jsaunderswrites

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Paul Andrew Saunders

31/05/1966 - 07/04/2025

Not a perfect man, but a father filled with infinite love.

The world is lesser now.

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I went to a library book sale this weekend and I found a very old book called “Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers,” which was published in I think 1975? I’ve been reading it kind of like how I would read a historical document, and it’s lowkey fascinating

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I'm a simple bitch. i believe the purpose of government should be to improve the lives of its citizens and protect its most vulnerable members. unfortunately i live in a day and age where this gets me labeled an enemy of the state

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Seen someone say “I can’t die, I got graves to dance on that hasn’t been dug yet.” And honestly, that goes hard. We need to keep that energy.

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The Panthers used to ride around and follow the police.

So the cops would pull over some sorry black person, and get ready to rough him up, but then there were the Panthers right behind them. Watching, armed to the teeth, and citing legal statutes. It’s inspirational.

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being neutral about other peoples kinks is necessary by the way. when consenting adults are doing things between consenting adults, and you prioritize your discomfort over their autonomy and right to exist safely in a space without having their private interests excavated and recontextualized to make them out to be predators, that says way more about your willingness to place yourself in the position of moral authority than it does about them and you deputizing yourself on the basis of nothing but vibes and your personal traumas makes you very dangerous politically.

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Fuck nazis. Taxes are great actually. The public service should be valued. Unemployed people deserve adequate financial support. Regulation saves lives and money. Focus on prevention not punishment.

You should care about other people.

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There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

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this is (hopefully) gonna be my one post about the live action because I do not want to hear or think about it. also if you hold or have expressed any of the opinions here that's totally cool and fine, this is in no way personal and I'm still happy for you if you can enjoy it!

This thing does not need to exist. Words cannot describe how much I do not care. The color palettes, shots, sets, costumes, etc. so far seem so close to the original that it makes me question why they would even bother. If you're going to do live action, there should at least be a PRETENSE that you have something to add by doing so. I hate Disney live action remakes as much as the next guy, but at least they tend to look like what the movie would look like if it were live action, y'know? And if you can't do that, that's maybe a good sign that the thing was in the medium it was in for a reason. I saw someone say that it looks like an insurance commercial and I can't stop thinking about that. Everything that looked cold and misty and atmospheric in the original looks sad and like it's filmed on a stage.

I saw someone say that we should at least be grateful that we're getting new content for the franchise and hoping the lore would be expanded. I could maybe, maybe even see that perspective too IF HTTYD WASN'T ALREADY AN EXTREMELY EXTENSIVE AND FLESHED OUT WORLD. We have a theatrically released TRILOGY. We have three pretty solid TV shows with the same characters totalling EIGHT SEASONS and 118 EPISODES. We have multiple video games, multiple shorts, and two more adjacent TV shows. And if that's not enough dragons for you, then there are the twelve books that it was based on, which are pretty different but just as beautiful and special.

I will not be happy with a live action remake. I was never going to be. There does not need to be more. And I especially do not want a washed out shot for shot regurgitation of a perfectly good movie spat out in my lap when I could literally just be watching that movie. No thank you. I'm done hearing about the thing.

And most importantly, I think the thing that really gets me about the discussion around live action remakes is when people are desperately reaching for good things to say about them or acting like "oh, well, you gotta hand it to them for this one aspect at least." You. Do. Not. You don't. I saw this a lot with the ATLA live action too, and while it's totally okay if you enjoy it or you just like seeing something in live action, you do not have to look for things to like. You SHOULDN'T have to look for things to like. We deserve better, and we do not have to waste our precious minutes on earth being grateful or looking for positives in a watery forgettable useless piece of media when there are so many good and beautiful things in the world.

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Great moments in corporate synergy: Disney released their Super Bowl ad imagining what the world would be like without Iconic Disney Moments and it included a single Disney animated film. Frozen obviously. Otherwise it's entirely films made by companies they bought and one live action remake. "Remember when Disney brought you Star Wars" and it's the original and no. Bc they very much did not bring us that one

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Our history repeatedly has us assuming fascist overlords must have been cool and charismatic villains who were bad sure but probably awesome enough that it made sense why people followed them!

Let us look to Musk and see why that was always wrong.

As Elon Musk cements his place in history as a fascist tech overlord and the rest of the world looks at us in horror, I really do want to reiterate what I feel will be lost to the history books

Nearly everyone in america has thought and continues to think that Elon is very cringe.

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So Sonic 3 is definitely the best one, but I felt Robotnik took a step back in feeling less like his own character and more just as a vehicle for Jim Carrey's schtick. While he had a bit of that in prior films here it overwhelmed the performance too much for me. And having him play basically 2 of that character definitely grated. I was glad they seemed to kill him off at the end.

Otherwise the script was still kinda thin, the talk about teamwork versus revenge was incredibly basic but functional.

Sonic deciding to suddenly work against GUN felt like it should have lead to something but it was just there to justify a heist scene. And the heroes are never made aware that Gerald is planning on actually destroying the Earth.

But I like Keanu as Shadow, him and Maria are adorable and I get their relationship in a way I don't really get the game version, because it's so artificial and fairy tale-esque how perfect and angelic she is there.

Though making her death more accidental instead of the military just actively gunning down a child was disappointing I guess it works so the audience won't be demanding revenge in spite of the moral of the film.

I hope the stinger is implying more just funny cartoon furballs having adventures without mundane human nonsense, because this movie had much less than the prior two and was much better for it. Now just avoid cramming Tom and Maddie into the midpoint and your golden!

The action between golden Sonic and Shadow and then the GUN robots was too short, give me way more of just that next time! Just the part where they kick off a mountain to launch and it's just shoved backward opening a glowing crevice of magma was MWAH!

Basically despite my best efforts to critically see all the flaws in these things (and there are a LOT) I'm still on board for Sonic 4 and hoping they can pull of one without a huuuge list of caveats.

Also: pleeeeaaase let Amy be voiced by someone who is an experienced VA! While Keanu was good he still had some awkwardness in communicating purely through voice work, and Idris continues to have the same issue (though according to behindthevoiceactors.com both have been in a couple more things than I realised)

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“Hey, look. I got the hammer. And it only took me, like, what? 10 seconds. 11 tops.”

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Food for thought