The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information. [...] The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it. --Chris Quinn, Editor of cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer

THIS is the kind of attitude that journalists and editors should have regarding reporting on Trump!

Chris Quinn, the editor of cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer wrote this excellent column explaining to his readers why opinion columns on his platforms are so critical of Donald Trump. His response is a credit to his integrity as a journalist/editor, and should be emulated by others in the mainstream media. Below are some excerpts:

A more-than-occasional arrival in the email these days is a question expressed two ways, one with dripping condescension and the other with courtesy: Why don’t our opinion platforms treat Donald Trump and other politicians exactly the same way. Some phrase it differently, asking why we demean the former president’s supporters in describing his behavior as monstrous, insurrectionist and authoritarian. I feel for those who write. They believe in Trump and want their local news source to recognize what they see in him. The angry writers denounce me for ignoring what they call the Biden family crime syndicate and criminality far beyond that of Trump. They quote news sources of no credibility as proof the mainstream media ignores evidence that Biden, not Trump, is the criminal dictator. The courteous writers don’t go down that road. They politely ask how we can discount the passions and beliefs of the many people who believe in Trump. This is a tough column to write, because I don’t want to demean or insult those who write me in good faith. I’ve started it a half dozen times since November but turned to other topics each time because this needle hard to thread. No matter how I present it, I’ll offend some thoughtful, decent people. The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information. The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse. This is not subjective. We all saw it. Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive. (If leaders began a yearslong campaign today to convince us that the Baltimore bridge did not collapse Tuesday morning, would you ever believe them?) Trust your eyes. Trump on Jan. 6 launched the most serious threat to our system of government since the Civil War. You know that. You saw it. The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it. As for those who equate Trump and Joe Biden, that’s false equivalency. Biden has done nothing remotely close to the egregious, anti-American acts of Trump. We can debate the success and mindset of our current president, as we have about most presidents in our lifetimes, but Biden was never a threat to our democracy. Trump is. He is unique among all American presidents for his efforts to keep power at any cost. Personally, I find it hard to understand how Americans who take pride in our system of government support Trump. All those soldiers who died in World War II were fighting against the kind of regime Trump wants to create on our soil. How do they not see it? [emphasis added]

I encourage you to read the entire column. It is worth it.

“I think there is a simpler explanation to the tragedy and the barbarism on October the 7th, which is that you cannot indefinitely contain a group of people under military occupation for decades and expect that there won't be violence. There is violence in the Middle East, and the root cause of that violence is an illegal military occupation that is now in what, it's 57th year in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. And this is not just me saying this.

I mean, people like General Shlomo Brom, one of Israel's most famous military strategists, says, the oppressed will rise against the oppressor because it's absurd to hope that Israel can indefinitely contain with its military might millions of Palestinians who claim the right to a free, normal life. That is the statement of Shlomo Brom.

It's not true that the previous Gaza conflicts were all started by Hamas. Some were, but not all of them. Ceasefires have been broken on both sides and that's been well documented by multiple neutral observers and international observers.

But just on the broader point, Israel was never done with Gaza. This myth that they pulled out all the settlers and the occupation ended, first of all, under international law, Gaza is still occupied.

The Israelis control most of the land borders, all of the naval waters, all of the airspace. You tell me a country in the world that would accept that, any kind of country that you would call independent or sovereign. The Israelis even control the population register in Gaza, which means if you're born in Gaza, the Israelis are the ones who register you in control.

All of the information about your birth, life, and death. So this idea that Gaza was free, it was not free. And the boycott, the siege, I mean, it was not defensive.

Again, multiple human rights groups, including Israeli human rights groups like Gisha have said over the years, that the boycott was not defensive, that it was arbitrary, that it was cruel. Items like pasta, coriander, right? These are items that were banned at certain points going into Gaza.

Even now, David Miliband, the former British Foreign Minister, head of the International Rescue Committee, went on CNN this week to point out that dual-use items are being blocked going into Gaza. Entire aid trucks are being turned away because there's a scissors in them. A pair of scissors is inside a truck.

For medical purposes, the entire truck is turned away. For years now, the people in Gaza have been blockaded, besieged. The UN said it would be unlivable years ago.

We're now in 2024. It's certainly unlivable now. So no, I don't believe the Israeli narrative.

And one last thing, let's say everything Israel said was true. That still does not justify the collective punishment of 2.2 million people, half of whom are children, and who are now in the midst of one of the worst famines in living memory, according to the experts.

[…]

I've been very, very, very critical of Hamas. I've been critical of Hamas for decades. I've been critical of Hamas since October the 7th.

