#the way i feel about scotus is so weird like

[thebreakfastgenie]

Some man on twitter took the opportunity of someone literally celebrating Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 90th birthday to push the "Ginsburg should have retired and this is her/Democrats' fault" line and unfortunately I have some time on my hands so you're getting this rant from me again.

First and foremost, putting the blame on a dead woman when there is a living man who is more directly responsible for losing control of the Supreme Court is profoundly stupid and while I doubt it's consciously misogynistic it does reflect a society that holds women responsible for everything.

I don't know how many times I can say this, but we didn't lose the court in 2020, we lost it in 2018 when Anthony Kennedy retired and Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed. A 6-3 conservative majority is certainly worse, but the Dobbs decision, for example, would have been the same.

You don't get to blame Democrats or Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the fact that you dismissed the importance of the Supreme Court in 2016. Whatever you think should have been done in 2014, you knew what the reality was in 2016. There was already an open seat on the Supreme Court during that election.

If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, Antonin Scalia would have been replaced by a liberal justice, likely Merrick Garland, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have been replaced by another liberal justice. Anthony Kennedy would either have remained in his seat or been replaced by a moderate or liberal justice. The tentative 5-4 liberal majority we had prior to 2016 would have become a tentative 6-3 majority with a solid 5 liberal votes. This Supreme Court would not have overturned Roe and would not be threatening policies like student loan forgiveness and affirmative action. That is the court we would have if 50,000 people in three states had voted for Hillary Clinton.

Instead, Donald Trump appointed three Supreme Court Justices and there is a solid 6-3 conservative majority that will continue handing down horrible decisions that are nakedly political and barely even bother with constitutional justification. At the moment we're basically waiting for a couple of them to die and hoping there is a Democratic president and senate when it happens.

I think the position that Ginsburg should have retired in 2014 is heavily influenced by hindsight, but even accepting that it was a good idea, it's not as simple as people who began believing it in 2020 make it sound. First of all, I cite 2014 because Democrats lost control of the senate that year. This argument relies on Democrats seeing that loss coming. Even if they could do that, Democrats did not have filibuster-proof majority in the senate in 2014. At the time, senate rules required such a majority for supreme court confirmations. Harry Reid had only recently changed the rules to allow all other federal judicial nominations to be confirmed with a simple majority.

It's easy to forget now, but the level of Republican obstructionism during the Obama administration was unexpected. The rule change came about because there were so many judicial vacancies. Unfortunately, not all of them were filled even after the rule change, which allowed a number of Republican appointments during the Trump administration. I didn't have a position on senate rules in 2012-14 because I was in high school, but my position now is that I support ending the filibuster.

I think it's very clear that Republicans will simply change the rules to benefit themselves anyway the second they have power, so Democrats are not gaining anything by preserving the filibuster. However, I reached this position with the benefit of having observed Mitch McConnell's actions as Majority Leader between 2015 and 2019. Democrats in 2012-14 did not have that benefit. I don't know how predictable this Republican behavior was, but it's certainly not the same as having observed something that already happened. If Mitch McConnell had not already changed the rule for Supreme Court confirmations in 2017 in order to confirm Neil Gorsuch, I would have urged Democrats to do it in order to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson. But I don't know if it's fair to expect Democrats to have done so in 2014.

It's also worth remembering that the open politicization of the Supreme Court is fairly recent. It's been obviously political at least since the 1980s, but for quite a long time both parties kept up a pretense that it wasn't. It's easy to see why Democrats might not have expected Republicans to keep a seat open for an entire year rather than even give a Democratic nominee a hearing.

I think "in hindsight, things would be better if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had retired in 2014 and Harry Reid had changed the senate rules so Democrats could confirm a replacement" is a reasonable take. But it's academic. There's no point in assigning blame. And Democrats clearly did learn from this, because Stephen Breyer retired and was replaced by Ketanji Brown Jackson.

And, once again, whatever you think should have happened in 2014, we all went into 2016 knowing exactly what did and did not happen. Few people were saying Ginsburg should have retired at that time, and even those who were would not have been justified in not voting for Hillary Clinton, or discouraging others from supporting her, or downplaying the importance of the Supreme Court.

[xthelastknownsurvivorx]

an incomplete list: things alex (and us readers) love about hrh prince henry of wales

something that I love dearly and find super cool about the list that alex makes for henry about what he loves about him is that we've actually experienced most of these things about henry with alex throughout the narrative of the book so it feels super organic and touching because yes we've come to love these things about henry too

so in honor of henry's birthday and because i was feeling sappy, here's all the moments throughout the book described in the list under the cut

1. The sound of your laugh when I piss you off.

Chapter 2, end of alex's london trip

“No booty calls,” Alex tells him, and Henry chokes on a laugh.

Chapter 4, great turkey calamity

“…you’re not a totally boring asshole.” “Wow,” Henry says with a laugh. “I’m honored.”

Chapter 10, morning after alex storms kensington

“Hi,” Alex says carefully, squinting over his coffee. “You seem … less pissy.” Henry huffs a laugh. “You’re one to talk. …’”

2. The way you smell underneath your fancy cologne, like clean linens but somehow also fresh grass (what kind of magic is this?).

Chapter 7, post-karaoke

Henry smells like expensive cologne and champagne and a distinctly Henry smell that never goes away, clean and grassy…

Chapter 9, lake house

…then Alex has him, inhaling the clean smell of him, laughing into the crook of his neck.

Chapter 15, election night

The second he steps backstage, there’s a hand on his back, the achingly familiar gravity of someone else’s body reentering his space before it even touches his, a clean, familiar scent light in the air between.

3. That thing you do where you stick out your chin to try to look tough.

Chapter 6, post-red room

“Hang on,” Henry says, and Alex is already groaning in protest, but Henry pulls back and rests his fingertips on Alex’s lips to shush him. “I want—” His voice starts and stops, and he’s looking like he’s resolving not to cringe at himself again. He gathers himself, stroking a finger up to Alex’s cheek before jutting his chin out defiantly. “I want you on the bed.”

Chapter 7, phone conversation

“It’s fine,” Henry says, steadiness rising in his voice as if he’s stuck out his chin in that stubborn way he does sometimes. Alex wishes he could see it.

Chapter 13, confrontation with mary

And [Henry] does the thing Alex loves so much: He sticks his chin out, steeling himself up. “I’m not a coward,” he says. “And I don’t want to fix it.”

4. How your hands look when you play piano.

Chapter 6, post-red room

Alex tries not to be in awe of the simple agility of his hands, tries not to think about classical piano or how swift and smooth years of polo have trained Henry to be.

Chapter 8, in Henry's apartments following wimbledon

His hands are fast, almost effortless, even as he goes off into a tangent about the War of the Romantics and how Liszt’s daughter left her husband for Wagner, quel scandale.

5. All the things I understand about myself now because of you.

Chapter 6

He’s starting to understand what swelled in his chest the first time he read about Stonewall, why he ached over the SCOTUS decision in 2015. … It’s weird that the thing with Henry could make him understand this huge part of himself, but it does. When he sinks into thoughts of Henry’s hands, square knuckles and elegant fingers, he wonders how he never realized it before. When he sees Henry next at a gala in Berlin, and he feels that gravitational pull, chases it down in the back of a limo, and binds Henry’s wrists to a hotel bedpost with his own necktie, he knows himself better.

6. How you think Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars (wrong) because deep down you’re a gigantic, sappy, embarrassing romantic who just wants the happily ever after.

Chapter 2, in the medical supply closet

Then, unprompted, Henry says into the stretching stillness, “Return of the Jedi.” A beat. “What?” “To answer your question,” Henry says. “Yes, I do like Star Wars, and my favorite is Return of the Jedi.” “Oh,” Alex says. “Wow, you’re wrong.” “…isn’t there something to be valued in a happy ending as well?” “Spoken like a true Prince Charming.” “I’m only saying, I like the resolution of Jedi. It ties everything up nicely. And the overall theme you’re intended to take away from the films is hope and love and … er, you know, all that. Which is what Jedi leaves you with a sense of most of all.”

Henry's passion and ability to recite things he's interested in 7. Your ability to recite Keats. 8. Your ability to recite Bernadette’s “Don’t let it drag you down” monologue from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Chapter 7

It’s another thing Henry does—whipping out these analyses of what he reads or watches or listens to…

Chapter 10, in the v&a

“James was completely besotted [with George Villiers]. Everyone knew. This French poet, de Viau, wrote a poem about it.” [Henry] clears his throat and starts to recite: “‘One man fucks Monsieur le Grand, another fucks the Comte de Tonnerre, and it is well known that the King of England, fucks the Duke of Buckingham.’”

Henry, who has tried, does try, and keeps trying 9. How hard you try. 10. How hard you’ve always tried. 11. How determined you are to keep trying.

Chapter 6, red room

Alex has been learning for a while Henry isn’t what he thought, but it’s something else to feel it this close up, the quiet burn in him, the pent-up person under the perfect veneer who tries and pushes and wants.

Chapter 7, conversation with June and the J-14 magazine

“It pisses me off sometimes, thinking about everything he’s been through. He’s a good person. He really cares, and he tries. He never deserved any of it.”

Chapter 10, when alex storms kensington

Alex swallows hard. “You’re not even gonna try to be happy?” “For Christ’s sake,” Henry says, “I’ve been trying to be happy my entire idiot life. My birthright is a country, not happiness.”

Chapter 10, morning after alex storms kensington

“I’m saying,” Henry begins, and the knit of his brow is nervous but his mouth keeps speaking, “I’m terrified, and my whole life is completely mad, but trying to give you up this week nearly killed me. And when I woke up this morning and looked at you … there’s no trying to get by for me anymore. I don’t know if I’ll ever be allowed to tell the world, but I … I want to. One day. If there’s any legacy for me on this bloody earth, I want it to be true. So I can offer you all of me, in whatever way you’ll have me, and I can offer you the chance of a life. If you can wait, I want you to help me try.”

Chapter 13, in london following the email leak

Henry who has been through the worst thing and now the next worst thing and is still alive. [Alex] reaches out a hand and touches the ridge of Henry’s shoulder blade, the skin where the sheet has slid off him, where his lungs stubbornly refuse to stop pulling air.

Honorable mention: When Alex used to think Henry didn't try Chapter 1, the lead up to cakegate

“I’m just saying,” Alex says, resting an overly friendly elbow on Henry’s shoulder… “You could try to act like you’re having fun. Occasionally.”

12. That when your shoulders cover mine, nothing else in the entire stupid world matters.

Chapter 5, in Alex's room after the state dinner

Henry’s hands are huge on his back, his jaw sharp and rough with a long day’s stubble, his shoulders broad enough to eclipse Alex when he rolls them over and pins Alex to the mattress. None of it feels anything like anything he’s felt before, but it’s just as good, maybe better.

Chapter 7, post-karaoke

Henry rolls Alex onto his side and burrows behind him until he’s covering him completely, his shoulders a brace for Alex’s shoulders, one of his thighs pressed on top of Alex’s thighs, his arms over Alex’s arms and his hands over Alex’s hands, nowhere left untouched. It’s the best Alex has slept in years.

13. The goddamn issue of Le Monde you brought back to London with you and kept and have on your nightstand (yes, I saw it).

Chapter 7, paris

In the morning, room service brings up crusty baguettes and sticky tarts filled with fat apricots and a copy of Le Monde that Alex makes Henry translate out loud.

Chapter 10, morning after alex storms kensington

And beside him, there’s a copy of Le Monde on the nightstand… He recognizes the date: Paris. The first time they woke up next to each other.

14. The way you look when you first wake up.

Surprisingly, no direct descriptions of this but we can extrapolate from Chapter 15, presidential election victory celebration

And for a fraction of a second, a whole crystallized life flashes into view, a next term and no elections left to win, a schedule packed with classes and Henry smiling from the pillow next to him in the gray light of a Brooklyn morning.

15. Your shoulder-to-waist ratio.

Chapter 5, alex sexuality crisis musings while on a run with june

He thinks about Henry’s voice low in his ear over the phone at three in the morning, and suddenly he has a name for what ignites in the pit of his stomach. Henry’s hands on him, …Henry’s mouth, … Henry’s broad shoulders and long legs and narrow waist…

16. Your huge, generous, ridiculous, indestructible heart.

Chapter 9, last night at the lake house

What if [Alex] got so wrapped up in everything Henry is—the words he writes, the earnest heartsickness of him—he forgot to take into account that it’s just how he is, all the time, with everyone?

Chapter 11, hometown stuff email

You love so much bigger than yourself, bigger than everything. I can’t believe how lucky I am to even witness it—to be the one who gets to have it, and so much of it, is beyond luck and feels like fate.

Chapter 12, bad metaphors about maps email

…the truth of you. the weird, perfect shape of your heart. the one on the outside of your chest. give yourself away sometimes, sweetheart. there’s so much of you.

Chapter 12, in london following the email leak

Six feet of boy curled around kicked-in ribs and a recalcitrant heart.

17. Your equally huge dick.

Chapter 10, in the V&A

“Oh, yeah,” Alex says. “The top list of reasons to love you goes brain, then dick, then imminent status as a revolutionary gay icon.”

18. The face you just made when you read that last one.

Chapter 4, new years eve party

[Alex] was having fun watching everything he did play out on Henry’s face.

19. The way you look when you first wake up (I know I already said this, but I really, really love it).

See #14

20. The fact that you loved me all along.

Chapter 10, morning after alex storms kensington

“What about you?” “What about me?” Henry says. “Christ, Alex. The whole bloody time.” “The whole time?” “Since the Olympics.” “The Olympics?” Alex yanks Henry’s pillow out from under him. “But that’s, that’s like—” “Yes, Alex, the day we met, nothing gets past you, does it?” Henry says, reaching to steal the pillow back. “‘What about you,' he says, as if he doesn’t know—”

Chapter 11, re hometown stuff email

But the first time I saw you. Rio. I took that down to the gardens. I pressed it into the leaves of a silver maple and recited it to the Waterloo Vase. It didn’t fit in any rooms. You were talking with Nora and June, happy and animated and fully alive, a person living in dimensions I couldn’t access, and so beautiful. Your hair was longer then. You weren’t even a president’s son yet, but you weren’t afraid. You had a yellow ipê-amarelo in your pocket. I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire. And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you.

[willows-livereads]

So uh.. this was just gonna be a place to post about whatever I'm reading at the moment, but with every other social media site falling to shreds, I just might as well blog to get this off my chest.

SCOTUS passed a ruling today. Basically says it's ok, at least for small businesses or whatever, to hang "no gays" signs. de facto, at least. and it's got me feeling a lot.

See, there's a coworker of mine, in retail hell. A petite, middle-aged women whose really friendly. We chat a lot, and I adore our chats, but there's always a glimpse of uglier stuff lurking beneath the surface. She seemed, at least to a nominal degree, to be skeptical of mail-in voting when that was being talked about so much, anti-vaccine mandates. She seems to have that acceptable level of discomfort with people that use food and housing assistance, clinging to anecdotes about people abusing those systems. She accepted me when I came out as trans, which I admit I was mildly concerned about, but I feel I'm "one of the good ones" in a way.

I bring her up not because I think she'd be ok with this ruling, but because I feel there'd be a "...but-" after. Maybe I'm being a little uncharitable, but I bring her up because she's who I picture when I imagine the common person out there who isn't terminally online, who isn't rabidly anti-gay or fervently xenophobic or grossly chauvinistic or any of that jazz, but who still votes R down ballot. The common person who may not have fierce opinions on the culture war bullshit but is nonetheless firmly inside the conservative media sphere. The normal shit like Fox or... well whatever else is standard fair media for Xers.

My point is that I just want to grab someone like that, and shake them by the shoulders. I want to, in a way purer than words can express, explain to them just how sickening it feels to me. There's this weird sort of unspoken assumption that "well the big businesses are available everywhere now and they'll never start doing that" and that that somehow just stops segregation from happening again. Maybe that's actually the case, I don't know, but this is about more than that. That 'NO GAYS ALLOWED' sign isn't just a factual statement that I can't go do business there, it's a public, proud declaration of hostility toward me; proclamation in the town square that I am not welcome here—not just "here" as in the owner's storefront—but in their town, in their community; and it's an implicit demand: "Know your place, subhuman."

And I just want to ask them how that is any different to the song and dance they did sixty years ago, and why that makes it any more acceptable than it was then. I want to believe that when I ask those questions, I wouldn't already be seeing the cogs turning to crank out an extra layer of justification for that carefully crafted narrative.

[sturmhondsdemjin]

Seven part one

He discovers Henry sleeps curled up on his side, his spine poking out in little sharp points that are actually soft if you reach out and touch them, very carefully so as not to wake him because he’s actually sleeping for once. In the morning, room service brings up crusty baguettes and sticky tarts filled with fat apricots and a copy of Le Monde that Alex makes Henry translate out loud.

He knows, objectively, he should pace himself. It’s only physical. But Perfect Stoic Prince Charming laughs when he comes, and texts Alex at weird hours of the night: You’re a mad, spiteful, unmitigated demon, and I’m going to kiss you until you forget how to talk. And Alex is kind of obsessed with it.

[...] and Alex is drunk and fucking transported, feeling every moment of twenty-two years and not a single day older, some kind of hedonistic youth of history.

There are a lot of days when Henry is happy to hear from him and quick to respond, a fast, cutting sense of humor, hungry for Alex’s company and the tangle of thoughts in Alex’s head. But sometimes, he’s taken over by a dark mood, an unusually acerbic wit, strange and vitrified. He’ll withdraw for hours or days, and Alex comes to understand this as grief time, little bouts of depression, or times of “too much.” Henry hates those days completely. Alex wishes he could help, but he doesn’t particularly mind. He’s just as attracted to Henry’s cloudy tempers, the way he comes back from them, and the millions of shades in between.

He’s also learned that Henry’s placid demeanor is shattered with the right poking.

It’s another thing Henry does—whipping out these analyses of what he reads or watches or listens to that confronts Alex with the fact that he has both a degree in English literature and a vested interest in the gay history of his family’s country. Alex has always known his gay American history—after all, his parents’ politics have been part of it—but it wasn’t until he figured himself out that he started to engage with it like Henry.

He’s starting to understand what swelled in his chest the first time he read about Stonewall, why he ached over the SCOTUS decision in 2015. He starts catching up voraciously in his spare time: Walt Whitman, the Laws of Illinois 1961, The White Night Riot, Paris Is Burning. He’s pinned a photo over his desk at work, a man at a rally in the ’80s in a jacket that says across the back: IF I DIE OF AIDS—FORGET BURIAL—JUST DROP MY BODY ON THE STEPS OF THE F.D.A.

It’s weird that the thing with Henry could make him understand this huge part of himself, but it does. When he sinks into thoughts of Henry’s hands, square knuckles and elegant fingers, he wonders how he never realized it before. When he sees Henry next at a gala in Berlin, and he feels that gravitational pull, chases it down in the back of a limo, and binds Henry’s wrists to a hotel bedpost with his own necktie, he knows himself better.

“Call it historical curiosity.” Except the truth is closer to the slight drag in Henry’s voice and the half step of hesitation before he speaks that’s been there all week.

“See, there’s a thing,” Alex points out. “You just told me that. You can tell me other stuff.”

“It’s hardly the same.”

He rolls over onto his stomach, considers, and very deliberately says, “Baby.”

It’s become a thing: baby. He knows it’s become a thing. He’s slipped up and accidentally said it a few times, and each time, Henry positively melts and Alex pretends not to notice, but he’s not above playing dirty here.

“Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever said this many words out loud in a row in my entire life, so please feel free to put me out of my misery any time now.”

“No, no,” Alex says, stumbling over his own tongue in a rush. “I’m glad you told me. Does it feel better at all to have said it?”

Henry goes silent, and Alex wants so badly to see the shadows of expressions moving across his face, to be able to touch them with his fingertips. Alex hears a swallow across the line, and Henry says, “I suppose so. Thank you. For listening.”

“Yeah, of course,” Alex tells him. “I mean, it’s good to have times when it’s not all about me, as tedious and exhausting as it may be.”

That earns him a groan, and he bites back a smile when Henry says, “You are a wanker.”

[aimmyarrowshigh]

Fic authors self-rec! ✨ When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you’ve written, then pass on to at least five other writers (if you would like to)!

I also got tagged in this ages ago by @morethanonepage, whose own answers are very lovely and inspiring, so this is a response to that tag as well!

What They Don't Tell You About History - The Hunger Games, Matched Trilogy, Across the Universe/Godspeed Trilogy

This is the first of my fics that comes to mind whenever anyone asks what my favorite fic is that I've written, but basically no one has read it because it's a crossover with two nonexistent fandoms for mid-list books and because it's written in second-person POV slash collective-first person Greek chorus. It's OLD now, too; I wrote it in 2011, so the fact that I still like it speaks volumes to me. But it turned out exactly how I wanted it to turn out, and I think I still pull a lot of headcanon for all three series from this story -- that they're all in one continuum of dystopia, rather than three separate dystopias is way more interesting to me and, I think, much more reflective of how actual history works (cause/effect) than just like, pretending that dystopian systems rise out of nowhere.

I feel like this is also kind of a ~last hurrah for me of really experimental, weird, LiveJournally fic, in terms of it being in second-person and being a three-directional crossover. You don't really see that many fics these days that are just balls to the wall experimental weird fiction, you know? I think the isolation of locked communities on LJ, where you knew that the only people who were going to read your story were people who genuinely liked the thing you were writing about and, really, were people you knew on some level, made it a lot easier to say, "Fuck it, I'm going to write in second-person/in the style of House of Leaves/a crossover with this tiny fandom I wish more people liked/tentacles" than the Googleable public nature of AO3.

I also think this fic is interesting to go back to after more than a decade and see where my political fears were prior to the 2012 presidential election, and how much FUCKING NIGHTMARE WORSE things have gotten since then. Like, we didn't even really consider 11 years ago just how bad things could get so QUICKLY, even when we were writing about them BEING THIS BAD. The central villains of the fic are analogs of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, and I would never have fucking considered the existence of an Amy Coney Barrett or a Brett Kavanaugh actually making it onto SCOTUS, or that Tr*mp would ever have been more than a rabblerousing birther game-show host. But Matched is a trilogy about the loss of reproductive freedom and Godspeed is a trilogy about what happens to Earth when all of its capable leaders are gone and you're left with charlatans, and of course we all know the mixing of reality television and politics that created The Hunger Games.

It's just a fic that feels very, very old, and very, very new at the same time. And I am still proud of it.

Representative passage:

Permit us the luxury of telling you this story out of order. If the past has taught us anything, it’s that perhaps Order is wrong. Oh, it’s not capitalized anymore, is it. Order. It’s only order now.

Apologies, apologies. You’re the first to inquire about this story and it’s a little hard to tell. A little hard to hear.

What you need to understand is this: these people are not heroes. They are ordinary people – girls, mostly, and a few very good boys – who did what they needed to do to save their own lives, the lives of their families and friends and the children that they did not think they would ever have.

But there are villains in this story. There are very bad people – women, mostly, and a few very bad men – who will have no redemption. If you are looking for a tale of peace and understanding and conflict resolution, this story is not that one. This story is what happened to the United States of America, and it is not a pretty story. There is blood, and there are dead children, and there are words, so many words, such a horrific carnage of words that are lost.

So please, permit us the luxury of lingering over our own. We don’t know when they will be taken from us.

A Constraint That Makes It Possible to Fly - Star Wars

This is by far the best fic that I've written since like 2017, which is kind of sad, but also, see above, we have been living in a nightmare hellscape since 2016 and I think it's been hard, in general, to write. This fic is also FUN, and SCARY, and SWEET, and ALL THE THINGS, which is also very Star Wars, so I think that it fits the tone of its franchise well. It's marked as incomplete and I guess technically it is -- I can go back to it any time and add more, if I have the urge -- but it's not a cliffhanger or anything. It's also kind of weird and experimental, in terms of being a nonlinear drabble collection that follows a set storyline.

The premise was really fun to play with, too, because it can be spun so many ways: what if everyone in Star Wars had wings that displayed their Force-sensitivity?

Well, everyone would know that Padme was carrying a Jedi's children. Luke and Leia would both grow up knowing they were Force-sensitive. Vader would have known Leia felt the loss of Alderaan through the Force and relished in her pain. The Jedi who survived Order 66 would have to hide a visible, instead of invisible, part of themselves. FINN, wings bursting out of his 'trooper armor at Tuanul against all odds.

I also played with all of my favorite totally unsupported headcanons, like Rey being Han/Leia's kid LIKE SHE WAS WRITTEN IN TFA HARRUMPH and Cassian having spent time as Bail's page and Padme surviving the birth of the twins and, and, and. I just really enjoy(ed) writing this story.

The titles for each drabble are also my favorite titles that I've come up with, because they're each a line from a different poem or song about birds!

Representative passage:

#32: Each Separate Dying Ember Wrought Its Ghost Upon the Floor

Darth Vader sees the Princess of Alderaan for the first time unconscious, when she is carried onto the Death Star by stormtroopers.

Those wings—

Rage fills both Darth Vader and the last, dying kernel of Anakin Skywalker. Those wings look like the ones he used to have, before Obi-Wan Kenobi betrayed him. Before that woman betrayed him.

Before the Force itself betrayed him.

There is no way that this—this—this rebel scum could be a Jedi. The Emperor, in his wisdom, would know if any Jedi still lived. And that woman told him—

She had drowned Anakin Skywalker's children.

Valor, Valeria - The Hunger Games

Another oldie. You know what it is? I'm trying to answer this with five fics that I actually wrote without a co-writer and most of my favorites/the ones that I think hold up have been co-written, because the vast majority of my longfics have been co-written. But if I answered with those, all of the reasoning would be "I had a lot of fun writing it with _____" and that doesn't really get into why I like the FIC, it gets into why I liked the PROCESS. And that's a different question.

This fic was a challenge for me, because I really hadn't written Katniss/Gale before, but I was writing it as a present for Jill @poppypickle. I really like the way that I mirrored the two halves of the story (Katniss/Gale and Finnick/Annie), although some of that has been -- IMO -- lost on AO3 because you can't format things the same way as on LJ, where half of the story was left-aligned and half was right-aligned. Womp womp.

I also feel sad for my eleven-years-ago self when I read this, just because it's part of my THG "I haven't gone to therapy yet" oeuvre, but honestly, I don't think that I could have written any THG fic if I had been therapized. Or at least, I would have written such different THG fic that I don't know what it would have been -- like, the drabbles I write now are based on the headcanons and interps that I came up with back then, so they're still part of that version of myself's fic lineage.

I think that the Annie I wrote in this story is so different from every other Annie I've written that it makes the story really stand apart. She is an Annie who is unknowingly cruel in her quest for self-protection, and that's not how most people write Annie (or how I see canon!Annie fwiw), but it's a valid way for someone growing up in Panem to become, and I wanted to explore that.

Representative passage:

They didn’t bind her ankles, Finnick notices. Someday, they stop.

“You killed my Tributes,” she greets him, an easy grin on her face. She’s stunningly beautiful save the gory scar down one side of her face, through the eye and down to her jaw. If she hadn’t been Remade, she’d probably be blind.

Finnick wonders why she kept the scar at all. It doesn’t seem to have repulsed anyone in the Capitol. There are pink handprints all over her body and smears of different people all down her thighs and chest and Finnick is as scared and trapped as he was in the adobe caves of his Arena.

À La Vôtre - Anna and the French Kiss/Lola and the Boy Next Door

This fic is just Soft and Sweet and there's no big backstory behind it, I just like it. I was going through an OBVIOUSLY ABANDONED phase where I was going to try to write a fic of at least 1,000 words for every fandom on my tagslist (HA, HAHAHA, HA HA... HA) and I got about as far as Anna and the French Kiss rofl. Every once in a while I still get the urge to go back and MAKE A FANWORK FOR EVERY THING but then I remember that I... didn't, lol, and so I... don't. But maybe someday. I do really like how this turned out. Also, the only literary boy dreamier than Étienne St. Clair is Michael Motherfucking Moscovitz, so that is a HIGH COMPLIMENT to AATFK. Also also, St. Clair looks like Harry Styles in my headcanon, so there's that.

Representative passage:

The triplex looked like a pointed Dutch chalet tucked next to a palm tree. They had almost no yard, but water and trash collection were included in the rent, so no one complained. Lola mostly appreciated that they were right down the street from the MacArthur BART stop – she’d heard two very exuberant poets waxing haikus about fried fish sandwiches on the way in last night – and Anna couldn’t have been happier that they were within walking distance of UC’s Pacific Film Archive, where Cricket suspected The Couple would go watch weird French movies about les cousins dangereuses, or whatever French movies were about. Cricket had gotten a job at one of the four bike shops in the mile around their cottage, repairing fixies for hipsters and trying vehemently to deny his own inherent hipster lineage, but… he was an inventor whose girlfriend wore panniers to the winter dance; there was no denying anymore.

When Cricket first told Lola that he was moving in with Anna and Étienne at the end of the semester, she had thought he was insane.

“Are you insane?” were the first words out of her mouth. “Why would you move in with a couple? Especially Anna and St. Clair? They’re all over each other all the time! All. The time. Did I tell you that I walked in on them sucking face behind the popcorn butter bags in the supply room last weekend? Cricket, they even suck face when surrounded by bags of liquefied chemical butter.”

“They’re not that bad,” Cricket said, trailing his fingertips over the inside of Lola’s arm. “They keep their clothes on. And besides, none of us can afford to live alone, and you know how they’re always trying to save money. It’s easier if we all pool together for rent.”

Lola kissed the side of his neck in the warm, good-smelling place just beneath his ear. “Curse your financial sensibility.”

In Screaming Color - Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

I WILL FINISH THIS FIC SOMEDAY. THERE IS SO MUCH MORE WRITTEN IN ITS WORD DOCUMENT THAN EVER GOT POSTED, IT JUST NEEDS THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE.

Maybe in another 25 years when they reboot for the Sequel Sequel Trilogy, I will have another chapter ready. ::facepalm::

At any rate, I really love Poe Dameron and I love when characters go to therapy and I love BB-8 and I love prophetic Force dreams and I love Finn's mind-battling Snoke and I love Poe/Muran and I love Poe being a widow and I love sad Poe learning to love again and Rey learning to love at all. And I love Luke not being whatever the fuck he was in TLJ and instead being Luke Skywalker, and I love little younglings climbing all over Rey while she learns to fight with her lightsaber.

Someday I will finish this fic. I will. I'm gonna finish this fic someday.

Representative passage:

By the time most of the sunlight has fallen behind the canopy of leafy trees on Takodana, Poe is among the last beings left digging in the pit that used to Maz's castle. He has what he came here for: information about the black market bacta trade. He also found a new ally for the Resistance, albeit not the most useful of allies he's persuaded to their cause. Anyone willing to take a firm stand against the First Order matters, in his book.

His back and shoulders are sore from the heft of the shovel, but it's a pleasant soreness. It reminds him of peacetime back home.

All the same, he grunts when he heaves himself up and out of the pit to gather up Beebee and make the return flight back to base. His hair is probably a complete mess when he trudges up to Maz's chaise longue.

“So, my beautiful boyfriend, when are you bringing me beautiful Bey babies to cuddle?” Maz Kanata asks, still sipping blithely from her teal drink.

“That depends; when are you going to agree to marry me?” Poe asks, and he smiles down at Maz.

“Hmm!” Maz hums through her nose again. “In your dreams, you should be so lucky. I could never give up on my other boyfriends. No, Poe Dameron, I was being quite serious.”

Poe blinks. “I—don’t know. I’m not having any children in the near future, as far as I know, Maz.”

The teal drink is set on the ground near BB-8, who beeps at it curiously and tilts up as if to give it a sniff. Maz stands on the chaise and she’s nearly as tall as Poe that way, her hands adjusting the lenses of her goggles until her eyes are enormous, the size of faraway moons. “I think you are hiding something from me, Poe Dameron. There is a look about you.”

“I’m not hiding anything from you! Never you, Maz.” Poe holds up his hands—crusted in dirt though they are—and laughs. “You know you’re my best girl. My only girl.”

The goggles click. The eyes grow even bigger. “I disagree. The Force always glows bright around you, Poe Dameron, but now it is singing. You must hear it. Ever since you were a little child and Shara Bey first brought you to me to show you off, the Force has had a love affair with you. Why are you keeping it waiting?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Poe says, and swallows down the dream of the Force tree back home, of Muran fading away and Rey shining bright. “I don’t have the Force more than any other average human, Maz. Maybe just enough to be a little luckier shot.”

“Not when you were hitting my castle,” Maz snorts. “No, you are wrong, Poe Dameron. Or maybe misguided by the way the Force has hurt you in your life. But don’t you see the way those who command the Force are always drawn to you?” She touches his face again, palms against his cheeks grown stubbly over the long day. “Your good heart is like a well of the Light, my beautiful boyfriend. Your mother, Shara Bey, she was the same. It is why Luke Skywalker entrusted her, and you, with the Force tree. I think your role in the fight is to sow seeds of the Light in any way you can. Those to whom the Force calls find their way to you. It is inevitable.”

[paso-liati]

Oof. Final thoughts on Rosemary's baby 2014...

First of all, read the tags because this movie gets really fucked up in the last half an hour and the way it gets fucked up is deeply realistic

It's a horror movie, but the monsters are people, mostly one person, and probably not the one you expect it to be

I was right about the villain in a previous post... and also wrong. More on that later

The Straights® were never OK™

But sometimes I forget how much not OK

Hits different in a post-Roe US (although probably about the same as the original did in a pre-Roe US

I wonder if the original one was in the midst of another "satanic panic"

I'm wondering a few things about SCOTUS re: (spoilers)

religion and forced birth. At this point it's legitimately more likely that SCOTUS serves demons than the demos. Conservatives - and other christofascists who are too cowardly to own what they are - spent this very week loudly proclaiming that, regardless of whatever name they may call their cult, they've decided it embraces with its whole chest the forced incestuous rape and pregnancy of a 10 year old child and forced incestuous rape birth by that 10 year old child

Compared to that, Roman, his cult, and his god don't look half immoral. Or, at least no more immoral

Now let's talk about the villain. I was wrong. Roman isn't exactly the villain. He is a villain. They legitimately tricked me with that, casting ever-the-villain Jason Isaacs as Roman.

The real villain is Guy. And Adams plays the role perfectly. P e r f e c t l y. It's a long, long, loooooong time before I suspected anything was off with him. In retrospect, I should have realised he had betrayed Rosemary when he got weird after the hallucinatory (but actually not) baby night. The man who enslaves his partner to a cult to get his book published and to get a promotion at work is in every, single way the worst person in this film. Oh and I guess he killed Rosemary's friend too so he wouldn't feel left out of his cult's other festivities

The ending is not cathartic. At all. But I like that neither Guy nor Roman nor any of them doesn't get their comeuppance. Horrible men and the women who trail them almost never do. Society will turn itself inside and out and light itself on fire to keep worthless men protected, comfortable, and unchallenged. Something about Rosemary being manipulated into caring for the child Guy prostituted her to another man/male being(?) to rape impregnate her seems... also sadly accurate - that and her having no real power or choice in the matter.

[realitista]

It may be a cult, but we should know what they want.

Conservatism (big C) has always had one goal and little c general conservatism is a myth. Conservatism has the singular goal of maintaining an aristocracy that inherits political power and pushing others down to create an under class. In support of that is a morality based on a person’s inherent status as good or bad - not actions. Of course the thing that determines if someone is good or bad is whether they inhabit the aristocracy.

Another way, Conservatives - those who wish to maintain a class system - assign moral value to people and not actions. Those not in the aristocracy are immoral and deserve punishment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4CI2vk3ugk

https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/conservatism.html

Part of this is posted a lot: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288 I like the concept of Conservatism vs. anything else.

*****

A Bush speech writer takes the assertion for granted: It's all about the upper class vs. democracy. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/why-do-democracies-fail/530949/ “Democracy fails when the Elites are overly shorn of power.”

Read here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/ and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism#History and see that all of the major thought leaders in Conservatism have always opposed one specific change (democracy at the expense of aristocratic power). At some point non-Conservative intellectuals and/or lying Conservatives tried to apply the arguments of conservatism to generalized “change.”

The philosophic definition of something shouldn't be created by only adherents, but also critics, - and the Stanford page (despite taking pains to justify small c conservatism) includes criticisms - so we can conclude generalized conservatism (small c) is a myth at best and a Trojan Horse at worst.

*****

Incase you don’t want to read the David Frum piece here is a highlight that democracy only exists at the leisure of the elite represented by Conservatism.

>The most crucial variable predicting the success of a democratic transition is the self-confidence of the incumbent elites. If they feel able to compete under democratic conditions, they will accept democracy. If they do not, they will not.

And the single thing that most accurately predicts elite self-confidence, as Ziblatt marshals powerful statistical and electoral evidence to argue, is the ability to build an effective, competitive conservative political party before the transition to democracy occurs.

Conservatism, manifest as a political party is simply the effort of the Elites to maintain their privileged status. One prior attempt at rebuttal blocked me when we got to: why is it that specifically Conservative parties align with the interests of the Elite?

*****

There is a key difference between conservatives and others that is often overlooked. For liberals, actions are good, bad, moral, etc and people are judged based on their actions. For Conservatives, people are good, bad, moral, etc and the status of the person is what dictates how an action is viewed.

In the world view of the actual Conservative leadership - those with true wealth or political power - , the aristocracy is moral by definition and the working class is immoral by definition and deserving of punishment for that immorality. This is where the laws don't apply trope comes from or all you’ll often see “rules for thee and not for me.” The aristocracy doesn't need laws since they are inherently moral. Consider the divinely ordained king: he can do no wrong because he is king, because he is king at God’s behest. The anti-poor aristocratic elite still feel that way.

This is also why people can be wealthy and looked down on: if Bill Gates tries to help the poor or improve worker rights too much he is working against the aristocracy.

*****

If we extend analysis to the voter base: conservative voters view other conservative voters as moral and good by the state of being labeled conservative because they adhere to status morality and social classes. It's the ultimate virtue signaling. They signal to each other that they are inherently moral. It’s why voter base conservatives think “so what” whenever any of these assholes do nasty anti democratic things. It’s why Christians seem to ignore Christ.

While a liberal would see a fair or moral or immoral action and judge the person undertaking the action, a conservative sees a fair or good person and applies the fair status to the action. To the conservative, a conservative who did something illegal or something that would be bad on the part of someone else - must have been doing good. Simply because they can’t do bad.

To them Donald Trump is inherently a good person as a member of the aristocracy. The conservative isn’t lying or being a hypocrite or even being "unfair" because - and this is key - for conservatives past actions have no bearing on current actions and current actions have no bearing on future actions so long as the aristocracy is being protected. Lindsey Graham is "good" so he says to delay SCOTUS confirmations that is good. When he says to move forward: that is good.

To reiterate: All that matters to conservatives is the intrinsic moral state of the actor (and the intrinsic moral state that matters is being part of the aristocracy). Obama was intrinsically immoral and therefore any action on his part was “bad.” Going further - Trump, or the media rebranding we call Mitt Romney, or Moscow Mitch are all intrinsically moral and therefore they can’t do “bad” things. The one bad thing they can do is betray the class system.

*****

The consequences of the central goal of conservatism and the corresponding actor state morality are the simple political goals to do nothing when problems arise and to dismantle labor & consumer protections. The non-aristocratic are immoral, inherently deserve punishment, and certainly don’t deserve help. They *want* the working class to get fucked by global warming. They *want* people to die from COVID19. Etc.

Montage of McConnell laughing at suffering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTqMGDocbVM&ab_channel=HuffPost

OH LOOK, months after I first wrote this it turns out to be validated by conservatives themselves: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/16/trump-appointee-demanded-herd-immunity-strategy-446408

Why do the conservative voters seem to vote against their own interest? Why does /selfawarewolves and /leopardsatemyface happen? They simply think they are higher on the social ladder than they really are and want to punish those below them for the immorality.

Absolutely everything Conservatives say and do makes sense when applying the above. This is powerful because you can now predict with good specificity what a conservative political actor will do.

*****

We still need to address more familiar definitions of conservatism (small c) which are a weird mash-up including personal responsibility and incremental change. Neither of those makes sense applied to policy issues. The only opposed change that really matters is the destruction of the aristocracy in favor of democracy. For some reason the arguments were white washed into a general “opposition to change.”

* This year a few women can vote, next year a few more, until in 100 years all women can vote?

* This year a few kids can stop working in mines, next year a few more...

* We should test the waters of COVID relief by sending a 1200 dollar check to 500 families. If that goes well we’ll do 1500 families next month.

* But it’s all in when they want to separate migrant families to punish them. It’s all in when they want to invade the Middle East for literal generations.

The incremental change argument is asinine. It’s propaganda to avoid concessions to labor.

The personal responsibility argument falls apart with the whole "keep government out of my medicare thing." Personal responsibility just means “I deserve free things, but people more poor than me don't."

Look: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U

*****

And for good measure I found video and sources interesting on an overlapping topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymeTZkiKD0

*****

Some links incase anyone doubts that the contemporary American voter base was purposefully machined and manipulated into its mangle of abortion, guns, war, and “fiscal responsibility.” What does fiscal responsibility even mean? Who describes themselves as fiscally irresponsible?

Here is Atwater talking behind the scenes. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/news/2013/03/27/58058/the-religious-right-wasnt-created-to-battle-abortion/

a little academic abstract to lend weight to conservatives at the time not caring about abortion. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-policy-history/article/abs/gops-abortion-strategy-why-prochoice-republicans-became-prolife-in-the-1970s/C7EC0E0C0F5FF1F4488AA47C787DEC01

They were casting about for something to rile a voter base up and abortion didn't do it. https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/02/05/race-not-abortion-was-founding-issue-religious-right/A5rnmClvuAU7EaThaNLAnK/story.html

The role religion played entwined with institutionalized racism. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/27/pastors-not-politicians-turned-dixie-republican/?sh=31e33816695f

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/01/the-long-southern-strategy-how-southern-white-women-drove-the-gop-to-donald-trum/

Likely the best:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

I'll leave it at that. Anyone who can read these and come away doubting the architecting of the contemporary American Conservative voter base is a lost cause (like the Confederacy).

Via Gray Idolon on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/kxtuwh/its_no_longer_a_political_party_its_a_cult_former/gjci4ua/?context=5

[cookinguptales]

Today, SCOTUS is hearing arguments about whether businesses should have to cover birth control for their employees in their health insurance plans and I just. It’s hard to read.

I was going to make up this big informational persuasive post about the situation. But I’m just. I’m just so sad and angry and tired. So I figured I’d make an emotional one instead.

Let me tell you about my hormonal birth control journey. 

(Rest under a cut for length and content. cw: mental illness, graphic discussion of medical issues, injuries, & menstruation, discussions of suicide & self-harm, discussion of opioids, alcohol, & recreational drug use.)

 I started taking hormonal birth control late in high school to help regulate “painful periods”. It wasn’t for actual birth control at that point and I hadn’t been diagnosed with any disease, not even POTS yet. I just had “painful periods”.

Things were okay for a little while, but when I got to college, things started to fall apart. The double whammy of undiagnosed mental illness and a barely-diagnosed chronic illness (POTS was relatively unknown at the time and my doctors gave me information which I now know is incorrect) really caused me to spiral during my first year of college. I didn’t know it yet, but I react very poorly to some forms of hormonal birth control. Put succinctly, they drive me batshit insane. On one pill, I literally did not leave my apartment for over a month. I became very literally agoraphobic. Bouncing off the walls, irritable, angry, high suicidal ideation. As bad as side effects can be.

But I didn’t know that yet. I just stopped taking BC as part of the whirlwind of medicines and doctors that my life became for about two years while I was on my (first) medical leave from college.

My ribs were coming out back then. I didn’t know that yet, either. I knew that when I was around 16, I started getting severe back pains. The first time it happened, I had to go to the ER because I couldn’t breathe and my teachers thought I was having a heart attack. I got a narcotic shot in my butt. It did nothing to dull the pain. That’s how much it hurt. But it went away on its own eventually and I over the years I started medicating reoccurrences with a lot of different things. Physical therapy. Muscle relaxers. (Medically prescribed) opiates that made me puke. Prescription strength Advil. Wine.

I didn’t see that it was all connected yet. Not yet. I didn’t realize, with my periods as irregular as they were, that the back pains were coming around the same time in my cycle each time.

My “painful periods” got worse. I talked to an OBGYN, with my mother in the room. I told her that I was scared of something like childbirth. I knew that my blood flow was dangerously bad. What if the fetus didn’t get enough blood? Oh, my doctor laughed, that wasn’t a problem. The fetus would always get enough blood. The risk was that I wouldn’t. That it, like the tiny vampire it was, would take it all until I simply died. If I got pregnant, I would likely die. I asked about permanent sterilization. My mother cried. My doctor said no. I didn’t ask again.

I went back on birth control.

It was odd. I didn’t want children before that visit, not really. I was so tired all the time. I knew I’d never be able to manage to raise a child — and honestly, I didn’t care to try. I was so depressed. I was so sick. It sounded like so much work. I still don’t want to have kids. But it still feels… weird, knowing that I can’t. And knowing that I could die if I get knocked up.

I’m bisexual, but I have zero sexual contact with men (because I don’t love them, despite being somewhat sexually attracted to them) and zero sexual contact with people with penises (because they could literally kill me and it would be no one’s fault). But I’ve been followed home by men before. I’ve had cabbies lock me in and ask me for a date. I’ve had men who won’t take no for an answer. And my god, it terrifies me that I might have to deal with both sexual assault and a slowly creeping murder all at once.

(It’s laughable to think he’d be tried for both.)

I ended up getting sick off birth control a few times. I went on and off it periodically during my college career. I now in retrospect see that a lot of my “meltdowns” were a combination of discrimination-based stress, physical breakdowns, and hormonal whirlwinds. At my worst times, I was on birth control. The wrong ones.

My periods, over time, got worse. My back would hurt. The cramps were unbelievable. I couldn’t feel my legs. I could feel them too much. I couldn’t keep food down. I’d be so angry, so sad, so everything.

I went to the doctor again. I was diagnosed with both endometriosis and PMDD. PMDD, or premenstrual dysphoria disorder, is like PMS on steroids. I remember telling my doctor, in halting tones, that I wasn’t well before my periods. That I always had depression, always had anxiety, but I wasn’t well before periods. At her prodding, I confessed that sometimes I would just lie there for hours, for days, in the fetal position. That I’d clutch at my own arms, mooring myself, because I knew that those white knuckles were the only thing between me and killing myself. That my brain, always somewhat malevolent, became an inescapable mantra of death. That I’d just lie there and sob because it took everything I had not to hurt myself. That I’d find claw marks, bruises, on my arms later, and all I could do was get some ice.

It was better than the alternative.

I told my doctor about how painful my periods had always been. How I’d heard a story once about, y’know, that Spartan boy? The one who hid a fox kit under his shirt during an examination and stayed perfectly silent even as it clawed at him so he wouldn’t be caught with it? How it tore at his stomach until he fell down dead, still silent? I told her how I felt like I was holding a fox kit every damn month and sometimes I couldn’t stand the pain of it. Sometimes I considered ending that pain, one way or another.

She put me back on birth control.

A little less than a year later, or in layman’s terms, about a year ago, my mental health was so bad again that I was almost committed. Literally committed. I had to go stay with my parents for a few months while I transitioned to new medications because it wasn’t safe for me to be alone. I learned that the birth control I was on could create those symptoms — but they didn’t start until months after you’d started taking it. So you didn’t realize it was the medicine. You just assumed you were crazy and unlikable and so, so angry. At the world, at your loved ones, but mostly at yourself.

I learned, around that time, that I also had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. That the pain I felt every month right before my period wasn’t just cramps. It was my bones coming undone from their sockets. It was my hips dislocating. It was my ribs popping out of my spine. I realized that that lump my parents could feel in my back wasn’t a hard knot of tense muscles. It was my fucking rib poking out of my back. I learned that there is a period right before menstruation that mimics a period during pregnancy where your joints loosen — your body thinks it is preparing you for birth, for loosening your pelvic cavity so an entire head can pass through. For someone with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, that period of joint looseness was enough to wreak absolute havoc on a system of already-weakened joints.

I learned how to put my own ribs back in with a foam roller. I started drinking marijuana tea for the pain. I went on a different birth control. I stopped taking the placebo pills. I had to fully eradicate that entire portion of my cycle. Goodbye PMDD and ribs constantly popping out. I don’t miss you!

I am still on that pill, y’know. Every day I take it and wonder if I’m one step closer to the day when it inevitably destroys me. The last one took about a year. Tick tock.

Or maybe I finally found the one that works… I really just don’t know.

The fact of the matter is that I have a full handful of maladies that require birth control so I can function. PMDD, endometriosis, dangerous pregnancy, EDS. I need hormonal birth control. I would probably be dead by now without it. The PMDD especially was that bad. My internal organs are likely a scarred-up mess. But the birth control itself almost killed me, too. God, it was close.

Simply put, birth control is heaven and hell all wrapped up in a pill. It treats illnesses and it prevents pregnancy. In other words, it provides you with both freedom and peace of mind. It is absolutely essential. But it’s also monstrous. The sheer number of sometimes-deadly side effects that come with hormonal treatments is staggering. Which is why you need to be under a doctor’s careful eye when you’re on it. You need to be free to choose whichever brand you need. You need to be free to switch kinds at a moment’s notice. None of these things are possible in a system where these pills are not fully covered by insurance.

(And yes, I know, this is a stupidly American problem in so many ways. Obviously the ideal thing here would be single-payer for all medical procedures. But that’s not up for debate here and insurance for BC is. Because for some reason we let some people’s religious convictions determine others’ health care. But I digress.)

Please don’t worry too much for me. I have a good employer who has told me in no uncertain terms that I don’t need to worry about my healthcare coverage. But there are so many people just like me. Who may not have diagnoses yet. Who may have “problem bodies”. Who only know that they need to do something and that they might have to go through several pills to find it. Whose employers either have the strong religious belief that hormonal birth control is a sin or the strong religious belief that they want to pay as little as possible for their workers’ health care. (Call me cynical.)

Those are the people I worry about. Those are the people I feel absolutely sick over as I watch the SCOTUS argue whether we should be allowed to have life-saving medicine. The people who I know will fall through the cracks the second that the cracks are widened enough for them to do so. The people who will die.

It’s a tense time right now. It’s a tense time for very obvious reasons. But this morning I find myself to be even tenser, and my stomach hurts thinking about it. It feels like all I can do is stare at a pill packet and remember every horrible reason I need it and every horrible thing it’s done to me and I just.

It’s a lot.

[hasufin]

So right now there are several LGBT cases before the SCOTUS.

I hate to say, we’re gonna lose them. Because the arguments are coming from a liberal mindset, and the people making the decisions are arch-conservatives.

See, the liberal mindset basically runs “We shouldn’t allow X because it will result in Y”. Things like “We shouldn’t have cars without seatbelts because it will result in people dying” or “We shouldn’t let ppl fire someone for being trans because that will hurt trans ppl.”

The problem is, Cons don’t just Not Care, those arguments actually make them inclined the other way. They don’t mind collateral damage in pursuit of their ideology.

To their way of thinking, the more harm they’re willing to allow, the more pure they are - it means they are *absolutely* following the principle and Doing Right, being unswayed by sinners begging for mercy.

Strike 40,000 legit voters from the rolls to be Absolutely Certain there’s no “fraud”? Absolutely! 20,000 ppl homeless just in case one person was “undeserving” of aid? Oh, yeah. Feel that morality boner.

The more cruel it is, the more people suffer, the more certain they are that they are doing the right thing. They love the idea of martyrdom [for others]. These people are suffering For A Greater Purpose.

Which gets super weird when they say their principle is to reduce suffering. Because they get completely sure they’re Doing The Right Thing to reduce suffering Because People Are Being Hurt. They can’t really check themselves.

It’s one reason why obviously bad ideas keep happening: voodoo economics, abstinence-only education, drug criminalization, banning abortion. The fact that they make the things they’re supposed to fix doesn’t register as a problem.

And that’s when they CARE about the ppl being hurt. When it’s LGBT? Oh, Cons *love* seeing sinners burn. They believe in punishing the unclean. If they suffer, they’ll become something else, or be consigned to hell. They love that.

Basically, you can’t appeal to conservative compassion - they intentionally have none. You can’t appeal to reason, they’ll throw that out. You can only convince them there’s a more PURE option. One that gives them a better morality boner.

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT AND THE SUDDEN, AMAZING, COMPLETE LACK OF CONTENT

I swear, I thought I had the greatest start to the next post, and then everything went wonky. Good afternoon, darlings, so sorry to have been so very absent. I mean, look at this, what a great start I was off to! What with the optimism and the reflection and all:

MAMA CAT AND THE PAST THREE WEEKS

Good afternoon, darlings. Here I sit with one eye on the clock and one eye on the phone and delicious afternoon coffee, my second favorite coffee of the day. I think I figured out why I was so amazingly tired last night. About five minutes ago, I opened my calendar ap (as opposed to my sleek paper date book), and realized that it was only three weeks ago that I took off for VO Atlanta, partly as an act of professional curiosity, the desire to re-connect with an industry with which I have not participated in a while, the desire for a career reset in the wake of the worst of the pandemic.

I had seen two LinkedIn posts from people whose opinions I value, researched the event, asked myself why I’d never been to this thing before fer cryin’ out loud, and booked a flight. If you’ve been following along, you will be aware that, among other things: an unfortunate sandwich rained on my parade; I contributed the gift of singing improv to a breakout session whether or not that was strictly necessary; and although I missed all of the parties, I did gain great benefit from the sessions I attended, and managed to meet some great people in spite of eating mostly saltines all weekend.

I also did this partly as an act of sympathetic magick.

Don’t worry, we’re not about to go down some weird rabbit hole regarding comparative religions and religious devotions. But just as I still serve my blackeyed peas with collard greens every New Year’s to bring good fortune, I feel like maybe I cast a little bit of something like a spell with this trip. For behold, I was stuck like a truck in the muck, and now I have completed many action items on my list  

************************************************************************Look at that – without so much as a punctuation mark to show its completion. I hopped up to respond to something, be it door or pet or other – and then suddenly it’s been 40 days and 40 nights since Diana Went Down to Georgia. Where did nearly two more weeks slip away to, and how? I had all these exciting ideas to share and whatnot.

We had a great deal of veterinary excitement regarding lovely Domino and her thrilling, original ways of attracting attention to her feline dental needs. There was a bit of a row with the SCOTUS apparently poised to start erasing the rights of American citizens. And I had some profound trouble sleeping, which resulted in a great deal of writing to which you, dear reader, may or may not ever be treated. There were two letters written, one to a service provider, one to a business for which I as an individual had provided services.

MamaCat may have had a breakthrough.

Like I said, I was having trouble sleeping, a crazy unusual patch of it. I had also been having regular heartburn, like clockwork, no matter how gentle and bland my food choices. One morning around 1:30am, I was suddenly sitting bolt upright in bed, wide awake, and feeling like maybe I had eaten five chili dogs (I do not eat chili dogs). Like I had swallowed a basketball. Not like when I got food poisoning, in Atlanta; not like a stomach bug had gripped me; and no, I wasn’t having a cardiac anything. I was just, inexplicably STUFFED.

And I realized I had to write. Right now.

It was like I was stuffed full of Word Tacos and Rage Burritos. I had wanted to be very direct with the service provider (an individual, not a corporation) about why they wouldn’t be receiving my business anymore. I had also wanted to be very specific with the business, because there had been an ongoing dynamic which had more or less forced me out, and it required addressing. And every time I had tried to focus on either of these bits of unfinished business, I had found it far too daunting and blown it off.

I went downstairs to the studio, turned on RadioFreePhoenix, and I wrote for the next ten hours. S.F.D.s, second drafts, revisions, finished work. It was intense. Let us not overwork the symbology of my feeling stuffed, and let us not descend into conjuring images of the icky. Let us merely mention in passing that, yes, my digestion improved throughout the experience. I had not realized how incredibly hard I was working to stuff down my reactions and responses to the persons and incidents I was now addressing to the very best of my vocabulary and abilities.

Not gonna lie… when I read that back, it does sound a lot like Ralphie’s ecstatic daydreams about writing his Red Ryder BB gun essay and thereby thrilling the literary world, or at least his teacher.

Not gonna lie… accurate.

You know, I like to think I’m all cool and evolved and have all the answers sometimes. I know, that’s hilarious, but it’s fun when the feeling comes along. Like when those quiches came out so perfectly a while back, I was Queen of the World for a minute there. So I like to think that I can work out my process stories smoothly and effectively, and look good doing it, too! But these two issues had my body literally doing everything it could think of to tell me, no, no, you have tried to lay these issues aside unresolved, and this is not acceptable. Therefore you cannot rest until you deal. You’re going to feel weirdly stuffed and bloated until you deal. You’re going to eat Tums like M&Ms until you deal.

In both cases, the underlying dynamic was ageism, and ageist perspectives. I fired my massage therapist and walked out on an at-will contract because I was chased away by a combination of stereotyping, ageist language, Othering, unkind words, and all the other microagressions that grow in the culture of ageism like bacteria in a Petri dish. This dynamic was present in both cases -- one where I was paying for services, and one in which I was being paid for services rendered. Both cases involved finding myself treated differently, poorly, because of negative perceptions around what a 64-year-old woman can and cannot comprehend. In both settings, it was shown by word and by deed that those with whom I was interacting hold the preconceived notion that gray hair equates with diminished mental faculties. Both experiences contain humans who would tell you that this is not so, these things did not happen, and that the old lady is projecting (I know this, because it was said directly to my face, but with far less direct language).

Both situations found me walking away, because I can replace both the massage therapy services and the revenue stream.

But my physical body rebelled when I thought that I could ghost either party. That’s when the weirdness started, and I didn’t even associate the bothersome symptoms with my unexpressed truths at first. It took time for me to realize I was feeling so rotten at all, let alone what the symptoms were and where they may have come from. They came on slowly, so a person would just think, well, I’m getting old, stuff like this is gonna happen…

See what I did there, cats & kittens?

Ageist within, heal thyself. 🤣🤣🤣

I slept eleven hours last night and woke up naturally at about 5:45am. I felt refreshed for the first time in a couple of weeks. And if you’re still with me, then get this and get it good: It’s not just an older woman resolving her anger issues with her ageism encounters. It’s anytime a problem with the way you were treated, when you realize that you should have advocated for yourself and didn’t, when you were treated as Less Than and you allowed it to be; when something like this has kept you up or made you nauseous or brought on a headache or distracted you while driving. It’s like the feeling you get when you find out that there are nine unelected monarchs of America, the majority of them seemingly ready to un-do any unenumerated Rights which may be inherent under the 4th and/or 14th Amendments.

It's the absolute necessity to realize you’re in a midterm election year, and that you absolutely must advocate for yourself and your liberty now. Liberty which strips rights and creates second-class citizenship and denies bodily autonomy is not liberty at all. The freedom to be chattel, the freedom to be closeted, the freedom to be underground and hidden away… those are not freedoms. Check your voter registration. Volunteer for candidates who make sense. Be a part of the solution.

So that’s where the better part of two weeks went between that super start to my regular posting, and today’s update. MamaCat promises to be a better correspondent. We were really cooking for a minute there and I’d love to keep up the momentum.

Oh, also, I’m going to Hollywood in six weeks because I have a film coming out.

Did I forget to mention that?

Old people. Honestly. 😎🎭🛫🥂🎉

Meow, darlings.

[omgktlouchheim]

Word Vomit Wednesday - Stop Kavanaugh

 Welcome to Word Vomit Wednesday! A series of blog posts where I attempt to process thoughts and feelings, usually about a specific topic from current events that I, and sometimes the rest of the Internet, ruminate obsessively about. All thoughts/opinions/experiences are my own (unless otherwise indicated); I don’t claim anything that I write to represent anyone other than myself.

CW: Sexual Assault

As with pretty much all the news about our current state of affairs, the Kavanaugh nomination and hearings for SCOTUS have been extremely triggering and stressful. Even before Professor Christine Blasey Ford came forward with her story of being sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh, this nomination indicated an even darker America to come, as if the one we’re in now isn’t dire enough for women, the LGBTQ+ community, and BIPOC. And, as with so much of the news we’ve been contending with since 2016, I’ve felt a need to pull back from watching it, reading tweets and articles almost ritualistically just so I can take care of myself physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Staying on top of everything going on takes a tremendous toll and I constantly find myself thinking about how the well-beings of marginalized people are constantly looked over and dismissed.

This came up for me again the other night when, after having a pretty relaxed evening watching The Emmy’s with my parents, my dad turned the news back on and that sense of simmering rage and hypervigilance that I’ve learned to just deal with existing as a woman in the world, came bubbling right to the surface. I had to leave almost immediately because that was not the way I wanted to end my day feeling. If I’m going to be active and helpful in any way, even in small ways like writing this blog, I need to be able to sleep at night. But one thing that came up in the few minutes of watching the Kavanaugh coverage that I have not been able to stop thinking about was a quote from someone in the nominee’s camp saying something along the lines of not even knowing the story or who the woman could possibly have been until Ford revealed herself. This narrative is offered over and over again as a way to dismiss women when they come forward in these situations. A narrative that continues to portray women and our experiences as insignificant.

That killed me. The fact that this woman not only went through a trauma where her personhood was never considered from the get-go, has been affected by it for decades, is risking her life for this country (she and her family have since had to leave their home due to death threats) to share her story and make her identity known, to again, be told by men she is not worthy of consideration is devastating. And that seems to be a major key in all of this. Women are not considered. At all. Kavanaugh probably didn’t recall the assault because he got what he wanted out of it. He never considered Ford or her feelings, needs, or wants. He couldn't have cared less. He still couldn’t care less. The GOP, who should care about putting an alleged rapist on the bench of the highest court in the land, but instead made a publicity stunt of having 65 women sign a document (all but two seemingly had no idea what they had signed) that stated they would vouch for Kavanaugh, definitely don’t see a problem if they’re willing to manipulate women to get their man through the confirmation process.

I saw a tweet the other day from @laurenthehough, who shared this sentiment: “You know what would be fucking weird to hear? ‘I did that. It was fucking terrible. I’m sorry. I did years of therapy and soul searching and work and I changed my behavior. I can’t change what I did. But I made damn sure I never did it again.’ Why is that never the statement?”

Why is that never the statement? I cannot tell you how healing it would be if those were the statements that we started hearing. Real accountability. Real apologies. Real work put into an individual’s growth and education. Would those statements start solving all of these problems? No, of course not. But they would at least indicate that these people recognize that the women they’ve hurt are people. And that they understand that they have caused harm, sometimes a lifetime’s worth, to another person. That would create a powerful shift. Because one of the reasons we don’t hear these statements is because these people don’t consider what they do to women to be of any significance. That unless you’re related to a woman by blood or marriage or if you find them attractive, they don’t matter. It’s probably inconceivable to Kavanaugh and his ilk that a situation that was so forgettable for him because “boys will be boys,” had been burned into Ford’s mind. She never mattered to him, he felt entitled to her and her body, and our culture allowed that.

As I’m writing this, I realize that I will be posting it on arguably the most important Jewish holiday of the year, Yom Kippur. Which couldn’t be more fitting for this topic. Yom Kippur translates to Day of Atonement. It comes ten days after Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, wherein those ten days are meant to give us time to reflect on the past year. All the great and terrible experiences and the things we wish we did better or hadn’t done at all. What we are sorry about and who we need to apologize to and when Yom Kippur finally arrives we are supposed to take full accountability for ourselves. Now, one day to hold ourselves accountable for our actions (as well as inactions) and how they’ve caused harm and suffering to others and actively make amends is not enough. Especially if the damage we have caused has had a prolonged traumatizing effect on person’s life and livelihood. Going to shul once a year and reciting prayers are not going to fix things or provide the healing that’s actually necessary. But at least the holiday is there to jumpstart the conversation. To hopefully get us thinking outside of ourselves and give the apologies that we wished we’d been given when we’ve been wronged and make necessary and lasting changes.

I’m pretty sure Brett Kavanaugh is not Jewish, probably has no idea what Yom Kippur is, and, like most cis-het white males, doesn’t think he's done anything wrong and that he's entitled to whatever the fuck he wants. But for those men who do genuinely want to make amends and be better people and because we very rarely have a framework for how to get started with that, I’m going to offer a few suggestions (mostly for men to combat rape culture and inequality, though some of these skills definitely apply in many other areas and for most people) on some things to start focusing on that would be incredibly helpful. This is by no means a complete and comprehensive list, and there is no significance to the order, but a few things to get people started.

Listen to women and believe them. We know our own experiences, so please do not come at us with “what if she’s lying” bullshit. There’s a reason men are conditioned to believe that women are liars and that reason is to keep women oppressed. Learning how to listen, really listen, is one of the most valuable lessons anyone can learn. When you check your egos at the door, unlearn your social conditioning, and learn to center and hold space for someone else and their feelings, especially when they’re in need, it validates their humanity. We all need support and knowing someone is in our corner who’s not going to question our motives, interrupt us as we process whatever we’re going through in the moment, or lash out at us is basic common decency that we are rarely shown, but (as women) are expected to provide for others. It’s also invaluable for the listener because you will get to understand someone else’s world a little better and hopefully gain more perspective on the one you inhabit.

Start asking “What do you need” and “How can I help you.” Practice those questions so much until they become second nature. No one is asking you to bend over backwards for other people, only you know what your limits are and it’s your responsibility to be honest about what you can or cannot do, but this is another small gesture, just like listening, that goes a long way. On the flip side of that, asking for help when you’re struggling is an important skill as well. People will typically show up for you if you give them a chance, especially if you’ve shown up for them.

Hold other men exhibiting toxic behavior accountable. Show by example how a good man acts and let those who are extremely problematic know that you see them and what they're doing and are not here for it. Men listen to other men (bc toxic masculinity, but that’s a post for another day), so you pointing out that some behavior or thought-pattern is problematic or shameful is effective.

Vote for and support women. Not just the ones you’re related to or find attractive. If you can only make room for the former, you're only performing ally ship and you don’t actually support women.

Men built the glass ceiling, therefore it’s your job to dismantle it. Do not put the extra weight of men’s work on marginalized folx who are already carrying and navigating too much.

Go inward and start tackling your own internalized patriarchal proclivities. Do your due diligence to understand toxic masculinity, sexist/racist double standards, and your privilege and the ways in which you help perpetuate a system that gives you benefits at the expense and suffering of others. Ways to start doing that: go to therapy, get a group of your boys together and actually start talking about and identifying your feelings and asking each other questions, read books or watch films/tv by people who come from very different backgrounds than you. You’ll hopefully learn a lot about yourself and the world. And you’ll learn how to take responsibility for your own feelings in a healthier way, rather than putting and projecting that emotional labor on the women and other marginalized folx in your lives.

If you have realized that you have done something wrong or hurtful or it was brought to your attention that you have, you may want to get defensive. Acknowledge the feelings you're having to yourself, but to the appropriate parties try saying something like this: “I did that. It was fucking terrible. I’m sorry. I did years of therapy and soul searching and work and I changed my behavior. I can’t change what I did. But I made damn sure I never did it again.” If you haven’t done the work yet, don’t say you have unless you do actually plan on following through. And then follow through. These are also great growth opportunities for utilizing those new listening and offering assistance tools from #s 1 and 2.

*BONUS*: Do not, under any circumstances, attempt ANY of the above with ulterior motives. You do not get a gold star for being a “good guy.” This is just how people should be treated. Decently, respectfully, and without any expectation of owing you anything in return.

Obviously, this is a very simplified list but when you start opening the door to one of these items, more and more doors begin to appear. As hard as it may be at times, it is worthwhile work that benefits everyone. Also, if you’ve made it this far, please call your senators and tell them to not confirm Kavanaugh to SCOTUS. We, the people, deserve someone on the bench who considers all of us.

Katie Louchheim seriously doesn’t know how she functions on a daily basis with all this bullshit. CALL YOUR SENATORS TO #StopKavanaugh: 202-224-3121.

[dankusner]

THAT TIME I INTERVIEWED JENNIFER COOLIDGE

Upon hearing that SCOTUS struck down Texas’ Sodomy Law, ‘Legally Blonde II’ bombshell delivers a special Independence Day message for her Lone Star gays

By DANIEL KUSNER

Without saying a word, off-kilter bombshell Jennifer Coolidge can make audiences burst with laughter just by smiling.

Whether she's playing a sadsack manicurist (Legally Blonde I & II), the Sapphic wife of a frail oil baron (Best in Show) or "Stifler's Mom" (the sexy main course in American Pie), Coolidge is a character actress who always delivers hilarious, full-figured comedy.

She makes her eccentric brand of humor look easy. But she's certainly paid her dues.

"For years — no, make that decades — I couldn't get a single break. I couldn't make anything happen. They wouldn't even hire me for one-liners. For years and years, I just worked as a waitress in a restaurant," she says from a borrowed cell phone at a Los Angeles beauty salon.

As a former member of The Groundlings, Coolidge got her big break as one of Jerry's girlfriends on Seinfeld.

"The minute I turned to comedy, the doors finally opened," she says. "It took me a while to figure it out. But I realize that my physical appearance drives a lot of my comedy. I really can't believe that's me when I see myself on screen. But, yeah. I look very clownish. And that makes people laugh."

So how is Coolidge different in real life compared to the characters she plays in movies?

"I'm kind of weird and messy. Not messy in a booze-and-pills kind of way. But I can't seem to keep much in order," she says.

While somewhat distracted during our conversation, Coolidge says her new film, Legally Blonde II, has a few socially redeeming values.

"Politically, I could say a lot of things about a lot of things that have gone down this year. But I feel like I should just keep my mouth shut about that. But the cute message the film gives us — about standing up for something you believe in and trying to do the most you can to make it happen... I can't think of a lot of films that empower anyone. So this movie is sort of good for that," she explains.

Does she have an empowering Fourth of July message for her gay fans about the Supreme Court striking down the Texas Sodomy Law?

"They did? Oh, man! I've been in this friggin' hair salon all day long doing these publicity clips for E!, and there's no TV on! I know this case. And I've been following it. I can't believe I wasn't there to hear them announce the decision. That's just fantastic!" she says during our interview last Thursday.

"I tell ya, if I was a gay man in Texas, I certainly know what I'd be doing on the Fourth of July. I'd be going to town, if you know what I mean. I would go to town with a sparkler lit in each hand! And man, I would make more than just a weekend out of it,” Coolidge laughs. "This would the beginning of one very long bender."

JULY 4, 2003 | DALLAS VOICE

[duaneodavila]

Raindrops On Roses And Whiskers On Kittens . . . And A Few Of My Favorite Fair Use Things We Enjoy Every Day

I couldn’t let Fair Use Week pass by without posting about fair use (same disclosure as last year: I coordinate Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, so this is a shameless plug), which I’ve talked about on this blog here, here, here, here, here, and . . . okay, I talk about it a lot, but there’s a very good reason. Fair use is critical to a functioning copyright system and we rely on it every day whether we realize it or not. If we didn’t have fair use, we’d say goodbye to search engines, memes, documentaries, and more. So, in celebration of Fair Use Week, here are some of my favorite things we enjoy thanks to fair use.

1. Parody: Right up at the top of the list is parody, in part because I recently saw Seth Meyers’s parody of various movies (such as The Green Book, Hidden Figures, The Blind Side, and others) entitled, “White Savior: The Movie Trailer” with the tagline, “A movie about a black woman who made history and a man who was white when she did.” It is hilarious and we have fair use to thank. Other great examples of parody? Saturday Night Live, songs by “Weird Al” Yankovic, the novel The Wind Done Gone, and 2 Live Crew’s parody of “Oh, Pretty Woman” — which resulted in a SCOTUS holding confirming that parody is, indeed, a fair use.

2. Political Commentary: Do you watch The Daily Show with Trevor Noah? Or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver? These shows rely on the ability to use clips for the purpose of illustration, juxtaposition, humor, and political criticism. The use of clips can illustrate hypocrisy and absurdity by politicians, commentators, lobbyists, and more. These shows simply wouldn’t be the same without fair use.

3. Memes and GIFs: Many memes and GIFs are parodies or commentary in some way and fall under fair use. They’re shared far and wide on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, on blog posts and emails. They are unlikely to affect the market for the original — no one actually believes that someone is going to watch a GIF of Hulk rampaging instead of actually watching the full Avengers movie. The Internet would be sadder for lack of memes and GIFs, so do a happy dance for fair use.

4. Remixes and mash-ups: In today’s world, it’s easy to remix songs, films, and art work to create new works. And it. Is. Marvelous. Check out one of my favorite examples, created by Movie Remixer on Youtube which mashes up 66 movie dance scenes from 60 different movies with Justin Timberlake’s 2016 song, “Can’t Stop the Feeling.” What’s amazing is that it mashes up old classic movies to recent blockbusters and many of the movies used really have nothing to do with dancing.

5. Documentary Films: Documentary films rely heavily on fair use (see the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use). While some footage used in documentaries may be licensed, often times documentary filmmakers rely on fair use. Remember that the next time you’re watching the latest Ken Burns documentary.

6. Feature Films: Think fair use is relegated to documentaries only? Think again. Fair use has been successfully invoked on a number of occasions related to film. Take the Academy Award-winning film, Midnight in Paris, for example. In Midnight in Paris, the main character (played by Owen Wilson) travels back in time to the 1920s and hangs out with famous artists and writers like Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein. At one point, the main character quotes a nine-word line from William Faulkner’s novel Requiem for a Nun and attributes it to Faulkner. The Faulkner estate sues, but the studio wins. Because fair use. You’re welcome.

7. Fan Fiction: There are many sites dedicated to fan fiction, a genre where individuals use existing characters from popular television, movies, or books and create new stories. In perhaps one of the most well-known instances of fan fiction, Fifty Shades of Grey initially started out as fan fiction based on the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers. Other authors honed their craft writing fan fiction, for example Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries.

8. Search engines: Do you use a search engine every day? Thanks to various cases — Kelly v. Arriba Soft, A.V. v. iParadigms, Perfect 10 v. Amazon, Authors Guild v. Google, White v. West, Authors Guild v. HathiTrust — all holding in favor of fair use, ingesting information into a database to make information searchable is legal. In creating these search engines, copying entire websites and indexing them to make them searchable is necessary; without fair use, such copying would likely violate copyright. Finding the address and telephone number of a restaurant, solving an argument about who the 21st President of the United States was, or looking up song lyrics is so easy today thanks to fair use and search engines. Also, while we tend to think about search engines in terms of web text — like Google or Bing — don’t forget that there’s image searches and audio searches, too.

9. DVRs, TiVo, VCRs: In a case that went all the way up to the Supreme Court, known as the “Betamax” case, time-shifting (recording a program for later viewing) was upheld as a fair use. This case — which was actually narrowly decided — paved the way for DVD players, TiVo, and other DVR services.

10. Reviews of films, books and art: Criticism isn’t just for political commentary, but also for reviews of copyrighted works including films, songs, books, and art. There are entire professions built around criticism, which is made possible through quotations, clips, and pictures that are fair uses.

11. News: Do you read or watch the news? It’s so much better when you have the direct quote from a speech or interview, rather than just a paraphrase. Any good lawyer knows that words have meaning (those three words were drilled into my brain 1L year by a criminal law professor who couldn’t get through a single class without emphatically stating, “words have meaning”) and a paraphrase often doesn’t cut it. Thankfully, we can determine exactly what was said whether it’s reprinted in a news article or shown as a news clip on television because quoting and reprinting to report the news is a fair use.

So the next time you use a search engine, enjoy parody, share a meme, or read the news, give thanks for fair use.

Krista L. Cox is a policy attorney who has spent her career working for non-profit organizations and associations. She has expertise in copyright, patent, and intellectual property enforcement law, as well as international trade. She currently works for a non-profit member association advocating for balanced copyright. You can reach her at kristay@gmail.com.

Raindrops On Roses And Whiskers On Kittens . . . And A Few Of My Favorite Fair Use Things We Enjoy Every Day republished via Above the Law

[douchebagbrainwaves]

MISTAKE NUMBER FOUR

A teacher has to walk a narrow path: you want to, only the desperate ones will take your money. Most of the people working there.1 The other is economies of scale.2 You can meet someone just to get to know one another. The real problem is, and make sure you solve that. That was one of those that exploit an insecure cgi script to send mail to third parties. When they think it's time to raise money to survive.

But in fact when you raise money, you tend to be forced to work on as there is no correlation between who people vote for and whether they're willing to talk about how to make this work. In both painting and hacking there are some tasks that are terrifyingly ambitious, and others because they are more or less a subset of lists in which the same curve, then they must be a media company? And yet if you analyzed the contents of the average grocery store you'd probably find these four ingredients accounted for most of the extra computer power we're given will go to waste.3 I don't think it's worth putting a lot of things that those who teach can't do. Notice I've been careful to talk about how to save it. The search space is too big.4 For example, in the long term, which do you think it would take to get new ones to move there. If you walked around their offices, it seemed as if there was a new version of the web emerging from under the broken models that got imposed on it during the Bubble, full of prowling VCs looking for the next hot startup. Another false positive was from a vice president at Virtumundo. The Ajax boom didn't start till early 2005, when Google Maps appeared and the term Ajax was coined. The root of the problem you're solving.5 Free!

They have the same sullen resentment as children made to do something weird at first. There just has to be. Two of the four spams I missed got through because they happened to use words that occur often in my legitimate corpus. A board consisted of two founders, two VCs, and one of the big successes? Your code is your understanding of the problem. People look at Reddit and think I wish I could think of an answer, especially when the idea is small at first; he just has some cool hack he wants to try out. No one can accuse you of unjustly switching pipe suppliers. It should be a technology company.6 What else can painting teach us about hacking?7 In hacking, like painting, work comes in cycles.

At Yahoo this death spiral started early.8 To anyone who has worked on filters at least, eating a steak requires a conscious effort not to think about where the evolution of species because branches can converge. And this skill is so hard to get them to stay is to give them enough that they're not tempted by an offer from Silicon Valley VCs that requires them to move to Silicon Valley? I've seen it burn off. And if you find yourself asking should we allow users to do x.9 One way to deal with this is to treat some as more interesting than others. Because few of us know any alternative, we have no idea how much better you can do high-resolution fundraising: if you depend on an oligopoly, you sink into bad habits that are hard to overcome when you suddenly get competition. 03% false positives. And meetings are the main mechanism for taking up the slack. Facebook have all had hacker-centric. The fatal pinch is default dead slow growth not enough time to fix it.

Languages are notation. Hackers write cool software, and for whom computers are just a fad. A physicist friend recently told me half his department was on Prozac. Another way to fly low is to give them enough that they're not tempted by an offer from Silicon Valley VCs that requires them to move. Mark Pincus has kept control of Zynga's too. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to in order to get things done.10 What good does it do me to know that my programmers would be more productive because there are no distractions. An obstacle downstream propagates upstream.11

At least, it has to be making money. But it would be good for hackers to have day jobs early in their careers. Where does it go wrong? What kind of book do you read and feel sad that there's only half of it left, instead of a production language he uses a mere scripting language—which is in fact far more powerful. Visiting Sand Hill Road precisely because they're so boringly uniform.12 The restrictiveness of big company jobs is particularly hard on programmers, because the more startups you had in town, the less this matters. While we're on the subject of homosexuality.13 For example, a city could give money to a VC fund to establish a first-rate university in a place with restaurants and people walking around instead of in an office park is not where they started; it's just very bad. They might even be better off taking money from an investor than an employer.

Their union has exacted pay increases and work restrictions that would have been reluctant to hire anyone who didn't. Investors are looking for startups that will be good to program in. A board consisted of two founders, two VCs, and one independent member.14 Because in fact the distinction we began with has a rather brutal converse: just as you can, so you start learning from users what you should have cited. And if you can get. Now we have two ideas that, if you had a thousand startups in town, the less this matters. How will we take advantage of the opportunities to waste cycles that we'll get from new, faster hardware?

Notes

Except text editors and compilers.

The most striking example I know, the best startups, because spam and legitimate mail volume both have distinct daily patterns.

It was common in the first meeting. Adults care just as he or she would be easy to believe, which people used to be staying at a regularly increasing rate. The expensive part of creating an agreement from scratch today would say that it makes people dumber.

The point where it was spontaneous.

For example, to pretend that the probabilities of features i.

It should not try too hard at fixing bugs—which, if the growth in wealth over time. Believe it or not, under current US law, writing in 1975.

High school isn't evil; it's random; but random is pretty bad. If a big factor in the process of applying is inevitably so arduous, and the super-angels gradually to erode. Well, almost.

If you look at what adults told children in the classical world meant training landowners' sons to speak well enough to do business with any firm employing anyone who had recently arrived from Russia. I startups. Particularly since economic inequality, but it wasn't. Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives were, they'd be proportionately more effective, leaving less room for startups might be interested in you, it seems a bit more complicated, because you need to be the dual meaning of the living.

Picking out the existing shareholders, including that Florence was then the richest and most sophisticated city in the first half of 2004, as reported in their early twenties.

Some are merely ugly ducklings in the sort of stepping back is one resource patent trolls need: lawyers. Mueller, Friedrich M.

The best investors rarely care who else is investing, but it seems unlikely that religion will be out of loyalty to the yogurt place, we love big juicy lumbar disc herniations, but that's what they give with one of these limits could be ignored. The application described here is defined from the Ordinatio of Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Nelson, 1963, p. And when they want you. A knowledge of human nature is certainly an important relationship between the government, it will tend to become one of the aircraft is.

They also generally say they bear no blame for any opinions expressed in it. But that doesn't mean easy, of course the source of better ideas: Paul Buchheit points out, First Round Capital is closer to a VC fund.

It's not a programmer would find it hard to get the answer. What has changed over time, not how much we really depend on Aristotle more than that total abstinence is the notoriously corrupt relationship between wisdom and probably especially valuable.

A good programming language ought to be a good product. Maybe it would take another startup to become merely stubborn. In the thirties his support of the money they're paid isn't a quid pro quo.

Thanks to Jeff Weiner, Robert Morris, Paul Buchheit, Sanjay Dastoor, Sam Altman, Geoff Ralston, Dan Siroker, and Marc Andreessen for putting up with me.

[robonomics]

He Said/She Said and Truth

Next Monday, a hearing will take place in the Senate Judiciary Committee about sexual assault allegations made against SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Politicians never want to touch the issue of rape other than to blame the perpetrator, anything else is risky politically. I’m somewhat surprised that the committee is therefore hearing the issue and then deciding whether to nominate Kavanaugh based on it, and with only 2 months left until the midterm elections. But, it seems that Congress’s hands were pushed, since if they declined to hear it, they’d be damned, just like they will be damned when they hear it next Monday. Odds are, the condemnation will fall along party lines, but we will see next week.

Here* are the facts as described so far, as detailed by the Washington Post:

Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of psychology research at Palo Alto University, said Kavanaugh pinned her down on a bed and fondled her when he was 17, and she 15, while at a pool party over the summer of his junior year, her sophomore year. She described him attempting to pull off her clothing, unsuccessfully, and putting his hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming.

Both attended an elite prep school outside Washington, DC.

Ford doesn’t remember the person’s house it happened at.

Ford said Kavanaugh’s friend, Mark Judge, was there in the bedroom and watched it happen. The only reason the incident stopped, Ford says, is because Judge jumped on top of them after a while. Judge is now an actor and writer, with a book out describing drunk stories from his life.

Ford said she had a little alcohol, and that Kavanaugh and Judge were wildly drunk.

Ford doesn’t remember how she got home.

Ford did not disclose the incident until it came out at a therapy session in 2012. She disclosed it to her husband as well. The notes from the therapist mostly align with her current story, with any differences, Ford says, attributable to the therapists error in note taking.

Kavanaugh says it never happened.

Judge said it never happened.

Kavanaugh and Judge are now 53. Ford is 51.

Congress, a non-fact finding or determining body, is now tasking itself with determining what happened 30 years ago. Good luck doing anything but pissing off everyone. What we have is a classic he said/she said situation, something all too common in rape cases. This one is a little less common, however, because it involves no agreement of facts between either side. One side claims something happened, the other fully denies its existence. Kavanaugh isn’t saying that it happened in a different way, like an issue of consent or that Ford was wildly drunk herself and mis-remembers the facts. It’s just either the story is fully true, or it never happened.

Both sides appear credible. The big hurdle for Ford to climb will be the fact that there was a corroborating witness present, Judge, who says it didn’t happen. Some writers and prosecutors have pointed out the fact that Ford’s story hasn’t really changed since she exposed the incident originally to her therapist, again to a California representative, and then to the Washington Post. However, in evidence law, none of those would be admissible as evidence of a fact, since the accounts were made so long after the incident, and not made contemporaneously while the trauma was still present. They could be used for credibility purposes though, but only if character for truthfulness was at issue. None of these evidentiary rules matter, though. Since this is a Senate investigation, judicial rule of evidence don’t apply. Anything is fair game so long as the Senate allows.**

How Senators decide will be up to them. The hard part is that no matter what, I bet the public is going to have to deal with, on the one side, people who believe Ford’s account, and on the other, those who believe Kavanaugh. Given the public sentiment over the past few years, I have a feeling those who believe Ford will be deeply offended by those who believe Kavanaugh. Both sides will want to rest on facts, but the problem here is that there is no overlap in the stories, meaning facts are left to be determined by the listener’s beliefs of the credibility of the speakers. Without any physical evidence, credibility’s role is even stronger. We’ll see how issues of credibility play out next Monday, but if all both Ford and Kavanaugh are equally credible, Judge’s corroborating factor will be the deciding factor in favor of Kavanaugh. However, it appears Judge will not be testifying Monday. (WTF, right?).

The truth, therefore, comes down to the same sad situation with a lot of sexual assault cases: who do you believe? Him or her?

9/19/18 update: Ford is now saying, at the advice of her attorney, that she wants the FBI to do an impartial investigation. This would hopefully delay Kavanaugh’s Senate hearing. While I don’t care much about the conspiracies that will arise about the motivations for a push to delay the nominees confirmation, what I find weird is that the attorney’s advice to her was to contact the FBI. Rape is almost always an issue for state prosecution, not federal. This is not one of those rare federal situations. Therefore, Ford should contact the proper Maryland county authority. I did a quick search, and rape does not have a statute of limitations in Maryland. If the case is considered to have enough evidence (good luck 30 years later without any physical proof), it will be up to the local prosecutor to decide whether or not to file charges, not the DOJ.

*Ford also says she took a polygraph test relating to the incident at the insistence of her attorney, and passed it. I’m not including it as a fact because polygraphs, against the incorrect beliefs of government hiring agencies and police, are a fundamentally flawed procedure rife with false positives and false negatives. It is considered prejudicial evidence because of the weight lay people give authority to it while ignoring other, better sources of evidence. They are not admissible in court in any state I can think of, or federally because of this. And, in this instance, the test was to determine the credibility of the story she believed was true, which does not prove anything other than that she believes herself. Unless something comes to light about her motive to lie, the test would simply only be showing that she thinks she is telling the truth, not whether the actual statements she is making are in fact true. For example, a person could take a polygraph test that says the black 6′2″ person in a police line up is the person who robbed them, but if the person wasn’t actually the robber (let’s say they had an alibi by being in another state and the robbery happened in a dark alley), the test would lead you to believe that the witness was telling the truth about a fact which she actually didn’t know, but still believed to be true.

** I actually don’t know the rules here, since I’ve never learned about the rules of evidence for Congressional or Senate investigations, so I could be wildly wrong on this statement.