I'm Not The First Or Last To See This And Post It But This Is My Serotonin For Today.

Bakugou, tapping an interviewer’s mic: Hi yes is this on?

Bakugou: I just wanted to tell all of you that I am very gay and love my boyfriend very much so leave me alone.

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.

Shinsou: Sleep is meaningless. There is only exhaustion.

Lay it on me, boys.

“By the moon and the stars, by the sun and the sky, I curse thee to fucking

DIE!”

Toga: You said you wanted a heart for Christmas?

Twice: I was joking about wanting to fall in love this Christmas.

Toga: Oh.

Twice: You got me a heart?

Toga: He was going to die anyways….. eventually

Random Writing Prompt 7

"And who are you supposed to be?" "Are you serious? Do you want to die?" "I don't care if I die or not, I care about who the somewhat attractive stranger in my house is."

| | (???)

Mystery potion!

(It took me far too long to figure out how to draw the bottle shape)

i wanna talk about this shot

Watched Everything Everywhere All at Once and thought of Jing Yuan and Yanqing.

Your child(apprentice) is both too similar to you and nothing like you at all. You share a stubbornness and a refusal to follow your parents(mentors) that drives you crazy, yet they have a different sort of anger than you do. You will do anything to cling to the past and present while they want to charge into the future.

Meanwhile on Yanqing’s end, like Joy, there is the fact you just want your parent(mentor) to understand. You want to find the pieces of yourself in your parent(mentor) so they can see why. So they know why you think the way you do. You want to make them see your point of view so they will stop holding you back. You are angry, so angry, and the fact they don’t feel your anger only makes it hurt more. You want your parent(mentor) to both hold you tight and let you go, to give you guidance and let you figure things out for yourself. You want destruction and yet you also want them to heal you.

There is also the same ‘you never had the trauma I did so why are you so angry’ vibe. They refuse to listen to their child(apprentice) because what do they know? They think that the youth don’t know the same sort of suffering and anger they faced. That they don’t know the troubles of the world the same way, and they are both right and wrong. As much as their child(apprentice) will never suffer the same way they did that child(apprentice) has their own struggles and reasons to be angry and the accidental invalidation and pressure that the parent(mentor) passes on…

Sorry about the ramble but yeah

This is what the alien who is trying to give you hints has to continuously remind themselves as you continue to be oblivious.

Studies have shown that humans are terrible at recognizing flirtatious behavior in other humans. We’re even worse at recognizing it in aliens.