#pre-file for 2020-2021

[highlynerdy]

"I do it because I want to protect him from the world, and sometimes from myself. I want to tell him every secret I ever had, and yet I never want to make him choose, to see the hurt in his eyes, to put this, too, on him. I want-I want so many things. Sometimes, I just want."

Turning The Page by @queerofthedagger / art by @schweetheart

I started this fanARTifact in July 2021 and finally, finally finished it in September 2024. Click below to see so many more pictures and read probably too much about the project.

This project was a LABOR OF LOVE because y'all...I failed so, so many times during the making of it. I had grand dreams of all the things that I was going to do and learn and every single time I tried something it was like the universe telling me to go ahead and go fuck myself, we're not doing that. But it's done and I'm pleased with it. I hope Mona and Schweets are. Let's talk about the process.

I read this story back in July 2021 when it came out and immediately wrote @schweetheart on July 23, 2021 to ask if I could use her art for the back because it was such a crucial part of the story.

She graciously allowed me to use it, and even sent me a high res file so I could have the portrait of Arthur printed on art paper.

THEN. My brilliantly stupid self decided that just making the book wasn't enough. I mean, I had already done that for Arthur's journal back in 2020 and I am nothing if not a nutter about learning to do new things, especially for my fanARTifact series.

SO. I'm going to learn to make paper. Yeah. Totally a reasonable escalation in terms of new skills, right?? ......... Nope. I bought a small 5x7 mould and deckle to practice with and some cotton linters to make the pulp. Twas. A. Failure. I didn't have a press or the felts or the sizing needed to make the paper actually, ya know, usable. This was the first time I put the project down for a while.

Moving on to another new skill in late 2021, I decided that I wanted to make the walnut ink myself. Luckily, I was part of a pigment subscription in 2020 (that is a hell of a nerdy statement, even for me) and had all the supplies in my art studio to attempt this endeavor.

I didn't fail this part! Fucking huzzah for small miracles. Now I had two small bottles of black walnut ink to use for the calligraphy that I wanted to do for some of the excerpts. Except now I was stuck again on the paper making part so I put it back down again for an eternity.

Picking it back up in late 2022, I asked Mr. Highlynerdy to make a custom size mould and deckle for me so I could have long pieces to fold for my signatures. It was his first time doing anything like this but he's a buddy and a pal and gave it a try. Surprising no one if you've read this far, we both failed this part. Even now, I'm still not sure we succeeded but eventually we did get something workable. And considering professional mould and deckles cost in the hundreds of dollars...yeah, it'll do.

It took a hot ass minute for me to feel ready to attempt the paper making again but once I was ready, I ordered wet, pre-beaten pulp from Twinrocker. A very curt man on the phone helped me figure out what I needed and added internal sizing to the pulp I ordered. I didn't take pictures of any of the paper stuff because it was very messy and annoying. Once again, Mr. Highlynerdy helped me rig up a drying box with tri-wall cardboard and ratchet straps and a box fan. Once the paper was dry, I used a gelatin mixture to paint on external sizing. Since I'm primarily a painter, I needed the paper to be able to handle ink, paint, pencil. Sizing paper is the only way to do this, but no worries, I won't go further into the nerdy details about this.

Once the paper was ready, I decided to sew the text block. Here's another part where I failed YET A-FUCKING-GAIN. I talked before on Arthur's Journal post about how books were very, very rare in the 6th century (Arthurian period), but BBC Merlin is soooooo anachronistic that it's fiiiiiine to just do what I wanted. HOWEVER. I did want to try to do visible spine binding. But. Unfortunately I had gone ahead and used all of my paper to bind the text block as if I was going to case it in. FUUUUUUUCCCCCK. It's fine. We're fine. Come on, brain. What can we do.

Well, what we CAN'T do is use a piece of leather from my large remnant that I bought for my first journal because someone - FUCKING ME - measured and cut the last piece NOT TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE WIDTH of the text block. So now it doesn't fit. And refusing to buy a new piece of leather I'm forced to pivot once again.

I decided to cut the leather spine even shorter, buy some wood pieces and sand them, paint them a matte black, and then glue the leather to those pieces. Cool cool cool. We're moving on. I tested a lot of different glues for this and good ol' super glue ended up being the clear winner. Cue putting this project away again for a whiiiillle.

In October 2023, I decided to pull it out again and do the calligraphy and drawings I wanted. This story has so many gorgeous parts but I finally decided on the first page, the last page, and the page about Gaius.

I mixed my handmade walnut ink with my beloved Finetec gold and used the quills I bought from John Neal Booksellers to practice my Uncial. I shouldn't have been rusty after lettering an entire fic for this fanARTifact, but I was.

The little dragon was inspired by medieval manuscript dragons I found.

Narratively, I loved the idea that Merlin's writing would start off soft and delicate and become stronger by the end of the journal. Also, I loved that the end word "WANT" would be just gold because the ink blend changes throughout. Something magical or whatever.

This part needed tears. They might have been real ones...

Annnnnnnnd, the project was put down again until a few days ago when I decided, after getting back into Merlin fic, I needed to buck up and finish it.

I did so many tests for the cover. I tried embossing, carving, and debossing and hated all of them. I settled on painting it with acrylic paints in the shape of a Celtic knot sort of pattern. I originally wanted to do a triskelion but after reading a bit about how some asshole groups have co-opted the symbol for shitty purposes, I decided against it. It's a mix of black and gold and it's hard to capture the depth of it through photos...eh, I did what I could.

Still. Something wasn't quite working with the brown leather and the black covers with the new symbol so I broke out my matte black leather paint and decided to go all black.

All I had left to do was glue in the text block and it would be done! And that still took me a few days to work up the courage. The book opens nice and flat, which will be good for me as I will use it as a sketchbook.

Sitting here, on September 1st, I have completed a project that taught me many new skills and also taught me a lot about humility and perseverance. There was no way I was going to abandon this project, and maybe I should have started over many of the times, but I am quite in love with the final result and I just hope that it does it's inspiration proud. Thank you @queerofthedagger Mona for all you create and share with the Merlin fandom, and thank you @schweetheart for allowing me to use your gorgeous art.

Also, you may see quite a few other fanARTifacts in this photoshoot because I will use any opportunity to show them off lol.

If you read to the end of this, you deserve a cocktail and a cookie. Thank you. 💛✨✨

[preseriesdean]

for @spnficrecfest day seven: outsider pov 🧡

JOHN POV

Like Arrows in the Hands of a Warrior by ADeedWithoutaName 10.3k words, rated M, published 2018, underage John Winchester loves his boys, and would take a bullet for either of them. He knows that he's doing it right, the way he's raising them, the things he's teaching them. Not every problem, however, has an easy answer. Like what to do after an incubus case in which their target got his pollen all over both of John's sons.

Flagstaff by Linden 7.3k words, rated T, published 2014 John tracked Sam down in Flagstaff, four days after he got home to find him gone.

Generosity by astolat 1.7k words, rated E, published 2007 John had traded the gun; he'd have traded away more, and he was still feeling the cold dread of the moment when the demon had cocked its head like a pistol and said, "You know, I'm feeling generous today," because if it hadn't taken more, that was only because it figured what was in store was going to be worse.

lost in yesterday by margaryes / @christsam 1k words, not rated, published 2023 John hasn’t seen his youngest son in 18 months.

half the man i used to be by dollylux 2.2k words, rated M, published 2016 John has a gradual, horrifying realization.

Mary's Angels by FrancesHouseman 3.1k words, rated G, published 2016 There's one more silver bullet in the chamber; one last shot at the sikutor, the ice siren that has Dean in thrall. John takes aim, and misses.

OTHERS POV

Buy You a Mockingbird by candle_beck (a.k.a. thee outsider pov fic of all time no contest) 10.3k words, rated M, published 2011, author chose not to warn A genuine horror story.

Multitude of Sins by Linden 4.4k words, rated T, published 2015 Every now and again, Jim Murphy would look up from his altar and find the Winchester boys at the back of his church.

All Heartless Spectres, Happiness 5.7k words, rated E, published 2021, soulless!sam Lisa Braeden receives an email with the subject line, "You Deserve to Know." It contains a single video file and nothing else.

I'll take my chance on a beautiful stranger by fleshflutter 3.9k words, rated M, published 2007 If Chase were a better friend, he might try to end the game now, before Brendan loses even more money. But if Brendan is a dick at Stanford, it’s nothing compared to how he is on break.

Other Brothers by homo_pink 7k words, rated M, published 2020, underage A callow boy can go from infancy to someone’s lover in the space of two wildflower summers.

Try asking by @goshen-applecrumbledore 7.4k words, rated T, published 2022 “Jerry says he saw them going at it in the back of that car of theirs outside Atlanta last year, I swear to God.” “Listen, man, I don’t like them either, but that’s a low blow. Jerry’s a fucking pervert.”

charmer & gentle by Askance 3.7k words, rated G, published 2015 The afternoon girl calls them Big and Tall, the strangers who come in late every now and then, buying this or that. The night girl doesn't think those names fit quite right.

Happy Wife, Happy Life by petrichorsam pre-slash, 7.1k words, rated T, published 2023 The hunters at Johnny's Roadhouse have heard enough tales about Dean Winchester's wife, Sam, to fill a book, and yet no one has ever seen her.

[mariacallous]

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) has been making headlines for his “rocky rollout” since being named former President Donald Trump’s running mate last month. The bad headlines and poll numbers have been driven by Vance’s extreme comments about “childless cat ladies,” abortion, and more. Well, along with extreme comments, Vance has some extreme investments. 

Vance has had a six-figure stake in Rumble, an online video platform. The company has played host to Russian propaganda and to far-right personalities like Stew Peters and Tim Pool. It has also featured even more extreme content, including explicitly neo-Nazi images and themes like this song touting the “Reich” and calling for Jews to be placed in ovens from a “dissident rapper” with a dedicated page on the site. The site features a plethora of channels and videos dedicated to the concept of “white genocide,” which is a core belief for white supremacists. It also hosts channels for explicitly white supremacist organizations including VDare and Patriot Front, which has led masked demonstrations around the country. 

