But the current wave of strikes is different: the teachers are striking
in “red states” where years of misrule and corporate giveaways have
bankrupted the states, and without a Democrat in office to blame, the
Republicans in those states are starting to realize that the problems
with their kids’ schools are the result of Republican policies.
This phenomenon is especially pronounced among Republican teachers, who’ve watched Education Secretary Betsy Devossmear teachers and denigrate the profession
and the very idea of “public education” and who’ve realized that the
president they voted for has made their destruction one of his top
policy priorities.
Now, teachers aren’t just switching party allegiances; they’re standing
for office to oust the Republican politicians who’ve been trash-talking
them while they walked the picket-line. They call it the #RedForEd
movement.
Wait…wait a minute, wait a minute, I just realized something!!!
What if she did know?
Think about it, Helen goes in to talk to Edna but Edna has already prepared a series of supersuits that are perfectly designed for every situation she and the kids are going to be in. And for some reason, we’ve all just accepted that, yeah, she’s Edna Mode, she would know these things, she’s just like that.
But what if we’ve all been missing something right in front of us?
We know Edna has affiliations with the government agency and has obviously been making suits for decades. Do you think the government is just going to get a random fashion designer to make these suits? Absolutely not.
They’re going to get a Super.
What if Edna is a Super with the power of future-vision?
That’s how she knows exactly what suit to make, that’s how she knows that the kids are going to be in danger, that’s how she’s so aware of everything going on around her and catches everyone off guard.
She never looks back; she looks forward.
(Sorry for hijacking your post, OP.)
which is why the whole cape thing hit so hard. she didnt see it coming
I love the idea of a Super whose power is to amazingly see into the future and she just uses it for fashion design.
Sorry for hijacking the post, but I saw @marauders4evr’s post and couldn’t help myself.
Edna was a designer, plain and simple. She always was, and always would be. She knew this. To be fair, she knew a lot of things, or…more precisely, she saw a lot of things. At first, Edna didn’t know what to make of the things she saw in her dreams. As a child, she was too young to properly grasp it anyway. She just woke up, drew what she’d seen, and went on with her day. A cute dress for her doll, which she loved and asked her mother to buy the fabric for, a small coat for the neighbor’s dog for after his surgery so he wouldn’t be cold. The ideas just kept coming to her, so Edna never really questioned it…until the first time she saw a Super, or…more specifically, saw a Super, in a dream. A young woman just a little younger then her, spinning around in circles with a wide grin on her lips as the cape behind her fluttered with her movements. A woman who suddenly lit her hands on fire and shot fireballs at a target.
Edna was confused about that dream, but she shrugged, drew it anyway, and continued on with her day, design school wasn’t easy you know, even for the best of the best. Until one day she ran into the woman in her dreams and Edna’s mind went screeching to a halt because said woman, barely out of her teens, was running around in the shoddiest costume ever, shooting fireballs at a villain…and repeatedly catching the arms of her costume on fire. “No no no, this will Not do.” Edna muttered as she watched the poor fashion disaster of a woman. Once the fight was over, Edna stormed over to the Super, hands on her hips. “This simply Will Not Do, Dahling. You may be a fantastic hero, but your sense of fashion is atrocious. Here, here is my card, call me in a month, I’ll have something much better for you.”
And she did. She used a fire proofing formula, the best heavy duty yet light fabrics she could find, and all her years of design school to make the poor dear a proper uniform. One befitting of her station as a hero. The woman, who’s code name turned out to be Spitfire, adored the uniform, twirling in glee and lighting up just like in her dream, and suddenly Edna knew. She was a Super too. But…where exactly did a Super who only saw future fashion fit in? The answer came months later when Spitfire gave her card to a friend, a fellow Super by the name of Humongo, a man who could go from skinny to bulked up and ten feet tall in a few seconds. For him, she made a suit that stretched with him, just as indestructible as Spitfires, and of course…a cape. He was just as pleased, and gave her cards to all of his Super acquaintances, and suddenly Edna had a place in the Super’s world. Her world.
After design school came science and engineering degrees, and Edna Marie ‘E’ Mode was on a role. Her suits became more elaborate, and better suited for the heros who needed them. Her signature though? The cape every hero and heroine wore. Her world, and her empire, would come crashing down around her soon though. Something she hadn’t seen coming at all. She made a commission outfit for a young teen, and it was the beginning of the end. Stratogale was a girl after her own heart. Eager to learn, so full of energy, and so interested in Edna’s work. So when Edna worked on her costume, she made it the best one she’d made to date, and added a cute little hidden hood to the cape in case the teen got caught in the rain on her way home. Wouldn’t do to have a bright young soul getting sick on a school night.
And then the news broke. Stratogale had died, sucked into a jet turbine by her own cape, and something in Edna broke. She could see the future. Granted, only her future clients and their superpowers, but she could see the future! Why…why could she not have seen this coming? For the first time in her life, Edna felt her powers were…useless. Shortly afterwards Supers were banned, and Edna was useless. She fell back on her design degree, working with models in Milan and Paris, but it was so boring. Days became a blur. Get up, draw the latest fashion to be, make it, snap at a few spoiled, stupid little stick figures with poofy lips who think only about themselves, go to bed, rinse and repeat. So she retired, and the dreams -for the most part- stopped coming.
Stopped coming, until one very special morning. A morning where she bolted out of bed, that old thrill of excitement thrumming in her veins, this time tempered with experience and a hint of wariness, as she drew. Drew out an entire family of suits! That i in the middle of the chests clued her in on who her design was for, an old friend and his family, Mr. Incredible. The Incredibles. She quite liked that name. Yes…she would certainly be coining that. She made sure, even if her dreams never showed one, to keep her old signature far, far away from her designs. No Capes!
Another design came a few days later, one that threw her for a loop. A costume with a cape. She drew that one with dread. Who would she make a cape for, after all the heart ache they had caused? The husband came first, grinning sheepishly like the dolt he was. Friendly…sweet…kind dolt. Her friend. One of the few she had left. The man she’d seen in her dreams came soon after, and the more she watched him stalk around, rant, and threaten her into ‘making’ a suit, the more she realized just why she had dreamed a cape for him. Syndrome was his name, and he was a villain through and through. The one to kill so many of her old friends. The wife came next, and she quickly showed her the entire lot of costumes left, chuckling as the poor woman denied Jack Jack being a Super. Poor dear, she would learn.
When the news reached her that Syndrome had been taken care of, by his cape no less, the age old ache that had taken up residence in her heart eased up ever so slightly. Sighing as she looked out over her sprawling manor from the balcony, drink in hand, Edna raised her glass to the setting sun. “I may not have seen what capes would do to you, my Dahlings…but your sacrifice gave me the tool to finally make a difference. The Super Killer is no more…thanks to a Cape.”
I can’t stop thinking about crocodiles for some reason so here’s some cool pictures I found of probably the second largest one in captivity, his name is Utan:
isn’t he beautiful
listen to the SOUND when he bites
and that’s not even a real power bite, that’s mostly just heavy bone falling on heavy bone from his jaws and the air rushing out from between them
2000 pounds of Good Boy
you get me
I honestly expected like 5 notes, what HAPPENED here
More tags on this ridiculous post:
Wait, thats the 2nd biggest crocodile? Then what does the biggest one look like?
That would be Cassius, a very old Saltwater crocodile who is estimated to be around 114 years old and lives at Marineland Melanesia in Green Island, Australia. His official measurement is 5.48 meters, which makes him the largest in captivity currently. Because Utan is only slightly smaller and much younger, (only in his 50s), he will likely break Cassius’ record eventually. But for now, Cassius holds the title:
He is NOT, however, either the largest crocodile ever captured in Australia OR the largest ever in captivity.
A slightly larger crocodile has been reported (though not yet comfirmed) to have been captured at 5.58 meters.
And while the famous Brutus of the Adelaide River was estimated to be just slightly larger than Cassius at 5.5m, he was driven out of his territory by a younger and even larger crocodile, who as a result has been given the name, The Dominator. He is estimated to be just over 6m.
This is Brutus, with an appropriate caption:
It is believed that he lost that arm in a fight with a Bull Shark.
The Bull Shark lost.
THIS is the crocodile who kicked him out. The Dominator:
And that’s STILL not the biggest.
The largest living crocodile ever reliably measured was Lolong, who for the 1.5 years between his capture and his death was the largest crocodile ever held in captivity, at a whopping 6.17 meters (20 feet 3 inches) and 1075 kg (2,370 lbs). He had been feeding on both humans and very large livestock in the Bunawan creek in Agusan del Sur in the Philippines. It took 100 people all night to drag him to shore during his capture.
And here’s why:
Also, to prevent credit from getting buried on a separate reblog, I have been informed that the above image of the crocodile with the cartoon eyes and halo was made by @rashkah! (And it is wonderful and I would like to thank him for its existence, because it perfectly captures my feelings about terrifying giant primordial reptiles.)
As far as Brutus is concerned I was led to believe that he lost that arm when relatively young.
Since then Brutus developed a habit of hunting and eating Bull Sharks.
Here’s him with a prey.
And if you thought that you’ll be safe if you just stay out of Australia then think again!
Meet Gustave the Nile Croc.
This crocodile became almost legendary for both it’s size and the habit of hunting both livestock AND humans.
So how big is Gustave?
No one is sure. Since he was NEVER captured.
His estimated size is of at least 5,5m but some give him over 6m.
The terrifying parts are:
1) He is still growing having only about 60 years.
2) Adult crocodiles often perform a gesture of submission to him – something usually done by young crocodiles toward adults – Gustave is just THAT BIG.
3) His sheer size makes it difficult for him to catch agile prey Nile crocs tend to feed on – hence why he developed a habit of hunting either larger prey like Hippopotamus or creatures which are not good at spotting danger in the first place like livestock and humans.
And this is NOT ALL.
Gustave actually has a noticeable scars on his body – he was shot at east 3 times and stabbed with a spear or something similar at one occasion.
He lived to tell the tale – my question is:
What happened to that one dude who attacked Gustave with a spear?
*Crocodile Dundee voice* Mate, that’s not Gustave:
THIS is Gustave:
And he is the PERFECT CROCODILE. He is the perfect example of what I mean when I talk about (as I do) how the morphology of extremely large crocodiles adapts to the changing physics of their bite.
This is a typical adult Nile Crocodile:
And THIS is a god among his kind:
This is it, folks. The Final Form. THIS is what peak performance looks like.
Crocodiles and physics have an interesting relationship. Crocodiles have, by a CONSIDERABLE MARGIN, the strongest bite of any animal on Earth. EVER. Scaled up estimates (based on Nile and Saltwater crocodiles) give the extinct Deinosuchus an estimated bite force MORE THAN DOUBLE the recently updated Tyrannosaurus bite estimates. Living crocodiles have bite forces measured in the range of 5000 pounds per square inch, for an individual around 15-16 feet. It is estimated that modern crocodiles in the range of 18-20 feet would have bit forces around 7-8000 psi or more.
That’s a problem.
Because a crocodile’s skull is only designed to handle so much pressure. Go beyond that limit and the force of impact when those jaws snap shut could literally shatter their own skulls.
But evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting crocodiles, so PHYSICS ISN’T GOING TO STOP THEM. What ends up happening in the skulls of these extremely large crocodiles is they will increase dramatically in mass to compensate for the increased forces. A crocodile’s skull is almost exclusively solid bone, with only minimal space for nasal passages, a surprisingly advanced brain, and some slightly porous looking framework that helps the bone distribute the force over a larger area. The effect is by far the most pronounced in Nile crocodiles, which most regularly feed on larger prey and need to make use of all that power.
Compare, 26 inch skull:
vs 29 inch skull:
Both of those are Nile crocodile skulls (or rather, replicas thereof).
And just for fun, here are the skulls of completely different (and very extinct species), Deinosuchus:
and Purussaurus:
The bigger the crocodile (within a given species), the more massive the skull needs to be to compensate for that UNBELIEVABLE bit pressure. This is one way to see from a distance whether you are looking at a normal sized crocodile:
and a truly extraordinary individual:
One of the things about Gustave that’s so impressive is how healthy his teeth look. A lot of large crocodiles, in their old age, have very worn down and often missing teeth. They do replace them many times over a lifetime, but when they get very old this slows down. Gustave, at least in every picture taken of him, had teeth that were in very good condition.
Even crocodiles much smaller than Gustave’s reported size (probably similar in size to Dominator or Lolong) tend to have smaller or more worn teeth:
than the pinnacle of his kind:
Lolong! It means Gramps or Grandpa, because he’s a relic of an ancient world where crocs more massive than he was walked the earth. His body is on display somewhere right now though I forgot where.
Every time I see this post there’s more crocodiles. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
@fattyatomicmutant Something tells me you’d be interested in extremely large reptiles who have been known to eat humans.
When I worked in fast food for minimum wage, they would yell at us and lecture us about “stealing” fries and burgers (while we had to throw out TONS of food every day) as though the giant billion-dollar corporations of McDonald’s and Sonic couldn’t afford to give their employees something to eat (while not even paying us a living wage).
Now I work at an upscale restaurant (it’s fancy, like celebrities eat there fairly often) and not only do I make WAY better money but they give us 2 free meals a day (eaten on the clock) and they’re GOOD. Today I got baked cod, spring rolls, rice pilaf, stir fry, and mashed potatoes and eggplant. Oh, and free espresso and juice. From this restaurant owned by a local man who is in no way a billionaire.
Obviously money is not the issue, valuing your employees as people is.
This needs all of the reblogs. All of them.
I worked in a little grandmom&pop Thai restaurant for a while. Even when the restaurant wasn’t bringing in great money, my boss (the grandpop), who was the chef, would make me a hot dinner every single night. If we were busy he would put it in a takeout box for me to take home. The first night I worked there, I wasn’t expecting it and he handed me a plate of chicken curry. I was embarrassed and said, “oh, I’m a vegetarian, you don’t have to make me dinner!” And then he went and made me vegetable curry.
lepidolite is a variety of mica and is typically pink or lavender colored. when tumbled it is extremely glittery – pictures don’t do it justice!
2) ulexite
ulexite is also called “tv rock” and has a super unique optical effect – when placed over something it displays that image onto the top of the rock. it’s not merely opaque – the fibers within the mineral literally project an image onto the surface of the stone.
3) pietersite
pietersite has chatoyancy – much like tiger’s eye – that creates movement and shine through the surface of the stone. however, unlike tiger’s eye, pietersite’s chatoyancy is in swirls instead of straight lines. it’s incredible to behold – i recommend looking up pietersite on youtube and checking out videos of it under good lighting.
4) optical calcite/iceland spar
this type of calcite is actually completely clear, but refracts the light going through it in ways that create rainbows and other neat optical effects. isaac newton himself actually studied this rock to help better understand the nature of light itself & the phenomenon of optical illusions.
5) alexandrite
alexandrite is a variety of chrysoberyl that exhibits a color change! it changes from a greenish hue to a brilliant red depending on the type of light and the source. the color changes in alexandrite are phenomenal and rarely seen in other stones.
6) spectrolite
don’t let the image fool you – this stone is actually pure black. the brilliant colors it exhibits are just a flash (it’s actually called labradorescence, which is what the stone labradorite is named for). spectrolite is an uncommon form of labradorite mined only from finland. some varieties of high quality labradorite from madagascar can show a spectrolite play, but nothing is as dark with as brilliant a flash as spectrolite.
7) specular hematite
specular hematite is a variety of hematite that has a beautiful, glimmering surface especially when polished. much like lepidolite, the shimmer of specular hematite is caused by mica.
8) boulder opal
boulder opal is ironstone with cracks of brilliant natural opal running through it. these formations are entirely natural. opal has the most brilliant and vibrantly colored flash of any other stone.
9) enhydro quartz
enhydro quartz is a variety of quartz that was formed with naturally occuring water & air bubbles within them! in some specimens the water bubbles will actually move underneath the surface of the crystal.
10) fire agate
fire agate is actually a form of chalcedony, and is well known for having a beautiful rainbow effect caused by schiller, rather than flash or labradorescence.
Medieval castle stairs were often built to ascend in narrow, clockwise spirals so right-handed castle defenders could use their swords more easily. This design put those on the way up at a disadvantage (unless they were left-handed). The steps were also uneven to give defenders the advantage of anticipating each step’s size while attackers tripped over them. SourceSource 2Source 3
Not really the best illustration since it totally negates the effect by having a wide open space for those ascending. Castle tower staircases tended to look like this:
Extremely tight quarters, with a central supporting pillar that is very, very thoroughly in the way of your right arm.
Wider, less steep designs tend to come later once castles moved away from being fortresses to simply noble family homes with the advent of gunpowder.
Oh! Pre-gunpowder military tactics are my jam! I don’t know why, but this is one of my favorite little details about defensive fortifications, because the majority handedness of attackers isn’t usually something you think about when studying historical wars. But strategically-placed walls were used basically worldwide as a strategy to secure gates and passages against advancing attackers, because most of the world’s population is right-handed (and has been since the Stone Age).
Pre-Columbian towns near the Mississippi and on the East coast did this too. They usually surrounded their towns with palisades, and they would build the entrance to the palisade wall in a zigzag – always with the wall to the right as you entered, to hinder attackers and give an advantage to the defender. Here’s some gates with some examples of what I’m talking about:
Notice that, with the exception of the last four (which are instead designed to congregate the attackers in a space so they can be picked off by archers, either in bastions or on the walls themselves) and the screened gate (which, in addition to being baffled, also forces the attackers to defend their flank) all of these gates are designed with central architectural idea that it’s really hard to kill someone with a wall in your way.
In every culture in the world, someone thought to themselves, “Hey it’s hard to swing a weapon with a wall on your right-hand side,” and then specifically built fortifications so that the attackers would always have the wall on their right. And I think that’s really neat.
Ooh, ooh, also: Bodiam Castle in Sussex used to have a right-angled bridge so any attacking forces would be exposed to archery fire from the north-west tower on their right side (ie: sword in the right hand, shield on the useless left side):
These tactics worked so well for so long because until quite recently lefties got short shrift and had it trained (if they were lucky) or beaten out of them.
Use of sword and shield is a classic demonstration of how right-handedness predominated. There’s historical mention of left-handed swordsmen (gladiators and Vikings), and what a problem they were for their opponents, but that only applies to single combat.
A left-handed hoplite or housecarl simply couldn’t fight as part of a phalanx or shield wall, since the shields were a mutual defence (the right side of the shield covered its owner’s left side, its left side covered the right side of his neighbour to the left, and so on down the line) and wearing one on the wrong arm threw the whole tactic out of whack.
Jousting, whether with or without an Italian-style tilt barrier, was run shield-side to shield-side with the lance at a slant (except for the Scharfrennen, a highly specialised style that’s AFAIK unique.) Consequently left-handed knights were physically unable to joust.
The construction of plate armour, whether specialised tournament kit or less elaborate battle gear, is noticeably “right-handed“ – so even if a wealthy knight had his built “left-handed” it would be a waste of time and money; he would still be a square peg in a world of round holes and none of the other kids would play with him.
Even after shields and full armour were no longer an essential part of military equipment, right-hand use was still enforced until quite recently, and to important people as well as ordinary ones – it happened to George VI, father of the present Queen of England. Most swords with complex hilts, such as swept-hilt rapiers and some styles of basket-hilt broadsword, are assymetrical and constructed for right handers. Here’s my schiavona…
It can be held left-handed, but using it with the proper thumb-ring grip, and getting maximum protection from the basket, is right-handed only. (More here.) Some historical examples of left-hand hilts do exist, but they’re rare, and fencing masters had the same “learn to use your right hand” bias as tourney organisers, teachers and almost everyone else. Right-handers were dextrous, but left-handers were sinister, etc., etc.
However, several
predominantly left-handed
families did turn their handedness into advantage, among them the Kerrs / Carrs, a notorious Reiver family along the England-Scotland Borders, by building their fortress
staircases with a spiral the other way to the OP image.
This would seem to be a bad idea, since the attackers (coming upstairs) no longer have their right arms cramped against the centre pillar – however it worked in the Kerrs’ favour because they were used to this mirror-image of reality while nobody else was, and the defender retreating up the spiral had that pillar guarding his right side, while the attacker had to reach out around it…
For the most part Reiver swords weren’t elaborate swept-hilt rapiers but workmanlike basket-hilts. Some from Continental Europe have the handedness of my schiavona with thumb-rings and assymmetrical baskets, but the native “British Baskethilt” is a variant of the Highland claymore* and like it seems completely symmetrical, without even a thumb-ring, which gives equal protection to whichever hand is using it.
*I’m aware there are those who insist “claymore” refers only to two-handers, however the Gaelic term claidheamh-mòr
– “big sword” –
just refers to size, not to a specific type of sword in the way “schiavona” or “karabela” or even “katana” does.
While the two-hander was the biggest sword in common use it was the claidheamh-mòr; after it dropped out of fashion and the basket-hilt became the biggest sword in common use, that became the claidheamh-mòr.
When Highlanders in the 1745 Rebellion referred to their basket-hilts as claymores, they obviously gave no thought to the confusion they would create for later compilers of catalogues…
Also, muskets had their whole “Flint and steel and gunpowder” thing on the right side so if you tried firing it lefty you’d get a face full of fire. More recently, rifles eject their spent shell casings to the right, so if you’re a lefty you get some hot metal in your eye.
good post this is a gOOD POST
I took martial arts classes that incorporated some iaido when I was a teenager, in the early 2000s, and even then we were all required to wield the sword right-handed, because, my teacher said, “there were no left-handed samurai.”
