#like not to be like oh the education system is failing us but like.

[riggedbones]

i think some of you really overestimate how good average high school english classes are at like. teaching shit.

[zevranunderstander]

number #1 tactic that people use to not sound as racist as they are when they talk to black people: 'uhh so you AMERICANS need to stop pretending everything is about YOU. why should i know this im not from the us :/' (= is talking about like. a phenomenally internationally well-known black artist)

[andragoras-in-vanity]

remember being a teen and watching shit like soul eater and kimono jihen and thinking god damn i wish I had a perpetually exhausted but badass mentor to help me get through things?

well now im 27 and im the perpetually exhausted mentor with bedhead and a slight alcohol problem to my 15 year old cousin and im gonna tear my hair out about not being able to just let her stay for a bit because i know it doesnt matter fuck all what i say to her dad, shes still gonna be treated like shit just because shes a moody teen with undiagnosed add and an autustic brother who constantly talks over everyone. i suddenly need a cigarette.

[inkskinned]

it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.

yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.

right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.

the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.

these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.

it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.

we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.

secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)

whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.

they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")

and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."

i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.

one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.

i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.

[balioc]

Oh, boy! It's Education Theory o'Clock again!

...I have a lot of thoughts on this topic. At some point, when I'm less busy and tired, I should probably try to write them up. Natively, I'm one of the school-is-a-nightmare-prison people, like so many others in this little discourse-sphere -- but I'm married to a middle school teacher, so I regularly encounter both the good arguments from the other side and the facts on the ground, and those things have altered my perspective somewhat.

But I am, in fact, busy and tired. So for now I'll just content myself with saying:

School is an institution that serves many, many, many purposes at the same time. A lot of those purposes are load-bearingly important. (A couple of years ago, I wrote this about college, and...it's double-plus true for primary and secondary schools.) If you don't try to account for all of that stuff in your theory of What School Is and How School Works, you will generate incoherent garbage thoughts. If you have a New Concept for school entailing top-down design that is optimized for a single function (like "increasing test scores" or "causing kids to love learning" or whatever), you'd better have a plan for how you're going to do all the other important things that schools do. And even if you think that some of those things aren't actually important or necessary, you'd better have a plan for dealing with all the people who disagree. Because...

-----

...school, as it exists today, is an inherently political institution. Both in the "soft" sense that everyone has strong opinions about what it's supposed to do and how it's supposed to work, and in the "hard" sense that it is actually controlled by democratically-accountable governments. (This is double-plus true in the US, where it is controlled by local governments, and therefore doesn't even have the protective insulation of a massive bureaucracy.) Everything about the way schools work is a compromise brokered amongst ideologues and self-dealers. Everything about the way schools work involves a lot of decision-makers trying not to get yelled at by the yelliest people around. If you're looking for elegant purpose-driven top-down design, you won't find it. You could probably make a case that any elegant purpose-driven top-down design would be better than the thing we actually have, but getting there would require finding a way to remove the political element.

-----

Most importantly: public schools are (1) compulsory, (2) universal, and (3) for children. [People who are legally children, anyway, whether or not they are actual children in whatever sense matters to you.]

This means that they cannot let students leave, and they have to keep control of all the students that they aren't allowing to leave.

In the most literal not-a-judgment-but-a-fact sense, they are indeed prisons. They are coercively keeping people inside. They have to do that thing, as per their most fundamental mandate within the current system. The alternatives involve letting kids run around unsupervised, and/or failing to give some kids even the most cursory kind of education, and those things are absolute non-starters under present conditions.

All the normal institutions-for-adults operate on the principle of -- If you really don't want to be here, you can leave, and deal with whatever consequences there may be for leaving. This is not an option for schools, and that fact accounts for...everything.

Classroom structure is built around the necessity of keeping the most-hostile, least-engaged student in the class present and supervised, and then trying to prevent him from disrupting things for everyone else. Because the obvious solution that any other institution would use -- "just cut him loose, he doesn't want to be here and we don't want him here" -- isn't available.

(I once talked to my wife about the rationed bathroom access thing, which is one of the most flagrant nightmare-prison aspects of the school experience. Her response was, "If you let kids use the bathroom whenever they want, as much as they want, then you don't have mandatory universal education anymore. Some of them will never return to the classroom, because they don't want to be there." Which is...obviously true.)

So you have something that replicates many of the features of prison, because it has to accomplish the same basic tasks that prison accomplishes. Yay, Foucault.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Odd question but - I'm looking to study in the UK this fall, and I'm trying to get to grips with the grading system. Could you explain the grading boundaries to me please? It's different from the US, as far as I can see!

I found this handy table which you might find useful - I don't really understand the US system either lol.

Here's what I will say though - I have many times before seen Americans online seeing the percentages for the UK grade boundaries and immediately wax lyrical about how EASY and SIMPLE it must be to do well in the UK because OH MY GOD I could tooootally get 70%!!! In the US that's barely a C!!! Wow education must be soooo simple in the UK -

And uh. I have seen very few Americans in those discussions stop and ask themselves how much harder it might be to hit 70% in the UK. Which, as the international academic office in every university will tell you, is the crucial question you absolutely should be asking. Does an American 70% look the same as a UK 70%?

(It Does Not.)

So don't be fooled by that! Over here, at undergrad the pass mark is 40%. 40-49% gets you a third; 50-59% gets you what's varyingly known as a lower second (formally), a 2:2 (most commonly), or a Desmond (by sad people. It's a reference to Desmond Tutu - two two). A 2:2 is also the most commonly awarded degree classification over here.

60-69% is a 2:1, or upper second class honours. And then the top level is the first - 70% and up. The vast majority of firsts are earned by students who got 70-79%. Exceptional work pushes into the 80s. It is incredibly rare that you ever see a mark in the 90s, and when you do, it's almost always on maths papers where there are right or wrong answers and that's it.

I can't remember how the US's summa cum laude etc stuff maps onto that, though you could probably find that on Google as well. But as a rule of thumb, think first = excellent, 2:1 = good, 2:2 = fair, and third = you need to be careful and see what you can do to improve (although that is still a pass at university and that is not to be sniffed at).

Ooh, as a final point, though, there's also how assessment works, which again, I know is very different over here (again I don't really understand it in the US). Your lecturer cannot set random work here and there to count as summative assessment. Every module is different in how it's set up, but let's give an example:

Module: Coastal and Marine Conservation Two assessments, each worth 50% of the final grade. Assessment 1: A report on the biodiversity of Ramsey Island in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Explore the cause of the lower biodiversity there than nearby Skomer/Skokholm; how was this challenged/rectified? How have species recovered since? What should be done into the future? Assessment 2: A two-hour closed book exam. Half of this exam (50 marks) will be a mix of short and medium length questions; things like "Define these five terms (two marks each)", or "Describe the process of longshore drift and its impact on sedimentation patterns (15 marks)" or what have you. The second half is a 50 mark essay - pick one of three essay questions offered, and off you go. (Essay questions are a staple feature of exams over here, and multiple choice questions are extremely rare and generally frowned on as being Not Sufficiently Academic.)

Now, in the case of this module, these are the only two assessment points. Both the report brief and the exam paper are registered with the academic office in the summer before the academic year even starts, and both are triple verified - by the lecturer who writes/sets them, by an internal verifier in the department, and an external verifier from another university. This is part of quality control.

If, for some reason, you fail one of these, or cannot submit them by their due date, or what have you, you still have to do them. If you claim for Extenuating Circumstances (e.g. "I was made homeless and my cat blew up, so I couldn't do it in time") then you get an extension on it; as long as you submit by the end of the academic period, you're fine. If you don't, you need to resit it. This normally means over the summer after the main term ends.

But, in the UK system what we can't do is go "Okay never mind, how about you submit a write-up of the volunteering you're currently doing with SeaLife instead and we'll count that?" The reason being, under the UK system that is not a quality-controlled solution. That has not been checked and verified as an equivalent assessment to what the rest of the class has done; so if you do that and get a 2:1, there is no assurance that you are actually of the same academic quality as one of your peers who got a 2:1 for that research report on Ramsey's biodiversity.

Which... don't let it scare you! As I say, there are a LOT of systems that can help you if things start going wrong (always, always, always keep Student Support and your lecturers in the loop). But that is a different system from what I understand you might be used to, so heads up on that.

