#use the resources you have!

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[hellyeahsickaf]

I found an extremely dope disability survival guide for those who are homebound, bedbound, in need of disability accommodations, or would otherwise like resources for how to manage your life as a disabled person. (Link is safe)

It has some great articles and resources and while written by people with ME/CFS, it keeps all disabilities in mind. A lot of it is specific to the USA but even if you're from somewhere else, there are many guides that can still help you. Some really good ones are:

How to live a great disabled life- A guide full of resources to make your life easier and probably the best place to start (including links to some of the below resources). Everything from applying for good quality affordable housing to getting free transportation, affordable medication, how to get enough food stamps, how to get a free phone that doesn't suck, how to find housemates and caregivers, how to be homebound, support groups and Facebook pages (including for specific illnesses), how to help with social change from home, and so many more.

Turning a "no" into a "yes"- A guide on what to say when denied for disability aid/accommodations of many types, particularly over the phone. "Never take no for an answer over the phone. If you have not been turned down in writing, you have not been turned down. Period."

How to be poor in America- A very expansive and helpful guide including things from a directory to find your nearest food bank to resources for getting free home modifications, how to get cheap or free eye and dental care, extremely cheap internet, and financial assistance with vet bills

How to be homebound- This is pretty helpful even if you're not homebound. It includes guides on how to save spoons, getting free and low cost transportation, disability resources in your area, home meals, how to have fun/keep busy while in bed, and a severe bedbound activity master list which includes a link to an audio version of the list on Soundcloud

Master List of Disability Accommodation Letters For Housing- Guides on how to request accommodations and housing as well as your rights, laws, and prewritten sample letters to help you get whatever you need. Includes information on how to request additional bedrooms, stop evictions, request meetings via phone, mail, and email if you can't in person, what you can do if a request is denied, and many other helpful guides

Special Laws to Help Domestic Violence Survivors (Vouchers & Low Income Housing)- Protections, laws, and housing rights for survivors of DV (any gender), and how to get support and protection under the VAWA laws to help you and/or loved ones receive housing and assistance

Dealing With Debt & Disability- Information to assist with debt including student loans, medical debt, how to deal with debt collectors as well as an article with a step by step guide that helped the author cut her overwhelming medical bills by 80%!

There are so many more articles, guides, and tools here that have helped a lot of people. And there are a lot of rights, resources, and protections that people don't know they have and guides that can help you manage your life as a disabled person regardless of income, energy levels, and other factors.

Please boost!

[void-botanist]

Global Day of Action for Palestine

Today (March 2) is a global day of action for Palestine. There are a huge number of protests taking place across the world. But even if you can't participate in a protest or walk out (or it's not March 2) there are still plenty of things you can do in support of Palestinians:

Anywhere

Free daily click to generate money for UNRWA aid (you can do this in multiple browsers or on multiple devices for more clicks)

Boycott produce from Israel and companies that profit from Israeli apartheid (BDS)

Donate eSims (informational post by blackpearlblast with links to purchase guides)

Pick a fundraiser from the Operation Olive Branch spreadsheet and donate what you can, even if it's only a dollar

US

✉ Email your reps (US Campaign for Palestinian Rights)

📞 Call your reps (US Campaign for Palestinian Rights)

If your Democratic presidential primary is happening now or in the future, consider voting "uncommitted" like over 100,000 voters in Michigan. This is unlikely to affect Biden being made the Democratic presidential candidate, but it does bolster the message that we want Biden to act against this genocide. Voting "uncommitted" may even be endorsed by a larger organization in your state, like the UFCW 3000 labor union in Washington state.

UK

✉ Email your MPs (Palestine Solidarity Campaign)

Canada

✉ Email your reps (Islamic Relief Canada)

Whatever actions you take, consider adding as many as possible to your daily routine, especially daily clicks.

[inbabylontheywept]

Soviet Birds.

The secret facility that I work in has holes in the ceiling. We don't know how to get them fixed.

We tried asking the government to fix it, once. We told them that the holes in the older parts of the facility had gotten large enough to fit birds through, and that birds were getting through, and that, perhaps, a Soviet Spy could fit through as well.

After all, it is well known that Soviet Spies and pigeons are approximately the same diameter.

Our hope was that that this vague and nonsensical threat would put a little fire under Uncle Sam's feet. If the fed couldn't be bothered to give a shit about the giant gaping holes in the roof of our facility, perhaps they could be persuaded to give a shit about... Soviet Spies.

This attempt at manipulation 100% blew up in our faces.

See, the government does not need to be persuaded to give a shit about Soviet Spies. It still wakes up most nights, drenched in cold sweat, terrified and confident that a Soviet Spy is hiding in their nightstand. If it sees a rock on the ground, it flips it over, pistol drawn, ready to shoot the Soviet Spy it fully expects to slither out from underneath. Which is to say: The government is crazy. So when we dropped those two words - inflitration risk - in the repair request, they came in guns-a-blazin'.

Does that mean that they fixed the roof? Of course not. Don't be stupid. No, instead of performing basic maintenance, they installed a state of the art alarm system throughout the facility - lasers, sonar, the works - and told us to always be on the guard. Because of the roof holes.

Then they left.

So now we had an extremely good alarm system... and birds. Which have combined in incredibly obvious and predictable ways to produce an unending fountain of problems.

For Example: About once a month, someone gets called in by the local airforce dispatch because AAAAAAAAAAA a Spy is in the Rad Lab! We're all gonna die! Except every time, it's a bird. And I get why we have to check, but every time, the dispatcher is panicked and the person going out has to be like listen, listen: It's a bird. It's always a bird. It's been a bird every month for the last fifteen years. It will be a bird next month. All this stress? Bad for your heart.

Second Example: Sometimes, birds get in while we're actually working. And when it's in the morning, you know, it's a nuisance, and it stops testing (we are not going to risk irradiating a bird) but it's not an all-hands-on-deck situation because it doesn't take ten hours to get a bird out. But surprisingly often, the bird gets in riiiiight at closing time, and in that situation, everyone goes feral because nobody can leave until the alarm is set, and we cannot set the alarm while the bird is there, because the bird would immediately trigger it and then we'd have to stay another 4 hours to confirm that it was not a Soviet Bird.

So in order to go home, everyone's top priority is Get That Bird. And we have a system for it.

Step 1: The test stands tend to be located in rooms with 30+ foot ceilings. We can't catch birds in places like that - so we have to lure the bird into the relatively low ceilinged (8 feet only) upper offices.

We do this by turning all the lights off in the test rooms, then putting floodlights by the exits. I don't know why this works - some kind of evolutionary brain fragment shared by both Bugs and Birds - but work it does. The birds almost always follow after the lights. From there, it’s just two guys moving the floodlight and a third guy to turn off the lights.

Step 2: Everyone else has been waiting for this step. There is this long stairway up from the basement level into the offices, and in the final stage, the floodlights are brought to the base of the stairwell to bring the bird up. At the top of the steps there will be a group of tennish people, waiting for the signal. The light guys will set up the final transfer, everyone will tense, and then, swish...a bird will flit up the stairs and into the offices.

It's like watching werewolves on a full moon. Before the bird cometh, we are engineers. Nerds. Pale and skinny things, trembling under the fluorescent lights. After the bird, we are beasts. Feral, gnawing things, glowing under the orange sunrise of the 70's halogen floodlights.

And like all beasts, we cannot help but give chase.

Step 3: The were-engineers begin the hunt. The goal at the start is not really to catch the bird - just exhaust it. So the pack simply does not relent. Because the stakes are going home on time, the group is basically given free reign to go anywhere in the building. If someone's door is open, and the bird goes inside, they're going to have to deal with ten sweaty panting maniacs leaping around their office. They don't get to say that they're busy, or remark on how all this movement is a terrible distraction. They are allowed to sit in silence during the chaos, and perhaps thank the war party for chasing the bird while they sat comfortably on their ass. This has been explained several times, and it will continue to be explained until cooperation is achieved.

Anyway.

The chase can go on for quite some time. Sometimes, the bird will get tired and find a crevice to hide in, where it can then be reached through standard cornered-bird catching techniques.

Other times, it will slow down enough that someone can actually yoink it out of the air. But this will go on until someone catches the bird and triggers Step 4.

Step 4: The Finale. This is the get-the-bird-out-of-the-building stage, and it requires someone to adopt a specific role: To Become the Sacrificial Vessel of Bird Removal.

This job is both coveted and feared. It's coveted, because holding a wild bird in one's hands is a precious thing. To feel how small, and fragile, and scared it is, only to free it from the building? That is what it's like to be a benevolent God. But the cost! Oh, the cost. The entire time the Vessel is in motion, the bird will be biting the hell out of their fingers. And I cannot emphasize enough just how painful bird bites are. Their entire face is a set of needle posed pliers, and they know tricks the even the cartels haven't figured out yet. So there's always a little hubbub about who shall be The Vessel while onlookers, stranded outside The Office of Bird Capture, can only look on. Quiet arguments and pleas are heard, little fragments of fear and pride and glory trickling out of room like the silver dust left behind in a bag of well shook quarters. The sound of concensus is silence, and the argument will go on until that's all that's left. And then, from the darkness of the final office, the chosen sacrifice will step forward: Hands gently cupped, tears streaming down their face, fingers trembling from the pain of the ongoing bird chomps.

And this scene is what organizes people. Not leadership, not truly. No one can think and coordinate a crowd while their fingers are being attacked with a combination nutcracker/ear piercer. But the crowd sees the suffering of their annointed, and it is driven to do everything poossible to make the process flow. People instinctively flair out, finding the fastest path outside. Doors are held open. Paths are cleared. Someone, somehow, always knows the way forward and can describe it to the sufferer. Left, left, forward. Corner closet. Yep, there's a hall in there. Forward. Two-hundred more feet man, you're doing great. Just hold it together a little longer. You're killing it.

Then the final door swings open, and the bird flees out into what remains of daylight. And yet, even here, the deed is not yet done. I cannot explain it in words, but the crowd that helped is never content until they can see and speak on the Bird Vessel's wounds. They all have to pull the fingers back and see what was given. Estimate the price: One day to get better - No, three - No, a week! Are you blind? Do you see that blood blister? -Yeah, that's not going away anytime soon - Damn, can you believe how feisty those things are? Like wolves without teeth.

(They cannot help but touch as they go. It has always been this way. Even Thomas was not content until he felt the wounds in Christ's hands.)

Only when the last of the helpers has seen, and commented, and commended, will the engineers scatter. It is their return from the underworld that announces to the sun living surface dwellers that they too can go home. (@somerunner tolja it needed to be a post.)

[vhstown]

please stop scrolling and take the time to read this.

i don't think people understand the extent of the horror happening in palestine right now. "death" means nothing to people because of desensitisation so let me just tell you what white phosphorus is. it's being used in israeli munitions and has been and will continue to be fired across gaza and the palestinian borders.

white phosphorus burns when it comes into contact with oxygen (at nearly 800°C or 1500°F. the human body can withstand ~50°C for reference.) the air you breathe in ignites and it is near impossible extinguish. it sticks to clothing and skin and is very difficult to remove because it will continue to ignite in air. it burns flesh up to the bone and even past the bone because it penetrates tissue and is absorbed VERY easily. if you inhale it it'll destroy your respiratory tract and lungs. it can cause failure in multiple organs including the liver, kidneys and heart. it is being released in one of the most densely populated places on earth.

the only way to treat someone exposed to white phosphorus is to submerge them in saline or water and to pick out the substance with forceps, and when you undress a wound the substance can re-ignite. this is just ONE weapon that is being used to kill palestinian people right now. palestine does not have access to medical care, humanitarian aid, power, or internet. their hospitals are being bombed. gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world with over 50% of the population being children. many children are the sole survivors of their families. there are videos of children experiencing panic attacks and symptoms of ptsd. the fact that israel has committed war crimes in plain sight means that we can only imagine what will happen to the palestinians in complete darkness.

israel has and will continue to deny this. your interests and fandom will still be here, you will wake up tomorrow morning and see your friends and family, but an entire nation of people are being wiped off the map. being silent is being complacent. reblog, spread information, tell people in real life, attend protests, sign petitions, call your government offices, at the very least be angry and upset and horrified because once you become numb and indifferent and hopeless the oppressors will have already won.

what's happening right now is more than a genocide and once it becomes a part of history we'll wonder how the world let this happen. genocides have been part of all nations. just because it is far away does not mean you don't have to be concerned. the fact that YOUR governments and YOUR idols and the people around YOU are supporting the mass eradication of an entire group of people should scare you. it shouldn't make you feel anything less than sick and angry and disgusted. DO something about it, no matter how small you feel your voice is, because palestinians no longer have one.

[edit] links to some helpful reblogs: one & two

post on how you can help palestine

learn about palestine with this masterlist of info

+ a further reblog of mine

[edit 2] about palestinians "not having a voice" at the time i wrote this post internet connection was cut off entirely and even journalists weren't able to report for a period of time — that is all i meant by that. they of course have a voice and i never meant to undermine how people are risking their lives in gaza to get information out there and i apologise if thats what people took from it, it was not my intention but it is entirely my bad. please continue to spread information and updates from gaza as they come.

