So Trump won. Next few years are gonna be rough, I know. What happened, and where can the Dems go from here?

James Carville said it best: It’s the economy, stupid (even if he predicted the wrong candidate). Inflation was a big concern among voters, mostly driven by gas, groceries, and housing. Rightly or wrongly, many voters tied this to Biden, and through him to Harris. They viewed Trump as being likelier to fix things, with a big bold plan (tariffs, deportations, tax cuts). I suspect some (many?) voters wanted to punish Dems for inflation. Others probably thought Harris would worsen it. While she had a long proposal, she didn’t seem to talk about it much, nor boil it down to soundbites. Many of the demos that swung were hit hard by the price increases.

We saw swings among Latinos, young voters, and rural voters toward Trump. Some of this was due to depressed D turnout (Harris got 15 million fewer votes than Biden), but in other cases it was due to genuine swings. Starr County, TX went Republican for the first time in decades. New Jersey only went for Harris by single digit percentages. Black voters had a small 2% decline of the share of the electorate.

I think non-immigration identity politics played a smaller role. I do think Harris/Walz could’ve talked more about men’s issues specifically (suicide, the academic gap, poor job prospects), although they are hard to soundbiteify and not sound forced. They likely could've approached it from a universalist angle. Trans issues might’ve driven some voters to Trump, but I believe it was more localized (e.g., reduced margins in Loudoun County). Latinos likely weren’t particularly turned off of Trump because they aren’t a cohesive bloc, and in many cases not even the same race (you’ve got whites, indigenous, blacks, mixed, even Asian Latinos). Between the countries the cultures can be very different, to the point of each country hating the other. They can be more socially conservative as well, especially those in their 40s and older.

Immigration was definitely a bigger issue, dovetailing with economic issues (housing costs, “why are migrants getting help but not me”, homelessness). The migrant bussing by Gov. Abbott will be viewed as one of the greatest political maneuvers of the 21st century. It brought the issue to voters outside of border states. The number of people coming to the border was frustrating/scary for some voters.

Abortion didn’t play as big of a role, I suspect because many women don’t think they’ll need one, or because they don’t view care that legally may qualify as one.

The state of democracy didn’t motivate enough people for the Dems, in fact, some people who thought it was important voted for Trump.

Foreign policy didn’t play much of a role, although Israel/Palestine probably was significant in Michigan. But that needle would’ve been hard to thread for any candidate, and probably would’ve been less of a problem if other points were addressed.

I think the fact that Harris is a biracial woman did reduce votes, but I don’t think it was necessarily decisive in her losing. The right woman can definitely win (Thatcher won the U.K. in 1979, so it should be possible in the U.S. in 2024). I would probably hold off in 2028, but I don’t see an issue with running women long-term.

So, what are the takeaways for Dems?

1. Suburban white-collar voters are not the end-all be-all. They are a good bloc to have (reliable voters in many swing states, including in off-years), but they are not enough to outweigh the others.

2. You cannot take minority demographics for granted. They will not stay with you forever. They are not monolithic.

3. Social policy can only go so far. Its salience can be quite limited compared to the economy. Negatives can be very negative, white positives may be “meh”.

4. Running against someone, rather than for yourself only works so many times.

5. You can only have so many issues stacked against you and be able to win. If it was just the economy, it might’ve been closer, but you had the economy, and immigration, and social policy, and Israel/Palestine.

6. The average voter does not account for lag in terms of policy. Trump got credit for a good economy even though Obama did a lot of the work.

7. Places that are or have been “safe” are not guaranteed to stay like that forever, especially when paired with point 2, without work.

8. NatCon populism is here to stay. The combination of left-ish economics and social conservativism, propelled by apathetics and the hard right is a winning one, and needs to be countered accordingly.

9. Many folks view Democrats as being the “mom” or “Karen from HR” party. That is not the kind of reputation that wins elections.

10. It’s the economy, stupid.

Based on that, what would my strategy be for Dems in 2026/2028?

1. Clean house. The folks in charge lost 2024 and only barely won 2020. Care needs to be taken to ensure replacements have sufficient political/management experience.

2. Don’t be the party of why/if. Be the party of do. The former implies insecurity, the latter confidence.

3. Bring back the 50-state strategy. Open offices in rural areas. States viewed as safely blue came awfully close to flipping for Trump this year. But the reverse can also be true, especially with a good candidate (cf. Indiana in 2008 ). And even if the presidential candidate loses, downballot candidates can still win, especially in off-years. I think the Dems had a good ground game, and while it cannot make up for everything else, it’s usually better to have it than not. Local elections matter a lot because they have stronger day-to-day impact, and they are the breeding ground for future politicians. North Carolina had several good Dem victories.

4. Focus on economics. Moderate suburbanites aren’t enough to win on, and many people like Trumponomics. Go for smart tariffs, universal policies (e.g., Child Tax Credit, universal Medicare, etc), targeted tax cuts and increases along with tax code simplification, and one other oddball policy (withdrawal from the WTO? Annual gas tax holiday?) likely to be popular with voters.

5. Social moderation/tolerance. The party is a big tent one, and there’s going to be friction over social issues. This doesn’t mean abandoning core constituencies, but being smarter about rhetoric and candidates (you won’t win the Georgia governorship with an Everytown candidate). Candidates should be allowed to have differing views on social policy (especially if it is personal and doesn’t extend to the political realm), and there should be a mechanism to allow dissent on an issue an individual is out of touch on. Related: get the loudest social progressives away from the party. They frequently clash with it but manage to tie the party to an unpopular viewpoint with something they said on Xitter/Tik Tok. I did like the initial message of freedom the Harris campaign was putting out, but it didn’t seem to be used much.

6. Turnout still matters. You need to be able to turn out more people for you than the other guy.

7. (My weird, hot take-ish view) Go on an offensive cyber campaign. You’ve got Russian operatives shilling for Trump and the GOP. Hack them. Make it so they can’t just continuously pump out disinfo. Even a few million should be enough to establish a unit dedicated to fucking up Russian troll farms.

8. (Courtesy of @EgoEimi) Go for the reality TV angle. Lots of rallies, some political stunts, and bring loads of energy.

One final thought: Trump is a sui generis candidate. He energizes people who aren’t into politics normally. Thus far, the GOP hasn’t been able to translate that into off-year elections or non-Trump POTUS candidates. Nobody wants diet Trump, they want the real deal. When he passes away, it remains to be seen whether someone (Vance?) can take over with the same level of success.

Given all the noise about whether President Biden is frail or cognitively compromised, I thought it would be interesting to informally survey Tildes denizens for their beliefs about aging.

These are purely conversational questions, each of which is so broad it could be its own topic - I have no skills as a demographer or pollster.

I also realize there may be national or ethnic definitions around who counts as venerable as opposed to senile, so I'll ask you to include nationality or relevant ethnicity in your response.

1. What decade of your life are you in - < 20, twenties, thirties, etc.
2. In what decade (see above) do you think old age begins?
3. What characterizes being "old" to you? For example, loss of sexual attractiveness, diminution of physical strength or stamina, illness, loss of mental agility, etc.
4. At what age do you think you will be too old to function as you want to in life?
5. Do you have experiences of aging (personal, family, acquaintances, caregiving roles) that give you concerns or hopes about your own future?
6. Do you believe age confers any benefits, and what might those be?
7. Assuming no catastrophic health events, do you believe life will seem better or worse to you as you age?
8. Do you feel like aging people are a burden to those younger?
9. Do you find yourself using pejorative words about age?

Full disclosure: There is evidence that what you believe about aging influences how well you age.

1. I'm in my 50's, US, ethnically Jewish.

2. My current inclination is to say that old age begins around age 75 in general, but I've met people who were what I'd call old at 30 and young at 90.

3. I know that various measures of peak {insert attribute here} start declining much earlier. 75 - 80 seems to be the point at which many things break down irreparably for the vast majority of people. That's the age range where the ability to live independently drops off, and that's what I count as "old".

4. I hope to be independent for at least another 25 years, but that's already somewhat determined by a limiting progressive condition. My experiences with aging are biased by highly educated people and super-ager relatives. There have been several centenarians in my family, each of whom was cognitively intact until death even if they were no longer completely independent physically.

5. I believe age confers the ability to recognize patterns based on cumulative experience. That's what passes for wisdom. The ability to acquire new memories and skills can be more rapid with connections to the previous body of knowledge. Socializing is definitely easier with many years of practice and the dulling of anxieties - the worst that can happen usually already did. For better or worse, people look up to you as a survivor and teacher...

6. Life will probably get better with age. I've had an extended time without a job followed by a job purely chosen, so I can say that "retirement" is likely to be much more productive and enjoyable both for self and society. I expect old age to be a time of reconnecting with others and doing the charitable activities I don't have flexibility to engage in now.

7. This is a tough one. At a general scale, we're encouraged to work as hard as possible to hoard resources that will ensure we have the means to maintain independence and purchase care when we're old. Rather, we could live lighter, share more, and build relationships which can sustain us. I count myself fortunate to avoid the burden that many others have endured when dealing with debilitated or demented relatives. And yet there are so many ways in which nations and cultures other than the U.S. do a better job of sharing care.

8. There's a lot of online discourse about greedy boomers, crumbly conservatives, and so on, but I think those are manufactured divisive narratives. I've been acquainted with so many people over the years who don't fit neatly into demographic or political boxes. On that evidence, I don't think any generation has a greater balance of virtue or vice compared to the others.

9. I use "adulting" and "old fart" self-denigratingly. I follow r/oldhagfashion for actual IDGAF style ideas.

disclaimer that I haven't done much research into this thought and it's mostly anecdotal but I doubt I am wrong?

I personally don't go to theaters, except for comicbook movies. and the only reason I go to theaters for comicbook movies is just cause I liked to discuss the comicbook movies on social media as soon as possible, but honestly, either I am getting really old or the redditors on /r/marvelstudios are getting young and younger everyday cause i go to those comments and it's not really a place I'd describe as open to a civil and non-memey discussion of the latest Marvel movie but I digress.

Point being, I personally prefer to wait for movie to arrive at streaming services. why?

