#she's being a bad socialist by putting profit over people

[beardedmrbean]

Gracias Madre, a popular vegan eatery in San Francisco's Mission District, closed its doors this week after more than a decade due to the city's deteriorating conditions. 

"Our mission was always to honor the mothers who give so much to serve, care for and live in hope for their families, especially those of Mexico. It has been an honor to work on behalf of their generosity and sacrifice all these years," a note posted outside the restaurant — and on the web — read in part. 

"The condition of life in San Francisco has deteriorated and made running a small business nearly impossible," the note continued.

SAN FRANCISCO CRIME PROBLEM RUNS DEEPER THAN ROSY STATISTICS FROM CITY, EXPERTS SAY

Betty Yu, reporter for CBS News in the Bay Area, quoted Gracias Madre's ex-general manager Joseph Donohueas saying that many people found it "a little bit too dangerous" to visit the restaurant at night due to lack of parking spaces and, if people did manage to find a place to park, the thought of someone breaking into their vehicle kept them on edge.

"So a lot of customers did say that they wouldn't come at night," he said.

Speaking to SFGate, Donohue blamed the "economy" and "the state of the Mission" for its closure. "If you go over a block to Valencia it looks like it’s a completely different city … they’re paying attention to one area and forgetting about the other areas of the city, which is kind of upsetting."

He also said the site never bounced back from damage dealt by the pandemic.

SAN FRANCISCO HAS THE WORST PANDEMIC RECOVERY IN THE NATION AS THE CITY IS MIRED IN CRIME, HOMELESSNESS: STUDY

The popular restaurant served organic and vegan fare priding itself on serving "traditional Mexican cuisine, made from scratch using local, organic, plant-based ingredients," according to its website. The restaurant reportedly opened in 2009, although the note to customers said there were closing their doors "after 16 years."

Gracias Madre's two other locations in California — West Hollywood and Newport Beach — remain open for now.

Fox News Digital reached out to Gracias Madre for additional comment, but did not receive an immediate response.

Crime has also wreaked havoc on Cafe International in the Golden City, forcing it to close short-term — for a week — after owner Zahra Saleh posted on social media that she needs time to "rest, think and regroup" her "violated state of mind" after witnessing so much crime in the area.

SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR FIRES BACK AFTER ‘GOOD MORNING AMERICA’ CALLS HER CITY'S DOWNTOWN ‘DANGEROUS’: REPORT

"Daily shoplifting, extortion coupled with a propensity of violence, back to back break-ins and thousands of dollars in debt for property damages," she wrote on Instagram. "My Lower Haight is sinking in sea of lawlessness and the ship captains and politicians are bickering among each other, blaming each other in a d--- size measuring contest while small businesses suffer…"

"We are currently on our own…" Saleh continued.

As many businesses flee the crime-ridden city, she remains determined to stay behind, finishing her statement with, "I need to think of something. I will not leave my city."

Last September, Tom Wong, who owned a private security firm in San Francisco, told "Fox & Friends First" he had also had enough of crime and homelessness in the city. 

"My business was robbed. It was broken into, and my equipment was robbed. My vehicle was constantly being broken into," he said.

[kojinnie]

AOT Characters’ Modern Jobs Headcanon; The Vets Edition!

The jobs that The Vets would have in modern!au, their workplace antics and their back story. There might be some inaccuracies when describing the job as obviously I don’t work at these industries to know its intricacies. Most of the jobs are office jobs. Enjoyyyy!

My Masterlist .::. Pt. II: Zeke Yeager’s Modern Jobs Headcanon   

Most recent work: Dream Me Home (Before Shiganshina) | reader x erwin smith

A/N: I really need to finish a presentation deck due tonight for an early morning meeting tomorrow but of course, this comes first hahaha 

erwin!

A/N: Basically lawyer!erwin is the way to go, innit?

He's in his 40s, so he may have a settled career

He came from a white-collar, middle-class family. So he wasn’t silverspoon-fed, but his parents had enough money to put him through good school

Got a scholarship to go to one of the nation’s finest law schools

Kept it lowkey in college’s social circle, graduated with summa cum laude, developed a strong academic relation with his professor, and got recommended for an internship at top law firm at the capital city

Starting his career as a corporate lawyer, but then built his expertise as white-collar crime attorney

In his early 30s, he represented a union suing against conglomerate corporation in a big case that had national coverage, from then on he began to know his calling

Expanding his portfolio and became well-known for defending workers, consumers and civilians against corporate fraud scheme

Currently doing a lot of pro-bono cases for deprived victims of big corporate fraud. You would see him frequently gracing your local newspaper we love us some socialist king

On the side, he often writes for law journal and fills in as guest professor at local universities for summer courses

Established his own law firm with some of his partners, specializing in white collar crime and labor & employment law

He’s damn accomplished, but never really had any time for self-indulgence. Even after he becomes a household name in the country, with tens of attorneys working under him, his employees would still see him working on New Year’s Eve

He was always attentive to his employees, though. Although he has a very strict, borderline no-life work ethics, he never forces his employees to follow his habit, in fact he despises when his employees works on holidays and can be seen blaming himself for it a bit of a hypocrite but thats ok

He still takes metro to work. He prefers a very lowkey, ordinary lifestyle because he fears if he shows any knack for indulgence, he will be susceptible to gratification from potential enemies or crooked politicians

Definitely a sight to see at the workplace, for he's tall and always oozes a sense of authority in the way he speaks and carries himself generally

His emotional intelligence is top-notch, you would never meet someone who is able to be very objective and calculating, while being kind and compassionate at the same time

His fellow attorneys put a lot for respect for him, and hundreds of applicants come to his considerably small firm every week, because a lot of aspiring attorney find him inspiring to work with

He wasn’t oblivious to his shiny reputation, but he’s trying his hardest to not let the compliments get to his head. Sometimes he doesn’t give himself enough credit for it

Was approached by one of the political party’s committee to run for local senate, but turned it down

basically he’s perfect if you like a man who’s never home for christmas

Hange!

A/N: Ok ok, I really wanna see Paleontologist!Hange because it has always been my fave dream job, but I want Hange to be out and about with people so here it is

Hange is the type to be incredibly good at one thing, that she will dedicate her whole life for that pursuit, but will be awfully oblivious to a whole lot of things (not intentional of course, they just have a very limited attention span) (they wouldn’t know who kanye west is or what tiktok is)

Like Erwin, they came from a middle-class family. While Erwin’s parents might have been teachers, accountants or other common profession, Hange came from a family of academician and researchers

Hange studied Human Geography at uni, but later found passion specifically in its relation to industrialization and urban development

Hange aims to advocate for a better living condition for workforce, and nearby inhabitants of industrialized city detroit would be a beautiful city if only they let hange designed it

Hange is a professor at university, where they also led a non-profit research think-thank that also serves as pressure group for better government policy.

The university that Hange teaches in, is also the uni where Erwin teaches in summer. They’re close-knitted colleagues as they share similar passion. Erwin relies on Hange a lot for some intellectual insights to help his cases  

Hange is relentless in their cause, you may find Hange everywhere! From street protest to a hearing in the government court. They are passionate and will do anything for the cause they believe in

Hange was once hired by the government as an independent consultant for a new housing project, but left because they grew to be frustrated by the government’s bureaucracy and their outward reluctance to follow Hange's recommendation

Hange spends a lot of time overseas, consulting and advocating development in newly industrialized countries

On Hange’s birthday, her fellow researchers surprised them with a ‘pampering day’ where they took them to an optometrist because Hange had been complaining about their eyesight for a YEAR that gave them a lot of migraines, but was always either too busy or too lazy to go

Hange never really considers themselves as working, because they enjoy their job very much. Hange likes to spend months observing a community, talking to people for hours, and trying their best in understanding their problem

Out of so many great qualities that Hange has as a researcher that meets different set of people everyday, prejudice or preconceived judgment is completely absent in Hange’s demeanor and perspective

Hange doesn’t get a lot of free-time, even if they do, they’d wander around the city to do a little observation. But when the weather’s bad and they’re stuck at home with their pet lizard, they would logged into Quora to answer random internet questions

They’re an avid writer for National Geographic, and one time Hange won a pitch to make a documentary about an industrial city project they were working on

After the docu-series got broadcasted, Hange gained a small but passionate and loyal fans on the internet. You could even find a subreddit dedicated for Hange’s works

for real I want to be Hange. I want to have that kind of passion in life

levi!

A/N: I spent a lot of times thinking about Levi’s job in modern!au. Because here’s the thing, either we adopt his unfortunate childhood into its modern!au equivalent, or let’s just recreate his whole upbringing. But I think his personality stems from a specific things he experienced during childhood, so let’s not dismiss that.

Levi came from a struggling working class family. I reckon his parents might have had worked multiple jobs to sustain their living expense. Unfortunately they both passed away when Levi was very little, and left little to no inheritance

Levi’s parents were not close to their extended family, so when they died, Levi was admitted to the system and had to brace several foster families who didn’t really pay attention to him

Little Levi had come to realize that life’s all about survival and so he had been able to fend on for himself since very young age, he never asked for things

His uncle, Kenny, finally won custody over Levi when he was in elementary. Kenny made money from small-scale racketeering here and there. Levi never asked what he did for living, as long as he got food to eat and tuition paid off

Kenny was emotionally absent, but he loved spending time with the oddly quiet little child, teaching him a lot of crafts, from carpentering to how to flay pig’s skin

Levi didn’t really care about getting into college, and thought that he’d probably end up working for his uncle, so he put his bare minimum throughout school, although he was really good with numbers, especially in math, accounting and finance

One time in high school, Levi’s teacher asked him to sign up for the olympiad team, Levi turned it down because he thought that was a rich kid thing

He didn’t even apply for college, and worked odd jobs after high school. Probably working as cashiers or assistant to retail shop’s owner for couple of years, enough for him to afford a cheap studio apartment on his own

One of his bosses came to acknowledge Levi’s talent, and trusted him to handle the company’s accounting

By sheer luck, the company hit it big, and Levi found himself running the day-to-day accounting of mid-sized business with over 300 employees

He made good money already without a college degree, but with a new-found confidence Levi applied for uni, where he chose to study accounting (of course)

Although he was confident with his skills, he understood he needed to widen his horizon and network -- thus uni

Levi was one of the oldest members of his cohort in uni, but graduated with highest distinction

After graduating, with his skills and experience, it wasn’t hard for Levi to score a job at top accounting firm

There, he discovered an interest for forensic accounting, where through audits, analysis and investigation, he basically finds out if a company is doing fraud and embezzlement or not

This is where he came to know and get acquainted with Erwin and Hange (yippie they’re together again)

The firm he works for was assigned to investigate the finances of a troublesome company that had been sued by its workers for a jeopardizing working condition. Erwin was on the case, and Levi helped him with evidences for legal proceeding.

By chance, Erwin introduced Levi to Hange. At first, Levi would find Hange annoying and overtly energized, but after learning the things they have done, Levi grew to appreciate Hange’s passion (and secretly wants to have more of his positive outlook)

Levi is fucking good his job. In short amount of time, he could get a really ideal position in the office. He was almost foolproof, finding even the tiniest bit of discrepancy in his audit. He’d get assigned to the big league case/project.

Although really good at his job, he’s not a social person, especially in his office. He couldn’t understand the lavish lifestyle that finance and banking people often lead. He will only show up to office party if it is really necessary for him to show up (usually to receive some kind of informal awards for, again, being so fucking good) 

He leads a no-bullshit attitude at the office, largely because of his background. He is a self-made man, and is not easy to impress by some young executives from posh school that talk bigger than they can chew

His cold, seemingly dismissive attitude gained him a reputation of being scary, when actually he is very considerate

One of the things he enjoys doing is to actually teach, he really likes when a new kid at the office come to him with none of that pretentious, big talk, and really asks for his guidance. He would love to teach you a thing or two

He would frequently check on his mentee, just to keep up with their development

And he doesn’t take credit too. When his mentee makes a milestone, he believes it’s 100% your work

If you’re his mentee, he probably doesn’t give a crap about your personal life, so don’t expect him to make small talk about that (and don’t ask him about his personal life either). But he really cares about your skill and career development

Same with Erwin, he leads a very ordinary lifestyle. He doesn’t go out often and would rather reading detective novel with his cat on the couch

He likes to spend Sunday at Uncle Kenny’s house, because he finds himself worried about the old man very often. They became close as Levi grew

Overall, Levi is a really kind and caring person if you know how not to push his button

[catsnuggler]

What didn't help my whole subconsciously-missionary-minded, silent-echoes-of-Mormonism socialism illusion, which made me think it would be selfish and wrong to demand my own liberation, was the misapplication of standpoint epistemology - put simply, when "identity politics" goes bad.

Putting the rest under a cut, because this is a long post.

While it's crude and ultimately incorrect to only say, for example, "Listen to Black voices", without emphasizing the critical thinking skills and empathy necessary to listen to Cornel West, and dismiss Candace Owens for the right-wing corporate hack that she is, what is for certain is that someone like me, a 100% white American settler of Mormon pioneer stock (on one side of my family, anyway), and with no formal education on the subject matter, doesn't have authority to speak on the experience of Black people in America. I have no argument against that, because it's true.

Continuing further, just because, in spite of the fact neither racism nor colonialism oppresses me, capitalism still does, this doesn't mean I have as much authority to speak on it as a Black member of the working class does, as anti-Black racism and capitalism compound on and depend on each other, making the lives of Black working class people more difficult than the lives of white working class people. Doesn't mean I can't speak on capitalism, just means I'm not the leading voice.

That being said - I'm going to talk as if I'm still a believing Mormon, let alone Christian, in this and the next paragraph, to better explain the subconscious workings of my mind, due to their brainwashing - the difference in our positions can be wrongly perceived, especially by someone raised in the illusory colonial missionary mindset, similar to the position of those with "the gospel" and those "of the world", where those with "the truth" have more, but are, like all, oppressed by "sin", yet at least believe themselves to have the knowledge and wherewithal to resist, while those "worldly" people aren't blessed with the wealth of God's Word, nor the solidarity of the church, and are thus further deprived of the perfection God desires for his children than those of His Flock already are, and must be ministered to, brought into the Fold, and Saved from On High.

Yet there must ever be a humility to such actions, there must ever be self-denial, for all are imperfect, even those in the church, as, just as Christ shed His blood, and allowed His flesh to be pierced, even to His death, in limitless sacrifice for the sins of all of the Children of Men, that they may be redeemed, so have countless socialist, communist, and anarchist revolutionaries died for the cause, and yet all who live, who do not seclude themselves from the world and its markets, facilitate the continued exploitation and robbery of each other by the capitalist class. All are imperfect, and all would deserve bondage and bloodshed, were it not for the bleeding hearts of the martyrs.

So, you see, even someone who consciously attempts to reject Christianity can still fall victim to its logic, even after abandoning the official doctrine of it, if proper safeguards against the general thought processes of it are not taken. Returning to the original point I've tried to raise, I've fallen for a long time to a Christian-esque stance of personal martyrdom for the sake of "saving others" to the point I believed pursuing my own liberation would be selfish.

I'm mentally ill and neurodivergent to the point that getting myself to even get into the habit of seeking jobs is difficult, much more so landing myself an interview; and getting an offer of employment? Only happened once, at the end of my first interview. As you predicted, the job sucked, they were desperate to hire me because it sucks, and it wasn't 3 months before I quit. I quit in late September of 2018. It's been almost 3 years of me not having a job.

I got my driver's license in mid 2019, but got into a minor parking accident that only broke a headlight on the car I drove, and didn't damage the other car, in September of that year. It was over a year before I drove again, because of the depth of my depression and anxiety over one accident, which cost about $150. Since January of this year, I've driven somewhat regularly, and have some measure of confidence, but am still anxious every time I'm behind the wheel. I could drive to and from a job, if needed, but it would be a while before that would be comfortable.

I still live with my dad, at the age of 23, and barely have any friends where I live anymore; those local friends I still have, I haven't seen face-to-face for a long time. My dad... my dad could die any day, and I would be royally fucked. Something happened earlier this month, and he wasn't healthy before, but this was really serious. He amazingly got away with few symptoms, and can make a full recovery with the right effort, except... it could still happen again, it would just be less likely. If it does, he could die. Again, I would be royally fucked. I don't know how much his treatment cost, but I know it must be a pretty penny. There's only so long I can continue like this.

Due to my dependence and general impotent state, I can't do a goddamn thing for what I believe in right now. I have to fight self-hatred with the argument that if I die, I'll have died useless and unhelpful, when I could potentially have kept living til I got my act together and finally done something helpful before passing.

I have a college degree. Not a "real" degree, in the sense of it mattering, but I have an Associate degree, DTA. No major; I never could figure out what I wanted to do. It would have been a close call between anything in political science, which would have led toward a government job, which would be unacceptable as an anarchist, or perhaps a professorial job, teaching would-be politicians and bureaucrats, hardly educating anyone of revolutionary intent; or something in chemistry, perhaps biochemistry, leading to some kind of colonial agrichem shit, or making expensive medicines nobody would be able to afford for private entities' profits, possibly having research appropriated by Uncle Sam for weapons purposes - I don't know, but none of that was appealing. I graduated community college with Honors, as a member of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society. I could have had promise as some or other kind of technocrat or bureaucrat - but I wouldn't be able to live with myself. It seems the less one is exploited, the more they exploit others. I don't know what job I can take that would exploit me enough that I wouldn't hurt others so much, while leaving me alone enough that I wouldn't kill myself, which... which has been a temptation, at times. Not too strong, but it is fucking there. I have promise; at short-term memorization and obedience, at least, like a mongrel dog who can read; but no conviction, no confidence, and a surplus of fear.

There are more woes I can recollect, I can continue this pity party in a book, but enough of that. Suffice it to say, all this time, I should have wanted my own liberation. Colonized people (in an American context, Turtle Island Indigenous and Black) have it worse, LGBT* people have it worse, women have it worse, physically disabled people have it worse, people with greater mental disabilities than my own have it worse, and I can't lead any of their struggles. But I do have the right to demand my own liberation, and I shouldn't convince myself otherwise.

*I don't oppose the use of the other word, except people of my demographic have abused that word so goddamn much, I don't want to type it, myself, let alone say it. It's always tainted when it comes from those who aren't of that community. Please don't think I'm either a radfem or a libfem just because I didn't use that word. I support people identifying with that label in using it.

This post became increasingly personal toward the end. However, I hope my flawed perspective, perhaps unique (read: unrelatable) in some aspects, perhaps explaining, at least in part, some of the fucked-up mental hurdles of white socialist "allies" that we need to get our asses over yesterday, might help - whatever I might have illuminated, and whatever I surely missed. I can understand why someone might want to share and add, share and criticize, or leave this alone with a like, nothing at all, or an unfollow.

Not that I can prevent this from being shared in any way, except by not posting in the first place, but I'm okay with it being shared by other socialists, for whatever it's worth... although I understand the more traction it gets, the more likely I'll get anon hate about being full of myself (deserved, to an extent at least), for being some dumb socialist cuck (not exactly wrong, but rude, and likely from a Nazi, so fuck you), or perhaps from non-Mormon Christians accusing me, someone they'd call a Mormon (which is arguably almost a new ethnicity (not race though) as much as it is a religion) of daring to throw the Christian god and Christianity, in general, under the bus, accusing me of being in league with the devil. So be it.

If you're not a reactionary, nor a liberal, nor somewhere in-between, and you want to share this for some reason or another, you may do so.

[rametarin]

tempting.

Reflecting on my health issues, since age 17. And my living situation.

So since around the age of 16, I’ve been plagued with unpredictable bowel problems and digestive ills. Like, everybody gets constipated every now and then, but I mean I’d get just, excruciatingly backed up and my family wouldn’t help me get seen or anything.

Basically from the time I was 18 onwards I was told my medical bills were mine. But oh by the way [Ram. Not my real name, but the name fam calls me], you gotta pay us every dollar that isn’t devoted to keeping yourself alive :^)

I’d be like, family, I cannot afford this, it’d be in your best interests to invest in my health so I can figure out what’s fucky about my bowels and stomach so this can stop happening, I can live a normal life, and we can all continue on our merry way.

Basically I was told, “tough shit, do it yourself, also pay your fair share to The Family” (aka, give mom all your money.)

It was never just fear of homelessness, but fear of homelessness while my GI tract was fucky and my teeth were rotting out of my head that made escape from here impossible. It’s why I didn’t just climb into a hole in the wall and escape this garbage fire of a mother and do that bootstrap shit. Because it sincerely made  me wonder sometimes if I was being poisoned by my mother to keep me powerless and in need of help, but perpetually weakened to where the best I could do is move towards help but just be put on a treadmill for someone elses financial benefit.

Perhaps my bitterness makes just a touch more sense now, right? Because Maine is a long-drive state. You need a car. You absolutely need a car to get anywhere. Not having one means you walk everywhere, you ride a bike everywhere and are FUCKED during the winter, or you go nowhere because you don’t have anywhere you need to be and don’t drive.

Now that said, imagine having bowel and ass problems so bad just the idea of driving makes you question if it’s safe for you to even be on the road.

That has been my existence for twenty years now, because my family wants me just close enough to extract what mom things “she’s owed,” but absolutely will not help me with anything. There’s no security in staying here because the whole fucking POINT of putting up with a family’s infantilizing “everything has its place” mentality, is you’re able to wisely squirrel away your income without paying a landlord anything and your income going up in smoke

If your mother is just the worst sort of landlord, you’re basically just paying a narcissistic bitch of a mother to be a narcissistic bitch of a mother. There’s absolutely no upside.

So I’ve been stuck in this virtual tutorial of an existence because my own digestive system was torturing me and seriously deleting my ability to operate independently. And mom, whom has always wanted absolute control over my finances and my future, saw it as a holistic way of penning me up and making be desperate. Never a wasted opportunity with this fucking monster.

Well. I eliminated cottonseed oil and chicken proteins from my diet and, while not perfect, the amount of excruciating pain and pressure and weird cold-acidic burning in my back and bowels has subsided a lot. As well as my stomach issues receded considerably.

The truth is I was loathe to even try and escape without figuring out these problems, but I couldn’t figure them out because I never had the money. I tried to get a barium enema x-ray when I was 17 and suffering a massive, excruciating flareup. I missed prom (I didn’t have anyone to go with anyway) because of what felt like it could’ve been anything from gall stones to bowel cancer.

Had a big useless cleanse that was excruciating, then had the guys that give the barium enema tell me, “lube is expensive” when I screamed about how much it hurt to have the thing shoved up my ass. My already inflamed, tender ass.

Absolutely nothing was found in my bowels. Which did absolutely nothing to explain why they felt inflamed and miserable. But it did give me a $1,700 bill, which proved.. absolutely nothing except they couldn’t find tumors or any object lodged in my butt. Given how it took me two summers to acquire almost that much working a shit job for my shithead father’s girlfriend, maybe you can appreciate how heartbreaking that is. Spending all that money and you don’t even learn WHY you’re suffering, you just learn why you aren’t.

And today I still fume with rage over being told, “ass lube is expensive so we’re skimping on it” and then be charged almost two thousand god damned dollars.

Absolutely could not get my family to help me pursue any other avenue. They just kept insisting, “it’s all anxiety, it’s all in your head. You just need to get off the computer and do more manual labor/make us money and your problems will go away. :^)”

But then they would not help me do it. They wanted me to take on all the risk while they got the guaranteed income from my needing to be around them.

My need to grow step by step was their opportunity to mitigate my life, every step of the way, so non-compliance with their exploitation would result in homelessness and complete uprooting. If I wasn’t going to voluntarily follow draconian rules, then I’d be governed by those rules anyway in the absence of them being verbally stated. Just, using poverty and immobility as a way to impose it.

But I refused to comply. I wasn’t going to suffer every day unendingly AND get my income snatched away, BY MY OWN GOD DAMNED FAMILY. A family that didn’t even pay RENT to live in the house we were living in at the time, and a family that made 65-70K a year, with another house they owned in a less convenient location worth $350K. My mother had ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS other than fun and profit as an excuse as to why I needed to buy, “the family,” a car. Other than making it the “family” car giving her defacto control over it but my obligation to pay for it. Just another indirect way to give her absolute control over my options and alternatives.

So I didn’t work. I sat at home and dealt with her abusive bullshit, because it was the only card I had left in my deck. She didn’t want the stigma of throwing out a sick man without a license, a car or any savings. I didn’t want to voluntarily throw myself out and die in the street.

So I dealt with my health problems as best as I could. There were a good many times living in this house, that we’ve lived in and she’s owned since 2006, that I questioned whether I should phone an ambulance and just say fuck it, go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt just goosechasing this problem, thanks to the backdoor socialized medical system that exploits the profit motive but uses government assured payment fixed to taxes in order to afford it.

That’s probably what pisses me off the most about my situation. Our medical system has been turned into a farce by socialists deliberately making medicine as toxic as they fucking can in order to then bat their eyes and go, “Bet you just want single payer and to basically make medicine another ring of the government NOW, don’t youuuuuu? It’d make all those woes go awayyyyy!” while turning the screws to our bodies by denying us affordable medicine. All while blaming capitalism for shit that’s assured to work at any cost by the government.

Other people pine for a more socialized system to make the disgusting exploitation and abuse stop. But the truth is, that’s just like wanting to marry a pirate so they’ll stop lobbing cannonballs and demanding tolls at sea from you. Yes, the actual literal war on you and your community and your personal sovereignty will be over, but you’ll also be institutionalizing pirates in order to make them stop taking complete advantage of you on their terms instead of taking complete advantage of you on mostly-their terms but you get to act like you’re consenting to it.

I digressed. Anyway...

Well. I’m curious about pursuing a shit job just to see if I can KEEP some income, but I know, and have always known, my mother will not allow me to do anything with that money but barely keep myself alive. While she uses it to just buy enormous bulk loads of garbage and hoards them in the corners, or throws hundreds of dollars at friends-of-the-family/neighbors and extracts that money from me to do it.

I know going into it that the job would be otherwise worthless. She wants her ten pounds of flesh a year from me, and if I worked, there’d be no getting around it. She isn’t going to allow me to profit living with her, in any way. Everything has to revolve around her, or I get made homeless.

But trying to hold a job would mean possible (there’s that ‘potential vs. guarantee dichotomy again) feelers out to couches to surf on. Or credit building.

It’d still be a sexless existence dictated by someone so fucking petty that they can’t help you fix a broken tooth but do miraculously have the money to buy you a cell phone and a plan, “if you want it,” purely to always have you at their beck and call and/or have control over your phone plan. And it’d mean committing to something that runs a minimum of a year while being able to have a foot crushing my neck and destroying whatever I’m trying to do in an instant.

but it’d also mean being able to financially pursue what’s wrong with me and fixing it.

But I will hold this grudge against women and the actual, objective privilege they have from the legal system and our social system in the US for the rest of my life. Everybody around me saw what she was doing to me and my life, and they’ve done and said absolutely nothing. An abusive woman in this society is basically on par with the richest barons in a young adult novel, and all you have to do to get that kind of institutional power, rich or poor, is have a vagina and be a mom.

