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greenjudy:

bemusedlybespectacled:

So, some context for this:

The Supreme Court has heard several cases about gerrymandering. The consensus is, basically, that political gerrymandering is okay (redistricting based on whether the house is Democratic or Republican), but racial gerrymandering is not okay – regardless of whether it’s meant to help or hinder minority voters. “Wait, help minority voters?” I hear you asking. Yup! Historically, some districts have been made all-black specifically because a racially-mixed district would never elect black politicians, and would essentially nullify the votes of any black voters. When the district was divided up for those reasons, a Republican majority has struck it down for being racist. But Hunt v. Cromartie (2000) says, basically, that if all the Democrats just happen to be black, then it’s okay, because it’s on political lines, not racial ones.

Okay, but that’s gerrymandering. What about other tactics to suppress your opponent’s vote that’s not gerrymandering?

The case quoted above is a case from 2016. After Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act that required some states to ask permission before changing their voting laws, North Carolina’s Republican government (including then-Governor Pat McCrory) basically set about undoing as many things that helped black voters as possible. Are there IDs that mostly black people use? They’re no longer valid. Do black people tend to both register and vote early? Eliminate early registration and early voting. Do black people tend to vote more on Sundays because of their church’s help (such as carpooling from the church parking lot)? Get rid of that, too!

And when asked about it, their justification is essentially the same as the one in Cromartie. “It’s not racist, it’s anti-Democrat. We’re just trying to keep Democrats from voting, and they just happen to be black!”

The Fourth Circuit (it never got to the Supreme Court, thank God) says, basically:

  • Your reasoning is bad and you should feel bad;
  • There’s no way you can justify this with “trying to stop the Democrats” when everything you got rid of was aimed at hurting the black vote;
  • Even if you were trying to stop the Democrats, having race as a factor at all lets us infer that you intended to be discriminatory;
  • Actually, wait, we don’t even have to infer it, because you fucking told us with your actual mouths that you intended to discriminate against black people, you literal dumbfucks.

So they struck down the law (though Republicans keep trying to change it or alter it – this article I’m linking to was published yesterday). 

I’m writing all this out partially because I’m a nerd who likes context, but also partially for this reason:

  • There is legal precedent that can, under certain circumstances, allow racially-biased voting laws so long as no one says they’re racially-biased. This is a major hurdle to pretty much any legal challenge to discriminatory voting laws.
  • Despite this, you can still take down those laws – it’s never impossible to overturn a bad law, even if there’s not a lot of evidence, though of course it’s easier if you have evidence that good on your side (THEY SAID IT. OUT LOUD. IN COURT).
  • A really good way to get rid of bad laws if you aren’t up to suing the government (though please, please, sue the government)? Fucking vote. The original omnibus law wouldn’t have been passed if Republicans weren’t in office.

Vote.

Vote them out.

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satan-graffitied-my-soul:

anarchetypal:

i saw this post earlier about therapists and it reminded me of my old therapist paul, who in my opinion is one of the greatest men alive and who did not put up with my bullshit for even one second

anyway i go in to see paul one week in the summer of 2016, and i’m doing my usual bullshit which consists of me talking shit about myself, and paul is staring at me, and then he cuts me off and says that he’s got a new tool for helping people recognize when they’re using negative language, and gets up and goes over to his desk

and i’m like alright hit me with that sweet sweet self-help article my man, because i’m a linguistic learner and whenever paul’s like here i have a tool for you to use it’s pretty much always an article or a book or something

paul opens a drawer, takes something out, and turns back around. i stare.

i say, paul.

is that a nerf gun.

image

yeah, says paul.

i say, are you gonna shoot me with a nerf gun in this professional setting.

he happily informs me that that’s really up to me, isn’t it. and sits back down. and gestures, like, go ahead, what were you saying?

and i squint suspiciously and start back up about how i’m having too much anxiety to leave the house to run errands, like it was a miracle to even get here, like i’ve forgone getting groceries for the past week and that’s so stupid, what a stupid issue, i’m an idiot, how could i–

a foam dart hits me in the leg.

i go, hey! because my therapist just shot me in the leg. paul blinks at me placidly and raises an eyebrow. i squint again.

i say, slowly, it’s– not a stupid issue, i’m not stupid, but it’s frustrating me and i don’t want it to be a problem i’m having.

no dart this time. okay. sweet.

so the rest of the hour passes with me intermittently getting nailed with tiny foam darts and then swearing and then fixing my language and, wouldn’t you know it, i start liking myself a little more by the end of the session, which is mildly infuriating because paul can tell and he’s very smug about it 

anyway i leave his office and the lady having the next appointment walks in and i hear what’s all over the floor? and paul very seriously says cognitive behavioral therapy tools.

