damn. kaveh and alhaitham really are adhd vs autism huh

Thinking abt Elijah and Jedidiah again, I’ve said a lot of it before, but I’m expanding here (finale spoilers btw):

I think Jeddie and Elijah were intentionally written to represent the opposing extremes of unhealthy love/ affection. It’s a symbolic parallel, they’re complete opposites in terms of attachment style… but they’re united in the fact that they’re both hurting Sydney (the subject of their feelings).

Jedidiah embodies cold, distant, withdrawn and purely behind the scenes love-

And Elijah embodies obsessive, love-bombing, all consuming and suffocating love.

Through this lens,

They both saw Sydney suffering and without consulting him (WITHOUT GIVING HIM A SAY!!!) took it upon themselves to help- but their fucked up perceptions of love lead their solutions to being… naturally… fucked up.

There’s even symbolism in the WAY they both tried to help (…had Sydney die).

Jedidiah wanted to end Sydney’s suffering. He would have Sydney die a lonely, cold, quiet death in the sterile environment of a hospital- then he’d bring him back in body, hoping that he’d return healthy again (the rose tinted memory of the old friend he loves)

Elijah wanted to end Sydney’s suffering. He would have Sydney die in a passionate roaring flame, surrounded by a crowd of feverous celebration- then he’d bring him back in spirit, hoping it’d bring him eternal peace and rest (the mirage of the deity-like figure he loves)

That is like the most blatant metaphorical representation of this whole thing imo. The mode of death represents their destructive love, and how it’s killing Sydney. Like, literally. But when it happens, they both wholeheartedly believe they’re doing this FOR Sydney, to “help” him.

AND THIS BRINGS ME TO MY OPINION ABT ELIJAHS INTENTIONS:

I’ve always interpreted Elijah as being entirely, legitimately convinced of everything he said. Like, through the lens of his own incredibly warped and distorted perception of “love”, he genuinely thought he was doing what was best for/ “helping” Sydney.

He had it in his head that he loved Sydney, none of that was a knowing lie, it was real to him— but his reality was… again, distorted.

And it’s written in a way which highlights how HORRIBLY UNHEALTHY that warped perception is. It mirrors how Jedidiah’s starkly contrasting ways are showcased as unhealthy, despite him too thinking that he was doing what was best for Sydney. Neither go excused, or sugar coated, the point being: to show how neither extreme is good.

Beyond their skewed actions,

They both wanted to resurrect a Sydney that didn’t exist. The Sydney Jedidiah wanted back had withered away,, Sydney’s sickness was more than physical, it had roots in his mind and memories. Jedidiah had left him feeling abandoned for so long that it’d take more than a simple reset to heal their rift. But he didn’t know how to do that, he didn’t know how to be close, and he was too wrapped up in his self- flagellation to actually break down the walls he’d built.

And Elijah’s version of Sydney was a total idolization. He was never self aware enough to realize he was a large contributor to Sydney’s suffering in the first place. He was too wrapped up in the thrall of his own delusions to realize how scary and confusing this all would be for Sydney. (I say delusions bc I think… they were/gen. Coming from someone who’s BPD-spawned delusions get similarly obsessive and convincing… I have a whole other tangent on this for another day)

This isn’t an Elijah apologist message btw, nor is it a Jedidiah apologist message— I just think this depth is an important part of the overall message- you can love someone and hurt them every second of it, if there’s no balance- a line between the two extremes!! I think we are seeing Jedidiah starting to find that line- he was actually listening to Sydney by the end of it all. Elijah… is still stuck in his head.

I think your take on Doublemeat Palace is interesting because to me it's emblematic of all the things that make Season 6 (particularly the back half after "Tabula Rasa") not work for me. It's relentlessly grim and unpleasant and I can feel the writers twisting the plot to make sure every character is as miserable as possible. I'm not opposed to seeing protagonists in a low point or even outright failing. Season 3 of Game of Thrones is some of my favorite TV ever. (1/2)

(2/2) But at a certain point the grim and gritty, if it's not well written, and broken up with some moments of lightness (like Buffy was previously known for) the audience gets numb. It also doesn't help that no one has any agency. (Magicrack, the not!wedding, Dawn doing zip) Again, I'm not opposed to dark plotlines. I'm opposed to incompetent writing.I don't think you can call an episode or an arc "objectively" good if it doesn't work for the majority of the audience it's been written for. 

 you know, i’m going to disagree about the “grim and gritty” thing. doublemeat palace actually stands out to me as being really funny. and for having a lowkey positive ending. true, the episode is about the soul-sucking prospect of having to do the same dreary work every day. it’s about how much it sometimes sucks to work, which is why you have willow dealing with the fact that recovery is a difficult thing that you have to decide to commit to every day, xander and anya facing the fact that marriage is also a lifelong daily commitment, and buffy taking an unpleasant and mechanical job in order to put food on the table (and the episode plays up that the managers have been doing it for five or ten years). but like, names like “manny the manager”? the weirdo robotic people? the exaggerated camera angles? the swirling cow and chicken? buffy’s constant attempts at jokes? “hot delicious human flesh”? a little old lady with penis monster on her head? this stuff is totally absurdist. i think of doublemeat palace as almost the opposite of episodes like once more with feeling and tabula rasa, where things superficially seem fun but are actually quite dark. doublemeat palace seems superficially unpleasant but actually has a wicked sense of humor. and i say that the ending is positive because it involves both willow and buffy committing to doing work. they’re faced with the opportunity to “cheat” at life like the trio, who steal money instead of having jobs, but ultimately decide to do the right thing. willow doesn’t accept amy’s magic and buffy doesn’t blackmail the company. 

that goes for a lot of season six, in my opinion. even late season six. people say there was less humor, and i think that’s true to an extent, but honestly i think it’s more that the tone of the humor changed. it got more sardonic and absurd, but was definitely still there. eg people think of seeing red as the episode where the two Very Bad Things happened, but outside of those scenes a lot of the episode is like, fascinatingly (to me) slapstick (the whole jetpack bonanza? “say goodnight bitch” “goodnight, bitch”). and has that really lovely conversation between buffy and xander at the end. in general, i think a lot more season six episodes have positive endings than it gets a reputation for. i already mentioned the ending of doublemeat palace. but the end of gone has buffy saying she doesn’t want to die, the end of older and far away has buffy deciding to stay home with dawn, the end of as you were has buffy deciding to break up with spike, and the end of grave has buffy, willow, and spike all making important changes for the better. as in, season six can be very dark, yes. but i would not call it a hopeless or cynical kind of dark. it’s about the characters clawing their way out of that dark place. not just a statement that “adulthood sucks.” you can argue that the season didn’t pull off its attempts at lightness, but i very much think they’re there. 

at any rate, i agree to an extent that if a work of art isn’t working on most people, that’s probably a sign it’s doing something wrong. but i’d offer the counterpoint that you might also say that if a work of art really works on some people, even if not everyone, it’s probably doing something right. as far as the season as a whole goes, i’d actually take issue, on a basic factual level, with the claim that it didn’t work on the majority of people. not to validate IMDB’s ratings for buffy’s episodes, but it does have an n=~2000 sample size and if you average out the ratings by season, season six doesn’t rank starkly lower than any other season. it’s on the less popular side, but it still hovers around an 8.0 average like most of the other seasons. moreover if you go by the big r/buffy polls (n=~120-310), season six ranks in the top three favorite seasons every year they did one (2011: 3 > 6 > 2, 2012: 6 = 3 > 5, 2013: 6 > 3 > 5, 2014: 3 > 6 > 5, 2017: 5 > 3 > 6). you can see the data for yourself if you scroll down to where it says “surveys”. perfectly possible that there’s data that paints a totally different picture. this is just what i had on hand. that ranking also doesn’t mean the majority of people liked the season, but it does act as evidence that there are a lot of people whom it really worked on. basically, i wouldn’t say that season six is disliked so much as it’s divisive. people seem to either love it or hate it. with a smaller percentage that likes it, but for whom it isn’t a favorite. or who appreciate what it was trying to do but don’t think that it succeeded. 

as far as doublemeat palace goes i notice a similar phenomenon. people either really hate it or they really relate to it. either they think the style is bizarre and annoying or they think it’s delightfully surreal. so it really seems like it’s up to the individual whether they want to lend more credence to one audience reaction or another in order to assess quality. 

which is why i tend to use my own rubric. when i ask myself whether something is good or bad, i pay a lot of attention to (1) is the work trying to do or say something specific? (2) how unusual or challenging or astute is the thing the work is saying? (3) how coherently is it doing that, and on how many different levels? (4) on a formal level—dialogue, cinematography, costuming, acting, pacing—how fluently was it executed, and how well did the formal choices contribute to the ideas in (1)? 

for the record, i don’t think that doublemeat palace is the best episode ever. i just think it’s solid, and fits nicely into what i think the season as a whole was doing. but the reason i say that it’s “objectively” solid according to my personal rubric—which granted, you’re more than welcome to not share—is that (1) it has a pretty clear idea that it’s exploring. the drudgery of work stuff that i mentioned in the first paragraph. moreover i think that idea is really relevant to the season-long topic of “what makes it feel like adulthood sucks”. buffy having to take a menial food job fits into the season’s food motif that i talked about once, which in turn fits character-wise with buffy’s ambivalence about being alive. a somewhat grotesque/humiliating job fits with the mood of material existence being unpleasant. (also, xander impulsively chowing down on food speaks to him probably not being ready for commitment) (2) i think this whole subject was just hella daring for the show to do. having been a poor and suicidally depressed 22 year old in a fucked up sexual relationship while working a menial job, season six and episodes like doublemeat palace just ring true to me as something for a show about growing up to depict. sometimes real life really is a grind, and sometimes it really does feel profane, absurd, surreal, etc. (3) i really like the way that buffy, willow, and xander and anya’s stories all fit the theme of episode but in different ways. i wouldn’t say the episode is a super nuanced take on drudgery, but it does have layers thanks to the three different storylines, and it comes off as clearly conscious and oriented around its theme. there are other parallels like amy, spike, and halfrek each being influences, too. (4) there’s some cool formal execution. not all of it. willow’s story, like a lot of her mid-season-six arc, is kind of tediously on-the-nose. but i enjoy pretty much every second of buffy’s part of the episode, because the direction is so in control of it. and i like the absurdist and genre-conscious playfulness. the soylent green riff, etc. 

i also disagree on your assessment of agency in the season but this post is long enough as it is. regardless, i certainly don’t begrudge you your opinion. it’s an often clumsy season. it also sounds like we enjoy things in different ways--i genuinely don’t care too much about writers contorting things in the interest of theme. i’m mainly trying to push against the implications (1) that the season was obviously just trying to be dark and grim, and just for it’s own sake or something. instead of for deliberate and interconnected artistic reasons that one could analyze and talk about, and (2) that there is some monolithic opinion on and response to it.

