#posting this because I’m at the wsj and I don’t have anything else | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mrs-monaghan · 1 year

Note

Thanks for sharing and confirming that my instincts were right. I always tend to trust my gut feelings about people but sometimes I wonder if I should. Well, once again, it seems that I, indeed, should. Now I have to be honest, I never gave much credit to wsj, I ended up unfollowing cause I wasn’t interested in her posts anymore at some point, I really don’t trust people claiming they know stuff about celebrities and posting it on the internet, everybody can pretend to be xyz, unless there’s some solid proof I chose to remain skeptical (I did see a few stuff, tough nothing groundbreaking, from the k-side that I trust though, so maybe she was right). That being said, it’s Tumblr, it’s more private that Twitter, we’re a smaller community, so I don’t see any harm in people sharing what they want to share on their own blog. Just move on and ignore if you don’t like. The campaign against her and other bloggers was disgusting. Let ppl speak on their own tiny corner ffs, if don’t agree you can expose your arguments, have a discussion or unfollow and block. As long as they don’t cross a line I don’t see the problem. I’m seriously done with the holier than thou woke bs attitude. It’s all about virtue signaling these days, showing how you’re so much better and morally pure, and you know everything better than the rest of the plague… give me a break. Also the discussion around jealousy and constant dismissing of k-army and korean dating culture was quite something… because as someone who comes from a country where the dating culture differs a lot with the American/western perspective, where a drop of jealousy and possessivity is considered as a normal display of affection - I’m not talking about excessive and toxic behavior obviously!! - the blatant ignorance and constant undermining of korean dating culture that is quite similar to mine in that regard really annoyed. me. so. freaking. much. It’s deemed as a big no-no in your culture, okay, I get it, but you’re not better than us who thinks that in many cases it’s not that big of deal and, in Jikook case, was quite revealing in the past. Sorry I’m going all over the place, I’ll shut up now!

Ha ha haaa... no, dont even worry about it. Its fine. Thing is though, the Jeonlous/Jimlous thing IS indeed quite exergerrated. Most of the compilations are rubbish. And I can see why most people hate it. Including Regina George. I get that. But it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Especially in the case of other people who are not members. My mind immediately goes to the Sean Mendez interaction. 🤭🤭🤭

(TT is accurate has not been manipulated in any way)

JK almost bulldozed RM and downright ignored him in his rush to get to Jimin. It's actually hilarious 😂😂 Now this can be classified as jealousy. But when it comes to members I don't think that's what that is at all. Annoyance, Irritation, maybe? because he can't do to Jimin what others can. But definitely not jealousy. Either way whatever it is, it happens and denying it is stupid.

As for WSJ I don't see why the notion that an Army personally knows BTS is so hard to believe. Normal people know celebrities all the time. That being said, my issue with everyone who went after her was the hypocrisy. WSJ was very careful not to tell us anything incriminating. And everything else she ever said were things we already knew.

-Jikook is real

-Jikook live together

-Vminkook have issues

Etcetera, Etcetera. These are things we already know. She was just confirming. And she wasn't even worse than us Jikookers. And i said as much to Stormie when she made that shady post. We are the ones talking about Jikook 18+ moments and posting about them. So anyone thinking they have a leg to stand on are being hypocrites. 🖕🏽

#toxic jikookers #jikook is real #bts fandom #jikook bothered

22 notes · View notes

thesecrettimes · 2 years

Text

Crypto Influencer Bitboy Flies to the Bahamas to Question Former FTX Exec Sam Bankman-Fried

It’s been 16 days since FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and the former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is allegedly still hunkering down at his seaside resort in the Bahamas. This weekend, the Youtuber known as Bitboy decided to fly down to Nassau in order to question SBF about the FTX collapse, and crypto supporters on social media have been eagerly watching Bitboy search for SBF on the island.

While Trying to Confront SBF in the Bahamas, Bitboy Says He’s Doing What No One Is Willing to Do

Crypto Twitter, otherwise known as CT, has been entertained this past weekend by the Youtube personality Bitboy, otherwise known as Ben Armstrong. The reason Bitboy has caught so much attention during the last few days is because he decided to fly out to the Bahamas so he could question Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). It is assumed that SBF is still in the Bahamas, even though the former crypto executive’s ostensible private jet has been traveling back and forth from Nassau to Argentina more than eight times since the bankruptcy filing. A few days ago, Bitboy told CT that he was headed to the Bahamas to do what no one was willing to do which is question SBF about the FTX disaster. We got @Bitboy_Crypto camping outside of Sam Bankman-Fried’s condo in the Bahamas . The man will not stop until he gets answers. — David Gokhshtein (@davidgokhshtein) November 26, 2022 Investigators from the U.S. have reportedly been investigating the FTX collapse, but people don’t believe law enforcement is really doing anything. Furthermore, they surely don’t believe the media’s efforts, as news publications like the New York Times (NYT), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Forbes, and the Washington Post have been accused of protecting SBF’s image and printing “puff pieces” about FTX and Alameda executives. NO ONE ELSE IS HERE TRYING TO GET TO THE TRUTH Only us. People are terrified for my safety. I’m eating a Tuna Steak lol. I’m fine. Guys you have no idea. This is not what you think it is. It’s not dangerous here at all. It’s actually super welcoming. — Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto) November 26, 2022 Bitboy’s visit to the Bahamas has been trending for the past 24 hours, and Twitter’s vertical trends show more than 100,000 tweets about the subject at the time of writing. The Youtuber with over 1 million Twitter followers stressed on Saturday that “no one else is here trying to get to the truth.” Bitboy said his hunt for SBF wasn’t about gaining attention but more about getting real answers from the former FTX CEO. “This is not about clicks. This is about answers. And I’m not leaving this island without them,” Bitboy tweeted. Lots of people have shown enthusiasm for what Bitboy is doing and many people thought it was very entertaining. “Who tf needs Netflix when you have CT?” one individual asked. In fact, crypto fans were quite astounded that it was Bitboy going to question SBF rather than investigators and the media.

Crypto Influencers Show Respect to Bitboy for His Reporting Efforts, Condo Staffer Says No One’s Been Looking for SBF

“So, here is the guy taking on and investigating the FTX scandal,” the Twitter account Cryptobull wrote. “Not the FBI, not the DOJ, not the media, and certainly not the SEC. My respect ,” Cryptobull added. Bitboy responded to Cryptobull’s tweet and said: “I told you I was out here fighting for the people. If no one else will do it, I will.” However, getting in touch with SBF has been difficult for Bitboy as SBF has blocked him on Twitter. But that hasnt stopped Bitboy’s hunt to find SBF so he can be questioned and the Youtuber has shared pictures and videos about the experience. One group of photos Bitboy shared on Saturday was a few images of SBF’s alleged Toyota Corolla. “According to Twitter this is Sam’s Corolla,” Bitboy tweeted. “Complete with pills in the front seat. Maybe someone can identify what they are. And an MSI laptop in the back. SBF, look out your window bud. I just want to talk. Come tell your story,” the Youtuber added. Sammy. Let’s talk. pic.twitter.com/XMRXri24wo — Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto) November 26, 2022 Bitboy also shared a video of the Albany seaside condominium where SBF allegedly resides at the moment. “It’s amazing to me a staffer at the Albany said we are the first people to come looking for Sam WTF,” Bitboy tweeted. The Youtuber has also been messaging SBF via iMessage and Bitboy shared a picture of the texts that show SBF may have read them. Later in the evening, Bitboy said: I’m just down here because no one has been willing to represent the people and confront Sam. A great number of cryptocurrency supporters tweeted about Bitboy’s visit to the Bahamas to question SBF. The bitcoin proponent Layah Heilpern explained that she wanted to see a live stream of the visit. “It’s confirmed is officially outside Sam Bankman-Fried’s house demanding answers,” Heilpern tweeted. “How is a crypto guy doing a better job than U.S. investigators? I want a live stream right now… Anyone else?” Throwback to when the security guard escorted us out. Brian was pretty cool tbh. Sam, Barb, and Joe are the ones who made him to it. Sam I’ll come back if you put me on the guest list. pic.twitter.com/13OqNOBSwq — Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto) November 27, 2022 Following Bitboy’s tweets, pictures and videos on Saturday, the Youtuber said that SBF is allegedly being kicked out of the seaside condo in 48 hours. “Sam will be kicked out of the Albany within 48 hours. Can you imagine living there knowing how many enemies he has who now see how easy it is to get in?” Bitboy said. If you are his neighbor, would you want this kind of attention in your million-dollar compound?” The following day the Youtuber said: We have basically done the equivalent of throwing a digital sledgehammer through Sam’s window. Once he came down from his uppers last night, how do you think he slept? What do you think about Bitboy flying out to the Bahamas to confront and question the former FTX CEO SBF? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Read the full article

1 note · View note

haleigh-sloth · 2 years

Note

Sometimes I feel people forget the type of story they are reading and what country it actually comes from but every once in awhile you can see a meta and can tell mha is people first entry to battle shounen like most sports manga are all similar and take cues from slam dunk well battle shounen are heavily inspire from others not a carbon copy of course but still and I can see the anger already the anti mha tag will be on fire come the ending saying they are being critical but it cause you didn’t get what you want and fine everyone is allow anger but it hilarious either way I already spent an embarrassing amount of money on the series and it going exactly as how I expected so I’m good everyone else be easy

I think it’s a little bit of this (for some who aren’t super familiar with manga and the industry it’s kinda obvious 😬) but also people who knew exactly what they were reading but hoping it would subvert the typical bullshit that occupies WSJ.

Which, I can say was a fair guess at one point in time imo. I didn’t read the series during the MVA days but I could see how that expectation would grow while those chapters came out.

But as someone who read the manga straight through and caught up to the war arc—I can also say that from my perspective MVA was pretty isolated as an arc and the story very very quickly returned to its usual tone and energy after it ended.

The war arc kiiiiinda followed up on the revolution destruction vibe—and I’ll admit I got lost in it too for a bit. But once the war arc ended it became extremely obvious that BNHA is not about to turn the tide and make history as a manga setting a new precedent or anything. That’s why I personally was so frustrated for the entire Deku solo arc (even though I’m over that phase, I still think that arc sucked bad). When I say I had to reevaluate my expectations for this manga to get over being so bitter, I meant it.

Sometimes I see posts I made last year and I’m like 😬. But ALSO my expectations for the ENDING have kinda always been the same. This post I made last year in May (during my “LOV are SJWs!” Phase no less) is still what I am banking on happening now—with the exception of a few things that my stance has changed on.

So yeah. Part of me held onto the “heroes will be the heroes no matter what” reality of the manga, but I won’t deny getting lost in the revolutionary takes and hoping for it at one point in time.

Granted I don’t want that now at all. Because that’s not where it’s going, so therefore holding onto it is just gonna make me bitter and I don’t want that? So now I’m attached to the optimistic corny ending we’re geared up for and don’t want it to change.

But yeah I say it a lot but this manga is a basic bitch.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #anonymous #bnha asks #bnha critical #kinda #not really

11 notes · View notes

eightyonekilograms · 3 years

Text

Someone on the Discord brought up fertility

Just like last time I'm lazy and just going to dump it instead of editing.

[5:10 PM] Me: Oh boy, I have thoughts about this

[5:12 PM] Me: I haven't brought it up here but demographics has been one of my covid obsessions. I got a couple books about it (What to Expect When No One's Expecting, One Billion Americans, etc.), read all the articles, etc.

[5:15 PM] Me: I agree with you about a couple things: namely that if we had "infinite free energy" we'd be a a lot better off in many ways including demographically, but I disagree with most of your other points.

[5:18 PM] Me:

Also we need not assume decline in population growth is chronic.

This is a tricky statement because there's a social aspect and a mathematical aspect. Socially you're correct in the sense that whatever trends are driving the current decline could, in theory, reverse at any time. But mathematically, population decline is exactly symmetrical to population growth: it's exponential (technically it's logistic, but that's the same as exponential in the short term), because having fewer people means fewer people to make more people later on.

[5:20 PM] Me:

Infact there is some evidence to suggest that we actually did more science when we had 4-6 billion people.

I disagree with the implication here: we used to do more science because there was more low-hanging fruit, which is now plucked, and further discoveries require more resources (human and financial). Actually one of the big reasons I disagree with Ray Kurzweil and the other singularitarians is that when they show these impressive-looking exponential curves about scientific progress, they quietly hide under the rug that these increases are requiring ever-more investment (again, in both people and money) to accomplish. Just to pick a random example, every time chip manufacturers go to a new process (14nm -> 10nm -> 7nm -> 5nm -> 2nm etc.), the cost to build the fab basically doubles. I remember a couple years back Intel had to spend $5 billion to hit a new process shrink; now TSMC needs to spend $28 billion to hit their next target: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tsmc-to-spend-up-to-record-28-billion-in-advanced-chips-capacity-11610623587)

[5:23 PM] Me: I will try to find it but I came across a paper a little while ago laying out in detail that the cost of new scientific discoveries has been steadily increasing over time. It's not that there's anything necessarily going wrong with the scientific process, this is just what you'd expect as we pick low-hanging fruit: the later discoveries necessarily become harder. But if you extrapolate that trend out forever you eventually hit a point where every single person needs to be a scientist, and every dime of capital in existence, needs to be used to make any new discoveries.

[5:26 PM] Me: (In most fields we're a long way from that point, but it actually is here or nearly here in e.g. particle physics. What I have been hearing from leading-edge particle physicists is that we've got maybe one or two more generations of particle accelerators left before we reach a point where, to probe any further (e.g. to see if string theory is true), we'd need to build accelerators the size of the Solar System, which would take more raw material than the mass of the Earth. Barring some new theoretical breakthroughs, we might actually nearing the "end" of high-energy physics.)

[5:30 PM] Me: Fortunately most fields aren't at that point, but my point is that the more we discover, the more human capital is required to make further progress. That's a tricky enough proposition with a growing population, never mind a shrinking one.

[5:36 PM] Me:

I don't think it is safe to assume lowering population growth is a biological disorder so much as a conscious choice most people in the younger generations are making for a variety of obvious reasons.

I agree with this, but it's important to dig into that a little and understand the reasons. For example, I'm not yet convinced that there is a mass epidemic of people choosing childlessness because of anxiety about e.g. climate change. In internet comments sections you certainly see lots of people making that claim, but talk is cheap and randos on the internet can say whatever they want. In terms of the actual reasons, the data I've seen shows that number of children continues to track closely with a couple data points, mostly housing costs, expected lifetime income and uncertainly about future income flow.

[5:40 PM] Me: Third, I think you should give more weight to the concerns Rhys brought up than you currently are. The environmental stresses of more people is certainly a big issue, but I think it's one that can be dealt with without too much struggle with increased deployment of clean energy (one of the few optimistic data points lately is that there's a staggering amount of wind and solar power being deployed every year) and a couple of lifestyle changes like eating less meat. Not to say these are easy, but contrast with the pretty serious problems of population decline, particularly the social safety net.

[5:41 PM] Me: And I don't just mean the explicit ones like Social Security, but even market-based, privatized ones like retirement savings have a hidden reliance on a growing population.

[5:42 PM] Me: When you "save for retirement", you're not stockpiling food and water to live off when you no longer work, you're collecting financial assets that you expect to sell to someone else and live off that income. But if there's no one to sell to, that doesn't work.

[5:44 PM] Me: This is a problem that's starting to show up at the top end of the income stack: see this WSJ article about retirees who can't find anyone to buy their $3 million homes: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-growing-problem-in-real-estate-too-many-too-big-houses-11553181782. It's easy to have schadenfreude here at those poor rich people who can't unload their huge mansion, but remember that this is inherently a problem which will start at the top of the income brackets and gradually make its way downward.

[5:46 PM] Me: You can push this problem back for a while by increasing taxes on the rich, and I do indeed think those should go up, but in a declining population that only buys you a little time. Remember that "money" is nothing but a claim on some fraction of total economic output. e.g. when you hold a dollar bill, you're essentially holding a note entitling you to one-zillionth of American GDP.

[5:47 PM] Me: At a certain point once population falls then total aggregate output necessarily falls too, and at that point taxing the rich hits rapidly diminishing returns: you're just claiming a bigger share of falling output

[5:49 PM] Me: One thing to keep in mind here is that most economies, but especially the U.S. economy, are primarily driven by consumer spending, i.e. normal people just buying and selling stuff to each other.

[5:50 PM] Me: This is why e.g. mass immigration isn't as huge a deal as a bunch of nativists like to think: immigrants get jobs, but they also spend money on goods and services just like anyone else: they generate labor demand as well as taking up supply

[5:51 PM] Me: But what I'm driving at here is that, again, a consumer-spending-driven economy with a falling population is going to get poorer pretty much by definition: fewer people buying stuff means fewer jobs to produce that stuff.

[5:54 PM] Me: Or to put another way, to use a ridiculously simplified model, GDP = Population X Productivity, and so if you take the derivative, then GDP' ~ Population' + Productivity'. So in a falling population environment, you need a lot of heavy lifting in terms of forever-increasing productivity in order for economic growth to be positive. And while there might be improvements down the pipe, frankly we kind of seem tapped out on productivity growth already

[5:55 PM] Me: Now, one possible response here is that we should work out how to have an economic system which delivers prosperity without endless growth, and I do agree we need that. But just saying that doesn't fix the problem that right now we don't have it and people will be poorer in a world without growth.

[5:56 PM] Me: And in such a world, I think it actually becomes harder to successfully transition to whatever post-scarcity economy can fix the problem, because people will be caught up in fighting over a shrinking pie.

[5:58 PM] Me: The neoliberal capitalist mindset of "a rising tide lifts all boats" isn't totally true and has been used to justify all kinds of nasty plutocratic behavior, but it isn't entirely false either. Without growth, at least in the system we have now, wealth distribution inherently becomes a zero-sum game. And that could get really ugly.

[5:59 PM] Me: So, that's most of what I have to say about why a falling population would be bad. But that's the easy part. Where this gets really complicated is why it's happening and what to do about it

[6:00 PM] Me: Now, I think one of the reasons I've been so fascinated by this is that it's been a pessimistic year, and falling birth rates are kind of the perfect pessimistic problem because I don't really see an easy way out. Also I'm just annoyed by partisans in general, and this is a perfect problem for that because it sort of frustrates partisans on all sides.

[6:02 PM] Me: e.g. the left mainly talks about the economic causes and proposes a variety of policy solutions, but an ugly little secret here is that government policy to increase birth rates has basically a perfect, unbroken track record of total failure

[6:03 PM] Me: All kinds of countries (mostly in Europe, but also in East Asia) have implemented all kinds of pro-natalist policies, and for the most part they have accomplished pretty much nothing. (Amusingly, this even goes back to antiquity: in the first couple centuries AD Roman Emperors were also concerned with falling birth rates, and implemented a variety of reforms that didn't do anything)

[6:03 PM] Me: You could always say they didn't go far enough, but at some point you're making an unfalsifiable hypothesis

[6:06 PM] Me: Meanwhile on the right, they're constantly talking about cultural factors, but this runs into two problems: it's again a set of mostly unfalsifiable hypotheses, but even worse since they're all tangled up in the Right's usual rants about The Way Things Ought to Be, but even if they turned out to be true, it seems like a hopeless cause because we basically have no levers to change culture.

[6:07 PM] Me: "Why does culture develop in the direction it does" is one of those huge questions I'm not sure we'll ever have a complete answer for, but I think it has to mostly involve technological determinism.

[6:08 PM] Me: https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/2017/11/12/why-the-culture-wins-an-appreciation-of-iain-m-banks/ <-- this is a great article explaining what I'm talking about, as well as explaining why you should read Iain Banks

[6:09 PM] Me: But my point here is that all the cultural changes the Right laments as causing people to have fewer children, assuming they're even correct which I am definitely not granting, are pretty much all products of industrialization. You can't roll them back without undoing the Industrial Revolution. At least not without an insane level of authoritarianism

[6:10 PM] Me: So on the policy side we have a bunch of levers which don't do anything, and on the culture side there are no levers at all.

#meanwhile on the discord

28 notes · View notes

natsubeatsrock · 4 years

Text

Do our heroes have agency?

Yeah, I need to do this.

There's no way I can get away with not doing this, especially if I'm making a lot of the points I will be making in this series.

Technically speaking, fictional characters have no agency. As they don't actually exist and don't actually think for themselves, they can't be said to have real agency. Any and all decisions made by them in-series are made by their creators "on their behalf". In that sense, they aren't making any real decisions.

At the same time, well-written characters ought to have clearly defined thought processes. We should have a good idea of what kind of actions a character we're following for a good amount of time would make and understand why they would make them. It should make sense that a character takes the actions and makes the decisions they do.

This wouldn't be so much of an issue if we were talking about simple character decisions. This doesn't matter when it comes to what a character eats or if they'll wear a blue hat or red hat. We can accept that decisions like those are obviously made ultimately by the author, but it makes sense that a character would likely think to make such a decision. As you can imagine, discussions about character agency have to do with more contentious subjects. (Hence the rest of this post.)

Here's an example you've probably heard on this website. Whose fault is it that a given female character decides to wear a comically revealing outfit? In the series, it's usually their decision to wear something that shows a fair amount of skin. However, we know that such a decision was obviously made by the creator of the series. This often feeds into larger discussions about how characters of different genders are treated by authors and creators.

My own personal view is that anything is fair game as long as the logic behind a decision makes sense in series and for the characters. If you have to go out of your way to make a character do something that will be perceived as sexy, you're probably doing something wrong. If you can make it work in the series in a reasonable way, that becomes a matter of the taste of individual audience members.

In Bleach, one of the female characters is asked why they're wearing a rather revealing outfit. She's not wearing a chain mail bikini suit, but it shows more cleavage than her other outfits. It turns out she was tricked into wearing the outfit by another male character. Considering we know him to be quite the trickster, this isn't that shocking to see. They even point this out in the series.

Compare that to Chivalry of a Failed Knight, where there's a scene where two important female characters get held as hostages by a couple of criminals. One of them is forced to strip for their pleasure. As much as I enjoyed the show, this scene bordered on ridiculous and unnecessary. It doesn't feel as though this needed to happen for any reason other for the sexual gratification of the audience. (And this isn't the first or last time we get scenes like this.)

To be honest, I don't love these types of discussions. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot that can and should be said about how well authors write characters of specific types and doing their best not to play into bigoted stereotypes. But after a certain point, an annoying divide becomes obvious. One side forgets that a character, usually by definition, doesn't actually exist while another side treats characters as nothing but a bundle of traits and characteristics interacting in a fictional plot.

While the former point isn't great, I worry that too many people on this site tend towards the latter. Much of the fun of a series is seeing how a character will react given an unexpected situation. If they don't have some set of clearly defined thought processes, there's no point in following them. Frankly, if they don't have a thought process guiding their actions, you're better off replacing them with a block of wood.

Normally, this is why we're drawn to genres in general. The joke goes than all shonen action series this side of Dragon Ball is basically the same. (The same is likely to be said of Naruto soon.) We want to see how different characters will react to a similar set of situations in different contexts. We fight over the differences between Asta over Deku over Gon over Natsu over Gintoki over Tanjiro over whoever else because we know what we're getting into. While the differences are important and what ultimately draws us to one series over another, it's not as if the similarities are important.

However, it's also fun if it creates a scenario where a character doesn't play by the rules of the genre. Back in 2016, the world was introduced to the most peculiar duo of protagonists: Kazuma Satou from Konosuba and Subaru Natsuki from Re: Zero. Both were fairly nerdy teens who were sent to a parallel fantasy world where their dreams of having an easier life are dashed against the rocks of their new reality. While both are twists on the isekai genre, the comparison came from how they played on the rules of the genre. Konosuba is a comedy and Kazuma's misery is couched in the ineptitude of his partners. Re: Zero is a tragedy and Subaru's misery comes from being in an unforgiving world where death is often the least of his worries. And something, something Isekai Quartet.

There's one other way character agency becomes a bit of an issue. Is a character's agency dependent on another character? If one character is too dependent on another character, it could be said that they have no agency of their own.

You'll see this brought up a lot with female characters in stories targeted to males. A lot of female characters don't have much to do in stories outside of their attachment to the main character. While I think people pointing to characters like Juvia or Uraraka are off base (another rant for another day), I can't act as if this complaint is without its examples. One of my least favorite characters in WSJ history is Misa Amane because there's so little to her outside of her disturbingly toxic relationship with Light in Death Note. She serves little other purpose but to highlight how terrible a person Light is. (I say this as someone who loves Death Note.)

The important thing to question, in this regard, is if a character has an arc affected by another character or if their arc revolves around that character. I think there's no shame in having one character affect another character's arc, as we'll get to later in this series. However, I don't think a character should act as a satellite for another character.

To be continued...

#not fairy tail month: crisis on infinite fandoms #our heroes #this one was tough #i wanted to try this #but i don't love these discussions

2 notes · View notes

unnaturalsolace · 5 years

Text

Summer 2019 Anime

I passed the 3-episode limit for this season, so I figured it was time to talk about what I’m watching and what I dropped.

CONTINUING FROM LAST SEASON:

Kimetsu no Yaiba: Still loving the anime, still my favorite manga (as you could probably tell). Aside from that episode 13 (you know the one), it’s still been a great adaptation, especially since this is where things really start to pick up in the manga. I am literally just counting down the days of the week until Saturday arrives, no joke. And I really do think a season 2 is possible since the manga sales have picked up a lot, although I don’t know how anime sales look like yet. I am sooo hyped for all the pillars to appear!!

Amazing OP, amazing ED

Fruits Basket: Also loving this adaptation as well. I think they are doing a really good job, especially with some of the details (I reblogged a post before about Yuki and Kyo’s anger marks that actually started out as animals). I actually got into Fruits Basket more than a decade ago, and it was pretty much my favorite manga until KnY. So the fact that they’re both getting adapted at the same time is pretty awesome for me. I never watched the first adaptation, and I probably won’t tbh.

Comfy OP1, comfy OP2, comfy ED1, comfy ED2

CURRENT SEASON:

Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo.: I’ve been reading the manga and it was interesting so I decided to watch the anime as well. Adaptation has been great as well, everything looks really good. As for the story itself, I liked the manga at first, but the scanlations haven’t gotten that far so I don’t know much beyond what’s aired so far. However, I have heard that there’s some NTR in the future so I’m not looking forward to that. The manga only has one chapter left so we’ll see how it all ends I guess. But I think overall it tackles some good themes, although I feel too old to relate to them lol.

Bem: This anime kinda reminds me of Gegege no Kitarou, mostly just the supernatural aspect. I did end up dropping Kitarou at some point, and I feel like I’ll probably do the same for this one. It’s been okay so far, but nothing special I’d say. And it seems like every time there are supernatural protagonists, the human characters are always relatively dumb.

Amazing OP

Cop Craft: This is a nice buddy cop anime I suppose, although one of the MCs looks like a 13-year-old which is a liiiittle weird. So I really hope the MCs don’t end up together. The story is a bit cliche but I think I’ll continue watching for a little while, although I may drop it depending on if my interest wanes.

Dr. Stone: One of my other favorite WSJ manga. I think it’s really hilarious, and I’m liking the science promotion, although I know some people think it’s a little childish. I recently started collecting the manga too. I think the anime has been doing a good job with all the expressions, and the manga has a lot of great expressions to look forward to.

Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru?: I read Kengan Asura (which is also getting an adaptation) and I heard this was by the same author, so I decided to check it out. It’s actually quite fun! I tried doing some of the exercises myself but I got really lazy and gave up after a few days lol...but it did motivate me for a little bit. I think it is definitely very educational (edutainment?) and also funny.

Very catchy OP

Enen no Shouboutai: I read some of the manga, although I think I dropped it like a year ago or something. I also read the author’s previous work Soul Eater, and I feel like these are both kinda...meh. I dunno, I feel like something is missing for me to like the manga. There’s not a lot of memorable characters, and my favorite (that I remember) is probably Arthur. Also the series has some really dumb fanservice, so that’s definitely gonna come up a lot in the anime. (Where’re all the anime DUDES with lucky lewd syndrome? I wanna see a guy trip and accidentally shove his ass in someone’s face, c’mon.) I’ll keep watching for now for Arthur, but I have a feeling I might drop this in the future too.

Given: I remember reading 1-2 chapters of this, then I guess I forgot about it. But I am liking the anime so far, it’s got a good sense of humor and hooray for more BL anime! I’m liking the characters, although I hear there’s some drama in store for the future. But it’s pretty comfy so far.

Comfy ED

Kanata no Astra: I read the manga since it’s a pretty short series (5 volumes). Overall I thought it wasn’t bad. I think my problem with this is how someone else put it: the idea and plot are good and serious, but the execution is rather childish. But it does get better later (from what I remember), and the climax is good. However, the resolution is just waaaay too easily settled. Kinda spoilers, but all the bad guys are just taken care of like an unimportant afternote. I guess the focus was more on the interpersonal relationships, but the manga was way too short for that to be really effective.

Nakanohito Genome [Jikkyouchuu]: I think I was pleasantly surprised by this. I went in expecting another death game/survival anime, and I got a rather funny show that isn’t taking itself too seriously. And even though there are 8 main characters, I think it’s been doing a good job of making each of them unique in a way. Also there is a tsundere boy, and tsundere boys are always the best characters (Exhibit A: Kyo). I really don’t know what direction this show will go in tbh.

Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Ni-kai Kougeki no Okaasan wa Suki Desu ka? (AKA Okaa-san Online): I started watching this because I saw a funny clip. I think that overall it’s pretty self-aware of what genre it is, especially with the latest episode and the hot springs. But I definitely can see that it dips into pandering here and there. Personally there’s too much mom-pandering for me (and she can be real overbearing, but the show doesn’t seem to count that as a flaw and kinda portrays her as without any faults), although I guess that’s the point of the show. I’m more interested in the other characters, and I hope it stays self-aware. I hope it stays a wholesome mother-son relationship with no actual serious incest vibes...I like that the son is actually worn out by the incest moments without any blushing or anything.

Comfy ED

Vinland Saga: A good manga, and WIT is doing a solid adaptation. Not really sure what else to say except that the animation is great, and I’m looking forward to Thorfinn growing up. I’ve been keeping up with the manga weekly, but I haven’t reread it, so I’m kinda fuzzy on most of the early stuff (although I remember major events).

DROPPED AFTER ONE EPISODE:

7Seeds: I remember this was a great manga (and Basara was too), but I kinda stopped reading a couple of years ago. I think it actually ended recently? I tried picking my interest back up with the anime, but the direction of the first episode was just so weird that I had to drop it. I mean, I read it, so I kinda knew what was going on, but for people who haven’t, it was probably confusing as fuck. I have no idea why they directed it that way, what’s wrong with just following the manga?

Ensemble Stars!: I wanted to give this a try because there are some great doujinshi out there, but I am honestly not that into idol anime (I think Idolish7 was the only one I ever finished). I’m not really into otome anime as a whole, it just makes me feel old.

Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator: I used to like Accelerator as a character, but I never got into the whole Index franchise. I tried giving this a shot but I think my interest is gone by now.

So that’s what I’ve been watching the summer, hopefully some of you guys feel the same about some of these. Just wanted to give my 2 cents on some shows, and also advertise great OPs and EDs.

#anime

7 notes · View notes

greengargouille · 5 years

Note

So like I've been scrolling through some of your Ass Class stuff because your posts are neat, and I kept seeing villain posts mixed with your 3-E posts, which made me think of a weird question: If we ignore the fact the villains did bad things to the Class E characters, like if we have an AU without Takaoka punching kids or Gakuhou enforcing unfair rules, who do you think each student would get along with most? You don't have to do all the students, just maybe a few of your favorites!

Aww, thank you Anon for this sweet message! And for your patience because I sure took my sweet time writing this. Also it’s going to be long. Be warned.

To be honest… I’m not sure how to tackle this question. If Gakuho don’t enforce unfair rules, then class E as it is can’t exist, ie no separate building, no ‘only one teacher for all of them’, no exclusion from club activities. Which means the story of AC can’t exist, as Korosensei’s presence would be found in like… three days. And without Korosensei around, you don’t have Shiro, Takaoka or Nidaime. Which is kinda a problem if we want them interacting.

