Midoriya: I Have So Many Ideas! I Love Working On Projects!

Mina: How are you today?

Kirishima, watching Bakugou pass by: Gay

Mina: ?

Kirishima: I mean ok!

Bakugou: Why did you help me? I’m a jerk.

Kirishima, internally: Don’t say it’s because you love him.

Kirishima: It’s because I love you.

Kirishima, internally: No!

Bakugou: I love you too.

Kirishima, internally: Yes!!

Good afternoon girl, I am being harassed by bot accounts

A very useful thread on Bluesky:

(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬ November 8, 2024

This is not going to be a repeat of 2016-2020. It will be better, it will be worse, but most of all it will be different. Here are things I want every single person to keep in mind as we head into round 2 of a Trump admin.

My credentials: I’m a queer female public interest attorney working on tech policy in DC. I’ve been doing this for a decade--longer than some, not as long as others. I had to navigate three different administrations, as well as Congress, regulatory agencies, courts, and the advocacy world.

FIRST: don’t let despair override your media literacy.

The left has grifters, just like every other movement. If you’re able and compelled to donate, give to orgs with established track records. Avoid giving to individuals, especially anyone who emerges overnight with a one-weird-trick “plan.”

The left is not immune to misinformation, and everyone—EVERYONE—falls for it sometimes, present company included. There is no shame in it. When (not if) it happens to you, you should acknowledge it; delete or retract the post to reduce the spread; and move on.

If a source consistently shares half-truths or outright misinformation, it is not trustworthy, no matter how much “their heart is in the right place.” Unfollow and move on.

Prediction, analysis, and reporting are three fundamentally different things. Learn to identify them for what they are. Reject attempts by amateur “analysts” to predict the future. They know as much as you do.

Real subject matter experts know and acknowledge their limits. They’re also (usually) hesitant to try and predict the future. The best frame their predictions in terms of a range of possible outcomes. Subject matter experts may also disagree with one another! It happens!

SECOND: What we know for sure about how the Trump, how he operates, and how that will impact the next four years.

Trump is a narcissist who avoids reading and doesn’t care about details. He cannot be persuaded by argument or logic; he’s moved mostly by flattery, and will agree with the last person who flattered him. He can and will upend his own administration’s work without warning, often by tweet.

As a result, most policy experts—even those "on his side"—dread him taking an interest in their field. Ask any Republican staffer who worked in Congress during the last administration, and most of them will confirm that their greatest fear was Trump tweeting about anything related to their work.

As such, people who are serious about their work will do everything to make it as invisible and boring-seeming as possible. This is the policy equivalent of defensive camouflage. Lots of “normie” work will continue in silence. (The lion’s share of tech policy ends up in this bucket.)

If you have a niche issue that you care about, now is a great time to donate to orgs that work on it. Lots of money will be funneled to big legacy orgs working on headline issues: ACLU, climate change orgs, etc. Consider sending your donations where they matter most: local, niche, established.

Trump runs his cabinet like the Apprentice. He thrives on chaos and making people compete for his approval. Not only does he not reward collaboration between his subordinates, he actively undermines it.

Moreover, everyone who works with him knows that they’re vulnerable to being thrown under the bus at a moment’s notice, for any reason (or for no reason at all). His cabinet is going to be scorpions in a bottle. They will not be able to coordinate, for good or ill.

One scorpion can still do a lot of horrific damage. But large scale inter-agency coordination is unlikely, particularly after the first few months, by which point he will likely (prediction warning!) have gone through a handful of cabinet secretaries already.

FINALLY: The view from inside civil society heading into 2025.

In 2016, Trump was a largely unknown quantity. The left and establishment right alike wasted a lot of time trying to read tea leaves and make sense of this guy, because he was completely outside the realm of what anyone had dealt with. That’s not happening now.

He did us a favor by broadcasting his plans in advance (aka Project 2025). Civil society has spent the last 2.5 years strategizing around it. We’re not starting off flat-footed.

The Biden admin did a good amount to future-proof its own achievements. Folks can speak to their own areas of expertise, but clean energy and CHIPS and Science Act (investing in domestic semiconductor production) have benefitted from huge sunk investments. That money’s not getting clawed back.

OVERALL TAKE-AWAYS:

It's going to suck. But civil society and the political left have some advantages we didn't have last time. We know him, we know his angles, and we know who he's bringing in--none of which we had in 2016.

We'll get through this. It will be grim, but we'll get through it.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

Thanks Meredith. I really valued your analysis over the past few years, and I think this is a reasonable, actionable framework to think about the upcoming storm

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

I really cannot overstate how much time was (necessarily) wasted in 2017 trying to figure out this guy and his influences. The fact that he's not only a known quantity, but ran the most over-studied administration in this nation's recent history, makes this a very different game.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

I bet we can weaponize his narcissism. Let's say some ghoul starts making progress with a mass deportation effort, if we start calling that ghoul that "shadow president" en masse, Trump would fire him in right away and appoint Hulk Hogan or something

‪Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

This is exactly why I don't think Musk will last very long. Trump is very clear that he's the only one in the room allowed to have an ego or any kind of brand name.

Bakugou: I hate Deku

Kirishima: Hate is such a strong word

Bakugou: Fine. I extremely dislike him.

Your parents hadn’t wanted to give you up. It was a hard season, but surely there had to be better ways. You knew better.

You could practically taste the salt of the soil, and as useless as you were as a planter, you could still tell things about your home, and right now your home was dying. You told them to do it. The only way they knew to ensure a good harvest, for now and forever. Offer a child in the dark part of the woods, where the mushroom circles were clumped together and hard to avoid. Where the fey courts lay.

The fey were surprised to see someone so grown as a child offered. Your smile is not the cute instinct of a babe, but something malicious. You knew how cruel the world could be, with your paper lungs and twisted spine. You who were nothing but a burden to your poor family of farmers.

The fey still take you. A bargain is a bargain, and they could not back out now. There were no lies, and the fey should have expected tricks. They make do, as most creatures will. You are to be wed to a creature whose name has long disappeared, whose every other spouse had vanished. An appeasement, they said. You figured you were going to be killed by your spouse for ‘entertainment’, like the horror stories you heard as a child.

The wedding is a blur of fancy outfits and your frail body being forced into dances that seemed to twist and warp it even further. Your bones crackle as you spin, on the edge of forgetting your own name. Then, just as quickly as the dance begins, it ends.

Your new spouse takes you ti their home, tells you the tricks to the courts. Do not speak unless spoken to, don’t eat the fruit or drink the wine, salt your food, and more. It all seems to blend together, yet you’re sure you could recite those rules by heart as soon as you hear them.

The first few days are quiet. Your spouse seems almost… afraid. Like they’re unsure what to do. Like they’ve never seen a human like you. You fill your time with the few tasks you knew how to complete at home- weaving scraps of thread or grass into cloth. One of the only things you were good for, now a comfort in this unfamiliar place.

You soon find a basket of weaving materials and a loom set up.

You remember what your spouse said about there being no such thing as a gift here in the courts, and so you immediately set to work making something in return. Weaving and cutting and sewing the cloth until it takes shape. The fae and their finery have no use for the simple clothes you make, so you instead make something entirely human: a child’s toy.

You gift the toy and receive an invitation. Dinner with your spouse. It is awkward and stiff and if you look a little too long you can see the flaws in the humanity of their form- but you talk.

There is another invitation the next night.

Your spouse is not, in fact, some dark creature. They are a lonely remnant, the powerful fae of ancient lore. They are scared to break you, their only companion as the courts move on to new ages without them. You assure them you will not let them.

Slowly, as you begin to know more and see more, you begin to see beyond the human facade they put on around you. Their power leaking through the cracks.

It’s beautiful.

There is birdsong and the smell of flowers that leaks through, enticing and earthy. You laugh with your spouse, and when you fall into silence you lean on them and listen to the babbling brook they have in replacement for a heartbeat.

Sometimes you miss your farm, but you know your parents are probably happier, no longer burdened as their harvest is plentiful. You have changed too much to go back to them, become too much fae and not enough human. Yet you have found a place of belonging here, in a spouse who is made of the beautiful parts of nature in a world of strange rules and laws. You have found a home, somewhat loving, and it is all you could ask for.

your parents just sold you as their firstborn to a fey. problem is you’re already an adult.

Sometimes a trio is you, your practically-sibling, and her boyfriend-who-doesn’t-know-he’s-her-boyfriend

Kaminari: In this house we respect the laws of gravity

Uraraka: No we don’t. We stomp all over them.

Aizawa, shaking: What do you mean disrespect the laws of gravity?

happy PRIDE i’m here i’m queer and i believe the land should be given back to the proper indigenous stewards.