#obamas last name
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Peter: Hey Mr. Stark, what's your last name? Tony:… Peter: Tony: Peter: Tony: I don’t know who’s stupider, you for asking that, or me, for actually thinking about it Rhodes: both of you are equally stupid.
#theyre idiots#but i love them#inspired by that one thing#'whats obamas last name?'#tony stark#peter parker#the avengers#rhodey
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I don't know... horrible things happen all around the world and it's not a competition
Atrocities are committed against multiple groups in multiple parts of the world at the exact same moment, and none of them erase each other. They all matter, all the people in this world who are being brutalized matter. There shouldn't be any line you draw where one group doesn't actually matter as much as another
You're welcome to prioritize your energy towards helping one group or another, but what's not ok is invalidating or dismissing people who are actively being harmed
Same goes for trying to figure out which social group has things worst (and lets be honest, always using a US lens)
Like... maybe the important thing is to prop each other up and help everyone get on their own feet rather than trying to... pick fights about if physical disabilities or mental illness are less respected (I'm trying to pick a more absurd example but sadly I've seen exactly that argument happen before). Maybe it doesn't really matter and what matters is helping who we can when we can
I'm tired of it, I'm just fucking tired of it. Support people, champion them when the world is just brutalizing them, but you don't need to throw a single other person under the bus to do that
Which seems to be an absolutely impossible lesson for people to learn
#I won't say anything else on this; but I will say that to me one of the groups that it feels like is most forgotten is Syrians#including by me if I'm honest#I don't know what's currently happening in Syria... but... my understanding is it still hasn't really gotten better#assad is still brutalizing people last I had heard#so rather than saying anything else I'd prefer to simply focus on some people it feels like were forgotten back during Obama#and... and have remained forgotten#and I'm sorry I can't do more to help with the suffering in the world#but... you notice what I'm not having to do here?#I'm not having to throw a single other person under the bus#I'm able to just focus on how much I wish for Syrians to be ok (which is a hollow gesture on my part in many ways I think)#and I can keep all the focus on Syrians rather than throwing anyone else under the bus or doing any whataboutism#and that's literally all I'm asking of you fucking people#don't downplay human misery to try and make your thing seem more important#they're both fucking important... they're all important#there's so much suffering I can't even keep up with it#there's so much of it that I can only name without knowing the details; Congo; I believe Sudan is still suffering; Haiti#I don't know how things are in Ethiopia right now... I can't keep track#and none of these situations and the horrible things they're dealing with; things I haven't even been able to follow#none of it detracts from and of the issues I am following more closely#I don't need to compare them and say 'well it's not as bad'; because... bad is bad and any is too much#and nothing I say here will do a damn thing; no one'll hear and even if they did they'd ignore it or get pissed#that's what my evidence shows me about how people behave#but suffering isn't a competition; the correct amount is zero#and... perhaps I'd have more tolerance if I hadn't watched how you behave with stuff#...the worst part is the person I adore who... man... I wish I could just get them to really think through their words#they mean well; they're coming from a place of love; but I just haven't been able to paint the picture for them of the harm#and I'm flawed; I don't have all the answers; I could be wrong here#but... can you at least see why I feel that maybe we shouldn't pit misery against each other#that the people suffering have more in common with each other than opposed and... maybe westerners aren't fucking helping#eh... too fucking drained thinking about this; end of tags
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blonney: oh, my girlfriend? she's perfect.
jessica in the distance: jennifer, what's obama's last name?
NOOOOOOO
JAJSJAJAJ
Blonney is totally the type of girlfriend to presume her lover to the world like she's the best, camera cuts to her girlfriend having a deep emotional conversation with a tree.
She's very in love with Jessica, and who can blame her, but she's not that oblivious to her girlfriend's obvious... Silliness
"Jennifer, can I eat the cactus critters?"
"Please stay as far away from them as possible."
There's never a short stack of dumb questions coming from Jessica, sometimes they're not so dumb, other times they're not so smart.
Yeah Blonney is not only her girlfriend but also her common sense.
Thankfully Jessica values Blonney's opinion, so many things have gotten uneaten thanks to this. Critters included.
#Defining Sanity#I have to admit that I also didn't know that Obama was his last name#and found myself stupidly asking that exact same question#Wish i had a Blonney#would have saved me from my stupid moments 😓#and my offensive amount of misspelled words
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If I have one piece of advice when it comes to your personal but professional email is to recognize that it is going to be your personal but professional email sooner than i did and never ever give it away freely
And never. EVER. give it to a politician
#i made the choice during obamas first run for president to give it to the dnc for some fucking reason#and now i forget to check it for 2 days and i have to delete 300 fucking ebegging emails from them#crap#man me from 16 years ago was am idiot and also oh my god how have i had the same email for over 16 years#by personal but professional i mean the one yu use to like. apply for jobs#god i hope you kids arent out there trying to apply for jobs with emails like sparklepirexoxo69 or blorbofor3v4r or whatever#hopefully you know youre best sticking to first name or initial last name maybe a middle name or something if its a common name#it doesnt even help to mark every fucking one as spam and unsubscribe theyre like a goddamn hydra
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getting vibes of teacher saying your name wrong and then everyone bullies you about it. my man luis manuel most iconic hispanic singer of all time
HAAHHAHAHAHWGRGAHSHAHSHEHS MB OG 🔥🔥🔥
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i have a terrible habit of not using references when im drawing. to remedy this, i've made one of my own. observe my favourite freaky flowerman
#no need for notes under the cut because they're all in the actual image#itd be really fun to make these for all of the others (that i like. sorry obama you're just a jpeg to me)#maybe ill do that. who knows#rtgame miitopia#the standard galactic just says 'magical johnathan' btw theres nothing interesting going on there. just his full name#first name magical last name johnathan#well. magical is more a title than a first name if we're being pedantic but the joke was right there#johnathan no last name given#asher scribbles
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Guess what this is!
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Damn, they ATM machined that man v.v
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LMAO ANYWAYS
Last name politicians
Trump
DeSantis
Haley
Biden
Warren
Klobuchar
First name politicians
Kamala
Bernie
Pete
Hillary
Jeb
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Y’all even notice how absentmindedly sexist we are when in comes to politics? My sister who’s a big writer and reader read some article about how people seem to call female people in politics by there first name and their male counterparts by there last name. I mean obviously we don’t see that in official things, but it’s still wild to realize people cal vice president Harris Kamala and call former president Trump, well, Trump. Hilary Clinton was always Hilary, but Donald and Joe were always Trump and Biden. So all this to say, my family started saying the opposite of that on purpose. Meaning we say Donald or Joe when referring to them, and vice president Harris when referring to the woman herself.
#I just thought this was funny and we should all start doing it#also there’s literally memes made after this#like the whole#what’s obamas last name joke#anyways alls to say#start calling her vice president Harris and calling Donald Donald#also sorry this is kinda random
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Stolen from an internet comment:
I mean think about it. Republicans got the endorsement of almost nobody. Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan were their front runners. Vance’s approval rating was like 30%. They had so many people vocally against them from media to celebrities to public figures.
Then in swoops the richest guy in the world who goes full bananas MAGA and puts his entire reputation on the line for Trump’s promise of a seat in the White House. Why risk it all unless you knew that promise was going to happen?
Why did Trump routinely say to not bother voting because they had all the votes? Why did Trump insist the only way Dems would win is if they cheated, is it because he knew he rigged it already so literally the only way Harris could win is if she somehow cheated and undid/redid the rigging? What was the “little secret”? Why did it seem like nobody on Trump’s team was excited to win and they took the stage like nothing happened, is it because they knew it was going to happen? How did states like Florida get called almost instantaneously? Why were there numerous bomb threats from Russia at only heavily Democratic polling stations? Why was there numerous reports of tabulators malfunctioning at only heavily Democratic polling stations? Why was every single person who has accurately predicted elections over the last 5-10-15-20+ years wrong? Not one or two, all of them were wrong, how?
How is it that none of the heinous stuff Trump did matter? Jan 6, felonies, racism, misogyny, questioning when Harris turned black in front of a room of black people, threatening to jail or kill people that didn’t support him, calling Puerto Ricans garbage, calling the military losers and suckers, saying Haitian immigrants are eating dogs, I mean you name it. How can he do all of the stuff over the last 4 years that would have sunk any politician’s career dead in the water and yet he gained supporters from literally everywhere?
How does sentiment analysis show Democrats with the highest voter enthusiasm and engagement since Obama and yet deliver an absolute abysmal showing in the election? How does Harris/Walz sellout enormous stadiums multiple times a day all over the country while Trump can barely fill a 2,000 seat auditorium, yet that translates into not even winning the popular vote?
Maybe they didn’t cheat. But you ask yourself the above questions and you really start to wonder if they did…
#us politics#us polls#vote democratic#vote democrat#democratic party#democracy#election 2024#us elections#presidential election#election day#election fraud#vote blue#vote harris#vote kamala#fuck the republikkkans#republicans#republican
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gigaobama vs anakin skywalker who will win
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HSR Characters I think would be attracted to Morons aka Moronsexual
These are all my headcanons. I mostly think these are funny and I was thinking about the Dan Heng fic I wrote not too long ago.
I'm also not calling you stupid as an insult. It's an astute observation/ j
Dan Heng
The more I think about this. The funnier it gets. You asked him what Obama's last name was, and now he dreams of kissing you in the moonlight of whatever planet or space station you're on. Those intertwine with his nightmares. It's like tonal whiplash for him. Also, because you're a complete and utter buffoon, you don't overthink his whole dragon identity very much. In a way, being around a stupid person lets him be himself. Yes, he does have to explain something to you five times, but it's okay. He loves those big, bright eyes without a thought behind them.
