Communion

When this ends up being the Senate map because Dems rallied around Buttigieg's Wario and then Fettemran flips...

I think someone like Ayanna Pressley has also commented on it, to be fair, because it seems that Rula believed being a black Palestinian meant her citing such usually inflammatory names - that she's shown as being critical of when white conservatives use them about black people - meant that Black Americans should understand what type of anger she has over Jeffries, but it is going to fail to land due to Black American history with said language. I think that's a reasonable position for Black Americans take or, at least, a reasonable sensitivity to acknowledge and be aware of. But it does speak to how, in a broader context, such understandings about contextual language should be universal. In the same way anyone should speak of and about Black Americans within the context of the language Black Americans use, people should judge the language that Palestinians use in the context that Palestinians understand. Ex: American Zionists trying to claim Palestinians using the word "Jew" and not "Israeli" to mean Palestinians are antisemitic, despite that, for all intents and purposes, Palestinians live under the repression of a "Jewish State", where they are ethnically cleansed to ensure the artificial "Jewish majority", to where foreigners can come from all across the world on the basis of "Jewish Birthright" and steal their houses, commit pogroms against them, etc. The Palestinian belief that their people are being slaughtered and killed in the name of acheiving "Jewish Supremacy" is materially correct and factual. There's a very specific "black liberal" type of account on social media (many of these people probably not even real black people!) that would rightfully take offense at Rula's comments yet then claim American Jews' feelings matter more when Palestinians speak of the people burning down their homes, killing their children, etc.

Black people can obviously be anti-black or promote anti-blackness themselves, but just to make note of it, apparently Rula Jebereal is Nigerian and Palestinian and identifies as a black woman. She is obviously tone deaf to how racism impacts black Americans and thus was ignorant with her words but the idea of now countless US politicians condemning maybe the most well known Afro-Palestinian - who is well known today for speaking on her life as an orphan in an apartheid state as now a journalist - feels all a bit circular.

Not to sound like a pressed fan but the very intentional aim to erase Ariana from any discussion within pop music journalism circles is so ????

A major political party calling to kill a country pop group and an iconic piece of political history: Jojo getting her highest charting single to date: Genuinely an iconic year.

Wait this tea. 2006 in particular feels like it's packed with songs like this, especially the way MTV tried to cover as many genres as possible. This peaking at #64: I'm not linking to Regina Spektor in the year 2026 but "Fidelity" also fitting this.

The power of the Pop Bible

For the GP, yes, but for pre-teen homosexuals? There are iconic hits here. (There are indeed some cases where TRL / MTV's music video rotation made some songs seem like huge hits but weren't actually. See: MTV playing the "Nothing In This World" video all the time but it apparently not even charting at all on the Hot 100?) But the sheer hits in this house.. Me & U Ain't No Other Man Stars Are Blind Do It To It Bossy Show Stopper Deja Vu London Bridge Ring The Alarm Long Way To Go Unappreciated Irreplaceable Whew... and even if it flopped, the image of Jessica Simpson's I Belong To Me video premiering live on TRL is burned into my head.

The B'Day anniversary made me remember first realizing in 2006 that, instead of downloading a single song one at a time over Limewire, there were entire sites on Blogspot where people uploaded full albums for download and you could even find downloads for regional bonus tracks (the gag of finding out songs existed that weren't on CD you bought ). When I think of B'Day, I also think of albums like Back to Basics, Danity Kane's debut album, etc. and really never realized just how back-to-back these albums were being released. August: September: The TRL girlies know how the above ravished the daily countdown after school.

People saying "KFC" like as though the ad isn't BURGER KING. Don't erase the ancient texts.

If a university has to certify it is not boycotting Israel, how is this shown outside of the inherent pressure for universities to maximize investments in Israel?

Something about the melody and production on the chorus ("the kids don't wanna dance") reminds me of this:

Why is someone shouting over Lost Yo Mind? (20 years and still no real explicit version...)

Me rewriting it 10 times to stay under the character limit

Okay I did giggle:

Ehhh the senate is built to be a conservative institution but the movement is best measured on who replaces who. Gary Peters votes only for progressive policies 33% of the time Abdul would likely vote 85-95% of the time for progressive policies. You can't judge people by race obviously ddd but black women due tend to vote more progressively (see: Blunt-Rochester voting so far this cycle for progressive policies 75% of the time vs how she replaced an old white man who had like a 20% score). So Dick Durbin votes progressively about 50% of the time, but Julia Stratton could at least be a reliable 75%. Tina Smith is usually a reliable vote about half the time, but Peggy Flanagan would likely be also measurably more progressive. When it comes to El-Sayed, Stratton, and Flanagan, all three would be moving leftward in voting record vs who they replaced.

Angela receives LA DSA's endorsement.

Heath running in NH-01 is suspending his campaign and endorsing someone else to try and stop Shaheen's daughter:

She announced it because she was bullied out of the public eye. It's odd that people took her speech from the concert as diffusing the resentful tone of her PR team's statement instead of the reality that it was reiterating that she blames the media and public for ruining things for her and her fans. People convinced themselves that somehow their toxic behavior was vindicated by the statement yet are going to reach a new level of insane when she doesn't actually remove herself from the spotlight much and continues posting on social media. People - for some reason - convinced themselves she'd be doing something like going to a medical facility and are going to go back to harassing her if she doesn't do exactly as they want.

Computer, zoom in! "Why do you care so much whose dick I ride, why?" indeed it seems. Ariana, the prophetess you are.

I do kinda hate that she's an inverse Kamala in that people genuinely read black women to be more progressive than they are (ie: people assuming Kamala Harris was extremely liberal in 2024 despite her platform not being so) to where people assume Candace is like some regular moderate and not someone with insane, far-right views.

It was a cash grab and the theatre for months delayed ticket sales because they had no way to stop them from being grabbed by scalpers to where they were in the middle of trying to develop their own ticket-purchasing site when Ariana decided to pull out. This was never going to work without her.

Why would that be the era you were referring to? The only era she was dating Ricky was when writing Dangerous Woman. Moonlight - 25% Knew Better / Forever Boy - 25% Christmas & Chill (25%-30% on each song) - He's the one who made her the makeshift home studio that parts of Dangerous Woman and Christmas & Chill were recorded in: