#Senate House Library

[sound-art-text]

A new audio experience that probes the connection between the environment, language, sound and silence, marking a unique collaboration between Artangel and Senate House Library.

A Thousand Words for Weather takes place across three floors of London’s most iconic library as a sonic installation born out of a collaboration between writer Jessica J. Lee and seven other London-based poets of different mother-tongues.

Each poet chose and defined ten words for the weather in Arabic, Bengali, English, German, French, Mandarin, Polish, Spanish, Turkish, or Urdu. They then went on to translate one another's chosen weather words or phrases, contributing to a unique multilingual weather ‘dictionary’ that seeks to generate a shared language describing our collective experience of climate and the changing environment while exploring the nuance of meaning in translating and describing our multilingual realities.  

These words form a sound piece created by sound artist Claudia Molitor and integrated with a bespoke playback system designed by software architect Peter Chilvers that inputs data from the Met Office, enabling the sound to be altered depending on the weather outside.

Visitors will be able to interact with a series of listening posts installed throughout the library, with all admissions taking place during term-time opening hours. You can book a day pass in advance which covers the cost of entry into the library.

[exquisitevision]

蒸蒸日上

[deadpresidents]

Do you have any fave history sites you can recommend?

There aren't a ton of history website that I spend much time on, but there are two places that immediately come to mind that might be a surprising source of fascinating history content: the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate websites! The House has a blog of sorts called "Whereas: Stories from the People's House" that has published seemingly endless pieces about really interesting Congressional history. They are usually pretty short, but I have often just got lost digging through all the little stories and following related links. It's really cool. The Senate has a similar site, called Historical Highlights, and, again, there are some really interesting stories about people, events, the artwork or architectural details of the Capitol, and much more.

Both the House and Senate also have links to information about specific traditions or symbols that are really educational and informative. And there are scores of resources that you can download from both institutions -- entire books, along with historic reports and oral histories.

Another thing that you might not know is that you can contact Senate or House historians through the websites of the respective chambers of Congress if you have questions about something and they'll actually respond. A few years back, I was working on something regarding the Vice Presidency and had a really obscure question that I just could not find an answer on. I e-mailed the Senate historian, and a few days later, they responded with a detailed answer, directions to further sources, and an offer to help if I needed any further assistance! I'm not kidding when I say that it was legitimately the most impressed I've ever been with anything connected to the United States Congress.

[tomorrowusa]

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI-03) has it in for teens.

Congressman Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin is a MAGA Republican who has a habit of disrespecting teens.

‘Jackasses,’ ‘little s‑‑‑‑’: GOP congressman curses out teenage Senate pages 

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) is in hot water after he cursed out a group of teenage Senate pages in the Capitol rotunda early Thursday morning.

According to a transcript written by a page minutes after the incident and obtained by The Hill, Van Orden called the pages “jackasses” and “pieces of s‑‑‑,” and told them he didn’t “give a f‑‑‑ who you are.”

The pages are a group of 16- and 17-year-olds who assist Senate operations, and when the Senate works late — as it did Wednesday night on National Defense Authorization Act amendments — pages generally rest nearby in the rotunda.

“Wake the f‑‑‑ up you little s‑‑‑‑. … What the f‑‑‑ are you all doing? Get the f‑‑‑ out of here. You are defiling the space you [pieces of s‑‑‑],” Van Orden said, according to the account provided by the page.

“Who the f‑‑‑ are you?” Van Orden asked, to which one person said they were Senate pages. “I don’t give a f‑‑‑ who you are, get out.”

“You jackasses, get out,” he added.

The incident, which occurred just after midnight, outraged members of the upper chamber, with one calling the string of remarks “horrible.”

[ ... ]

Van Orden did not dispute the exchange and defended his actions when asked by The Hill.

“The history of the United States Capitol Rotunda, that during the Civil War it was used as a field hospital and countless Union soldiers died on that floor, and they died because they were fighting the Civil War to end slavery. And I think that place should be treated with a tremendous amount of respect for the dead,” he said.

Van Ordrn’s defense was pathetic and hypocritical when you look into the company he keeps.

GOP Candidate Bankrolled Jan. 6 Riot Trip With Campaign Cash

Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL and small-time actor, has previously acknowledged attending the Jan. 6 rally, but has repeatedly claimed he never entered the Capitol grounds. However, social media posts from the riot suggest that isn’t true.

A Facebook image from Jan. 6 shows Van Orden standing on a wall on the Capitol grounds that was inside a restricted area. (The Daily Beast recreated the photo on Friday and confirmed that Van Orden would have had to cross police barricades to reach that area.)

Yep, Van Orden was one of the terrorists who assaulted the US Capitol on 06 January 2021. He yelled at teen Senate pages for taking pictures of the rotunda while lying down – apparently a tradition for pages. But did Van Orden yell at his terrorist buddies who smeared their own shit on the Capitol?

MAGA mob rioters smeared their own feces throughout the Capitol and 'tracked brown footprints' in several hallways during violent siege

But wait, there’s more!

Back in his home district, Van Orden yelled at a teen library assistant for a Pride Month display at the public library.

