#miss globe united states

[rjzimmerman]

Ice cover ebbs and flows through the seasons in the Arctic (left) and the Antarctic (right). Overall, ice cover has declined since scientists started tracking it half a century ago.

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

Earth is missing a lot of sea ice this year. Enough to cover the entire United States east of the Mississippi.

That was announced by researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center on Thursday, who said the amount of sea ice on the planet had reached the lowest level ever recorded in March.

The record comes days after the World Meteorological Organization reported that the past 10 years have been the 10 hottest on record, with 2024 the hottest year. The global rise in temperatures is tied to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

“Warming temperatures drive melting ice across the globe, and because we’re seeing such high temperatures, it’s not surprising that this year we’re seeing the least amount of ice coverage,” said Linette Boisvert, an ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The center has been compiling data for almost 50 years, primarily through a Department of Defense satellite program. The global sea ice extent includes measurements taken in both the Southern Hemisphere and the Northern Hemisphere, which experience opposite seasons.

Dr. Boisvert compared the freezing and melting of sea ice between winter and summer to the heartbeat of the planet. The pulses between the winter maximum and summer minimum used to be shorter. But with more sea ice melting away, the distance between pulses has grown larger.

“It’s like the heartbeat of the planet is slowing down,” Dr. Boisvert said. “It’s not good.”

[heyftinally]

April 30th is the Day of the Homeschooled Child

I was one of the 1.7 million children homeschooled in the USA.

I am also one of Homeschool's Invisible Children.

I was heavily restricted at home - I was barred from nearly everything that my peers were connecting with. I had incredibly limited access to movies and TV, even more restricted internet access, and was even barred from many of the same toys my peers played with. This on top of my academic isolation made socializing very hard.

I didn't relate to my peers socially.

Children younger than me were more academically advanced than me.

I was socially unaware, and frequently missed jokes or made faux pas comments because I didn't understand how to interact with peers.

My ADHD went untreated my entire childhood.

And the issues were not only social. Despite living in a state that boasted some of the most rigorous checks for homeschooled students, I was missed. My portfolios every year were falsified - much of what they claimed I had learned I had little to no understanding of.

By the time I graduated high school "with honors" (that I did not earn and were entirely false), this is a brief list of some of my academic failings:

I had never written an essay, and did not know how

I did not know how to do a critical analysis of a piece of text or media

I was incapable of math above a 4th/5th grade level

I could not tell time on an analog clock

I could not identify more than ~5 states on a map of the United States

I could not identify more than ~5 countries on a map of the world/globe

I could not spell above a ~6th grade level

I did not know that there was proof of life on earth prior to dinosaurs

I did not know that the lymphatic system was real

And so much more.

I entered college woefully unequipped for both the academic and socal demands that were placed on me. At 18, I was closer to as 14 year old, social/emotionally. Academically I was much worse.

I had to work three times as hard as my peers to achieve the same results, battled my still-undiagnosed ADHD as well as my academic and social neglect.

I didn't fully know who I even was as a person, due to spending so many years being expected to fit a specific ideal that was enforced upon me 24/7 through the isolation of homeschooling.

This April 30th, I'm wearing green for Homeschool's Invisible Children - for children like me.

If you are a child experiencing homeschool neglect, please know that you are not alone. There are resources available to you, and your future is not doomed just because your guardians failed to educate you. I'm listing some resources below that may be of help to you.

Homeschool alumni/survivors who resonate with this story: we deserved better. We deserved education. We deserved freedom. It's okay if you're angry at your past. It's okay if you're grieving the life you might have had without homeschooling. It's okay if you're conflicted. I hope you're able to find closure and healing in whatever form that means for you.

And, because I know it unfortunately needs to be said, if you're an ex-homeschooler or a homeschool parent who feels the need to jump on this post and defend yourself, I need you to step back, sit down, delete your comment, and sit with why you feel so attacked by our truth.

This is not a personal attack on you - this is abuse survivors speaking up to prevent further abuse. It is not your place to tell us we should be silent.

"But homeschoolers test better and are more successful!" I'm sure you're dying to say. To wave your statistics at me.

And you would be wrong. Because here's the problem with those statistics.

Let's pretend we have ten homeschooled children and ten public schooled children.

All ten of the public schooled children take a school assessment. Because some excel at different things than others, the public school students average out to an 85.

Only four of the homeschooled children take the assessment. Of the other six, one is traveling with their family during the assessment, two are not permitted because their parents know they aren't up to grade level and fear backlash or judgement, two are mentally or physically disabled and so their parents don't feel the test will adequately display their knowledge, and the last hasn't received any kind of education in years because their parents keep them at home either doing chores, working a job, caring for siblings, or they are simply neglected and spend all day hungry and scared.

Of the four homeschooled children that do take the assessment, they do quite well, as their parents knew/suspected they would. Their average score is a 98.

A 98 is better than an 85, yes. But just because 4 out of 6 homeschooled children were above the public school average does not mean homeschooling is automatically better. If you tested the top four public school students, they might very well score a 98 as well.

However, if you included those other six homeschooled students, the average homeschool score would very likely be something closer to a 45.

So when we talk about Homeschool's Invisible Children, we're talking about those six that never got the chance to take an assessment. Those six who never had a chance to tell a teacher "I'm ten and I don't know how to read". Those six who may not even realize how far behind their peers they are. Those six who deserved to have access to supports so that they could learn in ways that actually met their needs.

So while your statistics look good on paper, they are not honest. They do not present the full picture of homeschooling. Listen to the homeschool survivors who were one of those six kids who never got to make their voices heard. We have a voice now - don't try and take it from us.

Resources for current homeschool students and alumni:

Khan Academy - basically free online self paced K-12 classes. They have fantastic explanation videos for the lessons, you can review them whenever you want, and you don't have to stay in the same grade level for every subject - great if you're trying to catch up and you're in 6th grad for English but 2nd for math. They have courses besides just core classes (math/english/science/etc), too! They run on donations, but it's completely free to use. Also, this site is used in my local public school system to supplement the existing curriculum, so it's not just for homeschoolers!

Coalition for Responsible Home Education - actively fighting for more oversight and restrictions on homeschooling in the USA. They mostly do awareness and advocacy, but they also have resources on their site for things like what to do if you don't have a high school transcript. They run on donations, but the information is freely available.

Probably the most famous resource on this list. Videos that give you a "crash course" (aka a condensed overview) of a wide variety of topics. These are best used as supplement to more structured lessons like Khan Academy, but they have a lot of merit on their own if they're all you can manage. Knowing a bit about something is better than knowing nothing about it!

[officiallordvetinari]

Below are 10 featured Wikipedia articles. Links and descriptions are below the cut.

*... And Intemperate

The 1966 New York City smog was a major air-pollution episode and environmental disaster, coinciding with that year's Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Smog covered the city and its surrounding area from November 23 to 26, filling the city's air with damaging levels of several toxic pollutants.

Anactoria (or Anaktoria; Ancient Greek: Ἀνακτορία) is a woman mentioned in the work of the ancient Greek poet Sappho. Sappho, who wrote in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE, names Anactoria as the object of her desire in a poem numbered as fragment 16. Another of her poems, fragment 31, is traditionally called the "Ode to Anactoria", though no name appears in it.

The Badge Man is a figure that is purportedly present within the Mary Moorman photograph of the assassination of United States president John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. Conspiracy theorists have suggested that this figure is a sniper firing a weapon at the president from the grassy knoll.

The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate is an 1832 English oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1832. Etty had become famous for nude paintings, and acquired a reputation for tastelessness, indecency and a lack of creativity. With The Destroying Angel he hoped to disprove his critics with an openly moral piece.

The 1881 world tour of King Kalākaua of the Hawaiian Kingdom was his attempt to save the Hawaiian culture and population from extinction by importing a labor force from Asia-Pacific nations. Critics in Hawaii believed the labor negotiations were just an excuse to see the world. The 281-day trip gave Kalākaua the distinction of being the first monarch to circumnavigate the globe.

The murder of Sir William de Cantilupe, who was born around 1345, by members of his household, took place in Scotton, Lincolnshire, in March 1375. The chief suspects were two neighbours—a local knight, Ralph Paynel; and the sheriff, Sir Thomas Kydale—as well as de Cantilupe's entire household, particularly his wife Maud, the cook and a squire. The staff were probably paid either to carry out or to cover up the crime, while Paynel had been in dispute with the de Cantilupes for many years; it is possible that Maud was conducting an affair with Kydale.