Then other women will sympathize with the mother, whom can never be totally wrong about anything, and at best you might get silence and indifference about the way you’re treated.

You can be cornered, debased and neglected until you’re a greasy shoggoth of a person, and if it’s a woman doing this to you, it’s your fault for not escaping. After having every escape route made as torturous and unsustainable an option as possible, you’ll be held accountable for yourself.

I’ll be relieved and pleased when this disgusting pig of a woman dies of natural causes. She’ll have gotten away with grabbing my life and thrashing around with it for 20 years while the world passed me by, just to keep control, just for fun, just for profit.

But in the meantime, maybe there’s a local niche I can fill. Just enough of something to find somewhere else to live. Without conditions making it more damning to pursue than nothing at all.

But I’m not hoping too hard.

[arlingtonpark]

Harrow the Ninth Act I Thoughts

This is all your fault, @ghostmartyr. If you hadn’t reblogged what seemed like heavy metal boy band fanart, I wouldn’t be in this hole. And for that, I hate you.

So.

When I first encountered the Locked Tomb online, I couldn’t tell if it was a story about edgy, neogothic, teenaged angst, or something better than that.

Turns out, it’s both.

But in a good way.

I love it. It’s great.

It’s unabashed, it’s thoughtful, it’s entertaining, it’s suspenseful.

Gideon the Ninth is finished, and after starting Harrow the Ninth, I decided to blog about it as I go.

I’ll be doing one post for every act of the book. I hope.

Let’s start with our new main character, Harrow. Newly reborn as a god and one of the only survivors of the last book.

So….

Right now, Harrow’s…

Um.

She’s uh…

-gestures at everything-

She’s fucked.

Fucked, broken, in the shit, started godhood on the wrong side of the bed.

200 babies were killed in the name of birthing her. Her parents died in front of her because of what she did. Death has always seemed to follow her, and she carries the burden of all that death.

Harrow despises her existence and wishes she were dead because of the circumstances of her birth, and yet for that very reason she is committed to living, because if she dies, all those sacrifices would be null.

She takes up the duties of governing the Ninth, she applies herself rigorously to mastering necromancy, and when the opportunity arises to become a lyctor, she jumps at it.

Harrow does this because it’s why all those people had to die. She was birthed to carry the Ninth’s legacy; its traditions and obligations and to some extent its very existence.

The twisted nature of the Ninth and her parents is inseparable from that legacy, so in a sense it was that legacy that led to her infanticidal birth, but regardless, this legacy is all she has. It’s all she was ever meant to have. And so she devoted herself to it.  

Now that she’s a lyctor and her house’s future will be guaranteed, but to do it, she had to sacrifice Gideon, whom she loved.

It’s more of the same shit from her perspective: more people dying for her sake. 200 babies die to grant her obscene necromantic talent, her girlfriend dies so she can gain even more power. Harrow doesn’t mean to step on innocent people to get what she wants…but that’s always how it’s turned out for her.

But to add insult to injury, even after all she’s sacrificed, she still didn’t get exactly what she wanted.

Her house will have a future, but she can never return to it. She’s essentially divorced from the only thing that gave her life meaning.

She can never return to her old life; to the extent she saw that as desirable, she can’t have that. Her old life is gone forever.

Something also went wrong with her ascension to godhood. She’s violently sick, mentally unstable, and the powers she should have are…half baked, for lack of a better word.

Nobody said you could get hungover from ascending to godhood. Harrow should sue.

It’s like going in to surgery to remove a tumor and coming out lobotomized.

Is she even immortal?

It all stings of pointlessness. All that effort for nothing.

Worse than that; She lost everything. Her home, her love, her pride and dignity.

Her only purpose in life now is to fight these hell beasts that she’s never heard of before. Happy days ahead, surely.

Oh, and one of the people she’ll have to work with is named Gideon.

Does God hate her?

And then there’s God.

This guy is sus as hell.

He’s gracious and humble. Perpetually calm and soft spoken. Empathetic and understanding. That’s what He’s like in person.

But He’s…maybe the villain? I guess.

God works in mysterious ways, and I have no damn clue what His are, but it’s probably ugly.

Yes, He’s a cordial Dude…but he’s still the God-emperor of a galactic undead empire.

Dude wears a crown made from the bones of dead babies FFS.

Not to be accusatory, but this guy definitely has skeletons in his closet.

-bu-dum-tish-

One of the things that really got my attention while reading this series is how the magic system in this world is depicted. Usually, in fantasy stories, the magic system is depicted as being morally neutral. Good guys use it, bad guys it, but the magic itself just is.

The Locked Tomb Trilogy isn’t like that.

Necromancy is bad. Perverse, even.

All the necromancers are frail and sickly. Practicing it is deleterious on the body. Doing too much too fast with it causes even more pronounced harm. As in, bleeding from your sweat glands.

Necromancy works by manipulating the life force of living beings and, primarily, the death force those being give off when they die.

The forces of nature that necromancy utilizes are (apparently) fundamental to the universe, akin to the laws of nature, but the use of those forces in this way are clearly a perversion.

It’s sort of like a bad tv show, like Sword Art Online. Sure, the things that went into making the show are natural parts of the world, but you just can’t put those things together like that.

John and his empire epitomize that.

All known beings in the universe are fundamentally thalergetic in nature. They are beings who radiate life energy. Except for the planets of the empire. Those planets and the star they orbit are thanergetic in nature.

They literally radiate death. And they are apparently one of a kind in that regard.

John is the first necromancer. John used his newly harnessed powers to “resurrect” multiple planets that had died.

Except he didn’t really resurrect anything, he turned them into an entirely new form of being using his entirely new form of science that uses some kind of mechanism that doesn’t occur naturally.

What I’m getting at here is that everything about John, his power, and his empire is artificial. Man-made. Perhaps even John-made.

We don’t actually know what happened during the Resurrection. What killed off the planets, how John attained his God-like powers, and what life John lived before it.

Oh, yeah, and every planet the empire conquers is systematically killed over generations to fuel their necromancer’s powers.

Every planet God touches literally dies.

One thing I appreciate about this series is how layered the story is.

The Locked Tomb series is a fun, irreverent romp. It’s about allowing the past to rest in peace. It’s also surprisingly political.

The metaphor is pretty blunt: it’s about capitalism. What’s more, the metaphor seems to be from a progressive or maybe even socialist perspective.

Ok, so hear me out on this. This is less fan theory than speculation about the author’s intentions.

The empire is a society built on a system that requires them to move from planet to planet, gradually killing those planets until they have to evacuate and move to a new one.

This process of gradual death takes generations to play out, so apparently they don’t even consider it to be an event that happens.

The heart of this system is necromancy, a perverse science that is ultimately derived from natural phenomena.

This system places the most powerful necromancer atop a literal throne and worships them as God.

God’s disciples are the lyctors, second only to Him in power. They attained that power by a very special process.

The lyctoral process is exploitative. It requires the necromancer to use their cavalier as a sacrifice and to turn their soul into a power source.

The lyctoral process is built around domination. The necromancer, in sacrificing their cavalier, subsumes the cavalier’s soul into their being to gain power.

The lyctoral process is dehumanizing. The cavalier is degraded from a person to a mere battery, but the necromancer is degraded in a way as well. The necromancer can never return to their house, or any of the other houses for that matter. Instead they must fight and die for God in his battle against the Revenant Beasts.

If you’re progressive, this may sound familiar to you.

Relationships of exploitation, domination, and dehumanization. A society built around perversions. That rewards people with talent in those perversions with idolatry. That cold-heartedly and shortsightedly extracts every drop of usable resources from a planet until it is dead, then moves on to the next one.

To a socialist, this may sound a lot like capitalism.

Saying that is already bold enough for me, so I won’t try to argue that it’s a one to one allegory. Necromancy equals the profit motive, lyctors represent the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (So I guess that means the non-lyctor necromancers are the petit bourgeoisie) and the empire is humanity.

You could make a case for it, but the hot takes in this post are already pretty spicy, so…

OMG Mercymorn. XD

Mercymorn is my favorite out of the new characters. She’s a bitch.

Snide, rude, assertive, bitchy, and standoffish. No, it’s not that I want her to step on me, I just can’t get enough of her interactions.

I guess in real life she wouldn’t be fun to be around, but as a character in a book, she steals every scene. Her arrogant and bitchy remarks always make me laugh.

My one wish heading in to Act II: that Mercymorn is in charge of Ianthe’s training.

Just so she can kick her ass for not measuring up to her standards.

[diningpageantry]

We Are Far Too Young and Clever

Archive Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20327977/chapters/48197671

Chapter 1/6 of We Are Far Too Young And Clever

Word Count: 3,068

Summary: Youtube's a buzzing, content-creating platform, where people from all walks of life can create and share. Simon Snow and Baz Pitch are on a rise at two very different angle, but by the coincidence of shared people, they clash and come together at all the right (and wrong) times.

~~~~~~~~~~

SIMON

I don’t really remember how it started.

Well, that’s a lie. I remember starting it. I remember setting up my mobile, using a mirror to make sure it was at the right angle (using random little things like Penny’s tiny bottles of face cleansers and such to keep it propped, despite them continuously slipping). I remember it being half past 3 in the morning on a Thursday right before a final. I wasn’t studying. I can’t study--I can’t make myself study, I should say. Never could. And, I remember laying out craft scissors, glitter glue tubes, googly eyes, and finding old class notes to go to town on.

I remember the build up.

I remember the upload, and I remember thinking nothing of it.

But I don’t remember the rise.

More to this, I don’t really know why anyone really watches my videos. I think it’s sort of dumb to watch a man now climbing further into his mid-to-late twenties sitting on his living room floor, working in a ranging the state of his soberness from completey dry to beyond wrecked, and doing shitty primary school crafts.

But then again, I’m the man making them, so I guess I’m not particularly the one to judge on this front.

Part of me still really doesn’t connect the popularity with myself--like it’s been Penny’s doing. Which, she says, might be partially true. She already had a decent enough following, but I’m on a completely different genre. She does educative videos, and she stays popular because they’re on current events topics (defines hot topics, explains what a certain celebrity is in trouble for, yada yada). I call her the cliffnotes of the ever-rolling social media 15 minutes of fame. She asks me if I’ve ever needed to read a book with cliffnotes, and I didn’t have much defense besides “You know, I was an English minor.” (“For the first year, yeah.” “Still, had a year of it.”)

But for me? I don’t do anything new or appealing.

I think I might be a handsome face (which, in all honesty, would be a nice brag, if I could actually maintain a relationship). Or maybe it’s because I can get a bit funny, especially when I’m plastered. And there’s never really any instructions when I do these things. I have a Pinterest board, a google search option, and a flow of craft store gift cards at my disposal to make shit work.

Or, maybe, I’m just entertaining.

I’m not really confident on that front, but I’ll take what I can get.

I don’t mind it much. People seem to like the videos, and I never mind making them. Brilliant distraction, and surprisingly decent income (especially since crafts require products, so sponsors are easy to get for videos, and I never feel really guilty because I’d have to get shit to use anyway).

Penny gets on my arse about my sleep schedule, though.

“Why can’t you do special editions of Simon’s Arts ‘N Crafts in the morning?” She asks, or more complains, hovering over the kitchen bar with a mug between her hands and her flannel pyjama bottoms on. It’s nearing 1 in the morning now, and I’m just cracking open my second beer. (Don’t actually like them, but they’re tolerable.)

“Aesthetic, Penn.” I cringe after a thick gulp, squeezing my eyes tight. Shit tastes like a gym sock. “Premise of it all to put up a video that looks like a bloke who hasn’t properly slept in 10 years on his floor trying to build a shitty flower crown.”

She’s been a bit fed up with it for a little while, and I can see her point. Insomniatic tendencies aren’t something you particularly want to profit off of, but it pays the bills (and gives me something better to do than stare at my ceiling and try to count sheep into the thousands).

I hear her huff, my back turning to grab my mobile off the counter as I try to chug back a few more gulps.

Thumbing through notifs, I see a post alert for Baz Pitch. Something on Twitter--commenting on the flawed mentality of what socialistic systems are seen as vs what they are, or some other poshly worded bullshit about something that only really matters if you’re taking a secondary school course on politics.

Or if you’re Penny, I guess.

“You’re looking at Baz’s shit again,” she mumbles over her mug, sipping slowly as I glare back.

“What?”

“You get this look on your face--that one where your brows come together and makes you look constipated.”

“Yes, and? What about it?”

She smirks. “Well, you only ever get that when you’re looking at something Baz posted.

I pull my brows together when I look away, just for emphasis, and slip my mobile into my pocket. “Not only,” I counter, going for another pointed sip and holding back a cringe as I point at her, going on. “And it’s only because he’s full of himself. I don’t need, nor do I want to hear his halfhearted ramblings on something that he won’t have any affect on.”

“Then why do you have him on post-notifs?”

I try to look offended, but I just stare, mouth hanging open. “Maybe I like to keep a keen eye on him.”

She hums, unsatisfied.

“Excuse me for wanting to keep track of the man I’ve got an ongoing tiff with.”

“Ongoing tiff? Is that what you’re calling it now?”

I shrug, ignoring that with another shitty gulp.

“Look, Simon, just talk to the bloke. He’s a smart guy, if you give him a second of your time and attention beyond a twitter feud over some dumb shite like his family upbringing.”

“He’s rich, Penn! Guy’s a hypocrite.”

“Maybe,” she gives me a halfhearted shrug, leaning more over the counter. “You’re just mad that he’s got more following on his personal Twitter than you do on your proper Instagram.”

“Of course not.” She’s right, but I won’t dare admit it.

I’ll never admit to being jealous of Basilton fucking Pitch--some bloody political page gone pretty boy vlogging. His main work is only relevant because he talks about shit that’s within the dizzying political-sphere, nothing of which is something I really like to think about (I vote for whoever Penny describes as the best, then hope some other prick doesn’t throw us deeper into the cesspool that is this Brexit nightmare).

But he has his vlogging channel. A popular one, at that. Talks about what he’s reading, where he’s traveling. Skincare routine. Mindless bullshit, that I’ve forced myself to sit through just so I have a proper excuse to go off complaining about him.

Never seen the bloke break a proper smile, though. Not even in fan pictures. He smirks, and he’s got a barking, bitter laugh, but I’ve never heard anything that relates “Joyous” and “Basilton” in a similar sentence.

It’s a wonder he and Penn interact amicably.

She scoffs at me, sipping her tea slowly as my shoulders slump, beer can held tight enough in my hand that it’s denting in at my fingers. I should probably let go of it.

“Are you gonna help me set up?” I ask, deflating from the conversation and trying to distract with a new one.

“If you need help.”

“Need? No. Want? Yeah.”

She rolls her eyes, settling the mug down onto our countertop anyway before turning to start dragging the lights out of the side closet while I polish off my drink and head to grab my camera and tripod.

I’ve gotten better at this over the years. Swapped majors from social work to media studies, then minored in advertising, once the channel had hit 1k subscribers. Hadn’t quit my dayjob at the cafe until I hit 100k, but the steady rise since hasn’t been bad to us. Penny’s got a decent income, too, and she still decides to work in the school’s library as she’s working on her PhD in Sociology.

The flat’s a better one than the one we’d started in. We’ve even got a guest bedroom (screams disposable income). And, well, nicer equipment. A real sense of seriousness and maturity while we work.

Well, mostly.

I’m speaking as the grown man with a metal cabinet full of crafts supplies.

Business man with craft supplies.

Makes me sound more professional than “Newly 27 year old Youtuber who does nothing of serious impact, other than hoping to make others smile while throwing together terribly made, barely functioning crafts.”

I make my way back into the living room after setting up the camera and wandering back off, arms full of supplies as Penny starts setting up cameras, glancing over her shoulder. “What’d you choose tonight?”

I look down, then plop myself onto the floor and spread out my shit. “Uhh,” I say, shifting through. “I was thinking a beer can ghost.”

“Beer can ghost?”

I nod, holding up the gauze and glue. “As a Happy Halloween episode.”

“It’s not even October yet, Si.”

I shrug. “September’s close enough.” I grin, going off to grab my empty beer can and sprawling back out onto the floor. “Want to join in?”

“I think I’ll take a rain check for this episode, thank you.” She smiles teasingly, brushing past and messing my hair a bit as I’m settling myself onto the hardwood floor. I don’t take it harshly; I never take her harshly. I don’t think I’ve got the room to take it harshly, given I don’t seriously have anyone else in my life besides her (at least on a consistent basis).

“Suit yourself!” I call back, watching her disappear into her bedroom while shutting the door behind herself.

Before going at it, I take and post a quick Instagram picture at the layout in front of me, adding Halloween-themed emojis (so everyone knows I’m serious about wanting to get festive) as the caption.

I sigh and clear up my space, glancing around to make sure the area looks clean-enough, then get up to press start. It takes a second to make my way back and get myself properly situated on the floor, exhaling quietly and collecting my thoughts before shooting my head up and grinning at the camera angled a few feet away and slightly above eyeline with me.

“Hey everyone! Welcome back to Simon’s Arts ‘N Crafts!”

BAZ

I don’t understand the hype of Simon Snow.

I never truly have. He feels like he’s the sort of mindless bloke to pull out a guitar at uni and unironically start playing Wonderwall.

Allow me to rephrase; I don’t understand the hype of Simon Snow’s channel.

Snow himself, on the other hand, is a different story.

Cheerful smile, rosey cheeks. Curls that stick out at all angles (you’d think he’d try to style them properly, given he’s got the time and money now, but he doesn’t; he looks as disheveled as the day his channel began). Snow’s an utter mess just trying to occupy himself while avoiding other aspects of life, and somehow, for reasons I can’t chalk up to anything but his glittering disposition, he’s popular.

Not too popular, no. A couple million popular. Sponsored by major chains popular, due to the spike in young hobbyists trying to “Unleash their inner child” following his lead. But, of course, he donates huge portions to schools, giving them arts supplies and, for some saintly reason, gives to orphanages too.

I wonder at times if there’s anything deeper than just a handsome public face and overly generous donor. And, usually, I try to doubt there is, but I can’t quite ignore the occasional sign that Simon Snow may be a saint, and I fucking hate him for it.

I hate him for a number of reasons, starting with “He hates me”, and ending with “He’s gorgeous, and he hates me”.

I scroll down my Instagram feed, then refresh, immediately getting his post as a priority (I feel as though I’d be damned if anyone knew how often I go to simply look at him, or try to snoop through his older pictures to put the pieces together). It’s not much; his lap, which is a pair of grey joggers (Chris, I bet he looks fit in them), mismatched athletic socks, and a pile of half pulled-apart gauze, supplies for paper mache, an emptied beer can, and a sponge brush laying on a disposable plastic tarp. It’s simply captioned with a set of emojis that are definitely a few weeks too early.

baz.pitch Can’t count a calendar, Snow? Not surprised.

I stare at the comment for a brief moment, jaw clenching and swallowing back the strange, twinge that comes with our either interaction as quickly as it appears before trying to scroll and avoid any further thoughts on the matter.

It isn’t much longer before a notification drops down, hanging over the top of my screen.

(baz.pitch) buncespeaking: Are you still awake, or sleep-commenting?

I snort and tap onto it, letting the direct messaging screen load up.

baz.pitch: I am awake

baz.pitch: Is there something you want, Bunce?

Penelope Bunce and I interact far more than I’d originally thought we would. At first, when she first reached out, I’d assumed we’d quarrel, given her general harshness brought through her Twitter account, but I soon learned that she and I have a good bit in common. Personal views align, and she’s got a devilishly sharp sense of humour on her (not that I’d ever tell her, of course). Never thought I’d consider her not only an ally, but a friend in this harsh digital age, but I’ve found solace in her conversations.

That, and she teases Snow for me more than I could ever repay her for.

When I say tease, it isn’t quite the taunting I find myself regularly drawn into, but rather the simple name drop can be enough to get him to squirm in place (I know; I’ve seen it through live streams). I’ve never found it in myself to say any of my opinions on Snow to her, but given her intellect, I’d assumed she knows far more about my views of him than what Snow knows himself.

Which, at times, scares me. Nobody should know any vulnerability about me, unless I know equally as much incriminating information on them.

But so far, I haven’t had much a reason to worry.

(baz.pitch) buncespeaking: Do you know when you’ll find yourself in London again?

Interesting question.

Intentionally? Who the fuck knows.

As of recent, my life has consisted of no proper flat (which has begrudgingly left me living in my family’s manor, avoiding a permanent residence) while I hop about the island, then once a month, I spend a week in some various part of Europe. I just see it as trying to squeeze the most out of my life as a pitiful bachelor, but some others (Snow) consider this as me being a privileged arsehole and not wanting to commit to a proper life. (For the record, I regularly donate to LGBTQ+ nonprofits, but you don’t see me flaunting it in my personal work.)

Whatever. He probably hasn’t gotten snogged in the back of a Porsche in Venice during late spring.

Although, admittedly, that wasn’t very fulfilling.

Those trips never quite are.

And, sadly, neither are the men. All looking somewhat of a similar face; square jawed, wide-nosed. Long necks, wide shoulders, and curly hair that I love to tug and hold back.

But none of them are ever named Simon, and none of them hit quite the spot that this damned yearning has held.

Which is, I suppose, why I’m rarely ever in London. I’m not sure what I’d do with myself in London, unless I’m there with a purpose. I feel like I might go off the rails and try to actually find Snow without the guidance of some other party. I’d be a walking disaster.

baz.pitch: Depends on why you’re asking

(baz.pitch) buncespeaking: Well, a couple of reasons.

(baz.pitch) buncespeaking: Which all ultimately have the same suggested outcome of us collaborating on a video, and I’m not particularly set on getting myself out to Hampshire to sit in your frankly terrifying mansion.

(baz.pitch) buncespeaking: Plus, you can put me out of my misery and finally speak to Simon in person, for once. He’s driving me mad, and at this point, I’d pay for you to just put him to silence in person, for once.

As tempting as it seems, a small part of me worries that Bunce is believing that I’d sock Snow instead of snog him (maybe both are possible, but assaulting someone on their own property is risky at best).

I stare at my screen for a good, long pause, worrying at my lip as her typing pop-up ceases. It’s hard to not leap at opportunities I really wish to take--to just hold my dignity to somewhat of a respectable point.

But Snow crashes any barriers of my real rigidity.

He has for well over a few years now--ever since we were introduced digitally.

I’ve found myself watching his videos, over and over again, and trying to imagine how we’d play about. I like to wonder whatever happened to that pretty girlfriend of his (I’m aware they broke up, but he’s certainly too private to share the rest).

It’s been years since I first heard about Snow, and since then, I can’t quite get him off my mind.

It’s quite dizzying, trying to get Snow off my thoughts. I try to occupy--I try to fulfill. I try to find my way through life without some dull half-rivalry, full-teasing he and I share through out linked lives, but it’s like a drug. Draws me in, making me wish I had more of a good thing while trying to ignore that the good thing isn’t quite good for me, but rather simply a shocking want, prickling under my skin and bringing me back for more.

In all the things I do to occupy myself--to occupy the life I’ve been trying to lead (without success)--Snow’s been my favorite distraction. And I might just have to break through this and meet him, for once.

baz.pitch: Give me a time and a place and I’ll fit you into my schedule

[tessatechaitea]

Justice Society of America #4 (1992)

Ultrahumanite exhibits all the characteristics of a man happy to be reunited with friends: cheerily laughing, bright happy expression, hands on hips, weirdly-shaped massive hard-on.

