Doktor Archeville's Laboratory

Reminder that this weekend downtown New Orleans will simultaneously host GalaxyCon, Naughty N'awlins, the American School Counselor Association Annual Conference, and the Running of the Bulls. That's roughly 30,000 superheroes, 3,000 swingers, 5,000 counselors, and hundreds of people voluntarily being chased by roller derby skaters dressed as bulls.

The overlap of those worlds is where the real magic happens. It is entirely possible that somewhere in the French Quarter, Batman and Catwoman will successfully recruit Ms. Jones from some place called Crabapple Middle School to be their third, moments before all three instinctively scatter as a roller derby skater dressed as a bull rounds the corner.

Author/illustrator Trung Le Nguyen has been live posting reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time on bluesky and just hit the first proposal. The replies are basically the sickos meme

Vie the NYT:

Is he strong? Listen, bud: He's got no muscles or blood Is he live or is he dead? Takes the teeth from your head! Hey there There goes the Skele-Man

In the chill of night You can hear his shrill shriek He'll cause such a fright Make you shake, make you freak

Skele-Man, Skele-Man Spoopy neighborhood Skele-Man Wealth and fame, he's ignored Calcium's his reward

To avoid more punishment, the child sits still and is quiet. But they have to actively remind themself constantly to sit still and be quiet.

The teacher sees the child sitting still and being quiet. The teacher treats this as the baseline.

Since the child is putting a lot of effort into sitting still and being quiet, doing so distracts from paying attention to what the teacher is teaching. The child then is punished for not paying attention.

Hunting for some coochie

Wrote a G up on his belt

Too often, Democracy is presented to us as the boring, moderate option, only chosen by conformists and the indecisive masses. I am here to tell you:

Democracy is not Moderate. Democracy is Radical.

Democracy is the last major political ideology to insist that legitimacy rises from the many and not the few.

Every other system - no matter how it dresses itself up - rests on the same grim foundation: that power must be concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. Sometimes it is in the hands of The Party's Politburo, sometimes it's the Guardian Mullahs, sometimes a Noble Bloodline, sometimes it's the President-for-Life and his pathetic cadre of sycophants.

It doesn't matter what ideology props up Tyranny. The labels differ, but the structure is identical - a small group decides, and the rest of us obey. Strip away the slogans and you find the same contempt underneath: a profound distrust of humanity as a whole.

And that is how it has always been - in most places, and for most of human history. But Democracy is the rejection of that structure at its root.

Democracy is not tidy. It is not efficient. It is not comforting. It is a stubborn, defiant insistence that ordinary people - in all their conflicted ignorance, prejudice, generosity, and brilliance - are entitled to govern themselves. Not because they are perfect, but because they are human.

It assumes that the people are not livestock to be managed, nor children to be shielded from dangerous thoughts, but moral agents capable of judgment, disagreement, and correction.

There is nothing moderate about that.

And that is why Democracy and Freedom of Expression are inseparable. A system that depends on the people’s consent must allow the people to speak - to argue, to offend, to be wrong, to be foolish, to be alarming. Either you trust the people or you do not.

Democracy cannot survive on curated truths and sanitized discourse. It requires exposure to bad ideas so that better ones can defeat them in the open. It requires citizens who can hear something repulsive and reject it for themselves.

Authoritarian systems have no need for Freedom of Expression. They do not require educated citizens, only compliant ones. They do not need critical thinking, only discipline. Speech is dangerous to them precisely because it invites comparison, skepticism, and refusal. So the Authoritarians of all colors regulate it - not for any public good, but for their own survival.

Here in America, Democracy is strained. The public sometimes chooses poorly. Demagogues rise. Falsehood spreads. But the system is showing its cracks precisely because it allows us to see them.

The answer to bad democratic outcomes is not to abandon democracy - it is to defend it more fiercely. A system that permits error is the only system that permits correction.

I know that the temptation, in moments of fear and frustration, is to reach for guardians - to wish for someone stronger, smarter, cleaner to take the wheel so that you do not have to confront it yourself. That temptation is ancient, but it has always led to the same place: The surrender of voice. The criminalization of dissent. The quiet suffocation of truth.

Democracy asks something harder of us. It asks us to believe that people, together, can learn - can improve. That exposure to ideas does not inevitably corrupt. That sunlight does more good than silence. That freedom - including the freedom to create and consume shocking, offensive, unsettling ideas - is not a threat to legitimacy, but its foundation.

Democracy is not easy and it is not perfect. Democracy rejects the fantasy that some flawless leader will come along to save us. It does not falsely promise us good outcomes every time.

“What to the Slave is 4th of July?”: James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech [source]

This headline is missing some important nuance -- it's a headline, there's only so much they can do -- in that the Vatican said "this action you have taken excommunicates you." That is, 'we're not actively doing this to you, you are doing this to yourself, because we told you this was beyond the acceptable boundaries.'

The Vatican went way beyond what most of my Catholic friends expected -- they expected the bishops and maybe some priests to get excommunicated, but the laity and the nuns and... the Vatican has basically said 'bet, try it. See what happens.' (Excommunication, that's what happens.)

If you are on BlueSky and you are not following Claire Willett, you are truly missing out on some good fucking tea. Claire is a lesbian lifelong Catholic from Portland who knows her shit & has been sitting watching all of this with a giant bucket of popcorn and translating for the rest of us: