Ty in Bedlam's Fandom Wonders

They/Them. Current obsession is 9-1-1, and I'm Buddie-shipper above all.

[prettyboybuckley]

With how it feels like we got to the point of Buck being bi so organically (in my opinion at least), I don't think I want some kind of reveal that one or both of them has been pining after the other/each other the past few seasons, no matter how much fun that is in fic.

Because I think there is something even more beautiful about the idea that they love each other deeply but have never considered the possibility of that love going beyond just, well, love

There are a lot of ways to love someone and it seems that Buck has just discovered for himself that, yeah, he could get behind dating a guy. Loving a man the way he's loved women is a kind of love he could see for himself.

The foundation Buck and Eddie have built, their friendship, has always been what has drawn me to them.

And I think that building a new relationship on top of that foundation, a new kind of love, together, is so much more powerful than it having been that kind of love (romantic, sexual, whatever you want to call it) right from the start for either (or both) of them.

They've got some work to do before they can get there, but when they do it's going to be beautiful

[cidham]

amir khusrow (1253–1325 CE)

[cherepashkadrabbles]

This is back on my dash! And listen, I love to see Amir Khusrau getting appreciation, but this translation ignores a lot. The original rhymes! And scans! And does playful things with register! And conveys a tone of affectionate banter between the two speakers, not least because it has them both addressing each other as sakhi (translated above as “girl”) in the last two lines. I think taking some liberties with line order is worth it to preserve more of the rest—and I think there’s a better translation of sakhi. And so:

He only visits once a year, I splurge big on him when he’s here, His kisses make my tastebuds tango. Who, bitch, your man? Nah, bitch, a mango.

[no-longer-another-bondi-blonde]

Thousands of premature infants were saved from certain death by being part of a Coney Island entertainment sideshow.

At the time premature babies were considered genetically inferior, and were simply left to fend for themselves and ultimately die.

Dr Martin Couney offered desperate parents a pioneering solution that was as expensive as it was experimental - and came up with a very unusual way of covering the costs.

It was Coney Island in the early 1900’s. Beyond the Four-Legged Woman, the sword swallowers, and “Lionel the Lion-Faced Man,” was an entirely different exhibit: rows of tiny, premature human babies living in glass incubators.

The brainchild of this exhibit was Dr. Martin Couney, an enigmatic figure in the history of medicine. Couney created and ran incubator-baby exhibits on the island from 1903 to the early 1940s.

Behind the gaudy facade, premature babies were fighting for their lives, attended by a team of medical professionals.To see them, punters paid 25 cents.The public funding paid for the expensive care, which cost about $15 a day in 1903 (the equivalent of $405 today) per incubator.

Couney was in the lifesaving business, and he took it seriously. The exhibit was immaculate. When new children arrived, dropped off by panicked parents who knew Couney could help them where hospitals could not, they were immediately bathed, rubbed with alcohol and swaddled tight, then “placed in an incubator kept at 96 or so degrees, depending on the patient. Every two hours, those who could suckle were carried upstairs on a tiny elevator and fed by breast by wet nurses who lived in the building. The rest [were fed by] a funneled spoon. The smallest baby Couney handled is reported to have weighed a pound and a half.

His nurses all wore starched white uniforms and the facility was always spotlessly clean.

An early advocate of breast feeding, if he caught his wet nurses smoking or drinking they were sacked on the spot. He even employed a cook to make healthy meals for them.

The incubators themselves were a medical miracle, 40 years ahead of what was being developed in America at that time.

Each incubator was made of steel and glass and stood on legs, about 5ft tall. A water boiler on the outside supplied hot water to a pipe running underneath a bed of mesh, upon which the baby slept.

Race, economic class, and social status were never factors in his decision to treat and Couney never charged the parents for the babies care.The names were always kept anonymous, and in later years the doctor would stage reunions of his “graduates.

According to historian Jeffrey Baker, Couney’s exhibits “offered a standard of technological care not matched in any hospital of the time.”

Throughout his decades of saving babies, Couney understood there were better options. He tried to sell, or even donate, his incubators to hospitals, but they didn’t want them. He even offered all his incubators to the city of New York in 1940, but was turned down.