1. I don't have to deal with other people.
   1. I went to watch Creed 3 near the end of its theater run. 3 people chose to sit in front of me when the whole auditorium was basically empty (they looked to be in their mid-late 20s, maybe even early 30s.) I didn't care. What I did care was that one of the dudes spent half his time on his fucking phone. To the point that I literally had to bend over and ask him to put it away and he still didn't. this idiot just attempted to angle the phone in a manner such that I couldn't see it, or so he thought, the light still was there, just less. At that point, I just got too resentful of theaters to tell him off again but felt very stubborn about not moving away from my seat.
   2. I went to watch Aquaman 2 (iirc on opening weekend). I knew the movie was not gonna be great going in, just wanted to mark the end of the DCEU in theaters. 3 young girls were sitting in the middle section. as the movie started, these girls started taking selfies of themselves for the grams or snapchat or whatever the fuck it was. The light from their phone was bright. There was a couple sitting a seat or 2 to my right. the dude and I collectively rolled our eyes at the girls. They took 1 picture. I was like "OK, thank God". 2 pictures, I think "let's hope the second take works". Third picture "this is ridiculous". by this point, I wanted to throw something at them and just leaned over and asked them to put their phone away. I may been asshole cause it seemed like I scared them with that comment and to be quite frank, I took pleasure that I scare them, even accidentally.
2. Theaters are extremely non-inclusive. This one bugs me a lot just cause of Eternals and CODA and Hollywood pretending they are woke. Not sure if anyone here has ever tried to use the closed captioning devices. I am personally not deaf, but I do have trouble processing words. I am the kind of guy who will often ask people to repeat themselves to fully understand what they said. Obviously can't do that with a movie but reading closed captioning helps me process. I finally decided to start trying the closed captioning devices in theaters around the time of Avengers Endgame I think. It's very hit or miss. either the theater forgot to charge the device so it gives out halfway through the movie, or it's just all old and it's neck doesn't retain it's form when I twist it into the good position and it ends up pointing the closed captioning at someone who is a good 1 foot shorter than me or it's fully charged and can retain its form but the studios behind the movie didn't put any serious effort into the closed captioning so half the fucking words are missing, rendering it pointless. My gf and I went to watch Mad Max Furiosa in theaters the other day and the theater didn't even have any remaining, they had given their to the studio to fix and didn't have any in stock as a result.
3. Not sure about the states but up here in Canada, our big chain is Cineplex and they are so desperate to charge us extra that they now charge an extra "service fee" that you get charged only if you buy online.
4. And the classic complaint of "just the snacks cost us a movie and a half nowadays"

However, I don't know if I blame the theater for my issues.

I've read the stories about how Disney have theaters over a barrel with how controlling they are with how much of a cut of a theater tickets goes to Disney and how Disney insists on how many auditorium the theaters devote to their movies. And how theaters charge so much for concession cause they are trying to keep the lights on to some extent cause the studios demand so much of the profit. And if it's a struggle to keep the lights on, I am not surprised they can't be more enforcing with the policy of no-phones during a movie.

It seems to me the studios, in an attempt to "maximize" their profit as much as possible, demanded as much as possible from theaters, while not realizing that the less of a cut that theaters take, the less theaters can invest in a welcoming environment where people actually want to go to and therefore people come less cause couple that with streaming services, why wouldn't people come less?

So I think the demise of theaters and the rise of streaming service can't just be attributed to how much more convenient it is to wait 8 months for a movie on streaming service but it's also attributable to the decline in quality at theaters which I think is cause studios are bleeding them dry.

So I find it odd that studios and production companies bitch moan and complain that people don't go to movies more in a time where a movie has to make 500 million $ just to be considered profitable but they've never really done any proper self-reflection on a possible reason why people don't go to theaters as much anymore.

The company I work for laid off half of my office this week. I'm one of the survivors, and trying to process what happened.

The company has been transparent about revenues. However, we had no idea that we would be so badly penalized for management choices that created significant operating cost overruns in the face of a projected short-term demand decline. I've lost half the members of my immediate team, good friends, people whose work and thoughtfulness I deeply respected. The entire department structure is being upended. The harshness of the selection for people who were being laid off included a teammate who's in the hospital, parents of young children, people on the edge of retirement. I'm suspicious and extra hostile towards the company - it's very significant to me that all the people of color and people who've had recent medical leave are among the lost.

It's not the first time I've watched and survived a company's poor management and bad choices, but this is by far the worst. I've worked very hard at staying professional with the customers this week. I'm still inwardly seething with rage. I'm trying to figure out how to be supportive to the people who are leaving. I'm trying to figure out how to help a team lead who's in his first management job, and is totally devastated and nearly frozen with helplessness. I'm decent at my job, but don't know why I was kept and others with equal or greater skills were let go. I don't feel good about what qualities I might have had that corporate desired to keep - dutifulness, compliance, amiability, reticence?

At the same time, I'm looking at months of double workload even though corporate management claims they'll outsource part of the duties (so that's another symptom that I'm replaceable) and manage the task pipeline. There's a frankly insulting retention bonus if I stay for another year. We've gotten the usual anodyne HR garbage about the employee assistance program and coping skills. The corporate management's left us with the ominous "stay tuned for further announcements over the coming weeks".

I don't have a lot of choices here. I'm trying hard to stay focused on the present, without looking over the cliff of dread at the future. At the moment, I'm the sole support for our household and source of health insurance. My spouse is badly burnt out, and I don't want him to look for work a minute before he's healthy and enthusiastic about a job. I'm a late-50's end-career professional who wouldn't normally have much interest in restarting yet again elsewhere. I very deliberately chose this company, job and location, liked the work I was doing, the people I was doing it with, and I was looking forward to building on it. There's still the possibility that our half-vacant remote office will be closed and consolidated with the corporate headquarters. I have less than zero interest in relocating, and plan to keep separated coworkers who live here as personal friends.

I'll be grateful to hear any advice on coping with this situation, and hope the replies will be helpful to others in future.

A lot of people argue that we should try to protect "minority languages" and support "linguistic diversity", but I struggle to understand why having more languages is actually a good thing.

I would be very interested to hear about concrete benefits in the present to linguistic diversity.

Lots of random musings I had on this

A lot of people say things like "it helps you to think differently" which I have not really understood at all (I speak multiple languages, for context, some quite different), but my sample size is really just me in saying that. They also say things like "protect minority culture" which I think is quite harmful. For example my great-grandmother immigrated to an English-speaking country in the west from Africa (she was Indian-African), and she could not speak a word of English which put her at a massive disadvantage, but also gave other family members a lot more power in their relationship because they could all speak English. [Edit: I think there's a gender aspect where women are expected to maintain the traditional language and the burden is not put on men in the same way]. I get the whole assimilation versus integration, but I think there's a very strong case for trying to assimilate (into the dominant group).

I have yet to see a case arguing why it is better to have more languages (and thus necessarily less mutual comprehension and a more segregated world) rather than a single one (e.g. if everyone spoke English). My issue is not really with high-level philosophy about what would be better in an ideal world, but multilingualism as a practical concern. For example, Tildes does not really seem to 'believe' in multilingualism because it only allows English (which personally I think is better than if we had people arguing backwards and forwards in many different languages, but I am also a native English speaker so that might prejudice my perspective).

Most of the arguments about this that I see are from (usually) French speakers bemoaning the decline of their language (and it's kind of ironic to see France becoming a flag-bearer for linguistic diversity given that they exterminated a lot of languages to force French upon the world).

Just coming back into the rental market after owning a home for a short time. I found a place that would be great. Then, I got the lease.

This thing is a nightmare. Here are a few of the greatest hits:

• The lease lists my rent and then says they can charge "additional rent" which is "all added charges, costs, and fees for the duration of this lease." So, sounds like they can just make up a number and add it to the rent and I have to pay it?
• The landlord will make a "good faith effort" to make the apartment available to me when my lease starts. Shouldn't the landlord actually do that, not just make any sort of "effort" to do it, "good faith" or otherwise?
• If the unit is damaged such that I cannot live there while repairs are being made, the landlord "may" issue me a credit for the days I can't live there. What criteria will the landlord use? If they decide not to, that means I'll be paying rent for an apartment I cannot occupy?

This is a short lease — I've seen much longer in my time renting — but even so, I could come up with a dozen more examples like this. What is going on here? I've read the law in the area, and I suspect some of the clauses in here are actually unenforceable. For example, the lease allows for automatic rent increases at lease renewal without notification while the law requires 60 days notification, and it requires me to notify 14 days after notification of a rent increase if I do not accept where the law says I have 30 days to do so.

But how did we get here? I just want to pay a specified amount every month in order to be able to live in a space someone else owns. This should be relatively simple, but it's turned into this weird whack-a-mole game where every lease is a document of all that landlord's past tenant grievances they are trying to now avoid in the future, along with any other unreasonable terms they think they can get away with. Regardless of what the law is, the lease can say anything. If I read it and decline to sign, the next person will probably just sign it and hope for the best.

For those of you who are renting, how do you deal with this sort of stuff? Are there reasonable landlords still out there? Is the right way to buy a home just to escape from unreasonable lease terms, even if you don't really want to own?

Update: Possibly important context- This property is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

So, this won't be like the usual posts on Tildes. This will be on the long side and rambly, so I apologize for that in advance. Maybe this would fit better on a blog, but I don't have one so I'll post here instead. But while this post is definitely meant to be cathartic for me, I think maybe this will help some people too. Especially those who haven't experienced a super close or sudden loss yet.

I want to talk about neurodivergence and grief.

To start, I'm a 28-year-old woman. Higher end of the autism spectrum (diagnosed with Asperger's, though that term is out of favor now) and ADHD, and my parents managed to get me diagnosed by first grade. I've always known I perceived the world a bit differently from others, and this is further impacted by the fact I'm a writer. I often say one strange silver lining to being a writer is that everything is experience for writing. I've always been able to "detach" myself from reality pretty easily and view it from an almost outsider's point of view. Not full-blown disassociation, but I can step back more easily than most and start analyzing myself and others' actions. That definitely came into play here.

Two weeks ago on Wednesday, August 23, my dad died at the age of 68. Heart attack while golfing, stemming from a lifelong heart defect (structural issue, discovered when he had a heart attack at the age of 17). He had no other health issues, he went to regular checkups every six months or so and his heart checked out as fine as it could at the last one. There was zero warning, he was in perfect health that morning and everything was totally fine and normal up until the attack. The autopsy confirmed there were no external factors like the heat at play, just his heart suddenly giving out.

Just, one minute he was fine, and then less than 24 hours later my mom and I were sitting in a funeral home talking about packages and then to the cemetery to buy grave plots. It's the definition of a sudden death.

They say that everyone grieves differently, but I've been aware for a while that my grief is different from others. Until now, my experience with loss has been limited to three grandparents and pets. No aunts or uncles died during my lifetime, no cousins, no friends barring a former classmate who I didn't know too well but who committed suicide. With my grandparents, I definitely noticed I reacted differently. For example, I ended up checking out caskets during my grandmother's wake and talking to the workers about things like cremation jewelry. I still feel a bit bad for my dad who patiently followed me in there during his mother's wake. With my maternal grandfather, I remember thinking about a book I gave my grandmother while at their house, and I'm pretty sure I mentioned it to my cousins. Keep in mind, this would be like two hours tops since he died.

So, yeah. I've been aware for a while that my reactions to death and grief thus far aren't really "typical". I sometimes felt a bit guilty with how easily I felt okay after my grandparents died while seeing everyone around me nearly break. And more than that, I've been concerned about how I might react to other deaths. Particularly my parents.

So what I'm saying is that my dad was my first brush with super close and sudden loss.

So, now that you have the facts, I'll just start explaining my experiences with grief.

The Initial Reaction

My very first reaction: shock. Not even numbness, just shock.

My mom came home, and said she had bad news. I immediately thought it must be my grandmother, who's currently 97 and whose health has been on a steady decline. Instead, she told me my dad had a heart attack at the golf course (oh my gosh, is he okay?) and was pronounced dead at the hospital. For the first time in my life, I found myself asking if it was a dream and genuinely wishing it was. I hugged my mom and whispered "please be a dream", just like I often read and wrote in emotional scenes, and I meant it.

Almost right after she said that, the garage door opened and my first thought was that it was my dad, but instead it was my aunt.

That's around when my "writer-brain" kicked in. I looked at her and said "(Aunt), Dad's..." I couldn't finish the sentence—or maybe it wasn't a matter of could not but did not, because my writer-brain pulled upon all the similar scenes I'd read and written. My aunt pulled me in for a hug, followed by my two uncles, and I cried into their shoulders. I repeated this when my dad's brothers and their wives showed up, and pretty much everyone else who visited in the coming days.

Writer-brain led me to making a couple of docs on my phone: the first titled "Feelings of Grief", the second titled "Dad". "Feelings of Grief" was a bullet-point list of observations of my feelings and reactions. My arms felt heavy and kind of numb. Lifting my phone could be hard, every time I'd set it down or lower my arms in general my arms would just flop down to my side. I'd randomly start to cry and tear up. My chest hurt a bit. I felt empty. It was stronger when alone, maybe because I could distract myself with other people. Noted later in the evening that my arms were still kinda limp, and I didn't have many photos of dad on my phone, and please please PLEASE let mom's phone be synced to the cloud and the photos she had still there.

One interesting note I left: it wasn't the same hollow feeling as the former classmate who committed suicide. Writer-brain had kicked in similarly back then. I remember noting to myself how my jaw just naturally fell open of its own accord, I even closed it and it automatically went slack. When our vice principal first mentioned he'd died, my first thought was "oh no, it must be a car accident". But when he revealed it was suicide, it was a gut punch and the feeling was just... hollow. I reaffirmed this the next day while talking to my mom that there's a difference between "hollow" and "empty", not one I can put into words, but a difference nonetheless.

The second document on my phone, "Dad", started on Wednesday night as an obituary. When my grandfather died, my dad had told me how sad he always found those short obituaries, so I knew we'd have a long one. I'm a writer, so it felt natural that I start on it to take some of the burden off mom. The next day, I read it to mom and we ended up using it with minimal changes.

What I didn't tell her was that the rest of the document was basically me journaling. I don't journal, but I know writing helps me process things and organize thoughts, so I just wrote. Starting with the words "Dad, I love you." I wrote out all my thoughts, a letter he'd never get to read. I wrote about checking the Ring camera and it automatically pulling up the video of him getting the paper with the dog that morning. I made my bed and cried, put away dishes and cried, couldn't finish folding the laundry because I realized some of it was his. At that point it clicked in my head that the format was poem-like, and I wrote lines with questions that could fit a poem structure. I'm not even a poet, I've always preferred prose, but that's where my brain went.

And I also wrote about how I knew I'd be okay, because I already knew my grief was different. And how awful that made me feel. How I felt guilty that I wasn't there when mom was downstairs. She got the call while doing laundry, and I think I came downstairs right after she left. She went there alone, my uncle meeting her at the hospital, and had to wait until the doctor came out, while I was at home totally oblivious to the fact the most important man in my life was gone.

So, I never saw my dad in the hospital. Never saw how awful he looked after the attempts to revive him, only saw him on Monday at his calling when he'd been cleaned up. Both docs had me wondering if maybe the fact I hadn't seen him let my brain detach more, let me distance myself from his absence and the situation, and if seeing him on Monday would be when it really felt real.

Day 3 and Onwards: Weirdly Okay

On Friday, Day 3 after my dad died, everything felt... weirdly normal.

I think on Thursday, my brain was already starting to push me out of heavy-grief mode. Every time I hugged people on Wednesday I'd automatically cry, but I think towards the end of Thursday that reaction was dwindling. I think on Friday itself, it stopped entirely. I'd hug people but tears wouldn't automatically spring like the previous two days. I could even already tell, "Oh, I'm gonna get kinda tired of all these hugs, aren't I?" On Thursday I randomly cried a couple times, had to run upstairs to hug my mom as it crashed into me once again, but that didn't happen as much on Friday.

I'd already joked about "literal Covid flashbacks", because I got Covid this year and my primary symptom was an eternally runny nose. I went through at least one tissue box on my own and by the end my nose was just sore from blowing and wiping it so much, so I joked my brain didn't want a repeat of that soreness.

Inwardly though, I was reflecting on my previous experiences with grief. I knew I'd enter an "okay" state sooner than others, but I didn't expect it to happen so fast after my dad died. I still felt sad, but I wasn't randomly crying anymore. I live at home, never moved out and even attended a commuter college, we've always been an incredibly close family, so his death should be more... I guess devastating? Heart-breaking? It felt bizarre to me, to already feel like I was edging back towards okay.

My theory: it's an evolutionary trait promoted in neurodivergence, to ensure that at least one member of the "pack" won't be vulnerable. Make sure someone can be functional enough to identify potential threats and such, maybe go out for supplies. I mentioned this theory to a few people in the coming days. My mom said it was almost like a superpower when I explained it.

And as the child in the situation, it sucks. I don't have the experience or knowledge to do all these arrangements. All the financial stuff is on my mom since she has the accounts, she knows who to inform and could estimate how many people to expect, she had all the contacts who could help arrange and set up a reception at our house, etc. And even besides that, as the child in the situation, it wasn't exactly "my place" to do a bunch of that stuff. I couldn't directly help with anything but the obituary, provide tech support for getting the photos for the calling, and providing emotional support.

So, yeah. That sucked for me because I knew I felt much better than mom did, but couldn't really do much to ease her burden. So it felt like I was largely leaving her on her own to navigate the funeral process. We had my aunts and some of her friends present to help, including some who'd experienced similar abrupt loss and could help guide and advise her, but there's still a lot of stuff she needed to do herself. She didn't have much time to really process it on her own because she was just so busy, I don't think she really got a chance to relax until Wednesday after everything was over. So for most of the process, I was much more cognizant of my mom's grief than my own.

And I was honestly quite open with this. I didn't flaunt that I was weirdly okay, but people would ask how I was feeling and I'd be honest: "I think my neurodivergent brain is helping." By Sunday, I was still weirdly okay. The calling was the next day. I helped mom submit the pictures to the funeral home's website. We had a small horde of friends and aunts help move stuff to the backyard to prepare for the post-funeral reception at our house on Tuesday. We got through the day, and picked out dresses to wear.

The Calling

At the calling on Monday, I got to see my dad for the first and last time.

My mom originally wanted a closed-casket calling, but agreed to open-casket because we knew some people needed it. Including my uncle, who'd been present at the hospital and who my mom described as even worse off than her.

It turns out, my mom needed it too, more than she realized.

My dad had an autopsy for a few reasons. I kind of expected one given his heart defect, but there was also the fact it was an incredibly hot day and he hit his head when he fell, so the coroner wanted to confirm what exactly the cause was. And as I said near the start, it was just his heart. As far as I'm aware, he most likely died instantly from the heart attack itself, but they tried to revive him for a while before calling his death, maybe half an hour. The doctor at the hospital said he'd tried everything he could to bring him back. Surgery, intubation, etc.

To sum it up, he didn't look too good in the hospital. When I expressed regret I hadn't been with mom, she said she was glad I hadn't been there. I still wonder if that might have helped me get "okay" so quickly, since I didn't have the traumatic memory. He died away from home, so there's no traumatic memories associated with his body in our house. My first and only time seeing him post-mortem was at the funeral home, after he'd been cleaned up and dressed.

My dad in the casket looked peaceful. I don't know if I'd say he looked like he was sleeping, but he looked so much better than I had feared. At one of the last funerals I attended, I felt like their body hadn't looked like them (and my mom also felt that way when I mentioned it to her later), so I'd worried that might happen here. It was a relief that dad still looked like dad. Later, one of the morticians commented about the nasty bruise on his head from the fall, and I know that bruises can be particularly stark on corpses, so. Big kudos to the mortician. I think seeing him like that, instead of her last memory being at the hospital, was a big help to my mom.

Mom and I hugged in front of him and cried. We talked to dad a bit, and then people poured in. Relatives first, and then friends started coming, both friends of my dad and my mom. My mom is a social butterfly and has a MASSIVE social network in the local branch of her industry, to the point there's an actual joke about "Six degrees of separation from (Mom)", so there were a LOT of visitors just to support her. So my mom was in her element talking to people, while I floated around a bit talking to people I knew, hanging out with my cousins, helping introduce one of my dad's friends to other specific people he wanted to meet, etc.

I myself had four friends visit during the calling. And this is what inspired me to make this post.

Neurodivergence and Grief

One of my friends also abruptly lost her dad a few years ago. It's been a while so I can't remember the exact cause, but I think he'd died of a heart attack too. And like me, she's also neurodivergent. So of everyone I know, she's the one person who could relate to me the most.

So naturally, I told her about how I felt weirdly okay. I'd mentioned to others about how my neurodivergent brain seemed to be helping, mentioned my theory about it being an evolutionary advantage, but I went into more detail with her. I opened up a bit more than I did with everyone else, because I knew she'd gone through the same loss.