So, for this, let’s just ignore all the reasons all those villains would or would not interact with class E students. They’re just… here, I suppose.

Now, let’s go on and define who do I include as villains. Of course, we have the main four, Gakuho, Yanagisawa ie Shiro, Takaoka, and 2nd gen God of Death aka Nidaime. But… should we include every antagonist? I’m sure you will agree that Gakushuu and the other Virtuosos, while big rivals, don’t really count as ‘villains’. Nagisa’s mother? She’s certainly a villain, and actually my current favorite of the lot, but also she doesn’t have enough development to really see how she would act without the abuse. The three hitmen? End up being friendly in a way, if you include then you must also include Irina, Itona and Kayano to the villain lists, so no, they’re antagonists. Then I guess there’s Houjo or that random soldier in the anime, but nobody care about them. You might as well talk about Kunudon instead. Is that your true goal, Anon. Make me talk about Kunudon. Right, I thought so. Let’s just talk about the main four instead.

Before we go into which student would have who of the four as a favourite, we need to understand how would they interact with them without punches, kidnappings and all that.

Gakuho is probably the easiest to imagine, from his flashback personality and his post-assassination attempt moments. A cordial man who have his students’ interests at heart, able to speak about many subjects (and might brag a little about that), but have a few tricks up his sleeve to get them to study (like how Ikeda had one daily chance to defeat him every day), or just casually insert learning opportunities in conversation (the way he suddenly ask Terasaka how much chances Korosensei had to win). Frankly, the only students who would have a problem with him are probably the Terasaka gang, as they aren’t fond of authority figures, and Takebayashi, who don’t dislike authority figures so much as would feel a lot of pressure in interacting properly and leaving a good impression. Strangely enough, I feel like Karma would get along very well with him, as Gakuho would probably take him seriously and try to find challenges to nurture his potential. Plus, Gakushuu would be so annoyed that those two get along, it would be hilarious.

Now, the whole “have plenty of talents and can probably talk about various subjects (and is proud of it)” is also something you will find in Nidaime, but as for interactions, he would have no interest in teaching the class E students, nor is he in a position above them (as far as they’re concerned), so it would be way more casual. I’m not sure he would actually care much about them, without the whole assassination thing- it would be more of a business relationship, and just him being cordial whenever they happen to pass by, as part of his persona of the kind neighbourhood florist. He might end up having discussions with them on the subject of flowers or plants in general, which would certainly interest Kurahashi and Kanzaki (a former Ikebana club member), and maybe money-related subject (how to save money, how to make people pay more…) which Isogai would be really invested in.

Now, on someone who actually wants to teach but of a completely different character, we have Takaoka. Even without the punching, kicking, and all the physical violence, he’s a very tactile guy. Pat on the shoulders, slap on the backs, pulling someone almost like an hug… He’s also a loud and very enthusiastic guy. This kind of overbearing personality can be really divisive, you either like it or hate it but it’s hard to stay indifferent. Mostly he will make the shyer, calmer ones a bit uneasy, while people like Sugino or Okano would probably really be into it? And also, he buys lot of sweets. Which is automatically an A+ for the sweet alliance club (aka Hara, Kurahashi, Fuwa and Kayano).Which leave us with Yanagisawa. Which is a really tough case, as I just don’t see him interacting with children or teenagers more than he have to, and even less than that. Too emotional, too stupid for him. Plus, Yanagisawa… even taking into account that the whole tentacle experiment must have been a really stressful/tiring time, and that he was in a superior hierarchical position to everyone else in the lab… in the flashbacks, he was kind of a jerk. And I see him as one that lack the self-awareness that he’s a jerk, which make it really troublesome to interact with him. Sure, he can be a pleasant person whenever he wants to (as Akari explains to her big sis, ‘he looks fine on the outside’)- but why would he want to be pleasant to a bunch of 14 year olds who don’t have anything to bring him? (Or at least in this AU- this is why Anon’s question is tricky, as in a Korosensei setting it might happen differently).However… despite this, I feel a few students could still approach him.Okuda, without a doubt, as her fascination with science surpass any apprehension she could have to any potential hostility. She is a girl that stepped out of her comfort zone plenty of times, and she doesn’t seems to care about past reputations, if we consider her friendship with Karma? So, surely, she would certainly find the courage to ask questions about Yanagisawa’s work, because it must be so interesting. Plus, for all the disdain he can have, I don’t feel like Yanagisawa would be one to mock a particular science subject (for example, physicists that downplay how hard chemistry is), as the whole tentacle thing touched on both physics, biology and probably chemistry? So, really, as long as Okuda don’t try to ask for an internship under him she would probably actually appreciate him.Takebayashi… would probably respect Yanagisawa’s achievements, but I don’t see him going out of his way to interact with him. Mostly, if he pass by and the conversation peek his interest, he might end up exchanging.

Then we have Yanagisawa’s other interests. We do see him do magic tricks, notably some with doves. He also play with a rat in some chapter that he absolutely did not eat, what the heck Matsui, that was so…. So there are chances Kurahashi might just coo at the birds and find a common subject to talk about, pet raising and maybe insects? I could see Yanagisawa appreciating entomology.Another thing he seems to like is mangas- or at least the WSJ he’s seen reading. So, of course Fuwa have ignored all her previous assessments of the man just so she could talk about the latest chapter of whatever is trending. And Yanagisawa is sure to have very different point of views from her, so it’s bound to be interesting! How many times do you bet he actually root for the antagonist and defend the villain’s side. Or point out how stupid a plot point is. Or how science don’t work that way.

So! With that in mind, here are a list of which student would get along best with which villain, in this strange AU where they’re just here and not doing anything villainous; an incomplete list, as I only put the cases I felt really sure about:

Karma would, surprisingly, be partial to Gakuho? Because he’s paying attention to his students and also one who would actually try to challenge Karma intellectually. Plus, he likes to brag about his own son, and that’s just free teasing material against Gakushuu. What’s not to love about this situation.

Isogai would probably like Nidaime more. All the good advices for money savings and how to get a good relation with one’s clients that he could reuse as a waiter.

Okano and Kimura, I’m replying for them together because it’s a similar reasoning. They’re both physical, simple people, which I feel would get along more easily with Takaoka.

Okuda’s favorite would probably be Yanagisawa, at the surprise of most in the class, because really, how interested in science is she to ignore his unpleasant attitude, but most of it goes over her head in the first place.

Kanzaki… probably Nidaime due to her club, as mentioned earlier? And then it is revealed that, among all prizes and titles the Chairman got, he also won some video game competition that just make Kanzaki wants to challenge him.

Kurahashi is the girl that get along with everyone because she’s just like that. Incredible.

Sugino’s easy, he’s an enthusiastic guy who get easily friendly with people and who put a lot of efforts toward his sport of predilection, so he would probably go along well with Takaoka.

Takebayashi could go either with Yanagisawa or Nidaime, which is funny since they’re not really alike, but then that’s often the case with Takeban, isn’t it? Model student, with a good understanding of science and a respect of high achievements (but that would probably feel too pressured talking with the Chairman of his school), but also one that want to trace his own path and might be more dangerous than one might think at first.

Nakamura likes to be silly and want to have fun, so it might seems she would be partial to Takaoka, but I’m not sure she wouldn’t appreciate Nidaime more? More… mischievous, I guess.

Maehara… oh god, wouldn’t that be really ironic if his favorite was Takaoka? I mean, Maehara’s a bright young guy that was in the soccer club, and also pulled some nice dance moves in Korotan D, wasn’t he? But then, being around someone like Nidaime would be a real lesson on how to seduce the ladies and gentlemen too

…As you can see, I’m missing a lot of people on the list because I’m not sure what to think of them. Terasaka’s gang, for example, would probably not get along with Gakuho because he’s a symbol of authority, and neither would they appreciate someone like Yanagisawa; but would they actually get along with Takaoka, who’s someone uncomplicated, and also a physical kind of guy, but at the same time one who ask people to be really invested in their activities? Even for Hazama I’m not sure; she does stay around the rest of the gang, so it’s not like she feels uncomfortable with those kind of people. Plus, the whole enthusiastic thing, as one can see with Kurahashi that it exaust Hazama (well, starve her from her darkness) but at the same time, ‘They say that darkness is drawn to the light… ‘

In fact, on the subject of Takaoka, as I said he’s really divisive, and on the ones not on the list, I feel he probably wouldn’t be a favorite of the less social ones like Chiba, Hayami or Sugaya. Given Mimura’s awkward face in some panels I would say he would have an hard time, too. And I don’t really see them get along with Yanagisawa, so really, it’s a matter of chosing between Gakuho and Nidaime, and I can’t really tell which one they would chose.

Hara, on the contrary, is one that’s ‘good at handling the boys’ and is part of the sweet alliance, but would that be enough for her to choose Takaoka over one of the other not-villains?

…And I still have no idea for Kataoka. Neither for Fuwa- I evoked earlier she had a common ground to speak to Yanagisawa but that just mean I don’t exclude him, so I have even less of an idea what she would do. I absolutely don’t know about Okajima either- Gakuho probably knows about photography because he knows about everything, but he would probably be jugemental of Okajima’s other hobbies. Well, I guess Nidaime would be great at photography too that’s a basic spy/recon skill, gotta have that blackmail material. And Yada? I feel like she would appreciate Nidaime more but I don’t really have a basis for it?

Akari-Kayano, too, she could go a lot of ways- except one because her ex-brother-in-law is totally her unfavorite, for reasons that might all not be all that objective.

…Who’s Nagisa. Now you’re just inventing students.

#assassination classroom #ansatsu kyoushitsu #assclass #Anonymous #long post #very long post #in which for once group 2 is the one that leave me the most confused #how can I not even answer for my favorite #also like always I'm publishing this way too late for me to even think about re-reading myself for editing #so you will have to put up with any confusing parts or just plain wrong words #that's with the package you all been warned

9 notes · View notes

bmichael · 6 years

Text

Cold Takes

You need something extra after you drag yourself out of bed at 450am in a polar vortex to go to the gym long before sunrise. So I was honestly delighted this morning to see a new Chuck Klosterman - Bill Simmons podcast posted.

I’ve had an up-and-down relationship to reading and listening to these two. Growing up, I was a sponge for their ideas, then as a more mature person I outright rejected and ridiculed them, and now as we’re all more or less adults I can relate to their thoughts in a probably more considered way.

Simmons was in the news recently because of this WSJ profile of The Ringer and him that mentioned, among other things, that the Ringer makes around $15MM a year on ad and podcast revenue. Now, I saw some sports blogs and twitter users throw this number around as if it were large. And it’s not zero, but it’s not really a large revenue figure for a media network with you’ve got to figure at least 50 staffers (it launched with 43 and has grown) based in LA. He’s a businessman and a business, man (I will retire that phrase now) but it’s definitely still a pretty small business.