In a career spanning nearly half a century he claimed to have saved nearly 6,500 babies with a success rate of 85 per cent, according to the Coney Island History

In 1943, Cornell New York Hospital opened the city’s first dedicated premature infant station. As more hospitals began to adopt incubators and his techniques, Couney closed the show at Coney Island. He said his work was done.

Today, one in 10 babies born in the United States is premature, but their chance of survival is vastly improved—thanks to Couney and the carnival babies.

https://nypost.com/2018/07/23/how-fake-docs-carnival-sideshow-brought-baby-incubators-to-main-stage/

Book: The strange case of Dr. Couney

New York Post Photograph: Beth Allen

Original FB post by Liz Watkins Barton

[sar-kalu]

You know, when you think about it, Dr. Courney might have saved some 6000 babies in his life time - but if he pioneered the methods that we still use today, then he's saved every preemie baby since too.

[madistarlight]

OK BUT Did anyone else catch how Beth Allen is the premie in the picture and eventually became the New York Post Photographer who worked on that book/article? I'm going to cry

[this-is-moony-lovegood]

Just sitting here thinking about Buck trying to get Theo into sports or something so that he can find an outlet for his endless energy. So Buck shows him a bunch of different pamphlets for sports at the rec department: soccer, tee ball, basketball, etc. To no one’s surprise, Theo seems fascinated by basketball.

Of course, it’s basketball. Buck hates basketball, but if Theo wants to try it then he’ll do whatever that kid wants. When he goes to sign Theo up for the sport, they say they’ll have to add him to a waiting list. The reason? They don’t currently have enough parent volunteers to coach another 4-5 basketball team.

Buck knows nothing about basketball. Literally nothing - not that this seriously matters because it’s 4-5 year olds - but he can’t just let them not have a team that Theo and can play on. So what does he do? He tells the rec he’s got a perfect volunteer to coach and signs Eddie up.

After doing so, Buck is a little worried that Eddie is going to be mad that he signed him up for this without asking so he makes a big dinner, gets his truck washed, buys his favorite beer at the store, and goes across down for Eddie’s favorite desert. But it turns out he didn’t need to do all that because Eddie’s not even remotely mad. He’s thrilled, telling Buck, “Theo wants to play basketball? Are you kidding? This is perfect! Finally there’s a Buckley that wants to play basketball with me!”

He shows up to their next shift with a pair of basketball court shoes and a tiny LA Lakers jersey for Theo. As well as a dry-erase clipboard with the basketball court outlined on it and markers because he’s planning on making practice plans during their down time. The rest of the 118 are so confused as to why Eddie is the one coaching this team and not Buck, and keep sharing so many funny looks. But Buck can’t stop smiling because Eddie is just so excited.

When the first practice rolls around Eddie picks up Theo to take him to the gym while Buck goes to pick up Chris from some after school thing and bring the post-practice snacks for the kids because Eddie might be the coach, but Buck is the official snack dad. When Chris and Buck show up at the gym they stake seat on the bleachers with the other parents waiting for practice to end and watch. It’s a little chaotic because they’re 4 year old boys, but Eddie is so good with kids that they’re latching on to every word he says. Are the kids any good? Not in the slightest, but they’re trying their best and Eddie is beaming the whole time.

One of the mom’s comes and sits next to them, introduces herself and asks, “Which one is yours?” When he points out Theo, she says, “Oh, Theo? That means you must be Coach Eddie’s husband. God, you really know how to pick him. That man’s a miracle worker. You’re so lucky.” Buck nearly chokes, but before he can correct her, Chris pipes up beside him with a smirk replying loud enough for her to hear, “Yeah, Buck. We’re so lucky you’ve got a husband like dad.” Buck glares at him because now all the team parents are going to think he and Eddie are actually married, but Chris just gives him a shit-earring grin before going back to scrolling on his phone.

When they take turns practicing shooting at the end the only one to make a basket is Theo and everyone is so excited. The other kids cheer for him, but the first thing he does is go rushing over to Eddie who scoops him up in a big hug as Theo giggles with excitement over his basket, talking a mile a minute by giving him a replay of the shot as if Eddie hadn’t just witnessed it. Eddie just listens intently, nodding along grinning widely as he reacts to Theo’s retelling. Buck physically can’t stop the way his chest cracks in half at seeing the two of them together. Beside him Chris sighs and says, “Those heart eyes you’re wearing right now? That’s why people think you’re married.”

Buck scoffs, “I do not look at your dad with heart eyes.”

“Buck, you’ve looked at my dad with heart eyes every single day since I was seven. I know what it looks like. It’s seared into my brain.”

Buck doesn’t have time to think about Chris’s comment because Eddie calls for practice to end. After a quick chat and a team chant, Eddie directs the kids over to Buck and Chris to get snacks. In the chaos of Buck and Chris handing out snacks he doesn’t realize at first that Theo hasn’t joined them. Not until he’s got two extra snack baggie and juice boxes (one labeled with Spider-Man and the other Coach Eddie). When he looks up he sees Theo still running around on the court giggling wildly, carrying the basketball as Eddie chases him around. Eventually Eddie scoops up the 4-year-old and lifts him up to basket and lets Theo dunk. With a cheer, Theo kicks his legs for Eddie to let him down to he can get the ball and they can do it again.

That feeling comes back as he watches them this time, only for Chris to elbow him and tease, “You’re doing it again.”

Buck thinks in that moment… okay, yeah. Maybe I am… and maybe… maybe Maddie was right. It wouldn’t be so crazy…

[sooperlative]

Absolutely fascinated by Ryan Guzman’s (correct) belief that Eddie is entirely unaware of the romantic undertones that are peppered through his relationship with Buck. Or he’s not exactly unaware, but all those pieces of pepper are individual details and he can’t see the bigger picture, like putting a puzzle together while only looking at the pieces but not at what he’s got so far. He’s too naive to put things together. He’s never once considered it. If Buck were to confess to him, he’d be genuinely shocked. And Buck won’t, of course, confess, because if Buck is in love with Eddie, that’d break all the rules he’s set for this relationship. So Buck is ignoring the elephant in the room and Eddie is so zoomed in on specific parts of the elephant that he doesn’t even know it’s an elephant. He thinks that microscopic view of maybe-skin-or-an-iris is normal best friendship. Buck is “I’m not in love with Eddie obviously but if i was i wouldn’t be able to care about that rn bc I have a job and it would ruin the friendship rules I mentally gave us if he knew”. Eddie is “I want Buck to be with me all the time and I often think of him as my husband in my head and I want him to touch me and stay with me and I’ll do anything he asks of me and I worry about him a lot and whenever I think of growing old Buck is right next to me every step of the way also growing old. We’re such platonic best friends :)”. And that creates their wonderful dynamic where Buck dances around it all and Eddie is taking his hand and dancing with him because yay, they’re dancing. He loves dancing with Buck. Buck’s such a bad dancer. Ha ha.

[sooperlative]

Whilst I fully understand being upset that Buck fostering Theo feels sudden, ‘too easy’, and like it diminishes Buck’s relationship with the Diazes, I do think people need to remember that Buck doesn’t consider himself to be fully a part of that family. He’s Eddie’s best friend, but not really family as in immediate family. Like in Dutch we make the distinction between ‘gezin’ (family) and ‘familie’ (family), where ‘gezin’ is parents + children and ‘familie’ is everyone else. Buck is familie but not part of the gezin, if that makes sense? Hear me out here:

The show often frames Buck as being part of the Diaz unit, but writes him as actively keeping his distance: he’s surprised when Eddie asks him to talk to Chris both times in season 7, he (according to OS) likely didn’t call or message Chris even once while he was in Texas, he didn’t offer to join Eddie in the move to El Paso, and when Eddie and Chris move back in he moves out and states, firmly, that the house wasn’t ever really his home. Like, I got absolutely dragged on twitter for saying it, but Buck is really more akin to an uncle-esque figure than a (step)-dad in this unit. He doesn’t parent unless Eddie asks him to and very deliberately draws a line between him and Eddie-and-Chris, isn’t involved in the day-to-day of the two, and is present mostly for the fun times like a handful of dinners and game nights. Family, yes, but not too close.

There’s a dichotomy between what the character thinks he is and how the character is viewed—he kind of has a similar state of mind as Goob of Meet the Robinsons where like, yeah, Goob’s a bit of a weirdo and loser, but his perception of himself and how he’s treated is very different from the reality of the fictional universe. So how Eddie and Chris view him may be different, but Buck himself is written to not see himself as anything more than Eddie’s best friend. He doesn’t take parenting initiative, he doesn’t present himself as Christopher’s second dad, and doesn’t assume he’ll be folded into the fray if only he sits near them, because he believes he doesn’t have the right to and because he doesn’t want to overstep. The writers write him in such a way that he’s attached to both the Buckley-Hans and the Diazes in a similar way—as a family member who has his own life.

That’s ultimately what those shots when Harry basically tells him they’re in the same boat mean: Buck has angled himself away from the little groups because he’s single and childless and is keenly aware of that. He doesn’t want it, but it’s the reality for him. And that makes him realise that he could give Theo a (perhaps temporary) home, even if he’s only the donor and not legal next of kin, and then does as much. He’s in over his head, of course, but that’ll be where the rest of the 118, and likely Eddie most of all, come in: accidental baby trapping will be happening. It’ll provide some drama and shenanigans that we’re here for.

(And before anyone is like oh but it was way too easy for him to start fostering: his drug problem is likely filed as a temporary dependency on opioids as a result of a back injury (which it was; it was NOT full blown addiction yet, but close to it), the show has never once shown their characters having trouble with starting the process of fostering, CPS loves first responders for fostering, and time moves weirdly in the 9-1-1-verse so we’ve got no clue how long it took.)

[dr-shortsighted-owl]

To be very UK/England focused for a moment: Fuck Reform, and to anyone who voted for them, you’re a myopic knob jockey and I hope your pillow is always warm on both sides

How the fuck do you look at Farage and his policies and think he’s a man of the people?! Hadaway and shite, you twats

[thatdamnchampagne]

Buck still can’t understand himself to be a permanent member of the Diaz family because he sees himself as a backup. The will made him a backup father just like sperm donation made him a backup foster parent. Like his bone marrow and resemblance to Derek both made him a backup son. I think this will be a major arc for Buck next season, and it ties in really well to the still-unresolved Texas arc fallout of Buck not letting Eddie in, based on his fear that once Eddie can see the truth of his feelings, he’ll lose his temporary place in the Diaz family. And well, there’s one way for Eddie to show Buck that definitively, permanently, he wants them and their boys to be a family together. Friends to fiances trope you have never felt closer

[eddiesmedbag]

the thing is eddie is a textbook example of someone who is a hyperindependent caretaker. he wants to be there for everyone, and he will keep showing up for everyone he loves. but as soon as it is his turn to struggle, he instantly shuts down. he is fine, everything is FINE. he minimizes his own pain, emotionally and physically, because he doesn't want to be an inconvenience. he's fine, he scored a 12! his stab wound wasn't that deep!

eddie pushed down his pain about the shooting until it manifested in his ptsd arc. he pushed down his grief about shannon until the doppelganger arc happened. he pushed down his sadness about chris until he upended his whole life and moved to texas. we see this happen again and again. in each example, he doesn't talk about it until his life is already exploding. while I do think he is healing, he still has a lot of work to do.

to me, that's the biggest thing the elevator nde represented. chim offered to go with him, and eddie said no. he isolated himself again. he was feeling upset and guilty, and instead of leaning on the 118 (and especially hen) and feeling it together, eddie chose to remove himself from his chosen family. it all ties back to what abuela said in the beginning of the season. he is looking in the wrong places. he keeps trying to put his faith into this institution that hurt him when he should really be putting his faith in the people he loves.

