voidstarblade

[voidstarblade]

I've heard fiber art communities can be fucking nuts, but I just had one person I ordered yarn from local send me an email apologizing profusely about the fact my order would be a day late because she had to take her father to the hospital ( he's fine, thankfully), and earlier had another yarn seller worried I'd be upset the yarn I'd ordered from her was from two different animals, grown two different years.

The fuck did I get myself into?

[voidstarblade]

“not all cops”

I work in a non-restraint facility for special needs kids (21 and under) with extreme behavioral issues. I’m talking real violent stuff. Sixteen and twenty-one year old boys who can (and do) home-run swing desks at your head.

As a non-restraint facility, we are trained to respond to these outbursts in the most non-threatening, non-confrontational way possible, while still protecting both the bystanders and the person currently attacking us.

We are monitored every second of our shift to make sure the safety and dignity of our clients is maintained, especially–and just let me emphasize this–the safety and dignity of the person attempting to hurt us. Their right to be treated fairly and with empathy is not forfeit just because their brain chemistry fucked them up today.

We have to be calm, regardless.

We have to be gentle, regardless.

We can never respond with any kind of force, ever.

Those rules apply to all the staff, all the time, no matter what.

So when I hear bullshit about how somebody “reached for their waistband” or they were “resisting,” when I hear yet another police officer got off because the situation was “scary” or he “feared for his safety” or whatever the fuck, I lose my shit.

You wanna talk about how you were frightened for your safety, walking up to someone in the middle of a psychotic episode? Yeah, well, I’ve been there. Pretty regular–probably twice a week, at least–no gun, no taser, with guidelines that state I cannot even use my fucking thumb because that’s considered “grabbing” and therefore a “restraint.”

And you know what? I’ve walked away from every one of those. I haven’t died. I’ve never even been seriously injured. We defused the situation in ways that didn’t involving riddling the other participant with bullets and at the end of the day, everyone went home. Go fucking figure.

And yet–and fucking yet–I keep hearing “not all cops.”

“Not all cops” are bad. “Not all cops” shoot innocent people .3 seconds after rolling up on the scene. “Not all cops” are racist fuckbags, misusing power for a personal joyride. “Not all cops” rape people at gunpoint (and get off scott-fucking-free).

Yet, at my place of employment, somehow everyone is calm in a crisis. Somehow everyone responds to violence with non-violence. Somehow everyone is always able to act like a goddamn compassionate human-being in the middle of the worst kind of street fight–

but you’re telling me that cops, people paid to protect, can’t all do what I do?

You’re telling me that cops, trained to respond to crises, can’t all respond to the same crises, with the same skill, that I do?

And you’re telling me that cops have to stick together in the face of these “potentially false” accusations. That cops have to support each other, no matter what, because their job is dangerous or whatever. That yeah, some cops, but ~actually, sweetie, not all cops~

Fuck that noise. My job is dangerous, too. But you better believe that if anyone sees a member of our staff breaking regulation, their ass gets reported immediately. That person loses their clearances; they can no longer be hired in the field, anywhere. There’s no moving to another district. There’s no finding another location. We make it stop.

So until every cop is cleaning house, until every cop stops this strategically blind bullshit, until every cop refuses to stand by and watch the rampant abuse and corruption inherent in this system, until all the bad cops are weeded out and unemployable–

Until that moment, then yeah, all cops.

[voidstarblade]

[voidstarblade]

it amazes me how people still think fiction doesn’t affect reality when about 90% of us ran like naruto without a second thought just because we saw him do it and thought it was cool

[voidstarblade]

[voidstarblade]

the internet is an inherently haunted place if you think about it like. it's so weird to see long abandoned discussion boards stuck in a snapshot of the past, old conversations between kids from over a decade ago who have now grown into their own lives, obituaries taking the form of half finished profiles. and the silence that fills the gaps between. there's a constant ghostly record of each generation's thoughts, fads, their sense of humour. back when the future was at their fingertips. even stranger, people you used to know exist openly in that space, and they watch you watching them. if you want, deceased musicians can play through your headphones. there's always an underlying sense of reminiscing and time escaping our ever shortening attention spans. what a fuckin graveyard

[voidstarblade]

We need to disband the TSA.