So the podcast. I started listening to it as I went through my usual deadlift-squat-rows day -- not super fun but not the worst (squats-focused is the worst) and found it pretty entertaining. I don’t really care about Tony Romo’s announcing one way or the other and I thought they both circled around some pretty un-nuanced ideas re: basketball offenses. (Is the best offense just having James Harden try to score every play or pass -- maybe?! Three pointers and dunks are really good -- whoa, great point!)

There’s one relevant point to this ramble where they’re talking about the different Fyre Festival docs and what being an influencer means. Neither seems to have a strong grasp on the term. Simmons focuses on it qua job or activity, where you get paid to endorse something while Klosterman sees it more as an Aristotelian category. Neither correctly assesses it as a figure in the culture with great-than-zero brand recognition and a role within the capitalist-media complex to generate added revenue for someone or something and not always yourself. Ie, they’re both influencers, but neither seems to consider this.

(This point sort of comes up later tangentially and unnoticed when Klosterman laments his latest book dealing with all these things currently being made into films and documentaries while he got none of the credit...)

At the 1:15 mark Simmons brings up the movie Green Book and its unfair treatment thus far. Now, in the last podcast with Wesley Morris, Simmons talks about how he likes Green Book and thinks the movie works just fine while simultaneously reading the wikipedia page for the concept of the magic negro (really, he does this). He’s coming from a place of really liking the movie and attributing to it (or to his enjoyment of the movie, maybe more precisely) a nobody-believes-in-us type of moral gumption and gravity.

My reading of Simmons in the last two podcasts is that the movie’s embattled status as controversial and under fire by parts of the media pisses him off slightly and makes him want to see it succeed. In this equation, Green Book is the 2019 Patriots and Simmons treats it accordingly.

So Simmons says to Klosterman (almost a direct quote, but I don’t have time to go back and re-listen. It’s at 1:15:30-ish)

unless you satisfy all these different demographics, a piece of art will be rejected

He doesn’t clarify what “different demographics” he means, but I’m taking him to mean black people, primarily. He perhaps also means young people and/or woke twitter warriors. Simmons continues, saying that he thinks art “should make you think”.

By itself, I found this point uproariously out of touch and wrong, but Simmons kind of continues to sort of tease this point out with Klosterman. I’m saying “continues to sort of tease” not because I write in a folksy, casual style but because he really doesn’t seem to have an argument or single point of view in mind, and this is what I found so fascinating by this part of the podcast.

(Klosterman, for his part, doesn’t really say much about Simmons’ comments except that he grew up in a different era and understands he has a POV or prejudices implicitly that he cannot control.)

So a little later, Simmons brings up the movie Cruising, which I have not seen, but he says is very good. Apparently, its a “ 1980 erotic crime thriller film written and directed by William Friedkin and starring Al Pacino” about a serial killer targeting gay men. Simmons brings this movie up to make the point that people are much more easily mobilized these days (so insightful...) and to say, further, that if the movie were released today it would have been boycotted heavily and possibly not released.

I find this to be a laughable take, but he goes on to say something very revealing in response to something Klosterman says. Chuck says that if Cruising were made in 2019, maybe it would be made by a gay director and/or have a gay star. And Simmons is like, oh so they’d anticipate these issues and get out in front of the controversy.

This was so revealing to me because it snaps into focus a few different domains Simmons occupies and shows he almost ‘code switches’ his thought process, unconsciously, depending on whatever ghost of a coherent thought happens to be haunting his mind in a given moment.

This is clearly Simmons the producer and media mogul. He wants to get this movie, Crusing, made in 2019. Logistically, he knows certain demographics will boycott the film and maybe prevent it from being released.

(By the way, there have been some movies prevented from being released, generally on the basis of a moral panic, but the most recent one I can think of is the Woody Allen Louis CK one which, who the fuck would want to see that anyway? I’m sure it would ‘make you think’... that CK and Allen are pieces of shit.)

This is not really a great place to come from as a critic or even person who runs the Ringer media empire. Speaking to the latter, obviously the Ringer is a vehicle to make money for its owners, but it does seem to have a more coherent, somewhat woke new media 3.0 purpose that’s not 100% cynical in the vein of, ‘hey cast a gay actor for this homophobic film so that it won’t get boycotted’. For the former, sure it would be something you’d note and maybe write about, but would it really ‘make you think’? It would make me think that the movie was a cynical piece of shit floating in the homophobic toilet bowl of American culture.

Drawing back even further, it just goes to show me at least that the majority of influencers in this apparently lamentable influencer culture still don’t really consider themselves influencers. The sort of way saying someone’s a “white male” is kind of offensive because it creates this contre-pied cognitive step where a white man actually has to identify as a subgroup of humanity and not the default setting, as it were, and realize that he has discursive and political motivations that aren’t just ‘natural law’ or something and are generally around to further his demographic’s self-interests.

Simmons constantly spouts this backward, establishment-protecting bullshit when it comes to entertainment - and with regard to everything else. The one arguably moral stand he took, to badmouth Roger Goodell on his ESPN podcast, had the effect of making him more famous and gave his flagging outsider status a little more life, allowing him to pivot to the Ringer. He and his site still slavishly cover football, despite making jokes (I guess?) about CTE and concussions.

There is not a large conclusion to all this except to get my thoughts out there. Like, I don’t think Simmons is evil or anything, but he’s totally unaware of his biases -- the same as anyone, I know.

It just galls me that I think he thinks he’s this establishment-wrecking poster boy for new media when he’s just the same old self-congratulatory, now-middle-aged white guy holding back progress in the name of art or a sophisticated critical view when it’s really about the bottom line and protecting conservative values.

#bill simmons #chuck klosterman

13 notes · View notes

regnigt · 6 years

Text

It got a bit long, so I'll be replying to this post here, by starting a new post for @eclipseofshadows and anyone else wanting to talk about the Farewell Shinshengumi arc in Gintama and particularly about the interactions and relationship between Katsura and Kondo + Katsura and the Shinshengumi, in this arc and in following arcs. I don't have anything very spoilery to say right now but I'm putting this under a Read More cut just in case. (For my part, I've read up through chapter 698 so I'm personally fine with WSJ manga spoilers. I'm not up to date on any Jump Giga spoilers yet.)

[ETA in August 2023: I got a notification for this old post and found it turned out wonky-looking in mobile view - everything above the "Read More" cut disappeared. I've now removed the cut and hope that fixes the matter.]

Excellent analysis of Kondo's and Katsura's interaction, and how Kondo's attitude changes in turns with the events of the arc. I now think I should take back or at least modify what I wrote yesterday about Kondo post-Farewell Shinsengumi feeling a debt of honour to Katsura. It's true that he does outright tell him, "Now we're even", as your screenshot here shows; and I love how you point out that the real ground they can build on is Kondo understanding Katsura better, accepting him as a real friend and insisting they fight on together, which Katsura in his turn accepts.

Katsura trying to protect Kondo who he's gambled so much on in order to save can be seen as him asserting the mantle of a protective general towards his new subordinate -- a position Kondo refuses to accept in favour of the equal state of brothers-in-arms he posits instead, not letting Zura martyr himself. And that holds for the rest of the arc.

Afterwards, he does however acknowledge Katsura as a possible leader of the whole country, and a veteran at rebellion, who he can follow and in turn lead the Shinsengumi to follow. I now think there's less of an indebtedness there than I first thought: maybe below the surface, but Kondo wouldn't have said "Now we're even" if he didn't think so.

No, it now seems more right that it's Kondo's acceptance of Katsura as a brother-in-arms just leads naturally, under the specific circumstances the nation is in, to his accepting him as a worthy leader as well. But I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this subject!

What I would like to leave on is Kondou’s line about a new comrade to drink with. He’s shown drinking with Gintoki at the start of the arc and by extension, Shigeshige as well due to the tribute they pay him. Kondou’s line including Katsura in this is quite heartwarming knowing the latter’s role in following Shigeshige’s footsteps. Farewell Shinsengumi Arc is amazing because just about everything in the whole series comes together.

This is such a great point! And one that hadn't occurred to me. That makes the whole sharing a drink motif even deeper and more meaningful than I first thought. ♥

(Also, very good point that given their history, Kondo and the rest of the Shinsengumi wouldn't have listened to Zura if he hadn't acted for everyone's best interests. And you're so right about his "mother knows best" attitude. :D.)

#gintama meta #gintama spoilers #gintama #kotaro katsura #isao kondo #farewell shinsengumi #katsura & kondo #eclipseofshadows #gintama themes

11 notes · View notes

swans-anime-ramblings · 6 years

Text

“Luffy had no reaction to Boa...doesn’t that mean he won’t have romance?”

I’ve been debating about posting this blog because I was hesitant about the kind of reaction it would receive. But I think this topic is worth discussing logically.

Alright, so let’s dig into this thing.

If we’re going to understand Luffy and his actions (or not actions) towards Boa, then we have to first understand him as being a character that fits the Battle Shonen archetype. The genre, despite people’s complaints about it, is the most popular type of manga/anime genre there is. And One Piece, for all its glorious writing, world building and character development, is perfectly happy to sit in its genre, with Luffy fitting right into the hero archetype.

Where did this archetype even come from? It may surprise you to learn that Dragon Ball is in fact the grandfather of modern Shonen. You know what kind of stories were running in WSJ as DB’s contemporaries? Big burley manly men who never changed or progressed like Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star.

And the antithesis of this is Goku, little innocent Goku who takes this character type and flip it on its head. (Kid Goku is so cute guys! *cries*)

Toriyama’s writing absolutely can’t be understated here. Nobody had ever seen anything like Dragon Ball. It became a cultural phenomenon. It became a blueprint for success.

The classic Shonen Hero archetype has evolved into the following:

innocent

clueless when it comes to love

loves to fight/ get stronger

has a catch phrase

wants to protect their “Nakama”

thinks before they act

often stupid or a simpleton

gains power ups through training and other means

cute

Within the archetype you’ve got big hitters such as:

Goku— the OG who was so clueless, he couldn’t tell someone’s gender without slapping them in the crotch. Also obsessed with getting stronger to the detriment of, well, everything

Luffy— the uber innocent muffin who will do anything for his crew, and will go out of his way for people if it concerns their dreams. Aware of his weaknesses more than the others, Also really dumb at first

Naruto--- the misfit who starts out peeping at girls but then ends up taking on the burden of the entire world, because he’s THAT concerned about everyone and everything. Definitely the most selfless, has dumb moments, but smarter than the others

Ichigo--- the lovable grump who literally doesn’t give a shit. Coolest one of the bunch

Natsu--- loves his friends so much he gains power ups in the middle of the battle to win through the power of friendship. Probably the funniest one, takes life one job request at a time

Asta— the new kid on the block. Constantly yells to the point of irritation, believes working hard will solve all problems, doesn’t understand how relationships work and that nuns don’t get married

Deku— I know people will ask. Yes, he is a Shonen Hero, But doesn’t fit into the archetype so be will be left out of the discussion (the kid actually suffers from overthinking...complete opposite than these lovable idiots)

So, for fun, let’s throw all these Shonen Heroes into the same situation Luffy found himself in

All of these heroes fall through the ceiling and into Boa Hancock’s bath where they come face to face with the most beautiful woman on the planet who is naked.

