just a city queer

The Rodeo Rule: you only have to do it for the first time once.

The Rohan Rule: if you are at a social function full of new people and you want to be liked, find someone doing important work like setup or food prep and offer to help.

The Tutorial Mode Rule: to navigate an unfamiliar situation where you fear you will mess up an interaction, preface the interaction by mentioning that you've never done this before, and let them know if you have a specific concern or question.

The Rocket Science Rule: most new things you want to try seem very complicated but are simple when taken step by step.

The [X] Will Remember That Rule: if you need to make small talk with the same person on a regular basis, try to save one fact or current event in their life from a given conversation and bring it up next time you talk.

An innocent man is home with his family instead of spending his kids' whole childhoods in jail for "resisting arrest" when none of the cops could agree on why he was being arrested in the first place. (But it definitely had nothing to do with him being a Black man in a nice car, honest! 🙄)

And it still took like two hours of delibration after we'd heard all the evidence because one lady was so gung ho about believing everything the cops said, even when not a single goddamn one could agree with their own testimony, let alone their colleagues'.

Pointing out all the inconsistencies and admitted misconduct and letting people slowly come to their own conclusions as the trial played out was fucking hard, I won't lie. I can be patient, but it doesn't come naturally to me.

But. Yelling about how this was obviously a bs case would have shut everyone down and made them stop listening. Asking questions and letting people discuss how the cops tried to make xyz sound suspicious but it was totally normal, or about how if things played out the way the cops said then logically events should have proceeded in a totally different direction, and positing different theories that actually lined up with the evidence presented?

That got people thinking, and everyone realized that for a variety of reasons we all had reasonable doubts that the defendent had committed any of the crimes of which he was accused.

On 30 May 1588 after many delays, Phillip II of Spain’s great force, known to its enemies as the Spanish Armada and to the Spaniards as the Invincible Armada, sailed to Lisbon. The Fleet included around 150 ships carrying about 7000 sailors, 18000 soldiers, nearly 1500 brass guns, and almost 1000 smaller iron ones.

The Armada in Elizabeth- The golden age

The Spanish had several quarrels with the English, but the most immediate one was that they supported the Protestant Dutch in their rebellion against the Spanish crown. The plan was to sail up the English Channel to the Netherlands, where the ships would link up woth the main Spanish army fighting the Dutch, and transport it to England. But there was a fatal flaw, even without English intervention: there awas no good port in Spanish hands to embark the troops, and a small Dutch force could quite easily stop it from happening.

Hindered by heavy weather, the Armada made a slow passage north and did not enter the Channel until late July. It sailed in an arrowhead formation, keeping close to the English coast, hoping to terrorize the natives and looking for any opportunity to land.

The Armada in the Strait of Dover, Flemish School, 1600

On 29 July, the English commanders, Howard of Effingham and Francis Drake, were told of the fleet’s approach, and many warning beacons were lit along the coast.

Drake playing bowls on Plymouth Hoe, as the Spanish Armada is sighted, John Seymour Lucas 1880

The English Fleet sailed out and began to attack the Spanish in series of daytime raids. The English ships were careful not to get too close, knowing that the Spanish had much larger numbers of soldiers for use in boarding action. Instead, they used gunnery at a relatively long rage, moving in closer later in the battle, but after a week of action they had done little real damage.

The track of the Armada around Britain and Ireland, by Robert Adams 1590

The Spanish ships anchored off Dunkirk, northern France, and were dispersed by English fireships on 7 August.

The Armada retreated by sailing around northern Scotland and western Ireland, where maby ships were wrecked by storms. Less than half the ships that set out returned safely. In the religious climate of the times, both sides saw that as divine intervention, rather than just luck.

The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I, English School 1588