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argyrocratie · 4 months

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(...)

In a message that sharply diverges from the mainstream Israeli public discourse amid the army’s ongoing assault on Gaza, and at a time when anyone in Israel who expresses even mild opposition to the war is facing persecution and repression, Mitnick told +972: “My refusal is an attempt to influence Israeli society and to avoid taking part in the occupation and the massacre happening in Gaza. I’m trying to say that it’s not in my name. I express solidarity with the innocent in Gaza. I know they want to live; they don’t deserve to be made refugees for the second time in their lives.”

(...)

How did your decision to refuse enlistment come about?

Even before the first draft notice, I knew I was not interested in enlisting. I knew I wasn’t willing to serve in this system that perpetuates apartheid in the West Bank and only contributes to the cycle of bloodshed. I understood from the very privileged position I find myself in, having a supportive family and environment, that I have an obligation to use it to reach other young people and to show that there is another way.

When I talk to my friends — some of whom serve and some of whom received exemptions — about why I’m not going to the army, they understand that it comes from a humane perspective of consideration for the other. No one thinks I support Hamas or want [my friends] to experience harm. There are people who believe that military activity will bring security; I believe that my public refusal is what will influence and bring the most security.

How did the protests against the judicial overhaul help you shape your worldview?

Before the protests, I viewed political activism as something very distant, and I didn’t think it was possible to make an impact as an individual. When the protests began and I saw they included members of Knesset going out to the streets, I realized that politics is closer to me than I thought, that it can reach every corner of the country, and that it is possible to have an influence. That’s where I understood that my actions can affect the reality we see here, and I have an obligation to act for a better future.

Were you debating whether to do it now, given the current atmosphere?

Yes, there were doubts. I always knew that the army doesn’t have a consistent policy regarding conscientious objectors, that the response can change in a moment – to release all objectors or to imprison them for a long time — and I was prepared for that. After October 7 and the [government’s] attack on the peace movement, on Jewish-Arab partnership, and on Palestinian citizens expressing support and solidarity with the innocent in Gaza, even on demonstrations, it has become frightening. But now is precisely the time to show the other side, to show that we exist.

Do you think there’s anyone in the country willing to listen to such messages right now?

We all know that we need another way, especially after October 7. We all know that it simply doesn’t work, that Benjamin Netanyahu is not “Mr. Security.” Managing the conflict is a policy that hasn’t worked and eventually collapsed.

We can’t continue with the current situation, and there are two options now: the right suggests transfer and genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza; the other side says there are Palestinians here, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and they are entitled to rights. Even people who voted for Bibi, and even those who supported the judicial reform, can connect to the idea that everyone deserves to live justly, that everyone deserves a roof over their heads, and support shared existence here.

After October 7, many who were on the left claimed they “sobered up”. Did this affect you?

There is no justification for harming innocent civilians. The criminal attack on October 7, in which innocents were killed, is illegitimate resistance to the oppression of the Palestinian people in my eyes. However, outlawing legitimate resistance such as protests, or declaring human rights organizations as terrorist organizations, leads people to dehumanize the other and to actions targeting civilians.

October 7 did not change my perspective; it only reinforced it. I still believe it is impossible to live with the siege on Gaza and an occupation, and not feel [any consequences]. I believe that many people finally understand this. The idea of “out of sight, out of mind” doesn’t work. Something needs to change, and the only way is to talk, to reach a political settlement. I’m not saying it will solve everything, but it will be another step toward justice and peace.

What was your experience at the Conscience Committee?

The pre-committee interviewer was aggressive. She questioned my nonviolence because I opposed the government’s actions and the occupation. Essentially, due to my opinions, she told me that I am not a conscientious objector because these were political views.

In the end, I went through the pre-committee, and appeared before the committee itself less than a week after the interview, while many people usually wait half a year. It was a hostile interview: me opposite four people.

They attacked my opinions. They asked me what I would have done on October 7, and how I would have handled the situation. They constantly interrupted me, and said they would phrase the question differently. I tried to continue answering, but they said I wasn’t responding to them. I am not the leader of Israel; they can’t place me in that position.

They asked me how my refusal is different from the refusal of Brothers in Arms [a group of army veterans who declared their refusal to show up for reserve service in protest against the judicial coup]. I replied that I appreciate them and think it’s important that there are people who have a red line for service — but I set my red line before that, and I hope their red line moves in the direction of my red line.

Two days later, they told me I hadn’t passed the committee. I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t receive any explanation, they just called and told me the result."

...

#israel #palestine

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historicity-was-already-taken · 4 months

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This whole exhausting months-long exercise of talking about The Conflict only started because I had the nerve to post here about Jewish resistance in Warsaw during the Holocaust--you know, the topic of my book. A very smug person left a comment comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, and I spiraled.

Because that person didn't leave the comment because they were genuinely interested in discussing the parallels which could be drawn, and the appropriateness of such parallels (I've had those conversations offline; they were fascinating, difficult, mutually respectful, and no I'm not repeating them here); they left it to troll me and make me feel like an oppressor for....studying the Holocaust and posting about my work. And it worked. And the fact that it worked made me very angry, and...here we are.

I won't do that shit again. From this point forward I'm going to follow the rule I set for myself back in 2011: no talking about the Arab-Israeli Conflict here unless it's in regard to reference materials.

This also applies to questions in my inbox. Some of them are requests for secondary sources; when my draft is submitted to my editor I'll update the Reading List to include volumes which speak to the history of Zionism(s), and the international context surrounding the founding of the State of Israel. I also might delete some of the material posted between Oct. 7 and now. Mostly because I'm sick of the notifications. But I don't dirty delete, so there's your heads up.

And if any of you are going to learn a lesson from this, I'd say that if you know hostile online interactions trigger your anxiety, you should do the opposite of me and refuse to engage. Or just, you know, don't post about topics you know invite toxic interactions and generally make you into a basketcase (that's me calling myself a basketcase).

Take care of yourselves please, and make sure your activism benefits more than simply your ego.

Now, I'm going to back to writing vivid descriptions of what happened inside Treblinka's gas chambers before the improved group went operational in late August 1942.

#i am one of those/#melodramatic fools/#neurotic to the bone/#no doubt about it

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beardedmrbean · 6 months

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Democrat Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown took action against a member of his own hate crime task force on Tuesday after numerous antisemitic social media posts by the member surfaced, including a claim that the babies murdered in the brutal Oct. 7 Hamas attack were "fake."

Zainab Chaudry, an anti-Israel activist who serves as the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) Maryland office, made the posts in the weeks following Hamas' attack, which saw more than 1,200 people killed, including children and babies, as well as numerous rapes and destruction of property.

"The Office of Attorney General learned last week about personal social media posts of a member of the Maryland Commission on Hate Crimes Response and Prevention, Zainab Chaudry, Executive Director of the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations – Maryland Office," Brown said in a press release.

MARYLAND HATE CRIME TASK FORCE MEMBER CLAIMED BABIES MURDERED BY HAMAS WERE ‘FAKE,’ COMPARED ISRAEL TO NAZIS

"Attorney General Brown has determined that Ms. Chaudry’s social media posts risk disrupting the work and mission of the Commission, so he is announcing steps that he took today to ensure that the vital work and mission of the Commission can continue without interruption," he said, adding that Chaudry's membership on the commission would be "temporarily suspended."

He went on to say that his office would "develop a draft values statement" concerning personal communications by commission members, and called on those members to "to exercise great care in their communications and conduct."

In a Facebook post dated Oct. 26, Chadry wrote, "I will never be able to understand how the world summoned up rage for 40 fake Israeli babies while completely turning a blind eye to 3,000 real Palestinian babies."

In an Oct. 17 post, Chaudry wrote, "[T]hat moment when you become what you hated most," and included two photos of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, one showing it lit up with the Israeli flag in solidarity with Israel following the attack, and another from a ceremony in 1936 when it was decorated with the flag of Nazi Germany during the Olympics that year.

In another post from Nov. 6, Chaudry appeared to suggest the mere existence of Israel as a nation was the cause of the ongoing war, writing it was an "inconvenient fact." She included an image of the words "it all started in 1948," the year Israel was founded as a nation.

Others from the weeks following the attack showed Chaudry sharing a quote celebrating "martyred Palestinians," and a post citing what appeared to be an Islamic prophesy that said "garrisons who defend the lands of Islam will be in Ashkelon," an Israeli city north of the Gaza Strip.

When reached for comment, Chaudry told Fox News Digital that the "Nazi post" was originally shared "by a close Jewish friend," before going on to accuse the Israeli government of wanting to commit genocide against Palestinians. She also said she condemned the killing of Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

#nunyas news

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sterekreversechallenges · 2 years

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Sterek Reverse Quickie 2022

TIMELINE

Aug 17th, 2022 - Sign-ups open via Google form

Sept 13th, 2022 - Art due; sign-ups close

Sept 14th, 2022 - Prompts go up for viewing

Sept 17th, 2022 - 7 pm UTC - Claims round 1

Sept 18th, 2022 - 7 pm UTC - Claims round 2, if necessary and until all art has been claimed.

Sept 18th, 2022 - Matches confirmed

Sept 20th, 2022 - Check-in 1: Teams must confirm that they have made contact and are good to collaborate.

Oct 18th, 2022 - Check-in 2: Teams must confirm that they are on schedule to post. Writers submit an 80% draft for check-in purposes only.

Oct 30th, 2022 - Final drafts are due; fics and art will be posted into the challenge collection on AO3. The mods will set up and send out a posting schedule.

Nov 1st - Nov 18th, 2022 - Collaborations will be revealed by the mods

GUIDELINES for ARTISTS

In the quickie reverse bang round the following types of art are accepted:

painting/drawing (traditional, digital, mixed)

mood boards

fanvids (min 30 sec)

original gif sets (min 6 gifs)

playlists (10 songs min)

>> If the item cannot be uploaded to Discord directly, it has to be hosted anonymously and a link has to be provided.

>> In the spirit of anonymous claims, no watermarks, signatures etc. are permitted! If you are worried about art theft, you can add “Sterek Reverse Bang” as a watermark.

>> Artists can submit one or two pieces. If you are creating moodboards, only two boards per artist will be accepted. One moodboard per prompt.

>> Art must not have been published before, been a commission, or be associated with a fic at the time of claims.

>> When you submit your art, it should be finished. You may of course keep working on it until posting.

GUIDELINES for WRITERS

>> Minimum word count for fics in this challenge is 1k. Artists have the option to offer more art for longer fics.

>> Artists’ prompts need to be followed unless writer and artist agree to do something else.

>> Squicks and triggers have to be followed without discussion.

Please be gracious about all pieces and remember to keep all discussion about the art and what you want to claim in #strb-writers-chat. Flailing and praising is permitted in #strb-general, but please refrain from mentioning any specifics. Artists are very anxious about their art getting claimed and we don’t want to add to any fears about any piece of art not receiving the attention it is due.

POSTING

When the final drafts are due, fics and art will be posted into the challenge collection on AO3. Collaborations will be revealed by the mods.

>> Every team posts their collaboration to the challenge collection on AO3. The collection is set up so that works cannot be seen yet by the public.

>> Once posting starts, the mods will reveal one or more collaborations, depending on the number of teams, every day until the end of the week. Once a collaboration has gone live, teams can update the posting date of their work if they wish to do so.

>> Art should be embedded in the fic or be linked, depending on the preferences of the artist. In order to ensure that the art is only publicly visible once the AO3 post has been revealed to the public, art should be hosted accordingly, i.e. invisibly to the public until the date of posting, as well. Apart from using certain photo hosting pages or personal website space, this can be done e.g. via a private Discord server or in a Tumblr or Pillowfort post set to private.

Teams will:

make a master post on Discord in #strq-gallery, using the pinned format template

add the fic with the art or a link to the art to the AO3 collection

voluntary: submit a post to the challenge tumblr at sterekreversechallenges.tumblr.com using the same format as for the master post in #strq-gallery

Teams are of course welcome to also make posts on any platform of their choice to promote their work and the bang once their work has been revealed on AO3.

DROPPING

Talk to your mods! There is usually a solution, both for the person dropping and the person remaining in the bang (e.g. finding a pinch hitter).

>> Should any participants drop before claims (Sterek Reverse Quickie, Sterek Reverse Bang) or matching (Sterek Artist Seduction Screw), no harm done, no worries.

>> Should any participants drop out after claims without a very good reason and extenuating circumstances, participants will not be allowed to take part in the next round of reverse challenges hosted by Sterek Reverse Challenges.

>> Check-ins and deadlines have to be met. Missing a check-in or a deadline without a very good reason will result in the participant being disqualified from the current challenge as well as the next round of Sterek Reverse Challenges. Failing to plan ahead, e.g. for holidays, data loss, etc., does not constitute a good reason!

>> Dropping and ghosting will receive a lifetime ban with the participant in question also being removed from the Discord Server.

>> Should a team wish to drop out by mutual consent, they may do so, but may not post their work as part of the Sterek Reverse Bang Collection.

COMMUNICATION

The STRB is meant to be a collaborative effort between artist and writer. Part of the fun of the process is working with another creative person to make something new in the Sterek fandom. With that in mind, we have a set of things you should be talking about with your partner.

Artists and writers are free to decide mutually on how much contact they wish to have and in how much detail they wish to collaborate. However, as this is a bang based on art prompts, artists and writers should collaborate on the plot, unless the artist choses differently. Minimum Requirements:

>> By Check-in 1: Talk to your artist/author partner and exchange:

Names and pronouns

Account names (AO3, Tumblr, Discord)

Best way to communicate

How much do you want to communicate/ how much interaction are you looking for?

Time zones

Are there any times/dates when you won’t be available?

Any general ideas you have

>> By Check-in 2: Teams must confirm that they are on schedule to post.

Apart from sign-ups, the bang will be run via Discord, i.e. a Discord account is necessary to join.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSelWol_gMdKGzW1agzuxMQ9C3NQ81kAd4yhjWyDfWSTc2Ynug/viewform?usp=sf_link

#sterek reverse quickie #Sterek #sterek reverse bang #sterek reverse challenges #teenwolf

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college-girl199328 · 3 months

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When David Eby’s recent Holocaust Remembrance Day post on X went wrong, mistakenly stating, “We stand with the Muslim community throughout Canada on this sorrowful day,” the error was immediately pounced on by Andrew Reeve, press secretary for B.C. United leader, the writer of the post on X, with a scathing rebuke: “Glad to see this tweet was taken down, but who the hell drafted and approved this? Unacceptable.”

Who the hell? Well, probably someone just like Reeve—a communications staffer--is most likely not writing his own tweets. The error was serious but not fatal, in part because of the way it was handled.

Like it or not, social media has become the key component for government communications, from leadership campaigns to the highest office. Social media offers a direct avenue of communication between a politician, a government office, and the public. It’s a great tool, but not without pitfalls. Hard-copy news releases are a complete anachronism, and the days when government announcements were made in controlled environments such as a campaign bus or a carefully constructed news conference are long gone, said Geoff Meggs, who was chief of staff to former Premier John Horgan.

Managing a leader’s social media can lead to sleepless nights—think fires, floods, and pandemics expected--and they are expected to post on social media to show they are connected to issues in their local communities, including faith and cultural communities, and to respond to daily situations, such as emergencies and natural disasters.

They are consolers-in-chief, expected to respond to public pain, but they are also expected to have lighthearted moments, perhaps responding to the latest Canucks win. As said, social media is used as a straightforward communication tool to say what the government is doing.

Typically, a communications director will be one of the closest staff members to a leader, spending a lot of time with them so they can capture that person’s personality and be nearby to have them vet social media posts that either they or staff members write.

Planned social media posts that commemorate annual events, important cultural events, and religious holidays are typically carefully crafted in advance and not necessarily seen by the leader before they are posted—a possible reason the Jan. 27 Holocaust Remembrance Day post was mixed up with a planned Jan. 29 message commemorating the anniversary of the deadly shooting at a Quebec City mosque. Current events can easily go wrong, especially when the events are fraught. “From a communications perspective, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been a real challenge,” said Allam.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow got into hot water after she condemned Hamas in a tweet on Oct. 7, followed it with a tweet acknowledging Palestinian pain, then deleted both, then posted a revision, and later prompted an uproar by calling a local Palestinian protest “unsanctioned for the “messed up” messaging, blaming the limits of social media.

Allam said a good communications director will be methodical, thoughtful, calm, and committed to the values and views they and their clients represent. But there is one more thing: “You have to have nerves of steel,” said Allam.

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livetonki · 2 years

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Chicago bulls news

#CHICAGO BULLS NEWS UPDATE#

#CHICAGO BULLS NEWS FULL#

Still, Chicago can take solace in Caruso and Williams both trending in the right direction. Unfortunately for Bulls fans, injured guard Lonzo Ball only just began doing lateral movements and must undergo additional conditioning work.

#CHICAGO BULLS NEWS FULL#

Johnson noted he could receive full clearance in the very near future if his healed wrist responds well. 4 pick in the 2020 NBA draft has been cleared for partial contact and is partaking in 1-on-1 and 2-on-2 work.

#CHICAGO BULLS NEWS UPDATE#

Williams is a bit further away, but his update is every bit as encouraging. It’s not a guarantee that Caruso plays in Saturday’s showdown with the Cleveland Cavaliers, but he could make his return at some point during the team’s upcoming West Coast swing. He is in Chicago working out and will prepare to join the team for full practice on Friday. Johnson of NBC Sports Chicago reported Wednesday that Caruso has been cleared for full contact. However, the 28-year-old has made good progress. Here's the latest on Alex Caruso, Patrick Williams and Lonzo Ball from ⬇️ /jqDP07KX6d- Bulls Talk March 9, 2022Īt the start of March, the Bulls’ uncertainty as to when team doctors would clear Caruso for contact appeared to muddy his timeline a bit. Alex Caruso and Patrick Williams are both nearing possible returns It’s good news, then, that both players are taking critical steps toward getting back on the floor. Despite being just 20, Williams has the versatility and athleticism to make an impact at the 4-spot. Caruso guards multiple positions and sets the tone with his communication and excellence at the point of attack. Meanwhile, Williams played all of five games before undergoing surgery to repair torn ligaments in his wrist.īoth players are instrumental to a Bulls defense that has been one of the worst in basketball for the past couple of months. However, the Bulls ended their skid with a win in Detroit against the Pistons, and they received massively encouraging news regarding the potential returns of Alex Caruso and Patrick Williams.Ĭaruso has not played since suffering a fractured wrist as the result of a controversial encounter with Milwaukee Bucks guard Grayson Allen. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference following a five-game losing streak between Feb. Updates will be provided as the preseason grows closer this fall.įor a printable version of the Bulls' 2021-22 schedule, fans can click here.The Chicago Bulls‘ chances of contending for an NBA title have taken a big hit in recent weeks, with the team falling to the No. The Bulls and United Center are regularly in touch with the league, city and state officials and health experts on decisions regarding health and safety protocols for games and events this season. The health and safety of our fans, players and staff remains our top priority. On-sale timing for individual game tickets for preseason and regular season home games will be announced at a later date. A local broadcast schedule will be released at a later date.įull season tickets, 20-Game Plans, and 10-Game Plans are currently on sale at /tickets or by calling 31. 7, the NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks on March 4 and April 5, and the Los Angeles Clippers on March 31. Prominent home games include the New York Knicks on Oct. The Bulls are scheduled to play 12 nationally televised games this season – seven on NBATV, four on ESPN and one on TNT. Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans in a back-to-back matchup that follows with the Pistons again at 7 p.m. Chicago will host its home opener on Friday, Oct. 20 when they travel to Detroit to take on the Pistons at Little Caesar's Arena at 6 p.m. The Chicago Bulls will tip off the 2021-22 regular-season against a divisional opponent on Oct.

#Chicago bulls news

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kayla1993-world · 2 years

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Dylan Holloway making a strong case to stick with the Oilers

Dylan Holloway had an inside track for an NHL job with the Edmonton Oilers this season and likely cemented it with his performance on Monday. Holloway scored a hat-trick and added an assist in a 7-2 win against the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Place. Holloway’s first goal of the pre-season came on a deft redirection midway through the first period, and then he ripped a shot over the shoulder of Canucks goaltender Collin Delia in the second period. He completed the hat-trick by coming out of the corner and firing another shot past Delia with 2:41 to play. Hyman, Tyson Barrie, and Warren Foegele, with two late goals, also scored for the Oilers, while Jack Campbell made 28 saves. Nils Hoglander and Conor Garland scored for the Canucks, and Delia finished with 29 saves. Selected 14th overall by the Oilers in the 2020 NHL Draft, Holloway battled through a setback with a wrist injury that required surgery twice. He ended up playing 33 games with the Bakersfield Condors last season, scoring eight goals and collecting 22 points. Holloway dressed for Game 4 of the Western Conference Final against the Colorado Avalanche last spring, making his NHL debut, but was used sparingly. This season, he came into training camp as a strong contender to earn one of the few available roster spots and has made the most of his opportunities in the preseason. A Calgary product, Holloway, 21, played two years at the University of Wisconsin before turning pro. He had 11 goals and 35 points in 23 games in his sophomore season and sustained a wrist injury during the NCAA tournament. Holloway had surgery on his wrist, but it did not heal properly and he had to undergo surgery a second time, which cost him a portion of last season. With the injury behind him, Holloway can focus on trying to crack the Oilers' roster. He’ll likely get another opportunity to play with two pre-season games remaining before the Oilers open their regular season schedule at home against the Canucks on Oct. 12. At this point, it seems unlikely Holloway will not be on the roster for opening night. There are not many spots open on the blue line this season, and the Oilers dressed the bulk of their opening night defensive roster against the Canucks. Darnell Nurse and Cody Ceci made up the first pairing, with Brett Kulak and Evan Bouchard on the second. In the third pairing, Dmitri Samorukov and Tyson Barrie were partnered. The Oilers are expected to start the season with seven defensemen on the roster. Samorukov, Philip Broberg, and Ryan Murray are among the top three contenders for the final spot on defense. Ceci has a guaranteed spot and is working his way back after sitting out the early part of training camp nursing a lower-body injury. Oilers forward Tyler Benson left the game in the second period with a lower body injury and did not return. The Oilers left for British Columbia after the game and will take part in some team-building activities before taking on the Canucks in Abbotsford on Wednesday.

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xx-justlikehoney · 2 years

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writing prompt, oct. 2nd - apple scent

I cursed the apple scented candle burning on the counter, lit in a futile attempt to cover the evidence of the burnt bag of popcorn I plucked from the microwave an hour earlier. It had been at least a couple hours since the last customer walked in the door and the tell-tale electronic chime of the security system drew my eyes away from the textbook open in front of me.

I grabbed my phone and pulled up the text thread labeled “HBIC”, which wasn't by any means a term of endearment for my boss. She was indeed a heinous bitch, yet my fingers itched to draft a message asking her if it was okay to close up shop early. The hypothetical exchange played out in my head while I contemplated if it was worth it to ask at all.

