The 'Harvard degree' isn't the only secret...

And my manager was like no!!!! If that happened, I would drive to find you guys in my truck and we could eat stuff from my wife's garden and I would make sure everyone I know survived!! I would carry you all on my shoulders away from the zombies!!

The idea that societal collapse exposes mankind’s true nature ignores one thing: society IS mankind. We make it, just by being around each other. Social mores and customs aren’t arbitrary rules inflicted on us by some unseen force, they’re our own behaviors and views. We say please and thank you because we want to be kind. We establish charities because we want to help others. We set up garbage cans because we want to be clean. We’re the ones setting the standards and frowning at the people who don’t rise to meet them. We’re the ones who are appalled by the cruelties in our history.

The problem with nearly every post-apocalypse story is that they take the worst behavior of people during a riot or a natural disaster, extrapolate it to all of humanity, and assume that situation never changes. But even the worst disasters end. Hurricane Katrina looters aren't still looting. And there were far more people helping than looting.

that's not great. but it's not the whole story.

a few things got worse right before the vote too. the language that explicitly protected encryption, saying the bill couldn't be used to force platforms to weaken it, got quietly stripped out on Friday. that safeguard just doesn't exist anymore.

but this isn't over. it heads to the senate next, and the senate is genuinely not on board. blumenthal and cantwell, two of the senators who wrote the original KOSA, are saying they don't want this version near a markup. blackburn, a republican and the other original author, called the missing duty of care provision a red line.

worth being clear here, blackburn isn't on our side. she wants the policy stronger, not gone. but that's still a crack we can use. her opposition means the house version has zero guaranteed path through the senate as written, and a stalled bill is a bill that isn't law yet. use her objection, don't trust her motive.

senate commerce hasn't even scheduled a markup yet. that's the next pressure point. this thing has died or gotten majorly rewritten at this stage before.

contact your senators: find yours here. tell them you don't want the house version anywhere near a vote.

and remember, if you have to, contact your senators scared. anything helps.

And A big part of The Steps (disclaimer: can be reinterpreted and used atheistically but were invented from a religious perspective) is giving yourself over to God and making peace with the idea that you don’t have power over your life, God does, and God will purify your soul and forgive your sins when you follow this Addiction Rulebook yada yada.

It’s a trauma thing and it’s an Armand-ism, the way that he is perpetually unable to just Exist and Figure it out As He Goes. He NEEDS this structure that can tell him what to do and how to live and keep him stuck together with glue so that he doesn’t fall apart. But it’s also very very autistic, this inability to navigate nuanced, deeply social, deeply human conflicts and situations outside of a routine, or a structure, or a This is How You Do This Step by Step pamphlet.

And god, Armand is so heartbreaking in this episode you just feel for him so much 😭. He’s fumbling around stuttering like a child and of course it’s not working. Of course the formulaic neat-little-bow 12 steps approach is not vast enough to amend the kind of shit Armand’s done and the history he has with these people. But the heartbreaking part is he really genuinely is being sincere. He really is trying to be good, he’s just so so unable to connect with people in the fundamental common ways that social interaction is built on.

His apology notes are written like ChatGPT or some weird overly formal archaic textbook summary of his history, and he reads his own words from the “deepest regions of his soul” sounding like a phone operator unconfidently rehearsing the side effects of a bowel softener. He’s staring at the page with his hand shaking without a whiff of earnestness on his flat placid face, and I can’t blame lestat or Daniel at all for laughing in his face and calling bullshit. But I understand him I really do and god it’s sad.

I feel like such a big part of the disconnect with that part of the fandom that theorizes every single thing Armand does and says, regardless of logic or characterization or plot, is some sort of deeply contrived elaborate evil lie or scheme is because they fail to understand that Armand is just very legitimately awkward 💀. Like yes he is dangerous, yes he is powerful, yes he is very old, but this does not somehow contradict the idea that he is genuinely just awkward and not that clever and not great at communicating like a person.

Stripe-necked Mongoose (Urva vitticolla), mutual grooming, family Herpestidae, Western Ghats of southern India