Nik's Blog

I bet you get so FUCKING confused when I and dozens of others are putting all this “Glorious 25th of May” stuff on your dash and I’m sorry about that so let me TELL YOU what it’s ALL ABOUT okay but I had a couple shots too fast so bear with my lightweight ass.

It’s a thing from a book called Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. On May 25 in-universe, a thing happened called the “Glorious Revolution” where in this city called Ankh-Morpork the leader (Patrician) died (was sort of assassinated sort of induced into having a heart attack) and a new leader came to power. There was a lot of unrest in the city because the regular people were like Life Sucks We Want Things To Not Suck In These Particular Ways. So the Bad side of the police got dispatched to quell the rebellion and also the damn army got made involved, while there was a group of ragtag Good police who ended up just trying to actually keep the peace and protect the rebels so things would calm down, but a bunch of them got killed and the revolution ended with the new leader sucking almost as bad as the old leader and yeah everything still kinda sucked.

Fast forward a bunch of years to our hero Sam Vimes the commander of the Watch cops chasing a criminal and getting zapped back into the past by magical lightning no that’s not a joke. Vimes was a teenage new police recruit the first time the Glorious 25th happened and now he’s in the past having to pretend to be the guy who trained him the first time. As the same things happen as happened before in this pivotal moment in his life/the city’s history.

And like!! Vimes knows what’s going to happen! He knows people are going to die!! And he knows that if anything about the past changes too much, he won’t be able to go home to his proper present. But the criminal he was chasing got zapped back to the past too and could be fucking things up even worse due to being an asshole! So Vimes has to catch that guy so he can go back to the present and have justice be served.

BUT!!!! Even though he KNOWS he probably can’t save anyone who’s “supposed to die” and even though he KNOWS he’s doomed to lose everything he has in his present if things change too much (his wife! is about to have their child!)!!! HE TRIES TO SAVE PEOPLE. Because they’re good men!! And if the price of going home is NOT TRYING! and selling those good men to the night! He doesn’t want to pay it!!

So he TRIES. So fucking hard. Because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes.

And okay anyway let’s not spoil the whole book KidK but anyway! When the good cops are out doing their duty trying to just help things be peaceful in the city, one of them is like “we should have some kind of banner or plume to show we’re in this together” and one of them is like “how about sprigs of lilac I mean they’re all over the place.” So that’s why lilac.

And that’s why Glorious 25th.

And the fandom decided to celebrate it as a remembrance of Terry Pratchett and as a Thing to raise awareness for Alzheimer’s because that’s what PTerry died of.

So that’s what this is all about. A really good book about time travel and found family and comradeship and trying your best against the worst kind of odds. And a really good author who shouldn’t be dead and trying to help others with his same illness.

He didn't do it.

The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.

Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?

The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction

The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity

We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either

Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender

The gods didn’t actually have animal heads

Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)

The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous

While the Egyptians were fine-ass astronomers they didn’t align any of their enormous and/or important buildings to modern star constellations, because constellations look very different now than they did ~5000 years ago 

Speaking of that particular sphinx, the Napoleonic expedition is not responsible for its missing nose

Akhenaten was not a “heretic” by contemporary standards

Ramses II appropriated a lot of his predecessors’ buildings/reliefs and isn’t really deserving of the epithet “the Great”

It was not, in fact, practice to shave off eyebrows after cats died; Herodotus lied about that

Here are some vetted Egyptological books/sources (that are by and large appropriate for a lay-audience) you can find most, if not all of the above:

Lehner, M., The Complete Pyramids

Wilkinson, R. H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt

Hornung, E., The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt

Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C., Gods and Men in Egypt

Kemp, B., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization

Bard, K., An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt

Stevenson Smith, W., The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

Kitchen, K. A., The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt

Sweeney, D., Sex and Gender (in Ancient Egypt)

McDowell, A. G., Village Life in Ancient Egypt:  Laundry Lists and Love Songs

The point is that we live with a global network of elites who have enough power to treat politics, laws, public opinion, international treaties, and all other people as personal assets.

The point is that nobody is truly safe or sovereign when a handful of rich assholes have access to this kind of power.

stop buying into the idea that nonviolent activism is useless, rather than (by far) the most effective form of protest

stop falsely claiming that BLM accomplished nothing and that most citizens “don’t care” when people are murdered by the state

start understanding that most of your neighbors care about your rights, and their own

I must admit, I am not an expert on transgenderism. I struggle to understand so much of it, and the science is conflicting. When in doubt, however, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy, and compassion. I also try to get proximate, and I am learning so much from our transgender community. They are great kids who face enormous struggles. Here are the numbers that have most impacted my decision: 75,000, 4, 1, 86 and 56. 75,000 high school kids participating in high school sports in Utah. 4 transgender kids playing high school sports in Utah. 1 transgender student playing girls sports. 86% of trans youth reporting suicidality. 56% of trans youth having attempted suicide. Four kids and only one of them playing girls sports. That’s what all of this is about. Four kids who aren’t dominating or winning trophies or taking scholarships. Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are a part of something. Four kids trying to get through each day. Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few. I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live.

our lives matter more than your fucking nostalgia.