#them not caring about steve which i mean. fair. steve while being their big marketable character isn't their priority | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

maddy-ferguson · 1 year

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those who pick apart every flaw in the wheeler family dynamic to construe some kind of familial abuse storyline for mike lowkey remind me of steve stans who take the multiple instances of steve freaking about his dad ‘what will my dad think/my dad’s gonna kill me’ and the harringtons’ alluded to absent hands off parenting and construct steve a familial abuse backstory. If they wanted mike to have an abuse story they would have given him one. max and the byers are abused children, max by her brother and will/jonathan by lonnie. we also see the duffers write downright flawed parents, max’s mom coping from divorce and work woes with alcohol and not being present to her daughter’s growing depression, hopper suffering from his own fear of loss and lashing out against a child that obviously was gonna act out from being cooped up for a year. if the wheelers were supposed to be anything other than emotionally stunted, conservative parents that sometimes try and sometimes fall short they would be that instead. like max’s mom, like hopper, they contain parenting flaws. you’d think karen and ted were monsters for not always being the perfect support system for a child they cannot understand what’s going on with, supernaturally or otherwise, by the popular opinion of speaking of them here is

there's one key difference between people who do that with mike's family and people who do that with steve's: we're actually supposed to care about mike's family and his relationship with them. the wheelers are one of two families we meet in season one. we meet them first. mike is elliott in E.T and steve is...elliot's older sister's reformed boyfriend (elliott doesn't have an older sister). we're not supposed to care about his family. do the details we get matter? sure, it...explains why steve works at scoops ahoy i guess. you could find ways in which it informs his relationship with nancy i'm sure but it's not that important in the grand scheme of things because steve himself isn't.

what's annoying about people stretching what we see of mike's family and pretending that it's what's happening though is, well, the fact that they pretend it's what's happening and that they'll act like it's in the show and say you have no media literacy if you disagree. i think it's a thing in this fandom especially because people are sooo into Analysis that they forget that not everything has to be canon for you to enjoy it. steve is his stans' special little guy, of course they're gonna take the three things we hear about his family and make it big plot points in the fics they write, you're allowed to do that also. if you want to write a fic where ted is this lonnie type figure then by all means do it because he will never be in the show, just like steve's relationship with his parents will never be explored. that's something steve stans are well aware of, hence the fics and the frustration at the fact that despite his massive screentime steve's feelings don't seem to matter that much and that he doesn't get to process any of his trauma on screen. mike has family dynamics that are important enough to make it into the episodes. mike is given emotional depth. mike is a character that gets to be traumatized on screen. if you want to add to his trauma by making his parents worse than they are, that's what ao3 is for. if they wanted mike's parents to be abusive beyond redemption, they would've made them abusive beyond redemption.

#answering this ask because it turned one month old today <3 #guys why am i such a diplomat #(i'm actually not)#then again it also depends on what qualifies as abuse to you like if you think that their behavior's abusive you're obviously allowed to #but yeah. they're not writing them as abusive beyond redemption that's for sure #steve's feelings matter i guess but yk when he gets hurt it's also always like whoops there he goes again! not him getting tortured haha #and he says he got over nancy but then he's in love with her again like i can see that happening for sure but a lot of steve fans saw it as #them not caring about steve which i mean. fair. steve while being their big marketable character isn't their priority #there's a fascinating dissonance no one's happy here steve is always there but he also doesn't matter that much and steve stans will never #get the joy of seeing him break down because he's just a fun character but characters get sidelined because of how important he's gotten #to me steve stans are the ones who lost the most in season 4 like idk i would be sooo annoyed at the writers for the way they wrote him #like sure will has never been happy a day in his life but at least his trauma is important and when he's sad you're sad with steve it's #like oh. they decided that he loves nancy again. okay i guess? like idk #ask

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trillian-anders · 4 years

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chambers - xx

pairing: bucky barnes x reader

warnings: violence, angst, slow burn

word count: 2.8k

description: post-endgame. Steve Rogers has passed away from old age. The one remarkable thing is that no one knew his heart would be in the condition it was. He was able to save one more life. After receiving his heart, strange things start happening. Including something that would change your life forever. (Inspired by the Netflix series of the same name.)

note: thank you guys so much for being with me for this series, the first one i’ve posted. the first chapter sat half written in my drafts for almost a year before i decided to finish it and post and i’m very happy that i did. thank you so much for reading and i hope to see you on the next one!

if you have any questions about the series always feel free to message me.

Their names are Allan and Rosa. Your parents who were born, raised, and still live in Philadelphia. Your Mom always in a pair of scrubs and hair in a messy bun before messy buns were even a thing. Your Dad wore glasses and had a fully grey beard, his hair almost fully grey now with age. They taught you how to ride a bike, even though your Mom had been terrified. You remembered your Dad holding the bars over your shoulders and helping you down the street, your little heart beating so fast with excitement.

They taught you to read and write, cuddled under your Mom’s arm as she read you whatever you wanted her to read, pretty covers of books you couldn’t quite understand. Tales of dragons and elves, princesses and epic battles, books on romance. She’d read to you every day. In the hospital unconscious or in your childhood bedroom.

As you grew older and your health problems began to escalate. First heart, then the second. You started enjoying those little things more.

Sudoku with your Dad while he sat next to your hospital bed. Your Mom had a spin with needlepoint that the two of you attempted and your crude flowers sat framed in the living room to this day.

They were always there, all your band recitals, even though you were terrible at the violin. At every science fair. At every school function. They always showed up.

“You were our gift from God.” Your Mother had told you. “We knew you were meant to be ours the second we laid our eyes on you.”

They’d never been able to have children. That’s what they told you and Bucky when you’d gone to see them. They desperately wanted a child, and when they heard about you. How sickly you were. Their hearts broke.

“We thought we’d only have you for a short period of time.” Your Dad was emotional, dabbing his eyes. “We were fortunate enough to have you survive.” No one had wanted you. Not when they thought you were going to die.

“You were a frail thing.” Your Mother said, “You looked like you were at deaths door, but when I first saw you and you grabbed my hand so tightly… We knew you were a fighter. And we wanted to fight with you.” And they did. Every step of the way.

Every surgery.

Every new hope.

Every failure.

It was theirs too.

Not just yours.

And when you were a kid you resented them for it. They didn’t understand that you didn’t want to go outside. They didn’t understand that you didn’t want to get out of bed. You grumbled and groaned as your Mom rolled you out into the sun. The wheelchair after your surgery, she painted it a bunch of different colors and sat you in it in the back yard. The sun poking through the trees and warming your skin while she gardened, and you acted like it didn’t help.

They were always so unwaveringly optimistic. This next surgery would be the one that cures everything. This next surgery will be the one that sticks.

It wasn’t easy explaining them the situation. With Steve, Zemo. All of it and at the time, the less they knew the better. But it didn’t stop them from worrying. So it made sense that when it was all over, you spent a little time at home. A nice little break from the stress of the constant running. The looking over your shoulder.

You’d waited until your bruised face healed, until you were cleared by Bruce. Then you went home.

Your Mother cried when she saw you, Dad hadn’t gotten home from work yet. She gripped your cheeks and lay kisses on your face, pulling you into a tight hug before leading you inside.

The three of you ordered pizza from your favorite place. Cheese fries and soda. You talked to them about your biological parents. Who they were. What just happened to you. But trying to explain time travel seemed a little difficult.

“So… there’s more than one… universe?” Your Dad, trying to put the pieces together.

“Yes, but they’re all interconnected. Like… every decision is a fork in the road, so choosing ‘yes’ leads you down one path while choosing ‘no’ leads you down another and it infinitely splits off from there.” He nods before shaking his head.

“How long do you think you’ll be able to stay with us?” Your Mom asks.

“A week or two at least.” You pick at a fry, “Bucky is going to come get me whenever I’m ready to go.”

Bucky. They remember Bucky.

“The real brooding guy?” Your Dad asks. “He looks like he needs a drink.” You laugh,

“Yeah, that guy.”

You helped your Mom with her garden. You went to work with your Dad for an afternoon, taking money at the register of his barbershop. Grocery shopping was nice. Doing something so normal and mundane after a while. Getting apple cider donuts from the Amish market and browsing, picking out a good watermelon and barbecuing. Something you felt like you’d taken for granted for so long before.

“Hey, how are you?” You stepped inside, away from the noise of your cousin’s birthday party. A small backyard barbecue with just family, an iced sheet cake on the kitchen counter with candles waiting to be lit.

“I’m doing alright,” His voice, you hadn’t realized how much you missed it. “Sam is riding my ass about this paperwork, but it’s just about done. How are your parents?”

“They’re good.” You sigh, leaning against the wall. “They’re happy to have me back.”

“I’m sure.” There was silence for a beat,

“I miss you.” Both said at the same time. You laugh, “We spent so much time together in those last couple weeks… I thought this break would be nice, and it is, I love seeing my family and being here, but…”

“I wish you were here.” Who knew he’d be such a softie? You hum,

“You could always come down when you’re done with that paperwork.” You look out the sliding door to the back yard. “I’m sure my parents wouldn’t mind.” He lets out a chuckle.

“Maybe, I’ll think about it.” You tug your bottom lip between your teeth.

“Have you ever seen the liberty bell?” You can hear him shift on the other line, getting comfortable.

“Can’t say that I have.” You could hear the smile on his face.

“You should come see that at least,” You hear him hum, “Maybe get a cheesesteak, see a couple of museums.”

“That doesn’t sound half bad actually, I just might have to.” You pick at the polish on your nails.

“Wanda tells me that you’re having trouble sleeping.” A heavy sigh. “What’s going on?” Silence.

“I’ll be fine.” But you knew he wasn’t. Being back in the chair, going through that again, even if it was for a short period of time. I was setting him back.

“Have you talked to Tom about it?” His therapist. Another sigh, so no. “Bucky…”

“I know. I know… I’ll talk to him about it this week.” Your Mom steps through the sliding glass door with your Aunt.

“We’re about to do cake.” She says. Telling you to get off the phone without telling you to get off the phone. You nod.

“I’ve got to go, but please don’t forget to take care of yourself. Take a shower, talk to your therapist, and then come see me. Promise?” You can hear Bucky move on the other line.

“I promise.” A grin on your face.

He showed up the weekend after. Hair a little shaggy and beard unshaven he stepped out of his car and into your arms. The hug much needed, giving you a little rush of happiness. A comfort in it.

He looks so tired. Talking to your parents over dinner. Just exhausted. And you know he hasn’t been sleeping. If the bags under his eyes were anything to go by, he hadn’t slept much since you left a week ago.

“They like you.” You tell him later, sitting on the edge of the bed in the guest room. “You don’t have to sleep in here,” You offer, “They won’t care if you slept in the same bed as me.” It’s not 1940 went unspoken but was there. He sighs, rubbing his eyes.

“I’ve been a little restless,” He admits, “I don’t want to wake you up.” You roll your eyes, standing and holding your hand out to him.

“Come on.”

Your bed was a full size. Not as big as the beds at the compound but just about the size you’d had when you were sleeping in the Hydra facility in Austria. Which means you’re snuggled up face to face, looking at each other in the dark.

“I think it would be good for us.” You reason, “I think we need some closure.” He stares at you for a moment,

“That’s what Tom said too.” You shrug, your hands clasped together. “I just don’t even know what I would say…”

“I don’t know either.” You whisper into his hands. “Steve was leading me this whole way and the focus had always been on him, but… I was Peggy’s kid too.” And she had to give you away too. She had to lose a child too. “I think this would be really good for me.” He nods against the pillow.

“Okay.”

“We can go?” He sighs, fingers brushing your cheek.

“Yeah, we can go.”

Steve was buried next to Peggy. With her until death and far after. He was a traditionalist after all. The flowers felt silly in your hands as you lay them on the two graves, lush with flowers of admirers… tourists. You throat so dry and your nerves getting the better of you.

This wasn’t the Peggy that was your Mother. This was a different Peggy from a different universe. But it didn’t erase what was in your DNA. Your biology. You feel a tie to her. In more ways than one.

You’d done more research on her. Who she was. What she stood for. You talked to Sharon. Your cousin. She talked to you about how Peggy was really into female empowerment. She supported her when she wanted to join the CIA. She supported her through everything. And you wonder for a moment what it would have been like to grow up with Steve and Peggy as your parents. That legacy. If you’d lived long enough, would you have joined SHIELD? Would you have fought the same way they did? Against the injustice they saw in the world?

Yes, you think. You would have. Because even with a different hand dealt in life you still found your way back here. To this very moment.

“Hi, Mom.” It felt strange, talking to nothing, but it wasn’t really nothing was it? “I uh… I’ve been thinking about what I would want to say to you… how I would even… talk to you like I did with Dad and I know it probably wasn’t easy to let me go.” You swallowed roughly, tears already pooling in the corners of your eyes, “I know it wasn’t easy, but I just want to say thank you. I… I’m going to live a long and happy life here, where I might not have survived before. I found something that makes me truly happy, like I didn’t even know… that I was capable of any of that…

but I know it’s from you. Not just from Dad.” Your hands are shaking, and you wrap your arms around yourself. “I think that we kind of got lost in that a little bit. He’s Captain America, the golden boy… American hero that he is, no one even cared that I was your daughter… I just want to thank you for everything you’d done for me… and the person you let me become.”

It felt strange, talking to the grey stone. But relieving. Tension in your shoulders dissipating. There was also a slight emptiness, never being able to meet her. Never being able to talk to her. “I wish I could have at least talked to you,” A sigh, “At least once.”

But they’re always with you, right?

“Are you okay?” Bucky rubs your arms and you lean back into his chest, he wraps his arms around you, resting his chin on your shoulder.

“Yeah,” You sigh, “I think it’s your turn.” Your hand rubbing his forearm that lay across your chest. He stiffens slightly, you were sure he was anxious, he pressed a kiss to your cheek. “I’ll give you some privacy.” You stepped away from him, holding his hand until you were too far out of reach, taking steps away from him to reach the car, leaning against the passenger door.

Bucky looked back at you, you giving him a little thumbs up and a soft smile. He sighs, turning back to look at the stones in front of him. Steve’s name carved out in the granite. He remembers being here before. Carrying the casket. Sore and upset. He remembers you sitting, not too far away. In a wheelchair, recovering from your surgery still, but there to pay your respects to the man who saved your life.

He remembers that day as being very difficult. His fists clenched and angry. Sam had been trying to calm him down all morning, but it had been hard. He couldn’t deal with the loss. He just couldn’t.

It feels like a lifetime ago now.

He swallows, “Steve…” He felt a little ridiculous. “I’m angry that you left me.” He lets out a deep breath. “I was angry… that you left me. I was angry that you left me and didn’t tell me the real reason why…” His fists were tight now. “I would have understood, if you had only told me… I wouldn’t have thought that you didn’t love me enough, I wouldn’t have thought that you didn’t care.

Steve, I… I loved you so much for so long that I didn’t see anything else ever happening. I always thought we would be together, as friends or not. It was hard for me to come to terms with the fact that you didn’t see it that way. It broke my heart to bury you. I didn’t think I had anything else and if it wasn’t for Sam I…” Maybe wouldn’t be here. He squeezed his eyes shut, taking a deep breath and trying to gather his thoughts.

“She’s incredible, Steve.” He could feel your eyes on his back, knowing you looked at him with worry. “She’s so intelligent and kind, she’s strong… I would have left you for her too.” A rough joke with a watery laugh, “It’s easier to say now, looking back that you made the right decision. But at the time it was almost impossible to reason… I just… I wanted to let you know that I love her.” He felt the tension melt from his shoulders, “And I’ll take care of her pal… Thank you for bringing her to me.” The granite felt warm from the sun as he rest his hand on the headstone. “Thank you for everything you’ve ever done for me.”

He met you at the car, standing close, resting his hands on the roof of the car, caging you in. Your eyes fluttering closed as he pressed his mouth to yours. A soft and slow kiss. You sigh, wrapping your arms around his waist, the hug much needed. The emotional turmoil finally settling. A comfortable silence.

When you pull back, he looks down on you, a soft smile, red eyes.

“Are you ready?” You hum,

“To leave or to move on?” He shrugs,

“Both?” You return his smile.

“Let’s go.”

You couldn’t help but feel like, when you sunk into the passenger seat and let Bucky drive you away, that you were leaving that part behind you.

You hadn’t had another memory of Steve since actually sitting and talking to him, there was a little emptiness there that hadn’t been before, soothed over with the fact that you felt changed by this. Your hand was in Bucky’s, over the center console, his thumb running over your wrist. He brought your hand up to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of it as you pulled out of the lot and onto the street.

“I think we need a vacation.” He sighs, his eyes a little red rimmed still from the emotional toll of the day. You nod,

“Where should we go?” A side smile,

“Wherever you wanna go baby.”

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #the falcon and the winter soldier #sam wilson #steve rogers #captain america #bucky barnes x you #tfatws #sebastian stan

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shellheadtm-a · 4 years

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while i’m sitting here nervously chuckling to see if we go into curfew mode/shelter in place...

amanda’s guide to 616 tony’s relationships with characters you know from the mcu. otherwise known as how things are very different.

pepper: tony’s not married to pepper. he’s never been in a relationship with pepper. they pined after each other for a while, pepper got married to happy, happy died, she and tony banged, and then tony deleted his brain and that was pretty much that. by the time tony got around to asking pepper out, she was seeing someone, the weight of happy’s death was there (she asked tony to cut happy’s life support with extremis), and they’d both moved on. they definitely do not have a kid - 616 tony is childless. they’ve been good, good friends over the years, but now have mostly grown apart, and pepper’s doing her own thing as rescue.

rhodey: not much changes here besides the fact that rhodey is a former employee of tony/former ceo of stark/former iron man. while tony was pulling his life together while in recovery, rhodey was iron man. then he became war machine, and is also a liason to the us military for stark. he and tony are still pretty much bffs, despite the fact that they’ve had their spats over the years. tony loves rhodey a lot and tells him that frequently. they use ridiculous code names for things like mama hen and papa bear. when rhodey died tony rebooted him out of death. it’s like that.

happy: happy was pretty much the same. former boxer, tony hired him as a chauffeur. tony saw pepper and happy making eyes at each other and did his best to push them together. happy was in and out of tony’s employ for literal years, sometimes doing his own thing, for a while running literally all the pr and charity stuff (and doing a damn bang up job of it too, during the stark solutions days), and eventually was beaten into brain death during civil war. tony caused the blip in his life support at the request of pepper because happy didn’t want to spend his days like that. tony misses him a lot.

peter: 616 peter is a good deal older than mcu peter, and tony wasn’t really a mentor. instead, you can argue he kind of adopted peter as a little brother (which was a much better take on that friendship, no i do not take criticism). but civil war happened, tony convinced peter to reveal his identity for the sake of regristration/keeping peace, aunt may got shot, everything went to hell, and there’s been a long, slow healing process between the two of them. they can work together nicely enough...usually. but during the parker industries days there was some serious animosity going on - slapfights via the stock market. now, though, they’re starting to move on, and be able to act like grown adults and talk.

steve: oh boy. tony has some major fucking heart eyes for steve rogers. the avengers found steve in the ice, and he’s been tony’s literal attached at the hip bestie ever since, even though they break up more than a junior high school couple. instead of bickering, these two are all unnecessary touching and waxing poetic about each other and acting as each other’s biggest fans. tony has a captain america memorabilia collection. steve’s temporary death utterly destroyed tony completely. look for one, and the other probably isn’t that far behind. the avengers always function better when these two are in sync.

bruce: complicated. super complicated. bruce was a founding member, tony will tell you he is absolutely bruce’s friend, and he really is! but their relationship is...tumultuous. tony saved bruce’s life, but inadvertently caused the hulk as a literal manifestation via gamma bomb. he does love bruce, he does. but he’s also done shit like shot bruce into space because he’s something of a danger in the eyes of...well. just about everyone. (to be fair, that was the illuminati, and boy do i have opinions on the illuminati.)

thor: 616 tony and thor have been through the shit, both together and against each other, and have come out the other side still friends. the big three (tony, steve, thor) is called that for a reason. they’ve got a super tight relationship. but they’ve all three fought hard against each other, as well, and there was a point in time (after the thor clone particularly) where it looked like tony and thor were quitsies. not so much, apparently, thor’s a big tony supporter when tony and steve are feuding. tony (and also steve) have pretty much told odin to get fucked over their boy.

nat: nat and tony met while she was still a russian spy. that’s right. nat started off as an iron man villain. but once she switched sides and joined the avengers...listen. nat and tony have in the past had this...on again off again thing. how serious it’s ever been is up to you to decide, but they’ve been a thing. nat drags tony into things and he goes along willingly because he trusts her completely. he always believes nat has a good reason for doing what she’s doing. it’s been pointed out before but like...the level to which he did not care she had all this info on him (and clint, and bucky, and logan) could not have been more in the negative numbers. tony loves nat. tony trusts nat. enough that he doesn’t spaz the fuck out when she breaks into his bedroom and sits there waiting for him to wake up.

clint: clint was part of cap’s kooky quartet, when the og avengers left for some personal time. even so, tony and clint did spend a good amount of time out west with each other, during tony’s recovery and when he finally picked up the iron man mantle again. tony made clint’s hearing aids. it was tony and steve who were there when clint was going blind. they bicker and pick on each other like...a lot, but if clint calls, even for something as stupid as detangling his fucking cable box, tony’s there to help. they’re friends, is what i’m getting at. clint was the first person tony offered the shield to after steve’s death, to be the next captain america.

carol: instead of barely existing in the same space, tony is friends with carol. he loves carol like...a whole lot. they might argue, and they might disagree (and i think it’s because in reality carol and steve are a lot alike and tony is a good foil to the both of them), but ultimately tony loves and respects carol like...so much. he’s her aa sponsor. he’ll be there to help at the drop of a hat. hell, even after she’s broken his windpipe and finally explains herself to him and thor he’s more than willing to do what needs to be done. she’s the one he trusted with the whole...mmm...hinky shit that was going on behind the scenes after civil war bc he had to have someone and who better than carol danvers?

wanda: sorry but the mcu screwed the pooch completely with wanda all the way around. wanda was another one that was part of cap’s kooky quartet (along with pietro) and like...she was one of them for so long, you know, like...she and tony have actually led teams together, he brought her into force works. i honestly don’t think he holds any animosity for shit that happened before civil war, enough that he can make jokes about it now. it’s not this weird...you’re grounded bc i said so bullshit with them. tony will call wanda sweetheart at the drop of a hat.

vision: tony didn’t create ultron, that was hank pym. the vision is a bit of a weird case in 616 but he’s tony’s??? friend??? enough so that during age of ultron (616′s aou) tony was as blinded as everyone else that ultron had been using the vision to fuck with them from the future. he’s the one who worked to get vision’s self-repair to function after avengers disassembled and it eventually kicked in. he’s the one who helped vision with viv. and he fixed viv’s dog??? like??? he’s not the creator of either of the things that came out of ultron initially but he is vision’s friend, thank you and goodnight.

sam: yeah sam and tony aren’t like. best buds. they view life and being a hero too differently, i think. but they’ve been on teams together and worked fine together. they were able to get their shit together after steve’s assassination. i’d argue tony initially gave sam a chance because he was steve’s friend, and then gave his respect on his own once he saw who sam is as a person. especially when he was filling in as cap. not best buds, can work together just fine.

scott: hey so uh. tony’s friends with scott!!!! i hate!!! what the mcu did!!!! tony’s the one who took a chance on scott when he got out of prison. he hired him. he’s supported scott as ant man, scott’s been an avenger, tony’s uncle tony to scott’s daughter cassie!!! tony’s the one who begged cassie to please, please stay out of superheroing bc he’d lost scott, and he didn’t wanna lose her too. when cassie was little she used to be at stark industries parties!!! like...there’s none of his mean-spirited bullshit there, tony has no problem going to scott and being like hey. i need your help. they’re friends!!!!

t’challa: they’re friends, karen. like t’challa’s been on and off avengers teams for years, and these two have enough in common it’s probably no surprise they can?? get along just fine?? they were part of the illuminati together there toward the end of the incursions (along with steve until they, you know, wiped steve’s mind). they went after the avengers when that toxin was let loose at mount rushmore, because tony, the idiot, broke them out of jail. they have an information sharing agreement between tony’s company and wakanda. they’re friends. and tony’s always been kinda in love with him, lbr here.

bucky: how about a complete one eighty from the mcu? actual friends. didn’t start off that way, no, bucky tried to kill tony the first time they met. because bucky’s...well. he’s bucky. instead he ended up being the new captain america, bc tony took one look at this idiot and said “oh no he’s dumb i have to protecc.” tony knows where bucky lives in indiana - you can bet your ass not everyone does. tony can and will drop everything if bucky calls him in the middle of the night and says “hey, i need you.” he does the work on bucky’s arm that bucky can’t. alpine likes him. he’s willing to support bucky’s solo gig. keep the oatmeal angst, this is the tony and bucky content i’m here for, with bonus small town fireworks.

guardians of the galaxy: they come as a group in this because.................................tony used to be one!!! he likes them just fine!!!! he used their ship as a space crashpad for a while and got into so much trouble with them!! jfc, tony and peter set up the quill network!!! he and gamora had sex like once in which she was not impressed!! he and rocket bickered and dickered back and forth!! angela!!! they all met angela together!!! i hate!!! the mcu take!!!!

edit: stephen: i forgot stephen. because i’m dumb. anyway!! yeah so...stephen and tony don’t bicker that way. they’re friends. stephen never answers his damn phone, but they’re friends. stephen was long time illuminati just like tony was, and they all got up to hinky shit together. it was stephen that wiped steve’s mind at tony’s go ahead. they weren’t on the same side during civil war, but since they mostly get along just fine, and aren’t like...Like That with each other at all.

and as for people like...harley, ig. sorry, pal, they don’t exist in 616 so there is no comparison. tony wouldn’t know who the hell they are. but there you have it. it’s done. i did it.

#constant //: ( about )#long post #long post for ts

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berniesrevolution · 5 years

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You will not be surprised to be told that Tucker Carlson’s new book, Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution, contains a series of attacks on diversity, immigration, feminism, and “identity politics.” You may, however, be surprised to be told that the book contains high praise for Ralph Nader, quotes from Studs Terkel, laments the disappearance of the anti-capitalist left, and presents Jeff Bezos as one of its central villains. Carlson has written a book that is as staunchly nationalist as one would expect. Yet it’s also a little bit socialist.

Carlson’s basic framework would commonly be described as “populism.” There are the people, and then there are the “ruling class” elites. The rich and powerful care only about themselves. They do not care about Middle America, and have presided over the opioid epidemic, the hollowing out of industrial towns, and exploding inequality. Meanwhile, ordinary workers suffer. At times, he almost sounds like Bernie Sanders. His analysis is persuasive, well-written, and often funny. It’s also terrifying, because elsewhere in the book, Carlson makes it clear: he wants a white-majority country, thinks immigrants are parasitic and destructive, misses traditional gender hierarchies, and dismisses the significance of climate change. Carlson’s political worldview is destructive and inhumane. Yet because it has a kernel of accuracy, it will easily tempt readers toward accepting an alarmingly xenophobic, white nationalist worldview. Carlson’s book shows us how a next generation fascist politics could co-opt left economic critiques in the service of a fundamentally anti-left agenda. It also shows us what we need to be able to effectively respond to.

First, let’s look at the parts that are most right, and perhaps most unexpected. In an analysis almost identical to that of leftists like Thomas Frank, Carlson says that Republicans and Democrats are now both beholden to corporate power. Sometime in the 1990s, Carlson says, he began wondering “why liberals weren’t complaining about big business anymore,” and had started celebrating “corporate chieftains” like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and the Google guys. Ralph Nader should be a hero to all liberals, spending his days “greeting a parade of awestruck liberal pilgrims” from a retirement home. Instead, he is “reviled,” even though “every point Nader made was fair” and “some were indisputably true.” Suddenly “both sides were aligned on the virtues of unrestrained market capitalism… left and right were taking virtually indistinguishable positions on many economic issues, especially on wages.”

The “prolabor” Democrats, Carlson says, were “empathetic and humane” and “suspicious of power.” But today they have disappeared, and the party of the New Deal is now a party of Wall Street. Carlson points out that Hillary Clinton won wealthy enclaves like Aspen, Marin County, and Connecticut’s Fairfield County (the hedge fund capital of the country). “Employees of Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon donated to Hillary over Trump by a margin of 60-to-1,” and while “Seven financial firms donated 47.6 million to Hillary,” they gave Trump “a total of $19,000, about the price of a used pickup.”

As a result, Carlson says, Democrats are now largely silent on labor issues: “When was the last time you heard a politician decry Apple’s treatment of workers, let alone introduce legislation intended to address it?” Corporations make vaguely “socially liberal” noises, like decrying gun violence and being pro-LGBT, and as a result escape criticism for mistreating their workers or contributing to economic inequality. Carlson cites Uber, which has prominent liberal Arianna Huffington on its board and has had to commit to reforming its “bro culture.” And yet it still treats its drivers like crap:

“[Uber is] running an enormously profitable business on the backs of exploited workers… An obedient business press [has] focused on the ‘flexibility’ Uber’s contractors supposedly enjoyed. … [But] Feudal lords took more responsibility for their serfs than Uber does for its drivers… Uber executives weren’t ashamed… They sold exploitation as opportunity, and virtually nobody called them on it.”

What happens, Carlson says, is that corporations “embrace a progressive agenda that from an accounting perspective costs them nothing.” They are, in effect, purchasing “indulgences from the church of cultural liberalism.” Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In and Mark Zuckerberg is floated as a possible Democratic presidential candidate, but Facebook is an evil corporation to its core. Sean Parker has admitted that Facebook was engineered to be addictive, that its designers thought: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?… We need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once it a while.. To get you to contribute more content.” Carlson notes that the company commits “relentless invasions of the public’s privacy,” and that epidemiologists have linked the product “with declining psychological and even physical health.” Carlson writes:

“Evidence has mounted that Facebook is an addictive product that harms users, and that Zuckerberg knew that from the beginning but kept selling it to unknowing customers. Those facts would be enough to tarnish most reputations, if not spark congressional hearings. Yet Zuckerberg remains a celebrated national icon.”

We know Facebook is manipulating people’s emotions to sell advertising, and yet we still get headlines like “How To Raise The Next Mark Zuckerberg.” Or look at Amazon. Jeff Bezos supported Hillary Clinton for president, yet “no textile mill ever dehumanized its workers more thoroughly than an Amazon warehouse.” Carlson asks: “when was the last time you heard a liberal criticize working conditions at Amazon?… “Liberals and Jeff Bezos [are now] playing for the same team.” Successful businessmen “pose as political activists,” and pitch their products as woke. That way: “affluent consumers get to imagine they’re fighting the power by purchasing the products, even as they make a tiny group of people richer and more powerful. There’s never been a more brilliant marketing strategy.” He goes on:

“The marriage of market capitalism to progressive social values may be the most destructive combination in American economic history. Someone needs to protect workers from the terrifying power of market forces, which tend to accelerate change to intolerable levels and crush the weak. For generations, labor unions filled that role. That’s over. Left and right now agree that a corporation’s only real responsibility is to its shareholders. Corporations can openly mistreat their employees (or “contractors”), but for the price of installing transgender bathrooms they buy a pass. Shareholders win, workers lose. Bowing to the diversity agenda is a lot cheaper than raising wages.”

Carlson mocks the “socially liberal” Davos elite who hand-wring about inequality while reaping its fruits. He points to the example of Chelsea Clinton, who talked nobly about her values (“I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t�� That wasn’t the metric of success that I wanted in my life”) before buying a $10 million, 5,000 square foot apartment in the Flatiron District that spanned an entire city block. Chelsea Clinton’s career, for Carlson, shows how contemporary believers in “meritocracy” benefit from an unjust and nepotistic system: Clinton was paid $600,000 a year as a “reporter” for NBC despite appearing on the network for a sum total of 58 minutes. The bubble of privilege that many elites inhabit was exemplified in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, which suggested that “Things in America are Fine.” (The slogan was actually “America Is Already Great.”) Carlson is not wrong here: Hillary Clinton herself was so out of touch that she is still saying things like “I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product… So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.”

Carlson also says that there has been a troubling tendency for both sides to embrace the military-industrial complex. Key Democratic figures supported the Iraq War (e.g. Feinstein, Kerry, Clinton, Biden, Edwards, Reid, Schumer). It was New York Timesreporters who contributed to scaremongering about Saddam in the leadup to the war, the New York Times op-ed page where you can find contributions like “Bomb Syria, Even If It’s Illegal” or “Bomb North Korea, Before It’s Too Late,” and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman who said that Iraq War had been “unquestionably worth doing” because it told Middle Easterners to “suck on this.” Barack Obama (who was given the Nobel Peace Prize, Carlson says, for “not being George W. Bush”) killed thousands of people with drones, including American citizens, prosecuted whistleblowers, kept Guantanamo open, and failed to rein in the vast global surveillance apparatus. Hillary Clinton pushed aggressively for military action in Libya, which destabilized the country. There is a D.C. consensus, Carlson says, and it is pro-war. Some of the book’s most amusing passages come when Carlson flays neoconservative hacks like Max Boot and Bill Kristol, who have now become allies of the Democratic Party in paranoia about Russia. Boot’s career, he says, publishing articles like “The Case for American Empire” and advocating invasion after invasion, shows us how “the talentless prosper, rising inexorably toward positions of greater power, breaking things along the way.” The hawkish consensus is no joke, though, and Carlson says he misses the liberal peaceniks, who “were right” when they warned that “war is not the answer, it’s a means to an end, and a very costly one.”

To many on the left, everything Carlson says here will be familiar. The phenomenon he’s pointing to, by which Democrats and Republicans both became free market capitalists, has a name: neoliberalism. Larry Summers was quite open about it when he said that “we are now all Friedmanites.” Carlson’s point about how corporations whitewash exploitative practices by appearing socially progressive is one leftists make frequently (see, for example, Yasmin Nair’s essay “Bourgeois Feminist Bullshit” and Nair and Eli Massey’s “Inclusion In The Atrocious“). The foreign policy stuff is a little off: it’s not that Democrats used to be pacifists, since the Vietnam tragedy was initiated by JFK and expanded by Lyndon Johnson. Empire has always been a bipartisan project, antiwar voices in the minority. Aside from the suggestion that this is new, it’s accurate to say that American elites have largely embraced the projection of American military power.

But Carlson is not going to be joining the Sanders 2020 campaign. His book has a dark side: a deep suspicion of cultural progressivism, inclusion, and diversity. Carlson believes that liberal immigration policies have been imposed because they serve elite interests (Democrats get votes and Republicans get cheap labor for Big Business). As a result, the fabric of the country is fraying. He writes:

Thanks to mass immigration, America has experienced greater demographic change in the last few decades than any other country in history has undergone during peacetime… If you grew up in America, suddenly nothing looks the same. Your neighbors are different. So is the landscape and the customs and very often the languages you hear on the street. You may not recognize your own hometown. Human beings aren’t wired for that. They can’t digest change at this pace… [W]e are told these changes are entirely good… Those who oppose it are bigots. We must celebrate the fact that a nation that was overwhelmingly European, Christian, and English-speaking fifty years ago has become a place with no ethnic majority, immense religious pluralism, and no universally shared culture or language.

To some people, what Carlson writes here may not seem racist. And like many conservatives, he resents having what he sees as common sense treated as bigotry. I don’t think there’s any way around it, though: Carlson’s problem is that the United States looks different, that it’s not “European” any more and has no “ethnic majority.” He’s explicitly talking the language of ethnicity: it’s destabilizing that we’re not a white-majority country anymore. This isn’t simply about, say, the “Judeo-Christian ethic” or embracing the “American idea.” If that were the case, then it would be hard to make a case for why we shouldn’t let in the Catholic members of the migrant caravan, who love American culture and want to march across the border saying the Pledge of Allegiance. The problem is that they are not European, that they change the look of the place, that they disrupt the “ethnic majority.” Europeans are the real Americans, the ones that hold the fabric of the nation together, and minorities, people who are different, threaten to undo that fabric.

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#politics #the left #current affairs #tucker carlson #white nationalism #neofascism

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parf-fan · 5 years

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Followup: Blackfryars!

Mount Hope, I’m begging you. 👏 Hire 👏 a 👏 copy 👏 editor. 👏

As always, visit the Faire’s website for headshots

Estelle Angrist : Millicent Goodnestone – Apprentice Stone-Carver

Inside every stone is a piece of art, so says Millicent. All you need to do is listen to the rock and take away the unnecessary pieces. Now, the artistry comes in the patience with which one removes the extra bits of stone. Patience, hammer, chisel, and a light touch are all that are required. Otherwise, a good piece of stone can become a dust pile very quickly. Thank goodness today is a festival day, because Millicent has been sweeping piles of dust for a while.

Alessandra Appiotti : Bernadette Albright – Matchmaker

The shire is being visited by the World’s most famous Bachelorette: Queen Elizabeth! If Bernadette can find the one for Queen Elizabeth, she will go from rising star to full-on supernova! She’d better get started lining up eligible bachelors! Or Bachelorettes! She hasn’t met Her Majesty yet, so who is she to judge her tastes?

Andréa Barton : Lady Blanche Parry – Lady in Waiting

This devoted Lady has served the Queen from the time our monarch was in nappies! They are boon companions, sharing court life and all its intrigue and frivolity. While she may look like the marzipan on the cake, her skilled organization of the Queen’s library and fondness for a good jest keeps her wit sharp enough to cut like a knife. Just ask the fool that attempts to play with her heart strings or guitar strings!

Kristin Bauer : Frances Newton, Lady Cobham – Lady in Waiting

Lady Cobham is thrilled to be on progress with the Queen. After all, this busy mother needs some time with the Ladies. With her soft nature and quick smile, she can often times be found with the children of the Shire, telling stories, rhymes, riddles, and playing games. Her sense of mirth does not leave her without a streak of mischief, as she does love to put her finger in the pot, give it a stir, and see what happens! Naughty or Nice? You be the judge!

Lauralette Bernard : Tolly Muneford – Harbor Master

Nothing comes in or out of the shores of Mount Hope that Tolly doesn’t know about. Her web of knowledge reaches far and wide, and she does it all in the service of the Shire. If only she wasn’t so keen on sharing all this knowledge with literally everyone, she might be able to use it for personal gain.

Jennifer Blackwell-Yale : Emily O. Bales – Fire Brigade

It has been 15 years since a monarch last visited the Shire of Mount Hope. Coincidentally, it has also been 15 years since the last fire in the shire of Mount Hope. Emily is always ready for action, but no one is quite sure she would know exactly what to do should action arise. When in doubt: stop, drop, roll, and have some wine. It seemed to work out just fine for the Old Dun Cow!

Karen Rose Bitzer : Rosie DuLait – Milkmaid

This milkmaid typically spends her day milking the cows and goats on the farm; carefully churning the butter; separating the curds from the whey; making the precious cheese to sell at market; all the time, singing and talking to her fine, generous, milk-laden friends! Is it any wonder that Rosie’s dairy products are highly sought for their sweet, creamy nature? It is even said that her happy cows seem to prance in the fields, as if dancing to a jig. Is that even possible? With Rosie, one never knows! Today she was up early: the Queen is expected and she wants to offer the sweetest cream and the finest butter to lay upon the Queen’s table.

Tabitha Borges : Abigail Montgomery – Governess to the Lady Mayor

Abigail has always had a way with children, and has taken care of all the Lady Mayor’s progeny, which means she is quite resilient! Of the many duties, trials, and tribulations the Penburthys have put her through, her favorite activity is still telling stories, and she is a masterful storyteller. Now that the Penburthy children, Calvin, Penelope, and Danforth, have all grown up, she is experiencing Empty Nest Syndrome far more than Delores is!

Elizabeth Burkholder : Paraffin Dyson – Bellows-Mender

Paraffin is a fan. She is a fan of fans. Her bellows will blow you away, that’s how big of a fan she is. Sometimes she can be a bit of a blowhard, but usually she can play it cool. And yet, even the coolest of bellows-menders may have a difficult time not having a meltdown with our Queen on the Shire. Time will tell if Paraffin maintains her composure or has a blowout, but one thing is for sure; she will certainly enjoy this festival day!

Jasmine Crist : Mary Robin Richland – Shire Ne'er-Do-Well

Every shire has one, ours is Mary Robin! While good-natured and always seen with a smile, it is known that one must keep a hand on your purse and an eye on your goods, for you may come up short when the back side of Mary Robin you see! Slight of hand, quick of feet, and always with a jest to share, it is her good nature and sharp wit that keeps her just on this side of the law, for now! It has been heard that she has high aspirations, but for what? Ask her, she may or may not share!

Ashley Crowther : Ira Roth – Actuary

Everyone’s heard of mad scientists, but a mad actuary? That’s much rarer. If you stare at numbers all day long, apparently they start staring back. Eventually, everything starts to look like a ledger, and you can see the numbers everywhere. Sure... that adds up...

Josh Dorsheimer : Jakob Werner – Landsknecht

Professional mercenaries fight the wars of the Kings of Europe. Professionals like Jakob. He does his level best to never think about any of that, though! He would rather spend his time gallivanting around town, spending his hard-won gold on drink, friends, and frivolity. The oldest of the family, Jakob is sometimes mistaken as the decision-maker of the clan. While he won’t outright deny this, the three siblings all know who really calls the shots: their baby sister!

Elisia Freeman : Agnes Lambourne – Apple-Monger

Apple cider, apple butter, apple sausage, apple crisp, apple cake.... Just ask this happy-go-lucky lady what you can do with all those apples, and she will tell you! Be prepared, her list is LONG! Apple juggling, apple carving, apple tossing, apple dicing, apple bocci. Do not be fooled, she knows that man does not live by apples alone; everyone knows you need a little cinnamon and a lot of laughter!

Corey Graff : Wagner Werner – Landsknecht

Wagner travels all over Europe fighting battles with his brother and sister for one reason: he loves them both dearly. Honestly though, he would much rather be laying down in a meadow watching butterflies. Sometimes suffering from middle child syndrome, Wagner’s gadabout ways certainly make life interesting for all the Werner siblings.

Steve Hager : Rip Skeleton – Gravedigger

There are two things certain in this world: Death, and Taxes – and Rip ain’t no accountant. Its always nice to have a friendly face build your final resting place.

Jeremiah Halteman : Ronald P. Eversmeyer – Yeoman Guard

They say history is written by the victors. Ronald has every intention of ensuring that our good Queen’s name goes down in the history of the world as the greatest victor of them all! He is always prepared to put himself between Her Majesty and danger, wherever it comes from, in whatever form it takes, and at any personal sacrifice! His extensive training in the art of personal security has rendered him one of the elite of the yeoman guard; as long as Her Majesty is not attacked from the air. Unfortunately, Ronald has a fear of butterflies. Something about the wings just throw off his rhythm, but no worries....butterflies in Mount Hope? Never!!

Jonathan Heise : Sir John Giffard of Chillington, Minister of Parliament, Knight – Nobleman

This Minister of Parliament felt it his duty to be present during the Queen’s progress at Mount Hope. Concerned that perhaps this tiny village would not be up to the task of hosting our Queen, he would be quick to move the festivities to Chillington. Upon arrival he realized his foolish mistake; never had he seen such a shire, and thought perhaps ‘twas time to move Chillington to Mount Hope! However, for now, why not enjoy the festivities?

Brianna E. Holmes : Mary Hill, Lady Cheke – Lady in Waiting

This gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber is well loved by all. Her husband, John Cheke, a gentleman of the court, encourages her in her service of the Queen. The Queen has blessed them often with gifts, grants, and an estate or two. Even at this show of opulence, Lady Cheke takes it all in stride. She finds joy in the simple things in life; her children, her rose garden, and her love of arachnids. Their homes, their legs, and loving little eyes; can you ever have enough? I think NOT says Lady Cheke.

Anastasia Keno : Louise Weaver – Shepherdess

A diligent if mischievous shepherdess, Louise has a passion for all things fluffy! Why should sheep be the only animals allowed to graze free? Let the cats graze free! Let the puppies graze free! Let the mice graze free! Free the animals! Sorry... she can be very passionate.

Jennifer Litzinger : Cherie Piquant – Spice Merchant

If the first pinch of salt is free, be prepared to pay dearly for everything else. A shrewd business woman, do not let Cherie’s smile fool you. She was born to barter, and barter she will! Well-known on the shire as the woman who can get what you need, do not be afraid to ask; as long as its cinnamon, cloves, turmeric, or cardamom, by day’s end, it will be in your kitchen. Ask for a song, and you could be in for a treat.

Dana Micciché : Katherine Champernowne, Lady Kat Ashley – Lady in Waiting

Appointed governess, tutor, friend, and confidante, Lady Kat Ashley ensured that her Queen had all the necessary tools to rule England. Well versed in astronomy, geography, history, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Flemish, this unassuming woman is also trained in the art of swordsmanship, axe-throwing, archery, and caber tossing! Think you know a little about a lot? Lady Kat knew it first!

Traci Mohl : Olivia Charnwood – Huntress

The family tradition of hunting and tracking lives on in the guise of Olivia. Like her mother and grandmother before her, ear to ground, sniffing the air; hunting prey is in her blood. Mount Hope’s finest archer, Olivia never fails to bring home the meat – just don’t ask her to cook it!! On this festival day, she plans on showing off her tracking skills by sniffing out a merry time!

Beverly Newton : Charlotte Seaswift – Shipwright

This buoyant aquatic engineer helps keep the Harbor of Mount Hope afloat. An eye for design and a passion for innovation drive Charlotte. She knows that the fine line between sink and swim is just a patch away, and she is always ready to keep things floating on.

Jared Nocella : Miles I. Gore – Professional Henchman

Some people are natural born leaders. Miles is not one of those people. Miles is a natural born lackey, and he’s the best there is at being second fiddle. Always down for doing the dirty work, and he does it dirt cheap! Miles is a sidekick with a smile and has a flare for following.

Alexandra Pentz : Dorte Werner – Kampfrau

The youngest of the Werner siblings, but make no mistake: she is the one that keeps the family together. From designing the boys’ clothes, managing the family finances, and fighting her share of battles, she is as clever as she is dangerous. And after all that, she still has the ability to be the most mischievous of the three!

Lianna Pike : Rosalind Anne Uxbridge – Gardener

Rosalind has had her hands deep in dirt, up to her elbows, preparing for the Royal visit. The gardens must be perfect! Simple details like stone placement can be so critical, yet every time she plants, those chipmunks and rabbits have a feast . That is why Rosalind has a bed in all of her garden plots. She sleeps in a different flower bed each night. Thank goodness the festival is finally here, she can finally get out of the beds and enjoy the beauty of her work with the rest of the shirefolk.

Nicolas Rainville : Grayson Thomas Hemplewhite – Squire to the Master of Horse, Sir Robert Dudley

What an honor to serve the horse that carries the saddle that seats the man who serves the Queen so closely! To say that Hemplewhite is a hard worker is putting it mildly. His work is never done. Clean the tack, muck the stall, check the hooves; not to mention ensuring that Tinker, the horse, is always sweet-smelling for his Master to ride. But today is a festival day. Tinker smells sweet, now its time for Hemplewhite to have a bit of merriment.

Jessica Reesor : Holly Teacake – Baker

Everyone likes sweets at a festival, and Holly has made sure the shire is stocked with confections to please any palate. Fruity, chocolatey, savory – whatever your taste, Holly has you covered! An obsessive planner, Holly loves the order of a recipe. It is a mathematical equation for pleasing people. If only everything else was that simple!

Laura Reesor : Pearl Topstitch – Tailor

A visionary designer with an eye for style. Never satisfied with the same-old same-old; when something works once, she’s done with it! Her appetite for new and exotic is matched only by her skill. She can look at a piece of fabric and see the hidden...pearl...of genius within. Now it is time to show off her skills to the Queen.

James Riley : Adam Cringer – Yeoman Guard

A newly-minted member of the Yeoman Guard following in the footsteps of his grandfather and father before him. Legend of Adam’s monster-hunting exploits have already preceded him. Now it is time to see if the man can match the Legend.

Victoria Sangston : Dorothea Anne Heartley – Etiquette Mistress

Today is a big day for the shire of Mount Hope, and the Lady Mayor has tasked Mistress Heartley with making sure everyone puts their best foot forward. Of course, is that the right foot or the other right foot? Joyfully surveying the shirefolk, she knows everyone will be on their best, smiling, bowing, hat tipping, formal greeting behavior – or else!

Michael Sheffield : John Dee – Royal Astrologer

A good ruler has good advisors. Time will tell what kind of advisor John Dee will be. He says he talks to angels. Perhaps he does. Perhaps he’s just a brilliant con man. One thing is for sure – eccentric only scratches the surface of describing this stargazing man.

Jessie Smith : Polly Lynne Pickering – Apprentice Rag-picker

Polly Lynne has been following in her mum’s footsteps for as long as she can remember. Mum does have a keen eye for bits and pieces, but Polly Lynne is impatient! When she is THE Rag-Picker, she will be much more efficient! Would anyone REALLY notice if a bit was snipped off a gown here and there? Bushes and scissors are a picker’s best friend. She has heard of the fine fabrics worn by the Nobles of the court and is hoping to snip.... errrr....snag a piece or two of those fabrics for herself!

Mary Smith : Penelope Ann Pickering – Rag-picker

Some call it rag-picking, but Penelope prefers to call it fabric repurposing opportunities. Opportunities abound in the shire of Mount Hope, all you have to do is look around! And look she does!! With a keen eye for bits of fabric, lace, gossip, and good will, she has a kind word for everyone and perhaps a bit of scrap for those in need; and, really, who doesn’t need a bit of scrap now and then? And now, with the training up of Polly Lynne, she’s busy busy busy! Thank goodness for the Festival. Mirth, merriment, and fabric scraps!

Evelin Stayner : Buttercup M. Rosehips – Scullery Wench

This young lady is happy when surrounded by a pile of dirty anything. Beginning, middle, end! That is where she finds her joy. Every day has its adventures, and they all start when the sun comes up and last throughout the day. You may find her dancing, singing, or generally making herself an asset to the Shire of Mount. Hope. Some might even call her a fledgling pillar of society; probably more like a fence post. But everybody has to start somewhere!

Katrin Stayner : Eva Froman – Sausage Queen of the Shire

Blessed with infinite patience, and a lithe mind to keep up with her husband. The Fromans are nouveau riche, and happy to flaunt it. Eva is the true brains of the operation. Her wurst is the best, and her husband is the best at being the worst. [the Sausage King is being played by one of the improv directors who doubles as an independent act.]

Jordan Taft : Dorothy "Dottie" Brooke – Lady in Waiting

This Maid of Honor is a seasoned Lady of the court. Certainly Lady Dorothy has done it all, seen it all, and has the bodice to prove it. However, Mount Hope intrigues her. After all, it is time for her to settle down and have a family of her own, and the matchmaker of the Shire is famous throughout the land. She may leave here betrothed, or at least,with several good prospects. Love is in the air, or, is that TURKEY???

Robyn Thompson : Fiona Erin O'Donald – Personal Foot Post of the Lady Mayor

When Fiona came to Mount Hope, the first person she met was the Lady Mayor, who had just lost her third foot post in six months. Fiona needed a job; she had no idea what a foot post was, but she knew she could do it! She is Irish after all! As it turns out, she is the best foot post the Mayor has ever had!! Messenger, she’s the Lady Mayor’s personal messenger!

Sandi Trait : Becky Billingsly – Town Crier and Lady Mayor’s Official Letter-Opener

Becky Billingsly, the voice of the shire, knows full well the weight her proclamations carry. As Official Letter Opener for the Lady Mayor, she is at the forefront of all the news that is news in the shire. Of course, nothing beats today’s happenings! The young Queen makes her way to the gates of Mount Hope. How thrilling to share her news and tidings with the court of her Majesty!

Ariel E. Urich : Kathryn Bridges – Lady in Waiting

This Maid of Honor is on her first progress with the Queen. She has lived her entire life in training for this very time and now that it is here, she realizes that something is missing. She knows how to carry the cup with grace and style; the basket is a simple matter; smiling at the proper time, sitting, standing. So, what is the problem? She has this deep desire to make people laugh! So far, she has shared a bit of her talent with the Ladies of the Court, but perhaps this small shire is where she can be a bit more free with her jests and merriment. Oh, the festival day could not get here soon enough!

Brianna Yale : Lydia der Schlachter – Butcher

Leaving home to work for the Fromans was a tough decision but one she is happy she made. Butchering brings her such delight. From the time she begins to sharpen her blade to the beauty of well-cut chop, this butcher knows her way around a slab of beef, pork, and lamb. However, never ask her for a capon! She has been squeamish since the capon incident of 1552. Enough of that! This is a festival day, and she plans on celebrating with the shire folk and perhaps even catching a glimpse of the new Queen.

Darrell E. Yoder : Sylvan Farelight – Tinker

If it needs mending, this is the man to do it. If it needs replacing, step right up, he has it. If you need a bit of magic in your life, having Sylvan on the streets ensures that your needs will be met! Always popular when he arrives on shire; Sylvan can be counted on to share a bit of news from afar; a bit of wisdom from within; and a bit of magic from, well, from where magic comes from!

To the newcomers, welcome! To those returning, welcome back!

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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WORK ETHIC AND LOT

But cars were such a big win that lots of people who are young but smart and driven can make more by starting their own companies than by working for existing ones, the existing companies are forced to fall back on the East Coast after Yahoo. So writing to persuade and writing to discover are diametrically opposed. There are also two practical problems to consider: jobs, and graduate school. Don't be intimidated. Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift both lost money in the bank, the founders happily set to work turning their prototype into something they can release. That's the problem with formality. Web-based software is such a form of organization, though it may feel like it is. So you have to be a problem. Just fix things that seem broken, regardless of the application domain. And if you're in the fatal pinch? Startups and yuppies entered the American conceptual vocabulary roughly simultaneously in the late twentieth century. The unfortunate thing is not just that Steve Jobs and Co are industrial design wizards, but because it's not officially sanctioned, he has to do it, and 50% of those you start with too big a problem you have, and what we ended up with was: someone who doesn't expend any effort on marketing himself.

Though the first philosophers in the western tradition lived about 2500 years ago, and even then they rarely said so outright. You either have a startup scene, or they can't get good people. A programmer can leave the office and typing into vt100s. One thing most people did learn about for the first time, is that VCs will allow founders to cash out partially in a funding round, by selling some of their answers turned out to be equivalent, because each drives you to do the sort of grubby menial work that Andrew Carnegie or Henry Ford started out doing. When experts are wrong, it's often because they're experts on an earlier version of the change I've seen is fragmentation. You might think that people decide to buy something, and then instead of thinking no one likes us, you'll know right away. One upshot of which is that the amount of bullshit is inevitably forced on you. They're like a mountain that can walk. But it was also because our standards were higher.

And while I miss the 3 year old version of him, starting with the assumption that it was located to the south. The classic startup is fast and informal, with few people and little money. But this approach, combined with the preceding four, will turn up a good number of unthinkable ideas. Fair or not, that you were turned down by the more exalted ones. Which means your brain could conceivably be split into two halves and each transplanted into different bodies. But if you look at the machinery of fashion and try to predict it. In the old days the only limit on the inefficiency of their competitors. Wherever the startup is when it gets funded, it will be, for users and developers both. We often like to think of math as a collection of programs of different types rather than a single big company? When it got big enough, IBM decided it was worth paying attention to. If you were going to change.

Typically these rights include vetoes over major strategic decisions, protection against being diluted in future rounds, and the more ambitious ones will stop at nothing to achieve that. A lot of my friends are CS professors now, so I feel a bit dishonest recommending that route. If you write in classes differ in three critical ways from the ones you'll write in the language they're using to write them. Maybe this would have been the starting point for their reputation. So if you're a startup competing with a big company, learn how to minimize the damage of going public. I grew up, so studying philosophy seemed an impressively impractical thing to do, now that this market was ripe, was to reach out and pick it. The reason Aristotle didn't get anywhere in the Metaphysics the exploration of knowledge that has no practical use. As a result, a well brought-up teenage kid's brain is a more or less complete collection of all our taboos.