Like, i’m not saying no security at all, but we need to disband the current TSA and go back to like.  A quick x-ray of your bags and a metal detector.

When I was a kid flying alone, my parents knew I was smart and not easily freaked out by planes, so from age 8 when going to visit my grandma (an hour’s plane ride away), they wouldn’t even bother to set me up an an “unaccompanied minor”, they’d just let me fly.

Today that sounds absolutely NUTS, but you know why they could do it when I was 8?

When I was 8, they could walk me to the gate, put me on the gangway, and watch the plane take off, and know that my grandmother would be waiting at the gate on the other side to pick me up when I stepped off the plane.

Shortly after 9/11, my sister went to go visit my grandma.  She was probably 10 or so.  They wouldn’t let anyone go through the metal detectors anymore, you had to have a boarding pass, but if you went to the ticket counter and said, like “I’m picking up/dropping off an unaccompanied child/an elderly person/someone with disabilities” you could get a non-ticket pass to get through security and go to the gate.

Like, people forget sometimes, I think, that the full blown craziness of our current airport “security” (which is a joke and often does more harm than good - hurting or distressing innocent people and missing actual threats going through) took a while to ramp up.  If you told parents in the wake of 9/11 that they would not be able to go with their unaccompanied children through security to make sure they got on the plane safely, or be there to pick them up at the gate when they arrive, there would’ve been fucking RIOTS.  I remember my parents - VERY conservative and pro-Bush and pro-Patriot act and everything - being FRUSTRATED that they had to get a special pass to go with my sister through security if she was flying alone, because shouldn’t the fact that she’s a child and they’re her parent be enough to get them through?

Seriously, I know this is just one issue out of MANY that the current TSA has, but it’s just.  It blows my mind.

You used to be able to go have lunch in the terminal with a friend if they had a layover in your city.  You used to be able to romantically chase someone down to stop them boarding their plane when you realized you’d made a mistake turning down their offer to like.  Get together or whatever.  You used to be able to PUT YOUR GODDAMN CHILD ON A PLANE and be sure that on the other end someone would be right there to pick them up, or that they could just sit down right outside and wait if their pick-up person was running late.

[voidstarblade]

“Why does the third of the three brothers, who shares his food with the old woman in the wood, go on to become king of the country? Why does James Bond manage to disarm the nuclear bomb a few seconds before it goes off rather than, as it were, a few seconds afterwards? Because a universe where that did not happen would be a dark and hostile place. Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain.”

— Terry Pratchett, “Let There Be Dragons” (A Slip of the Keyboard)

[voidstarblade]

i think the disney company somehow forgot that you can make a character attractive AND expressive 

[voidstarblade]

So was thinking during a slow period at work about how there’s canonically at least one universe where Mustrum Ridcully and Esmerelda Weatherwax are married. And I was like…okay, but what if there’s a universe where it’s almost exactly like canon, and they’re married, but are also still very much them?

–They’re not going to have biological kids because Ridcully’s a wizard and those types don’t risk it and Esme’s not the mothering sort, but they both have a tendency to pick up “strays” they think they need to keep an eye on for a while.

–During Granny going up against the wizard’s school in Equal Rites, Ridcully is also there, mostly munching on popcorn and cheerfully telling other Wizards “that’s my wife!” whenever she does something badass. A handful of Wizards think he’s out for their jobs and try to kill him, failing comedically.

–In Wyrd Sisters, the Duke and Lady Felmet think Ridcully is the sort of Wizard your hire to work in a castle to fend off witches. No, he’s the sort of wizard who’s off hunting monsters until one of the Oggs informs him they’re going to move the country forward in time and he’s like “I shall kill every rooster in Lancre for you!” and the Oggs are like “no, we’ll just keep them quiet, Nanny has a plan here.” He and Esme later have a heated discussion about livestock management and he decides someone needs to teach Verence II how to go hunting like a king.

–Esme is very pleased Unseen University hired him as Chancellor, considering her husband a rare sensible wizard. Ridcully sets up a monthly meal with the Ankh-Morpock witches to foster magical community and common sense magic use in the city. Vetinari approves. Nanny Ogg occasionally invites herself down there for good food and to show off her good distilled moonshine. Granny invites herself slightly less often for a short break from witching and to terrorize some young witches and wizards gettin’ too full of themselves in the city. This leads to more popcorn eating and “that’s my wife!” from Ridcully.