A former Marine, Vance was elected in 2022 after a career as a bestselling author and venture capitalist. In both the financial world and as he rose in politics, Vance has been backed by the Silicon Valley investor and right-wing donor Peter Thiel. The pair co-founded a firm, Narya Capital, in 2020. In keeping with Thiel’s preferred styling, the company was named after a reference to the “Lord of the Rings” fantasy novels. 

In 2021, Narya Capital made a major investment in Rumble. The investment, which made Narya one of Rumble’s top shareholders, also gave the firm a seat on Rumble’s board. Financial disclosures filed by Vance in conjunction with his Senate bid also show that he made a personal investment in Rumble that was valued between $100,000 and $250,000. 

Rumble went public in 2022 following Narya’s investment. In a filing last year that was reported by CNBC, Narya indicated it planned to sell more than three million shares of Rumble. Narya’s initial investment in Rumble totaled over seven million shares. 

Vance has not yet filed required financial disclosures for last year. He sought an extension in April. His most recent disclosure, which covered 2022, showed the Rumble investment. 

The stake is notable because it represents a direct financial link between Vance and a key outlet for some of the most extreme elements of the far right. Vance’s stake in Rumble was the subject of a New York Times piece during his Senate race in 2022. That story focused on Rumble hosting the Kremlin-backed propaganda network RT, but gave less attention to the extensive hate speech on the site. 

A spokesperson for Rumble did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story. A company representative responded to the prior Times story by saying the company is willing to host those who “hold politically unpopular views, so long as they comply with our content policies,” framing the issue as a matter of free speech. A spokesperson for Vance’s campaign told the paper “J.D. does not play an active role at Rumble, nor does he set Rumble’s content moderation policies” and noted his belief in “free speech rights online.”

Vance isn’t the only figure in Trumpworld who has financial ties to Rumble. Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, signed a seven-figure podcast deal with the company last year. Trump Jr. reportedly played a “pivotal role” in persuading his father to bring Vance onto the Republican presidential ticket. Trump Jr. did not respond to questions about the extremist content on Rumble and about whether his financial relationships influenced his support for Vance.

Representatives for Vance and the Trump campaign also did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The campaign of Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, was more forthcoming. Harris 2024 spokesperson Joseph Costello issued a statement to TPM decrying Vance’s links to the extremist content on Rumble. 

“The American people deserve a president who works to bring people together and who gives hate no safe harbor,” Costello said. “Every day the words and actions of Donald Trump and JD Vance prove they belong nowhere near the White House.” 

While the bad headlines have seemingly led Vance’s political stock to drop among some Republicans, shares in Rumble have fared far better. According to CNBC Pro, Rumble stock went up 17 percent on the week Trump picked Vance. The movement prompted a note from JP Morgan analyst Kamal Tamboli, who said the surge was a “quarterly record” for the extremist platform. 

“Retail traders appear to be closely following US election developments,” Tamboli wrote. 

The stock has dropped a bit from its recent high, which came on the day Trump picked Vance. However, it is still up 21 cents from where it was before the pick. The Ohio senator may be a drag on the Trump ticket, but someone out there enjoyed a bit of Vancementum! 

[heroesriseandfall]

Canonical Batfamily Birthdays

Here are all the birthdates I know of that are canon somewhere in DC, with a preference for the main comics continuities. I have included exact sources and image references when possible. I am not including character introduction dates, just actual birthdays.

If you find any other sources for Batfamily birthdays, please do share!

A moment of silence for Batfamily characters who don’t have canonical birthdays yet, so far as I know. This includes Damian Wayne, Stephanie Brown, Duke Thomas, and more. :(

Summary

Source images will be further down, but here’s an overview in roughly age order (I’m not sure of Kate vs Selina’s ages) with the dates the birthdays were introduced and used:

Tim Drake: July 19th (from 2003)

Jason Todd: August 16th (from 2004)

Cassandra Cain: January 26th (from 2002)

Helena Bertinelli: February 14th (in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold universe, from 2010)

Helena Wayne: September 7th (from 1984), potentially October 20th or the 22nd of unknown month or maybe October 22 or maybe Feb 28th (all the New 52 on passports from 2011-2012). These could also be New 52 Helena Bertinelli’s birthdays or nobody’s birthdays. who even knows.

Dick Grayson: March 20th (from 1995), October ~24th ish (from 1990), November 11th (from 1976), December 1st (on Earth-16 in animated Young Justice universe, from 2012)

Barbara Gordon: September 23rd (from 1976), sometime in fall (from 1987)

Selina Kyle: March 14th (from 1976)

Kate Kane: January 26th (in Batwoman TV series from 2020), March 21st? (word-of-god by J.H. Williams III from 2012)

Bruce Wayne: October 7th (from 2021), February 19th (from 1970s various to more recently), April ~7th (from the late 1940s)

Jim Gordon: January 5th (from 1976)

Alfred Pennyworth: April 8th (from 1976), August 16th (in the Injustice: Gods Among Us universe, from 2016)

Note: in this post when I say “main comics continuity(s)/universe” I’m referring to anything that’s been a “home” continuity for the comics at some point. For example, pre-Crisis Earth-2, Earth-1/New Earth, and Earth-0/Prime Earth, as opposed to Elseworlds or DCEU earths that are still part of the broader DC multiverse but have never been the primary continuity of the comics.

Below are further details and source panels.

Details and Sources

Tim Drake

Tim has only been given one canon birthday. He turned 16 on July 19th in Robin Vol. 2 #116 (cover date Sep 2003).

Robin Vol. 2 #116 (Sep 2003)

Jason Todd

Jason turned 18 on August 16th in Detective Comics #790 (March 2004). This is his only canon birthday.

Detective Comics #790 (Mar 2004)

In post-Crisis/preboot (1986-2011) continuity, there was a gap of six months between when Jason died and when he was resurrected (Batman Annual 25). Jason died April 27th according to his death certificates in Batman Annual 25 and Batman Files 2011, so he would’ve resurrected near late October.

Batman Annual 25 (May 2006)

So, it could be that post-resurrection Jason is biologically 6 months younger than he chronologically should be. But honestly, do we even really know what multiverse-breaking resurrection punches and then a Lazarus Pit on top of that do to someone’s body??? Either way it’s just much more simple to just use his chronological age.

Cassandra Cain

Much like Tim and Jason, Cass has only ever been given one birthdate: January 26th from Batgirl Vol. 1 #33. With that birthday, she turned 18 in Batgirl Vol. 1 #37.

Batgirl Vol. 1 #33 (Dec 2002)

When Jan 26th actually comes, Bruce suggests David Cain could’ve lied about it, but Cass denies that idea and continues to treat the day as her birthday.

Batgirl Vol. 1 #37 (Apr 2003)

Why it's likely her real birthday: Bruce initially believes Cain must’ve lied because he doesn’t think Cain could’ve known her birthday. However, we later learn Cain had lied about her origins and was actually her biological father. Batgirl v1 #62 and #73 show he was there for her birth and could absolutely know the date.

On top of that, in Batgirl #37 Cass remembers celebrating her birthday with him as a child, so he did seem to actually keep track of it. I honestly don’t see any reason to believe he’d lie (Bruce is just a jealous spoilsport).

Helena Bertinelli + Wayne

I’m combining them here because the New 52 gives me a headache.

Helena Bertinelli celebrated her birthday on February 14th in a spin-off comic from the animated Batman: The Brave and the Bold series. This is obviously not part of regular comics continuity and the characters differ from the usual comics in many ways. And yet, for reasons that will soon be clear, it’s my favorite for actually being about Helena Bertinelli the Huntress and for not being an utter mess.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold #14 (Apr 2010)

In a character profile at the end of Infinity Inc. #7 (Oct 1984), Helena Wayne’s birthday was September 7th, 1959. Calculating back from October 1984, that would make her 25 at the time.

During the New 52, Helena Bertinelli was initially portrayed as a long-dead (secretly alive but don’t worry about it) mobster’s daughter and replaced by Earth-2’s Helena Wayne who got stranded on Prime Earth. This H. Wayne stole H. Bertinelli’s identity in the form of several forged passports and IDs, which had hints toward birthdates. The question is, can we take any of those birthdates seriously, and if so, which birthdates and for which character? (Cue my headache.)

Skip ahead to Dick if overthinking fake passports sounds boring.

When comparing to a real Italian passport, the date on H. Wayne’s fake Italian passport appears to be a birthdate. Note that the fake name is Carol Bertinelli, not Helena. H. Wayne said her IDs were inspired by H. Bertinelli but clearly she’s taking liberties for the IDs so that’s a point toward these being useless for H. Bertinelli birthdays.

Huntress Vol. 3 #1 (Dec 2011)

I don’t recognize the month abbreviation as a real abbreviation, but from the visible letter O I’m going to assume it means October. If it is, then the date is 20 October 1985. Sidenote: a 1985 birthdate during 2011 could put her age at about 26, which is actually quite close to how old she could’ve been based on pre-Flashpoint! 1985 has been given as Helena Wayne’s death year before, so it’s an interesting choice of a birth year for her. (Thanks to DC’s sliding timescale, though, birth years don’t actually mean anything in the comics.)

They don’t show her complete US passport, but I can see a “22” in line where the day of the month should be for her birthdate. This already contradicts the previous passport. This one uses Helena Bertinelli’s actual name, though–does that make it more relevant than the Carol one or this all still ridiculous because of the discrepancies?