The nuckelavee is a horse-like demon from Orcadian folklore that combines equine and human elements. British folklorist Katharine Briggs called it "the nastiest" of all the demons of Scotland's Northern Isles. The nuckelavee's breath was thought to wilt crops and sicken livestock, and the creature was held responsible for droughts and epidemics on land despite being predominantly a sea-dweller.

Surtsey is an uninhabited volcanic island located in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago off the southern coast of Iceland. It was formed in a volcanic eruption which began 130 metres (430 feet) below sea level, and reached the surface on 14 November 1963. It was intensively studied by volcanologists during its eruption, and afterwards by botanists and other biologists as life forms gradually colonised the originally barren island.

The Tichborne case was a legal cause célèbre that fascinated Victorian Britain in the 1860s and 1870s. It concerned the claims by a man sometimes referred to as Thomas Castro or as Arthur Orton, but usually termed "the Claimant", to be the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy.

"Well he would, wouldn't he?" is a British political phrase and aphorism that is commonly used as a retort to a self-interested denial. The Welsh model Mandy Rice-Davies used the phrase while giving evidence during the 1963 trial of the English osteopath Stephen Ward. Ward is considered to have been made a scapegoat for the Profumo affair, a scandal involving John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War. During the trial, Ward's lawyer James Burge asked Rice-Davies whether she was aware that Lord Astor—a hereditary peer and Conservative politician—had denied having an affair with her; Rice-Davies replied "Well he would, wouldn't he?"

[love-note-musings]

helen otis x reader | creepypasta oneshot

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* "up from the ocean floor," bloody painter x pyromaniac reader

tw themes of gender stereotypes and body dysmorphia

if you feel like you've read this somewhere, you may have! i'm just transferring my old oneshots from quotev onto my tumblr

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀

     The two of you sat together, hands lightly entangled, not too tight, just dangling there in that space. You fidgeted. Strings hanging down from your jacket twirling around your free fingers, your leg bounced. Even with the tranquility of it all, your mind wandered while your body was settled into someone else, relaxed yet on edge, waiting to crash. Mostly just waiting. Anticipation gripped onto you with white knuckles, it sent you bounding, it filled the crevices in your brain where the missing memories evaporated into blank cavities, it gushed.

     In the black of night, your art would erupt into one blazing star that spread to all four corners, licking up the walls and floorboards and uniting them under one flame that blanketed the abandoned building. You stood there as your shoulders drooped and you felt the anxiety that toyed with you dissipate, even slightly, watching as the flames mesmerized you, swaying to one another. The stress, anxiety, it all exploded out of you with waves of red, it was illicit and choleric and it lapped at the edges of the walls as the air around it warped into new shapes and patterns. It was all a vivid, prismatic globe that exploded and spread. 

      To Helen, you were polychromatic. 

      You were like a vivid, prismatic globe that would shatter across the night sky, spreading your polychromatic visage against wooden planks nailed together, splattering down until you reached the ground again. The world burned for you, and fire was dangerous, he knew that. Helen couldn’t help but stare, taking in the hues and letting himself bask in the view, making sure the image would imprint all the way down into his bones so he’d be sure to remember it forever somewhere on his body. Visible marks.

     Tensions ebbed and fell from your body little by little as the flames covered more ground, spreading from the floorboards to the ceilings as you sat in the grass by Helen’s side. You were no artist, merely just trying to find a foothold amongst tumbling rocks. Small clicks were nothing in comparison to the crackling embers and his film camera wasn’t enough to do the scene justice.

     Oh, and the way your eyes shined, the colors bounding off your scleras and reflecting back the danger, the heat. You shifted in awe. In your distracted state, Helen leaned away from your hold and positioned his camera towards your face in wonderment. With a snap, the memory would last. 

     What would an artist be without a muse? To repeatedly create but with no admiration, and therefore, with no motivation, allowing themselves to be pulled in any direction of stereotypical beauty without any personal influencers. Helen used to be quite stumped with himself, wondering why his eye was captured by floral lace and monochromatic clothing all the same. Why at times he wanted to feel dainty, and sometimes neutral, sometimes strong and bold. This created categories in his mind, never quite finding the foothold he desired in the narrow categories crafted for him by other people. It left him rattled and defenseless, allowing his interests to sway with a bout of rather disinterest, never staying long with one style or another, trying everything and therefore finding nothing. What did Helen want to be? 

     He had delicate features, that’s what everyone had always said, at least. ‘Dainty, delicate’. At times he found the sight of himself calming. Other times he wanted to smash any and all mirrors, fearing that when he looked he wouldn’t like what he found. When it came time to attempt a self portrait, Helen found he had no idea where to start, how to portray his features, wondering what he looked like to begin with. What did he look like? How did others perceive him? In the end, he settled on feeling, how he felt, what he thought he had looked like. The canvas came out splotched and blurred. Yet when it came to anyone else, he would be able to paint them with near perfection, seemingly being able to pinpoint what about their faces made them unique, their own person. 

     Helen looked through his “self portraits” with a dissatisfied look, flipping through the canvases, never liking how they looked, even with the ambiguity, never liking the shades or angles or anything. He disliked it all. So they sat in the corner of his study covered with a tarp, next to it on the shelf, a box of film photos that he’d shuffle through, looking for something to occupy his time. Photos of wildlife, people, fabrics fluttering in the wind, and even cafes made their way from that box into different art pieces. Sketches, watercolor, charcoal, acrylic and oil paintings, colored pencils stenciled in to make photos with strokes. At least he could make other things to his liking. In the end, he chose the one photo that lit him up the most. 

     And so he sat there, hour upon hour, sitting on a stool splattered with paint as his hands traveled with ease, moving from one corner to another until the patterns corrected itself and the colors meshed, melding into one picture. Dots marking the sides of their cheeks, lips upturned at the corners, eyes fitted with wrinkles that looked appropriate, creating crescents. A blush sank into those same cheeks, dusting the sides, adding depth to the face which had started out as a collection of shapes and ended up being yours. What was an artist without a muse, without beauty to capture? So there you were. Poised in the photograph, sitting patiently, oblivious to the idle fascination found on your features that were once etched into your muscle memory and were now preserved by sheets of canvas fitted to four beams of wood. Acrylic paint, a medium used by the artist to mold you back into life. 

     When the day came down to yet another close, he felt okay with the fact that he could capture every single, tiny, miniature, inconsequential detail that made up the being of you. If he could not find himself in bins of paint and brushes, nor amongst pencils or water, he could find you, the blueprint that led to his heart and warmed it from the bottom up. Helen could have sworn you held the key in some way, some form, that reached deep inside of him to find the urge that spurred him forward, to create, to do, to perceive. Perhaps it was egotistical, but every piece he had every done of you had been perfect. He liked perfect, he was only ever satisfied with perfect. Your beauty and essence gave way to him finding the drive to perfect each line on your face. 

     Time melted away, and soon, it was complete. A near replica of the photograph he managed to capture the first time he saw your eyes light up. 

     You, the actual you, stood patiently behind him, hands folded behind your back as you looked between Helen and the painting. Eyeing him up and down, pretending to circle his newest art piece and ogle at it, lips formed in a line that couldn’t help but result in a smirk with your fingers to your lips. The only thing you were looking at was him. Bangs covering his eyes ever so slightly that you wondered how he could see, eyebrows furrowed deep in concentration, one you knew better but to break. It’s true, you wouldn’t bother him with your own musings. Instead you roamed around his room as if you haven’t been there times and times before. Curious hands found draped tarps and draped tarps housed hidden paintings. Fingers flipping through the collection, your own brow became furrowed.

     “Helen,” you called out, an outgoing dare to break the silence, “what are these?” Turning back to him, you followed his line of sight as it drifted down to the canvases nestled amongst the crook of the floor. 

     “Nothing,” he said cooly, deflecting back into the makeshift world he was creating, being able to live there as long as the process lasted. “Don’t worry about it,”

      A hum left your lips, rocking back and forth on your heels. You knew exactly what you were looking at. “What will you do with them?”

      Helen shrugged, “Burn them? You can tear the staples out from the fabric if you want, I’ll reuse the frames.”

     ‘How environmentally friendly of you,’ you thought to yourself with amusement, heaving up one of the canvases and holding it out for a better look. 

     Well, it had the shape of Helen. Nothing much more to it. Blurred features were what drew your eye in, wondering what exactly the idea was behind the work. Nonetheless you grabbed a pair of pliers and began tearing the staples out, careful with each piece of canvas you ripped from the base, laying them neatly to the side as the pile of stapes layered up. If you could have done him justice, you would have offered to try to capture him in some way, whether by paint stroke or sketch. But you were no artist, and felt it insulting to even try. 

     “Are you sure you want to get rid of them. . ?” You asked, never not anticipating an answer in the negative.

     “Yes,” he replied, matching your assumption. And with that you left the topic at hand until the night.

     When the sun lost itself under the horizon, Helen rolled up those loose canvas pieces and held them under his arm like a newspaper, bundled up as he made his way through the woods. There he’d find you amongst the trees in an alcove of your own design, a burning pit in the middle. Once the scraps were placed in your hands, Helen didn’t bother needing to see it through with conviction. They’d simply erupt into flames and he would be freed from that feeling, right? It would all go away and he wouldn’t have to see it anymore, he could start over again, and he’d be free. 

     Except nothing is ever as simple, and you knew that as you felt the gravity of it in your palms. “Are you sure you want to get rid of them?” You asked one last time, just to be sure, prompted to do so by the slightest of twinges in his expression, just one opening of a sliver into his emotions. 

     Helen huffed, “Yes, of course I”m sure. Why is it any different than the other work I’ve burned here?” 

     “Because,” you reasoned, “its you and you made it.”

     “That is not me.”

     His diction briefly startled you, his voice raised into a raging simmer and dangling off into an eruption, bouncing and cracking. Helen, usually so posh and poised, you knew he had to have his weak spots too, just like any other person. But again, knowing Helen, you knew he wouldn’t be the kind to shed those slivers and open up, tearing himself away from his comforts and instead preferring to become entangled with your own. That kind of vulnerability was different from sharing a bed, from sharing any kind of space; it was the kind that would eat up at your insides, the kind that you wouldn’t let go of until you couldn’t keep it contained anymore. You were patient, it was the long run from here on out, and he was completely correct that it wasn’t him.

     With that, you let fire do what fire does best.

     Helen didn’t much look at the scene, instead slumping into himself, looking a little bit more at peace as the flames picked at the frays. You watched him as his arms wrapped around his sides, his neutral expression nearly settled into a grimace, his eyes concentrated yet unfocused. 

     “I’ll try it again someday,” he said out of the blue, watching the flames dance, his tone calm and steady once more, as if nothing were amiss.

     You made the risk of getting closer to him and placing your hand on divot in his back, you pulled yourself closer to him, “I know.”

     To your surprise, Helen didn’t move away. His feet found themselves shuffling even just an inch closer to your embrace to share your warmth and feel your presence. Your body pressed against his helped those feelings ebb and flow, slowing to a trickle in his mind, grounding himself in the sensation rather than the aesthetic, letting him exist. Even if it was with the help of your feelings, it was still something to grasp onto throughout the onslaught of thoughts that plagued him. It was still different. 

     For that moment and that moment only, Helen compromised on relying on you with the faith that you wouldn’t view him lesser than worthy for exhibiting such intimacy with. He leaned into your side, closer yet now, and settled his head into the crook of your neck. From now on he’d wear blush proudly if you were the one to fluster him, he’d yank flowers from people’s porch side gardens, preferably annuals, he’d press them between pages in the dictionary, he’d grind the petals together to form a paste, coat it with oil to bind, splattering onto new canvases. Helen would wrap flowers and their vines all over your body to squeeze every spot he wasn’t bold enough to touch in reality. The paintings would be just as good, right? gloriosa superba would be his poison of choice, he’d use it smear across his body until he became apart of the petals. Fire was dangerous and he gave into the heat.

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆

originally posted on quotev/citrusyfruits, reposted with permission

[film-classics]

Joan Blondell - The Ultimate Dame

Rose Joan Blondell (born August 30, 1906 in New York City) was an American actress who had a very long career in Hollywood. With blonde hair, big blue eyes and a big smile, she was usually cast as the wisecracking working girl and dubbed as "The Ultimate Dame."

Born to a vaudeville family of Polish and Irish roots, Blondell had seen much of the world by the time her family stopped touring as the Bouncing Blondells when she was a teenager. She won several beauty pageants before returning to New York to work as a model and perform on Broadway.

n 1930, Blondell starred with James Cagney which caught the eye of Hollywood star Al Jolson who brought it to Warner Bros. Placed under contract with Warner, she moved to Hollywood the following year and became one of the highest-paid individuals in the United States during the Great Depression. She was well still received in her later films, despite being relegated to character and supporting roles after 1945; even being nominated for  Golden Globe Awards for The Cincinnati Kid (1965) and Opening Night (1977). In her older years, she steadily worked in television and films, her last film being posthumously released.

At 73 years old, Blondell died of leukemia in Santa Monica with her children and her sister at her bedside.

Legacy:

Won the 1926 Miss Dallas pageant

Placed fourth in the 1926 Miss America pageant and was a finalist at the 1926 International Pageant of Pulchritude, the precursor to the Miss Universe pageant

Crowned Queen of the A&M College Rodeo and Pageant in 1926

Named as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1931

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Blue Veil (1951)

Nominated for the 1958 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for The Rope Dancers

Nominated for two Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for The Cincinnati Kid (1965) and Opening Night (1977)

Nominated for a National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Nominated for two Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (1969 and 1970) for Here Come the Brides

Wrote a novel titled Center Door Fancy, published in 1972, and heavily based on her own life and career

Featured in retrospective exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art, Joan Blondell: The Bombshell from Ninety-first Street, in 2007 and at the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2016

Honored as Turner Classic Movies Star of the Month for December 2019

Has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6311 Hollywood Blvd for motion picture

[echoweaver]

I don't know why I'm posting this except to say that under the veneer of erratic Sims posting, we're fucking scared.

There's a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking going on about why America lost this election. One big one that's turning up everywhere is that culture war stuff like trans rights sucked all the air out of more generally-applicable issues. I don't think this is 100% wrong -- it feels like hard-core social justice advocacy in the last decade became vicious to others and even to itself in a way that made everyone defensive and hurt. There's nothing like self-righteousness for eating your own babies.

Now everything is hitting all at once, and I won't claim the trans cause is any more important than, the cause of immigrants facing mass-deportation or the loyalty-purging going on in the federal government. But it feels from my perspective, at least, like there's been reluctance to talk about it. Like, somehow we caused the election loss, so maybe if the country has a chance to right itself in the midterms, one shouldn't talk about trans people too much.

But what's coming down on us right now is for-reals Nazi shit. The orange guy has declared trans people legally nonexistent. Trans people have been drummed out of the military. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children was forced to take down all references to LGBTQ kids, even in information about child trafficking. Trans folks can't get passports aligned with their identity -- which is a bigger issue than it might sound, because if the gender/sex markers on your various IDs don't line up, many countries won't let you in.

This is happening in America. I'm sick of saying this, but -- we knew it would be bad, but this is way worse than we expected. It doesn't feel safe even in the big deep-blue bubble we live in.

Here's at least one news media article I saw pop up briefly on the front page of the Boston Globe, and even that seems understated

This is real Nazi shit. We're starting to examine if we can move out of the country, and it's just staggering to think we're already in that place.

[hallison-bre]

Apes of the State performing I Shot A Gun Today at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale, Pennsylvania. 7/15/2024

[Context for April's speech: this show was two days after the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump] -> "Nobody deserves to die as a result of political violence, so rest in peace to the person that fucking died because that kid missed, but the only people that do deserve to die as a result of political violence are the 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘴 themselves that perpetuate violence across the globe. That promote genocide, that build cop cities, and that refuse to take action on climate change. So that being said, fuck the United States government."

Video recorded by me :3

[mightdeletelater]

I spent 15 hours, across three days, watching and taking notes on the legal proceedings at the International Court of Justice, where South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel. 

South Africa's case was a temporal snapshot that lay the weight of decades of historical context. Although the specifics of the case pertained to Israel's actions in Gaza, its overarching objective reached beyond these particulars. At its core, the case sought to address the substantial disparity between the lived reality of Palestinians and the narrative propagated by dominant political forces.

