Kungfunurse

"The 'God Made Trans People' billboard is stupid! God didn't make me! I'm an atheist!" Okay. The billboard sits along a major highway in Kansas. We can deduce that the target audience is not you—it's the centrist evangelical Christians driving along that road who could probably be persuaded to become allies as long as we choose our words carefully and don't make them feel attacked for not already knowing everything about trans rights issues. Another one I see a lot is, "We shouldn't be talking about how right-wing legislation catches [privileged in-group] in the crossfire when [marginalized out-group] suffers far more!" I know. I agree with you. Which is why you and I are not the intended audience of this argument!

The entire point of rhetoric is to win over someone who doesn't already fully agree with you. In this case, let's say that someone is Jennifer, the moderate center-right mom in your neighborhood who doesn't really know or care about transgender issues but would be absolutely horrified by the idea of her teenage daughter having to submit to an invasive inspection of her body just to be allowed to play soccer. Tell her, "Banning trans students from sports will inevitably subject all student athletes to invasive gender-policing," or "Legal restrictions on gender-affirming care will make it harder for you to access the hormone replacement therapy you take to treat menopause symptoms," and she is more likely to question her existing beliefs and listen to the rest of what you have to say than if you lead with leftist talking points that she already has a calcified opinion about or which she thinks do not personally affect her.

he also mentioned something i had not heard; he said the show's english title is not terribly accurate to the intent of the creators, but a poor translation problem on their part. he said a better translation is Utena: Girls' Revolution.

i get chills thinking about this distinction. he elaborated that the title wasn't referring to utena tenjou herself, or at least not Just to utena; nor any singular character for that matter. there's no Revolutionary Girl. its about the revolution of and for and by girls. and "utena"...the Support.

a little quote from Enokido Youji's rgu script notes i was reading today (you can read the rest of them here):

Deep voice, big muscles, Tall

I'm making this available to everyone again because I'm not very articulate and I have lots of feelings about the shitehouse mess that creep made of...well...everything, really.

I explain myself far better in fiction, so I'll do that. Initially I was going to finish this before S2, but S2 left me kind of cold, tbh. The minisodes were superb, but the Whickber Street stuff felt pointless. And Gabriel? Oh, okay. So you're just going to turn up nude, say some twee shit, drink some cocoa and be such an adorable tabula rasa that we forget you tried to set fire to someone and told him to die? It's not addressed, you see. Yes, Crowley confronts him about it, but he doesn't, not really. He confronts Jim, a mind-wiped innocent who can't rightly be held responsible for the shitty things he did before. Crowley realises this and backs off, but as for Aziraphale? Does he get any real contrition from Gabriel once Gabriel returns to himself? Not as far as I can see. Gabriel just swans off to Alpha Centauri without a backwards glance or any self-reflection.

Didn't care for it, and in the light of the way certain people keep popping up, acting twee, and hoping we all forget what he did? Yeah. Hate that.

S2 left me feeling like I'd eaten a huge bowl of frosting without the cake, so I couldn't see any way to work it into what I already had here - six fics and one unfinished. Besides, I knew how it ended, sort of.

I still know how it ends, but I've also realised it's going to be a great way to shit on the finale while also telling multiple dick jokes and finally addressing what Crowley got up to in the Papal Apartments in 1485.

So if you're looking for something that picks up from after S1 then I've got you covered here. Featuring bonus appearances by Madame Tracey, Charles I, Sister Mary Loquacious, Shadwell, Anathema Device, Leonardo da Vinci, and a really uncomfortable encounter with Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer.

TLDR: In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire job was to listen to volunteers. Most of the people they fired were union organizers. Wikipedia’s editors are now threatening to strike in solidarity. The Foundation is sitting on $296 million in reserves and a freshly profitable AI revenue stream. This is a confrontation with global implications.

"You hold more leverage than a cancellation could ever give you, and it works in the opposite direction. A donation that disappears is invisible. It shows up as one anonymous line in a spreadsheet, gets blamed on the economy or a bad fundraising email, and teaches the institution nothing.

"A donor who speaks up is much harder to wave off, because donors are handed a door that the Foundation’s own staff and volunteers aren’t. You should walk through that door instead of slipping out the back.

"In practice, that means writing to the Board of Trustees, whose job is to hold leadership to account, and telling them in your own words that your support has always been a matter of trust, and that trust depends on how an institution treats the people who build it.

Horses work very hard, and would like to try cake.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/86192551

Summary:

Cake means a lot of things. Killie makes an effort to try it.

a bunch of archives of incredibly important government datasets like maternal mortality statistics are about to be deleted forever. in a regime where they're known to fudge numbers, we can't trust a lot of the data coming from them to not be altered. open source backups like those found on data.world are vital to being able to verify that the data coming from our government is still intact and not altered. and they're about to delete all of it.

i don't know if we need to start a petition or what. nobody seems to fucking care. there are millions of users on data.world and yet nobody is raising the alarm bells and it makes me feel like I'm going insane. somebody needs to do something. i don't know what to do. it feels like more and more of this world is being destroyed and dismantled. it's not only US centric data, either! it's all sorts of countries from around the world! and they're about to fucking delete everything.

the only things that won't be deleted are private companies who happen to use the paid version of their platform (which isn't accessible data to the open source community; some people have just been using their service to host their own data on privately)

and the kicker? this announcement was made... via an AI generated blog post. so not even any sort of human touch. just a generic, soulless announcement made by a soulless human about to take a wrecking ball to one of the more important websites that exists on the internet.

an example of some of the things that will be deleted on July 11th:

https://www.re3data.org

There are over 3500 respectable data repositories on one respectable global registry; to a researcher there’s no point in data existing if not findable; if you’re trying to find a new home for your dataset, start there

Here are some of the scripts I’m using to email University Research Librarians and department chairs/assistant and associate deans who I know oversee faculty who use resources from data.world for their lessons:

During the stop, Lorenzo had 3 coworkers with him in his truck who have all been taken into ICE custody.

His family described Lorenzo as a hardworking family man who didn’t deserve to be killed. All he wanted was to provide for his wife and see his sons become great people. His eldest son recognized his father by his cries and pleas when trying to identify who the victim was.

The Salgado Araujo family has set up a gofundme to help with funeral and legal costs, and to help keep their family supported since Lorenzo was the sole provider.

He’s literally a baby….. but fr Jason being an absolute tank who really just misses the feeling of ducking in and out of Batman’s cape…. Pain….

Damian: I don’t understand, father keeps picking me up and treating me like I’m some sort of child—

Spin the wheel again. That’s who’s trying to protect you.

(If you have zero idea about a name you got, spin until you see someone you recognize.)

"Stuff like this is made to brainwash young girls into thinking that they can 'fix' dangerous men. Such girls usually end up in abusive relationships and their parents are right to worry."

It is rather strange to come across such a gross generalization, operating on an assumption that girls are blank slates whom anyone can manipulate and who can't distinguish between real and make believe on top of it.

In my entire "career"(if you can call it that) of engaging with fiction , the girls and women that I have run into in fandoms happened to be some of the most intelligent, talented, cool, witty and insightful people I have ever met. I've devoured the fics they have written. I have delighted in the arts and edits they've made. Their perspectives and interpretations about the characters and their relationships are genuinely fascinating to read about regardless of whether I agree with it or not. They are the ones who are most often at the receiving end of the antis' ire for no valid reason but they just keep deriving joy and inspiration from their favourite characters and ships and keep sharing it with others through stories, art and thoughts. They are not just smart but incredibly resilient, sensitive and aware not just about the media they consume but about the world around them and its issues.

boop! forgot to post this here

also a lil bonus if you wanna connect it to my other post :3

behold my kitty comic

bonus: