#government decisions

[megpricephotography]

Favourites from November walks with Barney & Flynn, in years gone by.

[ovaruling]

on the subject of individual actions, they do matter, which is why men flip out when the measured birth rate stagnates/doesn’t increase or drops. they worry and they get upset and they cry and they scream and they publish articles about how men are in a crisis and it’s all our fault because we are making selfish individual choices that don’t benefit their collective. it adds up. you may not think your individual impact is much, but men as a group, especially men in high places, usually pay a whole lot more attention to the individual choices of women than you might think. and they react. that’s all i’m saying

[amyrlinegwene]

My youngest sister favs <3

I feel like I don't really see people talking about how many parallels Egwene and Moiraine have in the books so here is my venn diagram. Feel free to add any more parallels from the books

[network-rail]

The Transatlantic Railway, part 7

We've finished all of our public consultations, and now we have prepared the final presentation to obtain the project's approval. Please review the slides carefully before you come to a decision. Whatever happens, thank you all for taking part in this project – your contributions are just as vital as from those who will actually build the bridge. Although, as our estimates suggest that this project will completely eliminate unemployment in the UK, US, and Ireland, it's quite likely you'll have the opportunity to work on the bridge's eventual construction.

With that, we now have the final poll of this project:

If you're curious, here are some citations:

Cost of the bridge: estimated based on looking at the cost per kilometer of like two bridges on wikipedia, multiplying by the length of our bridge, and then taking order of magnitude estimates

And for the US federal budget (you can hover over for dollar amounts, click on each box to see that department's spending breakdown):

[frittercrittern]

I am feeling entirely normal and nothing is going on at ALL in my brain about this triangle and his horrible awful dimension he is from

[nordfjording]

i think the biggest problem facing democracy is lack of understanding of the system. and i think that's why norway will end up taking a right turn in the next election as well, even though this government has been okayish navigating a frankly brutal int economy that the opposition definitely would have very different priorities in.

[solasfenheral]

vg is a game where there a lot of parts I enjoy on paper and then you have to reckon w execution that keeps like. keeps immediately killing narrative tension before it can build

[fandomfluffandfuck]

You ever think about the raw, unfiltered political unrest, near rage, that must come out in Steve's art sometimes, the shit that he's sure no one else will ever lay eyes on, deep in his sketchbook? Because I do.

[unofficial-project-2025]

PLEAE; REGISTER TO VOTE AND VOTE IN PERSON.

[sofia-not-sophie]

Help I’m thinking too hard about the unexplored world building implications of the seven kisses lead to pregnancy in a world where there seems to be/have been a patriarchy and also somehow it works interspecially despite humans and akiridions having entirely different modes of existence/bodily function

[deadqueernoldor]

Thinking thoughts about those from Cuivienen and how they later treated the Valar, especially after Cuivienen was destroyed.

I imagine a foundation of sorrow and a layer of betrayal and pettiness. They had promised safety. And how did it turn out? Kin of Tata and Tatie their first leaders, slain in Valinor by the Dark Hunter from which the Valar promised protection in Valinor.

And then, the War of Wrath comes and with it the destruction of Cuivienen.

If any of those were re-embodied in Aman, I wonder if they make it a point to always turn their back to Valar and Maiar. I wonder if they only speak in the tongue they had first devised all those millennia ago and spoke in Cuivienen before time and different kindreds changed the tongue, not Sindarin or Quenya from the Great Journey's time or later. I wonder if they sing songs in their ancient tongue, songs about the beauty and unsullied health of Cuivienen every time any of the Ainur are near.

I wonder if the Valar feel any shame when those who they once looked upon in wonder and love gaze back at them with indifference or disgust.

[gawayne]

they should invent a chocolate bar where it fits back in that thin ass box when you fold the foil over the end

[dittolicous]

i dont care where you live in the usa or w/e... if you dont vote for biden you are throwing away your vote and enabling trump. because *everyone* thinks their vote doesnt matter and piddles around because of that. hell, everyone thinks 'its only me, it wont make a difference' about THOUSANDS of things, like littering, picking seashells, taking stones from rivers, etc. and in all of those situations THEYRE FUCKING WRONG. if anything unites us, its our damn ability to think we alone are the outlier despite everything indicating otherwise.

and miss me with that 'biden is just as bad/is a murderer' shit. 1) cool, and how do you plan to change things in a mr. nazi-dictator trump world? how are you ACTIVELY making a difference? 2) CHANGE IS INCREMENTAL. the reason things suck so much is because the left keeps taking slow change as 'no change' and giving up before we can gain any momentum to make big change!

if you vote in hamas or w/e to protest... you might as well throw dirt at all those suffering innocent people. you arent saving palestine that way. that is not a helpful protest. you'll only enable trump to win by throwing away your vote. it is the one bit of actual power you have, so USE IT RIGHT! stop in-fighting for one moment! look at what is possible to achieve in reality! dreams arent fulfilled overnight!

when you feel like your vote doesnt matter, remember this - you have to try anyways

[shadowed-yet-vibrant]

Big decisions about abortion and LGBTQ rights make better headlines but SCOTUS just eviscerated the Chevron doctrine and no one but my dork-ass lawyer colleagues knows how immense this is (even if Chevron was arguably dead in the water before, and they just finally pulled the trigger to put it out of its misery).

[cygnahime]

Bioware made some Decisions about softening factions/moral disagreements/etc in Veilguard, but to me the one that's simply bizarre is...Tevinter slavery???

Because it's so incredibly unnecessary. Because the faction you connect with is the Shadow Dragons, abolitionist agitators. You really wouldn't have to deal much with people who think slavery is ok, because they are hardly going to be your allies. Neve is your Shadow Dragon contact, so whatever else, she shares those beliefs enough to be in good odor with them.

(And there is nothing unbefitting of her noir nature in "fighting the injustice in the very structure of society that one person cannot overcome". Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown Minrathous.)

They wrote Dorian as having pulled his head out of his ass and incorporated "you can't treat people well and enslave them" into his worldview, which isn't much of a stretch considering. He and Maevaris are, in fact, abolitionist politicians, not powerful enough to get anything done but just too powerful to easily get rid of. Real life has had plenty of those.

So...why bother to soften or erase that Tevinter is a slave state? It's not like we have any friendly characters who support it, including the Tevenes, unless I've missed something. They could not have party arguments about slavery the easy way!

So - I made an elf mage Shadow Dragon, okay, because that seemed interesting, but in practice the game doesn't give me much to work with. No conversation about what happens to elven slaves who manifest magic. About how far just "mage" doesn't get you around here. Hell, in the backstory they had her bust up an underground Venatori slave market, which is, frankly BS of the highest order! There don't need to be underground slave markets; there are regular markets for that! The whole point is that she and they took down completely legal places of business, because the law in Tevinter is evil! The Venatori don't have to coup Minrathous to go after them; the government already should be.

Softening it is so wildly unnecessary compared to e.g. the Crows, to the story they wanted to tell, that I'm just ??? confused more than anything.