#exhileration

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

A professor at Cornell University who received major backlash for saying Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 “exhilarated” him has taken a leave of absence for the remainder of the semester, according to a new report.

Professor Russell Rickford called the Hamas terror group’s invasion of Israel from neighboring Gaza “exhilarating” and “energizing” at a pro-Palestinian rally last Sunday. He later defended his comments by arguing “the fundamentalism of Hamas mirrors that of Israeli leadership.”

Rickford later apologized for his statements, insisting that he “intended to stress grassroots African American, Jewish, and Palestinian traditions of resistance to oppression.” He apologized to “my family, my students, my colleagues, and many others,” but not to the Jewish community or Israelis — who were the chief targets of Hamas’ terror onslaught.

According to the Cornell Review, a campus newspaper, students taking Rickford’s course on post-Civil War African-American history received on Friday a note from his substitute saying, “Professor Rickford will be taking a leave of absence and I will assume teaching responsibilities for the remainder of the semester.”

The university confirmed to the student newspaper that Rickford “has requested and received approval to take a leave of absence from the university.”

Rickford’s comments, which went viral and became national news, were widely condemned across Cornell’s campus. Last week, Cornell University President Martha Pollack and Board of Trustees chair Kraig Kayser said in a joint statement that his remarks were “reprehensible,” showing “no regard whatsoever for humanity.”

The statement continued: “Any members of our community who have made such statements do not speak for Cornell; in fact, they speak in direct opposition to all we stand for at Cornell.”

Nearly 12,000 people as of this writing have signed a petition calling for Rickford to be fired from the university, whose student population is estimated to be between 20 and 25 percent Jewish.

For nearly twenty years, Rickford’s scholarship has largely focused on Black Nationalist movements, some of which have promoted antisemitic tropes. In the early 2000s, Rickford joined the “Malcolm X Project,” assisting author Manning Marable, who published his own comprehensive work on the controversial figure, in arranging interviews with Malcolm’s acquaintances. Rickford also published a biography of Betty Shabbaz, the late wife of Malcolm X before his assassination in 1965.

Malcolm’s autobiography mentions the Jewish people dozens of times, often pejoratively. “The Jew is hypersensitive” and “I worked downtown for a Jew” are among the ways in which he referred to the Jewish community. “I gave the Jew credit for being among all other whites the most active, and the most vocal financier, ‘leader’ and ‘liberal’ in the Negro civil rights movement,” he wrote. “But … I knew that the Jew played these roles for a very careful strategic reason.” Malcolm also referred to “the Jew” as “Hymie” and “these devils.”

[hamable]

Brennan pulling out Real Test Papers and a Real Two Minute Timer is one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen on this show

[boinday]

A body in the water. A howl in the mist. A community secret. A God waking up. Sybil Kane, a London nurse, is dispatched to the isolated island of Calda off the Irish coast, to care for the grandfather she's never met. She's not built for the task; timid, quiet, and self-sacrificial, her journey across the sea dredges up past horrors she thought were long drowned. In the wake of the Irish Civil War and Free State, she feels like a foreigner on her own soil. The islanders are quick to embrace her – but they have plans for Sybil, plans they don't share out in the open. With only a revolutionary soldier and the local shipwright as allies, Sybil tries to persuade her newfound community to see sense and evacuate their elderly population to the mainland. But their roots are planted deep, and Sybil feels those tendrils growing around her... The longer she stays, the more she belongs. The closer she draws to the grotesque secret they keep hidden at the church...

Very excited to reveal the first teaser image of my novel, The Water Dog! It's been a long time in the making and is probably the most deeply personal story I'll ever tell. A mix of folk-horror and supernatural romance, I think people who've enjoyed my previous stories will be a bit surprised (in a good way I hope!) by this more intense literary experience.

I'll be releasing more updates soon, but this is the reason RTR has been on such a long hiatus. I've been writing like a demon all year to get this finished and edited to a professional standard. I can't wait to show you all more.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Listening to Shadowheart after a smattering of very tepid historicals is very "finally good food", but also depresses me because where did the books where the hero has a whole gang of child soldiers he's training while also saying things like "Hurt me, hellcat, but only in bed" while also promising that if she has his baby pretty please he pwomises he won't train them to be child soldiers even if that was his childhood and did he REALLY turn out that bad???

goooooo

[queenlucythevaliant]

Northern Lights

.