Forgive me for the erect penis joke but I felt it was in the tradition of Grunion Guy. You might find it funny if you knew how uncomfortable it made me to type it and how worried I was for a second that my mother might see it. But then I realized that if my mom saw it, it would mean my mom read Grunion Guy's blog, and then I almost threw up. That would be so embarrassing! Normally I would be on the side of the Justice Society of America because they are the good people with the good values. But how good are their good values if they are trying to stop a job creator and upstanding corporate citizen like Ultrahumanite who is just trying to run his Ultragen business the best way he knows how: with stormtrooper bodyguards to defend labs where they experiment on animal-human hybrids? Anything that hurts corporate profits is a bad thing for capitalism and the Justice Society of America should know that, being that they have "America" right there in their name. Although they also have "Society" in their name and that is a bird whistle for socialists. The bird whistle is the dog whistle of the left because it is more pleasant to listen to and it isn't aggravating or obnoxious and it makes the world a better place for everybody (except people who hate birds and probably own guns to shoot those stupid birds. Stupid birds. So dumb).

Oh no! Nobody warned these old timers that we aren't doing prison rape jokes anymore!

Wildcat has some great words of wisdom in that previous panel. It is the most scienciest science statement I have ever read (unless it was the mathiest math statement): "If X did not happen, Y would have happened! Thusly I have proved we are better than you! QED! In your face, Ultrahumanite!" Whenever I would lose a game of Dungeons & Dragons with my friends Bullpup and McGroover, I would say, "Oh yeah? Let's see you make a delicious sandwich!" Then they would back down and they would be all, "Yes, you are correct, Pickle Boy. You are the better friend with the most useful skills and we are only good at pretending to slaughter Kobold families for copper coins." That's pretty funny if you realize Dungeons & Dragons is about adventurers invading the lairs of creatures to steal their material possessions! Doctor Mid-Nite does not quip with the others because he might be dead. Do not forget these guys are really old! It does not matter how many muscles they have or what kind of cardio breathalyzer tests they can pass; they still have super old bones and a lifetime of clogged arteries. One slip or the slightest bit of extra exertion could mean Stroke City or Brokenhipsville for these cool cats! That is old person slang! It is very humorous!

Now they goof on his stutter? I am beginning to wonder who the real villains are in this story!

Look how happy the Ultrahumanite is! And these old guys have been nothing but bitter, cynical old winds from the butt! Plus he is a successful businessman and scientist who has created life! It sounds like he has turned over a new leaf now that he no longer has to steal bodies. I am not ignoring the laboratory full of hybrid creatures; I'm just going to assume that they were all volunteers until it is proven otherwise. You cannot go through life never eating the buttered bread that fell on the floor buttered side down! Ultrahumanite decides to recount his past for some reason. This made me laugh because I was thinking, "Yeah! They are old men. They cannot remember stuff from so long ago and also they have enlarged prostates!"

But which is actually worse: making fun of somebody's disability or sympathizing with Nazis? I've got some hard questions to answer!

Some things are unforgivable but one thing I think we can all agree to forgive is a hot woman who sided with the Nazis.

How does a huge ape body reflect the Ultrahumanite's desires? Please do not answer, "He loves to copulate with monkeys," because that's what I an suggesting by the question and you would look like one of those fools on Twitter who thinks they are hilarious by restating somebody's joke in a less subtle manner.

Ultrahumanite continues to explain how he became such a pillar of the business community. It is as boring as you would expect a PowerPoint presentation from a business man would be. That was probably the joke! Why is not the trademarked name "PowerPoint" two words? If you are going to bother capitalizing the second "P", you might as well just separate the words. Maybe it was somebody's online name when they were fourteen years old. It is always a smart decision to just run the two words together rather than separating them with an underscore. And it is easier to read when the second word is capitalized (as opposed to every other word capitalized or just the consonants. I do not understand young people). Nobody remembers to put underscores in when searching for a name online!

"Ultrahumanite! You are experimenting on innocent people, ruining the environment, causing unknown amounts of damage to the populace of every city where one of your labs operates but Ted Grant and the world just want to know one thing: was that hot Nazi body the real you because 'Rrrrrow!'"

You think I am making a joke but I don't joke about things that I don't joke about and one of those things is that Ted Grant has previously expressed interest in cultivating an intimate relationship with hot Nazi Ultrahumanite. Specifically, he said earlier that she "swept him off his feet." He only used that phrase so Al could make a joke about how they were hanging upside down so the sweeping off of feet is still happening. But I think, in his heart, he wanted to say, "She made me spontaneously become a man every time we wrestled. Is that okay under the Hays Code? Can I get away with that amount of innuendo?!" The Ultrahumanite has to go deal with The Flash who has literally suddenly appeared. Weird how the word "literally" is never actually needed when it is used properly. I guess using it in a hyperbolic and exaggerated fashion is really its only job. While Ultrahumanite is gone, Doctor Mid-Nite "double joints" his wrists to escape. I'm pretty sure Grunion Guy's wrists were double jointed by the amount of times he wrote about masturbating. He was a crude jerk but I still hope he rests in peace in that pauper's cemetery down by the toxic sludge factory. Doctor Mid-Nite takes on the guards while The Atom and Wildcat rush out to save The Flash who is The Flash and almost certainly does not need saving. While Doctor Mid-Nite is beating up the guards, he suddenly becomes a stand up comedian. Was I wrong to assume he was an actual doctor? Is that just his stage persona? I would tell you why his jokes were funny if they were but I cannot figure them out. Why is this an old joke (and if it is, why would he even retell it when it is nonsense): "I know you're out there because I can hear you breathing"? The Flash gets encased in some living green goo that absorbs heat and kinetic energy which might also be a definition of heat? I'm just a sandwich maker slash writer's assistant who has never once showed an ounce of curiosity about the real world so forgive me for languishing in my ignorance. At least I own a thesaurus. Back in Gotham City, Jesse Quick appears for a page or two to remind everybody that she exists. "Hello! I am the hot daughter of the infomercial guy! I have also deluded myself into believing a mathematical equation gives me super speed! It makes no sense!" Jesse takes some papers proving that Ultragen is breaking laws so the JSA has the right to beat the crap out of its CEO. For comedic effect, they have a little more confusion over Ultrahumanite's pronouns (which, to be fair, he has not expressed any preference for and doesn't seem to mind using whatever pronouns match the gender he seems to be expressing) before rushing off to punch her in the face. I don't know what pronouns to use either but she was a super hot Nazi so let's just go with that one.

See? She is a scientific genius!

At first I was all, "Oh, big deal! So The Flash is trapped in goo!" And then the Ultrahumanite was all, "You cannot breathe without oxygen!" And then I was all, "Oh no! I had not thought of that! Somebody save him, preferably an old guy from the JSA or I will feel cheated out of my hard earned buck twenty-five." I keep laughing at that previously scanned panel and how Wildcat and The Atom are hiding behind trees the way characters do in comic strips. So ridiculous! It is even funnier if you remember that they are old men! I bet you are laughing a lot more now! Doctor Mid-Nite arrives because he "smoke bombed" with his previous stand-up gig. Get it?! If you understood the play on the word "bomb" there and that I meant the fight against the guards when I said "stand-up gig," you would be cracking up like crazy!

Yeah. A smoke bomb! We all know that is where he keeps them!

The Flash breaks free and Doctor Mid-Nite punches Ultrahumanite in the nose, breaking it. Ultrahumanite is so vain that he falls to the ground, defeated! And that is when the Calvary arrives! That is funny because I used the wrong word and now you are picturing a crucified Jesus riding up on a horse to save the day instead of Green Lantern, The Flash, and Jesse Quick arriving on a Green Lantern construct! Justice Society of America #4 Rating: A. I have not read as many comic books as Grunion Guy but this one seemed pretty good in comparison to the ones I have read, like WildC.A.T.S. #1 and pick any issue you want of Youngblood. One more "What gender is Ultrahumanite?!" joke for the road!

Alan felt this was the kind of thing a heterosexual would say. It's funny because he "New 52" comes out of the closet later!

[favoritefightingfrenchgoth]

can you recommend any good books on communism/anti-capitalism?

you know what? I’m just gonna say it. i don’t really read theory, i’ve read part of the Communist Manifesto, and i mainly get everything from theory memes and cultural osmosis from being in spaces around leftists (like the subreddit chapotraphouse, which was quarantined a while ago for celebrating john brown and nat turner, like the only sub i go on besides trans memes)

or watching leftist stuff  (i can also make a kind of masterlist of leftist youtubers, docs, videos if you’d like that go over communism/socialism/capitalism and whatnot, bc i actually need everything dumbed down myself)

putting the reading recommendations under a divider bc it’s a bit of a long post whoops.

this post links a whole bunch of things to read online. 

Marx’s stuff is the Classics of leftism (Manifesto, Capital) and Engels too but it is pretty dated (1800s gang) and can be hard to read (dumb gang) so its best if you decide to read it to go very slow. Luxemburg, I’ve heard she’s cool but I haven’t read her yet. 

Zapatistas/EZLN are super cool and more modern (90s to now), an indigenous socialist anti colonization/imperialism movement 

Jacobin’s ABCs of Socialism goes over everything beautifully i think and is easier to read. Here’s a couple quotes: 

“Socialists’ indictment of how today’s societies fail to provide necessities like food and shelter in a world of plenty, or stunt the development of people locked into thankless, grueling, low-paying jobs, rests on a core belief (stated or not) about the impulses and interests that animate people everywhere.” 

“Compared to systems of slavery or serfdom, the hardships many workers face today are less immediately obvious. In most countries they have real legal protections and can afford basic necessities — a result of battles won by labor movements to limit the scope and intensity of exploitation. But exploitation is only ever mitigated in capitalism, never eliminated. Consider this (admittedly abstract) example: let’s say that you’re getting paid $15 an hour by a business owner in a stable, profitable firm. You’ve been working there five years, and you put in about sixty hours a week. No matter what your job is like — whether it’s easy or grueling, boring or exciting — one thing is certain: your labor is making more (probably a lot more) than $15 an hour for your boss.  That persistent difference between what you produce and what you get back in return is exploitation — a key source of profits and wealth in capitalism. And, of course, with your paycheck you’re forced to buy all the things necessary for a good life— housing, health care, childcare, a college education — which are also commodities, produced by other workers who are not fully remunerated for their efforts either.“ 

Another reading list of theory

The Principles of Communism and Part 2 

Marxism FAQ

A Q&A that defines terms and stuff, haven’t read too far into it, writer may have bad takes or tankie opinions

[ifridiot]

Questions that are all multiples of 5 for Shi :0!!

5. On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

Various small tools and like, screws and nuts and bolts and bits of brick-a-brack he might need for various repairs. If he’s been having a rough go of it, he might have something small and electronic to fidget into pieces. He’ll also be carrying his cell phone most of the time. 

10. Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing?

Let’s put it this way: Shi has a very rigid sense of style that he hasn’t deviated from since about 1902. He finally stopped wearing spats around the time Y2K was a thing people took seriously.

15. Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not?

Money, because there’s never enough of it. Money makes the world go ‘round, and Shi will grumble acerbically to anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck in the garage waiting on repairs about how he can’t wait for humes to finish fucking themselves over so capitalism can die. The only reason he wants money is to keep himself fueled and functioning, because humes can abide the idea of sharing resources without making a profit. He would never admit it because it sounds too much like caring about the general population, but Shi is ultimately a socialist; he sees no reason why anyone should ever have to pay for a thing they need to survive -- everyone deserves a home and food and water and medical care, and frankly he doesn’t get why humans banded together in the first place if not to take care of each other.

20. In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism?

Shi often criticizes himself in terms of ‘smart people (like Soren or Punchy or Tonic or Skull, depending on the specific situation) wouldn’t have done what you did, they would have X Y or Z’d it’. 

25. How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

Pretty fucking quick, but he can get stupidly compliant if he’s really close to the other person and they’ve passed his litmus test. For example, Punchy could probably rob him blind if she so chose and it would take him a damn minute to understand and accept that she’d done it before he lost his shit over it. 

30. What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

He does not like squishy things as a rule. Being in a romantic relationship with a lot of touching with Punchy is slowly changing his opinion there.

35. How does your character behave around people they like?

He considers himself extremely indulgent with the people he likes. In reality, it’s just a vaguely less grumpy attitude. 

40. How does your character treat people in service jobs?

Very nicely, unless they’re shitty to him first for being a robot, or, in the case of that 1996 Airport Incident, if he’s had a real long, bad day, he can become quite growly and short.

45. What does your character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

He imagines he’ll be stripped for parts and, if he’s lucky, someone who liked him when he was alive with deactivate his core and keep the housing. He liked the idea of his more usable parts being up-cycled, but the core housing needs to either be buried or kept by someone who cared about him.

[rhythmbastard]

STATE OF THE BASTARD 2019!!!

Better late than never! I'm 31! Wooo... For me, 2018 was a year where I tried out a lot of stuff and it worked. As shitty as things were otherwise, and at times, I felt like I was just spinning my wheels, I have a better idea of what to do going forward. The con front was quiet, but the few shows I did put on (Mini Iwai, Anime Iwai and Holiday Matsuri), went over very well, particularly because I've got my shenaniganing down pat. I've also put out quite a few songs out on Patreon, and managed to get to a few conventions I wasn't required to play at. Like, I can just hang out and shit. So I have a better feeling going into 2019. Here's to 10 More Years! Yeah, I've been at this for 10 Years. MOST RECENT SONG: "Death's Blossom" Youtube-

Soundcloud-

I JUST rendered the video and cover out today so I can have this for you guys. You're Welcome! FAVORITE SONG I MADE: "Thrash Panda" A song that's still Patron exclusive, but I feel REALLY good playing this song live. The ONLY reason I haven't dropped it yet is because I do want to make a cool piece of art to go along with it. OTHER COOL SHIT I DID: 2017's 3000 Brigade Show is finally out!

