#so it was mostly based on nomination numbers and then my guesses on which women would have overlapping fandoms

[beefy-babe-showdown]

I AM THE TRUE MUSCLE WOMEN CONNOISSEUR

IVE BEEN CONSUMING MUSCLE WOMEN MEDIA SINCE I WAS 12! IT WAS MY GAY AWAKENING EVEN, SO I KNOW WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT.

AND I CAN SAY JUST ONE THING

YOU ALL HAVE NO TASTE

A TINY BIT OF CURVE IS NOT TRUE MUSCLE, YOU GUYS PICKED STICK SHE RA OVER NOI? NOI!!!

AND DONT GET ME STARTED ON THE OTHERS!

ALSO IT WAS UNFAIR TO PUT THE TWO SUPERIOR MUSCLE LADIES AGAINST EACH OTHER IN THE FIRST ROUND! Noi vs Barghest.

This is just a joke please don’t come for my fragile ass.

The gay awaking at 12 wasn’t though. Have been a huge pathetic bottom lesbian ever since.

everyone share their gay women muscle connoisseur stats in the comments below and don't forget to like and subscribe

[okay-victoria]

Status of Women in The Empire

Summary: LN gives some evidence women have a better status than they did in OTL Germany. It gives little to nothing in the way of evidence that we are in post-sexual-revolution territory. It presents little enough evidence generally that you can use this issue in your own story as you wish; however, using how humans actually work as your baseline, it would be a very definite handwave to think that gender equality is much more than marginally better than OTL would have been at the time, or that Tanya wouldn’t be negatively affected by it in some significant ways in daily life. On the other hand, the original story handwaves an eight year old enrolling in a modern military and getting promoted to a mid-ranking officer by age eleven, so as a reader, I’m obviously pretty down for handwaving some realism for the sake of a good story.

Evidence:

V1/C1

“The armed forces have a practical exception in place for just about everything.” <= I think in fanon the entire Empire as seen as this sort of “everything we do is logical” territory where gender discrimination would have had to be eliminated, but in reality it’s presented as the military, and they are making an exception for a rare and incredibly militarily useful type of person to be able to be put to use by them without gender discrimination stopping it.

V1/C4

“But in the far-from-gender-free world of “ladies first,” Tanya with her outwardly girlish appearance is, albeit only relatively, blessed compared to the other students” <= YMMV, but I would not describe modern society as a world of “ladies first”. Do people do/say it to hark back to pre-1960s chivalry? Sure. Is it really the standard we live by anymore? Not so much. Tanya seems to pretty definitely still be living in those days.

“Basically, apart from the mage branch, the army is a man’s world. Actually, even most of the mages are men.” <= this is notable because it is said when Tanya is in War College, at which point the war has been going on for long enough that available mages have been conscripted, so there is no selection bias that men have simply chosen to pursue a career as a mage more often than women. This is actually weirdly important because it either means:

Magic talent is like, an X chromosome trait and men are thus more likely to have it [in which case, it would probably be taken as natural evidence that men are superior and worsen the gender equality situation]; or

There in fact is a Youjo Konki-esque exception for married women and/or mothers. A nation has to still be relatively in the infancy of gender equality if Female Mage #102 has children with Infantryman #1,000,102 and the military decides that since it can’t leave these children parentless, it has to conscript the dude who is substitutable for literally anyone else and not the human weapon.

Tanya has a long-ish reflection on women in the military. Important points are, the rules have only been overhauled recently to make it practical for women to serve in combat. Women in combat didn’t really exist prior to this war, and women in the military were basically limited to noble/imperial families having their daughters serve out nominal duties. Whatever boost women as a whole get from serving in a capacity that people are used to seeing men in, it has not had time to transform society all that much.

V2/C2

“Women administrators are not uncommon, but in the Empire where gender equality still has a ways to go, their qualifications are always questioned.” <= YMMV as to what degree this is meant to be a statement on something that still troubles women in modern times, or something that indicates gender equality is not particularly close to modern.

V2/C5

“After all, now that I’ve been turned into a girl, I’m faced with this annoying military framework where men are superior. Just the thought of my promotions being blocked by an invisible glass ceiling is enough to dampen any desire I might have to act all girlish for propaganda…apart from that, the Empire’s personnel system has adapted extremely meritocratic principles for the war, in a way, so I’m more or less satisfied with it.” <= sort of same as above, YMMV on whether this is just Tanya realizing what life is like for a woman in modern society or meant as a “no, it was worse” point.

However, I will say this: I highly, highly doubt any men chosen for high military honors were photographed doing anything other than looking ultra manly in uniform. Women serving in modern militaries are not forced to put on showy dresses when they get their photos taken, they are treated, at least in photos, with the same respect as their male colleagues. The fact that anyone found it appropriate to only photograph the recipient of the highest military honor in cute girl clothes speaks to some deep discomfort with anyone outside the military seeing women not doing what they’re supposed to.

V6/C6

“The Imperial Army has already tapped all the population pools that can be mobilized, but it still has two options. One is to begin the general conscription of women. That said, they’ve already been mobilized in the industrial sector.” <= YMMV, again, on how willing a modern country would be to conscript women to fight a world war, but if you are as deep into a world war as the Empire is and no one’s trying it, at the least we can say the Empire is not the bastion of cold logic it fanonically is outside the military. Also, it pretty much seems like women working in large numbers has only become a thing because all the guys are off fighting, which very much sticks us in pre-1950s territory.

V8/C1

Andrew reacts surprised to see a female reporter from the Federation, and reflects that they are quite liberal in some ways <= while this is a non-Imperial guy, given his familiarity with the Empire, it would seem weird that if the Empire was particularly more advanced than his country that he would still be so surprised.

Other Working Knowledge Your Author Has On This Subject:

Women serving in the military, while certainly helpful to the cause of gender equality, by itself is not going to create a broad-based transformation in society. That sounds a bit like saying: As we all know, the US dropped any racist laws or regulations as soon as we started allowing non-white units in the military. After Elizabeth I serving as the Ruler of England, a very manly role that her tiny woman-brain didn’t fuck up too bad, the people who thought women were naturally stupider than men were quickly relegated to the margins and gender discrimination mostly became more of an annoyance than a real hindrance to the average woman’s goals. It just doesn’t work that way. And I’m not here to say that the US is a post-gender paradise, but the US, which has never had a woman president and is pretty slow about expanding military opportunities for women, nonetheless is a lot better on the gender equality front than some countries that have had women leaders and allow women a fuller range of military opportunities. There’s a lot more complexity to it than: My country respects military => military allows women => guess I’m going to stop being sexist

The same goes for something that isn’t about gender equality at large but how it relates to Tanya: The view that while gender equality may be non-advanced, Tanya specifically is exempt from dealing with it because she is “one of the boys”. It Does Not Work Like That. At All. And the further you go back in time, the less it worked like that. Within the military specifically Tanya will probably be alright, but society at large punishes men & women that break gender roles as brazenly as she does more than it rewards them. This is an entire essay unto itself, Google is your friend.

This is going to sound silly and facetious but I’m being dead serious, from what little we know of fashion in the YS world, it matches what would have been the case in the real world in the WW1 era. If society at large was really that different, that wouldn’t be the case.

There is no canon evidence that magic has made any scientific advancements outside the military sphere of influence. Before the advent of things like dishwashers, vacuums, microwaves, especially refrigerators, and especially laundry machines being common household items, the ideal family model was: one person makes money outside home, one person takes care of house. There wasn’t enough time in the day to work and run a household. Many women in poor households had to work, generally at the expense of being able to keep their own household running smoothly, and even then they often worked in capacities that allowed them to be at home or ones that allowed them the flexibility to take care of some of this stuff. It really just isn’t possible to have a society remotely approaching equality when one gender is automatically assigned to home unless necessary.

Same goes for something else - contraception. Women having access to a contraceptive device that they control is a major component of setting a society on a path towards equality. Birth control pills didn’t become widely available until the 1960s. Without being unable to at least kind of balance the outcome of sex (even between married couples) between men and women, women as a class have a hard time escaping from the housewife-mother archetype.

Not to get too political here, but the Empire matches OTL Germanic-Prussianness too much to ignore. Living under a military-worshipping, religiously-inclined traditional monarchy has not, in any real life example I’m aware of, gone hand-in-hand with anything other than a fairly conservative and patriarchal society, and I feel like the burden of proof is on the other side to explain why that isn’t the case in the Empire, and our original author makes approximately zero effort to do this.

Being X turns Tanya into a woman for the purpose of making her life worse. It seems simply illogical [although I guess Being X’s decision-making skills are questionable] that he would then drop her into a world that had undergone broad-based gender reform instead of a world that was just barely tweaked from our own in such a way that it would allow Tanya to serve in the military.

My conclusion: the most likely option is that gender equality is exactly enough better as it needs to be to allow the military to convince the lawmakers that they should be able to use a very rare & dangerous ability to be part of their arsenal without respect to gender, or age, and no more. That difference is not likely to make life for women significantly better than it was in the equivalent OTL time period.

[aion-rsa]

Oscars 2021 Predictions and Analysis of Frontrunners

https://ift.tt/3s3HJE1

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Oscars 2021 nominations is how unsurprising they were. There were course a handful of snubs, from One Night in Miami and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom being left out of the Best Picture category to LaKeith Stanfield surprising awards watchers with a Best Supporting Actor nod thanks to Judas and the Black Messiah (displacing Chadwick Boseman from Da 5 Bloods). But by and large? Things proceeded the way prognosticators pretty much expected.

With the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences picks in, we can see that David Fincher’s Mank is the technical favorite with below the line voters, pushing the Netflix deconstruction of Golden Age Hollywood to eight nominations. These include major nods for Picture, Director and Best Actor (Gary Oldman) and Best Supporting Actress (Amanda Seyfried), but also a lot of technical recognition too in Cinematography, Production Design, Costume, and Makeup and Hairstyling.

Even so, the obvious frontrunner remains Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, a beautiful film that turns the tragedy of the Great Recession into a bittersweet celebration of American Nomad culture. The Searchlight Pictures release garnered six nominations, including Zhao in the Best Director category and another for Best Picture. Zhao’s directing nod, alongside Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman, additionally made history with this being the first time two women were nominated in the Best Director category in the same year.

Meanwhile fans still mourning Chadwick Boseman’s tragic loss, as well as celebrating his tour de force final performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, can take some small comfort in the actor being the heavily favored contender in the Best Actor category.

In the end, things proceeded more or less as how the breathless awards race media class hoped it would. All of which raises an interesting question: Will there be any actual surprises then on Oscar night? Well… below is our best, and entirely too early, guess at what will win Best Picture and the other major categories. Be sure to check back here on Oscar night to remind us how wrong we were.

Just for clarity, nominees we want to win will be italicized while the ones we think will win will be bolded. When they’re one in the same, one contender will be italicized and bolded.

Best Picture

The Father Judas and the Black Messiah Mank Minari Nomadland Promising Young Woman Sound of Metal The Trial of the Chicago 7

I’m not sure I can think of a year with a more clear cut and inevitable frontrunner than Nomadland in 2021. There have been other years with dominant frontrunners—almost every year in fact—including several that go on to win, such as Green Book just two award seasons ago. However, there is almost always a counter-narrative that threatens the perceived frontrunner. Sometimes those whisper campaigns unseat the presumptive winner (see La La Land and 1917), and sometimes they don’t. But in the case of Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland there isn’t even a serious challenger.

This in part because Zhao made an extraordinary film which uncannily mixed documentarian filmmaking and its study of real-life American Nomads with narrative storytelling. It’s a trick Zhao has done several times before, including memorably with the Independent Spirit Award winner, The Rider. But here it is done with Oscar favorite in star Frances McDormand, and it draws attention to a whole culture of forgotten (white) Americans. Additionally, Nomadland is opening in a pandemic year where most of the more traditional awards contenders have vacated. The ones that haven’t are mostly being produced by Netflix, including The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Mank. The former might be a real contender for Best Picture under different circumstances, but the Academy is notoriously recalcitrant toward awarding Best Picture to Netflix originals and other streaming efforts. Just ask Roma for more.

Nomadland braved a small theatrical debut ahead of its premiere on Hulu, supporting the theatrical experience during COVID, while Chicago 7 was snubbed a Best Director nomination, suggesting there is some skepticism toward the film among a large wing of Academy voters. Mank, meanwhile, is an acquired taste that appeals to my personal sensibility. But it’s quite cold and less a love letter to the movie industry than a loving middle finger. That fact will probably hurt it in a number of categories, including Best Original Screenplay where it was snubbed today.

Best Director

Thomas Vinterberg, Another Round David Fincher, Mank Lee Isaac Chung, Minari Chloé Zhao, Nomadland Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman

While I would vote another way for Best Picture, I am totally onboard with seeing Zhao pick up the Best Director plaudit. Hers is an entirely unique cinematic voice that has successfully blurred the lines of how narrative filmmaking can be conveyed, and she’s done so while cultivating a great sense of empathy in Nomadland. The picture that finds beauty and resilience in a story that could’ve been a tragedy, memorializing the Americans left behind by the Great Recession.

Her groundbreaking techniques make her stand out in her field. Plus, Academy will be acutely self-conscious this year about the disappointing fact that only one other woman, Kathryn Bigelow, has won a Best Director Oscar. So be prepared for Zhao to make that two.

Best Actress

Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of a Woman Frances McDormand, Nomadland Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman

Carey Mulligan is phenomenal in Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman. Acerbic but devastating, guarded but vulnerable, and equal parts righteous and occasionally terrifying, she provides a multifaceted turn unlike anything else we’ve seen from the now twice-nominated actor. Previously she was recognized for her ingénue breakout in An Education, but now as an adult thespian, she’s a true revelation. That narrative will appeal to Academy voters, especially as they tend to favor younger actresses in the lead category. Frances McDormand is a famous exception to that rule, but McDormand has two Oscars already, and one is for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri from only three years ago. Also Mulligan is much more keen on playing the awards season campaign game.

Admittedly, Andra Day won for Best Actress in a Drama at the Golden Globes … but the Globes are always going to be their own thing (ask Jodie Foster for more). And while Day is wonderful in The United States vs. Billie Holiday, that movie’s more meager quality is going to be an albatross.

Best Actor

Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Anthony Hopkins, The Father Gary Oldman, Mank Steven Yeun, Minari

In his final performance, Chadwick Boseman is heartbreaking and utterly riveting. All strained bravado and barely masked desperation, his Levee is cool to a tragic fault in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The film he occupies, based on the August Wilson play of the same name, enjoys its contrasts about Black artists navigating white dominated industries. But while Viola Davis’ charismatic turn is above the title, the B-side to her story as embodied by Levee is where the film’s ghosts wait. And they stayed with me long after the Netflix film ended.

Read more

Movies

How Chadwick Boseman Created His Final Performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

By Don Kaye

Movies

Promising Young Woman: Director Emerald Fennell Breaks Down the Ending

By Rosie Fletcher

Boseman deserves a posthumous Oscar for his turn—which would make him only the third performer to win one after Peter Finch for Network and Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight—and he’ll almost certainly get it on Oscar night.

Best Supporting Actress

Maria Bakalova, Borat Glenn Close, Hillbilly Eleg Olivia Colman, The Father Amanda Seyfried, Mank Youn, Yuh-jung, Minari

Conventional wisdom says Olivia Colman will win Best Supporting Actress for The Father. The Academy certainly likes her, having awarded her Best Actress two years ago for The Favourite, and the Academy also has a history of being more lenient on relative back-to-back Oscars in the Supporting category, unlike the historical precedents in the leading actor categories. However, I’m taken by the relative lack of consensus-building around Colman to date. Granted the Golden Globes denied Colman in favor of Jodie Foster, whose performance wasn’t even recognized by the Oscars this year. But the Critics Choice Awards also overlooked Colman while providing Maria Bakalova with a surprise win for Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm.

Precedent should still make me wary of picking Bakalova to win the award. After all, it’s a comedic performance which the Academy usually shies away from. However, this comedic turn was so good, it was able to expose Rudy Giuliani to be a creep with his hand down his pants in front of the world. That will appeal to Academy voters, especially after a year like 2020. Meanwhile my personal choice—Amanda Seyfried’s understated but wholly authentic restoration of Marion Davies’ image after Citizen Kane—may suffer from just a general apathy toward that film’s demeanor, at least from above the line voters. Her snub by her peers at the SAG Awards unfortunately speaks poorly of her chances.

Best Supporting Actor

Sacha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7 Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah Leslie Odom Jr., One Night in Miami Paul Raci, Sound of Metal LaKeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah

Daniel Kaluuya’s performance in Judas and the Black Messiah is a sweltering achievement. With limited screen time—despite being the ostensible messiah of the film’s title—Kaluuya is searing as the Black Panther Party Chairman who created the Rainbow Coalition and was hounded to his death by the FBI through illegal means. I’m also partial to Sacha Baron Cohen’s turn in The Trial of the Chicago 7 where he showed a more sardonic range as a counterculture activist in the Windy City. But even I’ll concede his performance isn’t the one folks will probably be quoting for years to come.

Best Original Screenplay

Judas and the Black Messia Minari Promising Young Woman Sound of Metal The Trial of the Chicago 7

Traditionally the Screenplay categories are where Academy voters tend to recognize the more challenging outside-the-mainstream Best Picture nominees they don’t want to give the top prize to. Ergo, it’s a great place for Emerald Fennell to pick up an award for Promising Young Woman. The movie is too candy colored bleak and light hearted in its tragedies to garner enough Academy support in Best Picture, but its originality will be awarded here.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Borat 2 The Father Nomadland One Night in Miami The White Tiger

I suspect the love for Nomadland will continue in the Adapted Screenplay category with Zhao picking up another Oscar. While the screenplay is quite brilliant, I personally feel the movie’s greater achievement is in its visual storytelling and melding of real stories with a broader fictional narrative. Whereas Kemp Powers’ adaptation of his own play is magnificent. There is a fair criticism to be made that Powers couldn’t fully escape the stageniess of his original conceit about spending a night in a motel room with Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown. But the acute intelligence of his dialogue, and the way it cuts to the tensions of Black responsibility juxtaposed with soft American power, is as potent as it is finally exciting.

Best Cinematography

Judas and the Black Messiah Mank News of the World Nomadland The Trial of the Chicago 7

I suppose I’m predicting a sweep for Nomadland, which in some ways will be earned. In others it may not, such as if Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography in Judas and the Black Messiah.

Best Film Editing

The Father Nomadland Promising Young Woman Sound of Metal The Trial of the Chicago 7

Film editing should be the one category Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 has locked up. With a breathless pace executed in nervy style by Alan Baumgarten, The Trial of the Chicago 7 makes dialogue exchanges out to be as exciting as any special effects-heavy set piece.

Best Costume Design

Emma. Mank Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Mulan Pinocchio

I suspect Costumes will be one area where Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom receives some technical applause by the Academy. However, I think the pastel and historically accurate designs in Autumn de Wilde’s meticulously designed Emma. shouldn’t go overlooked.

Best Production Design

The Father Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Mank News of the World Tenet

The amount of painstaking research and effort that went into so minutely recreating 1930s Hollywood in David Fincher’s Mank is undeniable. While I am expecting largely a shutout for my favorite film of last year, this will be one place where Mank will not go ignored.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Emma Hillbilly Elegy Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Mank Pinocchio

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom can win for Viola Davis’ immersive transformation into the Mother of the Blues alone.

Best Original Score

Da 5 Bloods Mank Minari News of the World Soul

It stands to reason that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross will pick up another Oscar for the score of Soul, which will also mark the first one for co-writer Jon Batiste. This would be a happy outcome, but if I’m honest the Emile Mosseri score of Minari touched me more.

Best Animated Feature Film

Onward Over the Moon A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon Soul Wolfwalkers

It’s another open and shut year for Pixar thanks to Soul. There’s of course a case to be made for Wolfwalkers, which was a beautiful work of art that’s actually hand drawn. But it’s an open secret that most Academy voters (sadly) do not watch all the animated nominees, and pick solely from the Pixar/Disney catalog. And Soul really is one of the best Pixar films in quite a while so…

Best Visual Effects

Love and Monsters The Midnight Sky Mulan The One and Only Ivan Tenet

There is precedent for the Academy to award less than deserving films in this category simply because the winner is associated with a more popular movie in above the line categories. However, none of the above the line darlings were visual effects heavy this year, and for whatever you might think about Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, there is no denying its visual wizardry is astounding, from the stunt work that sees men bungie jumping upwards to having in-camera effects happening simultaneously in different time streams. So the movie that wanted to “save cinema” may not be entirely overlooked by the industry on Oscar night.

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The post Oscars 2021 Predictions and Analysis of Frontrunners appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/30PQKEk

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Boy Erased

This is my last review of 2018! I wish I wasn’t ending on a downer, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes. This movie falls into the category of “films that I know I should see because they’re important but wowie wow what a drag” - basically most movies that get nominated for Oscars fall into this category for me. And Boy Erased is a true story about gay conversion therapy so, because I’m not Mike Pence, it’s hard to muster up the enthusiasm to watch something so depressing. So I guess the question is, what did this Important Oscar Movie teach me, and was it worth going to the movies for? Well...

I don’t know that it would teach me or any other LGBTQ folks anything they didn’t already know. But the performances are strong, the lessons are important, and the human connection is real. Directed by Joel Edgerton (who also stars as the lead counselor of the program) Boy Erased is based on the 2016 memoir of the same name by Garrard Conley and it details his time in a gay conversion therapy program. In the movie, our protagonist is named Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges), and he is sent to this program by his fundamentalist Baptist minister/car dealer father (Russell Crowe) and his mother Nancy (Nicole Kidman). What follows is a detailed look at how Jared got here, and the “education” inflicted on the young men and women in the program. 

Some thoughts:

I hope you know I don’t mean this lightly - the absolute weirdest thing I have seen in a film in 2018 is the bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea, in a polo shirt, screaming at kids about how to pray the gay away.

Nicole Kidman is getting all the buzz for an amazing performance, but honestly it was Russell Crowe that blew me away when I wasn’t expecting it. 

The most affecting thing about the entire Eamons family is that they truly believe this conversion therapy is going to work. The parents are doing this out of love, not punishment - they’re not kicking Jared out, they’re trying to save him, much as you would someone who has a drug addiction. And Jared wants to go fix his “problem” and has hope this program will do it! It’s all shown as very optimistic and positive for the family, which is unsurprising given the predatory nature of the business, but I was still a little shook up by it.

Lucas Hedges has to carry so much as Jared, and he does a fantastic job tapping into his anger and his confusion. I will say, I didn’t feel we got to see into Jared’s vulnerability very much - it always felt like there were walls around him. This makes sense given his inner conflict, but as a viewer, I wish I could have gotten more a sense of who he was when he wasn’t hiding.

[TRIGGER WARNING] Why was there a long, unflinchingly traumatic rape scene?? Why was it like this?? Joe Alwyn, why???

People laughed at the end of the film when it said Sykes (Joel Edgerton, the lead counselor) lived in Texas.......with his husband but um. That's not funny. It's awful and so sad that he tortured people in the name of something he couldn't accept about himself. We see what that does to Jared and the other kids, why would it be different for Sykes?

There were very few lesbians in the class, but there was one, Sarah (Jesse LaTourette) and I was so affected by her. She had very little time onscreen, but I wish we spent more time with her and her story, and Jared seems to feel the same way as they have a kindred spirit vibe about them that just feels heartbreaking.

In case any of this feels like it’s so far removed from reality as to be ridiculous, there is a scene at Jared’s dad’s car dealership where they pray at the beginning of the shift and I got vivid, visceral flashbacks to the work Christmas party at my last job in which the CEO led a 10-minute long prayer session blessing us all in the pure glory of Christ’s love. That shit is REAL, y’all.

Obviously we get to see the ugly details of the program up-close, and they’re meant to be shocking. Moral inventories of the participants’ family trees; role-playing exercises encouraging screaming matches against stand-ins for Dad; a mock funeral held for a participant (Britton Sear) followed by his family beating him with Bibles in front of everyone. It’s all awful, of course, but it just feels like a movie for straight people because the gays already know all this. We know the horror stories, we know the suicide statistics. So while I am VERY appreciative this movie exists, it’s a weird experience to feel like it’s meant for me while also not really meant for me at all. 

The grim reality of the matter is that ex-gay and gay conversion therapy programs are still legal in 37 states. And by sheer numbers and advocacy power alone, the straights are the ones who are going to have to wake up and fight that fight with us or else nothing’s going to get done. This movie is powerful, mainly from its emotional performances, but also a necessary teaching tool. Is it entertaining? I mean, i wasn’t bored. But mostly it’s important, and if you’re a fan of important movies, I can definitely recommend this one.

[sadhikamalladi-blog]

Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahniuk

Introduction

As a kid, I would devour books. I used to read a book every few days, and I spent so long refreshing the NYT Bestsellers List that I decided to just set it as my home page. This habit continued through high school. Any genre, any length, I wanted to read and learn everything there was to know. I loved how books moved at a pace that the author and I negotiated, instead of the wholly intractable speed of film. Sometimes, I'd spend hours rereading a line, relishing the image and rhythm the words and their pronunciations formed in my head. I wondered if the author intended for me to come back to that line, or if they simply wrote it while reaching blindly for a cup of coffee.

One of the first authors to pull me into their world, depraved and demented as it was, was Chuck Palahniuk. I read Fight Club, and I walked through life for months wondering if there was a fight club out there, literally or metaphorically, and if I would glean joy from joining. Through Palahniuk, I learned how to take an objective lens to everything, instead of arbitrarily assigning value and designating things or people as "good" and "bad." I read and reread all of Palahniuk's books, shaken as Seth turned into Manus and Tyler morphed into the narrator I had come to rely on and maybe even respect. Palahniuk let me be self-righteous only so he could dismantle me.

The truth is, Palahniuk's game has always been the same. He throws uneasy situations at you and lets them blossom into colossal shitstorms that you somehow find yourself at the eye of. His work is known for the employment of an unreliable narrator, one who's often equal parts bored and boring for the majority of the novel. So, I was especially surprised to find out his latest work, Adjustment Day, was a decentralized narrative.

Why I Hate Decentralized Narratives

Another book I read this summer was Into the Water by Paula Hawkins. Much like Palahniuk, Hawkins is known for unreliable narrators. Her previous book, Girl on the Train, captured my attention and twisted my judgments against me in the most Palahniuk-esque way I could've imagined. And she did it all without the gore and sheer shock value that accompanies Palahniuk's language. I had high hopes for Hawkins' novel, which ultimately left me unsatisfied because of its decentralized narrative.

Decentralized narratives are ones in which there are many narrators (at least 11, in Hawkins' case) of varying credibility. It's meant to provide us with the immersive experience of investigating the mystery as though we were living it -- through a series of short vignettes that inevitably reference context we don't have access to. And as readers, we're meant to wade through this mess and attempt to form loyalties and suspicions that are inevitably incorrect.

All of this is fine with me in theory. I love a good puzzle, and putting together conflicting narratives from ulteriorly motivated characters is an exciting prospect. Unfortunately, it's very hard to deliver this kind of novel.

The excitement of the style is also its downfall. The author has to maintain a careful balance across characters, placing red herrings and minor storylines with as much importance as the main plot. We're meant to have no indication from the writing alone who did what. And if we judge a character based on their past, we're bound to be wrong. However, the sad truth is that if we don't judge characters then we have very little incentive to remember who's who in the story. We also require some sense of coherence in order to follow a character's story.

About fifteen pages into Hawkins' Into the Water, I found myself pulling out a piece of paper and a pen, jotting names and bullet points down. Several hundreds of pages later, I was extremely displeased. Sure, there was a cohesive network of small tidbits that added up to a bigger story. But there were also loose ends galore -- to the extend that I found myself wondering if The Room was easier to follow (it wasn't).

I haven't seen a decentralized narrative executed properly. It does feel like the next natural step in literary evolution, from a single unreliable narrator to many.

Novel Overview

So, Palahniuk's Adjustment Day. I have to say, the novel brought up some exciting themes but ultimately fell a little flat for me, mostly due to issues with relating to characters. The ending left me especially dissatisfied, wondering why Palahniuk teed up situations primed for sharp and incisive social commentary and then didn't follow through. It really isn't his style to back off.

Parts of the novel felt clichéd, but I guess that's to be expected. We are consuming such a massive amount of criticism of different social phenomena that nothing really strikes me as surprising anymore. I've read stories about how Trump has planned his coup for decades and stories about how if only a few tiny things were different we would be in a vastly different social climate right now. Regardless, Palahniuk does his usual work of harnessing fiction to raise deeper questions about what's happening around us.

Youth Bulge

Every Palahniuk story is anchored by a simple social circumstance. Women feeling self-conscious about their appearances, men feeling inferior in comparison to their evolutionary ancestors' raw athleticism, etc. In Adjustment Day, it's all about the youth bulge, a phenomenon in developing countries where infant mortality rates plummet but fertility rates continue to skyrocket, resulting in a large number of youth.

Palahniuk focuses on male youth. He paints them with broad strokes, characterizing them as an aggressive, war-mongering group. He describes world governments in collusion with one another to construct aimless wars simply to expend these youth and occupy them. If they're not occupied, Palahniuk seems to claim, they'll run rampant and seek increasingly self-destructive ways to express masculinity.

The messiah-like Talbott character recognizes this trend and decides to harness the power of these young men. He spouts off various platitudes throughout the novel, many of which carry the ring of deep wisdom but lack nuance. The young men, proud to be part of some kind of covert movement, hang on his every word and seek to bring about Adjustment Day.

Adjustment Day

Adjustment Day is a largely circular idea. Basically, the idea is to divide the nation into three subnations: Blacktopia, Caucasia, and Gaysia. Through some increasingly contrived set of requirements, people are delegated mercilessly through these nations. As Talbott puts it, minorities only rebel when there's a majority to subvert. By placing the gays in one nation, the blacks in another, and the whites in a third, the new order will ensure that everyone exists solely in homogeneous communities and thus in eternal harmony.

But the first problem is that people are not willingly going to go into these subnations. What about interracial couples? What about young gay children being separated from their heterosexual parents? Talbott sees these as collateral damage.

To set the gears in motion, he establishes a new currency by which people can wield power in the new order. A humble list starts on the internet -- "America's Least Wanted." People nominate anonymously, and others can up- or down-vote names. As a name gained traction, the bounty on their head increased. Well, it's not literally their head -- the job is actually to slice off the person's left ear.

Preparation and Execution

The first half of the novel focuses on the preparation for this fateful day. Talbott recruits people who seek redemption -- addicts, disgruntled veterans, etc. -- and lets them start a lineage. They can recruit another man who can recruit another one and so on. The pride of the youth bulge ensures that no one recruits someone who will spill the beans too early.

Police officers and politicians are brought in on the deal, effectively making it hard to organize the state in response. The day of, the bloodbath occurs surprisingly quickly. People are slaughtered en masse, their ears sliced off and taken as tokens to establish influence in the new world order.

The Aftermath

We follow a few characters throughout the novel, seeing how they act before, during, and after Adjustment Day. In the aftermath, Palahniuk describes people forcing themselves to fit in just to maintain a semblance of their old life. An interracial couple pretends to be gay so they won't get separated into Blacktopia and Caucasia. A gay teenager enrolls himself in a glorified internment camp as he waits transfer to Gaysia.

Misfits scattered across the nations eventually stumble onto each other in some unspecified location and start anew.

What Worked

Palahniuk's language was as sharp as ever. He describes the justification for a temporary type of cash (the paper loses value in a few weeks).

Hoard food and it rots. Hoard money and you rot. Hoard power and the nation rots.

He so clearly cuts down to the core of our greatest fears about society -- that the effort we put toward a communal welfare may not ever benefit someone we care about.

Imagine there is no God. There is no Heaven or Hell. There is only your son and his son and his son, and the world you leave for them.

Palahniuk wrote about the desires of the youth bulge with passion that felt extremely familiar:

He was tired of learning history. He wanted to be it. Charlie wanted the history of the future to be him.

What Didn't Work

The decentralized narrative again made it hard to care about any of the individual characters. And although I felt some concern for the overall fate of the new order, I never really cared much about its ramifications on particular individuals. Arguably, that was where the punch of this entire story was hidden. If I could see the goodness of the overall arch but the badness on an individual level, we'd have another Fight Club situation. But I couldn't.

The horrifying descent into chaos was unsalvageable. If Palahniuk had just ended the book with Adjustment Day, I might have had a different perspective. But he continues on with this murky Reconstruction-esque tale that is neither interesting nor easy to follow. As NPR describes, Palahniuk tried to build the appeal of Fight Club into a bigger, more global movement but ultimately failed [1].

Conclusion

I still love Palahniuk. And I still let phrases from Adjustment Day roll around in my head. They don't have as much power to me though, because I can't contextualize them in any wonderfully meaningful way.

[1]: NPR article

[bb-bigbang-org]

EPISODE 1: “This house offers no cute people, and I hate it” - DREW

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CODY

I am playing up a character so I’m acting kinda cold to a lot of people saying short simple answers to DM’s mostly. 

MANDI

aaaahhhhhhhhhhhh. i think im actually really going to love this cast.

DREW

Alright ladies and gentlemen. I'm gonna make the first text confessional and I think its gonna be very simple. 

This house offers no cute people, and I hate it. I usually flirt with one man and woman in this house, and there is NO ONE cute in this cast. But I guess, this being the inaugural season of this ORG- I can't fault them because... it was probably hard for the production to find a solid group of people! That being said, the person coming closest to /cute/ is Andrew... but we'll see how it goes it from there.

DESIREE

Here are my first impressions based on the videos!

I want to be Katrina's friend. She seems like a super cool chick.

Austin seems like a good guy but it's hard to judge without a video and without chatting.

Mandi seems really distracted in her video and I worry that she will not have enough time for this game if she has so many other responsibilities.

Drew seems like a pretty chill guy, but for some reason I suspect that there will be some drama with him later on...

Pennino's a cutie. Voting him most likely to self evict. But he seems like a good kid.

Lukas is funny, I feel like he's going to be popular from the start... Not sure which way I should go with that but I should keep an eye on him.

Sooo I guess Frosby knows a bunch of people in this ORG which is certainly concerning. But he seems like a good guy.

Brooke seems like a lost sheep which may make her a good person to keep around for the numbers.

Kayla seems cool! Seems like she is knowledgeable about BBORGS but also seems pretty levelheaded. Also, she's pregnant! How sweet! As I mentioned in my video, I want to work in medicine with pregnant women so I love that.

Joe is cohosting another ORG I'm in and I feel like the other host doesn't like me so I wonder if he doesn't like me either.

Ashley seems great. She seems like someone I would hang out with.

Love Andy! I played in The Circle Online with him!

Sammy seems cool! He also mentioned time issues, but I feel like he would be active enough. He has respects for the hosts so I imagine he won't be missing too much, just might not be as active in the house chats. Probably a good person to keep around, though.

Cody hasn't provided much info except being Australian, which is pretty cool. lol

omg Chloe's video... She seems fun, seems like the kind of drunk to give a stranger a pep talk in a bar bathroom.

KAYLA

First day in the Big Brother house and I'm already part of two alliances. One I know was made by Cody the other...I'm not sure. Cody really wants this HOH which seems risky but, that's his choice, I guess. I really don't want to win HOH at all. Like...bruh lol so if somehow my guess was accurate...I'm gonna yeet myself into oblivion. Like, I want Cody to take the fall. Let him make the bloody first moves haha

FROSBY

Frosby is back in the saddle and I already have no idea what im doing... yet again. But ya know what im here to have fun god damiit and fun is what im going to have. First off im glad to see joe made this season bc BOOM instant ally gotta love the guy. 2nd Im already making some fast friends, what can I say I love talking to people. PRetty soon im going to have so many allies I wont know what to do. This season my main goal is to try and make a little more friends with more of the ladies. I realized in my last season of BB I didn't have a single girl for an ally and I feel like I sold myself short on some good quality allies. SO im going to try my best and talk to everyone and make allies with as many people as I can so I can safely make it through the early evictions. Also my plan is play it cool with challenges until post jury time and then I step up my challenge game! That is all I got for tonight ill probably come back tomorrow with a view on big players in the game. FROSBY OUT 

CODY

TO sum up my first day of this game I am playing it hard and fast! I am ensuring that I have a majority alliance and it’s awesome because I was quite lucky to have a few pre game connections going into this so I’ve utilised all of them. And it helped that Brooke wanted to make an alliance with me and a few other people from it

I pitched to everyone that the game of Big Brother is a difficult one to navigate through which is the reason why I created this majority alliance. Now my goal is to win this HOH and start the game from the top. When I am at the top is when my aggressive nature will truly start to kick in. First of all when I decide who I nominate I am going to request an alliance chat with them and tell them that I’m on top they are on the bottom and they both have 0 chance of winning the game. Then proceed to put them on the block

Now hopefully me being so aggressive it will actually be a weird way of showing how loyal I am to my alliance. This could easily backfire of course but the idea is for them to perceive me as a goat. When in reality that’s what I want them to think and I will do everything I can to aggressively get things my way in this game. And if I find out that any of my allies are going against me and the alliance I’m going to be aggressive about how I call them out for it. And hopefully the perception will still be “yeah this guy might be mean but he’s also very loyal to his people let’s take someone else out over him”

PENNINO

So i'm here! I'm really happy to be here. But I see some faces like Joe, Kayla, and Brooke, which I know, and I'm kinda scared about playing with them, but I really need to start talking to people. 

MANDI

So, the first day Cody made a nine person alliance. which is fine and all because i am in it but he is literally running the alliance and im not sure i really trust him at all yet.. so we will see how fast this will blow up.

KATRINA

Oh boy. I’m in over my head. There’s so many new people and I have no clue how to play this game. It’s so hard keeping track of people and who they are. I think a lot of these people know each other and have played with each other before which scares me. That means I have a disadvantage. I am an outsider and they won’t see me the same as those people that they’ve already played with. I’m going to try and stay under the radar but be very friendly since that’s what worked for me in the last org that I played in. I’ve met some really nice People so far. I really like Andrew and Austin. I hope the people that I’m talking to and making friends with her trustworthy. I would really hate if I started becoming really good friends with somebody and they turned out to go behind my back. That would really suck if I was one of the first people to leave.

DESIREE

For the record, I do not want to win the first HOH. Its too early for that power and I don't want to make a splash yet. I would rather just watch from the sidelines this week.

As my theme song said - "Take one step at a time, there's no need to rush."

JOE

I feel like I’ve made some solid bonds with the people around me. Came in knowing a lot of people, and they seem like they’re all willing to work with me. I think Mandi and frosby will be my go to’s. Surprised frosby still wants to work with me after last game but I feel like I can trust him. I think I’m in a good spot for at least these first few weeks. 

BROOKE

Watching Lukas blow up unde9able is great. Especially since I was the one that ratted it out to him. He came to me and said Cody has a nine person alliance and since he’s HoH, I didn’t want to lie to him. He promised me safety in return of telling him who’s in it. I’m just gonna kick back and relax and hope he doesn’t nominate Kayla. 

DREW

Unde9nable got leaked already? I wonder who told the HoH... not I, but I did tell Chloe- and girl its a MESS. I gotta act like I'm in some sort of trouble with Lukas, but after speaking with him earlier, he knows that its a front. I literally am just not feeling Cody, and his ass needs to GO. Glad to see that I have some people agreeing with me that he's fake, he sounds robotic, and that he's disingenuous! LOVE THAT FOR ME!!! 

ASHLEY

Hey hey it’s already day 2 feeling okay. I kinda wish that the one on ones weren’t in my private messages but it’s okay. I am getting to know people and it’s cool. Pretty good so far. I like Lukas and Sammy. And I’m glad I didn’t win HOH I don’t want to be first and have a target.

CODY

So I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen moving forward with my game. Obviously the HOH plan and alliance failed and I made the decision to stir the pot a little and made a particular comment which got reported. And it made me realise it’s best to stop the crazy persona. 

I do feel like I do have some legit relationships in this game, people such as Joe and Kayla I’ve talked to a lot. I’m not entirely sure that they will want to play with me moving forward through. Thankfully I do have an alliance with Brooke which she started and like I said I do feel like I got a good bond with Joe and Kayla. However it’s probably not gonna be enough. I just spent some time chilling in voice chat with a few people and we had a good time. We talked essentially 0 game though which was absolutely fine, the only thing we did talk about was just me apologising for my actions however I feel like I’m definitely a dead man walking but I can try to use that to my advantage and say that I am an open number. I just hope that does not make me perceived as a wildcard

DESIREE

Daily Thoughts for Day 2:

HOH Competition: I was really trying not to win the first HOH competition, but I didn't throw it necessarily, I just didn't try at all. I didn't want to obviously throw, but I figured not trying would be enough not to win. WELL turns out I tied for 2nd out of 16 houseguests. WHOOPS. That was close. Anyway, Lukas won! I feel okay with Lukas as HOH. We have talked a bit and he consults with me game decisions, so I feel pretty safe. We don't have an explicit alliance, but we have said we'll have each other's back this week at least.

9 person alliance: So, apparently there was a majority alliance created in the first 24 hours of the game. Even worse, it seems that Cody created the alliance and just added random people in without consulting them first. That seems messy af. Lukas blew up the alliance in the house after someone leaked it to him. I mean, are you surprised it got leaked if people didn't even want to be in it? I would have leaked it too! Lukas may have created a target on his back by blowing that up, but it seems like most people in the house are on his side because most people weren't committed to that alliance anyway.

House Meeting: After the alliance was exposed, Cody decided to call a house meeting. He explained that he came in here and decided to play a "drill sergeant" character. He quickly realized that he was rubbing people the wrong way after he got reported for threatening physical violence. He will play as himself from now on. He was trying to save his own ass, but I think it's too late for him.

Houseguest Connections:

The person I'm the closest with in the house so far is Frosby. We got to chatting on the first night about board games and the conversation just flowed really easily. He was a part of that 9 person "alliance" but that doesn't really concern me because I believe that he was just added willy nilly and didn't have any stake in it. Other than that, I've talked game with Lukas the most. I don't have any solid alliances formed, but I wanted to wait until week 2 to really start solidifying things. I prefer to take the time to get to know people before committing to alliances.

MANDI

well first nomination ceremony went good!! i totally forgot pennino was in the game.😳 i feel bad because he is in such a different time zone then all of us buuuuut. i was nominated so thats good. i am trying my best to just be social with everyone. i have talked to ash and desiree on vc but other than that i havent talked to them at all. i have yet to talk to pennino at all. but other than that i have mostly talked to everyone either through dm or in the house chat. i am honestly scared this game.😂 i have no idea what ANYONE is thinking. im worried about brooke and kayla because they are so close and know about me and joe. i know they are eventually going to try and break me and him up. joe will always be my number one and i will always protect my little brother.😎

PENNINO

So this is a bad situation. But I want to work with Lukas. Keep your enemies REALLY close

ANDREW

My thought on my housemates so far.

(They will be rank 1-15 purposely, it’s just a first impression rank, not everything in written in stone) 

1. Lukas (we’ve had a good connection, very fluid conversation, nice dude, TOP ally rn, he wasn’t part of the 9 person alliance)

2. Frosby (he contacted me, and he was very nice, very cool, he was part of the 9 person alliance, and we were both a bit Wary about it too.)

3. Mandi (my twinsie)

4. Sammy (he’s very nice, a bit busy, but when he has a break, he talks and it’s very fluid)

5. Desiree (i know her from another org, and she maybe an ally, like be a huge threat because she knows I play a good social game)

6. Katrina (i respect her for her career choice, also she said I was funny, and well now I love her lol)

7. Chloe (party girl, fun to talk to her, that character can also be an act, but benefit of the doubt)

8. Drew (he’s Zen, cool, i like him)

9. Ashley (she’s cute, i like her for now)

10. Kayla (i got no solid opinion of Kayla rn)

11. Brooke (she’s very active, i like that, but she has already a social game going on, and obviously I’m not part of it, but that can benefit me, for now)

12. Joe (who?)

13. Austin (weed bro, doesn’t talk much)

14. Cody (catfish)

15. Pennino (he’s very young, and has a very weird time difference, I’ve played a previous org with him, and he didn’t talk at all, i bet he bites more than he can chew)

That’s is my initial ranking of my houseguests.

My strategy for this game is “smile and wave”, this is 80 days, and the dying star will be mainly based on vengeance on another houseguest or if they think it’s a threat. Keep it cute, this game is basically called the “long con”. I’m ready to play.

DESIREE

Daily Thoughts for Day 3:

Lukas nominated Cody & Pennino today, and then Sammi, Chloe, & Frosby were picked. I feel good with the nominees, Cody already blew up his game and I haven't really talked to Pennino at all. I am happy to not be picked for POV as well, because I want to lay low in the game for now. I am happy that Frosby got picked though, because he is my ally so if he wins I can at least feel involved from the sidelines.

CODY

Alright so according to a few people I might actually be safe...it’s hard to believe anything that you are told in this game. But if I’m safe then fuck yessss I’m back in it. 

It seems as though people’s views and thoughts on me have changed mostly and the votes actually might not all be coming my way. However I’m still not expecting to be kept safe because they could just be trying to make me feel comfortable! 

If I do survive I am going to try and lay low for a bit. I’m probably going to throw the next HOH, still undecided. I don’t wanna draw too much attention onto myself because if I’m in a position of nominating people straight away after surviving then people might change how they feel about me yet again especially if they’re on the receiving end of a nomination

I am also probably not going to set up any alliances either unless I feel I absolutely need to. I think instead I’m going to try and be looked upon as kind of a floating free agent. I might only try to win vetos if I get picked for them

DESIREE

Daily Thoughts for Day 4:

Sammy won POV and didn't use it. I think that was the right decision. Final nominees are Cody & Pennino. Lukas told me he doesn't care who goes home and that it's up the house, but it seems like Pennino is a pawn here. I think if there is someone in the group who is so obviously making waves, they should go for the first week. In the coming weeks, we can worry about bigger threats, but first week, I'm more in favor of evicting the person who is the most controversial.

ASHLEY

Trust ratings so far (1 most & 15 least)

1. Sammy

2. Joe

3. Brooke

4. Kayla

5. Drew

6. Mandi

7. Lukas

8. Chloe

9. Katrina

10. Frosby

11. Desiree

12. Austin

13. Andy

14. pennino

15. Cody

MANDI

UGH. i dont know who to vote for.😭 everyone is so back and forth. everyone wants cody out because he rubbed them the wrong way, and pennino. people want him gone because he isnt very active, but he is sooo nice. but also i love drama and cody is a good drama started. WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO.😭😭 no one is giving me answers on who is going or who is staying.

ANDREW

Trust Ranking: 

1. Lukas

2. Frosby

3. Mandi

4. Sammy

5. Desiree

6. Austin

7. Brooke

8. Katrina

9. Drew

10. Chloe

11. Cody

12. Ashley

13. Kaya

14. Joe

15. Pennino

From 5-to 13. It can totally change during time.

DREW

Absolutely gaggin. 

Like this is how the first week is gonna end? People are gonna claim that CODY is the least threatening player than a 14 year-old. Absolutely bonkers man. Did I sign up to play Big Brother or Hopscotch? Like my god- the way that Ashley and Brooke are going around trying to PERSUADE the other houseguests that Cody is the one to keep. AND it doesn't help matters when I'm supposed to be aligned with Joe/Mandi/Katrina, and they're all like- yeah Cody isn't a competition threat and a vote shield!? 

AND WHAT OF THE DAMN 14 YEAR OLD? HUH? WHAT DOES THAT MAKE HIM?!?

Like I understand that Pennino isn't the most active, but why are we gonna be wasting a WEEK on him when he's probably gonna strike out for inactivity or something down the line?!? LIKE I DON'T UNDERSTAND. Everyone here is thinking on the short term, and I honestly hate it. I really do. 

Bollocks. I'm just so over everything that has transpired in the last 24 hours. And if this is any indication on how the rest of the game will be- then I'm gonna make it my damn mission to make sure that I get Ashley, Brooke, Frosby, Joe, and Andrew out of here. Trust and believe.

MANDI

soooo. kayla and sammy came to me and said they wanted to flip the votes and evict cody. i told them if they had the votes i would go wherever the house went. well my alliance with joe, drew, and katrina said we had the votes to keep cody. we have frosby, brooke, joe, drew, katrina, ashley, desiree, and maybe chloe?? i dont know and then me. i told sammy that they didnt have the votes to flip and that cody would be a good vote shield if we were ever on the block with him. so i finally convinced sammy to keep cody. sorry kayla and austin! i am just going where the house goes. i honestly dont care who goes home but i think keeping cody is our best option going forward in the game. plus pennino hasnt talked to me at all and i think i can trust cody.

BROOKE

Kayla really wants Cody gone but I think he should stay.. I really don’t want to go against her or lie to her but if I have to, I will.

WEEK 1 CAST ASSESSMENT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKxuIySz2d8

[liposcelidae]

This Is What (One Local Aspect Of) Democracy Looks Like

So I went to my first Democratic town caucus, and to be honest, I had no idea before I went what I was doing.  Delegates for the state convention? What?

http://www.massdems.org/caucuses/2017-caucuses

It turned out that the Massachusetts Democratic Party is having a platform convention in June, and these delegates will get to vote on what is in the platform.  My town gets a number of delegates determined by number of registered Democrats and voter turnout for Democrats, which for my town works out to 37 delegates, who had to be evenly divided by gender, 18 men, 18 women, and the last one could be "either". (I'm not sure if they said "either" or "any" but I assume it goes by your state ID gender.)  We had more interested women than men, so for women, we had an actual election, while for the men, we just accepted the 18 of them once we had 18 nominations.

Here's how it worked: we were a room of something like 150 people, who had signed in when we got there.  I think the guy with the computer was checking us against voter rolls to make sure we were actually town residents and registered Democrats.  We got a hand stamp saying we could vote - I almost missed this because I got there right at the time cutoff, fifteen minutes after the start time of the meeting.  (Caucus lesson one: be on time!)

When we started nominating women, anyone could speak out to say "I nominate so-and-so," by name, or you were allowed to nominate yourself. Then the nominated person had to say if they accepted and sign in as officially running to be a delegate. (Interestingly, most of the women were nominated by someone else, many more of the men nominated themselves.)  This continued until we ran out of people wanting to run, at which point they closed nominations with 25 candidates.

The candidates lined up and introduced themselves by name and had two minutes to make a short speech introducing themselves and explaining why they wanted to be a delegate, their history in politics, their major issues of concern, and things like that.  Some of the people had gone to many conventions and others were getting involved in politics for the first time. (They had everyone stand up who was at their first caucus and it was maybe 40% of the room. We are in the streets and we are in the caucuses, guys.)  Unfortunately, we didn't have a microphone, so from my seat in the back, I had to make my best guess when I wrote down people's names.

(Caucus lesson two: if you know you want to run as a delegate, consider printing out your name on a piece of paper in advance in a nice bold font, so you can hold it up when you introduce yourself. One smart person tried this with a notebook and a pen but the lines weren't really dark enough to read from the back.)

(Caucus lesson three: take notes! I didn't write down the first three people's names and then we got to the end and I had really liked one of them and I couldn't remember her name at all, doh. For everyone else, I wrote down names and "y", "?" or "n" based on whether I definitely wanted to vote for them, was indifferent, or definitely didn't.  It's kind of hard to say whether you really agree with someone's politics on the basis of their two-minute introduction - of course many of the people who had been involved in local politics for awhile knew each other, from being Town Meeting members or local party organizers or whatever. But I did the best I could based on what people chose to say.)

Once everyone had spoken, they handed out paper ballots they had just printed with a list of the candidates, and we could vote for up to 18.  My best guesses at hearing names were pretty good! Mostly. Still not entirely sure who "philly hodge" was, and I'm not sure how I got "mary kettle" from the actual Mary.  (Caucus lesson four: this process definitely seemed set up for people who were both hearing (to hear the names) and sighted (to mark the ballot). There was nothing to stop people from conferring, so someone could get assistance from someone with them, but I have no idea if there are like party resources for interpreters. I would contact the local committee in advance and see what they can arrange? They did say something at the beginning about accessibility but I was still signing in and missed it.)  After a few minutes, they collected ballots, and we nominated the men.  The men still got to introduce themselves even though we weren't actually voting on them.  (It felt a little weird to be turning away passionate women candidates and accepting men who had just put themselves forward to fill out the numbers, but I bet equal representation is still useful on a national/overall scale.)

After they came back with the results of the women's ballot, a couple of the women who didn't make it (weren't in the top 18 vote-getters) got re-nominated for the 37th seat, and they did another ballot for that, and then we nominated and accepted six alternates (again divided into three women and three men).  The whole thing took about two hours.  (There is some whole additional thing about Young Delegates (meaning people 18 to 35) that I didn't really follow - I think if you want to be a Young Delegate you can apply to your local committee and we get to send some of those in addition to our regular delegates?)

Part of why I'm posting this is to encourage people to get involved with the party - almost everyone there for my town today was middle-aged and up, and almost all white. (My town is pretty white but my kid's school is definitely more visibly diverse than this caucus was.)  I don't know if that's a function of how they announce/advertise this event, or what.  I really knew nothing before today about what this aspect of politics was or how it works.  Voting on delegates feels pretty far removed from actually affecting the government.  But if we're going to influence the priorities or strategy of the state parties, I think it means doing this kind of thing.  We have to be the party we want the party to be.  And, I guess, I want to encourage people, that even if you're as clueless as I was, this is something you can show up and participate in.  If you don't like it when people say the Democratic Party should move to the center, this is a place to push back against that, and send delegates to the state who believe in a strong progressive agenda.  Here are the dates and locations for the Massachusetts 2017 caucuses:

http://www.massdems.org/caucuses/2017-caucuses

Please feel free to reblog with information for other states!

[hub-pub-bub]

WEST SPRINGFIELD — For more than 60 years, W.G. Fry was an independent company making paper products in western Massachusetts. But on Sept. 25, all of that changed.

Except, instead of moving from its current location in West Springfield to another state or another country, the W.G. Fry Corporation is relocating its operation north to Leeds, in a move triggered by its purchase by Chartpak, a Leeds-based manufacturer and distributor of art, hobby, craft and office supplies.

“It’s two success stories,” said Saul Kuhr, the former owner of W.G. Fry, who now works for Chartpak as a consultant.

Kuhr, 63, who lives in Northampton and is a graduate of Hampshire College who earned his Master of Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, bought W.G. Fry in 1990, when its operations were based in Holyoke.

Kuhr did so after becoming dissatisfied with his career in finance, and being advised by a career counselor that he would be happiest working for himself and owning a small manufacturing company.

Prior to making the purchase, Kuhr worked on the factory floor running machines and getting a sense of the business. A bachelor at the time, Kuhr said that the company became like a family to him, although he is now married to his wife Karen, with whom he has two children, Jordan, 18, and David, 19.

A rich history

W.G. Fry manufactures a number of different notebooks and paper products, including the reporters notebooks used by The Daily Hampshire Gazette. Indeed, the Gazette and the Philadelphia Inquirer are the only two newspapers to which W.G. Fry sells reporters notebooks directly, as the vast majority are sold through distributors that W.G. Fry makes the books for.

“That’s because they would not leave us,” said Kuhr, on why he still sells directly to the Gazette and the Inquirer.

W.G. Fry products have appeared in a number of different movies and television shows, including “Law and Order” and Tim Burton’s “Batman,” and Kuhr noted seeing one of his company’s notebooks when he saw “20th Century Women” at Amherst Cinema with his wife.

Kuhr said that W.G. Fry continued to grow through the 1990s and 2000s, with the company relocating from Holyoke to West Springfield in 2001. At the same time, Kuhr noted that many other small-scale paper converters have gone out of business, as changes in technology have reduced the demand for paper products.

W.G. Fry has stayed ahead of the curve in part thanks to a decision Kuhr made 15 to 20 years ago. That’s when he determined that the fine arts presented a stable market for the company, as artists like to draw on and work with nice paper. As such, he began orienting the company to meet this demand.

Another way that W.G. Fry has been able to compete is its use of semi-automatic production lines. These lines have a number of different components that can be arranged to do jobs of different sizes, as opposed to automatic production lines that are set in place and cannot be converted. As such, W.G. Fry can do smaller jobs that larger companies are not able to take. At the same time, when given larger jobs, Kuhr said the company can arrange its semi-automatic lines to handle them.

“Saul’s manufacturing capabilities are very unique and very nimble,” said Steven Roth, the owner of Chartpak.

Business partnership

Kuhr said that he’s known Roth for years, but until recently Chartpak had never been a customer.

“We always just agreed on everything,” said Roth, who noted that he and Kuhr were always on the same page when it came to business.

In 2016, Chartpak contracted W.G. Fry to manufacture an extensive line of notebooks it had designed. Some of the notebooks have pages that can be taken out and then placed back into their wire bindings. Roth refers to this as “dome lock technology,” a feature unique to Chartpak.

“It’s like a Rolodex card,” said Kuhr.

Indeed, many of the notebooks that W.G. Fry produced for Chartpak have papers in them that were selected to work best with different Chartpak products, such as Koh-I-Noor pencils and Grumbacher paints, and are marketed as such.

These products were a major hit at this year’s International Art Materials Association convention in Salt Lake City.

“Immediately, the buying started,” said Kuhr, who noted that one of the buyers was Hobby Lobby.

It was also at the convention that Roth began seriously discussing acquiring W.G. Fry from Kuhr.

Prior to the sale, W.G. Fry employed 30 full-time employees and six temporary employees. All W.G. Fry employees were offered jobs at Chartpak’s Leeds facility — the company also has a plant in Florence — at their same pay or higher. Some would be employed on a nominally temporary basis until it was demonstrated that the new facility could support their jobs. Ultimately, 20 of the full-time employees decided to make the transition, along with several temps.

Between its Florence and Leeds facilities, Roth estimated that Chartpak had 100 employees prior to the W.G. Fry acquisition. W.G. Fry is currently in the process of moving to Leeds, while still fulfilling orders in West Springfield, and Kuhr estimated that the move would be complete in November, with folks reporting to work in Leeds no later than Thanksgiving.

Kuhr said that he expects that W.G. Fry will continue to grow, and he predicted that it would have more employees than it had before it was sold by this time next year.

Kuhr declined to disclose the purchase price of the sale, which was finalized on Sept. 25. That was also the last day of work for those who chose not to move up to Leeds.

Longtime employees

W.G. Fry has employees that have been with the company for decades, the longest-serving of which is Adrian Roberts, 68, of Belchertown, who began working at the company in 1969.

“I like it fine,” said Roberts, who runs an auto punch.

Roberts, who will be working in Leeds, says he plans to stay at W.G. Fry at least until he is 70.

“I guess my raises,” he said, when asked what his best memory with the company is.

Lucy Rubino, meanwhile, has been with the company since 1995. The 57-year-old machine operator acknowledged being excited about the move, while also praising her longtime boss.

“I love working for Saul,” she said. “He’s the best.”

One element of working at W.G. Fry that Kuhr noted is that he allows most of his employees to take unlimited overtime, which makes it so he doesn’t have to hire a second shift. Kuhr said he does this both as a benefit to his employees, and because he trusts their skills, noting that W.G. Fry works with expensive materials, which can make mistakes costly.

While Roth said he expects W.G. Fry will be bringing on a second shift, he also said that he had no intentions of interfering with the overtime policy.

As a consultant for Chartpak, Kuhr said that he would be continuing to run and grow W.G. Fry, doing much of the same work he did when he owned the company, while also spending more time on marketing and developing new products.

Roth said that having W.G. Fry at the Leeds facility will aid in the development of new products for Chartpak.

“It empowers us to come out with any product that we want to come out with in paper,” said Roth.

He also noted the creative effect it will have on the company. “Magic happens,” Roth said. “We can constantly play a lot.”

This acquisition will greatly expand Chartpak’s paper business, which prior to working with W.G. Fry was mostly centered around its Clearprint brand of art and engineering paper, the management of which W.G. Fry will be taking over.

Kuhr said that he expects W.G. Fry to move towards more automatic production lines in Leeds, although he said that the semi-automatic capability to take smaller orders would still be retained.

Under Roth, Chartpak has purchased a number of other companies, including the art materials company Grumbacher and the drawing products company Koh-I-Noor. Roth noted that while Chartpak does import products and have distribution deals with companies overseas, his preference is to create jobs in the United States and to move production to the Northampton facilities.

“We want to keep creating jobs for that community,” said Roth.

“My first preference is to manufacture in the United States,” he said, later on. “We want to save the U.S. manufacturing base.”

Kuhr expressed a similar passion for manufacturing in America, and said that he felt that not enough has been done for it on a national policy level.

While W.G. Fry’s bindery service business for commercial printing companies is going to be discontinued, it will still make products for both Chartpak and for other customers as a private label manufacturer. It will also continue to supply reporters notebooks to the Gazette, just a little closer to home.

[stoweboyd]

2017-02-22 - Digest

[I was experimenting with forms leading to what is now the Work Futures Weekly, I guess.]

ON THE FUTURE OF WORK

Paul Mason, Automation may mean a post-work society but we shouldn’t be afraid

A low-work society is only a dystopia if the social system is geared to distributing rewards via work.

I am sympathetic to Mason’s perspectives, but not convinced that our conventional economy can be coaxed into a soft landing.

The Heroic Future by Alex Steffen

Alex Steffen is raising funds for The Heroic Future on Kickstarter! A live documentary series about reimagining the world of tomorrow, in order to rebuild the world today.

ON ADVERTISING

Ben Thompson, The Reality of Missing Out

Digital advertising is becoming a rather simple proposition: Facebook, Google, or don’t bother.

[…]

I have been arguing for a while that in the aggregate the tech sector is fine, and the state of advertising-based services is a perfect example of what I mean: taken as a basket the six companies in this article (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Yelp) are up 19% over the last year, even though the latter four companies are down a collective 53%; the fact that Google and Facebook are up a combined 31% more than makes up for it.

This makes sense: while advertising as a whole is a zero-sum game, there is a secular shift from not just print but also radio and TV to digital, which is why this basket of digital advertising companies is up. Digital, though, is subject to the effects of Aggregation Theory, a key component of which is winner-take-all dynamics, and Facebook and Google are indeed taking it all.

We are seeing winner-takes-all in a number of other sectors: it’s a central outcome of a platform economy.

On Time

Adam Taylor, The radical plan to destroy time zones

Are time zones inherently flawed? That’s what Steve Hanke and Dick Henry think.

A few years back Hanke, a prominent economist with Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow with the CATO Institute think tank, and Henry, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins, teamed up to propose a new calendar designed to fix the inefficiencies of the current one. The plan was dubbed the “Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar.” Last month, after reading a WorldViews story about Pyongyang time, Hanke reached out to us to detail another idea that he and Henry had devised to fix the chaos caused by time zones.

The plan was strikingly simple. Rather than try to regulate a variety of time zones all around the world, we should instead opt for something far easier: Let’s destroy all these time zones and instead stick with one big “Universal Time.”

This is something like Swatch’s ‘Beat Time’ which was a universal single time zone based on 1000 ‘beats’ per day. The Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar doensn’t through the second, minute, and hour out the window, though. Just time zones.I think my proposal — Boydian Time — is way better. 13 months of 28 days each, with special days — not in any week or month — for New Years and Leap Day. PS — And no time zones.

ON THE POSTNORMAL

Ricardo de Queral, Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap”

An inspiration for Spain’s May 15 movement, the sociologist is skeptical about chances for change:

Zygmunt Bauman: We could describe what is going on at the moment as a crisis of democracy, the collapse of trust: the belief that our leaders are not just corrupt or stupid, but inept. Action requires power, to be able to do things, and we need politics, which is the ability to decide what needs to be done. But that marriage between power and politics in the hands of the nation state has ended. Power has been globalized, but politics is as local as before. Politics has had its hands cut off. People no longer believe in the democratic system because it doesn’t keep its promises. We see this, for example, with the migration crisis: it’s a global phenomenon, but we still act parochially. Our democratic institutions were not designed for dealing with situations of interdependence. The current crisis of democracy is a crisis of democratic institutions.

[…]

Today, every society is just a collection of diasporas.

Bauman continues to astonish.

ON ANTHROPOLOGY

MIchael Gazzaniga, On the Road to Humankind With Leon Festinger

It is the more primitive inventiveness of humans — technology and its role as the engine that powered humankind to dazzling heights of accomplishment — that pushed the slow grind of advancement into the fast lane of evolution. And Leon [Festinger, of the ‘cognitive dissonance’ fame], being a social psychologist at his core, began to see how technology could be used to control human life. Technologies are not only physical things. They can be social forces as well, like philosophical or religious beliefs.

[…]

Yet when Yuval Harari is talking about gaining control of people by the use of fictions, he is talking about the kinds of abstractions and ideas everybody can understand — money, religion, politics and preferences, the kinds of things an interpreter is at work on all day long. As the novelist captures the personal, the historian captures the social story within which most of us are embedded and uniquely thrive. It is the inventive interpretive mind first applying itself to our personal life and then to our social existence that is our core skill. Once humankind realized it possessed this technology, we seized on it to thrive in and control our niche on earth.

The most potent read of the week, partially because Festinger sounds like such a character, but mostly because of its reference to Yuval Harari’s work, from which I found this [emphasis mine]:

We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights. These are all things that do not exist objectively, but they exist only in the stories that we tell and that we spread around. This is something very unique to us, perhaps the most unique feature of our species. — Yuval Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

ON POLITICS

Jill Filipovic, Why Sexism at the Office Makes Women Love Hillary Clinton

As a young lawyer, one of the first things I noticed about department meetings at my law firm was not just the dearth of female partners, but that one of the few female partners always seemed to be in charge of ordering lunch. I listened as some of my male colleagues opined on the need to marry a woman who would stay home with the children — that wasn’t sexist, they insisted, because it wasn’t that they thought only women should stay home; it was just that somebody had to, and the years in which they planned on having children would be crucial ones for their own careers.

I saw that the older white, male partners who mentored the younger white, male associates were able to work long days and excel professionally precisely because their stay-at-home wives took care of everything else; I saw that virtually none of the female partners had a similar setup.

In jobs that followed, managers would remark that they wanted “more women” and proceed to reject qualified candidates. (Similar dynamics took place with minority candidates.) There were always reasons — not the right cultural fit, not the right experience, a phenomenon of unintentional sexism now well documented in controlled studies. I watched as men with little or irrelevant experience were hired and promoted, because they had such great ideas, or they fit in better. “We want a woman,” the conclusion seemed to be, “just not this woman.”

Watching a primary election in which an eminently qualified woman long assumed to be a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination faces a serious challenge from an older white guy with exciting ideas, many women my age and older hear something familiar, and personal, in the now-common refrain about Hillary Clinton: “I want a woman president, just not this woman president.”

Any candidate would be smart to call up Filipovic and have a long talk.

THIS WEEK’S POETRY

A new addition to the digest.

Leslie B. Neustadt, How To Plunge Into The Abyss The darkness is hard to explore. Await calm seas to shed light on the hidden world of strange life forms. Dress warmly and communicate with your mother ship. Take a shape that resists the crushing pressure. Slip between the waves in a vertical torpedo. Don’t stir up so much ooze you can’t see. Kiss the bottom and rise quickly.

[patriotsnet]

How Do Republicans Really Feel About Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-do-republicans-really-feel-about-trump/

How Do Republicans Really Feel About Trump

With Trump Off The Ballot Republicans Look To Regain Votes In The Suburbs

Trump’s influence in Ohio even after defeat so far has showed no signs of decline.

In the Ohio legislature, where the GOP controls the agenda with a super-majority, Republicans are looking to enact new restrictions on voting, following Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 elections. There have even been proposals to rename a state park after Trump and to honor him with a state holiday. U.S. Senate hopefuls are jockeying to be the most pro-Trump Republican candidate. And the fact that a Cleveland area GOP congressman, Anthony Gonzalez, voted to impeach Trump in January has made him a handy target for Republicans looking to catch Trump’s eye, and maybe an endorsement.

But even at the Licking County GOP gathering, there were a number of opinions about the former president and the role he should play going forward in Republican politics.

The guest speaker at the event was GOP consultant Matt Dole, whose remarks offered a bit of consolation to audience members who may have loved Trump but were far less fond of his Twitter habit.

“We had to defend whatever Donald Trump did on a day in and day out basis,” Dole told his audience of about 50 Republican Party members. He added that they were all for Trump’s policies, “but sometimes his tweets got in the way.”

Republicans wish Trump were still in office, but according to Dole, they are now free to go on offense and focus on attacking the policies of Biden and the Democrats.

How Early Trump Supporters Feel Now

The former presidents 2015 backers, in their own words

About the author: Conor Friedersdorf is a California-based staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs. He is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional nonfiction.

Now that Donald Trumps presidency is over, how do the Americans who supported him at the beginning of his political run feel about his performance in the Oval Office? I put that question to 30 men and women who wrote to me in August 2015 to explain their reasons for backing his insurgent candidacy.

Among the eight who replied, all in the second week of January, after the storming of the Capitol, some persist in supporting Trump; others have turned against him; still others have lost faith in the whole political system. They do not constitute a representative sample of Trump voters. But their views, rendered in their own words, offer more texture than polls that tell us an approval rating.

As I did in 2015, Ill let the Trump voters have their say. But this time Ill conclude with some thoughts of my own, in my capacity as a Trump critic who knows that Americans have no choice but to coexist, as best we can, because our political and ideological differences are never going away.

And now?

The third correspondent told me in 2015 that hed vote for Trump, despite knowing that he would do a terrible job:

How does he feel about Trump today? Not good:

His assessment today:

A Large Share Of Republicans Want Trump To Remain Head Of The Party Cnbc Survey Shows

A CNBC survey conducted in the days before former President Donald Trump‘s impeachment trial finds a large share of Republicans want him to remain head of their party, but a majority of Americans want him out of politics.

The CNBC All-America Economic Survey shows 54% of Americans want Trump “to remove himself from politics entirely.” That was the sentiment of 81% of Democrats and 47% of Independents, but only 26% of Republicans.

When it comes to Republicans, 74% want him to stay active in some way, including 48% who want him to remain head of the Republican Party, 11% who want him to start a third party, and 12% who say he should remain active in politics but not as head of any party.

“If we’re talking about Donald Trump’s future, at the moment, the survey shows he still has this strong core support within his own party who really want him to continue to be their leader,” said Jay Campbell, a partner with Hart Research and the Democratic pollster for the survey.

But Micah Roberts, the survey’s Republican pollster, and a partner with Public Opinion Strategies, emphasized the change from when Trump was president. Polls before the election regularly showed Trump with GOP approval ratings around 90%, meaning at least some Republicans have defected from Trump.

What Do Republican Voters Think About The Impeachment Inquiry

EmbedEmbed

Steve Inskeep talks to David French of the conservative website The Dispatch about how Republican voters view the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and revelations from witness transcripts.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Two realities are shaping the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. One reality is the facts – the largely undisputed record of the president’s efforts in Ukraine to get investigations that he wanted. Another reality is the politics – what voters think of a process run by their representatives. David French is following the story from his home in a red state. He is a conservative writer, a critic of the president and a resident of a state where the president captured 60% of the vote in 2016. He joins us from Franklin, Tenn.

Mr. French, good morning.

DAVID FRENCH: Good morning.

INSKEEP: And I guess we should note that nationwide polls show more people favoring this inquiry than opposing it. But when I look at the polling, from a lot of red states, really, the numbers flip. More people oppose it.

FRENCH: Absolutely. Let me put it this way. I think the best way to describe it is if you’re a politician in a red state, particularly a state like Tennessee – which would be one of the last to abandon Trump, honestly – if you’re going to support the impeachment inquiry, you should consider whether or not you want to continue your political career. ‘Cause it would be, I think, fair to say, a career ender for a lot of people.

FRENCH: Thank you.

How Hispanics Really Feel About Trump

Hispanic voters are not a monolith.

For the first time in history, Hispanic voters are expected to be the largest minority group in the 2020 electorate, according to the Pew Research Center.

With his re-election on the line, its no surprise that President Donald Trump is publicly courting Hispanics. In fact, in late January, he touted a poll he claimed showed his support among Hispanics had risen from 19% to 50%, due to his immigration policies.

Wow, just heard that my poll numbers with Hispanics has gone up 19%, to 50%. That is because they know the Border issue better than anyone, and they want Security, which can only be gotten with a Wall.

Donald J. Trump January 20, 2019

However, these rosy statistics are misleading, since the poll was not designed to gauge Hispanic voters opinions. It did not poll many Hispanics and did not ask questions in both English and Spanish.

As regularly examine public opinion, we know its a stretch to conclude that half of Hispanics approve of Trump, let alone suggest that a majority back his proposed immigration policies.

However, given their potential electoral impact, it is important to understand how Hispanics really feel about President Trump and how their opinions vary across party lines. We have done the work to try to answer these questions.

Inside The Republicans Bunker

Its hard to be worried when you dont really like the guy. Thats what one senior Republican Senate aide had to say when I asked how concerned conservatives are about Donald Trumps fate.

The truth is, Trump fatigue is a condition that knows no party, and many Republicans are as tired of this shit as anybody else. Thats not to say theyre outraged, or motivated to Make a Difference. Theyre just tired. You can live inside the right-wing bubble in a state of depression, resigned to the fact that, yeah, every five minutes or so, the president is probably going to do something norm-shattering or potentially impeachable, and no, you probably wont or cant do anything to change that. Sad!

Im totally bored by the story, one person who speaks regularly with the president told me. Theres nothing to it. I already know all the details. This person is bored more generally, too with the topic of Donald Trump. When we talk about what it would take for the presidents defenders to turn on him, this crucial piece is missing: You cant feel outraged if you can no longer feel anything at all.

The White House is just like, Oh, Trump will handle everything. Which is crazy but it seems like thats their strategy, the senior Repubican Senate aide told me. Its a depressing time.

*This article appears in the October 14, 2019, issue of New York Magazine.

What Republicans Really Think About Trump

July 21, 2016

CLEVELAND The arena here at the Republican National Convention echoes with applause for Donald Trump, but the cacophony and extravagant stage effects cant conceal the chaos in the G.O.P. and in the Trump campaign.

Republican senators suddenly are busy fishing, mowing the lawn or hiking the Grand Canyon; conservative celebrities mostly sent regrets. This vacuum reflects the horror that many leading conservatives feel for their new nominee.

Pundits like me are gnashing our teeth as Trump receives the presidential nomination of the party of Lincoln, but, frankly speaking, we dont have much credibility in Cleveland since many of us arent all that likely to support a Republican nominee in any case.

So instead of again inflicting on you my views of the danger of Trump, let me share what some influential conservatives said about him during the course of the campaign.

