes away from his handsome dark brown (almost black) eyes and silky tousled curls. A feeble “Hi�� is all you manage, your voice barely above a whisper as a nervous flutter stomps onto your stomach.

“Having a good time?” he checks in, his smile widening by the second.

“The asphyxiation I feel right now must be a sure sign that I’m enjoying myself, right?” you reply, fanning your hand in front of your face for dramatic effect.

His throaty laughter bubbles up from deep within him, the sound instantly cranking up your heartbeat. It’s genuine and infectious, like he’s letting down his guard and inviting you into his world, flashing those perfect teeth like they’re on a billboard.

“If you’re suffocating from excitement, then you must be doing something right. But don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye out on you. If you turn purple, I’ll dial 911,” he teases, gently lifting your chin with his index finger and giving you a full inspection with feigned seriousness. “Nope, we’re good. So far, all I see is beauty, no signs of death.”

You can feel your cheeks heating up with embarrassment, so you instinctively lower your head, hoping to hide your rose-tinted face. 

You battle to keep it together, but the fact that his hand hasn’t budged from your wrist since your eyes met screams, ‘fainting spell incoming.’ As if that’s enough, his thumb traces soft circles on your skin, sending goosebumps up your arm. “You make me cringe, do it again,” you joke, and you both share a laugh.

“Alright, let’s see what card I should pull next. Here it comes, drumroll—on behalf of everyone in here, I testify to your: ‘I got some serious moves and conquered the dance floor, but I need a breather now.’” he rambles and raises his free hand in mock ovation, his grin laced with mischief.

You chuckle, a surge of confidence brewing within you. “Well, it takes the greatest of them all to verify this. A lifetime of dancing lessons didn’t go down the drain, I guess. I appreciate your testament, sir, and the panel’s verdict,” you coo, bowing theatrically.

Once again, his laughter fills the space between you, warm and hearty.

After a few minutes of silence and a staring contest that makes it agonising for you to breathe, you finally utter, “I said this would be my night, and, apparently, I meant that,” discreetly eyeing him from head to toe, semi-drooling.

“Yeah? Any highlights of the night?” he inquires, his tone dripping with curiosity, and you can’t resist playing along after letting your thoughts slip out loud.

“Nothing yet. But I’m counting on your highlighter to illuminate my way,” you spill out, playfully tilting your head to the side. A sly grin spreads across your lips as you throw the bait, hoping he’ll keep up with your pun game.

His “strike” is immediate as he edges closer to you. “Believe it or not, I’ve got one on me that can change your night from the inside out,” he shoots back, his smile growing, clearly on the same innuendo-laden wavelength as you. You’re a match made in flirtatious banter heaven, true that.

“I need some inside work, that’s for sure. Glad you’re volunteering,” you reply, feeling a rush of heat flood through you at his words. Then, you quickly transition, turning his wrist stroking into a handshake as you introduce yourself.

He hums, gently taking your hand in his, his smile stretching wide enough to reveal his adorable dimples that only add to his charm. “Evan.”

“I know,” you admit, unable to contain your broad smile. “But just an FYI, I haven’t binged-read your fanfics or analysed our astrology charts to see if we’re soulmates. I’ve gone as far as watching Dahmer. Stellar performance, by the way,” you blurt out, still shaking his hand.

He rolls his lips into his mouth to suppress another giggle. “Okay, chill. No need to prove you’re not a psycho. Wanna grab a drink to cool off?”

“No need to ask,” you fire back with equal enthusiasm, both of you grinning like kids in a candy store. Without hesitation, you just follow his lead, diving headfirst into the moment with a reckless abandon, thinking, ‘I’m all in, no matter what crazy idea you’ve got up your sleeve, baby boy.’

He cups your hand in his, his palm firm and reassuring, as he guides you through the throngs of people toward a quieter bar setup located upstairs in the club. The touch makes your head spin, feeling the familiar sensation of heat pooling between your thighs, leaving your undies all moist. You’ve felt sparks like this before, but never quite so intensely, and certainly not so quickly with anyone else.

As you trail behind him, you can’t help but lightly graze the back of his hand, mapping the pathways of his veins with your fingertips. You love a baby face paired with strong arms—he’s exactly your kind of man.

“Maybe it’s better…” he begins once you reach the bar, but the music swells out of the blue, drowning out the remainder of his sentence.

