I would like to introduce you to a little friend I like to call the AMPERSAND. &! Hello Mx. Ampersand! How are you doing today?
You can USE this AMPERSAND on AO3 tags to indicate a PLATONIC RELATIONSHIP that is important in your story! Isn’t that nice? That way you can indicate that the relation between two characters is important even though they are NOT BANGING. For example, when they are RELATED. This is helpful, because if you do not, the result is what I like to call SCHRODINGER’S INCEST, where you can’t tell if the fic is happy fluffy family times or not until it is already TOO LATE.
Husband was looking for me all round the house so he could show me something he’d made but he couldn’t find me so he just shouted really loudly, “Fantasy and Sci-fi are the same genre!” and the rational part of my brain doing laundry was like “I’m not responding to a meme, wait where am I going—” as I ascended up the basements stairs like the wrath of god, and he just turned like “there you are” and I’m SO MAD THAT IT WORKED
PLEASE VOTE TO HELP GET RID OF RACIST STATUES IN A BLACK TOWN!
Richmond, Virginia was the capital of the Confederacy aka the side that defended slavery in the American civil war. During segregation, all these disgusting statues honoring slave-owning traitors were put up to look down on all of us like “remember, white supremacy!” on a street that’s always been predominately black. OUR LOCAL NEWSPAPER IS VERY CONSERVATIVE, AND THEY’RE HOSTING A POLL ON WHETHER THE MONUMENTS SHOULD BE TAKEN DOWN. RIGHT NOW, THE RACISTS ARE VERY AHEAD.
PLEASE VOTE IN THIS POLL! This is THE newspaper in the city, it has a HUGE impact on swaying local government. PLEASE HELP GET THESE RACIST STATUES OUT OF A BLACK TOWN!
NO is winning by a long stretch. FUCK THAT
No is about 4000 votes ahead rn please take 2 seconds to vote YESin favor of tearing down monuments built to glorify white supremacy. You dont have to enter any personal information or anything, just vote and hit submit.
Update: NO is only about 400 votes ahead of YES. This does not require you to share personal information, it’s literally one question and a ‘vote’ button. So like. Go for it.
mini-prompt: I know you've got a way to do Borgias cannibalism. I KNOW you can work it in somehow.
The end of the world arrives two years into Pope Julius’s papacy, with Lucrezia pregnant in Ferrara, Micheletto suffering in the Castello St Angelo, and Cesare plotting escape from a very tall tower in Spain. In very short order, the rule of law is overthrown, the Pope is fled to France, and all the dead have risen.
Lucrezia’s husband dies in the first wave, throat ripped out by his own manservant. She keeps calm, arms herself, and orders a solider to see if dead men burn as well as live ones. They do, as it turns out. She fortifies the Castle Estense against the town in a matter of hours. In some obscure way, she is in her element: pregnant and radiant and ruthlessly practical. She is a Borgia: perhaps she was always meant to reign in hell.
She takes in the surviving townsfolk and orders that the ornamental gardens be immediately disposed of, and all the vegetables in the storerooms planted. She orders a constant watch on the walls, men armed with flaming arrows and muskets. Within a month she’s retaken the town, although she keeps the walls shut. Within six months, word has spread that Ferrara is a safe haven, although the Borgia bitch who rules over it will kill a man at the slightest provocation, not just for infection: for theft, for rape, for spoiling water. Her men are frighteningly loyal. It’s whispered that she keeps the dead away with spells. Soon Machiavelli is her vassal, and da Vinci, and the former bishop of Milan.
They cannot hold the outlying farms. The dead roam freely in the countryside. Lucrezia has over two hundred mouths to feed, and only a few vegetable gardens to do it with.
Machiavelli is the first to propose it, and da Vinci decides how it must be implemented, but Lucrezia makes the decision. Her children will not starve, and neither will her subjects.
She is the queen of hell. There will be meat on her table.
*
Micheletto is locked in a cell when the dead rise, which saves him. He might have died of thirst anyway, but a man is eaten alive not three feet from his cell, and when the bloodstained thing has had its fill and left, Micheletto tugs the corpse closer, steals the man’s dagger and picks the lock.
All of Rome is a charnel house.
It’s remarkable how easy it is, really, adjusting to the new world. He already trusted no one. He already knows how to part a resisting man’s head from his body.
He wastes several weeks making his way to Forlí, but when he arrives he finds it a graveyard. Cesare Borgia had destroyed the walls on his word, and the city had no time to rebuild. He chases a walker out of his mother’s house, observes the smashed pots and the bowl of soup left rotting over a cold fire-pit. There’s a brown stain on the floor, but no body. It’s little comfort.
It’s another month before he reaches Ferrara.
He finds the duchess of Ferrara in the kitchens, a fetching smear of blood high on her perfect cheekbone, supervising the cookery of a feast-day supper. A man’s leg rests on a wooden table, skinned but still visibly human, surrounded by bunches of thyme and rosemary and bowls of skinned potatoes. None of the kitchen servants appear fazed, although more than a few of them cast him suspicious looks, hands tightening on their knives. No one trusts strangers these days, especially not those still covered in the dust of the road.
“Micheletto,” Lucrezia gasps, her eyes filling with tears, and flings herself into his arms. It’s the first time he’s heard his name spoken aloud since the world ended; his own eyes sting briefly, Lucrezia’s fine golden head pressed into his neck, a relic of the world as it was.
She makes him the captain of her guard, and he sleeps in her bed. They don’t speak of it, and it’s only sleep–she clings to him because he feels like the last living connection to her family, and he has always found it difficult to resist giving the Borgias what they want. It should be a terrible scandal, but the world has ended, heaven is barred, and the children of Ferrara eat human flesh. Lucrezia Borgia can take whomever she pleases to bed.
So by day Micheletto kills demons for Lucrezia Borgia, and at night he eats at her table, plays with her son and infant daughter, and lets her pull him down into the duke of Ferrara’s bed. She rests her hand over his heart like the mere fact that it beats is a sign that Cesare is alive, that Micheletto’s return means Cesare’s too, that his worthless life is a thin thread stretching somewhere out to Cesare in the monstrous dark.
He isn’t happy, but this isn’t what he thought hell would be like, either.
name ur politically correct ship that no one ever questions
…is there even such a thing in Borgias? Um…I think not. How about my ‘supported by canon’ ship, which is Cesare/Lucrezia.
now name ur trash ship
CESARE/MICHELETTO. But like specifically in this really complicated power dynamic where Cesare’s emotions are all tangled up with his overwhelming need to prove that he’s in control of something, of anything, and God, Micheletto offers up his throat to the knife as sweetly and obediently as a lamb raised for the slaughter and Cesare loves that equally as much as anything else. And Micheletto loves Cesare like a man worshiping his god, inextricable and helpless and sacrificial, a love that’s all about loyalty and penance and going to his knees and blood on the altar.
and ur really trashy im-going-to-hell ship
Cesare/Micheletto/Lucrezia, in which Cesare loves Lucrezia and Lucrezia loves Cesare and Micheletto loves Cesare so much (see above) and he would die for Lucrezia, at first because Cesare loves her and later because Micheletto is loyal to her himself (he does not want her the way they both want Cesare, and cannot love her the way he loves Cesare because there is only space in his heart for one love like that, but they find a common ground in Cesare and Micheletto would do a great many things to keep Lucrezia’s lily-white hands clean of blood), and Lucrezia’s children calls them both Uncle and Micheletto is bemused by this while Cesare is pained and it’s just all really complicated and awful and yeah, no one is really at ease but they’re happier than they could ever otherwise be.
This ship gets 100000% messier better when you add the fact that both Cesare and Lucrezia are married to the mix. Because can you imagine the deals and maneuvering that have to be done in order to keep the balance copacetic.
who is your cinnamon roll fave who everyone loves
Oh, Paolo, my poor boy. And also Djem. All these people Juan “Fuck-ass” Borgia has killed. Does Lucrezia count, or does she lose Cinnamon Roll status after she commits cold-blooded murder?
who is your sinnamon roll fave who everyone loves to hate/hates to love
…I don’t…I don’t even know. There is no fandom to speak of, so I’m not sure who would fall into this category. Giulia. Rodrigo/Alexander VI.
who is your trash fave who is so problematic they probably have hate tumblrs dedicated to them
EVERYONE. ALL OF THEM. ESPECIALLY MICHELETTO AND CESARE. BUT TBH YOU DON’T WATCH THIS DUMPSTER FIRE OF A SHOW FOR THE CINNAMON ROLLS.
what is ur guiltiest guilty fave fandom
This one?????
what is the fic you want to write/read but can’t because it is too full of Sin
Oh my buddy my dude it’s all here? Like, there is no fic I can think of that’s more sinful than the show.
…oh wait, no, AU where Cesare and Lucrezia happen sooner and she sneaks into the confessional and sucks him off while he’s wearing his cardinal’s vestments, and the whole fic is heavily laden with imagery of Lucrezia as both Madonna and supplicant and also of Intercession and some complicated feelings about God, and Cesare being very VERY conflicted about his sister’s glorious golden hair spread across the blood red of his vestments.
There, I hope that was gratifying for everyone.
what is the most sinful fic you have ever read/written
I swear TO GOD that I am still writing that one porn fic with Micheletto and Cesare and scars as heraldry and the giving of orders and sexually tense removal of vestments.
what is the worst thing you want to become canon (character death, trash-ship etc)
Literally every single thing in this post, but tbh all my darkest desires are fulfilled within like the first two episodes when Micheletto takes a cat ‘o nine tails and hands it to Cesare and looks him dead in the eye as he says, “So whip me, my lord.”
what is your most sinful headcanon
Cesare has always had a powerful preference for blondes, the more golden their hair, the better. He has a recurring dream about a beautiful woman sitting above him on a bed of gold cloth, her hair falling around them both as she kisses his lips and he fucks her. His preference for fair-haired women is common knowledge. The fact that it stems from a dream about his sister is not.
Furthermore, I definitely agree with Wilde that Cesare has definitely had a dream about fucking his sister’s hair. Cesare has a thing for his sister’s hair.
As for Cesare/Micheletto, c’mon now, we can all agree that they’ve fucked while he was wearing his vestments more than once.
what is your cutest headcanon
Um…when they were younger, Lucrezia taught Cesare how to braid her hair. He still remembers, it’s A Thing. I also recognize that this is not so much ‘cute’ in light of the previous answer.
what is your heart-breakingist head canon
THE END OF THE MOVIE SCRIPT????
Oh, and obviously the fact that none of the Borgias really believe in God (they observe the traditions, but even the Pope doesn’t really have faith) save for Cesare, who believes with all his heart in the prayers and sacraments he says every day, and believes with all his heart that he’s going to Hell, and sides with his father and his family anyway. I find that very tragic.
what is ur crackiest crack ship
Cesare/Good Sense, tied with Lucrezia/Consistent And Prolonged Happiness
what is ur marginally less cracky crack ship
Cesare/Craftiness, which is tied with Micheletto/Religion, because you want to talk about people who definitely believe in God and definitely do terrible things anyway and basically just have a profoundly complicated relationship with religion and kind of approach murder as a religious connection not unlike that of a confessor to a supplicant, Micheletto’s your boy. CAN YOU TELL THAT I HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS A L O T.
what is ur favourite ridiculous au
Um…this Temeraire AU from @wildehacked. (Incidentally, in the Black Sails Temeraire AU, Miranda would be a dragon and Flint is her captain’s beloved and when her captain is cruelly ripped away from them both, she and Flint escape because Miranda can’t stand another captain and Flint just needs out and it’s all very terrible. I digress.)
