#liberty b jones

[thetaurusgeminisystem]

Hetalia writing blurbs #1

A/N: So this is a series I'm probably going to post whenever I come up with some sort of short blurb from a story that is one of my WIPs. I'm doing this to hopefully gain some encouragement because I struggle sometimes with continuing a story. This is a blurb that was written by me and an alter in my system who is an introject of Germany. A lot of what is written is from his own source memories that he's had in the past. This is incomplete at the moment, but I wanted to share what was written.

TW: MENTIONS OF WWII GERMANY, POSSIBLE DESCRIPTIONS OF BAD CAMPS, HISTORICAL HETALIA. Not for the faint of heart. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Berlin, Germany

December 1961

If there was one thing that he hated to feel it was the feeling of weakness. From a young age, Gilbert had taught him that allowing your enemy to see your vulnerability was a death sentence waiting to happen. As the wall went up around the borders of his heart city of Berlin, he became completely fragile.

Ludwig Beilschmidt knelt in front of the concrete fixture that was raised by that damn commie and his men. The wall was thick, cold, and covered in razor sharp barbed wire at its peaks. He had watched so many of his desperate citizens try to escape the harsh rule of the communist east. He also watched them fail miserably and then if they were lucky they weren't executed.

The sound of gunshots, barking dogs, and Russian commands rang in his ears. Nearly every single time the sounds were accompanied by the flashbacks of his foolish mistakes. He knew damn well that he couldn't take on Russia alone, but he was truly too afraid to argue with his boss. Instead he stood by his men's sides as they pumped meth in their systems to block out the excruciating pain or sleep deprivation. He never imagined that his men would become addicted to the illicit substances and then become desperate for more of them.

He could remember the sight of seeing his men lying in the cold and unforgiving snow dead. Their deaths came from either the loss of blood and bodies riddled with bullets or the freezing hand of Russia's famed General Winter taking hold. Being shot to death was a mercy killing when you could die slowly of frostbite and hypothermia. As dark as it was to say, he preferred seeing the snow painted scarlet then to see the failures of his boss to realize that the lack of supplies would cost so much more than the land was worth.

Ludwig had gotten into the habit of coming and kneeling before the monstrous concrete wall almost every day. The habit had come after seeing the true physical state of his older brother Gilbert who now was known as East Germany. Some days Ludwig swore he could hear a lone flute playing on the other side. As it grew much colder though, the sound of the flute grew fainter and fainter. This didn't discourage the younger German personification though. He came every single day and stayed until nightfall because he feared that if he didn't come then he would lose hope.

As it was, he was already losing hope. England and France barely made a move to aid him and his people. Of course he felt that he should have expected that, but it didn't mean that it didn't cut him any less. America seemed to be his only true ally here. The young personification stood by his side when Russia made him feel threatened. Ludwig felt he owed much of his current freedom to the American and his younger sister.

The American girl with the teal and rust colored hair seemed familiar to him. Of course she had taken care of him and his wounds while he was forced into America's custody and he had seen her on the battlefields during the war, but there was something else about her. Ludwig knew her official name to be New York City, but her human name was lost on him at the moment. Everytime he thought of her recently it was like he was trying to access information that he wasn't allowed to. Why the hell was his brain blocking the information away?

What frustrated the German even more about the situation of his lost memories was that every time the personification of New York City was around him, he felt a strange sense of home. Did other nations feel that way when she was around? There was a small part of him that kind of hoped that they didn't. He didn't know where that part of his brain came from, especially because he hadn't made a move towards her, hell he didn't even understand what his feelings were towards her in the first place!

Ever since his time staying in her home, he hadn't fully been able to get her out of his mind. The girl was kind to him and patient with him when he felt that he didn't deserve her kindness, let alone her patience. He saw himself as a monster after he was forced to see the true nature of his boss's “perfect Germany”. He understood why so many other countries looked at him with anger, disgust, and even hatred. Yet the two Americans didn't look at him that way. They looked at him with sympathy.

Gods, but why sympathy? Did they feel sorry for him? Why? Sympathy was a sign of being fragile! He wasn't weak god dammit!

Suddenly Ludwig was brought out of his thoughts when he felt the touch of a cold tendril upon his face. He blinked as he noticed the simple white flakes beginning to spread across the ground. He looked up at the skies above him and saw the sun was still fairly towards the eastern skies, even if it was well hidden by a layer of clouds.

He then glanced down at the cracked wrist watch on his left wrist to confirm his suspicions.

1:00pm

Ludwig then stood to his full height and rested his forehead against the wall. He hadn't heard the sound of Gilbert's flute today, but he was too determined to leave. Gilbert had to be somewhere on the other side, he just knew it. Ludwig took a deep, shaky breath before he began to softly sing “Einsamkeit”. Each of his words were punctuated by a small puff of steam.

“One day bruder… one day” Ludwig finally said quietly as he finished the song. He leaned his head against the cool concrete and closed his eyes. One day he would finally be free and let his people live a life in democracy.

Ludwig stayed this way for at least a few good hours. The only time he seemed to move was to get back into a kneeling position when his legs grew tired. He was almost in a trance, his thoughts dragging him back to the past. His trance-like state made him grow unaware of the growing blizzard conditions around him. He even grew to not realize the steady worsening of his cough.

His mind was at a day in the past where he was forced to his knees in similar snow. He had cuffs securing his wrists in front of him securely. The biting steel of Russia’s pistol dug into his temple while the barrel of England’s was digging into his upper back. He could see dingy and disgusting looking buildings, a gallows where a cowardly soldier allowed the rope to claim his life, and what looked like an army of living skeletons being led away from further horrors by American and British soldiers. What he could remember most about the environment that Arthur, Ivan, Francis, and Alfred had dragged him to was the acrid smell of death.

“Are you aware of what's been going on here, Herr Germany?” the Russian asked, his tone dripping with an edge of disgust, mockery, and anger. As the question left the Russian, the barrel of his gun jabbed at Ludwig’s temple.

Ludwig had no idea that this place even existed, no less , had been used to murder innocent people. He took another look around in horror from his spot kneeling on the ground. Silent tears began to roll down his cheeks as he realized why his body had been sick and why Ace had betrayed him along with others among his men. Ace never meant to hurt him or betray him. She was trying to save him as many of his citizens had.

“Answer the question, you dirty kraut! How could you do this to your own people?” Arthur growled and then he kicked Ludwig in his lower back making the German fall face first into the dirt.

After a moment more of seeing dead bodies being taken away, a sharp pain burst across Ludwig’s chest. “NEIN! I KNEW NOZHING OF ZHIS, MEIN BOSS KEPT ME IN THE DARK ABOUT ANYZHING OZER ZHAH ZHE VARFRONTS!” Ludwig cried out as his tears spilled in a nearly uncontrollable manner at this point.

In that moment it was the first time that Ludwig was fragile around his enemies. When the trials came, he expected a death sentence. What he got was way worse.

The four allied nations had agreed to drop the genocide crime against Ludwig. This was due to all the evidence that New York was able to present. The evidence supported the theory that Ludwig was kept in the dark about all matters outside the war fronts. That didn't stop them from charging him with the rest of his war crimes though.