[royalarchivist]

How to Archive VODs and Clips

Whether you want to download VODs and/or clips for your own records or because you’d like to share them online, knowing how to archive things is handy, especially when so many streams become lost media once they’re deleted off Twitch and/or YouTube.

Here are a few programs that I use for Royal Archivist!

—

Of all the programs on this list, my personal favorites / the ones I most strongly recommend are Cobalt and Twitch Downloader! (When all else fails, OBS is also a good backup).

Cobalt

Cobalt has gained a lot of popularity the past few months, and for good reason! It's a very reliable, extremely user-friendly website that lets you save videos in MP4 formats, convert them into MP3 formats, or video-only without sound.

Cobalt is currently compatible with: BlueSky, Dailymotion, Facebook, Instagram, Loom, OK, Pinterest, Reddit, RuTube, SnapChat, SoundCloud, Streamable, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitch, Twitter, Vimeo, VK, Xiohongshu, and YouTube.

Twitch’s built-in download feature

If you’re downloading your own clip, this is the easiest method to use

First, navigate to your clips page.

To do this, click on your Twitch icon and go to “Creator Dashboard.” There will be a row of icons on your left - click the fifth button from the top (the one above the settings icon) and click on the link that says “Clips.”

At the top of the page, click on “Clips I’ve Created” and you should see a list of every clip you’ve ever made (regardless of whether or not you’ve published them, the clips are there!)

If you're having trouble, you can also type: https://dashboard.twitch.tv/u/ YOUR USERNAME HERE /clips/created

Click on the share button, and the list shown in the photo below will pop up.

After you click on the “Download” button (for landscape or portrait), a new tab will open up with the clip (which will autoplay, so heads up if you have your volume turned up high!)

Right click on the video and click “Save Video As”

That’s all there is to it! Please keep in mind that Twitch’s download function only works for clips you’ve made! You cannot use it to download VODs, or other people’s clips.

Twitch Downloader

Twitch Downloader is by far the BEST Twitch download program I have ever used. I’ve used several different ones, some which have broken because of Twitch’s updates, others which have fallen into disrepair because their creator no longer updates the program, but this one has been working consistently for me for a little over a year now. I’ve kept it very close to my chest because I’m terrified it’ll stop working one day, but it’s better to share resources than horde them out of fear.

Pros:

HD quality for all downloads! Whatever quality the stream was, that’s the quality the download will be (unless you adjust anything in the settings).

The best feature of this program is you can adjust how much you want to clip! Only want a 30 second clip from a 6 hour VOD? You can specify the section you want to download so long as you know the timestamps where you want the clip to start and where you want it to end.

You can download entire VODs.

When saving the file, it will automatically enter the original name of the stream and the stream date. (You can change this, but it’s very handy when you’re downloading an entire VOD and not a section of one).

It will automatically prompt you to update it when a new version has been released. (You do have the option to opt out of this, if you want).

There are a lot of other features available, however, I’ve never tried any of them so I can’t say how well they work. The Github page has a lot of examples and a Q&A section though, so check that out if you’re curious!

On the rare occasion that the program encounters issues, it's easy to use a past version, and the creators are quick to release new updates that resolve any problems. As of today (February 21, 2025) the latest version is currently 1.55.2, which updated last week.

Cons:

Sometimes when you click “Get Info” it won’t immediately load the VOD. This is pretty easy to solve by just restarting the program, so it’s not a huge issue imo.

You can’t preview clips before you download them, so you need to know the exact timestamps you want.

You can’t download VODs that are privated or no longer on Twitch.

How to use:

Download Twitch Downloader from Github and install the version that works for your computer. (In this case, I would download the GUI Windows-x64.zip version. Make sure you’re downloading the GUI version if you want a user-friendly version of this program).

Enter the URL of the VOD you’d like to download.

You can adjust the quality of the video and the length. If nothing is specified in the “Crop Video” section, it will download the entire VOD.

Once you’re ready, click the “Download” button and you’re good to go!

Open Video Downloader

If you’ve ever wanted to download any kind of video, I’m sure you’ve heard of Youtube-dl. There are different versions of this program, but some of them are a bit finicky and if things stop working, it can be difficult and frustrating trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it — which is why I recommend this program.

Open Video Downloader, aka youtube-dl-gui, is one of the best video downloaders I’ve ever used. It’s basically Youtube-dl with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that makes the program very easy for anyone to use.

Pros:

No coding knowledge required! VERY user-friendly.

The creator fixes user issues very quickly! Whenever the program experiences a problem, a new update is released within 24 hours.

It can download videos from pretty much all major social media platforms, including Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, Twitch clips, Instagram, and more.

Cons:

You can’t adjust the length of what you want to download. If you want to download a 2 minute section from a 5 hour Youtube VOD, you’ll have to download the entire video.

On rare occasions, I’ve had issues where it cannot download an unlisted Youtube video. There are sometimes ways to get around this, but it’s a pain and usually not worth the effort.

How to use it:

Download the latest version of the program from GitHub. Scroll all the way down to “Assets” and select the version that’s right for your computer. (For example, I use Windows, so I would download the .exe file).

Once you’ve installed it, you can start downloading things! For this example, let’s say I want to download Quackity’s “Welcome to the QSMP” video. All I need to do is copy the link and paste it into the white box at the top of the program.

Once that’s done, you should see the video pop up in your download queue. You can queue multiple videos to download at once (you can also download entire playlists too). When you’re ready, click the green download button on the bottom right (as shown in the picture below) or if you only want to download one specific video from your queue, click the download button (circled in red) next to the video.

You can adjust the quality of the video you want to download, and in theory you can choose whether to download just the audio or just the video of a video, but personally that’s never worked for me. That might just be a me issue though.

If you’d like to change where your videos are saved to, click the Folder button (circled in yellow) and choose a download destination. If nothing is chosen, it will default to your Downloads folder.

There are ways you can customize this program, but like I said earlier, this program is very very easy to use and does not require any tinkering whatsoever. You open it, download what you want, then close it. Nice and simple!

Other Recommendations

OBS is a good backup when all else fails! I have to use OBS pretty frequently for YouTube VODs, since there aren't a lot of tools that let you clip parts of a YouTube video (and I'd rather not download an entire 7 hour long VOD for a 30 second clip). There are already a lot of good tutorials out there explaining how to use OBS, so I recommend poking around and seeing what works best for you. If you're new to video downloading / archiving things, I'd still recommend starting with some of the tools I mentioned above first.

I’d recommend making a folder on your computer for clips. I find it very helpful to name all my files with this method: [Stream date] Streamer name - Something that helps me remember what this clip is about / something that will help me find it later, or a quote.

Example: [2-6-24] Mike - I hate capitalism

If you’ve got a significant amount of clips on your computer, I’d recommend backing them up and/or saving them to an external harddrive!

That’s about it! I apologize if I’ve missed any steps, but hopefully everything is more or less easy enough for folks to understand! I’m someone who does not like downloading random programs onto my computer and I’m very paranoid about cyber security, but I’ve used these programs for over a year now, and they’re very reliable and trustworthy. 10/10, I recommend both of them.

Lastly: if anyone has a recommendation for good Youtube clip downloaders, please let me know! I haven’t found any good programs that let me specify how much of a Youtube video I’d like to download, and I am suffering. Help your friendly neighborhood Archivist so I can share more clips from the early days of QSMP.

[seasaltdevotion]

Ok so,,,

I’m baffled.

I saw a post about someone’s “hot takes” on the gods. And it was tagged in Hellenic Polytheism and such-

And just boldly claimed Lord Poseidon is a terrible person and King Zeus is worse? Like hello? Are we following the same religion?

Just a reminder, you don’t pick and choose what gods are “good.” You don’t get to decide that gods are ok or not to worship based on their portrayal in myth. The gods are not their myths. Myths were written by opinionated/biased people who intended to explain the unexplained at the time. Myths are metaphors. Myths are *myths.*

Of course there is some information and lessons that we can draw from myths but our entire religion is not centered around myth literalism like other religions are such as Christianity.

The gods are not bad. They aren’t assholes or terrible people. They are Gods and Goddesses. They are the (I don’t wanna say personification but I can’t think of a better way to phrase it) personification and guardians of nature and life and knowledge and all of the beautiful things we deal with in everyday life. They’re not big story time villains that you get to write headcanons on.

Please, please research our religion and understand mythic literalism and why it’s not what the religion is founded on. Take the time to actually learn and understand that the gods are not their myths. They’re so much more than that, and they don’t mean any ill will on their followers unless you’ve terribly wronged them or someone else in an incomprehensible way.

I’m sorry for the long post but it upsets me so much to see people calling gods that are genuinely so kind and have helped me and others through so much assholes when they are anything but that.

[lairofsentinel]

Every chantry symbol in Miranthous is wrong. Every detail, every big statue, every enviroment has been designed so carelessly in this game. They don't even know that the Imperial Chantry has a particular symbol that separates them from the Orlesian Chantry of the rest of Thedas...

[shitpostingkats]

Alabasta Ace is so funny.

Like the strawhats keep commenting that Ace is so polite and restrained compared to Luffy but like. This dude drags himself out of the ocean just to thank them for looking after his brother and offer to help wash dishes. Mans asks "Are these guys bothering you?" and proceeds to blow up an entire fleet with his bare hands. He trips over himself to make sure all of Luffy's crew likes him and no, really, you don't mind that he's a weirdo???? That we, I mean he, are feral little insane guys who take up space and emotional labor and are kind hard to handle? Really???? Cool cool cool hey just a reminder I can help out with anything that needs doing. I got lost in the desert but donnut worry in the 0.6 seconds since you last saw me I have somehow acquired water and provisions for several weeks. Don't ask me how!

Peak oldest sibling behavior.

[erinwantstowrite]

you reposted a video of trump saying “you want me to go swimming”

and i just want to take a moment to recognize how actually insane that is.

like that’s how our president responds to tragedy? with no empathy?

the presidents role is to be the face and voice of america and her people, and for every loss of life, for every tragedy, and for all the pain her people must go through, the president must feel it. that is a heavy burden, but it is one our president must carry. our president represents us. there should be a level of class, of respect, and dignity in a president, that our current president does not fulfill

he is a sorry excuse for a leader, a role model, a human being, he is above all, a pathetic man who should not have the privilege of speaking for america and her people.

and even if you agree with his harmful policy’s, how dare you let our voice be so callous about lost lives? about children? it is disgusting. a president should have a level of poise when they speak, strong encouraging words instead of unintelligible insults

and the tiniest bit of hope i had, the smallest shred that this wasn’t all bad, has been ruined and tarnished, because excuse me for thinking that perhaps our leader would respond with even the smallest bit of empathy instead of placing blame everywhere else

he makes me sick.

THIS!!! EXACTLY!!!

(i promise this anecdote below is relevant to this bear with me)

when i was in high school, i was part of a very very good band program. there were a lot of talented people and we managed to take up a huge chunk of the school population. it was guaranteed to have at least two band kids in a class, and this was a AAA school. this is important because our reputation as band kids... was that we were always going to be the best students you had. not because of grades, but because of character. the same went for the many programs that we went to. if we were at a district competition, we were quiet when we had to be, we cheered for other bands, we would lend our equipment, etc etc. i can't think of any instances not only in my time there but before or after where people would groan when they thought about us coming to their event. because there were no incidences that made people think twice about inviting us

how we got that kind of reputation? my band directors built an environment in the band where we wanted to do great. "character, commitment, competence, capacity" were the 4 C's that were put on the wall. this is the best example that I could find, where I think communication and commitment are the same:

every student took up a leadership role even if you weren't handed a title like "drum major" or "section leader". we learned about how to represent ourselves and the people in our community, and we were proud of that. like yeah we might have sounded like a bunch of fucking nerds, but it was a good place to be.

often we heard adults wondering how the hell our band directors managed such a feat. it was such a large band that there should have been at least one group of teenagers that acted out or something. but that was incredibly (and i mean incredibly) rare, and were never so bad that it couldn't be immediately fixed.

it was possible because we had good role models!!

our band directors worked with every teacher on campus, brought us to community events, they had food drives and toy drives, etc etc. they were funny but they knew when to get work done, they created a space where we felt comfortable with them and wanted to make them proud.

i don't see anything like that when i see Trump, nor do i see it in people that voted for him. his Character is not just rude but nasty. his attitude towards the people he's supposed to be representing and caring about was absolutely intolerable. when asked if he cared about the lives of these people (WHO BY THE WAY, DIED MINUTES AWAY FROM WHERE HE IS RESIDING), he was a snarky fucking brat. he was childish and replied with THAT? "You want me to go swimming?"

I'M SORRY??

that was the most WILD, out of line shit i have heard him say in a minute. that was blatant disrespect on the lives of the people that were lost, their families that have to live with the grief for the rest of their lives, and to the American people that were hoping something would be said to comfort and ease our minds.

his statement was read off of a paper that someone else 100000% wrote for him. and then he went out of his way to say that DEI is responsible for it?????? THE DEI??????

you know why he said that shit? because it was his fault! he is directly responsible for air traffic control not having enough people that night. he fired 100 FAA senior officials, there was the hiring freeze that HE demanded, the Aviation Safety committee was disbanded, demanded for existing employees to leave, offered the buy it out. and then that plane went down- the worse air collision in the US in 16 years.