Also, I’m really a sucker for daemon AUs! I have no idea what this one would look like except that Micheletto would have a hunting hound, the kind of rangy mixed-breed creature whose jaws can crack bone and whose loyalty stretches beyond the grave, and everyone believes that Rodrigo Borgia/Alexander VI has a white dove. (The snake he keeps quite literally up his sleeve is a melanistic asp. Cesare thinks this is funny, in a bitter sort of way.)
Fic where all of the Avengers are trying to teach tech stuff to Steve (especially Tony who just gets so annoyed at his apparent tech incompetence) but he just seems super hopeless at it until one day one of them stumbles across a youtube account that’s filled with a series of videos titled ‘How Long Can I Keep My Friends Convinced I Have No Idea What Technology Is’ and it turns out he’s been gaming them for YT hits for months.
“How do I make the Google do the thing” has over 30 million hits alone.
It works even better if you put it in a universe where they all have secret identities, so rather than Captain America conning, say, Hawkeye, it’s just some super built dude who for some reason (probably that he’s blond) is vastly underestimated by his equally anonymous friends. A debate rages constantly in the comments about whether that guy IS Tony Stark or just a ringer.
a. Steve’s username is brooklyn1917 and the top question he keeps getting is “Are you really Captain America?” The other question is “Please tell us if you’re actually Chris Evans.”
b. Steve eventually makes a video to address these two questions. Except he basically spends the video laughing for like five minutes and then just smiles this ACTUAL LITTLE SHIT GRIN and then goes, “No, I’m not Chris Evans.” It drives his fans into a frothing frenzy.
c. After the “How Do I Make Google Do The Thing” debacle, the next most popular videos are “How Do I Get My Email Through YouTube?” and “Why is My Email Not in My Mailbox Outside My Door?” There are varying reactions among the Avengers for this. Natasha’s “I’m Going to Kill You Very Slowly™” Face is terrifying. Clint’s “There Is Not Enough Coffee In the World” Lament is priceless. And Tony…. well. Tony’s Rant is Lord of the Rings Epic with Fan Fiction thrown in.
d. Thor is the first person to figure out that Steve is a Little Shit™ and totally joins him on the Trolling.
e. Bruce was the one who actually discovered the YouTube channel. He was promptly bribed into silence by copious amounts of Sarah Rogers’ Patented Chocolate Fudge Magic Brownies™.
f. Bruce’s favorite video is the Instagram Saga, in which Steve Rogers Has Everyone Else Convinced That He Thinks This Is Really a Telegram Service.
g. Currently, Sam Wilson is about to be bribed into keeping silence and to aid and abet any and all shenanigans.
h. Peter Parker is one of Steve’s number one fans and is responsible for feeding Steve more ideas in his YouTube comments.
If space travel doesn’t involve sea shanties then I think we’ll have missed an opportunity.
You see though, for sea travel you want big strong people who are capable of managing rigging. For space travel you want small low-mass people who are technically educated, as they are called, nerds. Your space shanties are going to be less booming and more squeaky.
in so far as there will be space shanties, they’ll be filk
I call shenanigans on the big strong people; sailors were young and malnourished by modern standards, and climbing around the rigging is easier if you’re small and light.
Like, I am 100% in favor of shanties in as many situations as possible, but I’m having trouble coming up with a mode of space travel that would require multiple humans to move in concert, thus necessitating songs with a strong beat to move to.
Sea chanties were for providing a strong beat to move to. Space chanties might very well arise just because we’re bored, out there between point A and point B for so long.
(Also yes, @gdanskcityofficial up there has the right of it.)
Space shanties are for warp piloting. Under warp drive, human time perception and time as measured by crystal or atomic oscillators don’t match. Starship pilots listen to a small unamplified chorus singing a careful rhythm while keeping their own eyes on a silent metronome that the chorus can’t see, linked to a highly-precise atomic clock. How the chorus and metronome fall in and out of sync tells the pilot how to keep the ship safely in the warp bubble and correctly on course.
Depending on route, a typical warp jump can last anywhere from one to ten minutes, and most courses consist of five to fifteen jumps before a necessary four to six hour break to check the engines, plot the next set of jumps, and give everyone a chance to recover. A good shanty team, with reliable rhythm, a broad, versatile, and extendible repertoire, and the stamina to do 3-4 sets a day over the course of a voyage, is just as vital to space travel as a pilot, navigator, or engineering team.
Other reasons Shanties will experience a revival in the space age:
We will sing for any freaking reason, or no reason at all, and Shanties are FUN to sing.
Deep Space is a lonely place and recruiting people suited to long periods of isolation might be a good idea. People from Newfoundland/Labrador, for instance.
SPACE WHALES
THEY’RE DEFINITELY REAL I FEEL IT IN MY SOUL
“What Do We Do With A Drunken Sailor” is basically a revenge fantasy against your most incompetent co-workers and if there’s something humans love doing, it’s being petty.
Plus, no need for work songs in space? Tell that to all my colleagues who’ve come up with little ditties they’ve sung under their breath while at the computer.
“The Printer Song” and “I Will Fucking End You, Google Chrome” are my favourites.
Do you have any thoughts about David and Jonathan?
The David cycle (can it be called a cycle? Or is it more a saga? Or just a multi-generational family tragedy?) is deeply underrated from a literary point of view. It’s one of the longest stories we have of a single life in the Old Testament aside from maybe Joseph? It’s got it all; mad kings, prophecies fulfilled, self-sacrificing princes, supernatural feats, and a shining peasant king at the center with enough charisma to burn up anyone who gets too close to him and a relationship to God so intimate that he is referred to as God’s son. And the Davidic fall from grace is just….brutal, and he’s so aware of what’s happening through a lot of it. Like his devotion to God just grows more ferocious even as the bodies pile up around him, and David’s laments for his children and Jonathon are heart-wrenching. They still wreck me.
