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🍷🍇🐈‍⬛ …by the way, it seems the show will be canceled🤡

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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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Odysseus: *gently hands Athena baby Telemachus*

Athena: …you were PREGNANT AND YOU DIDNT TELL ME?!

Odysseus: what?- no-

Athena: DO YOU KNOW HOW DANGEROUS THAT IS?! I WAS TRAINING YOU!

Odysseus: no I wasn’t the one-

Athena: THAT POOR BOY WAS PROBABLY SO SQUISHED IN YOUR HELMET! LOOK AT HOW SMALL HE IS!!

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Common Cause put together a $115K deal with the Washington Post in partnership with SPLC to have these two huge ads in the WaPo papers that are delivered to Congress, the Pentagon, and the White House.

When they saw the images, they backed out, presumably bc Bezos doesn't want to piss off the Trump administration.

Well. I can't get these images into Congress, but I surely can start them running around the internet.

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I really don't understand how "without getting kudos or comments a fanfiction author is going to assume that people who clicked their fic didn't like it" became a controversial take.

I don't know why some people think an author should imagine, or guess that people who click their fic enjoyed it it when nobody is telling them that.

If you're re-reading a fic constantly, or leaving it up in your tab so that it re-loads every day for a hundred days the author is not going to know that unless you tell them. They'd love to hear it. It would make their day.

And if you don't tell them you liked their fic, there's no reason for them to assume you did.

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*faux leather no animals were harmed! :)

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Let’s goooooooo

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poster for your poster needs (grossly oversimplified but i'm going for broad strokes not intensive academic rigor)

free to use, repost & reproduce, no credit necessary

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*faux leather no animals were harmed! :)

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Use your own judgement as to what "counts" in regards to things like airport layovers and trips taken before you could remember.

–

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

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my theory is dragons kidnap princesses for the same reason they hoard gold and other treasure, which is the perceived value and the bragging rights thereof. however, unlike precious metals and gems, human attractiveness is way more subjective, so you end up with dragons calculating the most valuable princess to nab and getting frustrated when their math doesn't check out...

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In order to stop the culture of faking orgasms, we need to stop the culture of shaming others for their sexual experiences.

Can’t get your partner off on the first try? Cool. You can still be thoughtful and make them feel good.

Can get your partner off within 30 seconds? Awesome, good for you both, don’t let it get to your head.

Can make someone cum in less than 5, but for others, it’s a process that takes an hour? That’s alright, everyone’s different. 

Does it take you 30 minutes to cum? That’s okay, you’re not broken, you’re not a failure.

Does it take you 10 seconds to cum? That’s great, you’re not a slut, you’re not overly sensitive or dirty. 

Can’t cum without toys/vibrators? That’s awesome, that’s a valid part of sexual play!

Can only cum with loving, vanilla sex? That’s perfectly normal, and you will find lots of great partners to experience that with!

Can’t orgasm at all? THAT’S ALSO COOL. It’s not a bad thing, you can still enjoy sex TONNES just like others.

Orgasms are NOT the defining characteristic of your sexual prowess. They are great, they’re lovely when they happen, but for the love of science, stop bringing them up higher than they need to be. 

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i really like in fiction when they're like oh no!!! the bad guys are about to win!!! and Character Who Keeps Trying To Sacrifice Themself For The Greater Good is like. gentlemen i have an idea

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I'd like to share a few pre-odyssey stories from Odysseus's life that I think are fun.

He didn't choose to go to war. He was drafted into the war as a general. He tried to get out of it by pretending he was crazy because he didn't want to leave Telemachus and Penelope. So, when the guys came to his castle, he was out in the field pulling a plow, with the horse behind it like the horse was driving him. And most of the guys were like, "Wow, he's totally crazy!" but the head dude was like, "No, he's tricky. We gotta see if he's actually crazy. Bring out his newborn son!" So they brought Telemachus out, and put him in the path of the plow being like "If the king is actually crazy he'll run over his son!" Odysseus didn't do it, he swerved around Telemachus, and his cover was blown, so he had to go to war.

There was a prophecy that the first soldier who set foot on the beaches of Troy during the attack would die first, so when Odysseus's army were on the boats about to attack, none of them wanted to get off, in fear of dying. Odysseus was like "okay we need to get this show on the road." so he made a big show of talking about how ridiculous prophecies were, while secretly throwing his shield down on the sand. Then he was all "I'll jump down first, to prove that it's silly!" So he jumped off the boat onto his shield, and his army was like "Wow! he landed on the sand first! We've got nothing to worry about now!" So they all jumped off, and sure enough the first dude that landed was the first to die.

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a quick psa to anyone recently getting into greek mythology and is a victim of tumblr and/or tiktok misconceptions:

-there is no shame in being introduced to mytholgy from something like percy jackson, epic the musical or anything like that, but keep in mind that actual myths are going to be VERY different from modern retellings

-the myth of medusa you probably know (her being a victim of poseidon and being cursed by athena) isn't 100% accurate to GREEK mythology (look up ovid)

-there is no version of persephone's abduction in which persephone willingly stays with hades, that's a tumblr invention (look up homeric hymn to demeter)

-as much as i would like it, no, cerberus' name does not mean "spot" (probably a misunderstanding from this wikipedia article)

-zeus isn't the only god who does terrible things to women, your fav male god probably has done the same

-on that note, your fav greek hero has probably done some heinous shit as well

-gods are more complicated than simply being "god of [insert thing]", many titles overlap between gods and some may even change depending on where they were worshipped

-also, apollo and artemis being the gods of the sun and the moon isn't 100% accurate, their main aspects as deities originally were music and the hunt

-titans and gods aren't two wholly different concepts, titan is just the word used to decribe the generation of gods before the olympians

-hector isn't the villain some people make him out to be

-hephaestus WAS married to aphrodite. they divorced. yes, divorce was a thing in ancient greece. hephaestus' wife is aglaia

-ancient greek society didn't have the same concepts of sexuality that we have now, it's incorrect to describe virgin goddesses like artemis and athena as lesbians, BUT it's also not wholly accurate to describe them as aromantic/asexual, it's more complex than that

-you can never fully understand certain myths if you don't understand the societal context in which they were told

-myths have lots and lots of retellings, there isn't one singular "canon", but we can try to distinguish between older and newer versions and bewteen greek and roman versions

-most of what you know about sparta is probably incorrect

-reading/waching retellings is not a substitute to reading the original myths, read the iliad! read the odyssey! i know they may seem intimidating, but they're much more entertaining than you may think

greek mythology is so complex and interesting, don't go into it with preconcieved notions! try to be open to learn!

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Spin the wheel!

You are offered $20,000. In order to get the $20,000, you have to listen to the album chosen by the wheel from start to finish in one sitting. No breaks, no turning down the volume, no taking off the headphones. You have to listen to the album in its entirety.

No "I don't know this album" option, search it up yourselves and listen for a few seconds, expand your media diet