One way to answer the question, and the living expenses of the founders. When we wanted some publicity, we'd make a list of all the features we'd added since the last release, stick a new version number on the software, listening closely to the users as you do. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. To get a complete picture, just add in every possible disaster. Now much of the next generation of software may be server-based. To see fashion in your own time, different societies have wildly varying ideas of what's ok and what isn't. To understand what rejection means, you have to make it clear you plan to write about it, and 50% of those you start with too big a problem you have, and what ideas would they like to be swept off their feet by a vigorous stream of words.

And users don't care where you went to a better college. And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option. Now what I wish I could say it became a gateway into a wider world, but also all the ideas that end up in the same way I write essays, making pass after pass looking for anything I can cut. They'll be things you've already noticed but didn't let yourself think of such things. It's hard to trick professors into letting you solve them. And it's clear why: there are an increasing number of things we find interesting will surprisingly often turn out to be mistaken, but he seemed right for the next hundred years. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make a silicon valley becomes: who are the right people. But if you have what it takes to say it, a person hearing a talk can only spend as long thinking about each sentence as it takes to hear it. If it seems like a defense of present-day union leaders would shrink from the challenge.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #vetoes #professors #work #damage #money #grubby #release #ones #office #becomes #application #limit #Isaac #world

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marvel-girl-13 · 4 years

Text

Monster

Warnings: Language, Marvel AU

Word Count: 2344

Summary: Bucky unintentionally introduces Eden to his “friend”

---

The city streets bustled below, the New York minutes flying by. Many things happened in the Big Apple, and most of the little things tended to go on unnoticed. Including the middle aged, sweatshirt-ed individual making his way towards an alley fire escape. In his haste to evade the line of sight of the cops probably close on his tail after his midday heist, he took long strides and was careful to keep from stumbling. Not to mention the bulging sacks of money that he carried were a fair decent giveaway as to why his escape was necessary.

A chuckle escaped the thief’s lips at the thought of his success. His loot wasn’t as much as he would have liked, but it was more than he could have truly hoped. Hoisting his prize a bit more firmly in his grasp, he began his quick climb, doing his best to not trip in his haste. He was just about to make his turn into the next level of the steps, a grin on his face, when the sudden approach of another pair of boots caught his attention.

The man barely had any another time to react as a cold fist suddenly shot out of nowhere and slammed him across the jaw. The bags of cash dropped immediately at the impact as the thief fell back into the brick wall behind him. He cursed out of impulse, despite how he was seeing stars and there was blood in his mouth. But, he should have seen this coming, to be frank.

“So,” he started coolly, giving a wry chuckle as he wiped at his bruising bottom lip. “They chose to send the ‘Winter Soldier’ after me, did they?” His words were met with the typical silence. The robber’s eyes glanced over the tactile gear and military getup that the man before him wore. He was quick to note that the metal arm glinting ominously in the sun had a spec of his blood on a knuckle. “The Winter Soldier being sent to chase after a simple thief? That seems rather low for you.”

“Shut up, Rork,” Bucky growled.

“How’s the new lady friend doing?” the robber went on, his previous grin returning. “I heard Tony picked up another chick for your guys’ little pad up there. And there’s a rumor that you two might be banging -”

The thief flinched back as Bucky moved forward towards him at this. But instead of throwing another punch, the soldier reached down to retrieve the dropped goods.

“Hey, I earned those fair and square -”

“I said shut up, you piece of shit.” Bucky shot out his foot, coming in contact with the other man’s knee hard enough to knock him down onto the fire escape. His hand rummaged through the bags. He ignored the fluttering dollar bills that escaped as he searched. After a moment or two of listening to Rork moan about the pain in his head and leg, he at last extracted the items he was looking for. The various guns and weapons that he removed from the bags clattered onto the metal at their feet.

“Hey, I can, uh, explain that… Gifts… from a friend -”

“I let you help us out rounding the HYDRA up, Rork,” Bucky replied bitterly. “And now you’re filthing up your alibi with arming those that remain?”

“Well, it’s not - It’s... for some side cash,” Rork explained quickly, trying to keep his tone light. “I mean, not that you guys weren’t helping me out enough or anything, but I do have kids to feed and a wife to please. You get that, I’m sure, with your new piece of -”

His explanation was cut painfully short as the Winter Soldier lunged forward and at last chose to close his fingers around the thief’s throat. “If you gave a shit about any of them, you would have turned the rest of the HYDRA agents in, Rork,” Bucky snapped. “You’d be in a lot less trouble then. Not to mention adding the bank heist in to cover your tracks didn’t help you any.”

“No,” Rork gasped out in agreement, somehow managing to strike under the tight grip. “But… it did buy me… a bit of time -”

A gunshot abruptly rang out, and the sound of a ricocheting bullet near Bucky’s ear was enough to prove the man’s point. Dodging out of the way of Rork’s backup below, the soldier dropped his grasp on him to drop down to become out of range. Reaching for the sniper rifle slung across his back, he worked to quickly line up a shot to see what he was now up against. Four men were lined up below, their multiple assault rifles aimed upwards back at him. Bucky was able to take out one before his attention was drawn back to the sound of Rork working to hastily gather up his weapons and money scattered on the fire escape. After avoiding another shot taken at him, Bucky kicked aside the knife that the thief had been reaching for. Taking it as a lost cause, Rork suddenly leapt to his feet with what he had been able to shove into his bags and took off to continue his climb to the roof. Bucky had no choice but to give chase. Holstering his sniper and snatching up the knife, he followed the man the rest of the way, both of them dodging the continued fire from below.

Just as Rork managed to reach the top of the fire escape, Bucky lunged forward towards his ankle. He was not able to get a grasp on him, but the move was enough to trip the other man as he stepped over the rooftop ledge.

“Son of a bitch!” Rork snarled as he found himself sprawling across the concrete.

“You know you can’t run from me, Rork!” Bucky called to him as he continued to attempt to crawl away.

“No,” the thief replied, his tone still attempting to be humorous, but anger was clearly growing within him. He turned to look over his shoulder at the soldier striding towards him. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t try to!” Rork snatched up one of the pistols from the bags of money, unlocking the safety and training it on Bucky as he worked to get to his feet again.

The Winter Soldier stopped then, the knife he had grabbed held aloft in his right hand while his left moved into a defensive position. Just as Rork pulled the trigger, Bucky blocked it with his metal forearm. In that brief moment, he cocked back to send the blade flying. The knife caught Rork by the shoulder, sending him back a few paces. His shots paused, but he quickly resumed despite the blood stemming from his wound. Bucky was able to block two more, but the third bullet caught him in the outer thigh.

He swore, his knee buckling slightly underneath him. Bucky reached for the rifle he had strapped to his back. He had not wanted it to come to this, but he really had no choice at this point. “Stop it, Rork!” he shouted, gazing at him down the sights. “I don’t want it to end like this. You don’t want it to end like this -”

A familiar whoosh came up from behind Bucky as he was speaking. His heart suddenly skipped a small beat, but he held his composure as Eden’s heat was felt on the back of his neck. It was just then that he also noticed that the gunshots that had once continued to echo from below had been cut off at some point. He had wondered if she was going to appear during this whole encounter, especially when Rork’s backup had showed up.

Rork, of course, was not as prepared as Bucky was for the flaming woman’s appearance. His cocky act abruptly stopped, clear fear reflected in his eyes as he saw her. Bucky could almost picture Eden rising up over the edge of the rooftop, light as air, her features and form illuminated with a raging inferno. To him, it was like the sun appearing over the horizon.

But to Rork, it seemed as if a fiery succubus had been summoned from the depths of hell to claim his soul.

His gun, once directed at the soldier, is now rounded on Eden drifting onto Bucky’s side. “S-stay away from me!” he exclaimed, his hands now shaking. “W-what - what the fuck?!” This panic was startling to Bucky, and his brow furrowed at Rork’s behavior. This was a guy who had been associated with HYDRA, chose to sell weapons on the black market, was constantly on Fury’s radar, and lived in a city known for housing individuals with once seemingly impossible skills. Why was Eden’s presence making him freak out?

Bucky dropped his rifle down from its offensive position, looking between the two people with him. Rork seemed to have immediately forgotten that the Winter Soldier had been close to taking him down in that moment. “Rork, what the hell -”

“What’s going on?” Eden asked. Her confusion was just as apparent as Bucky’s. “I heard gunfire and I thought maybe you needed some assistance…”

“I’ve got things covered, thank you,” Bucky replied quickly, his tone lowered. He glanced over at Rork, who looked like he was close having a mental breakdown.

“W-w-what is that?!” he shouted “What the fuck is that? I-I swear I won’t sell guns again!” Rork’s breathing was haggard and rapid, his eyes huge. “I-I-I-I- Just… just keep that… that monster away from me!”

Bucky froze, halting the slight progress he had been making towards his now frantic target. He could hear Eden’s breath catching in her chest. His gray eyes met her burning ones; and despite the flames that blazed, he could see the emotions swirling within them.

The same feelings of uncertainty and doubt that he had witnessed just weeks before when he had passed by her room in the Avengers tower.

“Bucky?”

The inquiring tone of her voice gave him reason to pause, his forehead creasing in some concern. It was the middle of a stormy night, the rain beating against the windows and an occasional rumble of thunder disturbing the nighttime silence. Bucky knew that Eden should not be awake at this hour, considering how she was still rather banged up from their altercation with Adam from the previous week. He knew how she had been gently chastised by Steve for not taking the proper time to recover; which he also found hilarious considering how that was how he used to normally treat his best friend when he had gotten pretty bruised up himself.

But this was the middle of the night; there was the chance that Eden had had some sort of dream that was keeping her up at this hour. That was something that Bucky was quite familiar with.

“What’s up?” he replied in his usual soft voice as he paused by the entrance to her room. In a kind of awkward way that wasn’t really him, Bucky sidled up to lean against the doorframe. Eden’s lips curved a little at his attempt at being nonchalant before her own features reflected her worry once more.

With a small start, the Winter Soldier realized that she had been crying, her eyes red and her fingers twisting uncomfortably in her lap. “What’s wrong?” he asked, now moving towards where she was sitting on her bed and taking a seat with her.

“Bucky,” she started with a sniff. She stared at her hands for a moment, biting her lip as she worked to keep from letting go of anymore tears. Then her eyes met his. “Bucky, do you think I’m… a monster?”

The pain in her face, the hurt and the terror, struck Bucky to his core. Sitting here before him was this young woman who had never asked to possess the powers that she did, who grew up knowing that she wasn’t a weapon. But now every person she met here immediately believed her to be yet another experiment built to destroy, and any trust she attempted to forge with others was lined with caution.

None of them saw what Bucky was able to see: a young woman learning the world for the first time, working hard to try and find a place as the protector she was meant to be. Eden had had to witness those whom she called siblings die trying to fulfill their duty, and then to live on the rest of her days knowing that she was the only one who was able to possess her own free will. To see the reasons why she was created to protect the innocent and the weak, and yet she was doubted for her ability to do so. She was a child forced to grow up and learn that experiments like her were feared, deemed a danger to society before society could even see who she was.

And unfortunately, the Winter Soldier had an idea as to what could have fostered such a notion.

“Eden,” he said. “Eden, never would I think that of you.” His words were soft, with an air that could almost be sensed as a pleading one. He was unable to tear his gaze away from hers. They sat in silence for a moment, both sets of eyes becoming misty. “What made you think of such a thing?” he asked.

“I -” Eden swallowed, giving her head a small shake. Then she shrugged, her bottom lip trembling slightly as she struggled to find words. “I don’t know, I just - get this feeling when people look at me…” She shuddered, looking away from him. “I just feel like people are scared of me, Bucky.”

A sob then escaped from her throat, her shoulders shaking. Before he could quite comprehend it, Bucky found himself pulling her towards him to hold her tightly to his chest. He held her there in his arms, his heartbeat and the rain beating against the windowpane gradually lulling her back to sleep.

#bucky barnes #bucky fanfic #james buchanan bucky barnes #au #marvel #eden

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nothingman · 7 years

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His presidential campaigns may have mobilized the country's angriest, young white men.

Last December as the smoke was clearing from the electoral explosion and many of us were still shell-shocked and wandering around blindly searching for emotional shelter, Salon’s Matthew Sheffield wrote a series of articles about the rise of the “alt-right.” The movement had been discussed during the campaign, of course. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton even gave a big speech about it. Trump’s campaign strategist and chief consigliere, Steve Bannon — the once and future executive editor of Breitbart News — had even bragged that his operation was the “platform” of the alt-right just a few months earlier. But after the election there was more interest than ever in this emerging political movement.

It’s an interesting story about a group of non-interventionist right-wingers who came together in the middle of the last decade in search of solidarity in their antipathy toward the Bush administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a motley group of conservatives, white nationalists and libertarians that broke apart almost as soon as they came together. The more clever among them saw the potential for this new “brand” and began to market themselves as the “alt-right” and it eventually morphed into what it is today. The series is a good read and explains that the alt-right really was a discrete new movement within the far right wing and not simply a clever renaming of racist and Nazi groups.

This week conservative writer Matt Lewis of the Daily Beast, a Trump critic, wrote a piece about the libertarian influence on the alt-right and suggested that libertarians work harder to distance themselves from this now-infamous movement. He points out that former Rep. Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns were a nexus of what became alt-right activism. Sheffield had written about that too:

Pretty much all of the top personalities at the Right Stuff, a neo-Nazi troll mecca, started off as conventional libertarians and Paul supporters, according to the site’s creator, an anonymous man who goes by the name “Mike Enoch.”

“We were all libertarians back in the day. I mean, everybody knows this,” he said on an alt-right podcast last month.

It wasn’t just obscure neo-Nazi trolls. Virtually all the prominent figures in or around the alt-right movement, excepting sympathizers and fellow travelers like Bannon and Donald Trump himself, were Paul supporters: Richard Spencer, Paul Gottfried, Jared Taylor, Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones. (The latter two deny being part of the alt-right, but have unquestionably contributed to its rise in prominence.) Paul’s online support formed the basis for what would become the online alt-right, the beating heart of the new movement.

In fact, Ron Paul — then a Texas congressman and the father of Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — was the original alt-right candidate, long before Donald Trump came along. Paul was also, by far, the most popular libertarian in America.

Those of us observing the Paul phenomenon and libertarianism from the left always found it curious in this regard. Paul’s racism was simply undeniable. It was documented for decades. He hid behind the “states’ rights” argument, as pro-Confederate racists have always done, but it was never very convincing. If you are a principled libertarian who believes in small government and inalienable individual rights, what difference does it make whether a federal or state government is the instrument of oppression?

Most of us thought a lot of Paul’s appeal, especially to young white males, came down to a loathing for the uptight religious conservatism of the GOP, along with Paul’s endorsement of drug legalization. That made some sense. Why would all these young dudes care about the capital gains tax?

And let’s face facts, it wasn’t just libertarians who could be dazzled by Paul’s iconoclasm. There were plenty of progressives drawn to his isolationist stance as well. But as it turns out, among that group of “Atlas Shrugged” fans and stoners were a whole lot of white supremacists, all of whom abandoned Ron Paul’s son Rand in 2016 when Donald Trump came along and spoke directly to their hearts and minds.

Is there something about libertarianism that attracts white supremacists? It seems unlikely except to the extent that it was a handy way to argue against federal civil rights laws, something that both Paul père and fils endorsed during their careers, legitimizing that point of view as a libertarian principle. (In fairness, Rand Paul has tried to pursue more progressive racial policies in recent years — which may also have helped drive away his dad’s supporters.) Other than that, though, it seems to me that libertarianism has simply been a way station for young and angry white males as they awaited their “God Emperor,” as they call Trump on the wildly popular alt-right site, r/The_Donald.

Still, libertarians do have something to answer for. While principled libertarians like Cathy Young certainly condemned the racism in their ranks at the time, others who supported Ron Paul failed to properly condemn the rank bigotry undergirding the Paul philosophy.

Lewis’s Daily Beast piece certainly provoked some reaction among libertarians. Nick Gillespie at Reason objected to the characterization of libertarianism as a “pipeline” to the alt-right, writing that “the alt-right — and Trumpism, too, to the extent that it has any coherence — is an explicit rejection of foundational libertarian beliefs in ‘free trade and free migration’ along with experiments in living that make a mess of rigid categories that appeal to racists, sexists, protectionists, and other reactionaries.” So he rejects calls to purge libertarianism of alt-righters since he believes they were never really libertarians in the first place.

Gillespie does, however, agree that libertarian true believers should call out such people “wherever we find them espousing their anti-modern, tribalistic, anti-individualistic, and anti-freedom agenda.” (It would have been easy to include “racist” in that list but, being generous, perhaps he meant it to fall under the term “tribalistic.”)

Meanwhile, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler addresses some libertarians’ “misplaced affinity for the Confederacy,” a phenomenon I must admit I didn’t know existed. Evidently, there really are libertarians who take the side of the secessionists, supposedly on the basis of tariffs and Abraham Lincoln’s allegedly “monstrous record on civil liberties.” Adler patiently explains why this is all nonsense and wrote, “Libertarianism may not be responsible for the alt-right, but it’s fair to ask whether enough libertarians have done enough to fight it within their own ranks.”

Good for these prominent libertarians for being willing to confront the currents of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia that at the very least have contaminated their movement. We await the same honest self-appraisal from the conservative movement and Republican leaders as a whole.

Related Stories

Crying Neo-Nazi Chris Cantwell Lands Himself Behind Bars

An American Historian Busts the Poisonous Myth at the Heart of White Nationalist Ideology

Virginia Racial Violence Has Deep Roots in Antebellum Vigilante Groups

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bestbooksintheworld-blog · 5 years

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This blog contains affiliate links, meaning, if you click through and make a purchase, I may earn a commission. This is at no additional cost to you.

Do you know a common trait of all the successful people?

They read. A lot.

Bill Gates reads 50 books a year. Warren Buffett reads 500 pages per day. Mark Cuban reads for more than 3 hours every day. And, when asked how he learned to build rockets, Elon Musk simply said, “I read books.”

Wealthy people (defined as those with an annual income of $160,000 or more, and a liquid net worth of $3.2 million-plus) read for education, self-improvement, and success

But, poorer people (defined as those with an annual income of $35,000 or less, and a liquid net worth of $5,000 or less) read primarily to be entertained.

Reading is a habit that I developed recently. I try to read one book per week. When we talk about my favorite books for entrepreneurs, I made a list of 15 books that every entrepreneur should read.

So, ready?

1. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be “positive” all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people

For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. “Fuck positivity,” Mark Manson says. “Let’s be honest, shit is fucked and we have to live with it.” In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugar-coat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mind-set that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up.

Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—“not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society and some of it is not fair or your fault.” Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity and forgiveness we seek.

There are only so many things we can give a fuck about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience.

A much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-look-you-in the-eye moment of real talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is a refreshing slap for a generation to help them truly lead contented, grounded lives

Get the Book

2. The $100 Startup: Change your job to change your life

You no longer need to work nine-to-five in a big company to pay the mortgage, send your kids to school and afford that yearly holiday. You can quit the rat race and start up on your own – and you don’t need an MBA or a huge investment to do it. The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau is your manual to a new way of living. Learn how to: – Earn a good living on your own terms, when and where you want – Achieve that perfect blend of passion and income to make work something you love – Take crucial insights from 50 ordinary people who started a business with $100 or less – Spend less time working and more time living your life.

Get the Book

3. Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action

Each and every one of us in this world wants to become rich and successful. We aim to become successful in businesses, ventures, relationships and ultimately in life. However, to be frank, most of us fail to become one or are partially successful in whatever we start off with. The author of the book, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, feels that there is a reason behind it. Simon Sinek states the reason why some people are innovative, influential and more profitable than others is because they commenced their journey with ‘why’.

In this book, Sinek quotes that some of the most successful and influential people in the world like Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King Jr. focused not on the results of their venture but on the question why. People who ask ‘why’ than ‘how’ or ‘what’ are those who touch lives with their works and inspire people over the years. They achieve remarkable things and carve a place for themselves in the world. By quoting some real life stories, the author gives clear ideas on what it takes to desire, inspire and lead.

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action is for those who dream big and want to achieve their dreams. It is for those who do not compare themselves with others or complain on whatever comes in their life; but for those who are ready to face the challenges and emerge victorious against the odds and set an example. An inspiring book that will change the course of the way things work and how people perceived success.

Get the Book

4. Zero to One: Note on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them. It’s easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. Every new creation goes from 0 to 1. This book is about how to get there.

Get the Book

5. Business Adventures

What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur have in common? Each is an example of how an iconic company was defined by a particular moment of fame or notoriety.

These notable and fascinating accounts are as relevant today to understanding the intricacies of corporate life as they were when the events happened. Stories about Wall Street are infused with drama and adventure and reveal the machinations and volatile nature of the world of finance.

John Brooks’s insightful reportage is so full of personality and critical detail that whether he is looking at the astounding market crash of 1962, the collapse of a well-known brokerage firm, or the bold attempt by American bankers to save the British pound, one gets the sense that history really does repeat itself. This business classic written by longtime New Yorker contributor John Brooks is an insightful and engaging look into corporate and financial life in America

Get the Book

6. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change)

Named one of 100 Leadership & Success Books to Read in a Lifetime by Amazon Editors.An innovation classic. From Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos, Clay Christensen’s work continues to underpin today’s most innovative leaders and organizations.

The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, by renowned author Clayton M. Christensen.His work is cited by the world’s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller—one of the most influential business books of all time—innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right—yet still lose market leadership.

Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices.

Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator’s Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.

Sharp, cogent, and provocative—and consistently noted as one of the most valuable business ideas of all time—The Innovator’s Dilemma is the book no manager, leader, or entrepreneur should be without.

Get the Book

7. Outliers: The Story of Success

When a journalist looks for facts and connections between people who are a huge success, the outcome is always interesting. Malcolm Gladwell wrote his third book ‘Outliers: The story of success’ after extensive research and many interviews. If one thinks about it, is it possible to find a pattern in all the success stories of the world? Is it lies that take you ahead on your journey or is it just destiny and hard work?

This book is honest, audacious and direct. The book starts with discussing why all Canadian Ice hockey players are born in the first half of the calendar and he goes on to evaluate the opportunities that came to Bill Gates and other celebrities. This book was debuted at number one in New York time’s bestsellers list. The author talks about the “10-000 hour rule”, where he claims that to be successful and excellent at any skill, you need a practice of 10-000 hours.

It was very well received by critics. It contains an easy language and thus is a light read and informative book. The book is divided in two parts: Opportunity and Legacy. The book is autobiographical in nature. Gladwell, through this book makes a point in front of the readers that no one in this world can succeed alone. Everyone needs factors and support of people going in their direction although it might not be evident at times. This book is a good read if you are looking for some answers to the question of success.

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Everybody knows that hard work, luck and talent each plays a role in our working lives. In his landmark book, Adam Grant illuminates the importance of a fourth, increasingly critical factor – that the best way to get to the top is to focus on bringing others with you.

Give and Take changes our fundamental understanding of why we succeed, offering a new model for our relationships with colleagues, clients and competitors. Using his own cutting-edge research as a professor at Wharton Business School, as well as success stories from Hollywood to history, Grant shows that nice guys need not finish last. He demonstrates how smart givers avoid becoming doormats, and why this kind of success has the power to transform not just individuals and groups, but entire organisations and communities.

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9. The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses

‘The Lean Start up- How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses’ is a book that explains how to work on your innovative concepts as businessman through moments of anxiety and dilemma. The way to start a company has changed drastically over the time and this book will explain you how to utilize this change to our benefit. The book provides the plan, how a ‘startup’ is a company devoted to creating something innovative under circumstances of extreme uncertainty. As per author Every one of us has one thing in common and that is to clear the way of uncertainty and reach the target of having a sustainable, unbeaten and balanced company.

The book emphasizes on the developed companies that are both economically proficient and make use of human imagination more frequently. Influenced by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies depends on validate learning, rapid scientific testing, as well as a number of counter-intuitive exercises that shorten product growth cycles, measure actual development without resorting to vanity metrics and learn what consumers really want. Thereby, it a organization to move directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. The book make you learn entrepreneurship, in organization of all sizes, a way to judge their vision continuously and to adapt and adjust according to situation.

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‘Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make The Leap… And Others Don’t’ is a book that focuses on the concepts which when followed can make a mere good company, a great one! The theories given help the companies to be successful in their business. The author and his expert team set out to find solutions for the handicaps that the small and mediocre companies have to face. The problems can range from the initial teething problems to the mid-life-business feeling of just being good and not great! Their main focus is to help out those businesses which do not have any Godfather in the corporate industry.

The expert team conducted the research for a period of 5 years and analyzed various quantitative as well as qualitative aspects of doing business. It took a sample of 1,435 Fortune 500 companies. The experts assembled thousands of editorials, conducted face-to-face interviews with top executives, went through in-house planning documents and gathered analyst research reports in order to Qualitatively analyze the whole thing. For the Quantitative aspect, financial metrics were analyzed, executive remunerations were examined and comparison of management turnover was done. Besides, the impacts of mergers and acquisitions on the performance were measured. The blending of all the results was then enumerated to find out the ways of transforming a good company into a great one. The team came out with some remarkable concepts on the basis of these research and surveys. They found out that with the help of these tips, the companies would be able to achieve cumulative stock returns of 6.9 times the stock market over a period of 15 years. So, it is a great grab for the CEOs and Management of companies of good companies who want to progress towards being great.

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11. Duct Tape Selling

Many of the areas that salespeople struggle with these days have long been the domain of marketers, according to bestselling author John Jantsch. The traditional business model dictates that marketers own the message while sellers own the relationships. But now, Jantsch flips the usual sales approach on its head.

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In The Confidence Code, Claire Shipman and Katty Kay completely undress the concept of confidence. Is it selfworth or self-esteem? Is it real or imagined? They endeavor to understand how widespread the lack of it is and how this impacts the larger subject of leadership and success.

They dig into the critical question of growing up female: where confidence comes from and why it feels so ephemeral. By examining cutting-edge research, sharing their own and other notable women’s stories and providing practical principles, Kay and Shipman do more than merely admonish women to “lean in” to their careers. Rather, they give them the inspiration and the tools to close the gap between insecurity and fulfillment.

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14. Better Than Before

In Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin answers the most perplexing questions about habits with her signature mix of rigorous research and engaging storytelling:- Why do we find it tough to create a habit for something we love to do?- How can we keep our healthy habits when we’re surrounded by temptations?- How can we help someone else change a habit? Rubin reveals the true secret to habit change: first, we must know ourselves.

When we shape our habits to suit ourselves, we can find success- even if we’ve failed before. Whether you want to eat more healthfully, stop checking devices or finish a project, the invaluable ideas in Better Than Before will start you working on your own habits – even before you’ve finished the book.

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15.The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

An ideal guide to building your personality by altering your habits

It is rightly said that habits make or break a man. If you want to know why you are not doing something right, sometimes all you need is to perform an analysis of your habits and consider altering them. Because sometimes it’s not about what you do, but more about how you do it! And that’s where your habits play a very important role.

The 7 habits of Highly Effective People’ is a book that aims at providing its readers with the importance of character ethics and personality ethics. The author talks about the values of integrity, courage, a sense of justice and most importantly, honesty. The book is a discussion about the seven most essential habits that every individual must adopt to in order to live a life which is more fulfilling.

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The book is highly recommended for people of all ages. It also holds a record of having over 25 million copies sold in about as many as 40 languages all over the world.

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If you want to be a successful entrepreneur You should read these books asap.

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wbwest · 7 years

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New Post has been published on WilliamBruceWest.com

New Post has been published on http://www.williambrucewest.com/2017/07/14/west-week-ever-pop-culture-review-71417/

West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 7/14/17

So, I saw Spider-Man: Homecoming. Unlike most of you, I didn’t love it. I really liked it, but didn’t love it. Part of the issue stems from the legacy of Spider-Man films. I kinda hate how every star has delivered a great performance as Spider-Man, yet the minute the roll is recast, fans with short memories start saying the last guy was “shit”. People love ragging on Tobey Maguire, especially after Spider-Man 3, but he was really good in those first two movies. There’s a Spider-Man for every generation, and he was the Spider-Man we needed in 2002. Sure, he wouldn’t work so well now, but to compare his movies to Homecoming is basically apples to oranges. I also kinda hate when people say “They finally got Spider-Man right!” Um, Tobey already got him right. Andrew Garfield, in his own way, got him right. And Holland is getting him right. For now. They’ve all brought something special and unique to the table, and I think it’s unfair to discount that because there’s some new, shiny thing to take your attention.

All that’s to say that I liked Homecoming, but it didn’t really offer anything new to me. I felt the same wide-eyed wonder seeing Holland do the ferry rescue as I did when Maguire did the same thing with the train in Spider-Man 2. Some might call that an homage, but it just felt…familiar.

What did I love? I loved Tony being there. I felt like there was just enough Tony Stark without the film becoming Iron Man 3.5. It’s always good to see Happy, and this movie did more with him than most of the Iron Man films ever did. I especially love movie Happy since comic Happy is no longer with us (sad trombone). I loved sexy, younger Aunt May, but I’ve loved Marisa Tomei ever since she filled out her college application wrong and ended up at that Black college. I loved the running joke of all the guys commenting on how hot she was. It’s a new concept for May, but it works. I loved the Miles Morales Easter egg (I won’t spoil it here if you didn’t catch it). I loved Not-Ganke (For those not in the know, Ganke is the name of Miles Morales Spider-Man’s best friend, who looks EXACTLY like actor Jacob Batalon), even if I don’t know why they insisted on calling him “Ned Leeds”. I loved that Damage Control was officially revealed. Keaton was great, even if he’s not an Adrian Toomes that I recognize. The Liz Allen swerve was cool, ’cause I really didn’t see that coming.

OK, now for the things I didn’t like. They introduced a good swath of Spidey’s rogue (Mac Gargan, Shocker), all at once as Vulture’s gang, only to be relegated to ancillary characters and henchmen. I know the MCU has a “Villain Problem” of wasting their villains, but this just takes the cake.

Now, this is gonna sound stupid, but I spent a good amount of time trying to reconcile the MCU timeline in my head. The movie starts immediately after Avengers, jumps 8 years to Captain America: Civil War, and then to the present day, which is shortly after the airport battle where Spidey debuted. Now, a big part of Act 3 is the fact that Vulture wants to steal a bunch of Avengers/Stark Tech on Moving Day – when everything was being moved from Avengers Tower to the upstate facility. Now, Tony’s rich, so it’s not like he can’t own multiple properties, but why is Moving Day happening NOW? I mean, the upstate facility debuted at the end of Age of Ultron, we saw it again in Ant-Man, and everyone seemed to be pretty moved in by Civil War. So, why the delay in moving everything up there? Does Homecoming maybe not take place when we think it does? Well, we know it’s post-Civil War because Cap’s hilariously referred to as a war criminal by gym teacher Hannibal Buress. If it were just a thrown away reference, I wouldn’t care, but the whole final action piece is based on this Moving Day concept. Anyway, I think it’s fair to say I probably wasn’t in the right headspace for this movie if that’s where my brain was going.

Oh, and the thing I hated most: that effing MJ reveal! First of all, it accomplished nothing. It was corny, and it was executed just as poorly as when The Dark Knight Rises did it. Secondly, at the end of the day, her name is MICHELLE, not MARY. You can call her “MJ”, but that does not make her Mary Jane. And to be honest, the movie would’ve been fine without her character. While she was funny, it seems like she was woven into the movie solely to make that hamfisted name reveal at the end.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll watch this movie a bunch more once it hits the premium channels, but I just didn’t fall in love with it as much as a lot of you did. I’m really sorry about that, too, ’cause I really wanted to love it. Something just didn’t work for me entirely, and I can’t put my finger on it exactly.

Things were heating up in the news world this week. Back when NBC announced they had hired Megyn Kelly from Fox News, Today co-anchor Tamron Hall abruptly quit, reportedly because her contract was about to expire. Industry insiders, however, believe it was because it was rumored that Kelly would be given the third hour of Today – where Hall was currently the co-anchor of Today’s Take. Well, that’s somewhat true, as this week it was revealed that Kelly’s show will premiere September 25th, and will feature a live studio audience, like a traditional talk show. It will, in fact, occupy the third hour of Today, sandwiched between the regular Today and the Kathie Lee & Hoda hour of Today. Not to be outdone, it was also announced that Tamron Hall is developing a daytime talk show with Weinstein Television. It’s also believed that, in several major markets, this talk show will go head to head with Kelly’s daytime show. Now the race is on to see which one of them earns the coveted “Fake News” label first!

In other television news, CBS announced an upcoming animated special called Michael Jackson’s Halloween, which sounds kinda sketchy. Apparently, it’s about two Millennials (there’s THAT buzzword), which is basically to say “two shits too young to appreciate the King of Pop’s music”. Anyway, they meet at a party, end up at a weird hotel, and crazy stuff happens – all capped off by a dance number by an animated Michael. If you ask me, he already contributed his greatest gift to the Halloween industry: “Thriller”! Unless this is just a one-hour animated version of “Thriller”, I don’t think the world needs this. Somebody tell his mama to stop letting his estate make crap like this.

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

John Cho joins Fox’s The Exorcist next season. While some are all, “Yay, representation!”, I’m like “Why the F is Sulu doing television?!” Well, I guess since Kumar’s already doing television…

In a move that’s somewhat baffling to me, Lucy Liu will direct the season 2 premiere of Netflix’s Luke Cage

Speaking of Netflix, Bojack Horseman season 4 will premiere on September 8th.

Fresh of the Boat dad Randall Park has been cast as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jimmy Woo in Ant-Man & The Wasp

Netflix has also renewed the Castlevania animated series for a second season

Jeremy Renner essentially broke both arms while filming the movie Tag, though it’s not expected to affect production on Avengers: Infinity War.

Smallville‘s Lois Lane, Erica Durance, is taking over the role of Alura from Laura Benanti on Supergirl.

Despite flopping in North America, the Baywatch film is on track to make $100 million overseas

Showtime is planning a sequel to the hit lesbian series The L Word. If it were up to me, it’d be called The K Word, and it would be about non-binary gender Millennials as they make their way through NYC, but nobody pays me for these ideas, so…

After 27 years of voicing Kermit the Frog, it was revealed that Steve Whitmire was fired back in October, and it currently lobbying to get his job back. Apparently, it’s not east being Steve.

In probably the biggest TV news this week (at least for the geek set), it was announced that AT&T Lily herself, Milana Vayntrub, has been cast as Squirrel Girl in Marvel’s New Warriors on Freeform. I cared NOTHING about this show until that announcement. It still doesn’t really inspire any confidence for me, as I don’t know if the superhero comedy genre works on television (see Powerless), but I’m definitely more inclined to check it out than I had been prior to the announcement. I mean, who doesn’t love that chick?! I love her in the commercials, I loved her in Other Space, and I even loved her as a bitchy ex-girlfriend in Love. Here’s hoping this leads to the big break she deserves. It was a slow entertainment news week so, ya know what, Milana Vayntrub had the Breas…I mean West Week Ever.

#Batman #DC #Marvel #Movies #Music #Politics #Pop #Race #Star Trek #Television #West Week Ever

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brianwilly · 7 years

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So apparently I wanna talk about Secret Empire

[Shows up a month late with Pete’s Coffee]

There’ve already been a lot of well-written thinkpieces and entries about this comic, about Nick Spencer, about it all. But I wanted to maybe throw my two-cents into the pile because, to this day, I think most people are still a little confused about where the outrage is coming from, what exactly is making people uncomfortable, and why it all just keeps snowballing on itself.

And honestly I don’t blame those people; this whole situation is kinda hard to parse. You think it’d be easy to understand why “They turned Captain America into a Nazi” makes people upset, but the thing about Secret Empire is that it honestly does a good pretty job of covering its own ass, of not doing anything overtly offensive, of leaving in all the loopholes and technicalities and escape clauses to its own premise. “It’s going to be undone in the end.” “He’s not actually a Nazi, he’s just brainwashed (even though the story goes on and on for pages about how he’s actually not brainwashed and is in fact a Nazi).” “We’re treating Nazis as bad guys, not glorifying them.” “And they’re not really Nazis, they’re Hydra, it’s totally different.” “We’re tackling topical issues! Aren’t we brave! And daring!”

And that’s the kind of stuff I wanna try to cut through here, but it’s gonna require...well...yet another thinkpiece. Sorry about that.

So I think that Tumblr has covered much of this pretty well, but something to be aware of is that, for a while now, genre media has had A) really iffy mindsets about Jewish issues and B) a sort of casual flirtation with "cool Nazis" as some edgy cool thing to hype and market. It’s not glorifying Nazis exactly, but it’s using that kind of imagery and ideology as tools to sell your books and movies and TV. And when I say "genre media" has been doing these things, I actually am specifically referring to Marvel comics and studios for a notable chunk of these instances.

When you combine those instances with the state of the world where Nazism has been regaining traction with the 'chans and redditors and within the White House itself, with Holocaust denialism and Jewish defamation being a regular fixture of the news cycle...it's no wonder that members of the Jewish community and blogosphere has been feeling disenfranchised by a lot of the old entities and structures that had seemed like they should be able to count on as a matter of course. That includes the government, that includes our fellow citizens, and it also includes the media.

(sidebar, I am not Jewish, I just enjoy their comics!)

That's what readers mean when they say this feels like the worst sort of climate for a story that reveals and is marketed on the premise that Captain America was secretly a Nazi all along. It's not that people don't want the current political climate to be examined and lampshaded in media, it's that this specific method of examination comes across scarily comparable to all the antisemitic media and rhetoric that's been released throughout the years which has led us to this current political climate in the first place. It's the media-slash-rhetoric where Jewish (and other) characters have their origins retconned and whitewashed into homogeneity, where pontificating supervillains are just misunderstood revolutionaries who might have a point or something, where fascist police-states are shock value tropes to engender hype and interest amongst audiences.

Spencer's argument is that this story, which depicts a universe where the fascists win, is intended to incite discourse and criticism against such a universe. Hydra are still clearly the bad guys of the story, we're obviously intended to want to see them lose, of course they're going to lose by the end. But the way that the story has been constructed up to this point exhibits a lot of the same signatures of various antisemitic story beats we've had throughout the years. Captain America being retconned from a stalwart defender of Jewish people into being a Nazi agent, for instance, evokes Wanda and Pietro Maximoff being changed from prominent Jewish-Romani superheroes into whitewashed Hydra recruits on the big screen...and there was certainly no secret message or hidden allegory behind the Maximoffs' change; all it was was offensive and tone-deaf and that was it.

For another instance, Nazi Steve delivering issues-long sermons about how the heroes of this world have gotten complacent and misguided and that the world needs someone willing to make the tough choices, to do what it takes to protect it, is reminiscent of Tony Stark and Carol Danvers making fascism-apologia for months on end throughout the two Civil War event comics, like, hey maybe these guys playing the hardball roles have a point right? Hey aren't we so hardcore and edgy for tackling the hardcore and edgy topics? CHOOSE YOUR SIDE!...and in the end this fascism-apologia is just played completely straight, no hidden critique, no last-minute swerve, just Marvel turning its heroes into borderline supervillains and that was the end of the story. But hey, this story here and now will be totally different from that! Becuuuz...for some reason.

To be direct about his: This isn’t our first rodeo, Marvel Comics. Let’s not pretend that Marvel...and DC, let’s be fair...haven't in fact made a lot of legitimately terrible in-canon offensive character assassinations of iconic characters and that it's not that unreasonable to be afraid of it happening again at any given point. Let’s not pretend that Marvel hasn’t done a lot of those things for the specific reason of angering readers and then feeding off of that anger and attention.

At the very least, there's been this weird romanticizing of Hydra Cap from Spencer in what I've read of these books so far; it doesn’t exactly refute the premise that Steve being Hydra is bad, but Steve is still the protagonist of these books no matter how brainwashed he is, so these issues seem to have come across less like "Our heroes have to prevail against this nefarious schemer and his nefarious schemes!" and more like "Watch in wonder as this shadowy agent prevails against all the clueless establishment and does badass things throughout his mission!" It falls into the "cool Nazi" trend where it's like, of course we're consciously aware that he's the bad guy here, but isn't he so edgy and hardcore and badass anyway? I haven't read as many issues of Hydra Cap as Spencer would probably like so, I dunno, let me know if I'm way off here.

So, to summarize...well, not summarize exactly, but to organize these points, lets’ do a list. Everyone likes lists, right?

1) Showing the "bad guys" losing in, like, probably the very last issue of this year long storyline (which also included the main Captain America book which led up to the actual event) doesn't suddenly omit all those issues where the "bad guys" were shown being edgy and hardcore and badass and smart and powerful and pulling one over on all those dense clueless liberal "good guys," except in this case the bad guys are people who directly abetted in the Holocaust and not the guys who stole forty cakes.

2) This is during a time in the world where antisemitic rhetoric is seeing a startling resurgence -- or maybe just coming back into the light again after hiding away for a bit -- and Holocaust denialism, vandalism of public Jewish spaces, and outright physical violence being more and more common occurrences.

3) Readers in general have been consistently burned by Marvel's consistently tone-deaf depictions of moral or social narratives throughout their events (Civil War: police states are great!) (Civil War II: police states are great!) (IvX: Cyclops is goddamn HITLER for some reason). Jewish readers, in particular, have good reason to not to trust Marvel to be respectful and tactful of their issues. Any such complaints or concerns have been responded to with derision or misunderstanding on Spencer's part, which only makes everyone angrier and more wary.

4) Indeed, Marvel and Spencer's go-to insistence that Hydra are totally not Nazis at all and you're just being nitpicky if you say they're Nazis just further makes them come across as tone-deaf and bullish on the matter, on top of (probably unknowingly, if I’m feeling generous) mirroring the talking points of actual real life Nazis, who've been trying to rebrand themselves as something different for years in order to come across more fluffy and palatable to mainstream sensibilities.

5) I mean there's also the fact that Hydra is -- as currently depicted in this very event by the very writer who keeps saying they're not Nazis on Twitter -- a completely fascistic political regime that stifles free thought and rewrites history through fear, violence, and propaganda and oh hey did someone mention concentration camps? ‘Cuz there are concentration camps in this book. Hydra is functionally indistinguishable from Nazis in this actual book. This is not a book about Captain America being brainwashed by Saturnians to plant death lasers on the moon, this is a book about Captain America being a Nazi and doing things associated with Nazis in absolutely every respect. But sure let’s get comic shop owners to dress up like them and stuff

6) "I don’t care if this gets undone next year, next month, next week. I know it’s clickbait disguised as storytelling. I am not angry because omg how dare you ruin Steve Rogers forever. I am angry because how dare you use eleven million deaths as clickbait." Copypasted directly, because how can you get clearer than that.

7) Spencer's work with Sam Wilson Captain America, which generally turns him into a centrist apologist at best who couldn't believe that he himself was ever that much of an annoying liberal activist or something and occasionally fights literal "social justice warriors" on college campuses throwing bombs and internet slang, isn’t a particularly encouraging thing to have hanging on the back of your mind while reading this story about how Steve Rogers was actually a Nazi all along. 8) In a world where an X-Men artist is literally sneaking secret antisemitic propaganda into books that are supposed to celebrate diversity and civil activism, can you really blame people for being antsy about a comic book that is making members of Stormfront cream themselves by revealing that Steve Rogers was a secret Nazi all along?

So yeah, I dunno if I have any great point to make with any of this. I just felt like collating all the outrage and shedding a little light on how the situation comes across to me. Secret Empire isn’t exactly the sort of clear-cut idiocy where, y’know, some dense writer fridged yet another female character or replaced yet another hero of color with his white predecessor from forty years ago. Its problems are a bit more intricate, which means the blowback is a bit more intricate as well.

#Captain America #Secret Empire #Nick Spencer #Marvel Comics #Marvel #Steve Rogers #Hydra #Nazis #comics #Overthinking

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chaxicollective · 7 years

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Hello Again...

Welp, it’s been a while since I’ve written on here. Payton has written a few things here and there but mostly my voice has been absent from this blog. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been living the tea life. Quite the opposite. If you follow my instagrams (Chaxicollective and Settingsunteahut) you will notice this past year has been full of market, classes, tastings, workshops and Japanese tea dinners! I wrote an article about my hut that appeared in December’s Global Tea Hut, I was also featured along side my friend John, from Stone Leaf Teahouse, In a Seven Days article. I’ve had visitors from near and far, some as near as next door, some as far as Estonia! (Pictures are from Steve Kokker’s Visit last Friday) It’s been great sharing tea with new people as well as familiar friends of me and tea.

I could update you all on these specific things but that seems much better suited for an in person chat, so come visit! instead I’d like to focus on an interesting time for tea that I haven’t seen many talk about recently: 2007.

2007 was the year I really got into tea and Puer in particular. This also happened to be a a time when there was a huge boom in the market of tea, an explosion of new factories, random origin teas and crazy wrappers. This was also a difficult time to sift through reputable sources to find accurate info about quality vendors, translations of pinyin, or even just anyone else who might be drinking similar teas outside of the local teahouse.

There were small breadcrumbs here and there that led me to various blogs (some of which are not publishing anymore) others were just beginning or at least building on their tea practices and therefore not yet go-to places in the internet. Various forums, tea-clubs and curated puer vendors were not yet commonplace so buying tea was also a bit of a gamble.

You can read the book Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic to learn a bit more about how the landscape of tea production changed thanks to certification updates.

Part of the mystery about buying teas around this time was that they were new recipes with new materials made by new manufacturers. In the world of tea for aging, this was unfounded. Most teas on the market before this had some level of familiarity. This meant we needed to develop new tastes, learn to store tea well and then be patient that it would turn out better in a few years.

Though I do not have any of the first puer I bought from back then (not having many teas in your budding collection means you drink through them really fast) I have tasted my fair share of teas from 2007 and have a few cakes that I’ve been storing since 2010. Now, in 2017, we can see how many of these teas from the unknown era (as I’m calling it..) are turning out. Both in the 10 years of their life and also more specifically in the 7 years in my own storage (two houses but still in Vermont climate)

I’ve talked before about noticing changes in puer in 7 year increments. Generally speaking, the first 7 years being the most sweet, energetic, and fruity, the next 7 being the time where the dry, woody flavors come out and the tea mellows but also the chaqi becomes both more intense but also grounding. the 7 after that is when the first inclination of the “aged” tea flavors and qi will be apparent. The old book aroma and flavor, the lucid-dreaming type qi and the viscous and also earthy flavors start to really show their true colors. This is of course just my experience with the teas I’ve had from the vendors and storage that have purchased from. These 7 year change thing has been pretty consistent for me though, only a few teas haven’t really fit that mold (no pun intended)

With those parameters in mind, and comparing with teas before 2007 at the 7/14 year mark, My ‘07 cakes are tasting great! Not only have they continued to taste good, they have also aged nicely in my storage. This means I have some assemblance of how a young tea will do under my care. And hope that my tea will have a bit more than personal value in years to come. This by no means makes me a puer expert or even an accomplished collector. Most of you out their hoarding tea in your “pu-midors” likely have way more tea than I do. What this means is that I can make more informed decisions about which teas I should buy. Many years ago I would have steered people away from buying teas from 2007-2010 and instead directed them towards older teas or at least teas from established brick and mortar vendors like Camellia Sinensis.

Now that we’ve had enough time and distance from that “Boom” there is plenty of info available just about everywhere. Lots of blogs, English language books, Instagram, great tea-clubs, and a plethora of vetted puer curators. This is also enough time to look at weather patterns tea see how tea was affected. if you liked tea from 2005 (which I do, fantastic year for puer in my experiences) check the rainfall etc in Yunnan and compare to another year. Chances are if the storage is similar, investing in a youngish (under 7 years) puer that was produced with weather the same as your favorite year, the return in the future will be quite good. You don’t have to be an expert at deciphering meteorological data, just know that if you liked how the tea tasted when there was well above average rainfall or well below average temperature, chances are you’ll enjoy the tea with the same weather parameters from a different year.

I haven’t gotten fully into that realm yet. I enjoy most puer I taste at every age shift so maybe I’m an easy sell. I have had a few teas that tasted great young, then petered out for a few years and only this past year have really developed into something special. So don’t give up either.

Looking at the rest of my collection, this year will be an exciting time to revisit teas that should be entering a wonderful part of their life. Teas coming into their own and experiencing their first big change as well as teas turning the corner into masterful, aged goodness. So sit down and brew up something special, check on an old favorite, there’s still a couple more months til the 2017 teas come out...

#tea #teahut #settingsunteahut #gongfu #puer #china #yunnan #cha #chaxi #storag #2007 #meow #wherehaveibeen

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endenogatai · 5 years

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Omers Ventures outs €300M European fund — Q&A with Managing Partner Harry Briggs

Omers Ventures, the venture capital arm of Canadian pension fund Omers, is officially launching a new €300 million fund aimed at European technology startups.

Headed up by Harry Briggs, who was previously at BGF Ventures, Omers Europe will back companies at Series A to B stage. The new fund will typically invest between €5m-€10m per round, while also having the capacity to follow on in future rounds for the most promising portfolio companies.

Prior to his time at BGF — which ended rather abruptly due to “strategic changes” at the U.K. firm — Briggs was previously at Balderton Capital. His investments are said to include UK unicorn The Hut Group, Magic Pony (acquired by Twitter in 2016), GoCardless, Paddle, Touch Surgery, Appear Here and Revolut.

He also has decent entrepreneur stripes, having founded and exited Firefly Tonics, a health drinks company, which he expanded to 35 countries, before selling to private equity firm Langholm Capital.

Meanwhile, according to my sources, Briggs joined Omers some months ago and has been busy recruiting a small team for Omers in Europe.

Joining him at launch is Tara Reeves, who was most recently a Partner at LocalGlobe and is said to have led investments in Bricklane, Cleo, Cuvva, Floodflash, Tide and Trussle, providing her with insurance tech and finntech expertise. Tara also co-founded Turo, a car-sharing marketplace that has raised over $200 million.

Also joining Omers in Europe is Henry Gladwyn, who previously managed seed investments for the founders of DeepMind.

Below follows an email Q&A with Omers Europe Managing Partner Harry Briggs where we discuss the new fund’s remit, why Omers is different to other funds in terms of how it is financed, the influx of U.S. capital into Europe, and Briggs’ advise for dealing with VC (and journalist) egos.

TC: Omers Ventures in Europe plans to do Series A and B investments, typically writing cheques between €5m-€10m per round, as well as following on. Can you be more specific regarding the types of companies, technologies, business models or sectors you are focussing on?

HB: I’d summarise it as “consequential companies that will have meaningful impact on society”: we’re unusual in that our funds don’t come from wealthy family trusts – they’re the retirement savings of 500,000 municipal workers – people who make Ontario society function. OMERS’ other assets follow a similar theme – OMERS builds and owns the airports, utilities, railways, hospitals and commercial and residential buildings that make up the fabric of major world cities. So in OMERS Ventures Europe we want to invest in the companies reshaping how we live and work: for example, Health-tech, FinTech, PropTech, Mobility – obviously because we think there will be huge European successes in those areas to make great commercial returns for the retirement plans of the OMERS members; but also because they’re areas we’re passionate about, that OMERS members care about, and where there are obvious synergies with the other parts of OMERS.

TC: You’ve recruited Tara Reeves from LocalGlobe and Henry Gladwyn, who previously managed seed investments for the founders of DeepMind, but I gather you’re not done yet. What other recruitment plans does Omers Ventures have in Europe, either in the investment team or operations?

HB: We plan to build gradually to a team of 7 or 8 investors – from managing partner to associate level. We’re particularly looking right now at investors and operators with strong Continental European connections, and people with health-tech and deep-tech experience. But we’re in no rush. Toronto already has a superb operations team helping portfolio companies on talent and marketing, who are on hand to help our companies here – but in due course as our portfolio grows we will add operations support here too.

TC: What can we expect Omers Ventures to bring to Europe that doesn’t already exist, aside from another €300 million of venture capital?

HB: First, how many European Venture funds can tap into colleagues on every continent, and connections to giant assets under the same roof like Thames Water, Associated British Ports, US healthcare chains or a $50B property portfolio:- if you’re a health-tech, FinTech, Mobility or Prop-tech company, OMERS Ventures can offer a different level of experience and connections.

Second, I see founders and consumers as increasingly ethics-conscious: and in that environment it matters where your funds come from, and what else you’re investing in. Founders can know that if they build a giant business with OMERS Ventures money, they won’t be making billionaires even richer – they’ll be improving 500,000 Canadian workers’ retirement plans.

Technology will always have positive and negative impact, but in recent years we’ve seen tech giants become instruments of mass surveillance and mass-manipulation, undermining democracy and societal cohesion in the reckless pursuit of power and profit. The tech backlash is, finally, coming, and I think being a fund that questions the longer-term societal impact of our investments could help set us apart for the next generation of founders. Easier said than done, of course.

Lastly, our set-up means we’re 100% aligned with long-term value creation – OMERS needs to fund pensions 50+ years out – so founders can trust that we’ll always be pushing for the long-term great outcome, not short-term profits.

TC: In your announcement blog post you write that more and more VC firms are using data and technology to source deal-flow and reach beyond location and investment team size. How is Omers Ventures in Europe planning to use technology?

HB: We’re already working on building this with a fantastic team: Europe is a really unusual ecosystem, because talent is spread across so many different cities with so many different languages and cultures. That poses a big challenge to funds trying to find the biggest opportunities across the continents through network alone. But increasingly the data is there to flag many of the most exciting companies at an early stage, even if they’re outside the major hubs. This can be an advantage for us in the short-term, but we believe this will be table stakes in the future of VC.

TC: Related to this, you say that even though the “big four” Series A firms in Europe — Index, Accel, Balderton and Atomico — have managed to remain dominant over the last ten years, U.S. funds like Sequoia, Benchmark, Bessemer, and A16Z are threatening this dominance. Is this a good or bad thing for the European ecosystem?

HB: Undeniably this is a great thing for founders: more money for good companies, more competition among funds to provide the most value to founders, and more great funds to coinvest with. There may be some fair-weather tourists among the US funds, who disappear when times get tough – but generally we have much to learn from the top US funds and it should raise our game.

TC: You also write that switching VC jobs is “complicated” and then ambiguously refer to “half-truths” and “soul searching,” amongst other things. It’s hard not to interpret this as a reference to your abrupt departure from BGF after the firm had a change in strategy. Perhaps you can clarify?

HB: I’m usually a pretty frank / candid person – but during a job-change you always have to keep that tendency in check: trying to keep my plans from journalists has been a particular challenge, as you know Steve :-) Also, life is short, the pace of VC makes it best-suited to the young, and VC works best in long stints (it takes years to see investments through, and carry typically vests over many years), so one can’t make too many mis-steps… What mattered most to me was being able to have substantive impact, working with super-smart, high-integrity people: and I feel I’ve landed in the perfect place.

TC: In the same blog post you write that “The ego’s of VCs still largely exceed our value,” which is something that is bound to resonate with some of our readers. How much is VC ego a problem and what advice would you give to founders with regards to managing a VC’s ego?

HB: Most of the VCs I know are impressive, thoughtful people whom I look up to. But we’re all vulnerable to pride and insecurity and ego – it’s human nature to give ourselves too much credit when things go well, and cast about for someone else to blame when they don’t. VC egos only really get tested in the tough times – so we’ll learn much more if and when the correction comes. My advice to founders would be, test VCs for how open they are about their mistakes, how much they seek to learn and grow from them rather than divert blame for them; ask when they’ve changed their minds about something important. And see how they talk about founders:- to quote Anton Ego in Ratatouille, “We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment.” – good VCs should have the humility to admit that whilst this job is in so many ways a huge privilege, we remain mere parasites compared to the people doing the real work of building the businesses.

TC: Finally — while we’re on the subject of egos — do you have any advice for founders on how to manage journalist egos, too? My friends tell me they can be pretty huge.

HB: Ha! Insecurity breeds ego, and journalism has been a pretty insecure profession for some time… But thankfully there are diamonds in the rough!

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