#primary beneficiaries

[basileater]

i honestly don't care if feminism helps men too.

[totallyjazzed]

Fuck it

I've got additional bitches in my head, whether they want to talk to me or not is their problem

I'm just gonna start calling myself a system

[willsandtrusts]

When creating a will or trust, naming your primary beneficiary is one of the most crucial decisions. This individual stands first in line to inherit your assets after your passing. But what happens if this primary beneficiary predeceases you? This situation, while disheartening, is more common than you might think. Understanding the implications and planning accordingly is paramount. This article delves into what happens when a primary beneficiary in the UK predeceases the will or trust creator.

[anastasiaoftheironwood]

According to this article, California is likely to have its lowest primary turnout in the state’s history — 29%—"in part because more than 4 in 10 voters are not enthusiastic about voting for president or Congress, according to a Public Policy Institute of California survey." Further: "So far, Republican voters have turned in 32% of the ballots, according to Political Data, Mitchell’s analytics firm that monitors turnout across the state. . . .While there are roughly equal numbers of voters older than 65 and younger than 35 in California, so far 57% of the ballots turned in have been from seniors and only 2% from younger voters." (emphasis added) It's not just California.

You don't have to be "enthusiastic" about the candidate you vote for, but you must vote against the candidate you oppose.

Not voting is not a statement of dissatisfaction with the system; it says you are wiling to accept whatever other people decide, even if it's bad for you.

VOTE. Do not let the other side win because you couldn't be bothered to fill out a ballot.

[reasonsforhope]

"A trial programme providing a free meal a day has yielded not just financial relief for households but also improved child nutrition and student outcomes such as attendance and focus.

The free school lunch initiative for children from poor or disadvantaged families was introduced by President-elect Prabowo Subianto and Vice-President-elect Gibran Rakabuming Raka as one of their key campaign promises. Mr Gibran is President Joko Widodo’s elder son...

The pair – who won the Feb 14 presidential election by a landslide and will be inaugurated in October – had in the lead-up to the polls pledged to offer free lunches and milk for students as well as nutritional aid to toddlers and pregnant women in a bid to lower the country’s stunting rate.

Over 20 per cent of Indonesian children under the age of five experienced stunted growth in 2022, according to the United Nations. Stunting, which is being too short for one’s age as a result of poor nutrition, can result in long-term development delays.

When fully implemented by 2029, the programme will cover 83.9 million beneficiaries across the world’s fourth-most-populous nation of nearly 280 million, and cost over 400 trillion rupiah (S$33.7 billion) a year – about 2 per cent of annual gross domestic product.

But on the ground, a trial that was first rolled out in January at 16 schools in Sukabumi, in West Java, has been warmly received by around 3,500 students, their parents and school leaders, who have seen positive changes.

For one thing, saving on the cost of lunches for four of her nine children has provided significant finan­cial relief for Indonesian house­wife Rofiati, 46.

Her husband, a teacher at an Islamic boarding school in Sukabumi, earns 2.5 million rupiah a month on average, and the free school meals have helped them save about 420,000 rupiah monthly, which she can put towards other household needs.

Her children do not usually have breakfast before school. Before the free lunch programme, her children would eat lunch only upon returning home from school. Lunch would usually consist of instant noodles, or dishes of vegetables, eggs, tempeh or salted fish.

“I am not worried any more because I know they will eat at school. They have more appetite as they eat together with their friends,” Ms Rofiati told The Straits Times, adding that her children’s appetites have improved and they also like the variety of the meals provided. In fact, her 11-year-old daughter has gained 4kg since the programme started.

Every day, students on the programme receive a lunch package worth 15,000 rupiah, containing rice, meat such as chicken, fish or beef, vegetables, fruit and milk.

At home, the family usually eats meat only once a week.

It is not just the financial savings that parents are happy about. Ms Depi Ratna Juwarti, who has two out of three children benefiting from the free lunches, has noticed other encouraging results.

“They rarely get sick now. They are more motivated to study and spend a longer time studying at night,” Ms Depi said.

Her eldest daughter, Adifa Alifiya Mahrain, 12, also has good reviews. “The food is always delicious and the menu changes every day. I always eat everything. It’s a lot of fun to eat together with my friends,” said Adifa, who hopes to become a paediatrician in the future.

Mr Shalahudin Sanusi, principal of Gelarsari Islamic primary school in Sukabumi, which is trialling the programme, said he has noticed that pupils have been able to concentrate better and understand lessons more.

He said the initiative has raised the attendance rate of its 110 pupils from 85 per cent to 95 per cent. “They eat modestly at home – mostly rice and salted fish. Rice and eggs are the best they can get,” he told ST. “Now, they are so excited, some even arrive in school at 6am, an hour before lessons start.”"

-via The Straits Times, May 18, 2024

[fractualized]

In "Perp Walk", what do you think Bruce means when he says Joker "made him better"?

I have a few answers to this, starting with how the comic places the dialogue over visuals that, despite the lack of Red Hood, appear to recount Joker's fall into the vat.

[Batman: the Brave and the Bold #13]

Bruce had been Batman for some time before that night. I believe it's usually a year or so? But anyway, he says that he started out thinking of himself as a symbol of fear and justice, and note that "justice" is positioned over the fall into the vat. Initially this feels like it indicates the fall is a deserved consequence, but then the next panel with Bruce pulling Joker out, says, "Joker changed all that." As in Joker made him rethink his approach of focusing on fear and justice, which puts a different light on the "justice" panel, implying that it was anything but. Joker was only fleeing from a robbery that night, after all.

As the page goes on, the panels focus the pain and horror of Joker's transformation and Bruce's reaction to it. Bruce's face first looks determined, then shifts to wide-eyed surprise, and then appears understandably disturbed by the acid eating away at Joker's face. And over this, Bruce says that Joker changed him. Certainly over the years Joker pushed Bruce to confront greater threats than he ever imagined, but with this imagery, I also take this remark to mean that Bruce had to rethink being a force only of fear and justice. Even if Joker refused to be a beneficiary of any compassion Batman offered, Bruce saw firsthand how reacting to crime only with intimidation and violence compounded the problem he was trying to address.

We can also zoom out to the meta perspective. Joker has been Bruce's primary nemesis since 1940, and a hero is only as impressive as the challenges they overcome. The Clown Prince of Crime's schemes escalate higher and higher as time goes on, and Bruce continues to deliver defeat after defeat. It's this perseverence as a nonpowered hero that's made Batman a figure of hope to so many people, and of course contributed his indelible mark on pop culture. (And yes I still say this as someone who constantly talks about how insane he is.)

Joker making Batman better has been mentioned in comics before this, of course. A recent example is Snyder's Death of the Family storyline, in which Joker insists to Batman that his human connections make him soft, and that he was a better Batman when he was a loner.

[Batman (2011) #13]

You know how you help your pal and get back to how things used to be by trying to convince him to kill his own family.

Obviously Bruce does not do that, and he protests that his family makes him better. And yet throughout this whole ordeal, Bruce has to rise above and use all his skills to stop Joker like always.

Joker pushing Batman happens again not too many years after that in Tynion's Joker War. Through elaborate machinations, Joker takes away Bruce's fortune, his main resource in fighting, incapacitates him, and unleashes anarchy, like ya do. In their final confrontation, Joker gives this speech about his reasoning:

[Batman (2016) #100]

All this talk about how Bruce doesn't even understand the city, and yet Joker's endgame here is to force Batman to start over from nothing. He expects Bruce to get back up again, to work at correcting his mistakes.

Of course, Joker ends up defeated. But in the next issue, Bruce says that in some ways, Joker was correct:

[Batman (2016) #101]

And Bruce does make some changes, such as moving from the manor to the brownstone in the city to live among the people he protects.

Now, considering the context, one may return to Bruce's appreciation in "Perp Walk" and think, "Hey, Bruce, you remember Joker killed people, right?" Yes! Welcome to batjokes.

[fatehbaz]

They’ve built a “Great Wheel” on the Seattle waterfront [...].

The small timber village became a military outpost in the Puget Sound War [...], [and] soon evolved into a trade gateway, with timber tailings and other industrial trash from Henry Yesler’s mill used to fill in the marshlands [...], atop which migrant laborers raised tents and shanties [...] now working to feed raw materials into the furnaces of the Second Industrial Revolution burning in the East. [...] The first nationwide strike ripped across the country’s railways in 1877, but in Seattle the unrest took on a grim character, as thousands of unemployed white workers rioted against their Chinese counterparts [...]. Meanwhile, [...] local elites rebuilt [...] downtown [...] from scratch, hosting the tallest building on the West Coast alongside other new constructs [fueled] with money gleaned from the supply chains linking eastern capital to Alaskan gold. [...] Today the city - again rebuilt [...] - is seen as one of the primary beneficiaries of the “Fifth” Industrial Revolution in information technology, outshone only by California’s Silicon Valley. [...] The digital was increasingly thought of as somehow "immaterial," sustained by intellectual labor more than physical toil [...].

Silicon Valley myths of [...] "immaterial" labor disguise a more gruesome dynamic in which growing segments of the global labor force are being deprived even of the basic brutality of the wage, instead forced out into growing rings of slums, prisons, and global wastelands. [...]

---

Perched alongside a downtown business corridor [...], Seattle's Great Wheel seems to peer out over [...] [the] prophesied “cooperative commons,” an infotech metropolis abutting the beauty of an evergreen arcadia. But travel below Seattle’s cluster of infotech industries and the image appears much the same as that of a hundred years prior - a trade gateway, squeezing value from supply chains by selling transport and logistical support. The southern stretch of the metropolis bears little resemblance to the revitalized urban core of the city proper. Instead of the “cognitive labor” of Microsoft, it is defined instead by the cold calculation of companies like UPS, founded in Seattle when the city was one link in a colonial supply chain built first for timber, then Alaskan gold, then World War. [...]

In south Seattle, this logistics empire takes the form of faceless warehouses, food processing facilities, container trucks, rail yards, and industrial parks concentrated between two seaports, an international airport, three major interstates, and railroads traveling in all directions. Meanwhile, the poor have been priced out of the old inner city, moving southward [...]. [T]hey can be found staffing the airport and the rail yards, hauling cargo in and out of two the major seaports, loading boxes in warehouses [...]. And, beyond them, the shadow stretches out to Washington’s rural hinterlands where migrant laborers staff a new boom in agriculture and raw materials [...] - and further still into America’s long-depressed interior, where the Great Wheel meets its opposite: Memphis, the FedEx logistics city, watched over by a great black pyramid [the infamous Bass Pro Shop pyramid]. [...]

Every Seattle is capable of creating an eco-friendly, “cooperative commonwealth” tended by apps and algorithms only insofar as there is a Memphis that can provide human workers to sort the packages, a Shanghai to build the containers that carry them, and a Shenzhen to solder together the circuits of the machines that govern it all.

---

All text above by: Phil A. Neel. "The Great Wheel". Brooklyn Rail. April 2015. Published online at: brooklynrail.org/2015/04/field-notes/the-great-wheel. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Presented here for commentary, teaching, personal use, criticism purposes.]

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Questions for democracy

Many self described liberals and leftists who have not taken the coconut pill are grousing about the Dems being undemocratic. I see a series of much more profound questions.

Biden running despite massive unpopularity and having an incredibly safe primary is “undemocratic.” I agree! So how do you not do that in a democracy?

Biden dropping out and transferring his campaign assets to a designated beneficiary (Harris) with no consequences or friction is potentially undemocratic but I think this illegitimacy is a consequence of having faced a largely bloodless primary and voters not taking Vice Presidents seriously.

The primary aspect is an establishment issue: the risks of being a contrarian and running against an incumbent should be lesser and in normal times they probably would be but we live in an era of high stakes and tight margins. Risk aversion has become the Democratic political religion at the same time the GOP have become feral except when it comes to directly challenging Trump.

Not taking VPs seriously is a luxury that we have enjoyed since before many of us were born. It’s been a minute since we had to seriously consider removal from office by natural causes, assassination, or resignation. No President since Nixon has been cowed by threats of removal and the bipartisan will hasn’t existed in that long.

We should no longer permit ourselves to pretend the VP isn’t a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

If we don’t like these things about our political culture and system, then what? Grousing about legitimacy should come with introspection.

[queenvhagar]

It seems like a lot of House of the Dragon's writing issues in the first season stem from the disastrous final season of Game of Thrones, specifically the rushed implementation of Daenerys' Mad Queen arc. It feels like the writers and HBO are hyper aware of Daenerys' ending being fumbled and the negative audience reaction it garnered, and now they're trying to correct the mistakes of the main series through the prequel series and specifically its characterization of Rhaenyra. Both Rhaenyra and Daenerys are Targaryen dragon riding queens motivated by their perceived birthright, but the similarities between the two characters are surface-level. In reality, Daenerys and Rhaenyra are not the same character, and the story of the Dance of the Dragons is not the story of the War of the Five Kings.

Daenerys is the last Targaryen (as she knows it), a former slave who seeks to use the power of her dragons to reclaim the throne and in the process abolish the institution of slavery as it exists in the world, a true revolutionary who seeks to transform society through fire and blood if need be (and if a Mad Queen arc appears in the books, it will undoubtedly be because the existing Lords in Westeros would likely oppose a restructure of society - after all, they are the primary beneficiaries of the feudalist society - and this could lead to conflict with Daenerys, which would escalate).

