sweettartheart: Ink text on paper (100 words on paper)
empathy is a superpower ([personal profile] sweettartheart) wrote in [community profile] 100words2025-09-23 11:21 am

Prompt: #461 - Futile

This week's prompt is futile.

Your response should be exactly 100 words long. You do not have to include the prompt in your response -- it is meant as inspiration only.

Please use the tag "prompt: #461 - futile" with your response.

Please put your drabble under a cut tag if it contains potential triggers, mature or explicit content, or spoilers for media released in the last month.

If you would like a template for the header information you may use this:

Subject: Original - Title (or) Fandom - Title

Post:
Title:
Original
(or) Fandom:
Rating:
Notes:




If you are a member of AO3 there is a 100 Words Collection!
cornerofmadness: (Default)
cornerofmadness ([personal profile] cornerofmadness) wrote2025-09-22 10:45 pm
Entry tags:

Happy Equinox

It's Mabon here in the north. It's my favorite time of year. It was not off to a good start today but you know what? It's all just minor work stuff and it'll work itself out.

I don't understand what Rybelsus did to me but ever since I took it just for those 3 days (and it took another 3 to recover) it seemed to reset me. My diabetes is doing good, blood sugar down to normal levels. I know it won't last and it makes me sad I couldn't deal with the side effects. It would be nice not to have to worry about all the damage done from the high sugars.

Had the authors' zoom tonight. It was a short one but that's okay because storms were raging around and I got a lot of words and I finished my second [community profile] wipbigbang which is great. Now to get moving on other things. Too much to do.

And I got a request for my bio and buy links from the cryptid anthology I'm in. Finally. Still no release date.

So Mothman festival (pictures like all my pictures coming eventually). Last year I went on Saturday but my friend TH wanted to come with me this year and he couldn't go until Sunday. You know what, SO much better. On Saturday even getting there are 830 (it starts at 10) there was NO parking. Had to park blocks away (for some reason I wish I knew why, pre covid we had to park 2.5 miles in Krodel park but there were buses to the fest, now you still have to park there and WALK to town. No way)

But since Sunday had no 5K mothrun we got to park in the handicapped lot (which I doubt anyone knew existed because very few others asked the boys to move the blockage and let them in. I'm not shy about that). Last year everything was open before 10 (thank you racers) but yesterday no one was expect Silver Bridge coffee (my local favorite brand) I got caught and me and TH sat at a sidewalk table talking until things opened.

It was cool then (ended up around 90 by noon though) We left before 1 and the talks started but let's face it, I'm getting old and TH is several years older than me and it was getting hot. How many Bigfoot talks can we go to?!? We dipped out on that.

So it was a nice few hours of shopping around (and me showing him the new stores because he's a homebody and didn't even know about these stores) It's good. The town is recovering a little and it's great to see and for perspective, Point Pleasant has about 4,000 people. The festival had nearly 40K. Yeah.

Did I get much? No, oddly enough not as much as I usually do but again how much more crap do I need? I got some pins from the guy with popculture stuff, a couple fridge magnets, one book on creepy florida (ha, didn't expect that!) and two more cds from Nox Arcana whom I love. And some more infused maple syrup from the sellers I buy from every year.

I ran into a former student and we'll hopefully by hiring her on as part of the wellness committee to teach yoga.

Lunch was special...bad special, delicious but bad from coal miner diner, a hot dog with cheese, bacon, fried pickles and slaw. I felt SO much better after that and that caused me concern. I think my BP has been low (another sign I might have a slow bleed ulcer) I mean think of all the salt in that. It made me feel good so it raised my pressure up.

I saw storm troopers, ghost busters, men in black, mothmen, the hodag (another cryptid I lived in his town) and the hot new cryptid this year was the Squonk! That's right, the one I was going to his festival in July but had to house sit. He's also in the other cryptid story I wrote that I'm still waiting to hear (I hope they're not one of those we're never telling you you didn't get in) I didn't buy any squonk stuff. Maybe next year if my story gets taken in.

TH is looking at me like I'm crazy because I'm like hey Vendor, saw you at the Kecksburg fest, yo how was the bigfoot fest. No, not crazy but I am deeply weird.


It's just a free for all Music Monday share whatever makes your weird little heart happy. I'll go first.

For Mabon -



and here's the album I bought
hannah: (Running - obsessiveicons)
hannah ([personal profile] hannah) wrote2025-09-22 05:25 pm

Waiting for you.

The first day of fall. Rosh Hashanah beginning a new year. And giving blood, too. It took me just over six minutes, which isn't bad except for how I know I can do better than that. I'll keep hydrating and hitting the treadmill.

I'm also going to leave the bandage on until bedtime, as usual. It's yellow, so I feel like I should pick a dress for tonight's dinner that'll really make it pop.
drabblewriter: (Epic - Troy Saga)
Katie ([personal profile] drabblewriter) wrote in [community profile] 100words2025-09-22 10:34 am

[Amnesty][Challenge #398: Serve] The Iliad: Turned Around

Title: Turned Arouns
Fandom: The Iliad
Characters/Ship: Hector & Andromache
Rating: G
Note: also for “plead my belly” on my [community profile] allbingo Piracy Bingo card

Read more... )
abyssal_sylph: Kanaya and Rose are on a red with brown couch, reading a book with the HS quadrants symbols on it, both look very happy. (rosemary reading (homestuck))
Abyss in Cahoots ([personal profile] abyssal_sylph) wrote in [community profile] journalsandplanners2025-09-22 01:46 pm

My/Our 12 Pen Person Questions

"My/Our" put in the title because we're plural, but hi I'm Jade (she/they/bark)! I wanna get this system more into journaling again :] but for now here's my/our anwsers.

Read more... )
glinda: A jaeger from Pacific Rim, atmospherically lit with its engine/heart glowing red (pr - jaeger)
glinda ([personal profile] glinda) wrote2025-09-22 10:37 am
Entry tags:
but_can_i_be_trusted: from the Wayne & Shuster 'Art Gallery' pantomime sketch--and my first .gif icon! (Surprise)
Echo Invictus ([personal profile] but_can_i_be_trusted) wrote in [community profile] 100words2025-09-21 08:44 pm
Entry tags:

[AMNESTY: Challenge #391: Map] Original Fiction: 'Goal'

Title: 'Goal'
Fandom: Original Fiction
Rating: G
Notes: Crossposted to [community profile] drabble_zone

Goal )
cornerofmadness: (Default)
cornerofmadness ([personal profile] cornerofmadness) wrote2025-09-21 10:40 pm

Writerly Ways

I had thoughts about this, especially after the mothman festival so you can wait til tomorrow for that. And then the storm hit. My power went out. I wrote 3K in under 2 hours (so I can see what I'm capable of and what I USED to be capable of pre-social media) and then the power came back and I saw posts about two states trying to make it mandatory that all universities have a memorial to Charlie Kirk and my brain died of the stupid. (though I hope they do it and it fucking blows up in their faces) So instead have some links while my apartment cools back down (because omg why did it hit 89 again today)

OPEN CALL

Christmas Ghosts Short Stories Seasonal ghosts and spirits for Christmas

Horned Lark Press is open for Science Fiction and fantasy novellas Science fiction and fantasy novellas

Wars in the Stars Short Stories space stories that burst with imagination… and war!