he can't take responsibility. he won't do that, because he would have to admit that it was his fault. that's a pretty trick that narcissists love to do. they come up with excuse after excuse for why something couldn't be their fault, it always has to lie with someone else. and he chose to blame... diversity?

the thing that really gets me about this DEI shit is that most of these people will argue that we need to get rid of it because people should be hired for their merit and not because of the color of their skin or gender. THAT'S WHY THE DEI EXISTS. because if it DIDN'T, only white men would be hired- for the color of their skin, because of their gender, and NOT because of their merit. diversity in our workplaces is how we end up being able to see different perspectives. the US is a melting pot of cultures and that's supposed to be a beautiful thing. the fact that we are still having arguments about it is because there are still people in power who do not want us being unified as a nation. they directly benefit from us believing that "the black man/ the latino man/ the white man" are the enemy. the enemy isn't the person who looks or acts different to you, the enemy are the people who are supposed to be representing us that are only acting out of their best interests.

Trump will never admit that he was wrong about something. It's not in his character. He is not a giving, caring man, who wants the best for the people. He is a lying, cheating, scum of the earth that sits on a "throne" built on the backs of people that do the work for him and who he has divided using hate and envy, then he props his feet up on a footstool made of his ugly pride, and he sticks his big fat thumb in his mouth, taking up all the room for that silver spoon.

He has no commitment to us as the people (even the ones that voted for him) nor to the people also in power that are loyal to him. I believe that in no time at all, he's going to get greedy and they're going to eat him alive, because Trump isn't even smart enough for any of this, there's someone else pulling the strings. He is an incompetent man child with no accountability for his actions, he has failed nearly every business that he touched and only has his money because of what his family had built before him. And he has no capacity for greatness nor does he have critical thinking skills. He props his words up with fluffy decorations and lies right through his teeth, and the people that voted for him are lapping it up like dogs starved. People are about to find out real fucking quick that Trump has been playing it easy and using the benefits of other people's work before him to make himself look good.

And they're not even going to get their eggs.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Master manipulator vs Master manipulator

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[feminist-space]

I highly, highly recommend this website (thank you https://chrisisgre.at/!) which has an extensive set of resources and sources for covid knowledge.

The image above (also alt text-included) is of the youhavetoliveyour.life website, which is an incredible set of resources with articles that debunk common covid denial sayings, such as "covid is mild now" or "I got it and I'm fine" or "Healthy people don't have to worry about it." The image shows a drop-down menu with common covid denial excuses.

The website also uses photos of prominent public health leaders such as Leana Wen or Ashish Jha or Mandy Cohen, who have been touting, falsely and dangerously, that covid is "over," that it's "not a big deal," that "we have the tools now" (even though we don't, actually, and long covid is absolutely devastating).

Select a statement from the drop-down menu to find informative, helpful, and scientific articles that explain why those statements are misleading and incorrect.

Here is the link:

[lobotomize-d]

Butter roll cookie if... if he was.... uh. . . Student at the Parfedia Academy ...

[vaguely-concerned]

just for fun this time during 'sea of blood' I counted out all the venatori corpses I think we can be pretty sure were lucanis' handiwork before we show up (not including the ones he kills in his initial cutscene, and with an assumption that he's been at work mainly up and down in the areas we move through until we find him, not behind the locked door -- I think that's mostly the work of rampaging undead and other venatori-hoisted-by-their-own-petard suchlikes). can thus happily inform you lucanis has killed at least 32 venatori before rook and company get there. at least one of them he's impaled on their own weird crystal spike things the venatori mages cast as an AOE attack and that they're trying to keep him contained with when we find him. so he's clearly been keeping busy lol. that's my boy dispensing poetic justice and claiming some enrichment in his enclosure while he's at it good for him!

[wassupmygays]

all of the Aces' headbands being just. a scrap of fabric from the shirt shes wearing is such a perfect, genius costume detail. clearly expressing her resourcefulness she needs to have as a greaser on first look.

@/tilly_ek ig (📷cole zieser); @asexual-juliet 's costume post (📷i think bethmarie003 originally but i cant find for certain); @/annakbermudez ig (📷jordan chin)

[lemurballing]

This is stupid:

buuuut it still works cause tangle is awesome :] i direct you to issue 37, where tangle does this:

at face value, heck yeah!! using her tail as a pulley system to tie up the boat?? so clever :) (and being able to wrap her tail around all that after the boat starts falling, before it loses much height - that’s very fast, accurate tail extension! what if she’d accidentally bonked her tail into any of those metal beams down there instead of going between them? she wouldn’t have made it in time if she did bonk!)

but you look closer… and it might not be that clever. in fact, it looks like a mistake.

(at the dark purple question mark, her tail’s path isn’t very clear. i went with ‘repeating the pattern’ around a part of the boat we couldn’t see in blue, which would then wrap around at the angle you see her tail stretch left, out from the question mark.)

it’s wrapped around the whole boat, so where’s the problem…?

the problem is: leverage (or whatever the word is for pulleys & ropes).

in the leftmost diagram, we see the dots - the anchor points of the rope - are at equal height. at a resting point, they will both hold the weight up with their own material integrity; that is, it will stay at the resting height unless the material breaks.

in the middle diagram, the ‘anchor point’ for the right rope has moved lower; the bar it holds the weight up towards is far lower, and the excess is wrapped over to tie to the ground. again, at resting position, it will remain there while the material holds.

in the right diagram, the rope arrangament is the same as the middle one, but now we’re applying pull force to bring the weight upwards. at this level, due to where the right rope is ‘anchored’ on the bar, no matter what force is applied, it cannot raise the weight any higher than that bar - only the rope on the left could pull it higher, or support its weight in a higher position.

applied to this situation:

the blue sections are parts where tangle’s tail can support the boat just by wrapping around and staying in place, pretty much; it’s a net woven around that just needs to not slip. the orange sections are where the only provable anchor point above the boat is tangle herself! (and i will note that the way she’s holding her tail here, her tail is almost certainly not the limb doing most of the pulling - for it to angle so much before and after her grip on it, it can’t be tensed. to better clarify - if you have long hair, and something pulls on your hair, it pulls your scalp. unless you grab your hair with a hand and pull it closer to your scalp, and then all the active tension is redirected through your arms.)

which means that for the boat to stay where it is - above the ‘blue level’ - tangle is actively pulling it higher! pulling the entire weight of the boat up.

so how hard is this - how heavy is the boat? in this panel, it looks like a relatively small boat; maybe a dinghy? dinghies can have those ribbed sides, and are generally round, and it could weigh somewhere between 100-200lbs, and be a little tough to carry…

nope! it is some type of motor boat (perhaps a skiff). you can see a propeller under the ‘cinch’, so it has a motor… and if you look at the rest of the page, it has at least 7 seats (presumably 8), so it has to be large enough to hold at least 7 people!

i’m not acquainted with boats so i had to do some digging - and most of the ones i found at first had consoles/raised walls/less seats than this one, which weren’t exactly a fair weight comparison. i also didn’t want to try to calculate precisely how long this boat is, since the angles are off and hard to calculate from this perspective.

so, instead i looked at a few different types of boat to get rough estimated of weights, and then i’d roughly downsize that based off estimates of how much smaller a boat for ~3ft people needs to be!

i went through a handful of similar motorboats (mostly 1-4 people, but with added physical features to add weight) and found weights between 1,000lb to 2,000lb depending on length (18-22+ feet). a yamaha 195S is 19’5” long, and 2,509lb - but a nitro z18 is 18’8” and 1,700lb. the only good visualizers i found were charts for what motor horsepower to use for what length and weight:

so it was super hard to get a good estimate of the weight here!! like super hard!! so i’m just doing a vague whatever conservative estimate and someone else can do proper math!!!

if you half the length to a presumed 10ft long - which i’m not sure is properly long enough for this boat, i’d guess somewhere between 12-15ft - and then quarter the 20ft weight to try to account for the square-cube law, you get a guesstimate of a boat weighing about 500lb. if you’re conservative with it, maybe 400lb?

which, to keep from tipping out away from the metal cradle, lowering to the level of tangle’s tail wrapped around underneath, & be held upright as tangle is doing, has to be fully supported - and as noted earlier, without real assistance from tangle’s tail’s strength, this is just her arms.

now, you could assume tangle simply wrapped that mystery segment of tail around the cradle bar she’s standing on, and this would allow much more of the boat’s weight to be supported by her tail’s structure… but it’d have to be an awkward angle for her tail to do that and it to not be visible next to her feet or in the empty space to the right, which would also put some more of the strain on her arms/body instead of her tail, so she’d stil be doing a lot!

and especially if you estimate the boat closer to 12-15ft, which is closer to 600-750lb, that gets crazier…

PLUS the fact that she had to hold that weight up for at LEAST as long to ask them to hurry & tie the boat up, AND as long as it took for the others to actually work something up/fix the cradle to hold the boat and relieve tangle of it.

conclusion: this is canon