In the end, he was split into four sectors that were divided among the four allies. England, France, and America took the westward sectors while Russia took the eastward one. Russia's demands did not end there though. Thanks to a rightfully traumatized Poland and Lithuania, Russia demanded that Gilbert be completely disbanded as a nation and his land given to Poland.

What Ludwig had not known was that this very factor left Gilbert defenseless against Ivan and his lackeys. Gilbert had been beaten and kidnapped from the eastern side of the wall and was now imprisoned deep in Russian territory.

8:00pm

The icy winds of the blizzard kicked up and the snow was nearly blinding for anyone who dared to come anywhere near the Berlin Wall.

[ophilosoraptoro]

Flashback to 2009. Once again, Alex Jones was right.

[ciceroprofacto]

SOA supplementals

Primary Sources / Letters

Papers of George Washington RevWar Series volume 11 (all)

The Army Correspondence of Colonel John Laurens in the Years 1777-1778 compiled by William Gilmore Simms (p.145-162)

The Papers of Henry Laurens volume 13 (p.33-140)

The Political Writings of Alexander Hamilton by Holloway and Wilson (p.7-117)

Backstory / additional context

The First Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch (all)

The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution by Benjamin Carp (all)

Kidnapping the Enemy by Christian M. McBurney (all)

Strategy, Politics, Staff

Fatal Sunday by Lender and Stone (p.xi-122)

Washington's Secret War by Thomas Fleming (all: p.223-244)

To Starve the Army at Pleasure by E. Wayne Carp (various)

The Valley Forge Winter by Wayne Bodle (all: p.163-220)

George Washington's Indispensable Men by Arthur Leftkowitz (p.15, 45-157)

John Laurens and the American Revolution by Gregory Massey (p.86-106)

Washington's General: Nathaniel Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution by Terry Galloway (p.165-171)

Wives / Women of the Army

Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts (various)

The General & Mrs Washington by Bruce Chadwick (p.209-222)

Martha Washington: An American Life by Patricia Brady (p.118-126)

Caty: A Biography of Catherine Littlefield Greene by John & Janet Stegeman (p.48-59)

Pox Americana by Elizabeth Fenn (p.98-103)

Spies

Revolutionary Spies Intelligence and Espionage in America's First War by Tim McNeese (p.99-209)

General Washington's Spies on Long Island and in New York by Morton Pennypacker (p.1-119)

Washington's Spies by Alexander Rose (all)

Spies in the Continental Capital by John Nagy (all)

George Washington's Secret Spy War: The Making of America's First Spymaster by John Nagy (all)

Allies / foreign officers / special forces

Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright, and a Spy Saved the American Revolution by Joe Richard Paul (all)

Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations by Craig Nelson (p.99-145)

Special Operations During the American Revolution by Robert Tonsetic (p.7-149)

Light Horse Harry: A Biography of Washington's Great Cavalryman by Noel B. Gerson (p.1-60)

John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy by Evan Thomas (p.97-133)

The Admiral and the Ambassador by Scott Martelle (p.49-54)

Tadeusz Kościuszko and Casimir Pulaski: The Lives of the Revolutionary War's Most Famous Polish Officers by Charles River Editors (Pulaski section)

Pulaski: A Portrait of Freedom by R.D. Jamro (p.85-99)

Steuben / Drill

The Drillmaster of Valley Forge by Paul Lockhart (p.105-113)

The Life of Von Steuben by Frederich Kapp (p.120-136)

Baron Von Steuben's Revolutionary Drill Manual: A Facsimile Reprint of the 1794 Edition (all)

Lafayette

For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette and Their Revolutions by James R. Gaines (p.98-106)

Adopted Son by David Clary (p.154-179)

Lafayette by Harlow Giles Unger (p.65-71)

The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered by Laura Auricchio (p.59-64)

[volatilehqs]

Hoje não é noite de lua cheia, mas como nós estamos precisando de alguns lobisomens na nossa cidade, aqui vai a nossa terceira edição de ideias para personagens, agora voltadas para os licantropos em alcateias e solitários.

EICHEN PACK:

Aquele lobisomem que age como uma mãezona do grupo. Quando eles têm uma atitude errada, puxa a orelha dos lobinhos e xinga até a última geração deles. Mas quando é alguém de fora que está falando besteira da sua alcateia, pula em cima porque só pode falar mal da Eichen Pack quem está do lado de dentro.

SUGESTÕES DE FC: Charlie Hunnam, Daisy Edgar Jones, Richard Madden, Kristina Tonteri-Young, Jonathan Bailey.

Alguém que está tendo dificuldades para se transformar. Na sua primeira lua cheia, acabou se soltando e atacando alguém na cidade, ou até um outro lobo do grupo, se acalmando só depois de ser contido pelos membros. Desde então, consegue se transformar apenas parcialmente, se cobrando o tempo inteiro.

SUGESTÕES DE FC: Jaz Sinclair, Tanner Buchanan, Milly Alcock, Mason Gooding, Hailee Steinfeld, Rudy Pankow.

Um lobisomem que apesar de ter nascido em Arcanum e fazer parte da Eichen, sempre se identificou com o jeito selvagem da Alder Pack, enxergando os seus ideais como mais semelhantes aos deles, sendo assim, acaba se sentindo um pouco deslocado dentro do próprio grupo, ansiando pelo diferente.

SUGESTÕES DE FC: Emilio Sakraya, Courtney Eaton, Drew Starkey, Camila Mendes, Brandon Perea, Jessica Alexander.

Aquele lobisomem que só quer paz. Correr pela floresta na lua cheia, trabalhar na oficina durante a semana, até mesmo criar laços com lobos que não fazem parte da sua alcateia. Toda essa história de rivalidade entre facções e espécies não lhe interessa, só não quer que problemas apareçam no seu caminho.

SUGESTÕES DE FC: Ayo Edebiri, Charlie Heaton, Alba Baptista, Michael Evans Behling, Emma Myers.

Temos uma wanted connection de um dos nossos players que gira em torno de um trio de amigos de infância, um deles sendo o alfa da alcateia.

SUGESTÕES DE FC: Informadas pelo player na página.

ALDER PACK:

Um lobisomem que sempre teve uma ligação diferente com os animais, sendo assim, começou a trabalhar no abrigo usando o seu poder de absorção de dor no tratamento dos bichinhos. Pense um pouco no Scott Mccall.

SUGESTÕES DE FC: Apo Nattawin, Lizeth Selene, Santiago Segura, Lola Tung, Joseph Quinn, Madison Bailey.

Você pode ter um lobisomem que não é necessariamente o alfa da alcateia, mas é visto como alguém bastante acolhedor, especialmente para os novos lobisomens que chegam na cidade sem ideia de onde estão se metendo. Tenta oferecer conselhos e colocar a cabeça dos outros no lugar.

SUGESTÕES DE FC: Anne Hathaway, Adam DiMarco, Jodie Comer, Michael B Jordan, Zoë Kravitz, Josh O'Connor.

É funcionário da Toca do Lobo, pode até ser dono ou gerente, e é aquele lobisomem que coloca ordem no lugar na base da imponência. Assim que as brigas e gritaria começam, a sua voz soa mais alto porque os clientes lhe respeitam e temem que vá partir para a violência.

SUGESTÕES DE FC: David Castañeda, Rosamund Pike, Gong Yoo, Laura Harrier, Enzo Vogrincic, Gemma Chan.

Um lobisomem jovem que ainda está tentando se encontrar dentro da alcateia. Ele não tem muito poder pela idade, então está sempre se oferecendo para fazer qualquer tipo de serviço para os outros, sendo mais um seguidor que uma pessoa própria. Alguns podem tirar proveito disso.

SUGESTÕES DE FC: Maya Hawke, Xolo Maridueña, Emily Carey, Evan Mock, Maia Reficco, Clinton Liberty.

Também estamos precisando do nosso alfa. Você pode pensar nele como alguém que gosta de dar maior liberdade para quem faz parte da sua alcateia ou alguém um pouco mais rigoroso. Enxerga a Eichen como uma inimiga ou pensa que os dois grupos poderiam formar uma aliança?

SUGESTÕES DE FC: Lucien Laviscount, Adria Arjona, Lewis Tan, Melissa Benoist, Channing Tatum.

LOBOS SOLITÁRIOS:

Um lobisomem que foi expulso de uma alcateia por dar informações para a outra. No fim das contas, ficou sem lado, tendo que se virar sozinho. Ele pode ser uma espécie de “mercenário”, fazendo trabalhos sujos para outra espécie e até mesmo se colocando contra os lobisomens como vingança por ser rejeitado por ambos.

SUGESTÕES DE FC: Adeline Rudolph, Dacre Montgomery, Bruna Marquezine, Mike Faist, Jung Hoyeon.

Alguém que acabou de chegar na cidade, mas como sempre se virou sozinho, decidiu que não iria fazer parte da Alder.

SUGESTÕES DE FC: Callum Turner, Amita Suman, Taylor Zakhar Perez, Ella Hunt, Zain Igbal, Jessie Mei Li.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Footnotes, 151-200

[151] Jean Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), 107–108; Rob Boston, “If Best-Selling End-Times Author Tim LaHaye Has His Way, Church-State Separation Will Be…Left Behind,” Church & State Magazine, February 2002.

[152] Mariah Blake, “Stations Of The Cross: How evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news,” Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 2005.

[153] Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973), 22.

[154] Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, edited and translated by James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961), 67.

[155] Ibid., 66.

[156] Steve Blow, “Turning Textbooks into the Good Book,” Dallas Morning News, March 5, 2006.

[157] Mary Ann Zehr, “School of Faith,” Education Week, December 7, 2005.

[158] See www.ed.nces.gov.

[159] Laurel Elizabeth Hicks, Old World History and Geography (Pensacola, FL: A Beka, 1991), 247, as cited in Frances Patterson, “Teaching Religious Intolerance,” Rethinking Schools Online, www.rethinkingschools.org.

[160] Hicks, Old World History and Geography, 210, as cited in Patterson, “Teaching Religious Intolerance.”

[161] Hicks, Old World History and Geography, 213 and 214, as cited in Patterson, “Teaching Religious Intolerance.”

[162] Patterson, “Teaching Religious Intolerance,” 2.

[163] Jerry Combee, History of the World in Christian Perspective (Pensacola, FL: A Beka, 1997), 86.

[164] Patterson, “Teaching Religious Intolerance,” 2.

[165] Hicks, Old World History and Geography, 47, as cited in Patterson, “Teaching Religious Intolerance.”

[166] Combee, History of the World, 279.

[167] Hicks, Old World History and Geography, 212, as cited in Patterson, “Teaching Religious Intolerance.”

[168] Heritage Studies for Christian Schools 6 (Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1998), 41.

[169] Kurt S. Grussendorf, Michael R. Lowman, and Brian S. Asbaugh, America, Land I Love—Teacher Edition (Pensacola, FL: A Beka, 1994), 636.

[170] Ibid., 631.

[171] Ibid., 630.

[172] Ibid., 593. Italics added.

[173] Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Glorious Appearing: The End of Days (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 2004), 10.

[174] Ibid., 12.

[175] “UnCommonSense,” J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State, www_sos.state_oh.us.

[176] Ibid.

[177] Ibid.

[178] Ibid.

[179] Andrew Welsh-Huggins, “Ohio Televangelist Takes to Politics,” FortWayne.com, December 3, 2005, www.fortwayne.com.

[180] Sarah Posner, “With God on His Side,” American Prospect, November 2005.

[181] Jim Bebbington, “An Empire of Souls,” Columbus Monthly, May 1993, 35, quoted in G. Richard Fisher, “Rod Parsley: The Raging Prophet,” Personal Freedom Outreach, 1999.

[182] Posner, “With God on His Side.”

[183] Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), 64.

[184] William Lobdell, “The Prosperity Gospel; Pastor’s Empire Built on Acts of Faith and Cash,” Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2004, B1.

[185] Ibid.

[186] Andre Gumbel, “Scandal, Sex and Sanctimony,” New Zealand Herald, September 18, 2004, B16.

[187] Paul Crouch Sr., Praise the Lord, November 7, 1997, quoted in “Paul Crouch and TBN,” On Doctrine, www.ondoctrine.com.

[188] Lobdell, “Prosperity Gospel.”

[189] Gumbel, “Scandal, Sex and Sanctimony.”

[190] Benny Hinn, Praise the Lord, October 19, 1999, quoted in “Paul Crouch and TBN.”

[191] Benny Hinn, Larry King Live, quoted in “Benny Hinn—Truth or Consequences, Part 3,” Let Us Reason Ministries Apologetics Index, www.apologeticsindex.org.

[192] Gumbel, “Scandal, Sex and Sanctimony.”

[193] Paul Crouch Sr., Praise-a-Thon, April 2, 1991, quoted in “Paul Crouch and TBN.”

[194] Gumbel, “Scandal, Sex and Sanctimony.”

[195] William Lobdell, “Ex-Worker Accusing TBN Pastor Says He Had Sex to Keep His Job,” Los Angeles Times, September 22, 2004, B1.

[196] Lobdell, “Prosperity Gospel.”

[197] Ibid.

[198] Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell, America’s Providential History, 19

[199] Ibid., 3.

[200] Ibid., 214.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[twitter :: Janet @bekindhavehope] ::  

* * * *

      Small acts of resistance by Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks were grains of sand that changed the angle of repose of segregation in the Jim Crow South. Their actions toppled three generations of laws, rules, and "customs" piled on the shoulders of Black citizens denied liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

         So, too, with the small demonstration in the well of the Tennessee assembly last week by Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson. Their acts of resistance have set in motion grains of sand that dislodge others nearby, which in turn dislodge others . . . .

The chain reaction has begun. The movements will be imperceptible at first but—once started—are unstoppable. One small act of resistance by a single person is all that is necessary to overcome the angle of repose of decades of discrimination and injustice. Justin Pearson. Justin Jones. Gloria Johnson. You.

         We are watching history unfold and repeat itself as news leaders arise to lead the next generation. Our hearts should be glad and filled with hope!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[dr-demi-bee]

Username Song Game

Tagged by @abysskeeper. 🥰 This was so hard to pick! I am a music junkie with eclectic tastes and this gave me flashbacks to notes games on FB in high school lmao

[Rules are simple: pick a song for each letter of your URL and tag that many people!]

BEHOLD! My immaculate taste in music. /s

D: Devils Plans Dominic Lewis, Charles Jones

R: Ruled by Secrecy Muse

-: 11:11 p.m. All American Rejects

D: Dead! My Chemical Romance

E: Elanor Rigby The Beatles

M: My Type Saint Motel

I: I Want to Break Free Queen

-: 10 Things I Hate About You Leah Kate

B: Buttercup Hippo Campus

E: End of Beginning Djo

E: EP. 4: Important Ian McConnel

I took creative liberties for the em dashes, and just picked songs that start with non-alphabetical characters. I only ever BOOP anyone who wants to play along. Because the rancid urge in me calls to boop and boop again, but I am afraid, so I try to keep it under control. 😔

[mongrelmutt]

My books read list for 2023! For the first time I met my goal of at least one book a week!! 😁

1. "A Conspiracy of Kings" -- Megan Whalen Turner

2. "Thick as Thieves" -- Megan Whalen Turner

3. "Return of the Thief" -- Megan Whalen Turner

4. "Vatican II" -- John O'Malley

5. "The Catholic Church: A Short History" -- Hans Küng, translated by John Bowden

6. "Confessions" and "Letter to Coroticus" -- St. Patrick

7. "Through the Brazilian Wilderness" -- Theodore Roosevelt

8. "The Wind in the Willows" -- Kenneth Grahame

9. "Period: The Real Story of Menstruation" -- Kate Clancy

10. "Star Wars: Padawan" -- Kiersten White

11. "Star Wars: Master and Apprentice" -- Claudia Gray

12. "Deep Down Dark" -- Héctor Tobar

13. "The Lost World" -- Michael Crichton

14. "Provida Mater Ecclesia: Apostolic Constitution of Pope Pius XII Concerning Secular Institutes" (English translation) -- Pope Pius XII

15. "Frankenstein" -- Mary Shelley

16. "Kenobi" -- John Jackson Miller

17. "Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law" -- Mary Roach

18. "Trigun" and "Trigun Maximum" -- Yasuhiro Nightow

19. "Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution" -- Andrew M. Wehrman

20. "Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith" -- Eve Tushnet

21. "The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth" -- Beth Allison Bar

22. "Turtles All The Way Down" -- John Green

23. "All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries #1)" -- Martha Wells

24. "Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries #2)" -- Martha Wells

25. "Rogue Protocol (Murderbot Diaries #3)" -- Martha Wells

26. "Exit Strategy (Murderbot Diaries #4) -- Martha Wells

27. "Network Effect (Murderbot Diaries #5) -- Martha Wells

28. "Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot Diaries #6) -- Martha Wells

29. "Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History" -- Erik Larson

30. "The Johnstown Flood" -- David McCullough

31. "The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World" -- Riley Black

32. "Beastly Brains: Exploring How Animals Think, Talk, and Feel" -- Nancy F. Castaldo

33. "The Rise and Reign of Mammals: A New History from the Shadows of the Dinosaurs to Us" -- Steve Brusatte

34. "Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Dog" -- John Bradshaw

35. "Evolution Gone Wrong: The Curious Reasons Why Our Bodies Work (or Don't)" -- Alex Bezzerides

36. "Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive" -- Philipp Dettmer

37. "Catholicism and ADHD: Finding Holiness Despite Distractions" -- Alex R. Hey, PCAC

38. "The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery" -- Sam Kean

39. "An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us" -- Ed Yong

40. "Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig" -- Mark Essig

41. "The Mind's Eye" -- Oliver Sacks

42. "Loveless" -- Alice Oseman

43. "The Monkey Trial: John Scopes and the Battle Over Teaching Evolution" -- Anita Sanchez

44. "The Great Quake: How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet" -- Henry Fountain

45. "Kiki's Delivery Service" -- Eiko Kadono (translated by Emily Balistrieri)

46. "Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas" -- Jennifer Raff

47. "Ancillary Justice" -- Ann Leckie

48. "An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives" -- Matt Richtel

49. "System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries #7)" -- Martha Wells

50. "Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth's Most Awesome Creatures" -- Nick Pyeson

51. "Howl's Moving Castle" -- Diana Wynne Jones

52. "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" -- Shirley Jackson

53. "Sarah, Plain and Tall" and "Skylark" -- Patricia MacLachlan

54. "The Haunting of Hill House" -- Shirley Jackson

55. "All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings" -- Gayle Boss (illustrated by David G. Klein)

[infamousbrad]

From September of 1974 to May of 1978, I attended an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church run, John Birch Society funded cult brainwashing high school called Faith Christian Academy. The campus was a former mafia-owned golf course in Florissant, Missouri that was seized by the feds and sold to Dr. John Stormer, mostly famous for his conspiracy theory classic None Dare Call it Treason, less well known for being one of the cofounders of the nation-wide Union of Christian Schools, to use for his (thankfully long-ago closed) Calvary Chapel church and its attached private school.

Although they did manage to (briefly) convert me to Biblical Literalist Christianity, I was never not a disappointment to them because if they couldn't unambiguously prove any one of their doctrinal claims, I would politely but firmly tell them that I was going to, well, assert my authority and responsibility to make my own moral decisions in prayerful contemplation of scripture using sound tools of Biblical exegesis, as they had trained me. Except that for all that they taught "priesthood of the believer," in practice, if you came to a different conclusion from them and refused to accept that that meant they were right and you were wrong, they called that "rebelling against the authority that God has placed over you."

For example, as my class (of 28 students) approached graduation, we were all pointedly told that there (a) we were all expected to graduate from college in order to make ourselves better able to bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth in the United States, but, importantly, (b) there were only four colleges we could attend and "remain within the will of God:" Bob Jones University, Liberty Baptist University, Dallas Theological Seminary, and one tiny little school I'd never heard of called ... Hyles-Anderson Christian College. Which I gather is a major target of the documentary linked above, Let Us Prey.

I politely told them that none of those four schools had a decent math department, that I had gotten admission and financial aid to attend a Methodist university, Taylor University, and that I could not possibly care less about their opinion on the subject. But a friend and classmate of mine, the captain of the cheerleading squad, did apply for and receive admission to Hyles, and was excited to go.

The next Easter vacation after that, when I was back in St. Louis, I spotted her entirely by accident in a local mall, walked up and said hi, you're back for spring break too, how are things at Hyles? And she freaked out. She begged me to walk away and forget that I'd seen her, to tell no one where she was. She swore and said now she might have to run away again, she was afraid of having someone know that she was back in St. Louis.

Because, she said, her parents had signed a contract promising to return her to Hyles-Anderson, by any means up to and including force, and she wasn't back for spring break, she had run away, was homeless and on the run, had only come into the mall to warm up. And she said that she would kill herself rather than go back.

"Brad," she said, "I'm too ashamed to even tell you what happens there. You have no idea." I didn't press her on it. I offered help and she was afraid to take it. I never saw her again. I'll probably never know what horror she was fleeing, and I'm afraid to guess.

(I left Christianity behind forever, went more or less back to the humanism I was raised in, just a few years after that, in 1983.)

When I just saw a movie trailer linking the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist denomination in general and Hyles-Anderson Christian College in particular with mass physical and sexual abuse, including against minors? I wasn't at all surprised. It made me think about the fear I saw on the face of my old friend Johanna. I hope they didn't catch her and send her back to that right-wing rape camp. I hope she's okay. I hope she found healing somewhere.

[mcbitchtits]

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of His Old Movies

https://slate.com/culture/2023/07/indiana-jones-5-dial-of-destiny-raiders-inspiration.html

Raiders of the Lost Ark raided all of cinema for inspiration. With Dial of Destiny, the franchise steals only from itself.

 By Sam Thielman

   July 01, 2023

In her now-famous pan of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pauline Kael excoriated Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for wasting their talents on a film that aspired to be a B movie. “Spielberg—a master showman—can stage a movie cliché so that it has Fred Astaire’s choreographic snap to it,” Kael said. She had his number: The film (and the pair’s three sequels) is a sort of kitchen-sink pastiche, not of a single style of filmmaking but of everything the moviemakers loved from their own childhoods—Carl Barks comics, Citizen Kane, Gunga Din, Lawrence of Arabia, Stagecoach, Lost Horizon (the remake of which it actually raided for footage), and the cheap adventure serials that the two men had seen as children. That struck Kael, who also loved the artistic heights to which movies could aspire, as an unpardonable liberty to take with the audience.

She had the audience wrong, though—at least the part of the audience that was the age of the filmmakers. “The moviemaking team appears to have forgotten the basic thing about cliff-hangers: we had a week to mull over how the hero was going to be saved from the trap he’d got himself into,” she sniffed. Nope: Studios like Republic released serials weekly in the 1930s and ’40s in an effort to keep moviegoers returning regularly, but by the time the Indiana Jones team was soaking up stories of spacemen and lost treasure in the ’50s, those serials had migrated to television. In one story conference, Lucas said he wanted Raiders to have some kind of death-defying moment every 10 to 20 minutes, more or less mimicking the experience of watching several installments of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon uninterrupted, since that was how they aired on TV in the ’50s. Young people were used to drinking in set piece after set piece, and two technically brilliant filmmakers with enough money to make a feature were happy to crank up the energy way past the tolerance of their elders.

I can personally attest to the queasy pleasures of the serial experience. When I was a kid, my dad, anxious, like all dads, to introduce his offspring to artifacts of his own childhood (which, in his case, was roughly contemporaneous with Spielberg’s), scored an unexpurgated copy of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe on two VHS cassettes. I loved them. In fact, I found them hard to stop watching even after far too long in front of the television, and at least once I managed to creep downstairs to the VCR on a Saturday morning when most of the house was asleep and binge the entire thing in a single face-melting four-hour sitting. (Feel free to do this yourself if you want.) Raiders is probably my favorite movie, not least because it’s the skeleton key to so many other films that inspired its two colossal auteurs, and perhaps that is why it is so uncomfortable to hear echoes of Kael’s dismissal in my own distaste for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, allegedly Harrison Ford’s final adventure as the whip-cracking tomb raider.

For the original film, Lucas and Spielberg gleefully pilfered stories of adventure from foreign civilizations, the basic atomic unit of American pop culture during their formative years in the ’50s. Hiram Bingham had “discovered” Machu Picchu in 1911; in 1954 Barks had replaced him with Scrooge McDuck, and Hollywood had made him into a louche jerk named Harry Steele (Charlton Heston) in Secret of the Incas. The Raiders team stole their hero’s wardrobe from Secret—costume designer Deborah Nadoolman said the crew watched the film together several times—and the boulder sequence from Uncle Scrooge. When Indy channels a shaft of sunlight that reveals the location of the movie’s sacred MacGuffin, a scene lifted from Secret of the Incas, he’s dressed in a near-exact copy of T.E. Lawrence’s Bedouin garb in Lawrence of Arabia. It’s a slightly embarrassing quote—not as embarrassing as Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt Williams appearing in costume as Marlon Brando in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull—but perhaps it’s a little charming even so, not unlike catching a kid trying to wear his dad’s suit.

Spielberg and Lucas were also vigilant stewards of popular culture, not just appropriators of it. Star Wars may have looted Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress, and Indy may be an amalgam of Toshiro Mifune characters, but Lucas paid that debt back in literal dollars, forcing Fox to finance Kurosawa’s Kagemusha as a condition of distributing The Empire Strikes Back. Both he and Spielberg worked to make the Japanese auteur’s final film, Dreams, a reality. A long-overdue restoration of Lawrence of Arabia had stalled out; Spielberg and Martin Scorsese (who plays Vincent van Gogh in Dreams, incidentally) got it rolling again.

But watching Dial of Destiny, it’s hard not to think that Indy’s world was a lot bigger in 1981. We more or less have the Republic serial model back again in the form of the Marvel movies and TV shows, which deploy every few weeks and draw liberally on the chase-scenes-and-quips model perfected in Raiders and strung out enjoyably across Temple of Doom and Last Crusade and even parts of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. During Dial of Destiny, we no longer see references to movies made before Star Wars; instead, the new film, directed and co-written by James Mangold, is an homage to the other Indiana Jones flicks, with Mads Mikkelsen’s baddie at one point jacking his whole outfit from Raiders’ Arnold Toht and, at another, donning René Belloq’s white suit and fedora. John Rhys-Davies reprises not just his role as Indy’s faithful counselor Sallah but the few bars of H.M.S. Pinafore he bellows at the end of the original film. Indy and Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), on the outs at the beginning of Dial, reenact Raiders’ “Where does it hurt?” scene right before the camera discreetly gives them some privacy as the film ends. And that scene in which a sunbeam reveals the location of the titular relic is back, except this time to nod to Raiders rather than to shine a light on a forgotten Charlton Heston vehicle.

These Easter eggs can be tough to swallow if you really remember Raiders with any admiration. Though he softened over the years, Ford’s Indiana Jones began cinematic life as an almost irredeemable monster; that’s the whole point of Belloq, a dashing fascist fashion plate who tends to saunter off with the treasure Indy bleeds for. “It would take only a nudge to make you like me—to push you out of the light,” Belloq teases. Indy’s love interest, Allen’s indomitable Marion, is proof of Belloq’s observation—Indy took advantage of her when she was “a child,” she says (15, if you do the math). What makes Marion’s get-well kisses so sweet is that they don’t actually come to anything. Indy falls asleep—he’s overmatched, just as he always is, beginning in the very first sequence, when he nearly gets himself squashed by a boulder and loses the treasure into the bargain.

Nerds have debated whether or not Dr. Jones actually accomplishes anything over the course of the film, cosmically speaking—the ark of the covenant turns out to be perfectly capable of defending itself after he fails to do so—but the movie’s most important stakes have to do with the disposition of its hero’s soul, not the wrath of God. Ford is blindingly handsome and as charming as one of Indy’s hated snakes, but can a morally compromised predator become someone genuinely worth loving?