I heard a voice that cried, “Balder the Beautiful is dead, is dead!” 

.

Who knows what to call the lonely exhilaration of gazing out into a bright Northern sky? Who can name it? 

Jill could.

It was the same feeling that came to her at the teetering edge of a cliff at the end of the world. The same feeling as when she said her goodbyes to Puddleglum and Scrubb before they freed the prince. It was the same feeling that engulfed her now, sitting in the professor’s library with a volume of poetry before her. 

.

The wild northern wastes were well named: utterly wild, perfectly desolate, and terribly Northern. 

It was lonely there and often cold, but the sky was an endless whorl of gales and gray clouds. The stones were indigo under the pale winter sunlight, and at sunset they glowed a soft gold, as though lit from within. The gorges and moors lay before her, and Jill loved them for their vastness and their distance. Little grew in that country, but that which did was full of vigor. The grass was short and coarse. Every tree was victorious. 

On a still, deep breathing winter night, Jill lay on her back beneath a covering sky. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it until her tears began to blind her. Yet even then, she still couldn’t look away.

She felt bigger here in the wastes, like the landscape. Stronger, wider. The further she walked, the more she felt herself stretch out. One of these days, maybe, she would catch hold of herself at the edge and tug, and Jill Pole would open up clear as the Northern sky. 

.

And through the misty air passed the mournful cry of sunward sailing cranes.

.

The thing that surprised Jill most about the battle with the serpent was this: there wasn’t any yelling. Always, it seemed, whenever she read stories about people fighting with swords, the combatants would let loose some guttural yell before their blows fell. They would scream and writhe in pain as they died. They would shout instructions to their fellows, “Look out!” or “Hit him there!” But the whole affair with the serpent passed with very little noise. 

The poison-green coil constricted around the prince; he raised his arms and got clear, struck the serpent hard, and then Scrubb and Puddleglum dispatched the creature with heavy, hacking blows. The monster died writhing, but not screaming. And then it was over. 

The thing that surprised Jill most about the moments before battle was, of course, the noise. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears. She couldn’t stop listening to her own breathing. Every footstep rang out like a gong, and any words exchanged rang with a kind of finality that made them sound louder than anything. 

“You are of high courage,” Rilian told her when it was over. 

Yet the thing in Jill’s chest just then didn’t feel like courage. It was a deep breath, a plunge, and a release. It was loud and quiet all at once, till she was standing, blinking in the night air as snowballs whizzed round her, and maybe that was something like courage after all. 

.

And now, there was a stirring in her chest as she reread the words on the page. Sing no more / O ye bards of the North / Of Vikings and of Jarls! / Of the days of the Eld / preserve the freedom only / nor the deeds of blood! 

She thought of grief. Of freedom. 

The lonely ache in her belly grew stronger. She felt herself uplifted into the huge regions of sky that were just beyond those cliffs, weightless as the breath beneath her buoyed her up, further, further…

.

When she saw Caspian up close, Jill thought that he looked like the sort of person who was meant to live in a castle. A silly thought, perhaps, since she knew he was a king– only she wasn’t thinking of Cair Paravel. No, Jill was picturing the ruins of an old British castle she’d visited once on holiday. She still remembered how the stonework had loomed over her, all towering arches and crumbling walls. That was where Caspian seemed to belong. He had an air of ancient tragedy about him. 

When Rilian disappeared, all things had wept but one. The serpent coiled beneath the earth and flicked its forked tongue, spewing poison. 

Now, the king half rose to bless his son. He whispered a few words as he caressed Rilian’s cheek, words meant only for those beloved ears. Jill saw Caspian’s lips move and wondered what a man like that could possibly say, when time ran so short. 

.

They laid him in his ship, with horse and harness, as on a funeral pyre. Odin placed a ring upon his finger, and whispered in his ear.

.

Jill furtively took Myths of the Northmen and held it up to the professor with a question in her eyes. She was still shy around him and Miss Plummer, though she wished she wasn’t. 

“Would you like to take that with you?”

“...Please.”

.

It takes a certain kind of person to be exhilarated by the heights. You’ve got to love vastness more than you fear falling. 

.

They walked to the train station with an autumn wind blowing hard, and though Jill couldn’t fathom why, she turned and saw Lucy grinning, fierce and joyful– grinning and reaching a hand out towards her friend.

Jill reached back and grabbed it. “What will you do, once we’re back in Narnia?” she asked. 

The wind blew harder. The feeling of anticipation grew and grew, until it felt so big that she couldn’t dream of containing it. And there was Lucy, holding Jill’s hand and laughing like it was easy.

.

Preserve the freedom only, not the deeds of blood!

.

The second time Jill went to Narnia, she found herself not at its edge, but at its end. 

The thing about the Norse apocalypse is: it feels believable. It doesn’t reach beyond earth’s horizon to pull down hope beyond hope. It’s only the kind of courage that hopeless humans have: you are going to die, so you might as well die bravely. 

They found the last king of Narnia bound to a tree. His eyes were faintly red from crying, and his wrists and ankles red from the coarseness of his fetters. 

In the Norse myths, Loki broke free of his fetters at the end of the world. He escaped to the helm of a ship made from the fingernails of the dead.

The last king of Narnia fell forward onto the ground when Eustace cut his bonds. Jill crouched down beside him and watched as he rubbed feeling back into his legs. He wasn’t so much older than her, she thought. Jill was sixteen years old; the last king of Narnia could not be older than twenty-two. 

In the myths, the gods were ancient, hewn from the bodies of giants old as the earth. 

Jill put out a hand and helped the last king of Narnia to his feet. Not for the last time, she shivered. Something deep inside her (deeper than her chest, than her heart, than the marrow of her bones, deep as her soul, deeper) was singing an elegy and she didn’t know why, or how, or where it had come from. The king clutching her hand, who could have been her older brother, would have no heir.

Yet when he asked, “Will you come with me?” Jill could only smile. 

“Of course,” she said. “It’s you we’ve come to help.”

.

And the voice forever cried, "Balder the Beautiful is dead, is dead!"

.

“This really is Narnia at last,” murmured Jill. The springtime wood had little in common with the wintry lands she had traveled the last time she was here– but it awakened the same feelings of Northernness in her chest. 

Their party may as well have been the only people in the world, for how isolated their little wooden path seemed. Yet it wasn’t lonely, really, cocooned in all that green with the wind in the leaves and the primroses nodding and blue of the sky peeking through above. 

Jewel told stories about what ordinary life was like when there was peace here. As he spoke, Jill could almost hear the trees' voices speaking out of the living past, whispering, stay, stay. She was caught up to a great height, looking down across a rich, lovely plain full of woods and waters and cornfields, which spread away and away till it got thin and misty from distance. 

“Oh Jewel–” Jill said with a dreamy sigh, “wouldn’t it be lovely if Narnia just went on and on– like what you say it has been?”

She needn’t be a queen, as Susan and Lucy had been, but Jill would’ve liked to stay. She would've liked it all to stay, if it could. She might have been a woodmaid in a place like this: with the turn of the seasons, the swaying trees, swords into plowshares. Oh, if only she could stay!

Ahead, the last king of Narnia was softly singing a marching song. Jill tilted her head back and let warm shafts of sun caress her face. 

.

I saw the pallid corpse of the dead sun borne through the Northern sky.

.

“So,” said the last king of Narnia, “Narnia is no more.”

He tried to send them back. Jill shook her head. It was very loud and very quiet. “No, no, no, we won’t. I don’t care what you say. We’re going to stick by you whatever happens, aren’t we Eustace?”

They couldn’t go back anyway. Neither would they flee, not south across the mountains nor North into the great wide wastes. No, they would stay. They slept in a holly grove on the edge of ruin, waiting for the bonfires to light.

Jill slept fitfully, but in between she dreamed. She was high up in the air, buffeted by clouds and pierced by shafts of silver sunlight. 

.

They all died, in the myths. Jill knew that. It seemed beautiful and brave when she read it in her book, tucked away safe in the Professor’s library. It was terrifying now– and yet it was beautiful and brave still.

The dogs came bounding up, every one of them, running up to the king and his men with their tails wagging. One of them leapt at Jill and licked her face, tongue roughly lapping up the sweat and tears that had dried on her cheeks. 

“Show us how to help, show us how, how, how!” the dogs were barking, almost ebullient in their enthusiasm. Jill bit back a sob. How lovely, she thought. How terribly beautiful. How dreadfully brave. 

.

So perish the old Gods!

.

The white rock gleamed like a moon in the darkness when Jill finally reached it. She ran back to it alone, her hands shaking, while her friends stayed forward with their gleaming swords and Jewel’s indigo horn.

The while rock gleamed like the moon. Jill’s first shot flew wide and landed in the soft grass. But she had another arrow on her string the next instant. It was speed that mattered, not aim. Speed, and turning aside when she cried, so as not to drip tears on her bowstring.

The white rock gleamed. In the myths, a wolf devoured the moon. Peter’s wolf, slain many thousand years ago in this world, opened his jaw wide and darkness fell over everything.

Her next arrow found its mark. After that, she lost track. She pulled, and she prayed that her hands kept still another minute. 

The unique thing–maybe the appealing thing–about the Norse myths, was that they told men to serve gods who were admittedly fighting with their backs to the wall and would certainly be defeated in the end. Jill let loose another arrow, felt the white rock at her back, and she knew that the clawing fear–beauty–bravery deep in her gut was the same feeling that she felt on the heights. The same feeling, but a different face. You’ve got to love vastness more than you fear falling. 

.

“I feel in my bones,” said Poggin, “that we shall all, one by one, pass through that dark door before morning. I can think of a hundred deaths that I would rather have died.”

“It is indeed a grim door,” said Tirian. “It is more like a mouth.” 

“Oh, can’t we do anything to stop it,” said Jill. Better to be dashed to the ground than it was to be devoured. 

“Nay, fair friend,” said Jewel. “It may be for us the door to Aslan’s country and we sup at his table tonight.”

A hand tangled itself in her hair and started to pull. Jill braced herself hard, for a moment, until her strength gave out. She was standing on the edge of a high, Northern cliff. She took another step, and fell.

.

Perhaps when the moment comes, our bite will prove better than our howls. If not, we shall have to confess that two millennia of Christianity have not yet brought us to the level of the Stoics and Vikings. For the worst (according to the flesh) that a Christian need face is to die in Christ and rise in Christ; some were content to die, and not to rise, with Father Odin.

.

The world inside the stable was beautiful. It made Jill’s chest ache in all the loveliest ways. 

.

Build it again, O ye bards, fairer than before!

[remembertheplunge]

You've learned the secret of living

September 12, 1988 Magic Monday

Ahhhh. The easy lift of freedom provided only by sweet, pure, jury trial.

Bill B. And I talked about it here—about how it is a thrill next to sex in living. A timeless event. 

He said “I like to live on the edge of the world. I’ll be disappointed if I never get to go into space—what could be more edge of the world? And, if I go there and smoke some bad grass or whatever, I don’t care. I got to do it." And I said “Space? You have learned the secret of living! To Do. Even if to die is a part of the game.”

The William S. Jury is out. So, we shall see. I think he is innocent of receiving stolen property and of stealing a car and its parts. What the jury does is their affair. William S said “You did a good job”. John Goulart, the prosecutor, said “You did a great job of advocating. You were really good. Must be your experience. “ That made me feel so high. I said, while the trial judge was listening, “I like being in jury trial almost more than anything else. Sounds strange, doesn't it?”

I told Bill B. I’ve found home in this work. I love the people I work with. He said “That’s great”.

End of entry

Notes 9/23/2024

In 1988, I was a deputy public defender in Modesto California. Bill B. Was a fellow deputy public defender. William S. Was a client that I represented in a jury trial. John Goulart was the Deputy District Attorney in the trial.

Bill B likened jury trial to living on the edge of the world. That’s where I like to live, too. And I can get there through things like jury trial and open water (ocean) swimming. Where I could die. But it’s worth the risk to touch the world’s edge and to return to tell the story.

A post script to above entry

9/12/1988

"Well, I lost the trial and I swear it knocked the living breath outta me like a board to the stomach. I hit a nasty plain. But, I endured and jammed into trial II." (I began another jury trial at the conclusion of the William S. trial).