In the Words of a Flower All stories should incorporate an aspect of floriography, the language of flowers. (deadline is this week. Too bad I didn't see this when it opened, it could have been interesting)

Cosmic Roots And Eldritch Shores October 2025 Window

94 Opportunities for Historically Underrepresented Writers

30 Magazines and Anthologies Publishing Horror Fiction




From Around the Web


THE URBAN LEGEND THAT ATE MY STORY: How Folklore Fuels My Fiction. This is true of me

How I Write by Eugen Bacon

How a Character’s Personality Shapes Arc, Voice, and Goals

How to Polish Your First 5 Pages for Agents

How To Push Past The Fear of Never Getting Published

Craft Lessons from Reading Hundreds of Short Stories


From Betty

Six Wordcraft Questions Writers Fight Over

What a Panic on Twitter Revealed About Writers Today

So, Your Fantasy World Is Based on D&D


Five Important Ways Romances Engage Readers

5 Strategies to Pacing Your Dialogue

5 Ways to Manage Reader Expectations

How to Polish Your First 5 Pages for Agents

Writing for Children

How to Describe Characters

How to Show Your Character’s Repressed Emotions

What If No One Ever Publishes My Work?”

11 Successful Query Letter Examples for Writers in Various Genres

Writers: How to Read Email Reports to Improve Your Newsletters and Book Sales

How a Character’s Personality Shapes Arc, Voice, and Goals
but_can_i_be_trusted: (Writing)
Echo Invictus ([personal profile] but_can_i_be_trusted) wrote in [community profile] 100words2025-09-21 08:34 pm

[AMNESTY: Challenge #8: Poetry] Original Poetry: 'Laureate'

Title: 'Laureate'
Fandom: Original Poetry
Rating: G

Laureate )
chez_jae: (Books)
chez_jae ([personal profile] chez_jae) wrote2025-09-21 02:05 pm

Book 92, 2025

A Killer Crop (Orchard, #4)A Killer Crop by Sheila Connolly

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


View all my reviews

I finished reading A Killer Crop by Sheila Connolly last night. It’s the fourth in her “Orchard” series of cozy mysteries. The main character is Meg Corey, novice apple farmer.

Meg is in the midst of her first apple harvest, and it’s all hands on deck. She doesn’t have time for anything else, which makes a surprise visit from her mother especially harrowing. Worse still, the person whom her mother came to the area to visit has been murdered, and now the police are questioning her as a potential person of interest. Adding to Meg’s misfortunes, her orchard manager, Bree, gets injured and is unable to help out as much as she planned to. Now Meg has to step up her game as far as picking apples, try to suss out who really did in the professor, wonder if she should tell her mother about her boyfriend, Seth, and, oh yeah, try to get a straight answer from her mother as to why she was visiting an old college flame while her father was off on a fishing trip.

Lots going on in this one. Meg spent more time investigating than she did in the previous book. It was a miracle she found the time. Her mother was a bit of a snot when she first arrived, but by the end of the book she had mellowed and was more of a decent human being. I would have liked to see Meg step up and be less wishy-washy where her mother was concerned. I was zeroing in on a suspect about 2/3 through the story and was pleased to find my assumptions were correct.

Favorite line: “I’ll let mother wrestle with the naked chicken.”

Interesting plot, very busy and fast-paced. Four stars.
veronyxk84: (Vero#s6SpuffyBis)
VeroNyxK84 ([personal profile] veronyxk84) wrote in [community profile] 100words2025-09-21 01:13 pm

[Amnesty XLVI] BtVS / Spuffy — Laid Bare

Title: Laid Bare
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters/Pairing: Spuffy
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: some coarse language
Word count: 200 (Google Docs)
Setting/Spoilers: Set in S6, at the end of ep. 6x07 “Once More With Feeling.”
Summary: Buffy’s POV. The moments after “Where Do We Go From Here” that lead up to the Spuffy kiss.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction created for fun and no profit has been made. All rights belong to the respective owners.