(I am not arguing that one is better than the other, by the way. Last time I explained a difference in the UK university system I got a very hostile and aggressive American in the notes throwing a right strop over how terrible the UK system clearly is because XYZ, right up until I had to actually say "I am literally just describing how it's different, not claiming superiority," and then they went mysteriously quiet and stopped replying. So to forestall that, I am only describing the differences. There are advantages and disadvantages to each.

The UK system is certainly more inflexible. But it does, incidentally, at least free you from the tyranny I see reported so often by US students of the dreaded Tenured Professor who deliberately as a matter of pride sets impossible exams that everyone fails. Over here, that shit Does Not Fly. So there's that.)

Anyway - hopefully that answers your question! Any others, hit me up. Good luck, and enjoy your studies!

[autistic-duck]

It really sucks when you realize that a survivor's mentality is not a sustainable model for working full-time.

I can't go into every day thinking, “Oh, if the bathroom is occupied during lunch then I'll just wait to pee when I get home” because that is survival. I'm just surviving until I can get to a safe time and place. I am literally holding in pee for eight hours straight, feeling more and more pain because I can't figure out a better time to go to the bathroom.

I can't keep doing that.

Every day, it becomes, “If you can just sit still for a couple more hours, you'll get to move a little bit.”

Or, “if you can just hold in the tears until you can sneak into an empty room, you'll be able to make it through the day without anyone knowing you're upset.”

(Click “keep reading” to hear a more detailed explanation)

I started work this week, and I had completely forgotten just how awful it is to try and exist in a way that doesn't seem off-putting (or scary) to other people.

I had to do two eight-hour blocks of time alone away from home, which I hadn't done since high school, and I'm already realizing that my old methods no longer work.

I legitimately can't mask the entire day anymore. I can feel my joints groaning under the stress. My cells are feverish with the desire to stim. My mind is slowly melting under the fluorescent lights. The voices, the droning voices of professionals, buzz in my head and make no sense. I take notes, but the words look like no language I've ever spoken.

I can't keep pretending to understand what's going on.

But I'm also new to telling people that I'm disabled. The only people who know are immediate family and friends and the psychology clinic that diagnosed me. I want to be proud and confident, to just ask for and demand help, but I can't imagine anyone actually believing me. Nobody helps me when I ask for something because they decide it isn't important.

My sensory issues aren't “bad enough.” My social struggles are just “excuses to be rude.” My stimming is “attention seeking.”

Why did I choose education as the field to go into? I'm not cut out for this new “customer service” teacher mentality. I have to have good interactions with everyone all the time? Just so parents want to send their kids to our schools? How is that even possible? I have a hard time smiling at people who are nice to me, so how do you expect me to smile when someone is yelling at me for failing their student because they didn't turn in their work?

The education system is broken, and I'm just one disabled person who is just now realizing that their disability might actually stop them from keeping their dream job.

How do you advocate for yourself when you grew up thinking that self-advocacy was selfish and evil?

I literally just realized that I can't eat food or respond to greetings if I'm stressed. Showering used to make me feel relaxed before bed, and now it's the only thing preventing me from crying right before sleeping.

I want to learn Spanish, write in my journal, cook healthy meals, exercise in the morning, drink plenty of water, sleep comfortably at night, and spend time with friends who don't make me feel guilty for existing. I want to be able to go to the bathroom whenever I need to. Why does that feel impossible now?

If anyone has experience with advocating for a disability, especially high-functioning and heavily masked autism, I'd really like advice. Who do I talk to? What do I ask for? How do I explain my struggles and keep a job?

[qkanaw]

**Batfamily Group Chat**

*(Now featuring Barbara!)*

**Tim**: GUYS. Get ready for this one.

**Dick**: Uh-oh. What happened now?

**Tim**: Damian. Got. A. **D**.

**Jason**: HAH! You’re joking. No way the demon spawn slipped up that bad.

**Steph**: WAIT WHAT??? Damian?! A D??? What, was he on something? 😆

**Cass**: 😳💤❓

**Barbara**: Hold up. What subject? How did this even happen?

**Tim**: *History.* Our resident assassin failed **history.** The irony is killing me. 😂

**Duke**: How did he even manage that? Dude has memorized like 17 languages, but somehow history gets him?

**Jason**: Must’ve been taking a nap or something. Was he there for the test? Or out killing ninjas?

**Damian**: *Tt.* Laugh all you want. I was on a mission when the test happened. Not my fault.

**Dick**: This is so out of character for you, Dami. Were you **conscious** at all during the test??

**Barbara**: Maybe you mixed up 1066 with another century where you were personally stabbing someone. 😂

**Damian**: All of you are insufferable. One misstep and it’s a comedy hour.

**Jason**: A **D**, though! You didn’t even get a C. Were you sleeping? Drunk on milk?

**Tim**: Did you forget what century you’re in?

**Steph**: Did you *know* you were in a test? 🤣

**Damian**: As I said, I had just returned from a mission. You can’t expect me to prioritize something so beneath me.

**Dick**: Sure, buddy, sure. But you’ve got to admit, it’s kinda funny.

**Damian**: *Tt.* Perhaps.

**Jason**: Oh, he’s finding it funny now. The world is ending.

**Barbara**: Honestly, though, Damian getting a D is **wild**. I still can’t wrap my head around it.

**Cass**: 🧐📚🤷‍♀️

**Duke**: Do you even care, Damian?

**Damian**: Not in the slightest. Grades are meaningless. I’ve learned more in combat than your “education system” could ever teach me.

**Tim**: That’s a hell of a way to justify failing a test, Dami. Respect. 😂

**Damian**: It’s not failure if the system is flawed.

**Dick**: Classic. “The system is flawed,” says the kid who **failed** a test.

**Jason**: Honestly, I kinda respect it. You bomb a test, and your first reaction is to blame society. Real rebel, Dami.

**Steph**: *Very* punk rock of you, D. Maybe next time you’ll just burn the school down and call it a day.

**Bruce**: Damian. I expect you to study next time. Mission or not, I don’t want to hear about another “D” on your report card.

**Damian**: Tt. I’ll consider it, Father.

**Dick**: You have to admit, Bruce, even you didn’t see this one coming.

**Bruce**: I was busy. Alfred told me.

**Jason**: **ALFRED** knew before all of us?? No one’s safe from the butler. 😭

**Tim**: Alfred’s all-seeing and all-knowing. I’m convinced he has his own Bat-Signal for when we mess up.

**Alfred**: Master Damian, I have already scheduled tutoring sessions for you. You’ll be more than prepared for your next test.

**Damian**: **What?!** I don’t need a tutor! This is absurd!

**Steph**: Oh, this is golden. You’re getting a tutor for **history**. 😂

**Dick**: Just accept it, Dami. It’s for your own good. Maybe you’ll ace the next one!

**Damian**: I despise all of you.

**Jason**: Love you too, kid. But seriously, don’t sleep through the next one.

**Tim**: Yeah, or at least make sure you’re **present**. Physically AND mentally. 🤣

**Cass**: 🛌😴📚

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

Hello?

Gosh, I hope this is a terminal. Can anyone receive me? I've been recently trapped in this weird spaceship thing and I can't get out! All the doors are locked, I tried pressing every possible button on the forsaken console to no avail, and now the column at the centre is moving! Please help!

Hello! Don't worry, you’ve reached the Gallifrey Institute for Learning. It sounds like you're trapped inside a TARDIS - oh no!

🛠️ Basic Troubleshooting

Stay Calm: Panic won’t help. The TARDIS is designed to protect its occupants.

Identify Your Location: Are you in the control room? Look around for any identifying features or labels.

Check the Console: The central column moving indicates that the TARDIS is in flight. Look for the main console. The TARDIS console has several panels, each with different controls. Don't press random buttons; this could cause more issues.

Locate the Door Control: Typically, one of the console panels will have the door control. It might be a switch, lever, or button. Look for symbols or labels indicating doors or exits.

🔒 If Doors Remain Locked

Voice Commands: Some TARDIS models respond to voice commands. Try saying, “Open the doors” or “Release locks” clearly.

Telepathic Interface: If you have any telepathic abilities or sensitivity, try placing your hands on the console and think about opening the doors. Some TARDISes have a telepathic link with their occupants.

Manual Override: Look for a manual override mechanism. This might be a lever or panel on the side of the console.

🚨 In Case of Emergency

Cloister Bell: If you hear a loud, church-like bell sound, it means there’s a serious emergency. Find a secure place and wait for assistance.

Use the Communications System: Look for a panel with communication controls. You might be able to contact another Time Lord for help.

Distress Signal: Every TARDIS is different, but if you see a button or switch labelled “distress signal” or “SOS,” use it to alert others of your situation.

🛡️ Final Steps

Safety First: Ensure you’re in a safe part of the TARDIS. Avoid areas that seem dangerous or unfamiliar.

Wait for Landing: If all else fails, wait for the TARDIS to land. The doors may automatically unlock upon landing.

Stay in Communication: Keep trying to reach out for help. Someone will eventually notice your distress signal.

Hang in there! Help is probably on the way.

Hope that helped! 😃

Any purple text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →😆Jokes |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired😴

[angel-of-the-moons]

A Rose Under The Moon

Moon Knight System (Marc/Jake/Steven) x Fem!Reader

TW/CW: Pet death, grief

A/N: Yeah I cried writing this btw. I love cats so much and like this shit hurted :'D

Taglist: @bad4amficideas @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @shirukitsune @lokisremainingsanity @mundivagantsoul @furblrwurblr @zoleea-exultant @latenightcravingz @daygirl26 @thelastemzy @leahnicole1219 @marsmallow433 @crazyunsexycool

🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒

Chapter 8:

Everybody Loves Cats!

It was a full day after Puck made her miraculous reappearance, and you were delighted for her sweet fluffy company. She was such a cuddly little bed partner, and whenever the stress of the day became too much, she knew exactly what you needed.

She would roll over and show her belly, stick her tongue out at you with her eyes as large as saucers, or do… that weird thing cats do where they’re chill one second and just hurl themselves off into who-knows-what and it never failed to make you smile and cheer you up. Puck was more than content to receive chin scratches and some of her chicken-flavored dreamies that she went nuts for.

Oh, and her mouse stuffed with catnip. She adored that little thing. She would carry it around and make little noises with it (when she wasn’t sitting in the windows chirping at birds) and bat it around like she was playing her own private sports-game. Ah, cats.

They always had a way of making you feel close to your parents; your dad in particular. He always had cats around, as long as you can remember. You remember seeing his eyes light up when he would bring home a fresh little stray after he brought them home.

Your father had a particular soft spot for elderly cats. As a little girl, you once asked him, “Daddy, why don’t you ever get kittens? They like to play! Old kitties just sleep.”

You remember him smiling as he pet one of the said elderly cats, Cleo, he named her. She was a large, fluffy monstrosity who seemed to eat up snuggles like you saw squirrels eat acorns.

He gave you a look that had infinite depths of patience for your little girl questions; and chuckled. “Well, honey. You have to think of it from their point of view.”

Cleo stretched her paws up to his shoulder and bumped her head against his jaw with a tone-deaf purr.

“A lot of people abandon their older pets in favor of new ones.” He held up a finger as he educated you. “For example, say one family wanted to gift their son or daughter a cat for Christmas, but they already had one. That cat was older, couldn’t keep up, and had no teeth and the child just didn’t engage with that cat as much as they used to. So… they take their old cat to a shelter and leave them so they can get a newer or younger cat. Just to do it again when the same situation arises… or worse.”

“What could be badder than that?” You asked, already feeling sad for the metaphorical cat your dad was speaking about.

“Some people are extra mean to their pets.” Your father sighed, stroking Cleo’s fur as she turned in his lap, rubbing her whole body against his belly as he twisted his desk chair to fully face you. “Some people, who are like that, will take their kitties and just… leave them somewhere. So they get lost and can’t find their way home.”

“That’s so mean!” You whined, already feeling tears of frustration at such a mean thought. Were people really that mean to their kitties? And their puppies?

Your dad nods with a soft hum, smiling softly as Cleo leans into your face, sniffing you. Her creamy orange fur begging to be touched, you give in and sink your short, pudgy fingers into her soft fur, giggling when she made a loud “mrrp” noise and leaned into your touch.

“Someone did the same thing to Cleo, y’know?” He says to you quietly. “They were mean. They taped her up in a box and just left her by a dumpster.”

You gasped, offended; because Cleo was a good kitty! Why would anyone do that to Cleo? Yeah she was silly and didn’t play very much, but she was nice! She liked kisses, and even stranger, she liked to hop in the shower with your dad! Kitties don’t normally like water!

“But why?” You ask, your tiny voice squeaking with emotion as Cleo happily cuddled into your awkward pets.

“I don’t know. Maybe they got a new cat and didn’t want her. Or maybe the partner of somebody didn’t want her around. Or… they’re just not a nice person, honey. We just don’t know.” He sighed deeply, looking down at you with a saddened expression. He hated having to explain others’ cruelty to you. You shouldn't be so exposed to these things, but… it was better than lying to you. And that hurt him worse.

“But. It worked out in Cleo’s favor.” He smiled again at you as you leaned into his lap, tipping your head forward with a giggle as Cleo headbutted you softly, rubbing her fluffy cheek on yours.

“She’s got us, she’s got a belly full of food, and a nice cuddly home.”

“Is that why we have Chester, too?” You asked him.

Your dad nodded, looking over at the black cat who slept soundly in the windowsill, his fur almost glowing orange as the sun’s rays hit him. He wasn’t as old as Cleo, but he was getting up there in kitty years. “Yeah. We especially love black cats, okay? They’re very special because people are mean to them, too.”

You frowned up at him. “But why?”

“Some people consider them bad luck, or evil. So people hurt them… or just abandon them, like Cleo. Somebody left Chester in his carrier outside the pound. They were…” His mouth twisted as he tried to think of a way to explain what was going to happen to one of his furry companions. You were so young, you shouldn’t have to grasp the concept of death, but he had to find a way to explain it.

“They were going to put him to sleep if nobody adopted him.”

“But why? He can sleep by himselfs.” You retort.

You dad rests his hand on the top of your head, a pained smile on his face at your innocence.

“Putting an animals to sleep means…” He sighed. “They go to sleep forever. They don’t get to wake up again.”

“But don’t they get hungry? Chester always wakes up when he’s hungry…”

“They don’t feel anything anymore. They just get sleepy, fall asleep… and don’t wake up.” Cleo hopped onto your father’s desk, casually batting his mouse off the pad so she could sit on it for whatever reason as your father scooped you up and pulled you into his lap.

“But why?” You ask again.

Oh, the endless who’s, what’s, and why’s of a learning mind. He loved talking to you, but it was hard to, on this subject.

“Do you remember when your grandma passed away? When we had to put her in the casket and in the ground?” He slowly asked.

“Yeah…” You frowned, clinging to his shirt. You barely remembered it. You were little when it happened. Sure, you weren’t that much older, now. You were a whole eight years old, now. Grandma passed away when you were four.

“You remember how I told you she couldn’t come back?”

“Yeah…”

“It’s like that. Only for pets. And it’s not… it’s not natural.”

“But why do they have to do it? Why can’t they find homes?” You ask, looking up at him with watery eyes.

That almost happened to Chester? Chester was your best friend, he snuggled you to sleep every night, gave you kisses with his scratchy tongue, would sit on the bathroom counter when you took a bath… and would sometimes help you sneak snacks when you weren’t supposed to.

“Some places can’t afford to take care of an animal for a long time. Or, if the animal is very sick and won’t get better, it’s the more humane option instead of just leaving them in a cage.” He says gently, rubbing your back. “Or… if they’re old. Like Chester and Cleo.”

“I don’t like that.” You say stubbornly.

“I know, baby.” He chuckles softly. “So, now do you understand? Why we love old kitties?”

“Yeah! Just cuz they don’t do the flippies that the kittens do doesn’t make ‘em boring.” You pout. “And they don’t bite.”

“Some of them do.” Your dad reminds you with a chuckle.

You watch as Cleo licks her paws, a rather happy and content look on her face as her fluffy tail flicks around. Suddenly, another question pops into your head.

“Daddy, why do you like kitties so much?” You ask, reaching out to scratch Cleo on her chin, earning a happy noise from her.

“Well, it’s just… in the family, kiddo. My mom always had cats, my grandma always had cats… your great auntie, Ellen, she has cats.” He chuckled. “I don’t know why so much as I just do. Always have. And now, I adopt older cats so they can live their old fluffy lives in peace.”

“Yeah… okay.” You say, satisfied with that answer.

“And remember what I said, Lil’ Bit?” Your father asked, pulling a book from the edge of his desk. On the cover of this book, there were pictures of a thing that looked like an alligator, there was a kitty, and pictures of different kinds of fish on it. You can make out a few words, "Myths and Beliefs".

He flipped the pages until it opened to a page with pictures of different kinds of cats, including…

“Daddy!” You gasp, pointing at the book. “That’s a kitty mummy!”

Your father chuckles. “Yeah, the ancient Egyptians believed cats to be protectors and good luck charms. They would even dress their cats in jewelry. The reason that cat was mummified was probably because their owner wanted their pet to come with them to the afterlife.” His finger scans the page to a highlighted passage.

“Some of them believed that their gods could inhabit cats and other animals to check in on humans.”

“That’s weird.” You pout stubbornly, not understanding.

Your father, ever the patient man, laughed softly as he kissed the crown of your head. “Maybe so. But I like to think that owners loved their pets so much, that their pets are probably happy and waiting for them to meet them in the afterlife later.”

“...So will I see Cleo one day?” You asked.

The moment the words left your mouth, your father felt his heart lurch in his chest. He certainly didn’t expect that question to come out of your mouth. The weight of it almost knocked him out of his chair, if it weren't for your weight grounding him, he would have. He couldn’t even fathom being in a world without you, he didn’t dare imagine what it would be like to lose you.

But… he couldn’t leave your question unanswered.

“Yeah. One day, in a very long time. I’m sure Cleo, when she’s there, will be waiting for more scratches. Chester too. So remember, even if they pass away… you’ll see them again. It’ll just take a while.”

“What are my two favorite scholars discussing today?” Your mother’s voice rang out as she kicked the snow off her boots and set them in front of the fireplace to dry.

You slid off your dad’s lap and ran to your mom as she put her coat on the peg by the door. She turned and caught you mid-leap and spun you around, planting ice-cold kisses all over your face, leaving her bright red lipstick marks in their wake.

“So! What were you two talking about?” She hummed, walking over to your dad as she balanced you on her hip.

Your father adjusted his glasses and set the book down, leaning up to give your mother a sweet kiss.

“Oh, you know. Just about cats and the afterlife.” He grinned.

“Oh, but of course!” Your mother snorted. “A totally normal and reasonable topic for a child to learn about at eight years old.”

“Mommy!” You say, tugging her sweater impatiently.

“Yes, my love?” Your mother smiled down at you, her smeared lipstick at the corner of her lips. The rest of it was currently on you and four father’s faces and lips.

“Did you know that ‘gyptians mummied kitties?” You say, bouncing as you explained. “Oh! And–and that they gave ‘em fancy necklaces?”

“Why, yes. I did know about that. But why don’t you give me a refresher course while your dad and I start making dinner?” She hummed.

“Okay!” You chirped, hopping back down onto the floor, stopping to pet Chester as he slowly sidled up next to you, his sleek black tail wrapping around your small leg as he looked up at you, giving you a very slow blink.

“And daddy said I can see Chester and Cleo one day in the aff–after–afterlife, too!” You stumble the words out innocently as Chester walks with you into the kitchen.

“Oh… did he, now.” Your mother said, squinting as she slowly turned her head to look at your father.

You didn’t hear the rough swallow he made, but he definitely flushed and tugged at his shirt collar awkwardly.

“Ah.. well… you see...”

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You sighed nostalgically as the memory finished playing out. You gently held the book in your hands as you remembered that day. It was the very same book your father had read to you that day. Newer, and less-used of course, but it was still the same one.

God, you remembered how sad you were when Cleo died. You were only ten years old when she passed. You’d come home from school to your dad, his eyes red and puffy, holding onto you tight as your mother spoke to you softly, telling you that Cleo had “left”. You knew what that meant. You remember telling your dad what he told you, about seeing them again one day, and that seemed to make him smile at last.

But when Chester died? Oh, how that broke your heart. You had just turned sixteen, three days after your birthday, to be precise. You were sitting in your bed, legs crossed as you read your textbooks and jotted down notes for your schoolwork.

You didn’t think twice when Chester curled up next to you, purring as he closed his eyes.

You were so engrossed in your work, that you didn’t notice when he stopped purring. You only realized something was amiss when you reached down to pet him, only to find him still. Deathly still... but still warm.

You panicked and tried to wake him up, before shouting for your parents. Nothing could have been done. Chester decided to spend his last breaths snuggling you in your bed, his favorite cuddle spot. He wanted you to know that he loved you that much.

You were beside yourself for months. Until one day, on your walk home, you found a little cat. Small, but not a kitten; she was very malnourished and flea-infested. Solid black, just like Chester.

She was snuggled up tight against an old mailbox, shivering and wet from the rain, meowing in such a heartbreaking tone. You scooped her up on instinct and whisked her home.

You’d named her Nibbles. On account that she liked to nibble on people’s shoelaces.

You had Nibbles for several more years, until she passed away from feline leukemia, just before you moved to London. You loved her well, and she was with you when you lost your parents, comforting you when you were at your lowest.

You swallowed the lump in your chest and sucked in a breath as you put the book back into place on the shelf. You didn’t even notice your eyes were filling with tears until your vision blurred, and when you blinked, fat tears rolled down your cheeks.

Puck sat at your feet, a paw on your shoe and meowed up at you questioningly.

You sniffed hard and scooped up the furry little critter, nuzzling into her fur as you tried to push the feelings of grief away.

Puck leaned up and licked your salty tears, her tongue scraping your skin in a comforting way as she purred unusually loudly.

It takes a few minutes and you finally smile, kissing Puck on her tiny furry forehead. “I needed that. Thanks, you fluffy little terrorist.”

Puck purred happily and hopped out of your arms, satisfied at her job well-done and scampered off to the front of the store as the front door’s bell rang.

You take a deep breath and make sure your face is clean of any evidence of your tears and headed up front to see a young man, looking around curiously.

“Hi! Welcome to Here Today Books!” You chirp, “What can I help you with, today?”

“Um…” He says awkwardly. “I’m looking for a book.”

You can’t help but chuckle, hands on your hips. “That checks out!” You joke playfully.

“Oh! I… right.” He says, rubbing the back of his neck shyly. Aw, was he blushing? “I’m… I’m studying and, uhm…”

“Well, I have plenty of textbooks on a myriad of subjects. You looking for anything in particular?” You ask him politely.

He nods twice, “Yeah, um. It’s… for a history course. My professor told us to pick a civilization to write an essay on. And, it’s kind of hard to find the books on the subject I need because of the topics…”

You smile politely and wait for him to finish. Something about this young man told you he was painfully shy, and didn’t like much social interaction. Not unlike Marc, but he carried himself with a few degrees more of anxiety and social awkwardness than Steven did.

“Er…” He floundered.

“Let me guess… it’s ancient Egypt, isn’t it?” You grin.

“H-How’d you know?” He said, blinking at you.

“I have a friend who’s obsessed with it. I know quite a bit about it, myself. Is there a specific topic in particular you want to start with?”

He nods eagerly, “Yeah! Uh, I wouldn’t mind stuff on their myths, legends, and religions, if you got them?”

“Sure! I’ll just be a minute. Go on ahead and wait up front by the counter, for me.” You hum, turning to disappear into the depths of your shop.

He didn’t go stand by the counter, he just awkwardly stared at Puck, who looked at him from her cozy sweater-nest, looking at him through slitted pupils as the tip of her tail thrashed.

🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒🌒

You came back to see the man looking through random clearance books and upon noticing you, he smiled widely.

“Are those it?” He asked, gesturing to the two books in your arms.

“Yep!” You chirp, walking behind the counter. “Will these work?”

He slowly walks up to the counter, eyeing Puck nervously. “Uh–yeah. Definitely.”

“Perfect… that’ll be… ten pounds.” You say, typing it all in on the register.

The young man fishes out the notes and all too quickly shoves them into your waiting hand. He still hadn’t taken his eyes off Puck, whose fur was beginning to bristle as she stared at the man.

“Okie dokie. Come back anytime. I got plenty of books like this just gathering dust.” You chuckle, putting his “new” books into a canvas bag and handing it over to him.

His sleeve rolled up and you noticed a mark on his forearm. It was strange, but not the strangest you’ve ever seen. It looked almost like a–

Your thoughts were interrupted when Puck lunged at him, hissing and spitting, swiping her paws at him with claws fully out and open, her tail puffed out and stiff.

You gasp in shock. “Puck! Bad girl!”

You panic; trying to reach for Puck as the man frantically pulls away, now sporting a red scratch to the back of his hand.

