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The SBA is a lot smaller than the education Department and is already swamped. They have zero experience doing any of this.

Students Loans and Grants are how nearly everyone not born so rich they can pay cash upfront goes to college. Clogging this system to uselessness stops a whole lot of talented and hard working people from getting degrees.

Kids can't learn very well if they are too hungry to con concentrate. starving them of essential nutrients causes long term learning delays and health issues. This is designed to keep the children of the poor sick and poor and combined with strangling the student loan program is a way to deny them a life time of opportunities.

This is the rich pulling up the ladder of success after them to prevent everyone else achieving a decent standard of living.

Bonus they are dumping this on the SBA while slashing it to ribbons as part of their plan to crush small businesses to help the Billionaires who bought Trump:

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You realize that without this, there will be hardly any protein, right?

Reminder: We have so much extra money that we have wasted 18.2 million dollars on Trump's golf outing as of last week. Why is that a better use of taxpayer money then helping farmers and feeding people?

Have something you want to tell your Congress Critters?

If you can't safely contact them in person, here are some other options:

Five Calls to your critters: https://5calls.org/

Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resist.bot/

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Republicans decided we should no longer "waste money" on weather balloons used to track hurricanes in Tornado alley amoung other things.

Have something you want to tell your Congress Critters?

If you can't safely contact them in person, here are some other options:

Five Calls to your critters: https://5calls.org/

Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resist.bot/

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The 12th Book for my 2025 Book Blanket is Wake: the Hidden History of Women-led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall and illustration by Hugo Martinez. I didn't have the right colors at all for the square, so much more vibes based than some of the others. (Also my camera makes all the yarn look darker and the book covers lighter).

My rating for Wake is ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐! Rebecca Hall doesn't just take you through the horror of slavery but the horror of erased history. I urge everyone to grab a copy from your local library (ASK THEM TO PURCHASE IT IF IT'S NOT THERE). It's becoming too easy and common to bury history again.

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The tragedy of my life is that I keep acquiring and displaying fetish art and having to be corrected by my friends.

Most recently, a friend came over my house and saw my computer background and went, "Wow, um, I didn't know you were into that." To which I look at the picture of the well drawn muscular female minotaur in historically accurate Greek clothing and I start geeking out about how I love the detail the artist did with the clothing and I point out the period appropriate folds and pins, how the artist even inserted the native plant that was used to dye the clothing this particular shade in the background, and even how the belt has technology AND historically accurate weaving patterns on it.

Then I start explaining how I love the muscular choices of the minotaur, that I was so impressed with the artist's anatomically correct depiction of the muscles converging into the neck. That many people get an upright cow's neck wrong because cow's don't have collarbones, so it can be very difficult to merge the upper arms and a chest of a human with a cow's body. I draw her attention to the beautiful way they've merged the pectoralis major so smoothly while also staying true to how muscular they've depicted the rest of the body.

I finish up with my thoughts on the artist's bold choice to depict the minotaur as a female, and despite the underlying themes of a minotaur being violence, child murder, strength, and muscles. I segue into how unlike bulls, cow are perceived as mothers. That they are the major source of milk in human culture, and that idyllic depictions of them in a field usually depict calves frolicking nearby, yet the minotaur kills and eats children.

I finish and there is a long pause.

"Urban, this is fetish art." and she takes me to the artist's twitter and god dammit it's fetish art, not a bold statement on cultural perceptions of women and violence throughout history. I have been tricked again.

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I just watched the finale of Make Some Noise on Drop Out and I need Brennan to know that I cackled at the Marquis of Queensbury Rules. THERE IS NO CUT TOO DEEP

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DOGE just froze funding to vital Federal and Indigenous conservation programs devoted to supporting the very delicate and tenuous existence of the black-footed ferret.

I fell in love with these animals as a kid traveling to our National Parks. Their rarity and ferocity made me sharply aware, even as a child, of just how much of a responsibility we have toward our environment. I can't bear the thought of them being a fucking casualty of Trump and Musk.

Look at them! They do war dances.

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A guy gets isekae'd to a fantasy world and it's completely disconnected from our own world, like no shared history.

Except.

Words keep popping up. Someone mentions a "French braid", and he's like "a what braid? Where did you hear about France?" and no one seems to know the etymology. He gets in some minor trouble for assaulting a bard who can't explain where he heard Old Town Road.

The local Duke shows off his new portrait and it's somehow AI generated? And still painted?

He's going slowly mad trying to figure out why there's our-world references leaking into this fantasy world. Is there someone else who is isekai'd here? Is there a portal between here and earth? A wizard who can travel back and forth? What the fuck is going on?

He falls to his knees sobbing in the street when he sees a poster for a play being put on in the Capitol city. It's called "War of the Stars" and it's about Lucas the Sky Walker who is given a holy sword to fight the Black Knight who never removes his armor, and he rescues a beautiful princess from a hidden fortress with the assistance of a wizard mentor, a traveling merchant, and his werewolf companion.

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I think poor people deserve to buy luxuries for themselves

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solidarity with osha. i love a good railing

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Enemy (2013) dir. Denis Villeneuve

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The 11th book for my 2025 Book Blanket is The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe, presented by Re: Dracula with Stephen Indrisano as narrator and Sam Stark as Roderick Usher.

This one gave me fits. This is the third version and its one that I'm mostly happy with. I love the crack on the image, and I tried doing a bunch of color changes to achieve it, which kinda worked but it was super thick and I didn't trust it to hold up to use and washing. I also tried a solid white square with embroidery floss, which didn't look great. Doing a chain of black on the white square split the difference perfectly and if it does come off, I can replace it without having to figure out how to replace a whole square.

I have two ratings for this one. My rating for The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe is ⭐⭐. I like Poe. I like Gothic literature. I didn't like the Fall of the House of Usher. 🤷‍♀️ BUT, as for the audio from Re: Dracula, Stephen Indrisano, Sam Stark, Tal Minear? ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐! It was gorgeous to listen to. I'm also listening to Carmilla and plan on listening to Dracula in May.