Goku: completely unphased by Boa’s beauty. Asks who Boa is, and when she gets pissed, stands there with a “huh?” Look on his face when she shoots the love beam at him. After it has no effect, Goku puts his hand up with a smile and then says, “see ya!” Before flying off. Probably more concerned with where Vegeta went and if he managed to find a new level of Super Saiyan

Naruto: definitely phased by Boa. Would probably turn to stone ahahahaha

Ichigo: after being annoyed because he fell through the roof, would take one look at Boa, and get flustered out of embarrassment. By the time Boa tries to question him, he’s already left and found the exit.

Natsu: upon falling into the bath, he’d also be completely unphased by Boa. Would most likely take note of her earrings and ask about them. He’d probably also end up saying something Boa would find unbelievably rude, but something I would laugh hysterically at. “Woah?! Is that your guild mark?! Cool!!!”

Asta: I imagine Asta would most likely cover his eyes out of courtesy, and ask for the way out. When Boa gets mad and asks why he’s not head over heals for her, nor why he’s looking at her body, he’d say something like, “sister Lilly is waiting for me” and then leave. *sigh*

So here’s my point. Three of our boys would have the same exact reaction as Luffy. When it comes to the archetype, lusting after girls simply isn’t in their nature. Natsu’s reaction to a naked Lucy was to cover her boobs with his hands “fine I’ll cover them” he sighs in the dub. No lustful reaction whatsoever. I’m pretty sure any normal guy would, um, not react that way. He looks so bored.

Asta refused to peep at a girls bath (way to shut that down buddy), and Goku’s seen plenty of naked people and he doesn’t care. He even has the same reaction in Dragon Ball Super, after he’s married, when he accidentally sees another woman naked (who is very beautiful).

(Harsh reaction there Goku, lmao)

Luffy’s reaction to Boa is completely in line with the archetype. The innocent nature of the main character is extremely important. Oda even says in the SBS that it would just be plain weird for Luffy to get a nose bleed. I agree.

So, do our boys reactions to Boa mean romance isn’t possible for them? Of course not. Goku got married and had 2 kids. Naruto, who is the most interested in women, got married. Ichigo ended up with someone and had a kid. Natsu’s relationship with Lucy isn’t “canon” yet, buuuttt with this sequel coming and all the art Mashima’s been posting, I think we can all just call it and it’ll be happening. As for Asta, the manga is still young so it’s hard to say, but judging how Tabata is treating romance in his manga, I’d say It’s a distinct possibility. Asta does have a low-key herem going on 🤷‍♀️

When Goku was a kid, he came across a foe who could turn evil (ie bad thoughts) into a weapon and kill you. Goku was the only person to ever survive because he has no impure thoughts. It basically works the same way as Boa’s love-love beam.

This innocence is why Goku can ride his magical flying cloud the Kinto-Un, aka the Flying Nimbus. That innocence in Goku stays with him forever, too. Goku can ride the cloud after he’s gotten married and created spawns. The idea is, sex isn’t dirty. It’s just how you treat it may or may not make it dirty (ie unwarranted advances). Master Roshi, Goku’s perverted teacher, can’t ride the Kinto-Un. Using Goku as an example, our innocent muffins can still have romance/make babies. Their highly innocent nature doesn’t stop them, but normally with these types, they will only have romance/make babies if it’s with one very special person.

This is important to remember; for this genre, romance is a part of maturing and growing up. Most of these shonen heroes end up with someone once they’ve passed a certain point.

In One Piece Specifically

When it comes to Oda’s writing specifically, romance between characters doesn’t really play a huge role in One Piece like the way it does in Naruto and Fairy Tail. Everyone who reads OP should recognize this. Whatever ends up happening at the end of One Piece, there aren’t going to be a zillion pairings and those pairings staring off into the sunset.

There’s that famous line from Oda where he answered a question in the SBS (from chapter 317)

D: Doesn't anyone on Luffy's crew fall in love? Will there never be a tale of on-board romance? (Sanji is an exception in this case) I'm just wondering.

O: OF COURSE THEY'RE IN LOVE... WITH ADVENTURE! (← good one)

The SBS is a place where Oda jokes around with his readers. I think his answer is a good answer because it’s true, and when it comes down to it, a deflective answer. And whatever else Oda has said or hasn’t said in magazines or interviews, Oda can change his mind about what he wants to include or not include in his manga.

The reason I think this is worth bringing up is because I can see a storytelling shift which has changed in his manga. Romance in any capacity used to play almost no role in the early story. Just think about the type of characters he was creating. You’ve got Nolan’s descendant who hangs out with guys that look like monkeys. You’ve got the giants of Elbaf, you’ve got the Galley-Law company guys. There’s hardly any blood families in the first half either. Vivi and her Dad are a notable example, but they are the minority, not the majority. The first half of the story was mostly focused on people who were not blood related and were making their own families, like the Franky family. Like the Strawhats.

Post time-skip and New World, we’ve got a very different story being told. With Kyros and his wife Scarlet, Oda actually gave us the backstory to their romance! Dressrosa was set up a bit for that type of story, but I still find it notable. It wasn’t necessary for character motivations for Kyros. It felt like Oda wrote it because he wanted to.

You’ve got romance playing a big role in Whole Cake Island, even with Chiffon and Bege. This is a married couple with a young son, and not the type of characters we’d see in the early story. Sanji and Pudding were more of a serious type of relationship, even with Sanji “choosing to feel love” for Pudding. Guys, that’s...mature. We’ve seen a lot more blood ties in the New World, even to the point of the Big Mom pirates, dysfunctional as they are.

In the end, you write what you know. When One Piece started, Oda was a single guy, now he’s in his early 40′s with a daughter. The types of stories he’s telling now are based on more mature aspects of his own life.

Does this mean Luffy will most definitely end up with someone? Of course not. There’s a distinct possibility OP will end with Luffy as he is and there be no pairings of any sort.

But to dismiss the possibility of parings based on Luffy’s reaction to women or something Oda said back in some interview, is also too dismissive of a stance to take. Like his Shonen counterparts, romance for Luffy is a possibility. Remember what I said about the genre; romance is sign of growing up and maturing. Luffy is still growing and maturing, so it isn’t out of the cards.

In the end, Only Oda knows. Until One Piece has concluded, we’ll have to wait and see.

#luffy #lunami #luna #luffyxnami #luffy ship

88 notes · View notes

thesecrettimes · 2 years

Text

Crypto Influencer Bitboy Flies to the Bahamas to Question Former FTX Exec Sam Bankman-Fried

While Trying to Confront SBF in the Bahamas, Bitboy Says He’s Doing What No One Is Willing to Do

Crypto Influencers Show Respect to Bitboy for His Reporting Efforts, Condo Staffer Says No One’s Been Looking for SBF

0 notes

thisdaynews · 5 years

Text

POLITICO Playbook PM: Elizabeth Warren’s lucky debate draw

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/politico-playbook-pm-elizabeth-warrens-lucky-debate-draw/

POLITICO Playbook PM: Elizabeth Warren’s lucky debate draw

BREAKING — DEMOCRATIC DEBATE LINEUPS … Orange group:Cory Booker, Julián Castro, Bill de Blasio, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Tim Ryan and Elizabeth Warren. …Purple group:Michael Bennet, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kirsten Gillibrand, John Hickenlooper, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Eric Swalwell, Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang.

— PURPLE GROUPis clearly the main event. Biden, Harris, Sanders and Buttigieg in one sitting! Among the top tier of candidates, Warren’s got the other night all to herself.

— ORANGE GROUPwill go first.More from Zach Montellaro

NEW … FROM ANITA KUMAR … THE PRESS SECY SEARCH:After press secretary Sarah Sanders announced her departure Thursday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s office calledSTEVE CORTES,a President Donald Trump ally and frequent TV surrogate, to talk to him about the job, according to a source familiar with the situation.

CORTES,who served on Trump’s Hispanic Advisory Council during the 2016 campaign and is now serving on Trump’s 2020 reelection advisory committee, has been considered for White House communications posts before. He’ll visit the White House next week. Reached for comment today, Cortes declined to comment. The White House did not immediately return a message.

— ANDREW RESTUCCIAandNANCY COOK: “The Sarah Sanders replacement sweepstakes begins”

TALKER … WSJ: “Trump’s 2020 Re-Election Campaign Wants Order and Discipline, Down to Font Sizes,”by Mike Bender, Rebecca Ballhaus and Alex Leary: “President Trump’s path to a second term starts not in Florida, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, but in the pages of a corporate-style branding book developed inside a spacious and well-equipped campaign office.

“The document, ‘Branding Guidelines for the Trump Presidential Campaign,’covers design minutiae such as font size, spacing and authorized colors— ‘Trump Red’ and ‘Trump Blue’ for logos, and ‘Trump Gold’ for special occasions. It specifies which images of Mr. Trump to use to convey compassion, which to show strength and, in the case of a photo of the president pointing into the camera, when to let donors know they need to boost contributions.” WSJ

HMM … PETERSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS: “Trump Has Gotten China to Lower Its Tariffs. Just Toward Everyone Else.”

THE YOU-CAN’T-MAKE-ME PRESIDENCY — “Trump says he won’t fire Kellyanne Conway”:“On Friday, Trump fiercely defended Conway and criticized the Hatch Act, saying it unfairly muzzles officials. ‘It really sounds to me like a free-speech thing. It doesn’t sound fair,’ Trump said during an interview with ‘Fox & Friends.’

“‘No, I’m not going to fire her,I think she’s a tremendous person, tremendous spokesperson,’ Trump added. ‘They have tried to take away her speech and I think you’re entitled to free speech in the country.’” POLITICO

— REMEMBER: THE SUPREME COURTruled that the Hatch Actdoes notviolate free speech. (If you care, seeUnited Public Workers v. MitchellandUnited States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers.)

MORE FROM TRUMP’S FOX INTERVIEW — “Trump goes on Fox to clean up his foreign interference comments,”by Caitlin Oprysko: “Remarkably, Trump … asserted on Friday that he didn’t foresee that issue arising. ‘I don’t think anybody would present me with anything because they know how much I love the country,’ he said, despite well-documented attempts by Russian nationals to do just that during the 2016 election.