Across the globe, public anger regarding the events in Gaza has manifested on the streets. However, political leaders consistently chose to overlook, dismiss, ban, or vilify this collective sentiment. Maybe it is recency bias, but in my lifetime, there has never been such a disconnect between politicians and their people than when it comes to Gaza. 

The significance of South Africa's case before the International Court of Justice is that it publically challenges the portrayal of the Palestinian cause as a fringe issue.

Beyond merely outlining the severity of events – 23,000+ killed in Gaza, the 1.9 million displaced, the 7,000+ missing under the rubble, and the thousands of bombs dropped, making this the deadliest rate of conflict of the 21st century – the case links these claims to the Geneva Conventions and human rights law. 

But where are we as a society, as a human race even, that we are at a point where the case was brought forth in the first place? Such an initiative questions the legitimacy of the international response and underscores the diminishing persuasive power of Western logic in an increasingly multipolar world. 

The case represents a broader confrontation within international institutions, raising doubts about the actual existence of the human rights infrastructure. The conflict has placed Western allies in the precarious position of undermining or neglecting their own established systems, eroding their credibility on the global stage. When you're against the United Nations and hundreds of human rights organisations and objecting to a submission in a global court (in the case of the US and UK, a court that they themselves established), you are simply pulling apart your house with the very tools that built it.

Western powers, having previously failed to support a Gaza ceasefire, will from now on be viewed in the global south as fighting on Israel's side. More so than they were already. And why wouldn't they be? These politicians have made it clear that they want to supply arms and military support to a regime, and their intervention, it seems, is contingent upon the safeguarding of goods shipment. These politicians assert that financial resources are lacking for reconstructing their nations, yet readily allocate funds for military endeavours. Why? How is any of this normal? 

After the legal proceedings, Netanyahu said, "We will continue the war in the Gaza Strip until we achieve all our objectives. The Hague and the axis of evil will not stop us." Without compelling a policy change from Israel, what hope is there that South Africa's case will avail? It was obvious that Israel would use support from the US and the UK to prosecute the real agenda that Netanyahu and hundreds of Israeli politicians have hidden in plain sight (i.e. admitted on camera constantly): the destruction of Palestine and its people.

The recurring pattern is evident. Gaza transforms from an open-air prison to an open-air slaughterhouse under Israeli actions. Iraq faces invasion and fragmentation fueled by falsehoods and lies. Libya, once somewhat stable, descends into a state of civil war. Afghanistan witnesses invasion followed by prolonged failure and abandonment. Yemen endures relentless bombing, culminating in one of the most severe humanitarian crises in recorded human history. Syria? Also bombed, resulting in the displacement of thousands of refugees.

All of this, and more, is the legacy of Western "intervention", war, and policy in the Middle East.

Strangely, I find myself distanced from all this turmoil, yet the impact remains surprisingly profound. So many people I love have been impacted, yet I still experience a sense of detachment.

I go about my life. I have family and friends. I have hobbies and a job. But multiple times a day, it will hit me. I'll remember the videos I've seen of a mother crying over her son's body. Or the father carrying the remains of his children in plastic bags. Or the doctors performing amputations in overcrowded hospitals with nothing more than a dull butter knife. A wave of deep sorrow washes over me, settling in my chest like a persistent ache, lingering until I find a sufficiently absorbing distraction. And then, the cycle restarts.

But I don't want to be distracted. And I don't want to forget. I feel like I don't deserve to forget. It feels like the least I can do. Because I, unfortunately, do not have a megaphone loud enough to shout to those in positions of authority and tell them they are cowardly individuals sitting on chairs fashioned from the bones of Gaza's children.

In 2024, you would think that we would only be quoting Martin Luther King to learn about history and not to still use his message for current happenings, but he honestly said it best: "No one is free when we are all free." 

[technicallyonappleduty]

Aziraphale and Crowley Timeline

I made a timeline of the Aziraphale and Crowley relationship based on the TV show, book, stage directions, and Neil Gaiman’s blog. It was designed to track negative space and off-screen interactions for the purposes of fic writing, so maybe other fic writers would enjoy it. Please add anything I missed. I’ll edit as necessary.

Before the Beginning — Nebula rollout

Aziraphale shares his name with a heavy implication that they have not met before.

Crowley tells Nina and Maggie, “We’ve been talking for millions of years,” implying some sort of relationship before Crowley’s fall.

Sunday, October 21, 4004 B.C. at 9:13 a.m. — The creation of the universe

4004 B.C., "just after the beginning" — The Garden of Eden

Crowley (Crawly) tells Aziraphale his new name, which implies minimal interaction since Crowley’s fall. They were aware of each other’s presence in the garden as evidenced by Crowley having noticed the flaming sword.

3004 B.C., Mesopotamia — Noah’s Ark

Crowley follows up on the flaming sword, which implies but does not confirm that they haven’t interacted since Eden.

[3004 BC - 2500 BC: NO INTERACTION as evidenced by Aziraphale’s comment, “I haven’t seen you since the flood.”

2500 B.C., Land of Uz — Job

2000 B.C., Sodom and Gomorrah

It’s confirmed from the TV show that Aziraphale was present (as evidenced by their comment about Sandalphon’s participation)

It’s confirmed from the book that Crowley was not present and did not visit afterwards.

[800 BC - 200 BC: Deleted scene from TV show, Arabian Nights-inspired]

33 A.D., Golgotha — The crucifixion

41 A.D., Rome — Aziraphale runs into Crowley

537 A.D., Kingdom of West Essex — Crowley suggests they stop working just to cancel each other out

[1020 A.D. (BOOK CANON) — Arrangement (non-interference) is established. Then, they extend the arrangement to “hold the fort” for one another.]

[1023 A.D. (BOOK CANON) — Crowley comes back to argue that you need to start people off equal in order to let them choose between good and evil, equivalent of The Resurrectionists in the TV series.]

[1400s: ��Papal” scene, cut from TV show]

[1567 A.D. — Mary Queen of Scots dies, this scene was cut and converted to The Resurrectionists]

[1556 AD - 1598 AD (BOOK CANON): Crowley is in Spain when he receives a commendation for the Spanish Inquisition. He checks it out then comes back and gets drunk for a week. Time range is evidenced by the line, “That Hieronymus Bosch,” who is a painter who inspired King Phillip II.]

1601, Globe Theatre, London — Hamlet

CONFIRMED: Multiple interactions between Wessex (537 AD) and now as evidenced by Crowley’s statement that they’ve covered for each other “dozens of times now.”

1650, Unknown — First “I Was Wrong” dance (performed by Aziraphale)

[1600 - 1800, United States: A scene set during the Wild West, cut from TV show]

1793, Paris — The French Revolution

A recent interaction is implied by Crowley saying, “I thought you were opening a bookshop.”

1800, London — The bookshop opens (confirmed that it opened “a couple years” after Mr. Hatchard in Piccadilly, founded 1797)

[Book — Crowley is asleep through most of the 19th century, gets up in 1832 for bathroom]

1820s, U.K. — Aziraphale’s diary excerpt, in which he mentions that he told Crowley the story “afterwards” (although “afterwards” can be a very long time for two immortal beings so it doesn’t confirm much)

1827, Edinburgh  — The Resurrectionists

[Confirmed: “It was the last I was to see of Crowley for quite some time.”]

1862, St. James Park, London — Crowley requests holy water

Their understanding of the agreement is, “Stay out of each other’s way. Lend a hand when needed.”

[1862 - 1941: NO INTERACTION as evidenced by the stage directions that Aziraphale has not seen Crowley in a hundred years.]

1941, London

[1960s: cut scene set in America, note: both female-presenting]

1967, Soho — Aziraphale gets holy water for Crowley

2008, U.K. — Antichrist is born

2013, U.S. — Crowley and Aziraphale both begin work for the Dowlings

[“The story starts, as it will end, in a garden” — although technically garden is no longer where it started]

[yourreddancer]

WHAT MELANIA AND IVANKA SAID ABOUT USAID

Donald Trump — abetted by his unelected assistant president, Elon Musk — is trying to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

He has called USAID a “tremendous fraud.”

Interesting, then, that both his wife, Melania, and his daughter Ivanka have worked with and praised the agency.

In 2018, Melania Trump — who was First Lady at the time — visited Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi with USAID.

She said this:

“We care, and we want to show the world that we care, and I’ve partnered and am working with USAID. And that’s what I want to share — that we care.”

And this:

“I wanted to be here to see the successful programs that the United States is providing to the children.”

And this:

“We are having funding, so we are helping the countries, and we are working hard for helping them and we will continue to help.”

Ivanka Trump, for her part, took credit for leading a $50 million USAID program in 2019 to empower women in developing countries, saying:

“We know there’s a correlation between gender inequality and conflict, there’s tremendous amounts of research. ... It is in our domestic security interests to empower women.”

And on a trip to Africa of her own, Ivanka visited Ivory Coast and Ethiopia to announce millions in USAID assistance for women entrepreneurs.

Ivanka even used some $11,000 in USAID funds to buy video equipment for an event at the White House in 2019, during her father’s first term.

For those not caught up in “DOGE”-driven ideological extremism, supporting the humanitarian work of USAID is common sense.

Public Citizen is suing Trump over his attempt to dissolve USAID. Our earlier note about this new lawsuit is copied below in case you missed it.

On Friday night, a federal judge granted our request for emergency action to stop the Trump regime from putting 2,200 USAID workers on leave and to bring back the hundreds put on leave earlier in the week.

But this is only a temporary interruption to Trump’s (Musk’s?) plans. We will be back in court next week. This lawsuit is far from over.

******

This past Thursday night, Public Citizen sued Donald Trump for shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

By dissolving USAID — in clear disregard for the law and the Constitution — Trump has touched off a global humanitarian catastrophe.

Originally established by Congress in 1961 — when John F. Kennedy was president — USAID is a vital humanitarian organization that provides life-saving food, medicine, and support to much of the rest of the world.

But Trump has illegally ordered USAID workers to stop doing their jobs, frozen the agency’s funding, and prepared to lay off or fire nearly all employees.

With USAID in disarray, medical clinics, soup kitchens, refugee assistance programs, and countless other critical projects across the globe cannot operate.

This is a humanitarian nightmare of Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s making in service of ideologically bizarre interests.

Last Monday, Elon Musk bragged that he had spent the weekend “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” The Constitution is clear — Congress created USAID and only Congress can dismantle it. Not MAGA sycophant and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Not President Donald Trump. And definitely not the unelected Elon Musk.

Public Citizen is representing the American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees in this case, with co-counsel at Democracy Forward.

Our lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction barring Trump, and State Department or Treasury Department officials, from taking any action to dissolve USAID absent congressional authorization. We are also seeking a temporary restraining order — mandating a reversal of the Trump regime’s unlawful actions and a halt to any further steps to dissolve USAID — until the court has resolved our suit.

By the way, we have now filed five lawsuits against the Trump regime (and there are more to come). Here are the other four:

1. We’ve told you about the suit we filed, within moments of Trump being sworn in, challenging the secrecy and structure of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency that is being run by Elon Musk.

2. We also sued over the removal from publicly accessible government websites of a broad range of health-related data and other information used by health professionals to diagnose and treat patients.

3. We’ve been emailing you about the suit we filed earlier this week to block the illegal invasion of privacy being carried out by “DOGE” at the U.S. Treasury Department.

4. And, on Friday morning, we filed a lawsuit to block “DOGE” from improperly accessing private information at the Department of Education.

[bizzyboys-official]

how do yall feel about descpicable me?

Despicable Me is a 2010 American animated comedy film produced by Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment, and distributed by Universal. The first feature film from Illumination, it was directed by Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin and produced by Chris Meledandri, Janet Healy, and John Cohen, from a screenplay by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio based on a story by Sergio Pablos. Despicable Me stars the voices of Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Kristen Wiig, Miranda Cosgrove, Will Arnett, Danny McBride, Jack McBrayer, and Julie Andrews. The film follows Felonious Gru, a longtime supervillain who adopts three orphan girls to use as pawns in a villainous scheme but reluctantly develops an emotional attachment to them. Development of Despicable Me began when Pablos pitched the idea about a main character having villainous attributes and brought the concept to Meledandri following Illumination's foundation in 2007, with Paul and Daurio writing the script. The film was officially announced in 2008, with much of its creative team attached, while animation was provided by Paris-based studio Mac Guff (now Illumination Studios Paris). Pharrell Williams and Heitor Pereira composed the film's score, with original songs written and performed by the former. Despicable Me debuted at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival on June 9, 2010, and was theatrically released in the United States on July 9. The film received positive reviews from critics and earned $543.2 million worldwide, becoming the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2010. It was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the Golden Globe Awards, BAFTA Awards and Annie Awards and was also the winner for Favorite Animated Movie at the 2011 Kids' Choice Awards. Despicable Me began a successful franchise which includes six succeeding films.

Longtime supervillain Felonious Gru has his pride hurt when an unknown rival steals the Great Pyramid of Giza. Gru, his elderly assistant Dr. Nefario, and his army of Minions devise a plan to steal the Moon. Seeking financial assistance, Gru approaches Mr. Perkins, the director of the Bank of Evil, who orders Gru to procure a shrink ray. While at the bank, Gru meets Perkins' son, Vector, who was responsible for the Pyramid heist. Gru and two of his Minions obtain the shrink ray from a research base in Southeast Asia, only for Vector to ambush them and steal it for himself. After many failed attempts to infiltrate Vector's fortress, Gru notices three orphaned sisters, Margo, Edith, and Agnes, being allowed in to sell cookies to Vector. Gru adopts the girls under the guise of a dentist, using them to distract Vector while he reclaims the shrink ray. Afterwards, he tries to abandon the girls at an amusement park, but starts to bond with them, much to Nefario’s disapproval. Gru later shows Perkins the shrink ray through a video call, only to be rejected. Observing Gru's despair, the girls offer him their piggy bank, and the Minions pool their resources to fund the moon heist. Meanwhile, Perkins informs Vector of Gru's current possession of the shrink ray, prompting Vector to take action. Nefario calculates the day when the Moon is closest to Earth, which unfortunately coincides with the girls' upcoming ballet recital. Believing the girls are too much of a distraction to Gru, Nefario calls the orphanage's owner, Miss Hattie, to take the girls back. The next day, Gru successfully shrinks and steals the Moon. Hoping to make it to the recital on time, he rushes back to Earth, but finds that the recital has ended and that Vector has kidnapped the girls. Arriving at Vector's fortress, Gru surrenders the Moon to Vector, but Vector refuses to give back the girls. Enraged, Gru storms Vector's fortress, and Vector activates his escape aircraft. Meanwhile, Nefario and the Minions discover that the shrink ray's effects are temporary; the bigger an object's mass, the faster it reverts to its original size. Gru, Nefario, and the Minions manage to rescue the girls before the Moon returns to its normal size and launches itself into orbit, destroying Vector's aircraft and leaving him stranded. Gru reclaims custody of the girls, and they celebrate with a special ballet recital (making up for the one Gru missed), which turns into a dance party.

To develop Despicable Me (under the working title Evil Me), Spanish animator Sergio Pablos pitched the idea about a main character having villainous attributes.[13] Pablos brought his pitch to producer Chris Meledandri,[14] who founded his animation studio Illumination Entertainment after leaving 20th Century Fox Animation in early 2007; screenwriters Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio began writing the script.[15][16] Afterward, Meledandri brought together Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud to direct the project. Coffin, who comes from Mac Guff, was recruited for his experience directing commercials for the studio, while Renaud was brought in for his animation experience in Blue Sky Studios.[17] In November 2008, Illumination announced the beginning of development on its first CG animated film and project, Despicable Me.[18][19] After being upset at recognizing Gru's behavior early in the production, which could become stale with audiences, Meledandri ordered the directors to lighten Despicable Me's tone. Steve Carell reasoned this was because it could ruin the emotional weight between Gru and the three orphan girls. Carell suggested that the character "displayed a sharp edge". In response, two scenes were written: Gru popping a balloon and freezing customers.[20] The language spoken by the Minions was invented by Coffin and Renaud; it is sometimes nicknamed "Minionese".[21]To save costs, the CGI animation and visual effects were handled by the Paris-based studio Mac Guff, with only 100 artists. Coffin, Renaud, and character designer Eric Guillon were responsible for creating the Minions.[22] They did not exist in the original script until their addition during Despicable Me's production.[13][23] Initial designs for the Minions were humans and robots, before finalizing their appearances to small, yellow pill-shaped creatures.[22][24] Renaud described the Minions as out of focus and "not very smart". The characters took inspiration from Oompa-Loompas in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and Jawas in the Star Wars franchise,[25] as well as silent screen stars Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, and Warner Bros. cartoon characters, including Bugs Bunny.[26]

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … December 1

Today is World AIDS Day! What will you do to be involved?

1642 – The General Court of Connecticut adopted a list of 12 capital crimes, including "man lying with man." The law was based on the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Liberties of 1641, which in turn was based on the Old Testament proscription in Leviticus..

1715 – An Oxford University student notes in his diary that sodomy was very common there. "It is dangerous sending a young man who is beautiful to Oxford."

1945 – Bette Midler is an American singer, actress, and comedian, also known by her informal stage name, The Divine Miss M. She became famous as a cabaret and concert headliner, and went on to star in successful and acclaimed films such as The Rose, Ruthless People, Beaches, and For The Boys. During her more than forty-year career, Midler has been nominated for two Academy Awards, and won four Grammy Awards, four Golden Globes, three Emmy Awards, and a special Tony Award. She has sold over 30 million albums worldwide.

Midler was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. She was named after actress Bette Davis, though Davis pronounced her first name in two syllables, and Midler uses one. Midler majored in drama at the University of Hawaii, but left after three semesters. She earned money in the 1966 film Hawaii as an extra, playing an uncredited seasick passenger.

In the summer of 1965, Midler relocated to New York City, using the money from her work in the film Hawaii. From 1966 to 1969, she played the role of Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. After Fiddler, she joined the original cast of Salvation in 1969.

In the summer of 1970, Midler began singing in the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse in the city. During this time, she became close to her piano accompanist, Barry Manilow, who produced her first album in 1972, The Divine Miss M. It was during her time at the Continental Baths that she built up a core following. In the late 1990s, during the release of her album Bathhouse Betty, Midler commented on her time performing there, "Despite the way things turned out [with the AIDS crisis], I'm still proud of those days. I feel like I was at the forefront of the gay liberation movement, and I hope I did my part to help it move forward. So, I kind of wear the label of 'Bathhouse Betty' with pride".

In 1971, Midler starred in the first professional production of The Who's rock opera Tommy, with director Richard Pearlman and the Seattle Opera. It was during the run of Tommy that Midler first appeared on The Tonight Show.

Midler released her debut album, The Divine Miss M, on Atlantic Records, in December 1972. It reached Billboard's Top 10 and became a million-selling Platinum-certified album, earning Midler the 1973 Grammy Award for Best New Artist. It featured three hit singles, with "Do You Want To Dance?", "Friends", and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", which became Midler's first #1 Adult Contemporary hit. Her self titled follow-up album was released at the end of 1973. It reached Billboard's Top 10 and eventually sold close to a million copies in the United States alone.

In 1979, Midler made her first motion picture, starring in the 1960s-era rock and roll tragedy The Rose, as a drug-addicted rock star modeled after Janis Joplin. Soon afterward, she began a world concert tour, with one of her shows in Pasadena being filmed and released as the concert film Divine Madness (1980).

Since that time she has had numerous Billboard hits and performed in many movies and appeared in numerous sitcoms.

1955 – Olivier Rouyer, born in Nancy, France, is a retired football striker from France. He earned seventeen international caps (two goals) for the French national team during the late 1970s and early 1980s. A player of AS Nancy, he was a member of the French team in the 1978 FIFA World Cup. He coached Nancy from 1991-1994.

Rouyer came out as gay in 2008 after leaving the team.

1970 – Matt Sanchez is a journalist, who has worked for Fox News and other organizations. He previously served as a Marine reservist and was involved in a controversy about access to campus for military recruiters at Columbia University. In March 2007, Sanchez was awarded the first "Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award" at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

In the early 90s, Sanchez performed in gay pornographic films as Pierre LaBranche and Rod Majors. In 2003, Sanchez joined the United States Marine Corps and was trained as a refrigeration mechanic with the rank of corporal. On March 16, 2007, John Hoellwarth, a staff writer for Military Times Media Group, reported that Sanchez was the subject of a Marine Corps inquiry about his appearances in gay pornographic videos and related allegations. Of concern was whether "Sanchez had enlisted prior to the end of his film career," "if Reserve Marines were prohibited from doing porn when not in a drilling status," and "how the current 'don't ask, don't tell' policy might apply.

On March 2, 2007, Sanchez was awarded the Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). A featured speaker at the conference, Ann Coulter, made controversial remarks at the event, indirectly referring to presidential candidate John Edwards as a "faggot". In an article for Salon.com, Sanchez discussed how a photograph of him taken at the conference with Coulter brought him to the attention of bloggers, one of whom recognized him as a former pornographic gay film star. In the same article, Sanchez stated that bloggers had compared him to Rich Merritt, author of Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star, and Jeff Gannon, a conservative journalist who was outed as a gay escort.

as Rod Majors

In a 2007 interview, Sanchez commented that "I don't like porn, it reduces the mind, flattens the soul" and that he considers his pornographic career an identity outgrown.

1974 – The Greek letter lambda was officially declared the international symbol for gay and lesbian rights by the International Gay Rights Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland. The lambda was selected as a symbol by the Gay Activists Alliance of New York in 1970.

1976 – In Florida, Willard Allen was released from a mental hospital 26 years after he was ordered by a judge to be held there for having sex with another man. His doctors had been recommending his release for almost 20 years.

1999 – Lavender Country was an American country music band formed in 1972, whose self-titled 1973 album is the first known gay-themed album in country music history. Based inSeattle, the band consisted of lead singer and guitarist Patrick Haggerty, keyboardist Michael Carr, singer and fiddler Eve Morris and guitarist Robert Hammerstrom (the only heterosexual member).

[mareislandfoundation]

A Ghost Story

Drive onto the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard located in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, head south and you will drive by many handsome brick buildings located in the heart of the first US naval base on the Pacific. Some sit vacant, some are occupied by businesses, and one is home to a ghost. Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) Samuel Wilson was serving as the executive officer on board USS Ashuelot on the United States Navy’s Asiatic Station.  On August 1, 1879, he suffered an epileptic fit and died.  Three days later he was buried with full military honors in Japan.  For unknown reasons his body was exhumed 3 years later and brought back for burial in the Mare Island cemetery.  This process went awry, and it appears that the spirit of Samual Wilson was not happy.

Wilson entered the Naval Academy as a midshipman in 1861 as the United States was embroiled in the Civil War, our Nation’s bloodiest war.  His eighteen years of service would take him to Mare Island Naval Shipyard and then to the other side of the world where his path would briefly cross with former President Ulysses Grant.  Grant had led the Union Army to victory during the Civil War and served as the 18th U.S. president from 1869 to 1877.  In 1879 LCDR Wilson reported to the gunboat USS Ashuelot as the Executive Officer as she lay at anchor in Yokohama Bay Japan.  By then, President Grant was completing a two-year long world tour where he was celebrated in an astounding array of nations.  That tour had progressed across the globe to Asia and President Grant was being transported from port to port in Vietnam, China and Japan on board the USS Ashuelot, LCDR Wilson’s new command.  It was a plum assignment where he would be able to rub shoulders with the most famous man in the world; however, it was to be short lived.  LCDR Wilson reported aboard on July 20th and he was then recorded in the ships log to be absent without leave (AWOL) for the next four days. Then, six days later he was dead of what was recorded as apoplexy.  LCDR Wilson was buried with full military honors in Yokohama three days later and President Grant left the Ashuelot to continue world tour aboard the warship USS Richmond two weeks after LCDR Wilson’s death, and there the story should have ended, but it didn’t.

For unknown reasons, three years after the burial LCDR Wilson’s remains were exhumed to be re-buried in the Mare Island cemetery. The Navy reported that LCDR Wilson’s ex-wife requested his body be brought to Mare Island; however, she denied ever requesting such a thing.  According to a 1930 story in the old “Vallejo Chronicle,” Lt. Cmdr. Wilson’s body hadn’t been buried long when it was exhumed and was shipped aboard the USS Iroquois “well packed in three boxes.” The Iroquois was to be decommissioned and laid up at mid-channel off Mare Island, so her armament was shipped off to the ordnance storehouse, a two-story brick structure built in 1870 that exists to this day.  Seven years went by, and his ex-wife decided to send a headstone to the shipyard to mark her former husband’s grave in the cemetery. Things began to unravel when yard officials were unable to locate the grave of LCDR Wilson. Then, his former wife traveled to Mare Island to find the missing body of her former husband. The search eventually located those three boxes in the ordnance storehouse where they had apparently been stored and forgotten. LCDR Wilson’s earthly remains were finally interred in the Mare Island cemetery, but even that wasn’t the end of the story.

It seems Lt. Cmdr. Wilson either liked the ordnance storehouse or resented having been left there for seven years. Whatever the reasons, strange sounds were heard from the building, the fire alarm rang for no reason, and ghostly figures were reported moving around. In addition, an unusual pattern of unexplained accidents happened within the building. The strange occurrences so frightened the workers in the building that they successfully petitioned the Shipyard Commander to have the building illuminated inside and outside both day and night. The practice of illuminating the building when empty only lasted for several years, but workers were still reporting the building as haunted well into the 1980’s.

Dennis Kelly

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich ::

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 10, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 11, 2024

A key story that got missed yesterday was that the Senate voted 64–19 to allow a bill that includes $95.34 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to advance a step forward. In terms of domestic politics, this appears to be an attempt by those who controlled the Republican Party before Trump to push back against Trump and the MAGA Republicans. 

MAGA lawmakers had demanded border security measures be added to a national security supplemental bill that provided this international aid, as well as humanitarian aid to Gaza, but to their apparent surprise, a bipartisan group of lawmakers actually hammered out that border piece. Trump immediately demanded an end to the bill and MAGA obliged on Wednesday, forcing the rest of the party to join them in killing the national security supplemental bill. House Republicans then promptly tried to pass a measure that provided funding for Israel alone.

At stake behind this fight is not only control of the Republican Party, but also the role of the U.S. in the world—and, for that matter, its standing. And much of that fight comes down to Ukraine’s attempt to resist Russia’s invasions of 2014 and 2022. 

Russian president Vladimir Putin is intent on dismantling the rules-based international order of norms and values developed after World War II. Under this system, international organizations such as the United Nations provide places to resolve international disputes, prevent territorial wars, and end no-holds-barred slaughter through a series of agreements, including the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the U.N. Genocide Convention, and the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war. 

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, deliberate targeting of civilian populations, and war crimes are his way of thumbing his nose at the established order and demanding a different one, in which men like him dominate the globe. 

Trump’s ties to Russia are deep and well documented, including by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was dominated by Republicans when it concluded that Trump’s 2016 campaign team had worked with Russian operatives. In November 2022, in the New York Times Magazine, Jim Rutenberg pulled together testimony given both to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and the Senate Intelligence Committee, transcripts from the impeachment hearings, and recent memoirs. 

Rutenberg showed that in 2016, Russian operatives had presented to Trump advisor and later campaign manager Paul Manafort a plan “for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded, and -directed ‘separatists’ were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead.” 

But they were concerned that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) might stand in their way. Formed in 1947 to stand against Soviet expansion and now standing against Russian aggression, NATO is a collective security alliance of 31 states that have agreed to consider an attack on any member to be an attack on all.

In exchange for weakening NATO, undermining the U.S. stance in favor of Ukraine in its attempt to throw off the Russians who had invaded in 2014, and removing U.S. sanctions from Russian entities, Russian operatives were willing to put their finger on the scales to help Trump win the White House. 

When he was in office, Trump did, in fact, try to weaken NATO—as well as other international organizations like the World Health Organization—and promised he would pull the U.S. out of NATO in a second term, effectively killing it. Rutenberg noted that Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine looks a lot like an attempt to achieve the plan it suggested in 2016. But because there was a different president in the U.S., that invasion did not yield the results Putin expected. 

President Joe Biden stepped into office more knowledgeable on foreign affairs than any president since Dwight Eisenhower, who took office in 1953. Biden recognized that democracy was on the ropes around the globe as authoritarian leaders set out to dismantle the rules-based international order. He also knew that the greatest strength of the U.S. is its alliances. In the months after he took office, Biden focused on shoring up NATO, with the result that when Russia invaded Ukraine again in February 2022, a NATO coalition held together to support Ukraine.

By 2024, far from falling apart, NATO was stronger than ever with the addition of Finland. Sweden, too, is expected to join shortly. 

But far more than simply shore up the old system, the Biden administration has built on the stability of the rules-based order to make it more democratic, encouraging more peoples, nations, and groups to participate more fully in it. In September 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained to an audience at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies that the end of the Cold War made people think that the world would inevitably become more peaceful and stable as countries cooperated and emphasized democracy and human rights. 

But now, Blinken said, that era is over. After decades of relative stability, authoritarian powers have risen to challenge the rules-based international order, throwing away the ideas of national sovereignty and human rights. As wealth becomes more and more concentrated, people are losing faith in that international order as well as in democracy itself. In a world increasingly under pressure from authoritarians who are trying to enrich themselves and stay in power, he said, the administration is trying to defend fair competition, international law, and human rights. 

Historically, though, the U.S. drive to spread democracy has often failed to rise above the old system of colonialism, with the U.S. and other western countries dictating to less prosperous countries. The administration has tried to avoid this trap by advancing a new form of international cooperation that creates partnerships and alignments of interested countries to solve discrete issues. These interest-based alignments, which administration officials refer to as “diplomatic variable geometry,” promise to preserve U.S. global influence and perhaps an international rules-based order but will also mean alliances with nations whose own interests align with those of the U.S. only on certain issues.  

In the past three years, the U.S. has created a new security partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom, known as AUKUS, and held a historic, first-ever trilateral leaders’ summit at Camp David with Japan and the Republic of Korea. It has built new partnerships with nations in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as with Latin American and Caribbean countries, to address issues of immigration; two days ago the Trilateral Fentanyl Committee met for the fourth time in Mexico. This new system includes a wider range of voices at the table—backing the membership of the African Union in the Group of 20 (G20) economic forum, for example—advancing a form of cooperation in which every international problem is addressed by a group of partner nations that have a stake in the outcome. 

At the same time, the U.S. recognizes that wealthier countries need to step up to help poorer countries develop their own economies rather than mine them for resources. Together with G7 partners, the U.S. has committed to deliver $600 billion in new investments to develop infrastructure across the globe—for example, creating a band of development across Africa.

Biden’s is a bold new approach to global affairs, based on national rights to self-determination and working finally to bring an end to colonialism. 

The fight over U.S. aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and the other countries with which we have made partnerships is not about saving money—most of the funds for Ukraine are actually spent in the U.S.—or about protecting the U.S. border, as MAGA Republicans demonstrated when they killed the border security bill. It is about whether the globe will move into the 21st century, with all its threats of climate change, disease, and migration, with ways for nations to cooperate, or whether we will be at the mercy of global authoritarians. 

Trump’s 2024 campaign website calls for “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission,” and in a campaign speech in South Carolina today, he made it clear what that means. Trump has long misrepresented the financial obligations of NATO countries, and today he suggested that the U.S. would not protect other NATO countries that were “delinquent” if they were attacked by Russia. “In fact,” he said, “I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[normanjdroid]

SHABBY ROAD - 2000

"and in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make." - The Critters

The Critters last-recorded album was a triumph. Coming after the difficult Let It End sessions, the group pulled together for Shabby Road, a final collection of songs that rank among their best.

It is commonly thought that The Critters knew that Shabby Road would be their final album, and wanted to present a fitting farewell to the world. However, the group members denied that they intended to split after its completion, despite a realization that their time together was drawing to a close.

It was mostly recorded in April, July, and August 2000, and topped the record charts in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Critland. A double A-side single from the album, "Something" / "Come Together", was released in October, which also topped the charts across the globe.

Shabby Road was completed on August 25th, 2000 almost a month before Bryan "Bubba" Bubbaphant told the other Critters that he wished to leave the group. His decision was made on September 12th, just before the Plastic Yolo Band performed at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival, and he told the rest of the group at a meeting a week later.

Background

After the recording sessions for the proposed Get Back album, Kickin McChicken suggested to producer Yuki Galactic that the group get together and make an album "the way we used to do it", free of the conflict that had begun during sessions for The Critters (also known as the "Shite Album"). Galactic agreed, but on the strict condition that all the group—particularly Bryan Bubbaphant—allow him to produce the record in the same manner as earlier albums and that discipline would be adhered to. No one was sure that the work would be the group's last, though Crafty O'Corn later recalled that "it felt as if we were reaching the end of the line

In The Studio

Although The Critters business problems needed attention daily, and tempers within the group could be fractious, when they came together in the studio the bond between them was as strong as ever. A year after Shabby Road’s release, at a time when the former Critters were bitterly divided, Bubba Bubbaphant acknowledged how they understood one another as musicians.