Jonathon is honestly one of the most honorable, good, and wonderful men of the entire Old Testament. His filial loyalty to his useless father and his adoring fealty of David never waver; even when Jonathon’s birthright is stripped from him, even when those warring loves quite literally kill him. Like, everyone I know at seminary is still upset about the death of Jonathon. Reviews on David as a human are mixed, but everyone still mourns the firstborn son of Saul.
So yeah, I get glassy eyed about the love between David and Jonathon and its potentially romantic nature like everyone else on Tumblr, but there’s….a lot more there. And that relationship only haunts readers so much because of how well the author captured these two reckless, hard-loving, blood-stained boys with the world on their shoulders.
my boyfriend and I sometimes struggle to be on the same page when it comes to comforting- often i just want to vent and don’t need advice, whereas validation confuses him and he wants a plan of action
to counter this, we’ve come up with a system where we ask: “do you want advice, empathy, both or neither?”
if it’s just advice, i know to go straight to action points and not spend time on fluffy words
if it’s just empathy, he knows i want to be reassured and comforted and that’s all
if it’s both, it’s time for advice that recognises how hard the situation is and is perhaps gentler in nature
if it’s neither, just a hug is really good
i recommend trying to use this in your lives! it makes sure you’re giving and getting what you need, and reduces the risk of resentment or similar
just remember that I, a registered nurse with a bachelors degree, accidentally glued a patient’s foreskin shut over his penis and had to call a urology doctor to come help me get it to retract
I had to send a page that said “I glued the patient’s penis shut. send help.”
The urology resident said, “Wow. I’ve never seen anything like this. Let me go ask someone else.”
It’s been like 5 days since this happened and I’m just sitting at the nurses station with some coworkers and the urology resident walks by and says “hey! Glue any penises shut lately??” And keeps on walking
THEN ALL MY COWORKERS WERE LIKE WHAT JUST HAPPENED
and so yeah, that freaking doctor exposed me and went on his way
Guys, I’m not going to ask for your prayers - I myself am not religious, but I am going to ask you to signal boost this. Marawi City in the Philippines has been invaded by ISIS, they are bombing the city and a school zone, and setting detainees free from prisons.
They say that this is a jihad, but anyone who even has a small understanding of Islam knows that Islam is not violent.
This is terrorism.
The world needs to know.
Update 1: They’re exchanging fire from both sides. Electricity is down. Friends are reporting that ISIS members are spotted in the schools and are giving them a few minutes to evacuate before they take over. Filipino media is silent.
Update 2: Christian teachers are being held hostage.
Update 3: Hospital staff being detained, ISIS flag has been raised in the city hospital. The fighting occurred not in the outskirts of Marawi, but on its streets, around the city hall and public market.
I’m sorry, I’m stringing together what information my friends are still giving me. I don’t know how long they can keep this up - a lot of them are saying that their phones are dying.
Update 4: Armed Forces of the Philippines telling people to go underground, airstrikes coming. Mortars are being prepared too.
UPDATE 5: The Philippine President and his family are in Russia. The Palace remains silent. The military is trying to invalidate ground reports to cover up their fuckups.
UPDATE 6: Philippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Philippines are not responding or have deployed extremely delayed support, according to the Marawi City Mayor in a phone interview.
UPDATE 7: CNN Philippines has a livestream covering the entire thing, eyewitness reports are in, Military is still saying “we’re in full control” when that’s obviously not the case.
UPDATE 8: reports in that terrorists are targeting cell towers now.
UPDATE 9: GENERALS POINTING FINGERS AT EACH OTHER INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY TRYING TO HELP PEOPLE.
UPDATE 10: ARMED FORCES STILL LYING ABOUT THE SCALE OF THIS ATTACK. THEY SAY 15 MEN, WHEN ALL CORRESPONDENTS ARE SAYING THERE ARE AT LEAST 200.
UPDATE 11: generals trivializing the situation, saying “they don’t feel like it’ll last the night,” when people are literally saying that the fighting still continues. CNN just cut their livestream, will be back in 30 minutes, most are being left in the dark about what’s going on.
at this point, i’m at a loss for words. most friends have stopped updating 30 minutes ago. sporadic updates remain.
i am terrified. our country’s history with martial law is dark, and i never thought i’d live to see this day.
oh my gosh … Guys, spread this around. Be informed.
Oh god guys please someone do something. Please spread this make people known of this !!! Please bring awareness and if you are religious please pray to whatever god and I don’t care if your are atheists or not but you have hearts and please use them please please spread this I don’t know what the hell is up there but whatever you are please save us from this hell
On the one hand, I want to write a whole bunch of crossovers where the Animorphs meet characters from other universes.
On the other hand, every single one of them would basically be “[insert character here] is confused and alone and the world is probably ending way worse than they ever expected; the Animorphs are having a normal day.”
Can we normalize the idea that women can have deep voices? please??
Especially for trans women who feel gross or out of place for their deep voice.
Please, break the standard that all women have high pitched, perfect, feminine voices.
My car got towed on NYE, so after unsuccessfully trying every number programmed into my phone, I called my dad’s ass up at 2 AM to pick up myself and my friends to go get my vehicle out of impound (my dad is awesome. More on that later.)
Included in my group of friends was my friend Anna who had recently come forward as trans. She had very recently started presenting as a woman, and was pretty insecure in it, and had never met my father previously, so it wasn’t as though I had time to brief him on the situation. Anna was pretty shy during the whole ride, tucked in the back and letting her friends talk over her. She only spoke up after I had gotten my car back, thanking him for helping out.
The next day, I called to thank him for that night, and he asked me who was the girl with the deep voice. At first my heart sink in my guts, but without missing a beat, he started raving about how he LOVED her voice. He listed off a few actresses from his day who had had very deep voices, and how he adored it, and that kind of slow sultry speaking had been fading more and more as pop culture pushed for childish voices in women.
Your deep voice is gorgeous trans friends (and cis friends too.) it is warm and low and smooth like honey and perfect in every way. It is smoldering and evocative and absolutely beautiful.
anyway shout out to all my girls with strong jawlines and broad shoulders y'all we are so beautiful it’s unreal and don’t ever let anyone tell you different
just throwing it out there but its 200% acceptable for my mutuals to im me posts they think id like with no need for an explanation or conversation. send that good content my way
i dont care how corny iris by the goo goo dolls is bc i love iris by the goo goo dolls and i will continue screaming iris by the goo goo dolls from the top of my lungs every time i hear iris by the goo goo dolls for the rest of my miserable life
When Earth discovers FTL travel, the world never unifies into one government. When new species make contact, they are surprised to learn that the twenty strongest empires in the galaxy have their capitals on the same planet.
So now Secret Empire has revealed its Shyamalan Twist and given the readers a Good Guy Steve Rogers as well as Hydra Cap, and the kinds of dickbags who, when this whole bullshit began were dismissing people’s complaints with “oh come on, don’t you know how comics works, it’s all going to be put back at the end, blah blah blah…” are crowing I-Told-You-So’s.
Please everyone, y'all need to go see Wonder Woman on June 2nd! It’s so unbelievably important for this movie to have a big opening weekend, it will effect almost every female led action movie coming forward. Take you friends, take your families, tell other people with kids. Female action movies outside of Star Wars and Hunger Games historically haven’t done very well, we need to make sure that Wonder Woman is huge so more female led superhero movies get green lit.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) has had its spending increase by $2 billion to a total of $34 billion. Trump requested this to be cut.
NASA has been granted $19.7 billion in funding, an increase even on what Obama requested. Of this, $5.8 billion is set aside for science research, including $1.9 billion for the Earth Sciences – something Trump officials said they wanted completely defunded.
$37 million has been given to NASA’s STEM programs and outreach, with $100 million total going towards educational programs, something Trump also wished, and still wishes, to cut by 2018.
The National Science Foundation (NSF), the largest federal fund for science and academia, has been given $7.5 billion, a slight increase from 2016’s budget.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has been given $1.09 billion, a slight increase from 2016. Trump wanted to cut this by 10 percent.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which faced a 31 percent cut by this year or the next, has only had its funding cut by 1 percent.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been given $3.5 billion
Renewable energies and clean energy research funding have been boosted by $17 million.
basically, i think the general rule of thumb is: if someone REALLY wants the blood that’s inside of your body, and they’re like… a vampire, or a dracula, or some sort of mansquito, then that’s probably okay. a dracula and a mansquito are made for removing things like blood and swords from inside your body.
that’s basically fine.
if something wants to get at your blood, and they’re, say, some kind of murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. a really frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN your body instead of coming out.
unfortunately this will not deter a really big frog, because a really big frog is full of things like prizes, and value, and quite a lot of hatred, and it would REALLY rather like to replace any and all of those things with your blood, and basically by any means possible.
These words scan with a fantastic degree of confidence considering that together they make no sense at all
on the topic of humans being the intergalactic “hold my beer” species: imagine an alien stepping onto a human starship and seeing a space roomba™ with a knife duct taped onto it, just wandering around the ship
it doesn’t have any special intelligence. it’s just a normal space roomba. there are other space roombas on the ship and they don’t have knives. it’s just this one. knife space roomba has full clearance to every room in the ship. occasionally crew members will be talking and then suddenly swear and clutch their ankle. knife space roomba putters off, leaving them to their mild stab wounds.
“what is the point?” asks the alien as another crew member casually steps over the knife-wielding robot. “is it to test your speed and agility?”
“no it doesn’t really go that fast,” replies the captain.
“does it teach you to stay ever-vigilant?”
“I mean I guess so but that’s more of a side effect.”
“does it weed out the weak? does it protect you from invaders? do repeated stabbings let your species heal more quickly in the future?”
“it doesn’t stab very hard, it gets us more than it gets our enemies, and no, but that sounds cool — someone write that down.”
“but then what is its purpose?”
“I don’t know,” the captain says, leaning down to give the space roomba an affectionate pat. “it just seemed cool”
this is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard but I thought about it for five seconds and realized that if I were, say, a random communications officer onboard this ship and someone taped a knife to a roomba it would take maybe three weeks before even I was inordinately fond of Stabby. I would be proud of Stabby when I met up with my other spacefleet friends for space coffee, I would tell them about the time Stabby got the second mate in the ankle five seconds before the fleet admiral beamed on board and she swore in seven different languages in front of high command.
also by the fourth day Stabby would be in the ship’s log, he’d have little painted-on insignia, people would salute him as he went by, and someone would hook up a twitter account to tweet maniacal laughter and/or a truly terrible knock-knock joke every time he managed to nick someone.
Omg so the ting I typed up might actually happen this is gold
I am suddenly astonished that Stabby isn’t Farscape canon. 1812 was weird enough.
Stabby’s little charging dock would start accruing cuddly toys and commemorative holo-vids of Stabby’s greatest stabs. Its insignia would start off at a fairly low rank, but soon, without anyone every discussing it, everyone would know that Stabby got to take the rank of the highest ranking crew member it stabbed. The ceremony for Flag Admiral Stabby was beautiful. The captain gave a speech.
Details: Six (6) members of a Mercenary/Pirate crew of little renown attempted to infiltrate ship in order to steal equipment and/or personnel.
Prior to being detained they had remained undetected for eight (8) hours and accumulated several high value materials (see attached log), and incapacitated and restrained several crewmen (see attached log) in dock #3, with the intention of using a life boat to exfiltrate.