Congressional candidate Derrick Van Orden confronted teen library staffer over Gay Pride display

A staffer at a southwestern Wisconsin library says a Republican congressional candidate threatened her over a gay pride display. 

Kerrigan Trautsch, a page at the Prairie du Chien Memorial Library, told the La Crosse Tribune that Derrick Van Orden came into the library on June 17 and complained loudly about a display of fiction and nonfiction books about homosexuality in the children’s section. The display was part of the library’s efforts to recognize Pride Month. 

Trautsch, who was 17 at the time, describes herself as an advocate for the LGBTQ community. She said Van Orden was angry, and that he said the books offended him and that taxpayers shouldn’t have to see them.

[ ... ]

“He was full-on shouting at this point and he kept aggressively shoving the books around,” she said.

Van Orden ended up checking out every book from the display except one a library patron was already reading, she said. She went home and told her parents that she didn’t feel safe at work anymore.

He’s obviously a homophobe in addition to being a pal of poop smearing insurrectionists.

Van Orden is a first-class asshole. He fits in well in a GOP caucus which includes Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, George Santos, and Lauren Boebert.

Many high profile House GOP assholes like MJT come from super safe districts. But that isn’t the case with Van Orden.

In 2022 Democratic Gov. Tony Evers carried Van Orden’s WI-03. And Van Orden himself won by only 3.8% of the vote last year.

The right sort of Democrat with a good campaign could send Van Orden back to MAGAland where he can smear the walls with poop like his friends on January 6th.

Here’s WI-03.

Though it’s gerrymandered, WI-03 does contain four branches of the University of Wisconsin system. So Florida students trying to escape Ron DeSantis’s takeover of that state’s universities can find refuge at a U of W campus in Wi-03 while helping to make House Republicans a minority again.

And keep WI-03 in mind next year if you like to make individual contributions to congressional candidates.

[always-coffee]

WV Libraries Are Under Attack: How to Help

News came out yesterday that West Virginia House passed House Bill 4654. This would remove “bona fide schools, public libraries, and museums from the list of exemptions from criminal liability relating to distribution and display to a minor of obscene matter. …”

Potentially criminalizing librarians is bad, and it’s straight out of the fascist playbook. “Opponents of the bill said that while the bill does not ban books, the bill would have unintended consequences for public and school libraries, resulting in increases in challenges to even classic books and attempts to criminally charge librarians over books not pornographic in nature, but books that include descriptions of sex. They also said it could result in improper criminal charges against library staff,” Steven Allen Adams writes.

So, the question is: now what? What do we do? Where do we go from here?

If you live in West Virginia, call you state senate reps. You can find them listed here.

It’s okay to keep your message short:

“Hi, I’m [full name] calling from [ZIP code], and I’m a constituent of [Senator Name]. I am calling to voice my opposition to Bill 4654, because this is a dangerous step toward book banning. It could potentially harm librarians and libraries, which is incredibly wrong. Do not back this dangerous bill.

You can also ask how many people have called to voice their opposition to this bill. This may annoy the person on the phone, but they technically have to answer you. They may be evasive anyway. But you can either give them your contact information and tell them you’d like a call back or you can call back again later and ask for the tally.

The thing is, people rarely call in. A handful of calls is considered a lot, and the best thing you can do right now is make yourself a nuisance. Good trouble, etc.

Only call if you live in West Virginia, because they do not count calls from those outside their constituency. I am obviously not an expert, but if you have additional questions, ask them and I’ll try to help. I learned way more about how politics work during the last presidency than I thought humanly possible.

Additional resources:

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What the fuck is a PBM?

TOMORROW (Sept 24), I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

Terminal-stage capitalism owes its long senescence to its many defensive mechanisms, and it's only by defeating these that we can put it out of its misery. "The Shield of Boringness" is one of the necrocapitalist's most effective defenses, so it behooves us to attack it head-on.

The Shield of Boringness is Dana Claire's extremely useful term for anything so dull that you simply can't hold any conception of it in your mind for any length of time. In the finance sector, they call this "MEGO," which stands for "My Eyes Glaze Over," a term of art for financial arrangements made so performatively complex that only the most exquisitely melted brain-geniuses can hope to unravel their spaghetti logic. The rest of us are meant to simply heft those thick, dense prospectuses in two hands, shrug, and assume, "a pile of shit this big must have a pony under it."

MEGO and its Shield of Boringness are key to all of terminal-stage capitalism's stupidest scams. Cloaking obvious swindles in a lot of complex language and Byzantine payment schemes can make them seem respectable just long enough for the scammers to relieve you of all your inconvenient cash and assets, though, eventually, you're bound to notice that something is missing.

If you spent the years leading up to the Great Financial Crisis baffled by "CDOs," "synthetic CDOs," "ARMs" and other swindler nonsense, you experienced the Shield of Boringness. If you bet your house and/or your retirement savings on these things, you experienced MEGO. If, after the bubble popped, you finally came to understand that these "exotic financial instruments" were just scams, you experienced Stein's Law ("anything that can't go forever eventually stops"). If today you no longer remember what a CDO is, you are once again experiencing the Shield of Boringness.