Worlds’ Finest Vol. 1 #1 (Jul 2012)

We can try to glean the US passport birth month from the passport number at the bottom. The first two digits (“12” here) indicate the agency that issued the passport. 12 means the Honolulu agency. Right after “USA” is supposed to be the birthdate plus an extra number, in the order of year/month/day with the year being the last two digits of a year. Here we encounter another problem. It says 810228. This would imply her birthdate is 1981/02/28. That’s February 28, 1981. Since the earlier line indicated her birthday fell on a 22nd, this already contradicts itself.

Interpreting a Machine Readable Zone (MZR) on a Machine Readable Travel Document (MRTD)

However, I’d bet comic writers and artists aren’t always well versed in passport numbers (it’s already a stretch for me to bother checking it…). If they put the extra digit before the birthdate instead after, and the date is formatted month/day/year (the most common format in American English, so probably their first instinct), then we can drop the first 8 and it’s 10/22/8[?] with the last digit unknown. This would put her birthday as October 22, sometime in the 1980s. The 22 matches the earlier line, the October might match the previous passport if that really did say October (but contradicts the 20th), and the 1980s year could be 1985 to match the Italian passport.

At the end of the day I’m personally just going to let Helena Bertinelli be a Valentine’s born baby and call it a day, unless/until she gets a better one in the comics. For Helena Wayne I’d easily pick September 7th.

(My question is: did they give the crossbow vigilante a Valentine’s birthday as a Cupid joke??)

Dick Grayson

Dick has probably had the most birthdays of everyone (unless Bruce has more I don’t know about). All of them have their drawbacks.

In a main comics continuity, his most popular and most recent is “the first day of spring” so probably March 20th. This comes from Robin Annual 4 when his mom says she calls him Robin because he was born on the first day of spring. That presents some problems since there are other explanations given for the origin of “Robin,” including that his mom said he was “always bobbin’ along” (Dark Victory #12, page 17) or the original inspiration of Robin Hood (Detective Comics #38, p3).

Robin Annual 4 (Jun 1995)

Before that, in Secret Origins Vol. 2 #50 (Aug 1990), Marv Wolfman wrote a version of Dick’s origins where Dick turned 10 a week before his parents died on Halloween. That would make his birthday October ~24th (presuming that “a week” before Halloween literally means 7 days here).

Secret Origins Vol. 2 #50 (Aug 1990)

The first drawback of the October birthday is that it’s tied to Dick being 10 when his parents die on Halloween. Dick’s age and the date his parents die change a lot depending on the writer (Nightwing Vol. 1 #1 says his parents died June 27th, Dark Victory #8-9 says May, etc.). The second drawback is that few people remember this version of his birthday even exists.

Dick’s birthday is November 11th in Super DC Calendar 1976. Note: Despite being a non-diegetic calendar from almost 50 years ago, this source remains well known and used among comic enthusiasts (including those working at DC). Generally, I would say it should mainly apply just to pre-Crisis continuity, but it is also useful for characters that haven’t gotten updated birthdays ever since (like Roy Harper, Barbara Gordon, or Selina Kyle, for example).

Super DC Calendar 1976

Sidenote: Since Damian doesn’t have a canon birthday, November 11th is favorite to steal for my own fan canon Damian birthday. Dick has plenty birthdays to share and I think it’s cute. @ DC, give Damian and Steph birthdays, they’ve been birthday-less for decades!

Indeed, DC writer Tim Sheridan and editor Mike Cotton debated whether Dick’s birthday was in March or November. They favored March 20th and wrote a birthday scene in Teen Titans Academy #1 (published March 23rd, 2021). The publishing time near Dick’s birthday was intentional, though the date isn’t mentioned within the comic itself.

Link to tweet

The above birthdays were all meant to apply to a main comics continuity at some point. However, Earth-16, better known as the animated Young Justice universe (therefore outside of main comics continuity), says YJ Dick’s birthday is December 1st.

Young Justice Vol. 2 #20 (Nov 2012)

Unlike Helena Bertinelli, Dick has plenty of comics birthdays to choose from, so personally I’ll only count Dec 1st as being the birthday for YJ animated/Earth-16 Dick Grayson until or unless it’s ever mentioned to apply to main comics continuity.

Barbara Gordon

Super DC Calendar 1976 says Barbara’s birthday is September 23rd.

Super DC Calendar 1976

Since then, the only time I recall her birthdate hinted at is in Secret Origins #20 when her adoptive mom says her birthday is in the fall. This could support her birthday being September 23rd.

Secret Origins Vol. 2 #20 (Nov 1987)

Although she has celebrated her birthday on panel since then (the end of Nightwing Vol. 2 #153), she hasn’t been given any other actual birthdate. So I’ll keep September 23rd and call it a day.

Selina Kyle

Super DC Calendar 1976 says Selina’s birthday is March 14th. Once again, although it hasn’t been mentioned within a comic, it’s stuck around in popular consciousness (see: Catwoman actress Zoë Kravitz wishing Selina a happy birthday on March 14th).

Super DC Calendar 1976

Selina celebrated a birthday on panel in Catwoman (2002) #37 but the date was never mentioned. I don’t know of any other reference to her birthday, but my reading of Selina is thus far more sparse than my reading of the others.

Kate Kane

Kate’s birthday options all come from outside of the comics themselves.

In “An Un-Birthday Present,” season 1 episode 11 of Batwoman, a parallel version of her twin Beth had a driver’s license showing her date of birth as January 26, 1990. She and Kate later celebrated their birthdays on an episode aired Jan 26th, 2020. I don’t keep up with live action DC shows so I unfortunately can’t offer a screenshot (if anyone has one or the timestamp, please let me know!).

(I kinda wonder if somebody looked up Batwoman’s birthday for these episodes, saw Batgirl’s (Cass’s) birthday, and just ran with it. Batwoman and a Batgirl sharing a birthday is just. Ughhh.)

In 2012, one of her comic writers tweeted to choose a random date for her birthday and picked March 21st, which so far as I know has never been used as her birthday in comics.

Link to tweet

Bruce Wayne

Bruce’s most popular birthday is February 19th, but his most recent one is October 7th from the digital-only comic Legends of the Dark Knight. I believe that’s the only time October 7th has been referenced, but I’ve heard the animated show The Batman said his birthday was in October (can’t confirm, haven’t watched it recently).

Legends of the Dark Knight #10 (Jun 2021) - Note: two pages have been combined into one for this post

Still, even associates of DC seem to remember his February 19th birthday better. In February 2023, Warner Bro’s Gotham Knights game did a sale for Bruce’s birthday. I’ve also heard the birthday was used in the Gotham TV show, but again, I don’t watch much live action DC shows.

The February 19th birthday appears to come from the 70s and 80s. It’s his birthday in the Super DC Calendar 1976, and in Batman Family Vol. 1 #11: “Suprise, Suprise!” (May 1977). Bob Rozakis (known as DC’s “Answer Man”) said Feb 19th was Bruce’s birthday in the letter column of Detective Comics #494 (Sep 1980).

Letter column of Detective Comics #494 (Sep 1980)

Batman Family Vol. 1 #11: “Suprise, Suprise!” (Jun 1977)

Super DC Calendar 1976

Way back in the 40s, his birthday was in April, possibly April 7th. During a birthstone murder mystery, Bruce says his birthstone is a diamond, which is traditionally the April birthstone.

World’s Finest Comics #33/6 (Mar-Apr 1948): “The 5 Jewels of Doom!”

Star Spangled Comics #91 (Apr 1949) might imply the exact date was April 7th but we’d have to assume the party is on his birthday and that “this month” refers to the publishing month of April. I believe this is where people get the April 7th birthday when they bring it up.

Star Spangled Comics #91 (Apr 1949)

Early April also shines in Batman: Year One where it shows Bruce’s first night out as Batman being either the night of April 6th or the early morning of April 7th (Batman #405). So although the April Bruce birthday hasn’t been used in decades, it’s still a Batman birthday in a way.

I have also heard people say Frank Miller considered Bruce’s birthday to be in November. However, I have yet to find an original source of him saying that, and honestly (just like the “March 21st” birthday for Kate) if he never used it in any canon material I don’t put much weight in that.

Jim Gordon

The only birthday I’ve ever seen for Jim is January 5th from Super DC Calendar 1976.

Super DC Calendar 1976

Alfred Pennyworth

Alfred’s birthday in Super DC Calendar 1976 is April 8th.

Super DC Calendar 1976

In the Injustice: Gods Among Us universe (an alternate reality where the video game of the same name is set in), they show Alfred’s birth certificate, where it says his birthday is August 16th, 1943.

Injustice: Gods Among Us Year Five #26 (Jun 2016)

Maybe you’ll notice that August 16th is Jason’s birthday. A little funny considering the issue features Alfred refusing to share his birthday only for us to learn it’s the same date as Jason’s. Still, annoying. There are so many days in the year! Stop choosing the same ones!

This Alfred birthdate runs into a similar problem Helena’s birthdates did: it’s not part of main comics canon, it’s an alternate universe, so it may not be applicable to the main comics universe.

Note: if we calculate that 1943 birth year from Jun 2016 when the comic was published, that’d make Alfred 72 soon to be 73. Does that mean anything in canon? Probably not, but oh well. Also...token British character born by Windsor Castle? …of course.

Personally, I would rather go with the April 8th birthday than the Injustice one, since Injustice is an alternate universe. Also, outside of the humor of it, the idea of Alfred and Jason sharing a birthday is a bit too much for me. Still, it’s up to people’s own cherry picking.

Chronology

The birthdays in publishing order alongside notable reboots. A soft-reboot refers to reboots that only changed a few details with minor consequences, keeping the overall continuity mostly intact. A major reboot has significant effects on continuity (too many to list).