I was critical of Hamas on October the 7th. So no, I'm not sparing in my criticism of Hamas, but the missing context here, of course, is that we don't fund Hamas. I'm not responsible for Hamas.

I am responsible for the famine in Gaza. I am responsible for the killing of 30,000 people in Gaza because my taxes paid for it. The United States government is funding one side of this conflict.

The United States does not fund Hamas, last time I checked. So this idea that we are either fund them or protect them with a UN veto or arm Hamas, I don't think we send arms to Hamas, we do to Israel. Therefore, that is the focus of my journalism.

And by the way, yes, the focus of my journalism right now is on criticism of Israel because the rest of the US media has completely failed on this issue, has dropped the ball. I mean, I can go through The New York Times, The Washington Post, and show the exact opposite, pieces that are providing cover and safety for the Israeli narrative, including in absurd headlines where we go out of our way to use the passive voice and never cite that Israel is responsible for bombing a hospital or Israel is responsible for bombing a refugee camp. So I'm trying to do a little bit of correction on my end with this new media organization.

But look, Hamas is a brutal group. What it did on October the 7th was pure terror. They killed innocents, they abducted innocent babies as hostages into the war crime.

But none of that justifies what Israel is doing right now. And nor are we responsible for what Hamas is doing. But we are, in New York and across the country, sadly, we are responsible for the crimes that Israel is carrying out.

And that's the point I'm trying to make.”

—Mehdi Hasan

in 11.23 the BMOL conspiracy wall says "Cassiel," confirming that references to him under that version of his name exist in-universe. obsessed with the implications of this

do you think Dean ever made him watch Wings of Desire (1987) during their movie nights, ribbing him for thoughts on its "accuracy" to some affectionate eyerolls in response and going quiet when it depicts said angel falling for a human (whether he knew that going in or not)

maybe when the lights next come on in that bunker, the new generation of hunters with all the MOL's knowledge of angels at their disposal will wonder why the name of one is lovingly carved among the place's other undying signs of life

or in a certain alternate world, the would-be parents inheriting that mystery man's journal will learn enough to recontextualize the fondness he couldn't quite omit when that name appeared and wonder which family -whose happiness- he was really searching for, and how their example might have helped him find it

Thinking of assorted whalemen who died at sea that I’ve tried to find word on, but their deaths slip through the cracks and like so many working class lives historically go unrecorded by any sort of official documentation. Sometimes papers will publish a perfunctory notice of death, but usually they don’t. So the fellow is just there on paper, sometimes, in crew manifests or census records or city directories, and then he just isn’t, anymore. In the journals I’ve read, if someone dies on the voyage, the journal keeper usually makes a point to name him, say how old he was, where he was from, if he had any known family left behind, name how the crew felt about him (and there was almost always a lamentation of the void he left behind). Sometimes they do it for other ships’ crews where a stranger was lost, where the news is brought up in a gam and they record the information as well even though they didn’t know him personally. Sometimes whalemen come across old makeshift graves on uninhabited islands and also make a point to write down the information on the grave in their own journal. Who he was, how old he was, where he hailed from, when he died. I don’t know where I’m going with this…but it does something to me to know that somewhere those lives and deaths are recorded. And that they’re recorded in someone’s private journal, where he briefly departs in writing about himself and the life happening around him and instead makes a little note in acknowledging the loss of another. It’s something about the information-sharing, specifically—that beyond mentioning that a man died and the effect that death had on the writer, he’s being specific about where the man hailed from and all that. That even though no one is going to read those personal journals (or so, perhaps, they thought), they’re still trying to pass the word along through them.

Work things *siiiiiigh*

Long work shenanigans under cut

Gavin (work child #1) arrives, 5 minutes later... "Hey baker! Tell me if I am wrong, but I would rather suck man dick -"

Me "you are super pretty and I'm fairly certain you could make a lot of money sucking dick... be it man or otherwise."

"BAKeeeEEerrRrr!!"

"Right... right, just saying but go on..."

He sighs, "so... man dick or hairy pussy?"

Me blinking at him, "I'm old school, not like you youngins, I am from the old world where we wooed our women by singing soulful songs whilst splashing in the rain, hairy pussy is for no fool and I would still eat it."

He considers me a second "dick or... gross pussy?"

"Hobo gross? Yeah no, definitely dick, but grow up and learn that hairy pussy is still good you won't be pretty for the rest of your life" (tbh he's really pretty and likely to only grow prettier unless somebody throws acid or something insane like that)

Sebastian (work child #2) chatting with another coworker "yeah so we-"

Aggie, "Wait, this the same girl?"