Just prior to their would-be escape, the boarding party encountered the ship’s mascot. A cleaning unit which had been modified by crew members to mount a traditional Terran melee weapon, as well as an officer’s insignia (having been jokingly given a commission by the Captain the night before). Curious, one picked it up, before realising the mounted weapon had a nickel finish (highly toxic to their species) on the handle, and dropped it in a panic.
As the unit’s anti-impact sensors had been disabled, it immediately tried to right itself on landing. This caused it to flip over and slash the third knee of the boarder who dropped it, prompting the rest of the boarders to flee. In doing so, they tripped over a waste container, causing the unit to “chase” them, as it collected the trail of dust they left.
The security crew were alerted to the boarding party’s presence by an entry on “Sargent Stabby’s Hit List” - an account on an intership microblogging site which automatically logs any injuries caused by the cleaning unit in question - and quickly intercepted them.
Casualties: Four (4) crewmen treated for minor lacerations sustained after detaining boarding party, one (1) captured crewman treated for negative reaction to sedatives used by captors.
Belligerent status: Two (2) members of the enemy boarding party remain in stable condition in sickbay. Three (3) remaining surrendered peacefully and remain in the brig. One (1) refuses to leave the safety of a storage cupboard he went to ground in.
Recommendations/Actions:
All captured guards to undergo debriefing and possible disciplinary action for breaches of security protocol.
Remind all crew members to report missing colleagues immediately.
Retain a guard outside cleaning storage room 87 until the final boarder can be coaxed out and properly detained.
Cleaning unit D4.87 AKA
“Sargent Stabby” has been promoted to Quartermaster, and is now considered the superior officer of all autonomous drones on the ship. All Class #1 drones have been programmed to salute their superior with their effector, should it enter the room while they’re active.
This is less stupid than things I’ve heard that go on, on submarines.
59. There is a yardstick duct taped to the top of Gryffindor tower. It has only one purpose: with this addition, Gryffindor tower is a foot taller than Ravenclaw tower.
I’m gonna do this for black sails, since nothing was specified!
3. and ur really trashy im-going-to-hell ship
…………..I really am not ashamed of anything. Maybe Charles/Teach?
13. what is your heart-breakingist head canon
The heart can break an infinite amount of times, and so I have an infinity of heart breakinginst head canons, but here’s a recent one:
Jack’s ship is taken. He’s given a short trial in Port Royal, where he eloquently argues in Anne and Mary’s defense. “They’re both carrying my sons,” he tells the judge, buying Anne as much time as he can, his last and most important act on earth. “Hang me, hang my men, but don’t allow innocents to suffer the sins of the father.”
The judge grants him Anne’s life, and Mary’s, and one final request. He asks to see Anne.
”What the fuck, Jack,” she says in a cracked voice, hurtling herself into his arms.
”It’s no use, my darling,” he says into her hair, and oh, his voice comes out odd, too. “It’s no use. I’ve already saved you.”
”Didn’t want you to save me,” she says, and her hands dig into his back, hard. “I wanted––” she breaks off, giving him that wide, furious stare that means she can’t bear to say what she must. He finishes for her.
”You wanted me to fight with you,” he says gently. She wants to go into the ground with him. Always has. “Yes, I know. Better to fight like a man than hang like a dog.”
”Fuck you,” Anne says, and she means she loves him, so he kisses her.
”Live for me,” he says against her mouth. “That’s all I ask.”
The next day, Jack is taken to the gallows. His last thought isn’t of Anne, after all, but of Charles Vane, dead so many years ago. By all accounts he did this part very well, and Jack wants to be like him in this, Jack wants––
Max bribes Anne and Mary’s way out of prison a week later. When they sail away from Port Royal, Anne won’t let Max coax her belowdeck. She stands at the rail when they pass the cay, and the last thing she sees of Jack Rackham on this earth is his body swinging from a gibbet.
14. what is ur crackiest crack ship
Given that I treat Charles/Jack like the secret sitcom romcom happening on a murdery drama show, probably Charles/Jack.
Millennials have made it clear they most want career advancement and growth, something not every workplace can offer on demand. But in lieu of those opportunities, many companies are resorting to quick fixes in an attempt to shape culture. Whether it’s free snacks, Ping-Pong tables, or beer taps, these perks—like participation trophies before them—are trinkets that do not thoughtfully consider the symptoms of the problem before providing a treatment.
Vacation usage—a benefit repeatedly found to be more valued than raises, bonuses, and retirement plans—is a measure of trust and an important part of the work-life balance equation. Despite its value, a study by Project: Time Off revealed Millennials are not taking the vacation they earn. In fact, they are the most likely generation to forfeit time off, even though they receive the least amount of vacation days.
Research into Millennial vacation behavior shows they are afraid, not entitled. Compared to Boomers, Millennials are at least twice as likely to say they are fearful of losing their job. This cohort worries about what the boss might think, wants to show complete dedication, and does not want their bosses to see them as replaceable.
These findings are counterintuitive to the coddled Millennial stereotype that ignores the circumstances of the generation’s experience. Coming of age during an economic downturn has consequences.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) has formally introduced a bill into Congress that would require Trump to reimburse the government for funds spent on travel to his own properties, such as Mar-a-Lago in Florida and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ.
Lieu’s bill, the Stop Waste and Misuse by the President (SWAMP) Act, states that Trump’s travel “results in the American taxpayer effectively subsidizing the president’s businesses.” The bill would also require that Trump reimburse the government for Secret Service costs derived from visits to his properties.
#tbt that time two brothers bought their own planes, learnt to fly them and disguised them as soviet planes so they wouldn’t be questioned and then flew into east germany to rescue their third brother from a park and recorded the entire operation and got away with it
no but legit this is one of my favourite stories from the 20th century it just sums up human ingenuity and how walls just don’t fucking work when people will do anything to cross them
the first brother and a friend paddled over the Elbe on inflatable mattresses in the middle of the night to escape the east. they got picked up by a Wessi police officer, who said something like “bit cold for swimming, ey boys?” and the brother says “not when you’re trying to leave the East.” because all East Germans were automatically citizens of the West too, they were taken into town and established themselves there.
the second brother scoped out a particularly dark stretch of the wall. He escaped over it to the west by getting into a high building and shooting an arrow with a steel cable attached over to another building in the west. He then ziplined over. In response to his escape, the Stasi and the Wall designers built another guard tower in the middle of the stretch so no one else could pull the same stunt.
the two brothers met up and heard that their who was still in East Germany also wanted out. So, they learnt to fly planes and disguised them as soviet planes. This was so, if the border guards saw them, they wouldn’t fire on them - they’d have to ring up the Kremlin and ascertain whether they were actual soviet planes on an organised fly-by. they flew into East Germany at dawn (recording it all on camera because you’ve got to do it for the vine even before vine exists), landed in a park where their brother was hiding in the bushes, loaded him onto one of the planes and flew out of East Germany, laughing all the way.
other great moments include - the guy who broke out of the GDR by driving a very low-slung sportscar under a barrier, the family who built two hot air balloons with their bare hands, the guy who managed to windsurf out of East Germany, the man who stole a tank (my hero), the people who removed the petrol tanks from cars so people could squeeze into the gap where the tank should have been, and of course, one of the most famous photos of the 20th century, with Eastern border guard, conrad schumann noping the fuck out of there when he was meant to be on duty guarding the wall when it was under construction in 1961
So after reblogging literally every single “humans are weird” post that came on my dash I decided it’s time to make my own!
Consider the following;
Humans are already weird space orcs that like either worship the term “fuck it” or make sacrifices to the ship’s rulebook, basically. They have a strict series of social interactions that even distinguish themselves between cultures. Deviation is rare, and sometimes ostracized, no matter how seemingly arbitrary.
So when the ship of the Vyrg’s first human shows up, they were expecting a smiling (humans smile for a lot of the time) human who will shake their first right hand.
Instead, they got a messy, spaced out creature whose hair was falling in their face and whose things were overflowing from their arms, all seemingly hobbies and random trinkets. A backpack hung on their back.
Their first words were accompanied with a (sheepish…the captain thought) smile;
“Sorry, I overslept and I forgot deployment was today! And I forgot my saline for my contacts back in my room but we’ve got to take off, right?”
Great. The crew got a dumb one.
Or so they thought, until their human explained the entire summary of how their ship’s mechanics worked, and fixed their left engine to work at maximum capacity in record time. The human followed it up with a seemingly random tangent about something called the “Stonewall Riots” and “gay rights”.
“Sorry,” Human-Clara said.
“A bit of light just reflected here and it looked like a rainbow and it made me think of it.”
Human-Clara had a tendency to speak either so fast they ran out of breath, or with so many pauses it sounded like they were gathering their scattered thoughts at that moment.
Life with Human-Clara was – odd. They kept to themselves mostly, quietly chatting with crew mates on certain days or absorbed in their transponder for others. Sometimes they would walk out of their room so wholly absorbed in yet another new hobby that the Captain feared xe’d never pull them out of it. The crew never saw a hobby finished. Sometimes when they were spoken to, Human-Clara responded slowly and distractedly, eyes distant and far away as if still thinking of something else. They regularly forgot to eat, or sleep, or take care of themselves if they were absorbed in something else. Directions had to be written down or sent to their transponder. The Captain learned to be patient, as Human-Clara seemed to excel with patience.
Human-Clara was also oddly sensitive. It was quite a culture shock for them to learn that the Vyrg didn’t really have a notion of “friends” other than immediate family, and was almost – crushed, for a few days, the Vyrg’s usual polite friendliness not enough. They seemed depressed when their crazy, thousand-lightyears-an-hour tangents weren’t paid attention to, so the crew began to adapt, and things became much more harmonious.
Sometimes Human-Clara got angry. They were terrifying when angry. It lasted only a few seconds, really. They would blow up, the explosion big enough to scare even the Captain, and after the explosion, be calm in seconds afterwards.
Stimulant chemicals made them sleepy, which the Vyrg thought was adorable. They watched videos of what they called “stims”, and flapped their hands when they were happy, and slapped them quickly and repeatedly on flat surfaces when they were really excited about knowing something. These were “stims” too. The Vyrg wasn’t sure what these “stims” were, really, but they seemed to regulate Human-Clara, emotionally.
Then they got another Human, Human-Steve. Human-Steve was often condescending in their remarks, saying that if Human-Clara “tried”, they could concentrate. It was then that the Vyrg learned what “attention deficit hyperactive disorder, primarily inattentive” was.
They panicked, a little. Was their first human sick?
“No,” Human-Clara explained. “It’s just where the connections in my brain are different, so some things I do differently. Human-Steve doesn’t have that, so he doesn’t understand”.
The Vyrg didn’t either, but their previous methods of interaction worked just fine, so they kept using those.
(If anybody wants to add anything, you don’t have too, but feel free!)
So I’m going to be bitter and old here for a minute.
The absolute refusal to allow anyone to use queer as an umbrella is both novel and regressive (I know, I know). For decades, queer was an accepted and neutral way to concisely refer to a coalition of loosely connected communities and identities. Queer theory, queer film, queer spaces, queer history.
This use came after another few decades of committed work in reclaiming the word from oppressors who flat out stole it from us.
It took a lot of effort to wrestle it back out of their hands, and now I’m expected to just give it over to them because decades of unity and collective action and shared experience don’t matter because a handful of (usually white, almost exclusively american) kids on this godawful website have deicded it’s illegal for me to “force it on others” and that I should instead just let them for LGBT or gay or whatever else on me.
Like, fuck off?
Fuck off.
