#because I have opinions

[pagerunner-j]

Being a recovering Magic: The Gathering collector (read: I sold most of my cards during a bout of unemployment and I'm still sad about it), I'd talked myself out of buying any of the Doctor Who-themed cards. But I've been poking through the art tonight anyway.

For some reason, what's getting to me the most are the basic land cards.

For the unfamiliar, land cards are how you make the whole game work. You have to utilize the appropriate land cards to fuel basically anything you want to do. Because of this, the same foundational land types -- mountain, island, swamp, etc. -- have existed in the game since day 1. There are special land cards that do unique things, of course, and the art for those can be pretty intricate, but the basic ones generally don't get the fanciest art. They're just pretty landscapes, really, lightly themed to match the rest of the set they're in.

So for the Doctor Who set? Plain old forests and fields and such, as always.

Except the TARDIS is sitting out in the middle of them.

I would put these cards in any game of M:TG I'll ever play until the end of time.

[christinaroseandrews]

I was in college when No Child Left Behind became a thing. In fact, I was in college to become a teacher. Almost overnight everything I learned in my teacher ed classes became obsolete. And lesson plans that I had collected over years were suddenly thrown out the window because they taught critical thinking skills and not to the test.

I was in school primarily to teach middle schoolers which is the age when most kids start learning how to think critically and not just parrot what their authority figures around them think. I loved middle schoolers; they were the best age. It was so exciting to see kids start to realize who they were and ask questions.

No child Left behind squashed all of that. No child Left behind made it so that kids were no longer excited to learn things and in many cases had no interest in going to school.

No child Left behind is one of the biggest reasons why I chose eventually to switch focuses and no longer go into education. I wanted to teach kids how to learn and how to think critically and how to form opinions for themselves. I absolutely lived for the aha moment of when it clicked for a kid.

When no child Left behind was passed a lot of really good teachers chose to retire or switch careers. I can't blame them. With how little teachers are paid and how much they have to provide out of pocket for their classrooms as well as the really strict requirements for continuing education (summers off? Lol. No. That's when most teachers take their continuing Ed courses), most teachers were in it for love of teaching and for love of their students.

In the higher education world, whole ass curriculums had to be thrown out. My mother has been in higher ed teaching teachers for decades and with the passage of no child Left behind so many college professors and teacher Ed programs had to change how they taught their teacher ed students. This affected things like teaching classroom management as well as lesson planning and even curriculum development. There wasn't time to include fun things that energized students into learning. And the state that I live in has one of the strictest teacher education requirements in the US. (Fun fact, most states will accreditate teachers from my state with minimal hoops to jump through... My mother even set up a program where kids that were taught at her University would do their student teaching in places like Florida and would be guaranteed jobs there when they graduated.) Teacher education was already a five/six year program. No child Left behind just added to it.

No child Left behind didn't start charter schools but it sure is ass accelerated them. And a lot of those charter schools were fronts for identity theft. Ask me how I know...

No child Left behind absolutely destroyed the education system here in the US.

And that was the whole point.

No child Left behind harmed so many people. And it's one of the major reasons why I'm an editor and not a teacher.

I hate that bloody law. And I have so many opinions about it.

I was today years old. That is disgusting.

No Child Left Behind is one of the worst things to ever be incentivized in schools. It was signed into law when I was 14. Reading Rainbow was my show as a kid. LeVar Burton played a big part in why I became an avid reader to date. The joy of it. It's an adventure around the globe and through different time periods without stepping on a plane or time machine.

Children parrot behavior. In grade school, I always wanted to read the same amount of books as my teachers (50 books) and managed to double that each year. Before No Child Left Behind, book fairs and Scholastic catalogs were a serious matter like your grandma's Fingerhut catalogs. Libraries were (and still are) a wonderland.

Reading comprehension and proficiency in schools has been declining for decades. A crisis. The joy of books isn't pushed anymore and I'm always saddened by it. It's one of the reasons why I post my book reviews and recommendations on here, as well as posts from others to encourage reading and (novel) writing. Kids will parrot your behavior while the education system sadly fails to return as that example.

[lectorel]

Got permanently banned from a subreddit for saying law enforcement shooting someone dead in the street was still a bad thing even when the victim was a violent right-wing fanatic.

Gotta say, I did not expect that to be such a controversial statement. So repeating it here: law enforcement shouldn't kill people. Even violent assholes have a right to be taken in alive, and it's a failure of practice and policy when someone is killed in the process of an arrest.

[demaparbat-hp]

She will (and he'll let her)

[mrmrsman]

I'd love to see a dpxdc story where the Justice League knows about Amity Park and the Ghosts the whole time, and does think the ghosts are rogues to be addressed. Doesn't agree with the GIW, maybe doesn't even know about them? THE IMPORTANT PART.

The Red Huntress is the only active vigilante in Amity Park, according to the JL. Phantom is marked as one of her rogues. Maybe the Fentons even are marked as rogues from all the property damages and random shooting/sliming of citizens. Valarie is the only person successfully taking care of the ghosts, masking and suiting up in the classic vigilante way the whole time.

[captainjonnitkessler]

I truly, TRULY do not know how to say this, because the fact that I have to say it makes me feel like I am losing my grip on reality. But no, in the post-capitalistic anarchist utopia, I will not be relying on “autistic minecraft girlies” to be building inspectors because - and this may shock you - one of those occupations takes years of education in how to read and interpret hundreds of thousands of lines of regulations based on complicated math and physics that were the result of decades of tragedy and death, and the other one involves playing a children’s video game.

[proxycrit]

(I point. Gently, in the voice of somebody who’s mind touched by the outer gods, i whisper truth in your ears:

Your honor the horses are now lesbians

(Anyways here’s the designs)

[lucabyte]

On autonomy, and what it means to be Obliged to Help.

Bonus:

[egophiliac]

ENG PLAYERS I BESEECH YOU

I have been informed that you guys are getting part 4 of episode 7 tomorrow, which means we are FINALLY going to get the official romanization of Revaan's name, somebody please tell me because I need to know what it is.

like, yes, it's probably just Revan/Levan, but look, I'm sitting here with my finger over the button of all these Laverne and Shirley jokes and just waiting for the opportunity to deploy them --

[shepscapades]

Thanks to artfight, I’ve finally finished a detailed, official dbhc cub reference! :D

(I’ve put his Artifight description below the cut, which has a more detailed explanation of his timeline, lore, and aesthetics! >:3)

-ˋˏ ༻ ❁  OVERVIEW ❁ ༺ ˎˊ-

Name: C.B.F.N.4000 (Cub) Pronouns: He/Him Species: Android Height: 5’9’’ Associated Visual Themes: vex, ghosts, explosions, mischief, scientist aesthetic, potions, potionmaking, sleepy/tired aesthetic, conspiracies

-ˋˏ ༻ ❁  ABOUT ❁ ༺ ˎˊ-

CBFN4000 is an au version of MCYT Hermitcraft’s Cubfan, set in my DBHC (or Detroit Become Hermitcraft) AU! This au is inspired by the 2018 game Detroit Become Human, but not because it really has anything to do with DBH—I simply yoinked the android mechanics and incorporated them into the world of Hermitcraft. It began as a S8 au, and has roughly followed the hermitcraft timeline up to the present! 

Cub was the last android made during Season 8. While many of the hermit androids were made at the beginning of season 8 and a few were made for season 9, Cub was finished and activated mid-late Season 8, around the time when Hermits started noticing the Big Moon. Cub’s model ended up being a sloppy experiment in deviation, as Doc suggested they try to transfer deviancy to an android upon activation to try and avoid traumatic situations that might cause an android to deviate violently or upsettingly, such as Etho’s, Tango’s, or Mumbo’s experiences. While this went relatively well initially, it clearly wasn’t very thoroughly thought out, as Xisuma (who is normally so adamant and detail-oriented when it comes to assuring the androids’ safety with experiments like this) wasn’t truly himself due to external manipulation and mostly left a relatively young-deviant Doc to carry out the project himself. 

Cub, though adjusting to sentience rather well at first, very quickly became wrapped up in the Big Moon happenings on the server, new personality and inexperience to emotions like fear and ignorance completely overwhelming his young system. He became obsessive over the implications and consequences of the Season 8 Moon Apocalypse, joining the Mooners and spreading his conspiracy theories religiously throughout the server as he descended into madness. The insanity was like a virus to his programming, pervasive and all-engulfing, and Cub’s final attempt to free himself from the Moon’s impact with the Earth—to launch himself on a llama into space via potion-powered TNT(insane btw)— left his hands and feet singed and cracked to ruin.

The experiment, considered a horrific failure by a deeply shameful—and more awake—S9 Xisuma, left Doc and Xisuma with the decision to reset him for the new season, and they ended up pairing him with a hermit like they had done with the other androids until they had found deviancy enough to pursue their own projects. So, at the start of season 9 and fresh after a reset, Cub was paired with Scar. Naturally, because Scar is… Scar, Cub deviated almost instantly after being given to him, and very quickly adopted the iconic lazy, stoic, amused attributes normally associated with Cubfan. Scar’s tendency towards mischief and general shenanigans grew instantly on Cub, and the two were an immediate inseparable pair. So much so that when Scar began rambling one day about his Season 5 Hermitcraft Shenanigans (where deals with the Vex may or may not have been involved), Cub immediately stated he was interested in being in on it. Whatever “it” means. It’s unclear if Cub also made a deal with the vex or became connected to them in some other way, but… well, he got Doc’s help to trick out his eyes, hair, and back to best fit the part. Scar is very jealous that he can't magically make himself have the same features to match.

Cub is closest with Scar, but he gets along just as well with any of the other hermits! He’s close with Jevin and many of the other redstoners like Etho and Doc, who are the other two androids I’ve put on artfight!

-ˋˏ ༻ ❁  EXTRAS ❁ ༺ ˎˊ-

Cub's eyes can light up in the dark, and he’s the only android who has edited his programming so that the default state of his LED is white, not blue. It still will go yellow and red if his processors are working particularly hard, but he’s replaced the blue setting on his LED with white to better match the Vex vibe. Cub has all of the vibes of a fae. If that’s anything <3

[sanshofox]

I miss the days where you just had to push the power button on a console and could play the game immediately.

I can’t with this shit: system update, controler update, shop update, internet failing on my console or being slower than usual, install game, update game, games having an absurd huge amount of GB so you can only install maybe 5 games until storage’s full, having to wait for a century until you‘re ready to actually enjoy the fucking game

[arsenicflame]

Bonus round! Do you use a queue tag?

[bayeis]

I haven't watched this show a day in my life