Prompt: [Amnesty XLVI] #001 Sweet + #144 Ache + #356 Double/Triple Drabbles

Crossposted: [community profile] anythingdrabble, [community profile] drabble_zone, [community profile] sweetandshort, [community profile] emotion100, My journal, Sunnydale After Dark


READ: Double drabble/Laid Bare )
cornerofmadness: (Default)
cornerofmadness ([personal profile] cornerofmadness) wrote2025-09-20 10:01 pm

Hopes Dashed

So THIS house hit the market yesterday at 163K

It's gorgeous. It's everything I could want in a Victorian house. I was ready to call my bank to work up what I can afford. Then I calmed my ass down and looked it over. WHY so cheap? Yeah Wellston kinda sucks but it's not too bad. Sends to Dad. Why so cheap?

His response. Ghosts in that attic, demons in that basement (truth) buy it. We all were concerned that it looked like the basement wall is collapsing and if that's the case I can't afford to fix a foundation. [personal profile] evil_little_dog is already plotting how to redo the fence (so you can get to the garage) and putting in trees and apparently showing up with all her possessions, ha.

Today I go to Wellston and look. It's one block off the main drag. At the corner of the block is the abandoned (haunted!!) old Loy Hospital (jackasses busting out windows), some business I have no clue about and a non denomination (which I keep typing as demonation) church with a hand painted sign that says COMPELL CHRIST (like that's not ominous). On the other side of the block is a small business and the old school turned community center and Adena health clinic (is it a drug rehab place? I forgot to look. Good going Dana) Down the road is nothing but big houses like this one and St Peter and St Paul Catholic church and Grace Baptist.

I. Want. This. House. I don't wanna live in town. It's not the best area. I don't even care. I come home and find out why so cheap. It was a typo. It's 263K not 163. SIGH. Keeping my eye on it. If you knock off 30K I could probably still buy it but at that price I'm not sure I want that neighborhood. I'll end up with old hospital ghosts or something.


My stomach is no longer burning (huzzah) but I am still weak, exhausted and getting nauseated. Of course I suspected potential ulcers before this. I need to keep my eye on this. But I did get a letter (again! OMG why letters?) from Cabell Hospital about a telehealth appointment with the nurse prac. WHY? I haven't had the CT scan yet and I just saw the actual doc. Yet another call I need to make.


I did watch Glitch's Knights of Guinevere. It was....interesting. I'm not as jazzed as the rest of the internet who are acting like this is the second coming. That aside, I did really like it and am disappointed I'll be waiting months if not a year for more. It definitely comes out swinging (right at Disney). I do think I need a second watch, pausing to read all the worldbuilding posters etc in the background.

not really a spoiler but just in case )




And I haven't done Science Saturday in a while so have some links


here.

Scientists invent new sunscreen made from pollen and it doesn't hurt coral reefs like traditional sunscreen does

Diet change could make brain cancer easier to treat, early study hints

Kneeling Bull: A 5,000-year-old hybrid creature from Iran with a mysterious purpose The click baity title aside, there isn't much to the article but the sculpture is cool

James Webb telescope finds a warped 'Butterfly Star' shedding its chrysalis — Space photo of the week

Here’s Exactly What Happens to Your Body if You Eat Celery Every Day more the nutrition of celery. I love celery. I'm not allowed to eat it. Sigh.
chez_jae: (Archer book)
chez_jae ([personal profile] chez_jae) wrote2025-09-19 11:13 pm

Book 91, 2025

First Moon (Four Moons, #1)First Moon by Richard Amos

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


View all my reviews

I finished an ebook last night. It was First Moon by Richard Amos, and it’s the first book in the “Four Moons” urban fantasy series. The main character is Akira Murakami, who’s half-werewolf and half something else.

Akira is the son of the High Werewolf, making him practically royalty. However, he’s turned his back on politics and makes his own way in the world as a hired sword. Akira is good at his chosen job. He’s also a kick-ass baker. He enjoys making treats for Gabriel, the werewolf bodyguard that his father has assigned to him. Akira has the hots for Gabriel, but he tries to tamp it down so as not to make things (more) awkward between them. When werewolves begin turning up dead around London, killed in a ritualistic manner, Akira finds himself in the middle of the situation.

