#school!

[oserial23]

Studying arts right now!!

[marvelsmostwanted]

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

[nutmargaret]

macarons

[mudwisard]

my trick for getting through grad school is learning to navigate the quadrants with all their nuances

[chronotopes]

nobody got hurt so im allowed to giggle about this extremely looney tunes looking accident on a part of 64 i used to drive down at least once a week

[wizard-legs]

Shrek’s lesbian daughter and donkey’s gay son at the fantasy thrift.

[therosielord]

It’s so funny to imagine Wicked from the perspective of one of the normal students at Shiz. There’s this girl and she’s weird and an overachieving nerd and no one likes her, but then the popular girl becomes best friends with her overnight so you guess she’s chill now. They might be sleeping together but no one’s really sure. They’re also low key dating the same guy but you’re not clear on if it’s a polycule situation or a love triangle. Whatever. You’re just trying to study for finals. Your history teacher gets arrested and no explains why. You just hope this won’t effect your grade in the class. The weird nerdy girl gets a letter from the president inviting her to come see him. Wow, that’s exciting. She and her maybe-girlfriend go off to the capitol and you go back to homework and dorm room parties. One day later one of your professors is on the national radio saying that the weird nerdy girl, who used to be her favorite student, is now a terrorist, has stolen the nuclear codes, and is on the run from the government. You are still expected to show up to class tomorrow.

[femmedesyeuxnoirs]

Real asf This is literally the realest shit anyones ever said

[darcyolsson]

in loving memory of tumblr's april fools' pranks 💐 2014 - 2024

icymi, tumblr used to do an elaborate april fool's prank every year, but this year they suddenly stopped. here's a somewhat detailed recap of everything they did over the decade:

2013 - mishapocalypse (honourable mention): tumblr staff didn’t start doing april fools until 2014, but the mishapocalypse happened on tumblr in 2013 and i feel like this list would be incomplete without it

2014 - tumblrpro: upon opening your dash you were greeted by an “inspirational” video, that ended with the option to get “tumblrpro (for free)”. all it did was put a top hat on your icon.

2015 - tumblr executivesuite/coppy: a copying machine appeared in the corner of your dash. it would offer tips on how to use tumblr, like clippy the paperclip used to do in microsoft word. as the day went on, it slowly broke down and died right in front of your eyes. many people hated him (but not me). you could also make a (small) spreadsheet. @executivesuite2016 is the official blog.

2016 - this is decision/lizard election/tumblrdecides: a parody of the 2016 US elections. there were 4 lizards (well, one of them turned out to be a salamander in a scandal) to vote for. the dash looked different and there was a live news report with election updates, as well as an election blog for each lizard. they all had their own slogans and you would get an "i voted" button after you voted that would get slapped next to your icon. there were built-in functions to make an election poster for your favourite lizard and to create a text post that supported your lizard of choice that autogenerated a statement for all your followers to read. imo tumblr’s april fools peak. @thisisdecision2016-blog is the official blog, @mop-2016-blog @wretchedtooth @timefordeborah-blog were candidates. rick also had a blog (rick-official) but that now seems to have vanished because he ended up dropping out of the election. mop won, if you're curious. by far the most elaborate prank tumblr ever did.

2017 - horse friend: a tamagotchi-inspired game where you had to take care of a little horse in the corner of your screen. it came with a randomly generated name, and you had to feed and clean up after it. if you didnt take good care of it, it died. you could then hatch (yes, hatch) a new one. there was also an option to look at the names of all your dead horses. this is now available to buy in the tumblr shop. @horse-friends is the official blog.

2018 - tumblcoin: a parody of cryptocurrency (this was the year bitcoin took off). you could ‘invest’ in tumblcoin, with which you could in turn buy things with to spice up your dash, including last year’s horse friend, coppy from 2015, and a frame for around your icon. you could share the amount of tumblcoin you owned in an automatically generated gif post which would be tagged #tbc2018 and #tumblcoin. @tumblcoin is the official blog.