Within the Bowels of Tumblr - An Autobiographical Essay

It must have been 2013 when I first joined Tumblr due to it's large pro-ana community and the surplus of thinspo available to its users. After a while, I branched out, looking for LGBTQ resources. The blogs I had wound up following would provide ample news, support, and guidance for the LGBTQ community. I got deep into LGBTQ politics, considering myself an egalitarian, and even hopping on the promising Bernie train. With my newfound interest in politics, it was not long before I encountered authoritarian-left activists who had dubbed themselves social justice warriors (SJWs).

On the surface, the SJWs appeared to have been fighting for a just cause, but their censorship-centered campaign was off putting, leading me to question where to draw the line when it came to egalitarianism. My opinion of LGBTQ rights has, and always will be, "as long as it doesn't impede on the rights of others," thus, censorship looked a lot like muddy water. The deeper I went, the uglier the SJWs got. Despite their proclamations of equality, the message they gave was everything but. When they weren't campaigning for questionable guidelines, they would spew an overwhelming amount of toxic hatred towards white, straight and cisgendered people, men, and closeted/stealth LGBTQ members. They overgeneralized these demographics as evil, racist, rapists while claiming that bigotry towards these groups was non-existent, however their behavior alone had proved them wrong. When the SJWs weren't busy educating the general population that the mijority populose is in some way depraved and it was impossible for them to be at the receiving end of discrimination, they would announce their wishes of injury, rape, or death upon such individuals.

Upon examination of their blogs, I noticed a trend of common themes: candy-colored with chibi anime characters, cutesy things, like clouds and butterflies, and the overuse of emojis which suggested innocently blissful ignorance, such as "oWo", and "uwu". The image of cuteness and frailty was starkly antithetical of their appalling behavior. Their summary section usually contained their age, gender-identity, pronouns, sexual orientation, a list of self-diagnosed mental disorders, and a request that people belonging to their detested demographic not follow their blogs, saying it would trigger them. They would often laugh at anybody who was brave enough to point out their bigotry and hypocrisy. Once they began to lose and argument, they would start to spout out posts crying and complaining about being triggered, which was then followed by a chain of their ass-kissing followers and fans trying to cheer them up by validating and reinforcing the bigoted behavior.

Ultimately, they refused to apologize, using their self-diagnosed mental condition as an excuse for any and all of their bad behavior. Used as a badge of honor, rather than incentive to seek psychiatric help, they would misrepresent those individuals who had a professional diagnosis and perpetuate the stigma against mental illness. Any sort of feedback related to getting treatment or professionally diagnosed would lead to arguments and, once again, complaints of being triggered.

Aside from riding off the backs of the mentally ill, they treat the LGBTQ community like a fashion trend. This is done so by claiming psudopronouns, imaginary genders, or bizzare sexual identities. They lack the ability to differentiate gender divergence from gender dysphoria. Their lack of gender dysphoria precludes transgenderism, however they believe that their quirks are somehow integrated with their gender.

One example would be a man who likes to wear floral wreaths, calls himself a fairy, and asks that you call him fae/faer/faers, as opposed to he/him/his. Likewise, a women who dresses in a button-down, slacks, a bowtie, while donning a pixie-cut would call herself a "gender-confusion", defining it as "a gender that makes people confused," and request that you use the psudopronouns "voi/void/voids" when referring to her. In both examples, the individual is comfortable with their genitals. They fail to recognize that the taste and interests that they have in opposition to their sex is a common phenomenon and have deluded themselves into the belief that their personal preferences somehow define their gender. Not only do their theatrics make the LGBTQ community look like a bunch of clowns, but their baseless claims of transgenderism sustain and reinforce the belief that medical transition is superfluous.

As an SMI and FTM rape survivor, it was only natural for me to be irritated by the spread of misinformation and the outlandish portrayals exemplified by fools claiming to be something they're not, however, it was witnessing the barbaric demeanor which came with it that shook me to the bones. I was boiling with anger, and the only way I could let off steam was to assume active opposition against the SJWs. That was the start of my anti-SJW regime.

For some time, I had taken the role as a moderator for a blog once known as lgbtagainstsjws, where I was affectionately dubbed "The Hermit," a tarot card which I can identify with. I tried my best to present myself in a civil manner and not succumb to habitual trolling. The blog had a balance of personnel from across the political spectrum. Strength was the most conservative of us, however his delivery was on the abrasive side of things. After his disappearance, the balance shifted, and the blog began turning into that which it opposed.

Witnessing the tilt had me walking on eggshells. I became less active, only responding to inquiries of which could be answered without causing tension. I'd become more like my name implied, a hermit. Eventually, I woke up to a surprise in the Skype room. The oldest, wisest, and most respectable moderator, Justice had been expelled from the blog, on the grounds that her viewpoints were misaligned from their own. Since my stance was on par with that of Justice's, I quietly severed ties with the blog and it's moderators, leaving it with all but teenagers in charge.

Who's skye harper?

Ohhhh boy. Oh anon, oh bub. You’ve opened the Floodgates™️ now. (Ramble all about Skye incoming since she literally only has 6 issues in the entirety of DC history for us to parse through but MAN) (also disclaimer I’m formatting this on mobile but feel it’s Important for everyone to read to learn abt Skye. So no cut (since tunglr h*cks that up usually) just a “#long post” and “#dod spoilers” if y’all wanna block this on your dash)

Warning: Spoilers for Raven: Daughter of Darkness below!

So what drives the plot of the second half of DoD are the Shadowriders and Baron Winters trying to form a new Night Force against them. Skye is one of these young heroes he tries to recruit. Never heard of her? Me neither, until this! She’s literally made for this miniseries and this alone bc... well we’ll see why later

She’s asked by the Baron to join, and says she’ll think on it. This is end of issue #7. By end of issue 8 a WHOLE lotta sh*t hit the fan and Skye swoops in just in time...

To Try™️. Her Best™️. RIP Skye. I love you and you TRIED at least 😂😂😂 (shes not dead tho... yet)

Some less plot relevant stuff real quick but I feel they’re important to point out since they’re some of the small glimpses of personality we have to gain:

She’s a Voice of reason when tensions are running high and the team is all to new to each other

And she’s at ease around new people and more quick to relax/be playful near them. (Zach And Traci are just opposite sitting in chairs and bickering, as opposed to where Skye sits on the floor here, crisscross applesauce, playing with Teekl like a lil kid MY HEART IS FULL SKYE I LOVE YOU)

Back to Plot Stuff tho: Winters sends Raven off to rescue Black Alice. This backfired initially bc Alice just steals Raes powers to escape, leaving Rae to Almost Die. It’s revealed around this time that Skye has Information about the Shadowriders that Winters wants to use. Before they can dive too deep into what that means, however, Alice comes back to steal Skye away and deliver her to the Shadowriders.

Then we get this little Plottwist while Skye’s being??? Intimidated? By the riders? (Idk. They’re freaking her out n everything but it’s p clear they don’t want to actually harm her bc:

Yeah. She’s One Of Them (🎶dun dUN DUUUUUN🎶)

Alice tells this to the team as well and joins up, they decide to rescue Skye regardless and possibly ask Her what’s up. Defeat the riders w/out hurting their (teammate? Friend? Peer? Yknow actually. It’s a Shame we only got a mini and not a more fully developed/explored plot. Huh. Almost like this has the potential to be stretched out as a whole on-going arc of a comic or a season-long arc of a tv series hmm. Interesting.) (yes I’m bitter as FUCK)

So Raven rescues her while the others distract the riders. They keep her safe, but she’s been hurt/exhausted and this leads to near climatic battle with the riders where Skye makes a bold decision:

G O D I love this like??? Ravens whole THING is giving strength by taking away others pain and suffering. But alices whole Thing is taking strength regardless. In a way, looking back on this, their powers basically tore Skye apart. (But she was Ready to make that sacrifice, to make a decision to help save the day)

(This is a fake-Out at the beginning of issue 12, since Marv wanted to give me HOPE AND THEN TAKE IT AWAY A SECOND GOTDAMN TIME)

It’s a Lot so I won’t post the page in full Here. (And also y’all should read DoD anyways, the first 5 issues are up on the DCU app and I believe the trade with the 2nd half is gonna be hitting shops soon)

Skye Harper, like many one-off characters, was made to die. Given a vague powerset, some major but underexplored plot relevancy, and what little personality to starkly contrast against the majority cast, she may be forgettable to some. And that’s totally understandable. But I loved what little we saw of her, and I’d love to take a crack at exploring & developing her beyond this tidbit that we were given.

Let’s debunk this hot trash

“Part of the problem in front of Marvel Comics is the Marvel Universe is one long, mostly-unbroken line since its inception in 1961's Fantastic Four #1. There have been retcons, changes, tweaks, and cuts, but by and large it's a straight run. The universe has seen a number of resets, but it's mostly been returned to the state that long-time fans are comfortable with.”

Why is this a problem? Marvel is the highest selling comic book company in America and the long continuity is objectively not a problem.

It’s just something people incorrectly claim is a problem.

By the 1990s Marvel already had shittons of complicated continuity that had been going longer than most other long running franchise stories.

The readers back then jumped on ship just fine.

The AMOUNT of continuity you have is never the problem it’s how you manage it. In the days where every issue was treated as someone’s first and made accessible the amount of continuity was never a problem.

“Marvel Comics as a whole and the current creative stewards of its characters have to roll with 57 years of punches. They have to take the good and the bad. In the case of Spider-Man, the current writers, artists, and editors have to occasionally tackle the fact that Peter Parker hit his wife, made a deal with Mephisto to wipe out his marriage, or that Gwen Stacy had sex with Norman Osborn. ”

They don’t HAVE to deal with any of that.

They already dealt with the first of those things and simply SHOULD deal with the other two by erasing them.

But it’s also not like the presence of those things (sans OMD) is a huge hamper on the storytelling abilities or sales of the writers.

“Many of these are moments that readers and creators would simply like to forget, but they're a part of the fabric of the character. ”

Yes and welcome to ‘This is how a dramatic character on serialized fiction’ works.

“With Marvel's Spider-Man for PlayStation 4, Insomniac Games had the chance to start from scratch. They get to pick and choose what works for their version of Peter Parker and his alter-ego. The only backstory he brings to the table is that which Insomniac has carefully considered. This allows the team to drop the facets of Spider-Man that maybe didn't work and play around with some new ideas that might be better. And if Marvel's smart, they should steal some of what Insomniac Games did here.”

Why?

Insomniac already stole from Marvel.

Sales and storytelling potential for Spider-Man is NOT hampered by large continuity or even negative patches of it for the most part.

When bad stories happen so long as they are fixed then things get to move on. Even something as bad as Sins Past isn’t overly a drag because the story itself is so nonsensical it might as well not be canon, people have isolated and ignored it and the scope of the damage it can cause is fairly limited, it doesn’t really cut to the heart of the franchise. The time he hit his wife on the other hand was dealt with and moved on from.

