Abelas Tel'Abelas

Yeah, sure, serial killers deserve human rights too, but isn't there a more obvious demographic you're sliding right by? Isn't there a demographic of people so thoroughly erased by human rights discourse that their rights aren't even debated, it's just taken for granted that human rights don't apply to these people?

I take a poll: "how many of you would agree that 'everyone deserves the right to privacy' is a pretty uncontroversial statement?"

when 95% of them have put their hands up, I say "now, what if I clarify that 'everyone' includes children?"

Pedophiles, rapists, serial killers, the most evil people you can imagine are, in fact, still people.

All of them, if we're humoring the idea that your government has your best interests at heart and can be relied upon to do the right thing. Which, lol. Lmao, even.

But also, this has nothing to do with *forgiveness*. I don't have to "forgive" a person for that person to be *a person.* I don't think that only good people are people. I don't think that your humanity is dependent on your innocence or moral purity, and I think it's actually really dangerous to literally dehumanize people, especially as a way to justify state violence against them.

First: THIS RECALL IS NOT STATE SPECIFIC. IT IS NATIONWIDE.

here are the specific products and dates:

FDA page on this:

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

The half-circles are called zaï! They're a traditional farming practice in the Sahel desert, and their introduction + reintroduction can be largely credited to Yacouba Sawadogo, the man linked above! He reintroduced and innovated on the zaï on his own farm in the 1980s, and did extensive outreach (along with scientist Mathieu Ouédraogo) to encourage other farmers to adopt them as well.

He also promoted the use of cordons pierreux, which are basically just lines of rocks to reduce erosion, preserve sediments, and increase water absorption.

Katara: BOY???? HOT BOY?????? HOT TEENAGE BOY?????????

Zuko: *speaks*

And then it hit me.

Iroh: *sitting in a teahouse at a paisho table* Iroh, deadpan: I must capture the last airbender.  Iroh: It is the only way to make sure the powe rof the Avatar won’t be turned on the Fire Nation. Iroh: Only then will I be redeemed in the eyes of the Fire Lord for my failure at Ba Sing Se. Iroh: … Iroh: Anyway, it’s your turn.

he was the eldest son of fire lord sozin, who knew the avatar was the greatest threat to the fire nation, but also knew the new one would be a firebender and he couldn’t exactly merc his own people, now could he? but he always planned to order a convenient little assassination on whoever the new avatar turned out to be and in the meantime took out the air temples so that avatar couldn’t learn the next element in the cycle. of course, when it turns out to be his son, sozin, stellar dad that he is, thinks “if you want something done right” and shoots a fire blast at his firstborn.

zuko enters the avatar state, blows up half the palace, etc etc as one does, gets a nasty scar for his trouble, and escapes, hence why he was hanging out far enough south to necessitate katara and sokka cracking open a cold boy a century later.

all this is to say 1. i think it’s a good way to maintain zuko’s background and characterization in an au like this and 2. it leads to a secret second roleswap

So, you know, it's not JUST a "quality of life" improvement. It's also a *quantity of life* improvement.

Anyway I was bitching about how hard it is to come up with feasible planets in Star Wars because sometimes you need a new planet from scratch and sometimes you need to know more about a planet than the 'has jungles, is probably a moon technically' than Wookieepedia will give you, and they're like 'oh yeah I can do something about that'.

So they've written (in Matlab but they swear it will run as a .exe as well and I may be conscripted to embed it as a web tool at some point) a star system generator.

You input what you know about the planet (ecosystem, population, sun colour, does it have liquid water, does it have a moon or moons, is it a moon or moons, temperature averages, atmosphere, you get me) and it will give you the... everything else about the star system, in obedience to real-universe physics. And if you input nothing you get a randomly generated star system.

And I’m like oh I know people who will be into this with a vengeance, and they're not on Tumblr, so this is me seeing who exactly would be keen on, and I cannot stress this enough, a real-physics comprehensive star system generator.

see him sing

now see him thrushin

If you can correctly identify what type of dog Zorro is, you get a prize*