Rhaenyra is the named heir to the throne. Her position is "quite comfortable" - she enjoys her privileges (which is very fair of her). However, her privileged position above others leads her to act according only to her own desires and not her duty as heir. She fights only for herself and her own (although the show added the prophecy to obscure this motivation), and despite having the power and influence as the most powerful woman in the realm to promote "a new order" as she once envisioned a child, she repeatedly reinforces existing structures to further her own power (like defending Lucerys' illegitimate claim so her own looks stronger with her son as Lord of Driftmark instead of advocating for Baela to inherit as Laena's eldest daughter, something that ironically could have really supported her own claim of "eldest child inherits" in the process - and she could have sidestepped the bastard issue). Rhaenyra wants to be the exception to the rules; she doesn't seek to rewrite them for anyone else. Rhaenyra is a "rebel" only in the sense that she's breaking the law and then using her privilege to avoid facing the consequences of her actions at all costs.

You can argue that both Rhaenyra and Daenerys are breaking ground when it comes to becoming queen of Westeros, and both are motivated by their beliefs in Targaryen supremacy and their perceived birthrights to the throne. They might both be known as a "Mad Queen" - Rhaenyra's arc will come, and when it does, I'm really hoping it will be because of the reasons it was in the books: her suspicion and distrust leading her to isolate herself from her allies, eventually turning on them, and her disregard for the commonfolk leading to her being driven out of the city and the death of dragons (though I won't be surprised if the writers shy away from this, in fear of repeating any aspect of Daenerys' portrayal). But fundamentally, trying to write Rhaenyra to be Daenerys 2.0 so that they can fix the mistake of the Game of Thrones ending kind of ruins the Dance.

The Dance wasn't written as just the tragedy of a heroic girl taken down by sexism and misunderstandings, which is the story the show seems to be trying to tell. It's the tragedy of a family tearing itself apart, of the cultural conflict between Westeros and their Valyrian conquerors, of the desire for power and the lengths one will go to in order to get it.

But the writers are more interested in trying to tell a largely black and white story where they can make up for what they did with Daenerys' arc. Unfortunately for everyone, Rhaenyra is not Daenerys, and the Dance is not the War of the Five Kings.

[willsandtrusts]

When creating a will or trust, naming your primary beneficiary is one of the most crucial decisions. This individual stands first in line to inherit your assets after your passing. But what happens if this primary beneficiary predeceases you? This situation, while disheartening, is more common than you might think. Understanding the implications and planning accordingly is paramount. This article delves into what happens when a primary beneficiary in the UK predeceases the will or trust creator.

[morbidology]

Tina Watson, born Christina Mae Thomas, was a 26-year-old woman from Alabama who had recently married Gabe Watson, her college sweetheart. The couple had a shared interest in scuba diving, and they chose the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia, as the perfect destination to kick off their new life together. Gabe, an experienced diver, had over 50 dives under his belt, while Tina was relatively new to the sport.

On October 22, 2003, the couple joined a group of divers for an expedition at a site called the SS Yongala, a shipwreck popular among divers. According to Gabe Watson, shortly after the dive began, Tina began to experience difficulties. Gabe later claimed that Tina panicked and knocked his mask off, causing him to swim to the surface to get help. When he returned, he said, Tina was already unconscious on the ocean floor.

Tina was rescued by another diver and brought to the surface, where attempts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful. She was pronounced dead on the scene, and what had begun as a dream honeymoon had turned into an unimaginable nightmare.

Tina’s death was initially ruled an accident, attributed to drowning and possible inexperience with diving. However, as the investigation progressed, authorities began to suspect foul play. Witnesses reported seeing Gabe Watson act unusually during the dive, and questions were raised about the couple’s relationship and the circumstances leading up to Tina’s death.

The most damning evidence against Gabe Watson came from Tina’s autopsy, which suggested that her death might not have been accidental. It was determined that Tina’s air supply had been turned off during the dive, and her body was found in an area where the current was not strong enough to have caused the kind of panic that Gabe described. Additionally, investigators discovered that Gabe had increased Tina’s life insurance policy shortly before the wedding, with himself as the primary beneficiary.

Furthermore, fellow diver, Dr Stanley Stutz told authorities that he had witnessed David giving Christina a “bear hug” as she was flailing in the water, clearly distressed, before he saw David reappear at the surface as Christina sunk to the bottom. Another diver, Gary Stempler, snapped the disturbing above photograph which shows Christina lying on the bottom of the ocean. The photos were developed a few weeks after her death.

In 2008, five years after Tina's death, Gabe Watson was charged with her murder by Australian authorities. Watson agreed to return to Australia to face the charges, and in 2009, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter, claiming that he had failed to fulfill his duty as her dive buddy. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison, a sentence that many, including Tina’s family, felt was shockingly lenient.

Following his release from prison in Australia, Gabe Watson returned to the United States, where he faced additional charges of murder in Alabama. U.S. prosecutors argued that Watson had plotted to kill Tina in order to collect on her life insurance, and they sought to try him for capital murder.

The case drew significant media attention, with debates over whether Watson should be tried again for the same crime he had already been convicted of in Australia. In 2012, the Alabama judge overseeing the case dismissed the charges due to insufficient evidence, concluding that there was no proof that Watson had intentionally killed his wife.

[j2eonij]

I'm 100% sure that if we let baeddels have a complete monopoly on gender politics, discourses, movements, that they can say anything they want without any backlash, they'll institutionalize the idea that AFABs are in fact the dominant class of the patriarchy, that we oppresses trans women, cis men and other amab groups, that we are its primary beneficiaries and therefore have a vested interest in preserving it.

Lmfao look at this.

Cis men being seen as "at risk of being tma and therefore cannot be considered tme" means that your tma vs tme analysis of gendered power relations implies that cis women dominate and oppress cis men, that afabs have power over amabs, and that we were right when we warned that tme tma are replacements for afab and amab - tme being used to dismiss, misrepresent and villy us as the oppressors.

The whole ideology they're trying to normalize encourages cis men and transfems to ally with each other *against afab people*, because in this worldview we're seen as the class that oppresses both groups! The likely reaction of afab people exposed to such ideas is radicalization in the other direction: with afabs and against amabs. Are these baeddels aware of this outcome?

Sometimes I wonder if these people aren't some kind of terf psyop to fuel a gender war in the trans community in order to weaken it from within

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

It’s called asymmetrical warfare. If you can’t face off successfully against a more powerful nation on the battlefield you weaken and ultimately destroy it with attacks on infrastructure and disinformation to divide its people. It’s one of the main reasons Republicans want to kill off the rest of us and divide into smaller nations.

Who would benefit from American internal strife, civil war, or secession? Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea would be the primary beneficiaries of a weakened or divided America. Oligarchs also would have a field day plundering the remnants of the US if the government could no longer enforce regulation of industry, commerce, and banking.

Right-wingers, many trained on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, have been testing the waters by launching physical attacks on power grids. The right wing lunatic fringe believes the government would dissolve if power were lost just for two weeks. They could then live out their well known desire to be in an apocalyptic Wild West state.

[luminousbeings-crudematter]

Alford Plea

PART 3 - Anticipated Penalty

PAIRING:  Chef! Simon “Ghost” Riley x F!Reader 

WARNINGS: it’s nasty, it’s in the kitchen, Simon’s a dick, Reader’s a dick and this is some next level self-insertion. 18+ only.

4 part series + 1 "epilogue", all written, updates every Sat

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4 || Epilogue

__

Alford Plea: A guilty plea containing a protestation of innocence.

or

Where you knew that fucking your boss could not possibly end well, but you did it anyway, because what else were you going to do?  Not fuck him?

__

THEN

“Simon,” you whine.  “F-fuck just–please, fuck…” you trail off in a moan because the capacity to speak in full words finally seems to leave you.  You don’t even know what you want from him.  For him to slow down?  Or speed up?

He stands behind you on the edge of the bed, while you’re in…a compromised position.  His arm feels sturdy and solid on your back, pushing your chest firmly into the bed, while he grinds his pelvis into yours from behind you.  Only your feet dangle off the edge of the bed, and his hips make slow, languishing contact with yours, but he’s so much taller, so much more imposing, that he has to bend forward and bring his chest almost flush against your back. The motion pushes him so much deeper inside you, you’re not sure where you end and he begins.      

You don’t know what you want, and it seems almost pointless to even want to figure it out at this point.  

 Your face is turned to the side, watching him in the mirror, watching what Simon Riley looks like inside you.  His brow is furrowed—he has the exact same look when he’s trying to block everything out and concentrate on a singular task at work, you realise—and oh.  He’s looking at you through the mirror too.  Speaking to you?

“...d’you want, sweet girl?  Tell me and s’yours, love.”  But his words are slurred, drunk from the alcohol,  drunk off the way you feel around him, tight and warm and practically strangling his cock inside you. 

What you want most of all, you decide, is for him to never stop.

____

NOW

It’s your own fault for jinxing the day the way that you’d done.

You’d made the stupid mistake of thinking that lunch service had been relatively breezy, and now hell itself had opened up from beneath your feet to spew the most fucking vile dicks that had ever eaten at the restaurant.  Ordering off the menu, failing to understand the concept of rare meat, wanting faster service, wanting and wanting and wanting.     

You want to kill them all, and then set the whole kitchen on fire.  

It also doesn’t help that despite all of it, the primary recipient of your ire is Simon. 

 You’re not a complete idiot—you didn’t expect him to…well, you didn’t expect anything from him.  Obviously, the previous night was a mistake and you needed to acknowledge that you’d both fucked up and then move on.  Except…

Except you couldn’t.  You couldn’t pretend the previous night was a mistake and you couldn’t just move on.    

He has a certain way of moving through the kitchen, you realise, as you glance up at him from your station while you plate up.  There's a method to his madness, a unique grace in his chaos.  It’s why the kitchen runs so well.  He’s committed to his work, works just as hard as anyone else, and he may be a dick, but he leads the kitchen well, paying attention to the most minute details.  

And you know Simon can pay attention.  You’ve been the beneficiary of his attention, after all.   He gave you his attention last night—more than once—and then this morning—again, more than once—and boy, are you hoping to have some of his attention—

“Chef.”

He’s standing in front of you, looming over you, peering with barely-restrained disdain at the side salad you’re assembling. 

“You feelin’ alright?” 

You can imagine your face right now—caught looking like a deer caught in the headlights (or a stupid woman looking at her boss that she fucked the night before)—and look back down to your salad.  Then back up at him.  “...yes?”

“Is that the salad you make when you’re feelin’ alright, Chef?”

You’re only just coming to realise that he’s not floating on the same cloud you are, and you’re moments away from being chewed out by Chef Riley, your employer, not Simon, the man you fucked last night.

“I…what’s wrong with it?”

You’ve never heard a more derisive scoff leave someone’s mouth before.  “Start again.  S’ain’t leavin’ my kitchen, understood?” 

“What’s wrong with it?”  You cross your arms across your chest and you see his eyes lazily make the journey from your face down to your chest, and lingering, before they lift back up to your eyes.  He takes a step forward in your direction, and you have to struggle to control your breathing and hold your ground.  

You hear the lull of conversation hush around you, turn into tense murmurs.  This isn’t new.  You butt heads with Simon a lot.  But, for no obvious reason, he seems particularly unimpressed with you today.     

 “Do as I say, Chef.  Not repeatin’ myself.”  And with that, he steps back and turns to leave.  

 The dismissal stings.  You hate to admit it to yourself, you hate to even think about it, but you’d thought that the night before had meant something to him.  You didn’t have delusions of grandeur—you weren’t expecting to be treated like anything special—but you had expected him to be nicer.  Maybe…more kind.  And not only was he not being nicer, he was going out of his way to be a dickhead.  

“No,” you gripe.  “I’ve made it like the spec says, and it’s good to go.  Go find someone else to bully, Simon.”

It’s like watching a car crash—you know it’s horrible and awful and you should peel your eyes away from the mess—but you can’t look away.  You have an out-of-body experience, watching yourself in slow motion as you say the words to your boss, and you can do nothing but continue to watch in horror as it happens.  It doesn’t even occur to you to shut your mouth.     

Simon pauses, his shoulders frozen tight, and then turns towards you slowly.  Disobedience does happen, in his kitchen.  He allows people to challenge him, to disagree with him.  He’s not unreasonable.  

But disrespect?  In front of his staff?  

He looms over you, and you’re already wondering where else you can find a job that doesn’t require a long commute.

He leans forward towards you, and his voice is a whisper that gives you goosebumps on your arms when he speaks.  “Just for tha’, ‘m going to stuff your mouth full till you can’t speak, love.” 

And oh, he doesn’t realise what he’s done.  The hard 180.  The professional disrespect.  The fact that everyone you work with, everyone, is watching you.

You watch in slow motion for the second time in the day as your open palm makes contact with his cheek.     

____

THEN

Simon Riley kisses you like you’ve never been kissed before.  It’s equal parts passionate and arrogant, exactly like he is.

His hands come up to hold your face in place while he thoroughly explores the hot cavern of your mouth.  His tongue fights yours for dominance, and he kisses you for so long that it feels like a fight turning into an argument, then a bicker and when you grind your hips against his, looking instinctually for some friction, he groans against your mouth, surrendering, finally letting you win.  

This time, it’s your hands that move into his hair, running over the diligently kept crop until you reach the nape of his neck and pull him deeper into you.  His hands feel warm and a comforting kind of big as they shamelessly explore the contours of your body.  He runs curious but confident hands along the sides of your waist, squeezing and pulling your hips into his.     

He breaks away from you for a moment only to reach behind him and pull his shirt off in the particularly sexy way that men tend to.  The way that is designed to drive women like you insane.  

This is it, you realise.  He’s taken his shirt off, and soon, yours will join it on the floor.  Nothing will ever be the same.   Point of no return.

You’re less bothered by the thought than you thought you’d be, you realise, as you take a step away from him.  You see Simon’s eyes widen, and he runs a shaky hand through his hair.  You take your own shirt off.  

You don’t realise it then, but you’ve never been more correct.  You’ve just about demolished the relationship you’ve had with Simon up to that point, and nothing stays the same after that moment. 

____

A/N: yeah…full brainrot took over at this point

A/N 2: this wasn't uploaded yesterday (as it should have been) purely because of who I am as a person

Taglist: @mykneeshurt || @random-thot-generator || @xintothewoodswegox

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

If you are not a close follower of American college campus politics, you are likely to be unfamiliar with a woman who has been making headlines for over a month in the US and increasingly around the world. The lady in question, one Claudine Gay, was President of Harvard, one of the most renowned educational institutions in the world, until earlier this week when she resigned over plagiarism allegations.

Why does or should anyone care about this? Well, Gay’s decision to step down is the culmination of long-running efforts to address the cancer at the heart of Western societies: the idea that the way to fix injustices of the past is to commit injustices today.

Following her resignation, Gay’s defenders were quick to emphasise the racial dimension of this story. Ibram X. Kendi, for example, tweeted that “Racist mobs won’t stop until they topple all Black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structure of racism”.

And while his claims of this being a racist campaign are absurd, it is true that Gay was not targeted solely for seemingly adopting the personal motto: “I came, I saw, I copied”. She became a focus of major Harvard donor concerns and a media campaign led by Christopher Rufo – a man I would approvingly describe as the diversity industry’s greatest enemy – in the light of her mind-boggling testimony in Congress. Her statements, given alongside the Presidents of MIT and UPenn, revealed the core of the ideology the entire Western education system is based on in all its glory.

The oppressor vs. oppressed mindset which is - no matter how uncomfortable this may make some readers - cultural Marxism, says simply that white people and “over-performing” minorities like Indians, Jews, Chinese, Japanese and Korean Americans should be discriminated against in hiring and student applications in favour of “underprivileged groups”. As a result, college campuses on which regular meltdowns have occurred for a decade over such “hate speech” as dressing in a Mexican costume for Halloween found themselves with nothing to say about pro-Hamas demonstrations and the harassment of Jewish students on their campuses in the wake of the October 7 attacks.

But even that is not painting the full picture. Yes, Gay, a darling of the diversity industry, was targeted for her plagiarism following her complete failure of leadership in recent months. But she was also partially targeted because of the assumption, if not outright conclusion, that the reason she was appointed in the first place was, to put it mildly, not merit alone.

After all, Gay’s primary achievement is not stellar academic work, exemplary managerial skills or even charisma and force of personality. She was appointed President of Harvard following a distinguished career in fields like “improving diversity” and researching “race and identity”. To put it bluntly, many people believe that she is a diversity hire and the reason she pushed the DEI ideology that eventually led to her appalling testimony in Congress is that she is herself a beneficiary of it.

To be clear, she has not been forced out for being black. She has been forced out for being placed in a position for which she had neither the skills nor experience to succeed and then failing in it. This is the rotten legacy of affirmative action, which, as Thomas Sowell explained decades ago in 90 seconds and in many of his books since, hurts the very people it is attempting to help:

If allowing students to enter universities in which they are destined to fail for the sake of diversity harms them, then what might be said about hiring people for leadership roles in major institutions in which they are destined to fail? This harms not only them but also the people who work and study at those institutions.

To be clear, I have no evidence that Claudine Gay was hired ahead of better, more qualified candidates. But it is not hard to imagine that a position holding the prestige, reputation and nearly $1-million-a-year salary the role of Harvard President commands could have been filled by someone with more executive experience, academic achievements and other relevant expertise.

This is the other curse of the counterproductive attempts to artificially increase the presence of “underrepresented” groups in employment and education. Because everyone knows that some people are routinely given unfair preferential treatment, it becomes easier and easier for the rest of us to suspect specific individuals of being there for reasons other than merit.

So here is the truth: we must return to pursuing the goal of a colour-blind society immediately. There is no such thing as positive discrimination. All discrimination is wrong. And because it is wrong, it will create precisely the kind of resentment that Claudine Gay is now facing. She is seen as the standard-bearer of the DEI industry and is being treated as such by people who have had enough.

All of us must be treated on the content of our character. When we refuse to follow this principle, we hurt everyone: white, black, hispanic, Asian, Jewish. A healthy society relies on the equal treatment of all individuals. The fact that we have to say this out loud in 2024 is a sign of how far we’ve fallen.

DEI must be dismantled. This will take years, perhaps decades. But, in recent weeks, for the first time in a long time, we have grounds for optimism.

[canonicallyobserving911]

First Child (Buck) & First Baby (Buck and Eddie)

Fanonwriter2023 on AO3

Where CANON and FANON collide!

FANON Future Buddie Fanfic Series

New Buddie Fanfic

Part 15 - Chapter 6 is now available on AO3. There's one more chapter after this one then both the fic and the series will be complete.

First Child (Buck) & First Baby (Buck and Eddie) - Eddie’s been a father for almost 14 years and Buck’s been a legal guardian to the same child for 4 years. However, after a court hearing, Buck will become a father to their first child and the title of legal guardian will be given to someone else. Also, one year and three months later, Buck and Eddie will welcome their first baby into the world.

First Child (Buck) & First Baby (Buck and Eddie)

Currently 123.3K Words and 6 of 7 Chapters have been posted; Rated: Mature

Chapters will be posted one at a time.

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Here's a snippet from Chapter 6 of a phone conversation that began with Buck but Eddie continued it after Buck's phone slipped from his hand and he was no longer able to continue it.

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Once a couple of seconds have passed since Buck last responded to the caller, he starts loudly speaking into the receiver and asks, “Mr. Buckley-Diaz, are you still there?”

Eddie hears him and so does the rest of A-shift.

While continuing to maintain eye contact with his husband, Eddie picks it up and replies, “Hello, my name is Eddie and I’m Buck’s husband. He’s not able to respond but if you’re allowed to speak with me, I can handle the call.”

“You’re Mr. Edmundo Marques Buckley-Diaz, correct?”

“Yes, I am. Could you please tell me your name and the reason for your call?”

“Of course, Mr. Buckley-Diaz. My name is Lawton Gurnsey, I’m an estate attorney here in Los Angeles with the Blaylock, Gurnsey and Madison law firm and I can speak with either of you because you’re both listed as primary beneficiaries on William and Sandra Miller’s estate account and that’s the reason for my call. As the executor and trustee, I have some important information to provide to both of you but before I can continue, I need to first verify your identity.”

“Ok, what information do you need from me?”

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First Love Confession -Buck and Eddie share their first real and meaningful love confession.

First Date - Buck and Eddie go on their first date.

First Kiss - Buck and Eddie share their first kiss.

First Argument - Buck and Eddie have their first argument.

First Couples Therapy Session- Buck and Eddie go to their first couples therapy sessions.

First Time - Eddie and Buck make love for the first-time.

First Morning After - The night after Buck and Eddie make love for the first-time, they spend their first morning after together.

First Relationship Reveal - Buck and Eddie’s first relationship reveal.

First Mourning - Buck and Eddie experience their first mourning after a loss together.

First Marriage Proposal - Eddie and Buck’s first marriage proposal.

First Fiancé Introductions - Buck and Eddie’s first introductions as fiancés.

First Wedding Planning & Preparation - Buck and Eddie’s first planning and preparation for their wedding and honeymoon.

First Civil Marriage Ceremony - Buck and Eddie’s first civil marriage ceremony.

First Honeymoon - Buck and Eddie’s first honeymoon.

First Child (Buck) & First Baby (Buck and Eddie) - Eddie’s been a father for almost 14 years and Buck’s been a legal guardian to the same child for 4 years. However, after a court hearing, Buck will become a father to their first child and the title of legal guardian will be given to someone else. Also, one year and three months later, Buck and Eddie will welcome their first baby into the world.

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Their Firsts, At Last - 425K Words; Currently 14 completed works and 1 in progress: A multi-part fanfic series about the romantic “firsts” Buck and Eddie share as they journey through life in an established relationship and their lives as a couple will include some of Buck’s individual “firsts” too. It’s filled with the FANON love, romance, fluff and domesticity their relationship should have been allowed to experience in CANON. The second part of the series title was adapted from the song “At Last” by Etta James.

This series of FANON future speculation fanfics is being written on a continuous timeline that begins with the start of season 7 (if it were to start in September 2023). Each part ends at a specific point in Buck and Eddie’s relationship so the next part can begin with the ending of the previous part. Therefore, parts 1-14 should be read prior to reading part 15 and the series will continue in that manner until it’s complete.

Parts 1 - 15 are available on AO3

Part 15 has 7 chapters but they will be posted one at a time. Currently, Chapters 1 - 6 are available on AO3 and once Chapter 7 is posted, both the fic and the series will be complete.