So the existence of bad patches doesn’t really matter. Doctor Who has had no end of bad stories merely in it’s TV incarnation (to say nothing of it’s plethora of spin-off media which are all canon to varying degrees) and all those things still happened. But the show is still going strong and hit stratospheric popularity in the mid-late 2000s and early 2010s.

Hell the Simpsons is still going despite there being at least 20 years of mediocre-bad stories.

“I'm going to be honest. I'm not a huge fan of Mary Jane Watson. I don't necessarily have a problem with the character, but I've never really been a fan either. The marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson was done on a whim and many writershated it at the time.”

Oy vey this shit again.

The marriage was not done on a whim. Stan Lee, the creator of Spider-Man wanted it to happen and EIC Jim Shooter decided to synch it up with the comics.

At the time Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz had been building up to Peter and MJ’s wedding with the intention of her jilting him.

But the build up from them, and other writers like Peter David, was still there.

Only the outcome changed.

As for this ‘many writers hated it’ thing, the article links to ONE writer’s opinion on the subject.

If we actually look at the majority of Spider-Man writers to have written for Spider-Man during and after the marriage we see most of them were okay or neutral on the subject.

David Michelinie wasn’t thrilled with it, but he came on side eventually. Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz were the same. Matt Fraction wasn’t too sure about it but wasn’t innately against it either. Nick Spencer clearly liked it. Howard Mackie has given statements indicating he was against it at a time but might over all be neutral. Roberto Aguirre Sacasa has never said anything on the subject to my knowledge but his work implies he’s supportive of it. Mark Millar has never said anything on the subject. J.M. DeMatteis, J. Michael Straczynski and Peter David have been outright supportive of it, as was probably Todd McFarlane, Jodie Houser and for sure artist Ryan Stegman.

Oh and Stan Lee the creator of Spider-Man. Let’s not leave him out.

Compared to that we have Roger Stern, Terry Kavanagh, John Byrne, Paul Jenkins, Gerry Conway and Jim Owsley who were against it.

Conway’s opposition was possibly due to his going through a divorce at the time. Stern’s opposition was based upon his idea of MJ being stuck in the Silver Age but he wasn’t innately opposed to Spider-Man marrying in general. Jim Owsley on his linked to blog (where he routinely lies, including claiming Ron Frenz was potentially suicidal when he never was) had a stupid sexist rationale for disliking the marriage. John Byrne is creepy shithead who would’ve preferred Spider-Man was dating underage girls anyway and along with Terry Kavanagh never wrote a good Spider-Man story in his life. In Kavanagh’s case he never even wrote a good story in his life.

So of all those people only Paul Jenkins dislike of it wasn’t unjustified. But he was an outlier.

Every other writer either liked it, was neutral on it, disliked it for nonsensical reasons or didn’t know about good storytelling in the first place to make citing them worth a damn in the first place.

And aside from aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall of this...does the author realize Peter and MJ’s relationship and MJ’s whole character doesn’t begin and end in the years they were married?

Like he talks about their marriage as though this being bad proves their relationship and her character is bad when there was 20+ years of MJ prior to that.

“I think Peter has had better love interests over the years, including Gwen Stacy. ”

And the author would be wrong.

Gwen Stacy is neither better nor more interesting that Mary Jane.

That’s why THEY KILLED HER!

“Part of that is giving Mary Jane something to do. She's been a model and an actress, but the books were always more concerned with the superheroics, so you never really got the chance to feel her drive there. She was a nightclub owner, but again, the same problem persisted. ”

Except Spider-Man stories ARE NOT MORE CONCERNED WITH THE SUPERHEROICS!

My God. How the fuck can someone have read any number of Spider-Man stories and not realized, oh yeah, the book is about Peter’s life over all and his normal life is as if not MORE important than whoever he is punching this month.

By this logic Harry Osborn, Aunt May, Flash Thompson and literally every supporting cast member who isn’t J. Jonah Jameson or like Ashley goddam Kafka, is a better supporting character than Mary Jane.

Mary jane doesn’t have to be involved in the superhero side of Peter’s life because the Spider-Man series isn’t about that. It’s about his life in general and sometimes one blurs over into the other but not always and frankly if you go by the classic stories not even most of the time.

That’s why on the occasions where such things did happen it was a big deal.

“Other than supporting Peter Parker, what did Mary Jane Watson really want? ”

To be an actress

To be taken seriously as more than a model

To support her sick cousin

To earn a psychology degree

To avoid commitment

“Sometimes she just wanted Peter to not be Spider-Man anymore, which is a downer of a conflict.”

This is another lie.

The ONLY times during which Mary jane didn’t want Peter to be Spider-Man were during the Clone Saga when she was pregnant, he’d retired and Ben Reilly was the new Spider-Man and new main character (meaning there was no issue there) or during the Mackie/Byrne reboot where she was being written deliberately out of character as an act of sabotage.

Unless the author meant like in specific stories where Peter was injured and she didn’t want him to go off and be Spider-Man at that moment or in that specific context, as opposed to wholesale retiring. At which point...how is this a downer conflict? It’s a starkly realistic and emotionally justified conflict in a series built off the back of realistic emotions because Spider-Man is a human drama and soap opera FFS!

“Sometimes, things are good... ...sometimes, they're not.

Go to the article itself and notice the second image the author uses.

If you’ve ever encountered similar lines of anti-MJ/anti-marriage argument before those panels, that artwork or stuff similar to it might strike you as familiar.

Why?

Because it’s from the exact same story. Maximum Carnage.

Every asshole who tries to make this argument uses Maximum Carnage, one of the worst Spider-Man stories over all to bolster their claims. The repetition of scenes from this story (and usually the same scene) is telling because it’s either cherry picking from a notoriously bad story and pretending like it represented a norm (and removes it from important context FYI) or...these people don’t know what they are talking about and just parrot one another with the same examples.

“Over in the Ultimate Comics line, writer Brian Michael Bendis would give Mary Jane a career choice that dovetails well with superheroes: journalist. See, the reason DC Comics' Lois Lane works is her driving motivation—to be the best investigative journalist in the world—puts her on a path to run into Clark Kent and Superman. ”

Yeah and the problem is that MJ worked as well for decades even when she wasn’t a journalist. Shit she worked for the majority of Ultimate Spider-Man’s run prior to her becoming a journalist!

Yeah, remember that tiny piece of vital information the author conveniently ignored. For MOST of Ultimate Spider-Man’s 10 year tenure with Peter Parker as the lead character Mary Jane wasn’t a journalist!

Shit, she worked for her school paper so the idea that it made her involvement in heroics more organic is pretty bullshit.

More importantly prior to her journalist job Ultimate MJ’s role and function within the narrative was strikingly similar to her 616 married counterpart!

“Her intense curiosity and lack of self-preservation makes her endearing; the audience knows what she wants and the lengths she'll go to get it.”

And MJ’s goofy deameanor at times, inner strength, sociable nature, insecutirs, struggles with guilt and commitment make her endearing.

“So Insomniac decided to take the Ultimate version of Mary Jane and play it up to Lois Lane levels. She's an investigative journalist at the Daily Bugle searching for more on the recently-arrested Wilson Fisk. Her own adventures put her on the path to meeting with Spider-Man. You get that moment where they're both asking, "What are you doing here?" and you realize there's old, unmentioned romantic history. MJ already knows Peter is Spider-Man and she's fine with that side of his life. ”

And it works great...in a video game setting where you truly are spending 90% of your time in the middle of action and the plot needs to be entirely in service of that plot.

But in the context of a comic book more about the normal lives of the characters than revolving around superheroics and starring the most famous character (who’s clad in red and blue) of one of the two biggest companies in the world MJ as a journalist would die on it’s ass because it WOULD just be derivative of Lois Lane.

I mean Jesus Christ people also deride Black Cat and Norman Osborn for being derivative of Catwoman and Norman Osborn even though they deviate in big ways. But if Spider-Man major love interest/wife literally also became an investigative journalist and primarily interacted with Spider-Man (at least within the context of the main plot) within that role it would literally just be Lois Lane.

“This Mary Jane's problem is one of equal partnership. She's a great, inventive journalist. Sure, she could die on an investigation, considering where she decides to focus her talent, but in her mind, that's no different from a police officer or firefighter dying in the line of duty. The truth is important. This flips the dynamic a bit; her problem is that Peter doesn't acknowledge that she's also right where she needs to be. She's his equal, even if she doesn't have fancy Spider-powers. ”

  MJ was Peter’s equal in the comics too.

 Being someone’s equal as a person doesn’t mean doing the same job as them, working in the same line of work or directly contributing to the superhero action.

 You just need to be an equal in your personality and agency which in-universe MJ has had.

 This is to say nothing of how by this logic Alfred, Batman’s FATHER FIGURE, is not his equal or how Ganke Lee in Miles Morales comics wouldn’t really be HIS equal either or how, again, Spider-Man stories do not innately codify the superheroics as MORE important than the normal life stuff.

  “It's a great change.”

 Yes it is, in the context of a video game.

  “This Mary Jane is funny, a bit headstrong, and leaps sometimes before she looks. ”

 You mean just like comic book Mary Jane.

 “ Comic Mary Jane has many of these facets, but it's tough to get a grasp on what she really wants outside of Peter. ”

 Unless you’ve literally read the issue immediately after Peter meets her where she makes it clear she wants to be an actress. Or read any comic in the interim where she wants to have financial security, be taken seriously, reconcile with her family, indulge in/get over her commitment issues, help her cousin, learn psychology, etc.

 “Journalism doesn't have to be the answer, but there needs to be one that intersects with the lives of Peter and Spider-Man. ”

 No there doesn’t. In the real world couples jobs don’t have to intersect. Many of Peter’s supporting cast members do not have jobs that intersect with his life outside of the fact that they are his friends and/or family. This is true of other heroes too.

 MJ being Peter’s friend/girlfriend/wife is enough of a reason for her to intersect in his life and be featured in this stories, beyond that she can be given subplots of her own just like many other characters had.

 Two of the best subplots in Spider-Man involved Flash Thompson. One of them was his and Betty Brant’s affair and the other was his struggles with alcoholism. These were problems that for the longest time Peter wasn’t even aware of but they were compelling and entertaining unto themselves because Flash was a great character and we cared because he was Peter’s friend. However these stories also at no point ever really involved Spider-Man’s life. It was strictly confined to the problems of Peter Parker’s world.

 MJ’s job can be much the same.

 MJ’s normalacy is in fact a MAJOR reason why so many fans love her so much and why so many people love Spider-Man himself.

 Why make her more like Lois and her dynamic like that of Lois and Superman, those two characters who famously are awesome but also not as relatable as Spider-Man and MJ!

  “With Insomniac's Mary Jane, everything just clicks into place.”

 As would it for comic book MJ if you bothered to pay attention.

 “The problem here is Marvel never sat down and explained how this worked. Again, Peter's death was the impetus for Miles becoming Spider-Man. In the Ultimate comics, he had the powers long before he actually put on the costume. Miles' creator Brian Michael Bendis never sat down and explained the new backstory before he jumped over to DC Comics. We don't know the specifics of why this version of Miles took up the mantle, the question of his motivations always remains a bit fuzzy.”

  No it isn’t. Miles wasn’t REBOOTED into the 616 universe. He was integrated in with everyone’s memories altered around.

 His backstory was the same as in the Ultimate Universe he just literally, physically migrated over.

 Miles motivations were thus the same albeit undermined from a creative POV.

 “When the title of Spider-Man was passed on in the Ultimate universe, that made sense. But the question the Prime universe needs to answer now is: Why do they share the title? ”

 Because that was Miles’ chosen title and Peter gave his blessing for it and on a meta-level it is intended to represent how anyone can be Spider-Man.

 “Peter has offered it to Miles, but why does this version of Miles want it in return?”

  Because Ultimate Peter died and Miles wanted to honour him.

 It isn’t the case of he just ALWAYS existed in this universe. You cannot time travel back like 15 years into the 616 Marvel universe and locate baby Miles Morales He literally, physically doesn’t exist there.

 “That's really why these new versions of the characters work. I can see what they offer Peter and what he offers them in return. ”

 Comic book MJ offered Peter a human connection, a friend, a confidant, someone to support him and companionship.

 Why does she need to offer any more than that when in real life no one is hinging their deeper relationships upon the basis of what that person does for them in terms of their jobs or hobbies.

  “And that facet is sometimes missing in the Marvel Comics iteration. ”

 No it isn’t.

 “I see what they offer Peter, but sometimes it's hard to see what they get out of the relationship.”

 MJ gets a friend, companion, someone who understands and supports her, someone who helps emotionally fulfil her and make her a better person and sometimes someone who can help her in times of emotional and physical crises.

 “Great artists steal, Marvel. The comic publisher is already bringing Insomniac's Spider-Man into the the universe with the upcoming Spider-Geddon crossover (shown below). Now it's time to steal certain facets of the storytelling for the universe. Marvel Comics is stuck with the millstone of continuity around its neck, but that doesn't mean there aren't new directions the company can move Spider-Man and his amazing friends toward. ”

 Marvel has never rebooted it’s history since 1961.

 DC has done so in varying ways 5 or 6 times.

 Marvel outsells DC.

 Of all iconic characters owned by DC, Batman’s history has altered the least from one reboot into the next.

 Batman outsells every other DC character.

 In the 1980s Marvel fans had no access to the internet, few information books or other resources and few reprints with which to catch up upon the 20-25 years worth of history for the characters and of the few resources they did have not everyone had access to them.

 Marvel comics sold more physical copies back then than they do now.

 The highest selling Marvel titles of the 1980s and 1990s were the X-Men related titles which had objectively the most complicated, convoluted and least accessible .

 So STFU about too much continuity oh my God!

The Mogul in Search of a Kinder, Gentler Capitalism A self-made multimillionaire who married into a revered European banking dynasty, Lynn Forester de Rothschild now spends her time calling for higher taxes on the wealthy, stricter regulation of big business and a wholesale reordering of the capitalist system that has delivered her such privilege. It is an unlikely reformation for a woman who came from modest origins, made a fortune in the 1980s and could have spent her later years enjoying a sumptuous life of aristocracy. Born to a middle-class family in the New Jersey suburbs, Ms. Rothschild began her career at the white shoe law firm Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett, then started working with John Kluge, a telecommunications mogul, in the 1980s. Ms. Rothschild eventually struck out on her own, working for, running and founding a series of successful media companies. In 2000, she married Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, a British financier. (Henry Kissinger introduced them at the Bilderberg conference; the Clintons invited them to honeymoon at the White House.) Despite her pedigree, Ms. Rothschild has in recent years come to understand that while she and her associates have enjoyed the fruits of capitalism, not all have fared so well. Many workers are struggling to get by. The environment is in serious trouble. Government often cleans up the private sector’s messes. Sociable and well-connected, Ms. Rothschild has tapped her expansive network to launch a multipronged assault on the status quo. In 2014, she founded the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism, an effort to get business leaders more engaged in environmental and social issues. And she has parlayed that into a related group, the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, that is working with Pope Francis, and a new fund focused on socially responsible investing she founded with Jeff Ubben, a successful hedge fund manager. This interview was condensed and edited for clarity. Back when you were starting out in your career, were you concerned about some of the negative impacts of capitalism in the same way you are today? It was really different. I don’t think we realized how bad it was. Graduating from law school in 1980, I believed I was living the American dream. I was a skinny girl from nowhere who knew no one, who had aspirations for an interesting life that would make a difference. And I believed that was available to me if I worked hard and played by the rules. The mantra at that time, that was not said disparagingly, was “Greed is good.” There was an Ayn Rand view that if you pursue your interests, all of society is lifted. So I really did believe that all I needed to do was to pursue my career in a legal, ethical, exciting way, and I didn’t have to worry about society. When did it click for you that something wasn’t working? We didn’t anticipate the kind of disparity that developed over those 20 years when we started in 1980. And I don’t think people practicing shareholder primacy were evil. There was just too much greed. But by 2008 it was impossible to ignore. The concentration of wealth in America at that time already was back to levels we had during the Gilded Age. In the 1960s the ratio of C.E.O. pay to average worker pay was 25 to one. Today it is 320 to one. That has very conveniently created enormous personal wealth, which became the objective, as opposed to: What wealth have you left behind in society? How have you made the world better for your children, for your community? “Greed is good” was never a concept for Adam Smith. What do you see as the most problematic symptoms of our economic system today? Inequality of opportunity. We have to be honest that in each of our two recent crises — the great financial crisis and the Covid crisis — the government came to the aid of the wealthiest. Some have called it “socialism for the rich and capitalism for everyone else.” There’s something to that. The elites turn to government when the financial system is blown up or we have a health crisis. Government got us out of both of those problems, and it got us out with too much of the benefit going to the richest. So how do we equalize that? I personally am fine with higher taxes, if higher taxes lead to better distribution of opportunity, particularly for people of color and people in the lower part of the socioeconomic environment. I also believe that it is time that we listen more to our employees. It’s time that we create a more level playing field with respect to worker voice and worker involvement. This is hard stuff, because it can impact profit. A year ago you said Covid was going to change capitalism forever. In what way did you think it was going to change capitalism, and how do you think that all has actually played out? I’m probably always guilty of being overly optimistic. I believed that our moral compass would tell us that we need to take better care of the people who take care of us. But we saw starkly how we treated the people we called essential, how we were exposing them to this deadly disease. I personally find it difficult to understand why that is so hard for us as a society, and that’s why I founded the Council for Inclusive Capitalism. I had the disease. I was really sick. I thought I was going to die. I had a really bad case and I’m scared to death of it. What were the origins of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism? In June of 2015, Laudato Si was written by Pope Francis. By September, the Sustainable Development Goals were agreed to by the United Nations. By December, the Paris climate accord had been signed. You had every reason to believe that there was a sense of the common good. And if you go back and read Laudato Si, Pope Francis writes: “The lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated, and we are learning all too slowly the lessons of environmental deterioration.” He goes on to say that “by itself the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion.” What are some of the reforms you’d like to see? The Business Roundtable can put out as many press releases as it wants about stakeholder capitalism, but we still have companies losing billions of dollars, laying off tens of thousands of workers and still rewarding their C.E.O.s with tens of millions of dollars. Something is really broken. I do believe that C.E.O.s and boards are willing to share the wealth and do more. But the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable are going to go for tax policy and trade policy as their primary objective. I remember a person who was very senior in a previous administration told me that in his four years in office, only one C.E.O. asked to go and see him about an issue of the common good. Everyone was coming in to push what they needed for their own book. We need to profitably solve the problems of people and planet. That’s why business exists. Who’s to say that there shouldn’t be a government policy that prices the negative externalities that companies cost the taxpayer when full-time workers have to be on public assistance to lead a decent life? Why can’t there be a tax and a penalty on that? Why is Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world? He’s a nice guy, and at the same time he has tens of thousands of employees on public assistance. Why is that OK? Why do we have a government that lets that happen? Which do you think is more broken, American politics or capitalism? I think their problems feed upon each other. They’re creating a death spiral together and it’s got to be stopped. Politics and capitalism needs to return to a basic sense of decency. And that is actually why I reached out to the Holy Father, because I think that a lot of what it will take to change behavior is a moral and ethical reawakening. It’s not just one policy, it’s not just taxes, it’s not just reforming labor laws — all of which are important, and we need competent ethical people to do it. But at the core of it, it has to come from common decency. God did not invent the corporation. Society allows a corporation to exist, gives shareholders limited liability, and expects something in return. But we don’t just expect cheap widgets. How do you reconcile your critique of shareholder capitalism with the fact that you’re now working with a hedge fund manager? If there is going to be a system change, the capital markets need to reward shareholders. That is only going to happen if there are really talented investors who find the new levers of value creation, and are engaging actively with companies that are transforming at scale to become cleaner and more inclusive, and those companies become the ones that are the most valuable. Then we’ve created a race to the top. That’s why I’m in partnership with Jeff, who’s such a legend in shareholder value creation and transforming companies. I have 1,000 percent confidence in the integrity of Jeff, even though he’s been on the opposite side for many years. I trust many billionaires. Source link Orbem News #Capitalism #Gentler #Kinder #Mogul #Search

San Francisco Spent A Decade Being Rich, Important, And Hating Itself

David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images

A rider on a single-wheel electric scooter moves past a person adjusting their belongings on a sidewalk in San Francisco, Oct. 14.

In December 2019, as the decade drew to a close, thousands of 10-inch-long penis fish flopped ashore at Drakes Beach, about 50 miles north of San Francisco. Otherwise known as the fat innkeeper worm (Urechis caupo), the invasion of the phallic critters took over the beach, forcing out the locals. If you were looking for a metaphor to sum up what a decade of growth in the high-tech industry has done to the Bay Area, you couldn’t ask for something more apt. Unless, of course, the penis worms were libertarians.

Because, from a certain point of view, that’s been the core story here since the end of the Great Recession. Hordes of newly minted and newly wealthy tech bros, flush with Silicon Valley VC cash, ruined what once had been an all-are-welcome cool, gray city of love, where the funky landlady Anna Madrigal offered furnished rooms on Russian Hill for $170 a month. As the Jefferson Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner once joked, “San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.” If that were ever true, this was the decade in which reality finally closed back in.

At the end of the decade, how did the Bay Area end up in such dire shape? Perhaps our politicians, bought and sold by big business, opened the gates to a wave of capital and an influx of outsiders. That’s one way to tell the story of the decade of the technology industry in its capital, the San Francisco Bay Area.

And so, when the tech industry reignited our economy, we — newcomers and locals alike — didn’t have the capacity to grow.

But there’s another, which is perhaps more apt. In December, San Francisco’s Planning Commission approved the construction of five duplexes in Bernal Heights, where the median home price is just under a million and a half dollars. In the middle of the region’s excruciatingly well-documented and seemingly near-permanent housing crisis, it didn’t take the commission a month to approve the construction, or even a year. It took 41 years — four decades to approve just 10 new units of housing on a vacant hillside, kept that way by the opposition of neighbors who opposed construction, quite literally, in their backyards, and a system that prioritized their preferences over our needs.

This isn’t an anomaly. Across the street from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, a developer proposed to convert an all-but-empty mall into 2,400 homes. City voters said no. In 2013, San Francisco voters rejected a 141-unit condo building on the waterfront. Across the region, city councils, beholden to voters concerned about their own property values, dragged their feet in approving new housing. And so, when the tech industry reignited our economy, we — newcomers and locals alike — didn’t have the capacity to grow.

Politics is much less about who your friends are than who your enemies are. And in the last 10 years, the easiest enemies to find were the techies and the nimbys.

When he became the mayor of San Francisco in January 2011, Ed Lee presented himself as a compromise figure, one who could build consensus among the ever-warring factions of the city’s Democratic party. “I present myself to you as a mayor for everyone,” he said at the time. “A mayor for neighborhoods, a mayor for downtown, for business, for labor, for the powerless and the powerful, for the left, the right, and everyone in between — for everyone.”

In 2010, during the trough of the Great Recession, the regional unemployment rate reached 10.5%. So the next year Lee and the Board of Supervisors (San Francisco’s name for its city council) passed what became known as the Twitter tax break, an exemption on payroll taxes for new employees for six years. At the time it was estimated the legislation would save the company $22 million, in exchange for which it abandoned a threat to leave town for the valley, and moved to the offices it still occupies today, a stately building on the corner of Market and 10th streets.

For a moment, the Twitter tax break seemed as if it would make good on Lee’s promise to bring the city together.

The deal united members of the moderate wing of San Francisco’s Democratic Party with the progressives. It lured not just Twitter but several other tech companies, including customer service software maker Zendesk, to locate in a seedy part of San Francisco, better known for drug dealers than disruptors. When he unexpectedly ran for reelection in 2011, Lee’s allies cut a deeply goofy, but not unfunny campaign video featuring Facebook’s Sean Parker, Twitter’s Biz Stone, and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Giants pitcher Brian Wilson, and rapper MC Hammer.

Lee won in a rout, but the era of good feelings was short-lived.

In October 2012, San Francisco magazine ran a story by Salon founder David Talbot that posed the question that would dominate the rest of the decade. The title of the story said it all: “How Much Tech Can One City Take?”

Talbot’s answer: as little as possible.

“The unique urban features that have made San Francisco so appealing to a new generation of digital workers — its artistic ferment, its social diversity, its trailblazing progressive consciousness — are deteriorating, driven out of the city by the tech boom itself, and the rising real estate prices that go with it,” he wrote, adding, “And it’s not just about housing. Many San Franciscans don’t feel as if they’re benefiting from the boom in any way. While 23-year-olds are becoming instant millionaires and the rest of the digital technocracy seek out gourmet restaurants and artisanal bars, a good portion of the city watches from the sidelines, feeling left out and irrelevant.”

The progressive narrative hardened from there: Lee, desperate to attract businesses, had sold out the city to high-tech, throwing open the gates to every “Stanford asshole” (as Talbot would later put it) with a pulse and a business plan. Enter stock options, exit the soul of the city.

It was only a little more than a year later, in December 2013, that the next front in the local war against tech would open — this one covered in vomit.

Christiane Hübscher / Picture Alliance via Getty Image

Google busses pick up employees on the car park of the company in Mountain View, California, Nov. 6, 2015.

Because of the region’s clogged freeways, poorly designed public transit systems, and lack of housing near the main campuses of companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple, several tech giants had for years offered their employees shuttles to and from work. That winter, activists in San Francisco and Oakland blocked the path of the private shuttles that ferried workers who lived in the cities to their offices in Silicon Valley.

Demanding that tech companies pay for use of city streets, the protesters handed out a communiqué that blamed the tech industry for the rising cost of housing. (From the lowest point of the recession, the median inflation-adjusted cost of a home in the region had risen over $100,000 in just two years by 2013.) “Rents and evictions are on the rise,” they wrote. “Tech-fueled real estate speculation is the culprit. We say: Enough is Enough! The local government, especially Mayor Lee, has given tech the keys to shape the city to their fancy without the public having any say in it. We say, let’s take them back!”

The first protest occurred in December, and they lasted until April. In San Francisco’s Mission District, protesters stood in front of the buses as they loaded passengers. On the freeway, someone shot a projectile through a window. And in April in Oakland, a masked anarchist climbed on top of a bus and puked on its windshield.

Everyone had a hot take about the Google Bus protests. (This one was mine.) A UC Berkeley professor wrote that they were “synecdoches for the anger that many San Francisco residents feel towards technological privilege and its facilitation of a widening of a class divide in the city.” Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff rushed out a book that argued that protests showed that “the digital economy has gone wrong.”

Eventually, San Francisco’s city government muddled to a compromise. But by then, the issue had taken on a weight more symbolic than substantive.

The Google buses symbolized “the spaceships on which our alien overlords have landed to rule over us.”

And depending on which camp you found yourself in, there was one of two essays you’d brandish at dinner parties, yell about on Twitter, and pretend to have read that explained what the protests symbolized.

One was by the prolific writer Rebecca Solnit (Men Explain Things to Me) and published in February 2013. In the starkly titled “Google Invades,” she argues that the Google buses symbolized “the spaceships on which our alien overlords have landed to rule over us,” and compares the tech workers to the Prussian army invading Paris, while noting in passing that she, a Connecticut native, had sold her Mission District apartment to a Google engineer in 2011.

From one point of view, Solnit was a lyrical truth-teller. From another, a Boomer hypocrite, who benefited smartly from gentrification before decrying it.

It took until the following year for those inclined to the second point of view to find their voice, which came under the guise of a long post at TechCrunch by journalist Kim-Mai Cutler in which she tries to figure out how, as her title went, “burrowing owls led to vomiting anarchists.”

“NIMBY-ists in every city try and shove the housing issue onto someone else.”

To hear Cutler explain it, it wasn’t the tech industry that caused housing prices to skyrocket. Rather, it was a collective action problem: Too many people, for reasons that made sense individually, opposed new housing. That meant that, collectively, we were straight out of luck.

Thanks to homeowners protecting their prices, activists concerned about gentrification, preservationists fretting about the erosion of the physical traces of history, and environmentalists protecting those burrowing owls, San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area simply had not built enough housing to keep up with demand. The city “has added an average of 1,500 units per year for the last 20 years. Meanwhile, the U.S. Census estimates that the city’s population grew by 32,000 people from 2010 to 2013 alone,” she wrote. And what was true of San Francisco was true of every other city in the Bay Area, which added some 600,000 people over the course of the decade: “NIMBY-ists in every city try and shove the housing issue onto someone else.”

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

A homeless man sleeps on the sidewalk near San Francisco City Hall, Dec. 5.

The first time I met Sonja Trauss, we were breaking and entering. Coffees in hand on a sunny afternoon, we ducked under a railing at the Transamerica Pyramid to sit in a spot it didn’t quite seem we were allowed to be.

The former math teacher had just founded the SF Bay Area Renters’ Federation, an advocacy group of tenants that argued for more housing. It was the first moment in what became the “yes in my backyard” — YIMBY — movement. Trauss gives much of the credit for the spark to Cutler, telling me back then that the article “made organizing pro-density renters easier.”

Since then, the YIMBYs, and their elected allies, have notched several victories. In 2014, San Francisco Supervisor David Chiu narrowly defeated Supervisor David Campos, whose response to the housing crisis in his part of San Francisco was to propose a moratorium on market-rate housing construction, a measure that the voters defeated. Two years later, their colleague, Supervisor Scott Wiener won election to the state Senate. Wiener would go on to become the most consistent state legislator in working to accelerate the production of new housing, the author of a bill that would require cities to locate dense housing near transit hubs. YIMBY-supported candidates would also win office as San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose mayors, although Trauss was heavily defeated in her own bid for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2018.

“They aren’t leaving because they want to.”

Trauss lost in part, she thinks, thanks to a perception that the YIMBYs still represent short-timers, young workers who are not yet invested in where they live. “It was so sad,” she says. “I would talk to people who had lived here for 20 or 30 years. They would say, ‘These young people come to this city and leave after three years. They don’t even care. They are just here temporarily.’ They aren’t leaving because they want to. They are coming here, really trying to stay, and getting pushed out. You see that happening, and you think they are here for an extended vacation, but it’s really a pathological process. They are displaced.”

And while it’s true that their groups have broad support today, the YIMBYs drew much of their earliest support from leaders of the technology industry, including a $100,000 gift from Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and fundraising help from Nat Friedman, a Microsoft vice president. Critics seized on that funding to claim that Trauss, were she not a shill for developers, was a tout for the reterritorialization of the cities by tech-fueled neoliberal capital. As former chair of the Berkeley Planning Commission Zelda Bronstein wrote in 2018, “Yimbys propagate the capitalist growth imperative. Using housing as a proxy for growth, they endow the limitless expansion of population with a seductive moral charge.”

And many in the tech sector went out of their way in the last decade to be impossible to defend. There were world-historical villains like Peter Thiel, the billionaire who sued Gawker into oblivion after it outed him, and Tom Perkins, the venture capitalist who wrote the Wall Street Journal a letter during the Google bus protest to “call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich.’”

We had local-level assholes, too.

There were state-sized targets of ire, too, like Sun Microsystems cofounder Vinod Khosla, who bought a coastal property in 2008 in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, and tried to cut off access to the public beach there. Or venture capitalist Tim Draper, who made California voters waste their time on his proposal to split the state into six for no better reason, it seemed, than he was bored. Even San Francisco’s old money low-key hated guys like them, if you believe Vanity Fair.

We had local-level assholes, too. Startup founder Peter Shih wrote a 2013 Medium screed complaining that San Francisco was filled with “49ers, [women] who are 4’s but behave like they are 9’s.” There was Greg Gopman, a hapless techie who excoriated San Francisco’s homeless in graphic terms. “In downtown SF the degenerates gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy, they act like they own the center of the city,” he wrote the same year. “Like it’s their place of leisure.” Then there was Sarah Slocum, who got thrown out of Molotov’s, a Lower Haight bar, in 2014 for wearing Google Glass and claimed she was the victim of a hate crime. And the less we talk about T.J. Miller’s 2015 performance at the Crunchies, the better.

And I haven’t even mentioned Larry Ellison, the Oracle cofounder who inflicted his fancy boat race on us in 2013, at which his yacht-racing team cheated.

Point being: This decade has been such that, were you inclined to agree with Cutler or with Solnit, you could find plenty of evidence to support your point of view.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Housing activists stand in a mock living room during a demonstration in front of a home on the verge of being foreclosed on in San Francisco, Nov. 22, 2011.

As the decade comes to a close, in many ways we’re no closer to a synthesis than when we started. Tech’s villains continue to be awful, both individually and collectively. And our housing production remains anemic.

And yet there are signs of hope.

In search of it, I head to the roof of the Hamilton Families shelter in the Tenderloin. Here, standing next to her husband and Mayor London Breed, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announces that she is donating $1.35 million to the nonprofit (Google.org gave $850,000 and Wojcicki $500,000). Wojcicki discovered the shelter, which houses 200 people and serves some 500 more, after her daughter was assigned a school project on homelessness. The two visited, and Wojcicki decided she’d like to be more involved.

The donation is part of a larger push by the tech giant, which bought the video site in 2006, to address housing and homelessness. In June, the company announced a $1 billion investment, comprising the development of 15,000 new homes on property it owns, a $250 million investment fund to support affordable housing subsidized for low-income people, and $50 million in grants to nonprofits. In October, Facebook made a similar commitment that it estimated at $1 billion and In November, Apple did too, at an estimated $2.5 billion.

Toting up all three, if all of the promised projects were to come to fruition, it would bring at least 35,000 new units of housing online (Apple has not made public how many housing units it intends to build), something like three times all the new housing construction in the region in the past year.

On the roof of Hamilton Families, I meet the chief of public affairs for Google in California, Rebecca Prozan. She’s something like a diplomat for the company, working to keep local officials as happy as they can be. It’s ironic, but although the company has power that exceeds nation-states, its plans to redevelop its Bay Area still need to be approved by city councils representing 80,000 people.

Google would rather not be in the shuttle business, she tells me. Those commutes are long — two or three hours a day — and that’s why the company is hoping to develop mixed-use projects in San Jose, near the Diridon train station, as well across the region.

Prozan understands that the backlash to the industry in which she now finds herself is real. But she attributes it to a fear of change. The neighborhood restaurant closing. The owners of a long-popular bar deciding they wanted to sell. The shuttles became a visual representation of that, she thinks, but not the cause.

The shuttles seemed to have raised prices in areas right near the stops.

I do think she’s mostly right, although I disagree about the shuttles. Recently, I changed my mind on their impact, thanks to this research paper by Brian Asquith, an economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute. He found that within a kilometer of the shuttles, prices of homes went up and so did evictions of renters. “A fair interpretation of my work is that the shuttles seemed to have raised prices in areas right near the stops,” Asquith told me. “Every kilometer you get closer to the shuttle stop, prices appreciated by 5 to 18%.”

But, as Prozan rejoins when I tell her about the study, that’s likely true of public mass transit as well — and not an argument against building bus and BART stops. And besides, she points out, commuting in a shuttle is better for the environment and congestion than commuting in individual cars.

As much as I find to agree with when I talk to Prozan, Google seems like an outlier. Too big, too rich, and frankly, there’s plenty on the negative side of the ledger. The day after we speak, the company fires a fifth employee activist for questioning its policies. Google is so big and important that it’s only a stand-in for Google. To figure out what the Bay Area’s equilibrium might look like in the next decade, it helps to look elsewhere.

In the mid-Market neighborhood, a few blocks from Twitter and a massive fancy retail space that’s stood unoccupied since it was finished in 2016, is Zendesk. I’m in an upper-story office, surveying the Crazy Horse strip club with Tiffany Apczynski, the vice president of public policy and social impact at Zendesk, who points out that in renderings of a new building to be constructed next door to it, the architectural firm was careful to leave out the strip club. A former journalist, she still has an eye for a compelling anecdote, and I appreciate it, because it perfectly sums up the jostling tension between the old and the new, or the present and the future, here in the neighborhood that feels like the crucible of tech in San Francisco.

Zendesk, which makes customer service software, is far less known than Twitter. But it also benefited from the tax break, and now employs 1,100 people across 174,000 square feet in four buildings in mid-Market — including, oddly enough, the space where BuzzFeed used to have our San Francisco office. (We didn’t get the tax break.)

“Jackson, Mississippi, is in 1985, and they want to get an economy. So, careful what you wish for.”

In 2011, when Apczynski’s company moved here, it had 60 employees. “I recognized right away that this could go in a really bad direction,” she says, so she set about getting its coders and product managers out into the community, rubbing shoulders with people living on the streets. The company’s employees have run bingo games at the Curry Senior Center, assembled harm-reduction kits at Glide Memorial Church for people with drug addictions, and, as part of their first-day orientation, each one volunteers at the St. Anthony Foundation, which serves meals to the homeless. Next year, one of Zendesk’s designers will help St. Anthony’s redesign their clothing giveaway program.

“We didn’t want to be heroes,” she says. “but we did want to be neighbors.”

Apczynski is a 25-year resident of San Francisco, and plans to run for office here someday. But she worries that her 7-year-old daughter might not be able to afford to live in the city she’s growing up in. “If things don’t change, she probably won’t be able to afford to stay here. I want my baby girl living next to me as long as she can,” she says.

Apczynski recognizes that her company had to build trust — and that it took many years. And she’s not blind to the attitude that the Bay Area could solve many of its problems if it simply drove the techies into the Bay. She rejects that idea, though.

“I’m on the board of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, and in 2017 we went on a tour of the Deep South. Selma, Birmingham. Jackson, Mississippi. While we were there, I met some startups. They’re hungry to get venture capital. I think about that a lot when that San Francisco attitude comes to the forefront of, ‘Get out, I want to go back to 1985.’ It’s like, Jackson, Mississippi, is in 1985, and they want to get an economy. So, careful what you wish for.”

That said, she’s not tech supremacist either. She tells me something in passing that sounds simple, but is profoundly complex to achieve.

“Let’s be neighbors here,” she says. “Let’s be residents.” ●

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Ride For Love | From Sea To Summit in Andalusia

There’s something about hills that attract cyclists like wasps. And there’s something about Spain that does the same thing.

To me, cycling is all about effort and reward, the balance of which makes a ride fun rather than simply hard work. Hills sum this up perfectly – they’re all about contrast and and pay offs. There’s the contrast between the speed of descending and the snail pace of going skywards; one so easy, the other a battle. Then those old stalwarts pleasure and pain are starkly prominent, somehow so closely entwined as to be virtually indistinguishable though frequently they reside at opposing sides of the spectrum.

    Hills are great leveller as they challenge everyone; you just ride them at your own pace. As I explained to a new cyclist as we climbed up a five kilometre stretch at an 8% average gradient, no one truly finds them easy. Hills always hurt as when you get fitter, you still tend to push yourself the same amount as you always have – you just ascend more quickly. Those guys at the front probably hurt the same amount as you do at the back and they’re most definitely as elated as you to arrive at the top.

 All of this partly explains a couple of weeks ago a very mixed group of us flew to Spain to attempt to climb 15,000 metres over three days and ride the highest road in Europe. We all wanted a tough and fun adventure that would test us and hills never fail on that account. We knew we wanted to pit ourselves against nature and gravity. But most of all, we wanted to raise money for Tribe Freedom Foundation and help victims of human trafficking.

  Day 1

  With several inexperienced cyclists amongst our group, the first day was always going to be a good way to suss out how much time we were going to need to complete our ride, how often we would stop and crucially, how early we needed to leave each day – no one wants to be in charge of a large group of riders after darkness falls, particularly when they’re going through the Parque National de Sierra Nevada.

      To be on the safe side, we rolled out as the sun rose leaving the resort of Aguilas behind as we headed along the Andulucian coast towards Mojacar. The roads were entirely deserted as we rode through the arid landscape along a pleasantly undulating road. The interior to our right was a jumble of rocks and small pointed hills covered in low lying shrubbery that gave them appearance of fuzzy felt toys.

As we passed resorts of white, blocky buildings in peaceful bays, we wondered where on earth everyone was – the weather was fantastic and the temperature just perfect. It felt like we’d been let into a closely guarded secret; that Andalucia is brilliant for cycling and you have it to yourself outside high season.

    After lunch at the seaside – I don’t know how the Spanish make a plain omelette in bread with some tomato rubbed on it taste so good – we headed into the Parque National Cabo de Gata- Nijar, a volcanic area with a hot desert climate that makes for year round sunshine. Like the coast, the area was deserted, this time dotted with deserted goldmines and abandoned villages. The roads were pretty much ours and ours alone.

    Day 2

Our second day started with a tour of Algeria’s cycle paths before a 50km stretch that was pretty much all uphill. In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range it’s obvious why the region was the location for many of the ‘Spaghetti Western’ films, so called as so many were made by Italian directors such as Sergio Leone. Vivid purple cactus fruit enlivened the otherwise sparse, dusty landscape.

      I enjoyed riding entirely alone for a stretch, feeling tiny in the vast openness as I settled into a steady rhythm and zoned out. I love the peacefulness of a good climb – going slow gets rid of wind noise and with constant pedalling there’s not even the sound of a freewheel. A falcon of some kind hovered to my left, scrutinising the sun bleached plains.

     About 100km in, after another decent climb we were looking forward to around 35km of descent, as promised by our guide. That actually turned out not to be the case – the very fun downhill segments were punctuated with sharp little climbs that tested the legs. Still, the final section, from Cadia to Orgiva turned out to be the best and most attractive part of the day, something the organisers of the Vuelta must have thought too for we saw writing from this year’s edition on the road, albeit going in the opposite direction.

    Day 3

The third and final day was the one that was really meant to test us. With two days of climbing already in our legs, 3500m more was going to be a challenge. We’d planned to ride all the way up to the summit of the Sierra Nevada, an epic ride that would take us on the highest road in Europe. We also planned to ride about 80km and take on 1800m of ascent just to get to the start of the climb to the summit.

It turned out Mother Nature had other ideas, which was hugely disappointing as we wanted to succeed, not just for our own personal reasons but due to the fact we were fundraising for Tribe Freedom Foundation. But with snow, gales and -6 degrees Celsius forecast we couldn’t risk riding to Sierra Nevada.