The “I won’t hesitate, bitch” vine but @ friends who don’t love themselves

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mozalieri:

kaaatebishop:

eleemosynecdoche:

musicofthe-ainur:

Am I the only person who thought this was really fucking funny

A lot of the really funny moments in Lord of the Rings come from Tolkien playing with language like this, where we have relatively formal, archaic, “high” language responded to with informal, modern, “low” language. 

another hilarious example:

my absolute favorite example of tolkien switching registers in this way is

Please talk about the mummy returns

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eric-coldfire:

clarkent:

pristinepastel said: Hey, i know you like the first mummy, but what about the mummy returns?

I HAVE RETURNED…after like a day. 

but what the people want, the people get!

RIGHT SO THE MUMMY RETURNS!

aka the only sequel that is 1000% just as good as the first one. like holy shit. 

ten years later and we meet our heroes again. rick and evie are happily married, going on adventures, and evie’s dream of becoming a respected scholar has come true and they’ve made a tiny human! 

the only unrealistic part being that they only had one kid, i mean they are still all over each other ten years later and you’re telling me they only had ONE kid.

okay. sure jan. 

but boy o’ boy is that one kid awesome! 

alex o’connell. this kid is literally:

  • 50% evie super-klutz-genius. 
  • 50% rick screams-at-things-that-are-illogical-to-scream-at. 
  • 50% uncle jonathan’s sheer dumb luck and wit. 
  • 10% i’m really bad at math. 

you get the point. HE’S GREAT. also the actor passed on harry potter because, JUST LIKE ME, the mummy 1999 was his favorite movie and he just HAD to be in the sequel. alex is just such a smart-ass little shit. that much like his mother, accidentally brings about the apocalypse by opening something he shouldn’t have:

image

ARDETH BAY TIME LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. he has a much bigger role in this one. GOD BLESS. (because he was supposed to die in the first one, but test audiences loved him as much as we do, so they kept his fine ass around) he still looks prettier than everyone and is still so done with white people once again. 

*after almost being killed on he bus* “this was my first bus ride.”
*after realizing they’re gonna make him fly again* “why can’t you people ever keep your feet on the ground?”

he’s just such an awesome A+ friend goals, because while he probably needs to go be with other medjai to prepare for battle against anubis’ army (yikes), he stays with the fam to rescue alex. it wasn’t even much of a thought for him really, rick and evie just batted their eyelashes and he was like: *sighs* “these white people are always messing my shit up, but they are my white people.”

jonathan: still beautifully the same as ever. witty, clever, and would do anything for his family. 

“be quiet alex! if there’s going to be any hysterics, they’ll come from me!”

“if you see anyone come running out screaming, it’s just me.”

when he boasts about being a good shot and ardeth is internally like “i’m gonna die.” THEN HE SAVES ARDETH. hell yeah.

rick: he’s still screaming at things. BUT IN DAD MODE. he’s the ultimate dad.

“you, lighten up. you, big trouble. you, get in the car.”
*sweetly* “honey, what are you doing, these guys don’t use doors.”
“knowing my brother-in-law, he probably deserves whatever you’re about to do to him, but this is my house and i have certain rules about snakes and dismemberment.”

evie: still a super-klutz nerd, but with C O N F I D E N C E. little baby librarian is now a honey badger of ASK ME IF I GIVE A FUCK! and also a re-incarnated princess

“no harm ever came from opening a chest.”

rick: “i swear that kid gets more and more like you every day.”
evelyn: “you mean more attractive, sweet and devilishly charming?”

we meet izzy, another one of rick’s ex boyfriends, who is a much more reliable mode of transportation than previously mentioned murder buses. 

imhotep: still emo. still wants to make out with his gf.

anck su namun/meela: hella good villain. she bomb af and 100% wants to take over the world. amazing. she actually has like a really cool role this time too!!! like so much screen time. 

the rock…i mean the scorpion king, he’s another emo villain with goofy cgi rendering and like 4 million terrible made-for-TV spin off movies that you are lying if you haven’t watched at least one of them and felt that utter disappointment. but who cares the rock is pretty. and this was his first acting role and the reason we have him where he is today. 

thank you mummy returns for giving the world actor rock johnson #blessed

THE ROMANCE AGAIN:

normal action movie sequel romance: same guy. different girl. repeat of first movie’s romance. hehehehhehehehhEHEHEHEHHEHH. 

not here bitch. 

rick and evie’s love has only grown stronger. they still bicker like old ladies at bingo night. the still look at each other like they hung the moon. they’re still disgusting jonathan because they CANNOT KEEP THEIR HANDS TO THEMSELVES. one kid my ass. they still support each other and protect each other like crazy. they love each other so much and it’s so healthy and pure and there is some good in this world mr. frodo.

the bottom line here is. what’s the point of watching the mummy 1999 if you aren’t going to watch the mummy returns immediately after?

JUST DO IT.

There are only three Mummy movies worth watching, The Mummy 1999, The Mummy Returns, and The Scorpion King.

If the door’s locked, try the wall

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mstgkitten:

we-are-rogue:

lonelynotlonely:

lonelynotlonely:

we-are-rogue:

[by
Geoff Manaugh]

a drywall knife

In one of the most interesting moments in his memoir, [jewelry thief Bill Mason] sees that architecture can be made to do what he wants it to do; it’s like watching a character in Star Wars learn to use the Force.

In a lengthy scene at a hotel in Cleveland that Mason would ultimately hit more than once in his career, he explains that his intended prize was locked inside a room whose door was too closely guarded for him to slip through. Then he realizes the obvious: he has been thinking the way the hotel wanted him to think—the way the architects had hoped he would behave—looking for doors and hallways when he could  simply carve a new route where he wanted it. The ensuing realization delights him. “Elated at the idea that I could cut my own door right where I needed one,” he writes, Mason simply breaks into the hotel suite adjacent to the main office. There, he flings open the closet, pushes aside the hangers, and cuts his way from one room into the other using a drywall knife. In no time at all, he has cut his “own door” through to the manager’s office, where he takes whatever he wants—departing right back through the very “door” he himself made. It is architectural surgery, pure and simple.

Later, Mason actually mocks the idea that a person would remain reliant on doors, making fun of anyone who thinks burglars, in particular, would respect the limitations of architecture. “Surely if someone were to rob the place,” he writes in all italics, barbed with sarcasm, “they’d come in as respectable people would, through the door provided for the purpose. Maybe that explains why people will have four heavy-duty locks on a solid oak door that’s right next to a glass window.” People seem to think they should lock-pick or kick their way through solid doors rather than just take a ten-dollar drywall knife and carve whole new hallways into the world. Those people are mere slaves to  architecture, spatial captives in a world someone else has designed for them.

Something about this is almost unsettlingly brilliant, as if it is nonburglars who have been misusing the built environment this whole time; as if it is nonburglars who have been unwilling to question the world’s most basic spatial assumptions, too scared to think past the tyranny of architecture’s long-held behavioral expectations.

To use architect Rem Koolhaas’s phrase, we have been voluntary prisoners of architecture all along, willingly coerced and browbeaten by its code of spatial conduct, accepting walls as walls and going only where the corridors lead us. Because doors are often the sturdiest and most fortified parts of the wall in front of you, they are a distraction and a trap. By comparison, the wall itself is often more like tissue paper, just drywall and some two-by-fours, without a lock or a chain in sight. Like clouds, apartment walls are mostly air; seen through a burglar’s eyes, they aren’t even there. Cut a hole through one and you’re in the next room in seconds.

~ Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar’s Guide to the City

@we-are-rogue

The futility of tagging the person you reblogged something from, into your reblog, because you think they’ll like it…

On the plus side, I do like it. 😀 😀 😀

Seriously, limiting yourself to the architecture at hand is only if you’re trying to have things go unnoticed for as long as possible.

Otherwise, speaking from a more nefarious moment in my life, locks are only there to deter opportunists, and real thieves will let themselves in however they want.