#claim yours now or something!!

[youmustfixyourheartt]

crazy times we live in

[infiniteglitterfall]

I guess this might be why the UK seemed to go so antisemitic so quickly

I'm researching the 1947 pogroms in the UK. (Actually, I'm researching all the pogroms and massacres of Jews in the past 200 years. Which today led me to discover that there were pogroms in the UK in 1947.)

From an article on "The Postwar Revival of British Fascism," all emphasis mine:

Given the rising antisemitism and widespread ignorance about Zionism [in the UK in 1947], fascists were easily able to conflate Zionist paramilitary attacks with Judaism in their speeches, meaning British Jews came to be seen as complicit in violence in Palestine.

Bertrand Duke Pile, a key member of Hamm’s League, informed a cheering crowd that “the Jews have no right to Palestine and the Jews have no right to the power which they hold in this country of ours.” Denouncing Zionism as a way to introduce a wider domestic antisemitic stance was common to many speakers at fascist events and rallies. Fascists hid their ideology and ideological antisemitism behind the rhetorical facade of preaching against paramilitary violence in Palestine.

One of the league’s speakers called for retribution against “the Jews” for the death of British soldiers in Palestine. This was, he told his audience, hardly an antisemitic expression. “Is it antisemitism to denounce the murderers of your own flesh and blood in Palestine?” he asked his audience. Many audience members, fascist or not, may well have felt the speaker had a point. ...[The photo of two British sergeants hanged by the Irgun in retaliation for the Brits hanging three of their members] promptly made numerous appearances at fascist meetings, often attached to the speaker’s platform. In at least one meeting, several British soldiers on leave from serving in Palestine attended Hamm’s speech, giving further legitimacy to his remarks. And with soldiers and policemen in Palestine showing increasing signs of overt antisemitism as a result of their experiences, the director of public prosecutions warned that the fascists might receive a steady stream of new recruits.

MI5, the U.K. domestic security service, noted with some alarm that “as a general rule, the crowd is now sympathetic and even spontaneously enthusiastic.” Opposition, it was noted in the same Home Office Bulletin of 1947, “is only met when there is an organized group of Jews or Communists in the audience.”

The major opposition came from the 43 Group, formed by the British-Jewish ex-paratrooper Gerry Flamberg and his friends in September 1946 to fight the fascists using the only language they felt fascists understood — violence. The group disrupted fascist meetings for two purposes: to get them shut down by the police for disorder, and to discourage attendance in the future by doling out beatings with fists and blunt instruments. By the summer of 1947, the group had around 500 active members who took part in such activities. Among these was a young hairdresser by the name of Vidal Sassoon, who would often turn up armed with his hairdressing scissors.

The 43 Group had considerable success with these actions, but public anger was spreading faster than they could counter the hate that accompanied it. The deaths of Martin and Paice had touched a nerve with the populace. On Aug. 1, 1947, the beginning of the bank holiday weekend and two days after the deaths of the sergeants, anti-Jewish rioting began in Liverpool. The violence lasted for five days. Across the country, the scene was repeated: London, Manchester, Hull, Brighton and Glasgow all saw widespread violence. Isolated instances were also recorded in Plymouth, Birmingham, Cardiff, Swansea, Newcastle and Davenport. Elsewhere, antisemitic graffiti and threatening phone calls to Jewish places of worship stood in for physical violence. Jewish-owned shops had their windows smashed, Jewish homes were targeted, an attempt was made to burn down Liverpool Crown Street Synagogue while a wooden synagogue in Glasgow was set alight. In a handful of cases, individuals were personally intimidated or assaulted. A Jewish man was threatened with a pistol in Northampton and an empty mine was placed in a Jewish-owned tailor shop in Davenport.

And an important addendum:

I've read a whole bunch of articles about the pogroms in Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Eccles, Glasgow, etc.

Not one of them has mentioned that the Irgun, though clearly a terrorist group, was formed in response to 18 years of openly antisemitic terrorism, including multiple incredibly violent massacres. Or that it consistently acted in response to the murders of Jewish civilians, not on the offensive. Or that at this point, militant Arab Nationalist groups with volunteers and arms from the Arab League countries had been attacking Jewish and mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhoods for months.

I just think the "Jewish militants had been attacking the British occupiers" angle is incredibly Anglocentric.

Yeah, they were attacking the British occupiers. But also, that's barely the tip of the iceberg.

Everyone involved hated the Brits at this point. If only al-Husseini and his ilk had hated the Brits more than they hated the Jews, Britain could at least have united them by giving them a common enemy.

[ink-the-artist]

holy shit I did NOT realize how popular my "I will remove my teeth, for I want to remain kind despite my anger" quote is. I just googled it for fun to see what would come up, a bunch of people are quoting it not knowing who its from, an artist called Kuma made an album titled that, so bizzare

[beanghostprincess]

Repeat it with me! "Nakedness and SA scenes aren't always fanservice and sometimes they're just things that happen in the story ESPECIALLY when the main character is a woman who's part of a very sexualized subculture! And they're not portrayed in a good light! And if you believe they should not exist because they make you uncomfortable perhaps you should leave the internet and touch some fucking grass!"

[mostlyghostlyy]

Me staring at Dale after trying to have a serious conversation, and he breaks out into song for the fifth goddamn time:

[blusandbirds]

eli moskowitz - "am i making you feel sick?"

[yuwuta]

twin aus are fun bc sukuna is sooooo ugly and yuuji is soooooooo pretty and beautiful and lovely <3 completely understand why sukuna ends up the deliquent loser twin bc why would anybody choose him when <3yuuji<3 is right there

[embrace-and-love]

Full offense, but I think it's funny how some fans immediately accept book changes like Armand's parents selling him as a slave (when on the books he was kidnapped and his family became a wreck after it) or him 'pretending to be a Muslim' (which they left unresolved, but nobody confirmed it to be an act either? we must wait for answers?), but the moment it is something making him worth of empathy, like being a sexual slave, or making a white character that isn't even on the show yet look bad, suddenly people care about book canon? And even justify their arguments with things that go against the books, like, "Armand is lying about his sexual trauma to manipulate people" when on the books it is canon that he was kidnapped, trafficked, abused and objectified several times? And I don't want to get into the whole thing Marius (my feelings about them aren't a secret), but I think everyone can admit that wasn't the best, healthiest, most respectful, romantic and balanced relationship (even by TVC standards) at all? Everything appears to be pretty in line with the source material, though there are some adjustments, the main essence is still there.

It seems to me that the problem isn't book changes, but Armand not being an one-dimensional villain caricature (and he isn't that in TVC either, so I don't understand the surprise) and having crumbs of positivity in his life.

[pigeon-butch]

I certainly have my own concerns about the treatment of moo deng but um. well i think some of you may just be racist

[mickeym4ndy]

u see “nobody understands Svetlana/Debbie/Mandy/Karen like I do🥺” and u just know you’re about to read the most one dimensional misogynistic take ever

[backslashdelta]

How To Gif: Glass Shatter Effect

By popular demand (ie, 7 people who voted in this poll), here is a tutorial on how to do the glass shatter effect I used to create the first gif in this set.

I use Photoshop CC 2015 (yes I know it's old) for my gifmaking, but you should be able to apply everything to newer versions of Photoshop. For this tutorial I'll be assuming you know the gifmaking basics, but if not, I would recommend this tutorial, which is the process I use to make gifs. Note that this particular process involves saving all of the frames, importing those frames into Photoshop, and then using an action to convert to a smart object.

Keep reading below the cut to learn how to do this effect!

Before I could start making this gif, I needed three things; the two scenes that I wanted to use, and a video of the glass shattering effect. I already knew the scenes I wanted, so then I took to YouTube to find a video which I can't for the life of me find again (edit: thanks to add1ctedt0you in the replies for linking this video!), but it looked like this:

Something like this is what you want. Ideally the green part would be entirely white, but as long as there are two clearly different colours you can usually work with it.

This looks a lot slower than the gif that I made, but that's not because of the frame rate - which is exactly the same above as in the final gif - it's just because there are extra frames in this slower one that I cut out. In the video I used, the glass shattering happened very slowly. I didn't want that, so I ended up skipping several frames when I loaded the frames into Photoshop before using my gifmaking action. I just did this by manually selecting one frame, skipping the next several before selecting another frame, and repeating this until I had selected 60 frames.

After using my gif action, I had a smart object of the glass shatter effect that looked like this:

That's a much better speed! It still wasn't quite where I needed it to be though. I needed this in black and white, so I slapped a hue/saturation adjustment on the smart object and set the saturation all the way down to -100.

Okay great, I could start putting the gif together now.

First, I made a copy of the glass shatter smart object, because I'll need that later. Then, I pulled in frames from the scene that I wanted to appear in the hole after the glass shatters, and I used those to create a new smart object with my gif action (we'll call it Scene-bg). I pulled Scene-bg into the same window as the glass shatter objects. Then I created a new smart object by combining one of the glass shatter objects with Scene-bg, which I did by selecting both layers right clicking, and selecting "Convert to Smart Object".

I renamed this smart object to Shatter-fg. I opened it by clicking on the little icon next to the layer name in the layers window here:

The most important thing here is that the shatter effect object should be the top layer, and I set the mode to "lighten". This will make sure that the lightest colour of either this layer and the layer behind it is displayed; that means that anywhere that's white in our shatter animation will still show up, but anywhere that's black we'll see what's in the layer(s) behind it.

Then I threw some adjustment layers between them to get the colouring I wanted. I used a curves layer, a hue/saturation layer, and I also added text with an outer glow layer effect. Here's what the layer order looked like and the settings I used for each layer:

After this process, Shatter-fg looked like this:

Okay nice, this is starting to look like something! I saved this and went back to the main file with the other glass shatter object.

I needed to invert that other glass shatter object. There's a weird quirk with the version of Photoshop that I use where it doesn't like it when I apply specifically an invert adjustment to a smart object (it appears correctly when editing, but not on export) so I did this by creating a new smart object which included a separate invert layer, but if you have a newer version of Photoshop you can probably just apply the invert adjustment directly. Just note that you'll need to do one of these options; it won't work if you add a separate adjustment layer in the main file, it needs to be applied specifically to the smart object (which we'll now be calling Shatter-bg). It looked like this after I inverted it:

Once that's done, I made sure Shatter-fg was the layer directly above Shatter-bg, and set the mode of Shatter-fg to "darken" and Shatter-bg to "lighten". Since Shatter-fg is set to darken, it will be visible only when it is darker than the layer behind it. By setting Shatter-bg to lighten, I've guaranteed that the layer behind it will always be lighter (ie, white) in the places we want Shatter-fg to be visible, and will be black otherwise. Once I update those settings, this is what the gif looked like:

This is all there is to the glass shatter effect itself. Next I pulled in frames from the second scene to fill in the black areas. This layer needed to go below both glass shatter layers, so that it only shows through where the black. Then I added adjustment layers and some text. I used curves, hue/saturation, and vibrance adjustment layers, and I also added the "archer" text below the glass shatter layers so that it would be hidden to reveal the "prey" text. The other text I added above all of the layers, since I wanted this to be visible all the time. Here is the layer order and all of the settings I used for each of the layers:

I also grouped Shatter-bg and Shatter-fg and shifted them on the timeline so there would be some time to see the background gif before the shatter effect starts.

And that's all! Then it''s just a matter of exporting the finished product:

This is the first gifmaking tutorial I've ever made, so I hope I was able to be reasonably coherent and helpful! I'd love to hear if you make anything by following these steps, or even if you just feel like you've learned something reading through this. And if you have any outstanding questions, feel free to reply or send me an ask and I'd be happy to answer!

[qiu-yan]

in MDZS the novel, the innkeeper in Yunping mentions that people are too scared to go petition Yunmeng Jiang for help because someone once walked in on Sect Leader Jiang whipping a guy in the main hall, supposedly because the guy was a demonic cultivator.

[thevioletcaptain]

...i see people are on twitter posting lies for clout again

[lucienne-thee-librarian]

Okay but also because I'm a pedantic bitch...in relation to that post I just reblogged explaining part of gay-on-gay bigotry...what if some people are just assholes who happen to be gay, or bi or trans? And they're all for oppression or just plain cruelty as long as it's aimed at other people? Like that's also something to consider.

I don't actually think, any longer, that "internalized self-hate projected outward and also suppressed envy for someone who's doing and being all the things you were convinced into not allowing yourself" is...all there is to this phenonemon. And I wish we'd stop fixating on that quite so much just because we want to be frankly, nicer than some of these people have ever deserved. It's always more satisfying on some level, to imagine your enemies as Tortured deep inside (whether it's because you feel a bit malicious or you just want to believe that there's a way to reach out and heal them with kindness.) than to admit that Sometimes They're Just a Shithead.

Now, do I think that complex can be a big part of it? Oh yeah. And of COURSE, different people have different motivations in different amounts and yadda yadda yadda. No group of people, ethnic, gender, political or otherwise is a Monolith. (For one thing, when it comes to these Pick-Me Gay/Trans pundits and Influencers, money and clout should never be left out as an explanation. Just saying.) But that's the point, isn't it? Any ONE explanation can't explain them all completely.

Tbh, I think we need to consider some people are just bullies who happened to be born not cis or straight. And even if they were bullied at one point for their identity, they learned absolutely nothing from the experience except Don't Be On the Social Reject Side. So they moved their thinking just enough that "woman who likes women" "man who likes men" "I just happened o want to be a woman instead, or a man instead despite how I was born" could be put in the Safe category and they fight for that. Everyone else though, is still fair game and even a fair target. Some people don't just want power to escape oppression and live their lives in peace, they WANT to BE the ones oppressing. Like, do we ACTUALLY understand that LGBT people are humans too and that that includes the bad side?

It tracks a lot better too, when you consider that a lot of people like the masc4masc gays are openly racist and fatphobic. "No fems" Yes but also "No fats. No Asians." Christ, I could think of countless examples of white thin (and sometimes but not necessary cis) queer people doing that sort of thing. I'm sure y'all can too. This idea of some poor lost soul Tormented by Self Hate and Envy of the Freedom of Others doesn't do shit to explain that. Like, even if the two things coexist and they can, it doesn't explain that part.

I honestly just think the uglier but more accurate truth is that lot of queer people aren't all Hashtag Gay or Trans Rights or aren't Liberal out of any sense of justice AT ALL but only self-interest. Being an activist because you're a member of an oppressed group is like, entirely normal and fine of course BUT it becomes real clear when someone's framework of ethics and politics is PURELY "I think me (and people I personally like and approve of) being oppressed is bad" and literally not one inch deeper.

You can tell because if it was deeper, why would they find it so easy to turn around to a fellow queer/trans person to jeer at and humiliate and throw them under the bus if they think they're a Deadweight to the group by being a Weirdo I Don't Want to Stand Next to, Eww...or if they just don't personally like them? Why have you clearly spent absolutely no time unpacking any of the prejudice and biases around gender sexuality (or GOD FORBID race) that society throws at you.. at least no more time than it takes to rationalize yourself out of the category of Should Be Destroyed and Oppressed?

We are not immune from this sort of terminally self-interested activism. I just feel like we'd get a lot further as a society, as a community, if sometimes our analysis of bullies and assholes didn't fixate on finding some deep pain and trauma inside them, to explain their actions in a way that makes them look more tortured and less malicious (even if we say, even mean, that it's not supposed to be an excuse). Sometimes people are just racist, or fatphobic. Sometimes lesbians or gay men or bi or trans people just want to be judgmental bullies too.

Sometimes the reality isn't Tragic Villain Backstory. Sometimes, its just a selfish, deeply pathetic person refusing to become any less, because it's easier not to; even if you had a unique chance to see how the other side lives, a chance your straight cis bully peers didn't get by virtue of their identities.

[lsleofthelost]

backstories for the Villains of Merlin Academy

Hades: I’m stealing Blue’s idea that Hades was sent there as a punishment by the Olympians. We’re looking at it through the Disney lens, rather than Classics lens, meaning Hades is a villainous figure. I imagine he made contracts with a number of impressionable/gullible teenagers in an attempt to use them to overthrow Zeus. When this was discovered, he was sentenced to a human existence (hence why he ages later. the Olympians didn’t interfere with his sentence to the Isle of the Lost because they agreed that it’s a part of the human life) and made him a teenager. Intellectually, he knows he’s an immortal God but the human body and brain can not comprehend it, not fully, so he feels and acts like a teen boy. Yes, he has some of his powers, like pyrokinesis and shadow manipulation but they are limited.

Merlin was informed of this by Iris and he thinks it’s a wonderful and dangerous idea. He enrolled the now boy in classes and treats him as a normal student (sometimes he does forget that this isn’t just a punk).

Hades still likes what he likes, which is loud music, black leather and pushing people around, so he organically becomes part of the villain group.

Maleficent: She comes from a proud noble line of fae. They have been preordained to birth the future Mistress of Evil generations ago, and they leaned into it heavy. Every daughter is treated as a possible fulfilment of the prophecy, so all her cruel acts, all callousness, all harsh words were encouraged. When she was younger, she didn’t believe she was the one, and argued with her mother about it. Her family didn’t initially want to send her to Merlin Academy (she could make friends! become soft!) but she won out in the end. The reason she wanted to go was because she’s actually a bookworm, a scholar if you will, and the Academy is known as having the most comprehensive library in all the realms, including otherwise banned books.

Because she herself didn’t believe she could become the Mistress of Evil, Merlin didn’t either, and he could sense her hunger for knowledge, so how could he refuse to accept her? She likes that he’s scatterbrained and easy to manipulate.

She really didn’t come there to make friends, but when she realised that she was in the same year as actual literal God of the Underworld, she decided to make an exception. Plus, he likes good music.

Morgie: I will be so honest with you, I’m afraid I don’t know enough about Arthuriana to make a really good one here but I will try.

His mother doesn’t like thinking about her son. There’s no warmth or affection, really. As a son of such a powerful fae, he’s somehow crushed under the expectations and doesn’t give a shit. He wants his mother to love him, but he kind of realises it is a lost cause.

There was no question about his attendance, not really. Sure his parent is in a very tumultuous position to the realm, sometimes benevolent, sometimes malicious, she is still respected.

He mostly spent his days before the Academy in the Moors, with the animals, so he’s not that great at socialising with people. He spent a long time trying to approach Maleficent but didn’t know how. But eventually, he strikes a connection with Hook and is adopted by the group.

Hook: He is from a completely regular family. It’s not a loving warm family by any stretch of imagination but, unlike the others, there isn’t anything inherent to him. His parents work in a pub by the port, and he spent a lot of his childhood listening to stories from sailors from all over the spectrum of legality. That is also where he got his penchant for drama, because performing for drunk, recently paid sailors is a quick way to get some coin. He’s afraid of turning out like his parents, stuck in a dead end job, where people don’t have respect for you. He contemplated just joining a crew, but he knows that to become a Captain, he would either need to work a ship for years, or graduate an academy. So he sends an application.

He is one of the many scholarship kids at Merlin Academy. Officially, his goal is to enlist in the Navy and become a privateer. Less officially, he doesn’t care if he has a paper from the Crown, he wants to sail the seas, capture ships, and get a prize.

Because he’s attracted to power, he instantly sets his sights on the royal and noble kids. But their lives are so far away from his, and they don’t like his crude jokes so it doesn’t last long. Uliana thinks he’s hilarious, though.

Uliana: She was always the spare for the Royal House of Atlantis, ignored and forgotten. Unlike Ursula, she doesn’t have the bitter resentment of being the eldest child and being passed over in line for the throne in favour of Triton. But since Triton was raised pretty separately from them, Uliana feels more connection and competition to her sister. She knows there’s nothing she can do to be better than her brother (it’s not like she can be born a boy and challenge him for the throne) but she can be worse than Ursula. She desperately wants to be the best at something, to make people regret not paying attention to her.

She’s sent to the Merlin Academy, as is expected of a royal. But she doesn’t fit in with them. The other royal girls are either future rulers (which is partially why she disliked Bridget so much, because she takes that privilege for granted and humiliates herself with begging people to be friends), or they are perfectly happy and pampered princesses, who don’t understand her drive to be great. The nobles are too soft hearted for her taste, and she won’t lower herself to socialise with commoners.

She does connect with Hades, and Maleficent through him, and later Morgie, via James (he’s the only commoner she likes. he has drive). She’s the most motivated and initiating out of their group and becomes the de facto leader.

[awkward-teabag]

Was looking at my iPod Nano and thought how utterly BS it is that companies say it takes too much room to have a headphone jack.

I already thought it was BS before but the claim invariably comes down to form factor and keeping the jacks would make the device too big.

My Nano is ~5mm thick with the jack (also it's thinner than that but the glass stands out to make it thicker). That's nearly 3mm thinner than the latest iPhone and even the thinnest iPhone is over 2mm thicker.

You're telling me as components and ports shrink and boards also get smaller, it's unfeasible to do something that was done a decade ago?

It's almost as if it's not that form factor/technology doesn't allow it and it's all about selling proprietary adapters and/or Apple-brand headphones/earbuds/airpods that can be paired without a jack, and removing customer freedom.