“I’m so sorry! She’s not normally… She never does this!” You apologize profusely, afraid of the ramifications a complaint could bring should he report this little “incident”. Sure, it was minor, but if he was the type to make a big something out of nothing…

“It–It’s okay.” He says quickly, stepping away. “Cats don’t normally l-like me, for some reason…”

Puck thrashed in your arms, leaving small welts in your arms as she growled lowly in her little chest, staring at the man, her usually sweet and docile eyes full of malice.

“Puck!” You wince, trying to calm her down. “Stop! What’s gotten into you?”

The man scurries out of your shop finally, and Puck starts to calm down in your arms.

It takes a few minutes until the black ball of rage begins to settle, and you set her back onto the counter.

Her ears pin back and her eyes get large as she looks up at you, seemingly full of guilt at what she’d unintentionally done to you.

Her little nose touches the scratches she left on your arms and you sigh; “They’re just scratches, Puck… I know you didn’t mean it.”

You rub her chin to help ease her poor feelings at scratching her human. “Okay, okay… I forgive you. But no dreamies for you tonight, missy!”

Puck leaps off the counter, slinking off into the shadows of your shop and you're left with throbbing injuries to tend to with your tiny first-aid kit. You just couldn’t figure out why Puck was so upset about that guy. He mentioned cats didn’t like him, but why? You’ve never met a cat that didn’t like you.

What was his deal?

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Elsewhere, in their flat, Marc winced and dropped his glass of water, the ceramic shattering on the floor, making Layla jump.

“Gah! Marc! What’s wrong?” She asked him, carefully avoiding the broken glass as she moved closer.

“My fucking…” He groaned, looking down at his arms. He was wearing a simple cotton t-shirt today, so it left his thick forearms fully visible. “My arms! I don’t know!”

And Layla certainly saw the thin red marks up and down his arms. She clamped her jaw shut.

Oh, she knew all right. He just wasn’t ready to know.

Not yet, as Taweret told her.

Not yet.

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Chapter 9: Link

[diveyne]

non americans really pissing me off. the lack of empathy is insane. we are watching our democracy crumble and our rights being stripped away with a FULL REPUBLICAN CONGRESS TOO. remember when trump said we would never have to vote again? i knew exactly what it meant the moment he said it. people also not understanding that this country, UNFORTUNATELY, is a massive BIPARTISANSHIP. and every dumb tiktoker who sat and said “oh gen z will turn the tide” yeah because gen z white men are all neonazis lmao. and white women in this country will actively vote against their own rights if it means a black woman wont be in office. fuck off.

and the disingenuous, performative, bad faith guilt trips and attempts to shame people like “oh you voted for kamala? so you want palestinians to die?” imagine what’s going to happen now with trump. like??? he literally said he’s going to bomb the shit out of iran next. with kamala we could have a CHANCE at having her hear us out and doing something about israel.

AMERICAN IS A BIPARTISANSHIP. people who have zero understanding of politics genuinely are showing their asses. and i don’t blame everyone because the education system has failed us. not everyone has a civics class or good teachers.

but what that means is third party candidates will NEVER have a chance at winning a presidential election. a vote for third party was a vote for trump. voting third party might help your conscience but it does nothing for the country. but the biggest people to blame are the radicalized white men. the fucking boomers. all these maga cult bitches who hate the idea of a woman, a black woman, in office so bad and have brains so rotted with nonsense rhetoric. it’s a lack of education, genuinely. i will never forgive bush for his no child left behind policy because EVERYONE damn well got left behind, especially in rural counties.

it’s not fair. but moreover i need non americans to shut the fuck up. there are those who do, and equally as many who don’t, understand that america’s president affects their country too. so quit with the shaming as if voter suppression doesn’t exist. that gerrymandering doesn’t exist. that elon musk wasn’t out there incentivizing people with money to vote for trump. that black and brown americans were literally blocked from voting. that a convicted felon was even ALLOWED to run again. so many blue counties trying their best in overwhelmingly red states because there are poc and lgbt communities trying so fucking hard to matter. i’m sick. i’m fucking sick.

do not dare look at me and shame me for voting for kamala and say “wow so you’re not anti war? you don’t want to free palestine?” because i didn’t waste my vote on jill stein. how can i do anything to help anyone else if I AS AN ASIAN QUEER WOMAN DONT HAVE ANY RIGHTS. fuck lmao

like trump is 100% going to pass legislation that allows him to be in office until he dies. how is america going to help anyone now???? like. fuck bro LIKE.

[witchofthesouls]

So, uh, this little memory just suddenly popped up out of no where and I figured it would serve as good(?) ‘world-building’ material.

So, when I was in my private all-girls Catholic high school (that’s how you know it’s going to be a good story) girls would soak their tampons with vodka to get drunk. Some where more successful than others, but some where also less fortunate when their near fatal encounter of alcohol poisoning and nasty-ass vaginal infections where known throughout school.

My question is; do cybertronians have a similar method of madness like the vodka tampons?

And my second question; did Cybertronian’s have their own version of an all girls catholic school? And if they do, what kind of crazy shit went on there?

I can tell you so much about the crazy shit that went on there; the illegal gambling ring, the bi-curious and lesbi-curious girls who were convinced that they liked/loved another girl and stalked the poor girl, some of the shady male teachers, the secret LGBTQ+ club (which was actually kind of wholesome and I was apart of), the bullying (sweet Jesus was there a lot of bullying and harassment), some nuns were Grade A+ assholes who would wack our hands with rulers and have affairs with some of the male teachers, and there’s was a…uh,…secret orgy/cunnilingus club too.

It was the nineties, what would you expect?

Oh wow. I heard of things in private, religious schools from a friend, but hot damn that's wild!

I did go to a religious university. They had a weekly chapel where classes were suspended and all students were required to attend. I did start a tiny alcohol ring in the dorms. Nothing nefarious or crazy binging, just enough in plastic bottles to use in cooking or sipping for a secret meat meal in the rooms. I came from a time when weed was still illegal, but damn I never thought it would prepare me for smuggling meats into a strictly vegetarian campus.

So going back to the questions:

Cybertronians do have alcoholic goodies for popular sex play. Unlike humans, their reproductive system is a closed loop circulatory-wise, and they don't need to worry about poisoning themselves. But for an experience similar to humans doing stupid things for that drunk-high is the equivalent of a wine enema into their afts. That's because their "asshole" is actually a medical port that has components connected to their pelvis structures; meaning, they can get off really well with that alcoholic enema. Yeah, you don't need to be an expert in alien biology to understand that pouring drugs into a hole that's connected to your nervous system can be a stupid bad idea.

Get ready for a lot of worldbuilding:

Education on Cybertronian is severely restricted to caste due to edicts based on Functionism where frame dictates function in society. Some city-states like Vos and Tarn get away with public schooling by citing it as a necessity component of their citizenship and to the benefit of Cybertron as a whole. Vos stylizes their system as a military academy since Seekers are typically slotted into such hierarchies and citizens are drafted into the Air Force during wartime; whereas Tarn is famous for its factories and mines. Sparkling armature is too fragile for the unstable environment, so keeps the workforce much more docile that the bits too big for the holds are kept away and provides leverage as a union-busting technique. Accidents happen.

There are the old traditions of apprenticeships and mentorships for mecha that catch the attention of a well-established professional. Each decade, the number dwindles as more fees are added such practices, such as "alt-mode exemption for education" and "Form Ed-98A-3432d: Exemption to mentor a student two castes below."

Higher education typically functions as private entities with very high-stakes testing. If a student fails to pass progress exams to move to the next module, then it's game over. There's no retakes or repeats or any sort of second chance. They're permanently expelled from completing education within the city-state.

Because of this, coercion is a common phenomenon, especially to snap up specific connections or talented individuals under the school's domains or their related patrons. Skill was the means of trade among the faculty and students as well as the ability to cultivate it. Money could be both everything and nothing within these facilities; it was as meaningful as the parties in agreement made it. This was a strange world compared to what was outside the walls as it blended all the castes and frames and cultures and reduced it to what a person could bring to a table via their own hands or their future. Make no mistake, it wasn't a utopia. It was a cutthroat arena with deep tensions that were mitigated by the faculty and student council as they all battle to polish diamonds from the rough, force people into cohorts, and seal alliances. If done right, a low-caste sponsered can be taken care of for the rest of their lives or die back on the streets with nothing.

Ratchet managed to get away with his old clinic doing illegal free services by utilizing this strange culture. The relationships he cultivated with his old mentor's ties into their own university as well as Ratchet’s own ties via teaching will cover his tracks and provide some funding as long as he takes in "chosen" medical apprentices to train in such conditions and documents the long-term effects of poverty at those sunless levels. Ratchet was only able to trace a few of his benefactors in his project, Senator Shockwave and Counciler Alpha Trion.

Because it was a different world with so much on and off the books, the really secretive clubs would be the "heretics" with worship to certain Primes, Titans, or Unicron, sex clubs that cater to xeno-related kinks, and those with dysmorphic frames, either by force or assigned (cold construction, lab-grown sentio metallico, or noncon frame overhaul), trying to find themselves without anything set on legal paperwork.

(Knockout took advantage of that.)

[chaifootsteps]

Chai, I'm going to rant here. It's terrible how much our education system has failed us. I'm talking about the perspective of an American because I've seen other Americans do this.

Some people don't know how some stuff happened in the past because schools want to censor and ban shit.

Did you know people use to dig up tombs and eat mummies? It was a fucking delicacy and it wasn't until much later people were like "hey, maybe we should stop and start doing research and other crap instead of eating them." Oh god, I'm not going into the whole debate about it, but it's shit that happened.

That and apparently in some parts of the US they removed teaching the Holocaust and having assigned readings. I read this book called Number the Stars and an autobiography of someone who stayed in concentration camps called Night. I know one was historical fiction, but I feel like forcing kids to read those helps their critical thinking skills of shit that happened.

I remember in elementary we saw a play on the Velveteen Rabbit and then in our science class they told us "hey, if you're sick go to the doctor" and emphasizing how you need your fucking vaccines.

I don't know what the education system is now, but I've been seeing its failed people. People think "ugh, this person was just mean. :(" let's not pay attention to how some stuff was before research and studies were done on it.

Ok, I'll stop ranting. I'm blaming the education system and I'm blaming people for not wanting to do research or learn more about crap.

Oh, I definitely knew about the mummy thing. I once worked a job where I got to tell people all about that. It was fun.

I think there are a lot of reasons why things seem to be getting so bad so fast, why it feels like we're all stuck on a train with no breaks, and the education system is one of them.

[x-manson-annotated]

X-Manson Annotated Chapter Three - Part 9 - THE ACCUSATION

I'm going to level with you. If you weren't already put off by this story, this section might seal the deal for you. This section deals with Emma Frost being placed at the center of a scandal where she is accused of sexually abusing her students. It's awful, but it is integral to understanding the world of this story. This will be the last section of Chapter 3.

tw for that, and tw for mentions of attempted suicide.

I'd like to know who this "Weedy Looking Man" is. My assumption is it is the X-Manson version of Trevor Fitzroy.

Like i said, this section isn't pretty. I am of the mindset that nothing happened, but this section will bring to the mind of some people the Satanic Panic and Q Anon conspiracy theories popular among the right wing.

Shinobi Shaw, the son of Sebastian Shaw.

*also, Doug and Marie-Ange are insufferably cute.

**Pot's legal in the United States as of 1990.

This feels like an outlandish parody until you realize that conservative media is exactly like that.

"She knew what could happen to teenaged girls" What the fuck does that mean? That feels close to "Well, you saw what she was wearing. She probably wanted it." It's a cryptic, weird thing to say.

This feels like a reflection of something you would see a lot of later in the 2000s. Ultimate Marvel used to do this thing where psychics would read minds and there would be a joke of "Oh, stop thinking about me naked." or "I wasn't thinking about it until you told me not to think about it." Shit like that. This feels like a more realistic take on how that might feel with someone with psychic powers. It isn't some kind of fun jokey thing for them. It's horrifying.

*I'm detecting a reoccurring argument between them with this line from Marie-Ange.

**That's an incredibly strange way to speak about someone, Douglas.

***She's not wrong for thinking that.

But let's focus on the thirteen students who put forward accusations against Emma.

I can't imagine who they might be. Possibly this world's version of the Hellions, sans Marie-Ange?

What were they arrested for?

Holy shit, Disney is not pissing around when it comes to copyright in this universe.

This makes sense about why Xavier kept his class sizes on the smaller end. Easier for him to be more personable and manipulate the students.

I wonder how much of that is coincidental and how much of it was orchestrated by Xavier.

The system failing to work.

She finds it difficult to maintain romantic connections if she doesn't have access to her psi-ablities? Difficulty reading the emotions of others? Autistic Emma Frost?

A full lobotomy with a gun killed her psychic abilities?

It's interesting that there are still mutant education systems in place in public schools.

I have no idea who this man is meant to be.

Also the "Roy Cohn Professor of American History" Roy Cohn? like the lawyer and all-around bastard who adored Joe McCarthy.

The Hinckley Law. This immediately puts me in mind of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr. Reagan was never Presiden in this Au, so is it possible that Hinckley attempted to assassinate him when he was running for Governer of California?

Furthermore...Did Ronald Reagan destroy Hinckley's personality?

You can tell this is fantasy because the American Left is presenting a unified front against Conservatism.

Mary Jo Kopechne was a mutant with gills!

The pear-shaped man is Sebastian Shaw. This feels like an accurate way to describe the man.

I feel like the molestations stopped around when Emma took over the school. Good god.

Sebastian, his nose heavy with clotted phlegm and coke: how can any red-blooded American man learn in the company of disgusting WHEMEN!

This feels like something from the McMartin Pre-School Scandal where kids were essentially coerced by law enforcement into making up bigger and bigger lies about satanic ritual abuse.

Example Below from the McMartin Preschool Trial's wikipedia page:

Some of the abuse was alleged to have occurred in secret tunnels beneath the school. Several excavations turned up evidence of old buildings on the site and other debris from before the school was built, but no evidence of any secret chambers or tunnels was found. There were claims of orgies at car washes and airports, and of children being flushed down toilets to secret rooms where they would be abused, then cleaned up and presented back to their parents.

The Cuban cigar angle feels like a nod to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.

*This reads like a modern day Trumper losing his shit.

**If you cared about your family's "Good Name" you wouldn't have named your son "Shinobi" you insufferable goddamn weeaboo.

Sebastian: the rich of america are entitled to live as kings! We are not unlike gods!

The mad philosopher Scalia. Is Antonin Scalia a supervillain in this universe?

*Again, you can tell this is a fantasy because we have the misfortune of having had Scalia on the Supreme Court.

Insane.

"That he knew of". I want to know more about what kind of Anti-Psi protection exists in this world.

All this kind of bums me out. I mean, i guess i'm happy about an au where Doug's doing kind of alright after a tragedy. But him becoming this big tech bro kind of sucks to me.

It's kind of cool that he turned Apple into a co-op. I guess.

[furiousgoldfish]

Hey goldfish :) It's 🌟 anon again (previous ask for reference: https://furiousgoldfish.tumblr.com/post/730639643605876736/hey-anon-from-this-post)

So things have changed quite a bit since the last time we spoke. Turns out we are in fact a system for one, and the host who was sending those asks has stepped down due to being extremely overwhelmed by being trapped in the situation we're in after realising just how bad things are. Bun still comes around to talk to our friends, and plans to return to being host once we get out of here, it's just too much for bun to be aware of how bad things are and still be stuck in this environment. In the meantime myself (the new host) and a couple of other alters are pushing forward with the plans to get out of here and holding down the fort, so to speak, until the day comes that we can get out of here. It's been a couple of months since this host change, and we've been doing alright so far.

Right now we're actually in the process of looking for a job! It's pretty hard, admittedly, considering that we don't actually have any qualifications (we were taken out of school when we were 9 years old) but we're hoping that something simple like just stacking shelves at the local supermarket won't require something like that. We're looking into it at the moment, hopefully it works out. Our long-term plan is to be able to learn to drive at least, so we can have more freedom, then start saving up to try and get our own place. One of the other alters here managed to reach out to social services to attempt to get help with finding housing, and we're just waiting on a reply from them. Assuming that works out, we might even be out of here in a year, which is really exciting!

Of course, with the potential escape so soon, it's starting to sink in that we...have no idea how to do a lot of things. Our mother refused to teach us anything because she was always "too busy", so we barely know how to make a simple sandwich (and even that's from one of our friends telling us!), let alone actually cook anything, and she has outright refused to teach us how to wash dishes, do laundry, or anything of the sort. That coupled with the fact we never got chores growing up means we have basically no life skills on top of the lack of qualifications, so there's a few of us who are terrified that we're going to fail.