–Ridcully thinks Magrat’s kind of meek and useless until he sees her Queen Ynci moment. Granny knew she had it in her all along and teases him for not noticing for a decade or so. He shows his appreciation to Lancre’s new queen by keeping the royal family informed of his hunts so he doesn’t drive anything extinct without royal permission. Would be rude.

[voidstarblade]

reblog this post with a cool animal species lets make a wholesome thread

[voidstarblade]

allergies

[voidstarblade]

Impossible Physiology  and Class System.

am I The Gamer?

Click on it twice. These are your two super powers.

[voidstarblade]

We were listening to The Nutcracker on the highway yesterday and this happened. Enjoy the March of the Snowplows

[voidstarblade]

It’s what happened to Jews in Germany in 1938 when their passports were declared invalid. That is what is beginning to happen here, now, to Hispanic citizens along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Oh, is it bad to compare the GOP to Nazis? Well, if members of the GOP do not like being compared to Nazis, they should consider not behaving exactly like Nazis.

Hispanic U.S. citizens, some of whom were in the U.S. military, are not being allowed to renew their passports. This is reportedly happening to “hundreds, even thousands” of Latinos, according to a report in the Washington Post. They’re getting letters from the State Department saying it does not believe they are citizens. The government claims their citizenships are fraudulent. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center—U.S. citizens,” Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville, told The Washington Post.

The Washington Post also reports on ICE officials coming to citizens’ homes and taking their passports away. This is an escalation from a few months ago, when Americans were detained by ICE officials just for speaking Spanish to one another.

The administration is currently launching an effort to take citizenship from people who they suspect of fraud in obtaining it. Fraud in these cases is exceedingly rare. The last time the government tried to strip people of their citizenship was, according to Columbia Professor Mae Ngai, during The Red Scare of the 1950s. As Ngai remarks, McCarthyism is not typically remembered as a good period in American history.

There is good reason to believe that this could portend still worse things to come for the U.S. Hispanic population, unless people begin to speak out loudly, and fast.

[voidstarblade]

Forgotten By History

Female firefighters at Pearl Harbor (1941).

Donna Tobias - the first woman to graduate from the US Navy’s Deep Sea Diving School in 1975.

Brave women of the Red Cross hitting the beach at Normandy.

Dottie Kamenshek was called the best player in women’s baseball and was once recruited to play for a men’s professional team.

Kate Warne - Private Detective. Born in New York City, almost nothing is known of her prior to 1856 when, as a young widow, she answered an employment advertisement placed by Alan Pinkerton. She was one of four new agents the Pinkerton Detective Agency hired that year and proved to be a natural, taking to undercover work easily. She had taken part in embezzlement and railroad security cases when in 1861 the Pinkertons developed the first lead about an anti-Lincoln conspiracy.

Catherine Leroy, female photographer in Vietnam.

The three women pictured in this incredible photograph from 1885 – Anandibai Joshi of India, Keiko Okami of Japan, and Sabat Islambouli of Syria – each became the first licensed female doctors in their respective countries. The three were students at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania; one of the only places in the world at the time where women could study medicine.

Female Samurai Warrior - Onno-Bugeisha - Female warrior belonging to the Japanese upper class. Many women engaged in battle, commonly alongside samurai men. They were members of the bushi (samurai) class in feudal Japan and were trained in the use of weapons to protect their household, family, and honour in times of war.

One of the most feared of all London street gangs from the late 1880’s was a group of female toughs known as the Clockwork Oranges. They woulde later inspire Anthony burgess’ most notorious novel. Their main Rivals were the All-female “the Forty Elephants” gang.

Maureen Dunlop de Popp, Pioneering female pilot who flew Spitfires during Second World War. She joined the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) in 1942 and became one of a small group of female pilots who were trained to fly 38 types of aircraft.

In 1967, Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston marathon. After realizing that a woman was running, race organizer Jock Semple went after Switzer shouting, “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers.” However, Switzer’s boyfriend and other male runners provided a protective shield during the entire marathon. The photographs taken of the incident made world headlines, and Kathrine later won the NYC marathon with a time of 3:07:29.

[voidstarblade]

Wait a minute…