This was a good one. I still have the Wii Fit Trainer stuff, in my closet. 2018's show was even better since I had more to do! Amanda if you're reading this I still have all of your acoutrements in my closet I've also joined a DnD Campaign long time internet friend Luke Herr is running, which leads me into... PODCAST STUFF: RPG Pals Club- By the time you read this, it'll be out for the public! My character is Oi! A Drow Monk who chose the punk life over the underdark. So now he's a punk monk. NOW HE'S A PUNK MON- I'd Rather Not- The last episode was... not fit for human consumption, but we're nearing on 100 episodes, so the shaningans will Pentuple! TREND I LIKED THE LEAST: Coddling Bigotry Being A Cottage Industry Oh, wait? That was last year? And it still persists this year since all social media companies worry about is "engagement", content be damned, since 4chan Nazis have nothing better to do all day than harass transgender people and other minorities? TREND I LIKED THE LEAST PART 2: Articles About "Going Too Far" You know the trend: "SANTA SHOULD BE GENDER NEUTRAL!" "THEYBIES?" "EXACTLY ONE WOMAN WITH FEMINIST IN THEIR TWITTER BIO SAID A THING SO IT'S NEWS" You've seen these articles a million times shared by friends on Facebook, usually accompanied by a "WTF?", and in the comments go something like "I'm not racist/sexist/hating on x group here, BUT..." These stories serve a purpose to make you think that a certain marginalized group is going "too far" in the pursuit of equal rights. And when you have the fear of going "too far", its two fold: 1. You're afraid of anything being tried in the first place 2. It leaves the door open for someone more agreeable to the status quo to come in with an ineffective solution. So the only response is to drag them to the main point kicking and screaming, "Well don't you think X should have the same rights as the rest of us?" TREND I LIKED THE MOST: Furries Being The Comrades We All Need In This Shittastic World This year's Internet Hero was not a man, but a fox. A black, gay fox (everything Republicans hate) who was really, really good at fighting games. Second place goes to a guy who shat on Elon Musk: I've mentioned that the furry fandom/subculture is more creator focused than anime fandom, which means that is is decentralized, and all media considered "furry" is not produced by a singular entity. There may be pieces of media popular amongst furries, like Disney movies, Star Fox, etc., but the fandom itself owns the means of production, meaning it's socialist as hell, which is a good thing.    Since there's no singular entity that produces the art, there's no reason for them to ignore bad actors in the name of profit. Video game and comics companies and the like can look at bullshit like Gamergate and Comicsgate and go, "Hey, their money's just as good as anyone else's! But since the talent pool is widely distributed, and everything is done on a person to person basis, you can tell the Nazis to fuck off:

And yes, there are Nazifurs/Altfurries. When the entire pull of a fandom is "You don't have to be the default you", it can be a good, like a safer space for LGBTQ+ people to express themselves and feel more out (i.e. their fursona is a different gender than the person was assigned, sexuality is different, etc.). Or it can be a bad, meaning "Hey, I was kicked out of my usual group because I was a dipshit who kept making holocaust/attack helicopter/racist jokes, SURELY these people will accept me!" As mentioned earlier, you can kick out the latter group. It's fine. When you've been an internet punching bag for so long, you can either be a shittier person, or keep on keeping on and learn to be better on your own. Same for the juggalos. LET'S COMBINE THE TWO, SHALL WE? FAVORITE SONG OF 2018: "Make Me Feel" by Janelle Monae

So, the runner up for this was "She's Kerosene" by The Interrupters, but while that a lot of energy and I crank up it my car all the time, "Make Me Feel" wins out because it has sexiest buildup to any song ever, and of course, Janelle Monae at her most fun. TOP 40 SONG I HATED THE LEAST: "Thank U, Next" by Ariana Grande

My thought process: "Ugh, OK, like, I haven't listened to a lot of Top 40 Radio, so I guess 'Feel It Still' is in the running, but let's see what Todd In The Shadows thinks..." "Thank U Next? That Ariana Grande song? It's a meme, but I'll give it a listen." "DAMN THIS IS SO GOOD! Her voice is so soothing! And the song expresses a sentiment so unique! Haha! I wonder what movies I'd parody for my thank u next equivalent?" THE "WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME ABOUT THIS SOONER?" AWARD: The Shadowrun Games by Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun is a TTRPG setting that's basically when two designers didn't want to decide on making a cyperpunk game, or a fantasy game so they're like "FUCK IT, WE'LL DO BOTH!" and have a game where you can play as orcs who can cast magic and elves who can hack into shit. Since 2013, Harebrained schemes have been making games based off the brand and have done so with X-Com style combat mixed with Neverwinter Nights style exploration, and while not very long, they've been fun to play and get into. Dragonfall is the best out of the three with a better story, and more connections to your usual shadowrunning squad. GAME OF THE YEAR: See Above ANNUAL REMINDER I SHARE A BIRTHDAY WITH MC BAT COMMANDER: via Blogger http://bit.ly/2Ht1MZJ

[weecb1983]

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation…

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation…

 O would, or I had seen the day

That treason thus could sell us,

My auld gray head had lien in clay,

Wi' Bruce and loyal Wallace!

But pith and power, till my last hour,

I'll mak' this declaration;

We're bought and sold for English gold -

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.

 Interpretation of poetry has never been my strong point, but I’d hazard a guess that The Bard was pretty pissed off when he wrote these words.  More than 200 years later, I have to wonder – are we still a “parcel of rogues in a nation”?

 I started off 2019 with two resolutions:

1.     Don’t worry about things until they happen

2.    Stop tweeting

 I lasted until the 2nd of January before I came across a tweet from the Scotsman…”End indyref2 talk in 2019, campaigners TELL @NicolaSturgeon” and felt compelled to retweet with a sarcastic comment and a bemused emoji. Fast forward a few hours and I’m awake at 3am, anxious about the state of the country and a Brexit that hasn’t happened yet.

Earlier in the year, to relieve my anxiety, the “other half” begrudgingly agreed to me stockpiling food.  So I set about compiling a “Brexit Cupboard” filled with pasta, rice and other staples from the continent such as olive oil and sundried tomatoes that may be hard to come by in the even a no-deal Brexit scenario.  I received a lot of stick for this from friends and family, who suggested that I was catastrophising and perhaps I had too much time on my hands, being on maternity leave at the time.  It was time I went back to work.

 Brexit cupboard ready to go, I still find myself awake at stupid o’clock in the morning, so in another attempt to get a decent night’s sleep I thought I’d try to take the thoughts that are troubling me and put them down on paper….

 Back in 2014 when Scotland voted No, I was heartbroken but I understood and accepted the result.  I don’t blame my friends and family who voted No (openly).  Initially, my gut reaction was No.  It was a risk, but I decided that since it was such a serious decision, I should partake in some research.  I had never been interested in politics before and, prior to 2013, wasn’t even registered to vote.  Coming from a predominantly socialist family, I was conscious that my vote should be an informed decision and not based on what those around me thought.  The more I read, the more convinced I was that Scotland should be independent, and the more incensed I became that we weren’t already.

 I joined Twitter, entered into discussion with “Unionists”, asking questions and looking for a reason as to why Scotland should remain as part of the UK. I am still looking.  For one single reason.  Instead I have received nothing but condescending replies, questioning my intelligence and level of education, or lack thereof.  One lovely chap asking, “not very bright are you?”. Regarding the ever divisive topic of Scottish Independence, polite discourse quickly descends into “sharing and pooling” and “fiscal transfer” and “go away, you don’t understand”.  I’ve tried with GERS.  I really have, and I don’t think it’s that GERS figures are beyond the comprehension of the average “cybernat”.  Just that they are far too dull to hold the attention of all but the most dogged “Britnat”, who would rather see Scotland burn to the ground than be independent (they might get their wish come April).  They wait eagerly for “GERS-figures day” every year and, like a dog with a bone, rip them to shreds and shout “See!  They are your own government’s figures and they show that Scotland is too wee, too poor!  Get back in your box”.  From what I can understand, these figures are based on Scotland being part of the so-called “United” Kingdom and can’t be used to predict what an independent Scotland would look like so I really don’t see what all the hoo-hah is about to be honest.

 Sometimes I think, in an alternative universe, where Scotland voted Yes four years ago, what would my unionist friends and family think if the country was in the state that it is now?  I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be biting their tongue, going by the continuous loop of “SNP-bad” rhetoric that still prevails, despite none of this current shit-show being of their doing.

 Looking at the state of affairs, it is extremely disturbing to see what people will accept nowadays.  If you had told me four years ago that the UK would be stockpiling food and medicine, preparing the army for civil unrest and that Schrödinger’s drones would cause Gatwick airport to grind to a halt, I would have said, no one in their right mind would vote for that….but then again, they didn’t put that on the big red bus.

 Credit where it’s due to the Westminster establishment, they have been extremely clever in this respect.  Of course it would never have worked to put “Vote for martial law” on the bus!  Instead, over two years they have, little by little, gone from “£350 million for the NHS!” to “a no-deal scenario wouldn’t be the end of the world” with Westminster’s very own resident hobbit Michael Gove kindly suggesting that we allow people to scavenge on rubbish heaps.  Even better, it will give us a chance to go back to the good old days of the Blitz when everyone pulled together.  To anyone who says that, I say, get yourself down a trench during the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  I visited the WW1 battlefields in 2015 after 97 years of peace, and it was traumatising enough.

 To anyone who is (even now!) unsure about whether Brexit is all bad, I simply say, look at who supports it…for the love of God!  Imagine, stumbling across a party and looking around to see Boris Johnson, Hobbit Gove, Nigel Farage, Andrea Leadsom, Dominic Raab, Priti Patel, John Redwood, Vladimir Putin and last but by no means least, the smiling assassin, Jacob Rees-Mogg and his fellow Dickensian panto-villain Julia Hartley-Brewer (never trust anyone with a double-barrelled surname).  I would be turning on my heel and getting out of that place before they started burning £50 notes (or as it will be known post-brexit…$5,000,000).

 I happen to think Theresa May herself would also be at that party.  I am not for a minute buying that she was ever a Remainer.  I reckon her husband (senior executive at an investment fund that profits from tax-avoiding companies) would stand to lose a pretty penny from the EU’s Anti Tax Avoidance Directive which was presented on 28th January 2016 (!) and requires its member states to apply these measures as of 1st January 2019…3 months before the Brexit deadline.  Coincidence?  No deal has always been the end goal and who better to run down the clock than the cringe-worthy curtseying Theresa May who campaigned so emphatically for Remain? Theresa May, who is trying to broker a deal that is best for the WHOLE country and one that supports the democratic vote…the last democratic vote you’ll ever have, by the way.  Because now democracy means that when you voted once, based on an illegal campaign that no-one has been held accountable for, you are no longer entitled to change your mind because that is what democracy means now. Is Theresa May the Keyser Söze of Westminster?  Albeit her daft walk at the end is to the tune of Abba?  Is she that clever and forward-thinking to have orchestrated this whole clusterbourach?

 No, she is merely a puppet and her strings are being pulled by disaster capitalists who know exactly what they are doing.  They will have prepared for every eventuality.

 Panto villain Mogg has been popping his polite, well-spoken, over-privileged and under-achieving head up recently to air his views whenever he can on the main-stream media.  I noted that he voiced his support of the late Margaret Thatcher featuring on the new £50 note.  Margaret Thatcher, who was a known admirer of General Pinochet.

 This is a quote from Naomi Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine:

 “The British prime minister was well acquainted with what she called “the remarkable success of the Chilean economy”, describing it as a “striking example of economic reform from which we can learn many lessons”.  Yet despite her admiration for Pinochet, when Hayek first suggested that she emulate his shock therapy policies, Thatcher was far from convinced.  In February 1982, the prime minister bluntly explained the problem in a private letter to her intellectual guru.  “I am sure you will agree that, in Britain with our democratic institutions and the need for a high degree of consent, some of the measures adopted in Chile are quite unacceptable.  Our reform must be in line with our traditions and our Constitution.  At times the process may seem painfully slow.”

 I wonder if 30 odd years is slow enough and I think by “quite unacceptable”, she means this…

 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-pinochet-affair-i-saw-them-herded-to-their-death-i-heard-the-gunfire-as-they-died-1179543.html

Make no mistake, this is a right-wing coup.  It’s just that it’s being carried out in an orderly fashion – the British way.

 No one wants to talk about Brexit anymore.  The majority of the people in my life are completely ignorant about the consequences of a no-deal scenario, blissfully so, and encourage me to join them. The apathy shown towards the biggest political disaster to happen to this country in living memory is beyond my comprehension.  So half the country is sleepwalking and half have just about reached Brexit saturation point and all the time we are being nudged, slowly towards the edge of the cliff. ….and when we’re pushed over the edge, there will be Sajid Javid waiting on an armed boat shouting “CRISIS! - NO MIGRANTS ALLOWED!”.  The neoliberals stand to make a tidy profit while the country is reeling from the chaos that would inevitably ensue from a No-deal. We can look forward to the swift privatisation of our Health Service, abolition of the welfare state, chlorinated chicken, etc.

 In 2014, Scottish independence was about hope and the ability to control our own affairs.  Now, it’s about the survival of our democracy.  If Scotland is not independent come March 29th 2019, I predict that, freed from the burden of EU laws, Westminster will adopt Henry VIII powers to abolish the devolved parliaments.  It has already shown what it is capable of, and its contempt of the Scottish parliament, by taking them to court over the Continuity Bill.  Scotland has barely been mentioned throughout the Brexit “negotiations” and has been disregarded and disrespected at every turn.  We are absolutely not, as was promised, “Better Together”. Independence is the only option now and I, for one, hope to begin 2020 as part of an independent Scotland with my human rights still intact.

 However, if anyone is reading this in a post-Brexit version of “The Handmaid’s Tale”….nothing to see here!  All left-wing views out the window.  God save the Queen.

[thenewsguru]

The news media IS the enemy of the American people

In an article I wrote months ago, I told the story about visiting my uberLiberal sister and having to endure the “noise” emanating from the TV.  It was CNN from morning coffee to get ready for bed. My brain was being assaulted nonstop. I put on my headphones but unfortunately, they do not cancel out the noise.  I could still hear the voices of Anderson Cooper and others which truly made me want to scream! I finally had “the talk” with my sister.  I asked her if she ever searched the internet for truth.  She told me that CNN is ALL truth and that she didn’t need any other source of information.  I sat there staring at her, not even knowing what to say. Liberals are brainwashed and it’s satanic. George Soros If any news stations are in the pocket of someone – let’s cut to the chase, shall we? George Soros views the world as a type of Monopoly Board.  He buys up everything which will affect the masses (useful idiots) and because of his financial involvement, these Liberal news sources stay the Leftist/Socialist coarse; never daring to deviate from it.  I only wish that his “Monopoly Board” had a Go Directly to Jail card. We can only hope…….. From mrc.org This article is a bit dated, but because the influence of George Soros simply goes on and on – the article is relevant today. “Over 30 Major News Organizations Linked to George Soros When liberal investor George Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio, it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC, and ABC. Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalist’s ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.” The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” the code for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts. The ProPublica stories are thoroughly researched by top-notch staffers who used to work at some of the biggest news outlets in the nation. But the topics are almost laughably left-wing. The site’s proud list of “Our Investigations” includes attacks on oil companies, gas companies, the health care industry, for-profit schools and more. More than 100 stories on the latest lefty cause: opposition to drilling for natural gas by hydraulic fracking. Another 100 on the evils of the foreclosure industry. Throw in a couple investigations making the military look bad and another about prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and you have almost the perfect journalism fantasy – a huge budget, lots of major media partners and a liberal agenda unconstrained by advertising. Read the full article

[daxolotl]

On UK Politics, or, “The Absolute Shambles”

Christ, it’s been a week, hasn’t it?

I say that, but I know I have a lot of followers in the US and elsewhere, so...not everyone might know about exactly what’s been going on in the UK recently. So I thought I’d take a bit of time to cover everything that’s happened to lead us up to where we are now - and where exactly that is.

