#total drama disarray is so great i love it so much

[misiahasahardname]

she’s just here to make friends!

am i allowed to total drama disarray post on main

[waitmyturtles]

Okay. The Promise IS REALLY GOOD, SO GOOD, SO GOOD! Gah, I am SO happy I picked this up.

Episode 3: we still don’t have a read on what separated Phu from Nan for 10 years. However, a few notes on why this episode was the best yet so far, despite not getting that juice yet. Some quick notes first, and then big thoughts (and I have a couple of coffee notes as a postscript):

I should have realized this earlier, but I think one reason why I’m loving this show so far is because, while much of the show is flashbacks, our two mains are in their early-going-into-their-mid-30s, and much of the show happens in the context of their professional pursuits. As an #old, me likey -- I always love generational shifts in dramas, and I definitely need more dramas with older folk. 

The sponsorship of this show is so wild, but honestly, I’m not kidding, I kinda think it works (listen, it looks like UMG’s only sponsor is for for CANNED MACKEREL, so like, how they’re going to weave CANNED MACKEREL in the show will be VERY INTERESTING, and I’m NOT looking forward to it). Why does this Devonte Men skincare framework shit work?

Because: this episode focused on Nan as a professional. And I LOVED IT. In his personal life, Nan’s a mess. Before Phu came back, he had trouble sleeping, his house was in disarray. During college, he needed to rely on Phu to keep track of his classes. Phu keeps Nan in check -- he encourages Nan to keep fit, Phu keeps Nan organized.

But in the office? We see that at least in this episode, Nan’s a G, a confident one, too. I can’t wait to get @respectthepetty‘s read on Nan’s red suit vs. the blue suit at the end, but I totally felt the red rascal vibe on Nan for the first three quarters of the show. Nan owned everything! He HUSTLED and GOT THE COFFEE SHOP FOR PHU. He nailed the first presentation with boss Ken. Nan was faltering a touch at the end, but HIS bro (not anyone else’s bro) came thru with the product samples and the dimples. Nan makes shit happen professionally -- for himself, for his team, for Phu. We didn’t get quite that strong sense during the first two episodes, but this episode clearly defined what Nan can do STRONGLY in his life. He’s not a total hot mess. 

I LOVED THIS. We know we need to learn about Phu, but Uncle Tong Khom Kongkiat is out here telling us -- there’s a story, a big story, about Nan, too, that I need to tell y’all, so that y’all have the full context you need to understand what’s happening between these two. 

And that’s why those small flashbacks to Chiang Mai and to Nan’s dad were really important. Phu and Nan, Nan and Phu -- they’ve balanced each other out for their lives. They clearly exist in an equilibrium when they’re together, and it’s so lovely to watch. I looooved that tingle of jealousy at Joe’s club, and then the ride home. It sizzled. 

When Phu was out of Nan’s life, Nan was unbalanced. I think episode 3 makes sense as Nan’s presence as a professional is depicted as so strong, because Phu is back in his life, and Nan is back in balance. 

I THINK THIS SHOW IS SO GREAT. (I totally don’t mind the whole weaving-in of the sponsorship thing. They make it work.) 

****

Okay, quick SE Asian food/coffee thoughts (y’all know I love the food context), because I actually think they’re important to the show. I could maybe make a separate post about this, à la khao man gai, but let me just put this down first. Coffee is VERY important to this show, clearly.

Oliang means coffee! Oliang is specifically Thai black iced coffee, according to Wikipedia. Man, my heart. I love that Nan named his cat Oliang. A way to honor how he missed Phu, the coffee guy, before Phu came back.

Okay, I don’t know that much about this, but it seems that a common way to brew coffee in Thailand is to brew it with spices, which, GAH, YUM. (I once had a drink here in the States called “Bangkok iced coffee,” which was cardamom-infused coffee with half-and-half and condensed milk. GOOD LORD.) Check the Wikipedia article for the different styles of iced coffee you can get in Thailand -- oh my fucking god, YUM.

Alright, kopi. (Peep the definition for Thai kopi in the oliang article linked above.) I love that Thai and Malay both share a same word for kopi, although Malaysian/Singaporean kopi looks like it’s slightly different than in Thailand, because there are many styles of “kopi” in M’sia/SG that don’t necessarily come with condensed milk. Take a look at this list on the Malaysian/Singaporean kopi Wikipedia page. 

I also don’t *think* that Malaysian/Singaporean kopi is boiled with spices (if they don’t mind the tag, my SE Asian homies @telomeke and @tireddddddddddddddd-d might know -- apologies for tagging you if you’re not watching The Promise, but kopi question over here! Is Malaysian/Singaporean kopi ever boiled with spices, as it seems to be in Thailand?)

If you’re a coffee nerd: note that in the Malaysian/Singaporean style of kopi, that the beans are roasted with salt, sugar, and margarine. There’s a style of coffee in M’sia called Ipoh white coffee, which is my personal fave, super strong, and seriously divine, if you ever get your hands on it. It’s famous in part for that roasting in margarine.

It seems that, according to the kopi Wiki article, that the kind of Thai kopi that Nan and Phu drink was actually historically inspired by the Malaysian/Singaporean way of roasting and brewing hot coffee. So putting it all together, the Thai kopi that Nan and Phu have seems to be the hot spiced coffee with condensed milk, which must be just HEAVENLYYYYYYY. Gah. (And I love love love how they reference it as “old-school coffee.” A throwback to their rural childhood.) (I am sure many of y’all have had strong Vietnamese coffee, which is also black coffee with condensed milk.)

ANYWAY. Coffee/kopi culture is big in this region, and so worth nerding out about! Anytime I can get my hands on Malaysian kopi/white coffee, I get it, and I’m certainly going to keep my eyes peeled for Thai coffee preparations now. If I’m ever lucky to get my hands on a cup of old-school Thai kopi, I’ll report back on how awesome I know it will be. 

[hayleysayshay]

On Wu’s backstory:

Wu is a character many people find annoying, but I enjoy. His backstory is vague at best. Here is what we know.

Wu is the grand nephew of Hou-Ting. He is the only heir to the throne.

At some point he moved to Republic City. Commentary implies that he was there doing a degree

At some point Mako was made his bodyguard. Commentary implies that Mako was his bodyguard for the three years.

The canon status of all commentary is debatable. As far as I see it, the show is true canon, the only reason we take the commentary as canon is because nothing contradicts it, but it is particularly substantial.

So, let’s analyse this backstory. This is all my personal opinion and headcanon and based upon what I find interesting and what fits Wu’s character as we see it in Book 4.

Was there a Royal Family massacre and is Wu traumatised?

We don’t see any other family members than Hou-Ting in Book 3. In Book 4, we are introduced to Wu, and only Wu. He is the heir to the throne.

At the end of book 3, Ba Sing Se falls to a the angry citizens of Ba Sing Se. We do see them enter the palace. They are seen looting and burning.

So, did this mob murder the rest of the Royal Family? Wu is the only heir. He is the grand nephew. This implies both his parents and grandparents are dead. What happened to them? They all must have died fairly young if Wu is the heir as a twenty something in Book 4.

I believe this is the basis of the ‘royal family massacre’ argument. Wu is too young to be the only heir to the throne. And the mob were angry. Therefore, the heirs above Wu were killed.

Now to be clear: the real reason Wu is a young heir is because Bryke wanted someone young for Mako to bounce off of. He’s around the same age as Mako but has a completely different life to him. Wu is not serious whereas Mako is. Wu is flippant and Mako is serious. Wu is extroverted and Mako is introverted. Wu is rich, Mako is not. This contrast is more fun if they’re the same age.

I say this because I think it’s clear that Wu was created with no clear trauma in mind. Wu does not act especially scared, or traumatised by the past. He is cautious and scared of hearing of Hou-Ting’s death, but acts in a comedic manner (fake strangling sounds) but then resumes a proper mourning action (may she rest in piece). Wu acts fairly silly throughout the series, enjoys the attention from fans, and even towards the end he creates a plan that he hopes will gain him attention from Korra. Wu is breezy and flippant and shallow, only really maturing towards the end and appears to be genuinely committed to dismantling the monarchy.

The trauma seen in fan works is a result of fan expansions, and personally I don’t really see it having a strong basis in the show. Wu is never really shown to be scared, or withdrawn at any points. Wu is never shown to be angry at the local populace who killed his family, as although Wu is shallow he never treats anyone badly. So is he masking? That’s totally up to your interpretation. Wu could be burying all his negative emotions and is acting out to hide his trauma. This is perfectly plausible. Personally, the lack of anger is what slightly damns this interpretation for me, I’m sure he’d show something.

Also I don’t think Wu not being fully prepared to take the throne is unreasonable— it makes sense if he was going to finish his education before starting public duties and gaining more political experience. And he could have made public experiences but still be fairly shallow. It’s implied that the Dai Li have a great degree of power so Wu not taking things that seriously or having a lot of experience is perfectly reasonable: it’s not needed for him to do so. So no, I don’t think Wu being the primary heir to the throne has to be sudden and unexpected because Wu isn’t very well prepared or serious.

How Old is Wu?

If you take the idea that he was in Republic City doing a degree when Hou-Ting was murdered, he could have been eighteen at the time, and twenty-one by the time of Book 4. He could be older. He could have started the degree at a younger age however, so he could even be nineteen at the start of Book 4.

If you ignore the idea that Wu was in Republic City prior to Book 3, and only came to Republic City to be safe after the Queen’s death, he could he even younger, potentially around eighteen in Book 4 if you HC him as young, but he could also still be older than Mako. Basically nothing confirmed, but I think it does depend on how seriously you take the commentary about the degree.

Have Wu and Mako worked together for three years?

This is going to be my strongest opinion, but I don’t think their relationship makes much sense if they’ve known eachother for three years.

I feel like this was meant to explain what Mako was doing for three years, but Mako doing his job as a detective was enough. So I don’t think it was needed.

In the episode where Wu’s coronation is ruined, Wu has a breakdown. Mako asks why he even wants to be King. He apologises, and Wu says that ‘no-one ever spoke to him like that’.

No-one has ever spoken to Wu like, even Mako. For three years? I don’t buy it. Mako is professional but he does talk back to Wu. Mako doesn’t think Wu is deserving of power just because he was born into it. I can’t believe Mako would his tongue on Wu for three years.

Also, I think Wu and Mako have a nice arc over Book 4. They get to know each-other more deeply. Mako sees the more mature side of Wu. I just don’t get the impression that they really knew each other that well beforehand, and I think you’d learn more about each other if you were together 24/7 for three years.

Obviously a lot of fan works expand on this and make the whole three years together thing make sense (by making them fuck usually and then having ensuing drama), but my critique is that I often think this over explains Wu’s character and ignores the very real shallowness Wu does show in early Book 4 by making It doesn’t meant I don’t love these fics, but I just don’t really ever reconcile them with the version of Wu we see in the show.

What I headcanon.

Again, this is literally just headcanon, and the events have no real confirmation in canon, it’s just what I think is both interesting and what I think matches with Wu’s characterisation in the show, whilst also giving him a backstory and more depth.

Wu’s grandparent and heir to the throne had one child, who became Wu’s father. This grandparent and heir dies. This grandparent dies young.

Wu’s parent’s were married. It was a political arrangement as Wu’s mother was from a rich family. Their marriage is strained. They have one child, Wu and don’t really talk to eachother much. Wu’s Dad dies young from partying too hard. Wu is left the only heir.

Wu’s mother remarries a wealthy baron or something. Because of not doing widowhood properly she is not welcome at the palace and moves away from Ba Sing Se. She and Wu have a strained relationship, since she never really wanted Wu in the first place. They sometimes exchange letters. (This could be swapped for his father and his mother was the heir but honestly I just wanted a strained relationship with a maternal figure. She got her happy ending but not with Wu).

Wu and Queen Hou-Ting have a very strained relationship as Hou Ting considers him weak, and despises animals which Wu loves.

Wu ends up with no real close familial relationship and is used to never really caring about anything. He is very isolated and is mostly raised by Dai-Li appointed carers.

At twenty ish Wu decides he wants out and asks to study in Republic City. The Queen is against this but Wu is insistent and she sees it as an excuse to get him out of her hair.

Wu moved to Republic City. After the fall of the walls, the Dai Li are in disarray as much of the leadership flees the city. Wu was previously appointed Dai Li bodyguards but Republic City officials replace them with city appointed bodyguards instead to maintain order. Unsure of how to proceed with Wu, Raiko and the other leaders agree that Wu shall complete his degree whilst Kuvira restores order. Wu is rarely included in meetings that decide the Earth Kingdom’s policy because they don’t like him and everyone just accepts he will be a King supported by his advisors and won’t rule himself.

Wu is of course horrified but he has a lack of personal stake in the death of his great aunt other than the realisation that he is now under a lot of pressure, which Wu mostly just ignores.

Wu completed his degree. After this, he begins to move into the public sphere and begins to make public appearances. Instead of a rotating team of bodyguards he requests a personal one, Mako, because he saw him a newspaper and thought he was hot really cool. This happens around six months before Republic City.

Mako treats Wu as a job, but the events of Book 4 eventually push them to become better friends and get to know eachother. Wu matures What happens next is either comics canon or my own ideas.

This is complete headcanon and I expect some people disagree! Hope it makes sense.

[pinkymoone]

Savage Garden 🌱 The Gradual Chaos 🌹LEE HYEON-SOOK

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD !!! PROCEED WITH CAUTION

If you’ve kept up with my past posts, I’m obsessed with this manhwa- author LEE Hyeon Sook :) Another excellent story about a bunch of pretty boys in rich-private school with a TON of drama (the way I like it) and that cliche “I’m a girl but I have to go to an all-boy’s school undercover” BUT (don’t click away lol) as the story rolls along there is a gradual state of disorder and chaos from all the drama that happens to violate moral law. LEE took a “shoujo” idea, and twisted it into something much darker. 

Rather than romance (although there is undoubtedly a romance between two brothers (Raymond/Euan Kensington) and the main girl, that goes undercover as a guy (Gabriel aka Jeremy) it leans more towards psychology. 

Let’s talk about the Chain of Being (most present in Shakespeare). “The Great Chain of Being is a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought by medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. The chain begins with God and descends through angels, humans, animals, and plants, to minerals” (as defined by our trusty Wiki). Now from the beginning of this story, the Chain of Being is already broken. Our protagonist is a poor, orphaned girl who was to be sent to become a maid for the rest of her life. However, her friend Jeremy, who was to have the same fate (but as a laborer) actually turned out to be related to a nobleman. Things were looking up for him, while Gabriel was falling more and more into a pit of hopelessness because of her fate. Yet God seemed to have noticed her behavior, as her life took a turn when Jeremy ate a berry that was actually poisonous.

Which brings us to Gabriel enrolling in a super rich-boy school as Jeremy in a deal with his “mother” (whose not really Jeremy’s mother) to trick her husband into thinking that Jeremy was still alive until she tells Gabriel to stop. So it was a pretty “one-minute of glory” kind of opportunity, but Gabriel can now finally escape her fate in becoming a poor maid. She cheated the whole system of the Chain of Being. Yet cheating such a system leads to serious consequences for the future (You’ll see). 

With that, the juicy events of misunderstandings and relationships begin. Gabriel wasn’t actually involved in any until she became involved with Raymond and Euan. Although this story delved more into Raymond and Euan’s backstory, it just ultimately sums up to how Euan (older brother) wasn’t living the life he wanted, making Raymond carry all the burden of dealing with marriage and the troubles his older brother gets in to until he can’t run away from it no more. Raymond had his own share of problems that Euan was trying to keep as a secret and it turns out that Raymond killed his own mother. Their mother was broken from their father that ignored her and hung out with other girls, so Raymond being stressed with his mother’s behavior just saved her from the suffering after a gunshot. They’ve been through a lot... but Gabriel comes back with the several consequences of keeping up her facade.

A rich-boy friend of Gabriel, Arron, was actually dating a maid that turned out to be Gabriel’s friend back at the orphanage. With her friend that knew the true identity of Gabriel, she had to come clean. But it seemed her friend had bigger plans, blackmailing the ‘mother’ of Jeremy for money to escape with her true lover. But that plan didn’t succeed as the couple both committed suicide by eating those darn berries once again, breaking Gabriel’s heart and being in a state of danger now that the “mother” got the impression that Gabriel has revealed her real identity to everyone. Arron was absolutely in disarray, almost trying to kill Gabriel because he thought she was the reason his maid-girlfriend died, and she just seems to accept at this point. Why was she even living as Jeremy? It did very much seem that she was going to die at any point being someone that she wasn’t... however her friend, in shock at this acceptance, didn’t kill her. 

But. A hit-man is now after Gabriel, so not very much came out of that mercy. On top of that, she seems to be gathering all the rich boys and making them fall in love with her but the time has come to run away. These empty love triangles, in my opinion were left in that state on purpose to show that some things just over power love- like survival?! Come on she’s about to be assassinated! This theme can also be seen by Will, a side-character that had a whole deal going on as well, but he was born sick. Knowing when he would die, he carelessly threw himself on a maid, showing that love is just pointless at times.The danger of being in love in Gabriel’s situation also just seems to block that route as well. Jeremy’s “father” gave Gabriel a ticket to study abroad, and using that, she takes the opportunity to escape after almost getting shot down by the hit-man of the “mother”. Raymond saved her, found out that she was a girl, and was going to accompany her to the train so that she may escape death. But, guess what? Jeremy’s “father” found out that his son was actually Gabriel, and sent a hit-man to kill her as well. Euan couldn’t accept the fact that Raymond was going to be near death by accompanying Gabriel, so he tricked him and went to accompany her instead. Euan also had feelings for her since the beginning of the series... but he also knew Raymond liked her as well. 

Sigh...After all that. After Gabriel successfully escaped, Euan died. In fact, Jeremy’s “father” was responsible for his death that was so sudden. Then the author just ends with Raymond and Gabriel reuniting in the far future. 

Many absolutely despised this ending. Was it too rushed? Seemed very thoughtless? But I argue that they just haven’t really thought about it. Being undercover as a poor girl that made her way to the top of an all-boy’s school that seems like an area only reserved for gods can only go so smoothly. Rich boys are still human, and rather wouldn’t they be more unhappy with their lives? Being controlled by their parents, they can’t marry freely, escape from work that comes with money (like inheriting a business?), they can’t get involved with maids or “normal” people for reputation, and they have to be reserved to keep secret of all the scandals and crimes that goes behind the curtains of wealthiness. Getting involved with these rich people can get you into some spicy troubles because wealthy people have the power to control the Chain of Being in which they sit at the very top. Now... Why did Euan die such a pointless death? Well... he was already unhappy with his life from the start. He wasn’t a good brother, he wanted to escape from his parent’s control which could easily be seen by his careless involvement in gay affairs at such a prestigious school (he also had someone that he was to marry), and he fell in love with Gabriel even though Raymond liked her as well. The ending was all for his rest. He accompanied Gabriel instead of Raymond to finally be a big brother and protect his brother as well as Gabriel. Gabriel appeared in front of him as an actual girl before they went to go escape. Euan was just satisfied with that. Love with Gabriel was absolutely impossible with him, so all that he could do was to protect her ‘til the end right? Euan already derailed from the train of his life probably when he first met Gabriel on the ground as he was shot by his ex-lover (he survived due to Gabriel and most likely fell in love with her then because she was a being that was totally unrelated to everything he hated about his life and her innocent kindness showed). Raymond, who was protected from becoming like his older brother most likely because of being too occupied with his own problems (like his identity crisis of killing his own mother, that blinded him of everything that was going on in their rich society) So Euan’s death made sense, he was just a lonely failure that sat on the King’s throne, later to be killed for his actually normal behavior. Really goes to show how being rich, being in high society, doesn’t ensure eternal happiness. 

[sourwolfstories]

Hey! Can you recommend some long, good fics pls? Thanks!! ☺️

Here are some excellent fics that are all at least 100k words long! Hope you enjoy!!

The ETA From You to Me by Rawren (Deshonanana)

In which Derek drives a tow truck and Stiles is the weekend dispatcher who attempts to woo him with his lack of a brain-to-mouth filter and affinity for run-on sentences.

The Boy and the Beast by Dira Sudis (dsudis)

In which events in Beacon Hills go rather differently from the start, and a Beauty and the Beast (ish) story ensues. (Scott is not a teacup and no one sings about their feelings.)

Cinderstiles by willwork4dean

Stiles comes with the territory.

Anthracite by LupusScintilla (inkandblade)

It’s been a quiet few years, and the McCall Pack has grown and settled. But, when the Hale Pack return to Beacon Hills they find Scott isn’t as welcoming as they had hoped.

Soon they, Stiles, and Lydia, find out that not everything about the McCall Pack is as it has always seemed.

♠

Time Vortex by thedarknovak

High School/Time Travel AU: A recently turned Stiles is swept into a time vortex and ends up in the past, coming across a teenage Derek Hale. Stiles needed to find a way back to the present, but he starts to like it there in the past, with Derek, where he truly gets to know the boy and how he was, before the Hale fire. What will Stiles do about being trapped 10 years in the past?

The Hollow Moon by thepsychicclam

It’s the summer after Stiles’ first year of college, and he’s working a crappy job and dealing with nightmares and anxiety - but he’s okay, he swears. He makes it through most days without too much trouble. Then, a certain werewolf comes back into town. Which Stiles doesn’t care about, nope, not at all.

After two and a half years, Derek returns to Beacon Hills with his small Pack. Though he tried to move on, something just kept drawing him back to Beacon Hills, he’s just not sure what. Now, he figures he can start building something like a life - but he keeps getting distracted by Stiles Stilinski of all people.

Pack Wars by miss_aphelion

Scott liked to call it the Great Pack Divide of 2012.

Derek liked to call Scott an idiot.

(Or the one where Derek kidnaps Stiles to teach Scott a lesson, and ends up learning a few things himself)

Mommy Dearest by BeyondtheKilljoy

Stiles was supposed to be put in weight training, but due to scheduling problems he was dropped into Health. It was fine, really, it was up until the point where Coach assigned the baby project. And the kicker?His partner was the reclusive, intimidating Derek Hale - so it really wasn’t fine anymore; especially with a baby who wouldn’t give him a moment of rest if Hale wasn’t there. However, when the project forces him to get closer to Hale than he would even imagine possible, he learns new things about the Hale family and maybe begins to see Hale in a different light.Even if he’d totally be the mom.

Love Thy Neighbor…He’s Hot by Triangulum

Derek and Laura seriously lucked out with Stiles as their neighbor. Yeah he can be loud, but he keeps it to normal hours, and he brings them food, they have movie nights, he’s so beautiful, and okay, Derek might be pining. The only problem is, Stiles has a girlfriend. And Derek HATES her.

OR

The one where Derek and Laura live next door to Stiles, and Derek has a completely out of control crush. A Sterek as neighbors one shot AU that got wildly out of control.

Home by TheTypewriterGirl

January seventh. Seven days since the start of 2015, and seven days since his father’s death.

The bastard, he thinks bitterly. The past year Derek Hale had made it blatantly obvious that he hated his scrawny guts, taking every given opportunity to shove him up against a wall, growl threats in his ears and roll his eyes whenever he stepped into the room, muttering some snide comment about how spastic or idiotic he was.

So why did he fucking volunteer to take him in?

Find It In Our Hearts by Regann

Kate Argent had a lot of secrets, some of which she took to the grave. When one of them shows up on Chris Argent’s doorstep in the form of Kate’s five-year-old daughter, it’s not long before more to come to light – namely, that Kate’s crimes against Derek Hale didn’t begin and end with the murder of his family. It’s no surprise that as soon as Derek learns about his daughter’s existence, he decides that nothing will keep him from claiming the only family he still has in the world. Stiles finds himself firmly in the middle of the Hale-Argent family drama, slowly growing more certain of his feelings for Derek and ever more sure of the inevitable heartbreak they’ll bring.

Put Down in Words by paintedrecs

“Oh,” Stiles said, his voice coming out low and breathy, “fuck me.”

“I don’t think that’s on the syllabus, but we can check to see if there’s a spot open in any of his classes,” Scott said, grinning.

“This isn’t an actual professor, though,” Stiles insisted, unable to resist brushing his thumb over the sharp line of the man’s bearded jaw. He was laughing at something off-camera, the shot taken in three-quarters view, his coat collar casually rumpled and opened to reveal a sliver of a simple grey t-shirt. The whole thing was deliberately calculated to lend him a more accessible feel, and god help him, Stiles was falling for it.

*

When Stiles signed up for Dr. Hale’s intro to history class, he had two goals: knock out the credits his advisor was bugging him to complete before he graduated, and spend a few hours a week daydreaming about his sexy professor’s salt and pepper beard.

Derek, a few months away from turning forty and not sure when his life had started feeling so damn lonely, had never encountered someone like Stiles before. Bright-eyed, sharp-tongued, determined to throw Derek’s carefully cultivated world into disarray…and absolutely the last person Derek should be falling in love with.

[nitrateglow]

A few hours ago, my browser recommended me the article “There is No Case for the Humanities” by Justin Stover. At first I thought it would be a call to reform of the humanities departments in academia, which I could totally get behind. It was not. If anything, it was painfully regressive in its views on the place of humanistic subjects in everyday life. Apparently, only scholars should bother with literature, history, art, and language. Apparently, this matters to no one outside of a lecture hall.

Such thinking appalls me to my very core.

If you were to buy into Stover’s ideas, then the humanities are only of interest to the scholastic elite. He actually compares humanities professors to members of a golf course, imparting a sense of frivolity to the study of literature, rhetoric, history, art, and religion. To him and to many, the humanities are worthless because they do not give people immediate economic benefit. Hence why everyone insists you’re better off sticking only to STEM majors or business or trade schools. He says the humanities are only really meant for academics who shut themselves off from the world and publish overly-specialized articles in publications no one but other academics read. Of course, they’re useless.

I take issue with the idea that the humanities are entirely frivolous: I have seen how students still write at a fifth-grade level or use strawman arguments when they leave high school; they NEED to learn how to properly write a sentence and communicate their ideas. That’s just part of the working world. Learning to fact-check is also rather important given the media atmosphere of our times. Considering how multicultural the world is becoming, learning how other people see the world isn’t so frivolous an idea either. And do I need to argue that history is important? Like, really? Of course, I do have my own problems with academia, having worked in it, but that isn’t my point here. I just take issue with the frankly elitist notion that “normal,” non-academic people have no use for the humanities. So did someone else as I came to discover. 

This rebuttal by Roberto Fubini is simple and direct: yes, we do not need the humanities to continue breathing. However, a world without myth or art or language is a dismal one. Our biological functions do not need these things, but as human beings, we absolutely do.

Fubini argues that the humanities should not be seen as the study of irrelevant, dead things only of interest to specialists, but of things vital to our lives and our understanding of the world. Anyone can benefit mentally and spiritually from the humanities. Here’s his defense for the humanities:

The humanities need no case: a response to Justin Stover and many others.

Editor’s note: This letter was written by a reader of the site; I have provided the links to posts he addresses in his remarks and include his references.

Rimini, Antica Cafeteria, Piazza Tre Martiri / January 2018

Dear Editor,

Your excerpt and publication of Justin Stover’s piece, “There is No Case for the Humanities,” brought to mind the ironies in the attempts to marginalize the study of literature, language, history, philosophy, or religion – in short, those areas we now call the humanities. All these attempts, Stover’s included, create puppets of the humanities and give them voice from their ventriloquism: squeaky, insecure sounds, which offer caricatures and puffed-out straw men. Stover would have us imagine the humanities confined to the university library and lecture hall, with their professors holding forth on the narrowest of subjects. Small wonder, then, that scientists push them aside and receive greater recognition.

These ventriloquists of the humanities may be staging their spectacle with the aim of delighting or antagonizing their readers, but they miss the central point. The staging and spectacle employ the very means they would caricature, namely the humanities. Rhetoric, logic, and language are at the heart of the humanities, and their opponents – as well as many of their would-be advocates – secretly make use of the humanities in their speeches about its worth.

Language: if one sits in a café in a busy square and listens to the conversations, not to eavesdrop, but rather to take in what language reveals, then one comes closer to the heart of the humanities. It is the language of gossip, anger, excitement, exhaustion, distraction; it is the language of lies and love. Federico Fellini in his Amarcord, his film of remembrance, traveled back to this seaside city to record this language. Recording this language, he made a work of art. But this art is not above us, foreign to us. It is not a learned abstraction. On the contrary, its language illuminates our lives. The groundlings in the Globe Theater could applaud Shakespeare’s Tempest, and follow Ariel as much as Caliban.

Stover speaks for many others who would make the humanities into fragile, erudite, and airy subjects. They are much more basic and durable. In fact, they preside over the means of their making. He argues that the humanities produce overspecialized and effete scholarship. We could try to defend this humanities hologram. But this would be only more theater of the absurd, when the drama itself lies in the language of argument. Stover overlooks the real stakes of his “case” against the humanities: the loss of language, or more specifically the loss of care for and love of language.

If we look to poets and thinkers across the centuries, we discover, repeatedly, that they have criticized scholars for their narrow pursuits, and also for their quest for fame and money. So Socrates mocked the sophists, and Lucian the philosophers. Seneca ridiculed their excesses, a theme picked up by Erasmus’s Folly, and then by Rabelais and Montaigne, who stated (or understated) that “the greatest scholars are not the wisest men.” This resonated with the words of Seneca, who called them “a spiritless lot: for people are forever acting as interpreters and never as creators, always lurking in someone else’s shadow” (letters 33 and 87).

But – in case you think I am now being pedantic myself – the point is to learn from the humanities, the range and depth of its literature. By this means we might more fully understand ourselves by understanding others. Scholarship, at its best, serves as the café waiter or maître d’ to these literary offerings.

The humanities are so fundamental that critics (and advocates) easily overlook them, but this oversight is part of our modern malady and one-sidedness. Here Italians are more alive to the dangers of this one-sidedness, which is why Rimini will always celebrate Fellini, and Certaldo its Boccaccio, and why Roberto Benigni, the actor and comedian, can read Dante before thousands of people on the steps of Santa Croce in Florence. The leading television program right now is a tour of Italy’s cultural heritage by Alberto Angela.

Russia, too, has long explored this modern urge to isolate and limit the humanities through science and scholarship. Gogol, in his brilliant Dead Souls, has his protagonist Tchitchikov visit two estates: one is run according to the latest scientific methods; on the other, the learned landowner yearns to educate the peasants in German arts and manners. The first farm is a model of utility and proficiency and the second is in disarray. Gogol shows us the ‘triumph’ of the sciences at a cost, the cost of character and personality, as well as the vanity of erudition. Both extremes exist to the detriment of both.

This is comical, but relevant, as relevant as the question raised in Dostoevsky’s Devils: what is more important, Pushkin or a pair of boots? Stover would have the humanities push literature into scholarly insignificance. But the humanities, at heart, tend Pushkin’s fire, so that his words could warm the spirits of Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky, and Akhmatova, and through them untold numbers of readers for generations to come. As Joseph Brodsky observed, Dostoevsky found inspiration and insight in the very syntax of the Russian language, in its use of dependent clauses, which led to the spiraling psychological digressions that wind through his work.

Does all this that the humanities provide then need a “case”? Can we ever stand as advocates or lawyers for the humanities? Or do they not, rather, wait upon us to become more alive to their resources? They require not a case, but care. They remain in patient uselessness; they guard the gifts of language, which we all need though too little respect in our preoccupations with science and technology.

Rabindranath Tagore a century ago contemplated the advance of the sciences in words that were pungent and prescient. Tagore held science in esteem and met with Einstein in 1930 to discuss the nature of truth. Yet as an educator, poet, and philosopher, he warned against the single-minded mania for science as the path to fulfillment. He spoke to Japanese students in 1916 just as Japan was pursuing Western technological ‘advancement.’ The life of science, he told them, was a “superficial life”:

Science, when it oversteps its limits and occupies the whole region of life, has its fascination. It looks so powerful because of its superficiality – as does a hippopotamus which is very little else but physical. Science speaks of the struggle for existence, but forgets that man’s existence is not merely of the surface. Man truly exists in the ideal of perfection, whose height and depth are not yet measured. (“The Spirit of Japan,” July 2, 1916)

The height and depth of humanity, then: these are the coordinates of the humanities. We may ignore them as we ignore our inner lives, our need for myth and stories, even our love for flowers: all “useless” things that, somehow, we secretly recognize as essential to who we are, to our self-knowledge and our self-realization. Erwin Chargaff, the great biochemist who explored our DNA, echoed Tagore’s warning, with greater pessimism: “Our time” – he wrote some forty years ago – “when even Old Testament prophets must disguise themselves in laboratory gowns, will not understand when I say that the majority of those things that concern or should concern humanity plays out in realms in which the natural sciences have not bearing at all.”

It is pleasant to be idle in a city like Rimini and sit outside in warm January weather and, like the statue of Julius Caesar in the Piazza, observe the passeggiata of life. Life in the round is the realm of the humanities. This realm is more than the courtoisie of an educated few, as Stover imagines the culture of the humanities. If we listen to the poets and singers that voice our mythologies, our lives follow a richer cadence. Schools and universities may have retreated from these voices, but they have never left us, nor do I think they ever will, if the gods are kind. It falls to us to watch our language more intently, with a sense of wonder before what may appear on the horizon, what new vessel may bring the wandering poets home after what seems so long an exile.

Cordially,

Roberto Fubini

Amen!

[bountyofbeads]

Is Trump Destroying Bipartisan Consensus on Israel?

Two weeks of outrage and head-spinning news show that institutional unification on Israel has gotten much weaker under President Trump.

Emma Green | Published August 25, 2019 10:44 AM ET | The Atlantic | Posted August 25, 2019 7:02 PM ET |

Updated on August 25, 2019 at 12:19 p.m. ET

For a long time, elected officials in Washington maintained a rough consensus on Israel. The United States and Israel were unquestioned allies. Military and aid packages were guaranteed winners in Congress. And support for Israel was bipartisan. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, when the country’s survival seemed imminently threatened, Jewish organizations helped build this American consensus, and helped sustain it: Lawmakers and other political leaders were entitled to their own opinions, but at a basic level, being anything other than pro-Israel was unacceptable.

As the past two weeks of head-spinning news about Israel have demonstrated, some aspects of Washington’s long-standing consensus on the country are changing. Donald Trump has upended normal channels of advocacy, leaving large, traditional institutions constantly scrambling to catch up with his latest tweet or off-the-cuff remark. He constantly amplifies far-right and far-left voices on subjects relating to Israel, fueling a narrative of fracture and polarization. And while Republicans have long worked to portray themselves as the only true friends of Israel, Trump has made this a priority, last week going so far as to say that Jews who vote for Democrats show “a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” later clarifying that he meant disloyalty to Israel. The past three years have exacerbated existing fissures among American Jews, with activists on the left loudly questioning the old consensus and political leaders on the right going along with Trump’s tactics.

Trump’s behavior is “very dangerous,” Abe Foxman, the former longtime head of the Anti-Defamation League, told me. “He’s trying to use us: in his efforts, his campaign, whatever his needs are.”

The upshot is that Jewish organizations have lost control of the narrative on Israel. Trump’s actions and statements about Jews and Israel have little to do with the Jewish people—they reflect the mode and priorities of his largely Christian, right-wing base. In practice, Washington’s bipartisan consensus on Israel mostly remains intact, but the story about Israel has changed radically. Jews have become characters in a larger political drama over Israel and anti-Semitism, two of the issues they have historically cared about most. The endless cycles of outrage are not meant to benefit Jews, and they’re not really about Jews. 

The watchword of pro-Israel groups in Washington has always been bipartisanship. This generally lines up with Americans’ views: Since at least 2001, according to Gallup, people from liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans have consistently held favorable opinions of Israel, and their views have largely improved over the past two decades. Alan Solow, a former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who helped lead fundraising for both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, told me that he came up in an era when members of the two political parties basically agreed that they should work together to promote the U.S.-Israel relationship. Now “the whole world is becoming more partisan,” he said.

Trump, in particular, has changed the bipartisan playbook on Israel. The president repeatedly singles out Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who have been critical of Israel and were recently barred from entering the country at Trump’s urging. When Trump says these women hate Israel, hate Jews, and are anti-Semites, that gives permission to “the president’s people to say, ‘We don’t care about traditional ways of approaching the U.S.-Israel relationship,’” Solow said. “It also frees up all the president’s opponents in the Jewish community to say, ‘You know what? All the rules have changed.’” As a result, politically conservative and progressive Jews, who might have once found common ground on the Israel issue, are constantly at one another’s throats.

For Jewish leaders who want the old bipartisan consensus to remain in place, this dynamic has been highly frustrating. “I’ve been struggling with the impact this has had on the [Jewish] community,” Democratic Representative Ted Deutch of Florida told me. Groups including the Republican Jewish Coalition have defended Trump no matter what, even when he seems to invoke classic anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish dual loyalty. “We are going to support Trump because President Trump has been a great friend to the Jewish community and a great friend to our organization, and he’s been the most pro-Israel president in history,” Neil Strauss, the national spokesman for the Republican Jewish Coalition, told me. “What President Trump said wasn’t anti-Semitic ... The idea that President Trump doesn’t like Jewish people is outlandish.”

Democrats such as Deutch, however, see this as divisive. “There was a decision made that somehow it’s in the best interests of the president’s reelection campaign to try and drive a wedge in the middle of the community,” Deutch said. As a result, a week’s worth of news cycles have been dedicated to Trump’s comments and the reactions of far-left Democrats such as Tlaib and Omar, who recently held a press conference that was “essentially the voice of the BDS movement,” Deutch said, referring to the effort to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. While Congress recently voted 398–17 to condemn the BDS movement, with nearly every Democrat supporting the resolution, that majority gets little voice—the dozens of pro-Israel Democrats who recently visited Israel together could hold a press conference on the steps of the Capitol and “there wouldn’t be a single reporter there to cover it,” Deutch said. Trump “winds up giving attention to anyone he’s criticizing, and it elevates the rhetoric and temperature.”

Under Trump, all the typical rules of political advocacy have been destroyed, leaving pro-Israel groups flat-footed following every new Trump tweet. “It used to be, you take a certain position, there are two or three responses,” Foxman said. But Trump is totally unpredictable. On August 15, after Trump tweeted that Israel should bar Tlaib and Omar from entering the country on a planned visit and the Israeli government announced that it would do so, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israel organization, criticized the decision—an exceedingly rare move for the staunchly bipartisan group that showed how little power it had in the situation. “All the institutions are in disarray. Lobbying isn’t what lobbying used to be,” Foxman said. Trump “didn’t clean the swamp. He just confused the swamp.” Large, traditional membership organizations are particularly ill-suited to navigate this political environment. “The Jewish organizational world, for better or worse, [is] the most status-quo, establishment thing you can possibly imagine,” Solow said. “It’s always trying to find a happy spot and stay out of trouble. And you’ve got a president who—that’s the last thing he wants to do.”

When it comes down to it, Trump may not care so much about making Jewish pro-Israel organizations happy. “A lot of this has nothing to do with the Jews,” Yehuda Kurtzer, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, told me. “I think most of the president’s policy over the last two years as it relates to Israel has been about evangelicals.”

The Israeli government long ago decided to accept and court the help of conservative American Christians, who widely support pro-Israel policies, in part for theological reasons. Republican politicians in the United States play up their pro-Israel credentials to satisfy their voter base, trying to spin their Democratic opponents as anti-Israel. All of this has undermined the bipartisan consensus that large Jewish institutions have traditionally pursued, turning Israel into another right-wing rallying cry. Among Christians, “it’s much more of a culture-wars mentality,” says Dan Hummel, a historian at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who studies Christian Zionism. “It’s about winning and maintaining power.” Insofar as Trump cares about getting more Jewish voters—an unlikely outcome, given that Jews voted against him more than any other religious group in 2016—it’s not for their numbers, but for the credibility they afford.

Evangelical-led pro-Israel organizations have clear sway in the Trump administration. The leaders of Christians United for Israel, an American group that claims to represent 7 million members, won top speaking slots at the opening ceremony for the new American embassy in Jerusalem last year. Trump regularly gives interviews to the evangelical Christian Broadcasting Network, and his evangelical advisers cheer him on as he criticizes Jews for voting for Democrats.

The most bizarre example of the Christian influence on Trump’s views of Jews and Israel came last week, following Trump’s comments about Jewish disloyalty. The president tweeted praise given to him by Wayne Allyn Root, a Christian conspiracy theorist who says he has Jewish heritage and regularly claims, dubiously, to speak for American Jews. Trump credulously crooned about how much Jews love him using the words of an evangelical Christian, even as Root invoked the imagery of Jesus: Jews love Trump “like he is the second coming of God,” Root allegedly said, reflecting neither mainstream Jewish political views nor mainstream Jewish theology. “If the president believes that somehow it helps him among evangelicals to claim that there is only one way [to support Israel], and he is going to tell the Jews what that way is, it may make some members of his base feel good,” Deutch said. “But it’s caused enormous discomfort in the Jewish community.”

Beyond the cozy halls of Washington, American Jews have a wide range of views on Israel, and they always have. Young, progressive Jewish activists today are trying to raise greater awareness of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. A decade ago, years before Trump, the organization J Street tried to disrupt the stalwart pro-Israel consensus in Washington to create more space for criticism. What’s changed the most in recent years is not the diversity of Jewish views on this issue, but the tools Jewish groups have to make their voices heard on an issue they care about deeply. Every other week, some explosive new fight over Israel or anti-Semitism seems to break out, but very little of it has to do with protecting Israel or defending Jews.

America is living through a never-ending nightmare of partisan warfare. Israel and Jewish historical trauma are but the stage, Jews the bit players. And that’s never been good for Jews before. “We’re basically being swept along as pieces of a human drama that is not really about us,” Kurtzer said. “No version of a story in which Jews are objects in their own history ends well.”

[buddyrabrahams]

10 NBA coaches on the hot seat this season

The NBA is a “get wins or get out” enterprise. The business can be callous at times, spurning head coaches who have seemingly earned job security — a lesson Dwane Casey learned the hard way in May. It’s still hard to imagine Casey on the Pistons’ sideline.

It may seem ridiculous to already be speculating about which coaches could be fired this season, but the 2018-19 season is practically upon us, and before we know it, some team will be searching for a new leader. With the preseason already underway, here are 10 coaches on the hot seat.

10. Alvin Gentry, Pelicans

You could argue Anthony Davis’ impressive late-season surge saved Gentry’s job last season. The Pelicans won their first playoff series in the Davis era — an encouraging sign — but the Warriors quickly vanquished New Orleans’ momentum. This seems to be a pivotal moment for the franchise. The Pelicans didn’t have much spending money this summer, as the squad had already dished out hefty contracts to players like E’Twaun Moore, Alexis Ajinca, and Omer Asik. The team allowed DeMarcus Cousins to bolt and signed bargain-basement assets Jahlil Okafor and Elfrid Payton, in addition to Julius Randle. The Pelicans are reliant on Davis sustaining MVP-level production; if he and Jrue Holiday crash back to earth early this season, however, GM Dell Demps — left with little flexibility to add another impact player — may opt to make a coaching change.

9. Tyronn Lue, Cavaliers

It seems the pressure should finally be off of Lue now that LeBron James has joined a new team, right? We disagree. It’s no secret that King James was highly influential in Lue replacing David Blatt midway through the 2015-16 season. Though Cleveland reached the Finals in each year under Lue, the Cavs’ success was always served with a hefty side of drama. With his ties to LeBron now irrelevant, Lue’s job security appears precarious. The Cavs’ talent level is suddenly average — if you’re looking at it optimistically — and the team this summer doubled down on Kevin Love, giving him a four-year extension. That indicates the team will presumably build around the 30-year-old Love. With Cleveland’s finances in disarray and no real prospect of competing for a title in the near future, the Cavs appear headed downhill fast, and Lue could lose his job as a result of a bad season.

8. Mike Malone, Nuggets

In April, Denver GM Tim Connelly said Malone’s job was safe. “I guess [questioning Malone’s job status is] the unfortunate narrative of professional basketball, but Mo’s done a fantastic job,” Connelly told the Denver Post. The Nuggets narrowly missed out on the postseason. With a roster that’s brimming with young talent, you have to wonder whether Malone’s job will indeed be safe if the Nuggets limp out of the gate. With a young core centered on Jamal Murray, Nikola Jokic, and Gary Harris, expectations are high. Malone’s contract is up after 2018-19, so it wouldn’t be a big surprise for Denver to part ways with the former Kings head coach. To hold onto his job, Malone will need his team’s defense to improve; last season, the Nuggets had the fifth-worst defensive rating in the league.

7. Luke Walton, Lakers

With great (star) power comes great responsibility. As Lue noted, having LeBron on the roster generates “outside tension,” which puts “added pressure immediately on the coaches.” Walton now has arguably the toughest role in the league: coaching LeBron. Walton’s job already seemed in jeopardy last season, when LaVar Ball was calling out the young coach. The Lakers have improved in each season under Walton, but expectations are at a new level this season. In Cleveland, Lue got a bit of a break because fans — and management — recognized LeBron had little talent surrounding him. In L.A., however, the situation is different. The Lakers are flush with promising young pieces, and they shelled out cap space to acquire veteran role players like Rajon Rondo and Lance Stephenson this summer. Though the Lakers’ long-term prospects are encouraging, the situation this season has all the makings of something that could go wrong out of the gate. The team lacks shooters and a reliable second scoring option. If the early season goes poorly, the 38-year-old Walton could be the fall guy.

6. Doc Rivers, Clippers

The Clippers have officially moved on from Lob City — Chris Paul was traded to the Rockets, Blake Griffin was traded to the Pistons, and DeAndre Jordan signed with the Mavericks. With that era in the past, the team may also look to move on from Rivers, who’s been with L.A. since 2013. He’s no longer heading up the front office, and when he shifted to focusing exclusively on coaching last season, the results were surprisingly good. Despite the roster lacking noticeable talent, the Clippers — led by surprise star Lou Williams — hung around in the West playoff race and finished with a winning record (42-40). Given the team’s performance last season, Rivers’ job isn’t in major jeopardy, but it’s also not entirely secure. L.A. could retool with two max-contract players in 2019, and if the team wants to usher in an entirely new chapter, it may change its leadership as well.

5. Terry Stotts, Blazers

Stotts is the leading candidate to replicate Casey’s fate this season. He’s done a tremendous job in Portland, but his team hasn’t found success in the postseason. Shortly after Portland fell to New Orleans in Game 4 of their first-round series, completing the Pelicans’ sweep, Marc Stein tweeted that “murmurs have already started in coaching circles that 10 consecutive playoff defeats will cost Terry Stotts his job.” GM Neil Olshey elected to keep Stotts around — for now. Rumors have also indicated the Blazers are open to shopping C.J. McCollum or Damian Lillard, but it’s tough to imagine the team breaking up the electrifying young backcourt. Portland also this summer re-signed big man Jusuf Nurkic, doubling down on its current roster. With Stotts owning an uninspiring 12-28 career postseason record, he could be the scapegoat if this team falls short yet again, or falls behind in the competitive playoff race by the All-Star break.

4. Fred Hoiberg, Bulls

Who knows what’s going to happen with the Chicago Bulls this season? That team looks entirely unpredictable. Hoiberg was successful at Iowa State, and he was considered one of the hottest young coaching commodities in hoops circles — but his move to the NBA, like Billy Donovan’s, has not been ideal. His Bulls teams haven’t escaped the first round since he took over, and his win total has declined every year. Chicago has an enticing group of young players — Lauri Markkanen and Wendell Carter Jr. are particularly promising — but it isn’t clear who will bear the Bulls’ primary scoring burden. Zach Lavine? Jabari Parker? Is having one of those players as your primary option even remotely encouraging? Hoiberg’s system has not translated well to the NBA; the 45-year-old may not make it through year four of his five-year deal.

3. Dave Joerger, Kings

Seemingly everyone was baffled when the Grizzlies didn’t bring back Joerger. The Kings were thrilled to sign the emerging young coach, who had pushed Golden State to six games and had led Memphis to 55 regular-season wins. But his time in Sacramento has been a letdown. In Joerger’s first season (2016-17), Sacramento won 32 games; last season, the Kings won 27. If their win total declines yet again — which many expect it will given the proliferation of talent in the West — the Kings may allow Joerger’s contract to expire. The wrinkle in this situation: Sacramento has embraced a rebuild and is focused on developing its young talent. If De’Aaron Fox, Marvin Bagley III, or Harry Giles seem to be blossoming into a star, the Kings may hesitate to switch coaches, fearful of stunting the young player’s development.

2. Tom Thibodeau, Timberwolves

Minnesota made the playoffs last season for the first time since 2003-04, but Thibs is in serious trouble. Despite the playoff berth, last season was a letdown. With Jimmy Butler, Andrew Wiggins, and Karl-Anthony Towns in tow, pundits expected the Wolves to challenge the top teams in the West. Instead, they limped into the playoffs and barely challenged Houston in the first round. Now, Butler — who also played for Thibs in Chicago — wants a trade to a major-market team with space to sign him to a max deal. Butler’s camp can try to spin this a different way, but there’s no denying the dynamics in Minnesota’s locker room were off. The three stars just didn’t play well together, and personalities seemed to clash. Some responsibility for that funky dynamic has to fall on the coach. Thibs’ coaching approach may have worked with the hard-nosed Bulls, led by Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah, but he hasn’t replicated his success in Minnesota. This situation looks poised to blow up.

1. Billy Donovan, Thunder

You have to wonder whether Donovan regrets leaving Florida. In his first season, the Thunder took a 3-1 lead on the Warriors in the Western Conference Finals — but, of course, they blew that series (and have not escaped the first round since that point). Then another blow: OKC lost Kevin Durant to Golden State. Then Russell Westbrook turned into a one-man wrecking crew, driving basketball purists mad. Last season featured the awkward Carmelo Anthony Experiment, and the season ended in disappointing fashion with a hasty exit at the hands of the Jazz. OKC brought back Paul George this summer, and GM Sam Presti said “continuity is (Donovan’s) best friend going forward.” With George back, Anthony gone, and Dennis Schroder added to the rotation, OKC is starting to gain some title buzz — they could challenge Houston as the West’s No. 2 team, people are saying. Fans are expecting a contender. Donovan inherited a tough gig with high expectations, and this appears to be his final chance. If his team doesn’t escape the first round yet again this year, he’ll all but certainly be looking for a new job (perhaps back in the NCAA ranks).

Aaron Mansfield is a freelance sports writer. His work has appeared in Complex, USA Today, and the New York Times. You can reach him via email at aaroncmansfield@gmail.com.

from Larry Brown Sports https://ift.tt/2RkdCpE

[isuckandotheressays]

PART 1 ; self-saboteur

How can you even start to talk about something like this without sounding so fucking cliché it makes your teeth hurt. Stuff is hard, like really hard, and it will be forever, and I know that. I am like, obscenely good at whining, I can whine about pretty much anything, the weather, the fact I have nothing to wear, the fact that I don’t get what I want. I'm internally spoiled, but I think everyone is really, any one that isn't is lying, what type of crazy person likes when they don’t get what they want? Unless you are ,like a masochist, which in some ways I probably am, or at least a self-saboteur.

Anyway, unimportant. More importantly, my life is currently in shambles. The love of my life won't talk to me because he's upset that I tried to kill myself. Now I'm sure from an outwards perspective that makes him sound unfeeling, a dick, but to be honest I'm the dick.  

Don’t get me wrong, I 100% wanted to die, I could not see my way out. I weighed out my options, I could hang myself from the loft bed he built for me, but I'm too tall and it wouldn’t have worked. I would slit my wrists, but then I would get heaps of blood on the 70's carpet and that would be just like, disrespectful to my housemates. So, my final thought was just to take as many of my sleeping meds as I could and just like, go to sleep. I wrote a note, in tears, obviously, I had fucking lost it.  

I individually popped out the pills and took them one by one, slowly getting more and more tired, getting less and less conscious. I kept thinking about random things, like how mad everyone is going to me if I survive this, how fucked it's going to be for Luke, how I've probably ruined his life. So I thought in my drug addled state, I should probably just like message saying I'm sorry to all my friends or whatever. Because I'm a dirt human.  

Suicide, is a really selfish thing, the most selfish thing you can do, but at that point in time, I couldn’t see my way out. I felt worthless, that the person I cared for the most in the world was never going to trust me again, that my best friends didn’t want to hang out with me because I'm so fun because I'm a useless sad lump that wines, can't even drink red wine because I become some heaps horrible bitchy cynical version of myself. That I would always disappoint my parents, because to this day, I don’t actually want to do what they want me to do and I really just want to be a starving artist and make art about how sad I am all the time.  

Anyway, I squeezed out some drama queen ass text to the people that meant the most to me, 'I'm sorry I love you' , which I meant but in hindsight as someone that wanted to die peacefully and alone in their house, is not a good move because people care about if you are dead or alive and well, got scared if they get that message out of the blue. So next minute, my dad, arrives in a cab, and I go to Emergency, and no one really takes what goes on particularly seriously and then in a bed and some doctor is making me drink some sludgy black coal shit to soak up all the medication in my stomach (side note it's been three days at this point and all that is coming out of me is like spirited away anime style sludge.  

So, I wake up and I'm going to the ward, this is like 8 at night, I did all this pill business at about Noon, and I'm sitting in the waiting room with my mum and dad who are literally at their whit's end with their nerves shot because their only child has an inability to cope with real life.

Side note, I am a productive member of society, I have job, that I mostly like and work hard at, I do a little bit of 'faffy' modeling for cash when I can, I get up I get coffee, I catch the train to school etc. Granted my mum pays my phone bill because I'm a 22 year old child that can't do real life human things. But yeah, back to the ward.

PART 2 ; repercussions

I'm sitting there waiting at the mental health ward and they literally come and give me some belongings I left there the time before. Like I'm some frequent flyer, I sort of laugh under my breath but try to stifle it because I love my parents  more than anything and I don't want to make this situation any more confusing and awful than what it is. I go to the tiny mini fridge and fish out a cheese sandwich because the stuff I took to OD makes you so fucking hungry.  

So I'm admitted, given the awkward PJ's, some hectic sedatives and put in the room with the vinyl mattress like the ones in jail I'm sure, except in the ward they give you milo and night and speak in hushed tones and take your blood pressure a lot and offer you adult colouring books.  

Then I'm in the room and I'm thinking things. The things I'm thinking are about the fact that I did not succeed in ending my life and now there are repercussions. I have to not only feel shit, I have to feel guilty because what I have done to the people who love me is so monumentally horrible and I'm a bad selfish person who is never going to be loved, etc. Then I think about if I had done it another way, if it had worked, then I fall asleep.

I'm woken up by a student nurse that looks about 15 rolling in a huge blood pressure machine. The soft voice ensues like fucking silk "so, uh, cay, do you feel safe? Do you feel like hurting yourself? Killing yourself? Feeling a bit better than yesterday?" And me, being a fucking idiot, says, "oh yeah I'm fine now, just tired you know". Because, from lots of practice, I'm a master at pretending I'm okay (I'm being sarcastic hopefully you get that and I don’t just sound like a prized IDIOT).  

Hours down the track in walk out in my gross green PJ's and look at who else in in the ward. Literally exactly what you would expect, some full grown woman with pink hair doing a puzzle of teddy bears, some 'methy' looking guy talking to himself in the room (until this point I thought this was a ward for woman only) that has a video of a waterfall on loop and an extremely greasy middle ages Asian woman being scolded for trying to sleep when she has to be awake because its day time. Nobody talks to each other, we are all sort of collectively embarrassed, no one really knows how to act, do we like smile at each other? Or do we have to prove our sadness to each other? I just keep my head down mainly until I get handed the sludgy meal that we have to eat with a spoon because u could mince yourself with a fork or knife. I recon if you really wanted you could use a spoon, I recon if you really wanted you could use anything like, it's pretty fucked up but I think about that all the time. I know pretty much all the things in a room that I could use to hurt myself.  

Like spoon? Easy, I would just either with all the force in my body, sorry for the gore, slam the not spoony part into my wrist and like , blood would Tarintino style go everywhere. I could also just like shove it down my throat and choke. I recon I could like, paper cut myself to death, that’s so morbid, oh my god, sorry.  

PART 3; insidious thing  

Fast track to now, I'm at my parent's house, with a shaved head, in the country, the love of my life won't talk to me. I'm almost certain that he's going to leave me, he's already moved out and he's basically sick of my shit. And to be honest, even though it fucking hurts, its fair enough.

Backtrack again, I worked at the pub, and everyone there just like, happened to do cocaine, so I tried cocaine, and of course, it was great but very expensive. If went from something fun to something I needed to get through a shift because I was so tired. Then I would spend all my money on it. Then the guy would show up at the bar and I would just swipe my card and take money out of the till. Like at the start it was spending my money, and then I started stealing the money.  

Now, I have a huge problem which honestly, I like being on drugs, plus being bipolar, oh yeah, but now that’s up for negotiation and could be a personality disorder or whatever. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing this, not even my partner or my friend who could have helped me. Especially, my partner. But again, dirt human remember.  

So, I was holding that secret in for ages, like was literally killing me. It was the most insidious thing ever. But I've always stuffed in and marred the truth to protect myself. When I was younger, like childhood till I was 16, I had a really hard time at making friends so I literally would just make shit up. But when I was first diagnosed and had my first break up, I worked out that, that probably wasn’t optimum to being like an alright human. So I stopped saying I was related to famous models and that I got kicked out of karate because I punched the teacher and started telling the  true story about the stress nose bleeds, of the white robes and I was related to a bunch of people that lived in Yass, as in many merinos (no offence to my family - you are all phenomenal).

PART 4; him

Forward, I hadn't told my parents this immense thing, and I was lying about what actually happened. So I told them. And, they really didn’t care. Not only what this an insane and complete surprise to me, it made me feel even worse that I have been an absolutely horrendous person to my partner.  

So now, I am petrified. I'm writing this with my newly shaved golf ball head, he's not talking to me and I'm this total wreck of self-hatred and total disarray. Because I want to be with him, I don’t want to hurt him. But I don’t know how to move forward. I don’t know how to make someone trust you again, and I sure as hell don’t think I deserve to have such a fucking angel in my life.

Like you know those classically handsome boys from teen movies, yeah think about that, but like Bowie dreamy. Big ass blue eyes, freckles, tall, absolutely killer smile. He supports my art, he's good with kids and animals, he's stupid crazy intelligent, goofy and gets my humor, that I barely get sometimes. Like I have no idea how human trash like me could have made this person fall in love with me. One time, he fucking flew overseas to see me on our anniversary because he missed me. He has written obscure punk songs about me. He also supports me immensely, which I owe my life to, on many occasions.  

To be honest, I will understand if he's over it, he could do so much better, he could like, date a  girl who is not legally insane, that would not self-harm and lie and do batshit stuff like some crazy murderer. But, I do want to get better for him. And I am trying, I've enrolled in this crazy program that the psych lady said would improve my honesty as well as make me be able to deal with real life grown up situations like an adult and not some mentally inept baby thing. I am trying. Shaving my hair was a thing for me. I needed a physical change to put stuff in motion. I'm in motion now. And I hope that he sees that, but I understand, I truly I am the worst.

Skip forward to two weeks later, we ended it, I broke it I really did. But that okay, because you have to have a red hot go at being by yourself. I am weirdly happy, elated even, I feel like ive got myself back. Its crazy that you don’t even notice how much you have lost yourself until your alone, the cracks in what seemed like a perfect relationship start to show. Not to throw shade, but I think that I embarrassed him sometimes and tried to hard to act cool. And to be honest, I recon I am pretty fucking cool. I bent myself to fit around him, even my aspirations, even my work even my internet presence. He never let me 'vlog' he thought it was lame, seems like such a teeny thing but I full want to vlog. I want to talk into the abyss that in Instagram, hear an echo or not.  

I guess its all a learning curb really, you got to lose what you think you want to get what you need. I could 'smiths' along and ask to 'please please, please, let me let me let me, get what I want this time' but right now, I'm still working out what that is. It's pretty flippin' great.

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/proud-boys-rally-rocked-by-sex-cocaine-allegations

This sadly 😢is #POTUS #MAGA #America and definitely not something we want our children emulating. Congress must do it's job and impeach this man.

Republicans are crawling in the gutter while digging down lower & lower.

Trump, Jr, Roger Stone & all of these people on "the right" are just one big cesspool of bizarre & pathetically weak pervs making money from gullible #MAGA "conservatives".

TRY TO READ IT.

TOTAL GUTTER

This story about #MAGA Proud Boys cocaine allegations is wild read — it features:

-A pro-Trump relationship expert

-Some bad behavior at a DC tourist hotel bar

-The line "I've never even kissed a Proud Boy."

Proud Boys Rally Rocked by Sex, Cocaine Allegations

By Will Sommers | Updated 07.05.19 6:05PM ET Published 07.05.19 5:16PM ET | Daily Beast | Posted July 6, 2019 |

A far-right rally scheduled for downtown Washington on Saturday has been thrown into disarray by dramatic allegations centering on cocaine, a love triangle, and the far-right Proud Boys men’s group.

“The Proud Boys? More like the Joke Boys,” Republican congressional candidate Omar Navarro, a key player in the bizarre feud, told The Daily Beast.

The drama has torn apart one-time allies prominent on the pro-Trump internet and cost the so-called “Demand Free Speech” rally at least one speaker, after other prominent right-wing celebrities already cited other reasons for not appearing. While the rally was meant to protest the banning of conservative figures from social media, the surrounding drama has cast a shadow over the event.

On one side of the fight: Navarro, a perennial challenger to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) whose losing campaigns against the liberal stalwart have become a cause celebre on the right. 

On the other: the Proud Boys, the all-male group of self-described “Western chauvinists,” and DeAnna Lorraine, a self-styled MAGA relationship expert and Navarro’s ex-girlfriend.

The clash became public late on Wednesday night, when Navarro tweeted that Lorraine had been using cocaine and “sleeping with the proud boys.” Navarro declared that he would no longer speak at Saturday’s rally, which was organized in part by top Proud Boy leaders.

“I found this girl I dated is doing cocaine and sleeping with the proud boys I cannot agree with the drug lifestyle they follow,” Navarro tweeted.

Navarro’s withdrawal from Saturday’s rally comes after the event has already lost other speakers. Former Pizzagate conspiracy theory promoter Mike Cernovich had also been on the event’s bill, but said earlier this week that he wouldn’t attend. Fellow former Pizzagate advocate Jack Posobiec has also suggested he may not attend, despite being listed as a speaker on the rally’s website. 

In his tweets, Navarro made a series of allegations, claiming that Lorraine had, through the Proud Boys, threatened him “because I said I would expose the cocaine use including hers.” (Lorraine has denied using cocaine, while the Proud Boys describe themselves as “pro-drug.”)

“I denounce the proud boys as of today,” Navarro wrote. “@DeAnnaTLorraine used the proud boys to threaten my life with eminent danger [sic] because I said I would expose the cocaine use including hers. I don’t mind getting kicked out of free speech rally to stand for truth” 

Complicating matters further, Navarro is still married to another woman, who he describes in a tweet as “my soon to be ex-wife.” In one tweet, Navarro chastised Lorraine, who says she dated Navarro for a few months earlier this year, for having a relationship with him while he was married.

“@DeAnnaTLorraine didn’t have a problem having an affair with me, so you shouldn’t be dating married men,” Navarro wrote.

Navarro’s tweets followed a tense confrontation that night at Harry’s Restaurant, a divey downtown Washington restaurant popular with that set of pro-Trump personalities.

Lorraine and other conservative figures associated with the rally had gathered at Harry’s the night before the Trump-centric 4th of July celebration in Washington. They were joined by the Proud Boys, a far-right club designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Proud Boys have been charged with violent attacks against their political opponents and must adhere to a series of rules, including restrictions on how much they can masturbate.

Just a few months earlier, Navarro and Lorraine had organized a “Tribute to Men” at the same restaurant. But when Navarro arrived there on Wednesday night, he wasn’t in a celebratory mood.

Accounts differ on what happened at the restaurant. Navarro claims that he was upset about organizational details of Saturday’s rally, and was confronted by a Proud Boy behaving “like an animal.”

Lorraine and other witnesses, meanwhile, claim that Navarro was acting aggressively towards Lorraine and had to be separated from her by a Proud Boy.

“He started intimidating and threatening me and another woman,” Lorraine said.

Rally organizer Adrienna Dicioccio told The Daily Beast that Navarro “tried to start a situation” at the restaurant.

“He got really disgusting that night,” said Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio.

As Navarro left the restaurant, the Proud Boys yelled that they were banning him from their men’s club, according to Lorraine.

“They said ‘we’re disavowing you, you are no longer one of us, you can’t claim to be one of us,’” she said.

In response, Lorraine said, Navarro vowed to blast the Proud Boys on social media.

“He said at the bar, ‘I’m going to go off on you guys on Twitter,’” Lorraine said, adding that Navarro had regularly threatened in the past to ruin her career as a conservative personality with allegations on Twitter.

Navarro denies any wrongdoing at the restaurant.

“The Proud Boys are just as bad as antifa is,” Navarro said. “The Proud Boys are a bunch of drunk guys who are accusing me of being drunk.”

Navarro sent his tweets shortly after leaving the restaurant. But the feud didn’t end there.

The Proud Boys responded to Navarro on Wednesday with a late-night Periscope livestream shot in a backyard somewhere in the Washington area, starring right-wing personality and former InfoWars staffer Joe Biggs.

“A punk-ass bitch named Omar Navarro is running his fucking mouth, and he’s about to get the smackdown, know what I’m saying,” Biggs said, adding that Navarro was attacking the Proud Boys because “he can’t satisfy his motherfucking woman.”

Tarrio chimed in, claiming that Navarro runs his quixotic campaigns against Waters in an attempt to make money from gullible conservative donors. Navarro lost his last two races against Waters by more than 50 percentage points.

“He admitted to me that he stands no chance against Maxine Waters, and he admitted to me that he’s doing it just to get donations from you guys,” Tarrio said in the video.

Ethan Nordean, who has become something of a celebrity Proud Boy in the group because of a viral clipof him punching a left-wing antifascist in a fight, fumed in the background.

As the video ends, Biggs declares that Navarro has been “fucking banished” from the Proud Boys.

“The helicopter blades are spinning,” a person off-camera warns as the clip ends, a reference to the Proud Boys’ fondness for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose regime executed its opponents by throwing them from helicopters.

Navarro said the Proud Boys in the video were clearly on drugs.

“They’re disgusting, they’re reprehensible, they are a joke of an organization,” Navarro said. “They should be the Proud Jokes, not the Proud Boys.”

The feud has also drawn in other right-wing personalities. On Telegram, anti-Muslim British activist and Saturday rally speaker Milo Yiannopoulos called Navarro “a piece of work.”

Now that he’s on the outs with his one-time allies, Navarro is happy to detail more allegations against them. He urged The Daily Beast to find evidence of Lorraine using cocaine at Harry’s, and asked The Daily Beast to send a reporter to the Proud Boys annual Las Vegas convention, where he promised there would be “some pretty compromising stuff.”

“These guys are completely disgusting—they sleep with women that are married,” Navarro said.

Lorraine denied using cocaine, and said she has never had a relationship with a Proud Boy.

“I’ve never even kissed a Proud Boy,” Lorraine, the author of pro-Trump relationship guide Making Love Great Again, said.

The Proud Boys, on the other hand, aren’t as reluctant to discuss drug use. In a post to Telegram, which Proud Boys and many of their allies have been forced to use after being kicked off Twitter and Facebook, the Proud Boys mocked Navarro for his prudish attitude towards cocaine. 

“I’m sure people are shocked to hear there was cocaine at a party in DC too!” the group wrote. “Shocking development asshole.”

Tarrio said he wasn’t sure what cocaine use Navarro was referring to, but wasn’t concerned about the allegation.

“Regardless, we’re pro-drugs,” Tarrio said.

As for Navarro, he’s running against Waters in 2020—this time without even the right-wing allies who helped him in the past. While he had been planning to protest social media bans at the rally on Saturday, he now says Twitter was right to ban some of the people coming to the event.

“Most of them are blocked on Twitter for the right reasons,” he said.