#steve is the the brother-IN-LAW that max deserves!!!!

[reineyday]

sometimes i see posts of steve and max where they call steve "the brother max deserves" and it always irks me a little because billy was the brother max deserved, they just killed him before he could properly show it. 🤦🏻‍♀️

she had a brother, they (the writers) just didnt use him very well. clearly by s3, billy and max were on good enough terms for her to mourn him all the way into s4. her grief and survivor's guilt and the trauma not just from his death but from living in an abusive home and being part of that abusive cycle are the reasons she gets targeted by vecna, and there's an entire episode titled after the letter she writes to him and reads to his gravestone. the last words he ever says are an apology to her.

calling steve the brother she deserves like billy isnt an integral part of her character, like billy isnt worth considering or looking at or like he doesnt exist, like he's somehow a villain that was cast upon max, a punishment she didnt deserve... that aint it. it takes away from their character backgrounds and the nuances held within them imo.

i love steve but the brother max deserves is a living billy, shuttling her around in his camaro and calling her "shitbird" and being like a real brother and sister, the way she wishes for in her letter. i have no doubt that had billy survived starcourt, they would have gotten there. they just chose to let him die instead. :/

[i-am-the-gremlin]

Stranger Things AU!

Mighty Ducks but make it Steve Harrington and the Party.

Steve graduated college and went off to run a branch of his dad’s company in Indianapolis. Five years later, he’s 27 and in trouble with the law - drink driving or something. Takes a plea bargain for community service and ends up back in Hawkins to coach a ragtag group of 13-year-olds, that proudly call themselves The Party, in an after school ice hockey program.

Max is Fulton Reed. I feel like she’s got the attitude for it and Neil probably wouldn’t let her play hockey because it’s a ‘boys’ sport, so they manage to convince the Hargrove family that Max is learning figure skating with El Hopper (who’s already on the team).

Max and Mike become these two:

Cause Mike one hundred percent deserves to bash some heads in. Boy’s got a lot of big emotions to work through.

Will is the fastest on the team, but he can’t stop and spends a lot of time bowling over his own team. He designs the team logo when they finally get proper uniforms.

Dustin has terrible coordination and can’t stay on his feet, he always makes his shots though. Claims it’s basically science and numbers. Oh and Eddie is Dustin’s older brother (Wayne and Claudia got married). Gotta get my Steddie in there somewhere.

I kind of want Lucas to be the goalie. He falls in love with Max when she body slams another player for hitting him.

Erica is way to young for the team but it doesn’t stop her from becoming assistant coach and running them all ragged. She rules the team with an iron fist.

[wheelercurse]

I'll try to be respectful. I'm a Mileven. I genuinely don't understand why you guys hate Mike's monologue. The only reason I can think of is because he said he loves El and not Will. It doesn't make sense in any other point of view.

YES it's bad that his only function in the show is being El's girlfriend, he deserves to be a layered character just like the other ones (but this is what he is, so...). YES it is also bad that Will doesn't have a love interest at the end of the show. I don't like Will as a character but yeah, he deserves to be in a relationship just like the other straight characters, it would be homophobic if he end up single. But destroy Mileven's development for him? That's really fucked up. Mike doesn't have good references in romance. His references are: his parents (they don't love each other) and his sister (her relationship with Steve). He is insecure in his relationship with Eleven because he's scared of losing her, he said that.

His insecurity: not being able to love her enough the way she deserves, like his dad with his mom and Nancy with Steve. He wants to make SURE he does love El.

The fear of losing her: saying he loves her and at the end of the day it's not true... The result >>> lose El.

The monologue is about it: Mike is not afraid anymore of losing El because this isn't an option. YES it was Will that helped him saying the monologue, but Will is literally his best friend, this is what friends do. El needed to hear every word that Mike said. She was able to save Max because her boyfriend was there for her. Also, Will is kind of done with Mike after the van scene, the band aid line tells a lot. His talk with Jonathan is also foreshadowing of Will moving on from Mike because Will saw how happy Mileven was and he could never have his sister's boyfriend (note: it's weird that you guys want him to date Mike when he's with El, it doesn't matter if he loved him first, he is now his brother in law, nothing will ever change that).

And El didn't talk with Mike because the Duffer brothers fucked up the end of the season after the 2 days later thing. Everyone knows that. I'm quite sure they will address Mike's monologue in season 5 and they will work as a team.

Thanks for the ask, I really appreciate it. I like to share our thoughts respectfully. I agree with you in some things and in others not, let me explain it.

I don't hate per se Mike's monologue. I just feel it was flat because they needed to talk more about their insecurities, like you comment above, it's clearly that this relationship bring them insecurities to both of them. And they need to solve them talking, and not in an improvised monologue in a risk situation. I am not one of the person that believes that Mike was lying in his monologue, at least not intentionally, sometimes he contradicted himself but it's because he was just saying what he thought El needed to hear.

The way I see it, Mil3ven had been built up for two seasons, and the last two seasons they're showing us how these two don't work together. Mike ditching his friends to be with El, and lying to them, also he trying to act more cool and mature with her, and stop playing games that makes him happy. And then in s4 we have this big conflict that Mike can't say ily, and how that bring insecurities to El, also she lied in her letters about how she was doing, and created a new persona. Also Mike made her feel like a monster because of how he reacted when she hit Angela, and he wasn't there to reassure her. Yes he said in his monologue that he loved her in her bad days, but he didn't show it. That's a problem. I don't think Mike stopped loving her in that moment, it's just that he couldn't show it nor give the love that El wanted in that moment.

Another big problem in their relationship, it's that Mike views her as a superhero, and that makes him insecure. I agree with you when you said that Mike is scared of losing her, that's true!! And it was one of the reasons that he couldn't say ily. But it's also true that he feels like he is just a random nerd, and he can't be at the same level as her, so he thinks, she deserves better than him. And this is related with his insecurity of not being needed by her. He always wants to protect and save his loved ones, but he knows that he can't bring that to El because she's the superhero, so he feels useless in that relationship.

I disagree that his insecurity is not loving her enough. He never implied that, it's just that he is scared of losing her if she realizes that she doesn't need him. And he thought if he said that words, that day would hurt more. (This is a misbelief and he will be proven wrong in s5 when El break up with him, and realize that it won't hurt as he had thought. We see a glimpse of this outcome at the end of the season when El isn't talking to him a lot and relying on him. Mike, the one who wants to be needed by her, doesn't look that affected by it.)

I completely disagree that El was able to save Max thanks to Mike. Actually with his monologue, El lost, Max died at first, and El was able to bring her back to life thanks to the memories that they had together, not for Mike's words. I don't think that Mike's monologue made her lose, but his words weren't enough. El's journey is about self-love and self-acceptance. Knowing that she can't be defined as monster nor superhero. Her worth doesn't come from her powers, nor her duty is to save the world. She needs to embrace that to became stronger, she doesn't need Mike's love.

I disagree, Will isn't moving on from Mike. The van scene wasn't the resolution of their conflict. Will's character arc is about saying the truth about his feelings, to complete his journey he has to be honest with Mike. And the painting has to be bring up again to clear things. And the scene with Jonathan is another scene that show how Will feels sad when he looks at them together, he is still yearning and pining for Mike. So, to me it says the opposite of what you said.

I mean it's okay if you find weird that Mike will date now El's brother, but I don't think El would mind tbh.

And the last part, sometimes I think that you're right. I have thought that too, that they just fucked up many character's arc. But if you see everything with context, it feels intentional. They didn't write a scene where they talk about the monologue, but neither a scene where El wake up, so we could see their emotional reunion. They did write that that they weren't talking a lot in the last two days. They wanted to show us that, so it's an important detail that we had to notice. And they also wrote Will confiding in Mike, just to show us the contrast with El shutting the door at his face (literally and metaphorically lmao).

And you said that they will work together in s5. They are showing us that the ones who will work together are Mike and Will, that's why they have an important conversation in the last episode. He reassured him that they will kill Vecna (of course it will be team work with the other characters and not just them, but this scene is a direct parallel with s2 when Mike never left his side). And of course the last shot where Mike and Will are together and El is in the front.

In conclusion, at the end of the season we see that Mike and Will are closer than they were in the beginning. And El and Mike aren't that close even if he already told her what she wanted to hear. So, no, that monologue wasn't the solution to their conflict.

Edit: I forgot to tell you that Mike isn’t written just as a love interest, he is more nuanced. Like Will said in the van scene, Mike is the leader, the one who inspire the party, and I am confident that we will see this role again in s5. 

[alraedesigns]

Pedro Pascal IMDB Checklist game

Thanks for tagging me, @something-tofightfor! I am DEFINTELY NOT going to top your score.

Put a ❤️ if you’ve seen the actual show/movie (if it’s a show it can just be the episodes he’s in)

Put a 💜 if you’ve seen all the scenes Pedro is in but haven’t actually watched it

Tag some Pedro stans <3

The Last of Us - Joel Miller  ❤️

Strange Way of Life - Silva

Housebroken - Claude

The Mandalorian - Din Djarin ❤️

The Bubble - Dieter Bravo ❤️

House Comes With a Bird - Nico ❤️

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent - Javi Gutierrez  ❤️

The Book of Boba Fett - Din Djarin ❤️

Calls - Pedro Across The Street 💜

We Can Be Heroes - Marcus Moreno ❤️

Wonder Woman 1984 - Maxwell Lord ❤️

Home Movie: The Princess Bride - Inigo Montoya ❤️

Community: Webisodes - Mr. Stone  ❤️

Triple Frontier - Frankie Morales ❤️

If Beale Street Could Talk - Pietro Alvarez 💜

The Equalizer - Dave York  ❤️

Prospect - Ezra ❤️

Kingsman: The Golden Circle - Jack “Whiskey” Daniels ❤️

Narcos - Javier Peña ❤️

The Great Wall - Pero Tovar ❤️

Exposed - Oscar Castro Vargas 

Sweets - Twin Peter 

Sia: Fire Meet Gasoline  ❤️

Bloodsucking Bastards - Max Phillips ❤️

The Mentalist - Marcus Pike ❤️ (or as my dad puts it "That handsome guy that tried to kill Denzel deserves better than that teenage witch lady")

Graceland - Agent Juan Badillo

Game of Thrones - Oberyn Martell ❤️

The Sixth Gun - Special Agent Ortega

Homeland - David Portillo

Red Widow - Jay Castillo  💜

Nikita - Liam 

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Kyle Hartley  ❤️

Body of Proof - Zack Goffman

Wonder Woman - Ed Indelicato💜

Charlie's Angels - Frederick Mercer  💜

Sweet Little Lies - Paulino

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit - Special Agent Greer  ❤️

Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe - Comandante Veracruz  ❤️

Brothers & Sisters - Zach Wellison 

The Adjustment Bureau - Maitre D' Paul De Santo 

Lights Out - Omar Assarian  

The Good Wife - Nathan Landry  

Nurse Jackie - Steve ❤️

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Kip Green/Reggie Luckman  ❤️

Iris - Billy

I Am That Girl - Noah

Law & Order - Tito Cabassa  ❤️

Without a Trace - Kyle Wilson ❤️

Sisters - Steve

Earth vs. the Spider - Goth Guy  💜

NYPD Blue - Shane 'Dio' Morrissey 💜

Touched by an Angel - Ricky Hauk  💜

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Eddie  💜 (also not a buffy fan)

Undressed - Greg  ❤️ (Why have I even seen this whole show??)

Good vs Evil - Gregor New 

Window Shopping - David  

Burning Bridges - Alex

36/57! 

I'm surprised I managed to get this many!

Who else wants to play? Tagging: @ezras-channel-rat, @the-blind-assassin-12, @writeforfandoms

and anyone else that wants to play! 

[neuronary]

some odd but canon compliant stranger things fic ideas:

suzie leaves the mormon church, with help from her boyfriend's friend's brother's best bud. a.k.a. suzie and argyle's very good and cathartic roadtrip from salt lake city to hawkins, featuring explosions, trauma, and copious amounts of marijuana.

the one where max's dad is waiting on an HIV screening to come back clear and max decides to fly back to california about it, featuring a not insignificant amount of theft, tears, and family law of 1980s america. a.k.a. what i think the deal is with max's dad.

in which murray bauman makes a lot of screwdrivers and writes nancy wheeler a letter of recommendation for emerson, entirely unprompted. a.k.a. i think nancy deserves a role model that's just as unhinged as she is, spoiler alert they are opening a detective agency.

max mayfield learns to read braille, gets a dog, and befriends eddie munson's uncle along the way. a.k.a. a study in grief and slow recoveries.

lucas' mom's perspective on billy hargrove, steve harrington, and the hawkins police department. a.k.a. the post s2 saga of sue sinclair kicking ass, taking names, and baking casseroles (not necessarily in that order).

actually a one-shot series about the mothers of hawkins and their perspectives on what their children have been through. i have a lot of thoughts on this.

robin's not-quite-a-friendship with barbara holland pre-canon and how she finds out what really happened to her. a.k.a. steve and robin's very bad nightmare-filled first sleepover.

[avengers-nextgen]

The Aftermath XVIII

“Today is the day,” T’Challa smiled faintly, “you must get up. There are things to prepare.”

“I know,” Siyanda huffed, “I know.”

“Don’t forget to smile,” T’Challa reminded. Siyanda frowned in reply much to her father’s distaste. “Come on. Enough lying about. There’s no delays today. Everything must be on time.”

“Yeah, okay,” Siyanda nodded. She waited for her father to leave before clambering out of bed. Every part of her dreaded the day that was about to unfold.

— — —

“Why bring us here?” Sif frowned, sparing Loki a cold glance. The four Asgardians were standing amid ship wreckage at the bottom of the ocean. A green throbbing barrier kept them from drowning.

“I don’t know but it gives me the creeps,” Valkyrie shivered, eyeing the abandoned husk.

“Something stirs here,” Loki explained. “I didn’t wish to alert the children. It’s a dangerous aura.”

“Wasn’t Prometheus destroyed?” Thor questioned, crossing his arms. “This place should be nothing but a metal husk.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, brother,” Loki swallowed his nerves. Creeping along the tilted floor water retracted when the barrier touched it. The prince lead his companions along the rusted intestines of a long deceased vessel.

“The relics were destroyed,” Sif noted, “there is no danger.”

“You don’t know the ancient texts my lady,” Loki replied, “but I do. There are things that cannot be explained unless you’ve read them yourself.”

“Well you better try,” Valkyrie demanded.

“Fine,” Loki paused in their journey with an irritated huff. “The Shadow Realm was what Prometheus intended to open. He believed it was a void of churning chaotic matter. Once his little side project of creating the perfect human through the use of scientific mercenaries failed- he looked elsewhere. He wanted to open the shadow realm to create a new breed of human made from the chaotic matter inside. Ancient laws don’t allow him to combine technology with people but they don’t restrict his ability to make new races from other matter.”

“We know all of this,” Thor sighed.

“But he was wrong,” Loki paced about with his hands flying in wild patterns. “There isn’t chaotic matter or some endless void. There’s a place. A dangerous place ruled by a being even more ancient than Prometheus. The maker of man needs to be made himself.”

“How do you know this? Asgard texts say the Shadow Realm imploded on itself eons ago. That it turned into chaos and turmoil when Tenebris and Noctis went to war,” Sif shook her head in confusion.

“Someone won the war,” Loki determined, “Noctis did.”

“You’re making this up,” Thor snorted. “There’s no way you would know. The artifacts were made to keep the realm closed during the war. To allow the realm to destroy itself while protecting other worlds.”

“When I was searching for more of our people,” Loki spoke rapidly, “I found something here on earth that didn’t belong. It was an ancient mural depicting a man. Someone gifted with sight.”

“Only Heimdall has that power,” Valkyrie frowned.

“There’s another,” Loki sighed, growing increasingly irritated by their interrupting. “Blessed by Vor to protect the earth from itself.”

“Certainly haven’t done a good job have they?” Valkyrie smirked.

“Gifted with sight but can only see the past. To keep us from repeating it,” Loki insisted.

“Seems like a crap shoot of a gift,” Thor grunted.

“My point is-“ Loki yelled cutting off anyone else who tried to speak, “I found them. They told me to fear Noctis.”

“Why?” Valkyrie could hardly keep up with Loki’s logic.

“When Prometheus died he left a seam between our world and the Shadow Realm. Energy has been leaking out ever since,” The god of mischief’s eyes darkened.

“That explains Max’s powers,” Sif nodded. “How hasn’t it infected anyone else?”

“Because of this.” Loki lead the group up and over a twisted stair case to the very spot Prometheus died. A dark pool of liquid sat bubbling and frothing in front of them. “It’s collecting here.”

“Then we must close it,” Sif frowned, drawing a blade.

“We can’t,” Loki worried.

“What do you mean we can’t?” Valkyrie asked.

“The Realm keys are the only ones that can close it. The only things that could open them,” Loki explained.

“But Alex destroyed them,” Thor glowered.

“Yes,” Loki breathed, “which means we are in very grave danger.”

— — —

“There you are,” Nakia smiled, standing in front of her daughter. “You’re so beautiful.”

“It’s stifling,” Siyanda whispered, bowing her head. “Why must I look like a set of fancy cutlery?”

“Darling, it’s only for the evening. It’s the way of the ceremony,” Nakia sighed, taking Siyanda’s hands in her own. “You’ll be alright.”

“I’m not alright,” Siyanda frowned. “I’m not going to be alright without her here. She deserves to be here.”

“I know,” Nakia nodded, looking sadly at her daughter. “But-“

“But the people,” Siyanda glowered.

“She’ll be happy to hear about it I’m sure.”

“She shouldn’t have to hear about it. She should be here.” Siyanda’s voice was cold like steel. She was angry. Pissed, actually.

“It’s too late to even try,” Nakia sighed. “You know, I did try to talk sense into him. But your father is stubborn. He’s worried that it’ll affect your safety. That Thalia could be endangered too.”

“Perhaps,” Siyanda shrugged, “but if he’s so concerned for my safety why hold the ceremony?”

“It’s much easier to watch after one person than two,” Nakia explained.

Though Siyanda understood the logic behind her parents’ wishes she couldn’t help but feel betrayed. She’d always pictured Thalia being there. Or her friends. Or anyone she wanted but that was some hope of the past. Instead, she had no one but her family.

“Why did you tell me-“ The princess swallowed tightly trying to keep her composure, “why did you tell me it was okay?”

“Honey, I don’t understand,” Nakia worried.

“Why did you tell me it was okay to love girls?”

“Because it is.”

“No. No it’s not.” Siyanda shook her head in frustration. “It’s not and you knew it. You lied to me.”

“That’s not true.” Nakia’s expression became fierce. “I would never lie to you.”

“Then why is it-“ the princess struggled for words,”why is it that I could ask for anything and receive it but the moment I ask for her I’m a delusional child?”

“Because...life was never going to be easy for you,” Nakia whispered, “but we knew that. We’re trying to protect you.”

“You’re only hurting me.”

“Not everyone loves you the way I do,” Nakia’s eyes glistened with tears. “And I don’t want you to be hurt because of that.”

“Then let them hate me.” Siyanda set her jaw and turned away from her mother. She spotted her father waiting by the door.

“It’s time,” He smiled.

— — —

“Don’t you know a spell or something?” Valkyrie worried, eyeing the growing pool with concern.

“Well I can try to slow it down but-“

Loki didn’t get to finished. The ship hummed like an old groaning spirit.

“I think it’s time to go,” Valkyrie squeaked.

The pool began to move like some form of a melted shadow. It writhed and grew and shrank and stretched until a sight so terrifyingly beautiful emerged that Loki wanted to cry in despair.

“A welcoming party,” Noctis grinned, her canines too sharp for comfort. “How sweet.”

Sif twirled her blade stepping back wearily. “Go home, Noctis.”

“Sorry dear. I have a date with an old friend.”

— — —

“Steve...”Natasha’s eyes widened in fear. He turned to follow her gaze. Across the diner and in the horizon a darkness was building. Violent in color seemingly seeping all vibrancy from the world around it.

“What the hell?” Steve frowned, standing slowly. James and Alex slowly caught on to the tension between their parents. Abandoning their lunch they fought for space to see out of the window.

“Come on,” Natasha whispered, ticking an arm protectively around each of her kids.

“Stay close,” Steve warned, tossing a tip on the table.

— — —

“Ellie don’t scribble in there,” Nathaniel worried, spotting his niece by the poolside going to town in Chloe’s note book.

“It’s fine. I don’t mind,” Chloe shrugged, neglecting her conversation with Cooper and Lila.

“You sure?” Nathaniel arched a brow.

“Promise,” Chloe smiled, eyeing something behind Nathaniel. The archer was rigged under the water by Arthur.

“I love pool days,” Penny beamed, leaping into the water like a very ungraceful swan.

“Cassy she’s going to-“ Scott couldn’t warn his other daughter in time. Penny flipped her older sister clean off the floatie.

“You tried,” Hope smiled, patting Scott on the shoulder.

“Cl-Clint?” Laura nudged him anxiously with her elbow.

“What is it?” Clint asked, making faces at Ellie.

“Is there a storm today?”

“Weather was supposed to be clear. Why?”

“I think the forecast was wrong.”

All eyes slowly fell to the sky. Silence settled over the group like a thick blanket. It was hard to determine what they were looking at but whatever it was-it was terrifying.

— — —

Maria’s phone rang. She picked it up with little care until she heard who called. “Sam?! How-How did you get my number?”

“Doesn’t matter. Can you tell me what the fuck is going on?” Sam demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“Look outside and tell me the universe is just fucking with me,” Sam pleaded.

Frowning, Maria glanced out of her bedroom window. What she saw hadn’t been there moments before. “You know what Sam? I’ll have to call you back. I have no clue what’s going on.”

“Great,” Sam snorted, “just, stay safe. Tell Steve not to be stupid.”

“Nice to hear from you after all these years,” Maria smiled, “kind of missed your eternal pessimism.”

“Yeah, well Fury’s about to get a whole wee full of it,” Sam promised just before ending the call.

— — —

Siyanda stood on the stage like balcony with her eyes trained ahead. She stared past the crowd and into the distance as if she weren’t there at all. Nothing her father said registered.

Only when all went quiet did she snap back to the present. It was then she realized the entire sky had gone black, every color had dulled, and her father looked deeply afraid.

“Nakia, Siyanda, Shuri, Mother,” T’Challa whispered, “get inside.”

“What-“

“Get inside,” He insisted. Shuri took Si by the arm and tugged her in doors. They closed off any view of the outside world. All Si saw was the suit beginning to cover her father’s form. She didn’t know hat was happening, but it was dangerous.

THE END

[shirtlesssammy]

13x06: Tombstone

Then:

Uncontrollable Sobbing

Now:

Where the fuck is our TFW reunion? Dean and a local lawman from Dodge City, Kansas are hunting something at night in a graveyard, when the sarge gets sucked underground by some particularly strong grabby hands. 

48 Hours Earlier

Dean and Cas are reunited and all is right in the world. (Sam. Sam is here too.) Dean asks Cas if it’s really him. Cas admits to annoying an ancient cosmic being into sending him back to Earth. Sam mumbles something about not knowing what to say, but Dean’s got this one.

“Welcome home, pal.” And Dean gives Cas a big hug ---and oh my, his face journey when he hugs Cas. What the fuck, Dean!? I know you’re in shock, but don’t pal-zone the dude. Your face is a menace.

(Sam. Sam is here too --and he gets a hug in as well.)

Cas asks how long he was gone (all calculations seem to indicate ~a month), and Dean responds, “Too damn long.” Like, when Cas finds out how long it really was, he better call Dean out on how dramatic that is. He tells the brothers that he was in the Empty. Sam surmises that Jack did something to wake him.

<Insert Fanfiction Gap where TFW discuss Cas’s new outfit, what serious pain Dean’s been in lately, the absence of Mary, and Jack not needing all those diapers after all.>

At the bunker, there’s a heartfelt meeting/reunion of Jack and Cas. This third Cas hug was really emotional for me, guys.

Jack is eager to prove to his new family that he’s studying hard, moving pencils with his mind, and finding cases to work. If he wasn’t so fucking cute, I’d have my supernatural sensors pinging right now. He wants so desperately to be good, but the more he learns about his powers, the more he’ll use them. We’re only at episode 6 --there’s a whole lot of time for him to go dark side. Jack lets the team know that “the dead are rising in Dodge City, Kansas.” Nerd Dean makes an appearance. And much to Sam and Cas’s reluctance, they decide to check it out. Off to the Stampede Motel and RV Park!

Dean books the best room in the joint (but only two beds for four grown men, smh). 

And Dean Bean really nerds out about all the western gunmen on the wall. (Sam. Sam is here too --wondering why he can’t enjoy serial killer trivia.) Also, I just about died watching Tactile!Dean touch the bison’s nose. 

While Dean and Sam prepare to crash for the night, Cas and Jack bond over not sleeping.

Dean opens the closet door to discuss how getting Cas back is a “pretty, damn big win.” Sam’s happy he’s happy, but his Dimples of Knowledge™ indicate he knows it’s more than that. And he closes the closet, conversation over.

Meanwhile, Deputy Kyle pulls over a stolen truck, only to be dragged under the vehicle for his efforts.

Later that night, Dean gets his first real good night of sleep in a month, while Cas and Jack talk about all that’s happened to Jack. Jack is just such a nougat-face wondering about heaven (angels are dicks, Jack.) They talk about Kelly, and Cas apologizes for not being there for Jack from the beginning. “Kelly would be so proud of you,” Cas assures his mini-me. It’s then that Jack sees the latest law enforcement development and runs to tell Sam and Dean. Cas, who’s watched Dean wake up angry so many times he’s lost count, runs to stop Jack from making the most egregious error, but is too late. Dean pulls his gun on him (thankfully Jack doesn’t blast him with nephilim power, right?), and then asks for someone *cough*Cas*cough* to make him coffee. 

After finding out that the deputy was found with bite marks all over, Sam and Jack decide to hit up the local graveyard while Cas and Dean check out the crime scene. After Dean’s coffee break, of course.

Classic Scene Alert

Dean and Cas pull up to the crime scene. Holy Hell, guys. I could watch this on repeat forever.

Dean bought Cas a cowboy hat --only it’s a straw hat!

Dean fixes said hat to look better, but Cas is dubious of that correction.

Cas touched Baby’s rearview mirror and lives to to see another day.

Dean is hella excited to act like he’s in the movie Tombstone.

Cas is Dean’s ‘Huckleberry”, i.e. man he’s been looking for.

Dean makes Cas watch movies with him.

Dean closes his eyes and swallows very dramatically when Cas lowers his voice and quotes Tombstone. (I don’t make the rules, that’s just canon.)

Dean is glad to have his angel back and his voice breaks when he says “Cas”.

<Insert dramatic exit from car set to the Steve Miller Band’s Space Cowboy.>

I have to admit, I’m not the biggest Steve Miller Band fan, so I was a bit meh when I first heard this, but after watching this scene a couple hundred dozen times, I’m cool with it. It’s certainly not their most played song and it’s jangly fun for the scene. I loved the record scratch at the end. And Cas’s “Howdy partner” and “Much obliged”? JFC.

Dean Agent Russell, and his associate, Cas Val Kilmer, meet with Sergeant Phillips about the victim. Turns out to be his nephew, and he’s wondering why the Texas Rangers are this far north. Dean rolls with his new role.

At the undertakers, rockabilly Athena is preparing a body for embalming while wearing noise cancelling headphones. She doesn’t hear Sam and Jack Agent’s Elliott and Paxton approach. Athena doubts Jack’s age (aww, remember when Sam was so young people doubted that he was an FBI agent? They grow up so fast.) Sam and Athena make a brief connection over Amanda Palmer and Jack fucks up and asks about cold spots. (He’s trying so hard. PROTECT.) 

At the grave, Sam finds a gnawed on hip bone. They’re dealing with a ghoul!

TFW 2.0 wonders if Athena is the ghoul, but quickly dismiss that idea. Athena, meanwhile, is busy at work, and busy being followed by a shadowy figure. Dean figures it out that they’re looking for Dave Mather, cowboy and outlaw and someone who’s been dead since 1886, “which makes this a little weird.”       

Athena’s mysterious stalker is Dave! It seems that Athena was accepted to a prestigious make-up school in LA. Dave is less than impressed. Athena spills the beans on the FBI visit, alerting Dave.

After Jack pieces it together that Dave is Athena’s boyfriend, they head out to the mortuary, looking for Dave.

Dave is busy robbing a bank.

Team Free Will 2.0 heads to the bank to stop him. They confirm that Dave is, in fact, a ghoul who's been chomping on ole Dave for a long time now. A regular Western-style shootout begins. Cas tells Jack to stay hidden but Jack's full of confidence now. He rushes out and gets shot full of lead for his trouble. But Jack's unperturbed by this. He holds up his hand and does a power blast, throwing both Dave and the bank guard violently backwards.

Dave falls to the ground but the bank guard gets knocked against a concrete pillar. When he falls to ground, he falls down dead, presumably killed instantly as soon as his head hit the pillar. Dave escapes on foot with Dean in pursuit while everyone else checks on the guard. Dean loses Dave (curse you, stray automobile!) and heads back to the crime scene where Jack is looking with horror on the dead guard who Castiel tries and fails to resurrect. This seems like a low power moment for Cas, but here's my headcanon. Cas could revive the body but the guard's soul already moved on. Since he isn't welcome in Heaven these days, Cas couldn't head up and retrieve his soul. You may say to me. Natasha. How do you explain Gadreel then HUH? To that I simply say that Cas and Charlie's souls hadn't moved on yet. (I also accept the more popular headcanon that Cas will never be max power again now that some of his grace was destroyed by Metatron’s spell.)

Anyway, the guard is irrevocably dead. They all head back to the hotel to figure out their next step.

We cut to the hotel where the camera closes in on Jack with an actual thunderclap sound effect. Yesss yes give me your heavy handed audio cues. Cas asks if it's happened before (and I'm getting some serious parent/teacher conference vibes here.) But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because there’s a dead man in town and the police are gonna be sniffing around. Dean sends Cas and Sam home with Jack while he stays to take care of the ghoul.

Back at the mortuary, Dave stumbles in on Athena. He's bleeding, aggressive, and he's got a bag full of stolen money. He confesses to robbing graves for quick cash and a bank for mega cash. Athena hears all this, puts two and two together, and realizes that he killed the officer. Dave protests that the murder was okay because he “had it coming.” He grips her tightly and tells her that she should stick with him because he'll protect her. It's all very...UGH. Athena tells him that she'll never stay with him and I'm honestly fearing for her life right now. Because telling him she's leaving him will only lead to him rage-killing her, right? A car pulls up outside, interrupting Dave in what just might have been the knick of time.

We jump to outside the mortuary. It's the Sergeant, quickly followed by Dean! They greet each other laconically. “You here to shoot down a gosh durn monster?” “Yep.” They stalk through the cemetery and separate to flush out Dave when a hole opens up in the ground (yes, we're looping back to the opening scene) and swallows up the Sergeant. Dean rushes to the hole. It's deep and dark and Dean, bless him, hesitates at the lip of the sinkhole.

“Mmm mmm. Nope, I don't wanna,” he says and I one hundred percent back him up on this opinion. Going face first into a tiny crawl hole is the stuff of nightmares. To his credit, however, in he goes. He crawls through on his belly, shotgun in hand.

Back in the Impala, Sam and Cas try to make Jack feel better. “I've killed people who didn't deserve it,” Cas tells him. “My friends. I killed people I loved. I wish I could tell you that it gets easier...with time it hurts less but that would be a lie.” Jack ain't buying it and honestly...neither am I. I'm not convinced that telling newborn Jack that his role model isn't such a role model is the best strategy in this case. But ANYway. Cas tries to convince him that what happened was a mistake and he can still improve. “I have to believe it,” Cas says. And...AAAW CAS <3 Always swimming towards faith in something better. (High fives the Empty for drop-kicking him back to us.)

Jack is JUST DONE.

Dean finally crawls to the end of the tunnel and ends up in the undertaker's basement. He finds Athena tied up down there and the Sergeant injured but alive. A gun snicks behind Dean and he turns around to find the last player in the drama: Ghoul Dave.

Dave's wearing his cowboy hat (because why not) and orders Dean to hold his hands up high. Dave hits peak about-to-get-his-comeuppance smug, describing how he's going to kill Dean, when Dean steps aside revealing the Sergeant holding a shotgun. The Sergeant fires a carefully aimed round and takes off Dave's entire head. The blood cannon splatters across Athena's crisp, white shirt in what Boris described as cleverly staged costuming. “Happy trails, cowboy,” Dean says to the headless body.

Dean heads back to the bunker, gives the victory report, and tells Sam that he took care of covering up Jack's accident. This makes Jack angry. He's not ready to accept forgiveness and he's frustrated that everyone tells him to move on. He shouts and Sam backs away with his hands in the air. Jack recognizes their fear. “Maybe I'm just another monster,” Jack theorizes. To everyone's surprise, Dean disagrees. He's no more monster than Sam, Dean, or Cas. Jack, to his credit, doesn't think this is exactly a winning argument. Jack decides to leave so he doesn't hurt anyone else. He power blasts them all to the floor and then flaps out of the bunker.

QuoteBack Mountain:

I do.

Two salty hunters, one half-angel kid, and a dude that just came back from the dead again. Team Free Will 2.0.

He really likes cowboys

I told you, he’s an angry sleeper, like a bear.

My name is Val Kilmer.

I’m gonna get my boots on.

Tell her that the guy she's banging eats dad people and we gotta kill him.

Sure, come to Dodge City. We'll have some laughs.

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

[mindthump]

Overlooked No More: Alan Turing, Condemned Code Breaker and Computer Visionary https://nyti.ms/2XsJPxN

Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times. This month we’re adding the stories of important L.G.B.T.Q. figures.

By Alan Cowell

LONDON — His genius embraced the first visions of modern computing and produced seminal insights into what became known as “artificial intelligence.” As one of the most influential code breakers of World War II, his cryptology yielded intelligence believed to have hastened the Allied victory.

But, at his death several years later, much of his secretive wartime accomplishments remained classified, far from public view in a nation seized by the security concerns of the Cold War. Instead, by the narrow standards of his day, his reputation was sullied.

On June 7, 1954, Alan Turing, a British mathematician who has since been acknowledged as one the most innovative and powerful thinkers of the 20th century — sometimes called the progenitor of modern computing — died as a criminal, having been convicted under Victorian laws as a homosexual and forced to endure chemical castration. Britain didn’t take its first steps toward decriminalizing homosexuality until 1967.

Only in 2009 did the government apologize for his treatment.

“We’re sorry — you deserved so much better,” said Gordon Brown, then the prime minister. “Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as he was, under homophobic laws were treated terribly.”

And only in 2013 did Queen Elizabeth II grant Turing a royal pardon, 59 years after a housekeeper found his body at his home at Wilmslow, near Manchester, in northwest England.

A coroner determined that he had died of cyanide poisoning and that he had taken his own life “while the balance of his mind was disturbed.”

At his side lay a half-eaten apple. Biographers speculated that he had ingested the poison by dousing the apple with cyanide and eating it to disguise the toxin’s taste. Some of those who studied his personality or knew him, most notably his mother, Ethel Turing, challenged the official verdict of suicide, arguing that he had poisoned himself accidentally.

To this day Turing is recognized in his own country and among a broad society of scientists as a pillar of achievement who had fused brilliance and eccentricity, had moved comfortably in the abstruse realms of mathematics and cryptography but awkwardly in social settings, and had been brought low by the hostile society into which he was born.

“He was a national treasure, and we hounded him to his death,” said John Graham-Cumming, a computer scientist who campaigned for Turing to be pardoned.

Above all, Turing’s name is associated for many people with the top-secret wartime operations of Britain’s code-breakers at Bletchley Park, a sprawling estate north of London, where he oversaw and inspired the effort to decrypt ciphers generated by Nazi Germany’s Enigma machine, which had once seemed impenetrable. The Germans themselves regarded the codes as unbreakable.

At the time, German submarines were prowling the Atlantic, hunting Allied ships carrying vital cargo for the war effort. The convoys were critical for building military strength in Britain and eventually enabled the Allies to undertake the D-Day landings in Normandy in 1944, heralding the collapse of Nazi Germany the next year.

Only by charting the submarines’ movements could Allied forces change the course of their convoys, and for that they relied on the cryptologists of Bletchley Park to decode messages betraying the Germans’ deployments.

The enduring fascination with Turing’s story inspired the 2014 movie “The Imitation Game,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. But his scientific range went far beyond the limits of cinematic drama: He laid down principles that have molded the historical record of the relationship between humans and the machines they have created to solve their problems.

Image

Turing and colleagues working on the Ferranti Mark I Computer in 1951. It was based on a prototype built five years earlier at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Professor Max Newman.CreditSSPL/Getty Images

Even before World War II, Turing was making breakthroughs.

Credit for the creation of the first functioning computer in 1946 went to the researchers John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly for their machine the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or Eniac, which they had developed at the University of Pennsylvania during World War II.

But Turing’s notions preceded the Eniac. He conceived what became known as the universal Turing machine, which envisioned “one machine for all possible tasks” — essentially computers as we know them today, Andrew Hodges, Turing’s biographer, wrote in a condensed version of his 1983 book, “Alan Turing: The Enigma.”

Turing’s vision, Hodges said, was that one machine could “be turned to any well-defined task by being supplied with the appropriate program.”

He added, “The universal Turing machine naturally exploits what was later seen as the ‘stored program’ concept essential to the modern computer: It embodies the crucial 20th century insight that symbols representing instructions are no different in kind from symbols representing numbers.”

Later, technology that emerged from the Manhattan Project, the United States-led effort to develop the atom bomb, also relied on Turing’s ideas.

“What had begun as a British idea was scaled up to industrial size by the Americans,” David Kaiser, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in 2012 in The London Review of Books.

Turing’s postwar work at the University of Manchester, on the first functioning British computers, was also significant: It reflected the emerging power of electronic computing in the Cold War race for nuclear supremacy. And he remained fascinated by the interplay between human thought processes and their computerized inventions. Even in 1944, Hodges wrote, Turing had spoken to a colleague about “building a brain.”

Image

Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing in the 2014 movie “The Imitation Game.”

In an article published in 1950 in the academic journal Mind, Turing developed a method that came to be known as the “Turing Test,” a sort of thought experiment to determine whether a computer could pass as a human. As part of his experiment, a human interrogator would ask questions and try to figure out whether the answers had come from a computer or a human.

Many years later, on a visit to London, President Barack Obama placed Turing in a trans-Atlantic pantheon of innovation and discovery, saying, “From Newton and Darwin to Edison and Einstein, from Alan Turing to Steve Jobs, we have led the world in our commitment to science and cutting-edge research.”

Alan Mathison Turing was born in London on June 23, 1912, the second of two sons of Ethel Sara Stoney and Julius Mathison Turing, who had met in imperial India, where his father was a senior colonial administrator. After Alan’s birth they left him and his brother, John, in the care of foster parents in England while they returned to India so that Alan’s father could continue his work.

“Alan Turing’s story was not one of family or tradition but of an isolated and autonomous mind,” Hodges wrote.

In his early days, Turing’s education reflected the overwhelming social requisite of his class to secure a place at a reputable private boarding school. Alan, at age 13, enrolled at Sherborne School, in southern England, where his fascination with science raised alarms in an educational system based on the study of what were called the classics — works in Latin and ancient Greek.

“If he is to be solely a scientific specialist, he is wasting his time at a public school,” Nowell Smith, Sherborne’s headmaster, wrote to his parents, as recorded in Hodges’s book.

Image

A young Alan Turing sailing with classmates from King’s College in Cambridge, where he studied mathematics. He graduated in 1934 with a first class honors degree.CreditREX/Shutterstock

Nonetheless, he secured a place at King’s College in Cambridge to study mathematics, graduating in 1934 with a first class honors degree. With remarkable academic precocity he was made a fellow of the college in 1935. A year later, he published the groundbreaking paper “On Computable Numbers, With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” (or “decidability problem”), a reference in German to a celebrated riddle that the American logician Alonzo Church had also explained.

Both Turing and Church reached the same conclusion — a basis for computer science — that there is no single algorithm that could determine the truth or falsity of any statement in formal logic (though Turing’s thinking was more direct).

Turing completed a doctoral thesis at Princeton in 1938 before returning to Cambridge. With Britain’s declaration of war on Germany in September 1939, he joined the Bletchley Park code breakers at the Government Code and Cypher School, working in makeshift huts clustered around a mansion.

Their greatest initial challenge was figuring out the method of encryption of the German Enigma device, which was invented 20 years earlier by Arthur Scherbius, a German electrical engineer who had patented it as a civilian machine to encrypt commercial messages. The machine worked by entering letters on a typewriter-like keyboard and then encoding them through a series of rotors to a light board, which showed the coded equivalents. The machine was said to be capable of generating almost 159 quintillion permutations.

The British were helped initially by a Polish mathematician who had been studying the Enigma machine and had provided vital details after Hitler’s forces invaded Poland in 1939. But under the direction of Turing and another Cambridge-educated mathematician, W.G. Welchman, the Bletchley Park code breakers greatly expanded and accelerated those early efforts. Using a huge contraption called the Bombe, they mimicked the operations of the Enigma machine to break its codes.

Image

The back of a huge contraption known as the Bombe, which the Bletchley Park code breakers used to break ciphers created by Nazi Germany’s Enigma machine.CreditSSPL/Getty Images

“The critical factor was Turing’s brilliant mechanization of subtle logical deductions,” the biographer Hodges wrote.

In 1942, Turing was assigned to visit the United States for several months of high-level consultations on the encryption of conversations between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill. His wartime work earned him a high civilian award, and he was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

In the postwar years, Turing’s fascination with computers led him to design the Automatic Computing Engine. Although it was never built, Turing believed that “the computer would offer unlimited scope for practical progress toward embodying intelligence in an artificial form,” Hodges wrote.

In May 1948, Turing moved to Manchester University’s computing laboratory and bought a house in nearby Wilmslow. Among his enthusiasms were his work on various scientific themes, including morphogenesis, the theory of growth and form in biology; his continued secret ties to Britain’s postwar code breakers; and long-distance running.

He was also, Hodges said, beginning to explore the homosexual identity he had hidden when he proposed marriage in 1941 to Joan Clarke, a Bletchley Park cryptanalyst. He later withdrew the offer after explaining his sexuality to her, and the two remained friends.

About 10 years later, the police were investigating a burglary at his home when he admitted to having had a physical relationship with a man named Arnold Murray. Murray told Turing that he knew the thief’s identity, and detectives, in their questioning, asked Turing about his relationship to Murray.

In March 1952, Turing and Murray were charged with “gross indecency,” and both pleaded guilty in court. Murray was given a conditional discharge, but Turing was ordered to undergo chemical castration by taking doses of the female hormone estrogen to reduce sex drive.

Two years later, the motive for his apparent suicide, at age 41, remained unclear and left many questions. At the time, Hodges wrote, known homosexuals were denied security clearances, which meant that Turing could not be involved in secret work during the Cold War, leaving him excluded and embittered. While a coroner deemed the death a suicide, the telltale apple at Turing’s side was never forensically examined.

“Eccentric, solitary, gloomy, vivacious, resigned, angry, eager, dissatisfied — these had always been his ever-varying characteristics,” Hodges wrote, “and despite the strength that he showed the world in coping with outrageous fortune, no one could safely have predicted his future course.”

[crayonlead2-blog]

Links 3/18/19

Patient readers, we just this instant switched on the codes for a new advertising vendor. A very much unintended and unexpected side effect is that some of you may be seeing video and other pop-ups. We were very clear in that these types of ads were not allowed. We are working to make them go away as fast as we can, because we know how much you hate them (and we do too)! –lambert

Update by Yves: The site seems to load faster with the new ads (the ads were what would slow down loading times), so once we get the popups sorted out (which thank God are appearing only on the landing page and so aren’t interfering with reading articles), this should be a net plus to readers once we get past transition issues.

Stonehenge-like monuments were home to giant pig feasts. Now, we know who was on the guest list Science

What’s the cost (in fish) between 1.5 and 3 degrees of warming? Anthropocene

Home Of Strategic Command And Some Of The USAF’s Most Prized Aircraft Is Flooding (Updated) The Drive

Radical plan to artificially cool Earth’s climate could be safe, study finds Grist

Fire Breaks Out At a Houston-Area Petrochemicals Terminal Bloomberg. Second in a week. Video:

The heat is deforming this metal storage tank. Some of the first responders are worried it will collapse. pic.twitter.com/Y3ZsjJ96zj

— Respectable Lawyer (@RespectableLaw) March 18, 2019

Leave the oil in the ground, and this doesn’t happen…

The Fed has exacerbated America’s new housing bubble FT

Churches are opening their doors to businesses in order to survive CBS

Some county treasurers have flouted Iowa gift law for years Bleeding Heartland

Corporations Are Co-Opting Right-To-Repair Wired

Brexit

What will it take to push May’s Brexit deal over the line FT. The arithmetic: “To overturn her 149-vote deficit, she would have to win over at least 75 MPs. The most plausible route starts with the DUP’s 10 MPs. If they backed her deal, then some 50 of the nearly 70 Tory Eurosceptics who voted against it last week may change sides. Then Mrs May would need a further 15 Labour MPs, in addition to the five Labour and former Labour MPs who backed her last week.”

Northern Ireland’s farmers urge DUP to back Brexit deal FT

Around 40 Tory Rebels Told Theresa May: We’ll Vote For Your Brexit Deal If You Quit Buzzfeed

Labour likely to back public vote on UK PM’s deal, says Corbyn Reuters

Brexit by July 1 unless UK votes in EU election: Document Politico

The Irish Backstop: Nothing has changed? It has actually (PDF) Lord Bew and Lord Trimble, Policy Exchange. Bew is a Professor of Irish Politics. Trimble is a former First Minister of Northern Ireland and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Well worth the clickthrough to read the entire PDF. Here is the final paragraph:

All of this suggests that a backstop that functions for more than a short period of time – and the DUP has indicated in Parliament that it could live with a short backstop – is likely to be an extremely unstable affair. If it does not negotiate a trade deal with the UK in the next year or so, the EU is also likely to become increasingly aware that the Protocol will give it nothing but grief as it gets sucked into the Northern Ireland quagmire. In this quagmire, the UK Government (which has the support of the majority of the population in Northern Ireland and which pays the subvention which subsidises the entire society), holds most of the cards.

Politico’s London Playbook calls their report “a ringing endorsement of the tweaks to the backstop agreed by Theresa May in Strasbourg this month.” Readers?

NORMAN LAMONT: History will never understand Tory MPs if they kill off Brexit Daily Mail

Brexit will mark the end of Britain’s role as a great power WaPo. Surely Suez did that?

Macron calls for ‘strong decisions’ after violent Yellow Jacket protests Politico

Among the Gilets Jaunes LRB

Syraqistan

Months after saying US will withdraw, now 1,000 troops in Syria to stay Jerusalem Post but US denies report it is leaving up to 1,000 troops in Syria Channel News Asia. And what about the mercs?

Saudi Crown Prince’s Brutal Drive to Crush Dissent Began Before Khashoggi NYT

A Palestinian Farmer Finds Dead Lambs in His Well. He Knows Who’s to Blame Haaretz

Algeria After Bouteflika Jacobin

North Korea

Investing in resource-rich North Korea seems like a good idea — but businesses find there’s a catch Los Angeles Times

Picking Up the Pieces After Hanoi Richard Haass, Project Syndicate

New Cold War

How ordinary Crimeans helped Russia annex their home Open Democracy

How Russia Gets To Build Its Most Controversial Pipeline Riddle

Trump Transition

The Pentagon’s Bottomless Money Pit Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone. How are they gonna pay for it?

Government withholds 84-year-old woman’s social security, claims she owes thousands for college WISH-TV

737 Max

Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system Seattle Times

737 MAX disaster pushes Boeing into crisis mode Phys.org

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

All the Crime, All the Time: How Citizen Works NYT

Global Mass Surveillance And How Facebook’s Private Army Is Militarizing Our Data Forbes

More Than a Data Dump Harpers. Why Julian Assange deserves First Amendment protection.

Democrats in Disarray

Establishment Democrats Are Undermining Medicare for All Truthout. As I kept saying with my midterms worksheets, the liberal Democrat leadership’s #1 priority is to prevent #MedicareForAll, and to that end they shifted the center of gravity of the electeds against it. Now we see this strategy born out in falling sponsorship numbers.

Even a Vacuous Mueller Report Won’t End ‘Russiagate’ Stephen Cohen, The Nation. “[T]he Democrats and their media are now operating on the Liberty Valance principle: When the facts are murky or nonexistent, ‘print the legend‘.”

Venture capitalist Steve Case spreading funding to Middle America with “Rise of the Rest” CBS

Class Warfare

What’s Wrong with Contemporary Capitalism? Angus Deaton, Project Syndicate

Bill McGlashan’s firing exposes hypocrisy in impact investing Felix Salmon, Axios

The College Admissions Ring Tells Us How Much Schoolwork Is Worth New York Magazine

How Parents Are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood NYT

‘Filth, mold, abuse’: report condemns state of California homeless shelters Guardian

Wall Street Has Been Unscathed by MeToo. Until Now. NYT

What the Hell Actually Happens to Money You Put in A Flexible Spending Account? Splinter

‘Super bloom’ shutdown: Lake Elsinore shuts access after crowds descend on poppy fields Los Angeles Times. “Desperate for social media attention, some visitors have trampled through the orange poppy fields, despite official signs warning against doing so.” Thanks, influencers!

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.