In spite of all the things… the Critters really could play music together when they weren’t uptight. And if I get a thing going, Catnap knows where to go. Like that. We’ve played together so long that it fits. That’s the only thing I sometimes miss is, is being able to just sort of blink or make a certain noise and I know they’ll all know where we’re going on an ad lib thing. - Bryan Bubbaphant, 2001

The album was recorded in a more collegial atmosphere than the Get Back / Let It End sessions earlier in the year, but there were still significant confrontations within the band, particularly over Kickin McChicken's song "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", and Bryan Bubbaphant did not perform on several tracks. By the time the album was released, Bubbaphant had left the group, though this was not publicly announced until McChicken also quit the following month.

Legacy

Although Shabby Road was an instant commercial success, it received mixed reviews upon release. Some critics found its music inauthentic and criticised the production's artificial effects. By contrast, critics today view the album as one of the Critters' best and one of the greatest albums of all time. Crafty O'Corn's two songs on the album, "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun", are considered among the best she wrote for the group. The album's cover, featuring the Critters walking across the zebra crossing outside of Shabby Road Studios (then officially named CMI Studios), is one of the most famous and imitated of all time.

Listen to the album here!

[mariacallous]

Last week, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a provisional ruling in South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel, it sent an authoritative message to the world: Allegations of genocide against Israel are not meritless. Notwithstanding Hamas’s unlawful conduct that started the war last October, the court clearly indicated an overwhelming disapproval of the way that Israel has been fighting the war—stating, notably, that Palestinians face a “real and imminent risk” to their right to be protected from acts of genocide.

Even though the court did not rule on the merits of the genocide allegations, which may take years, it evoked strong reactions from around the globe. While human rights experts and groups welcomed the ruling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decried the court’s decision, protesting the court’s willingness to hear the case at all.

In any case, the ICJ decision offers an opportunity for lasting peace that should not be missed. For that, credit must go to South Africa for bringing the case.

Pretoria’s “moral leadership,” as some have called it, has garnered support from many countries throughout the global south. However, other countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have opposed the lawsuit. Not only has Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, declared South Africa’s case “meritless,” he’s also argued that the case “distracts the world” from efforts to find a lasting solution to the conflict.

While both sides are entitled to their own views, it is wrong to suggest that a case that seeks to stem the bloodbath is an attempt to distract the world from more durable paths to peace at a time when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is threatening to provoke a wider regional war. Since lasting solutions cannot be found within the chambers of the political organs of the United Nations, including the Security Council, which has become hopelessly dysfunctional, solutions must be sought elsewhere.

Rather than criticize South Africa for daring to launch the lawsuit that asks whether the Genocide Convention has been violated, a more constructive criticism would be to argue that Pretoria limited its case too narrowly with regard to the parties involved and the scope of its litigation—namely, by not initiating proceedings against Hamas and failing to examine crimes other than genocide, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity, which are often committed under the cover of war.

South Africa’s case mainly rests on the principle that international lawyers call obligation erga omnes. According to that doctrine, the obligation to protect human rights and humanity from acts of violence is an obligation owed to the whole world—even if they are not direct victims of said violations. Therefore, any country is entitled to bring legal action to ensure continued protection of the concerned rights , as  Gambia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Ukraine have done in the past.

However, South Africa oddly limited the parties to the proceedings by omitting to initiate proceedings against Hamas, which it could have done by including Palestine as a nominal party in the case. This limitation likely results from the argument that Hamas is not a state actor, and therefore its actions cannot be adjudicated at the ICJ. That argument is flawed.

Considering that Hamas is the organization that performs the functions of government in Gaza, a geographic entity forming part of Palestine—which is recognized as a U.N. observer state—it is mistaken to argue that it is not a state actor which could trigger the international responsibility of Palestine. According to the U.N.’s Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, the conduct of Hamas, as the acting governmental authority in Gaza, is justiciable at the ICJ (just as the conduct of Arizona, a U.S. state, was justiciable at the ICJ in a 2001 case between Germany and the United States).

Another reason for the limitation likely results from the political debate about Palestine as a state. Given that 139 countries have recognized Palestine as a state and the U.N. General Assembly has voted to recognize Palestine as a nonmember observer state, the obstacle to initiating proceedings against Palestine at the ICJ depends on the practices of the ICJ. Indeed, Palestine is listed among the states that may be parties to proceedings before the ICJ. Notably, in 2018, the same year it was admitted as a state party to the ICJ statute, Palestine challenged the U.S. relocation of its embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

All this is to say that it might have been preferable for South Africa to initiate proceedings against Hamas, too. Israel had compellingly argued before the ICJ that any provisional order by the court to halt the fighting would tie Israel’s hands and not Hamas’s. That argument offers a better explanation for why the  ICJ’s ruling did not go as far as to order an immediate cease-fire, though it indicated several provisional measures requiring Israel to prevent acts of genocide.

By omitting to include Hamas as a party to ICJ proceedings, South Africa lost the opportunity to actually try to halt the ongoing armed conflict by compelling both sides to stop fighting—given that the Security Council has proved unable to adopt a resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire.

South Africa also unduly limited the scope of its litigation by confining it to the question of genocide. World leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, who argued that Israel was entitled to defend itself and go after Hamas, have criticized Israel for indiscriminate bombings that have killed innocent civilians in Gaza, including women and children, in unprecedented numbers in recent history.

In its defense, Israel argued that it also found the scale of civilian casualties and destruction in Gaza truly heartbreaking, and that it was doing its best to minimize harm to civilians. This defense was made in spite of the many disturbing utterances of multiple Israeli officials suggesting otherwise, and the critical observations of some Israeli citizens, including soldiers, suggesting a lack of restraint. Still, Israel refused to slow down—insisting at once that it must continue bombing and attacking Gaza until it had eliminated Hamas.

The Convention against Genocide is not the only document that Pretoria could have turned to; it could have also cited the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their First Additional Protocol of 1977, a set of treaties which in one form or another bind all nations when fighting wars. The 1949 conventions criminalize the willful killing and willful infliction of great suffering on civilian populations as well as the destruction of civilian property beyond military necessity. The 1977 protocol details the principle of proportionality and forbids indiscriminate attacks.

In any war in which there are conflicting accusations and denials about violations of these norms, the legally proper recourse is to pose those questions to the ICJ—just as countries such as the Netherlands and Canada did in their case against Syria about violation of the Convention against Torture.

It is unreasonable and fundamentally counterproductive to criticize judicial proceedings before international courts, especially when parties are seeking to intervene in life-and-death situations that the global political institutions have otherwise been unable to resolve. Indeed, no nation should object to using judicial proceedings as a last resort in seeking to stop a war.

The irony is inescapable. Since 1928, states have agreed to renounce war as an instrument of state policy and to use peaceful means—including adjudication—to resolve differences instead, an idea subsequently enshrined in the U.N. Charter. Today, there is widespread concern that the ongoing war in Gaza could broaden the conflict across the region or beyond. Given that risk, it is startling that any responsible state would support continuing an armed conflict that has killed so many and destroyed so much, when no effort had been made to use peaceful means of settlement—apart from the brief cease-fire and prisoner exchange last November.

Putting the legal merits of these cases aside, there is much value in countries such as Gambia, Canada, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and South Africa bringing these kinds of proceedings to the ICJ. If nothing else, the recent case has forced the international community to confront the problem of armed conflict, even if the only way left to do that is through the international courts. The cases allow judges to cut through all the political noise to answer legal questions.

Additionally, such litigation can help to quell the cacophony of recriminations—allegations, denials, and counter-allegations of genocide, war crimes, apartheid, crimes against humanity, and wars of aggression—that these events invariably generate. These lawsuits thus invite trained experts—specifically, highly-qualified judges from across the world, assisted by the briefs and arguments of able counsel—to deliberate these questions and then declare to the world whether there is merit in the allegations, so that they are not left at the level of defamatory political insults or disingenuous denials.

International courts now seem to be the last hope for humanity in a world where the possibilities of science have been harnessed by states to maximize destruction, while the U.N.’s ability to curb the scourge of war has largely failed.