I liked this. It was interesting and different from the urban fantasy I usually read. World-building was okay, and characters were portrayed well. The narrative alternated between action scenes and downtime for Akira. He did come across (to me at least) as a bit immature, but he’s only 24. I also didn’t like that Akira was a bit of a slag. LOL! I mean, good for him, but I prefer characters who are more...selective, shall we say. Throughout the story, I kept wondering who the villain was. I suspected and rejected various other characters, and it was a bit of a surprise at the end. Speaking of which, there was precious little resolution at the end. It’s possible to provide closure and still leave the reader eager to read the next book in the series.

Favorite lines:
♦ The only thing that could ever rattle me was a cake that wouldn’t rise.
♦ Sometimes you could just feel a shit storm brewing.

Very good, four stars
cornerofmadness: (Default)
cornerofmadness ([personal profile] cornerofmadness) wrote2025-09-19 09:18 pm

Nothing but fandom

Because the day was boring and I'm still unwell so have fiction



Title: Something to Make My Heart Beat the Faster

Summary: Charlie has decided to make a more in depth infomercial for the hotel. Alastor’s input is to add a little melodrama to it as well to showcase the idea of self-sacrifice as a path to redemption, volunteering Husk for the short movie. Angel can’t wait and he has ideas of his own for how this should go. He’s the movie expert, after all.

Rating: mature

Notes: Written for spikegirl58’s six word challenge. The six words were Wet, Implied, Thirsty, Dress, Grumpy & Surprise. These words couldn’t have been more perfect for a story inspired by (and spoilers for) the S2 teaser if they had tried. Also written for the allbingo prompt of rum and the lyrical titles bingo challenge for the prompt a pre-1950s song. I chose All the Things You Are, originally written for a 1939 musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammestein and covered by many. This version if by Ella Fitzgerald.

This is definitely a spoiler for that little teaser trailer for S2 so read or not accordingly if you don’t want even a hint of spoiler.

Story at the above link or under the cut )

Goodbye For Now 光渊 | Justice in the Dark


Dressed To Kill Torchwood

Chance Meeting Doctor Who

You Are Perfect Final Fantasy XV

Trouvaille The Owl House

Crazy For Trying Torchwood

In At The Deep End FAKE

You're Too Sweet For Me Hazbin Hotel

Freeze Frames Hazbin Hotel

Power to the People Stargate Atlantis

Making Something from Nothing Stargate SG-1/Stargate Atlantis

A Weapon of His Making Hazbin Hotel

Score: i√2 to 𓅧 Elementary

DVD Commentary for Score: Q to 12 Elementary

The Aftershow The Amazing Digital Circus

Barely Holding On Torchwood

A Better Man Buffy the Vampire Slayer

C is for.... Conductor Stargate Atlantis

who cares (i'm fine) The Amazing Digital Circus
cornerofmadness: (Default)
cornerofmadness ([personal profile] cornerofmadness) wrote2025-09-18 10:36 pm
Entry tags:

Damage might have been done

So after throwing up at 1 AM as I was getting ready for bed I made a choice to not continue at the moment on this med. My heart burn is so bad and the nausea rampant that there was no way to keep on to 'see if I adjust'. It took until 10 tonight to not be nauseated but my stomach hurts so badly that I was honestly weighing going to the ER to be sure it's not a bleeding ulcer. I chose not to because a) I doubt they'd do anything other than to say see a GI doc (like 4 months from now) b) cut for tmi ) I still might go to urgent care if this pain and heart burn continue. I am worried that the med made my stomach issues worse.

Saw the allergist today. No one took my blood pressure. I should have asked them to but I was still SO sick at that point (he saw it immediately) I'm still light headed (another reasons to fear a bleed but as I said, there aren't signs of one so I'm not hitting the panic button yet). Got my allergy pills redone.