This entry was posted in Guest Post, Links on March 18, 2019 by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/03/links-3-18-19.html

[42inchtv]

Some Thoughts On The Best Movies Of 2018

Honorable Mentions: “Aquaman” (dir. James Wan), “Avengers: Infinity War” (dirs. Anthony and Joe Russo), “BlacKkKlansman” (dir. Spike Lee), “Blockers” (dir. Kay Cannon), “Eighth Grade” (dir. Bo Burnham), “First Reformed” (dir. Paul Schrader), “Isle of Dogs” (dir. Wes Anderson), “Mary Poppins Returns” (dir. Rob Marshall), “mid90s” (dir. Jonah Hill), “Ocean’s Eight” (dir. Gary Ross), “On the Basis of Sex” (dir. Mimi Leder), “A Quiet Place” (dir. John Krasinski), “Roma” (dir. Alfonso Cuarón), “A Simple Favor” (dir. Paul Feig), “Venom” (dir. Ruben Fleischer)

10. “Vice” (dir. Adam McKay) A thing about “Vice” is Shea Whigham (49) plays Amy Adams’ (44) dad and Christian Bale’s (44) father-in-law — and the movie makes no attempt to hide the fact that they all look the same. It's a weird and imperfect film, but I'm oddly drawn to it -- despite the fact that many of the negative things people have said about this movie are very true. Perhaps that's why I keep coming back to Boots Riley's tweet-review: "Adam McKay makes movies that get me mad because he does several things that I wish I did first. In 'Vice,' he doesn't just break the 4th wall -- he breaks it and comes and sits in the seat next to you with popcorn and hot sauce. I don't think he makes film, he makes theater." There is something transfixing about "Vice." It's a trainwreck, a complete blank-check movie, the work of an auteur who was not told "no" once during the process. So this thing rattles off the rails early and often and features performances and tones so wildly divergent that it feels like something entirely different than regular movies. But put it this way: I'd rather watch a movie like “Vice” than “good” movies like “First Man.” McKay goes for it here in a way that seems reckless and irresponsible -- as if he'll never get the chance to make another movie so why not throw every idea he's ever had at the screen. There's something laudable to that kind of ego and arrogance. “Vice” condemns everyone, including the audience. After what we’ve done, it’s the movie we deserve.

9. “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” (dir. Susan Johnson) Did everyone who bought high on “Set It Up” watch “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” and feel slightly awkward? A winning coming-of-age romcom that should stand proudly next to “10 Things I Hate About You” on the list of awesome teen movies that people watch forever.

8. “If Beale Street Could Talk” (dir. Barry Jenkins) If there was a better scene this year than Brian Tyree Henry’s section of Barry Jenkins’ lush, wondrous, absolutely stunning “Moonlight” follow-up, "If Beale Street Could Talk,” I didn’t get around to seeing it.

7. “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” (dirs. Ethan and Joel Coen) The James Franco section feels incomplete and hurried — why wasn’t it axed completely after Franco’s sexual misconduct allegations? — and the Liam Neeson section is dark and slow. But the other four parts? Instant, rewatchable classics, some of the best things the Coen brothers have ever done. My fave at the moment is the Tom Waits one, but the Zoe Kazan segment is also not without its pleasures. For a movie exclusively about death and dying and the relative fleeting nature of life, “Buster Scruggs” is a delight. It’s an exception to the premise of the film: how could life be meaningless when this exists?

6. “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (dirs. Peter Ramsey, Robert Persichetti Jr., Rodney Rothman) As we've gotten further away from 2018, it feels like few movies from that calendar year will stand the cultural test of time. In five years, will people still talk about even the year's best gems, "The Favourite" and "Widows"? Maybe? At this rate, "A Star Is Born" will live in infamy, an Oscar front-runner that was basically shut out in the final calculus; even a film like "Roma," a wonderful movie that deserves its many awards, feels somewhat diffuse. Alfonso Cuarón's intimate epic has barely made a dent now, at a time when even the worst Netflix movie becomes meme fodder for weeks on end. All of which is to say, if one movie from last year winds up being *the* movie from last year, allow me to submit for consideration "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." Its message is more powerful than the pablum of "Green Book" and it just seems so damn modern? Transformative? There's a reason "Spider-Verse" caught the attention of the zeitgeist. It's a now movie -- a dazzling, scattered, boisterous affair that's super funny and legitimately sweet. I slept on a lot of this the first time I saw "Spider-Verse" (literally, being a parent is tough sometimes!), but with clear eyes and full hearts, I watched it again and fell super in love. Time to re-do the 2018 top-10 list.

5. “Widows” (dir. Steve McQueen) How would “Heat” look if it were all about systemic white supremacy? A lot like “Widows,” apparently. What a blast of pulp fiction, with a stacked cast just knocking the crackling dialogue out of the park at every turn. Viola Davis was the headline story here, putting in a complex turn that feels comparable to Robert De Niro in “Ronin.” But the real star is Daniel Kaluuya, who delivers the best villain performance since Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh. Build a statue for him in lieu of his guaranteed Oscar snub.

4. Black Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler) Marvel's own version of “The Dark Knight,” “Black Panther” is the best MCU movie yet, a legitimate epic in league Christopher Nolan’s superhero classic but with a central conflict that feels like an extension of “Do the Right Thing.” Months later, Michael B. Jordan’s towering performance still rules: he’s every bit as impressive as Heath Ledger was as the Joker.

3. “A Star Is Born” (dir. Bradley Cooper) The closest thing to "Hamilton" released this year, Bradley Cooper's meme factory focuses on who lives, who dies, who tells their story. There’s a lot of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical in “A Star Is Born" and the film is structured as such, up to a literal heart-clutch final moment that makes me cry just thinking about it (and rivals Eliza’s last gasp in “Hamilton”). Enough has been written about "A Star Is Born" that more isn't necessary, but let's just pause here to praise Cooper, the Actor, for a performance so great that it's easy to take him for granted.

2. “Mission: Impossible - Fallout” (dir. Christopher McQuarrie) What if “The Dark Knight” but Tom Cruise? What if “Skyfall” but “Mission Impossible”? That’s “Fallout,” the best action movie since “Mad Max: Fury Road” and the best blockbuster in a great year for blockbusters. To use overdone online parlance, this movie fucks. From the jump too, with a prologue that combines elements of the first “Mission: Impossible” with a hilarious cameo and the Wikipedia entry to “Rogue Nation” to set the tone for what’s to come. “Fallout” is a masterpiece of action cinema – to wit: the second act is basically one giant action sequence segmented into separate movements – and a tightly wound spy game that does just enough with Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his IMF team (Rebecca Ferguson remains a highlight) to make the characters worth caring about. A relentless, special movie – the best Cruise has done since “Edge of Tomorrow” – “Fallout” feels like the end of this beloved franchise. And why not? How do you top perfection? Why would you even bother to try?

1. “The Favourite” (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos) The funniest movie of the year, “Mean Girls” in corsets with Rachel Weisz absolutely effing owning in the Regina George role, “The Favourite” is maybe the only perfect movie of 2018. Weisz, Emma Stone, and Olivia Colman are all incredible, a trio of co-leads in the tradition of “Goodfellas,” “Zodiac,” or “The Social Network.” Yorgos Lanthimos’ film belongs in the same zip code as those classics from a quality standpoint as well, with a sharp-edged script that powers the proceedings to its downbeat, darkly comic conclusion. And while this is a movie all about those aforementioned women, don’t sleep on at least one man: Nicholas Hoult, who hams it up with an abandon reserved for Ryan Phillippe in “Cruel Intentions.” A true classic.