everyone who hasn't heard must get the news via this meme
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"India on Wednesday [August 23, 2023] landed a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, an uncharted territory that scientists believe could hold vital reserves of frozen water and precious elements, as the country cements its growing prowess in space and technology.
A lander with a rover inside touched down on the lunar surface at 6:04 local time, sparking cheers and applause among the space scientists watching in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru. After a failed attempt nearly four years ago, India made history by becoming the first country to touch down near the little-explored south pole region and joins the United States, the Soviet Union and China in achieving a moon landing...
Excited and anxious, people across India, home to the world’s largest population, crowded around televisions in offices, shops, restaurants and homes. Thousands prayed Tuesday for the success of the mission with oil lamps on the river banks, temples and religious places, including the holy city of Varanasi in northern India.
India’s Chandrayaan-3 — “moon craft” in Sanskrit — took off from a launchpad in Sriharikota in southern India on July 14."
-via PBS NewsHour, August 23, 2023
Unrestrained summer fun
agree to pay your workers fairly and the strikes will end, it’s that easy you greedy shits!
More and more I am thinking that the reason the studios are refusing to budge is because any deal other than the workers unconditional surrender would require the studios to make streaming numbers public so workers know what fair pay is, and companies have been lying about streaming numbers so much that making the real numbers public could result in lawsuits and possible criminal charges from the investors they've defrauded.
There has been an outpouring of public support for unions the past few years I don't think the execs would refuse to even make a counter offer unless there was more going on.
My mother asked why it looked like the apocalypse outside. So I showed her this map.
She's very quiet now.
Sunset two nights ago outside of Seattle, WA. I have not altered the colours of this photo.
The Headless Goddess. One of the causes of a plague of madness in my country. Years and years of increasingly absurd and terrifying cultivation of blind worship along with already high tolerance for violence and oppression. And now the majority don't even bat an eye on the war, because we can't be wrong, right? The Great Nation of Victory always fights for all things right against all things wrong, period.
It's so scary. And the scariest part is that they simply don't want to listen. They choose this, because the reality is worse, they're protecting their illusions with the blood of the country they've already saw as an antipode.
A continuation on my post about unloved foods, specifically this is my in-depth defense of root beer.
Root Beer isn't inherently gross, it's just one of those weird local flavors that's off-putting to people who didn't grow up with it. We all like different things and also we all tend to like flavors that are similar to what we grew up with. That's okay! But honestly root beer is pretty unique and, in my opinion, delicious.
One of the main complaints against root beer is that it tastes like medicine. Funnily enough, it was originally marketed as medicinal! This is true for most OG sodas actually. Pretty much as soon as carbonated water was invented, people were drinking it to soothe various ailments. A lot of the original soft drinks were actually invented by pharmacists. I just think that root beer is especially cool because the main flavor came from the root bark of sassafras, a common North American shrub. Because it's so widespread and aromatic, all parts of the sassafras plant have been used in food and medicine by many different Native American tribes throughout history and was subsequently picked up and used by European colonists. In the 1960s, some studies indicated that that safrole oil, which is produced by the plant, can cause liver damage. Whether or not this would actually remain true after it had been boiled and added to root beer is unclear, but it was really easy to replicate the flavor, so the sassafras in commercial root beer these days is artificial. Another fun fact about safrole is that it's a precursor in the synthesis of MDMA. None of this information has stopped my childhood habit of eating sassfras leaves right off the shrub whenever I walk past it on a hike. I'm like 85% sure it's safe and also mmmm yummy leafs go crunch.
Another root beer complaint is that it tastes like toothpaste. I think this is probably because another key flavor in most root beer recipes is wintergreen. I'm assuming that the people who think this are the same people who think mint chocolate chip ice cream tastes like toothpaste. I can understand and even respect that some people don't like mint and associate it only with brushing their teeth, but like. Mint is a pretty common flavor. I mean I think it's safe to say that humans have been eating mint flavored stuff for longer than toothpaste has existed... anyway!
Other common flavors in root beer (real or artificial) are caramel, vanilla, black cherry bark, sarsaparilla root, ginger, and many more! There's not one official recipe, and root beer enthusiasts often have strong opinions about different brands. Some root beer is sharper, with more strong aromatic flavors, and others are mild and creamier.
Another thing I think is cool about root beer is that it's foamier than most sodas. This was originally because sassafras is a natural surfactant (and why sassafras is also a common thickening agent in Louisiana Creole cooking.) These days, other plant starches or similar ingredients are added to keep the distinctive foam. Root beer foam > all other soft drink foams. That's why root beer floats kick more ass than like, coke floats.
If you've never had root beer before, imagine if a sweetened herbal tea was turned into a soda, because that's basically what it is. If your first response to that is a cringe, fair enough. That's why lots of people don't like it. If your first response to that is "interesting... I might actually like it, though" then I encourage you to track down a can of root beer today, hard as that might be outside the US and Canada. Next time you see an "ew, root beer tastes like medicine/tooth paste" take, know that there's a reason for that, but also the same could be said for literally any herbal or minty food/drink.