Sebastian "naah, I broke up with the other one last month, this is the new gf, yeah, no BRO imma dawg!"

Me sighing heavily as I scrub my focaccia rings, she laughs "baker do you hear this?!

I shake my head as he visibly panics, "my work children out here being such HOES! My poor Victorian heart cannot take it, I feel faint, fetch me my fainting seat! I am disappointed and distraught!"

"Wait... Baker! I- we... were were only dating! It wasn't a real relationship- AND I broke up with her, like really! I didnt ghost her or anything! I did it to her face!"

Aggie laughing as he hurries over to me by the sink. I contain my chuckle, "so, you were a man about it?"

"Yes! TOTALLY! Like you said, I didn't just disappear! I promise!"

Me smil8ng "that's what DATING is, a time period to figure out whether you like the person to the point that you decide that you want to commit, and that's when it turns into a relationship. But that includes the commitment thing- which is gross, be a hoe."

He laughs.

Back to Gavin, he comes up as I'm speaking to a manager, "Baker, how do you tell your gf her mom is like... super hot?"

Me- 😮 manager 🤣🤣🤣

"Well the thing is- we did our workout and she tells me that her mom made us food and I like food-"

Me nodding "understandable"

"Then I walk into her home and her mom is cooking at the stove in like this nightgow thing! And my floor hit the fucking ground cause she is so hot! Like... RIDICULOUSLY HOT, not that my gf ISNT pretty, but her mom is so-"

Manager "waaaaiiiiiit! How old is her mom?!"

Gavin "not sure but she falls in my age range, which is like, 20yo to-" eyeballs the manager "...50...ish"

She laughs and I fistpump the air "I STILL FALL IN YOUR AGE RANGE IN MOT TOO OLD!!!" manager laughs as he smiles at me and nods "but your still too young for me and I'm so old my bones creak, but your valid for wanting the older chick bud, older women pull shit out of the hat that you never knew could be done and they just smirk at you after it's all done"

He nods enthusiastically, "spitting straight facts and I am legal now, 18 is legal"

Manager laughing"oh my gawd! You two are too much!"

Me dying as he stares at me and shoves him over "your legal enough to get in trouble for crimes and arson! Not old enough to drink asshat!" He cackles

Both boys "baker you're so cool"

Me 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ I'm too old for this shit. They gonna kill me hahaha

Women's coiffures for evening dress in Paul Gavarni's Journal des gens du Monde, 1834. Art by Gavarni (Rijksmuseum).

Apollo knot

(F)

Period: 1824–1838.

False hair plaited into a loop or loops and wired to stand above the head; for evening and some day hair styles.

— Valerie Cumming, The Dictionary of Fashion History (second edition)

The satirical magazine Le Charivari also depicted the Apollo knot in this 1832 cartoon detail by Honoré Daumier (Met Museum).

"The Mayeux knot, known as Apollo." I've found some references to hairstyles by Mayeux, but I'm not sure if this was a real person or a caricature persona.

Yes. I’m ready for this.

+ is this his perspective?

I trust the Guardian to illuminate what’s really happening as America faces an election in which one of the two likely candidates engaged in an attempted coup. Robert Reich: Not just the facts it conveys but also its judgment about what to convey – the stories it believes worthy of reporting, and doing it in ways that illuminate what’s really happening. That judgment is especially important as the US faces an election in 2024 in which one of the two likely candidates was engaged in an attempted coup and has given every indication of wanting to substitute neo-fascism for democracy. Again and again, the mainstream media have drawn a false equivalence between Donald Trump and Joe Biden – asserting that Biden’s political handicap is his age while Trump’s corresponding handicap is his criminal indictments.

But Trump is almost as old as Biden, and Trump’s public remarks and posts are becoming ever more unhinged – suggesting that advancing age may be a bigger problem for Trump than for Biden. The Guardian has been picking up on this, but why isn’t the mainstream media reporting on Trump’s increasing senescence? Similarly, every time the mainstream media reveal another move by the Republican Party toward authoritarianism, they point out some superfluous fault in the Democratic party in order to provide “balance”. So readers are left to assume all politics is rotten.

A recent Washington Post article was headlined: “In a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of politics.” “How do Americans feel about politics?” the New York Times asked recently, answering:

“Disgust isn’t a strong enough word.”

But where is it reported that the mainstream media have contributed to making people tired and disgusted with politics? And where is it acknowledged that this helps Trump and his Republican allies? They want voters to be so turned off of politics that they’re unaware of Biden’s accomplishments, such as an economy that continues to generate a large number of new jobs, with real (adjusted for inflation) wages finally trending upward, inflation dropping and no recession in sight. Plus, billions of dollars pumped out to fix and improve the nation’s roads, ports, pipelines and internet. Hundreds of billions allocated to combat climate change. Medicare, now lowering the cost of prescription drugs. Billions in student debt canceled. Monopolies attacked. Workers’ rights to organize, defended.

u have no idea what i’ve accomplished in the last 72 hours (finished 5 full-color pics that i’m queuing for 4 days from now)

Israel Blames ‘Translation Error’ for Claiming Calendar in Children’s Hospital Was List of Hamas Hostage Guards

**As if terrorists would create a sign in chart to take turns watching hostages. 🙄 But of course CNN & others shared this video & kept a straight face while pushing ridiculously obvious nonsense. Laziest propaganda ever esp considering the soldier was pretending to be reading the paper....from left to right!. Arabic, like Hebrew, is written and read right to left**

The Israeli military said a video that falsely claimed a basic calendar was a Hamas guard list was a “translation error” after several journalists and native speakers on social media pointed out that the written Arabic words on the calendar were only identifying the days of the week.

The Israel Defense Forces released a video Monday of IDF Spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari touring the basement of a children's hospital in western Gaza, where it said it found multiple weapons and evidence hostages were held.

As part of the video, he pointed to the calendar hung on the wall.

"This is a guardian list where every terrorist writes his name, and every terrorist has his own shift guarding the people that were here," Hagari said about the calendar.

But upon closer inspection, Arabic speakers and news outlets called out the claim saying that the list was merely the days of the week.

“Not a Borat Sketch! The IDF Spokesman points to a random calendar at the Rantisi hospital as "evidence" of a "hostage keepers' list" with "terrorists' names," Muhammad Shehada, who worked for a Swiss-based human rights group, posted on X.

"But the ONLY thing on that "list" is literally the days of the week (Saturday-Friday)."

The IDF attributed the claim as an error saying “a mistake was made in the translation of part of the table," reported Israeli news channel N12.

The IDF video — including the calendar — was widely broadcast by news organizations including CNN, as well as shared by several prominent Israel supporters online including Aviva Klompas, the former director of speechwriting at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations.

every time an article of men's clothing is a little ill-fitted on me and there's an almost-identical women's version i wonder if i ought to just suck it up and get that instead—and that voice is the devil* talking

because (a) the ways it would 'fit me better' are also the ways it would be depressingly distractingly feminizing, like, that non-adherence to my actual form is doing important gender-affirming work for me! and (b) even if it looks like a plausibly androgynous garment on the female model, it always turns out to be noticeably not-actually-androgynous once i get it on—a scoopier neckline is the most common culprit but there's always something >:(

⸻ * disclaimer that i don't believe in the devil and i do generally want to avoid casually regurgitating christian turns of phrase but. you know. joci causa.

i started daily journaling/de facto bullet journaling in may and i've kept it up ever since with at most ~a week downtime. this might be the longest i've held onto one organizational habit. sharing my strategy in case it helps anyone else...

i purposefully bought multi-packs of really cheap crappy ~5x7 lined paperback journals (in my case moleskine, i know they're shit but that's the point) so i wouldn't feel any preciousness toward using them. i can take them anywhere in my bag and i don't care much if they get banged up (though they hold up well). i started numbering and dating them on the front as well.

they're both task journals (to-do lists etc) and personal journals. i scribble anything i want in there. i take notes from conversations and write down peoples' contacts in there. i write entries stating what i did during the day and sometimes i have neurotic breakdowns in there. it's like a boring survival horror diary LOL.

i will say this isn't an effective reflective/introspective journal. it's essentially notetaking on my own life; it isn't the kind of journal to meditate on and reach deep insights about my psyche. that's okay.

i think "journaling" is sometimes touted as a tool for self-expression and deep emotional healing, but that assumes a very particular mindset, approach, and skillset within the writer. personally, i can't think much about how i feel when all i can think about is what i need to do during the day, so the first step in taking better care of myself emotionally is simply equipping myself to get those things done--to free up mental space.

there's also a lot of talk about whether "introspection" as discussed in the modern day is a means of mindfully reflecting your inner experience, or more an attempt to individualistically define and externalize all aspects of yourself so you're an easier customer. i think it can be both, but the point is it isn't a universal good. ...but i digress.

the journal works because i don't try to preemptively filter my thoughts into different locations. oftentimes my feelings+experiences reflect actions/tasks and vice-versa. i don't think i could use a journal that was only to-do lists, or a journal that was only my feelings. but now most of my notable thoughts and experiences are all in one place.

anyways, for the to-do lists, i write one every night as one of the last things i do before the next day.

i rarely get everything on the list done, but i don't necessarily need to (consider adding ABC(DE) prioritization labels; i do this mentally). what i take from bullet journaling is that i reference the previous to-do list (and sometimes go a few lists back) and copy over relevant tasks while allowing myself to leave things unfinished and to drop tasks completely. if i do something i didn't plan on my list, i add it and immediately cross it off.

when you notice yourself rewriting the same tasks for several days, usually it's because there's some hidden step you're missing or a subconscious reason you're avoiding it. the art of defining and scoping tasks is a really important skill that i won't get into here, but the point isn't to get frustrated when something keeps getting kicked along--it's to get curious and to try different approaches.

in general, i think a lot of the skill is in striking a balance between what emotionally feels good for you (what triggers a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, what makes you feel insecure and demotivated) and what you need on a technical level to maintain progress. for example, you want to balance setting manageable task scopes with not overwhelming yourself. you want to celebrate the little things without feeling like you're fluffing up your list with inconsequential tasks. you want to figure out how much work you need to frontload without making the act of task-writing itself a chore. and you'll definitely need to plan for your practices to evolve based on your current needs.

something my friend told me when getting started is to start a to-do list with a box that says "make a to-do list" so you always have one thing checked off from the start LOL. i think trying little tricks like that helps you test the waters of what feels good for you.

if i were to add anything to my practice, i'd like to get into making a monthly backlog like what the original bullet journal guy suggested (IIRC), where i've recorded every task for the month in one page and i can review what hasn't been done by the end. sometimes i drop something because it can't be a priority for the next 1-3 days and then have to circle back, and it might be easier to do that if i referenced a more clean-cut page. but i can be neurotic about page space allocation so i've held off. maybe i'll start it this month o'december...

but yeah. it's kind of crazy to have been doing this for this long, and though i'm still often struggling with executive dysfunction, i feel it's borne some tangible benefits and generally has made me feel a lot more in control of my life during a difficult time. hope you can find something that works for you as well. smiles :)

False Equivalence

Why does the mainstream media keep depicting lunatic-right Republicans and normal Democrats as equidistant from the center?

With the final passage of the debt ceiling deal, Democrats got off easier than one might have expected, given that it was a deal between a mainstream Democratic president and a Republican House in thrall to the lunatic far right. In drastic contrast to the scorched-earth budget bill initially passed by the Republican-controlled House, the cuts were about par for the course in a divided government; and they spare the country a repeat of this debt-hostage ordeal for two years.

However, much of the media played the agreement as a compromise between two equal extremes. The New York Times story about the House passage of the deal included this astonishing sentence: "With both far-right and hard-left lawmakers in revolt over the deal, it fell to a bipartisan coalition powered by Democrats to push the bill over the finish line, throwing their support behind the compromise in an effort to break the fiscal stalemate that had gripped Washington for weeks."

Think about that for a moment. There is no doubt that Matt Gaetz, Elise Stefanik, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar et al. are far-right by any definition, as white supremacists, Christian nationalists, election deniers, and nihilists on fiscal policy.

But no Democrats in the House can fairly be described as hard left. Those who voted against the deal included moderate liberals such as Joaquin Castro, mainstream progressives like Rosa DeLauro and Jan Schakowsky, as well as self-described democratic socialists including Cori Bush and AOC. But none of them are "hard left," which suggests anti-democratic, any more than Franklin Roosevelt was hard left.

The Times coverage reinforces a narrative of false equivalence that the media keeps repeating, with lazy catchphrases like "partisan bickering." It also plays into the hands of corrupt No Labels and Third Way types, who promote the idea that the best course for the republic is to split the difference between neofascists and a normal mainstream Democratic Party and president.

Big media, obsessed as it is with the appearance of fair and balanced coverage, took years to give itself permission to accurately describe Donald Trump with the impolite word "liar." But its treatment of the two parties as in any sense symmetrical is far more insidious than using euphemisms to characterize Trump’s lies.

Our friend Peter Dreier, whose observations inspired this post, points out that by any reasonable definition, "even the most left-oriented Democrats (AOC, Bush, Bowman, Raskin, Jayapal) are not extremists. They are shades of social democrats. They are pro-union, pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-LGBT equality, pro-Green New Deal, pro-progressive taxation. But the most right-wing Republicans are extremists and reactionaries."

(continue reading)

anais tells the tiefling kids in the grove they're all probably going to die because at that point she believes it's true, and she would never lie to a child.

Film Journal

"False Positive" by John Lee

Making the News: The Press, the State, and the State of the Press