[sooperlative]

I wanted to come back to this post now that donor baby’s (fondly referred to as Unethically Sourced White Baby, or USWB, by the server I’m in) return has occurred, but haven’t be certain on how to formulate my response. I tried. So, in a (long) defence of USWB:

I think, as a donor conceived person, that the discourse regarding the TheoandBuck of it all so far is just missing some context? People may just not know what it’s like to be donor conceived and/or adopted, have forgotten how Hen’s family is constructed, and/or be ignorant to the vast amount of ethical issues surrounding sperm- and egg-donation. That’s fine. I’ve just been seeing a lot of accusations of bio-essentialism and found family dismissal (which the show doesn’t do), and personality retconning (the behaviour is consistent with the plot’s introduction in season 6) all to give Buck a baby, and I’m not sure I agree.

I viewed a lot of Connor and Kameron’s behaviour during the dinner, in addition to their reasoning for seeking out Buck for help in season 6, as pointing to Theo being an attempt at a designer baby. Sperm- and egg-donation exists in a precarious position that can shift into eugenics rather easily: though people with genetically hereditary diseases are often barred from donating for health reasons, more and more people are pointing out that refusing donations based on mental disorders may be related to the eugenics (and thus, creation of ‘designer babies’) driving the industry, and I’m inclined to agree. Connor and Kameron largely didn’t seem to be asking for help in handling Theo (other than the “Could we speak to your mother?” comment), and instead sought out someone to blame. It didn’t come from my side of the gene pool, you better not be a criminal, he’s absolutely your kid, we’ve visited a number of professionals and none of their suggestions have helped and he might be [said ominously] Diagnosed with Something so we must ask if you are too and withheld it from us.

It’s no secret at this point that disorders like ADHD and ASD may be hereditary. It’s also no secret that it doesn’t have to be: realistically, Theo could’ve exhibited the same behaviours and symptoms if Connor had been his biological father. There’s fine line between ‘it’s okay if you’d rather your child didn’t have this’ and ‘it’s okay to pick and choose genetics to have The Best Child’: you cannot truly remove ‘a person with autism/ADHD shouldn’t donate sperm or eggs’ from eugenics, and you especially cannot disregard the optics of Connor and Kameron specifically choosing a white man to donate when Connor isn’t white.

Prospective parents should, of course, be able to make an informed decision, but as my mum put it: Buck’s behaviour, to Buck, does not include symptoms of ADHD. It’s just his behaviour. He helped them make an informed decision with the information he himself could provide, based on the questions he was asked. To go to his house and essentially blame his DNA for Theo’s behaviour (great parts of which are not solely caused by undiagnosed ADHD, because there is such thing as permissive parenting, especially if none of the four experts they consulted could come up with even slightly helpful solutions and methods) is very plainly weird. Any parent worth their salt of a donor conceived person wouldn’t blame all their child’s ‘bad’ behaviour on genetics. They’d be removing their own hand in raising the child. That, specifically, would be bio-essentialist.

The show doesn’t have a habit of using that line of thinking. Mara and Denny are not biologically related to Hen and Karen, but there’s no doubt they’re not their kids. The fandom keeps comparing Chris’ behaviour to Buck’s, Buck’s to Bobby’s, May and Harry’s to Bobby’s, and nothing is written accidentally. The show itself even has suggested Buck’s impulsive streak comes from his parents’ emotional neglect: the flashbacks of Buck Begins are steeped in the idea that he was desperate to receive their attention, and getting hurt was the only way he could.

I could go on like this. Had Bobby’s father not been an alcoholic, Bobby likely would not have drunk the whiskey after his death to connect with him. Had Ramon Diaz not had a job that had him away from home for such long stretches of time, Eddie likely wouldn’t have been so insistent on what a father’s role is in a family, and might not have joined the army after Shannon got pregnant. You’re coloured by your environment and the way you grew up, not just by your genetics. My own behaviour is most similar to that of my legal father’s: nurture, not nature.

Of course I’m not ignorant to the show’s potential implication that Buck may be better at handling Theo because they’re related—or at least, because he understands his own mind and behaviours, and as such would understand Theo’s. But then he wasn’t shown to be better at handling Theo. He was shown to be somewhat capable handling him whilst babysitting, which is different from parenting: when he can’t give Theo all of his attention, Theo almost sets his kitchen on fire.

Disliking this storyline doesn’t mean it’s inherently an amoral depiction of something, much like enjoying a storyline doesn’t mean it’s inherently a good portrayal. It ultimately exists in a grey area in a reasonably progressive show that, from time to time, proves itself as one of the more democrat-aligned shows of American procedurals. But as someone donor conceived, I simply don’t see this storyline as particularly problematic, as Buck doesn’t even want to be Theo’s parent—he’ll (perhaps only initially) be a foster parent at most, underlined by the show (and Buck himself) differentiating between ‘Buck’ and ‘next of kin’. And if anyone could encourage Buck to foster, it would be Eddie, as Eddie’s been concerned with people falling through the cracks of the safety net the entirety of season 9. That would be the found family you’re looking for: choosing to help and to love.

So before you write this storyline off as fridging, bio-essentialist, or out of character, please remember that the show has a habit of relating a child’s behaviour to how they’ve been parented. Remember that Buck doesn’t consider himself to be Theo’s dad. And remember that in season 6, Connor and Kameron were pushy, stepped over boundaries, and chose Buck because he was Connor’s tall, handsome, heroic, (white), friend without a criminal background. Their behaviour hasn’t been retconned since; it’s just been built upon. If that means some viewers therefore see Buck of all characters as the better option, then so be it.

[ty-in-bedlam]

When it came to this whole donor baby thing, I immediately thought this would go two ways; one, Kameron and Connor would back out of Buck's life and never again disturb him, or two, something will happen to have Buck be confronted by the baby he helped create, the baby he had to deliver and then give away, closing the door on any sense of fatherhood towards said child, and keeping to being just a donor. Did I expect this? No and yes. From what I have heard, the scenes I have seen (as I'm a British person, I won't be able to view it until this Friday, and it may or may not change my mind), none of Kameron or Connor's behaviour seems out of character or new considering how we have already seen them. I'm certain that I'm not the only who thought how they went about getting Buck's agreement--then tracked him down when he was delayed--was manipulative are worse, and the best being them completely unaware (or uncaring) of Buck's boundaries? That they wanted to continue having some sort of relationship with Buck, perhaps dragging in closer and into a family-type of relationship with Theo, shows that they still had no understanding about Buck's boundaries or how it could affect him emotionally without the distance of being a donor and no-contact Buck needed to keep that boundary within his head and heart. (To be fair, neither Kameron nor Connor seemed to have any idea of how them going through this would emotionally affect them, either.) Someone in my 911 sever pointed out that it seemed like Kameron and Connor were trying to have a baby to fill this missing something in their relationship, and they were not surprised that they failed.

So, when the donor plot line came about, both Kameron and Connor had an idea, a dream, about how this would happen, no doubt. Buck would say yes, there would be no delays, and the pregnancy would be a great and wonderful time for the both of them as they prepared for their baby.

Only reality didn't match the dream; Kameron turned up at Buck's place because Connor was struggling to accept this all emotionally, Buck was placed in the middle as they argued or avoided each other, and I'm not the only one who thought Connor was going to do a runner, right?

But he didn't; Buck delivered the baby and gave Connor the talk he needed to get his head out of his ass, and surprisingly, four years later, Connor is still sticking it out.

The fact that once again their dream didn't match their reality doesn't surprise me, nor does it surprise me that they want someone to blame, to say it's not their fault, and all that. I have no doubt so far that they loved Theo, but I don't think their parenting style worked with him, and I also don't think they ever reflected upon it.

No, they were convinced something was wrong with Theo (something, as someone with autism and such, I greatly dislike saying because ADHD or not, Theo is precisely who he should be), and they wanted something, someone, to blame because the problem could not possibly be the way they have taken to parenting him nor the weak attempts to establish boundaries and rules of behaviour. The fact they brought their four-year-old to someone's house---a house they could easily assume is not child safe---and hadn't thought of how they were going to keep him distracted so he doesn't do anything dangerously destructive? Blows my mind. As a kid, I either had a toy to play with, giving permission to run around my grandparents' garden, or biscuits to keep me content while my parents did the whole boring adult socialising bit.