My final take on root beer is that it would be the soda of choice for gnomes. Thank you and good night.
ALT
happy ides of March
yo why is this on my dash its august
Yeah, why is this getting notes? It's August!
It's knife day
will riker is like. the opposite of a queercoded/baiting character. he’s hetcoded. but both jonathan frakes and all of us know he’s bi af and the show just purposefully only shows the ‘het’ encounters
I love that some people think there’s any question over whether Will Riker would fuck a guy. Will Riker would fuck an intelligent gas cloud if they laughed at his jokes there is no way details as minor as human genitals are putting that man off.
Will Riker’s orientation is DTF
Anonymous asked:
I understand how important it is to be able to criticize the President, and am not at all of the belief he should be beyond critique, but the critiquing of Biden makes me so nervous. (That's not to say I agree with every decision he's made - I absolutely do not). But I feel like people see things he's done wrong and decide they won't vote for him because of it. I'm not sure if enough people have the ability to see that he's done things wrong but also is our only hope of staving off literal fascism.
So many people talk about how sick they are of it constantly being a lesser of two evils situation, constantly having to vote for a candidate they hate because the other side is worse (I heard it in 2020, 2022, etc), and I guess I just- I don't really get it? We're here because they didn't do that in 2016. All of this could've been avoided had the result been different then. I just feel like people don't comprehend how different of a place we'd be in if Hillary won and engage in all this cognitive dissonance to make themselves feel better about being part of the reason she didn't.
qqueenofhades answered:
Like…. this has been a long-running topic of discussion on my blog, not least because it is so inexplicable and maddening. It also shows how terribly shallow most people’s understanding of the American political process is, and how toxic the “I can only vote for a candidate if every single personal belief/position of theirs matches mine” belief is, as well as how much damage it has done to American democracy even (and indeed, especially) by people who technically don’t identify as right-wing. Yell at Republicans all you like (God knows I do, because they’re the worst people on earth) but they vote. Every time. Every election. Every candidate. Whereas the Democratic electorate still holds out for Mister Perfect, and it very definitely is Mister Perfect. The amount of “evil HRC!!!” Republican-poisoned Kool-Aid that so-called progressives drank in 2016, and then afterward when they insisted they could have voted for someone like Elizabeth Warren and then didn’t do that in 2020, is… baffing.
Frankly, I don’t care if Hillary Clinton’s personal positions on XYZ issue were the most Neoliberal Corporate Centrist Shill to Ever Shill (and Online Leftists’ intellectual skills being what they are, I seriously doubt that they were using any of those words correctly and/or accurately). American policy is not made by “personal dictate of the ruler,” or at least it shouldn’t be, because we are not an absolute monarchy. We rely on the operation of a system with input from many people. As such, if Hillary had been elected, we would have 2-3 new liberal justices on SCOTUS and have secured civil and environmental rights for the next generation. Roe would be intact, and all the other terrible rulings that SCOTUS has recently handed down wouldn’t have happened. We wouldn’t have had January 6th, the attempt to stage a coup, all the tawdry scandals, our national security being at risk because of Trump stealing classified documents and probably selling them to Russia and/or Saudi Arabia, etc etc. If you think that’s in any way an equivalent amount of evil to what would have happened if Hillary was elected, or if she was “still evil!!!,” then I honestly don’t know what to tell you. She could fucking murder puppies in her spare time if she had preserved SCOTUS for us, WHICH SHE WOULD HAVE, BECAUSE SHE WARNED US EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.
(Hoo. Sorry. Still steamed. 2016 war flashbacks, again.)
In short, Hillary would have been a solid continuity Democrat and she would have signed whatever legislation a Democratic House and Senate passed, not to mention been hugely inspiring as the first female president. But because it’s so important to the Online Leftists’ moral sense of themselves that BOTH PARTIES ARE THE SAME!!!, they can’t possibly acknowledge that ever being a factor, and/or admit that they have any culpability in not voting for her in 2016. It’s like when you read the British press about any of the UK’s equally numerous problems, and they BEND OVER BACKWARD to avoid mentioning that Brexit might be a factor. They just can’t mention it, because then that means they might have made the wrong choice in pulling for it as hard as they did, and blah blah Sovereignty.
Basically, if HRC had been elected president, everything would be so much less terrible and terrifying all the time, we would be talking about her successor in 2024 as someone else who could be the “first,” we could explore handing the reins over to Kamala as a Black/Asian woman, we could promote Buttigieg as the first gay president, etc etc. But because 2016 was so catastrophically fucked up, we are in damage control mode for the immediate future and every election is just as pivotal. And yet, because people think that the only thing that matters is a presidential candidate’s personal views, we’re stuck having the same old arguments and desperately begging people over and over to please vote against fascism, since that somehow isn’t self-evident enough on its own. Yikes on Bikes.
I’d like to add something.
But I feel like people see things he's done wrong and decide they won't vote for him because of it.
This is half of it, sure. The other half is that people don’t see things he’s done right.
When the DEA lifted restrictions on telehealth prescriptions, it was reported as if they were arbitrarily putting restrictions into place. The fact that they were clearly trying to be as lenient as possible without breaking the law (passed with bipartisan Congressional support in, IIRC, 2016), just straight-up was not part of the narrative. (When I had my own telehealth appointment last month, I specifically asked my doctor about this. That DEA policy was a best-case scenario for telehealth.)
When he put into place a huge funding package to help unhoused people get access to mental and physical healthcare, short-term and long-term housing, and other needs - crucially, as identified by the local community in conversation with them - it just. was not. around the social media web. Except from Fox, where it was reported as “Biden gives millions of dollars to drug addicts, transgender teens” (since access to hormones and therapy is a major need of many homeless teenagers, and since safe injection sites and needle exchanges are a major need of many unhoused populations).
His attempt at student debt relief was blocked by Republican judges, many of whom were appointed by Trump, since Mitch McConnell et al blocked Obama from appointing tons of positions in his last few years in office. I specifically remember begging people to consider the Supreme Court - one vacancy already, Ruth Bader Ginsburg old and not likely to make it another four years - during the 2016 election, and people said it didn’t matter.
When his administration allotted funding to fix the most severely-damaged and frequently-traveled bridges on the highway system, I saw it going around tumblr as “lol, they’re only fixing nine of them” instead of the first fucking time in ages there’s even been an attempt at infrastructure repair.
He’s currently trying to expand Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or Dreamer, access to healthcare - i.e., allowing undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children to obtain insurance under the Affordable Care Act. I have not seen a single tumblr post about this.
He has vetoed two Republican-led bills, both of which were written specifically to overturn policies they didn’t like because they were potentially good for the environment, or just acknowledged the existence of the environment.
Biden’s first veto was of a law Republicans were trying to pass that would make it illegal for investment fund managers, at least those whose funds include retirement savings, to consider potential risks from climate change. The Dept. of Labor had said it was legal, not even required but allowed, for the manager of an investment fund who has a bunch of retirement savings accounts he’s supposed to oversee to basically decide not to invest in something that’s going to be riskier than the numbers say because of climate change, like beachfront property somewhere the waterline’s been rising by 18″ per year. So, by vetoing that bill, he allows investment fund managers to safeguard retirement savings funds in their care.
His second veto was another Republican-led bill trying to overturn a rule the EPA had put into place. They were restricting agricultural run-off into waterways. It’s been hard to find details on this, because even CNN, the allegedly left-wing source, spends more time explaining why Republicans say it’s overreach than, like, telling you what it actually does. It’s either the EPA rule limiting PFAS, chemicals that cause severe health problems and don’t degrade, in waterways, or it’s the “rule” that was just them repealing the Trump changes that basically just said they didn’t have any real power to regulate waterways.
Part of why people don’t like Biden is, yes, because they disagree with some of what he has done (or, frankly, they disagree with what they’ve been told he has done, which often has only a passing resemblance to his actual actions), but a larger part, IMO, is that - as I keep hearing - he isn’t doing anything, isn’t doing enough, etc. But... he’s doing a LOT.
It’s just very, very difficult to figure that out from social media, because “president issues an executive order to entire administration to expand affordable childcare, specific details include expansions of grants and application processes, expanding and shifting budget for family needs...” etc... does not get the kinds of interactions that make social media algorithms happy, and/because they don’t fit the narratives of “both sides are the same” OR “Biden is useless and old.” An article that says “Biden breaks railroad strike” is going to get a LOT of comments, hiiiiilarious replies dunking on Biden without having read the article, jokes, incredibly angry replies, some of which have merit and others less so, and a bunch of defensive Democrat-or-bust folks, some of whom ALSO didn’t read the article, fighting all of the above.
So on algorithm-driven social media likes, the negative article, true or not, fair or not, is going to be seen by a lot more people, because those angry comment fights and rage-faces keep eyeballs on screens and those eyeballs churn out ad dollars like a perpetual motion machine. But the boring-but-true, good-news-but-complicated, government-functioning-as-best-intentions-hope article above? That’s not gonna get LOL dunks or laugh-cry reacts or angry Republicans or leftists who can score a couple points on The Neoliberal Liberal Shill Dems. Most people won’t read the whole thing. They’ll scroll past it. So not many ad dollars, so the algorithm doesn’t boost it, and even if rad-left tumblr bloggers and influencers and podcasters SEE it, they’re not going to talk about it for the same reason - it doesn’t fit their narrative.
Good news for you, this August 23rd.
It’s that time of year again.
Nice
Guess what today is?