lostcybertronian

[lostcybertronian]

Ratchet was requested to read human's slangs

[lostcybertronian]

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)

[lostcybertronian]

Have some old prowl doodles while I try to finish my comic

[lostcybertronian]

My favourite attention whore

[lostcybertronian]

Fireborn

[lostcybertronian]

Gossip buddies for @medicalgradezine

[lostcybertronian]

shit’s bad!!!!! here are some not terrible headlines to take the edge off a little bit

[lostcybertronian]

Sorry for not posting much Transformers art lately, I've been focusing on making OFF content. So here's old grandpa Kup giving you a candy.

[lostcybertronian]

Whirl and Megatron are actually sort of narrative foils for a moment in MTMTE. I think the scene where Whirl attacks Megatron is meant to highlight how similar yet different the two are.

Whirl was forced into violence, and chooses to continue being violent and awful because he thinks nothing can change the way people see him.

Megatron chose violence, did terrible things, yet chooses to atone, because nothing can change the way people see him, but he doesn’t want to continue being violent and awful and putting more pain into the universe.

Its 1AM so feel free to disagree or add something I missed cause my thoughts aren’t all together

[lostcybertronian]

It's a lot healthier to go for a daily walk than to sign up for a gym membership you won't be using because you hate that kind of exercise. It's a lot healthier to eat a frozen meal than to skip a meal because you were too tired to cook something healthy. It's a lot healthier to take a quick shower than to procrastinate an elaborate routine for days. Don't aim so high that you won't be hitting anything!

[lostcybertronian]

Happy Valentines Day

Ummm I originally was planning to use a reference but then I gave up and said fuck it we ball so have a random Oppy design I pulled out of my ass crack

I think it’s also obvious that I gave up with the bullet casings lol

[lostcybertronian]

USA people! Buy NOTHING Feb 28 2025. Not anything. 24 hours. No spending. Buy the day before or after but nothing. NOTHING. February 28 2025. Not gas. Not milk. Not something on a gaming app. Not a penny spent. (Only option in a crisis is local small mom and pop. Nothing. Else.) Promise me. Commit. 1 day. 1 day to scare the shit out of them that they don't get to follow the bullshit executive orders. They don't get to be cowards. If they do, it costs. It costs.

Then, if you can join me for Phase 2. March 7 2025 thtough March 14 2025? No Amazon. None. 1 week. No orders. Not a single item. Not one ebook. Nothing. 1 week. Just 1.

If you live outside the USA boycott US products on February 28 2025 and stand in solidarity with us and also join us for the week of no Amazon.

Are you with me?

Spread the word.

[lostcybertronian]

Hey remember that a boycott if actually MORE effective under capitalism if you profess you would actually end the boycott under certain conditions.

“Nothing this company does can make up for their bad actions, I will never buy from them again!” Okay so they’ve lost you as a customer and have no reason to try and get you back. You can HOPE to drive them into bankruptcy but Chic-Fil-A is evidence of how well that works.

“This company did something bad. I would not consider buying their product again, UNLESS, they publicly apologized and made up for it by … [donating money to a cause, promoting different content, offering better care to their employees, etc.]” This is actually MORE likely to be effective because if enough people say this, the company m sees them as potential customers of a certain demographic, and is willing to make changes to get those customers back and, long term, make money from them.

[lostcybertronian]

Not sure if I've told this story here before, but once upon a time, I didn't really get the point of most protests happening my area because I viewed them as "preaching to your own echo chamber" in a lot of cases. Ex: I saw people do a climate march through a very liberal university campus within a very liberal city, and I was just like "Okay, everyone here agrees with you. This place has crazy aggressive sustainability goals. What is the point of this?"

Then when Roe fell, there were a lot of protests outside the courthouses in cities near me, and though those city courthouses do serve the surrounding rural areas as well, the cities themselves are all rather progressive and left-leaning, so once again I was like "Okay, what is the point of this?" but I went anyway just for the experience. We stood on a street corner with our signs. Most people driving by honked in agreement with us. A few people yelled "abortion is murder" at us out their car windows, and we yelled back "abortion is healthcare!" Cool, okay, still didn't get the point because it's not like we were changing any minds or there in large numbers (we were no threat to any power structures), and the city already largely agreed with us.

But then we got another SUV that pulled up and yelled "abortion is murder!" at us (both husband and wife this time). Looked in the back seat, and they were traveling with their daughter who was maybe 13ish. She locked eyes with me, gave me the most serious look I've ever received, and gave us a thumbs up just above the window ledge so that her family couldn't see.

And that's the day I learned that protests are not always about threatening entrenched power structures but letting people in isolated ideological bubbles know that there are other perspectives and that if they share them, they're not alone.

[lostcybertronian]

national Park service didn’t remove the T. It was done to them by DOGE. More info on their FB page, they’re were very upset about it too!

maybe i'm stupid but why don't they change it back? like why are they sitting around as if they can't go back in and change their own website. sorry but if this is the "non-compliance" that's happening where, sure, they don't take initiative to comply with executive orders, but they just sit back and let someone else do it anyway and go "oh well, that's that", should we really be patting them on the back lol

[lostcybertronian]

who wants jazzop

[lostcybertronian]

Hi, i hope you’re having a good day. If it’s alright to ask, could I get your opinion on G1 Prowl’s personality? I want to learn more about the character but sometimes the information gets confusing like how in Tv tropes they described Prowl becoming a jerk near the end of G1 and stuff.

If they mean the cartoon? Absolute fiction. Prowl is friendly and helpful throughout the entire cartoon. He doesn't even have a big role in the cartoon, but he never does anything remotely mean. Watch the episode "Roll For It" and you've got his character.

As for the Marvel comics, I can't say if he "becomes a jerk" towards the end because I haven't gotten there yet. However, I do know that Prowl and Grimlock do not like each other in the comics because Grimlock is mean and not a good leader. The most jerk thing I've read Prowl do so far is remind Huffer that they can't be distracted from what they're supposed to be doing by their homesickness. Even then, it's softened by Prowl calling it "an admirable endeavor". (This particular story is something of a Huffer highlight.)