Hi Elana, is it alright if I close the store a bit early tonight? It’s been over two hours since anyone has stopped in.

It’s only 7:15...someone is supposed to come by to pick up an online order tonight.

The rain hasn’t let up and I don’t think anyone is going out in this storm.

Anna, this better be the last time you pull this shit. We close at 10. Go organize the racks or clean something if you’re bored.

I determined it wasn’t worth it to ask a question I already knew the answer to. Lightning streaked across the sky followed closely by the low rumble of thunder as rain pattered against the wall of windows facing the street. Studying was giving me a headache, or it might have been the heavily chemical tinged fake apple candle. I flipped my Anthology of American Literature textbook closed and turned my attention to the computer, typing “American Girl Doll generator” into the search bar.

It had turned into a strange habit of mine when I couldn’t think of anything better to do. Sometimes it was too easy spending an hour or more concocting the ugliest or strangest looking American Girl doll possible. If Elana checked the cameras and caught on to my odd habits there was a good chance I’d be fired. Or maybe it was only the hopeful part of me wishing she would get rid of me already and save me the awkwardness putting in a two weeks notice. Short, curly red hair, teeth too big for her mouth, thick framed glasses, gloves. Could I give her an eye patch too?

There it was for the first time in so long it made me jump up in my seat.

Ding.

My eyes immediately shot up and over to the door where a man shook the rain off his long jacket onto the rug below.

“It’s starting to get crazy out there. Mind if I get out of the rain for a little bit?”

“Not at all,” I managed to choke out. The sudden nervousness I felt was easily played off as a tickle in my throat. I reached for my empty cup of water and pretended to take a sip, quickly closing the window for the American Girl website. “Let me know if you need help with anything.”

He gave a close lipped smile that spread so far across his face it looked sinister, and as he turned away to browse a wall display with knit sweaters I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. His hair was mussed up from the rain and the first few buttons of his white collared shirt were undone.

“Has it been a slow night?” he asked, casting a quick glance back in my direction before running his hands over the material of the sweater.

“We’ve had a lot of people in and out despite the rain.” I was lying of course, and I wondered if the words squeaked out of my mouth the way I thought they did. I wouldn’t tell this man I couldn’t recall the last time another living soul wandered past the store, let alone ventured to step inside. The slightest trace of stubble crept out like a shadow across his cheeks. He was maybe in his mid-thirties, good looking too.

My eyes were practically burning into the back of his skull until I noticed he was turning back toward me. I trained my eyes over to the register where I absentmindedly scrolled through sales for the day, unable to actually focus on any of the numbers. When I got a good look at him up close I took in the fading purple splotches beneath his eyes. One of his shirt buttons was missing, leaving behind a tangle of broken threads in its place. He held the sweater up to the light and placed it on the counter.

“My girlfriend is going to love this. Her favorite color is this shade of blue.”

I reached for the sweater to slide it off the hanger, but as it inched a bit closer toward me the man slapped his hand down on the counter, catching the hem and making me freeze.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Would you mind trying this on for me? You look like you’re the same size as my girlfriend and it would really help me out.”

My stomach began to turn, the acid burning up into my throat. I choked down the urge to vomit. There were small, angry red cuts scattered over his knuckles that looked fresh, overlapped by blooming bruises.

“I can't really abandon my post to try this on while someone else is in the store. I’m a medium so I think this should work out fine for you.” I pasted on my best fake smile and tried to steady my flittering heartbeat and shaking hands. It wasn't the most unusual request, but something about our interaction was setting off alarms in my head. My phone vibrated relentlessly in my pocket then stopped. I weighed my options.

“It’ll only take a minute, and I can watch the door for you.”

I swallowed hard and took another look outside where the rain had only picked up, flooding the streets and kicking up all the trash along the curb.

“Today is her birthday and I’m on my way home without a gift. I’ll stay right here and you’ll be keeping me out of the dog house.”

I don't know why I said yes, but I found myself shuffling toward the dressing room with the sweater clutched in my hands, attempting to keep the man in my periphery until I disappeared inside and swept the curtain closed. It gapped open just enough where it met the wall that I could see him pacing back and forth by the front door. I peeled off my t-shirt and slipped the sweater over my frizzing hair. My phone buzzed again, but I ignored it, wanting nothing more than to get this man out of the store as soon as possible.

I rushed out of the dressing room and did a nervous little twirl for him.

“Looks like a good fit, she's going to love it.” He walked back over to the display and grabbed another blue sweater, leaving the hanger behind. He approached the counter with the sweater draped over his arm and a few crumpled bills in one hand.

“How much?”

“Uh, $40.85.”

"Keep the change.”

He placed a fifty dollar bill down on the counter and strolled out of the door with the sweater still resting over his arm; the rain transformed it into a deeper shade of blue as it soaked through. I sprinted to the door and clicked the lock shut, tugging my phone out of my back pocket. A news alert flashed across the screen.

Police are looking for a man approximately six feet tall, early to mid-thirties, with dark hair in connection to the murder of 32-year-old Lily Haughn, who was found stabbed to death on her birthday early this morning. An unidentified man had been stalking her for months and is wanted in connection with the murder. He may have defensive wounds to his hands and arms.

The phone slid out of my hand and crashed to the floor as my legs buckled beneath me. I crumpled behind the counter, letting ugly sobs wrack through my body.

#writing challenge #fiction #short story #writers #thriller #writers community #writers of tumblr #female writers #october #writers and poets #fiction writing

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 4 years

Text

Trump & the Military

(This was shamelessly copy/pasted from OP on Reddit (u/myusernameiscool1234, thanks dude!) because it needs to be spread and I wanted to update a tad, add links and reformat it so it's easier to follow. I'm sure I'm missing stuff, so feel free to add to it and I'll try to update accordingly. Please Share!)

On Military Service

• Trump dodged the draft 5 times, 4 for college and 1 by having a doctor diagnose him with bone spurs.

• Trump said having unprotected sex was his own personal Vietnam (1998)

• Trump said “I felt that I was in the military in the true sense because I dealt with those people” because he went to a military-style academy and that he has “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military”. (2015 biography)

• Trump accepted a Purple Heart from a fan at one of his rallies and said: “I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.” (Aug 2, 2016)

• ⁠No Trump in America has ever served in the military; this spans 5 generations, and every branch of the family tree. In fact, the reason his grandfather immigrated to America was to avoid military service

• Trump made his 2nd wife, Marla Maples, sign a prenup that would have cut off all child support if Tiffany joined the military (reported on June 4th, 2019)

Use & Treatment of Military

• He sent commandos into an ambush due to a lack of intel, and sends contractors to pick them up, resulting in a commando being left behind, tortured, and executed. (Trump approved the mission because Bannon told him Obama didn’t have the guts to do it) (Oct 4, 2017)

• He forgot the aforementioned fallen soldier’s name during a call to his pregnant widow, then attacked her the next day (Oct 23-24, 2017)

• He urged Florida to not count deployed military votes (Nov 12, 2018)

• He used troops as a political prop by sending them on a phantom mission to the border and made them miss Thanksgiving with their families (Oct-Dec, 2018).

• He stopped using troops as a political prop immediately after the election. However, the troops remained in muddy camps on the border (Nov 7, 2018).

• He called troops on Thanksgiving and told them he’s most thankful for himself (Thanksgiving, 2018)

• He fired service members living with HIV just before the 2018 holidays (Dec 19, 2018-present)

• He finally visited troops 2 years after taking office, but only after 154 vacation days at his properties (Dec 26, 2018)

• Trump lied to deployed troops that he gave them a 10% raise. He didn’t give them a 10% raise (Dec 26, 2018). He initially tried to give the military a raise that was lower than the standard living adjustment. This was before Congress told him that idea wasn’t going to work. Then after giving them the raise that Congress made him, he lied about it pretending that it was larger than Obama’s. It wasn’t.

• He revealed a covert Seal Team 5 deployment , including names and faces, on Twitter during his visit to Iraq. Endangering both the operatives and their families. (Dec 26, 2018)

• He refused to sign his party’s funding bill, which shut down the government, and forced a branch of the military (see below) to go without pay. This branch of military was forced to work without pay, otherwise they would be AWOL. However, his appointees got a $ 10,000 pay raise (Dec 22, 2018 – Jan 25, 2019)

• He didn’t pay the Coast Guard, forcing service members to rely on food pantries (Jan 23, 2019)

• He denied female troops access to birth control to limit sexual activity (on-going. Published Jan 18, 2019)

• He banned service members from serving based on gender identity (Jan 22, 2019)

• He diverted military housing funds to pay for border wall (Feb 15, 2019). A judge subsequently denied this. In July 2019, SCOTUS ruled that Trump could in fact divert military housing funds to pay for his wall.

• Trump pardoned war criminals (May, 2019)

• In May 2019, Trump turned away US military from his Memorial Day speech because they were from the destroyer USS John S. McCain. Trump initially ordered the USS John McCain out of sight during his visit to Japan (May 15, 2019) which led to the ship’s name subsequently being covered. (May 27, 2019)

• In June 2019, Trump sent troops to the border to paint the fence for a better “aesthetic appearance” (June 7, 2019)

• Trump demanded US military chiefs stand next to him at 4th of July parade (reported July 2, 2019)

• Trump made the U.S. Navy Blue Angels violate ethics rules by having them fly at his July 4th political campaign (July 4, 2019)

• On July 31, 2019, Trump ordered the Navy rescind medals to prosecutors who were prosecuting war criminals.

• On ⁠October 8th, 2019, Trump plans to withdraw from Open Skies treaty giving Russia the ability to target our military aircraft.

Attacks on Service Members

• Trump said he doesn’t consider POWs heroes because they were caught. Says he "prefers people who were not caught" (July 18, 2015)

• He said he knows more about ISIS than American generals (Oct 2016)

• Trump attacks Gold Star families including: Myeshia Johnson — a gold star widow and the Khan family—gold star parents (2016-present)

• He called a retired general a ‘dog’ with a ‘big, dumb mouth’ (Jan 1, 2019)

• Well documented dislike of Sen. John McCain, going back to his statement on POWs (see above) and leading up to McCain’s passing. On March 20, 2019, Trump complained that deceased war hero, Sen. John McCain, didn’t thank him for his funeral.

• Trump started his D-Day commemoration speech by attacking a private citizen (Bette Midler, of all people) (reported on June 4th, 2019)

• Trump used his D-Day interview at a cemetery commemorating fallen US soldiers to attack Robert Muller, former FBI special counsel and a Vietnam veteran (June 6, 2019)

• Children of deployed US troops will no longer get automatic American citizenship if born overseas during deployment. This includes US troops posted abroad for years at a time (August 28, 2019)

• After he pleading with superiors in a letter asking to offload most of the sailors on the ship in order to allow for social distancing and sanitizing the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Trump attacks Capt. Crozier calling his letter “terrible” and "not appropriate” leading the Secretary of the Navy to remove Capt. Crozier from his post. 114 of 4,000 sailors on the ship had already tested po sitive for COVID-19. (April 3, 2020)

• On June 24, 2020, the White House ends the National Guard's deployments to assist the American people during the COVID-19 pandemic, the day before thousands of National Guard members would qualify for early retirement and education benefits under the Post-9/11 GI bill.

Immigrants in the military

• He deported veterans (2017-present)

• He ordered the discharge of active-duty immigrant troops with good records (2017-present)

• Trump doubled the rejection rate for veterans requesting family deportation protections (July 5, 2018)

• Trump deported active-duty spouses (11,800 military families face this problem as of April 2018).

• Trump deported a spouse of fallen Army soldier killed in Afghanistan, leaving their daughter parentless. The US has since overturned this as of April 16, 2019.

• In July 2019, Trump denied a United States Marine of 6 years entry into the United States for his scheduled citizenship interview (Reported July 17, 2019)

Treatment of Veterans

• For a decade, Trump sought to kick veterans off of Fifth Avenue because he found them unsightly nuisances outside of Trump Tower. Being quoted as saying, “While disabled veterans should be given every opportunity to earn a living, is it fair to do so to the detriment of the city as a whole or its tax paying citizens and businesses?” in 1991.

• Trump sent funds raised from a January 2016 veterans’ benefit to the Donald J Trump Foundation instead of veteran’s charities (Jan, 2016). The foundation has since been ordered shut because of fraud and Trump to pay $2 million in damages as of November 2019.

• The controversy surrounding wether or not he said vets get PTSD because they "aren’t strong" (Oct 3, 2016)

• He blocked a veteran group on Twitter (June 2017)

• Trump changed the GI Bill through his Forever GI Act.

• Trump changing the GI Bill caused the VA to miss veteran benefits, including housing allowances and forced many veterans to run out of food and rent. “You can count on us to serve, but we can’t count on the VA to make a deadline,” one veteran said. (reported October 7, 2018)

• While in Europe commemorating the end of WWI, he didn’t attend the ceremony at a US cemetery due to the rain – but other world leaders went anyway (Nov 10, 2018)

• He got three Mar-a-Lago guests to run the VA (unknown start – present, made well-known in 2018)

• He increased privatization of the VA, leading to longer waits and higher taxpayer cost (2018)

• He tried to slash disability and unemployment benefits for Veterans to $0, and eliminate the unemployability extrascheduler rating (Dec 17, 2018)

• He canceled an Arlington Cemetery visit on Veterans Day due to light rain (Nov 12, 2018)

• He tried to deport a marine vet who is a U.S.-born citizen (Jan 16, 2019). He deported countless other veterans (2017-present)

• When a man was caught swindling veterans’ pensions for high-interest “cash advances,” Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined him $1. As a reminder, the Trump administration’s goal was to dismantle the CFPB, installing Mick Mulvaney as the director, who publicly stated the bureau should be disbanded. (Jan 26, 2019)

• Trump purged 200,000 veterans’ healthcare applications (due to known administrative errors within VA’s enrollment process and enrollment system) (reported on May 13, 2019)

• On August 2, 2019, Trump requisitioned military retirement funds towards the border wall.

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eddie-redmayne-italian-blog · 4 years

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photos by Frank Ockenfels

The Long Journey and Intense Urgency of Aaron Sorkin's 'The Trial of the Chicago 7'

by Rebecca Keegan September 23, 2020, 6:00 am PDT

The director of the Netflix film, which stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Redmayne and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, reveals why it took nearly 20 years to get the project about the politically motivated prosecution of protestors made and why it couldn't be more timely: "I never imagined today would go so much like 1968."

In October 2019, hundreds of protesters marched down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue toward the Hilton, chanting phrases like "No justice, no peace!" and "A people united will never be defeated!" as police in riot gear descended on the crowd with billy clubs and tear gas. Earnest and energized, clad in 1960s period costumes and flanked by vintage police vehicles, this group thought they were acting out the past, staging a scene from Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7. As it turned out, they were performing the future, too.

Sorkin’s film, which opens in select theaters Sept. 25 and hits Netflix on Oct.  16, tells the story of the riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention and the circus-like trial of political activists that followed the next year. Thanks to Hollywood development hell, the movie is arriving 14  years after Steven Spielberg first mentioned the idea to Sorkin but just as its themes and plot points — civil unrest, a self-proclaimed "law and order" president’s vilification of protesters (Nixon then, Trump now), the police’s excessive use of force, tensions within the Democratic Party over how far left to move — have become bracingly current."I never wanted the film to be about 1968," Sorkin says in an interview over Zoom from his house in the Hollywood Hills on Labor Day weekend. "I never wanted it to be an exercise in nostalgia or a history lesson. I wanted it to be about today. But I never imagined that today would get so much like 1968."For only the second time in a career spanning nine films as a screenwriter, Sorkin serves as director with Chicago 7, helming a sprawling ensemble cast that includes Eddie Redmayne as anti-war activist Tom Hayden, Sacha Baron Cohen as Youth International Party (Yippie) provocateur Abbie Hoffman, Succession’s Jeremy Strong as counterculture figure Jerry Rubin and Watchmen’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Panther party co-founder Bobby Seale. There are undeniable parallels not only between the film and the present political moment but also between the performance-art activism of the actors and the men they’re playing, most vividly Cohen, who, like Hoffman, has made a career of political self-expression through comedic stunts, including crashing a far-right rally in Olympia, Washington, this summer while pretending to be a racist country singer. (Cohen, who shoots most of his satirical projects incognito, impishly calls reports of his appearance at the rally "fake news.")Eight months after Sorkin filmed the protest scenes in Chicago, Abdul-Mateen was marching in Black Lives Matter protests in West Hollywood, as was Strong in Brooklyn. "There’s power when a lot of people come together to protest out of anger, out of frustration," Abdul-Mateen says. "Everybody has a role in the revolution; this film shows that.

"Though the movie feels crafted for this political moment, it was born of another. At Sorkin’s first meeting with Spielberg, "I remember him saying, 'It would be great if we could have this out before the election,'" Sorkin says. The election Spielberg was talking about was 2008’s, when Barack Obama and Joe Biden faced John McCain and Sarah Palin.The film hit multiple roadblocks, beginning with the 2007-08 writers strike and continuing as financing faltered repeatedly, a fate illustrated by the more than 30 producers who can claim some sort of credit on Chicago 7. It took another unscheduled detour this summer after Sorkin finished it as the pandemic worsened, and the odds of original distributor Paramount mounting a successful theatrical release before the Nov. 3 election seemed increasingly slim. For some involved with the film, there is a question about the ethics of Hollywood inviting audiences to return to theaters before a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available. "

There’s a moral quandary that we, the motion picture business, have to be careful that we don’t become the tobacco industry, where we’re encouraging people to do something we know is potentially lethal," says Cohen.Before his visit to Spielberg’s Pacific Palisades home to discuss the project on a Saturday afternoon in 2006, Sorkin knew next to nothing about the Chicago 7. The federal government had charged seven defendants — Hoffman, Rubin, Hayden, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, John Froines and Lee Weiner — with conspiracy for their participation in the protests against the Vietnam War outside the Democratic National Convention. (Originally the men were known as the Chicago 8 and included Seale, who asked to have his trial separated from that of the others and postponed so that he could be represented by his preferred lawyer, who was ill; that trial never took place.)

When Spielberg proposed a movie about the riots and the trial that followed, Sorkin, who was 7 in 1968, said, "'You know, that sounds great. Count me in.' As soon as I left his house, I called my father and said, 'Dad, do you know anything about a riot that happened in 1968 or a crazy conspiracy trial that followed?' I was just saying yes to Steven."Despite his ignorance, Sorkin was a logical choice to write the project: Having penned Broadway’s A Few Good Men and its 1992 film adaptation as well as the long-running NBC series West Wing, he’d shown a flair for dramatizing courtroom procedures and liberal politics, and he turned in his first draft of the Chicago 7 script in 2007. Originally, Spielberg planned to direct the project himself, but by the time the writers strike was over, he had moved on and a number of other potential directors circled, including Paul Greengrass, Ben Stiller, Peter Berg and Gary Ross, though none was able to get it off the ground. "There was just a feeling that, 'Look, this isn’t an Avengers film,'" Sorkin says of the studios' move away from midbudget dramas and toward action tentpoles in the 2010s. "This isn’t an easy sell at the box office. And there are big scenes, riots, crowd scenes. How can this movie be done for the budget that makes sense for what the expectation is at the box office?"As the project languished, Sorkin tried writing it as a play, ultimately spending 18 months on a fruitless effort to fashion a stage treatment. "What I didn’t like was having a script in my drawer," he says. "I was just thinking, 'Jeez, this is a good movie and it feels like it’s stillborn.'"It was the confluence of two events that ultimately revived the film with Sorkin in the director’s chair in 2018 — the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the 2017 release of Sorkin’s well-received directorial debut, Molly’s Game, which doubled its production budget at the box office. "This is before George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and police protests or confrontations," Sorkin says. "This is just when Donald Trump was musing nostalgically about the old days when they used to carry that guy [a protester] out of here on a stretcher and punch the crap out of him."With Trump’s throwback rhetoric lending the subject matter a new timeliness and Sorkin’s directing chops confirmed in Spielberg’s eyes, the movie moved forward with its screenwriter at the helm.

Cross Creek Pictures came in to finance, and Paramount bought the domestic rights. But all those years in development had left an expensive imprint on the project — a jaw-dropping $11  million had been spent on casting costs, producing fees and the optioning of Brett Morgen’s 2007 documentary about the event, Chicago 10, leaving just $24  million for the actual 36-day production.

One way Sorkin attempts to achieve a sense  of scope despite that budget is by intercutting real black-and-white news footage with his dramatized protests. He rounded out his large cast with a deep bench of experienced and award-winning actors including Oscar winner Mark Rylance as defense attorney William Kunstler, Oscar nominee Frank Langella as Judge Julius Hoffman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as prosecutor Richard Schultzand, Oscar nominee Michael Keaton as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark — with the filmmaker and many of his actors working for scale. (Abdul-Mateen and Strong both became first-time Emmy winners Sept.  20.)Sorkin shot the protest scenes on location in Chicago and built a courtroom set in an old church sanctuary in Paterson, New Jersey, because none of the available courtroom locations in the Garden State conveyed the scope he wanted. "If we’re saying the whole world is watching, I want a packed courtroom for six months full of press and spectators," Sorkin says. "I wanted the big, cavernous feeling of the federal government and its power coming down on these people."

Julian Wasser/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images "The movie is tribute to the bravery of the protesters of 1968 [pictured] and today in Belarus, on the streets of America, in Portland," says Cohen.

Among the vestiges of Spielberg’s original plan was the casting of Cohen as Hoffman, which required the London native to affect a Boston accent and return to a subject he had studied as an undergraduate at Christ’s College in Cambridge, where he wrote a thesis paper about Jewish activists during the civil rights movement. At 19, Cohen had interviewed Bob Moses, the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which Hoffman was involved in before he founded the anti-war Yippie movement. "Honestly, I was very proud of the fact that Jews were involved in the Black civil rights movement in the '60s, and there wasn’t much written about it," Cohen says, explaining his youthful scholarship.

There’s a clear line to draw between Hoffman’s 1960s theatrics — which included throwing fistfuls of money into the gallery of the New York Stock Exchange and vowing to levitate the Pentagon — and Cohen’s contemporary TV and film pranks. Perhaps among Cohen’s most memorable and pointed gags was getting Vice President Dick Cheney to gleefully autograph a waterboard kit, which the comic did while posing as an admiring Israeli anti-terror expert for a 2018 episode of Who Is America?, his Showtime series. “What I wanted to do was to show that he was proud of torturing," Cohen says. "I could not believe how happy Cheney was to be sitting next to an uber-fan. So, yes. Ultimately in the shows and the movies that I do, I’m trying to be funny, but yeah, I’m trying to get out the anger that I have within me."

Cohen sees Hoffman’s unorthodox protest methods as pragmatic. "The Yippies were underfunded, and he was using theatricality to gain attention for his aims," Cohen says. "He wanted to stop the war. And how do you do that? You use stunts and absurdist humor to try to effect change." The actor estimates that, after researching Hoffman, he pitched Sorkin hundreds of lines the activist had really delivered. "As an annoying person with a lot of chutzpah, I was emailing Aaron every other night until morning, 'What about this line? What about this line?'" Cohen says. The writer-director, known for his exacting prose, politely tolerated the suggestions while largely sticking to his own script.

As Rubin, Strong is playing Hoffman’s conscientious jester sidekick, a role wildly different from the tragic, wealthy approval seeker he portrays on Succession. Strong added some of his own dramatic flourishes, including painting words on his chest for one courtroom scene and bringing a remote-controlled fart machine to disrupt Langella’s imperious judge. "I wanted to channel as much as possible that spirit of the merry prankster and of joyous dissent," Strong says. Hoffman and Rubin’s real-life personae were so large that Sorkin at times asked his actors to dial down their faithful portrayals, requesting, after one particularly jubilant take, "less cowbell."

Sorkin’s script draws a sharp contrast between Hoffman and Rubin’s campy methods and Hayden’s more reserved approach to the anti-war movement, with the tensions between Hoffman and Hayden supplying the film’s key relationship in a kind of begrudging brotherhood of the peace movement. To learn more about Hayden, Redmayne studied remarks that Jane Fonda, who was married to the activist and politician from 1973 to 1990, made upon his death in 2016. In his own life, Redmayne is cautious when it comes to discussing the role that he, as an actor at the center of a huge studio franchise (Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts) might have in political life. "I find it endlessly challenging," Redmayne says of navigating his public activism. "There’s the elitist thing. It’s speaking up on climate change but being conscious that you’re traveling a lot. One has to be aware of one’s own hypocrisies, because they can be detrimental to something you believe in. So sometimes I find that I have to live my life and speak to my advocacy in a way in that it’s around friends, family and people I know rather than making something public."

Abdul-Mateen has begun his acting career largely associated with fantastical roles, like Dr. Manhattan on HBO’s Watchmen, Black Manta in Aquaman and Candyman in the upcoming Jordan Peele-produced remake of the slasher film. Playing Seale represented a chance to do more grounded work and to depict a man who had loomed large during Abdul-Mateen’s childhood in Oakland, where Seale co-founded the Black Panthers in 1966 and later ran for mayor. Seale’s inclusion in the original Chicago riots indictment was controversial and strange — prosecutors accused him of conspiring with men he’d never met after visiting Chicago that week for only a few hours to deliver a speech. For the prosecution, Seale functioned largely as a prop to tap into the fears of white jurors and white Americans watching the news coverage, and during the trial he had no attorney. "I wanted to key in on, how did Bobby Seale survive this trial?" Abdul-Mateen says. "How did he survive the gross mistreatment by the United States government, and how did he go through that with his head high and not be broken? It was an exercise in finding my pride, finding my dignity."

In one scene, Seale is brought into the courtroom bound and gagged, and throughout the trial he is kept separate from the white defendants. "Although it was meant to be a humiliating act, I walked out with my chest high, with my head high. Bound and gagged and everything else. It would be very dangerous for a Black man in that time, even sometimes today, to show the proof of the wear and tear that oppression can take on a person, because that can be seen as a sign of weakness, and a sign of weakness is an open door that it’s working." For the moments of lightness that Cohen and Strong bring to the movie, Abdul-Mateen supplies ballast. "It’s important for the right reasons and at the right time to make art that makes people uncomfortable," he says.

Niko Tavernise/NETFLIX. On the set, from left, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Rylance, Ben Shenkman, Aaron Sorkin and Eddie Redmayne

Spielberg has remained involved in the film "in an emeritus role," Sorkin says, "from giving me good script notes to casting to notes on early cuts of the film." He also showed up to the New Jersey courtroom set. "When you have to direct a scene in front of Steven Spielberg, you’re not at your most relaxed necessarily," Sorkin says. Spielberg did not, however, take an executive producing credit on the film and declined to be interviewed about it.

The decision to switch to a streaming release came after an early summer marketing strategy call between Sorkin, Paramount chief Jim Gianopulos, other Paramount execs and some of the film’s producers. "At the end of the call, Jim said, 'Listen, we don’t know what the theater business is going to look like in the fall. We have troubling data telling us that the first people back in movie theaters are going to be the people who think that the coronavirus is a hoax,'" Sorkin says. This was clearly not the intended audience for a movie whose heroes are liberal activists. "I said, 'I don’t think the Idaho militia are going to be the first people coming to this movie,'" Sorkin says.

The group agreed to explore alternatives and gave Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Hulu 24 hours to watch the film. After a bidding war, Chicago 7 landed at Netflix in a $56  million deal against its $35  million production budget, with a robust marketing campaign and promise of a theatrical release. "We knew we didn’t have the option of 'Let’s wait a year,'" Sorkin says. "This is what we’re thinking about and what we’re talking about right now, and it just would have been a real shame to not release it now."

After Chicago 7 opens in limited release, Netflix will add more theaters in the U.S. and abroad throughout October, expanding upon the film’s premiere on the service, a strategy akin to what it provided Oscar best picture nominees The Irishman and Roma, albeit in a wildly different theatrical environment.

As Hollywood opens up to more production, Sorkin, and many of the Chicago 7 actors, have begun returning to work. Abdul-Mateen has been in Berlin for The Matrix 4 and Redmayne in London for Fantastic Beasts 3, while Sorkin is shooting a West Wing reunion special at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown L.A. that will premiere on HBO Max in October as a fundraiser for When We All Vote and include video appearances by Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton and Lin-Manuel Miranda

For the real-life Chicago 7, the denouement consisted of ultimately being acquitted of conspiracy. Judge Hoffman sentenced Seale to four years in prison for contempt of court, one of the longest sentences ever handed down for that offense in the U.S., but those charges were overturned on appeal. Just three of the original eight defendants — Seale, Froines and Weiner — are still alive, but the legacy of the case lives on in contemporary protest movements. "The movie is tribute to the bravery of the protesters of 1968 and the protesters of today in Belarus, on the streets of America, in Portland," Cohen says. "These people now are risking their lives, and they’ll continue risking them."

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/the-trial-of-the-chicago-7-aaron-sorkin-and-stars-on-films-timeliness-to-election-and-why-everybody-has-a-role-in-the-revolution

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pear-pies · 4 years

Photo

Piranha - Oct 2000

fairly awful google translate of the OCR scan below the cut

Placebo has been owned for four years

among the most hopeful

new bands. With her third

Black Market Music Album

now you have yours

Maturity exam passed.

m short-lived music business from Today, faster profit is more important than 7 7 the continuous building of a Tape. Result: bands are signed, hyped, land a hit, sell an album well and then mostly disappear in the lowering. Fortunately, placebo was different. The multinational trio (an American, a British te, a Swede) first appeared in 1996 nung. With the singles "Bruise Pristine" and "Nan- cy boy "caught their attention, not only with the audience, but also with David Bowie. After a pretty successful, self-titled Debut album was ignited in 1998 the second stage det. "Without You I'm No- thing "appeared and became« Von Relationship thanks to the fantastic problems Lead single "Pure Morly Philosophical ning "(including spectra. Placebo kular video) a global look over the success. own outside the box As the title already extends « lets mute, acted Album mostly of relationship problems. Problems like this are inevitable for a man like Brian Molko because of his reputation. In addition to diligently flirting with androgynous appearance, he has also labeled himself a bird of paradise with cracks in the pear through some ambiguous statements in the direction of sex and drugs. However, these times are said to be over. Placebo has not sworn off drugs or sex, but both should now be handled in a controlled manner and with a certain degree of responsibility. Regardless of that, the focus should now be on music. So welcome to "BlackMarket Music", which is undoubtedly a huge advance against the singles the draft horses - for albums that still contain some filling material, Placebo has now succeeded in an all-round successful work that does not contain a single superfluous track. Even the first single "Taste In Men" convinces with hard electronics and urgent beatings, which in no way sets the direction for the whole album. The point of contrast, for example, is "Commercial for Levi", one cozy acoustic number, which deals with the new sense of responsibility in dealing with everything that is dangerous. There was "Special K", a brisk guitar number the huge impact of being in love, or "Spite & Malice", the first placebo song with rap passages that fit amazingly well. Huge. «And even more so than before, slow, introverted pieces are represented. "Narcoleptic" and "Blue American" are dark, morbid, and as jet black as the sunglasses that Molko rarely takes off ... But as I said, "Black Market Music" no longer lives from individual tracks that cover the whole album have to wear, it's actually worth listening from the first to the last second. And you can see how much love and effort went into it. After spending more than a year on tour, placebo were just keen to do something new. And, of course, they had also become increasingly self-confident, had learned to put their musical ideas into practice, and to skillfully incorporate new elements. And so placebo can count themselves lucky that they have been given the chance to grow so naturally instead of »From promising - to success again - to be served to the newcomers. Thanks to well-known stars: "Black this happy Um-Market Music" stands, you are now in a position in Placebo's admission ticket to the club that could have made it one of the greats of the new century. With only three albums they have reached an impressive maturity, have developed an unmistakable style of their own that will sound fresh and distinctive for many years to come. Who knows, if the next album improves like this compared to "Without You I'm Nothing", you could end up with one of the most important works of the decade. For the moment, they have to be content with "only" making one of the absolute best albums of the year. But that should open doors and gates for them even more, give them more confidence and hopefully inspire them to do even greater things. In any case, it will be interesting to see what size little Brian Molko can still be inspired to. Until then, we'll enjoy this gem from an album!

#placebo #brian molko #stefan olsdal #steve hewitt #germans please help!

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hannigram-a-b-o-library · 5 years

Photo

Hannigram A/B/O Reverse Bang

Schedule and Information

The time has come! We’re ready to get the Hannigram A/B/O Reverse Bang underway... Below you will find the pertinent information. If there is anything that hasn’t been covered or you have more questions about, please do get in touch. We will happily respond here, on Twitter, Pillowfort or via email, and where appropriate add the information to an FAQ. Schedule: Sept 19: Sign ups open (Writers and Artists/Media) Oct 20: Signs ups close (Writers and Artists/Media) Dec 22: Artist Only check in (Mandatory) Feb 17 - 23: Submission of completed art/media (Media Creators) March 1 - 5: Claims (Writers) March 8: Creative Teams announced April 26: Writer Only check in (Mandatory) May 24: Posting Schedule Organised (form will be sent to Writers and Media Creators) May 31: Team Check In (Mandatory) May 31 - June 7: Posting of promotional/teaser banner/fic summary June 28: Posting Begins

Dates are subject to change and any changes will be announced on Twitter, Pillowfort and Tumblr.

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In order for this to run as smoothly as possible and to retain focus on creators within the fandom, there are a few rules we have put in place, including some sign up criteria. Please read thoroughly before signing up.

Participant Criteria:

You don’t need to be massively active in the online fandom, but you MUST have created something for it previously.

With your signup you will be asked to provide links to any fandom accounts you wish (tumblr, ao3, etc), and also for a link to at least one specific post with an example of your work.

You MUST ensure you have the time and capacity to take on the challenge before signing up. Please do not sign up unless - barring a change in circumstances/real life - you are confident you will be participating.

You MUST be over 18 years old to take part in this event, due to the mature content.

Creative Content:

These rules have all been set with consideration to making this as easy for a partnership to work with as possible, including pairing choices, word lengths and media contribution numbers -

All sign ups and claims will be managed through google forms. We will be explaining each step of the process via email, with links to forms, as we go. But if anyone would like clarification on anything, please get in touch.

Once matched, the team will be given each other’s contact details (email and tumblr), so please ensure you are comfortable with this, and provide suitable details. The teams will also be announced via email to participants, and shortly thereafter on our social media platforms.

You may enter as both a writer and artist/media creator, but you may not create for your own art/media.

All works should be brand new. No previously posted WIPs or remixes. Sequels and prequels will only be allowed if they work as a standalone piece.

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Full information for artists/media creators and writers, beneath the cut. Please ensure you read thoroughly before signing up!

Artists/Media creators -

The main pairing in your creation must be Hannibal and Will. You can feature other pairings (Marlana, Bedannibal, Spacedogs, etc), but the main focus must be Hannigram.

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Submission: In February, you will have a week to submit your finished work in order to continue to participate. You will also be asked to complete a short form with information about the work, including any short prompt or idea behind the work, for guidance to the writer. As well as any ratings, tags, warnings you don’t want used in the associated story.

Claims: We will open for Claims to writers on March 1. They will be given until March 5 to claim. Once matched up, we will be letting everyone know which writer they are matched with.

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Promotional Banners: This needs to be a snippet - a close up or teaser - of the work. A WIP as a teaser is also acceptable. The banner must include the name of the fic and both names of the teammates - guidelines will be given for this, including for those creating media that may not be easily made into a banner. These can be posted by you and/or your teammate, along with a snippet of the fic, on social media platforms of your choice (we will RT/Reblog on Twitter, Pf and Tumblr) during the week of May 31 to June 7.

Posting: You and your teammate will be assigned a posting date, based on your posting date preferences. You can decide between you whether both team members post their separate parts (linking to the other), or whether one of you posts. You can post on all social media platforms of your choice on your posting date. Artists/Media Creators can either post their works to the AO3 collection, or embed in the teammates fic - this is for you to decide as a team.

Posting: For visual art, please ensure this is posted with appropriate resolution and dimensions for the platform(s) you post to. If you need guidance on these please let us know.

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The minimum word count is 3000 words.

As the art will already be complete, there is no upper word limit on the fanfic. However, please ensure the fic is complete as a standalone story by the due date.

Any rating and warnings are allowed by the event, HOWEVER you must check with your artist/media creator that they are comfortable with this. They will be asked to submit their preferences, which you will be made aware of at claims. But further discussion should take place, especially for any potentially triggering tags.

Any tropes or genre welcome, canon and AU allowed. However, this should be discussed with your artist/media creator, in case they have strong preferences on it.

Claims: Will take place March 1 - 5. You will be asked to select several art/media in no particular order. We will do our best to match you with one of these. Once the claims have been processed, we will let you know who you have been matched with.

Team Communication: It is important that you have an initial conversation with your artist/creator once matched, so that you are all on the same page before moving forward. After that the level of communication is down to you and your partner, but please be clear with them what level of input you are comfortable with or would prefer. Whether you want to be left to it, keep them totally in the loop, or something in between. At the least, we’d expect writers to share their finished story with their teammate before it gets posted publicly.

Check In: You have one check in (April), where we will send you a short form (less than 5 mins) to find out how you are getting on and whether you are still planning to participate. There will be a team checkin in May, in order to ensure you are happy with how things are progressing, whether you think you will be finished, and whether we can assist in any way. We will not be asking for drafts, but we will be asking for a truthful estimation of how complete you feel you are.

Promotional Banners: You will need to supply your teammate with the name you will be posting under, and the name of the fic, so this can be added to their banner. These can be posted by you and/or your teammate, along with a snippet of the fic, on social media platforms of your choice (we will RT/Reblog on Twitter, Pf and Tumblr) during the week of May 31 to June 7.

Posting: Your fic must be posted in its entirety on your assigned day, even if it has multiple chapters, they must be uploaded on the same day.

Posting: Your fic must be posted into our AO3 collection with appropriate ratings, warnings and tags. Artists/Media Creators can either post their works to the AO3 collection, or embed in your fic - this is for you to decide as a team. At the least, you must include a link to your teammate’s collaborative piece in your notes.

Withdrawing:

Again, please ensure you have the capacity, time and enthusiasm before signing up!!

However, we understand that sometimes life happens and you may no longer be able to commit. If this is the case, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can ensure teams are not unduly affected.

If you are withdrawing, please email us - [email protected]

If you are wanting to withdraw because your team isn’t working out for any reason, please let us know as we may be able to make swaps or involve pinch hitters if possible.

Contacting us:

You can email [email protected], or send us a DM on Twitter or Pillowfort, or an ask on tumblr. Please note that if you send the tumblr ask as anonymous we will not be able to respond to it privately

#hannibal #hannigram #a/b/o big bang #Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics #omegaverse #hannibal extended universe

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advernia · 4 years

Text

around june of last year, i decided to revive my writing blog as one of the many potential stress-relief methods i could think of.... i didn’t think i’d be able to keep it active for long since work + family duties keep me preoccupied most of the time, but eyyy!!! so far i haven’t lost the motivation to keep going back to this blog, and i even managed to keep it afloat for half a year!!! amazing!!! (•̀o•́)ง

and now here we are halfway through 2020!!! it’s waaaay overdue but here’s a big T H A N K Y O U V E R Y M U C H ! ! ! to everyone and anyone who dropped by this blog last year + all them likes, comments, reblogs...... please know that i’m still i n c r e d i b l y grateful for the support & interest in the content i’ve posted up!!!! tbh my activity’s still hella sporadic so it’s really amazing for me that i even gained new followers.... i’m very honored to have all of you stick around my blog despite my irregularity!!!!!!!! (༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ)

it’s also overdue, but i slowly managed and finally cleaned up the blog like i’ve been meaning to do + changed the blog name to match my ao3 handle for consistency!!! i make no promises to be super active... but i’m sure that i still want to continue writing & keep this blog alive!!!!

again, thank you all for your time + reading my works!!!!!! ∩( ´∀` )∩ work commentary on the rest of my works last year follows under the cut!

oct 1 // hero’s journey

a drabble on blanc + oliver about the alices... now that i think of it, calling the first alice first alice is kinda funny considering that alice is really her name... or is it?

i do hope blanc’s route talks about her a bit, haha! i mean, i wish cybird remembers that they’ve been dropping the occasional background tidbits about her... like for example, her pocketwatch (that she gave to blanc eventually) having a magic crystal engraved into it.... her potentially leaving a fucking globe in the black army’s possession (like... wow... u fell with that thing????????)....

plus, i just find it interesting that she was remembered by cradle as a heck of a troublemaker lol! it also makes you wonder who among the main cast met her, blanc aside... though it’s not stated when exactly she fell into cradle, so maybe only blanc had the opportunity of meeting her...

so does blanc speak of her fondly bc she’s a woman, or is there something else??? has he been frequently visiting the land of reason pre-game??? has he found the first alice’s antique shop / met her again??? does he still try to figure out the reason why there’s a magic crystal engraved into the first alice’s pocketwatch????? hmmmmm......

on another note, it would be hilarious if cybird pulls a peter pan 2......... since we can’t pull off a mother-daughter relationship like wendy & jane’s, what if alice the second is somehow actually related to the first alice?? and while she’s completely different from her predecessor, blanc finds himself falling for alice the second........ just like he fell for the first alice? drama!

that’s just a random thought but kidding aside, i do hope blanc’s route is hella interesting bc i think he’s our mr. exposition for knowing more about cradle itself lol

oct 1 // fair (?) ladies & phony (?) enchanters

a result of going manic a few days after seeing harr’s trailer + route release.... ahaHAHA I’M STILL WILLING TO PLAY UR ROUTE IN JP HARR (if i actually had time to sit down and translate gET REKT)

i liked writing these drabbles and i think they’re cute but tbh they did nothing to ease my curiosity about harr’s route.... if anything else, it became even w o r s e haha........................

if i think of blanc to have a cradle-centric route, i do hope harr’s route is magic tower-centric! naturally it will be since he’s got history there, but i hope a lot of my questions about the magic tower will be answered.....

will harr’s perspective of the magic tower be in the eyes of a test subject or a disciple???? he was scouted by the magic tower, but it wasn’t stated what he was doing exactly..... going by hints + loki’s & zero’s routes, it’s more of him being a disciple, so there’s bound to be guilt.......

hopefully alice’s characterization in his route is good + we get a fun group dynamic with loki!!! their potential.... the most(?) notorious criminal of cradle, a sought after test subject, and that one girl who nullifies all magic; a renegade trio lurking around the forbidden forest.... what an odd bunch!

oct 4 // god is a five minute hymn

a religious themed fic with lancelot & alice - tbh i don’t even know why religion was the first thing that came into mind when liz and i were talking about cultural differences, lol.

on that note though! i personally like thinking that if ever cradle had a semblance of a religion, it would be polytheistic & nature-centric, and not strictly practiced - the stratocracy of both territories i’d like to think makes it harder for religion to have a voice, much less have one that is practiced by the general population. the only thing general about it is that the religion centers or has magic crystals as an important factor... or something. yeah.

that aside, i think i specifically chose lancelot in this piece for the sole reason that his canonically stated lack of common sense, in my opinion, gives him the curiosity of a child sometimes - there’s no sense of malice or doubt, just the pure innocence of wanting to know something....... religion does that to kids, especially when introduced to it at first.

rereading the fic makes me think of the instances where when faced with dire or unsettling situations, people turn to faith as a life line.... well, i’m not sure if i had that subconsciously in mind when writing alice, but that does give a spin to it....

oct 6 // flow like the river nile

a spontaneous red army-centric fic! it certainly turned out better than i expected... i liked the formatting i used for this one!

if cybird can give us more about the pre-game suitors it would be great, tbh! and while the stuff about them in school is interesting, i’d like to see more about when they assumed their positions + combat scenes! the neutrals are special cases, but knowing more about their living conditions + daily lives is also a treat...

i was thinking of adding one last snippet about lancelot in the eyes of the reds, but i scrapped it out and switched it to alice & lancelot’s conversation about duty - it could’ve worked better if i stuck to using the what is your duty? question, but i scrapped it eventually too. ah well. it does look good enough as it is.

oct 7 // seeking out phantoms

a mandatory(???) odd one out aka content that’s not ikerev, haha! i missed fe:a all of a sudden...

i never got around to writing properly for this fandom tho, what a shame - i’ve got some bits of pieces in my drafts that looked interesting and easy enough to pick up, and this was one of them.

robin investigating more of their plegian heritage could’ve been a good subplot tbh... i still wish there was something like a paralogue or dlc about it, bc honestly the valm arc goes a bit slow until you get to the future past revelations. ah well.

and gaius bc first husband for the win.... not like i actually had the guts to marry anyone else in my other save files lololol

nov 7 // push me off a bridge (to catch me as i fall)

my longest project of 2019, holy shit! i didn’t know i still had it in me to write something past 10k... i need more of that motivation + energy....

there’s nothing much to say about this since i blabbed about everything in the post-reading notes, but as much as i fought myself to get this done, i really enjoyed writing a long fic again! hopefully i can get myself to write another one this year...

nov 18 // beloved, beloved, let me be clear

18 sentences on zero & alice + macross frontier references! man, when i really got to the point about the earrings i was thinking of sheryl a lot....

kept it in sentences cause i didn’t have enough time to put up a decent ficlet! but i really wanted to get my screaming out of my system....... i used to do sentences + three word sentences challenges before, and doing one again was pretty fun!

