“The first thing everyone should understand is that Trump’s executive order was not a reversal, or a cave, or a capitulation. This crisis was caused by the administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy, under which everyone crossing the border illegally, even those who present themselves to officials and say they are seeking asylum, is subject to criminal prosecution. That policy is still in place. As Trump said yesterday, “We are keeping a very powerful border and it continues to be a zero-tolerance. We have zero tolerance for people that enter our country illegally.” The goal of the executive order is to shift from detaining children and parents separately to detaining the families together. But this would still be a harsher system than it had been previously, in which a family seeking asylum would usually be released while their case moved through the system. That can take months or even years; those families would now be imprisoned for extended periods for the crime of crossing the border — a misdemeanor. And we should note that the administration doesn’t seem to have decided if or when it’s going to reunite the more than 2,300 children that have already been removed (likely more by now) with their parents.”
—
Don’t be fooled: Trump’s immigration policy is still incredibly cruel
And don’t be fooled by Melania’s “surprise” trip to a Potemkin Camp. They are cynically using a woman and a mother to try to soften the grotesque cruelty and child abuse that is being perpetrated by Trump and the Republicans.
Category: Uncategorized
Listen to the sound of wikipedia
Listen to the sound of wikipedia
This is a way to listen to changes to wikipedia. You are literally listening to knowledge being added to the world.
Pluck sounds are an addition, strings are subtractions, and the pitch says how how big the edit is. My heart shudders at this I love it so much.
this is actually really beautiful
I listened to wikipedia for like 3 hours while it rained one day, it was lovely.
I kinda want to add this to my list of things to listen to when I want to be productive. Even though the music itself might not be particularly focus-inducing, knowing you’re listening to the sound of knowledge being created and shared is really inspiring. :3
Hi new friends! I see you all being super nice in the comments and trying to be as supportive as possible, which is so lovely and great, thank you! I would however like to draw your attention to something real quick that I keep seeing in the comments, just while I’ve got you here.
The phrase “wheelchair bound” is something a lot of disabled people are actually not too keen on and are pushing back against, as it’s not a very nice way to phrase the words “this disabled person uses a wheelchair”.
If you are an able bodied person, I could see how perhaps that one time you
spent on crutches or in a wheelchair because you hurt yourself, was not a
pleasant or positive experience. But for many in the disabled community, a wheelchair is an important mobility aid which helps a lot of people to move from place to place with greater ease and freedom.It is a tool that helps us. Owning a wheelchair for many people is felt to be liberating, as it gives them autonomy and the ability to move around, sometimes even unassisted.
It is a positive thing, and should be framed as such.We are not “bound” to our walking canes, they are a mobility aid that provides us with greater stability on our feet and can help alleviate pain. They are super useful tools. Implying that we are “bound” to such devices, implies that they are limiting, when they are in fact the opposite.
To put it in terms more of you might understand:
I wear glasses. I cannot see without them, not wearing my glasses is a hindrance. I lose my balance and suffer from headaches. I cannot work easily without my glasses, and nor can I do the things I enjoy like reading or going to see movies.
Putting my glasses on enables me to see, it lets me not fall over and avoid severe headaches. I am able to work better, and enjoy the things I like when I wear them.
So am I bound to them? Am I caged in by my frames? Does my quality of life seem worse to you because I am wearing them? Of course not, that would be silly! Right?
It’s a small thing. But small things make up the whole, and the language we use about mobility devices and other kinds of aids is important in how we frame disability, and how disabled people are regarded and ultimately treated by society as a whole.
Which I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, is actually not that great at the moment.
This isn’t intended as a scold, or a slap on the wrist. It is intended to let you know that while your support and sentiment are entirely welcome! It would be beneficial to us if you modified your language to reflect a more positive outlook that didn’t imply disabled people are prisoners of the things that actually help to give them a better quality of life. Thank you 🙂
Please note: this is not the same as when able bodied people say things like “can’t is a four letter word” or treat the word “disabled” like it’s a slur. It’s not. Disabled is a perfectly valid and correct term which many of us would rather you use than trying to call us things like “differently abled” or hilariously “can-abled” which I lose my mind laughing every time I see it, because it just sounds like “cannibal” in my head. Please just say the word disabled. It’s not the bad, horrible thing you’ve been taught to think it means. And neither are mobility aids.
the resident blue heron decided to take a bath in the pool
When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:
“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”
Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either.
this. everytime. this.