Went to get meds in Jackson, wanted to do the Jackson Apple fest. went to the library to see the quilt part of it and...they didn't do it this year. Aw. Then realized the building they usually do the craft vendors in is being torn down and I didn't know where they'd be now and also realized I was way too light headed to walk blocks to this so I came home. Sigh.

Have some community recs

[community profile] therealljidol What would you get if you took a writing competition added the twists and turns of reality television and put it on a rollercoaster with iffy brakes? You'd get LJ Idol: "A microcosm of everything Livejournal". this is on their DW profile page...


[community profile] characters20in20 A Dreamwidth 20in20 Icon challenge community!


[community profile] fandomweekly multifandom weekly short fic challenge
hannah: (Stargate Atlantis - zaneetas)
hannah ([personal profile] hannah) wrote2025-09-18 10:10 pm

Strolling through.

The highlight of the day was sending out a pair of novel queries, the first in a while. Beyond that, not much. I got the flu and TDAP boosters yesterday, so my arm's sore enough I didn't want to move it a whole lot, certainly not for weightlifting, so all it was in the gym was the treadmill.

I also found out why I hadn't been informed of certain family developments: they're all on the family group chat. However, everyone else is using the iPhone's proprietary message system. Last week I turned that off to just get text messages, thinking that might help with coordinating movie theater seats - if an iPhone message wouldn't get sent, maybe a text would. Then the other people arrived and I didn't think about it for several days, until my dad gave me a call the other day about recent ongoing developments. I tried turning that feature back on, but it didn't bring in the backlog of things that'd been shared, so I'm still at a loss for how things are going. I'm also really tempted to turn it back off, just to see what happens. Except given how my phone's already largely incapable of getting internet-based message services, there's not much of a difference to be made.
solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)
solarbird ([personal profile] solarbird) wrote2025-09-18 06:07 pm

Report: FBI to designate trans people ‘violent extremists’

I would like to wish all the people who fought with me and sneered at me about how Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris were no better than Donald Trump and sat out the election and encouraged others to do the same a very happy DRINK SOME FUCKING BLEACH:

FBI Readies New War on Trans People
“We’re looking at the entire web”
Ken Klippenstein
Sep 18, 2025

The Trump administration is preparing to designate transgender people as “violent extremists” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, two national security officials tell me.

Under the plan being discussed, the FBI would treat transgender suspects as a subset of the Bureau’s new threat category, “Nihilistic Violent Extremists” (NVEs).

This is, yes, OBVIOUSLY, a duplication of Putin’s moves to designate target groups as “extremist organisations,” whether there’s an organisation or not, as “LGBT” was designated a couple of years ago, leading to the de facto re-illegialisation of LGBT people and large scale prosecutions.

Every other kind of queer is probably gonna be next.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)
solarbird ([personal profile] solarbird) wrote2025-09-18 10:41 am

greg gutfield’s fascist rant

I do not believe it’s a minor thing that Greg “let’s reclaim the word Nazi” Gutfield is repurposing Hitler’s “Jewish hypnotism” libel against trans people to transfer guilt from a cis white boy from a conservative family:

“[The shooter] was a patsy. He was under the hypnotic spell of a direct to consumer nihilism – the trans cult.”

Greg Gutfield on Fox

There are plenty of other full-on-fascist declarations in this rant, too, not the least of which being the open declaration that they “don’t care” about “what-abouts,” which is to say, the overwhelming share of violence being from the right, or, in this case, the literal assassination of two Democratic state officials earlier this summer by a MAGA supporter with an extended list of targets. Those don’t count, because Democrats. Only MAGA are people, only MAGA have rights, only Trump can be king.

But it’s still important, and the one I think people may miss. This is, again, literally Hitler libel from a many who proposed “reclaiming” the word “Nazi” this summer.

If he wants the word so much, let’s apply it to him.

Greg Gutfield is a Nazi.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)
solarbird ([personal profile] solarbird) wrote2025-09-18 08:18 am

the regime going all in on censorship, while advisors push for mass arrests

The grim times we’ve been expecting are here.

Congressman Ronny Jackson (R-TX) calls trans people a virus and a cancer that must be censored, isolated, and imprisoned en masse. It’s a call for genocide, or – as they said during the election – for “eradication.”

Laura Loomer, an important Trump confidante and aide, calls for a Trump dictatorship and mass arrests and prosecution of “leftists” (which for her absolutely includes liberals):

Laura Loomer on X:"I was thinking about this over the last few nights while I couldn't sleep.I have to say, I do want President Trump to be the 'dictator' the Left thinks he is, and I want the right to be as devoted to locking up and silencing our violent political enemies as they pretend we are.I've had enough of the Left only thinking we will defund them, prosecute them, lock them up and dismantle their power for generations to come.It just needs to happen."7:23AM - September 13, 2025

Trump and MAGA are following Putin’s playbook on the media, pushing it either into the hands of ideological compatriots or into silence:

Senator Adam Schiff on X:"Kimmel. Colbert. Suits against the New York TImes, Wall Street Journal, and 60 minutes. Extorting settlements from CBS, ABC, and others. Blocking the AP's access to the White House. This administration is responsible for the most blatant attacks on the free press in American history. What will be left of the First Amendment when he's done?"

Correct commentary from Mastodon:

Kimmel is about as controversial as a goldfish here. They aren’t serious about it being a problem; the whole •point• is that it’s obviously •not• a problem.

They are using something extremely benign to test the waters of government repression of speech, to see just how much they can get away with — and ABC caved like 3rd-grade toothpick bridge.

It’s relevant that there are mergers in process and it’s clear that Trump would fuck with them if they didn’t pull Kimmel down:

Nexstar Media Group, which is seeking FCC approval for a multi-billion-dollar merger with Tegna, said its ABC affiliates would not air Kimmel’s show before ABC announced its own decision.

Even Karl fucking Rove thinks they’ve gone too far, but that won’t stop them, or even slow them down:

‘They’ Didn’t Kill Charlie Kirk. It insults his memory to blame political opponents for one man’s heinous act.

Meanwhile, Trump demands federal investigations into ‘organized’ Trump protesters – this is also out of Putin’s playbook:

Earlier this week, responding to a conservative reporter who said that anti-war protesters near the White House “still have their First Amendment right,” Trump replied, “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure.”

It’s against this backdrop that Politico reported [that] the Justice Department’s No. 2 official said Tuesday that people noisily protesting President Donald Trump could face investigation if they’re part of broader networks organizing such activities.

Worth reading: Keep An Eye on What We Know (And Don’t) – 15 September 2025 – TPM:

In the current environment I think it’s fair to say there’s really no reason to believe anything we’re hearing from federal law enforcement, either formally or on background to reporters.

Worth reading: Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause – 16 September 2025 – Vanity Fair / Ta-Nehisi Coates:

It is not just, for instance, that Kirk held disagreeable views—that he was pro-life, that he believed in public executions, or that he rejected the separation of church and state. It’s that Kirk reveled in open bigotry.

Finally, an article and a concept that’s been gaining traction: It’s Time for Americans to Start Talking About “Soft Secession”:

Not the violent rupture of 1861, but something else entirely. Blue states building parallel systems, withholding cooperation, and creating facts on the ground that render federal authority meaningless within their borders.

See also: In the disunited states, conflict and uncertainty rule, which also brings up “Soft Secession,” and I’ve seen people holding signs up about it at protests since the original column came out.

I feel I don’t really have to say, “shit’s bad, folks,” but, well – shit’s bad, folks. If there’s a protest near you, find it, and join it.

They can’t arrest literally everyone, and Trump does chicken out – the only response you can have to him is push back as hard as you can, every time.

And that means right now.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.