“‘Nobody’s gonna present me with anything bad,and No. 2, if I was — and of course, you have to look at it, because if you don’t look at it, you won’t know it’s bad, but, of course, you give it to the FBI or report it to attorney general or somebody like that,’ he argued. ‘But of course you do that — you couldn’t have that happen with our country, and everybody understands that and I thought it was made clear.’” POLITICO

— “Trump Claims ‘Night and Day’ Change on Border, Announces Czar,”by Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove: “President Donald Trump claimed migration through the U.S. southern border has already slowed dramatically following a deal with the Mexican government, and that former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan would return to his administration as ‘border czar.’” Bloomberg

— HUSBAND OF THE WEEK,viaPia Deshpande:“President Donald Trump on Friday likened his wife to the beloved former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, saying, ‘We have our own Jackie O, it’s called Melania, Melania T.’” POLITICO

— THE ONLY PROBLEM WITH THISis that Jackie O was not Jackie O in the White House. She was Jackie Kennedy.

Happy Friday afternoon.The White House announced that Canadian PMJUSTIN TRUDEAUwill visit Trump in Washington on Thursday, with a focus on the USMCA and the upcoming G-20 summit.

FRIDAY READ … CNN’S REBECCA BUCKinWAPO: “On the trail, looking for traces of my dad”

THE NRCC RECRUITING CHAIR IS RETIRING … INDY STAR’S MAUREEN GROPPE: “Indiana Republican Susan Brooks will not seek re-election to Congress”:“Indiana Rep. Susan Brooks, one of only 13 Republican women in the House as well as the head of GOP recruitment for 2020, found someone she could not convince to run: herself. The Carmel Republican will not seek a fifth term next year, she told USA TODAY. …

“For 2020, Democrats had put Brookson their ‘retirement watch list.’ They see her district, which includes the wealthy northern Indianapolis suburban areas, as potentially flippable as Republican support has eroded in some suburban areas under President Donald Trump.” Indy Star

— IN THE LAST WEEK OR SO …The NRCC got crosswise with Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, contributing to the demise of a pay-raise negotiation … Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, got into a behind-the-scenes fight with NRCC Chairman Tom Emmers. She told him people are starting to doubt he is up to the job … And now, the very person charged with convincing GOP candidates to run for Congress as the party seeks the majority is forgoing reelection.

— WE ARE TOLDthat Brooks is not relinquishing her recruiting chairmanship.

— SARAH FERRIS: “Rep. Susan Brooks shocks GOP with retirement decision”

THE INVESTIGATIONS …ABC: “President Donald Trump says it ‘doesn’t matter’ what former White House counsel Don McGahn told Mueller”:“President Donald Trump is directly disputing the account of a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible obstruction of justice … In an exclusive interview with ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos, Trump says McGahn ‘may have been confused’ when he told Mueller that Trump instructed him multiple times to have the acting attorney general remove the special counsel because of perceived conflicts of interest.

“‘The story on that very simply, No. 1,I was never going to fire Mueller. I never suggested firing Mueller,’ Trump told Stephanopoulos. But when Stephanopoulos pushed back and referenced McGahn’s testimony, Trump was defiant. ‘I don’t care what [McGahn] says, it doesn’t matter,’ Trump said.

“‘Why would [McGahn] lie under oath?’Stephanopoulos later asked. ‘Because he wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer,’ Trump said. ‘Or he believed it because I would constantly tell anybody that would listen — including you, including the media — that Robert Mueller was conflicted. Robert Mueller had a total conflict of interest.’ ‘And has to go?’ Stephanopoulos followed up. ‘I didn’t say that,’ Trump insisted.”With video:ABC

LATEST ON THE TANKER ATTACKS — “‘Flying Object’ Struck Tanker in Gulf of Oman, Operator Says, Not a Mine,”by NYT’s Ben Dooley in Tokyo: “One of the tankers that were attacked in the Gulf of Oman was struck by a flying object, the ship’s Japanese operator said on Friday, who also disputed part of the account of United States officials who had blamed Iran for the attack. …

“[Yutaka] Katada, citing accounts from the ship’s crew,said: ‘I do not think there was a time bomb or an object attached to the side of the ship.’ … Mr. Katada said that the holes in Kokuka Courageous were well above its waterline. ‘There is zero possibility that they were torpedoes,’ he added.” NYT

— FROM THE WHITE HOUSE:The president and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe spoke by phone this morning and discussed the tanker situation, Abe’s trip to Iran, trade and the G-20, according to a statement from deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley to today’s pooler, Liz Goodwin of the Boston Globe.

IMMIGRATION FILES — BUZZFEED’S @ZoeTillman:“NOW: The DC Circuit rules that the Trump admin. cannot block pregnant, undocumented minors in U.S. custody from obtaining abortions. The court rejects ‘the government’s position that its denial of abortion access can be squared with Supreme Court precedent.’”

FOR THOSE KEEPING TRACK — “U.S. extradition case against Assange set for next year,”by AP’s Gregory Katz in London: “The judge at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday set a full extradition hearing for Feb. 25, 2020. It is expected to last about five days. Interim hearings are expected in July and October.” AP

TRADE WARS — WSJ’S RAJESH ROYin New Delhi:“India to Impose Its Own Tariffs on Some Goods Imported From the U.S.”:“India will impose higher tariffs on some goods imported from the U.S., according to Indian officials, in an apparent response to a U.S. move earlier this month to remove some special trade benefits that India had enjoyed. The decision takes effect Sunday, just days ahead of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to New Delhi aimed at boosting U.S.-India ties. …

“Indian officials delayed implementing their tariffsfor a year in hopes the U.S. would reconsider the steel and aluminum tariffs aimed at India.” WSJ

ON THE WORLD STAGE — “U.S. calls Sudan military crackdown ‘devastating,’ urges independent investigation,”by WaPo’s Paul Schemm in Addis Ababa

BEHIND THE SCENES — “The Harriet Tubman $20 Bill Was Far Along Before Mnuchin Delayed Work,”by NYT’s Alan Rappeport:“An image of a new $20 bill, produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and obtained by The New York Times from a former Treasury Department official, depicts Tubman in a dark coat with a wide collar and a white scarf. …

“A current employee of the bureau,who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, personally viewed a metal engraving plate and a digital image of a Tubman $20 bill while it was being reviewed by engravers and Secret Service officials as recently as May 2018. This person said that the design appeared to be far along in the process. …

“But the Treasury Department,which oversees the engraving bureau, decided that a new $20 bill would not be made public next year. Current and former department officials say [Secretary Steven] Mnuchin chose the delay to avoid the possibility that Mr. Trump would cancel the plan outright and create even more controversy.”With picture:NYT

NATASHA KORECKI: “Biden: No deep fakes, bots or disinformation by my campaign”

THE POLICY PRIMARY — WSJ’s JOSHUA JAMERSON:“Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren proposed legislation Friday that would allocate $7 billion in federal grants to help minority entrepreneurs start businesses. Ms. Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, said the program would be administered by a new Department of Economic Development … States and municipalities would play a role in administering Ms. Warren’s proposed program, the Small Business Equity Fund.” WSJ …Medium post

VALLEY TALK — NANCY SCOLA: “How a liberal think tank is driving Democrats on reining in tech”:“[T]he Open Markets Institute has become one of the most influential drivers of Democratic politics in the fight to rein in Facebook, Amazon and Google … Despite its small size — 15 or so employees operating out of a shared WeWork space in downtown D.C. — Open Markets is exercising outsized influence these days, helping to shape Washington’s intensifying scrutiny of giant tech companies and their vast influence on American society. And the apex example of its influence is its relationship with [Elizabeth] Warren.

“Open Markets has its critics,among them pro-business organizations that say the group offers few fresh ideas and scorns honest debate. And its leaders have developed a reputation for pugnacious rhetoric, responding aggressively to legislative proposals, news coverage or analysis deemed insufficiently tough on the tech companies. … Beyond Warren, the group has established a sprawling network of ideologically like-minded people in Washington and across the country.” POLITICO

— WSJ’S RICH RUBIN: “Does Amazon Really Pay No Taxes? Here’s the Complicated Answer”:“Democratic presidential candidates have seized on reports that Amazon.com Inc. paid no 2018 federal taxes as they press for changes in the tax system.

“A closer look at the internet giant’s tax disclosuresover several years paints a more complicated picture: Amazon has paid income taxes somewhere, albeit at a low rate, likely helped by deductions and incentives related to investment, research and employee compensation.” WSJ

KEEPING TABS — WAPO’S PETER JAMISON: “Trump still owes D.C. $7 million in inauguration costs as he plans July Fourth gala”

— “Ivanka Trump Made $4 Million From President’s Washington Hotel,”by Bloomberg’s Bill Allison: “Together, Trump and husband Jared Kushner earned between $28.8 million and $135.1 million in outside income while working as unpaid senior advisers to her father, President Donald Trump, their disclosures, which covers 2018, show.” Bloomberg

ONE MORE SUNDAY SHOW …

ABC

“This Week”:President Donald Trump … Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) … Panel: Rick Klein, Chris Christie, Stefanie Brown James, Julie Pace

TV TONIGHT —Bob Costa sits down with PBS NewsHour’s Yamiche Alcindor, NYT’s Peter Baker, WaPo’s Ashley Parker and CNBC’s Eamon Javers at 8 p.m. on PBS’ “Washington Week.”

REP. STEVE SCALISE’S OFFICEhas cut a video marking the two-year anniversary of the congressional baseball practice shooting.The video

SPOTTED:Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) standing in front of the H&M at Metro Center today.Pic

EPA ARRIVAL LOUNGE — Jordan Picwill be a special adviser for intergovernmental affairs at the EPA. She is currently scheduler for Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.).

Anna Palmer @apalmerdc

Jake Sherman @JakeSherman

Daniel Lippman @dlippman

Eli Okun @eliokun

Garrett Ross @garrett_ross

View all our politics and policy newsletters

#debate #Foreign #lucky #Politics

0 notes

gwydionmisha · 6 years

Text

Re: My Choice of Sources for News Links

I’m not posting the anonymous ask I just got as it is a nonsense libelous conspiracy theory.

I mention it because of my sincere bafflement as to why someone reading my journal, in which I hardly ever use the Wall street journal for anything as I don’t read it, it’s not a preferred source for a variety of reasons, and is hardly ever relevant to my interests, would bother writing in a long attack on them to me based on what looks like stuff they or someone else in the Conspiracy Theory Swamps made up. It seemed addressed to me as if I liked them and was in some way a partizan. O.o

Like, I wish they hadn’t been anonymous so that I could directly ask them what they were thinking and why they chose to target me with them. I am pretty sure I liked to the WSJ at some point in the past because I literally couldn’t find whatever it was somewhere else, but really? Why not put this energy into engaging with someone who actually would be relevant to the fantasy they subscribed to.

