In the spirit of Timothy Snyder's lessons for those faced with tyranny (quoted above), I would like to remind folks that:
You can't deport an American citizen. You can't extradite someone who has not been accused--formally, in a court of law--of a crime. What ICE does is called rendition. It has nothing to do with law and order.
The person who murdered the CEO of United Healthcare is not called Luigi. We don't know who they are. Luigi Mangione has been accused of the crime. In accordance with law and order, he is not a criminal until such time as he is convicted according to the preponderance of evidence. If you must give that murderer a name, call them the Claims Adjuster.
(Cool motive. Still murder.)
People are not illegal. Immigration into the United States is not an illegal act. Immigration into the United States without going through the proper channels is a misdemeanor. Call immigrants immigrants, except when they are in fact refugees.
It isn't inflation when company profits go up right alongside company prices. It's price gouging.
New departments of the federal government must be established by act of Congress. The correct way to refer to DOGE is Department (sic) of Government Efficiency.
If somebody says that services that keep people alive should be cut for the undeserving, don't try to argue that the people being thrown into the abyss are in fact deserving of life. Call the person making the argument a sick fuck for asserting that anybody born on this Earth does not deserve life. Call them a sick fuck for trying to apply efficiency or the profit motive to keeping people alive.
A/N: I find my titles becoming less and less creative, oh well. Also uncharacteristically insecure about the beginning of this but I still like it. Not requested, I was just thirsting for Lucifer yet again. I hope you enjoy!
Pairing: Lucifer x MC
Warnings: I’m not sure if this should really be stated but just in case it is a trigger to some people; there is slight ownership play in this (is that even what you’d call it?). Also, slight spoilers for lesson 9.
Requests are open!! Send something in!
Despite being a game, Doji Maji Memoriam felt quite real.
The metal of the bleachers under your thighs was warm from the sun. The singing of the birds was melodic and sweet. The breeze carried cherry blossoms that flew past you and landed in your hair. The lemonade you were sipping on tasted sweet. And your heart fluttered just as much when Lucifer was near you.
Luckily, this game allowed him to be in his own body despite the fact that he was currently in Satan’s in the Devildom. It made communicating with him much easier, you were no longer messing his name up with Satan’s. It also allowed you to shamelessly stare at him without Satan noticing the eyes on his current body, and teasing you for it.
It was nice.
You were stress-free for the most part. The possibility that you will not complete the game and therefore be stuck in this universe for the end of time, was now just a fleeting thought.
You had bigger problems to focus on, like whose confession you would accept at the end of the game.
You wanted to accept Lucifer’s since your adoration for him extended outside of this universe, too. The problem with that? The teasing you would receive from Satan and Levi, and the taunting you would endure from the other brothers when they were told about your choice. Also, the possibility that his feelings would not reciprocate once you all got back. This wasn’t just a game to you, and you didn’t want to be taken for a foolish and naive human. Not again.
You could accept Satan’s. What would he get out of that, though? Other than one upping Lucifer, of course. You wanted their relationship to repair, that was the whole point of this after all. At least if Lucifer won, he wouldn’t rub it in Satan’s face. If Satan won, however…
Yeah, Satan was a definite no.
At this point, Leviathan seemed like the best choice; the one that would have the least consequences. Sure, he’d rub it in their faces but it was nothing they weren’t already used to. It would also make him happy, happier than it would make Lucifer or Satan, for sure. This was his game after all, losing would greatly upset him.
Your thoughts had you in a trance, so preoccupied weighing the pros and cons that you didn’t notice when Lucifer walked up the bleachers and took a seat next to you.
“Ahem…” A throat clearing to your left strikes you out of your contemplation.
You startle, turning your head and eyes meeting with sparkling ruby. A smirk lifts the corner of his lips up, your eyes watching every miniscule movement. He leans forwards, and your breath catches in your throat.
Is he? Is he going to kiss you?
Instinctively you shut your eyes, lips pursing just the slightest. Your heart thuds inside your chest, suddenly you are too aware of the flips going on in your stomach.
Your mind races; What will his lips feel like? Surely they’ll be soft, just like how they look. And what would he taste like? Maybe the black coffee he often drinks. Or mint. Or something else completely, something you wouldn’t be able to put a name to.
And as quick as the excitement starts, it ends.
You don’t feel his lips on yours, rather his hand running through your hair. Eyes snapping open, you watch as he plucks a stray cherry blossom out of your hair, pulling back and examining the small pale petal in his hand. The smirk on his face now accompanied with an amused twinkle in his eyes.
‘Of course he wasn’t going to kiss you,’ You think to yourself. Trying so hard to keep your tears of embarrassment and flared cheeks at bay.
He takes notice of the water rising in your eyes, and his cocky facade falters. Lucifer never meant to make you upset, he had to fix this.
Lucifer reaches out and takes your hand, opening it and placing the petal in your palm. He can’t help but take notice of how much you have in common with this small cherry blossom.
Both of you are soft. Almost unbearingly so, he just wants to scoop you up and revel in your velvety smoothness. Both of you are fragile. So delicate, he’s scared the slightest touch will have you crack into a million pieces. Maybe that’s what keeps him from pulling you into his grasp. However, it doesn’t stop him from lifting your other hand to his lips.
His humid breath fans over your skin, his eyes stare into yours. Suddenly, your cheeks are red for a completely different reason from embarrassment.
When his lips meet your skin, your insides tighten up in the most delicious way. For something you imagined on repeat in your head, you never thought this would actually happen. It’s blissful. You never want him to stop.
“You humans are so fragile. So innocent compared to us demons, so pure. I just want to devour you whole, encase you in my very being. Make you all mine.” Lucifer breathes out, voice barely above a whisper. His lips trail to your fingers, taking one in his mouth and sucking.
“I-I..I’m.” You stammer, eyes growing wide.
“Shhh.” He hushes you, pulling his mouth away and nibbling on your fingertips before moving his lips up your wrist and arms. Kissing you all the way.
Listening to his soft command, you try your best to relax. Gulping on nothing, your mouth dryer than any desert. You were right, his lips are soft. They feel like heaven.
‘Ironic.’ You stifle a laugh, but Lucifer notices. He stops and lifts his head up from where it was resting on the inside of your elbow.
That smirk is back, along with the twinkle in his scarlet red eyes.
“What’s the matter, my dove?” He hums, though you know it's not exactly a question.
You try to speak, but a lump in your throat keeps any sounds from getting out. He quirks an eyebrow at your silence, so you clear your throat and try again.
“I-I was just thinking…” Pausing as that embarrassment from earlier comes flooding back in. You can’t believe this was happening. “I was just thinking, that it’s-it’s ironic how someone so...sinful could make me feel something so heavenly.” You stumble out the words, faltering when his lips and teeth meet your skin again.
He laughs a little at that, the vibrations from it pulsing through your veins; and you let out a small moan. Lucifer falters at the sound, looking at you from the corner of his eyes before making his way up your arm with his kisses. When he gets to your neck, a gentle kiss is placed on your shoulder before he licks a long stripe from the base of your neck to below your earlobe.
If your red cheeks weren’t bad before, they were bad now.
“You’re really enjoying this, huh?” He whispers in your ear, before licking that too. You shiver as he continues. “I’m glad. I’ll have you feeling no other way.”
Slowly, confidence comes running into your veins. Feeling emboldened, you bring your hand to his hair. Clutching it roughly before a growl from him stops you, so you resort to just running your fingers through it. Unsurprisingly, his hair is just as smooth as his lips and skin. Who knew someone who kept such a cold resolve could be so soft. It brought a smile to your face.
Lucifer lifts his head up from kissing your neck and pulls your hand away from his hair. A look in his eye that could only be described as dominant. He knew who was in control here, he had to make sure you hadn’t forgotten. So he pulls your hand to your side, keeping a careful grip on your wrist.
He leans forwards so his lips are fanning breath over yours; “Who do you belong to?” He teases, smirking as your jaw drops in awe.
“I-I don’t know.” Your mind going blank as you stutter. Luc doesn’t like that answer, so he pulls away slightly leaving you whining.
“Who,” He tightens his grip on your wrist. “Do you belong to?”
This time you make sure your mind doesn’t draw a blank, he was making it fairly obvious who you did belong to anyways.
“You.”
He hums, “Say my name.”
“You, Lucifer. I belong to you.” You state after drawing a breath in.
Liking the answer, he smiles a little and moves his hand at your wrist to intertwine with your fingers. Then, he leans forwards.
“May I?” Ever the gentleman.
You smile, giggling a little before you give him consent. And before you know it, his lips are finally firmly pressed against yours.
The kiss is passionate, and he slowly lowers your body so you’re laying down on the bleachers. He climbs on top of you, his lips never leaving yours.
You stay like that for a few minutes, before he nips on your bottom lip and pulls away, breathing heavily. You, also breathing just as heavily.
With you under him he can’t help but take notice of how beautiful you truly are. The sparkle in your eyes, the way the sun warms your features up. The gentle heaving of your chest, and the way your hair rustles in the breeze.
He gets lost in your features, as do you get lost in his. You’re about to speak up when his hand comes closer.
'Verb Stems' are an important part of the Japanese Language and in this lesson we are going to learn you how to forｍ them.
As we have learned you before, we have three types of verbs in the Japanese language:
Ichidan Verbs 【一段・いちだん】
Godan Verbs 【五段・ごだん】
Irrigular Verbs 【不規則動詞・ふきそくどうし】
For all three verb types, you first form the ます form.
For Example:
Ichidan Verb ➜ 食べる 【たべる】 ➜ 食べます
Godan Verb ➜ 飲む 【のむ】 ➜ 飲みます
Irrigular Verb ➜ する ➜ します
Now to form the 'Verb Stem', you just drop the ます at the end ➜
Ichidan Verb ➜ 食べます ➜ 食べ
Godan Verb ➜ 飲みます ➜ 飲む
Irrigular Verb ➜ します ➜ し
Lesson 9 - Regular verbs 1 (present and past tense)
In Danish we can differentiate between three different types of verbs: regular verbs (type 1), regular verbs (type 2) and irregular verbs. In this lesson we will look at the regular verbs of type 1 and how it conjugates in present and past tense. Remember that the conjugation of a verb is the same across all pronouns in Danish.
Regular verbs type 1
Note: “at lege” and “at spille” both means “to play”. The difference is that “at lege” is the sort of playing that kids do (e.g. playing with toys) and “at spille” is the act of playing a game (e.g. playing football, playing a video game, playing a boardgame).
The formula for present tense is:
(pronoun) + (verb) + r e.g. jeg arbejder
The formula for past tense is:
(pronoun) + (verb) + de e.g. hun cyklede
Example sentences
Jeg arbejder hver dag = I work every day
Han arbejdede i går = He worked yesterday
Hvad laver du? = What are you doing? or What are you up to?
Jeg laver en smoothie = I am making a smoothie
De cykler til stranden = They are biking to the beach
Cykler du i morgen? = Are you biking tomorrow?
Vi cyklede i skole = We rode our bikes to school or We were biking to school
Børnene leger udenfor = The kids are playing outside
Hun legede med hans følelser = She played with his feelings (here “at lege” is used, since playing with someone's feeling is considered a childish behaviour)
Vi spiller et spil = We are playing a game
Jeg spillede Tetris = I played Tetris
Spiller du poker? = Do you play poker?
If you have any questions or feedback feel free to submit a question/feedback at danishwithemi.tumblr.com/ask and I will answer as soon as possible.
Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Victor Klemper, a literary scholar of Jewish origin, turned his pathological training against Nazi propaganda. He noticed how Hitler's language rejected legitimate opposition: "the people" always meant some people and not others (an American president said "my people"), encounters were always "struggles" (an American variant is "winning"), and any attempt to understand the world in a different way was "defamation" of the leader (or, as an American president put it, "treason").
Politicians in our time feed their cliches to television, where even those who wish to disagree repeat them. Television purports to challenge political language by conveying images, but the succession from one frame to another can hinder a sense of resolution. Everything happens fast, but nothing actually happens. Each story on televised news is "breaking" until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.
The effort to define the shape and significance of events requires words and concepts that elude us when we are entranced by visual stimuli. Watching televised news is sometimes little more than looking at someone who is also looking at a picture. We take this collective trance to be normal. We have slowly fallen into it.
More than half a century ago, the classic novels of totalitarianism warned of the domination of screens, the suppression of books, the narrowing of vocabularies, and the associated difficulties of thought. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953, fireman find and burn books while most citizens watch interactive television. In George Orwell's "1984", published in 1949, books are banned and television is two-way, allowing the government to observe citizens at all times. In "1984", the language of visual media is highly constrained, to starve the public of the concepts needed to think about the present, remember the past, and consider the future. One of the regimes projects is to limit the language further by eliminating ever more words with each addition of the official dictionary.
Staring at screens is perhaps unavoidable, but the two-dimensional world makes little sense unless we can draw upon a mental armory that we have developed somewhere else. When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading. So get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books. The characters in Orwell's and Bradbury's books could not do this -but we still can.
What to read? Any good novel enlivens our ability to think about ambiguous situations and judge the intentions of others. Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" and Milan Kunderas "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" might suit our moment. Sinclair Lewis's novel "It Can't Happen Here" Is perhaps not a great work of art; Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" is better. One novel known by millions of young Americans that offers an account of tyranny and resistance is J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". If you or your friends or your children did not read it that way the first time, then it bears reading again.
Some of the political and historical texts that inform the arguments made here are "Politics and The English language" by George Orwell (1946); "The Language of the Third Reich" by Victor Klemper (1947); "The Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt (1951); "The Rebel" by Albert Camus (1951); "The Captive Mind" by Czeslaw Milosz (1953); "The Power of the Powerless" by Vaclav Havel (1978); "How To Be a Conservative-Liberal-Socialist" by Leszek Kolakowski (1978); "The Uses of Adversity" by Timothy Garton Ash (1989); " The Burden of Responsibility" by Tony Judt (1998); "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning (1992); and "Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible" by Peter Pomerantsev (2014).
Christians might return to the foundational book, which as ever is very timely. Jesus preached that it "is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." We should be modest, for " whoever shall exalt himself shall be a based; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted." And of course we must be concerned with what is true and what is false: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