You involuntarily scrunch up your nose and squint, struggling to concentrate and hear him over the blasting tunes. “Come again, sorry?”

Before you can react, he draws closer to you. His breath is warm and tickly against your ear, causing a tremor through your entire body. Not to mention his voice: husky and velvety, making your cunt pulsate for him already.

Damn, things are moving at lightning speed, and you’re struggling to keep pace.

As Evan gets nearer, you catch a subtle yet alluring whiff of cinnamon and cologne. But, actually, it’s the natural scent exuding from his body that has a chokehold over you. Those pheromones he unleashes are like full-blown intoxication, making you lightheaded, your pulse thudding.

You lean in to mimic his gesture and whisper to his ear, but you’re pleasantly surprised when he gently clasps your hand, signalling for you to hold on. As he removes his earplugs, he explains, “Sorry I’ve got very sensitive ears.”

You chuckle, a wicked spark in your eye as you lift a tuft of hair to reveal your own ear protectors. “Great minds think alike,” you cheer.

“No, you didn’t,” he exclaims, eyes widened as you burst out laughing in sync.

As your laughter subsides, Evan’s expression shifts. His eyes bore into yours with a smouldering intensity as if he’s on the verge of revealing a long-held secret or daring to make a move.

But before you can form coherent thoughts or pluck up the courage to speak, Evan blinks fast, breaking the spell. “Shall we get those drinks at last? What’d you like?”

You clear your throat, trying to snap out of your nasty thoughts with Evan being the main character. “I’m down for another Corona, thanks.”

He flashes a quick two-finger salute to the bartender before turning back to you, his lips curving up in a cute, crooked smile. “So, who are you here with tonight?”

“Just some friends,” you confess, your voice trailing off as he raises his bottle to clink it against yours in a toast. His eyes remain glued on yours as he takes a sip, his defined jawline and slender neck at full display begging for your kisses. The intensity of his gaze makes your legs all wobbly. “A-and yourself?” you stammer, breaking eye contact to nervously trace a circular pattern on the rim of the bottle glass with your fingers.

“Same, I came to visit friends during my break. I’m flying back to Vancouver in ten days to carry on filming Tron.”

Your grip tightens around the cool glass of your drink as Evan drops the bombshell. You feel the liquid catch in your throat as you choke, a sudden surge of panic hitting your chest. You cough, the sound harsh and uncontrolled, your body reacting instinctively to the news.

“Canada?” you manage to croak out between coughs, your voice hoarse. You struggle to swallow past the lump, your throat raw and constricted. Your chest heaves as you fight to regain control.

“Y/N, are you okay?” he asks with a sense of urgency, his forehead creased with deep lines of worry. Leaning in, his eyes search yours for any sign of distress. His hand reaches out to steady you, giving you comforting back rubs.

You nod weakly, your eyes watering from the effort of suppressing another coughing fit.

“Let me fetch some water for you,” he offers, his voice soft and soothing. He sprints to the bar, returning seconds later with a glass of water and a concerned frown etched on his forehead.

“Thanks,” you mumble, accepting the glass with a trembling hand, keeping the bottle of beer in your other hand. The cool water soothes your parched throat, and you feel a sense of relief wash over you as Evan tenderly ruffles your hair and massages your scalp to calm you down. Hint: his hands on you work wonders.

“I’m okay,” you assure him, looking up to meet his gaze again, your heart hammering. Everything else fades away, leaving only the reassuring presence of Evan before you.

You can practically sense the sexual tension between you. His stare flickers between your lips and eyes, his own mouth slightly parted. It’s like a silent invitation that hangs between you like a charged wire ready to ignite, daring you to take a plunge and smother his face with kisses. And then suck his dick so hard that his stomach caves in like a Caprisun.

It doesn’t matter that you’ve just met; he has you at hello and you’d spread your legs for this man without a second thought…

You gulp as you realise he’s almost inches away from you. You shudder when his fresh breath—an irresistible blend of mint and alcohol—wafts into my mouth, blowing stray strands of hair off your face. “You’re leaving in ten days?” you sigh, puckering your lips and giving him a puppy-eyed look.

“Yes, but I’m still here,” he whispers, his eyes fixed on your lips as he leans into your stool. With a single knee, he slowly splits your legs and slides in between them.

“You’re here now. Wanna be at my place next?” you suggest, and he stares back at your eyes with a crooked smirk, his lips curled mischievously.

Without warning, his lips brushed against yours, throwing your arousal off the chart. The torturously slow pace that his lips slide along yours makes your sex leap, pop, and drip. Soft moans escape your bodies as he grabs your ass to pull you in, squeezing it along the way as his chest cushions firmly against your breasts.

He smiles against your lips as you tangle your fingers in his hair and part your mouth, giving him the green light to roughen the kiss. His hard rock boner already presses against your wet centre when his tongue invades your mouth with primitive force, swirling and twirling with yours in a passionate dance.

“How long to get to yours?” he grunts out of breath, wincing from the uncomfortable angle his stiff cock has now taken in his trousers.

“It’s roughly a ten-minute ride, give or take,” you pant, adjusting the hem of your dress.

“Off we go.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@evanchantingpeters — All rights reserved. Please do not modify, translate, or plagiarise my content.

[wojakgallery]

Highly esoteric wojak image with TL;DR interpretation by WojakGallery:

Title/Name: The Crowning of Chudjak Wojak Series:  Chudjak / Poljak (Variants), Soyjak (Variants). Image by: Unknown Main Tag: Chudjak Wojak

Information and interpretation on the image (TL;DR):

Unfortunately, I could not actually find out much about this one, so some "light assumptions" will be made based on what we get from the image + my research and knowledge. I did a reverse image search using Google and TinEye, but according to the research I did, this one hasn't been posted anywhere that can be easily found with its original title/name and description, so I gave it the name "The Crowning of Chudjak" because it makes it clearer. You can call it whatever you like, though.

The following I will say here are just a few observations I've made on the image. Obviously, Chudjak is being crowned King.

But maybe something not so obvious is that he's being "crowned" with a crown from Burger King (fast-food restaurant franchise). I didn't find any information on why Chudjak is being crowned to wear a Burger King crown, so that's somewhat esoteric; maybe it's just for a comical effect, or to imply in some way that he "rules". In the image, it's two chudjaks crowning another chudjak, so he's basically crowning himself.

Another thing in the image is that there are Soyjaks present, some have wings like angels, which is something common in 14th-century classical Renaissance art, that is the general theme of the image, with all the clouds and people or gods in "heaven" or the sky. And Soyjaks are often considered by many users as "the greatest" variants since the inception of Wojak. In the image, you can see that there are soyjaks that appear to be somewhat distressed, and this is probably because some of them were placed below the chudjaks in the image. This may be to imply that chudjaks are superior to soyjaks, or that, in comparison to soyjaks, chudjaks are on a higher level of "Wojak Greatness." There are dark clouds in the image that may imply that a storm is coming. It's trivial, but both soyjaks and chudjaks are often depicted as the most popular wojak characters that wear glasses.

Also in the image, there is a wild naked soyjak trying to "lift" the chudjaks, this could possibly be a reference to 'Atlas', a Greek mythology Titan condemned to hold up the heavens or sky for eternity after the Titanomachy. In art, Atlas is often depicted naked.

And not easily noted and can be easily missed in the chudjak at the left part of the image that is wearing a red robe or mantle, it's possible to see the partially covered words "Mein Ka", which seems to be a reference to the book 'Mein Kampf' which is german for "My Struggle" which is a autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The book outlines many of Hitler's political beliefs, his political ideology, and future plans for Germany and the world. The original nazi flag has a background of the color red, so it makes sense that the robe or mantle is red covering what looks like the book standing.

And last but not least, there is an anthropomorphic-looking soyjak dog on the right part of the image; it seems the dog is being caressed by the chudjak above him, or he's being held against the chudjak's leg (maybe in a forced manner); the dog's face seems somewhat confused, but this is unclear. The soyjak dog is wearing a collar or necklace with a pink tag or object. I didn't find any info on this type of collar or necklace. Anyway, the color pink may represent a number of things, including compassion, purity, and hope. It's usually known that a pink dog collar generally symbolizes sweetness, gentleness, and femininity. But maybe it's just a random collar or necklace with the color pink and no esoteric meaning involved.

The end.

Update: Tumblr user aeshna-cyanea pointed out that the original painting this wojak image is based on is titled "Coronation of the Virgin" by Diego Velázquez. Diego Velázquez, though a Baroque artist of the Spanish Golden Age, did draw inspiration from Renaissance art and incorporated elements of it into his work.

[thoughtportal]

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears)

PublicAffairs, 288 pp., $28.00

But don’t worry—it almost never comes to this. As one park service PSA noted this summer, bears “usually just want to be left alone. Don’t we all?” In other words, if you encounter a black bear, try to look big, back slowly away, and trust in the creature’s inner libertarian. Unless, that is, the bear in question hails from certain wilds of western New Hampshire. Because, as Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s new book suggests, that unfortunate animal may have a far more aggressive disposition, and relate to libertarianism first and foremost as a flavor of human cuisine.

Hongoltz-Hetling is an accomplished journalist based in Vermont, a Pulitzer nominee and George Polk Award winner. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) sees him traversing rural New England as he reconstructs a remarkable, and remarkably strange, episode in recent history. This is the so-called Free Town Project, a venture wherein a group of libertarian activists attempted to take over a tiny New Hampshire town, Grafton, and transform it into a haven for libertarian ideals—part social experiment, part beacon to the faithful, Galt’s Gulch meets the New Jerusalem. These people had found one another largely over the internet, posting manifestos and engaging in utopian daydreaming on online message boards. While their various platforms and bugbears were inevitably idiosyncratic, certain beliefs united them: that the radical freedom of markets and the marketplace of ideas was an unalloyed good; that “statism” in the form of government interference (above all, taxes) was irredeemably bad. Left alone, they believed, free individuals would thrive and self-regulate, thanks to the sheer force of “logic,” “reason,” and efficiency. For inspirations, they drew upon precedents from fiction (Ayn Rand loomed large) as well as from real life, most notably a series of micro-nation projects ventured in the Pacific and Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s.

None of those micro-nations, it should be observed, panned out, and things in New Hampshire don’t bode well either—especially when the humans collide with a newly brazen population of bears, themselves just “working to create their own utopia,” property lines and market logic be damned. The resulting narrative is simultaneously hilarious, poignant, and deeply unsettling. Sigmund Freud once described the value of civilization, with all its “discontents,” as a compromise product, the best that can be expected from mitigating human vulnerability to “indifferent nature” on one hand and our vulnerability to one another on the other. Hongoltz-Hetling presents, in microcosm, a case study in how a politics that fetishizes the pursuit of “freedom,” both individual and economic, is in fact a recipe for impoverishment and supercharged vulnerability on both fronts at once. In a United States wracked by virus, mounting climate change, and ruthless corporate pillaging and governmental deregulation, the lessons from one tiny New Hampshire town are stark indeed.

“In a country known for fussy states with streaks of independence,” Hongoltz-Hetling observes, “New Hampshire is among the fussiest and the streakiest.” New Hampshire is, after all, the Live Free or Die state, imposing neither an income nor a sales tax, and boasting, among other things, the highest per capita rate of machine gun ownership. In the case of Grafton, the history of Living Free—so to speak—has deep roots. The town’s Colonial-era settlers started out by ignoring “centuries of traditional Abenaki law by purchasing land from founding father John Hancock and other speculators.” Next, they ran off Royalist law enforcement, come to collect lumber for the king, and soon discovered their most enduring pursuit: the avoidance of taxes. As early as 1777, Grafton’s citizens were asking their government to be spared taxes and, when they were not, just stopped paying them.

Nearly two and a half centuries later, Grafton has become something of a magnet for seekers and quirky types, from adherents of the Unification Church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon to hippie burnouts and more. Particularly important for the story is one John Babiarz, a software designer with a Krusty the Klown laugh, who decamped from Big-Government-Friendly Connecticut in the 1990s to homestead in New Hampshire with his equally freedom-loving wife, Rosalie. Entering a sylvan world that was, Hongoltz-Hetling writes, “almost as if they had driven through a time warp and into New England’s revolutionary days, when freedom outweighed fealty and trees outnumbered taxes,” the two built a new life for themselves, with John eventually coming to head Grafton’s volunteer fire department (which he describes as a “mutual aid” venture) and running for governor on the libertarian ticket.