1935-1986: Pre-Crisis era (Golden Age begins ~1946, Silver Age runs from late 50s--early 70s)

Mar-Apr 1948: Bruce’s birthday is in April

Apr 1949: Bruce has a birthday party on the 7th of “this month”

Skipping a good three decades because I barely even know what’s in there. Sorry lol

Mid 70s to early 90s: Bronze Age era

1976: the super dc calendar says Bruce’s birthday is February 19th, Alfred’s is April 8th, Dick’s is November 11th, Babs is September 23rd, Selina’s is March 14th, Jim’s is Jan 5th

Jun 1977: Bruce celebrates his birthday on February 19th

Sep 1980: letter collumnist says Bruce’s birthday is February 19th

Oct 1984: Helena Wayne’s birthday is on September 7th, 1959

Mar 1986: the major Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot (begins post-Crisis/New Earth era, many previous comics are now considered Earth-2 instead)

Nov 1987: Babs birthday is in fall

Aug 1990: Dick turns 10 a week before Halloween (probably October ~24th)

Sep 1994: Zero Hour soft reboot (Batman and Robin become urban legends so Robin is not allowed on video, Bruce’s parents’ murderer is changed to unknown instead of Joe Chill, Selina is no longer a once-prostitute)

Apr 1995: Dick’s birthday is the first day of spring (probably March 20th)

Oct 2002: Cass learns her birthday is January 26th

April 2003: Cass turns 18 on January 26th

Sep 2003: Tim turns 16 on July 19th

Mar 2004: Jason turns 18 on August 16th

Jun 2006: Infinite Crisis soft reboot (Joe Chill is restored as the arrested Wayne family murderer, Superboy-Prime's punch retroactively resurrects Jason)

Apr 2010: In the Batman: Brave and the Bold universe, Helena Bertinelli celebrates her birthday February 14th

Oct 2011: the major Flashpoint reboot (end of post-Crisis/preboot, begins the New 52 and changes the primary universe to Prime Earth; significant character/timeline changes and erasures)

Dec 2011: Helena Wayne’s fake Carol Bertinelli passport seems to list October 20th as a birthdate

Jul 2012: Helena Wayne’s fake Helena Bertinelli passport lists some 22nd unknown month, Oct 22nd, or Feb 28th birthday

Sep 2012: Batwoman writer J.H. Williams III randomly picks Kate’s birthday as March 21st on Twitter

Nov 2012: Earth-16/YJ animated Dick Grayson celebrates his birthday on December 1st

Jun 2016: In the Injustice: Gods Among Us universe, Alfred’s birth certificate says his birthday is August 16th

Jul 2016: Rebirth reboot (restores some pre-Flashpoint continuity, some characters regain previous histories but now semi-synchronized with the New 52 era)

Jan 2020: Batwoman TV show Kate celebrates her birthday on January 26th

Mar 2021: Writer Tim Sheridan says he & his editor chose March 20th as Dick’s birthday over the November option

May 2021: Infinite Frontier holds all previous continuities as potential canon, restoring more of pre-Flashpoint

Jun 2021: Bruce says his birthday is October 7th in a digital-only comic

Feb 2023: Gotham Knights game has a sale for Bruce’s birthday

[batboyblog]

The Biden-⁠Harris Administration Advances Equity and Opportunity for Black Americans

Growing Economic Opportunity for Black Families and Communities Through the President’s legislative victories, including the American Rescue Plan (ARP), the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—as well as the President’s historic executive orders on racial equity—the Biden-Harris Administration is ensuring that federal investments through the President’s landmark Investing in America agenda are equitably flowing to communities to address longstanding economic inequities that impact people’s economic security, health, and safety. And this vision is already delivering results. The Biden-Harris Administration has:

Powered a historic economic recovery that created 2.6 million jobs for Black workers—and achieved both the lowest Black unemployment rate on record and the lowest gap between Black and White unemployment on record.

Helped Black working families build wealth. Black wealth is up by 60% relative to pre-pandemic—the largest increase on record.

Cut in half the number of Black children living in poverty in 2021 through ARP’s Child Tax Credit expansion. This expansion provided breathing room to the families of over 9 million Black children.

Began reversing decades of infrastructure disinvestment, including with $4 billion to reconnect communities that were previously cut off from economic opportunities by building needed transportation infrastructure in underserved communities, including Black communities.

Connected an estimated 5.5 million Black households to affordable high-speed internet through the Affordable Connectivity Program, closing the digital divide for millions of Black families.

Helping Black-Owned Businesses Grow and Thrive Since the President entered office, a record 16 million new business applications have been filed, and the share of Black households owning a business has more than doubled. Building on this momentum, the Biden-Harris Administration has:

Achieved the fastest creation rate of Black-owned businesses in more than 30 years—and more than doubled the share of Black business owners from 2019 to 2022.

Improved the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) flagship loan guarantee programs to expand the availability of capital to underserved communities. Since 2020, the number and dollar value of SBA-backed loans to Black-owned businesses have more than doubled.

Launched a whole-of-government effort to expand access to federal contracts for small businesses, awarding a record $69.9 billion to small disadvantaged businesses in 2022.

Through Treasury’s State Small Business Credit Initiative, invested $10 billion to expand access to capital and invest in early-stage businesses in all 50 states—including $2.5 billion in funding and incentive allocations dedicated to support the provision of capital to underserved businesses with $1 billion of these funds to be awarded to the jurisdictions that are most successful in reaching underserved businesses.

Helped more than 37,000 farmers and ranchers who were in financial distress, including Black farmers and ranchers, stay on their farms and keep farming, thanks to resources provided through IRA. The IRA allocated $3.1 billion for the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to provide relief for distressed borrowers with at-risk agricultural operations with outstanding direct or guaranteed Farm Service Agency loans. USDA has provided over $2 billion and counting in timely assistance.

Supported small and disadvantaged businesses through CHIPS Act funding by requiring funding applicants to develop a workforce plan to create equitable pathways for economically disadvantaged individuals in their region, as well as a plan to support procurement from small, minority-owned, veteran-owned, and women-owned businesses.

Created the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that will invest in clean energy projects in low-income and disadvantaged communities.

Increasing Access to Housing and Rooting Out Discrimination in the Housing Market for Black Communities To increase access to housing and root out discrimination in the housing market, including for Black families and communities, the Biden-Harris Administration has:

Set up the first-ever national infrastructure to stop evictions, scaling up the ARP-funded Emergency Rental Assistance program in over 400 communities across the country, helping 8 million renters and their families stay in their homes. Over 40% of all renters helped are Black—and this support prevented millions of evictions, with the largest effects seen in majority-Black neighborhoods.

Published a proposed “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” rule through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which will help overcome patterns of segregation and hold states, localities, and public housing agencies that receive federal funds accountable for ensuring that underserved communities have equitable access to affordable housing opportunities.

Created the Interagency Task Force on Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity, or PAVE, a first-of-its-kind interagency effort to root out bias in the home appraisal process, which is taking sweeping action to advance equity and remove racial and ethnic bias in home valuations, including cracking down on algorithmic bias and empowering consumers to take action against misvaluation.

Taken additional steps through HUD to support wealth-generation activities for prospective and current homeowners by expanding access to credit by incorporating a borrower’s positive rental payment history into the mortgage underwriting process. HUD estimates this policy change will enable an additional 5,000 borrowers per year to qualify for an FHA-insured loan.

Ensuring Equitable Educational Opportunity for Black Students To expand educational opportunity for the Black community in early childhood and beyond, the Biden-Harris Administration has:

Approved more than $136 billion in student loan debt cancellation for 3.7 million Americans through various actions and launched a new student loan repayment plan—the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan—to help many students and families cut in half their total lifetime payments per dollar borrowed.

Championed the largest increase to Pell Grants in the last decade—a combined increase of $900 to the maximum award over the past two years, affecting the over 60% of Black undergraduates who rely on Pell grants.

Fixed the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, so all qualified borrowers get the debt relief to which they are entitled. More than 790,000 public servants have received more than $56 billion in loan forgiveness since October 2021. Prior to these fixes, only 7,000 people had ever received forgiveness through PSLF.

Delivered a historic investment of over $7 billion to support HBCUs.

Reestablished the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Black Americans.

Through ARP, secured $130 billion—the largest investment in public education in history—to help students get back to school, recover academically in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and address student mental health.

Secured a 30% increase in child care assistance funding last year. Black families comprise 38% of families benefiting from federal child care assistance. Additionally, the President secured an additional $1 billion for Head Start, a program where more than 28% of children and pregnant women who benefit identify as Black.

Improving Health Outcomes for Black Families and Communities To improve health outcomes for the Black community, the Biden-Harris Administration has:

Increased Black enrollment in health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act by 49%—or by around 400,000—from 2020 to 2022, helping more Black families gain health insurance than ever before.

Through IRA, locked in lower monthly premiums for health insurance, capped the cost of insulin at $35 per covered insulin product for Medicare beneficiaries, and helped further close the gap in access to medication by improving prescription drug coverage and lowering drug costs in Medicare. 

Through ARP, expanded postpartum coverage from 60 days to 12 months in 43 states and Washington, D.C., covering 700,000 more women in the year after childbirth. Medicaid covers approximately 65% of births for Black mothers, and this investment is a critical step to address maternal health disparities.

Financed projects that will replace hundreds of thousands of lead pipes, helping protect against lead poisoning that disproportionately affects Black communities.

Provided 264 grants with $1 billion in Bipartisan Safer Communities Act funds to more than 40 states to increase the supply of school-based mental health professionals in communities with high rates of poverty.

Launched An Unprecedented Whole-Of-Government Equity Agenda to Ensure the Promise of America for All Communities, including Black Communities President Biden believes that advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our government, which will require sustained leadership and partnership with all communities. To make the promise of America real for every American, including for the Black Community, the President has:

Signed two Executive Orders directing the Federal Government to advance an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda that matches the scale of the challenges we face as a country and the opportunities we have to build a more perfect union.

Nominated the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court and more Black women to federal circuit courts than every President combined.

Countered hateful attempts to rewrite history including: the signing of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act; establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday; and designating the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Mississippi and Illinois. The Department of the Interior has invested more than $295 million in infrastructure funding and historic preservation grants to protect and restore places significant to Black history.

Created the Justice40 Initiative, which is delivering 40% of the overall benefits of certain Federal investments in clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, clean water, and other programs to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution as part of the most ambitious climate, conservation, and environmental justice agenda in history.

Protecting the Sacred Right to Vote for Black Families and Communities Since their first days in office, President Biden and Vice President Harris have prioritized strengthening our democracy and protecting the sacred right to vote in free, fair, and secure elections. To do so, the President has:

Signed an Executive Order to leverage the resources of the Federal Government to provide nonpartisan information about the election process and increase access to voter registration. Agencies across the Federal Government are taking action to respond to the President’s call for an all-of-government effort to enhance the ability of all eligible Americans to participate in our democracy.

Repeatedly and forcefully called on Congress to pass essential legislation, including the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, including calling for an exception to the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.

Increased funding for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, which has more than doubled the number of voting rights enforcement attorneys. The Justice Department also created the Election Threats Task Force to assess allegations and reports of threats against election workers, and investigate and prosecute these matters where appropriate.

Signed into law the bipartisan Electoral Reform Count Act, which establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes for President and Vice President, to preserve the will of the people and to protect against the type of attempts to overturn our elections that led to the January 6 insurrection.

Addressing the Crisis of Gun Violence in Black Communities Gun violence has become the leading cause of death for all youth and Black men in America, as well as the second leading cause of death for Black women. To address this national crisis, the President has:

Launched the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, and taken more executive action on gun violence than any President in history, including investments in violence reduction strategies that address the root causes of gun violence and address emerging threats like ghost guns. In 2022, the Administration’s investments in evidence-based, lifesaving programs combined with aggressive action to stop the flow of illegal guns and hold shooters accountable yielded a 12.4% reduction in homicides across the United States.

Signed into the law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant gun violence reduction legislation enacted in nearly 30 years, including investments in violence reduction strategies and historic policy changes to enhance background checks for individuals under age 21, narrow the dating partner loophole in the gun background check system, and provide law enforcement with tools to crack down on gun trafficking.

Secured the first-ever dedicated federal funding stream for community violence intervention programs, which have been shown to reduce violence by as much as 60%. These programs are effective because they leverage trusted messengers who work directly with individuals most likely to commit gun violence, intervene in conflicts, and connect people to social, health and wellness, and economic services to reduce the likelihood of violence as an answer to conflict.

Enhancing Public Trust and Strengthening Public Safety for Black Communities Our criminal justice system must protect the public and ensure fair and impartial justice for all. These are mutually reinforcing goals. To enhance equal justice and public safety for all communities, including the Black community, the President has:

Signed a historic Executive Order to put federal policing on the path to becoming the gold standard of effectiveness and accountability by requiring federal law enforcement agencies to ban chokeholds; restrict no-knock warrants; mandate the use of body-worn cameras; implement stronger use-of-force policies; provide de-escalation training; submit use-of-force data; submit officer misconduct records into a new national accountability database; and restrict the sale or transfer of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, among other things. 

Taken steps to right the wrongs stemming from our Nation’s failed approach to marijuana by directing the Departments of Health and Human Services and Justice to expeditiously review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law and in October 2022 issued categorical pardons of prior federal and D.C. offenses of simple possession of marijuana and in December 2023 pardoned additional offenses of simple possession and use of marijuana under federal and D.C. law. While white, Black, and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionately higher rates.

Announced over 100 concrete policy actions as part of a White House evidence-informed, multi-year Alternatives, Rehabilitation, and Reentry Strategic Plan to safely reduce unnecessary criminal justice system interactions so police officers can focus on fighting crime; supporting rehabilitation during incarceration; and facilitating successful reentry.

FACT SHEET

[skz-rin]

📀Now Watching - The Show: The Bae Hyerin Files

SEASON 1: PRE DEBUT

EP 1: NEW COUNTRIES

SEASON 2: I.O.I

EP 1: N/A

SEASON 3: SURVIVAL SHOW

EP 1: N/A

SEASON 4: STRAY KIDS (2018-2020)

EP 1: N/A

SEASON 5: STRAY KIDS (2021-2023)

EP 1: NIGHT RAINS

SEASON 7: STRAY KIDS (2024-)

EP 1: N/A

[arbitrarygreay]

Audacity for Debian-based Linux

So, some time around 2020/2021, Audacity for Linux from the repositories of Debian-based distros (including Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) no longer had access to high quality stretch (change tempo, change pitch, shifting slider). This appears to be due to a combination of Debian no longer updating Audacity at all past 2.4.2 (as Audacity's new owners from 3.0.0 on have had...issues, to put it lightly), but also the fact that 2.4.2 specifically was requiring a version of the SBSMS library past what Debian had. It's still the case that the apt version of Audacity on Linux Mint still lacks the high quality stretch functions.

The workaround for this is to compile from source. HOWEVER. Be apprised that if you specifically go for version 2.4.2, there is still a bug around SBSMS, which causes Audacity to crash when attempting high quality stretching. Apparently, if you go for versions afterwards (3.0+, new Audacity owners), or the version before (2.3.3), you will not run into this issue.

I am stubborn, so I have verified that I can now open Audacity 2.4.2 and do a high quality pitch change without crashing. Here are the solution options. Know that both are still compiling from source.

Option 1: Do it manually command by command on the terminal

You will, however, notice that the important download link for the patch is broken. You must get it from here.

Note that you should preface all of the commands listed in that post with "sudo", or they will likely throw an error. (Or do whatever you need to for terminal to continuously recognize root access.) In addition, note that the "pre-installation test" section is not optional. Audacity will not run if the "Portable Settings" folder is not created, and furthermore, the "Portable Settings" folder and all containing files need to have write permissions enabled to the relevant non-root group/owner.

Whether you installed manually or used the script, you will need to go to "/usr/local/share/audacity/audacity-minsrc-2.4.2/build/bin/Release" to launch Audacity. In the file explorer window, you can click the button to the left of the magnifying glass to switch to text input where you can copy and paste the above path. Or, from /home, go up one level, and then navigate through manually.

Change the launcher's icon and add it to the start menu/desktop, per your specific distro and desktop environment.

Option 2: Modify and run a bash script

I found a helpful Youtube video stepping through the process, before they link to a bash script automating the whole thing. However, the script does not include the 2.4.2 patch. There are also a few modifications that need to be done to the script.

Modifications to make (right click the .sh file, open with, pick some text editor):

Line 35: change the dl_directory to match your own system. (Specifically, you probably need to replace "piuser" with your own account name.)

This change also needs be done on lines 115, 116, and 120 (or replace the hard coded parts with "${DL_DIRECTORY}").

Line 77 (optional): add "patch" as a dependent package to check. Like Python, it's mostly likely already installed, so you could leave this commented out.

Lines 139-142: Not a modification, but a note that I didn't end up using this (left it commented out), so I did have to download the 2.4.2 source code from fosshub manually and put it in the location specified by dl_directory. I also put the patch there. If you do want to try to automate the download, you'll not only have to add another line to also download the patch file, but both the source code for 2.4.2 and the patch have hyphens in their urls, so you need to either add backslashes to escape them, or enclose the entire url in quotation marks. But I also can't guarantee that either of those things will work, since I ended up doing the downloads manually.

Line 150: Per the manual installation above, the patch needs to be applied before the build. Add this code block at line 150 (after the script checks to see if the "Build" folder exists):

#SBSMS patch required for 2.4.2 if [ -f "${DL_DIRECTORY}/changepitch.patch" ]; then sudo cp "${DL_DIRECTORY}/changepitch.patch" "${DIRECTORY}/${VERSION}" fi sudo patch -p 1 < changepitch.patch

That's it for changing the script. Save it, close out of the text editor. (If you decided not to try letting the script do the downloads, then make sure you download the source code and the patch and put them in the dl_directory location at this point.)

Enable the script to be executable. (Right click the .sh file, Properties. On the Permissions tab, check that "Allow executing file as a program" is checked.)

Double click the .sh file. I suggest doing the "Run In Terminal" option so you can see the progress. (And if it's really short, probably something went wrong. The build section takes 20 minutes.)

This script does not include installing the offline manual for Audacity. That is covered in the guide posted in Option 1. Sorry, you'll have to do some terminal typing after all.

Whether you installed manually or used the script, you will need to go to "/usr/local/share/audacity/audacity-minsrc-2.4.2/build/bin/Release" to launch Audacity. In the file explorer window, you can click the button to the left of the magnifying glass to switch to text input where you can copy and paste the above path. Or, from /home, go up one level, and then navigate through manually.

Change the launcher's icon and add it to the start menu/desktop, per your specific distro and desktop environment.

[rekishi-aka]

Tatort Saabrücken timeline thoughts (or: DfL was actually time travel)

Okay so this is a mashup of this post with post-KdE musings, because I obviously needed to course correct for KdE.

The whole thing only started making sense when I rewatched everything again before KdE. My hypothesis starts with DfL actually taking place in 2021 (instead of 2020 when it aired).

Okay let's look at a few facts:

Leo says Adam has been gone for 15 years

They were in 11th grade in 2006 per the yearbook in "Der Herr des Waldes" (= 16/17 years old per starting school at 6 or 7 and G8, both of which would have still been true when they were in school, Saarland only switched to G7 in 2003 and they would likely have been on a G8 track already)

The doorman at the Hofer company says he's born in 1955 (just like his car) and that he will retire in a few months

It's clearly spring (Lida is sowing peas and the next episode takes place two months later when it's obviously summer)

By this logic, their lives would look like this:

1990: Adam and Leo are born [I remember grading papers at uni for my freshmen born in 1990, I thought they were so incredibly young then and now 20 year olds never knew a pre 9/11 world, gosh I feel old 😭]

If we're keeping the actors actual birthdays, a few days apart in July (post-Stichtag babies): 1989

2006:

April: Roland Schürk falls into a coma after his...accident, after meeting Lausch in the woods

July/August: Adam and Leo start 11th grade (Adam was in Lausch's Philosphy class and Lausch only started at their school after the summer)

2007: Adam vanishes. My personal guess is sometime in spring/summer when he couldn't take it anymore...but Adam also isn't stupid enough to run in winter.

