#Screed Removal

[tilecleaningtoday]

Birmingham Expert Details the Restoration of Neglected Quarry Tiled Floors in Bournville

A customer had recently moved into a property in Bournville and discovered an original Quarry tiled floor in the living room, hallway and a couple of quirky tiled areas upstairs. After searching on the internet for some inspiration, they came across my previous work and got in touch. Period floors like these are very popular and so they were keen to have the Quarry tiles restored.

I went over the property to survey the floor and made notes of all the floors and problems including the removal of self-levelling screed in the living room. This is often used to level tiled floors prior to the installation of another covering such as Vinyl or Carpet. It can be difficult to remove but it can be done. Another issue that would need to be dealt with was carpet glue and paint stains which I found in the hallway.

I worked out a detailed plan for the restoration work and was able to use this to create a quote for the work. Keen to have the floors restored my quote was accepted and a date set for the work to start.

Cleaning a Quarry Tiled Living Room Floor

The first day was spent removing an area of levelling screed from the living room along with a couple of repairs to the tiles. This literally has to be scrapped off the tiles by hand to remove the bulk of the screed. The whole floor was then cleaned with a strong dilution of Tile Doctor Remove & Go scrubbed in with a 120-grit carbide pad fitted to a weighted buffer machine. The resultant slurry was then extracted with a wet and dry vacuum.

The next step was to give the floor an acid rinse using Tile Doctor Grout Clean-up which is ideal for breaking down cement residues. It was let to soak into the floor for ten minutes before being scrubbed. For this the coarse 120-grit pad was switched for a finer 240-grit carbide pad. The floor was rinsed with water and extracted again to remove the slurry.

After inspecting the floor, I was pleased to see that marks imprinted onto the tiles by the previous floor covering had been removed and the tiles were looking so much cleaner. Happy with my work the tiles were left to dry off overnight with the aid of a couple of air movers.

The next day I tackled the Quarry tiled hallway which was stained with carpet glue. The started with a steamer to loosen up year’s old adhesive and bitumen along with a scraper to remove dried paint. The hallway tiles along with a couple of tiled hearths upstairs were then cleaned using the same process as the living room.

After an hour or so of drying the tiles, I applied a coat of Tile Doctor Stone Oil to all the floors and left them to dry for twenty minutes before towelling off the excess. The tiles were then left to dry off completely overnight. Stone oil is the first step in the sealing process and adds colour, texture, and generally improves the condition of the Quarry tiles after years of neglect.

Sealing a Quarry Tiled Living Room Floor

On the last day I applied a coat of Tile Doctor X-Tra Seal to all the tiles to seal them. This sealer is an impregnator that soaks into the Quarry tile, occupying its pores and thereby preventing dirt from residing there. The tiles were

This sealer will ensure that dirt remains on the surface where is can be easily cleaned away. Another benefit of the sealer is it further improves the colour of the tiles and being fully breathable it will allow moisture still in the floor to rise through and evaporate at the surface.

Once complete all the tiled floors looked so much cleaner and colourful, additionally the new sealer gave all the Quarry tiles a consistent appearance throughout the property.

My customer was very happy with the results and before leaving I took time to discuss aftercare cleaning and left them with a complimentary bottle of Tile Doctor pH neutral Tile Cleaner. This is a mild but effective tile cleaning product that won’t impact the sealer which can be the issue with the stronger products you find in supermarkets.

Source: Quarry Tile Floor Cleaning and Restoration Services in Bournville Birmingham

[anghraine]

I really feel the grief and pathos of Denethor's fall after his last confrontation with Sauron after decades of them, mere days away from Sauron's downfall. That said, I find it a bit wild that he's giving these exaggerated or outright paranoid speeches and then wedged in the middle is this:

So! With the left hand thou wouldst use me for a little while as a shield against Mordor, and with the right bring up this Ranger of the North to supplant me?

I mean, this is deliberately contemptuous ("thy" indeed!) but if you pull back from the glamour around Aragorn, it's hard to say this is not exactly what is happening.

Gandalf, Elrond, et al. are in fact perfectly okay with entrusting Denethor with holding back a conquest-happy powerful Maia without much regard to what it's costing Gondor or him personally, while forwarding his rival who has every intention of displacing him.

It's not exactly helpful that the claim of the house of Isildur vs the rule of the Stewards is, behind the heroic sparkles, a highly legalistic dynastic dispute between different groups of descendants of Elendil after a millennium of capable and decent rule by the Stewards. Until Denethor goes mad at the last minute after his own personal decades of stable, effective rule and tactical brilliance, there is literally no justification in anything he's done for removing him from power. Nevertheless, every particle of evidence suggests that his eventual overthrow was planned by Team Aragorn anyway, very much including Gandalf.

Denethor's mind breaking in his final combat with Sauron after decades of such combats (at the worst moment of emotional despair in his life vs A Literal Maia) leads to his paranoid assumption that Gandalf is using Aragorn because he wants to be the power behind allllll the thrones. This is obviously untrue. But the idea that Gandalf's basic strategy is "let Denethor fight Sauron, then if all goes well, Aragorn can displace Denethor after the war" seems simply accurate!

[herrmit]

it's been interesting watching the fandom fall back so quickly into the black vs. white, good vs. evil paradigm. 'outie mark is irredeemably selfish, innie mark is wholly virtuous.' 'innie mark's love is "real and true," outie mark's is not.' 'outie mark doesn't not deserve to find happiness - innie mark does-' and so on and so forth. it demonstrates an eagerness for uncomplicated, simple dynamics and a rejection of the nuance this show has built into its very core. it's kind of baffling- how does one watch this show and come away with a take like that? haven't the showrunners spent the past season fleshing out the antagonists (milchick, cobel, helena, natalie, etc) laying all their flaws bare and inviting us to empathize with them anyway?

i mean, if we take a character like dylan george: his first reaction to his innie crossing a boundary is shock and anger. he threatens - via gretchen- to end his life. but when he's given some time and perspective, he comes to the realization that his anger was born from insecurity, and that he understands how any version of him would fall for someone like gretchen. this is one way of interacting with an innie: we see the polar opposite that between helly and helena (i'm sure i don't even need to get into why it that's so contentious). so when it comes to mark and his innie, i don't so much think it's a lack of general empathy, but the bone-deep self hatred he's been cultivating for years manifesting as anger and dismissal towards himself. this dismissiveness is a character flaw, no doubt: but i feel like i have seen it framed as emotional immaturity turned outwards rather than inwards. acknowledging the framing of severance as self-harm: one which someone may undergo to escape the hell that is capitalism's ever-churning labor force.

none of this is to to say mark is actually an angel who did nothing wrong- he isn't! but isn't that the point?!

[i hope this doesn't come off as unkind to the OOP, because i'm not even directing this rant at them specifically; it's just a good jumping off point for my train of thought. i really do mean this in good faith-- i'm not trying come in here and call someone i've never met 'bad at watching the show' or some other equally ridiculous insult. it's just that i've been seeing this sentiment echoed by a lot of the fans- especially here on tumblr- and i think addressing the elephant in the room is a conversation worth having.]

The innie/outie communication scene and the way it exposes outie mark as someone still totally incapable of having real empathy or understanding what they’ve all done via severance hit so right. Even if they fuck up anything else they will have always done this so right

[tanadrin]

Can you explain in what what you think eugenics doesn't work? Does this basically boil down to skepticism about the accuracy of GWAS studies? My understanding is that academic consensus is "G probably exists, disentangling direct genetic inheritance vs genetic cultural inheritance is complicated but possible, we can identify a number of alleles which we're reasonably confident are directly causally involved in having a higher G factor"

when it comes to intelligence, its heritability, and its variation at the population level, my understanding of the science is:

highly adaptive traits don't, in fact, vary much at the genetic level between populations of a species because they are strongly selected for. in an environment where a trait is being strongly selected for, a population that failed to express that trait strongly will be rapidly outcompeted.

intelligence is probably the quintessential such trait for humans. we have sacrificed a great deal of other kinds of specialization in favor of our big brains. we spend an enormous amount of calories supporting those brains. tool use, the ability to plan for the future, the ability to navigate complex social situations and hierarchies in order to secure status, the ability to model the minds of others for the purposes of cooperation and deception means that we should expect intelligence to be strongly selected for for as long as our lineage has been social and tool-using, which is at least the last three million years or so.

so, at least as a matter of a priori assumptions, we should expect human populations not to vary greatly in their genetic predisposition to intelligence. it may nonetheless, but we'd need pretty strong evidence. i think i read this argument on PZ Myers' blog a million years ago, so credit where that's due.

complicating the picture is that we just don't have good evidence for how IQ does vary across populations, even before we get into the question of "how much of this variation is genetic and how much of it is not." the cross-national data on which a lot of IQ arguments have been based is really bad. and that would be assuming IQ tests are in fact good at capturing a notion of IQ that is independent of cultural context, which historically they're pretty bad at

this screed by nassim nicholas taleb (not a diss; AFAICT the guy only writes in screeds) makes a number of arguments, but one argument I find persuasive is that IQ is really only predictive of achievement in the sense that it does usefully discriminate between people with obvious intellectual disabilities and those without--but you do not actually need an IQ test for that sort of thing, any more than you need to use a height chart to figure out who is missing both their legs. in that sense, sure, IQ is predictive of a lot of things. but once you remove this group, the much-vaunted correlations between IQ and stuff like wealth just straight-up vanishes

heritability studies are a useful tool, but a tool which must be wielded carefully; they were developed for studying traits which were relatively easy to isolate in very specific populations, like a crop under study at an agricultural research site, and are more precarious when applied to, e.g., human populations

my understanding based on jonathan kaplan articles like this one is that twin studies are not actually that good at distinguishing heritable factors from environmental ones--they have serious limitations compared to heritability studies where you actually can rigorously control for environmental effects, like you can with plants or livestock.

as this post also points out, heritability studies also only examine heritability within groups, and are not really suited to examining large-scale population differences, *especially* in the realm of intelligence where there is a huge raft of confounding factors, and a lack of a really robust measurement tool.

(if we are worried about intelligence at the population level, it seems to me there are interventions we know are going to be effective and do not rely on deeply dubious scientific speculation, e.g., around nutrition and healthcare and serious wealth inequality and ofc education; and if what people actually want is to raise the average intelligence of the population rather than justify discrimination against minorities, then they might focus on those much more empirically grounded interventions. even if population differences in IQ are real and significant and point to big differences in intelligence, we know those things are worth a fair few IQ points. but most people who are or historically have been the biggest advocates for eugenics are, in my estimation, mostly interested in justifying discrimination.)

i think the claims/application of eugenics extend well beyond just intelligence, ftr. eugenics as an ideology is complex and historically pretty interesting, and many eugenicists have made much broader claims than just "population-level differences in intelligence exist due to genetic factors, and we should try to influence them with policy," but that is a useful point for them to fall back onto when pressed on those other claims. but i don't think even that claim is at all well-supported.

[finniestoncrane]

Can you maybe possibly please write something with Arkham Eddie about reader having a choking kink? Like maybe he puts his hand on readers neck and they’re WAY too into it and he decides to use it?? Sowwy I desperately need more degrading riddler stuff 😭😭

Arkham!Riddler x GN!Reader, word count: 819 oh anon you couldn't know me better unless you crawled into my ear and hooked your little fingers into my brain bumps u-u one nasty little fic of eddie choking someone and commenting on what a little whore they are for enjoying it, coming right up!!💚 request info • prompt list • send me a request • kofi • masterlist minors DNI!! 🔞 cw: choking, degradation

Your fingers reached out to the wall, almost as though it required a tactile exploration to understand what the scribbled words and numbers meant. Although, it was obvious to you that it didn't matter. Whether or not you could begin to comprehend the complicated screeds of problem solving and planning that decorated this abandoned space, you knew one thing concretely. You were fucked. Of all the places to accidentally stumble into, you'd managed to 'stupid' yourself into a villain's work in progress. And not just any villain. You'd stumbled into his.

As you stroked along them, the bright green paint stuck to them, still wet. The realisation struck you like a punch to the gut. He could still be here. Your heart fluttered a little, akin to the way you had felt approaching Jack Ryder's table to express how much you enjoyed his report on the Deacon. Like you were meeting someone famous.

It wouldn't be as pleasant as that quick interaction with Ryder, though. That was plainly obvious when you felt his hands on your upper arms, turning you around. The heel of his palms on your shoulder blades as he pushed you backwards. And then his strong, dextrous fingers curling around your throat. But there were still butterflies swirling as he grinned oh so menacingly towards you.

"If I were you, and I could talk through your choked gasps for air, I would be very grateful that I looked as stupid as I clearly was. I won't mistake you for someone who intentionally found me. But that only means I will kill you quickly and without the arduous task of torturing you to find out what you might know. Since, I expect you know very little."

As he continued his self-satisfying tirade against you, you could feel yourself getting hot. At first, you expected it was the lack of adequate breath, the heat of your skin prickling in response to your inevitable demise. But you could feel it only in your cheeks, as they blushed in response to the way his finger tips pulsed against the sides of your neck. And then, as you found yourself caught in his intense stare, steely blue eyes holding you as easily as his hands had physically restrained you, you could feel the heat spreading in your stomach, your abdomen, between your legs, which you pressed together with a whimper to try and keep your composure.

A futile effort, obviously. Nothing got past him, he was The Riddler after all. And when he noticed your body's unfortunate response to what was supposed to be a threat, he leaned in, his nose almost touching you, the scent of stale coffee on his breath, you whined. Your mouth flooded with saliva, drooling at the delicious notion that this might be how you died. One final hurrah indeed. Past the struggling gasps for air, you managed to almost whisper the words "my god" as he lifted one hand from your neck and used one pointed finger to wipe the strand of your drool from the corner of your mouth.

"I see. This threat appears to be having almost the complete opposite intended effect. Perhaps... there are other ways that I can buy your silence. One that might not warrant me cleaning up your pathetic corpse afterwards."

Your vision pulsed with a black aura on the peripherals as you attempted to nod, desperate to live, but more than a little bit upset at the notion that he might remove his hands from your body.

"What a pathetic, whoreish little cretin you are. And yet, so lucky! Because if you weren't so embarrassingly aroused by the threat of death, perhaps you would have been murdered far quicker."

His hand tightened, then loosened, repeating the action, giving you a slight taste of air, oxygen, clawing breaths, before taking it away and watching you tremble.

"Now, can you promise to be quiet? Because I can easily find out where you live, and the next time I get my hands on you it will not be as pleasant as this seems to be for you."

With all of your remaining concentration, most of your mind focused on the way your slick was spreading as your thighs squirmed, your clit throbbing, threatening to send you over the edge of orgasm without so much as a slight touch, you nodded in agreement to his terms.

"Well then. It appears that for the act of finding my latest project, you will be leaving here with a reward instead of a punishment..."

He looked you up and down, a look of pity and disdain on his face as he rolled his eyes at the state you found yourself in. Knees collapsing, the wet of your slick visible on your clothes, your drool collecting on your lips once more.

"... Although I do fear I will still have to clean up some kind of mess."

[curlybraceyourself]

The Case for Curly Brace

In July of 2024, a tumblr account by the name of "Curly-b-blog", themed after Curly Brace from Cave Story, began posting harassment towards prominent members of the "Lily Orchard Critical" community. These members include IloveKimPossibleALot, Courtney Peet (Lily Orchard's sister, who has accused her of sexual assault while both of them were minors) and Sai Scribbles, an artist from the aforementioned community.

Curly-B has gone as far as to involve people outside of the community in this harassment, sending unwarranted "critique" to unaffiliated artists, purely due to those artists having sent gift art to Sai Scribbles. Curly-B has used her anonymity as a shield to get away with this behavior and has expressed no remorse for her actions.

It should be made clear at this point that Curly-B is not an alias of Lily Orchard, nor is she Lily's wife Mikaila Orchard. Furthermore, the collator of this evidence requests that you do not harass the person behind the Curly-B alias; this information is collated for purposes of evidence only.

(Collator's note: tumblr has a policy of appending "-blog" to tumblr blogs that go inactive for extended periods of time. Due to this, some archived versions of curly-b-blog will simply be labelled as curly-b. Please keep this in mind if you wish to peer review the evidence presented)

Prior to her reappearance in July of 2024, Curly-B was already an established tumblr blog wth some history; as of this writing, a handful of posts dated to late 2011 and early 2012 still exist in Curly-B's archives. Moreover, there are a handful of posts dated to December 2023, that allude to some undetermined drama:

An Internet Archive snapshot from November of 2023 reveals the root of this drama: on November 15th, the Curly-B tumblr was used to post an anonymous screed detailing turmoil within the ranks of the Moderneopets art team. For the uninitiated, Moderneopets is a fan-run clone of the popular webgame Neopets.

(the full post by Curly-B can be viewed here: https://web.archive.org/web/20231123030516/https://curly-b-blog.tumblr.com/)

It seems Curly-B's post led to some friction within the Moderneopets community, as evidenced by its current absence from the blog. For more information, we have to go to the source; the Moderneopets Discord, which just happens to have public access:

From the above posts, we can ascertain that

Curly-B was an established member of the Moderneopets art team

Curly-B was removed from said art team on or around November 23rd, 2023.

Unfortunately, we run into a bit of a dead end here; see, the only archived instance of the Moderneopets artist roster dates to November 27th, 2023, four days after the discord posts mentioned above. In this snapshot, Curly-B has likely already been stricken from the record.

record of the Moderneopets art team as of November 27th, 2023 If we had an earlier snapshot then we could compare and contrast, but alas, we do not. Shy of combing the Moderneopets discord for all mentions of prior artists, this angle seems bust.

And then Curly-B did something incredibly stupid.

An anon ask sent to Curly by a mysterious figure known only as "K" According to the above anon-response, Curly's still on the Moderneopets art team. If we take this ask at face value, then either Hazer, the admin of Moderneopets, was lying about Curly's removal, or Curly was indeed removed… and then reinstated shortly thereafter.

And wouldn't you know, we have access to a list of Moderneopets artists, taken mere days after Curly's removal.

So let's compare:

Archived list of artists vs. list of artists, current as of August 20th, 2024.

One name appears on the current list that is not present on the November 2023 snapshot: Taffer. A quick search on the Moderneopets discord confirms that Taffer (aka Sneaky-Taffer) is not a new artist, but in fact an established artist with contributions to the Moderneopets project dating back to at least 2022.

It is not unreasonable to assume that Taffer got caught up in the drama of the time, and was briefly removed, before being reinstated at a later date. Just as what Curly is implying happened to her. So who is this Taffer? Well, she has a tumblr of her own:

As a reminder, Please do not send Harassment towards Sneaky-Taffer. This is merely a collection of evidence, not a call to arms.

The above evidence alone would not be enough to implicate Sneaky-Taffer as the individual behind Curly-B, however, a substantial quantity of evidence can be gathered from both Sneaky Taffer's and Curly-B's blogs that pushes this connection beyond the circumstantial:

Artistic similarities:

Curly-B draws herself in the above style in the margins of her redlining posts- this style is highly similar to one used by Taffer in several comic pages:

Artwork by Sneaky-Taffer, 2018 Note the similarities in how hair is shaded. Other comics by Taffer (viewable under "My Art" on her tumblr) use a similar means of shading hair, as well as the crosshatch shading and blush methods used by Curly-B for her avatar. Similarities in handwriting:

The above depictions of Curly-B feature handwriting in a consistent style. This handwriting is highly similar to that used by Taffer in her comics:

Note the shape of the Ws and the Ms in particular Edit: Taffer's Twitter account also features this piece of redlining that matches Curly-B's style and handwriting quite closely:

(Image links to the relevant Twitter post) The design of Taffer's OC:

On the 18th of August, Curly-B briefly posted an image of art that she claims is hers, before deleting it shortly thereafter. The image was, however saved by tumblr user Nivatar:

While no matches for this image have been found by typical searching, one of the characters depicted bears a striking similarity to one of Taffer's OCs, Sarnai :

more art of Sarnai can be found here

This suggests that the above artwork is either unpublished artwork by Taffer, or art commissioned by Taffer of her OC(s).

Prior involvement in the Lily Orchard circles

Would it surprise you to find out that Sneaky-Taffer had involvement in Lily Orchard discourse on Tumblr, prior to the appearance of Curly B? It turns out she's crossed paths with noted Lily Critic britts-galaxy-brain before:

(click on the image for link to the relevant post)

And Taffer has even responded to Lily Orchard's posts directly:

(click on the image for link to the relevant post) EDIT: Evidence has also been found of Taffer feuding with both KP and Courtney, on Twitter in June of 2024, shortly before Curly's revival. Both KP and Courtney were early targets of Curly-B's ire:

(Image links to relevant discussion and Taffer's twitter) and finally, as silly as it is:

Taffer had a Curly Brace phase in 2011:

EDIT: Taffer's former Deviantart account has been uncovered. Artworks in this Deviantart appear in an artist retrospective posted by Taffer in 2019:

This Deviantart account hosts a number of Cave Story-themed artworks dated to late 2011 and early 2012, the same period during which Curly-B was first active:

(Images link to their respective artwork pages on Deviantart) As an additional note; an archived version of Sneaky-Taffer's tumblr from 2013 links to a forum called Anime Maniacs United, which appears to be a message board for Anime Roleplay accounts. While no public archives of the AMU boards' content are available, it appears that AMU has a tumblr blog that persists to this day, featuring a list of affiliated character blogs:

... and wouldn't you know it, Curly-B is on the list. To quickly recap the things that we can be absolutely certain of:

Taffer is an artist on the Moderneopets art team, which Curly-B is also a member of

Taffer was not a member of the Moderneopets art team at the time that Curly-B was ostensibly removed

Taffer has interacted directly and negatively with ILoveKimPossibleALot and Courtney Peet, the first two targets of Curly-B's ire, prior to Curly-B's resurfacing.

Taffer was a member of an Anime RP Forum that is directly affiliated with Curly-B's tumblr. At this point, coincidence doesn't cut it. Sorry Taff, the jig is up. Noticed anything that I missed? Please let me know, and remember: No harassment. Thank you for your time.

-K

[catgirlhell]

so in light of recent events

im officially packing up catgirlhell and my side, purrgatoria, effective immediate. i didnt expect to open twitter today and find the ceo of a website actively stalking a user he'd banned, and i dont want any of my shit on this platform. aside from the grossness of what's happened to Rita, this speaks to a genuinely unsafe environment for users going forward. i do not need the moderators and owners of the website i use to share my funny little pictures doxxing me across social media in their hate screed. i will be making archives of these accounts, and then i will be moving permanently to co-host, twitter, and bluesky for the foreseeable future.

until the current ceo is removed and the stuff with the moderation team is properly addressed, i do not feel safe on this site and will not contribute any further traffic to it.

twitter: https://twitter.com/catgirlhell

co-host:

bluesky:

[wolfertinger]

wis might have deactivated because she realised she was legally culpable for libel. we were talking about sawyer possibly pressing charges and by deactivating she removed the evidence and covered her ass

funny. that most of the most damning screeds, are archived here.

i doubt, that wis will be able to keep quiet, after all. she made a burner, just to continue seething. and without salems platform. no one cares.

"it is irrelevant what wrongs you committed against them".

wis. you know, what mari did. mari told you, the night of.

rape apologist.

[bonefall]

the whole thing with the author defending (?) tom the wife beater is so repulsive, and then you read it again and i don’t think bumble is mentioned ONCE. she scrounges for sympathy with turtle tail, but the other one? the fat, useless, other one? forget her! (this is negative towards the authors, i adore the better bones stuff, esp how bumble is treated. vote bumble :) )

I really cannot get over it... to angrily write out a whole screed on how the strongest punishment is regret and not consequence, compare the sentiment of a reader that "Tom didn't deserve heaven" to his physical abuse of Turtle Tail, and then not even mention his other crimes of kidnapping and torture.

Even in death, Bumble isn't important enough to mention. As the books continue, they even continue to only mention her death as an unfortunate accident, or evidence of why kittypets can't join Clans. Even though she was MURDERED.

I think the statement is a good exercise in the difference between a post advocating rehabilitative justice, and abuse apologia just dressed up as it.

There IS a point to be made about how the idea of a Hell/Prison just makes bad people worse. We often have a desire to punish, because we FEEL better getting catharsis seeing A Bad Guy suffer like they hurt others. But that alone doesn't really fix or address a problem.

For example, it's really common to feel that kind of revulsion at a drug addict who robs a convenience store for money. Does it actually reduce addiction rates, or undo the trauma of the assaulted cashier, or help prevent it from ever happening again to throw the robber in a broken prison where they come out, 7 years later, with no rehabilitation?

The answer is no. It didn't help anyone. 7 years pass and he's still addicted to substances, possibly even worse, because prison just made his life shittier. As a leftist we can recognize that compassion is usually the answer.

(Unless, of course... someone needs to be removed from a position of power or actively prevented from attacking others. Violence is the answer sometimes.)

But the thing is, the author didn't SAY that. What they did was compare the impulse for catharsis, to TOM'S DESIRE TO BEAT HIS WIFE.

NO, those are NOT the same thing. Your desire for comeuppance towards a wifebeater character getting a redemption reward for "saving his child" after a long life of cruelty without consequences, is NOT THE SAME as Tom the Wifebeater inflicting pain and suffering on people out of spite.

She had to phrase it in the worst possible way for this argument to even LOOK like it made sense. "She broke HIS rule of Don't Be Mean To Tom" vs "He broke YOUR rule of Don't Be Mean To Turtle Tail." And "Now he's being taught how to be lovely"

Physical abuse, emotional abuse, and kidnapping are not "being mean" and it's both sick and insightful that she'd call it that

Domestic abuse is not a "failure to be lovely," it's the act of harming your family or partner to control them.

Tom the Wifebeater is a character who was not written with a scrap of nuance. He is not a real person. All they did with him was consistently show how much pleasure hurting people gives him, then say him dying for his biokid absolved everything

So in this series where you establish there are Born Evil Truly Malicious people (ONE EYE IS IN THE SAME BOOK), but then turn around to cry that Tom the Wifebeater can be made lovely off-screen...

You end up saying that domestic abuse isn't in your arbitrary "evil" category.

And that's so fucking fitting for the arc of Clear Sky's "redemption," where the same book ends off on Thunder saying that his abusive, woman-killing dad wasn't so bad all along because he's not like One Eye.

The answer's just that simple. They don't think male abuse is all that terrible because it's the same as an impulse; explicitly not malice. So it doesn't make you "evil," and only "evil" people deserve the Dark Forest.

(Dont question the Dark Forest as a concept or how starclan defines evil though :x dont worry about it :x)

[gabessquishytum]

Since his imprisonment over a century ago, cinema has changed. Dream knew the camera would always be the next big thing in storytelling and that the movie would become a new medium that the next generation of storytellers would manipulate and mold.

So Hob proposes movie night. They go in order of the decades, from just before he was captured up to the present day. So far Dream has really liked the 1926 rendition of Phantom of the Opera, Gertie the Dinosaur, and the 1939 rendition of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The film for this movie night is Gene Kelly's Singing in the Rain and then afterwards Wizard of Oz, but he's not alone.

Del is still feeling a bit rejected by her family and decides to pop around her siblings to see what they've got going on. Destiny let her get lost in his maze, Death took her into the deep ocean to say good bye to an ancient whale, Desire took her to a club where she made a guy hitting on her dance forever, and Despair just sat around in her own self misery and Del nearly succumbed to boredom. Dream is the only one left to humor her and brings her with him for movie night.

It goes off about as well as to be expected. She loved the film, particularly enjoying Cosmo's Make Them Laugh and Dorothy's Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Dream also liked the film, though it wasn't one of his favorites. Just something bright and colorful to pass the time. But this gives her an idea. Things always seem to work out when people are singing and she just wishes that everything with her family would resolve in something as simple as a song.

So she makes everyone sing. The first victim is Hob who wakes the next day singing to his appliances and every sentence afterward. Which is weird for him, but he can't stop. He can't get through a lesson without making it into a song. Which is becoming disturbing by lecture number three. He goes home and contacts Dream.

Who is having his own issues. The Dreaming and its denizens can't stop singing either. Matthew has turned into a songbird and the music is starting to chafe his nerves. He goes into the Waking and finds all of humanity has joined in a discordant musical number. Lovers sing about the virtues of romance, street punks are dancing in lines and singing about how they're going to cause trouble. A woman screams herself bloody about her lost dreams and passions. He makes his way to Hob's apartment, where he comes down with a song himself.

It's a heart wrenching screed about the loss of time and opportunity. About how he just wants to love and be loved in return. Red-faced, he disappears.

Hob heard every word he said and opened the door too late, leaving them both to scream themselves hoarse about their feelings. A song that perpetuates until Hob passes out from exhaustion and is ferried onto the Dreaming. There they have a heart to heart in the form of a ballad which culminates in a big, sweeping movie musical style kiss.

After the first few deaths from exhaustion, Death comes to her sister. Even she is not immune and through a large musical number, shows Delirium the extent of the damage she's caused. Del doesn't feel bad, until she hears her brothers and sisters sing. The whole universe is in a chorus of pain and misery as they struggle under the weight of her gift. So she removes the curse and sulks. Her sigil dims and she retreats deep into her realm.

Until she hears her siblings collectively calling for her. She appears in Hob's living room. The popcorn is popped, the room is darkened and she can see everyone sitting on the couch or the floor except for one place on the couch, between Death and Hob. Dream is comfortably sitting next to his new human lover, his head on his shoulder. They invite her in as the movie is just about to start. They're watching Meet Me in St. Louis.

- 🤜 anon

MY HEART. Poor darling Del, she certainly meant for it to be a good thing. But nobody really wants to be singing for more than a short amount of time. I wonder what Dream and Hob sound like while singing? If Dream’s singing is as unique as his laughter, I'm sure it was truly... something. But hey, Del unwittingly performed a minor miracle by bringing the idiots together at last. Who knew that all it would take was a romantic ballad after 600 years of pining?

Del enjoys Meet Me in St Louis a lot! She likes the slightly disfunctional family, particularly the little sister who gets into all kinds of shenanigans. The best part is being with her family, though, especially because they're all on their best behaviour! They even have a good ole sing along to the Trolley Song. Delirium revels in the slight chaos and finally feels properly appreciated by her entire family <3

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said a federal judge who attempted to block his administration from deporting hundreds of immigrants to an El Salvadoran gulag should be impeached and removed. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg halted Trump's attempt to deport without due process the alleged Venezuelan immigrants he accused of being members of a violent gang. Trump already ignored Boasberg's order to turn around the planes, which were carrying the alleged immigrants to El Salvador. But now he wants Boasberg removed altogether, saying in a deranged Truth Social post that Boasberg is a "Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama." "He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn’t WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING!" Trump wrote in his insane and lie-filled screed. "I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY. I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!" Multiple House Republicans want to impeach judges who have ruled against Trump and his administration's other illegal actions, including those largely conducted through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. "I’m drafting articles of impeachment for US District Judge Paul Engelmayer. Partisan judges abusing their positions is a threat to democracy," Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona said in a post on X in February, after the judge blocked DOGE staffers from accessing Treasury Department data. Shortly after that post, Crane introduced articles of impeachment against Engelmayer, accusing him of violating his oath and abusing his judicial powers. And freshman Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas said this past Saturday he was introducing articles of impeachment against Boasberg. Co-President Elon Musk replied to Gill’s post, writing in an X post that Boasberg’s impeachment is “necessary.” But this is the first time Trump has publicly blessed Republican efforts to try to remove judges who are simply interpreting and applying the laws. [...]

Even the right-wing New York Post editorial board has told Republicans to cut it out with their thirst for ousting federal judges. “Sorry, Elon: Even deporting illegal gangbangers must heed the rule of law,” the editorial board wrote on Sunday. It went on to say that it is “just plain silly for Musk to tweet ‘necessary’ of a Texas rep’s plan to file to impeach the judge.” “It’s nothing of the kind, and cheering it only makes Musk look reckless—a reputation he doesn’t need when many DOGE actions also face court challenge,” the board wrote. Meanwhile, the Republican impeachment efforts have led to warnings from sitting federal judges that the campaign to clear the federal bench of anyone who rules against Trump will chill the judicial branch from applying the law out of fear of retribution or even violence. “Impeachment is not—shouldn’t be—a short circuiting of that process, and so it is concerning if impeachment is used in a way that is designed to do just that,” U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Sullivan said at a news conference earlier in March, according to a report from Bloomberg Law. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, meanwhile, issued a statement condemning the calls for judicial impeachments. "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said in a curt statement on Tuesday—a sign he thinks the impeachment talk is dangerous and not merely bluster. But Trump doesn't care about any of that. He's been shredding the Constitution to carry out his dream of being a dictator. He's already ignoring court orders and is now backing up the House Republican efforts to impeach judges who stop their illegal actions.

Constitution-trashing fascist mad king Donald Trump, echoing the lead of right-wing media talking heads and other GOP politicians, called for the impeachment of Judge James Boasberg for correctly ruling that Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act was lawless.

SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts was less than amused by Trump’s threats to Boasberg and the judiciary as a whole.

See Also:

NCRM: Trump Pushes to Impeach ‘Radical Left Lunatic’ Judge in Unhinged Morning Rant

NCRM: Chief Justice Roberts Smacks Down Trump's Lawless Call To Impeach Boasberg

The Guardian: Chief justice rebukes Trump for call to impeach judge hearing deportation case

The Parnas Perspective (Aaron Parnas): BREAKING: Donald Trump Calls For The Impeachment Of The Federal Judge Who Ruled Against Him

Civil Discourse (Joyce Vance): John Roberts Weighs In

[cutecipher]

Going on a long screed about ai removing the human spirit from art but the longer it goes on the more obvious it becomes im only talking about lesbian erotica

[eretzyisrael]

by Benjamin Baird

After a lengthy search, Brown's office announced the new members of the Commission on Hate Crimes on July 31. Nassar, who was picked to replace Chaudry and represent the Muslim American community, is described as "the CEO of the Islamic Leadership Institute, where he works with youth to help them be the leaders of tomorrow ... ."

An FBI "Most Wanted Terrorist," Siddiqui was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 with bomb-making materials and plans to attack U.S. targets on behalf of Al-Qaeda. Under questioning by U.S. authorities, she managed to get her hands on a rifle and shoot at her interrogators. Nassar's group alleges that her prosecution was all part of a grand Zionist plot, joining ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in bargaining for her release.

The official Aafia Foundation Facebook page is filled with pro-Hamas screeds and includes statements glorifying the Taliban and deploring the killing of Al-Qaeda terrorists. The terrorist support group also advocates for Hamas operatives and is close to convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad member Sami Al-Arian.

Furthermore, the Islamic Leadership Institute (ILI) that Nassar founded for youth engagement has also faced recent allegations of extremism. Lecturing at a local mosque, ILI instructor Mahmoud Abdel-Hady called Hamas's Oct. 7 attacks a "great victory" and promised that Muslims "will be the ones in control" and "have the final say" around the world due to their expanding population.

This is not merely a case of guilt by association. Nassar's own social-media history shows that he adheres to the same radical antisemitic views that cost his predecessor her seat on the commission. His favorite platform for spreading these hateful opinions is the professional networking website LinkedIn; his profile page is teeming with examples.

First, Nassar echoes antisemitic tropes that have been used to justify violence against Jews. Referring to the Israeli military arrest of a Palestinian youth, Nassar reflected: "Same kidnappings that happened to Africans, [the] only difference [is that] Africans were taken as slaves; Palestinians are taken as body organ donors then murdered."

In a May LinkedIn post, he insisted that the Gazan floating pier used to bring humanitarian aid to Palestinians was built with the "rubble & body parts of the natives" or collected from bombed civilian infrastructure in Gaza that contained human remains. He also referred to Israel as "the colonized portion" of Palestine or the "apartheid land," and shared posts calling the war in Gaza a "Holocaust" and "genocide."

Nassar reserves equal animus for the United States, especially regarding its support for Israel. "If you are working in America, every day two hours of your 8-hour workday is dedicated to murdering children and creating chaos across the globe," he wrote.

His hatred extends to the gay community. In a June rant, he compared how "the white race was able to justify slavery 200 years ago," with how "special interests [were] able to justify homosexuality 20 years ago."

"Attorney General Brown's persistence in naming hate mongers to a commission whose very purpose is to combat hate is a travesty," said Jay Bernstein, a local pro-Israel activist who testified in support of an early version of HB763.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Home education and homeschool families are under vicious attack from establishment media outlets, with major propaganda voices on both sides of the Atlantic working to portray homeschooling as dangerous and radical. The anti-homeschooling screeds come as the number of families removing their children from government schools has grown by as much as 100 percent in recent years…

[finniestoncrane]

hello finnie i am very kindly asking for kissing as a distraction with btas edward thank you

Take A Break

BTAS!Riddler x GN!Reader, word count: 650 i am being so brave right now because this is the first thing i've properly written for this absolute sweetheart SO I HOPE IT'S OK!! 💚 request info • prompt list • send me a request • kofi • masterlist minors DNI!! 🔞 cw: really just fluff, and some kissing, and a tiny bit of teasing

Eddie removed his deep green bowler hat and tossed it to the side, letting his gloved fingers run through his soft, red hair. Leaning back on the chair he let out a deep exhale, staring, unblinking, at the screen in front of him. The screeds of code, line upon line, made your head hurt to look at, and you could tell he was getting the same way. As he dragged his hands down his face, he settled one on his chin, scratching at it as he looked at the monitors.

Coming from behind him, you draped your arms around his shoulders, laying your palms flat on his chest and feeling him lean further back into you. He tilted his head up and offered you a weak smile.

“Please, my dear. No distractions. If I’m to finish this project on time, then I need to reserve all of my focus for it.”

Not one to take no for an answer, you sighed dramatically as you circled him, perching on the desk between him and the screens. Avoiding any eye contact, you brushed at the lapels of his suit jacket, straightening them out and smoothing them down as you used the pretence to make lingering physical contact with him. He watched you intensely, savouring each soft brush of your fingers against him, biting the inside of his cheek in a bid to keep himself from losing focus on what was important.

But he could feel himself coming undone regardless as he watched your fingertips take hold of the end of his tie, untucking it from his buttoned jacket and playing with it as you leaned closer. You ran the toe of your shoe up the front of his leg, a slight movement, almost imperceptible but outrageously flirtatious nonetheless. That kind of understated, almost innocent kind of teasing drove him wild, and you could tell it was working now. His cheeks flushed a soft pink and his eyes lingered on your hands.

Just as quickly as you had him under your spell, however, he shook himself out of it, placing his hands over yours and pushing them away gently. He cupped them for a moment longer, smiling warmly, if not exasperated.

“My sweet, I appreciate the sentiments, but I really must get this finished.”

Shuffling past you, he tucked himself back under the desk, continuing to type out the code for his videogame, furrowing his brow and closing his eyes tight each time a wave of pain from the developing headache crossed him.

“You’re a stubborn man, Mister Nygma.”

He chuckled softly, neither confirming nor denying it. You stood up from the desk and let your hand find his face, caressing it softly as you walked behind him again. Leaning into his ear, you spoke quieter.

“And you’re very lucky that you’re so adorable.”

A soft kiss was placed on his cheek, before you moved to the other side of his head.

“Otherwise, I might not put up with you.”

Another kiss on this cheek now, lingering longer as you let your hands fall down his front once more, slowly toying with the buttons on his shirt before loosening one completely. At your insistence, Eddie finally got up from his seat, turning to you, grabbing your elbows and pulling you into an embrace as his lips found yours.

He held you to him, warm and firm, as he let a soft sigh out against your mouth, his hand reaching to the back of your head to keep you still, not wanting you to pull away before he was satisfied. As soon as he eased off you moved back, taking in a deep breath and watching a smile curl up on the corners of his mouth.

“Perhaps a distraction was necessary.”

“Hm… has it cured your headache?”

“Not completely, but I think I know what would.”

A mischievous grin brought out your own smile as he took your hand and led you out of the room.

[rainofaugustsith]

One of my favorite little facts about Anne Frank's diary: Dr. Dussel. So you know (or may not) that Anne actually rewrote most of her diary in 1944 with an eye toward publication. The Dutch monarchy in exile on the radio had told Dutch citizens to keep diaries of their experiences and publish them after the war. Since Anne was already writing a diary, and loved to write, as she said in her diary, everyone's head immediately turned toward her. So she rewrote the diary from 1942. She edited, unified the people she was writing to (originally she addressed her entries to several friends and she made them all to Kitty instead), removed some of her more personal entries, and gave the other people in the Secret Annex aliases. If you ever read the complete version of her diary it's fun, because she made notes about her own writing. The dentist she shared a room with - and loathed - was given the alias of Dr. Dussel. Now, Anne spoke several languages. She was writing her diary in Dutch. She also had an American penpal for a short time before going into hiding and was working on English. However, she'd come from Germany as a small child and was fluent in German too. In German, if you look it up, 'dussel' means "dope," "idiot," blockhead," etc. So she wrote the book in Dutch, but this name in German. And although her father excised some of what she wrote, he left that in. Every time she's saying anything about that dentist she's literally calling him Dr. Jackass, essentially. She also has some pretty good screeds about the dentist in her diary. His family actually sued the Anne Frank Foundation at one point, but it was her opinion - and she was a teenage girl forced to share a bedroom the size of a closet with a somewhat conservative and stern middle aged man who made negative remarks toward her. There's no reason she wouldn't have been angry.