It’s a much more interesting question than anything in Dial of Destiny, which declares itself to be thematically interested in whether history and the people who love it matter anymore. The text of the film answers the question in the affirmative, but everything else about it says “not if we can help it.” In the Disney galaxy of intellectual property, the Indiana Jones franchise is one of the smaller constellations, and its affection for films of a bygone era is its least marketable quirk.

Things have changed, largely because of Lucas and Spielberg. The films they fought to see recognized as great works of art now not merely have become canon but have aged into snootiness; whether or not it inspired the terrific truck chase in Raiders, Stagecoach is generally the purview of film buffs, now a tweedier demographic than the kind of nerd who dreamed up Indiana Jones. Same with Lawrence of Arabia, Lost Horizon, and the rest. Instead, everything looks like a Spielberg movie, even when it’s not. Our world is now filled with Apple products that look like set dressing from Minority Report, and moviemakers like J.J. Abrams have constructed entire visual styles out of E.T. The most popular show on the most popular streaming service is a travesty of Spielberg’s work in every sense of the word. We have more, but we draw on far, far less.

Raiders was conceived as a sumptuous meal of elegantly plated junk food, prepared in the firm belief that it’s actually not as bad for you as its detractors have declared. “In addition to the artistic pleasure given by comic stories and drawings such as Carl Barks’, comic art has something to say about the culture that produces it,” Lucas wrote in his introduction to a collection of the Barks stories that had so inspired him. And so it was, he and Spielberg believed, with children’s television and corny Westerns. The old serials were produced with a large measure of cynicism—some sequences of Flash Gordon are just footage from other films, notably the German mountaineering adventure movie The White Hell of Pitz Palu (starring Leni Riefenstahl!). But Lucas and Spielberg have forcefully and successfully made the case that low-cultural art is hugely valuable artistically and monetarily, and that case wasn’t generally accepted when Flash Gordon was being produced.

Now the companies that generate mass entertainment seem concerned primarily with wresting away the rights of artists and forcing every narrative angle to rebound back into intellectual property that they control directly. Stories must form part of a big collective mosaic of trademarked distinctive likenesses, deepening characters and complicating their stories only when those characters can be repurposed for another iteration. The opening sequence of Dial of Destiny, in which Ford is computer-graphically de-aged back to 1981, reads almost as a threat: “Like this?” it seems to say. “There’s more where it came from.” Imagine if Lucas and Spielberg had to dress up Indy as Lawrence not because they loved the David Lean movie but because Hasbro had a line of Lawrence of Arabia action figures coming out. “Essentially, George Lucas is in the toy business,” Kael wrote. She hadn’t seen anything yet.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"ADMITTED GUILT ON TWO CHARGES," Hamilton Spectator. March 19, 1913. Page 11. --- Youths Arrested at the Falls Broke Into Shops ---- Plooard's Record Got Him a Three Year Term ---- William Case Confessed to Theft of $90 ---- Edward Watt, 247 Duke street, and Charles Stratwick, West Hamilton, the two youths brought back from Niagara Falls last night by Detectives Cameron and Goodman to answer a charge of shopbreaking and theft preferred against them by Hayes & Richards, King street west tobacco dealers, were arraigned at court this morning and pleaded guilty to the charge. It is alleged they procured $80. A second charge of shop-breaking and theft was laid against the pair by Daniel Keith, the proprietor of a tobacco store on Locke street. They also pleaded guilty to this charge, and were remanded until tomorrow morning for sentence. Richard Hammill, 83 Poulette street, who was suspected of having been mixed up in both cases, pleaded not guilty, and was allowed his liberty.

THREE-YEAR TERM William Plooard, [pictured] the young man who pleaded guilty yesterday to stealing a hand bag from the rear vestibule of a Locka street car, received a sentence of three years. He has been convicted before, and when passing judgment on him this morning his worship said: "There is no other course open for me other than to send you to the penitentiary for the next three years."

REMANDED FOR SENTENCE William B. Case, 203 Lottridge street, appeared to answer a charge of stoaling $90 from William H. Jones, and pleaded guilty, electing to be tried by the magistrate. He was reminded until to-morrow for sentence.

MUST CLEAN UP. Mrs. R. Durfey, 48 Bay street north, the woman with whom Mrs. Riley who was murdered by her husband last January, resided, appeared be- fore Magistrate Jeifs this morning, on complaint of the board of health department. Dr. Shain said he advised the woman several times to clean up her yard, as it was in a filthy condition, and she refused to do so. She had to pay a fine of $5 and was told that if she didn't comply with the order of the department she would be brought before him again and receive a larger fine.

WAS ACQUITTED. May Clark, 16 Francis street, was acquitted of the charge of wilfully destroying a photograph, the property of Rov Bossil.

WILL MAKE INQUIRIES John Jacobs, of no address, was агrested last night by Constable Pasel, on a charge of vagrancy, and was remanded for a few days until inquiries are instituted into his past.

CHARGE INSANITY. William Thornton, of no address, but who later said that Woodstock was his home town, answered to a charge of insanity registered against him by Constable Pasel and was remanded for a few days to be examined by a commission.

GAVE HER ADVICE. Mrs. Marie McCarthy, 219 Wellington street north, pleaded guilty to a charge of child desertion, but as there was no rider attached to it saying the child was in danger of serious injury. She was allowed her freedom, after a heart to heart talk with his worship.

[Plooard was from Chicago, a common labourer, 20, and had a long criminal record, with two previous terms in the Central Prison and four previous stays in the Toronto Jail. He had a number of tattoos, including a cross on his right shoulder, the letters C.W. and A. N. on his right arm bicep, clasped hands on his right forearm and the letters S. D. near his right wrist. He was convict #F-568 at Kingston Penitentiary and mostly worked in the excavation and trucking work crew. He was reported once, in December 1913, for talking, and lost five days remission. He was released in late 1915.]

[ledenews]

Wheeling History Highlighted by Ohio County Public Library

July 11, 2023 It’s Wheeling History Trivia Deluxe Neighborhood Edition! IT'S BACK! The popular trivia contest, “It's Wheeling History” returns as a one day, two-person per team history “Bee.” Teams representing Wheeling's historic Neighborhoods will answer trivia questions mostly centered on those Wheeling Neighborhoods in a Round-Robin format with a double elimination until only one team is left standing to have their names carved on the It's Wheeling History cup for posterity! Register your team now! (lunchwithbooks@yahoo.com). Your host: Dr. David Javersak! Want to play? CLICK HERE TO REGISTER: Register Your Team NOW!  Get your name on the prestigious IWH CUP!   Watch LIVE on Facebook Watch LIVE on YouTube Facebook EventLibrary Calendar July 18, 2023 Wheeling Poetry Series with Lori Wilson and Dave Prather Lori Wilson is the author of two poetry collections: The Dream Women Called (2021) and House Where a Woman (2009). Both from Autumn House Press. A graduate of the Drew University MFA Program in Poetry, Wilson received the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Since 2007, she has been part of the Madwomen in the Attic Creative Writing Workshops at Carlow University, including ten years as a teacher. She lives in Morgantown, West Virginia, where she works as a software developer. David B. Prather is the author of We Were Birds (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2019). His second collection, Bending Light with Bare Hands, will be published by Fernwood Press. Published in many journals, his work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. He taught English and Creative Writing at WVU—Parkersburg and English at Marietta College. He worked as an editor at Tantra Press and for the literary journal, Confluence. He also served as coordinator and host for the Blennerhassett Reading Series. David studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory in New York and still takes time to “trod” the boards at the Actors Guild of Parkersburg. He studied writing at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. He currently serves as a reader for Suburbia Journal, and he lives in Parkersburg, WV. Facebook Event Library Calendar July 25, 2023 Japan Outreach-Language for Travel Manami Kawazoe of the Japanese Outreach Initiative at West Liberty University promotes awareness and understanding of Japan through activities and events for culture exchange. For her final presentation at LWB, she will instruct us in useful terms for travel to Japan. Facebook Event Library Calendar Aug. 1, 2023 Goosetown Memories As part of the Neighborhood Nostalgia Series, we invite people to share memories of Goosetown, a hard-nosed, fun-loving Wheeling community of up to 100 homes with small gardens and full of mom and pop stores and pubs that once spanned the area from Baltimore Street to Tunnel Green and the Creek. Sadly, most of it was taken for the modernized Route 2 leading to the I-470 ramp. Facebook Event Library Calendar Aug. 8, 2023 Music and Memories Roger Hoard and Kyle Knox will discuss music and memories from Roger’s amazing career. Roger, who will play songs along the way, was a member of Jamboree USA from 1971-2007;  and former Musical Director for Jamboree USA, and Jamboree in the Hills. He's performed with the likes of Chet Atkins, Jim Stafford, Steve Wariner, Lenny Breau, Brad Paisley, Robben Ford, BE Taylor,11/70 Band, The Other Brothers, The Fabulous Bender Boys, and as a Solo and Jazz Guitarist. He is currently with: Hoard and Jones, and the Roger Hoard Jazz Quartet.  Facebook Event Library Calendar Aug. 15, 2023 Faire May for San Roch In honor of the Italian tradition of marking the Feast Day of San Rocco, Faire May will present a set of Italian music accompanied by dancing from Ohio Valley International Dancers. Saint Rocco's Feast Day commemorated the end of a severe outbreak of the plague in Venice in 1576. The tradition was brought by Italian immigrants to the United States. Faire May is a traditional music band specializing in enjoyable folk music from the near and distant past.  Facebook Event Library Calendar Aug. 22, 2023 TBA Aug. 29, 2023 A Solo-Acoustic Beatles Tribute In honor of the last Beatles concert, which took place at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California before an audience of 25,000, on Aug 29, 1966, our friend The Troubadour, Bob Gaudio, returns to regale us with an array of the Fab Four’s finest.  Facebook Event Library Calendar Read the full article

[sulfuric-nest]

I’m working on something :))

[come-on-you-blues]

New York over the last couple of weeks.

Man what an improvement. They have really started to look like a team to worry about.

Their positioning doesn't give them the credit they deserve.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A reflection on last week.  :::  April 10, 2023

Robert B. Hubbell

             Tonight, I offer a reflection on last week—and a suggestion about how we must respond. We went into last week expecting the news to be dominated by Trump's arraignment. It was—until the GOP-controlled legislature in Tennessee expelled two young Black Representatives for protesting briefly in the well of the assembly. We then received the report of Pro Publica outlining the manifest corruption of Justice Thomas by Texas millionaire and Hitler memorabilia collector Harlan Crow. And then Judge Kacsmaryk issued a thinly disguised religious fiat banning mifepristone for women across America.

         Each of the above events demonstrates the GOP’s efforts to achieve its goals by breaking the democracy that guarantees their liberties in the first instance. But we must now add to the sad litany a new item—Governor Greg Abbott’s pre-emptive announcement that he will pardon a Texas man convicted of murder after a jury trial. At trial, the defendant was able to present his argument that he acted in self-defense. The jury rejected that claim and voted unanimously to convict him of murder.

         Why does Abbott believe that he is justified in pardoning the murderer even before appeals have been heard? Abbott is, after all, substituting his judgment for that of the jurors who heard the evidence first-hand. Abbot believes the defendant is innocent of murder because he killed a “BLM” protester.

That’s right: Governor Abbott has established a new rule that laws do not apply equally to people protesting police killings and right-wing extremists who are upset by the protests. In a single act, Abbott has altered the law in Texas, demoted protestors demanding justice to second-class status, and told Texas jurors that their voices do not matter when MAGA extremists are on trial. In short, “self-defense” is a MAGA “get out of jail free” card under Greg Abbott’s reign in Texas.

         Together, these four instances illustrate a strategy the GOP learned from Trump: If the democratic system does not produce the result you want, then break democracy to obtain a different result. That is what the Tennessee legislators did to Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, that is what religious zealots did to all Americans, that is what monied interests did in bending the Supreme Court to do the bidding of the privileged and elite, and that is what Greg Abbott has done in summarily overturning a jury verdict that flies in the face of the facts.

         We have been confronting this asymmetry from the very moment Trump announced his bid in 2016, and it has worsened over time. As Democrats toil within the system to forge compromises over competing policies, Republicans break the system to get their way. They simply ignore it (McConnell on Merrick Garland’s nomination), they deny it (outcomes of elections), they falsify it (fake electors), they rig the judicial system to guarantee assignment of cases to a sympathetic federal judge (Kacsmaryk), and they attempt to stop its operation through violence (J6).

         There have been scattered calls for Democrats to employ similar tactics. Indeed, some are calling for the federal government to ignore Judge Kacsmaryk’s order if it is not stayed by the 5th Circuit or the Supreme Court. To state the obvious, to do so would amount to “breaking democracy” simply because we don’t like the result. We must not give in to the temptation to adopt the GOP’s anti-democratic tactics. We must fight our battle of resistance from within the walls and ramparts of democracy if we have any hope of saving it.

         The truth is that the rule of law continues to exist in America today because one of America’s major political parties remains committed to upholding that rule—despite the efforts of the other party to destroy it. If both parties feel emboldened to ignore the rule of law, our democracy will be gone. All that will be left is a contest of brute force in which dark money will substitute for violence.

         I do not believe we will reach that point. I have faith that Democrats will do the right thing despite legitimate feelings of anger, hurt, and despair. In each of the four situations described above, there is a democratic path forward to correct the result. It will not be easy, and we may not succeed entirely. But so long as we have a path forward, we should not set aside our great charter and the laws that give it life. It has endured for more than two centuries during equally trying times; we can make it through the present challenges, as well.

+

[from comments]

Overall, MAGA Republicans are revealing who and what they are. During the mid-terms, Democrats pushed back against an anticipated red tsunami and vastly outperformed expectations. Perhaps the ongoing MAGA performances will convince even more voters to shut them down.

