The reason I'm so fucking steamed about this primary and at Bernie fuckers is because of the Supreme Court. And I blame Bernie supporters for Hillary's loss in 2016, and consequently, the loss of SCOTUS.

In 2016, there was an open Supreme Court seat and the election was going to decide the ideological makeup of the court for a generation. As a lawyer, I cannot understate how fucking Important that was. Every single large political question gets decided by SCOTUS. Gerrymandering, healthcare, marriage, abortion, even climate change regulation.

And liberals lost SCOTUS for a generation. And the lower district and appellate courts to Trump's nominees.

Hillary lost by 70,000 votes across MI, WI, and PA, and I absolutely believe that Bernie supporters' vitriol was to blame for low turnout, and I've yet to see anyone take responsibility for that. Even if they lived in a blue state and "it didn't matter,"their vitriol, theur attitude, their voting third party, their refusal to vote made it seem acceptable for others in other states to stay home or vote third party. Their attitude affected others.

There was so much at stake in 2016 because of SCOTUS and Bernie fuckers couldn't see past their own egos to get that and I believe that cost Hillary the election.

So with RBG's 87th birthday next week and the fact that she has had cancer four times, twice in just the past year, I'm having fucking deja vu that we'll lose another SCOTUS seat if Trump gets to appoint her replacement. (also, Breyer is 81.) With a 5-4 conservative majority liberals can get an occasional win.

If Trump gets reelected and that majority expands to 6-3 or 7-2 it's fucking over for the next forty years. Medicare for All will be unconstitutional. The Green New Deal will be unconstitutional. Any climate change regulation will be unconstitutional. Roe v Wade is gone. Even now, there's little hope that those things would be blessed by the current SCOTUS. If Trump replaces Ginsburg or Breyer, even that vanishes.

I wish I could explain this urgency so that people would fucking get it.

Yesterday some people were waiting to vote for 8+ hours. To go out and vote would have required many people to miss an ENTIRE DAY OF WORK with no guarantee of pay (many states don’t even have to pay you for that time). 

How is this anything but a poll tax? 

why do y’all have to vote in the middle of the week…

Ha ha ha hah hahaha my good friend, we in the good ol’ USA don’t just vote once in the middle of the week - we vote on vastly random days depending on your state 

and that’s just the beginning the problems

you wanna vote in Arizona? alright buddy well you gotta be at the polls on tuesday in march 17th 

New Mexico? that’ll be June 2nd. oh you live in North Carolina, sorry that was last Saturday. 

Anyway don’t forget to check how you have to be registered in your state and check what forms of ID you need because it differs wherever you are. Whoops they booted you from the voter rolls? Too bad your state doesn’t allow same-day registration. 

Alright the rest of you get in line for 8 hours and be grateful you live in the land of the FREE

When Gandalf says there are many magic rings in the world, to me “many” implies a lot more than just the twenty rings of power.

Given that dwarves can (arguably, lore-wise) make minorly enchanted toys, I’m picturing a world with a whole bunch of minorly enchanted rings:

• the ring the fisherman passes on to his son when the boy takes his place, not because his son is getting married but because the person wearing that ring has survived every shipwreck for generations;
• the ring a hobbit lass wears while milking the goats because when she does the cream always churns easier and tastes sweet (and when she doesn’t it tastes like, well, goat);
• the ring dogs dig up from any grave, no matter how deep;
• the ring an Easterling trader barters from a shopkeep in Dol Amroth to replace the one that no longer fits his wife’s hand, and which incidentally appears to stop her snoring;
• the ring with a gem that goes from green to blue when the weather’s turning;
• the ring that seems to ease arthritis, but only on the finger that’s wearing it;
• the ring that nobody wants because it makes them look ten years older (or, the ring that youths trying to gain work on a ship want, because it makes them look ten years older);
• the ring that fixes toothache;
• the ring that causes toothache;
• the ring that looks lovely on the mantelpiece and about which elderly relations always warn “now don’t try that on, dear,” because it brings on hives;
• the ring that burns when its wearer is cruel to others, and is incredibly difficult to remove;
• the ring that seems to result in redheaded children, and when passed into a new family line sometimes causes conflict and confusion;

just…a whole lot of slight magic that turns into superstition over the years and eventually fades away, but was once as real as the big kind.

It’s sad how much of what is taught in school is useless to over 99% of the population.