For the record, I’m super poor, which means I have to rely on free articles and I’m guessing most of my readers are the same. If I had money to buy a subscription to any paper in the country at all, I’d pick the Washington Post and/or the Seattle Times. I’d pick the Post because I think they are the best at what they do right now. I used to take both my local paper and the Seattle P-I, back before the P-I and the Times became one thing. My local paper is terrible and literally makes up quotes, is unreliable as to facts, and has a serious editorial bias. They also are big on vicctim blaming and wentfull on character assassination on him even though he was about as innocent as it’s possible to be and literally worked for them. Did I mention they area shitty employer? well that too. I vowed never to give them another penny for any reason as a result. I love and support local papers and believe they are incredibly important. I thought I’d always be a local paper subscriber, but not to this particular one. If the PI hadn’t been so expensive that I had to drop my subscription, I’d still be reading the PI/Times. I miss being as up on state politics as I used to be, but my financial situation is going to be incredibl precarious for the next few years.

So anyway, if I had money to online subscribe to the Post? I’d do it, but I don’t. As a result, I try to save my free articles for the most important things. Same with other limited access things like the NYT, Wired, Vanity Fair, etc.. I do my best to choose the most reliable source out of a set covering an issue that doesn’t involve pay walls. I carry a whole tiered list in my head, and while I can’t always get the best, I do try for the best I can reasonably get. I don’t link things like the Daily Mail, the Sun, mic.com, the New York Post, though I will occasionally end up with their links in the comments, which I can’t help. This is also why sometimes I will link different versions of the same basic news item. They generally have different takes or different secondary information/context/etc., or it might be a situation where a reader might prefer one source over another. Do you want just the basic facts or do you want it in a larger political historical context for example.

I thought I’d mention how I do my selection since it occasionally comes up and this weird anon thing reminded me I should probably explain why I do things the way I do.

I can not 100% know anything close to all the English Language news outlets in the world. I don’t even try. When I’m forced to sample from an unfamiliar outlet, I do try to google search them for bias and reputation, but that’s not going to be perfect. If I sample something you know isn’t a good source, feel free to let me know and I’ll look deeper into it. I can’t reasonably go back and dig that source out of everything I’ve posted across social media all the way back to the mid-oughts, but I can amend going forward, as I have on past occasions when such things were pointed out to me.

I do my best, and with me especially as I’m not a journalist, remember to look skeptically at anywhere you get links and news. We all have selection bias, whether in history, journalism, or in life. I do this because I have time and interest to try to share things going on the world with people who are busy and can’t possibly keep up. I am one disabled person in frail health. Do not take what I post as anything close to everything out there. I do my best, but again, one person with particular interests and biases. What you see here is whatever I managed to find that dayish.

So caveat emptor.

#News Sources #Bias

0 notes

bitchyfoxcandy · 8 years

Text

Okay guys...

I would like to take a moment to look at something that is undoubtedly on everyone’s mind: the PewDiePie issue. I will NOT speak about the issue directly here; I want to focus on the people who HAVE. I’m not here talking about Felix. I’m here to talk about Mark and Jack.

As most YouTube fans know, both Mark and Jack have put out videos responding to the issue, and they each did it in a very different way. Mark chose to use the issue as a springboard for his comments on a much wider subject: human decency. He called for people to stop using harsh labels and spewing hate at others, because doing that is not giving that person a chance to be an equal. We all make mistakes, we all do stupid things, we all make people mad. BUT- that does not give anyone the right to attack someone else or throw a horrible label on them and stigmatize them without looking at them as a whole, real, living human being. Mark’s message was one of respect for your fellow man as an equal. He is now being called an enabler of hate and a coward.

Jack posted a video, about twice as long, addressing the issue directly. He looked at things such as the WSJ’s article and media attacks on Felix (at his personal address, mind you) and YouTube cancelling Scare PewDiePie’s second season, a season that Jack was costarring in. He stated that he admits Felix messed up big time and has to face some consequences, and that technically the newspaper and YouTube have the rights to run/not run, air/not air anything they want. That is within their company rights. Jack tried to let people know that Felix is a good person, but he just made some choices that were unwise. Jack is now being called a backstabber.

Now... let me break it down to its very simple points:

Mark: Posts a video that is, more or less, a response to the PewDiePie issue; not one that attacks the problem directly, but instead looks the elements surrounding the issue. And he’s a “Nazi-enabling coward”.

Jack: Posts a video response to the PewDiePie issue, tackling the subject directly and giving us all the information he knows, and then commenting his thoughts that, YES, Felix f-ed up big time and there will be consequences, but that does not mean we and the media should be so brutal. And he’s a “backstabber”.

Hmmmm...

Mark - doesn’t address the specific issue, is a “Nazi enabler”.

Jack - addresses the specific issue, is a “backstabber”.

Does that sound a little fishy to you? Because it sure does to me. It is a lose-lose situation. Because people are so willing to go to war with other people over the internet and will look for anything to start a fight. I am not going to say I think one or the other handled it better. I am just here to lay it out the way I’m looking at it. It would not have mattered which route they took, because they would have received hate ANYWAYS. Doesn’t that sound WRONG?

Disagree with them all you want! They both have embraced the discourse! Totally fair opinions to hold. But, everyone is missing the main points of their videos entirely. These two guys, both similar pop culture icons to and good friends with the man in question, are trying to satiate their communities and possibly offer solutions to the pure vile hatred coming from those communities. And both of them lost. If you don’t like Mark or Jack, DO NOT SUBSCRIBE OR WATCH THEIR CONTENT OR FOLLOW THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA. If this particular issue really squicked you that badly, maybe open a polite discussion over it. Or, if you can’t/don’t want to do that, just calmly take a break from the content and let this thing work itself out. Hell, unsub if you feel like you must. Just... you can do ALL of those things without spitting acid at them in the process! You don’t have to have the last laugh, because there’s nothing here either of them are laughing ABOUT! It’s like at the top of some fanfics, “don’t like, don’t read”. People have claimed that I am biased on this subject because I am a huge fan of both Mark and Jack. Okay, maybe I have some bias. I see them as brave heroes for doing what they did. That’s my subjective opinion, my bias. However, the objective issue still exists:

THEY WERE DAMNED IF THEY DID, DAMNED IF THEY DIDN’T.

And that, folks, seems pretty wrong to me. I stand by Mark and Jack. They do not deserve this. These are two dudes in their mid-twenties trying to make a living by making people from the ages of around ten to probably thirty or so laugh. They are human beings. They have lives outside of a webcam, families, friends, girlfriends... They’re just like you and me. They just have a YouTube channel that happens to 16.5 and 14.5 million subscribers. They’re wonderful guys who give to charity and go visit sick kids and help animals and reach out those in need... Mark is not a Nazi enabler. And Jack is not a backstabber.

I’m sorry this went on so long, I wanted it to be short and to-the-point... but there is so much happening with this issue right now that I feel like I had something to add to the discussion.

#markiplier #jacksepticeye #end sermon

29 notes · View notes

osheamobile · 8 years

Text

jeanphoenixheart replied to your post “jeanphoenixheart replied to your post “If whatshisface the letsplayer...”

Okay, perhaps I need to clear this out because this needs to be said. Yes, PDP did make some anti-semantic jokes, but you know something? He's also made other unpopular jokes -before- being hired by Disney. Disney knew what they were getting into when they were hiring PDP.

Soooooo that means A: it was okay because he does it all the time? And B: that companies aren’t allowed to take time to decide, or fire someone after there’s a scandal, or just say it breaches contract or anything?

No, really, I want to know what your argument is here. I mean, that’s not true, I don’t give a shit what your argument is, but I think it’s important to be clear.

Your fave got some bad press and you’re rushing to defend him, even though he still has a YouTube account and, I’m pretty sure, lots of other advertisers that he’s making his millions of dollars from.

Also, forgot the Enter key ends a post. Anyhow secondly, the original story from WSJ was only pointing out those specific jokes because the writers were indeed just moral busybodies. Ever heard of a hitpiece? That article was the worst kind of fake news, because these "journalists" are so blinded in their ieaology, that they try to ruin anyone that either voices out against it, or are just making fun of their fanaticism.

Really. You’re going to “ethics in journalism” me.

It doesn’t matter to you that the articles were true, only that they resulted in something you don’t like happening as a result. Gotcha.

So, what’s your definition of “fake news”? Based on your choice of phrasing, it’s merely something that you don’t like, even though it’s true. True news is fake if it’s negative to you.

That’s not how it works. No matter what Donald shouts at three in the morning as he’s watching television, shouting it loudly enough doesn’t make it true.

Also, your 'attempt' to look at both sides look more like you were raising your own bias on a higher pedestal than mine or anyone else. but you know what? I know someone else who can put this point out better than I: https://youtu.be/dC5LyaCdpEI

So, for a lark, I clicked on that, and it started out with a long still image of PDP in nazi clothing, in front of a row of swastikas, with the hashtag stating that he did nothing wrong.

Which you linked to someone Jewish.

Gosh. I bow before your superior hateful memes.

And in case that video was too long for you: https://youtu.be/Pu6KHQwZjt4

A video entitled “Since when did leftists care about Jews”

Gosh again, you’ve really hit the nail on the head. Nobody actually cares about us, which means that any kind of statements or actions about it is the worst kind of virtue signaling and really means that you should be able to do what you want.

Here’s a thought: What does that have to do with a company deciding to pull their advertising, something that happens all the time?

What makes this special?

No, don’t bother answering that. It’ll contain some combination of the wonderful phrases “lib cuck SJW triggered kek” and we’ve already established that doesn’t mean anything. And we’ve also established that I don’t care.

Everything’s fair game unless it’s happening to something that you like. What’s that wonderfully dismissive phrase? Special snowflake? You might want to think about its applications before you throw that around, too.

Did you miss the part where I said that I’d actually accept it if he actually apologised, instead of just a bullshit “The media is being mean to me”? Because I would. And I still will. If he does.

Because, regardless of what you think of me, I know that people fuck up. It happens. I’ve done it. Everyone’s done it. You’ve done it four times to my last post.

When you fuck up, you acknowledge that you fuck up, and you learn from it, and you don’t do it again. That’s what adults do. Fuck, that’s what children do.

Did you know, I was recently in a screaming argument with one of my best friends? She yells at me when I fuck up. I trust her to do that, because she’s my friend. People need friends to tell them “Hey, that’s actually a really shitty thing you just did”, and then you go “Oh shit, you’re right, I didn’t even realize I was doing it, thanks for catching me out”, and they go “No problemo home-skillet” and we all go out for ice cream freeze frame a group high-five and wait for the credits to roll.

I mean, you didn’t read that because you don’t care, you posted your hateful videos as a smug self-satisfied “This will really stick it to that fuckin’ libcuck snowjew SJWflake” because lol, posting swastikas to jews means that now I’m triggered kekekekekeke

You may mentally insert the image of a poorly-drawn cartoon frog.

So, here’s what I want you to do.

Take a dollar out of your pocket. Hold it in your hand. You got it? Right in your hand.

Walk outside, because it’s absolutely beautiful out here in Chicago.

Go to the corner store.

Buy yourself a goddamned clue.

#jeanphoenixheart

13 notes · View notes