From my understanding, it's Buck who sets Theo up with a colouring book, and not either of his parents, it shows a continued lack of understanding of how to deal with their own child.

Does this mean they were bad parents? Yes and no; yes because their parenting style could cause plenty of issues for Theo as he grew up, and no, because they are not either the Buckleys or the Diazes. Theo was four; Kameron and Connor could have come to the realisation that they were not gentle-parenting their son, but being permissive to behaviour which his potential school would have taken great issue with if it continued. Unfortunately, neither of them will get the chance, and it's horrible that Theo has been orphaned like that, that it's very likely he'll only remember what his parents look like via photographs because he's so young. (Am I surprised by Tim killing them off, considering how much he has said he hated the donor plot line? Nope.)

[devildoll]

[quakerjoe]

[maswartz]

This is something people have forgotten. Cabinet members didn't used to be household names. You only heard of them when they fucked up royally.

[takereveng3]

I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.

On April 21st, the left screen moved first.

I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.

At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.

On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.

At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.

Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.

I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.

My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.

The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:

Reviewed.

That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

Let me show you my flags.

March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.

March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.

April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.

April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.

April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.

That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.

The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.

Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.

Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.

Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.

The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.

I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.

The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.

One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.

One account is a coincidence. But there were six.

Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.

My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.

March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.

The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.

The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."

Then the White House sent the email again.

I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.

I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.

But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.

Zero prosecutions.

As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.

The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.

In my field, we call this price discovery.

[animentality]

[twofingerswhiskey]

"oh food now has so much added to it, past food was so pure and untainted" victorians used to cut bread with chalk and aluminum powder. romans put lead in the wine, which was made from dirty feet mushing unwashed grapes covered in horse shit and road dust. i think our species will survive a few additives in food. our food systems have never been cleaner and safer. it has room for improvement, but we're not putting fucking plaster of paris in the milk

[buddielifers]

A lot of people really do look past the real meanings of Buck and Eddie’s relationship and the impact they made on eachother. Neither would be who or where they are now without eachother.

It’s already been established in canon that Eddie would have lost Chris a very long time ago to his parents if it wasn’t for Buck (s6) even when Chris was in Texas it was Buck who managed to advise Eddie on what to do to fix his relationship with him as Eddie said, he appreciates him. Between fixing him up with Carla in the very beginning to help with Chris to Eddie being able to fix his relationship with Chris in Texas because Buck sacrificed his apartment so he could move to be with him and now have a commitment to Christopher in the form of guardianship upon Eddie’s death. Eddie would have been so lost in LA without Buck.

Then there is Eddie Diaz who was responsible for settling down Evan Buckley and stopping him from being reckless with his life that he spent most of his life being because he didn’t have anyone or anything to hang around for. Eddie gave him that reason, his son. Trusting him more than anyone to look after his child if anything happened to him. Giving him all rights and responsibility to Chris if he was ever incapable. He gave him a reason to want to live, Eddie has been keeping him alive.

People love to hate on Buddie and mainly hate on Eddie but no one else has been or will ever be able to do what they’ve done for eachother. Buck kept Eddie and Chris together and helped them build a life that they’d have lost without him and Eddie kept Buck alive and gave him a reason to live. The life they both have now wouldn’t exist without eachother and a lot forget or look past that.

[ahellalottafandoms]

Someone on Twitter said that the sunset scene of Buck and Eddie in 9x13 could be a parallel of Buck and Maddie running towards each other in Fight or Flight... and now I can't stop thinking about it!

Eddie, exhausted and hurt and in so much pain, terrified at the prospect of never seeing Buck again... When he hears someone shouting his name, he sees Buck staggering and stumbling towards him from across the desert, bloodied and hurt, and then Eddie is running at full speed towards him. They collapse into each others arms, the adrenaline taking over their pain just for a few minutes so they can hold each other tightly... and if we get a few desperate kisses and a few whispers of "You're okay!?", "We're okay!" "You're alive?! They told me you were dead!?" inbetween each one, before reality hits them at what just happened, and they just stare at each other before help shows up... 👀👀

THEN WHAT???