I want to try and find something, at least, to help reassure those scared alters that we'll be okay, that we can make it out of here and stay out, but I have no idea where to start looking to try and learn anything, or even what to focus on first. Do you (or any of your followers) have any advice on where to start? Anything in particular I should be trying to learn now while we're still trapped here, to try and reassure the others that we'll make it?

Oh hey, glad to see you (or, the new host of your system) back!

So you are a system, god I am so sorry, that is one of the most extreme disorders you can have due to abuse and it proves that what was done to you was intensely cruel, inhumane and equal to torture. Kids don't develop something so extreme for no good reason, you had to become like this just to survive in your parents house. And they cut off our education, which sounds insane and illegal.

It makes sense for the old host to be overwhelmed, I remember when I realized how bad things are, I wanted to jump out of my own skin just not to be there anymore. I completely understand the old host's instincts to be inside where it's safer and to let others figure this out until you escape. I'm so glad you're planning to get out of there and to gain freedom, you deserve this and I believe you can make it out.

You're right that there's simple jobs that don't require much qualification, stacking shelves sounds great, I am guessing you could also do stuff like cleaning (what I do) or stuff that's easy to be trained for (I can't think of anything, I haven't done many jobs, if anyone can give recs in replies please do!)

I hope you do get out of there within a year! That does sound exciting, and even if it takes longer, as long as you keep trying you'll get there, I know sometimes it can feel impossible, especially when the abusers are onto you and work to sabotage you. Be sure to never reveal to them what you're up to!! Leave when they won't immediately notice! Don't let anyone know your location so you're safe from being discovered by them! The best safety from them you can have is them not knowing where you are or how to get to you, once these 2 things are accomplished, you are safe completely, and also you do need some income, but you already know all that.

I don't think I was even reading about survival skills back when I was living with abusers, because it just isn't the same when you can't immediately try out your new skills, the best way to learn is to try and figure it out on your own. I'd love to give you step-by-step instructions on how to cook, how to do laundry, how to clean, how to maintain your living space, how to organize and whatever else skill you want, but it's likely you wouldn't be able to try it out, and it would fade from your mind before you learned to use it. If you want I can still try and give you the instructions and you could save them for when it's useful!

There's a website I saw that gives step-by-step instructions to do any task, I want to link it here but right now I can't seem to find it, does anyone know what I'm talking about? It breaks down any activity to small steps that guide you trough the process, it was made for people who get overwhelmed by big tasks but do well with task broken down.

I do want to say that survival skills are pretty easy to learn and some of them super instinctive, and a lot is just about having confidence and the right information. I remember I got a lot of confidence from just learning how to tie a rope in different ways, I could make different knots, or create ladders or a swing using only rope, and that made me feel so smart and capable, even though I barely used it for anything except to show off.

I feel like I should do a basic instruction post about cooking, laundry, cleaning and maintaining living space and it would potentially make it easier to approach for a lot of people. I'll start on it now and you'll see it published a few hours from now.

You and your alters can definitely make it! If you can learn even skills that don't feel vital right now, like if you can sew a little pocket or make a cool knot, it will boost your confidence and give you a feeling on how exciting and rewarding it is to learn these things.

[mariacallous]

NextCity recently published a hot take by Steffen Berr tying the ways in which the US is failing at reducing pedestrian deaths to the misaligned training that most transportation engineers in the US receive. Berr explains that a transportation engineer “is a really a civil engineer who has received a little exposure to the transportation sector.” Due to the structure of accredited degree programs, “In a best-case scenario, a civil engineer will only take three transportation classes during their bachelor’s degree. In the worst case, they’ll only take one: Introduction to Highway Engineering. To put this into perspective, the most educated professionals we entrust to design and run our roads and streets have received only half of a minor with a handful of credits on the topic.”

Berr goes on to address the reasonable objection that in many fields, people learn on the job. But what transportation engineers learn on the job, per Berr, is not things like how to choose the most appropriate intersection for the desired use, how the road system should be laid out at a network/route level, or how to fix congestion (none of which, he argues, they learn in school either.) Instead, they learn “how to navigate the impressive amounts of bureaucracy that have been built up in the industry, memorize an impressive vocabulary of technical jargon, practice with design software like AutoCAD to produce engineering plans, and how to copy the current engineering standards. There is no exposure to deep levels of theory that can help our future professionals create original solutions to fundamental problems like safety, congestion, emissions and ethics.” 

I’m less interested in Berr’s point about the wrong degree requirements than I am in his observation about what the job of transportation engineer actually is. As Stafford Beer observed, “the purpose of a system is what it does,” and by analogy, the purpose of a job is not its stated goals but what the people who do it actually do day to day.1 When talking to people who’ve never worked in government, the biggest disconnect is usually a lack of understanding of the actual jobs of public servants. A rather dramatic illustration of this comes from a Mercatus Center podcast with Lant Pritchett in which he shares an anecdote about advocating for evidence-based policy in the Indian bureaucracy. 

After they had done the RCT [random control trial] showing that this Balsakhi program of putting tutors in the schools really led to substantial gains and learning achievement and reading outcomes, he took it to the secretary of education of the place in which they had done the RCT. And he said, “Oh, by the way, I have the solution to your problem of low learning levels, or at least part of the solution. Look, we’ve got this powerful evidence that this works to improve leading outcomes by putting these volunteer tutors and pulling their low learning kids out.” The response of the secretary of education was, “What do you think my job is? Why do you think that this is a solution to a problem I have? Look around my office. See these piles and piles of files that keep me busy 60 hours a week and not one of these files is about a child not learning. I’m under no pressure about that problem. If I try and transfer a teacher, I’ve got a court case on my hand. If I try and close a school, I got a court case on my hand. My job is to administer the existing education policy such that there’s policy compliance. Super kudos to you for this cute little study you’ve done. It has nothing to do with my job as secretary of education.”

Ouch. And that’s a secretary of an agency serving a county with 1.5 billion people.

I suspect a lot of public servants in the US will read that and think “My job is not quite as bad as that but it sure feels that way a lot.” The people I know maintain enough connection to the actual mission to avoid such a meltdown (though I find the secretary’s frankness refreshing.) But both these stories help explain a conundrum that many who care about effective government (or, shall we say, state capacity) struggle to explain: the contradiction between the dedication, smarts, and creativity of most public servants and the sometimes terrible outcomes they are associated with, like the recent tragic lapses in administering student loans by the US Department of Education. (Or in Berr’s world, the 40,000 traffic deaths we’re stuck with every year while countries like the Netherlands have dropped their own already low number by 46%.2) To be sure, there are often extraordinary outcomes (hello Direct File!), and we notice them far less often, to our own detriment. But while it’s impossible to give government a meaningful overall grade, if its job is to meet challenges we face (national security, climate change, an effective safety net, etc.), we are at risk of falling dangerously short. The problem isn’t that public servants are doing a bad job, it’s that they’re doing a great job — at the wrong jobs.''

The (unnamed in this context) Indian Secretary of Education seems to agree: “My job is to administer the existing education policy such that there’s policy compliance.” I highly doubt that’s the job he thought he was getting, or the job he wanted to do. Berr is on the same general theme when he says that what transportation engineers learn on the job is “how to operate in the industry effectively as it has been currently set up.” Note his use of the word effectively. Effective towards what? Not towards reducing traffic deaths or congestion levels. “All the experience in the world of copying and pasting a standard invented fifty years ago is useless when the problems that the standard was invented to resolve have changed,” he says. “Understanding this sheds a lot of light as to why 40,000 people are still dying on our roads every year and why your local city insists on laying down sharrows [which are known to be ineffective and often dangerous] in their latest round of “safety improvements.” Quite frankly, it’s because we have no idea what we are doing.”

This is a useful nuance as I develop a framework for building state capacity. One of my admittedly obvious and oversimplified tenets is that systems have both “go energy” and “stop energy,” much as a car has a gas pedal and a brake. You wouldn’t drive a car without a brake, but you also wouldn’t drive a car in which the brake was pressed all the time, even when you were trying to accelerate. This is a good metaphor for how we’re dealing with the implementation of CHIPS, IRA, and the Infrastructure Bill, for example, where the clear intent is speed and scale but the public servants responsible are held back from that by the brakes of overly zealous compliance functions. I hear a version of this at every agency I visit: “Congress tells us to do something. Then the compliance offices keep us from doing that very thing.” (And side note for further discussion: This is an issue of representation, voice, and democracy.) The stop energy in our government is currently a lot bigger than it should be. We’re hitting the gas but we’re not accelerating because we’re pressing the brake at the same time. 

Lots of people in government have “stop energy” jobs. We need them, and we need them to be good at them. I don’t want to live in a country where our government doesn’t exercise “stop authority.” I try to remember not to complain when my flight is delayed because I really don’t want to die in a plane crash, and a rigidly implemented checklist is a big part of how we keep safe (the current epidemic of doors and engine cowlings blowing off notwithstanding). I also really like being pretty confident that a pill I’m taking has been tested and not tampered with. I like thinking our nuclear arsenal is protected. You know, little things like that.

Stop energy is critical. Rigid adherence to protocol is usually lifesaving. But it must exist in balance. I recently learned the Navy concept of “front of sub/back of sub.” The back of a nuclear submarine, where the nukes live, is run by the book. You don’t deviate from the checklist. You don’t innovate. You don’t question. The front of the sub, on the other hand, is responsible for navigating through dark waters. You have to improvise. You have to make judgment calls. There are manuals and checklists, for sure, but the nature of the work calls for a different approach, and the Navy recognizes that the cultures of front and back have evolved appropriately to meet distinct needs. 

There are times, of course, when you’ll need front of sub judgment in a back of sub context. If the plane I was on was about to be bombed by an enemy combatant (unlikely in my life, I hope), I would be okay with the pilot using her discretion to cut a corner or two on the takeoff checklist, because the very thing that checklist is there to protect (the lives of the people on board) would under threat from a different vector. Taking every precaution in that scenario could be reckless. That’s a bit how I feel about the NEPA reviews and other bureaucratic processes that are holding back building the infrastructure we need to move to a low-carbon economy. I wish for the public servants in charge to see the threat of inaction – those species the checklist is trying to protect are threatened by temperature rise as much or more than they are by the project in question – and make good judgment calls about getting the plane off the runway a lot quicker, so to speak. This feels like a domain where back of sub culture has more hold than it should given the circumstances. And to Berr’s point, we can’t rely on back of sub culture when the checklist and protocols it uses no longer serve the purpose.

Of course, “stop energy” roles can themselves be balanced – if only I had a dime for every discussion about the value of lawyers who get to yes and the frustrations with those who seem to do nothing but block. The analogy breaks down a bit here because the items on a pre-flight checklist are binary – they are either red or green – whereas the ad hoc checklists that lawyers assemble to ensure compliance before signing off on an action are almost always shades of gray – they can be open to lots of interpretations. Any given lawyer, or compliance officer, or ethics cop can treat their role with appropriate balance, reserving their stop authority only when the risks truly outweigh the benefits. But getting the culture of a team, department, or agency to balance stop and go correctly at a macro level is extremely difficult. It’s rare to see leadership really change that balance, or for it to stick. It’s a retail approach, hugely dependent on personalities and circumstances.

What would a wholesale approach to getting back into balance look like? One answer should be a simple matter of top-down workforce planning, of the kind our Office of Personnel Management should be empowered to do: fewer stop energy jobs relative to go energy jobs. Hire more doers than brakers, both in how the position is defined and in the characteristics of the people selected for the job. But that proposal needs several important caveats. Of course, every great employee is some mix of these energies – a “go only” employee would be exhausting and dangerous in all but the most extreme circumstances – so we’re talking about a general orientation. More importantly, having fewer brakers will only result in enormous backlogs if they have the same stopping power. But there are plenty of functions where its possible to safely move from default no to default yes, possibly with an after the fact correction mechanism.3 Instead of requiring form redesigns to go through a long White House approval process before they can be made available to the public, for instance, allow agencies to apply the appropriate level of scrutiny and sign-off for the form at hand and develop a process for catching and quickly fixing anything determined to be detrimental. This example speaks to the issue of multiple levels of safeguards. Loosening a safeguard that operates at the top level of federal government may not make much difference to overall stop energy if agencies, or in turn their subcomponents, or even teams, react by strengthening their own safeguard processes. There might be something like a Law of Conservation of Safeguards at play here. But it’s still worth considering the value of moving to default yes processes where appropriate. 

Of course, the question of the nature of the job public servants are tasked with is about much more than just stop vs go. It’s about what kind of work we’ve decided to invest in. I go into some depth about this in Chapter 5 of Recoding America as it relates to our lack of investment in digital competencies and how ideologies about private sector superiority led to a big outsourcing push just as digital was beginning to massively transform society.

…these internal competencies in digital became necessary just as we were jettisoning internal competencies of all sorts, not developing them. Instead of digital competency, government has developed extensive processes and procedures for procurement of digital work, and the ins and outs of procurements sometimes seem more complex and technical than the latest programming languages.

This points to another way to understand the disconnect between high employee performance and the outcomes our government produces (or fails to), especially relative to the investment made.4 Take procurement. I know a lot of people in procurement who are really good at their jobs. Some of them are considered really good because they’re great at the “back of sub” tasks of making sure every box is checked, and a manager might feel compelled to give them a high performance rating because of their thoroughness and dedication, even if the people who need the thing being acquired are frustrated by the slowness and rigidity of the process, and even if the thing that is ultimately acquired has checked all the boxes but doesn’t actually work. (For an example of this, see Chapter 4 of Recoding America.) But many of these procurement professionals operate according to “front of sub” principles, and are enormously creative and mission-driven. The other public servants who rely on them to procure things value them enormously. They may or may not receive high ratings, if the manager is judging them based on a “back of sub” approach. But procurement processes simply should not be as complex and burdensome as they have become. Both of these kinds of procurement professionals are doing a job that simply shouldn’t exist in its current form.

Especially with the looming threat of the return of Schedule F under a possible Trump administration, there’s a lot of talk of public sector employee performance and protections. I agree strongly with Donald Kettl, who has said about the left’s silence on civil service reforms in the face of Schedule F: “You can’t fight something with nothing.” I hope to be part of proposing a something there, something that improves government’s ability to fill many open positions and to effectively and ethically manage the workforce. But we could succeed entirely at that and still fail to meet the challenges in front of us if the jobs we fill are the wrong jobs.

Another of my admittedly obvious and oversimplified principles of how to build state capacity is that there are really only three things you can do:

You can have more of the right people

You can focus them on the right things

You can burden them less.

There is obviously quite a lot to say about each of those things, and they are all deeply intertwined. A big reason we don’t have more of the right people is that we overburden both the people responsible for hiring and the applicants, focusing both on the wrong things. We overburden public servants generally because we have designed too many of their jobs to stop bad things instead of to enable the things we desperately need. We are too often asking if public servants are doing a good job instead of understanding and questioning the nature of the jobs they’ve been hired to do. 

We need a much more robust understanding of how to fix the problem of hiring the right people to do the wrong jobs. We need wholesale strategies for tuning the dial between front of sub and back of sub, between stop and go, between brake and gas, and refocusing the job of public servants on the work that’s most directly meaningful towards the outcomes we want. We need staffers in agencies who act as if the climate crisis is the enemy plane that’s about to bomb us. We need transportation engineers whose actual job – as practiced on a daily basis, at scale – is to reduce congestion and pollution and improve and save lives. We need Secretaries of Education who have time in their day to look at the study on improving learning achievement, and maybe even take action on it. We need all of this now.

Imagine a world in which this — not just enforcing rules, not even just helping agencies fill open jobs, but ensuring that federal government fills the right jobs — was the mandate of an empowered and deeply collaborative Office of Personnel Management. They couldn’t do it alone, of course — it’s agencies that define the jobs they think they need and Congress that throws down law after law they must comply with, feeding the need for compliance. The White House Office of Management and Budget adds its own reporting and compliance burdens. Each would need to buy in on an agenda of building state capacity and do their part. But this is what workforce planning should really be, and in 2025, we will need it more than ever. If Biden gets a second term, this is the kind of ambitious agenda he should set.

1

Please read Dan Davies’ excellent new book The Unaccountability Machine for a lot more on Beer and why this is important.

2

The US has 12.8 traffic deaths per 100,000 people, the Netherland 3.6 per 100,0000.

3

I think this is a Guarino-ism… if I’m misattributing it, someone will correct me.

4

Some will point out that perverse incentives in the performance management practices can sometimes make it hard to give public sector employees poor ratings, which may skew the data. I don’t quite know how to evaluate that claim, but I also don’t think it’s all that relevant if you’re trying to