Jessica Craven's latest post in "Chop Wood, Carry Water," celebrates many recent victories. She also writes that the two Tennessee lawmakers who were expelled can run in the special elections for their seats, and if they win, they cannot be expelled again. As for the other ugly instances cited here, I can sympathize with the anguished plea, "what does it take?" that most of us uttered during the long years of the Trump regime. Read Jessica Craven's post from today to understand that there are reasons for optimism.

https://open.substack.com/pub/chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions/p/extra-extra-april-9th

We are being forged by fire to get as tough as our opponents and as clever. We already outnumber them. We are inspired by the courage of Ukrainians in their fight for their democracy and their lives. We are inspired by the heroes of our own Civil Rights movement that is ongoing. We are inspired by the turnout of the Israeli populace and even its military members that caused the Netanyahu regime to blink. We are being called upon to dig deep, stay tough and committed and resist even though we are tired.

Tomorrow is another day. Let's get on with the work.

[Gary S.]

[darkmagickingdom]

Dark Magic Kingdom au info

AU where the Disney parks funded and had their Imagineers develop a series of highly advanced walkabout animatronics to allow guests to more authentically meet their favorite characters. Inspired by @disney-android-foundation ‘s AU and the concepts behind the disney parks kinect game and the mobile game Disney Magic Kingdoms

Since I have the ability to envision the company as not a totally soulless corporation in this AU, this implementation didn’t result in all character and mascot actors getting fired. They’re now either on the repair teams, understudies (to take the place of an animatronic if it breaks down) or character handlers (the folks who keep an eye on the animatronics and make sure they A. aren’t left to just break down somewhere, B. don’t wander farther than they’re supposed to, and C. don’t cause trouble for the guests) Character handlers also sometimes have to break up character fights or arguments because they’re all programmed to act and interact with each other very authentically.

However the animatronics were built with Asimov’s first law in mind, so unless something goes REALLY wrong, they’re incapable of intentionally causing physical harm to humans. Some of them will definitely yell at your kids though.

This AU is centered around the villains but there’s hero characters too (princes, princesses, mascots, supporting characters, etc), and I would be happy to talk about them as well if requested.

I’m mostly covering Disney animated movies, but also Pixar films, spin-off cartoons of both, stuff based on the rides (PotC, Haunted Mansion mostly), and Star Wars stuff (though mostly prequel era content because that’s my main area of interest and expertise). I’m not really going to cover Marvel stuff, sorry, I’m just not a big enough MCU nerd. Block criteria is at the bottom (I don't expect everyone to read it, it's just there for like. My stance on things I think matter and an explanation as to if anyone gets blocked and doesn't get why)

Villains and their home sections

Magic Kingdom

Fantasyland

Grimhilde/The Evil Queen (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves)

Maleficent and Diablo (Sleeping Beauty)

Ursula (The Little Mermaid)

Madam Mim (The Sword in the Stone)

The Horned King, Gwythaints and Creeper (The Black Cauldron) / Character Handler: Carys

The Queen of Hearts (and the king) (Alice in Wonderland)

Hades (Hercules)

Gaston (Beauty and the Beast)

(Gaston can also be found roaming Animal Kingdom)

Adventureland

Captain Hook (Peter Pan)

Jafar (Aladdin)

Mozenrath (Aladdin the animated series)

Yzma and Kronk (The Emperor's New Groove)

Davy Jones (Pirates of the Caribbean)

Helga Sinclair (Atlantis: The Lost Empire)

Clayton (Tarzan)

Tamatoa (Moana)

(Clayton can also sometimes be found roaming Animal Kingdom)

(Because Tamatoa’s so huge, he’s mostly stuck in his meet and greet area)

Liberty Square

Dr. Facilier (The Princess and the Frog)

Oogie Boogie (The Nightmare Before Christmas) / Character Handler: Sam

The Headless Horseman (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)

(Oogie has a casino-themed restaurant here, he roams the whole park in the Fall but stays here the rest of the year)

(The Horseman also shows up in Main Street, USA and sometimes Frontierland. He's a night-only character and sometimes even chases the Disney Railway trains, which the guests love. Both he and his horse are animatronics because you are not going to get a live horse to do tricks like that. He leads the Halloween parades also)

Main Street, USA

Cruella De Vil (101 Dalmatians)

Professor Ratigan, Fidget and Felicia (The Great Mouse Detective)

(I know they're British, I didn't really have anywhere better to fit them and Main Street's based on Colonial America anyway)

(Cruella can also sometimes be found roaming Animal Kingdom)

Tomorrowland

John Silver (Treasure Planet)

Scroop (Treasure Planet)

Doris (Meet the Robinsons)

AUTO (WALL-E)

NOS-4-A2 (Buzz Lightyear of Star Command) / Character Handler: Carmen

XL (Buzz Lightyear of Star Command) / Character Handler: Roxie

Evil Emperor Zurg (Toy Story)

Randall Boggs (Monsters Inc.)

(In my heart there's a Treasure Planet dark ride in Tomorrowland 😔)

(AUTO's pretty much confined to his meet and greet area, maybe it's inside a restaurant or something. I'm not sure yet)

(Zurg is based on his personality in the Star Command series rather than the one he has in Toy Story)

Animal Kingdom

(and either California Adventure or Adventureland in Disneyland)

Africa

Scar (The Lion King)

Zira (The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride)

Shenzi (The Lion King)

(Shenzi's hyena buddies are also around but she's the one that interacts with guests the most)

Discovery Island

Bruce (Finding Nemo)

(Bruce's shark buddies are also around, but he's the one that interacts with guests the most. They're all confined to the water)

Asia

Shere Khan (The Jungle Book)

Kaa (The Jungle Book)

Star Wars Galaxy's Edge

Darth Maul

Asajj Ventress

General Grievous

Count Dooku

Cad Bane

Hondo Ohnaka

Darth Vader

Various battle droid types (B1, Commando, MagnaGuard and Droideka)

I can attempt other characters not on this list also.

Block criteria

I don't have the time or patience to thoroughly vet everyone who interacts with my posts and I make it a rule to never publicly call out anyone blocked, but if I see you being like openly racist or ableist or some shit like that it's a block (probably a report too for hate speech). If I see you being hateful of any part of the queer community, that's a block. (Transphobia, homo/lesbophobia, biphobia, exclusionism against nonbinary/aspec/pan/"weird" labels and genders, take your pick, it's all banned)

I'm pro-choice and also antivaxxers would do well to avoid me because I am autistic and proud, I'm not gonna have you around spreading lies and treating me and people like me as though we're a fate worse than death.

Because I'm autistic and proud, folks who I see calling people having fun and being themselves "cringe" get a block too. Basically if you're pro-bullying or think bullying is okay if the target's "weird" or fat or whatever.

I do not want to be dragged into discourse, please don't come to me asking me my stance on the discourse of the week. If I haven't made my stance clear I either don't care or don't have enough info to feel confident taking a side. Or I'm actively choosing to stay out of the drama.

I generally will not block over ships or written/drawn fiction unless it ends up making me super incredibly uncomfortable. If that happens, please don't take it personally. I can't really predict what will and won't upset me really bad, but I won't call you out. If I see you suicide-baiting someone over written/drawn fiction/a ship that's a block, though. There's no reason to get like that over your uncomfortableness. If I think you might be an actual threat and not just someone with a ship I dislike, I'll just quietly block and report. No drama, no callouts.

If you think there's anything inherently morally wrong with being a furry, being a monster lover, liking villains, or selfshipping, you might as well block me because I'm shamelessly pro all of those.