As bad as 2008 was, it wasn't even close to the end of terminal stage capitalism. The market has soldiered on, with complex swindles like carbon offset trading, metaverse, cryptocurrency, financialized solar installation, and (of course) AI. In addition to these new swindles, we're still playing the hits, finding new ways to make the worst scams of the 2000s even worse.

That brings me to the American health industry, and the absurdly complex, ridiculously corrupt Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), a pathology that has only metastasized since 2008.

On at least 20 separate occasions, I have taken it upon myself to figure out how the PBM swindle works, and nevertheless, every time they come up, I have to go back and figure it out again, because PBMs have the most powerful Shield of Boringness out of the whole Monster Manual of terminal-stage capitalism's trash mobs.

PBMs are back in the news because the FTC is now suing the largest of these for their role in ripping off diabetics with sky-high insulin prices. This has kicked off a fresh round of "what the fuck is a PBM, anyway?" explainers of extremely variable quality. Unsurprisingly, the best of these comes from Matt Stoller:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-lina-khan-pharma

Stoller starts by pointing out that Americans have a proud tradition of getting phucked by pharma companies. As far back as the 1950s, Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver was holding hearings on the scams that pharma companies were using to ensure that Americans paid more for their pills than virtually anyone else in the world.

But since the 2010s, Americans have found themselves paying eye-popping, sky-high, ridiculous drug prices. Eli Lilly's Humolog insulin sold for $21 in 1999; by 2017, the price was $274 – a 1,200% increase! This isn't your grampa's price gouging!

Where do these absurd prices come from? The story starts in the 2000s, when the GW Bush administration encouraged health insurers to create "high deductible" plans, where patients were expected to pay out of pocket for receiving care, until they hit a multi-thousand-dollar threshold, and then their insurance would kick in. Along with "co-pays" and other junk fees, these deductibles were called "cost sharing," and they were sold as a way to prevent the "abuse" of the health care system.

The economists who crafted terminal-stage capitalism's intellectual rationalizations claimed the reason Americans paid so much more for health care than their socialized-medicine using cousins in the rest of the world had nothing to do with the fact that America treats health as a source of profits, while the rest of the world treats health as a human right.

No, the actual root of America's health industry's problems was the moral defects of Americans. Because insured Americans could just go see the doctor whenever they felt like it, they had no incentive to minimize their use of the system. Any time one of these unhinged hypochondriacs got a little sniffle, they could treat themselves to a doctor's visit, enjoying those waiting-room magazines and the pleasure of arranging a sick day with HR, without bearing any of the true costs:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/27/the-doctrine-of-moral-hazard/

"Cost sharing" was supposed to create "skin in the game" for every insured American, creating a little pain-point that stung you every time you thought about treating yourself to a luxurious doctor's visit. Now, these payments bit hardest on the poorest workers, because if you're making minimum wage, at $10 co-pay hurts a lot more than it does if you're making six figures. What's more, VPs and the C-suite were offered "gold-plated" plans with low/no deductibles or co-pays, because executives understand the value of a dollar in the way that mere working slobs can't ever hope to comprehend. They can be trusted to only use the doctor when it's truly warranted.

So now you have these high-deductible plans creeping into every workplace. Then along comes Obama and the Affordable Care Act, a compromise that maintains health care as a for-profit enterprise (still not a human right!) but seeks to create universal coverage by requiring every American to buy a plan, requiring insurers to offer plans to every American, and uses public money to subsidize the for-profit health industry to glue it together.

Predictably, the cheapest insurance offered on the Obamacare exchanges – and ultimately, by employers – had sky-high deductibles and co-pays. That way, insurers could pocket a fat public subsidy, offer an "insurance" plan that was cheap enough for even the most marginally employed people to afford, but still offer no coverage until their customers had spent thousands of dollars out-of-pocket in a given year.

That's the background: GWB created high-deductible plans, Obama supercharged them. Keep that in your mind as we go through the MEGO procedures of the PBM sector.

Your insurer has a list of drugs they'll cover, called the "formulary." The formulary also specifies how much the insurance company is willing to pay your pharmacist for these drugs. Creating the formulary and paying pharmacies for dispensing drugs is a lot of tedious work, and insurance outsources this to third parties, called – wait for it – Pharmacy Benefits Managers.

The prices in the formulary the PBM prepares for your insurance company are called the "list prices." These are meant to represent the "sticker price" of the drug, what a pharmacist would charge you if you wandered in off the street with no insurance, but somehow in possession of a valid prescription.

But, as Stoller writes, these "list prices" aren't actually ever charged to anyone. The list price is like the "full price" on the pricetags at a discount furniture place where everything is always "on sale" at 50% off – and whose semi-disposable sofas and balsa-wood dining room chairs are never actually sold at full price.

One theoretical advantage of a PBM is that it can get lower prices because it bargains for all the people in a given insurer's plan. If you're the pharma giant Sanofi and you want your Lantus insulin to be available to any of the people who must use OptumRX's formulary, you have to convince OptumRX to include you in that formulary.

OptumRX – like all PBMs – demands "rebates" from pharma companies if they want to be included in the formulary. On its face, this is similar to the practices of, say, NICE – the UK agency that bargains for medicine on behalf of the NHS, which also bargains with pharma companies for access to everyone in the UK and gets very good deals as a result.

But OptumRX doesn't bargain for a lower list price. They bargain for a bigger rebate. That means that the "price" is still very high, but OptumRX ends up paying a tiny fraction of it, thanks to that rebate. In the OptumRX formulary, Lantus insulin lists for $403. But Sanofi, who make Lantus, rebate $339 of that to OptumRX, leaving just $64 for Lantus.

Here's where the scam hits. Your insurer charges you a deductible based on the list price – $404 – not on the $64 that OptumRX actually pays for your insulin. If you're in a high-deductible plan and you haven't met your cap yet, you're going to pay $404 for your insulin, even though the actual price for it is $64.

Now, you'd think that your insurer would put a stop to this. They chose the PBM, the PBM is ripping off their customers, so it's their job to smack the PBM around and make it cut this shit out. So why would the insurers tolerate this nonsense?

Here's why: the PBMs are divisions of the big health insurance companies. Unitedhealth owns OptumRx; Aetna owns Caremark, and Cigna owns Expressscripts. So it's not the PBM that's ripping you off, it's your own insurance company. They're not just making you pay for drugs that you're supposedly covered for – they're pocketing the deductible you pay for those drugs.

Now, there's one more entity with power over the PBM that you'd hope would step in on your behalf: your boss. After all, your employer is the entity that actually chooses the insurer and negotiates with them on your behalf. Your boss is in the driver's seat; you're just along for the ride.

It would be pretty funny if the answer to this was that the health insurance company bought your employer, too, and so your boss, the PBM and the insurer were all the same guy, busily swapping hats, paying for a call center full of tormented drones who each have three phones on their desks: one labeled "insurer"; the second, "PBM" and the final one "HR."

But no, the insurers haven't bought out the company you work for (yet). Rather, they've bought off your boss – they're sharing kickbacks with your employer for all the deductibles and co-pays you're being suckered into paying. There's so much money (your money) sloshing around in the PBM scamoverse that anytime someone might get in the way of you being ripped off, they just get cut in for a share of the loot.

That is how the PBM scam works: they're fronts for health insurers who exploit the existence of high-deductible plans in order to get huge kickbacks from pharma makers, and massive fees from you. They split the loot with your boss, whose payout goes up when you get screwed harder.

But wait, there's more! After all, Big Pharma isn't some kind of easily pushed-around weakling. They're big. Why don't they push back against these massive rebates? Because they can afford to pay bribes and smaller companies making cheaper drugs can't. Whether it's a little biotech upstart with a cheaper molecule, or a generics maker who's producing drugs at a fraction of the list price, they just don't have the giant cash reserves it takes to buy their way into the PBMs' formularies. Doubtless, the Big Pharma companies would prefer to pay smaller kickbacks, but from Big Pharma's perspective, the optimum amount of bribes extracted by a PBM isn't zero – far from it. For Big Pharma, the optimal number is one cent higher than "the maximum amount of bribes that a smaller company can afford."

The purpose of a system is what it does. The PBM system makes sure that Americans only have access to the most expensive drugs, and that they pay the highest possible prices for them, and this enriches both insurance companies and employers, while protecting the Big Pharma cartel from upstarts.

Which is why the FTC is suing the PBMs for price-fixing. As Stoller points out, they're using their powers under Section 5 of the FTC Act here, which allows them to shut down "unfair methods of competition":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The case will be adjudicated by an administrative law judge, in a process that's much faster than a federal court case. Once the FTC proves that the PBM scam is illegal when applied to insulin, they'll have a much easier time attacking the scam when it comes to every other drug (the insulin scam has just about run its course, with federally mandated $35 insulin coming online, just as a generation of post-insulin diabetes treatments hit the market).

Obviously the PBMs aren't taking this lying down. Cigna/Expressscripts has actually sued the FTC for libel over the market study it conducted, in which the agency described in pitiless, factual detail how Cigna was ripping us all off. The case is being fought by a low-level Reagan-era monster named Rick Rule, whom Stoller characterizes as a guy who "hangs around in bars and picks up lonely multi-national corporations" (!!).

The libel claim is a nonstarter, but it's still wild. It's like one of those movies where they want to show you how bad the cockroaches are, so there's a bit where the exterminator shows up and the roaches form a chorus line and do a kind of Busby Berkeley number:

https://www.46brooklyn.com/news/2024-09-20-the-carlton-report

So here we are: the FTC has set out to euthanize some rentiers, ridding the world of a layer of useless economic middlemen whose sole reason for existing is to make pharmaceuticals as expensive as possible, by colluding with the pharma cartel, the insurance cartel and your boss. This conspiracy exists in plain sight, hidden by the Shield of Boringness. If I've done my job, you now understand how this MEGO scam works – and if you forget all that ten minutes later (as is likely, given the nature of MEGO), that's OK: just remember that this thing is a giant fucking scam, and if you ever need to refresh yourself on the details, you can always re-read this post.