Sometimes trauma doesn’t demonstrably affect you and you walk away wondering if you ought to have sustained more damage than you did. Sometimes recovery is as dull as flipping a switch inside your brain and just… deciding to do things differently. Don’t waste time looking for proof that you’re suffering before moving to help yourself.
if you’ve seen the breaking news that trump just signed an executive order today to end the family separation policy here’s some quick info to keep things in perspective
- this doesn’t end the “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting anyone who crosses the border “illegally”
- the only thing this changes is that going forward, entire families will be detained together while awaiting prosecution
- this offers no solution for freeing the thousands of children currently held in ICE child prisons or any path to reuniting them with their families
- children will still be detained and treated as criminals
- this will likely lead to thousands of families being held in ICE facilities and tent cities that will face the exact same issues of overcrowding, abuse, and inhumane conditions that exist in the child prisons
this is not a victory or a solution. This is the administration trying to cover their asses and avoid any more public outrage. They want people to see this as the end of the news story and go back to their lives. They want people to forget the thousands of children they are still keeping in cages in ICE facilities across the nation. This issue is not over and we cannot stop being outraged until we are given proof that the thousands of kidnapped children are returned to their families, and that the policy of arresting and prosecuting people who cross the border is ended.
#that is a human as a rat as a cup
That was a long 12 years for Wormtail.
Can you imagine how differently their lives would’ve gone if Ron, in trying to transfigure Scabbers, had actually transfigured him back into a human?
Just take a moment to imagine McGonagall’s reaction if Peter Pettigrew had abruptly appeared in her classroom from Ronald Weasley’s rat.
Take a moment.Or if Ron had fucked it up a little worse and couldn’t get ‘Scabbers’ back and McGonagall had take him to disenchant him and next thing we know there’s a naked Peter Pettigrew sitting on McGonagall’s desk and the kids in that class learn six new swear words, a hex they will never dare to use, and a fear of Minerva McGonagall’s wrath that will be with them until the day they die.
Ten and twenty years later first years are being pulled aside and warned never mess around in Transfiguration seriously the last time a kid mucked something up in that class Professor McGonagall used two semi-legal hexes, took down a Death Eater and sabotaged the rise of the Dark Lord before Potter had time to get his wand out.
What most of Hogwarts learned first on that otherwise-unexceptionable day was that Professor McGonagall could sure scream loud.
Professor Flitwick’s Charms 5th-year Charms class was close enough to catch the full effect, and the door had been left open besides; en masse the students recoiled with shock and a miscast Hiccuping Charm broke one of the windows (out which the entire flock of ravens they were practicing on escaped to the Forbidden Forest where they only had to worry about centaurs, rather than annoying young humans with wands).
Up in the Divination Tower, Sibyl Trelawny preened over her foresight to have warned her students of an unprecedented catastrophe likely to occur before the hour was out.
Out in Greenhouse Five, a NEWT-level Herbology class looked up in puzzlement, and most of them were subsequently bitten by the Venomous Tentaculae they were attempting to propagate. It does not do to ignore a Venomous Tentacula when you’re prodding at its intimate parts with a cotton ball held in tweezers, so the class was cancelled while two-thirds of the students headed for the infirmary and the rest of them headed into the castle because if they stayed with the Venomous Tentaculae they’d be outnumbered, and nobody wants that.
And down in the dungeons, Professor Snape turned away from comparing Lee Jordan’s Pepper-Up Potion to spoiled cream at what sounded like a woman screaming from the entrance hall. At the second scream, he ordered the class to remain where they were and behave, sweeping out of the room just in time to miss Theodore Nott suddenly jumping up and yelping as if someone had put a crocodile heart down the back of his robes.
Fred Weasley stepped back from the unfortunate Slytherin, shared a smirk with his twin, and stuck his head out the door to make sure Snape had rounded the corner before leading the way out of the classroom.
–
Back in the Transfiguration classroom, about four minutes ago, it had started innocently enough. Ron Weasley, possessed of a broken wand and a lurking suspicion that most of the family’s magical talent had been soaked up by his siblings before he was around to get any, had attempted to turn his pet rat, Scabbers, into a teacup.
Scabbers had not become a teacup.
Scabbers, blast his useless furry little backside, had become a furry, vaguely teacup-shaped monstrosity out of which absolutely no one would have been tempted to drink, and to make matters worse, he still had a tail.
It was moving.
Harry was hiding a smile behind his hand. Dean and Seamus weren’t even trying to hide, elbowing each other and laughing. Parvati and Lavender were looking with disgust and horror at either Scabbers or him, and Hermione was opening her mouth, no doubt ready to tell him exactly what he’d done wrong.
Which only made it worse that he really thought he’d done everything right this time.
He snatched Scabbers off the desk (eww, the base of the cup had the same texture as rat feet) and turned away from Hermione. He made the wand movement again, picturing in his mind the way McGonagall had demonstrated it. “Erreverto.”
“Erreverto. Erreverto. Erreverto.”
It didn’t work. It didn’t work when Professor McGonagall stopped by and gave Hermione two points for Gryffindor for getting the spell perfect in both directions. It didn’t work when Harry made his successful transfiguration (Ron looked; the pattern was a little bit furry but it was definitely a teacup). Ron’s lips formed the shape of a word that would’ve made his mother box his ears had she heard it and attempted the reverse transfiguration, which didn’t work either.
Finally, faced not only with the indignity of failure but the threat of Scabbers being stuck like that, he’d gone up to Professor McGonagall’s desk.
“Um, Professor?”
Professor McGonagall looked up from the paper she was grading and looked from him to the squirming teacup. “Problems, Mr. Weasley?”
“Um, yeah, Professor. I can’t get it to work in either direction and it’s not fair to Scabbers to make him stay as a teacup just because I can’t do a spell right and can you maybe … ?”
“I suppose so, Mr. Weasley,” she said, and waved her wand in the exact manner Ron had been doing all along.
Nothing happened.
Professor McGonagall looked very, very puzzled.
“Now that’s odd,” she said softly.
As one, the other students rose from their seats and quietly moved closer.
She did not attempt the transfiguration in the other direction. Instead, she made a complex motion with her wand and murmured an incantation that possibly only Hermione recognized. The teacup squeaked. Professor McGonagall looked more puzzled than ever, and made a sweeping wand movement that ended with a sharp jab and uttered, “Arcanum finite!”
And there was a loud bang, and there was a pale, pudgy, and very naked man sprawled out on her desk, and she jumped back hard enough to knock her chair into the wall and screamed.
–
Having taught a particularly rigorous course of magical study to children and teens for quite some time now, Minerva McGonagall had become accustomed to certain things. Students who didn’t listen. Students who did rude things to the mice when they thought she wasn’t looking. Students who accidentally turned a frog or a raven into a flock of starlings or a school of strange slimy South American fish (and tried to solve the immediate problem by filling the classroom with two feet of water, neglecting to consider the gap under the door). Students who tried to transfigure their noses into a more appealing shape and wound up in the hospital wing regrowing their nostrils.
Naked men on her desk was something Minerva McGonagall had never had an occasion to get used to. What made it worse was that she recognized this one, and he’d been dead for more than a decade.
Inferius! was her first thought, followed shortly thereafter by Animagus, which collided with Peter Pettigrew! and produced the utterly horrifying thought of what if all four of them were Animagi? which didn’t bear thinking about at all, so her brain jumped to if he wasn’t killed by a Dark Wizard then why didn’t he say so? and realized there was only one possible explanation why, and about that time her eyes registered that parts of Peter Pettigrew she really doesn’t want to know about were flopping about in front of her face, and she was screaming as she jumped back.
The flow of invective which followed somehow failed to surprise her one bit. Some part of her registered, peripherally, the shocked faces of her students, but most of her attention was directed at Peter Pettigrew, who at very least faked his own death and at worst framed Sirius Black and if Black didn’t betray the Potters then who … did. And the words poured out of her, filthy English and filthier Latin while Pettigrew squirmed on the table, his face rage and guilt and fear and something shifty and contemptible, and he turned to look at the stunned students and lunged for Ron Weasley’s wand.
–
Severus Snape had reached the Entrance Hall by the time the scream died away and the invective replaced it. He almost smirked, amid the alarm; of all the things he’d never expected to hear from Minerva McGonagall … he took the stairs two at a time, still not noticing the students who followed.
He did notice the Herbology class, which had stopped on the way to the Infirmary and were staring transfixed in the direction of the Transfiguration classroom, but pushed his way through them, getting Venomous Tentacula pollen all over his robes in the process.
From the other end of the corridor came Professor Flitwick’s Charms class, with Professor Flitwick bringing up the rear and pushing his way between students.
–
Ron looked stunned as the man who’d been his pet rat snatched the wand from his hand; Professor McGonagal’s expression shifted to one beyond fury and when the entire class recoiled, it wasn’t from the naked man with the wand.
“Laedo!“ Minerva McGonagall roared.
–
Ron Weasley’s wand cast a Splintering Curse many years beyond its rightful owner’s abilities, and it did Peter Pettigrew the poor favor of eliminating the door, which might have slowed him down a bit.
–
Severus Snape flailed and skidded to a halt as the Transfiguration classroom’s door shattered. He stepped back just in time, and stared, jaw dropped in shock, as a naked man he recognized from his school days flew past him and bellyflopped against the wall, bounced, and collapsed to the ground just in time to avoid the “Exitium!” which followed and vaporized an impresive chunk of the castle’s stone wall.
Fred and George and Lee Jordan, determined to stay at the front of the crowd, had been pushed almost against Professor Snape by their fellow Potions classmates and some pollen-coated Hufflepuffs. Fred squirmed aside hastily as Professor McGonagall appeared in the doorway, the look on her face so utterly livid that Professors Snape and Flitwick both reflexively stepped back.
Snape tripped over George’s foot and fell against a knot of Hufflepuffs, releasing another cloud of pollen and knocking them backwards. Pettigrew saw his opportunity and took it, scrambling to his feet, stumbling sideways, and launching himself towards the gap.
And Minerva McGonagall made a thrust with her wand and said, “Perdo.”
In the very loud silence which followed, Filius Flitwick squeaked, “The Splinching Charm, Minerva?”
She might’ve looked embarrassed for a moment, and then she smiled as she looked down at Pettigrew, who lay on his belly, his arms and legs lying akimbo some distance away.
“Unorthodox,” she said, “but useful in a pinch. If someone would inform the Headmaster, and send an owl to the Ministry—-not Fudge, not Crouch, someone competent—-Shacklebolt, perhaps. Students, return to your classrooms, please. Mr. Weasley, I’m very sorry, but I do believe it’s impossible to return you your rat. However, the zero I was going to have to give you for the day’s work is entirely undeserved, as you were not transfiguring a normal rat. You may make the lesson up any time this week.”
–
The story was, of course, much embellished by the time it reached all the students. Versions of it had the intruder peppering Snape with a Glitter Hex or transfiguring Ron’s rat into a pair of boxers, and people had to be disabused of the notion that it had been Voldemort who’d been hiding as a rat all this time.
Snape gave both Weasley twins detention for tripping him, and took forty-seven points total from Gryffindor over the next few weeks for various pretend-subtle pollen references.
Kingsley Shacklebolt showed up with a team of Aurors in time to meet Professor Dumbledore; the Wizengamot launched an investigation into the events surrounding the Potters’ murder; the results turned into a scandal which saw the release of Sirius Black and the forced resignation of both Director Bartemious Crouch and Minister Cornelius Fudge. Director of Magical Law Enforcement Amelia Bones was confirmed as Minister of Magic shortly thereafte, and the Daily Prophet reported that Sirius Black (“Godfather to the Boy-Who-Lived!” “Framed, Abandoned, Condemned to Living Hell!” “Heart-Wrenching: His Release In Pictures, Page 17!”) was considering applying for a teaching position at Hogwarts, “but just for a year, I’ve been cursed enough for one lifetime.” (“The Prophet reminds its readers that the so-called “curse” on a certain Hogwarts teaching position is almost certainly a mere string of coincidences.”)
And, Minerva thought with relish some months later, it was almost three weeks before anyone attempted messing around in her class.
A personal record.
I’ve probably reblogged this before but I’m going to do it again right now
I think this is literally the best au this entire fandom has produced
I’ve only seen this legendary bit of writing in memes and screenshots. I feel so blessed to see it in person.
Beautiful, simply beautiful!
Reblogging my own post because a) it’s my damn horn and I’ll blow it if I want to, and b) I just (finally!) cross-posted this to Archive Of Our Own, so if anybody wants to go read it over there, here it is.
YESSSSSSS!
Love it!!