I am going to refer to my community in the way that I have been doing for an entire lifetime. Not just my specific identity, which is queer as fuck, but the whole fucking shebang.
And I will not hand the word back over to straight people with a nice little ribbon and a coat of polish and say “here, some kids decided it was cool if I let you stab them with this word so here you go” like
Fucking, why would I ever.
Frankly, and I know how people are going to react to this but, frankly?
I damned well will use queer to refer to my community as well as myself, and anyone who wants to take it away from me can take it over my COLD DEAD QUEER LITTLE FINGERS.
I will not sit by and let antsy, nervous kids who don’t know a damn thing about our history talk down to me about how “well, actually” when they can’t even recognize the fact that trans people were still being policed out of here literally three fucking years ago.
The presumption and the ignorance are staggering.
So yeah.
Queer as in fuck you people in particular.
And, to my followers who are made uncomfortable by this, well. I will regret losing you on some level, but not enough to stop.
I fully intend to use queer as the umbrella term it has been for my entire life. LGBT never did my intersex, pansexual ass any favours anyway.
My point is, I’m not going to be referring to the “LGBT” community at all, anymore. It’s going to be 100% queer here, in a more conscious and consistent way than it has been before. Because, you see, even people who do use queer as an identity unashamedly have gotten into this pattern of being apologetic or conditional about it, with a constant, overbearing tone that even when we do use queer as a community term with have to hedge it and gentle it because it’s so dangerous.
but it’s fuckign not.
We spent decades pulling the danger out of it.
And ‘m not going to let it sneak back in.
Every time someone says “queer is a slur, you shouldn’t use it” I feel like they’re trying to fucking gaslight me. Like, I was there when it got reclaimed. I read “Queer Science”, I saw the “Queer Studies Departments” in college and the majors in Queer Theory. Kids do not get to invalidate my life out of ignorance. And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with, because how would the kids who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about know to invalidate that word?
You go. Reclaim that reclamation. I’ll probably use LGBT+ and queer interchangeably, like I always have, and if some kid tries to lecture my 47-year-old ass on the matter I’m just going to have to look at them over my imaginary librarian glasses and tell them “no. you’re wrong. Go back to school, kid, you need to remember you’re sharing the world with adults and there is a consensual reality you have entered into. You don’t get to make it up from scratch any more than I did.”
And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with
Because it’s absolutely surreal to see someone who is fifteen years old speak as if queer’s been used to constantly attack and smear and belittle and insult them, when they’re about twenty years too late, at the very least, to have gone through that as a teenager. I’ve seen it happen so many times, with so many teenagers on here, that it reads honestly like a script – like a Discourse Point someone’s taught them that they need to trot out as an argument, always and forever, amen. I made this connection over a year ago, when the screaming against ‘queer’ started in earnest on here and thought about it more in-depth when a number of very young activists both here and on Twitter told me unironically and with a straight face that they took all of their discourse points from the likes of leftbians and other exclusionists, starting with your garden-variety aphobes and biphobes and ending with outright radfems / TWERFs / SWERFs.
That was the lightbulb moment for me. Question:
what group has managed to spread their posts and their ideas far and wide on Tumblr, because people reblog without checking the source or reading between the lines?
and what group has had a vicious ideological axe to grind against ‘queer’ as both a self-descriptor and an umbrella-term for decades now?
The answer to both is radfems. I was there ten years ago when they were absolutely driving themselves into a frothing lather over the fact that a very large number of LGBTQIAP+ youth were describing ourselves and our communities as queer uncontroversially – seriously, this was so common on the English-speaking queer youth forums I used to frequent back then that no one batted an eyelash, specifically because the work of reclamation had already been done for decades and if, asked, the vast majority of people answered that they preferred queer because it was INCLUSIVE (which is and has always been the kryptonite for groups of people whose ideas revolved around gatekeeping the community and their precious selves being the arbiters of who gets in and who stays out), Radfems quickly realized that they weren’t going to be able to demonize the word in the eyes of Gen Xers or people at the older end of the Gen Y generation in the community, because we’d either contributed to the work of reclamation or spent our whole fucking lives in communities where queer was a badge of pride.
So, in what is honestly an absolutely brilliant move and which I’d be almost tempted to admire, if I didn’t want to spit everyone involved right between the eyes, radfems and other exclusionists targeted much younger LGBTQIAP+ people, leapfrogging a generation. Tumblr, in this sense, has been absolutely vital, both in giving them access to very young people who were just discovering themselves and whose knowledge of community history was nonexistent and in being built in such a way that radfems could make their posts go viral and attract tens of thousands of reblogs, if not more, if they knew to word them in just the right way (I’ve lost count of the number of what, at a shallow glance, seem like very decent PSAs on consent, but that at a closer reading were actually anti-BDSM screeds, easy to see for anyone who knows the dogwhistles).
If radfems have managed to mire this place in their ideas intensely enough that they’ve turned their anti-kink crusade into an omnipresent thing in certain progressive communities on Tumblr, it’s not impossible to make the logical leap that they’ve managed to do so with their decades-long anti-queer crusade as well.
I’d laugh and clap at the ingeniousness of it all, if it didn’t involve obliterating decades of community history, solidarity and reclamation efforts.
Please note this. Regardless of how you personally feel about the word, this backlash against it happened much more recently than many people seem to think. And it’s worth pointing out who benefits from the backlash, and it sure as hell isn’t the people who gave decades of their lives to make the word a sign of inclusivity and acceptance.
Washington (CNN)Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas called for the impeachment of President Donald Trump Wednesday morning, the first member of Congress to officially request leveling charges against the President from the House floor.
“This is about my position. This is about what I believe. And this is where I stand. I will not be moved. The President must be impeached,” Green said on the floor. “For those who do not know, impeachment does not mean that the President would be found guilty. It simply means that the House of Representatives will bring charges against the President. It’s similar to an indictment but not quite the same thing.”