but really.... zero’s route kept me happy for days???? their buildup + dynamic was something i was totally w e a k for, no joke..... thank gods the collection event was going on, bc i really made good use of my stocked chapter tickets lolol!

i was especially excited come the ball scene, and that cg..... a h a h a.... i need more of those pretty cgs where i can see alice’s face + costume change.......

nov 20 // coloring inside the lines

jonah + alice + makeup!!!! tbh this was really fun, i enjoyed writing this one - if i remember, this was a fic that i managed to continuously work on the day i thought it up!

jonah may not be my best boy but tbh i find writing him very easy - i guess it’s because i’m very fond of characters like him!!! those uptight nobles who are as prideful as hell but can definitely live up to their name + are more capable than their bragging suggests... idk if there’s a general trope name for these doods, but i especially like analyzing their motivations + convictions!!!

i liked how i ended it, but i apparently i made an actual ending that’s now a snippet in my drafts - jonah & alice head to the ball, and somewhere along some bystanders’ flow of conversation someone drops a comment about jonah’s lips looking... quite more luscious than usual, lolol. so t h i r s t y. upon hearing this, alice can’t seem to stop smiling for some reason.....

nov 27 // blue fields, verdant skies

a practice drabble set centric on a ray/alice development that i liked so much i made it into a series - plus, it’s black army content and honestly i need to write more of them! my red army bias is showing whoooooops

it’s a feudal + arranged marriage au, with the latter... being quite spontaneous. it’s those types of marriages where neither have even met - not even once - only to face each other come the wedding... so it’s a given that audiences from both parties are rather curious how this will turn out.

since i had the theme of fate in mind, ray was the automatic pick for the male lead. the rest of the black army is a given and for kicks, i added dean and dalim! i actually want to write about them + mousse, but since i’m still unsure on their characterizations i’ve been holding them off.... but i gave in anyway.....

alice is again named for word count convenience purposes since it’s in actual 100 words aka drabble form! i have planned scenes + an ending already in mind, but going there is pretty hard bc.... i still have to write the scenes in between + resist temptation to expand further on other scenes, haha....

initially i was planning to keep it updated here as well, but any more updates of this are on ao3 instead! the formatting looks better there instead of my blog tbh, and it also gives it a sort of muted tone to the story that works with me!

this is also the 31st fic in this blog, marking an end of the challenge liz bestowed to me lolol - since i brought this blog back to life around june, i was dared that by the end of the year, i should’ve posted more than 15 fics to add up to the initial 15 i had already posted before, thus the numbers on my fics back then.... now that i actually succeeded, i can stop counting lololol!!!! tho hopefully i can still be pretty active this year....

dec 22 // duck, duck, bullet

oliver & fenrir on guns... this probably wins as the most spontaneous idea i had on my head - tbh, i wasn’t even sure where i was going with it at first! but i’m sure i was suddenly thinking about that one detective conan movie.... then it became kid!oliver with a gun.....

i wonder if he tests the bullets at night, when he’s in adult form.... then again, kid!oliver with a gun still works.... say that because he’s a genius inventor, he made some models to serve as his shooting targets.... but another thought that amuses me more is.... blanc does the bullet testing for him!?

lololol i already thought about blanc being oliver’s live target, but i also find blanc with a gun very interesting.......... i mean, blanc certainly doesn’t look like he can fight, but who knows??? i mean, mousse is the former ace of hearts, but i still can’t imagine him fighting..... appearances can be deceiving....

the two aside, i wonder how fenrir even met oliver and got him working on his bullets........ was it through blanc or other connections???? how long have they been seller and buyer???? does anyone else commission anything from oliver?????? hmmmm.....

dec 23 // terms of surrender

i’ve been told by liz + luci + other friends that i needed to practice writing more.... cheesy fluff. i’m not sure if this sirius/alice piece counts, lol. in fact, i think it’s my definition of fluff i see here - and it translates to not exactly fluffy at all!

tho if you want me to be honest about it - when i write suitor/alice stuff, how alice was characterized in the suitor’s route is still my basis for how i’ll write her, and sirius’ alice................ haha......... i think she’s the alice that’s honestly easy to write but i choose to avoid..........

i don’t dislike the sirius/alice dynamic per se, tho. i do find it cute, especially if cybird stops emphasizing the issue of maturity in the relationship on alice’s side. i understand - i really do - that it’s a potential issue in the relationship, but...... that’s not the only problem you can possibly have as time passes, right?????

on another note, it’s funny that only sirius gets to be harped about the maturity due to age difference issue - setting aside blanc, who heavens know how old he is, lancelot’s 29 and since alice is presumed to be around ray + fenrir’s age, you could say that she’s 24 or even 23 to be safe.... so that makes a 5 / 6 years difference but it’s never brought up, lol. but i guess it’s because unlike lancelot, the black army’s been making sirius’ age a running gag....

anyway, this piece is pretty decent! i was thinking of something along the lines of mornings between a “married couple”.... there were two scenarios i had in mind, and i opted to write this one out first.... maybe i’ll have the second one posted up here another day.

dec 28 // a chain of black thrones

pre-game!sirius & ray and bc i was thinking a lot about the previous chosen, the former jack of spades!!! i wonder if the armies have a set age for retirement lolol... it would be awesome if there was still a chosen who’s already past his 50s or something, haha!

since sirius was constantly badgered to take on the role of king, i was also wondering about how long the black army was ‘king-less’... i mean, if the tension between both armies was really as great as they say, having no king puts the black army at a precarious position... i also thought that ‘nah, maybe there was a king or something but maybe the black army didn’t like him or something so they insisted that sirius take it instead’ but sirius’ 1st anniv. epilogue says otherwise - there really was a period that the black army had no king, wow. how the heck did they deal with that???? surely the red army saw this as a display of vulnerability....

can the black army’s chosen choose to leave their posts when they feel like it??? when they’re defeated by a challenger, what happens to them - a demotion, or do they serve under the ‘new’ chosen??? does the black army’s chosen change constantly because of their meritocracy + challenger system??? like, how do they deal with that, and do they announce their changes in chosen each council meeting??? each new question just snowballed my curiosity, whoops...

there were so many angles i thought of but i decided to settle for addressing the king-less state of the black army... through the eyes of a veteran who’s probably served many kings throughout his time of service as part of the black army’s chosen.

i gave this jack of spades character a name, actually - garret folner. maybe someday i’ll write him again, bc i actually enjoyed thinking about the present + past chosen interactions - maybe i’d think about that for the red army, but this time i find the black army’s side more interesting for this situation.

dec 29 // steadfast tin soldier

a zero/alice piece for zeroweek - i was about to post pt. 1 as a standalone, but then i just thought about how.... zero bought alice a gown.... but never got to dance with her at the day of the ball..... so i rushed to add pt. 2 haha!

with the addition of pt. 2 it looks cut short tho - i did think of putting a scene in between, but no good ideas came into mind bc i was too fascinated with the dancing scene... i swear at some point i will find myself writing a fic or a part of a fic that’s a dance scene for the rest of the ikerev suitors + alice....

this is the kind of fluff i live for, actually... i’m totally fine with the steamy content cybird throws during events + bonus stories, but if i were to be honest i say.... where’s my non-sexual intimacy????? the simple, wholesome stuff?????????????????

man, i feel hilarious for typing that out..... but well, i guess it’s a matter of different strokes for different folks, lol!

#rundown.txt #can i spam thank yous???? seriously idk what else to say ahhhh #this! blog! shall! live!!! if i do well enough updating will become a habit!!!#i need better habits than sleeping + working + spring cleaning lololol #aHA i was thinking of changing themes again bc aesTHETIC #there wasn't one that caught my eye tho... plus coding during work... get rekt #but i fooled around with pages instead and colors!!! blue's the color of the year

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

Text

Bolivian Leader Evo Morales Steps Down https://nyti.ms/2roDkAO

“This is not Cuba. This is not Venezuela!” they chanted in La Paz, Bolivia’s main city, over the weekend. “This is Bolivia, and Bolivia will be respected.”

Bolivian Leader Evo Morales Steps Down

A leftist who had served longer than any other current head of state in Latin America, Mr. Morales lost his grip on power amid violent protests set off by a disputed election.

By Ernesto Londoño | Published Nov. 10, 2019 Updated 7:22 PM ET | New York Times | Posted Nov. 10, 2019 |

President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who came to power more than a decade ago as part of a leftist wave sweeping Latin America, resigned on Sunday after unrelenting protests by an infuriated population that accused him of undermining democracy to extend his rule.

Mr. Morales and his vice president, Álvaro García Linera, who also resigned, said in a national address that they were stepping down in an effort to stop the bloodshed that has spread across the country in recent weeks. But they admitted no wrongdoing and instead insisted that they were victims of a coup.

“The coup has been consummated,” Mr. García said.

Mr. Morales was once widely popular, and stayed in the presidency longer than any other current head of state in Latin America. He was the first Indigenous president in a country that had been led by a tiny elite of European descent for centuries, and he shepherded Bolivia through an era of economic growth and shrinking inequality, winning support from Bolivians who saw him as their first true representative in the capital.

“I want to tell you, brothers and sisters, that the fight does not end here,” Mr. Morales said on Sunday. “The poor, the social movements, will continue in this fight for equality and peace.”

“It hurts a lot,” he added.

Mr. Morales’s reluctance to give up power — first bending the country’s laws to stand for a fourth election, then insisting that he won despite widespread concerns about fraud — left him besieged by protests, abandoned by allies and unable to count on the police and the armed forces, which sided with the protesters and demanded he resign.

As the country slipped into deeper turmoil over the weekend, protesters voiced their fear of Bolivia’s trajectory under Mr. Morales.

“This is not Cuba. This is not Venezuela!” they chanted in La Paz, Bolivia’s main city, over the weekend. “This is Bolivia, and Bolivia will be respected.”

Carlos Mesa, the former president who came second in last month’s election, celebrated Mr. Morales’s resignation, which he characterized as “the end of tyranny.”

It remained unclear on Sunday night who would take power, as several officials in the line of succession had resigned. Mr. Morales’s resignation statement was expected to be read in Congress Monday.

Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said on Twitter on Sunday night that his country would offer Mr. Morales asylum if he sought it.

Mr. Morales’s departure is a milestone in the spasms of unrest that have roiled Latin America in recent months. Several leaders in the region have been bedeviled by street protests, acts of vandalism and deepening political polarization — dynamics exacerbated by underperforming economies and rising outrage over inequality.

As it became clear that the military would turn on him, Mr. Morales flew with Mr. García and a small number of aides from La Paz to Chimoré, in the state of Cochabamba. It was unclear whether Mr. Morales intended to leave Bolivia or stay in that area, which is home to coca leaf growers and has been a stronghold of support.

Mr. Morales’s increasing grip on the country had been worrying critics — and many supporters — for years.

In 2016, he had asked voters to do away with the two-term limit established in the 2009 Constitution, which was drafted and approved during his first term. Voters narrowly rejected the proposal in a referendum — which, under Bolivian law, was supposed to have been binding.

But Mr. Morales found a workaround. The Constitutional Court, which is packed with his loyalists, held that term limits constricted human rights, giving Mr. Morales the right to run for office indefinitely.

The beginning of the end for Mr. Morales came on Friday night, when a smattering of small police units made dramatic pronouncements that they were breaking from the government and joining protesters angry over suspicions that the Oct. 20 presidential election had been rigged.

Mr. Morales appeared intent on weathering the storm until his generals abandoned him on Sunday. During his presidency, Mr. Morales went to great lengths to make the armed forces an integral part of his political movement, mindful of the country’s long history of coups.

Christoph Harig, a research fellow at University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, Germany, who studies the relationship between the military and civilian leaders in Latin America, said Mr. Morales’s ouster did not constitute an “old-school coup in which the military aims to take power itself.”

But he said the sequence of events that led to the president’s resignation was “not the sign of a healthy democracy,” and added to the recent events in Latin American in which military leaders have been dragged into political disputes.

“It once more reinforces the military’s position as final arbiter in political crises,” he said, predicting that it would “further fuel polarization.”

Police officers in La Paz were among the first to join the revolt. Initially, many took to the streets with bandannas or surgical masks covering their faces, apparently fearful of being identified. But as their ranks grew, many shed the masks and used bullhorns to address protesters.

“Our duty will always be the defense of the people,” a female officer said through tears in a televised address. “The police are with the people!”

By Sunday, the rebellion had spread to the military.

Shortly before Mr. Morales went on national television to announce his resignation, the commander of Bolivia’s armed forces, Gen. Williams Kaliman, said the military chiefs believed he should step down to restore “peace and stability and for the good of our Bolivia.”

When Bolivians went to the polls in October, many expressed hope that the president would suffer the first electoral loss since his landslide victory in 2005. Graffiti denouncing Mr. Morales as a “dictator” was ubiquitous in the capital.

The opposition felt victorious when initial results showed that Mr. Morales had failed to carve out the 10-percentage-point margin needed for an outright win and would have to face a runoff. That scenario was potentially ruinous for Mr. Morales because other opposition candidates had endorsed the runner-up, Mr. Mesa.

Without explaining why, election officials stopped releasing information on the vote count for 24 hours. The evening after the election, they announced a stunning update: Mr. Morales had won outright, with enough votes to avoid a second round.

Opposition leaders and international observers cried foul, saying that Mr. Morales’s turn of fortune defied credulity. Angry mobs attacked election buildings around the country, setting some on fire.

In subsequent days, large demonstrations and strikes paralyzed much of the country. Mr. Morales defended his electoral triumph as rightful and called on supporters to take to the streets in a show of force. Many have, including bands that have roughed up people protesting the government.

Mr. Morales’s standing grew precarious on Sunday after the Organization of American States, which monitored the election, issued a preliminary report that outlined irregularities and said the vote should be annulled.

In response, Mr. Morales called for a new election in an extraordinary concession. But it did not appease demonstrators and opposition leaders, who renewed calls for him to step down.

The president’s hold on power grew more tenuous as the day wore on. Leading figures in his party resigned, and the military launched operations that appeared intended to protect protesters from armed bands of Morales supporters.

Mr. Morales, a member of the Aymara Indigenous people, rose to prominence as a union leader for coca leaf growers. On his watch, the country’s power structure was transformed. Women today hold nearly half the seats in Congress, and Indigenous people hold more sway than ever.

His first term also coincided with a commodities boom that allowed him and other leftist leaders in Latin America to lift millions out of poverty through subsidies and political patronage. One of the poorest nations in the world, Bolivia used proceeds from natural gas exports to turbocharge its economy.

His party, the Movement for Socialism, has long been the country’s dominant political force, controlling both houses of Congress. Opponents struggled to compete with Mr. Morales because of his enormous support, but they also faced enormous personal risk. Mr. Morales has unleashed allies in the judiciary against political rivals, many of whom have landed in jail or gone into exile.

Raúl L. Madrid, a professor of government and Latin American politics at the University of Texas at Austin who studies Bolivia closely, said Mr. Morales came to feel indispensable.

“I think he views himself as the savior of Bolivia, as a representative of the marginalized people of Bolivia, especially Indigenous people,” he said.

Mr. Madrid said that if Mr. Morales had stepped down after his second or third term, he would have walked away with a commendable legacy. Yet, he added, the president’s decision to try to remain in power was unsurprising.

“From the beginning, he was not interested in grooming a successor that could have threatened him from within,” Mr. Madrid said. “These populist leaders who try to hold on to power at all cost end up undermining their legacy, and people remember them as dictators or would-be dictators.”

Leftist leaders in Latin America, including President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, Argentina’s incoming president, Alberto Fernández, and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil condemned Mr. Morales’s ouster as a coup.

“It’s unfortunate that Latin America has a financial elite that does not know how to abide by democracy and the social inclusion of the poorest people,” Mr. da Silva said.

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president, said he was pleased to see Mr. Morales go.

“The word coup is used a lot when the left loses,” he told the newspaper O Globo. “When they win, it’s legitimate. When they lose it’s a coup.”

Ernesto Londoño reported from Rio de Janeiro. Cesar Del Castillo and Mónica Machicao contributed reporting from La Paz, Bolivia, and Anatoly Kurmanaev from Caracas, Venezuela.

#worldpolitics #world news #international news #news #breaking news #latest news #national news #national security #nationalsecurity #trending topics #top news #top stories google news #u.s. news #south america #political protest #protest #bolivia #evo morales

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soysaucevictim · 5 years

Text

Week 2 of current engagements to follow.

Oct. 26

I woke up around 10AM, today.

Did a bit of gaming before moving straight into exercise stuff, in anticipation for the outage.

First, today’s DD. 1′ one arm plank with EC. I really should keep the timer on the ground, it's just unpleasant straining the neck to glance up at desk to find my cue to switch sides. But done. :P

Second, Day 7 of the 30DoHIIT. Ab work, Level 3. Unlike the previous days - this one was completely untouched as far as structure went. And I did enjoy the selection of exercises. Except maybe the scissors - but I was able to manage.

Third, Day 7 of the PGC. 1′10″ un/clenching fists. Still outpaced the .gif slightly. But it’s definitely getting more challenging to do so,

(After some errands and feeding the dog...)

Fourth, Iron Bar + Footwork Workouts.

(After the power going out around 6PM, I spent most of my remaining daylight hours on reading to dad.)

Last, Day 7 of the G2B. I got to bed a bit before midnight - probably one of few good things about the outages... =_=

Oct. 27

I woke up a bit after 10AM.

The pretty much the first thing I did was my exercise.

First, today’s DD. 10 plank walk-outs with EC. I saved the image before the outage, so I could still do it on time. It was just manageable.

Second, Day 8 of the 30DoHIIT. Cardio HIIT, Level 3. Despite the outage and not being able to listen to music with subs, this went pretty well. This was the same in everything except for set counts from the older version. So it was easier, now.

Third, Day 8 of the PGC. 1′10″ overhead flex hold. Pretty straightforward.

Fourth, Iron Bar + Footwork Workouts. Iron Bar was probably the second hardest part of my exercises today. But I think it's going to be a good call for at least the next week or so.

(After spending some time repairing a bunch of gloves, going to Grandma’s for dinner because she still had power, and doing some reading to dad...)

Last, Day 8 of the G2B. I got to bed a bit later than yesterday, but still in the green zone.

Oct. 28

I woke up a little later than yesterday.

After some yard work, I went into my exercise early again.

First, today’s DD. 100 squat hold punches with EC. I asked my brother if he could use a bit of cell data for me to peak at this one, so I did it on time again. I enjoyed it and my quads were on fire. :D

Second, Day 9 of the 30DoHIIT. Active Plank, Level 3. Good thing that I installed a HIIT Timer app on my phone for this one. Made this WO go p smoothly and the 2′ rest period was so nice. (Also worth noting, this was another day left completely untouched by revision. Except for the title.)

Third, Day 9 of the PGC. 1′20″ un/clenching fists. I think I maintained a pace of about 2/sec, but that was only an estimate.

Fourth, Iron Bar + Footwork Workouts.

The power came online moments before grandma came to pick us up (~3PM). At her place, we played cards and ate dinner there. Dad tokk the time watching football.

Then we got home, I did a bit of gaming, ranting on Twitter, and took a shower, before winding down... which happened too late for the G2B (~3AM). Thankfully I’m giving myself one grace day each week.

Oct. 29

I woke up a bit before yesterday.

First, today’s DD. 2 minutes chest expansions with EC. I counted 112 reps by the end, a few shy of 1/sec. But I’m okay with that. It was fun, too.

Second, Day 10 of the 30DoHIIT. One & One. It escaped me to jot down my reps, this time. I would say this was harder than the previous instance this version, but easier than the older version. I did notice I staggered my pace during the jumping Ts, after going a bit too fast for the half jacks, but I did the jumping jacks somewhere in between them. Middle row was a nice breather. The high knees + butt kicks hovered between jogging and running.

Third, Day 10 of the PGC. 1′20″ overhead flex hold. This was made a touch harder after all the standing shoulder taps - but still manageable.

Fourth, Iron Bar + Footwork Workouts.

I unfortunately did not get to bed on time, tonight. Though I did turn in a bit earlier, than yesterday. :/

Oct. 30

I got up a bit before 11AM.

After a bit of the usual and getting upset from feeling overwhelmed, I did some exercise.

First, today’s DD. 30″ star plank with EC. This was pretty doable, I think just negotiating the floor space was the most awkward part of it. :P

Second, Day 11 of the 30DoHIIT. Ab Work, Level 3. This was a day left completely untouched. And I enjoyed the selection of exercises and it did improve my mood a bit.

Third, Day 11 of the PGC. 1′30″ un/clenching fists. That got pretty tough to mostly outpace. And also tougher to type afterwards, which is an amusing effect of doing this exercise.

Fourth, Iron Bar + Footwork Workouts. Pretty straightforward, feeling pretty helpful to do. Knees and ankles feel more stable. I’ll do this at least one more time before taking it out of the regimen for a time.

Last, Day 9 of the G2B. I did get to bed a few minutes before midnight - but I hit the yellow zone again.

Oct. 31

I got up sometime after 9AM - accidentally hit the snooze button too many times.

Woke up to the driver calling home. And I rushed my ass out to get in the car to keep them from waiting too long. Surprised I didn’t forget to bring anything with me, despite that (except there was no time for some food/coffee). @_@

Got to the facility, worked more on that project, went to WRAP Group, ran out for some vending machine snacks, and did the DD, before leaving home-bound.

The DD was 5′ “Zombie“ hold (it was basically just a frontal arm raise hold), done with EC. I found this amusingly festive to do before leaving the facility today. My triceps started trembling in the last minute or so, but still very doable and fun! :,D

Got home, spent a few hours on the usual, but I did roll out the garbage and exercised.

First, Day 12 of the 30DoHIIT. Active Plank, Level 3. I think this was easier than the old version - mostly because of fewer sets again. Selection-wise I think it’s a harder judge - it was definitely challenging to maintain balance going right into those plank rotations with the stacked muscle fatigue. But I managed and my abs burned good! =w=

Second, Day 12 of the PGC. 1′30″ overhead flex hold. This was just about doable - a good way to work some wrist ache out.

Last, Iron Bar + Footwork Workouts. I think this will be the last time I regularly incorporate these exercises, for the time being. They were very helpful!

Unfortunately didn’t get to bed on time again. Got to bed a bit after 2AM. :/

Nov. 1

I woke up around noon, today.

Most of my day was spent on the usual, making dinner, doing dishes, watching the rest of KLK + Snowpiercer. Dinner was stuffed green bell peppers... my knees didn’t like that. =_=

It was an active rest day, so as far as exercise went, I did just the DD. 40 climber taps with EC. Not much to say other than I found, this was just about doable.

For a bit of catch-up, I fulfilled Day 10 of the G2B. I went to bed shortly after midnight, and hit the yellow zone.

I’m going to just post this now. I draft another for the following week.

#adventures with fitness #california power outage

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