I’m not going to provide references to anything I say in this because there’s a LOT, but if you want references for anything I say, please feel free to send me an Ask or reblog this and I’ll find you references for whatever you’re interested in.

Cheat sheet:

‘Tories’ = The Conservative Party. Basically the Republicans. One of the two biggest parties.

‘Lib Dems’ = Liberal Democrat Party. Centrist, slightly left

‘Labour’ = Labour Party. Left-wing. One of the two biggest parties.

‘New Labour’ = A movement that happened in the Labour Party in the late ‘90s that created ten years of Labour government and saw them pushing from the Left towards...basically slightly-less-right-wing than the Conservatives. It was shitty.

‘UKIP’ = UK Independence Party. Far Right Assholes, want to leave the European Union.

‘SNP’ = Scottish Nationalist Party. Slightly left-wing from what I understand but I’m not overly familiar with Scottish politics. Mainly want independence from the UK.

‘DUP’ = Democratic Unionist Party. Far-right hyper-religious party in Northern Ireland.

‘Sinn Fein’ = Sinn Fein. In a deadlock with the DUP the Northern Irish Assembly which is the core of the Good Friday Agreement - letting UK Parliament govern them while the two parties remain deadlocked. Have a Thing about never taking their seats in UK Parliament.

Putting all the rest of this under a read more because...things are gonna get long. It’s a fuckin’ ride.

FLASHBACK - 2015

It’s a General Election year. There’s been five horrible years of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, during which time the Lib Dems (who were the minority) weren’t able to get any of their policies through, and were pressured into delivering ALL of the bad news that the Conservative government pushed through. As a result, their approval dropped to rock bottom between 2010 and 2015.

David Cameron, current Conservative Prime Minister in coalition, needed something to get a ratings boost and to ensure votes. So what should he do? Well, UKIP has been pushing for a referendum to leave the European Union for years - so he decides a good plan would be to boost his ratings by promising that Referendum if he’s elected, securing the rising UKIP vote for himself.

It works - just. The Tories get a 5-seat Majority (you need a minimum of 326 seats for your party in order to win a Majority), allowing him to form a Conservative government. The Referendum is arranged for 2016, and David Cameron gets to work campaigning...in favour of Remaining in the EU. He agreed to call a referendum about leaving when he personally is not in favour of leaving. What could go wrong?

Also in response to this, the heads of the Labour and Lib Dem parties stepped down. The Lib Dem leader was swiftly replaced by a man with the personality of dried toothpaste, while in the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn (a genuinely left-wing figure and socialist) was put into the running as a joke by several Labour MPs, and he proceeded to sweep the entire party leadership race in a flood of youth support.

The Labour party, still with much New Labour support, responded to that by immediately trying to backstab and oust their most popular leader in decades, which didn’t work particularly well.

FLASHBACK - 2016

The Referendum campaign was a mess. Lies and slander everywhere, Boris Johnson (a Conservative dick) becoming a prominent Vote Leave campaigner not because he wanted to leave but because he wanted to use it to boost his career against David Cameron. Theresa May (remember her name, it’ll be important later) siding on Vote Remain. UKIP and their leader being plastered on the front page of newspapers despite being a small party.

Oh, and Labour MP (and Remainer) Jo Cox being murdered in broad daylight by a white supremacist.

And then Vote Leave won. 52% to 48%. This was taken as a clear mandate, and David Cameron set to work starting the process of leaving the EU.

Oh wait, no he didn’t. He immediately resigned, causing a leadership race within the Conservative Party. Okay, Boris Johnson was prominent in Vote Leave, surely he’ll take this opportunity to...oh wait, no, he decided not to run for position of Prime Minister. Eventually, it got down to two candidates - Theresa May and one other. The one other proceeded to step down before members of the Conservative Party got to actually vote on the issue, meaning that Theresa May became Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party MPs, having failed to support Jeremy Corbyn up until now, decided this was the perfect time to try and backstab and oust their most popular leader in deca--wait, didn’t this happen already, last year? It doesn’t work, again, and he wins a second leadership race by an even bigger margin than last time.

However, two backstab attempts has left Jeremy Corbyn seeming, publicly, to be a weak Labour leader, while Theresa May appears to be strong.

FLASHBACK - 2017

Theresa May triggers Article 50 - which marks the formal beginning of our exit from the EU (”Brexit”). It can be cancelled at any time, but from when it’s triggered, we have two years to organise everything before we leave. Talks with the EU are set to begin on the 19th of June. Time for Theresa May to start preparing for talks, surel--

JUST KIDDING! SNAP ELECTION TIME!

Apparently, the Conservative 5-seat majority was not a “clear mandate” for leading Brexit, so Theresa May decides to call an early snap election, because politicians are allowed to do that for some reason. It’s definitely to get a stronger mandate, and not blatant profiteering by Theresa May to try and gain a larger majority due to the fact that the Conservatives are polling with a TWENTY POINT LEAD over the Labour Party.

The snap election is arranged to take place on the 8th of June - just 11 days before talks with the EU are due to begin. What could go wrong?

So Theresa May starts by talking about how the Conservative party is Strong and Stable, and that’s why she called an unexpected election after promising she wouldn’t, after taking control of the party after David Cameron stepped down after promising he wouldn’t. Strong. Stable.

It’s worth noting now that with a 20-point lead, Theresa May could have personally kicked all of her constituents in the kneecaps and she’d STILL get a majority government.

She follows up with the Strong and Stable argument by saying that she...will not attend any debates with any other parties. At all. She basically goes into hiding after calling the General Election.

Over time, she comes out of hiding. Jeremy Corbyn is campaigning publicly across the country, drawing huge crowds, so May counters him by attending private rallies in locked rooms with CEOs where the press aren’t allowed to attend. She also counters him by suggesting that he’s soft on terrorism and that he has past dealings with the IRA in Ireland, which...he doesn’t, other than as part of the peace process. She also counters him by suggesting that any Labour leadership would be a weak “Coalition of Chaos”.

Other parties slowly release their manifestos. The Labour party talks about their pledges, and the Conservatives jump on their most classic of attack tactics - that Labour is bad with money and the Conservatives are good with the economy. Their favourite is to talk about a “magic money tree” which pays for all of Labour’s pledges.

Labour responds by releasing a fully-costed Manifesto with clear detailing of where every policy will be funded from. This doesn’t actually seem to bother the Conservatives, who continue talking about how Labour uses magic money trees.

Shortly after this, the Conservatives release their own manifesto. It’s half the length of the Labour manifesto, and is...completely uncosted. In fact, the only costing in it is the fact that it would cost 7p to bring in free school meals. This, for obvious reasons, doesn’t sit well with a lot of people.

What sits even worse is one of their manifesto pledges, coined a “Dementia Tax”. Within it, anyone who needs a carer to help them would have to pay large fees for the carer provided they have money or property worth more than a £100,000. What this meant, essentially, was that any older person who, oh, happened to own any house at all, would be ineligible for the Council to pay for their social care, and would have to pay for their care from their own pocket. In practise, this would result in many older people being forced to sell their houses, even if they’re living in them, in order to afford the social care.

In a single move, she managed to alienate the largest, most reliable Conservative voters - old people with houses.

Following huge outcry and her approval rating in the polls dropping by another few points as Corbyn’s continued to climb, Theresa May announced that the Dementia Tax would NOT be happening. The “Strong and Stable” leader becomes the first leader in history to go back on a campaign promise DURING THE CAMPAIGN she’s running.

Election Day and Now

The 8th of June comes. The “unassailable” 20-point lead of Theresa May and the Tories has narrowed to just a few points.

Voting closes. The BBC Exit Poll releases, predicting...a hung parliament. It predicts that the Conservatives will be the largest party, but will NOT have a majority. If that happens, then they have to try and make a deal with another party in order to gain a Majority - either through smaller deals, or with an outright Coalition.

Results roll in over the night. By 4am, it’s clear the predictions of a hung parliament are correct. By final results, the Conservatives have 318 seats out of the 326 that they need - losing 13 compared to last election. Labour, meanwhile, sit at 262 seats, having gained 30 compared to last election. (Percentagewise, the Conservatives had 42% of the vote while Labour had 40%). Most of that gain is ‘blamed’ on young voters who had a massive turnout.

The only possible majority is still Conservative - they just need to find a party who’ll work with them. Labour obviously won’t. The Lib Dems aren’t making that mistake again. The SNP in Scotland won’t. The Green Party won’t. Sinn Fein won’t. UKIP, previously with a few seats, earn NO MPs.

Then it comes to them. The DUP. They’re right-wing, and they earned 10 seats - just enough to push a Majority, if they can get a deal. A deal the Conservatives desperately need to avoid another election.

The DUP who have current links with nationalist militant groups in Northern Ireland. The DUP who compare homosexuality to paedophilia. The DUP who push to keep abortion illegal in Ireland. The DUP who believe the Earth is 10,000 years old. That DUP.

LGBT constituents and LGBT Conservative MPs are against it.

Sinn Fein are against it, because they claim any Coalition or deal would breach the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, prioritising one of Northern Ireland’s two parties over the other.

And most amusingly: https://twitter.com/AbiWilks/status/873691569504882689 THEY WON’T NEGOTIATE ON SUNDAYS.

It’s now one week until talks with the EU are due to begin. And the UK has never seemed weaker.

And it’s fucking hilarious. Theresa May tried to push for more power for herself, and instead, she’s seen a genuine appetite from the people of the UK for socialism and left-wing ideas. She wanted to create a huge Conservative majority from a 20-point lead, and instead she LOST her majority and is having to try for a chaotic coalition to desperately cling on to power.

The UK is in disarray. We have no government. The Conservatives announced a deal with the DUP which, https://twitter.com/skydavidblevins/status/873811317068627968 as it turns out, hasn’t been struck yet, and they’ll be meeting to try and reach a deal on Tuesday.

I, and much of the youth of the UK, is looking at all of this with delight. Logically, I know that long-term we’re probably still fucked in a lot of ways. But short-term? Short-term, Right-Wing power is disintegrating because of their greed and overconfidence, socialism earned 40% of the total vote, and we get to see the Government that has fucked us in the name of personal profit for the last seven years get forced to beg to hold on what vestiges of their power still remain. The Conservatives look pathetic, and even if/when a deal with the DUP is struck, they will have no authority in any negotiation with the EU. They have been humiliated.

David Cameron might have fucked a dead pig in the mouth, but the Conservatives have fucked themselves.

[openanonymity]

Facebook As A Political Podium

I think today has been a day where I'm just annoyed with everything. It started with a truck driver totally fucking up the flow of traffic downtown. He almost caused a car accident with his shitty driving. Then I looked over the Learned League questions for the day, which appeared to be relatively easy today, as I got three right for the second straight day. I made the foolish mistake of checking Facebook. There, I saw two posts put up by different people which I'm assuming voted for our Asshole In Chief. The first post was showing a video of workers at what I'd imagine is an oil refinery, or something similar. The men were doing some high risk labor, and the caption read something like "fast food employees are fighting for $15/hour; this is what $15/hour looks like". I was close to leaving an extensively long comment about hourly wages. I'm not an economist or a business expert, but I feel the need to chime in sometimes with what I believe, because from my perspective, they're saying that if you work fast food, you're not worthy of making an hourly wage that requires your fingers and toes on which to count. I totally agree that a fast food employee isn't on the same skill level as someone who works at an oil refinery. But there is this illusion that everyone believes about the fast food industry, is that it only consists of teenagers and "entitled millennials" who expect a handout. Here's the thing: NOT ALL MILLENNIALS ARE EXPECTING HANDOUTS. They're not like the billionaire "too big to fail" corporations that the politicians we're given no choice to vote for are helping bail out every time the economy shits a cinder block and collapses. So, as I was saying, not everyone who works in the fast food industry barely making minimum wage is a teenager. There are older people who work full time for the following reasons: -They dropped out of high school -They are working toward getting their GED -They are single moms or dads trying to provide for their families, just like those of us in white collar office jobs -They got laid off and this was the only place hiring -They retired and still didn't have enough money in their pension/401k -They just came into the country and this is the only place that would hire an immigrant These are the people who are fighting for that $15/hour pay, and to deny them that right because the job isn't skillful enough is a bullshit excuse. They put up with all of us and our shitty attitudes. They have some high risk factors in the workplace too, such as handling hot grease, avoiding wet spots on floors, and using proper safety procedures when handling sharp objects such as knives and whatnot. Those who work oil refineries I would imagine took on an apprenticeship or went to a trade school to learn the skill set required for the job. I'd also believe it's a unionized industry, much like electrical workers, pipe fitters, etc. They have the privilege to go on strike if their wages or working conditions aren't up to par, and they probably put in a ton of hours each week doing what they do. I have a hard time believing they make $15/hour. They should be making much more. But if they do indeed make $15/hour, the unions should be stepping up and pushing for higher wages. $15/hour isn't a hard goal to reach for fast food employees. Also, why is everyone so against wage increases? I'm sure the amount I'm making was the same amount a middle management employee was making 20+ years ago. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you increase the minimum wage, doesn't everyone else's wages increase as well? When I worked at Wendy's, that was the case. They bumped me up an extra 30-40 cents hourly when the minimum wage went up. When you raise everyone's wages, it's good for the economy. People are more willing to spend their extra income, invest their money into more things such as a 401k, 529 plans, stocks, Roth IRAs, etc., and even purchase houses and cars. If you don't increase people's wages at the same rate that the cost of living increases, you put the workforce at risk of stressing out, being overworked just to make ends meet, and certain markets suffer greatly, such as the housing market. It's a chain reaction/domino effect. Increase fast food workers' wages to $15/hour (which I'm guessing would be a 30% increase), and increase everyone else's wages who make below $75k/year by that same percentage increase and you will see a much better economy. The only reason we are fighting about this is because the CEOs refuse to increase the wages, saying their profits will be hurt, while they give themselves ungodly pay raises and bonuses. The other thing I caught on Facebook was someone posting a picture of Colin Kaepernick with the caption "Colin Kaepernick is still a free agent". I know for a fact the person who posted this hated Colin Kaepernick for refusing to stand for the national anthem. I know a lot of people hate him for doing that. But here's the thing. He is/was protesting the anthem for a good reason. We don't hear the full national anthem when it is sung. There are more verses, and one includes a line that glorifies the murdering of slaves, but he was also exercising his first amendment right to sit down because he can't salute the flag of a country that isn't truly free, when cops are killing innocent black men and women. According to him, this will truly be a free country once the police quit racially profiling minorities and open fire on them when they haven't done anything wrong. Being black, Latino, Muslim, LGBT, Jew, or anything that isn't white, male, heterosexual, or Christian subjects you to oppression, bullying, and even worse, your eventual death. Perhaps I'm sounding a bit extreme, but to many people, this is the case. Kaepernick was the quarterback of my favorite team, and I think with nobody signing him yet, it makes the NFL look bad. This is a League that allows rapists, murderers, and domestic violence/child abusers to roam freely throughout the league after serving punishment that is nothing more than a slap on the wrist, but if you prefer to deflate your footballs or sit during the national anthem, you're a disgrace to the country and the league. Fuck the NFL and fuck the person who put up that post. She's about to be unfriended. So, with all that said, I was doing my delivery this morning and one of the tech guys asked me if my coworker was taking the buyout. That's been the big talk at my 9-5. Apparently, this guy is taking it. Good for him. I told him if I was in my coworker's situation, I'd take the buyout and likely leave the country, especially with the current political climate. I should've known the guy voted for Asshole In Chief. We got into a long debate about politics and spoke about immigration, tax returns, etc., and he said nobody had given past presidents a tougher time. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!? Where were you the past 8 years when the Republicans had done EVERYTHING they could to block anything and everything Obama did, even going as far as to suggest he's not born in this country and a socialist or communist Muslim terrorist? I told this guy every candidate released their tax returns, how does orangeface get a free pass? I didn't say orangeface, but I was very close. At that point, I kind of stopped listening to him even when he said don't leave the country, I was like "it won't get any better under this administration, they're reversing everything that was good about this country. Then, on my way to the van, one of the cleaning guys gets on me about being parked at the loading dock. I sarcastically apologized, and when I left, I noticed the Pepsi truck was still parked at the other loading dock. So, my main complaint here is that this fucking troll knew the Pepsi truck was there, why not go to the fucking cafeteria and find that driver, tell him to move if he wasn't using the loading dock? He's not an employee of this company, but I am. I'm done with today. Can it be Saturday already?

[outletggdbshoes-blog]

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[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to a weekly collaboration between FiveThirtyEight and ABC News. With 5,000 people seemingly thinking about challenging President Trump in 2020 — Democrats and even some Republicans — we’re keeping tabs on the field as it develops. Each week, we’ll run through what the potential candidates are up to — who’s getting closer to officially jumping in the ring and who’s getting further away.

The concept of electability was on some candidates’ minds this week as they considered the potential of the eventual Democratic presidential nominee to win the general election, especially in Midwestern states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which helped President Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But in an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted at the end of April, the preference for a candidate who matched the respondent’s views was nearly equal to preference for a nominee who could beat Trump.

Several hopefuls also spoke out this week to argue that it should not be assumed that moderate blue-collar Midwestern voters prefer a white, male candidate or even that they’re all moderate and blue collar themselves.

Here’s the weekly roundup.

May 3-9, 2019

Michael Bennet (D) Bennet hit the ground running in the first week after his May 2 announcement of his 2020 presidential bid. Bennet, the 21st Democratic candidate to join the race, was in Iowa talking about the cost of education.

“Getting to free college for everybody is not a very progressive way to approach this because a lot of wealthy kids will benefit from that, but let’s see if we can get you out debt free,” Bennet told a voter, without offering any specifics.

Bennet also appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday to respond to criticism of his voting record. The senator from Colorado had previously been given an “F” rating from progressive super PAC Demand Justice for helping to advance Trump’s judicial nominees and, specifically, for voting against filibustering the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch.

Joe Biden (D) The former Vice President received pushback from Sen. Bernie Sanders in response to a claim Biden made in March that he has “the most progressive record of anyone running.”

“I think if you look at Joe’s record and you look at my record, I don’t think there’s much question about who’s more progressive,” Sanders told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl in an exclusive interview from Des Moines, Iowa, that aired on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday. Sanders’ refutation was part of a trend of 2020 candidates defining themselves in relation to Biden.

Biden also stopped in Columbia, South Carolina Saturday to speak with African American voters and attended a private fundraiser on Saturday evening, at the home of his longtime adviser Dick Harpootlian, an attorney and former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman. On Wednesday, a health care union in California held a protest at a fundraiser for Biden at the home of a board member for Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles.

A small group of members from the National Union of Healthcare Workers — which represents 3,500 mental health clinicians who work for Kaiser Permanente in California—stood outside the home of Cynthia Telles, a member of the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan boards of directors, to protest long wait times for patients to receive follow-up care and fight inequities between mental health care and medical health care with Kaiser Permanente.

Union President Sal Rosselli told ABC News Tuesday that his members hope Biden, who has been an advocate for mental health care, would support the union’s position. Biden did not address the protests during his remarks at the fundraiser and the Biden campaign declined to comment to ABC News for a story.

Cory Booker (D) Booker introduced what his campaign team called “the most sweeping gun violence prevention proposal ever advanced by a presidential candidate.” Booker supporters were notified Monday in an email titled, “I’m sick and tired of thoughts and prayers.”

His plan focuses on pressuring gun manufacturers to comply with new regulations and imposing rigorous oversight over their products. The senator has previously vowed to “bring a fight to the NRA like they have never ever seen before.”

In an interview with ABC’s “Nightline,” Booker reflected on the violence in Newark, a city he led for over seven years as mayor.

Booker told co-anchor Byron Pitts. “I’m tired of walking around cities like mine that have shrines of teddy bears and dead kids. Teddy bears and candles and places where the murders happen.”

Pete Buttigieg (D) On Sunday, Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, joined former President Jimmy Carter’s Sunday school class in rural south Georgia, according to the Associated Press. Carter said he knew Buttigieg from working on a Habitat for Humanity project in Indiana where the mayor volunteered.

On Friday night Buttigieg was heckled by protesters at an event in Texas. Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was interrupted on several occasions by anti-gay remarks. Protesters yelled, “Marriage is between a man and a woman,” and “Repent,” according to a CNN reporter in the audience.

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who is also running for president, came to Buttigieg’s defense on Twitter. O’Rourke wrote, “Texans don’t stand for this kind of homophobia and hatred. Mayor Pete, we are grateful you came to Texas and hope to see you and Chasten back again soon.”

Julian Castro (D) Last Friday, Castro’s campaign announced it met the 65,000 donor threshold to earn the former Housing and Urban Development secretary a spot in the first presidential debate.

In an interview with PBS Newshour, Castro expressed confidence that his campaign “will steadily but surely get stronger and stronger,” despite polling that currently shows him in the back of the field.

He further proclaimed that he would remain in the race, at least until the Iowa caucuses next February, pushing back against the idea of stepping out of the race should his support remain stagnant.

John Delaney (D) Delaney was sharply critical of some of the major proposals being debated on the campaign trail, including the Green New Deal and Medicare for all, in a radio interview earlier this week, labeling them “half-baked socialist policies.”

“I’m just going to point out — their policies are bad policies,” the former Maryland congressman said in the interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “Medicare for all, in terms of the bill that’s been introduced in the Senate, is fundamentally bad health care policy. Putting aside we have no way of paying for it, even if we were able to pay for it, it still would be bad policy.”

Delaney laid out his alternative, a public health care option, in a PBS Newshour interview, arguing that Americans want to be given choices rather than be limited to one plan.

Tulsi Gabbard (D) In a fundraising email to supporters, Gabbard attacked the media, claiming that reporters were ignoring her campaign because she is “taking on … the corporate media and the military industrial complex who drive us into war for their own power and profit.”

The congresswoman from Hawaii outlined her platform in a nearly 30-minute-long interview with The Intercept on Thursday. She also talked about her decision to run for president after endorsing Sanders in 2016, her isolationist foreign policy views and her opinion that it’s time for the Democratic Party to move on from the Mueller report and focus on issues.

Kirsten Gillibrand (D) The senator from New York pledged Tuesday that, as president, she would only nominate judges who would uphold Roe v. Wade. Gillibrand acknowledged that it was unusual for presidential candidates to set such a litmus test, but argued that such a stance was necessary after “Mitch McConnell obstructed the nomination process and stole a Supreme Court seat.”

“I believe that reproductive rights are human rights, and they are nonnegotiable,” Gillibrand wrote in a Medium post. “Women in America must be trusted to make their own medical decisions and have access to the full range of reproductive health care, including abortion.”

This weekend, Gillibrand travels to New Hampshire for six stops from Friday through Saturday, including at New England College, where she will deliver a commencement address.

Kamala Harris (D) The New York Times reported Wednesday that Harris is reworking her campaign strategy to focus more on Trump, particularly after her aggressive questioning of Attorney General William Barr during last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earned her praise.

And during a trip to Michigan last weekend, the senator from California took on the idea of “electability” — a concept other female candidates have had to navigate as they seek higher office. She took a direct jab at the idea of her chances to move into the White House at the NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner in Detroit on Sunday, the largest NAACP chapter in the country.

“There has been a lot of conversation by pundits, about the electability. And who can speak to the Midwest? But when they say that, they usually put the Midwest in a simplistic box and a narrow narrative. And too often their definition of the Midwest leaves people out. It leaves out people in this room who helped build cities like Detroit,” Harris said.

John Hickenlooper (D) Hickenlooper authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed Sunday titled, “I’m running to save capitalism,” in which he explains his belief that while income inequality has led many Democrats to support socialist ideas, “capitalism is the only economic system that can support a strong middle class, a growing economy, and innovative entrepreneurs leading global technological advancements.”

The former Colorado governor concedes however that “the government has to adjust [capitalism],” making it easier for Americans to access higher education, raise wages and strengthen anti-trust laws.

Jay Inslee (D) The Washington governor unveiled what he called the”100% Clean Energy for America Plan,” which calls for clean energy standards with regard to electricity, new vehicles and building construction.

In conjunction with the plan — which would begin on the first day of his presidency and attempt to achieve renewable, zero-emission energy by 2035 — Inslee told ABC News that he is interested in retraining workers, such as coal miners, who currently labor in positions that would be affected by the plan, to work in new, clean-energy jobs.

Amy Klobuchar (D) Klobuchar rolled out a $100 billion proposal last Friday to fight drug and alcohol addiction and improve mental health care. In a statement announcing the initiative, the Minnesota senator tied it to her father’s alcoholism and subsequent treatment, saying that she feels “everyone should have the same opportunity my dad had ��� [to get the] help they need.”

The plan’s foundation includes prevention, early intervention and treatment initiatives, as well as justice reforms that would deprioritize jail sentences for non-violent drug crimes and economic and housing opportunities to support recovery.

Beto O’Rourke (D) On Monday, the former Texas congressman spoke at the United Steel Workers Local 310, as part of a five-day trip across Iowa, according to the Des Moines Register. A union pipefitter asked O’Rourke if he would commit to a federal law that would give unions the power to collect money from non-union members for collective bargaining.

“Everyone needs to pay into the benefits that they gain as a result of those who are willing to organize and fight,” O’Rourke responded.

On Wednesday, Sasha Watson, a writer who dated O’Rourke when she was in college, penned a story for the Washington Post Magazine about watching his rise to fame.

Watching him run for Senate, she wrote, “I was no longer one of a small group of friends who watched him at a distance, but a member of the public, and I followed his campaign along with tens of thousands of people.”

Tim Ryan (D) In an interview with CNN last weekend, Ryan criticized Biden for saying China was “not competition,” calling the statement “stunningly out-of-touch.” The Ohio congressman elaborated by noting that China was “putting billions of dollars” behind construction in the South China Sea and investment in the solar industry.

Bernie Sanders (D) The senator from Vermont debuted an agriculture and rural investment plan in Iowa on Sunday which includes sweeping reforms to break up agribusiness conglomerates, establish a “right to repair” law for farm equipment and redirect subsidies to prevent their disproportionate distribution to large producers as opposed to small farmers, among other proposals.

Sanders campaign staffers ratified a union contract with leadership this week, the first of its kind in presidential campaign history. Included in the contract are provisions that require the campaign to pay health insurance premiums for low-salaried employees and a pay ceiling for senior officials.

On Thursday, together with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Sanders proposed legislation to cap credit card interest rates at 15% and establish basic banking services at post offices.

Eric Swalwell (D) Swalwell would not commit to supporting Trump’s impeachment during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, but said the president should face “consequences,” comparing the situation to one with his children.

“We have to start taking this president seriously and speaking the only language they know, which is force and consequence,” Swalwell said on the show Sunday. “I’m a father of a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old. We’re going through the terrible twos. When my son misbehaves, we take a toy away.”

Elizabeth Warren (D) Warren appears on the cover of Time Magazine this week and the accompanying profile directs a spotlight on her policy-heavy campaign.

On Wednesday, Warren released a $100 billion plan to combat opioid addiction over 10 years. Friday, Warren is scheduled to visit West Virginia, the state with the highest level of opioid-related deaths in the nation, and a state that voted for Trump in 2016. The senator will visit the town of Kermit, where in 2016 the Charleston Gazette-Mail revealed the trail of nearly 9 million opioid pills shipped to a single pharmacy in the town.

On the Senate floor Wednesday, the senator from Massachusetts read portions of the Mueller report and continued to call for Trump’s impeachment, explaining to Politico that, in the wake of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s “case closed” pronouncement, she “felt a responsibility to go to the floor to say: ‘Case not closed, buddy.'”

Andrew Yang (D) The Des Moines Register reported Tuesday that Yang did not disclose on his campaign finance reports his monthly gifts of $1,000 to a New Hampshire family to demonstrate his proposed universal basic income plan. A spokesperson for Yang’s campaign said that their first quarter report would be updated.

Next week, Yang will hold a rally in New York City’s Washington Square Park, for which his campaign claims over 5,000 people have already RSVP’d.