florafaunaandeldritchhorrors

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For science,

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Oh no. MAGA is mad that the NYT shared the names of DOGE staffers. Don��t share this! Would be a shame

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Anakin wasn't dillusioned with the Jedi to the point he became Darth Vader.

Palpatine was trying to seperate Anakin from the Jedi and make them suspicious of Anakin and make Anakin resentful of them, yes, but it isn't to make him want to kill all Jedi. He wants to make sure Anakin has nowhere to turn about Padme by playing on Anakin's fears and insecurities.

The Council won't give him the rank of Master. Anakin brushes off Padme's suggestion that Obi-Wan could help them. "We don't need him."

Anakin resents the Council for not making him a Master and he resents the request to spy on Palpatine, but he tells Mace that Palpatine is the Sith. He doesn't show up later because he's trying to figure out if the Jedi are the real villains for doing a coup, he's worried that if Palpatine dies he won't be able to save Padme.

And during the confrontation Anakin is fine with arresting Palpatine. He tries to argue for Palpatine's life despite Palpatine actively shooting force lightning because if Palpatine dies he can't get the Sith secrets he has.

The reason Anakin hates the Jedi comes from two places:

⭐

1: he had to kill a bunch of them during order 66. Like during the slaughter of the Sand People he's blaming everyone but himself. It's the Council's fault, it's the Jedi's fault, they all deserved it. Even the children. If they had done xyz I wouldn't have to kill them.

2. Obi-Wan, who Anakin views as the epitome of what a Jedi is, who Anakin cares about on a personal level 'betrays' him and leaves him to die in lava. Anakin cares more about personal relationships than ideology and even then it's all fear based where he worries about loss. He loses Padme, Obi-Wan leaves him, all he has left is Palpatine. And once again he's blaming Obi-Wan for Obi-Wan betraying him and ignoring the fact he just slaughtered Obi-Wan's family. He thinks he should matter more than everything else... Even though he was actively trying to kill Obi-Wan moments before.

Vader knows what Palpatine is, but Vader is locked into hatred.

It's far easier to convince yourself your victims deserve it while being a darksider than knowing they were innocent and still being turning back to the light. Being a darksider is selfish. It's about what you feel and the power you have. The Jedi deserve to die because I hate them. Not the Jedi died because I was afraid of loss.

And this is the thing the Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan describes to Luke was real. He was a good man, he was Obi-Wan's best friend, but Anakin was afraid and in the moments where it matters he falters. A good person becomes twisted and evil because of their own fear. That's the Darkside.

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Tuesday's House Budget Vote and what you may not have heard about

I'm reposting this from a reblog of a really great post about the work that Representatives Mullin and Pettersen did in voting against the GOP budget on February 25th, because I don't want to detract from that message.

Instead, I want to talk about the larger implications of H. Con. Res. 14 itself, and why the Democrats risked so much (in Mullin's and Pettersen's cases, actual harm) in order to show up for this vote.

The vote in question is starting the first of quite a few votes for the upcoming GOP budget; it's not a done deal by any means, this was just the vote to get it started, so to speak. But it was still a very, very, VERY important vote, because not only would failure be catastrophic, but so would a win that just barely squeaked by.

And this one squeaked like a fucking mouse in Murray's Cheese Shop.

Speaker Johnson has been waffling on putting this to a vote because there were several outspoken GOP members who talked a big game about opposing it. Usually this doesn't matter, since most bills get some bipartisanship, but at present the House is in GOP hands with only a three-member margin of error, with two seats vacant (note: those two vacancies are FL 1 and 6, which are holding their special elections on April 1 — lol — and which are EXTREMELY unlikely to flip but hey miracles happen! Donate or phonebank if you'd like!). And Democratic representatives have been voting in a bloc against...well pretty much everything the GOP's been pushing through since Trump took office. Not only that, but this budget is legit unpopular with a number of Republicans, so much so that Johnson pulled the vote at first on Tuesday because he knew it would fail if the GOP members who'd threatened to vote against it actually went through with it. What he needed was to either convince them all to fall in line, or resort to cheating.

So he did both!

He and Trump strongarmed all but one of the GOP holdouts into voting yes (Congressman Massie is in many ways a turd in a toilet, and his reasons for voting no were bad, but he did stick to his guns, I'll give him that). Reports of Trump actually screaming at one of the (female, naturally) GOP holdouts are...well, unsurprising, but that's how panicked they were about getting this bill started. Usually the Whip does this work, but Tom Emmer's been laughably bad at it and so they had to get Trump to actually do some work. Which is itself sort of astonishing. But even then, they weren't sure they could get it done.

Which leads us to part two of Johnson's plan: blatant cheating. During Pelosi's last session as Speaker, she allowed for proxy voting in light of COVID and, you know, the general state of things, but the second the GOP got back the gavel they nixed it right in the bud. This puts the Dems at a disadvantage right now because at least three of them are out for medical reasons — Mullin and Pettersen, as well as Congressman Raúl Grijalva who's fighting cancer at present. (He was the only Democrat who couldn't get to the floor for this vote, fwiw, and anyone who insists he should've can suck my left tit.)

So Johnson adjourned the House for the evening, sending everyone home, but told the GOP members to stay and then tried to rush through the vote before the Dems realized what was happening. His hope was that enough Dems would be caught flat-footed/not see the recall notice/be asleep watching Taskmaster (whoops that was me) by the time they got the message to get back to the floor. That way he could lose the holdouts but still pass the budget onto the next phase.

However! While Nancy Pelosi no longer rules the Democratic caucus with her iron fist and fabulous coats, my man Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries learned quite a lot from her (and is pretty fucking genius himself). Not only did he and the other House leadership expect this kind of chicanery from Johnson, they had planned on it.

Because here's the thing: Mullin and Pettersen didn't get on a plane at the last minute on Tuesday; they'd gotten to DC on Monday, without telling anyone they were in town. They actually hid from the GOP members all day Tuesday in order to lull Johnson into thinking he had more of a margin than he did; if the GOP holdouts really had voted against the budget, then it would've failed. Which would have been a biiiiiiig problem for Johnson and Trump.

As it is, it's still a biiiiiiig problem for Johnson and Trump, because now they know just how razor-thin their margin is. More importantly, they also now know that the Dems will fuck with them just as much (if not more) as they will fuck with Dems. Congress (and the USA in general) has operated for years on the assumption that Democrats operate in good faith, while taking it for granted that of course the GOP ratfuck as much as humanly possible.

This moment is a chilling one for the GOP; they can't assume anymore that Dems will play fair or fight clean. Which seems like a very small thing in the larger picture right now, I know, and I also know that people would love for their Democratic representatives and senators to be more vocal and angry in public ways. I get that!

But this move on Tuesday night? Is actually going to have far bigger consequences than any meme or viral video or clever soundbite from a politician. Democrats are no longer playing by the rules that the GOP's ignored for years (if not decades); they're playing by the GOP's own rules, and they just might win.

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let jedi be jedi.

let them be uncomfortable with romance and/or marriage.

let them be repulsed at the idea of leaving the order.

let them feel liberated by jedi beliefs--let them see it as freedom from the burdens and chains of worldly life to follow the will of the force.

let them love the temple and think fondly of their fellow jedi and their communal lifestyle.

let them care for their masters and their padawans without imposing the dynamics of the nuclear family. let them explicitly reject comparisons of their masters to parents, or their padawans to children.

let them defend the jedi openly! without shame!

let them embrace the modesty, humility, and practicality of jedi clothing.

let them love being jedi, everything about being jedi, with no strings attached.

just....let jedi be jedi

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cyndaquil's trip through time

(bonus comic below i may or may not render idk)

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Another day, another mutual uncritically reblogs one of those neo-Rousseauian "humans are inherently good and pure, capitalism and a mysterious 'few horrible people' have singlehandedly corrupted us!" posts.

STOP. JUST STOP. You should know history better than that.

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Star wars ought to have at least one species that are sentient but pretend not to be so no one will make them pay taxes

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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker | by P h a s e R u n n e r

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You wait a century for a royal tomb and then two come along at once.

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LISTEN UP MOTHER FUCKERS

SEE THIS WEBSITE? 

ITS CALLED WOLFRAM ALPHA

THIS IS THE BEST GODDAMN WEBSITE FOR ACADEMIC SHIT. FUCK GOOGLE. 

THIS MOTHERFUCKER WILL LET YOU SEARCH “HOSPITAL BEDS IN CHAD VS. IRAN” 

AND IT GIVES YOU A STRAIGHT GODDAMN ANSWER 

MAYBE YOU’RE NOT INTERESTED IN DOCTORNESS OF THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES COOL SHIT 

HAVING TROUBLE WITH MATH?

HOLY SHIT

OR MAYBE YOU WANNA DICK AROUND

WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT

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Do you think that a owning a pickup truck is a red flag?

Yes, it indicates that they are probably conservative and lack empathy

No, there are plenty of non-asshole reasons someone could drive a pickup truck

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"Why didn't the Democrats codify Roe v Wade?"

They didn't have enough votes to bypass the filibuster because of Joe Manchin

"Why didn'-"

The answer is probably Joe Manchin.

"They had 60 votes in-"

For a few months and that entire time was spent wrestling with like 11 Joe Manchins from a bunch of red states in the senate to get health care reform passed.

"What about the Filibuster-"

JOE FUCKING MANCHIN

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kate's 365 days of female characters:

day 40: cindy burman stargirl

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Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are feeling the wrath of constituents as their phone lines light up with complaints, worries and confusion over Elon Musk's efforts to gut government programs and fire longtime civil servants.

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this from the guy who wrote the sting pain index, a scale he constructed after letting himself be stung by insects