And she'd had the same thing happen.

I won't try to summarize everything we talked about. Some of it is personal and I reached some internal conclusions about her own experience she might not want me to share, but one thing that stuck out was that she told me not to let others act as if I was grieving wrong. She assured me that everyone grieves in their own way, and while everyone says that, hearing it from someone who went through the same experience as me just gave it so much more weight.

I'd been aware my reactions to loss would be different since my grandparents died. I've had years to think on it, and by the calling I already accepted that it was a quirk of my brain. It didn't mean something was "wrong" with me, that I didn't love my dad any less. It's just my brain being kinda weird and helping me adapt faster. I'd once read a theory years ago that autistic people don't struggle with feeling emotions at all, they struggle with feeling too much, and their brains get overloaded and just shut down the emotion. I don't know how true that is, but at times like this, I think that might be true.

But despite knowing and accepting this, hearing that I wasn't alone, that it wasn't just my brain and someone else had experienced this weird "okay-ness", helped more than I expected.

And that's why I'm writing this.

Neurodivergent brains don't process things the same as "normal" people. Anyone who's ND knows that, and every person's experiences with it is different. Even if you, the person reading this right now, also have ADHD and autism, you probably don't have a "writer-brain" analyzing events and your own emotions for writing reference the way I do. I got lucky to be born to two amazing, loving parents who never made me feel like I was wrong or broken for my differences, and to help me adapt to the world instead of trying to suppress those. They helped me accept it as part of myself.

But while I've always known and accepted this, it doesn't change the fact that knowing others feel the same way can be a relief. Confirming that it's not just you, that there are others—it can mean so much.

It's why I proudly identify myself as asexual to people I meet, to help educate others that it's a thing that exists and they're not broken. It's why I was so ecstatic to learn immersive and maladaptive daydreaming are things, to discover that my lifelong game of pretend isn't just some quirk of my autism and ADHD but something thousands of other people do, including full-grown adults. It's why people find pride and comfort in having labels at all, why even diagnoses can be a reason to celebrate: just being able to know you're not alone.

I got lucky with my parents, who have loved and supported me throughout my whole life. I don't even like referring to ADHD and autism as disabilities, because to me, they're just different forms of cognition. Nothing to be ashamed of, they're just a part of who I am. I've spent years thinking and reflecting over myself, and managed to understand the core pieces of myself as a person fairly early on. And I'm happy to say I like who I am.

Unfortunately, my story isn't nearly as common as I'd like though. Many neurodivergent people grow up thinking something is inherently wrong with them, either due to not knowing about their conditions, or because their own families tell them as much. Far too many people think they're awful people, stupid because of learning disabilities, or even just broken. Our "normal meters" are off by default compared to neurotypical people, and if you don't know why, it can really bother you.

This strange okay-ness and quick recovery from grief seems like one of those things that would haunt people, lead to all sorts of guilt for not feeling grief strongly enough when you "should". The words "everyone grieves differently" feels like a kind of hollow platitude in the face of those feelings. It's one of those sayings that everyone spouts, like "time heals all wounds", but there's a huge difference between saying something and experiencing it. It's just one of those things that people say, regardless of experience with it. Especially when it's "normal" people saying it.

So, take it from me now, someone who's neurodivergent and has just experienced close and sudden loss: You might feel okay sooner than you expect, and that's perfectly fine. It's just our brains being weird, and it says nothing about how we feel about the person we lost.

Maybe the circumstances of the death will make it easier or harder for you to adjust. Maybe it will hit you harder when you're alone. Maybe you'll find comfort in surprising details. Or maybe it will hit you in bits and pieces, in the smaller things you notice as time passes.

There are so many ways you can react. It really is true that everyone grieves differently. No matter how you react though, it doesn't automatically mean you're a bad person or don't miss them enough. It just means your brain processes things differently, and might be trying to shield you from the full brunt of the pain.

And besides, even if you feel like you’re recovering too quickly, I think there’s a good chance you feel that loss more strongly than you actually realize.

Nighttime Talks with Dad

The last time I saw my dad was Tuesday, August 22, before he went to bed.

I don’t remember our exact final conversation. We had a nightly ritual though where we’d either try to get our dog Zoey on the porch, or step out there ourselves. Zoey hates people hugging and kissing. For some reason at nighttime, just standing near each other can set her off. Every night when dad would come upstairs from the basement, the second one of us spoke, she’d start barking because she knew that was a precursor to physical contact. (Also, yes, this DID make the initial hug-fest after the news broke a bit frustrating since she barked constantly.) I like to say that she’s brought our family closer together than ever, and she hates it. Dad would go out of his way to give extra hugs and kisses just to set her off, laughing while she’d go crazy. Usually we’d try to get her on the porch so she couldn’t jump up on us while barking, but even after letting her back in he’d still sometimes give an extra hug and kiss just to mess with her.

If she wouldn’t go on the porch, we’d just go out there ourselves. And in more recent months, we’d step outside on the deck to look at the night sky. Dad would usually go out there in the summer before going to bed, so I just started joining him. I think the only constellation either of us can identify is the Big Dipper, but it was still nice to look at the stars and moon.

On Tuesday, August 22, we went outside as part of that ritual.

The next night before going to bed, I stepped outside to talk to dad again.

And I’ve done that most nights since then.

I just step outside and talk to him. I don’t know if he can hear me. I’m not particularly religious and honestly terrified of the unknown eternity that is the afterlife, and I told him that. But I want to believe he can. I tried talking to him from the porch one night, but it felt wrong so I stepped outside to do it. So maybe it’s just psychological and in my head, or maybe it actually means something.

And when I do, I usually end up crying a bit.

That’s one thing I’ve noticed: while I stopped randomly crying throughout the day by like Friday or Saturday, I still cry at night when I talk to him. I think that little note I made on night one that I might feel the grief more strongly when I was alone was right. I’ve even said as much out loud, just asked, “Dang it, why do I only do this at night?” It’s the kind of time where I’d want to hug someone like mom, but by that point she’s in bed.

I’ve probably weirded out Zoey with the near-nightly hugs after these talks. I doubt she understands dad is gone for good, and I don’t think she fully gets we’re sad. That dog lives in her own world and isn’t the brightest. At least she’s finally made the connection that water helps with thirst (no, I’m not joking. We genuinely questioned if she realizes water helps with thirst, and now that she’s drinking regularly we’re pretty sure the answer was “no”).

Right now, I think during the day I can function fine. I think I am mostly fine already, wrong as that feels. I know that it will be the little things I’ll miss the most. Like him making my bed every day, or being able to suggest watching a show, or messing with the dog together, or coming home from visiting friends to see him and mom slow-dancing in the living room.

But at night, when I step outside to talk to dad... Well, I think that’s when I allow myself to really process it. To process his absence on a subconscious level that I just can’t do consciously. Maybe it’s because it’s too much to process, like that theory about autism I mentioned earlier. I don’t know.

One thing I do know: everything still feels surreal.

My mom and I went to my cousins’ lake house over the weekend. We had already planned to go before, and last Wednesday my mom said “Screw it, let’s go up anyway.” We needed the change of scenery and time to decompress after the funeral. She later said it’s basically us avoiding the situation for just a little longer, and I think she was right about that. Being away from the house made it a little easier to act as if it was just a normal vacation, almost like a "girls' trip".

I didn’t talk to dad while up there, maybe due to avoidance, or maybe due to my brain suddenly deciding it doesn’t like being surrounded by water in the dark. It was never an issue on previous visits. Last time we were up there, dad and I sat on the dock staring up at the stars and just being in awe. We’ve been reminiscing about it all summer long. I planned to talk to him, but the first night on the dock I turned off the flashlight on my phone and my brain basically went “nopenopenope, water everywhere verybad runrunrun get to land runrunrun”. So that's a thing now, good to know I guess?

So, yeah. We got back on Tuesday, and were exhausted from a seven-hour car trip. And then I talked to him again last night. Cried a bit, because that’s just how those talks tend to go, and then I went inside to hug the dog before sitting on the couch to resume my usual quasi-nocturnal routine. (I got upstairs and into bed before 4 am though, so I'm getting better! Little victories.)

Closing Thoughts

There’s a lot more I could say, but I don’t know what. Usually I like to edit these sorts of rambles to heck and back, but this time I’m doing minimal editing. (Editing note: I apparently lied, just went back to reread and edited it as I went along, dang it.) For now, I want to focus on some more closing thoughts and miscellaneous details. Things I couldn’t fit above too well, but think need to be said and shared. Maybe it can help you, maybe it won’t.

The benefits of how my neurodivergence is impacting my grief: I can help my mom more. I’ve already decided I’ll take on the task of figuring out all the account transfers (e.g. Netflix, Ring, etc.). I was also able to go through my dad’s laptop to find photos, just quickly page through them and look for any photos with him. I’m not sure my mom could have done that herself without getting sucked into each memory they held.

I will say that, as a writer, I like to think I understand emotions better than most people. I like putting myself in people’s shoes to figure out why they feel a certain way, understand their mindsets and how it influences their thought processes and actions. I’m definitely incredibly empathetic compared to the average person. That said, just because I understand their feelings, it doesn’t mean I know how the heck to handle it. My brain tends to freeze up. Happened when my aunt burst out crying and hugged me when my grandfather died years ago, and it will probably happen again now.

So I’m still out of my element if mom suddenly breaks down sobbing and crying. I think this will apply to many of us. So uh. Sorry guys, I don’t have much advice for comforting people other than “just hug them as needed and let them vent”. Hugs can REALLY help though, I think some people these past two needed the hugs more than I did.

On that note, feel free to reject the parade of hugs. I know a lot of ND folks don’t like physical contact or hugs anyway, but neurotypical folks can get over-hugged during these times too. One of my mom’s friends who lost her husband told us that we might get sick of hugs. So don’t feel obligated to accept them just because of the occasion. You're the one grieving, so they can't judge you for refusing. If they judge you anyway, they're assholes and don't deserve to have their opinions considered.

One of my main coping mechanisms is humor. I try to be mindful of it and keep some of them to myself, but I might've made some jokes that are "too soon". For example, our dog is the only thing now standing between my mom and I from becoming crazy cat ladies. Previously it was my dad's allergies, so yeah. If you also cope with humor, just be careful about telling the jokes. The pain can be more raw for some than others, and some jokes might be too much. Some people are really good at putting up a strong front, so you can't always be sure how they'll actually take it. So be careful.

I mentioned earlier that when my mom told me the news, I first thought it was about my grandmother. At the time, part of me wished it had been my grandmother, which made me feel guilty. But I later found out pretty much everyone had this exact reaction, including my aunt (her daughter) and I think even my grandmother herself. We've all been sort of mentally bracing for her death, and she's 97 so she’s lived a long and good life. It would still be sad of course, but, well, we’re expecting it. No one was expecting my dad to die though. So if you find yourself with similar thoughts, don’t feel like that makes you an awful person.

One of the biggest benefits of my neurodivergence though: I was able to give a eulogy for my dad.

I honestly expected I’d give one from day one, but apparently no one else did until I talked to the minister right before the service. Originally we said I’d go second, between my dad’s best friend and his brother. After his best friend’s speech though, I realized I should definitely go last. I could tell they’d be telling more lighthearted stories, and mine would set a different tone that served better for the end.

I wanted to talk about dad’s love, his most defining trait and the most important thing he passed on to me. He was the kind of man who’d sacrifice for the people he loved, who’d go out of his way to find a specific restaurant despite wanting to go home just because we mentioned wanting milkshakes from there. Heck, last Christmas we all agreed to buy just three gifts each, and guess who didn't stick to that rule? I swore I'd buy a blu-ray player sometime this year instead, our DVD player doesn't work with the new TV we got in the basement so just needed to run to a store together. (I still might, but it's a lower priority now.)

Besides all that, I wanted to share a story he told me, that I’ll also tell you now.

When my grandfather was a little boy, one day at school a classmate came in raging mad about a fight with his own father. They’d had some argument, and this kid was ranting about how he hated his father. Petty, empty words because he was still mad at his dad over whatever they'd fought before.

Well, his father died at work that day. Car accident, I think. And the boy grew up knowing his last memory with his father was that awful fight.

Yeah, that sounds like an awful story to tell a kid, huh? I must have been five or six when he told me, and it was probably because I was pretty angry at my mom for some stupid petty reason. Just a kid throwing a tantrum, you know how it goes. Maybe it was a true story, maybe he just made it up on the spot to show me that being mad at my mom over petty little things was wrong. Either way, it worked. And I think it worked better than my dad ever knew. Thanks to that story, I grew up aware in the back of my head that death can happen suddenly and without warning. Maybe that’s a bit of a bad thing, but I’m grateful I got to understand that so early on without experiencing that sort of sudden loss myself. And it stuck with me, just how awful it would feel to have your last memory be such a bitter one.

So, I made a point to always say “I love you” to my parents and any others I care about. They go to bed, “Good night, I love you.” They're going on a trip, “Have fun, love you!” when they leave and at the end of every phone call. They’re just running to the grocery store five minutes away, I open the garage door to stick out my head to say “I love you” just to make absolutely sure it’s the last thing I said to them, just in case.

I don’t remember my exact last words with my dad. But I know that it was almost certainly “Good night, I love you” just like countless other nights. And I am so damn grateful I can say that.

So I passed on that story at his funeral. And afterwards, I got countless compliments about how strong I was for speaking at all, and how I didn’t stutter or need notes (someone asked if I had public speaking experience, and I don't, so I guess I might have a natural knack for speeches??), but... I think that was most definitely because of my neurodivergence. I think I’ve already made it quite clear over the course of this post, but by the time of his funeral, I was, weirdly, okay. Sad and empty, but not devastated. So I could deliver my message clearly, the same one I'll pass to you:

My dad was a wonderful, loving man, and everyone should remember that you never know which goodbye will be the last one. So make sure you always punctuate your farewells with an “I love you”, and try not to ever part on a bad note. Not even when you’re just going to sleep.

If you’ve read all of this, thanks. And I hope maybe this ramble of mine can help people a bit too, especially those who have yet to experience such a loss themselves.

Remember, everyone experiences grief differently. Maybe it will devastate you and you won't be able to function for a while, or maybe you'll be able to largely go back to "normal" a bit faster than you expect like I did. Brains are weird, even without throwing neurodivergence into the mix, and there's so many factors in grief that makes every experience truly unique. I'm not sure I'd be nearly as composed if I'd seen my dad at the hospital, or if he'd died in pain or of heatstroke. The inevitability and quickness of his death, the fact we could have done nothing to prevent it, has been a surprising comfort to both me and my mom because there are no agonizing "what ifs" to haunt us. We're not sure how we'd feel if it was something preventable, that's a "what if" I don't want to consider.

Just remember that no matter how you respond, somewhere out there, there's likely someone else who's had the same feelings and reactions as you. You're not broken, you're not an awful person. You're just you. Your reaction won't diminish whatever feelings you have for the person—and note that I said have and not had: just because they're gone doesn't mean those feelings are gone too. He's still my father, I'm still his daughter. Death doesn't change that, it just means I can't hug him and tell him that directly anymore. The same applies for every other loss we'll experience. There's a reason some people refuse to date widows and widowers.

Today, my aunt left. She’s been staying here since he died, she flew in from out of state. Tonight will be the first night with just me and mom at our house. This is the first night of our new “normal”. I don’t think we’ll have anyone over tomorrow besides the cleaning lady (who last came the day after he died—felt kinda bad for her to visit that day knowing what happened), so tomorrow will be the first day it’s really just us. The first day we won't have any real distractions from his absence.

I don’t know how we’ll feel in the coming days, how things will go from here. Maybe his death will finally really hit us now that we’re not in funeral-preparation or vacation mode, and can sit and breathe in our own house. Maybe I’ll have a delayed grief reaction. Maybe my mom will break down sobbing in her bed tonight or tomorrow. I don’t know. Everything feels almost dream-like, like we’re in a weird limbo but also not. The world’s still moving without us, and we’re slowly moving with it.

All we can do is take it one hour at a time.

Note: Because the post is already going to be long enough, this will only cover the movies from May to July. August still counts as the summer movie season, but there's usually not a lot of big movies released, and this August hasn't been particularly interesting so far (do we really need to wait for Blue Beetle to bomb to talk about DC?).

On paper this should have been a great summer: The last Guardians of the Galaxy movie, another installment in the highly successful Fast and Furious movies, another Disney live-action remake which have been incredibly successful, a movie featuring Michael Keaton back as Batman, Indiana Jones, and a Tom Cruise movie after his highly successful Top Gun sequel.

That was on paper.

So what actually ended up happening?

Well a lot of busts.

First let's go over the saga of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. Early on it was a contender for a billion dollars this summer. Unfortunately for Disney Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania came out with the absolute worst reception of any Marvel movie since Eternals (and honestly even then it was definitely worse received). The Marvel brand was now tainted, at least a little. Pre-sales (that being the sale of tickets that people buy in advance) was looking bad. At one point it looked like it might open below 100 million.

In response to this, and confident in the product they had, Disney decided to drop the review embargo earlier. Resulting in similar positive critical reception that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever received . This finally made pre-sales climb higher, and once people actually started watching the movie positive word of mouth lifted it up to 118 million for the opening weekend. Still, this was much lower than what Guardians 2 opened up to six years ago (145M). It had a similar Cinemascore (the gold standard for audience reception) as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (A) but if we look at other factors it indeed had better word of mouth. It's because of this glowing word of mouth that it was able to leg it out 358 million. Having the best multiplier of any Marvel movie since... well the first Guardians. It also had more appeal internationally than the previous two Guardians movies (maybe due to the darker tone) and it made nearly 850 million worldwide. Which is phenomenal, especially considering it got off to a shaky start that first weekend.

I should re-iterate: Marvel movies don't perform like this anymore. They usually have big openings and weak-ish legs. Having a softer opening but longer legs is a thing of the past for these types of fan driven movies, they're usually reserved for films aimed at older audiences.

I'm gonna group the next two May releases together. Fast X and The Little Mermaid also had high expectations. Both are coming from predecessors that have made billions of dollars. And actually, both didn't perform too bad overall. Fast X didn't do well domestically (it's basically a dead franchise stateside) but did very well internationally making 700M WW, and The Little Mermaid didn't do well internationally but did pretty well domestically nearly reaching 300M DOM and 550M WW. These are respectable grosses. Just one problem: their budgets. Fast X is sporting a 340 million dollar budget, making it one of the most expensive films ever made, and The Little Mermaid is sporting a 250 million dollar budget. The break-even points for these films are 850M and 625M respectively. They did not reach them. They would have been profitable if Fast X had the same budget as F9 (225M) and The Little Mermaid had the same budget as Cinderella (95M). Those would have been the responsible budgets to make these films with, but alas shit happens. They were both shooting during the pandemic, which raised costs on productions, and Fast X had to switch directors half-way through production.. Still, money losers are money losers.

June starts off with a bang. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opens to 120 million, more than Guardians 3 and four times more than what it's predecessor opened to. With great reviews and great audience scores, it becomes the first true out and out success since Guardians 3. It also had a much lower budget than all the summer blockbusters thus far. 100-150 million, according to differing reports (we'll know by the next year when Deadline does their most profitable blockbuster list) making profitability much easier. The film basically covered it's production budget in one weekend. It legged out pretty well. Outgrossing Guardians 3 domestically (375M) but not being able to match it internationally making nearly 700 million WW. While it did "fail" to meet the high expectations of 400M DOM, it's still massively successful. And will remain in the top 5 grossing films domestically.

The rest of June is a different story. First up we got Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which was, at one point, one of the biggest movie franchises around resulting in two billion dollar films. While it beat expectations opening weekend, opening to 61M, it did not leg it out very well. 155M DOM and 420M WW is not a great number, especially not compared to it's 200M budget. It made less than Bumblebee despite having twice the budget. It's basically a dead franchise at this point, and it was not the win Paramount needed after Dungeons and Dragons also flopped.

Then we get a double whammy. The Flash and Elemental open the same weekend. At one point The Flash was projected to open well above 100 million just for the weekend, but pre-sales told another story. Pre-sale trackers on the forum BoxOfficeTheory, saw what industry tracking couldn't: a lack of interest. The sales just weren't there. DC as a franchise is already on the decline. This was a movie about a minor character that debuted in Justice League (which also bombed heavily), with a controversial lead star, and just unappealing trailers, who would be interested? Michael Keaton fans, supposedly. That was what people were clinging onto. The older Keaton fans would come out and help the movie. Apparently there aren't any. Doesn't help that Keaton had his last Batman outing over thirty years ago, meaning no one below the age of 40 even really cares about him as Batman. It opened disastrously to 55 million. dropping throughout the weekend from toxic word of mouth. It didn't even manage to hit the lower end of those initial projections throughout it's entire run. WB dumped so much money into this, just for it to be the biggest bomb in their studio history.

Elemental, on the other hand, ended up fairing a little bit better. Not on opening weekend. God no. It opened to 29M, one of the lowest openings in Pixar's history. But, it was really well received by audiences. And people kept watching it week after week, resulting in some of the best legs Pixar has had in a while. Reaching over 150M DOM, and over 400M (and counting) WW. If it reaches 500M WW, which it still looks like it might, it would break even theatrically. That's not great, as studios would love to make money theatrically, but considering this could have been a massive money loser for Disney, it's quite an impressive run. Thanks to Disney's re-commitment to theatrical, their animation studios are slowly building themselves back up in the eyes of audiences.

To end the month came Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Supposedly the Top Gun: Maverick of 2023, at least that's what some people had pegged it as at the beginning of the year. Once again, it didn't work out that way. It premiered at Cannes to mixed reviews, and while the funko pop critics were able to get it to fresh on RottenTomatoes, the damage was done. Indiana Jones spent months with a rotten symbol. Even before that, trailer views were weak, the interest just wasn't there. Why? I think perhaps Crystal Skull was supposed to be the last outing for the character (which actually ended up being the second highest grossing film of 2008 and even outgrossed The Dark Knight internationally), and even before that The Last Crusade was supposed to be the last outing of this character. And now we're getting another last outing for the character. Except now he's 80. A fantasy wish-fulfillment character being 80 is probably not a great thing. It's also another situation where no one below 40 really cares about Indiana Jones (me excluded but I don't share the viewing habits of other people my age). So... it was over before it even started. It opened okay all things considering, 60M isn't bad. But it had mediocre drops week to week, no doubt due to mediocre word of mouth. And again, the budget was out of control. Initially reported to be 290M, the actual budget ended up being 320M. It didn't even get close to 400M WW. Making it one of the biggest bombs of all time, and certainly the biggest bomb of the year. This is probably the last straw for Lucasfilm. I can't imagine Disney letting them continue doing things this way.

Next one comes a sad one for me personally, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part One the first big movie of July. They decided to release it over a 5-day weekend. And, more importantly, decided to open the weekend before Barbenheimer. Unfortunately, that meant that no one was paying attention to Tom Cruise's latest critically acclaimed action film. It opened below 80 million for the 5-day weekend, below Indiana Jones even. It's only hope was to leg it out well. But again, two big movies would come out a week later. Mission Impossible was yet another victim of Paramount's idiotic release date decisions. Dungeons and Dragons opened a week before Mario, despite positive reviews and audience reception that ended up dropping like a rock too. If Paramount had picked more empty dates both of these movies would have done better. MI is the only blockbuster this summer to be extremely well reviewed, to get positive audience reception (same scores as Fallout) yet not be a success at the box office. The budget didn't help, 290M, it was one of the first productions to restart during the pandemic that's where this audio of Cruise yelling at crew members breaking protocols comes from. They actually set the standard for productions during the pandemic. But, money losers are money losers, and Paramount has been bleeding a lot of money.

One of the more interesting success stories so far this year is Sound of Freedom. Originally produced in 2018, 20th Century Fox held the distribution rights. When Disney bought Fox they shelved the movie. Angel Studios then got the rights to the film. They opened it on the Fourth of July weekend (America!) to rave audience reactions. It opened modestly, to 19 million, but has legged out spectacularly. Outgrossing summer blockbusters like Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Domestically anyway. It was powered by conservative influencers and the often reliable christian market. It's been debated if this should count. As they had a pay it forward service, meaning people would buy tickets for others to use for free. There were several reports of sold out screenings playing to a largely empty room. Whatever it is. It's money for movie theaters. And it's clearly playing well to an underserved market.

Now we get to the big one: Barbie and Oppenheimer. For over a year these two have been building up hype. Christopher Nolan, who usually has his films distributed by Warner Bros., was incredibly unhappy with how they sacrificed his film Tenet during the 2020 pandemic and even was even less happy when WB announced that their entire 2021 slate would be day and date on HBOMAX. He then takes his next project to Universal, after they agreed to a laundry list of demands. They pick the date July 21st, because that's the date Nolan likes and is "reserved" for him. Warner Bros originally had Coyote vs Acme there, a live-action Looney Tunes film with John Cena. However, they remove Coyote vs Acme from the schedule (it still has no release date) and instead put Barbie there. It originally started off as a "battle." Who would win, who would flop? But as we got closer, it became something else. The stark contrast between the two films, while both being from filmmakers who are lauded by younger people online, led to the creation of Barbenheimer. It wasn't "which one will win" it was "we're excited for both." It also wasn't, as some people think, manufactured by Universal and Warner Bros (why on earth would competing studios work together) it was organic. If it wasn't organic it wouldn't have worked. Barbie opened to over 160M and Oppenheimer to over 80M.

What makes their successes so great for the industry, is that they're in genres that have not been doing well post-pandemic. Even pre-pandemic comedies like Barbie were struggling. The last big comedy to hit 200M DOM was Ted back in 2012. Barbie easily blew past that. It's also a female oriented film in a time where women have been one of the slowest demographics to return to theaters. Adult dramas were also on lifeline. Elvis had been the highest grossing one post-pandemic, but pre-pandemic we would get multiple hits. In 2019: 1917, Little Women, Ford vs Ferrari, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood all grossed over 100M DOM. In the two years since the pandemic only Elvis managed to hit that mark. But now Oppenheimer, something that on paper is tailor made for the end of the year Oscar season, opens like a blockbuster in the summer. It's the first drama to make over 200M DOM since Joker, and first non-franchise drama to make that much since Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star is Born crossed that threshold back in 2018.

Maybe it's a fluke, maybe it was just because it was these films specifically. But it's hard not to feel optimistic that this will translate to other dramas like Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon, and other female-oriented films like Wonka.

Smaller successes and optimism for the future of theatrical:

I covered the big movies. But what about the rest of the slate? Movie theaters can't just survive on 20 or so big movies a year. They need the smaller films to still deliver some money. These past two years, the box office has been incredibly top heavy. We either got films that only made a ton of money or we got movies that made no money.

Let me give you an example of the struggle of this specific market. The Peanut Butter Falcon was the 100th grossing film domestically of 2019. It grossed 20 million. In 2021 it was The Father with 2.1 million, in 2022 it was Cyrano with 3.8 million. You can see the toll the pandemic took here. But you can also see slight recovery.

I believe 2023 is the year we see substantial recovery in his part of the market. Smaller, non-franchise, and art-house films have been making more money than they have been in the past two years.

Let's look at some examples:

Asteroid City has the highest opening PTA (per-theater-average) of any film since the pandemic. Over 100k PTA something that used to be more common before the pandemic. And, once it goes wide, grosses 27 million domestic. Compare that to Wes Anderson's previous film which grossed 16 million domestic.

Past Lives also opens to a healthy PTA of 58k. That's higher than TAR and The Banshees of Inisherin. And that's without any star power and without having a well known Director. It has Oscar buzz, to be fair, but so did the other two and it still managed to outgross both of them when it went wide. So these types of awards films are already doing better than they were even six months prior.

No Hard Feelings not so much a small film, it's not an art-house film, and it's not an awards contender. It's a mid-budget comedy that relied solely on star power as a selling point. It's exactly the type of movie that failed countless times in 2021 and 2022. Yet, it outgrossed star-studded R-rated comedies from last year such as Amsterdam, The Menu, and Babylon pretty easily. Making 50 million domestic. It, perhaps, did not turn a profit theatrically, but it at least made some of its money back. Even a year ago, the thought of this type of movie making anything more than it did would have been unfathomable. Even Ticket to Paradise, which did make more than No Hard Feelings especially internationally, was PG-13 and had two old school stars headlining it instead of one young one.

I think these three movies really do show how much the market continues to improve, even as we faced massive bombs. When something as benign as Theater Camp can open with a PTA on par with Banshees of Inisherin, we're definitely heading in the right direction.

This was quite the summer for Hollywood. With so many high profile bombs, and two surprise hits, this already feels like a transformational year for the industry. Trends are changing. Franchises from the 2010s (mostly from Disney) are no longer the guaranteed money makers they were. The unions are on strike. Studios are looking to cut costs. It's a whirlwind.

I would like to learn for me and my loved ones.
In my case is health issues and anxiety about deadly emergencies (I have been there). Also, professional growth potential have declined after certain age.

https://www.polygon.com/23793493/bungie-destiny-2-harassment-lawsuit

Win empowers employers to protect employees from online harm

Bungie has won almost $500,000 in damages from a Destiny 2 player who harassed one of its community managers and his wife with abusive, racist, and distressing calls and messages, and sent an unsolicited pizza order to their home in a manner designed to intimidate and frighten the couple.

According to members of Bungie’s legal team, the judgment from a Washington state court sets important precedents that will empower employers to go after anyone who harasses their employees online, and strengthen the enforcement of laws against online trolling and harassment. “This one is special,” Bungie’s attorney Dylan Schmeyer tweeted.

As laid out in the court’s judgment, the defendant, Jesse James Comer, was “incensed” when the community manager — whom both Bungie and the court declined to name, to protect them from further harassment — spotlighted some fan art by a Black community member. Using anonymous phone numbers, Comer left a string of “hideous, bigoted” voicemails on the community manager’s personal phone, some asking that Bungie create options in Destiny 2 “in which only persons of color would be killed,” before proceeding to threaten the community manager’s wife with more racist voicemails and texts. Then he ordered a pizza to be delivered to their home, leaving instructions for the driver to knock at least five times, loudly, to make the intrusion as frightening as possible.

The court ruled that Comer was liable to pay over $489,000 in damages, fees, and expenses it had accrued in protecting and supporting its employees, investigating Comer, and prosecuting the case against him.

As laid out in a Twitter thread by Kathryn Tewson, a crusading paralegal who worked on the case, the judgment is significant because it recognizes that patterns of harassment escalate from online trolling to real-world violence; establishes that harassment of an employee for doing their job damages the employer as well, which can then use its resources to go after the culprit; and recognized a new tort — a legal term for a form of injury or harm for which courts can impose liability — around cyber and telephone harassment.

(article continues)

I've had the same secured credit card through my bank for years; I only use it for car rentals and when my debit card gets declined on international online purchases. It's very easy to maintain as there are no fees and I always pay off the balance within the week; however, there are also no rewards. I know that a lot of credit cards out there have cashback rewards, and it seems like kind of a waste not to take advantage of that. But there are so many different ones that it's horribly overwhelming for me to try to research which one(s) might be a good choice. Costco has one which would have probably been an easy choice if I were able to spend more money there, but as of currently I have very little space and only hold a membership for gas.

So, do any of you lovely folks have recommendations to give me a starting point for what to look into? What cards have you used and been happy with?

ETA: I am in the US!

Welcome to Tildes first Turing Test.

Rules:

1. Anyone can ask a question in a top level thread if you want to see if you can tell man vs machine. I'll just start with @NaraVara, but feel free to post up.
2. Anyone can answer the question in 1.
   a. Respond with two responses. One human. One AI. Add [A] in front of the first response and [B] in front of the second response. Randomly assign which one is the human. Remember your choice and keep it secret.
   b. Your AI should try to pretend it is human. You can decline to respond to any question that exploits GPTs well published weaknesses, or exploits the fact that this is a small community. I suggest you pick a character from https://beta.character.ai/ that is similar to you, or get really good at Jailbreaking ChatGPT so that it will pretend to be a human with a personality similar to yours. Any response where the machine mentions ChatGPT or OpenAI disqualifies that thread, as Turing's machine should be specifically designed to pretend to be a human.
   c. Your human response should be a genuine response. Answer the question without tipping the scales either way. Don't say something impossible for the GPT model to say. Don't mimic ChatGPT. You can always decline to answer any question, just decline for ChatGPT as well.
3. The original person who asked the question in 1 can now reply with a follow up question based on the responses in 2.
4. Now the original person who provided the answers in 2, can now answer the new questions in 3.
5. And so on. After 700 words of questions and answers, the person asking the questions in 1 and 3 must guess which is human and which is AI. 700 words is approximately 5 minutes of Q&A.
6. If you are asking questions, no peaking if there is activity in another thread. I suggest we use expandable sections with the details tag to hide responses.

@NaraVara, if this is clear, do you want to give this a go?

Edit: minor formatting

Original page is unencrypted so I'm posting the article here.

This is a bit complicated.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is the government department that pays social security benefits in the UK. There are a range of benefits. Some of these benefits are for people who cannot work because of disability. In order to qualify for some of these disability benefits you need to have a medical assessment with an "independent" doctor. This doctor is independent from the patient. They're employed by companies who are paid by the DWP, so there's supposed to be some kind of arm's length arrangement there.

A doctor was employed by one of these companies to do this assessment work for the DWP. He was a committed Christian. He held that he would not be able to refer to people by anything other than the gender they were assigned at birth.

The DWP is clear: you must respect a person's choice of pronouns.

The General Medical Council (the registrant body for doctors in England) is also clear: you must not impose your personal views upon your patients, especially if it's going to cause distress.

This doctor was spoken to about his beliefs. He declined to change his stance. He lost his job. He took his employer to employment tribunal for unfair dismissal based on discrimination against his protected characteristic: his religious views.

He lost his case.

Here's the legal document: https://christianconcern.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/CC-Resource-Judgment-Mackereth-DWP-Others-ET-191002.pdf

It's pretty long! 42 pages! The last pages give a summary.

You'll notice the URL. He was supported by the Christian Legal Centre. I won't say anything about them, but I'll link this page which gives some useful information: https://nearlylegal.co.uk/2018/04/on-the-naughty-step-the-questionable-ethics-of-the-christian-legal-centre/

We've had a few threads recently criticising the direction of various shows cough Game of Thrones cough and @Amarok suggested a thread celebrating the good stuff on TV instead. Personally, television is by far my favourite means of visual storytelling, a good TV show can go into the kind of depth and complexity that the more time-limited format of movies just can't touch.

A few of my favourite shows then, in no particular order:

House MD - recently rewatched this and it definitely stands the test of time. Sure, there are a few weak episodes here and there but on balance it's solid. Hugh Laurie absolutely nails the role of Sherlock Holmes Greg House and the supporting cast are excellent too. It has one of my all-time favourite endings of all television shows, even knowing what was coming I still ended up a little moist of eye by the end. Also they grade the colour with increasing desaturation throughout season 8, almost to the point of it being monochrome - until the final scene is in glorious, bright colour and I love little touches like that. TV shouldn't just be actors reading lines, there is a whole medium to tell stories with (Game of Thrones also did this kind of thing well).

Detectorists - BBC show about two metal detectorists. Gloriously paced, slow and gentle but insistent in telling it's tale, with really strong characters. Finishes beautifully, at just the right time. A gem of a show, it's very well written and nearly flawless throughout. Mackenzie Crook (writer, director) was offered more seasons but he declined because the show was finished and that takes guts to do but I love that he did. Also features Diana Rigg (Olenna Tyrell) who is never not brilliant.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer - I mean what can you even say about Buffy. Might have been the last show where my friends would meet up for a watch party every week, hanging out for hours discussing it and enjoying herbal cigarettes for the evening. Streaming is great and so convenient but in some ways I do miss TV being an event. There was someone very special about getting everyone together once a week to share in that world, and especially with Buffy because the characters were so close in age to me (I'm slightly younger than Alyson Hannigan and I had such a crush on Willow). Sure, it had it's wobbles (the entire Adam story arc, for example) but also some of the best TV moments of the 90s/early 2000s. Once More With Feeling and Hush are fan favourites for a reason.

Hannibal - Produced by Bryan Fuller, who is always good, but absolutely outdoes himself here, and Mads Mikkelson is terrifying in the titular role. Visually it's stunning, the plot is engaging and deeply disturbing, the characters well drawn and believable (Hannibal particularly so, which is all the more horrifying) and the sound design is absolutely astonishing. I bought a whole new sound system literally just for this show and it was totally worth it. Sound design is one of those things which you only notice when it's particularly bad or particularly good and Hannibal is definitely the latter. It's such a well-rounded piece of television, it uses colour and light and sound and all the tools in the TV maker's box. the ending is a little on the weak side but they got axed early - Bryan Fuller had five seasons planned but they only got three.

I could go on, but I won't because I'll go on for ages! Please add a couple of your favourite shows and maybe we can all find a few new things to watch.

Hey, I dunno if this is an appropriate place for this, and feel free to take it down if it's too direct/off-topic or what have you. I can't post this on reddit because my mom browses reddit and it would be painfully obvious.

So, as some of you may know, Backpage was a website like craigslist that got shut down completely due to complaints/reports of trafficking. In that shutdown, many people lost their jobs, my mother being one of them. My mom received a severance pay, and had to find work. Within that same timeframe, she also broke things off with a man whom she had been dating prior for reasons I still don't know. After having to sell her house, she tried to make it on her own, but then inevitably had to come and live with me and my Dad (Whom she had divorced about 10 years prior)). At some point a year or so ago, she had a nasty fall and hit her head, concussing her. Lately, she seems to be coming unhinged.

Her behavior started with her continually retroactively accusing my father of cheating on her ~15 years ago on several occasions based off of information she swears happened but cannot corroborate. She has, in recent memory, been known to make false claims and, when presented with proof refuting her claims, to discard said proof and continue to push her claims instead. She has tried to get me to "remember" incidents over 10 years ago where she ran across "women who were his type". On top of that, she has accused my father of going into businesses she has applied for and telling them not to hire her. My dad wants nothing more than for her to get back up on her feet and get going. I have no idea why she would believe this.

We had another incident where my little sister went downstairs to get something to eat, and used the microwave to prepare it. My mother interjected and told Ali that she shouldn't be using the microwave because she's afraid of the radiation it gives off. My little sister politely told her that that was bullshit and that she isn't worried. My mother then grew angry, told her something along the lines of "Fine, I'm not going to care if you die then", took her phone, and sent her upstairs (We all shave our rooms upstairs and she has her space downstairs, where the guest room is). This isn't the first time she's posited a completely ridiculous and baseless claim/conspiracy/concern, however I hadn't tried to refute it before.

I texted my Aunt and debriefed her, and she said that she was aware of my mother's mental health declining, and she wanted to help, but I guess she said something my mom didn't like, because my mom has since blocked her on her phone, severing the only means of communication between them (She's 2 states away). My mom seems to keep doing this to people; saying and believing untrue/ridiculous things and becoming increasingly angry and hateful when she is refuted or called out on it. She has severed ties with her Aunt, the sister of my deceased grandmother, who tried to tell her she was wrong after accusing my grandmother of various things she didn't do. She doesn't have any family left that she hasn't pissed off.

The only person left in my house who she isn't angry at is me, but I am supremely bad at handling these things and would much rather retreat into my room and not come out until it's all over. My girlfriend living with me is trying to provide support as well. This morning, my mother asked me to drop her off at a homeless shelter. She has a bed, food, clothes, a shower and restroom, and WiFi here, but she feels so much that my father is the root of all of her problems that she wants to leave at any cost.

I don't know what to do now that my mother is slowly and surely losing her goddamn mind and is driving out everyone who loves her when they don't reaffirm her insane delusions and accusations. It hurts to see my father struggling to do something, because he can't just kick out the mother of his children; he still loves the woman he married. We can't tell her she needs to seek help, because that is interpreted as an insult and calling her crazy. I've tried, again and again, to tell her that we are all here to help her and we want the best for her but she seems to discard every good thing I say and pick out the worst, even if I didn't intend any kind of negativity. She's getting to the point where she's beginning to lose her temper with me and I'm afraid that that will be the final nail in the coffin. My father tried calling some place (I believe they specialized in mentally unwell people) and asking for advice, but when he asked them to call my mother and they agreed, my mother got angry at them and accused them of "collecting evidence" for my father. It's out of their hands if she isn't harming herself or others.

I don't really know what I expect from posting this. Maybe commiseration, maybe sympathy, or advice, but I'm going fucking insane and do not have any prior experience to help me cope with/fix this and I would really appreciate if anybody does and they're willing to share

howdy pardner!

welcome back to my emo rap deep-dive series! for those just joining us, i'd encourage you to go back and check out chapter one: sprite. and chapter two: dirt. first.

so why am i even writing this to begin with? if i'm being honest, it's not all entirely educationally-motivated. i've been really wanting a way to share my favorite genre of music with people (maybe it's a subconscious testing of the waters before i begin to record my own music?) and collect their thoughts. but every time i went to share a link in ~music, i'd deliberate over and over, "what should i share?" it's been so hard for me to pick one single song that's all-encompassing and anthemic (is that even a word? i keep using that word) of the genre as a whole.

so instead of spamming ~music, or having to cherry pick a small number of tracks, i thought i'd use this as an opportunity to provide a little historical background and, hopefully, maybe, inspire a new appreciation in a subgenre that very often gets overlooked, or thought of as basic / whiney / overproduced.

that said - hopefully you've all been following along, and i'll stop stalling! let's dive right into chapter three of our emo-rap deep dive - dirty sprite. or, how did we go from OutKast to Lil Pump?

let me open with a question. what do the following have in common?

polish composer and piano virtuoso frederic chopin
controversial american rapper lil pump
american actor and i guess also musician? corey feldman

you guessed it!

opiates.

all of the present characters used opiates in their lifes, typically throughout the better parts of their creative years. chopin was using medicinal opiates in order to aide with his tuberculosis. feldman fell into and has since (i believe) fought his way out of a heroin addiction. lil pump sips promethazine by the bottle just to party (hyperbole. don't drink prometh by the bottle) which is a prescription medication often used as a sedative or used to prevent coughs or nausea. often sold as a mixture of promethazine and codeine, itself being an opiate. if you've seen a rap music video in the past two to three years, you may have seen this bottle somewhere throughout.

where do all of these drugs come from?

the answer to that question actually holds a lot of relevance to the history of emo rap itself, but to answer it, we first have to go all the way back to the 90s.

off we go!

believe it or not, drugs as a matter of discussion weren't always ever-present in the rap game. from the late 70s to the early 80s, only about 10% of all rap songs mentioned drug use, whereas in the early 90s, we see that number jump waaaay the fuck up to 45%, to eventually hit 69% by 1997 [source]. this is all taking place around the same time that we saw the decline of major urban neighborhoods due to the effects of white flight, decreasing the amount of tax dollars flowing throughout these areas, and leading to a decrease in public services that would include decreased effectiveness of, say, fire brigades or police squads.

with poorer households now making up a majority of these neighborhoods, the illegal drug trade quickly grew in popularity as a way to make money on the business end, and a way to escape the day-to-day on the client end. a plethora of burned, broken into, or otherwise abandoned houses became a seemingly limitless amount of places to go about the production of drugs - most notably, crack cocaine. these houses came to be known colloquially as trap houses, and the music inspired by this phenomenon, trap music.

this sound grew it's roots in the early 90s thanks to the early projects out of the south like UGK (title: Cocaine in the Back of the Ride), Three 6 Mafia (title: We Got Da Dope), and The Showboys (title: Drag Rap). coincidentally, the showboys are actually a group out of new york, though gained the height of their popularity touring around southern states.

as we head into the mid-nineties/early-naughts, we see the emergence of a few acts that really take this sound and run with it. setting the roots for the coming commercial explosion of the trap sound, we see examples like OutKast's "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik", Lil Jon's "Who You Wit". we're gonna see lil jon's name pop up a few times as we go through this.

taking the reigns from these majorly influential projects, we next see T.I. come to the stage for his second album "Trap Muzik" in 2003. much to the surprise of the industry (his debut album did not go over all too well), Trap Muzik debuted at number 4 on the Billboard 200, sold over 100k copies in it's first week, and was later in 2012 called one of the classic albums of the last decade by Complex. the album features many early hits from T.I. like "Be Easy", "24's", and even some tracks with producer credits from Kanye West like "Doin' My Job". still sticking to their guns, pioneering the trap sound, we continue to see records from Lil Jon and Three 6 Mafia taking to the radio such as, respectively, "Get Low" and "Stay Fly"

paving the way towards the 2010s, we begin to see the rise of artists like Gucci Mane and his debut album "Trap House" (aptly titled eh?) hitting the Billboard 200 with tracks like "Icy", Young Jeezy with internationally-charting tracks like "Soul Survivor", and most notably in modern trap, producer-powerhouse Zaytoven with work on tracks like "Papers" x Usher.

so we skip forward 5-7 years and things look...different.

instead of having chart-toppers like "Smack That" x Akon, "Hey There Delilah" x Plain White T's, or "Umbrella" x Rihanna

we see a lot of love for things like "First of the Year (Equinox) x Skrillex, "Sail" x AWOLNATION, and most importantly by far, "Versace" x Migos which was quickly popularized by Drake's remix. the rest of 2013 serves as the absolute corner stone of modern trap music seeing the success of songs like "Swimming Pools (Drank)" x Kendrick Lamar, "Started From The Bottom" x Drake, and of course, the absolute trap anthem, "Love Sosa" x Chief Keef.

in that avalanche of tracks, we get the recipe that will come to make up the bulk of today's trap music:

1. edm-inspired instrumentals
2. triplet meter rhyme
3. heavy 808s and crystal clear hi-hats.

over the next few years, we steadily start to see these three ingredients come together to produce some absolute bangers leading up to the trap zeitgeist.

in 2014:
"Fight Night" x Migos
"Black Widow" x Iggy Azalea
the ever-memed "Lifestyle" x Young Thug

in 2015:
the year of Fetty Wap with tracks like "Trap Queen", "679" on the Billboard 100
"No Type" x Rae Sremmurd
"Flex" x Rich Homie Quan

in 2016:
"Panda" x Desiigner
"Broccoli" x DRAM
Drake jumping back in with "Jumpman"
"Down in the DM" x Yo Gotti

and then, finally, we arrive at 2017 - the year that caused the internet's busiest music nerd anthony "melon" fantano to pose the question "have we reached peak trap?". up until recently, the term "trap music" was actually not all too commonly associated with rap music - instead referring most commonly to a subset of edm with (still) heavy 808s, thicc bass drops, and dirty breakdowns. however, with the musical zeitgeist quickly moving to seat rap at the throne over rock music, and with the internet popularizing songs like "Ultimate" x Denzel Curry, "Flicka Da Wrist" x Chedda Da Connect, and "U Guessed it" x OG Maco, the term has now been absolutely overtaken as many rap fans find themselves infatuated with the sound. this causes the scene to absolutely explode throughout 2017 with songs like:

"Humble" x Kendrick Lamar
"Bad and Boujee" x Migos
"Bodak Yellow" x Cardi B
"Look At Me!" x XXXTentacion
and of course
"Gucci Gang" x Lil Pump

this year sees the debuts of several artists that are still dropping bangers today, like the previously listed Cardi B, Lil Pump, XXXTentacion (rest in peace), A Boogie wit Da Hoodie, and (again) of course, 6ix9ine.

analogous to the rise of screamed lyrics, heavy instrumentals, and prettyboy-frontmen of mid-late 2000s rock bands, we see the rise of trap music today.

now, the final question to be answered.

how do we get from rap songs with hedonistic lyrics, heavy 808s, and loud-personality frontmen, to a subsect of the genre that nearly predominantly speaks of subjects like death, addiction, loss, and suicide?

i'll see ya soon for the fourth and final installment of the emo-rap deep dive - chapter four: xanax sprinkles.

Online/digital bookmarking and excerpting is something that really interests me because I think most if not all existing options for it fall very short of the functionality I wish existed, and that I think could exist.

One of the first online bookmarking services I used was Delicious, and for a few years it was irreplaceable for me. However it languished after it was bought by Yahoo and then resold, and since then I’ve observed its slow and steady decline from afar.

The purpose of this post is twofold:

1. I want to know the current state of online bookmarking for you. I’m curious to know if it’s as much of an unmet need in anyone else’s life as it seems to be in mine.
   • Were you once a bookmarker and gave up due to the seeming futility of it?
   • Have you never been interested in bookmarking and/or don’t see the point of it?
   • Are you an active bookmarker, and if so what tools or workflows do you use, and what kinds of content do you bookmark?
2. I thought I would share some of the research I did into Delicious’ various design iterations over the years via the Internet Archive. It’s a cool birds-eye survey of how the service’s ethos, goals and design changed over time. Beyond the value it provides as a case study, I think there are greater lessons and insights that can be gained from observing the rise and fall of what was once such a beloved online service.
   • del.icio.us | 16 September 2005
   • del.icio.us | 20 December 2005
   • del.icio.us | 11 October 2006
   • Delicious.com | 11 May 2011
   • Delicious.com | 27 November 2011
   • Delicious.com | 12 May 2012
   • Delicious.com | 30 August 2012
   • Delicious.com | 14 October 2013
   • The period between 2013 and 2016 seems to be one endless loading screen from the archive’s perspective
   • Delicious.com | 15 March 2016
   • At some point in 2016, they went back to their original domain name – del.icio.us | 14 May 2016

As a sidenote, I also found this explanation of Delicious' approach to tagging to be very interesting: del.icio.us/help/tags | 21 February 2006

I hadn't realized that Delicious was actually the first to introduce the concept of user-controlled tags for bookmarks:

When Delicious was first launched, it was the first use of the term "tag" in the modern sense, and it was the first explicit opportunity where website users were given the ability to add their own tags to their bookmarks so that they could more easily search for them at a later time. This major breakthrough was not much noticed as most thought the application at the time "cool" but obvious. – Source

Edit: I hope it's alright to edit a post this many hours after having submitted it. There were a few important updates that I really wanted to include here.

Openly published research makes science advance at a wonderful rate. In my experience scientists and researchers support open research in a nearly dogmatic fashion. Personally I am generally for it. However here is my concern.

I believe that humanity is in a terrible race. One of the competitors is the advancement of science, which of course can sometimes be used in a dangerous ways. The other competitor is our society moving towards murder and war becoming obsolete. The science is obvious and needs no examples. Societies move towards the sanctity of life is shown here.

"Violence has been in decline over long stretches of time", says Harvard professor Steven Pinker, "and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence."

Now to get to my point. In the past scientific advancement has created some really scary things. Atomic weapons, bio and chemical warefare, etc. However, those weapons took a lot of people and capital to produce, and had relatively un-scalable effects. Now with open research on advancements like CRISPR, we are nearing a time where in the near future a smart high school biology student with a few thousand dollars and an internet connection will be able to create self-replicating custom viruses that could kill millions. The asymmetric threat has never been greater.

Do you agree with my assessment and concerns?

If so, do you believe that there should be limits on publication of research in certain areas?

Edit: I should have said CRISPR and gene drives. Here is a TED talk on how gene drives can change and entire species, forever.