Sunday
He mourns the fact that he's attracted to a dumbass. "No. Ena. Fuck. WHY?!" he yells to the heavens. However, he is also fascinated by you. For all his life, Sunday has been monitored and groomed to be the perfect family head. Perfection was the blueprint for his life. You were one of the furthest things from that. That's why he's so drawn to you. In a way, you've inspired him to find beauty in his imperfections himself. Maybe. Just maybe. He can entertain that thought.
Kafka
You're both like Roger and Jessica Rabbit. Kafka is a cool, calm, collected, and sexy woman. You are the goofy, loveable dumbass she fell for. I can see her looking at you fondly while Silver Wolf trolls you in a racing game by hacking your controller. You don't notice anything, unobservant as you are. Truly, Kafka has felt something resembling a spark of joy whenever she sees you. That's something she hasn't felt in a long time.
I can go into drabbles to expand on this. This is funny to me.
#honkai star rail#hsr#hsr x reader#honkai star rail x reader#dan heng#dan heng x reader#hsr kafka#kafka#kafka x reader#sunday#sunday hsr#sunday x reader
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YOU
YOU GET IT
The thing about me is I will, at any point of the day, stop whatever I'm doing to drawl, "Ooooh, meteor shower" in Hevy's voice.
#because guess what. i do this too#I DO THIS TOO#this arc is actually my favorite tcw arc. for personal reasons. one of those being it has some absolutely iconic lines#i mean. there's this one. then you have “would you shut UP with instructions?? you're not in CHARGE”#(which is with a lot of siblings something i hear on a near-daily basis anyway XD )#of course there's “ARC TROOPERS follow ORDERS” and the resulting fistfight#there's “now let's hear from the squad that ran the test in record time- ARC Trooper time!”#and then THE most self-depricating “think he means US boys?”#(shortly followed by the galaxy's most sarcastic “Well. BrAvO fOr BrAvO sQuAd”#there is the absolute heart-wringer of a scene that is “we're just numbers Ninety-Nine! ...Just numbers”#AND THEN “not to me. to me... you've always had a name”#(SCREAMING. BY THE WAY)#then we go to the rishi moon. and we've got echo's iconic “personally i LIKE that it's so quiet. i can catch up on the reg manuals”#(and the ensuing teasing)#and then “uh. shouldn't you be watching your scope Hevy?” “sure. let's take a look.”#*looks. mockingly. and then* “wow. would you look at that? all clear! JUST LIKE THE LAST HUNDRED TIMES I CHECKED”#the absolutely CLASSIC “looks like we've got ourselves a couple of SHINIES”#(one of the reasons i love this episode is because it lets rex be the silly chaos man for once)#and then. AND THEN. “uhh... do we take prisoners?” “I DON'T.” and ugh i am sobbing once again#and then there's ARC Troopers which is a glorious episode for the sheer amount of fives and echo that we get#and i love this entire episode but i must say that without a doubt there is one line that stands above the rest#(and i promise this isn't just my fives-centric bias showing through)#because “look around you. we're one and the same- same heart; same blood. our training is IN our blood. and MY blood's boiling for a fight!#is SUCH a line. like wow what were the clone wars writers ON. this is POETRY. i want to like. embroider this into a tapestry#oh and then at the end when rex is like “you boys showed real bravery out there. reminds me of me actually.”#like oh rex you silly man. it's like the meme of obama giving a medal of honor to obama. i am laughing hysterically#okay so this was really long but all this to say: you are correct and should keep doing this because you're in good company :D#star wars#look at my guys
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High School Time Travelers, Part 2
It's finally here! Follow up to this story.
***
“So. Spill. What the fuck is going on with you and Angelique?”
Raph fidgeted uncomfortably, and something within Erin roared out in protest at that. They were in her room, surrounded by her clutter and band posters and the stuff he kept at her house to keep his mom from throwing it away. He wasn’t supposed to be uncomfortable here.
Eventually, he took a deep breath. “I time-traveled last night.”
“I’m serious—”
“So am I,” he said wearily. “I woke up in a house I haven’t set foot in for years, across the hall from someone I promised myself I’d never talk to again. It happened, and if you’re stuck on that part then this conversation can’t continue.”
Erin got up and paced her room, kicking aside her backpack, nearly knocking over the guitar stand in the corner. “What the fuck.”
“That’s what I said.”
“What the fuck, Raph.”
“I didn’t mean to!”
The absurdity hit her instantly—he didn’t mean to time travel, as if they were talking about him forgetting his homework or getting in Monica Dillon’s way during passing period. She wanted to laugh.
But then she remembered some of the weird things Angelique had said—about friendships imploding, about college, about shit not mattering in high school, all with the easy certainty of experience.
“Prove it,” she said. “Can you do that thing where you predict what I’m about to say?”
“I’m not stuck in a time loop, dumbass, yesterday I was thirty-three!” Raph snapped. “I had to go through math class trying to pretend I still remembered my teacher’s name!”
“Okay, okay, Jesus.” Erin held up her hands placatingly. “There’s gotta be something.”
Raph sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I dunno. Anything meaningful and unchangeable I can remember won’t happen for a while, so if you’re willing to wait for the Trump presidency or the global pandemic, there’s that.”
“The what.”
“Wait, who’s president right now? It’s still Bush, right?”
Erin pulled a face.
“Next one’s Barack Obama, he’s gonna do two terms,” Raph informed her. “First black president.”
“Oh, huh. Cool,” Erin said faintly.
“Let’s see, what else, um… Balloon Boy? Has Balloon Boy happened yet?”
“No, what the fuck is Balloon Boy?”
Raph brightened. “Yeah, so at some point this family is gonna release like, a homemade weather balloon? Or something? And there’s gonna be this huge panic because they think their son is stuck inside it, but then it turns out he was fine and hiding in the basement the whole time and it was a hoax.”
“Okay, I’ll keep an eye out for that I guess?” Erin sat down again. “You’re seriously not fucking with me right now?”
“I mean, if you want, we could forget this conversation ever happened,” Raph offered. “Continue with our normal lives, while I keep under-reacting to devastating world events.”
“Christ, I don’t know.” Erin pressed her palms into her eyes. After a moment, she lifted her head again. “Wait a minute, we’re getting off track. What does this have to do with Angelique?”
Raph’s silence could not have been louder.
“Raph,” Erin said, a little desperately.
“First you have to promise you won’t be mad,” said Raph.
“Did you sleep with her in the—” Erin paused to do some arithmetic in her head. “—eighteen years between then and now?!”
“She’s my wife,” Raph blurted out.
Moments later, Erin’s mother knocked politely on the bedroom door. “Everything okay in there?” she asked. “That’s an awful lot of screaming for a Tuesday night.”
Erin continued howling into her pillow. “She’s fine, Mrs. Yokota!” Raph called. “We’re looking at—uh—creepypastas!”
“Creepy what?”
“Uh—crap, are they still called that?—like, ghost stories and stuff!”
Placated, she left them to it. Eventually Erin recovered enough to lie back and stare listlessly at the ceiling.
“Dude.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What the fuck is your life?” Erin demanded. “How did that even happen?”
“We ran into each other at—so my friend Hazel got roped into being in their college roommate’s bridal party and dragged me along for moral support, and Angelique was in the same friend group but with like six degrees of separation from us,” Raph explained. “It took half the reception for her to recognize me because at that point I’d been on T for a few years, but the second she realized we went to the same high school she turned fishbelly-white, pulled me aside, and apologized for how much of a bitch she was back then. It was really awkward.”
Back then, he called it, even though for Erin it was still right now. “And you married her?”
“Like eight years later, yeah.” Raph ran his hand through his hair, not quite hiding the small smile that stole over his face. “She really turned over a new leaf.”
Erin was silent for a while, mulling over this new information, combining it with what she already had from that afternoon.
“Is your name still Raphael?” she asked. “She sounded really surprised about it. And I know you said you were just taking the name on a trial run, but you really seemed to like it. Not that there’s—you know,” she added. “I know that—just because I picked it, I knew you might not… you know. It’s fine, I was just wondering. If I should call you something else.”
“I did—I do like it,” Raph assured her. “But, uh, some stuff happened. My dad found me.”
Erin’s eyebrows shot upward. “Wait, really? What’d he have to say for himself?”
“That Mom ghosted him when she got pregnant because her side guy had more money.”
“Dude, fuck your mom.”
“Don’t fuck my mom, she’ll ghost you for money, weren’t you listening?”
Erin burst out snickering. “Fuck, sorry, this isn’t funny.”
“It will be in eighteen years,” Raph said with a wry smile. “Hindsight. Anyway, he found me in—he’s gonna find me in two years unless I reach out first. He’s a good guy. My stepmom’s pretty cool, too. And I have sisters? So that’s awesome. And yeah, he had this friend who passed away when he was younger, and he always wanted to name his son after him, but then Mom disappeared and he only ended up having daughters, so when he found me, it kind of worked out.” He hesitated. “I’m Damian. Damian Raphael Harker.”
“That’s such a cool name,” Erin sighed.
Raph—Damian—tilted his head back to grin at her. “Yours is cool, too.”
“Shut up,” she said fondly.
“No, seriously,” he said emphatically. “Your name is unspeakably cool.”
There was something odd in his tone, sticking up and catching like a loose nail. It bothered her, the same way something Angelique said earlier had bothered her.
“Hey, Ra—Damian?” Erin said cautiously. “Earlier, when Angelique sat down with us, she didn’t recognize me.”
“She does, don’t worry.”
“No, she didn’t,” Erin pressed. “It took her a second to realize who I was, and she stopped herself from saying why.”
Suddenly Damian looked deeply uncomfortable. “I, uh.”
She took a deep breath. “Was I dead in your time?”
“Wh-no! No no no no, of course not!” Damian looked horrified. “We played Pathfinder like last week, you’re not dead.”
“What’s Path—no, never mind. Something’s clearly up. If we just played whatever-that-is last week, and Angelique is your wife, then why didn’t she know who I was?”
“Uh…” Damian’s hands had worked their way deep into his sleeves. “You look different, that’s all. You kind of reinvented yourself in college.”
“Oh,” Erin said, momentarily relieved. Then— “Wait.”
“What?’
“Damian. You’d—” She hesitated. “If I was a guy, you’d tell me, right?’
“Oh my God,” Damian mumbled into his be-sweatered hands.
“Damian.”
“You’re... not...”
“You’d tell me, right?”
“See, I don’t know if I would!” Damian answered, in a strained high-pitched tone. “That’s—look. If you were a guy, that’s something you’d have to work out for yourself!”
“Damian, I swear to God.”
“I can’t crack your egg for you, that’s like violating the Prime Directive!”
Erin seized a pillow and started to buffet him with it. “You are such a nerd!”
“It’s your personal journey, you can’t use me to cheat!” Damian cackled, fending her off with a plush horse.
***
“Yeah I’ll get the banana split.” Angie bounced on the balls of her feet, eyes raking over the array of toppings. “Can you put caramel and chocolate sauce on it? And Heath bar pieces, chopped strawberries, and M&Ms.”
“Yeah, sure thing.”
It took all of her self-control not to press her nose against the glass as she watched them make it. Some small part of her balked at the sight of three huge scoops of ice cream and all the toppings, but she quieted it. She had a second shot at being a teenager, and that meant never taking her garbage disposal stomach and body made of rubber bands for granted ever again.
She hummed absently to herself, only to pause halfway through the tune. How did it go again? She tried repeating the first half, only to get stuck at the same spot. Oh, this was going to bug the crap out of her. It wasn’t like she could look it up, not when the song wouldn’t come out for almost ten years—
Her phone vibrated in her purse, and she checked it absentmindedly, zeroing in for a moment on the DAD displayed on the screen. After a moment, she put it back without answering. If it was that important, he could text.
Sure enough, her phone gave a short buzz. New text message—he hadn’t even bothered to leave a voicemail.
DAD I need you to talk to your brother.
Angie checked her banana split’s progress with a glance, and replied.
lol why
DAD He’s not listening to me. We both know the courts favor the mother so if we’re going to beat her I need both of you on your A game.
Angie ground her teeth until her jaw creaked.
what do you need me to do
DAD Just coach him on how to talk about her. You’re a smart lady, I know you can do it. He’s always getting scuffed up at practice, just have him say the bruises came from her. Throw in a drinking problem if you have to, just keep your stories straight.
why father dearest i’m surprised at you you want me to lie under oath?
DAD Just talk to him, will you? Keep your stories straight, don’t get too outlandish, and we’ll get out of this with everything we want. You’ll never have to hear the word no again, I promise.
ok daddy ill do my best!
DAD Good girl. You’re the smartest girl I know. Smarter than your mom, smarter than her bitch lawyer. Love you!
“Order up!”
Angie brought her banana split to the table with the clearest view of the door. It took her a moment to decide how to begin, then nearly a full minute balancing equal parts ice cream, banana, and toppings in a single spoonful. She managed it in the end.
Mood lifted, she unlocked her phone again and made a call. “Heeeey, Anika.”
“Need I remind you that phone calls are billable,” her mother’s lawyer said dryly.
“Yeah, I’ll be quick, I have some incriminating text messages I think you’ll be interested in?”
The sound of rustling papers paused. “Go on…?”
“Dad just told me to lie to the judge,” Angie explained, twirling a thin ribbon of caramel around her spoon. “And to coach Eric to lie to the judge. I took screenshots.”
Anika cursed softly under her breath. “Thank you for telling me. Send them to your mom, okay? Thank you.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
The bell above the ice cream parlor door jingled, and Angie perked up as both Damian (Raph?) and Erin walked in. She waved them over, grinning when both pairs of eyes widened at her treat.
“That thing’s half the size of your head,” Erin pointed out.
“Sure is, you guys came just in time.” Angie nudged it across the table, along with the two extra spoons. “If we split it, I’ll have enough room for a milkshake chaser.”
“You’re a monster,” Damian said delightedly. “Oh shit, are those Heath bars?” He dug in without waiting for an answer.
“They’re peanut butter cups,” she said solemnly, once he’d taken a bite and could probably tell they weren’t. “I added them just to hurt you.” Damian rolled his eyes and dug his spoon back in.
Erin stared at her, probably still baffled by the gentle banter, but at least she looked more curious than infuriated, like instead of being suspicious she simply didn’t know what to make of Angie.
“So, you guys talked?” Angie asked carefully. “Are we… all good?”
“I think so,” Damian replied, shooting a cautious glance at Erin.
“You’re on thin ice,” Erin informed her as she helped herself to the chocolate scoop.
“Fair.” Angie didn’t remember Erin putting up quite as much of a fight, but then, it had been years when they’d reconnected before. This time around, it was still fresh.
“The ice cream helps,” Erin added, slightly muffled by the spoon in her mouth.
“Noted.” Angie paused, weighed her options, and shrugged. No harm no foul, probably. “Hey, you’re a musician, right?”
Erin swallowed. “Yeah, why?”
“And not just a performer, but you write music too, right?”
“Yeeaaah?” Erin squinted suspiciously. Beside her, Damian shot Angie a warning glare.
“If I give you half a tune, could you resolve it?”
Erin was staring at her like she’d grown a second head. “Probably.”
“Great!” Angie hummed the earworm from earlier. “How would the next part go?”
Erin repeated it to herself, nodding along. After a moment, she said, “Probably like—”
And sure enough, there it was. The rest of the chorus’s tune came rushing back to Angie’s memory, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thanks! That was driving me nuts.” Angie returned to her banana split, ignoring Damian’s growing scowl.
Later, when Erin was in the bathroom and Angelique was standing in line to order her promised milkshake, Damian dug his elbow into her side. “You’re not as slick as you think you are,” he muttered.
“What?” Angie said innocently. “I didn’t give anything away.”
“You just taught her half the chorus of a song she’s eight years away from writing!”
“I’ve planted a seed,” Angie insisted. “I’ve created a stable time loop.”
“That is not what you did and you know it.” Damian pursed his lips, clearly trying to stay annoyed with her. “I barely avoided spoiling her transition, and that’s after she asked me to my face.”
Angie grinned. “So you haven’t told her she’s a genderfluid punk rocker yet?”
“No. Because she’s not a genderfluid punk rocker yet.”
“And now, when she becomes one,” Angie said with a smile, “she’s going to look back on this day and laugh.”
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TOP TEN DINOSAURUSES
maybe you're wondering my most tenned favorite dinosauruses??? The science study of dinasacacers is called "dinosaurusology" by leading experts like myself, and it is constantly changing as we make new uncoveries almost every tuesday when we find new bones in my cousin rob's garage (he hasn't thrown anything out since the 90's!) As such bear in mind that up to two facts I am about to share could become dated over the course of the next century, however as both the king and queen of science this will only be true if I'm still available to approve the new facts. If I'm dead or kind of tired then nobody will ever know what's true anymore so you should be nice to me. #10: OVIRAPTOR
OVIRAPTOR was a good model for what all dinosacans were like: it was a wrinkly lizard that slithered in filthy dirt and had difficulty standing upright because its bones were made of rocks. This is why we have the term "the stone age," so be grateful you're living in "the bone age!" Oviraptor's name means "eggs velociraptor" because it was a kind of velociraptor that stole eggs. It didn't know what to do with them because nobody invented cooking yet and raw dinosaur eggs were disgusting, so every oviraptor starved to death.
#9: IGUANADON
This was the last known photograph of IGUANA DON (not to be confused with his cousin iguana dan) when george washington invented photographs 2 million years ago. Don was an ugly disgusting hilarious lizard monster with one horn on its nose and he died because he evolved a dining room in his torso exactly the right size for 21 cavemen to walk in and eat his kidneys. This was not helped by don's instinct to sleep on a big porch under a chandelier.
#9 DIMETRODON
DIMETRODON was the most common dinosaur of jurassic, which was the fifth and final era of dinosaurs after the ice age but before the ediacaran. In fact dimetrodon was the very last dinosaur to ever exist on earth before they were all eaten to death by the ediacaran's dominant predator: a species of swirly looking weird rock. Nobody knows why these swirly looking weird rocks died out, but it's most likely because dimetrodon was so poisonous from its diet of entirely pufferfish. You can tell it was a sea dinosaur because of its fish fin! #8: PTERADACTYL
PTERODACTYL was a regular dinosaur until it got married to a species of bat and its bat wife laid a bunch of pterodactyl eggs! This woodcut is however inaccurate: flying would not be invented until president obama discovered the first airplane in 1998, so pterodactyl couldn't possibly have stayed in the air and just immediately fell. The long 900 million year reign of the pterodactyl abruptly ended when the last one finally hit the ground (it took longer in those days because the oxygen disaster made so much more air) #7 SNORKASAURUS
SNORKASAURUS was completely unique among all dinocaurs by having a really long neck. It was one of the largest creatures to ever roam the earth at over 7 feet tall, or exactly 12 meters to those of you living in Liberia or Myanmar! This is the last known photograph of snorkasaurus, giving birth to the first cavemen. Snorkasaurus went extinct because all of them did this instead of making baby snorkasauruses. This is because like all dinosaurii they had only a tiny peanut for a brain, and nobody was around to give them 'the talk' because that wasn't invented yet.
#6 SMILODON
SMILODON was a very special dinosaurn because it was the first one to stand up on its hind legs after years of rigorous exercise and weight training. By inventing this new way of walking, Smilodon made it possible for the first monkeys to evolve! This is called "convergent" evolution.
#5 BULBASAUR
BULBASAUR was a majestic and beautiful species of neopet unfortunately disliked by the scientific community because it is the reason there are no flying dinosuars. Bulbasaur was the first ever flying dyanasar ever invented, 19 billion years ago on September 10, 2001, but the project was discontinued when its first test flight ended in a tragic accident. That's right: on September 11, 2001, Bulbasaur crashed into the stock market, causing the great depression that lead to the civil war :'( now to this very day, flying dinosarers are against the law.
#4 YOSHI
YOSHI is a type of dinersaulophus called a "bird," which was actually the second attempt by early neanderthal alchemists to manufacture a street legal flying dinnersauran, but the New Zealand government realized if dinophlofbuses can fly, then bats would no longer be special, and since bats are New Zealand's only major export it would have been an economic disaster. The queen of Australia (New Zealand's largest city) ordered the CIA to sand all of the wings off of these early prototype birds. Every bird tragically went extinct when it looked down, noticed how high up it was and remembered it could not fly, activating the effects of Earth's gravitational field.
#3 ANOMALOCARIS
ANOMALOCARIS was the dinosorcerous that discovered the first primitive cave painting of a modern day crab and invented carcinisation. All the other dinanders laughed at Anomalocaris for wanting to turn into a crab, but guess what??? Every single kind of dinosaur is dead but there's a crab still alive at 29, making it the oldest person in the world. Who's FUCKING laughing now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#2 EARL SINCLAIR
This is the last known photograph of Earl Sinclair, seen here as an uncredited extra in "Avatar 3: Lost in New York." Earl Sinclair was a sindonaur species that could disguise itself as a human by putting on sunglasses, a necessary adaptation in order to hide from the largest predator dancasore to ever live: Mellisuga helenae. However, near the end of the coal age, M. Helenae finally remembered that sunglasses hadn't even been invented yet. Look carefully, and you'll notice nobody is wearing sunglasses at all in this scene, making Earl Sinclair stick out like a sore thumb! If you're still having difficulty, here's a zoomed in image of this majestic thunder lizard:
Unfortunately......this wardrobe malfunction made Mr. Sinclair just as obvious to his ancient enemy, and the last Earl Sinclair's brains were sucked out on September 11, 2001, the darkest day in British history because he was the only one who knew the recipe to chicken mcnuggets (the only british food.) To this day all british people are extinct but you can still see their fossilized skeletons waiting in line at the department of motor vehicles.
#1 CONCAVENATOR
Concavenator was an Early Cretaceous carcharodontosaurid up to six meters in length with an unusual pointed crest on its back.
#science#dinosaurs#paleobiology#paleoart#nature#animals#lizards#reptiles#birds#ADAD don't get mad at me I actually hope if you ever see this you just find it cute and enjoy the convoluted references I put in
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On Radicalization
I'm seeing a lot of people now talking about radicalization (for obvious reasons) and I want to put my two cents into it.
I'm not a radicalization expert by any means, but I have my MA in terrorism studies, and I'm currently pursuing a PhD in security studies, so radicalization is a thing that I have talked/thought about a fair amount.
I think one of the most important things to understand when you think about radicalization is that "radical" and "extremist" are both relative. Generally, when we're talking about radicalization, we're talking about a sharp political shift to a position outside of what we would consider the norm. What's radical in a liberal city in the United States in 2024 is vastly different from both what would have been radical in that city 150 years earlier and what is radical in some other countries right now.
For much of the last 2+ decades (or at least ~2001-2019), most of what was talked about with radicalization was in the context of islamist terrorism/violent extremism. People around the world were trying to figure out why people (especially in Western countries) were joining al Qaeda or ISIS or why people in Afghanistan were joining the Taliban, etc. What was it that drove one person to do that and another person not to--and, what was it that drove one person with those ideological beliefs to commit violence and one person not to.
Right now, in the US, what a lot of people are talking about is why people (namely young white men) are shifting dramatically to the right, particularly socially, and ending up in the political far right. In particular, why are they now advocating for (or at least voting for people who advocate for) taking away rights that are ~50 years old, as well as being more openly white/Christian supremacist than was socially acceptable 25 years ago, and why are some of them committing far right violence?
I think some of the reality that we have to face is that people have been advocating against abortion (and to a lesser degree birth control) access for those entire 50 years, and people have been white/Christian supremacists this entire time, and we just had a brief period of time when it was a little less okay to say out loud. But anyone old enough to remember the Obama campaigns remembers that the opposition to them was virulently racist and Christian supremacist.
But radicalization is happening, so let's talk about some of the ways that it happens in general. None of these are universally true, and what might radicalize one person might not radicalize another.
Social isolation. Social isolation is an extremely common factor in radicalization. Communities generally do two things: they act as a moderating force, and they give people ties that discourage violence. When studying islamist radicalization, from what I remember, conversion was a factor in likelihood of radicalization--not because there is something inherently radicalizing in the act of converting to a religion, but because converts often found resources online or with communities that specifically targeted new people, ones that were less ideologically moderate.
People who convert are also I think in some cases the people who are more likely to be ideologically driven anyway, because it is more work to convert and so you would only do so if you have a stronger ideological belief in it. You see this with some Catholic converts (e.g., Vance)--they are often more conservative and don't necessarily reflect mainstream Catholic teachings because they didn't grow up in a Catholic community as much as intentionally looking for the things that would make them The Most CatholicTM (ironically and hilariously one of those seems to be disagreeing with the Pope, which is approximately the least Catholic thing you can do).
if you have a community, you're generally also less likely to try to hurt people in that community because they're people you care about. Not a universal truth, obviously, but in aggregate. Being in a community also means that there are people who can tell you that what you're saying is extreme and walk you back from it. If you're isolated, nobody will tell you that.
But overall being isolated makes you more likely to feel like nobody likes or cares about you, which can make you angry and disaffected and looking for someone to blame, and it also makes you far more vulnerable to people who are looking to recruit. If you think everyone hates you and then someone tells you that everyone does hate you except for them, you're probably going to listen to them.
Relative depravation. Relative depravation is the idea that the radicalizing factor isn't having nothing, it's having something and seeing people who have more so you feel like you have nothing. I remember this came up when people were studying who in Afghanistan joined the Taliban, and it was often people who were more middle class rather than people living in poverty. The people living in poverty didn't have time to be radicalized because they needed to put food on the table, but the middle class people could see how good other people had it and how bad they had it and it made them mad. (I am vastly oversimplifying a study I remember from 10 years ago--it's a lot more complicated than this.)
But in the US, we're seeing this with men (who have, on an objective basis, lost political power in the US), and with white people (who have, on that same objective basis, lost political power in the US), and with people from geographic regions that used to have much stronger economies and better opportunities but don't anymore (e.g., coal areas, manufacturing areas). They can look at other people (e.g., women, POC) and say "I lost power and you gained power because I lost power, that's not fair and it's hurting me" or "it used to be better but now it's bad, that's not fair and it's hurting me" and then they get mad about it. And some subset of people who get mad about it decide to hurt people over it, or at the very least they vote to try to get it to not be like that anymore. They want to go back, because to them, back was better.
Radicalized education. One of the reasons why white women are so valuable to the white supremacist movement is not just that they can have white children, but that they can teach those white children. Some of this starts at home, or in the schools, or in the churches. And it's not necessarily radicalization if it starts that way (because people aren't moving politically so much as just being), but there are tens of thousands if not millions of children right now who are learning misogynist, queerphobic, and white supremacist ideas in all forms of their education. Those children who learn the benevolent slaveholder narrative or the states rights idea or that Jews killed Jesus or whatever grow up to be adults, and some of them vote, and some of them vote Republican because the ideas Republicans are spouting are the ideas that they were taught.
Suffering under real or perceived oppression. One of the goals of terrorism, in some cases, is to spark an overblown government reaction, which will then radicalize the populace into rising up against them. This is because, sometimes, for some people, that works--some people suffering under oppression or what they perceive is oppression will become increasingly anti-government (or anti-whoever is oppressing them) and that will sometimes turn violent.
The thing to remember here is that oppression is also in the eye of the beholder, to some degree. By the standards of some right-wing Evangelicals, for example, they are oppressed by the secular federal government, which keeps them from practicing their religion in the way that they see fit.
Justice by any means. This isn't exactly a way that people are radicalized, but one thing I see in people I would consider radicalized on basically all ideological fronts is this idea that justice (or winning) should come by any means. You see this in people who burn abortion clinics or kill abortion providers to "save babies" and people who kill cops as a solution to police brutality and people who stone gay people to death. The idea that your ends justify your means is, to me, a core to true radicalism.
The reality is this: if there was one way to stop radicalization, countries would have done it decades ago. Sometimes it's about drawing people into a community, and sometimes it's about getting them out of the community that is radicalizing them. Sometimes it's about being kind or compassionate to a single human being, and sometimes it's about showing them that they are operating against their own self-interest.
And sometimes it's just about damage control and about keeping someone who is already radicalized and looking to do violence from doing violence.
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