There are literally math concepts taught in high school and middle school that are only used in extremely specialized fields or that are even so outdated they aren’t used anymore!

I took calculus my senior year of high school, and I really liked the way our teacher framed this on the first day of class.

He asked somebody to raise their hand and ask him when we would use calculus in our everyday life. So one student rose their hand and asked, “When are we going to use this in our everyday life?”

“NEVER!!” the teacher exclaimed. “You will never use calculus in your normal, everyday life. In fact, very few of you will use it in your professional careers either.” Then he paused. “So would you like to know why should care?”

Several us nodded.

He picked out one of the varsity football players in the class. “You practice football a lot during the week, right Tim?” asked the teacher.

“Yeah,” replied Tim. “Almost every day.”

“Do you and your teammates ever lift weights during practice?”

“Yeah. Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend a lot of practice in the weight room.”

“But why?” asked the teacher. “Is there ever going to be a play your coach tells you use during a game that requires you to bench press the other team?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why lift weights?”

“Because it makes us stronger,” said Tim.

“Bingo!!” said the teacher. “It’s the same thing with calculus. You’re not here because you’re going to use calculus in your everyday life. You’re here because calculus is weightlifting for your brain.”

And I’ve never forgotten that.

THIS.

When it’s taught right, learning math teaches you logic and how to organize your brain, how to take a problem one step at a time and make sure every step can bear weight before you move to the next one.  Most adults don’t need to know integrals, but goddamn if I don’t wish everyone making arguments on the internet understood geometric proofs.

Scientific concepts broaden our understanding of how the world is put together, which does not mean that most adults ever really understand how light is refracted through a lens or why spinning copper wire creates electricity–and they don’t need to.  But science classes in general are meant to teach the scientific method: how to make observations and use them to draw conclusions, how to test those conclusions, how to be wrong and grow stronger from it.

History isn’t about dates and names of battles, it’s about people, patterns, things we’ve tried before and ought to learn from.  It’s about how everything is linked, how changing one circumstance can lead to changes in fifty others, cascading infinitely.  Literature is about critical thinking, pattern recognition, learning to listen to what somebody is saying and decide what it means to you, how you feel about it, and what you want to do with it.

Some facts matter: every adult should know how to read a graph, how global warming works, some of the basic themes and symbols that crop up in every piece of fiction.  But ultimately, content is less important later in life than context.

The good thing is, students who learn the content are likely to pick up at least some of the context, some of the patterns of thinking, even if they don’t realize it.  (The unfortunate thing is how the current educational system prioritizes content so much that a lot of students, and a lot of adults, don’t see the point in learning either, and teachers are overworked and held to standardize test grading scales such that it’s hard for them to emphasize patterns of thinking over rote memorization, etc etc etc, but that is a whole different discussion.)

Now hold on these mfs might actually be on to something for once 🤔

modern problems require modern solutions

today i did a double feature of hop (2011) dir. tim hill and sonic the hedgehog (2020) dir. jeff fowler and i gotta say… james marsden is intimidatingly handsome and also has great chemistry with small talking cgi animal creatures

finding myself very invested in the James Marsden Chauffeuring Obnoxious Little CGI Creatures Cinematic Universe  (JMCOLCCCU) 

Imagine having this career

The most valuable thing I learned doing a Masters degree with depression, anxiety and ADHD was to change my “things I’m bad at” list to “things I can’t do on my own.” Stop thinking of them as things I could do if I tried hard enough, and accept that I can’t accomplish them by effort and willpower alone; they’re genuine neurocognitive deficits, and if I need to do the thing, then just like a blind person reading or a mobility impaired person going up a storey in a building, I need to find a different method.

I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.

Accept your limitations and learn to leverage them, instead of buying the neurotypical fairytale that they’ll go away if you just try hard enough.

I needed this so much.

Cody rolls over in the middle of the night a couple days after he exchanged his vows with Obi-Wan and asks "since we're married now that makes me Anakin's step dad right?"

And Obi-Wan's like "yeah"

And Cody thanks him and that's the end of the conversation.

2 days later Anakin proposes some idiotically batshit insane plan. Cody looks him in the eyes and tells him he's grounded

For the record Cody does not explain why he feels like he has the authority to ground Anakin but Obi-Wan is insisting that Anakin is in fact grounded if Cody said he is

An Anakin has no idea how to interpret the situation but figures he's grounded so like what can he do

The power

She’s beauty, she’s grace, she’ll absolutely kick you in the face