+15 years is 2022. Which absolutely doesn't work from a timeline perspective, because that would mean "Das Herz der Schlange" takes place shortly after "Der Herr des Waldes" and the whole team is a) too cozy for that in the restaurant, but also b) Roland is healed up and getting a cut Achilles tendon healed up does not happen in a matter of months, c) Roland had had time to plan his ultimate revenge, and d) they're dressed for early summer throughout the episode. I guess it could be early autumn, but I don't actually think so.

Until now, I always thought the writer had simply messed up the timeline and 15 years sounded better than 13 years. The link above assumes that "Das fleißige Lieschen" takes place in 2020, which was the year it aired.

(This is a non-Covid world, simply because in 2019, when it was shot, they couldn't know. So this is where the Tatort universe diverges, since a few Tatort franchises definitely had Covid, e.g., Berlin.)

However, again, I don't think, because: The doorman says he was born 1955 and that he is going to retire shortly.

Regular retirement age for birth year 1955 was 65 years 9 months (because retirement age rises incrementally until it reaches 67 year). It's spring. 1955+65 years 9 months = 2021

Also, a friend pointed out that Konrad Hofer delivered also the files for 2020 (150 years, 75 years for each of them), but those wouldn't be available in 2020, so this must be 2021.

Which means: "Das fleißige Lieschen" and "Der Herr des Waldes" both take place in 2021 and "Das Herz der Schlange" takes place in April or May 2022 and since Adam looks pretty hale in the promo pictures. Alternately, there could be a two-year jump to 2023, but I actially doubt it.

As for "Die Kälte der Erde":

Boris is still in prison

It's set in Mexico (or at least the dog days of summer)

Adam and Esther are bickering (which is actually nice!) but Adam is also still really mad about the SEK, and attrition would likely have taken care of that. there's a limit to how bitter and grudge-y one can be for prolonged periods of time

Plus, where was Adam living for a whole year? If he'd been with Leo, that would be really shitty to move out again after that long a while, and Leo is in far too good a mood at the beginning for that to be an issue

So it seems likely that KdE actually takes place in August 2022 [or 2023 if HdS is also 2023], which would leave sufficient time for Adam to heal up and rehab his fingers and be back in the field. This, of course, means that they weren't shattered but "only" broken [unlikely considering how it had happened, but! Tatort logic, whatever], but eh. If they want to run with it, fine by me.

This still means that the 15 years Adam is supposed to have been gone are an embellishment, but let's be honest, 15 years sounds better than 14.

I wonder if we'll be stuck in 2022 for the rest of time.

So, this leaves us with the following dates:

1990: Adam and Leo are born

If we're keeping the actors actual birthdays, a few days apart in July: 1989

2006:

April: Roland Schürk falls into a coma after his...accident, after meeting Lausch in the woods

July/August: Adam and Leo start 11th grade (Adam was in Lausch's Philosphy class and Lausch only started at their school after the summer)

2007: Adam vanishes. My personal guess is sometime in spring/summer when he couldn't take it anymore...but Adam also isn't stupid enough to run in winter. (Although my friend is right, he would be stupid enough to run in winter if it got too bad.)

2021

March/April [latest time to sow peas]: "Das fleißige Lieschen", Adam returns, Roland wakes up

May/June [two months later]: "Der Herr des Waldes", Roland gets suspicious

2022:

April/May: "Das Herz der Schlange", Roland seemingly gets his revenge on Adam for not becoming the man he wanted him to be

August-ish: "Die Kälte der Erde"

[libratalks]

The Resurgence of CDs: the "forgotten format" remembered by me

I know what you're thinking. There is no rebirth of CDs, Isha.

The facts tell us that they have been dying a slow death since their peak in the 2000s, suffering a 97% drop in sales revenue back in 2020. It fails to be a viable commercial format due to performing terribly in sales' data, with only a 1.1% increase in the US during 2021. No one is buying CDs, and those who are, well they just don't matter in the grand scheme of things for a few reasons. There are various sources of media that say otherwise, yet Damon Krukowski boldly states that one of the reasons why journalists have been penning articles regarding "the resurgence of CDs" is because there is a sense of false consciousness attached: it is an attempt by the industry to substitute the interests of the rich for one's own; to distract music consumers from facing the deeper problems within music distribution, such as a supposed booming economy in the music industry despite there being a great income inequality. To which I say, true, but un(?)fortunately, our minds do not resort to that aspect of the resurgence of CDs immediately. I mean, really, when I came across a sticker-peeled, used copy of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill in the snug CD section of my temporary hometown's Oxfam (I was in Bath during my second year of university), I was hardly thinking of the effects of CD sales in the music industry. What I was thinking about was the excitement I felt in the pit of my stomach to be eight years old again, sat on my bedroom floor, wanting to scream the lyrics to Ironic whilst dancing around my stereo. If there is a resurgence of CDs, it is thanks to my generation: Gen-Z.

Perhaps one of Krukowski's faults is that he is building his conclusions based on CD sales from corporate stores, not independent stores that sell pre-owned copies. An hour ago, I was stood in a place named Record Collector in Sheffield, a whole store dedicated to collecting CDs along with artist memorabilia, such as tour posters and band autobiographies. There are also places such as Oxfam and Truck Store in Oxford where pre-owned copies of various CDs are sold at cheap prices ranging from 99p to £5. These stores are where the heart of CD-love lies. It's the accessibility with personal ownership that is comforting, along with the affordable pricing in contrast with vinyl prices. This reason for CD appreciation has always been evident, yet the introduction of MP3 files and the quick accessibility to downloads back in the 2000s is one of the murderers of the CD craze. Once there was a rise in MP3 players being sold, CD sales nearly halved between 2000 and 2007. Despite this, various artists and music fans remain defending CDs against MP3 players due to MP3 files becoming compressed when downloaded, affecting the audio quality of the song. With CDs, the audio is never compressed nor tweaked in any way. Yes, you could also just encode your MP3 files at a higher bit rate, but that leads me to my next favourite thing about CDs.

THE CREATIVITY IS UNMATCHED. I have always been a visual learner of some sort, falling in love with aesthetics that are carefully crafted in front of me for my own enjoyment. It's why I adore films over books, possess a keen eye and attention to detail when it comes to their direction and fashion, and it is also why I love CDs in the way that I do. I mean, I have a whole Instagram page dedicated to the craftsmanship that artists have demonstrated through their CDs. I own a growing collection, ranging from artists like Hole and Radiohead, along with Avril Lavigne and Alanis Morissette. All CDs I own are bought based on two things: how much I love the music and how much I adore the artwork. This creativity that artists can build on introduces a realm of sentimentality for when a music consumer witnesses time taken to produce a delicate work of art, where thorough thought has been given to which photos will be used for the cover - what colour scheme we are aiming for in terms of the album's aesthetic - which font should be used for the title and should it be the same for the lyrical pages in the booklet? - these are intricate details that an artist recognises and appreciates, no matter what. With so much love and care given to a piece of work that you have crafted, not always alone but with a team, you can't help but feel a sense of inspiration along with appreciation for the beauty of it all - allowing you to feel a strong connection with the artist. With that, no other music format could even compare to the liberation of creativity that CDs possess.

If there's anything you're going to take from me and my ranting, please let it be this: close your eyes, think of an album, or a song, or an artist that you can't help but feel a strong connection to, and buy one of their CDs. Go through the cover booklet, consume and appreciate each framing of text on each page - ask yourself why they chose to use that font or that colour - have the music playing at the same time and read through each page that consists of their lyrics... Let yourself be completely enamoured by the artist's choices of creativity and build your critical thinking in terms of what could be going on inside their minds.

You'll find yourself tapping into a whole new aspect of consuming music, especially in terms of appreciating visual individuality and the liberation that comes with it. All these feelings... thank you, CDs.

[hehehoohoohole]

OKAY SO. First question: Are there other diseases that can spread despite being cooked?

The answer is no, not really. Prions are just really fucked up. But! If meat isn't cooked to the proper temperature and held there for a while, you can end up with meat that looks cooked, but still is dangerous. This is especially true with ground meats, which is why you should never order a rare ground meat burger.

The reason ground meat is a problem and not steak is because the bacteria and viruses that cause illness tend to vibe on the outside of the meat, so with steak, as long as the outside is properly cooked, you're pretty safe. With ground meats, every surface is mashed together and thus the whole product has the potential for bacteria and viruses.

As for being a carrier of disease- generally, in a slaughterhouse setting, the animal is examined before slaughter, and then after slaughter, indivual spots are examined for signs of disease to ensure bad product doesn't make it to the market. I know that at least the esophagus and the lymph nodes are checked off the top of my head (my dad has been involved in the opening of the second ever ostrich slaughterhouse and had a GREAT time trying to figure out the esophagus stuff).

Thankfully, I found these fun and cool PDFs about the pre and post mortem inspection processes! So here those are if you wanna take a peek- https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/2021-11/17a_HQ_LSIT_Antemortem_07-02-2019.pdf https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/2020-08/PHVt-Post_Mortem_Inspection.pdf

Doing these inspections on a Human Person would likely be sufficient for determining if they were a carrier for a disease or not. But we also have the added bonus of humans being a lot easier to tell if they're sick by virtue of. We know what sick humans look like because we are also human/human adjacent in this setting. Also because you can just ask.

