Chalk Revelations

Double Arch Milky Way - Wongan Hills, Western Australia

The double arch is only possible at certain times of the year. The basic principle is to image the first arch early in the evening (right half) then the second arch in the morning (left side), leaving your camera in exactly the same spot. Right arch goes from south to west to north while the left arch goes from south to east to north, completing a 360 degree view of the night sky.

Lupe (the woman in charge of the waiting room) comes to Robby with the news that patients are leaving and asks him what to do, and he instructs her to "tell them the truth and hope they stay".

Be completely honest about what's happening, and let people decide for themselves whether staying is worth the risk.

One of the accusations that's been levied against Robby is that, by mentioning that patients and staff have been leaving, he made the hospital a target. Except, as has been pointed out, the hospital was already a target.

The ED has a legal duty to treat anyone who comes in, documented or undocumented. ICE knows that, so they know there undocumented immigrants in the ED and the waiting room. The staff who have left are in the country legally, but (rightfully) worried that might not matter to ICE. The Federal government knows exactly who they are and where they work.

This is probably not the first time ICE has shown up, and it's unlikely to be the last.

So Robby gives the people in the most danger as much control of the situation as he can by making sure they know about the danger.

And in doing so, he is also trying to encourage them to come back.

One thing we've seen a lot over both seasons is how crucial trust and the human connection are in treating the most vulnerable.

You can only treat people if they come in. Even with the street team, the patients still need to co-operate.

By making sure that the hospital, as an institution, is open about the presence of ICE, Robby tells them that the hospital will be honest in the future.

If you come back, you can trust that we'll tell you if and when ICE comes back. If we tell you ICE isn't here, you can trust that they're not.

Hey, so many of you are familiar with fix-it fanfiction, the superglue which holds together the hearts canon has shattered, right? Well, I have a point to make. As of right now (1-28-2020), there are 6,659 fanfictions in the Leverage category on AO3. You know how many of those are fix-it fics? 25. A measly 0.38% of Leverage fanfiction is tagged as fix-it. For comparison, 2.20% of MCU fanfiction and 1.25% of Supernatural fanfiction are fix-its.

So yeah, Leverage is so amazing that hardly anything needs to be fixed. But we already knew that. No, it gets better. Of those 25 fix-it fanfictions, 16 (64%) of them are actually fix-its for OTHER fandoms. Leverage has been used in fix-its for White Collar, The Walking Dead, Coupling (UK), The Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Kings, Person of Interest, Pacific Rim, Once Upon a Time, The Losers, Merlin, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the actual 2016 US election (yeah, that).

before i watched project hail mary i knew exactly 2 things about ryan gosling:

Benjamin Foster’s Gilgamesh condenses all the different tablets we’ve found together to make one cohesive narrative which is way less intimidating and therefore my go-to if you want something that feels cohesive while also sticking very close to the language of the original. 10/10

Andrew George is the most thorough and up-to-date, and sticks as close to the text as you can get. It does, however, separate out all the different tablets, and feels very unedited in its style. Definitely not a “pretty” version. 10/10 cuz he’s a legend and this is the most definitive scholarly edition but don’t start with it.

Maureen Kovacs has a lovely translation with some very interesting footnotes on word choices. Her Ninsun is absolutely incredible and if you want to cry your eyes out over Gilgamesh’s fate that’s the one for you. It’s one step up from Foster’s in terms of poetic-ness but still pretty close to the original. 8/10

Sophus Helle is more poetic than Kovacs but BRILLIANT, one of my favourite Enkidus and his Shamhat is wonderful. Top favourite of all time. This is a very good starting point. 9/10

I wouldn’t recommend Sandars simply because it’s prose, and also condenses the twelfth tablet into a nice tidy ending that doesn’t really work with the Standard Babylonian narrative. 6/10

Lewis’ Gilgamesh Retold is more of a poetic retelling than a translation; it’s beautiful but definitely not a starting point. Sweet and gentle Enkidu though, very charming. 7/10

Stephen Mitchell I’m not a fan of. He smooths the poem out into something tame and very expected. This is my personal bias but I really dislike his Shamhat. His Enkidu and Gilgamesh are also explicitly more like brothers, which is a valid interpretation but also again not one I lean towards. 5/10

Herbert Mason’s Gilgamesh has some stunning moments in it (Enkidu! They do not know you like I know you!) However it is nowhere near the real text BUT closer than Lewis’. Changes the ending of the poem so it’s about Gilgamesh mourning Enkidu rather than mourning his own mortality; a much sadder conclusion with less resolution than in the Standard Babylonian. 7/10

BONUS ROUND:

Derek Hines’ play GILGAMESH is fucking DERANGED guys. Ten Gilgillion out of ten.

Roman Frescoes + Solid Colors

In Re Gault was about a 15 year old kid who allegedly did a stupid crank phone call to a neighbor. (I don't think it was ever proven that it was actually him; he said it was his friend and he kicked his friend out after the phone call was made.) The sheriff took him into custody, his parents were not informed, and he was kept at the local jail. After that, the judge in the case decided that he needed to go to the state reform school until he was twenty-one (21) god damn years old.

Important to note that these reform schools were unregulated rarely inspected abuse factories. As with pretty much any time you hide away children and put adults in charge of them who can do anything they want, the children were often directly physically and sexually abused, used for forced labor, locked in solitary confinement, deprived of education, forced into religious conversion... What happened to these kids is very similar to the unceasing horror and violence done to Native Americans in residential schools, complete with unmarked graves, and just like with the indigenous peoples, authorities patted themselves on the back for taking care of the problem.

Gault, in this process, was not:

Told what specific crime he was charged with (the judge tried to backtrack and say it was a different one later)

Given an attorney

Given a transcript or the ability to make a transcript of the proceedings

Allowed to appeal the decision.

His parents brought it to the state Supreme Court anyway on a habeas corpus petition, which the Court referred back to the original judge to decide. When the original judge decided that he'd been right after all, they brought it back to the state Supreme Court, which said that all the problems seemed cleared up now.

The United States Supreme Court reversed 8-1 (THERE WAS A DISSENT!!!!) and gave kids, at that point, in the year of our lord 1967, the right to know what charges they had, the right to confront their accusers, and the right to have an attorney.