  The ride to Monachil was brilliant nonetheless. Another early start saw us climb from Orgiva as the sun rode behind the town to illuminate the perfect ribbon of road that hugged the hillside. After the pretty town of Lanjaron we made for Lake Beznarm, a huge reservoir ringed with hills before heading uphill again. An 18% climb halfway through the day felt cruel yet amusing for its ridiculousness and was followed by a lovely descent past vineyards. Wet through but happy, with heavy legs and sore shoulders, at Monachil we celebrated finishing the ride together with glasses of red and bread dipped in the finest olive oil… or at least it tasted as such after so many miles.

       Along with the company, the hills were what had made the ride special. Without them we wouldn’t have had such incredible views and so much time to enjoy our surroundings, so many fun descents or an excuse to carb-load each evening. Those hills brought pleasure, they brought pain and they brought us all together. And more importantly, they helped us raise over £10,000 for Tribe Freedom Foundation.

    The post Ride For Love | From Sea To Summit in Andalusia appeared first on Bikes 'N' Stuff.

from Bikes 'N' Stuff http://bit.ly/2Dxj1oq

The sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have brought out something in conservatives. Even elite Never Trump writers have started lining up to defend the nominee and the president behind him.

“Ever since the rise of Donald Trump, the conservative movement has oriented itself as a circular firing squad. The attacks on Kavanaugh broke that formation,” conservative pundit Seth Mandel writes in the Atlantic. “Mild-mannered anti-Trump conservatives would, in private conversations, fume at Kavanaugh’s treatment and insist Democrats had crossed a line and could not be appeased — the judge had to become a justice.”

Eli Lake, a neoconservative columnist for Bloomberg, put the point more bluntly in a Thursday morning tweet: “Congratulations Democrats. Your Kavanaugh circus has united the right behind Trump.”

On this analysis, Democrats’ investigation into serious and credible allegations of sexual assault — including an accusation that Kavanaugh pinned down a teenage girl, groped her, and held his hand over her mouth to prevent her from crying out — are so partisan that they are rallying even sober Republicans to Trump’s side.

It’s a claim that is, more than anything else, an expression of narcissism. The truth is that Republicans have been united around Trump long before Kavanaugh: The mostly DC and New York-based conservatives who criticize Trump have never really had a constituency in the actual American public. The Kavanaugh hearings may be truly be a turning point in elite conservative thinking, but they are generals in search of an army.

Trumpism was able to seize the commanding heights of the Republican Party easily. What the elites won’t admit is that when push comes to shove, and it becomes a question of Republicans versus Democrats, elite conservatives will hold their noses and side with their team. The Kavanaugh episode proves what we already knew: The conservative opposition to Trump is a sham.

Take a look at this chart, from the polling firm Civiqs, of Trump’s approval rating. It shows Republican approval of the president from the beginning of his presidency, through many of its major controversies, right up until this Tuesday:

Civiqs

Trump has had a approval rating near 90 percent among Republicans for basically his entire presidency. Nothing — not the travel ban, not Charlottesville, not the family separation controversy, nothing — really put a dent in that. Christine Blasey Ford publicly came forward with her allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh on September 16; the Civiqs data shows no change.

This isn’t just one pollster. Gallup’s tracking poll has had Trump’s approval rating among Republicans steadily in the 80s for almost his entire presidency; a Pew analysis of its data on Trump describes his approval rating as “remarkably stable” throughout his first 18 months, adding that there was consistently “a wider gap between Republicans’ and Democrats’ views of Trump than for any other U.S. president in the modern era of polling.”

Now, it’s possible that registered Republicans aren’t the right people to poll. It could be that many Never Trump Republicans now identify as independents when contacted by pollsters.

If that were true, then you’d expect to see a significant increase in Trump’s overall approval ratings since the Kavanaugh controversy began, as conservative-leaning independents came home. But there’s limited evidence of that.

Gallup’s polls of independents finds that Trump’s approval rating among independents has gone up by 3 points since the Kavanaugh controversy began, from 34 to 37, but it’s still lower than it was in August (39 percent). Trump’s Gallup numbers have been somewhere in the 30s for much of 2018, sometimes higher and sometimes lower, and there’s little evidence to show that the post-Kavanaugh data is anything outside the norm.

Similarly, the Civiqs numbers suggest a slight shift towards Trump since the Kavanaugh hearings began among independents, but not a major divergence from the overall 2018 numbers. Trump’s -6 net approval rating among independents as of Tuesday (50 disapprove-44 approve) is a bit worse than the -3 number it hit in mid-April (48-45):

(Civiqs)

So while it is possible that Trump’s handling of the Kavanaugh allegations has indeed helped him gain support from a small percentage of wavering independents, it’s a matter of a few percentage points, at most, among the sub-sample of Americans who identify as independents. And we’ve seen a narrowing at other times as well during 2018; there’s not yet any reason to believe this time is different.

Even if the slight post-Kavanaugh increase is real, the data isn’t good enough for us to know who these independents are. For all we know, these independents aren’t disgruntled center-right conservatives at all, but rather relatively non-ideological men who support Trump’s aggressive pushback against women accusing a high-profile man of sexual assault (polling suggests opinion on Kavanaugh is stratified by gender).

Mandel, in his Atlantic piece, argued that the Kavanaugh allegations are a defining moment in solidifying conservative support for Trump. “In terms of ideological and partisan sorting, no single event in Trump’s presidency has had anything like this impact. And nothing will be quite the same no matter how this ends,” he writes.

The data so far suggests otherwise. There is no wave of Republicans lining up behind the president, nor is there any tangible evidence of conservative independents coming home en masse. If elite Never Trumpers are moving back to the president, then it looks like they’re doing so on their own.

Now, there is a credible argument that the Kavanaugh fight is helping the president politically. The Washington Post’s James Hohmann has argued that Kavanaugh is driving up enthusiasm among Republican voters for the midterm elections: GOP supporters who might not have been willing to vote otherwise are getting angry, and are now getting ready to turn out at the polls.

This could be true, though the evidence for it is fairly thin (read FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver for the details). If it is, though, the mechanism is not wavering Republicans changing their mind about Trump: It’s people who already support the president, but weren’t really excited to vote, getting really pumped about backing their guy in November. It’s a story not of an ideological shift, but rising enthusiasm among Trump’s base.

This points to the forces really at work here. The Trump-GOP defense of Kavanaugh has largely amounted to a defense of privilege: An increasingly-obvious backlash against the MeToo movement and social change more broadly. It’s best summarized by Trump’s suggestion that he’s more worried about boys being falsely accused than girls actually being assaulted, or Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) now-immortal quote from a Senate debate the day after Ford and Kavanaugh’s testimony: “I’m a single white male from South Carolina, and I’m told I should just shut up, but I will not shut up.”

This argument has been paired with a partisan attack on Democrats as somehow being unfair or cruel to Kavanaugh by forwarding these allegations, an argument the nominee made himself in his testimony when he invented a conspiracy to undermine him motivated by pro-Clinton rage.

“This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election,” Kavanaugh said. “Fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons, and millions of dollars in money from outside, left-wing opposition groups.”

“The Trump-era degradation of American conservatism is bringing out my inner liberal”

These twin appeals, backlash politics and partisanship, have formed the core of Trump’s appeal since Day 1. His argument has always been that I will “make America great again” by rolling back social change, and I’ll stick it to the Democrats in the process. This is the argument that seems to be exciting the Republican base — and, crucially, bringing Republicans who claim to be repulsed by Trump into his camp.

Some Never Trumpers, admirably, have seen this for what it is. But in doing so, they have come to see themselves as alienated from not just Trump, but conservatism in general.

“Some defenses of Kavanaugh are bringing out my inner feminist,” Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of the conservative Weekly Standard, tweeted. “The Trump-era degradation of American conservatism is bringing out my inner liberal.”

Most Never Trump conservatives refuse to admit what Kristol has: that the problem isn’t just Trump, but the Republican Party and conservative movement in general. Trump’s regressive social stances and hyper-partisanship are what make him popular in the GOP: If you are to opposed to Trump, then you need to challenge him on that terrain.

But when the choice is put out before Never Trumpers so starkly — either aid and abet Trumpism, or else side with Democrats — they choose the former, time and again. Partnering with the other tribe on something as important as the future of the Supreme Court is unthinkable.

“For the first time since Donald Trump entered the political fray, I find myself grateful that he’s in it,” the New York Times columnist Bret Stephens writes in his Thursday column. “I’m grateful because Trump has not backed down in the face of the slipperiness, hypocrisy and dangerous standard-setting deployed by opponents of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.”

When supposed Never Trumpers like Stephens write things like this, they are showing you who they really are. Believe them.

Original Source -> Brett Kavanaugh proves the Never Trump movement was a sham all along

via The Conservative Brief

Southern Baptist leader under fire after criticism of Trump

By Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Washington Post, March 13, 2017

Concern is mounting among evangelicals that Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s policy arm, could lose his job following months of backlash over his critiques of President Trump and religious leaders who publicly supported the Republican candidate. Any such move could be explosive for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which has been divided over politics, theology and, perhaps most starkly, race.

More than 100 of the denomination’s 46,000 churches have threatened to cut off financial support for the SBC’s umbrella fund, according to Frank Page, president of the executive committee. The committee is studying whether the churches are acting out of displeasure with Moore because it has received more threats to funding over him than over any other “personality issue” in recent memory, said Page, who will meet with Moore today.

Since he was elected in 2013, Moore, 45, has been praised by younger evangelicals for challenging the political approach of an older generation. He is also very popular among many evangelicals of color, who have welcomed Moore’s promotion of racial justice, including his vigorous opposition to public displays of the Confederate flag.

A threat to Moore’s job would have a “chilling” effect on efforts toward racial reconciliation, said Thabiti Anyabwile, a pastor of Anacostia River Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Washington. “The fallout will be the denomination signaling to African American and other ethnic groups that they’re tone deaf and disinterested in that membership,” said Anyabwile, who is black.

But Moore’s anti-Trump activism during the presidential campaign and criticism of his followers continued to upset many established white Southern Baptist leaders, who question whether Moore can now lobby effectively for their concerns with the Trump administration.

More than 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump, according to exit polls, and many did so with the belief that they thought he would appoint a Supreme Court justice who opposes abortion.

Some say the debate is less about Moore’s politics than it is about Moore, whom some view as arrogant and out of touch with many rank-and-file Southern Baptists, particularly in rural churches.

The controversy surrounding Moore appears to extend beyond his opposition to Trump to encompass a larger debate over white evangelical alignment with Trump and the Republican Party.

During his tenure, Moore has criticized the involvement of evangelicals in political affairs, calling into question past strategies of the Religious Right. He called on younger evangelicals in particular to reject the old idea of a “moral majority” and embrace a role as “prophetic minority.”

Moore, who said he could vote for neither major party candidate, was an early critic of Trump and the evangelical leaders who supported him, accusing them of “normalizing an awful candidate.” When other Southern Baptist leaders met at Trump Tower last summer, Moore suggested they had “drunk the Kool-Aid.”

