#sciences class

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Bill Nye the Science Guy was my science teacher. When he came into class we'd all chant, "Bill Bill Bill" but also, "Science Science Science". Then one day I went to class and Bill wasn't there and it turned out he was fired. I found his apartment in a massive monolithic block and we had a heart to heart chat. He broke down into tears saying, "I really liked being your science guy".

[ikiprian]

Mr. Fenton is a competent teacher. Almost too competent.

If Mr. Daniel Fenton had any more than a BS (with a minor in education), Tim would’ve flagged his profile as a potential Rogue. That’s the way of most charismatic academics, at least in Gotham. (Got a PhD? Instant watchlist.) Instead, he’s Gotham Academy’s newest celebrity, as a young, passionate, out-of-towner substitute while the chemistry teacher’s on maternity leave.

Tim gets the hype. Fenton seems to genuinely love teaching, and is invested in the welfare of the student body. He hands out bananas during exam week, hosts a “study habits seminar” each month to coach effective learning strategies, and the third time Tim falls asleep in his class, he even pulls Tim aside to ask if he’s doing okay. With all the late work he accepts and the protein bars he sneaks Tim, he’s every teen vigilante’s dream teacher. He could’ve been Tim’s favorite.

In fact, Mr. Fenton was Tim’s favorite. Up until Tim walks into Mr. Fenton’s chemistry classroom for a forgotten textbook, an hour after the final bell.

On the board where tallied scores for today’s review game had been kept, “THE CHEMISTRY BEHIND DR. CRANE’S FEAR GAS: ANXIOGENICS, NERI’S, & YOU,” is now scrawled. A detailed diagram of the human endocrine system projects in front of a small crowd of adoring and attentive students.

Fenton is wrist-deep in the skull cavity of an anatomical model. A short tug, and out pops the brain.

It’s plastic. It’s fake.

Tim identifies the nearest emergency exit.

Fenton turns to the door, and in the dark classroom with the projector illuminating half his face, his eyes almost seem to flash red. “What’s up, Tim?” he asks. His friendly grin is too big for his face. “I didn’t know you wanted to join the Just Science League!”

[OR: Danny’s a science teacher at Tim’s school. Gotham’s a pretty wild place, even for someone who grew up a superhero in a ghost-infested town, so he takes it upon himself to start a club teaching kids how to manage themselves in the event of a crisis. These Gothamites are pretty hardy, but a little extra training never hurt anybody! And he suspects one of his students might be a teen vigilante, like he’d been, back in the day. As a senior super, it's Danny’s duty look out for him! Surely, this is the subtlest and most appropriate way to give the kid pointers.]

[Tim immediately assumes supervillain.]

[thesulkycroissant]

Forever seething that Erik didn't get to raise a household full of chaos children with Charles. Watch the scene in First Class where Banshee is about to jump out of the plane and turns and looks at Erik and says, "Not you!" Look at the way Erik and Charles look at each other in this scene. They were MEANT to coparent.

[teslacoils-and-hubris]

I dont care if it "freaks the interns out" I became a mad scientist so I could install a hinged glass panel in my skull to remove my brain whenever I get migraines. Tell the interns that if they can't handle watching me remove my own brain and put it in a jar then they should change majors before they waste more of my time

[thedoodlenoodle14]

Oh no...👀

Ok, but I found some random picture and I had to redraw it with Uzi XD

Original image:

[valentimmy]

I added color to it look at them

[gladosluver]

they should set their differences aside and work together. imagine the horrors they could create

[loudclan-clangen]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

in other news, congrats to the newest heirs of the Healer and Leader positions…

AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NO NO NOOOOOOOO

and a bonus, the "definitely not sisters":

Thank you! This art is so sad in the best way! I love the idea of covering wounds with animal pelts and the song lyrics are 🤌*mwah* perfect. Also I appreciate the pelt you drew belongs to the rabbit from Moon 25! Fun fact I colored that rabbit using Dashpaw's palette (minus the dark brown, that was to bring it out as the focal point) to foreshadow his death. I didn't really expect anyone to notice, especially because it was one of the first moons with shading, but it did make me feel like an evil mastermind.

It's difficult for the living and the dead to communicate to each other, but starclan cats definitely still know what's going on with the clan! So yes, Fiercestripe would have found out that she saved Thorn, but no, Dashpaw can't talk to his brothers. Dancepaw's ghost sense isn't strong enough to be able to make out any words, and Songpaw can really only see or hear Eklutna.

It was a combination of both. Fiercestripe refused to sell out the fleeing she-cats, and also didn't want the farm cats anywhere near Loudclan. Part of it was an emotional "This is my home and I don't want any trace of you in it" and part of it was a pretty rational "Owlstar's an idiot and Tundrafrost only sees the best in people and there's a non-zero chance that they fall for Coal's charismatic bullshit and end up allying with them". I can say as the author that they wouldn't have, but Fierce only had a few moments to weigh her choices and she made the best decision that she could.

Thank you! Can you tell I learned from old Riverspirit speedpaints? I watched them religiously as a kid.

[gregor-samsung]

Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

[vampelanovela]

Investigative reporter Daniel Molloy curious about the upper limits of vampiric healing meet known masochist and body horror enjoyer Armand

[chernobog13]

The business end of the IKS Amar, a Klingon K't'inga-class battle cruiser.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Working class Dems who campaign on economics beat Trumpists in elections

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me FRIDAY NIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and more!

The Democratic Party Pizzaburger Theory of Electioneering is: half the electorate wants a pizza, the other half wants a burger, so we'll give them all a pizzaburger and make them all equally dissatisfied, thus winning the election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

But no one wants a pizzaburger. The Biden administration's approach of letting the Warren/Sanders wing pick the antitrust enforcers while keeping judicial appointments in the Manchin-Synematic universe is a catastrophe in which progressive Dem regulators (who serve one term) are thwarted by corporatist Dem judges (who serve for life):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

The Democrats – like all parties in two-party systems – are a coalition; in this case, a "progressive" liberal-left coalition with liberals serving as senior partners, steering the party and setting its policies. These corporate dems like to color themselves as "neutral" technocrats with "realistic, apolitical" policies that represent what's best for the country:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

This sets up the left wing of the party as the starry-eyed, unrealistic radicals whose policies are unpopular and will lose elections. But for a decade, grassroots-funded primary challenges have made it possible to test this theory, by putting leftist politicians on the ballot in front of voters, especially in tight races with far-right Republicans (that is, exactly the kinds of races that the corporate wing of the party says we can't afford to take chances on).

The 2022 midterms included enough races to start testing these theories – and, unlike traditional midterms, these races enjoyed high voter turnout, thanks to the unpopularity of GOP positions like abortion bans, book bans and anti-trans laws. Jacobin teamed up with the Center for Working-Class Politics, Yougov and the Center for Work and Democracy at ASU and analyzed those races:

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/11134429/CWCP-Report-2024.pdf

Their conclusion: candidates from working-class backgrounds who campaigned on economic policies like high-quality jobs, higher minimum wages, a jobs guarantee, ending offshoring and outsourcing, building infrastructure and bringing manufacturing back to the US won with a 50% share of the vote in rural and working-class districts. Dems who didn't lost with a 35% share of the vote:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-03-18-how-actually-existing-democrats-run-for-office/

In other words, in the kinds of districts where Trumpist politicians are beating Democrats, running on "left populist" policies beats Trumpist politicians.

That's the good news: if Dems recruit leftist, working class politicians and put them up for office on policies that address the material reality of voters' lives, they can beat fascist GOP candidates.

Now for the bad news: the Democratic establishment has no interest in getting these candidates onto the ballot. Working-class candidates, by definition, lack the networks of deep-pocketed cronies who can fund their primary campaigns. Only 2.3% of Dem candidates come from blue-collar backgrounds (if you include "pink-collar" professions like nursing and teaching, the number goes up to 5.9%):

https://jacobin.com/2024/03/left-populists-working-class-voters

All of this confirms the findings of Trump's Kryoptonite, an earlier Jacobin/CWCP research project that polled working-class voters on preferences for hypothetical candidates, finding that working-class candidates with economically progressive policies handily beat out Republicans, including MAGA Republicans:

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/08125102/TrumpsKryptonite_Final_June2023.pdf

Since the Clinton-Blair years, "progressives" have abandoned economic populism ("It's not a burning ambition for me to make sure that David Beckham earns less money" -T. Blair) and pursued a "third way" that seeks to replace half the world's of supply white, male oligarchs with diverse oligarchs from a variety of backgrounds and genders. We were told that this was done in the name of winning elections with "modern" policies that replaced old-fashioned ideas about decent pay, decent jobs, and worker power.

These policies have delivered a genocide-riven world on the brink of several kinds of existential catastrophe. They're a failure. The pizzaburger party didn't deliver safety, nor prosperity – and it also can't deliver elections.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/20/actual-material-conditions/#bread-and-butter

[vroom-vrooms]

Max socially awkward, geography nerd, trauma dumping machine Verstappen and Charles loved by everyone on first sight, music nerd, repressed trauma Leclerc should get married or something

[superstargaycare]

crawls in ,,, nexember day 4 ,,,,.,

i had to redo this one bc i put the wrong number. "oh its the fifth day right" in the voice of a guy who has to be up in three hours

[spockvarietyhour]

Docking at Imperial Station 003 "Into the Breach"