Now- here's the fun part!! In a kitchen setting, meat is not your only concern! Veggies used in salads and for garnish are also a hot bed for food borne illness, since they aren't cooked and washing often isn't enough to get E. Coli off your lettuce. That's why it's important yo be aware of food recalls and ALSO have separation of raw meat, cooked meat, and veggies. You GOTTA have separate areas for preparation of each (I've heard that a lot of kitchens use color coordinated cutting boards!).

I....don't know how to apply food safety to fucking someone in a kitchen where you then do slaughter and cooking. Or actively having sex with someone during the slaughter process. Uh. I think it would break the rules. But I....don't know. Which rules. This is not something that comes up in normal food safety, I'm sure you understand. I think as long as Morell washes his hands afterwards it's- it's kinda okay?? ITS HARD TO APPLY REAL WORLD LOGIC TO THIS.

In conclusion: it would probably be fine for kiddo to eat human as long as Morell follows USDA guidelines at least a little.

As thanks for reading this ramble, please take this baby ostrich photo!

You have a lot of info, and it's nice to have someone with a clear idea about this stuff...as much as it can be applied to fucked up porn scenarios.

I'm glad that the kiddo and Piglet will probably be fine if they eat some, at least physically. I had told pin about Prion disease in an RP we did a long while back, as that was how my troll, Liva, was convincing Morell to stop feeding Piglet other humans. This updated information is nice to know so I don't further spread misinformation, even if in reality it's probably fine to use whatever to spook people off actually eating each other.

As for Morells cleanliness, uh, he is not at least in regards to butchering and sex, he's a gross man and doesn't wash his hands for cooking after I'm pretty certain. Piglet will have to hose him for her safety, hands, mouth, dick, everything if she can manage to get him to listen to her. The good news is I think he stops fucking people after meeting her so there's at least one less thing to worry about carrying disease.

In a world with magic and Krulu hovering around making sure his employees play things don't die so they don't have man baby tantrums none of this really matters though. Even without Krulu directly getting involved though, there's Patches and or Liva's magic, which probably can't fix everything ever but can probably fix enough. Patches probably won't help out of the goodness of his heart, he'll need to be nagged by Morell but Liva will, and verbally rip into the chef the whole time for being so bad at taking care of his "wife".

Aahh hello little babies! I would give them little head kisses if they weren't still in the inside phase, they're still vulnerable when they're that little I believe. Thank you for the picture and the interaction, I find it very sweet that you wanted to info dump for me, I'm around if you'd like to again.

[insanityclause]

What’s-on-Netflix today is saying that White Stork is happening. Is this a legitimate source? Looks legit.

2) Saney have you seen this thing about White Stork? I'm not buying it

And you shouldn't. Whats-on-Netflix is nothing more than a clickbait site. It ran the same story (virtually word for word) 2 years ago.

It also literally has this in the 'article' (and I use that term loosely):

IMDb Pro has reported in the production status timeline of the series that filming had begun on September 16th, 2021, and ended on January 10th, 2022. However, as of August 23rd, 2022, the production status of White Stork was listed as unknown. Production updates listed by IMDb Pro should be taken with plenty of caution as there are no sources to verify the information.

Another one of our sources currently has White Stork listed for pre-production.

This is what is currently listed on IMDb Pro.

Except we know he didn't film anything in the fall of 2021, as he was spotted elsewhere, and was doing The Play What I Wrote. There was never any other cast announced for WS -- because it wasn't happening. And that's not the normal progression of production - it would go from post-production to released or have a release date, not back to Production Unknown... So that apparent change in status was nothing more than a random troll.

Because at the same time, this was happening with the actual production company:

July 2021 account statement filed with the UK government

They were planning to break up the production company due to not having the main cast member (that would be Tom). Note the words production abandoned - not 'on hold', but 'abandoned'.

And then the official filing to dissolve the production unit in March 2022.

Full dissolution - June 2022

You can't produce anything without a production company to pay the bills.

All information publicly available via Companies House, the UK Government's official listing of all company registrations.

Furthermore, the project is no longer listed on the Eleven Films website - at all. Not even the original news item from 2020. You can check for yourself, but there's no mention of it.

So 1) Don't believe clickbait sites like What's On Netflix; they're just regurgitating stuff they wrote years ago.

and 2) Don't always believe IMDb, since it's editable by trolls. IMDb Pro less so, because you generally have to provide proof for updates, but not 100% guaranteed.

Anyway, White Stork isn't happening. At least not with Tom or Eleven Films involved at this point.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

After vaccines became available, a partisan gap in deaths emerged

Analysis by Philip Bump

There are times when correlation really seems as though it is obviously representative of causation. Some set of data lines up so neatly that it’s hard to escape reaching an obvious conclusion. This can be dangerous, certainly, but usually it’s simply because the data are causally related. A plus B seems to equal C because it does.

An example of this is the overlap of COVID-19 deaths since 2020 and partisanship. Last month, I reviewed the evolution of the pandemic, assessing where fatality from the virus was sharpest. Even in the era of omicron — a moment when we’re dealing with a less-deadly virus and have better vaccines and treatment to address it — there is a noticeable gap between Democratic- and Republican-voting places, just as there has been for months.

The word “places” is important there. What we could produce was analyses like the one below, showing how Florida and Ohio counties that voted for President Donald Trump in 2020 had higher rates of death, month after month, than ones that voted for Joe Biden. That didn’t necessarily mean that more Trump voters were dying, just that places where more of them lived saw higher fatality rates.

(In mid-2021, Florida briefly stopped reporting county-level death tolls.)

Why might it be the case that places with more Trump voters saw more deaths?

Well, we know that many of those who died of the virus last year were unvaccinated. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that about 234,000 deaths from June 2021 through March 2022 could have been prevented had the decedents been vaccinated against the virus. That protection, too, held into the omicron era.

We also know that Republicans were less likely to get vaccinated than Democrats. Republican officials often downplayed the utility of vaccination, responding to framing of the shots as an unnecessary intrusion from the government. Trump-voting counties were also more likely to seek alternative treatments for COVID, such as the drug ivermectin — treatments that were shown repeatedly not to be effective.

All of this, though, was correlation. We couldn’t say that more Republicans were dying, specifically, so the link to partisanship was indirect, however clearly rational an assumption it might have been.

Last month, though, the National Bureau of Economic Research published an important study from researchers affiliated with Yale University. They took 577,659 death records from Ohio and Florida between January 2018 and December 2021 and matched the decedents to a 2017 voter file. In other words, they were able to identify the partisanship not only of the places those people lived but of the people themselves.

What they found is that the rate of excess death — that is, deaths above the expected toll relative to the pre-pandemic baseline — was higher for Republicans, particularly after vaccines were rolled out.

“Registered Republicans in Florida and Ohio had higher excess death rates than registered Democrats, driven by a large mortality gap in the period after all adults were eligible for vaccines,” the researchers write. “These results adjust for county-by-age differences in excess deaths during the pandemic, suggesting that there were within-age-by-county differences in excess death associated with political party affiliation.”

You can see that on charts included in the report. Democrats and Republicans in Ohio and Florida died at higher rates than would have been expected based on 2018 patterns. But Republicans were much more likely to do so, particularly after the second dark, vertical line on the graph — the point at which all adults became eligible for vaccines.

In another chart, the point is made explicitly. Before the vaccines, the pattern of deaths during the pandemic looked the same for Democrats and Republicans, even in counties that would later have lower vaccination rates. Then, after vaccinations became available, the divergence emerged — and was much wider in counties with lower vaccination rates.

This is something else we knew, too: Counties that backed Trump more heavily in 2020 had lower vaccination rates. In other words, there was a separate correlation between vaccination rates and Trump support. If we separate out the counties in Ohio and Florida that backed Trump by a margin of at least 40 points and those that backed him by a narrower margin, we see another separation.

More-Trump-supportive places had higher death rates than less-Trump-supportive ones during peaks in the pandemic, and both had higher death rates than Biden-supportive ones.

“The results suggest that the well-documented differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republicans and Democrats have already had serious consequences for the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the United States,” the researchers conclude. “If these differences in vaccination by political party affiliation persist, then the higher excess death rate among Republicans is likely to continue through the subsequent stages of the COVID-19 pandemic” — exactly as we’ve seen in county voting data.

Sometimes correlation is causation.

[harrison-abbott]

A Post-Internet World

I was watching The X-Files earlier. Season 1, which aired in 1993. It’s a fun show; and as a 90s boy (me being born in 1992), it took me back to that hazy world, where the music was different, the haircuts different, even the colour of the streets seemingly different.

The characters step into phone booths to make calls. They still have those televisions which are massive black boxes which flash with those black & white dots when not hooked on to a channel. They still read broadsheet newspapers. I’ll admit a nostalgia for the 1990s and TV shows from that pre-Sopranos age.

But it got me thinking about the main thing missing from the daily lives of people back then.

The internet. They don’t use the internet; it’s just not there … Which is surreal when you compare it to 2023, when all of us are constantly wired to the internet.

So it got me thinking about just how much the world wide web has altered the planet, since the era I mentioned above, when I was a child.

1993 is a convenient year, because this is when the first proper web browser was released to the public. Amazon and eBay were invented in 1995, and Google in 1998. Wikipedia was born in 2001. In 1993, 1% of information fed through global telecommunications networks was performed via the internet. In 2023, it is 100%.

What about TV shows? Well – you remember Blockbuster, right? The video store. That’s what you’d do on a Friday night, go and rent a VHS out to watch the X-Files. Well, Blockbuster declined heavily after the explosion of the internet, and closed its last store in Alaska in 2018.

The internet also killed Toys R Us, RadioShack, Virgin Megastores (in terms of high street shops, in the West), the Discovery Channel Store, Borders book shop, Hastings Entertainment, Dixons entertainment, Woolworths, Sears (which was once the world’s largest retailer) and GameStop, to name a few.

Furthermore, there are whole industries which have had to adapt to the WWW. Pre-internet, and up until the new millennium, almost all books were sold in bookstores, as physical copies. Today, 80% of books are sold online. Specific types of books are no longer bought on demand; such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, travel guides or maps – all of which are easier to access online.

Landlines … for your phone in your house. In the 1990s 9 in 10 of households used their landline phone as a main way of communication. Today it’s 9 in 10 with cellphones.

Journalism. From 2005 to 2021, over 2200 American print newspapers closed in the US; and from 2008 to 2020, the number of American newspaper journalists were cut by half. Similarly, in the UK, around 300 newspapers died away between 2009 and 2019.

The music industry. Is an obvious one, and among those most severely struck. Whilst the net made it far easier to pirate music, platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify removed the need for illegal listeners. The industry itself was among the most profitable in the 1990s. Within the last 20 years its revenue has been reduced by 50%, when taking all sources into account. CD sales reached their peak in the year 2000 in America (a figure of around 900 million). Since then sales have dropped 95%.

And, on a grander scale, we can’t ignore how the internet has altered how we socialise. We spend more time on the internet in our daily lives that we do via communicating with other people face to face.

It’s changed the way we read, and the amount that we read. People are far more likely to skim read articles on a screen and not read beyond the initial three or four paragraphs, especially if this requires clicking ‘next page’ to read on. Writers on the internet now write shorter sentences in order to hold reader attention span.

The internet has changed crime. Through cybercrime, as people find it easier to steal money from long distance locations whilst hiding their identities. It is estimated that over $600 billion is lost (or robbed) each year via cyber criminals.

It’s changed the way people date. People who use dating apps are more likely to have sex sooner in a relationship than those who meet in the ‘traditional’ way; and are more likely to date several people at once before choosing a specific individual. Moreover, it has made people less likely to commit, because with internet dating, they have far more options.

Most of this essay has been negative. One can’t deny that the internet has many positive sides to it too. With Healthcare, for instance: as people are able to communicate with their doctors without having to physically attend a GP, thus making it faster. And in terms of education – one can basically look up any information they please at any point. Rather than having to head to a library or school.

I use the internet all the time as well. Am no different. I suppose it just felt odd, watching the X-Files earlier, as it gave me that dose of what it was like in boyhood. There was Twin Peaks, as well, and Friends, you know, all of those classic 90s shows. I used to watch them on one of those gigantic televisions, which only had four channels.

In 1993, around 15 million people used the internet. Nowadays, over 4.66 billion people are online. That’s less than 1% of the world population in 93, to around 60% of the world population now.

I miss the 1990s. It was a great decade for things like television, and film, and music. Culture in general. The irony is that I no longer own a VHS player. And I was using a streaming site to watch the X-Files earlier. I should feel lucky to have experienced that last-decade-before-the-internet. To belong to the millennials generation.

What I do still have is a retro TV (with the black & white scrambly dots), and a Nintendo 64 and Playstation, oh – and a great collection of CDs. And they’re never getting chucked out, ever. Will keep them, always.

[mariacallous]

Virginia state Sen. Jennifer McClellan will win the special election for Virginia’s 4th Congressional District and will become the first Black woman to represent the commonwealth in Congress, CNN projected Tuesday.

McClellan will defeat Republican Leon Benjamin, a pastor and Navy veteran, to succeed the late Democratic Rep. Donald McEachin, who died in November.

The heavily Democrat district, which comprises the city of Richmond, parts of Henrico County, Petersburg and south toward the state line, had been held by McEachin since 2017. He overwhelmingly defeated Benjamin in 2022 for the seat with 69.4% of the vote.

McClellan outraised and outspent Benjamin in the lead-up to Tuesday’s special election, according to their respective campaigns’ pre-special election reports filed on February 9.

Her election to the US House of Representatives is a milestone for Virginia, a state that was once home to the capital of the Confederacy and is a former slave-trading center. McClellan’s victory will add to what is already a record number of women and women of color in Congress, and also set a new record for the number of Black women, according to data from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

On a busy Saturday ahead of the election, she greeted voters alongside Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a close ally who officiated her wedding, and local and state lawmakers. She also rallied a few dozen campaign volunteers before they went knocking on doors of potential voters and cast her ballot along with her husband, David Mills, with their two children Jackson and Samantha.

“It’s a tremendous honor but it’s also a tremendous responsibility because I need to make sure I’m not the last,” McClellan said after casting her ballot. “And, I have a responsibility to be a mentor and help pave the way for other Black women, whether it’s, you know, running for federal office or running at local or state and to just help as many as I can to succeed.”

Raised in Petersburg, Virginia, McClellan was elected to the House of Delegates in 2005 and won a 2017 special election for state Senate after McEachin was elected to Congress in 2016.

In 2020, she launched a bid for governor, eventually coming in third in the 2021 Democratic primary. Her bid for the US House was a “level up” from her delegate and gubernatorial campaigns, which helped her prepare for this campaign, she told CNN.

“That I had that team ready to go when the special came and it made it very easy to build a very fast campaign. And that the importance of having not only a message that resonates with voters but the resources to communicate it. That both are equally important and having the importance of a field organization, you really need all three, and I was able to pull all three together in a very short amount of time,” she said.

McClellan won the Democratic nomination for the 4th Congressional District in December, defeating fellow state Sen. Joe Morrissey and two other candidates in a “firehouse primary,” which was conducted by party officials across a handful of pop-up voting locations. She took 85% of the vote to Morrissey’s 14%, according to the Virginia Democratic Party. McClellan was backed by party leaders and groups, including House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark and the moderate-backing Democratic Majority for Israel PAC.

During her time in the General Assembly, McClellan has pushed legislation on several issues, including climate, gun reform and education. In 2020, a bill rolling back restrictions on abortion rights that she sponsored in the state Senate was signed into law by then-Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat.

She spearheaded the Voting Rights Act of Virginia, which was signed into law in 2021 and aimed to eliminate voter suppression and intimidation in the commonwealth. McClellan also sponsored her chamber’s resolution that helped Virginia become the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex and guarantees equality for women under the Constitution. (In 2022, state Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, withdrew Virginia from a legal effort to have the Equal Rights Amendment recognized as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.)

McClellan told CNN she plans to continue her work on issues including voting rights, education and access to health care, but she may be met with challenges in the US House. Republicans’ majority in the chamber makes the possibility of passing Democratic-backed priorities slim. And Republicans in the Senate, although still in the minority, have already blocked advancement of previous voting rights measures.

“I was in the minority party for 14 years here,” McClellan said of her time in Richmond. “I learned two things. One, you really need to listen and understand why people believe what they believe, where they are coming from. And when you do that, sometimes you’ll find common ground,” she said. “So, start from that and then see how far you can go. If you can’t find common ground, then persist until you succeed, and I’ve had success doing both at the state level.”

McClellan said she is interested in joining the Armed Services, Agriculture and Foreign Affairs Committees, though said she’d be “happy with whatever I get.” She said she is also excited to join the Congressional Black Caucus.

[hotel-japanifornia]

WIP Game

Tagged by: @f-oighear (thank you! :D)

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Honestly, I don't have a folder so much as I have a disorganized amount of fanfics that I have lying around both my Google Drive and the Documents folder on my computer. But, I'll do my best to list them all anyway. I'm going to go in order from how old the WIP is because I feel like it.

Zidane proposes to Garnet (circa 2014-2015? I wrote this on Notepad so I actually have no idea how old it is)

Babysitter Yamcha (circa August 2016)

Bardine fic (circa April 2017)

Phoenix Never Exists AU with a twist (circa April 2019)

Pre UR-1 Simon and Maya meet (circa 2019)

Maya has a nightmare (circa June 2020)

Will Powers does wholesome shit (circa June 2020)

Edgeworth confesses while drunk off his rocker (circa Jan 2021)

Maya and Penny have sex at SamuraiCon (circa Jan 2021)

Pearl channels Elise (circa Jan 2021)

Third part of the SFG-FR trilogy of oneshots. (circa 2022)

Maya and Phoenix compare taser scars (circa 2020s)

A remake of an old oneshot (circa 2023)

Random pairing drabbles (circa 2023)

"tag as many people as you have WIPs" Hmmm, I'm not entirely sure how many writers I'm following/are following me, but if y'all want to try it, then by all means, go ahead!

[mightyflamethrower]

Residents who fled Multnomah County, Oregon, in 2020 took over $1 billion in income as they searched for a better life in other areas.

The news is according to an analysis of data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Oregonian reported Sunday.

“Numbers gleaned from annual income tax returns provide the most detailed information available on where Americans are moving — and taking their money,” the outlet said:

The latest figures, based on income tax returns filed in 2020 and 2021, show that Multnomah County lost a net 14,257 tax filers and their dependents. The county’s resulting net income loss topped $1 billion for the first time in the decade that the IRS has tracked moving data. The pandemic appeared to prod relatively higher earners — more likely to hold jobs that can be done remotely — to relocate than in pre-pandemic years. The average income of Multnomah County residents who moved away in 2020, the most recent figure available, was 14% higher than of those who moved the year prior, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive’s analysis.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Census found almost three percent of Portland’s population decided to leave between 2020 and 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported in June.

“The drop of about 17,400 to 635,000 was the sixth largest decline among the 50 largest cities,” the article said, noting that local leaders are now desperate to keep people from moving out.

In addition, “Mayor Ted Wheeler, a Democrat, has come under increasing pressure to address rising violent crime and sprawling homeless encampments,” the Journal article stated.

Portland families were reportedly packing up and moving elsewhere because of rampant homelessness and crime plaguing the area, according to a report from August 2022, reported by Breitbart News.

“Portland experienced a massive spike in its homicide rate from 2019 to 2021, recording a 207 percent increase. During that same timeframe, frequent ANTIFA riots were also occurring in the downtown area,” the article said.

In May, KPTV said Portland was “one of the fastest-shrinking U.S. cities.” A reporter for the outlet noted people said data backs up the fact that “Portland just is not what it used to be now.”