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[mckitterick]

Christofascist Republican calls LGBTQ people "filth" during public forum

The culture of hate among Christofascists recently led to the violent beating and subsequent death of Choctaw two-spirit teenager Nex Benedict in Oklahoma.

When questioned about how 50+ anti-LGBTQ bills might have affected this case, State Senator Tom Woods said,

“We are a Republican state - supermajority - in the House and Senate. I represent a constituency that doesn’t want that filth in Oklahoma.”

Several audience members clapped at his statement, while others appeared shocked.

“We are a religious state and we are going to fight it to keep that filth out of the state of Oklahoma because we are a Christian state - we are a moral state,” Woods said. “We want to ... let people be able to go to the faith they choose. We are a Republican state and I’m going to vote my district, and I’m going to vote my values, and we don’t want that in the state of Oklahoma.”

State Representative David Hardin added, “How you live your life personally, that’s between you and God... but what goes through our public schools - I will fall back on my faith. I want to make sure that at least the children in our public schools have that faith... what I want to make sure of is that our young children have the right to grow up with that faith."

After the forum, Woods reiterated his stance on the matter: "I support my constituency, and like I said, we’re a Christian state, and we are tired of having that shoved down our throat at every turn... I stand behind my statement, and I stand behind the Republican Party values."

When asked what he thought of Woods’ characterization of LGBTQ people as “filth,” State Senator Dewayne Pemberton said, “No comment.”

Again and again, today's christofascist Republicans (any other sort doesn't get elected these days) reveal that they want to indoctrinate public school kids into their own bigoted hatred, forcing children to hate anyone who doesn't subscribe to their narrow interpretation of their religious texts. Christofascists seek to impose their personal, misguided religious biases on the general public, including creating laws codifying hate and authoritarian control over the lives and bodies of everyone, not just others in their own religion.

Make no mistake, Nex Benedict's death was caused by christofascist indoctrination of the three girls who brutally beat Nex in that school bathroom. Nex Benedict's death was caused by the school failing to take their injuries seriously, by hate codified in Oklahoma state laws designed to harass LGBTQ folks and normalize bigotry against them, by Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters appointing hate-speech villain Chaya Raichik (responsible for "Libs of TikTok") to the Oklahoma Department of Education's Library Media Advisory Committee even though she doesn't live in the state (but he likes that she used Benedict's school and teacher for targeted hate). And on and on - it's a systematic attack on personal freedom and human rights - and the lives of queer folks.

Nex Benedict's death is exactly what christofascists seek through indoctrinating children into their hate that perpetuates bigotry into the future and forcing their religious fanaticism into the public sphere through unconstitutional laws built on hate and control.

Do you want to live in a theocracy dictated by those who narrowly interpret their personal religious texts to promote hate? Because as long as citizens fail to speak out against these harbingers of civilizational collapse, they'll only feel more and more emboldened to turn hate crimes into victories.

We must not let another of our people become victim of systemic bigotry. To protect children and end generational indoctrination, we must fire all public officials who subscribe to christofascist hatred and, when appropriate, prosecute them for the violence they incite.

If we fail to end the careers of hateful christofascists, we fail our children.

[tanoraqui]

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Confirm your voter registration

Find your polling place

Know what ID to bring

Heck, just check out this website for a variety of official answers to voting-related questions, state by state. Or this one.

Did you know that in many states, you're required to get time off to vote?

And don’t forget your local elections! That’s where your single vote is most likely to make a difference, that’s where most of the decisions will affect your daily life and your neighbors’, and that’s where novice politicians whom you really like gain experience to rise to higher office!

- It's currently a dead heat for which party controls the House of Representatives (propose most laws, oversees the presidential election process which Trump WILL try to fuck with), so vote for that!

- 538's poll aggregates currently predict that only in 1 out of 11 timelines do Democrats win the Senate (approve Supreme Court nominees and basically every other appointment in the government) so vote like HELL for that!

- School Board members determine if books should be banned. Your Mayor and City Council members decide how much money goes to your local library, park, schools, and how much goes to the police. Do you want your local Parks Board or Transit Board or Superspecial Tiddlywinks Board to be run by someone who believes that public services should be privatized, or that they should serve the public? VOTE FOR THAT SHIT!!

- Also, in between, Governors and State Assembly and however you state or local municipality does measures, propositions and taxes... (I only know California, where our state constitution has been fighting for its life against direct democracy since 1911, and losing the whole time.) And sheriffs and district attorneys to run your local prosecution of criminals, and State Secretary of State to oversee your elections…

CANDI THE CAT IN HER STYLISH AUTUMN VEST WANTS YOU TO VOTE!

[todaysdocument]

Report from the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress regarding the purchase of Thomas Jefferson's Library

Record Group 128: Records of Joint Committees of CongressSeries: Committee Papers

In Senate of the United States

October 7. 1814

[number "372" written in pencil]

Mr. Goldsborough, from the joint committee, on

the Library of Congress,

Reported,

That they have received through

Mr. Samuel H. Smith, an offer from Mr. Jefferson

late President of the United States, of the whole

of his library for Congress in such a mode, and

upon such terms as they consider highly advan-

tageous to the nation, and worthy the distinguished

gentleman who tenders it. But the means placed

at the disposal of the committee being very limited

and totally inadequate to the purchase of such

a Library as that now offered, the committee

must have recourse to Congress either to extend

their powers, or to adopt such other plan as

they may think most proper.

Should it be the sense of Congress to

confide this matter to the committee, they

respectfully submit the following resolution:

Resolved by the Senate and House

of Representatives of the United States of

America in Congress assembled, that the

joint library committee of the two Houses

of Congress be and they are hereby authorized

and empowered to contract on their part for the purchase of the library of Mr Jefferson late

President of the United States, for the use of

both Houses of Congress.

[modernism-in-metroland]

Staircase, Senate House and Library, Bloomsbury

1936

Charles Holden

Image from RIBApix

[zombiesama]

Banning LGBTQ+ Books (March 2023)

I want to talk about what’s happening in my home state of North Dakota regarding banning books in libraries, coming from a queer library assistant. 

Two state bills, SB 2360 and HB 1205, are aiming to ban “obscene” materials. What are obscene materials? Well one of the bills, SB 2360, defines obscene as a number of things including written or visual depictions of:

Human masturbation 

Sexual intercourse

Deviant sexual intercourse

Sexual perversion

Sex-based classifications

I’m sure you can imagine what lawmakers mean by “deviant” and “perversion”, and if you can’t, they’re trying to be as vague as possible with their bigotry targeting the LGBTQ+ community while claiming it’s for the protection of children. A tale as old as time, really. 

HB 1205 is worse. Where SB 2360 tries to be vague about its targeting of the LGBTQ+ community, HB 1205 is very blatant about it.

Its definition of “explicit sexual material” includes “sexual identity” and “gender identity” and the bill aims to ban these books from libraries in the state.

Thankfully, an amendment was adopted for HB 1205 (the worse of the two bills) stating that this only applies to children’s materials, however, I need to stress that book banning, especially targeting marginalized groups, is still bad, even if it’s just children’s materials. Dozens if not hundreds of books in my local library alone will have to be discarded if these bills pass. And, because lawmakers have publicly accused us of this, I need to state that no public library in North Dakota contains pornography, and we are especially not pushing pornography on minors.

Currently, libraries across the state are preparing a class-action lawsuit against the state that will take effect if either of these bills pass. My library director just announced this morning that we’re joining the lawsuit. People across the state have been planning and going through with read-in protests and postcard writing campaigns. We’re doing all we can to keep these bills from passing, and I want the rest of the country and the LGBTQ+ community to take notice. 

Please spread word, and if you’re from North Dakota, please contact your representatives! Here is a form you can fill out to contact them easily:

TL;DR : North Dakota’s House and Senate are trying to pass bills that would limit what books North Dakota library patrons have access to on the basis of banning “obscene” materials. This includes mentions of sexual and gender identity.

[lightsaber-dorphin]

Jedi Order Bureaucratic Structure

I’ve been working for a while on worldbuilding the inner workings of the Jedi Order. Below is a flowchart of the administrative bodies, their duties, and any other admin bodies they oversee. More details on each below the cut.

These are different groups involved in running the Jedi Order. For different roles within the Jedi, see my Jedi Order Corps and Subdivisions.

High Council: (Finance, bylaws, PR, major trials)

Determines the budget(s)

Relations with the Senate

Only body that can expel members

Librarian's Assembly: (Ensures knowledge is available to Jedi)

Fund academic researchers (many Jedi researchers work directly for the assembly)

Archives: (Run the Archives & research)

Host academic conferences

Protect important artifacts

Run basically directly by the Librarian's Assembly

Department of Classes: (Adult education)

Organize all classes that aren't geneds

Set criteria for certifications/ degrees

Help members get degrees from external organizations

Council of Reassignment: (Oversees transfers & is Jedi CPS)

New Initiate paperwork

Transfers between corps and/or branches

Helps members leave the Order

Checks the CoFK when necessary

Padawanship paperwork filed here (crèchemasters sign off, padawan signs off, check master for red flags/ not allowed to take apprentice, sometimes mind healer signs off)

Council of Justice: (Attourneys & internal justice system)

Try & punish cases committed by Jedi & internal to the Jedi Order

Mediate interpersonal disputes

Lawyers for the Order

Cannot expel members

Council of Outreach: (Manages outposts & patrols)

Assigns Jedi to satellite locations or watchfolk posts

Hires other outpost staff

Ships supplies to & from outposts

Tracks the locations of missions & sends Vanguards to areas that haven't been visited recently

Council of Temple Maintenance: (Oversees internal services and temple upkeep)

In charge of the cleaning droids

Coordinates trash & recycling with Coruscant government

Has the occasional member who can do specialized maintenance (ex. plumber, electrician)

Volunteers sign up to fix things

Hires outside contractors when there isn't a Jedi with the necessary skills

Assigns Jedi to living quarters

Interior decor

Delegates chores such as taking out the trash, mopping, dusting, etc.

Padawans and initiates are often assigned these chores as punishments

Kitchenmasters: (Mess halls)

Make & serve food in the mess halls

Label the food with which species can eat it

Order food supplies

Supervise initiate clans helping in the kitchens

Quartermasters: (Distribute supplies & manage finances)

Bulk-order supplies for the Order

Provide mission allotments

Desk operators help members pick up supplies

Accounting

Transport Office: (Run the hangar bay & speeder pool)

Responsible for the Order's vehicles

Mechanics

Vehicles are checked in & out like a library for cars & ships

Hire external staff when there aren't enough Jedi

Temple Guard: (Security & emergency response)

Guard against exterior threats to the temple

Security during criminal situations

Really good at sensing danger to temple inhabitants

First responders (fire & police-- MedCorp handles EMS)

Change lightbulbs and smoke detector batteries

Odd jobs on behalf of the CoTM

Uses the lore by Adsecula in "Nameless"

Council of Reconciliation: (Central hub of Jedi outreach & diplomacy)

All aid requests go through them

Sets mission objectives

Approve or deny aid/ mission requests

Reviews behavior of Jedi on missions when there are issues

Mission Consignment: (Assign Jedi to approved missions)

Desk jockeys

Not officially divided by type of mission/ Jedi role needed, but missions will be passed to people who are more familiar with the experts required

Organizes specifics for missions such as transportation and housing

Council of First Knowledge: (Runs Initiate & Padawan dorms, clans, & childhood education)

Initiate clans members live together with their crèchemasters rotating out night shifts

Padawans & Senior Initiates live in individual rooms in designated halls with some crèchemasters living in each hall

Department of Seekers: (Regulates conduct of Seekers)

Create regulates for what Seekers can & cannot do & how they should act

Investigate reported misconduct by Seekers

Crèche: (Organizes care for Initiates)

Sort Initiates into clans

Run events/ field trips/ etc.

Set educational standards

see my post about Living Quarters in the Jedi Temple

Department of Primary Classes: (Classroom education for younglings)

Standard elementary school operation stuff

Provides the general education classes all Jedi take as younglings

Circle of Healers: (Sets certification requirements)

Certified to train medical professionals for a variety of degrees

Determines when Jedi have fulfilled requirements for medical certifications

Sets the qualifications for Force-specific medical degrees

Halls of Healing: (Healthcare within the Order & internal outreach)

Like a local hospital but also has general practitioners

IRB: (Reviews research for ethical concerns)

Institutional Review Board

"Under FDA regulations, an Institutional Review Board is group that has been formally designated to review and monitor biomedical research involving human subjects. In accordance with FDA regulations, an IRB has the authority to approve, require modifications in (to secure approval), or disapprove research. This group review serves an important role in the protection of the rights and welfare of human research subjects."

IRB for the entire Order, not just the MedCorps

[deadpresidents]

So now we’ve seen some nice-looking Oval Office setups. Do you have some atrocious ones?

When President Kennedy traveled to Texas in November 1963 and was scheduled to be away from the White House for a few days, White House staff put the finishing touches on a planned redecoration of his Oval Office. JFK, of course, was assassinated on that trip, so he actually never saw his redecorated office, but it was pretty brutal-looking, in my opinion, as they installed a bright red carpet that just didn't seem to fit in the Oval Office:

Here's a comparison of the Oval Office when JFK took office in 1961, which largely looked like the decor used by President Eisenhower throughout the Eisenhower Administration, and the ugly, red carpet redecoration that Kennedy never saw due to his assassination:

When LBJ assumed office following JFK's assassination, he kept the bright red carpet for a while, but eventually redecorated again and got rid of the carpet. LBJ also swapped out the legendary Resolute desk that has been used by most Presidents over the past 120 years. President Johnson was a physically large man, and he installed a larger desk that he had previously used when he was in the Senate and serving as Vice President. The desk that LBJ used -- which is actually called the "Johnson desk" -- is now on display at the LBJ Presidential Library | @lbjlibrary | in Austin, Texas in the museum's Oval Office replica, which displays LBJ's Oval Office as it looked once he replaced the ugly red carpet and had the office redecorated to suit his own tastes.

[tomorrowusa]

Minnesota joined pioneering Illinois in making it illegal to ban LGBTQ+ and other books at libraries. The bill, known as MN SF3567, was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz on the 17th.

Minnesota has banned book bans, making it illegal for libraries to remove titles based on ideology. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed HF3782 into law last week, which prevents libraries from removing books “based solely on the viewpoint, content, message, idea, or opinion conveyed.” Instead, content curation will be managed by “a licensed library media specialist, an individual with a master’s degree in library sciences or library and information sciences, or a professional librarian or person with extensive library collection management experience." "Censorship has no place in our libraries. As a former teacher, I’m clear: We need to remember our history, not erase it," Walz said on Twitter/X. "Today, I signed a bill into law putting an end to book bans based on ideology in Minnesota."

In the Minnesota Senate, all 34 Democrats voted for the bill along with 1 Republican (Sen. Jim J. Abeler). All 31 Nay votes came from Republicans.

In the Minnesota House, all 68 Democrats voted for it and all 59 Republicans voted against it.

So don't take shit from third party losers who tell you that both major parties are alike.

This vote is another reminder of the importance of state government and state legislatures in particular.

The passage of Minnesota's anti-censorship bill was made possible when Democrats flipped the state senate in 2022. 😉

Look up who represents you in your state's legislature.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

If you're represented by Republicans, work to defeat them. Volunteering to help in a legislative election is an excellent way to get your feet wet in politics. It's very grass roots and you'll probably get a chance to talk with the candidate yourself.

BONUS: Minnesota's new state flag became official this month. It's VERY blue and even if Justice Alito flies it upside down it won't make any difference.

[transformersarelikemagicalgirlz]

Cybertronian Liminal spaces ideas: TFP

Tunnels (thru Mts, under cities, etc.)

Red Sand Deserts (Rust Sea Similarities)

Large Scale Industrial Sectors (Think big, automated assembly lines; Similar to their factories)

I also feel like truly gigantic cities (Lots of skyscrapers; similar to their cityscapes) would be similar enough to evoke a sense of nostalgia.

Cybertronian Specific Places:

OP - Libraries (the bigger the more nostalgic he gets) and Rome, b/c of the Collusium (I imagine it reminds him of Kaons Arena)

Megs - Rome (Same as OP), Empty Mines, and ruined Forts (even tho their forts 100% looked different, our ruins still give the same effect)

Ratch - Colleges (Academy Days, specifically the long, winding trails from one building to another), Hospital Corridors (If he has a holoform) and Oddly enough, Victorian Houses. Old and creaky, reminiscent of an old era.

Star - The Buj Kalifa (Vosian Remenicent). Sometimes Specific weather patterns, like Hailstorms or Freezing Rain, remind him of the stinging Acid rain of Cybertron. He hates Blizzards too.

Bulk - Construction sites get him. Rome as well (architecture in general, really).

Sounders - Rome, Government Buildings (specifically, the twisting hallways some important buildings have) and castles/forts.

Arcee - Tunnels, Ravines (I imagine she hid a lot on cybertron, cracks in cybs exoplates would be similar to ravines), and old houses (dilapidated buildings, slowly rotting away; similar to one specific spider incident.

KO - Raceways (obv), but also airports (hanger bays specifically) and large scale paint factories. Also, Buj Kalifa (HC that KO is a Grounded Seeker, explaining SS comment in TFP). Maybe medical tents as well? He was a front line medic after all.

Bee - Rocky mountain roads (scouting), ruins like Stonehenge, and ghost towns. Places where life has been destroyed. Also, war ravaged cities and mysterious old paths through the trees.

BD - Similar to Bulk, but add Mines and industrial buildings too.

Smokey - Libraries (not to the same extent as OP tho), old ruins, and abandoned junkyards (similar effect to the transport ship) I also HC that the escape pod made him pretty Claustrophobic. So small spaces are a no go.

Shockers - Labs, research buildings, but also government buildings (Senator days) and hospitals (too pristine/white a room; he slightly panics) HC that Shockers hates the color white with a dying passion.

Jackie - Labs as well, but also hanger bays and random bars get him too. (HC that he basically found Seaspray in a galactic bar.)

Dread/Quake - Old English/French architecture and Rome

Mags - Government buildings, Libraries (somewhat), but mainly offices and conference rooms get this guy.

Arachnid - Dug out Tunnels (insecticon hives), fancy buildings (Senete esch enough; similar to all her targets homes), and out-of-the-way villages (similar to other organic planets easiest targets)

I think that basically everyone (everyone important I think? Cliffs dead so I didn't include him lol).

HOOOOLY FUCK man you put a LOT of thought into this, this is so cool. The bit about lifeless or decayed places igniting that kinda nostalgia in Bee is actually really sad if you think about it.

Man now I wanna see an episode where a relic is found near the remains of the colosseum, and it has a lot of bots on edge.

I feel like the cities with big reflective or iridescent skyscrapers are spot on, especially in the flashbacks. To add to city scenes, in the flashbacks they had huge streets and ramps and freeways that looked a lot like ours too! (Unless I’m remembering wrong and I’m just nuts)

[intothestacks]

Abigayl Martin, a BYU-Idaho alumna and writer who has been following the bill’s history the past few years, explained how last year a version of the law passed the House and the Senate but was vetoed by Governor Brad Little due to dangerously vague language and enforcement concerns.

For example, containing sexual conduct is one of the grounds for requiring a book to be relocated; however, in House Bill 710, part of the definition of sexual conduct includes anything “homosexual.”

“Say there was a book with a gay main character or trans main character or something like that,” Martin said. “That could very likely be, even if there was nothing else, you know, no sex, no anything else, no language, just that the main character, you know, was gay or trans. And then that will be reason enough to ban a book, which is kind of terrifying, if you asked me.“