Trump drew attention to Moore when he tweeted in May that Moore was “a nasty guy with no heart!” Moore replied, “Sad!”

After a report about a videotape of Trump’s lewd comments directed at women was published by The Washington Post, Moore tweeted outrage at leaders who still continued to back the candidate.

Former SBC president Ronnie Floyd, who sits with other Southern Baptists on Trump’s advisory council, said some leaders were especially upset by Moore’s delivery.

“I have no problem with a minister articulating concern over an issue. But at the same time, there’s a way to do it,” Floyd said. “It’s a matter of being able to do it and keep respect for everyone who may disagree.”

In an ironic twist, Moore’s lack of White House access reflects his belief that evangelicals should be prophetic outsiders, although no one thought such a shift would take place under a Republican president, said religion columnist Jonathan Merritt, who is son of former SBC president James Merritt and supports Moore.

After the election, Moore wrote that his criticism was for “a handful of Christian political operatives excusing immorality and confusing the definition of the gospel.”

“But there were also pastors and friends who told me when they read my comments they thought I was criticizing anyone who voted for Donald Trump,” Moore wrote. “I told them then, and I would tell anyone now: if that’s what you heard me say, that was not at all my intention, and I apologize.”

But some thought his apology did not go far enough.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist, told a TownHall columnist that he was “utterly stunned that Russell Moore is being paid by Southern Baptists to insult them.”

Moore also has been outspoken on immigration and refugees, often not necessarily reflecting mainstream white evangelical attitudes. For instance, Moore effectively denounced Trump’s refugee executive order, while 76 percent of evangelicals say they approve of it.

Though Moore has not changed the SBC’s stance on policy positions, his willingness to diverge from the evangelical pack has made him enormously popular among a younger generation and people of color.

Although important Southern Baptist leaders have opposed Moore, he has also received key support from black Southern Baptist leaders.

While Moore did not start the SBC’s conversation on racial reconciliation, he has helped it progress by speaking out forcefully about the nation’s racial climate, making it one of his key focuses at ERLC.

The denomination has gone through a significant realignment before. In the 1980s, Southern Baptists hotly debated the interpretation of the Bible as President Ronald Reagan took office. During his two terms, conservatives in the SBC tended to side with Reagan while moderates tended to side with Jimmy Carter-style Democrats, said Nathan Finn, a Southern Baptist historian. The debates led to nearly 2,000 churches breaking away to form the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship that ordains women.

“The last time Southern Baptists were this divided, the Republican Party was reinventing itself,” said Finn, who is dean of Union University’s School of Theology and Missions.

In addition to topics such as immigration and Muslim rights, Southern Baptists have also been embroiled in a theological debate over how to understand salvation that has also divided the denomination along generational lines.

During last year’s annual convention, two Southern Baptist leaders went head to head in a presidential election that represented a generational and theological divide. Southern Baptists were evenly split between J.D. Greear, a younger pastor, and Tennessee pastor Steve Gaines, who was perceived as representing an older generation of Southern Baptists. After neither received enough votes in a runoff, Greear withdrew from the race and Gaines became president. Gaines declined to comment.

Greear said Moore has represented a younger generation well with his tone and his hesitancy toward partisanship. He said part of the generational debate involves how deeply the denomination of 15 million members should venture into policy beyond abortion and civil rights. He and others of his generation question, for example, whether Southern Baptists should weigh in on specifics of refugee policy.

A Southern Baptist who ventures too far out from the political mainstream for the denomination, like Moore, risks being cut adrift, Finn said.

“If you’re one step in front of Southern Baptists, you’re a leader,” he said. “If you’re two steps in front, you’re a prophet. Three steps in front of Southern Baptists? You’re a target. A lot of Southern Baptists think Russell Moore is three or four steps in front of Southern Baptists.”

The 411 on Diabetes + Thyroid Disease

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/the-411-on-diabetes-thyroid-disease/

The 411 on Diabetes + Thyroid Disease

My dad has hypothyroidism, as does my grandmother. For my whole life, my dad has taken a tiny little pill every morning to make sure his metabolism functions properly. I always thought that compared to diabetes, thyroid disease wasn't very "serious" — all my dad needed to do was pop a pill! — and that it was nothing I needed to worry about anyway. But then, because of my diabetes and my "genetic predisposition," my endocrinologist insisted on starting to examine my thyroid regularly...

But despite my risk factors, I never knew much about thyroid disease. Now's as good a time as any to learn.

January is actually National Thyroid Awareness Month, so for this edition of our 411 series on diabetes complications and co-morbidities, we're taking a look at another body part in distress: the thyroid.

What Does It Do Again?

The thyroid is a little butterfly-shaped gland that lives in the middle of your neck, and it's part of the body's endocrine system, where diabetes also dwells. This system controls your body's metabolism. One of the thyroid's primary responsibilities is to manage your metabolism by producing two thyroid hormones: T3 and T4. An overactive thyroid can cause weight loss, a quick heartbeat, and other signs that your body is "on the go" a little too much. The opposite, an underactive thyroid, leaves people feeling sluggish, and causes weight gain and slow heartbeat. Essentially, your body's normal equilibrium slows down.

Turns out, thyroid issues are incredibly common. They're so widespread, in fact, that Oprah was all on about it a few years ago. Thyroid disease affects 30 million people in the US — and some experts think thyroid disease may affect nearly 56 million Americans.

Note that "thyroid disease" is actually an umbrella term for several different conditions that can affect this gland, including:

hypothyroidism

hyperthyroidism

autoimmune thyroid disease, which includes Graves' Disease and Hashimoto's Disease

goiter, which is an enlargement of the thyroid

thyroiditis

thyroid cancer

As you can imagine, none of these are good news for your body.

There are a whole host of different risk factors for thyroid disease, and you guessed it, diabetes is one of them! Experts estimate that about 30% of people with diabetes will be affected with a thyroid disease, so it's a big one for us.

Diabetes itself does not cause thyroid issues, but those with an autoimmune condition are automatically at an increased risk for other conditions. In the case of thyroid disease, PWDs are at risk for the two autoimmune-type of thyroid diseases, Graves' Disease (hyperactive thyroid) or Hashimoto's Disease (underactive thyroid). Approximately 10% of type 1 PWDs will have a thyroid condition. Although type 2 diabetes is not an autoimmune disorder, there's also an increased incidence in thyroid diseases, but for reasons that researchers can't explain. One theory is that thyroid disease and type 2 diabetes both affect the elderly, although we've learned that's not 100% true in all cases. On top of that, women are at a much greater risk for thyroid issues. Once again: lucky us!

How Can You Tell?

The symptoms of hyperthyroid and hypothyroid are starkly different, and it can be difficult to tell there is an issue right away because symptoms can develop very slowly. They also often match symptoms for a whole list of other conditions, so it can be tricky to figure out the culprit. This is why regular thyroid screenings are important.

Hyperthyroidism symptoms include quick pulse and pounding heart, weight loss despite an increased appetite, shortness of breath when exercising, muscle weakness or tremors, and trouble concentrating.

As you can probably guess, hypothyroidism symptoms are the polar opposite: fatigue and sleepiness, persistent feeling of being cold, dry skin, brittle hair, weight gain despite no change in diet, low blood pressure or a slow pulse. Hypothyroidism can also affect fertility in women. Yikes!

Symptoms of thyroid conditions can sometimes be confused with symptoms of diabetes, or attributed to other circumstances. Take veteran diabetes journalist David Mendosa, who wrote about his diagnosis with hypothyroidism last Spring. He writes, "My feet were cold most of the time. Even when I wore thick woolen socks to be, my feet were often so uncomfortable that they interfered with my sleep. Since I have diabetes, I assumed that my problem was that I had one of the most common complications of our condition, peripheral neuropathy. So I focused all the more on controlling my blood glucose levels in hopes of reversing my problem some day. Good strategy in general. But worse than useless when the assumption is faulty. My problem is hypothyroidism."

Does the Thyroid Affect Diabetes Care?

One thing to note is that although hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism do not directly affect blood sugar levels, not treating thyroid disease can cause lots of issues in managing your blood sugars because the effects the symptoms have on your body and how your body metabolizes glucose and insulin. For instance, with hyperthyroidism, insulin "clears" through your body faster, leaving you with higher blood sugars.

Hyperthyroidism can cause rapid heart rate and increases the risk of abnormal heart rhythm, so it increases the risk of heart problems, compounding the heart risks posed by diabetes.

Hypothyroidism can cause insulin to move through your body much slower, which could leave you with lower blood sugars. because the insulin "sticks around" longer. Hypothyroidism can also cause an increase in cholesterol and LDL levels, and an increase triglyceride levels, which adds to the danger of high cholesterol with diabetes.

So clearly it's all bad news if you don't catch the thyroid problem quickly!

What Up with Diagnosis & Treatment?

You'll want to see your endocrinologist (endocrine system, remember?) or primary care physician asap. You may be referred to a doctor who specializes in thyroid issues (as opposed to diabetes), but your endocrinologist will know exactly how to diagnosis you. The primary way to diagnose thyroid disease is something called a TSH (Thyrotropin Stimulating Hormone) test, which checks the amount of thyroid-stimulating hormone in your system. It's a very easy and inexpensive blood test, so don't delay if you think you have symptoms!

However, sometimes the test will come back false-normal, so testing for antibodies or having a full Thyroid Panel can also turn up things that the TSH test might leave out.

Autoimmune thyroid diseases, like Hashimoto's Disease, are usually much easier to manage than diabetes. The hormone replacement treatment comes in pill form, so taking the medication is easy-peasey. But some patients have difficulty finding the right type of thyroid replacement pill. While there are two types of natural thyroid hormones, called T3 and T4, only T4 is found in the common thyroid replacements. For many people, this doesn't work well. In theory, T4 medication would also convert to T3, but research suggests this doesn't always happen. You'll want to do your homework and make sure you get on the right treatment for you!

Patient Lindsay O'Rourke writes on the TuDiabetes group for Hypothyroidism: "I went on my generic prescription, levothroid, and even at a very low dose it was an extreme difference. I felt back to normal. My energy was back, and a slew of other symptoms went away."

Hyperthyroidism can be treated with anti-thyroid medicines such as methimazole (Tapazole) and propylthiouracil (PTU), but the most common way of treating hyperthyroidsim is radioactive iodine therapy. Weirdly, it kills off the thyroid, causing permanent hypothyroidism. So you're really just trading one problem for another.

Because of the common problems with misdiagnosis and mistreatments, there's a whole movement of Thyroid Patient Advocacy, both in the U.S. and abroad.

So far, I personally have been lucky in the thyroid department, and have not had any issues, although Amy has not been quite so lucky. I know that being a woman with type 1 diabetes puts me at a greater risk for thyroid disease and it's something I fully intend to keep an eye on. If you've dealt with hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism, we'd love to hear your story in the comments!

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

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