Although John’s bids for high office failed, his ambitions remained undimmed, and in 2004 he and Rosalie connected with a small group of libertarian activists. Might not Grafton, with its lack of zoning laws and low levels of civic participation, be the perfect place to create an intentional community based on Logic and Free Market Principles? After all, in a town with fewer than 800 registered voters, and plenty of property for sale, it would not take much for a committed group of transplants to establish a foothold, and then win dominance of municipal governance. And so the Free Town Project began. The libertarians expected to be greeted as liberators, but from the first town meeting, they faced the inconvenient reality that many of Grafton’s presumably freedom-loving citizens saw them as outsiders first, and compatriots second—if at all. Tensions flared further when a little Googling revealed what “freedom” entailed for some of the new colonists. One of the original masterminds of the plan, a certain Larry Pendarvis, had written of his intention to create a space honoring the freedom to “traffic organs, the right to hold duels, and the God-given, underappreciated right to organize so-called bum fights.” He had also bemoaned the persecution of the “victimless crime” that is “consensual cannibalism.” (“Logic is a strange thing,” observes Hongoltz-Hetling.)

While Pendarvis eventually had to take his mail-order Filipina bride business and dreams of municipal takeovers elsewhere (read: Texas), his comrades in the Free Town Project remained undeterred. Soon, they convinced themselves that, evidence and reactions to Pendarvis notwithstanding, the Project must actually enjoy the support of a silent majority of freedom-loving Graftonites. How could it not? This was Freedom, after all. And so the libertarians keep coming, even as Babiarz himself soon came to rue the fact that “the libertarians were operating under vampire rules—the invitation to enter, once offered, could not be rescinded.” The precise numbers are hard to pin down, but ultimately the town’s population of a little more than 1,100 swelled with 200 new residents, overwhelmingly men, with very strong opinions and plenty of guns.

Hongoltz-Hetling profiles many newcomers, all of them larger-than-life, yet quite real. The people who joined the Free Town Project in its first five years were, as he describes, “free radicals”—men with “either too much money or not enough,” with either capital to burn or nothing to lose. There’s John Connell of Massachusetts, who arrived on a mission from God, liquidated his savings, and bought the historic Grafton Center Meetinghouse, transforming it into the “Peaceful Assembly Church,” an endeavor that mixed garish folk art, strange rants from its new pastor (Connell himself), and a quixotic quest to secure tax exemption while refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the IRS to grant it. There’s Adam Franz, a self-described anti-capitalist who set up a tent city to serve as “a planned community of survivalists,” even though no one who joined it had any real bushcraft skills. There’s Richard Angell, an anti-circumcision activist known as “Dick Angel.” And so on. As Hongoltz-Hetling makes clear, libertarianism can indeed have a certain big-tent character, especially when the scene is a new landscape of freedom-lovers making “homes out of yurts and RVs, trailers and tents, geodesic domes and shipping containers.”

If the Libertarian vision of Freedom can take many shapes and sizes, one thing is bedrock: “Busybodies” and “statists” need to stay out of the way. And so the Free Towners spent years pursuing an aggressive program of governmental takeover and delegitimation, their appetite for litigation matched only by their enthusiasm for cutting public services. They slashed the town’s already tiny yearly budget of $1 million by 30 percent, obliged the town to fight legal test case after test case, and staged absurd, standoffish encounters with the sheriff to rack up YouTube hits. Grafton was a poor town to begin with, but with tax revenue dropping even as its population expanded, things got steadily worse. Potholes multiplied, domestic disputes proliferated, violent crime spiked, and town workers started going without heat. “Despite several promising efforts,” Hongoltz-Hetling dryly notes, “a robust Randian private sector failed to emerge to replace public services.” Instead, Grafton, “a haven for miserable people,” became a town gone “feral.” Enter the bears, stage right.

Black bears, it should be stressed, are generally a pretty chill bunch. The woods of North America are home to some three-quarters of a million of them; on average, there is at most one human fatality from a black bear attack per year, even as bears and humans increasingly come into contact in expanding suburbs and on hiking trails. But tracking headlines on human-bear encounters in New England in his capacity as a regional journalist in the 2000s, Hongoltz-Hetling noticed something distressing: The black bears in Grafton were not like other black bears. Singularly “bold,” they started hanging out in yards and on patios in broad daylight. Most bears avoid loud noises; these casually ignored the efforts of Graftonites to run them off. Chickens and sheep began to disappear at alarming rates. Household pets went missing, too. One Graftonite was playing with her kittens on her lawn when a bear bounded out of the woods, grabbed two of them, and scarfed them down. Soon enough, the bears were hanging out on porches and trying to enter homes.

Combining wry description with evocative bits of scientific fact, Hongoltz-Hetling’s portrayal of the bears moves from comical if foreboding to downright terrifying. These are animals that can scent food seven times farther than a trained bloodhound, that can flip 300-pound stones with ease, and that can, when necessary, run in bursts of speed rivaling a deer’s. When the bears finally start mauling humans—attacking two women in their homes—Hongoltz-Hetling’s relation of the scenes is nightmarish. “If you look at their eyes, you understand,” one survivor tells him, “that they are completely alien to us.”

What was the deal with Grafton’s bears? Hongoltz-Hetling investigates the question at length, probing numerous hypotheses for why the creatures have become so uncharacteristically aggressive, indifferent, intelligent, and unafraid. Is it the lack of zoning, the resulting incursion into bear habitats, and the reluctance of Graftonites to pay for, let alone mandate, bear-proof garbage bins? Might the bears be deranged somehow, perhaps even disinhibited and emboldened by toxoplasmosis infections, picked up from eating trash and pet waste from said unsecured bins? There can be no definitive answer to these questions, but one thing is clear: The libertarian social experiment underway in Grafton was uniquely incapable of dealing with the problem. “Free Towners were finding that the situations that had been so easy to problem-solve in the abstract medium of message boards were difficult to resolve in person.”

Grappling with what to do about the bears, the Graftonites also wrestled with the arguments of certain libertarians who questioned whether they should do anything at all—especially since several of the town residents had taken to feeding the bears, more or less just because they could. One woman, who prudently chose to remain anonymous save for the sobriquet “Doughnut Lady,” revealed to Hongoltz-Hetling that she had taken to welcoming bears on her property for regular feasts of grain topped with sugared doughnuts. If those same bears showed up on someone else’s lawn expecting similar treatment, that wasn’t her problem. The bears, for their part, were left to navigate the mixed messages sent by humans who alternately threw firecrackers and pastries at them. Such are the paradoxes of Freedom. Some people just “don’t get the responsibility side of being libertarians,” Rosalie Babiarz tells Hongoltz-Hetling, which is certainly one way of framing the problem.

Pressed by bears from without and internecine conflicts from within, the Free Town Project began to come apart. Caught up in “pitched battles over who was living free, but free in the right way,” the libertarians descended into accusing one another of statism, leaving individuals and groups to do the best (or worst) they could. Some kept feeding the bears, some built traps, others holed up in their homes, and still others went everywhere toting increasingly larger-caliber handguns. After one particularly vicious attack, a shadowy posse formed and shot more than a dozen bears in their dens. This effort, which was thoroughly illegal, merely put a dent in the population; soon enough, the bears were back in force.

Meanwhile, the dreams of numerous libertarians came to ends variously dramatic and quiet. A real estate development venture known as Grafton Gulch, in homage to the dissident enclave in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, went belly-up. After losing a last-ditch effort to secure tax exemption, a financially ruined Connell found himself unable to keep the heat on at the Meetinghouse; in the midst of a brutal winter, he waxed apocalyptic and then died in a fire. Franz quit his survivalist commune, which soon walled itself off into a prisonlike compound, the better to enjoy freedom. And John Babiarz, the erstwhile inaugurator of the Project, became the target of relentless vilification by his former ideological cohorts, who did not appreciate his refusal to let them enjoy unsecured blazes on high-wildfire–risk afternoons. When another, higher-profile libertarian social engineering enterprise, the Free State Project, received national attention by promoting a mass influx to New Hampshire in general (as opposed to just Grafton), the Free Town Project’s fate was sealed. Grafton became “just another town in a state with many options,” options that did not have the same problem with bears.

Or at least—not yet. Statewide, a perverse synergy between conservationist and austerity impulses in New Hampshire governance has translated into an approach to “bear management” policy that could accurately be described as laissez-faire. When Graftonites sought help from New Hampshire Fish and Game officials, they received little more than reminders that killing bears without a license is illegal, and plenty of highly dubious victim-blaming to boot. Had not the woman savaged by a bear been cooking a pot roast at the time? No? Well, nevertheless. Even when the state has tried to rein in the population with culls, it has been too late. Between 1998 and 2013, the number of bears doubled in the wildlife management region that includes Grafton. “Something’s Bruin in New Hampshire—Learn to Live with Bears,” the state’s literature advises.

The bear problem, in other words, is much bigger than individual libertarian cranks refusing to secure their garbage. It is a problem born of years of neglect and mismanagement by legislators, and, arguably, indifference from New Hampshire taxpayers in general, who have proved reluctant to step up and allocate resources to Fish and Game, even as the agency’s traditional source of funding—income from hunting licenses—has dwindled. Exceptions like Doughnut Lady aside, no one wants bears in their backyard, but apparently no one wants to invest sustainably in institutions doing the unglamorous work to keep them out either. Whether such indifference and complacency gets laundered into rhetoric of fiscal prudence, half-baked environmentalism, or individual responsibility, the end result is the same: The bears abide—and multiply.

Their prosperity also appears to be linked to man-made disasters that have played out on a national and global scale—patterns of unsustainable construction and land use, and the climate crisis. More than once, Hongoltz-Hetling flags the fact that upticks in bear activity unfold alongside apparently ever more frequent droughts. Drier summers may well be robbing bears of traditional plant and animal sources of food, even as hotter winters are disrupting or even ending their capacity to hibernate. Meanwhile, human garbage, replete with high-calorie artificial ingredients, piles up, offering especially enticing treats, even in the dead of winter—particularly in places with zoning and waste management practices as chaotic as those in Grafton, but also in areas where suburban sprawl is reaching farther into the habitats of wild animals. The result may be a new kind of bear, one “torn between the unique dangers and caloric payloads that humans provide—they are more sleep-deprived, more anxious, more desperate, and more twitchy than the bear that nature produced.” Ever-hungry for new frontiers in personal autonomy and market emancipation, human beings have altered the environment with the unintended result of empowering newly ravenous bears to boot.

Ignoring institutional failure and mounting crises does not make them go away. But some may take refuge in confidence that, when the metaphorical chickens (or, rather, bears) finally come home to roost, the effects are never felt equally. When bears show up in higher-income communities like Hanover (home to Dartmouth College), Hongoltz-Hetling notes, they get parody Twitter accounts and are promptly evacuated to wildernesses in the north; poorer rural locales are left to fend for themselves, and the residents blamed for doing what they can. In other words, the “unintended natural selection of the bears that are trying to survive alongside modern humans” is unfolding along with competition among human beings amid failing infrastructure and scarce resources, a struggle with Social Darwinist dynamics of its own.

The distinction between a municipality of eccentric libertarians and a state whose response to crisis is, in so many words, “Learn to Live With It” may well be a matter of degree rather than kind. Whether it be assaults by bears, imperceptible toxoplasmosis parasites, or a way of life where the freedom of markets ultimately trumps individual freedom, even the most cocksure of Grafton’s inhabitants must inevitably face something beyond and bigger than them. In that, they are hardly alone. Clearly, when it comes to certain kinds of problems, the response must be collective, supported by public effort, and dominated by something other than too-tidy-by-half invocations of market rationality and the maximization of individual personal freedom. If not, well, then we had all best get some practice in learning when and how to play dead, and hope for the best.

[sophie-frm-mars]

As a trans woman engaged with environmental politics I've often observed what felt like an ontological tension between the naturalistic view a lot of people adopt in those spaces and my reality of being trans. Lots of talk about the natural virtues of the divine feminine and so on, that lends itself to a very essentialist view of sex and gender.

I was wondering: have you noticed this tension, and do you know of any writers who have done work to resolve it? Or is it kinda unavoidable that when we place inherently higher value on things that are "natural", for trans people to end up othered in the process?

How long have trans women been doing diy castrations and brewing horse piss to get estrogen out? It's like 2000 years I think. Older than spectacles anyway

This is another one where the realities and the theory are not comfortable friends. I'm half way through a stay on a rural French commune right now and the communards have been universally lovely to me and my wife, also trans.

I like the manifesto "Xenofeminism" for arguments deliberately against naturalism, like medical and surgical abortions aren't "natural" in a Return To Monke way. Childbirth is the single biggest killer in history.

At core we have to understand that humans have and do will continue to change the world around them and the only "defending nature" that exists is making positive changes instead of negative ones, acting as nature defending itself, acting as stewards of the other-than-human world. There is no going back. I don't see any conflict with trans people's existence and valuing nature because nature is a made up concept to separate us from the other-than-human

[theredhairing40]

As I am sitting in silence observing the surroundings of the residents, I know that just for only a second I have to be quick on my feet. I had to make sure that no one was eloping, or that they were safe in their little flats within the home. Sometimes they need a gentle touch, encouragement, and people who appreciate them during their last days.

I'm sure we're all wanting that... right?

Observers Manifesto