2019 - @memories: this blog still functions the way it did on april fools itself! it's like mad libs, where it takes post templates and then adds in tags you use a lot and users you frequently interact with on your main blog. like a personalized shitpost bot.

2020 - group chat prank/@storybot: it was so hard to find info on this because it was contained entirely in the now-defunct group chat function, which no one used. i had to go through the notes of this post for information because no one cared enough to actually write anything explaining it. turns out, you could write a story with your mutuals by adding storybot to your group chat. it also kept working after april fools (well, up until the group chats were deleted) just like memories. many people missed out on it entirely because they did not use the group chat function.

2021 - tumblcryptids: tumblr allowed you to adopt “non-fungible tumblcryptids”, a parody of NFTs. clicking a button that said "Summon thy Tumblrcryptid" would spawn an image of a little blob-shaped creature with a short description, which would always read "Hi! My name is [randomly generated name]. I love [thing most people like]. I hate [thing most people dislike]. Like my parent, I can't get enough of #[tag from your main blog]." you could share them in a post, which would automatically add the tag #NFTumblcryptids to your post. and yes, people on the piss on the poor website freaked out about it because they thought they were real NFTs harming the environment. @tumblcryptidadoptioncenter is the official blog.

2022 - click-a-thon: when you clicked a light switch on your dashboard, a bunch of colourful things showed up, like a sponge you could move around, an "engagament meter", clickable buttons, and a “Summon Crab!” button, which would summon a crab when you clicked it. you could. the crabs, like horse friend, are still available in the tumblr store as of 2025. here's some screenshots. there were various ways to share your crab activities, which would all get tagged #april fools 2022. the prank was presented as a marketing technique created by Brick Whartley, a fictional businessman character created by tumblr, who (afaik) originated in a post on the official blog of the 2018 april fools prank, albeit originally in a different role. around this time he also started functioning as the mascot for tumblr's shop ( @emporium )

2023 - abstract reactions (emoji reacts): buttons were added to every post that allowed you to add emoji reactions, many of them based on tumblr inside jokes (horse as a reference to horse plinko/horse friend, vanilla for the vanilla extract meme, pikaman, bug for bug race, and brick whartley, who wasn't a meme but staff really wanted him to be). if one specific emoji was used a certain amount of times it would add an effect to the post, eg many cheese emoji reacts would cover the post in cheese. this was also attributed to Brick Whartley ("his" blog @brickwhartley also documented the day)

2024 - boop-o-meter: allowed you to “boop” other users who had opted in to the booping, like facebook’s poke feature back in the day. depending on how long you held the button, you would either boop, super boop, or evil boop. on the dashboard there was a counter for both how many times you had booped others and how many times others had booped you, as well as how many boops were given side-wide. when booping someone, an image of a cat paw appeared. you would get badges (which can still be used) for booping 1, 100 and 1000 times. if you gave/received more than 999 boops, the counter would switch to showing a three-letter word (see this post for specifics). this was brought back for halloween 2024 (as BOOp-o-meter. get it), with a ghost, skeleton and mummy paw. no official blog, but here's an official recap for april first from staff. i believe this was the only april fools prank that was mobile user friendly.

2025 - @fandom is running some polls, i guess

[nephritebabie]

oof

[catchymemes]

[dogcrisis03]

shapeshift!

[fly-chicken]

A Pragmatic and surprisingly comforting perspective about the Trump 2nd Presidency from the ACLU

***Apologies if this is how you found out the 2024 election results***

Blacked out part is my name.

I’m not going to let this make me give up. It’s disheartening, and today I will wallow, probably tomorrow too

AND

I will continue to do my part in my community to spread the activism and promote change for the world I want to live in. I want to change the world AND help with the dishes.

And I won’t let an orange pit stain be what stops me from trying to be better.

A link to donate to the ACLU if able and inclined. I know I am

[animentality]

[monstrousliarstold]