Hes a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesnt represent my party. He doesnt represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina

I dont think this guy has any more core principles than a Kardashian marriage. Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska

We saw and looked at true hate in the eyes last year in Charleston. I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the K.K.K. That is not a part of our party. Nikki Haley, Republican governor of South Carolina

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

President Trump Faces Criticism After Church Visit

McConnell’s comments came after a weekly closed-door lunch for Senate Republicans at which Pat Roberts of Kansas said George Floyd, the black man who died in Minneapolis police custody last week, and the protests weren’t discussed. Instead, they spoke about pending nominations, the coronavirus pandemic and the Paycheck Protection Program.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, criticized the president, refusing to say whether she’d vote for him November “out of respect” for the deep political divisions roiling the country. She said she’s not sure whether her Republican colleagues are focusing on the pain the country is feeling right now.

“I’m not quite sure if we are focused on the right things right now,” Murkowski said, adding that the president isn’t delivering the leadership the country needs. “I think tone is really, really important right now. And I do not believe that the tone coming from the president right now is helping. It’s not helping me as a leader.”

The No. 2 Senate Republican, John Thune of South Dakota, said on “PBS NewsHour” that he hopes the president shows an “appreciation for the frustration, the anger, the anxiety that people are feeling” and “just being willing to listen.”

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who has an uphill battle for re-election in her swing state, said the president looked “unsympathetic” and “insensitive” in front of St. John’s, saying it’s a church she believes he has attended just one time.

The 2022 Midterms Look Sunny

The over-performance by Republicans in 2020 House races gives them what is historically a very good chance to retake that chamber in 2022, as Kyle Kondik recently noted:

Since the Civil War, there have been 40 midterm elections. The party that held the White House lost ground in the House in 37 of those elections, with an average seat loss of 33. Since the end of World War II, the average seat loss is a little smaller 27 but still significant.

Based on the House as it was shaped after November 2020, Republicans would only need to flip five net seats to regain the majority. The Senate is iffier thanks to a landscape dotted with GOP retirements. But busting up the Democratic trifecta would have a massive effect on the Biden administrations ability to enact legislation.

Republicans And Their Declared Positions On Donald Trump

Elected officials’ positions on Donald Trump Federal:Republicans and their declared positions on Donald Trump Republicans supporting Donald Trump Republicans opposing Donald Trump State and local: Republican reactions to 2005 Trump tape

In a typical general election year, elected officials readily line up behind their party’s presidential nominee. In 2012, for example, The Hill reported that only four Republican members of Congress had declined to endorse Mitt Romney by mid-September of that year. “All other House and Senate Republicans” had already endorsed the Republican nominee.

But 2016 was not a typical general election year.

Controversial comments from the GOP’s 2016 nominee, Donald Trump, about women, Muslims, , and caused some Republican lawmakers to distance themselves from the businessman, while others outright denounced him.

This page tracked the stances of Republican lawmakers on Trump throughout the 2016 presidential election: Did they support him? Did they oppose him? Or were they somewhere in between? The focus of this page is on Republican members of Congress and Republican governors, but we also have included some information on influential Republicans who have served in Republican presidential administrations.

How Do Americans View Bidens Handling Of The Pandemic And The Economy

Most Americans think Biden is handling the coronavirus pandemic far better than Trump. Sixty-two percent approve of how Biden has managed the U.S. response so far. Another 30 percent say they disapprove.

Chart by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour

The publics approval of Bidens actions far exceeds that earned by Trumps leadership during the pandemic. His highest approval rating was 18 points lower, at 44 percent in March 2020, the same month the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic and Trump labeled it a public health emergency. From there, his approval on handling the pandemic dropped as low as 37 percent, recovering slightly to 39 percent by the time he left office in January.

But Americans have less faith in Bidens ability to heal the nations wounded economy compared to Trump. While 46 percent of U.S. adults approve of how Biden has managed the economy, another 41 percent do not approve. During Trumps last days in office, half of Americans said they approved of the former presidents handling of the economy, a sentiment thatTrump leveraged throughout his presidency and in his 2020 campaign for a second term.

Keanu Adams, 25, of Vacaville, California, said he voted for Biden and hopes the president recognizes the country needs more than public health and economic fixes right now.

The nation needs to uproot systemic problems to address what is really wrong, Adams said.

This Is How Hispanics Really Feel About Trump

For the first time in history, Hispanic voters are expected to be the largest minority group in the 2020 electorate, according to the Pew Research Center.

With his reelection on the line, its no surprise that President Donald Trump is publicly courting Hispanics. In fact, in late January, he touted a poll he claimed showed his support among Hispanics had risen from 19% to 50%, due to his immigration policies.

However, these rosy statistics are misleading, since the poll was not designed to gauge Hispanic voters opinions. It did not poll many Hispanics and did not ask questions in both English and Spanish.

Wow, just heard that my poll numbers with Hispanics has gone up 19%, to 50%. That is because they know the Border i https://t.co/ghQ4IogS02 Donald J. Trump 1547993006.0

As regularly examine public opinion, we know its a stretch to conclude that half of Hispanics approve of Trump, let alone suggest that a majority back his proposed immigration policies.

However, given their potential electoral impact, it is important to understand how Hispanics really feel about President Trump and how their opinions vary across party lines. We have done the work to try to answer these questions.

Hispanics on Trump

We analyzed the results of a University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll fielded by Nielsen Scarborough from Oct. 24 to Nov. 16, 2018. The survey was conducted among a nationally representative sample of 600 Hispanics, and it asked questions in both English and Spanish.

Poll: Majority Of Iowans One

Fifty-five percent of Iowans, including a significant portion of Iowa Republicans, say they hope Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, decides not to run for what would be his eighth term in the Senate in 2022, a new poll out of the state shows. 

The new survey from the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll, conducted by the prominent Iowa pollster Ann Selzer’s Selzer & Co., found that just 28 percent of Iowans hope Grassley will run for another term. Another 17 percent say they are not sure. 

A majority of Democrats and independents say they hope Grassley does not run, a sentiment shared by 35 percent of Republicans. Fifty percent of Republicans, however, say they hope he does decide to run, compared to 11 percent of Democrats and 27 percent of independents. 

Grassley is currently 87 years old and is the oldest Republican senator serving in the body . Grassley’s age has prompted questions as to whether he’ll run again he’s told reporters he’ll decide later this year and has, in the meantime, filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to begin fundraising for a possible reelection.

The poll is a mixed bag for Grassley while he retains a 48 percent approval rating among Iowan adults , it’s his lowest Iowa Poll approval rating since 1982, according to the Des Moines Register. 

The Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll surveyed 775 Iowa adults between March 7-10 by telephone in English. The margin of error is +/- 3.5 percentage points. 

With Weeks To Go Before Louisiana Special House Elections New Filings Show Best

WASHINGTON Just weeks before two special elections in Lousiana, new campaign finance reports show there’s a clear gap between the haves and the have nots looking to win each seat. 

Each party is favored to hold onto the seats each won in November. Republicans have the edge in the Fifth Congressional District, where Republican Luke Letlow won a runoff last December but passed away from Covid-19 before he could take office. And Democrats are the favorite in the Second District, which was vacated by Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond, who decided to join the White House.  

Julia Letlow, the widow of the former congressman-elect who is running as a Republican, leads the cash race in the Fifth District. She raised $682,000 through February and started March with $521,000 banked away. Letlow has won a smattering of Republican endorsements in her quest for Congress, including House Minority Whip and Lousiana Rep. Steve Scalise, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the Lousiana State GOP. 

The only other Republican who appears to have filed by the FEC’s Monday deadline is Sancha Smith, who raised less than $10,000. Sandra Christophe, a Democrat and social worker who ran last cycle, just short of $70,000 for her bid and closed February with $50,000 in cash on hand. 

In the Second District, three candidates raised at least $100,000, two Democrats and one Republican. 

Most Republicans Still Believe 2020 Election Was Stolen From Trump Poll

May opinion poll finds that 53% of Republicans believe Trump is the true president compared with 3% of Democrats

A majority of Republicans still believe Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election and blame his loss to Joe Biden on baseless claims of illegal voting, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.

The 17-19 May national poll found that 53% of Republicans believe Trump, their partys nominee, is the true president now, compared with 3% of Democrats and 25% of all Americans.

About one-quarter of adults falsely believe the 3 November election was tainted by illegal voting, including 56% of Republicans, according to the poll. The figures were roughly the same in a poll that ran from 13-17 November which found that 28% of all Americans and 59% of Republicans felt that way.

Biden, a Democrat, won by more than 7m votes. Dozens of courts rejected Trumps challenges to the results, but Trump and his supporters have persisted in pushing baseless conspiracy theories on conservative news outlets.

US federal and state officials have said repeatedly they have no evidence that votes were compromised or altered during the presidential election, rejecting the unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud advanced by Trump and many of his supporters. Voter fraud is extremely rare in the US.

Still, 67% of overall respondents say they trust election officials in their town to do their job honestly, including 58% of Republicans, according to the poll.

Democratic Groups Are Spending Big To Support The Covid

“It’s more money in your pocket, billions to speed up vaccinations, safely reopen schools, and help small businesses come back,” a narrator says in the new ad. 

“Joe Biden kept his word, and that’s exactly what your president should do,” the ad concludes.  

According to a spokesperson from Unite the country, the ad is a seven-figure buy targeted in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin  all which Biden narrowly won last November, and all of which hold key Senate and gubernatorial contests in 2022. The ad campaign will be mostly featured on digital platforms.

The buy is the latest in a group of Democratic organizations with campaigns airing across the country. 

On Friday, the Democratic National Committee released a new ad that will air nationally and in battleground markets. Entitled, “Help is here”, the ad features parts of Biden’s speech explaining the Covid-19 relief bill. 

Also this week, the Democratic group Priorities USA said it was placing digital ads  like this one  in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin  in support of the new legislation.  

And House Majority Forward, the Democratic outside group that focuses on House races, said its launching a $1.4 million ad campaign across nine competitive House districts  like one focused on Texas’ 7th district  thanking Democratic members for voting for the relief package.  

Ben Kamisar and Melissa Holzberg

On Trump Approval Asking Why Reveals Differences By Education Within Gop

Many pollsters, including our team here at SurveyMonkey, track President Trumps approval rating, which has fallen to an all-time low. We wanted to delve deeperto ask respondents not just whether they approve or disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president, but why.

We did this in the simplest way possible: by immediately following our question on presidential approval with the open-ended question Why? This way, we can get explanations in respondents own words as to how they feel about our current Commander in Chief.

Republican Approvers: “Kept Promises”  Republican Disapprovers: “Childish”

In SurveyMonkeys most recent Trump approval update, 59% of people said they disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president.

Whats making these Republicans frustrated enough to split with their own party? To find out, we used structural topic modeling to explore how different groups of people explained their various reasons for approving or disapproving of President Trump. Structural topic modeling is a machine learning technique that discovers themes or topics within a large collection of responses, then predicts the prevalence of these topics according to certain respondent characteristics .

The graph below presents the differences in prevalence of various topics mentioned in response to our Why? follow-up, comparing responses among Republicans by whether they approve or disapprove of Trumps performance as president .