thin air's as sweet as water

elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey:

badscienceshenanigans:

systlin:

dzamieponders:

miss-pearls-official-account:

systlin:

frenzy5150:

systlin:

untilstarsfall:

systlin:

systlin:

systlin:

So apparently Senators Collins and Murkowski have pissed of the white male members of the GOP to the point where some members have said that they’d challenge them to a duel if they were in South Texas

Anyway so I’m calling Rep. Farenthold later to accept on Sen. Collin’s behalf and I’m choosing Fists. Can take place in Iowa because if two parties agree to mutual combat, under state law it is totally legal here.

And if he accepts yes I will stream that shit live don’t be silly.

And after I beat his ass once for Collins, I will duel him again on Murkowski’s behalf.

Square up, bitch.

OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU SO MUCH GOD CSPAN BOUT TO BE LIT

Submitted

Originally posted by allreactions

SO I CALLED HIS DC OFFICE AND SAID BASICALLY THE SAME THING I SENT VIA EMAIL. 

After about 20 seconds of dead silence, the staffer let out kinda a little laugh and said “Well ma’m, I’ll be happy to pass on your…”

“I’m not joking.”

“Ma’m?”

“You think I’m joking. I am dead serious. You want my address? Or I’ll meet him at the airport. I am absolutely serious about this. Oh, and as the challenged party, I get to pick weapons. I choose fists.”

Another 20 seconds of somehow even deeper silence.

“I…I’ll pass your challenge on to the congressman.”

“No. He issued the challenge. I’m accepting. Unless he’s backing out like the spineless coward he is.”

More silence. “I…I’ll let Congressman Farenthold know, ma’m.”

“You do that.”

ANYWAY SO HOW DID YOU ALL SPEND YOUR LUNCH BREAK TODAY.

I LOVE THIS DO IT B

followup when

FOLLOW UP; He has proved himself a faithless coward and refused to meet me in honest physical combat, so I cursed him. Specifically, called on his past misdeeds to be visited upon him and justice he’s evaded  to find him. 

He’s now retiring after his history of sexually assaulting women came to light and will not be seeking re-election anywhere. 

reblog to bring truth out of her well to fisticuffs mankind

this is how the civil war started except that instead of challenging to a duel a senator literally just whipped out a cane on the senate floor

(via cerulean-beekeeper)

yip-yip:

flower-lesbienne:

gunsandfireandshit:

casbean:

harryngtonewithyourshit:

beardedchrisevans:

Is Chris Evans Steve Rogers or is Steve Rogers Chris Evans?

good

“Fellas, is it gay to be a good father?”

Shout out to Harry Hill

(via cerulean-beekeeper)

What Does It Mean To Watch The X-Files For The Mythology?

plaidadder:

Every once in a while I see this argument go around pitting people who watch for the ship against people who watch for the mythology. The assumption on both sides seems to be that only one of these things matters and that people who watch ‘for’ the other one are doing it wrong.

To me this is a false dichotomy. The ship is entangled with the mythology, and neither can exist without the other. The alien abduction arc of S2, for instance, was foundational to both the mythology and the ship. You COULD ship Mulder and Scully based solely on their interactions in MOTWs, but you’d be missing most of the really important developments in that relationship (“Memento Mori,” for instance). Similarly, you COULD be into the mythology so hard you didn’t care about the ship, but it would be very hard to find a major development in the mythology that doesn’t have *something* to do with the ship.

First time around, I watched the show for the mythology. I did not ship Mulder and Scully first time around in the sense of really wanting the show to make them a couple (or just to let us see them bang). But I don’t think I would have been watching the show at all if I hadn’t been interested in Mulder and Scully and their relationship (whatever it was). And I don’t think I would have been able to follow the mythology at all if the M/S narrative weren’t there to give us a steady linear plot on which to hang it all. 

Because the thing is that for Chris Carter, the mythology ‘plot’ is fundamentally static. I used to think he was refusing to advance it because he was afraid of the show ending. After S7, I came to believe he had no endgame in mind at all. After S10, I believe that all Chris Carter has left in the tank now–regardless of whether there was ever anything else in that tank–is a miasmatic and stagnant paranoia which doesn’t so much progress along narrative lines as cling to the show’s OTHER narrative lines like a dank and malignant fog. If what you really watch is “the mythology” and nothing else, then basically you’re just watching the mist roll in and out of the bog. Over and over and over.

So unless you have been experiencing the X-Files as a ten-season-long Samuel Beckett play, then you have not been watching for the mythology *alone.* Because their relationship is the only thing in the X-Files universe that ever really moves forward. You may not have thought it was a romance; you may not have liked that that it became a romance; fine, we all had our opinions about that back in the day. But even when it was just a REALLY intense platonic friendship, it is the ONLY thing that ever got anything done in the X-Files universe. 

So the bottom line is, if you are watching the show, you are watching it ‘for’ both the mythology and the ship. This dichotomy really exists only because of the division over the question of the banging, or rather, the question of whether it’s better for the show for Mulder and Scully to be platonic or romantic. That division has its roots in a longstanding male devaluation of things that are more about emotion than ‘reason.’ But by God…reason has NOTHING to do with Chris Carter’s mythology. NOTHING. It never made sense, it never will, reason was not th epoint of it. The mythology is just as much a ‘feeling’ as the feels people get from watching Mulder and Scully almost make out. Just because it’s called SCIENCE fiction, that doesn’t mean rationality or logic have anything to do with that show.

But I digress. My point is: I don’t believe anyone can watch this show PURELY for the mythology, in the same way that the ship wouldn’t BE the ship if the mythology had never been created. It’s all wrapped up in one fascinating yet always problematic package.

I actually just started rewatching the X-Files after, wow, maybe 10 years or more since I’d last seen an episode of any kind, and I have to admit, I never thought the dichotomy in the fandom would come in the form of shipping-or-mythology, I thought it would come in the form of myth arc-or-MOTW.

…MOTW FTW.

(via plaidadder)

plantyhamchuk:

jumpingjacktrash:

howlfromthecore:

socalledunitedstates:

saint-aries:

socalledunitedstates:

I want other young people to understand that if the extent of your radical action is posting “eat the rich!” on social media and waiting for somebody to tell you a revolution has started, nothing will change and you’ll get arrested in the Third Red Scare and that’ll be it

What’s the plan?

Join a local trade union and the IWW. Join or start a local tenant’s union. Volunteer with Food Not Bombs and do other mutual aid in your community. Support your local solidarity economy and maker community. Build, fix, and grow stuff. Use free, open-source software and stop letting companies sell your data. Pirate stuff. Break unjust laws. Attend local actions

And most importantly, join radical groups in your area. Strength is found in numbers and none of us can change the world alone. If you need help finding your local movement, DM me and I’ll look around for you so you can start getting stuff done

Feed the people. People can’t–won’t– strike, protest, go against the bosses, sit in, down, or out, show up for community actions, marches or any other damn thing, and they won’t put thier jobs or homes or freedom or ability to feed and house thier kids in jepoardy unless you can answer the question “How are we going to eat?”

You’ve got to have an alternative. People need to eat and live and meet thier needs and the needs of the people they are responsible for. People have to come together and get each other taken care of and fed. Otherwise the only people who show up are the ones who can afford to. And since the group of people who both have resources-time, emotional, financial, transportation, etc and want to show up and change the system–is fairly small, and not growing fast…. That’s not enough people for a revolution.

Learn consensus. Build community with people. Talk to the humans around you and figure out what they need and how to organize people to meet that need. People aren’t going to show up and be told what they need. If you–if we–want a different system, we have to show up and show–not tell-people how they can meet each other’s needs.

and if your sole contribution is gatekeeping and infighting, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. turn outward. look for opportunities to help. DO SOME WORK.

Ella Baker

Very relevant wiki - Community Organizing 

“Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other^[1] come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest.^{[citation needed]}

Unlike those who promote more-consensual community building, community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless. Community organizing has as a core goal the generation of durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence key decision-makers on a range of issues over time. In the ideal, for example, this can get community-organizing groups a place at the table before important decisions are made.^[2] Community organizers work with and develop new local leaders, facilitating coalitions and assisting in the development of campaigns.”

Very relevant wiki - Community Building

“Community building is a field of practices directed toward the creation or enhancement of community among individuals within a regional area (such as a neighborhood) or with a common interest. It is sometimes encompassed under the field of community development.

A wide variety of practices can be utilized for community building, ranging from simple events like potlucks and small book clubs, to larger–scale efforts such as mass festivals and building construction projects that involve local participants rather than outside contractors.

Activists engaged in community building efforts in industrialized nations see the apparent loss of community in these societies as a key cause of social disintegration and the emergence of many harmful behaviors. They may see building community as a means to increase social justice, individual well-being and reduce negative impacts of otherwise disconnected individuals.”

Community-building and the Environment

“Community building efforts organize around toxic waste, environmental health, and environmental justice. Prior emphases on conservation, preservation, endangered species, rainforest destruction, ozone depletion, and other national global concerns often had no salience for local communities, and such emphases kept the environmental movement a largely middle class and upper middle class movement. (Brown) Groups may be as influential as the United Nations ^[10] or as small and local as neighborhoods. The Natural Resources Defense Council lists many publicly organized community-building groups created to decrease the ecological footprint and reduce the environmental impact that humans have.^[11]”

These wiki are not exhaustive, just a starting point.

(via hereeatthiskitten)

ekjohnston:

drst:

innytoes:

innytoes:

innytoes:

Listen I have zero headcanons or plot for a Leverage OT3 highschool AU, I just have a burning desire for Eliot driving around his boyfriend and girlfriend in a beat up old car and Nana being awesome and Parker being Mysterious and also maybe like milkshakes??? Flannel and sneakers??? Cute teen dates??? Someone please save me.

-Eliot charming the shit out of Nana with his ‘ma’am’ and appreciation for Good Food.

-Parker not officially going to school, she just picks a class or two she wants to follow because Archie said she should learn to blend in with kids her age. She steals the teacher’s roll-call list and adds herself to it. 

-Eliot 100% the quarterback. He is also Very Popular with The Ladies and some of the other players are like: HOW DO YOU GET SO MUCH ASS ELIOT and he is like: TRY TREATING WOMEN LIKE PEOPLE JACKASS. (He doesn’t even get around half as much as people think, because he is Respectful and even when he does have sex he never tells.)

-Hardison takes ALL the computer classes. He finished all his assignments on the first day and spends the rest of his time hacking and programming and messing with the school’s system so bullies actually get in trouble and kids who have accessibility needs are suddenly getting the funds and help they need. 

-Parker tried out for cheerleader and it went about as well as you can imagine.

-Lots of very cute late night dates at all-night diners with milkshakes and Eliot arguing with the fry cook and Hardison charming the waitress but only because he wants to distract her from Parker sneaking behind the counter to top up their milkshake.

-Hardison being very understanding Eliot doesn’t want to introduce him to his dad like: is it the boy thing, the black thing, or… And Eliot is like: no no no it’s the my dad is an asshole thing and I don’t want to subject either of you to him but I want you to meet my little brother his name is Jake he’s really smart you’ll like him.

-All three of them have tried the yawn-and-arm-around-the-shoulders move and only one of them was succesful. (Eliot. And only half the time, one time he nearly poked Hardison’s eye out.)

-Parker stealing her boy’s clothes and accidentally becoming the centre of attention because wearing the quarterback’s letterman jacket Means Something so she makes Hardison switch with her and that just causes more gossip and meanwhile Eliot is bitching at them like DID NOBODY THINK THAT MAYBE I’M COLD WITHOUT MY JACKET DO YOU SEE HOW MANY LAYERS I WEAR IT’S NOT A FASHION STATEMENT DAMMIT HARDISON GIVE IT BACK.

-Nana has totally taken Parker aside and told her if she needs anything, she can always come to her. Parker fled because of Emotions but also has totes dropped by the house while Hardison was out to 1) get advice from an adult who was not Archie and 2) eat all the homemade cookies.

-Eliot takes the other two camping. It goes about as well as you can imagine.

-Hardison and Eliot seeing Archie with Parker when they’re arguing about a job. Hardison very carefully tries to question her about who Archie is (’nah, Archie isn’t my dad, he has a Real Family’), if he’s bad-touching her, and Parker being ‘???’ until Eliot is like: IS HE HURTING YOU BECAUSE I WILL PUNCH HIM and Parker being like: oh lol no, Archie knows I would stab him if he tried to touch me. =D He gave me a knife! 

-They’re still not entirely sure about who Archie is so they track him down and threaten him just in case. Archie makes up some kind of story about being a mentor and being all: I’m glad Parker made friends who will threaten adults for her.

-Who gave Parker a skateboard who thought that was a good idea she is riding it along the edge of a 10 story building. 

-Laser tag death match, winner gets to pick the movie/food/sit in the middle of the snugglepile.

-Weirdly invested and inappropriate-life-advice-giving guidance counsellor Sophie Devereaux who may or may not be a con-woman laying low for a few years.

-Econ teacher Nate who will explain the economy and the market and also how marketing schemes and con-men work and if you ask the right questions at the right time and distract him BOOM your lesson is now a history of epic heists class.

-When Hardison finds out Parker is not officially enrolled, he Fixes That in the system, making sure to forge her some nice grades for the classes she doesn’t take (nice, but nothing that will make her stand out.) He tries not to pry, because Parker tends to disappear when you pry too much, but he makes sure that whoever she lives with, they’re not hurting her. He thinks maybe she just has shitty foster parents, or some kind of Weird Religious Ones who want to homeschool her? She knows a lot about art and geography, okay, and she does fine with math, so clearly she’s got schooling.

-Eliot is the one who learns she lives in a Creepy Warehouse. She makes him promise not to tell Hardison, because he will make Sad Eyes and possibly get Nana involved. Eliot is like: YOU OWN A WAREHOUSE? HOW? WITH WHAT MONEY. No no don’t tell me I don’t want to know. He makes sure she’s safe and comfortable and goes home to punch his punching bad in the basement because DAMMIT HE PROMISED NOT TO TELL HARDISON but maybe Nana should be involved because that can’t be healthy.

-Various teachers spend a year trying to get Parker to go to the guidance counsellor. She needs some kind of help, they agree. 

-Parker only actually goes when Eliot and Hardison ask her to the winter formal, and she’s like: YOU GIVE PEOPLE ADVICE RIGHT HELP ME I WANT TO LOOK NICE FOR THE DANCE. And Sophie is all: um that’s not the kind of advice they mean but also I am not going to turn down giving fashion advice come in what can I do for you.

-And Parker tried to ask Nana, and Nana is sweet and kind and told her feel-good stuff like ‘wear something that makes you feel pretty’ and ‘you will look great no matter what you wear, dear, don’t let yourself get caught up thinking you need some expensive dress’.

-But that doesn’t help, she doesn’t know what to wear, what makes her feel pretty is her jeans and the shirt she stole from Hardison and Eliot’s second-favourite flannel because they preen when she wears them. But those aren’t Dance Clothes and she wants to look nice but also not stand out and also not wear uncomfortable shoes.

-So she sits down with Sophie and explains all that and then is like: so I need something to wear with THIS. 

-And she pulls out this necklace. And Sophie is like: Is That The Bismarck Sapphire??? And Parker is like: Eliot says blue brings out my eyes.

-And Sophie, momentarily forgetting she is a Guidance Counsellor, asks her like: HOW DID YOU GET PAST X SECURITY MEASURE AT THE SMITHSONIAN and then Parker looks at her and Knows. Sophie is like her.

-And then they spend like, 25 minutes gossiping about Stealing Shit before Sophie pulls up some websites and shows her some lovely dresses that would look nice with her necklace. 

-And from then on, Parker goes to visit Sophie regularly, usually with some cool anecdote about a thing she stole like it’s show and tell, until Sophie gently tells her she’s welcome even without that, she doesn’t have to ‘pay’ for advice, and she helps Parker with stuff like How Do I People and also How Do I Pass This Exam When I’m Stealing A Thing Downtown The Night Before.

So Bonnano is the principle, right?

Bonnano is Vice Principal. He doesn’t know HOW all this happens, but it happens.

Sterling is the Principal, having support from the Superintendents that Nate was never able to get.

(via hereeatthiskitten)

spiroandthelacktones:

liberalsarecool:

Voting to ‘hurt’ people is sick.

Also notice how fucked up the “he isn’t hurting the people he’s supposed to be hurting” mentality is, like it’s admitting you voted for him cause you thought he would be hurting people just the ones you don’t like

(Source: liberalsarecool, via cerulean-beekeeper)

ms-demeanor:

runcibility:

ms-demeanor:

chrisevans-sexualfrustrations:

Steve?

Okay but he’s right and he should say it.

“Smart” and “Cloud” also mean data gathering. I need to have a tangent, so pardon me while I run with this…

Here’s the thing: I’m a nerd. I want to be able to automate things in our home and to have usable data. So I want smart electrical plugs that allow me to have rules and show me what’s hooving up a ton of energy. That’s useful to me, but that’s not the bargain that tech companies are willing to strike with me, because they want to be able to gather data and sell it.

What’s annoying as hell is that every currently supported thing that does this wants to be a cloud-based application that requires me to install an app on my phone.

I. Do. Not. Want. This. 

I want my plugs on a network so I can flip open a browser on my laptop or phone or tablet and access them that way. I do not want them on or touching the goddamned internet. I do not want an information-gathering-and-data-leaking-phone-app.

The one thing that I’ve found that semi-reliably does this is no longer supported by the manufacturer. Every other goddamned option requires me to have it be app-controlled and I can’t control the data gathering from the manufacturer.

In this case, I am DEFINITELY an old-coot yelling at THE cloud.

Oh, in case I didn’t make it incredibly clear: the internet of things (IoT) is garbage and it’s tremendously insecure and it is UTTER FUCKING CRAP and I can’t explain how much I completely loathe it but here let’s try because it has been a while since I yelled about this.

[Obligatory introductory joke to explain the field: What does the S in “IoT” stand for? Security.]

1: As Grandpa Cap said, things should just work. IoT things don’t just work, they’ve gotta be joined to your network and have proper connectivity and they’re whiny little baby machines when they can’t talk to the mothership and oh yeah sometimes they completely stop working because the company that makes them goes out of business and suddenly you’ve got a hunk of technology that isn’t getting patches or updates and can suddenly get bricked with no warning. Sometimes they’re such sensitive delicate little flowers that after a power outage they go back into demo mode and spoil all your food. That’s not something that “just works.”

2: Very little user control; bad attitudes about security all around. It’s actually really hard to do shit like re-set passwords on a lot of IoT devices. Either that or people don’t realize they need to re-set passwords for their stove or their roomba or whatever. Long story short if I felt like it I could watch your family through your baby monitors or just wait until your kids fell asleep and started shrieking through the monitors to ruin everyone in the household’s sleep. That’s maybe less of a concern with something like a roomba or a smart fridge but I can also watch your IoT security cams and smart doorbells if I put some effort into it. Walk around your house naked? Maybe don’t set up a bunch of really poorly secured webcams that use your home wifi.

3: Big Data can suck my sparkly blue dick. You know these things are collecting data on you, right? Your vacuum sends out a map of your house. Your smart fridge tracks the grocery lists you keep and how often you shop and how many accounts there are in the house. I’m willing to bet that the smart doorbell that is probably managed by Amazon tracks how many deliveries you get. When you agree to bring this shit into your home you agree to share with Amazon exactly how many times you said “Alexa, play Venom (2018)” to cope with the ever encroaching threat of technology and oligarchy.

4: Do you want botnets? Because this is how you get botnets.

5: I’m going to steal your internet-enabled car OR I’m just going to rickroll you through your internet-enabled car stereo but either way I’m going to be laughing while I do it. SERIOUSLY. Next month I’m tabling at a DIY/Hands-On/Hacker con type thing; last year one of the workshops was two days of a crash-course (geddit) of open-source car hacking software. Actually for the last, like, three years every con I’ve gone to has had an IoT hacking village. It’s so prevalent now that hackers chill in between difficult contests or dull talks by fucking with smart blenders the way we fuck with locks.

6: BOUNDARIES ON THIS SHIT ARE GETTING WEIRD. Even my own beloved field of Teledildonics is getting wrapped up in insecure IoT fuckery. And it’s really creepy to think that you could be chilling with your vibrator only to have its controls suddenly taken over by someone else.

7: You’re trained not to think of your phone and computer in exactly this way but holy shit do you ever need to. Is your smartphone really shitty at making calls but really good at one-touch amazon orders? Did your phone have no native MP3 player but came preinstalled with Facebook? Look, you gotta do everything you possibly can to choke the life out of the apps you’re running, deny them everything they ask you, uninstall everything you possibly can and then still recognize that you’re carrying around a tracking device that tells every company it talks to everything about you.

Anyway the panopticon is real, everything is terrible, and while I’m by no means a primitivist I do feel like it’s beginning to be imperative to do something drastic about the erosion of privacy.

Also since I’m here being grumpy and shouty here’s some advice for any anarchists or hackers or protestors or troublemakers out there: start leaving your phone at home a couple days a week at random times. Your behavior is tracked through your daily patterns, it’s unusual and suspicious to suddenly leave your phone at home for twelve hours. So start leaving it home whenever you don’t feel like having it. Memorize two or three important numbers. You should be able to have some untracked time a couple of days a week.

Also also fucking seriously start using a passcode to unlock your phone instead of biometrics.

Okay, yelling done, the internet was a mistake, I love you all.

(via hereeatthiskitten)

dashbork:

aka14kgold:

blodwynn:

If a sitting president threatens to hold government employees hostage and shut down the government for years because the other branches of government won’t give him absolute power, then he should be fucking impeached.

#like this is literally how authoritarianism starts #the government wo[n’t] build your wall? #shut down the government entirely! #declare a state of emergency to circumvent congress! #like how long will it take for martial law to be declared after that?

American friends just be watchful in 2020 if it looks like he’s going to loose, especially if he’s going to lose to a woman or a member of a minority..

(via cerulean-beekeeper)