#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

[oldtestleper]

the menu is a terrible movie about class dynamics but a fairly accurate movie about artists

[wild-at-mind]

I’ve always wondered about the whole razor blades behind facist or transphobic stickers thing, because articles about it happening are often frustratingly vague, and often without pictures which is odd as these days most people carry a device with a camera! Wouldn’t you want proof?

I found the below by an anti-facist writer about the issue: https://libcom.org/article/sticking-it-razorblades-and-anti-fascist-folklore-f-bear

The main conclusion the writer comes to is that it may have happened a few times for real, but it is also an urban legend that can be found referenced in the press as early as 1976. He notes that the razor blade articles tend to recommend not removing the sticker and reporting to the police instead, therefore leaving the message behind for the next person to see. (Tumblr and twitter posts tend to prefer a rather vague ‘be careful when removing!’) He points out that the razor blades would greatly increase the cost of the stickering, the time to apply the sticker, and the penalty for the stickerer if caught doing so. So yeah, I’m inclined to agree with all these points. I think sharing round the razor blade sticker one source articles from local papers, or tumblr posts, is subtly encouraging inaction and spreading fear in marginilised communities. There is no need for this. The writer says keep taking down stickers as your social duty- a 50p can help scratch off the stubborn ones, or a black marker to cover the message if it really won’t come off.

[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.

[communistkenobi]

like generally when I see people use ‘transwoman’ it’s from cryptos and other “covert” transmisogynists who don’t publicly go so far as to misgender trans women outright but they also don’t want to acknowledge them as being equal to cis women so they “compromise” and type it out as all one word. and they think they’re being so clever! but now I’ve seen it out in the wild. I don’t always assume bad faith because sometimes like it is just a genuine mistake or unawareness, and I’ve also recently seen people use “transmen” (something I’ve not seen before personally) so like idk if it’s a general infection of transphobic terminology into broader online spaces or deep cultural amnesia (much like “gay panic”) or what. It does feel like social media spaces have become even more right wing in the past year or so, from the fervent Zionism from many public figures/influencers and fandom bloggers to twitter removing a bunch of protections against harassment and hate speech (“cis” is literally considered a slur on twitter now lol) to even the recent Trump re-election prompting a bunch of people to post racist screeds and deportation fantasies and Islamophobic rants at minorities who apparently caused this to happen

[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:

[tomorrowusa]

Republicans don't want voters to know what anti-abortion fanatics they are. J.D. Vance has been busy scrubbing his site and social media of his more virulent comments against reproductive freedom.

Sen. JD Vance, Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, is an anti-abortion extremist, but like the rest of the GOP, he’s doing his damnedest to cover that fact up. First, he scrapped the anti-abortion screed from the website for his Senate campaign, then he falsely insisted Democrats and the media were twisting his words on abortion. 

Just because he's hiding his extreme views doesn't mean he's changed them.

This was on the mobile version of his site before he removed it this month.

He tries to paint his views in glowing terms. But he shows no sympathy for 13-year-olds forced to travel hundreds of miles to blue states to end unwanted pregnancies. He is in sympathy with Texas laws which would rather have women die than end pregnancies which have caused life-threatening complications.

Society shouldn’t view those pregnancies as inconvenient, he said in a 2021 interview, explaining his support for a federal ban on abortion without exceptions for rape and incest.  “I think two wrongs don’t make a right,” he said. “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term. It’s whether a child should be allowed to live.” 

It's not J.D. who is forced to spend 18 years raising the child of a rapist.

You hardly heard the word abortion mentioned at the Republican National Convention. But that doesn't mean that patriarchal Christian fundamentalists weren't salivating at the prospect of a Trump-Vance régime.

No Republican at the convention wanted to talk about abortion and the extreme position they have embraced. But don’t be fooled by the cover-up that Trump, Vance, or the Heritage Foundation are attempting. 

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) released a fact sheet on Project 2025 (the Trump blueprint for a second term) and reproductive freedom. It's a PDF which can be printed out and posted.

Blue Illustrated Medical Center Flyer - Repro-Project-2025-Fact-Sheet

[antifainternational]

Hey so like three years ago I think I sent a post asking, effectively, about some criticisms of generally accepted antifascist philosophy that David Rovics made on a like, three hour podcast that was posted on YouTube.

I know I was waaaaaay all over the place and super rambly and it was probably a weird/maybe uncomfortable thing to get in your inbox. Long story short- I was dealing with hella anxiety and undiagnosed CPTSD (at the time, I’ve got a good therapist now and I’m medicated, and they’re both very well managed now) that was partially triggered by events going on during the summer of 2020. I guess I just wanted to apologize for any weirdness, frustration, stress, or problems that might have caused. Realistically I’m probably overthinking this and y’all probably don’t even remember that, but I’ve wanted to clear things up for awhile, so I am. I was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing, even on anon.

Hope you guys are well and have an excellent day. Also, free Palestine. ✊🏻🇸🇩

Oh hey! It's been, well, more than a minute, hasn't it? You're right that we actually didn't remember our conversation very well but we looked it up again to refresh our memory. First: we're well-pleased to hear that you've been able to get help with your mental health, that you're taking good care of yourself, and that you're feeling much better now than you did when you wrote to us in early 2021. Second: no need to apologize! For one thing, you were putting forth well-intentioned and thoughtful arguments in a respectful way. We're always here for that! A movement that won't pause and do some self-reflection or take some self-criticism from time to time isn't a very good movement, after all. Finally: this might be a good time to see what's happened with David Rovics and violent white nationalist leader Matthew Heimbach since Rovics platformed Heimbach in a fawning, two-hour video filled with softball questions and lots of head-nodding agreement about the "anti-white racism" which Heimbach whines about being a victim of.

On the other hand, we now have this meme thanks to Matthew Heimbach (center, with glasses)

Since then, and after immense public pressure, Rovics did remove the video of his interview with Heimbach. But! Rovics' next move was to talk about the whole affair in an interview with a notorious anti-semite and Holocaust denier, during which Rovics also agreed that "people should be able to ask questions about the Holocaust." and that antifa were "likely Russian agents." Rovics went further then this, hosting and interviewing the noted anti-semite Gilad Atzmon in a discussion about "Jewish identity/tribal politics." All this, of course, led to more public denouncements of Rovics and more criticism. His response has been to cast himself as a victim of "cancel culture" and to categorize his critics as puritan radicals obsessed with identity politics. More disturbingly, Rovics has singled out two critics - researchers Shane Burley and Spencer Sunshine, both of whom are Jewish - and insinuated that they may be Mossad agents, working to discredit him on behalf of the Israeli regime. In the summer of 2023, Rovics publicly doxxed alleged members of Rose City Antifa and then quibbled that he hadn't actually doxxed anyone because he only published their names and social media handles, not their home addresses, in a lengthy essay he self-published in which he also describes notorious far-right extremist and grifter Andy Ngo as "a conservative journalist" and a victim of baseless attacks by antifascists. Rovics appears to have not learned anything from all of this or changed his views in any way. About a year ago, he wrote a rambling screed where he defended TERFs and "feminists," and villainized trans women ("who were raised as boys," Rovics claims for no apparent reason) as the real problem, for their refusal to allow fascist to hold public space or use platforms to broadcast their bullshit. This, according to Rovics, is the real problem - antifascists refusing to concede public space to fascists. So in summation, thanks for reaching out, glad you're doing better, and 100% fuck David Rovics.

[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

[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.