[three-fold-symmetry]

#1 for the Choose Violence Ask Game, please! (Star Wars)

Oho, going straight for the throat, I like it. <3

1 The character everyone gets wrong Hm, would it be cheating to say all the clones? Because I honestly don't think there's much basis for the whole "one big family" thing fanon has going on in TCW.

Like, they're first and foremost a military, with the ranks and discipline and all that at the forefront of their social structures. At least that's what it looked like to me when I watched the show. They work together - some of them are really close, others are aquaintances or annoying colleagues. Some of them are in the position to make decisions that may send thousands to their deaths.

And I think that's way more interesting than going for a 'traditional' family structure.

Obligatory disclaimer: Enjoy fandom the way you want to. Me expressing a preference is not a condemnation of alternative opinions.

[strawbubbysugar]

quick question about elio and arche cuz I kinda wanna know: what's keepin their limbs attached to the rest of em? Is it magnetism? How strong?

...

(If I put a really strong magnet next to their hands can I pull their hands towards that magnet or is their pull just too strong?)

Also how does Arche put his boots on if his feet aren't attached to his legs..? And does Elio get around everywhere barefoot? Dude, you're gonna get something stuck in your casing, be careful!

(Do they have casing for things to get stuck in...???? I feel like I'm askin the wrong questions here)

Hope your day's goin good so far!

Its going amazing, people are interested in my ocs!!! <3<3<3

oughghgh no wrong questions im losing my mind being asked anything about them at all!!! Its attached with incredibly strong magnets, even if you tried to pull their limbs away while they were charging or unaware, youd just end up yanking all of them with it! Its meant to allow them to move more fluidly than the other robots in Atomata can, since they were designed with the express purpose of being more human than the other robots in order to ease the transition for the human that would marry them eventually Arche's feet are very attached with the magnets, so hed be able to put his boots on no problem!

Elio avoids wearing shoes as much as possible because while he and Arche have pad sensors on the bottom of their feet, Elio likes feeling the ground- It makes him feel human to feel as much as he possibly can all the time. Much like Damia doesnt like layers, Elio hates shoes.(much to the chagrin of both his brother and his parents. It was a fight when he was younger to even get him to wear pants)

(their casing is sealed behind the magnets so no risk of things getting stuck inside, however it does mean he has to clean off his "ankles" (the magnetic structure holding his feet on) before he goes to bed or he'll be dragging a bunch of rocks that stuck to it into the sheets hsfgh

Side note: If you catch them while theyre turned off completely, they sort of fall apart like a house of cards once they turn off, without the magnets to hold them together. So theyre always very careful to be in bed or somewhere laying down, so their parts dont go scattering everywhere

Elio fell off a high ledge once when he was younger & on low power because hed been avoiding charging to play more, & Damia thought he died because all of his pieces scattered

[skincareroutine]

makes me so sad how much fucking product placement is in the new mean girls movie. the entire essence of girlhood is shitting on anything and everything all the time whether u like it or not.

[mickstart]

thinking about... ratiorine motorsports au... ratio the engineering genius nobody really understands or likes despite how good his cars are... aventurine the reckless self-hating driver who is known for constantly being On The Limit going for gaps nobody else would kissing the wall of champions brushing the edge of the gravel heroics into sainte devote... ratio FURIOUS that they've hired that MANIAC to drive HIS PRISTINE MACHINES!!! ... Aventurine arguing with him about his car bc it doesn't have enough oversteer for him it's too grounded... Ratio and Aventurine late nights at the factory arguing over this car... it becomes like their baby... they learn more about each other...

[tinybitofart]

its been way too long since i was in a gay rp where i had no idea what wasgonna happen

[comixandco]

hey

heyheyheyheyheyheyhey

go ride a dragon and descend into the depths with them right now

you can thank me later

[thesilenticeroads]

goddamn... cant believe i actually did it. renders and refs for my babys on artfight before the bell rang.

feels... nice. even if i dont get any attacks, just having my guys put down somewhere in a public space is so gratifying. i feel accomplished

[dxppercxdxver]

hated my teacher so much i wrote almost a thousand words of scathing takedown in her course eval. now i know why those old timey pamphleteers were Like That

[shrimplicitly]

it should not have taken me until i was 23 to have the chance to run from a cop. yet here i am

[oysterie]

going to eat some icecream and rewatch the handmaiden methinks