I had a weird and funny thing happening to me yesterday before I was about to start up Skyrim again. In the background the TV was running and there was a documentary on about Norway apparently and I hear Skyrim music (Far Horizon) being used there. As if this wasn't weird enough a while later I heard a tarck from the Oblivion soundtrack as well and Morrowind too. Then there were two more Skyrim OST tracks. This was truly an experience. What are the chances of this happening in the exact same time I wanted to start up the game lol
Wait, do Norwegians not just hear the Skyrim OST all day IRL???
the funny thing is that i don't think younger people - and i mean those under the age of 40 - really have a grasp on how many of today's issues can be tied back to a disastrous reagan policy:
war on drugs: reagan's aggressive escalation of the war on drugs was a catastrophic policy, primarily targeting minority communities and fueling mass incarceration. the crusade against drugs was more about controlling the Black, Latino and Native communities than addressing the actual problems of drug abuse, leading to a legacy of broken families and systemic racism within the criminal justice system.
deregulation and economic policies: reaganomics was an absolute disaster for the working class. reagan's policies of aggressive tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, and slashing social programs were nothing less than class warfare, deepening income inequality and entrenching corporate greed. these types of policies were a clear message that reagan's america was only for the wealthy elite and a loud "fuck you" to working americans.
environmental policies: despite his reputation being whitewashed thanks to the recovery of the ozone layer, reagan's environmental record was an unmitigated disaster. his administration gutted critical environmental protections and institutions like the EPA, turning a blind eye to pollution and corporate exploitation of natural resources. this blatant disregard for the planet was a clear sign of prioritizing short-term corporate profits over the future of the environment.
AIDS crisis: reagan's gross neglect of the aids crisis was nothing short of criminal and this doesn't even begin to touch on his wife's involvement. his administration's indifference to the plight of the lgbtq+ community during this devastating epidemic revealed a deep-seated bigotry and a complete failure of moral leadership.
mental health: reagan's dismantling of mental health institutions under the guise of 'reform' led directly to a surge in homelessness and a lack of support for those with mental health issues. his policies were cruel and inhumane and showed a personality-defining callous disregard for the most vulnerable in society.
labor and unions: reagan's attack on labor unions, exemplified by his handling of the patco strike, was a blatant assault on workers' rights. his actions emboldened corporations to suppress union activities, leading to a significant erosion of workers' power and rights in the workplace. he was colloquially known as "Ronnie the Union Buster Reagan"
foreign policy and military interventions: reagan's foreign policy, particularly in latin america, was imperialist and ruthless. his administration's support for dictatorships and right-wing death squads under the guise of fighting "communism" showed a complete disregard for human rights and self-determination of other nations.
public health: yes, reagan's agricultural policies actually facilitated the rise of high fructose corn syrup, once again prioritizing corporate profits over public health. this shift in the food industry has had lasting negative impacts on health, contributing to the obesity epidemic and other health issues.
privatization: reagan's push for privatization was a systematic dismantling of public services, transferring wealth and power to private corporations and further eroding the public's access to essential services.
education policies: his approach to education was more of an attack on public education than anything else, gutting funding and promoting policies that undermined equal access to quality education. this was, again, part of a broader agenda to maintain a status quo where the privileged remain in power.
this is just what i could come up with in a relatively short time and i did not even live under this man's presidency. the level at which ronald reagan has broken the united states truly can't be overstated.
people joke about how tumblr users lack reading comprehension skills but I don't think that's right. I don't think the problem is generally people misunderstanding what they read, even though that does happen. I think there's a much more significant problem where people just don't read posts. a substantial portion of tumblr users just look at keywords and guess what the post says even if it's a post they're engaging with. and I now have a much more alarming upper bound estimate for how often this can happen which is kinda stressing me out
Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.
I can't access the full paper, but their conclusion is right there in the abstract:
While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable. Current evidence is mostly low certainty and has heterogenous quality but does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender.
For those who have missed it, a tourist in Hawaii decided it would be fun to chuck a rock (a BIG rock) at a monk seal. He missed, but he was captured on video, and when told it was illegal to interfere with them, said "I'm rich, I can pay the fine."
Is the best part that he got doxxed? No.
Is the best part that he got tracked down by a local and beaten? No.
Arrested on state at federal charges, looking at up to 5 years and 50K? Nope.
The best part is the local city council's reaction.
And the best part of that is the look on the attorney's face.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Contacting Bail remained an option, but Ahsoka expected his response to be more evasion. The more she wanted to know, the more she came back to the core question: why was Vader’s identity kept secret from her? Many discoveries in the fight against the Empire could not be shared freely because of the agents and operations which could be compromised. Withholding information from Ahsoka, one of the Rebellion’s top intelligence coordinators, regarding how she possessed personal knowledge of the second most powerful person in the Empire, didn’t make much strategic sense.
That doubt went both directions. If the Rebellion needed to know their enemy, then Ahsoka should let the entire galaxy know the truth about Anakin. Tell every Fulcrum operative and every allied cell, spread it over the holonet, archive everything they could find about Anakin, especially his military history and combat skills, then use that to devise countermeasures. Leave traces connecting the disclosures to prominent imperials, let Vader hack his way through them in a rage.
But, the more she thought about it, the less Ahsoka felt like she knew Anakin at all.
Most animated characters have a pretty limited variation on outfits. I presume Ahsoka and Barriss have more than one set of clothes in your fics, have you given any thoughts to the differing styles they have?
Their preferred outfits aren't that different from what's seen in the show, those seem to be their general preferences for casual situations. Ahsoka typically has her arms out, shirts are designed to accommodate her head, she wears at least some light armor when going out on missions. Barriss dresses more conservatively, keeps her head covered by a hood or headscarf, and is more inclined to wearing skirts. She has reluctantly given up heels, making her look even shorter than she appeared in the show, which totally doesn't bother her at all.
The outfits are similar because what they wore wasn't suited for war anyway, and I'm working on a combat outfit for Barriss which offers better protection, but it'll take a while to appear in a story. I'm also writing a story where she's moving with her usual graceful body language while wearing a comically baggy flight suit.
What was the glacier that destroyed a village in norway in 1728-29? My quick googling hasn't yielded any results.
I am told it was the Abrekkebreen Glacier, as cited in the essay "Don't Build On A Glacier's Right-Of-Way" by Larry Gedney of the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (also cited in the bibliography in my video):
https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/dont-build-glaciers-right-way
"One tragic incident involved the occupants of a farming community that was threatened by Norway's Abrekkebreen glacier in 1728. The entire group moved to a location that the people thought was safer, only to have their new homes wiped out by an avalanche. There were only two survivors."
of course, like anybody else would, the first thing i did upon getting my time machine was go back in time and kill hitler when he was just a child. but when i came back a cursory google search revealed that there was some other charismatic guy called jan krupp who staged a coup and took control of germany leading to ww2. so naturally i went back in time and killed him before he could grow up and commit genocide. but i soon discovered that he'd been replaced by another guy. so i continued on this path of killing and tbh i'm not sure how many german babies i've killed at this point and it's a little hard to find old german newspaper clippings from the ww2 period anymore because they underwent a population collapse around the turn of the 20th century. best i can tell it's this weird german serial killer they called "jack-of-the-cradle" who kept killing newborns. but googling "world war 2" doesn't come up with any results so really i think all i need to do is stop this jack guy and then that'll be mission accomplished
i feel like we don't talk enough about the County-Palatinate of Durham
like
i feel like at some point in general english history education people should at least touch on the theocratic city-state where the bishops had rights otherwise unique to the monarch UNTIL 1836????
WE HAD OUR OWN MINI-VATICAN SITUATION IN ENGLAND LESS THAN TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO AND NOBODY OUTSIDE COUNTY DURHAM EVER SEEMS TO KNOW THAT.
like they weren't TAXED they were sitting in the middle of the wool trade (up until the bottom fell out of the english wool trade in the 16th century) and the coal trade and they were EXEMPT FROM NATIONAL TAX COLLECTIONS
they had their own courts! they had their own judges! they had their own militias to call up independent of the Crown! they had their own maritime court as well, so they had their own naval and port authority! they had their own customs and excise!
i need everyone to understand how fucking wild the county-palatinate of durham is as a concept this just EXISTED for hundreds of years and nobody seems to know about it
last unhinged county-palatinate post of the night i swear but
this, on reflection, makes it both way weirder and slightly more explicable that 90% of england straight-up does not know county durham exists, or goes "oh, is that in ireland?"
it also kind of makes sense of why county durham is like. the only english county with that "county [name]" structure? because it's only been county durham since it ceased being the county-palatinate of durham. and was never included in the shire system because it was busy being basically a vassal kingdom.
#county durham#I have to wonder how much of this was that some tax collector took one look at that hill and that insane river#(which is actually very shallow but that's not obvious)#and decided “fuck that#leave them to it“
OH NO YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD i know this is a joke but also i do actually know why the county-palatine started
and it's not about the geography but it is very much "fuck that, leave them to it"
TIME FOR AN EVEN MORE UNHINGED HISTORY RAMBLE
the County-Palatinate of Durham was actually a liberty (i.e. a region with special governance privileges) before it was English - it started as the terrritory of St Cuthbert in 684, under the Kingdom of Northumbria. now, at that point, it wasn't actually in Durham. it was in Lindisfarne, which is a lot less of a geographic block and a lot more difficult to administrate (on account of being an island half of the time), and it was developed as a liberty for a few reasons:
it was a crucial meeting-point for convocations between the Celtic and Roman churches, as well as for various British churches;
it was out of the way, and had few natural resources, so it was a good way to appease the church without actually costing much;
Saint (then Bishop) Cuthbert was scary.
the first time Northumbria fell apart, the Community of St Cuthbert saw an opportunity and majorly increased its territories. at this point it was not basically independent, it was independent - it was a theocratic polity in a region where a whole bunch of polities were fighting over scraps.
when the Danes finally reunified Northumbria, there was a big ethnic split between the Anglian north (in modern terms, roughly Northumberland and Cumbria) and Danish York. they were all officially in the Danelaw (i.e. under Danish/"Viking" rule), but there were big regional beefs going on. King Guthred of Northumbria sees an opportunity to bring the Community of St Cuthbert to his side and simultaneously create a peaceful buffer between the Angles and the Danes, so he grants the land between the Tyne and Wear to the Bishops of Lindisfarne as a patrimony. governance looks very different at this point in time, it's not a liberty yet, but County Durham basically comes into existence then (around the mid 9th century) and already know they are Important.
(now, as anyone raised in the region was definitely told at primary school, is when the Viking raids on Lindisfarne drive the Community of St Cuthbert inland, first to Chester-le-Street and then to Durham. the corpse of st cuthbert is dug up and found to be fresh as a daisy. a seasick monk accidentally drops 1/4 of the most beautiful and celebrated illuminated gospels overboard on the way over, they start building a cool cathedral, etc and so forth. The abbey at Lindisfarne remains part of the Patrimony of St Cuthbert for now, but the administrative centre moves to mainland Durham.)
FAST FORWARD ANOTHER 200 YEARS. northumbria has lost a lot of power, and is now an earldom rather than a kingdom, largely autonomous but answerable to the saxon kings at winchester. the earl of northumbria, Tostig Godwinson, who happens to be the cousin of the king of england, makes the worst decision in the history of all the bad decisions in northumbria. he calls up the king of norway and is like "hey do you want england? you can have england if we can have northumbria's independence back." said king, one Harald Hardrada, is like "hell yeah i love trying to claim thrones unsuccessfully, it didn't work when i did it to Denmark but it'll work now!" and marches northumbrian troops down to stanford bridge where he gets his shit absolutely rocked by Harold Godwinson, who then has to quick-march to the english channel to get his shit rocked at Hastings (largely because his entire army was exhausted from rushing 185 miles to try and catch William of Normandy when he landed)
so what i'm saying is: norman conquest happened!
*deep breath* speed round
Tostig died at Stamford Bridge, so the earldom's vacant! William taps a Northumbrian lord who has accepted his rule, hey, new earl. new earl immediately gets murdered by his brother, who rises up against the Normans. he gets ousted by the Normans and replaced by a new new pro-Norman earl. new new earl immediately rises up against the Normans. William puts down the rebellion, puts a Norman earl in Northumbria. within a year, the new new new earl gets murdered and Northumbria rises up again. William says "fuck this, time for a mass slaughter". hey! it's the Harrying of the North! we have killed allegedly 100,000 people! this is a Norman area now!
1075: William sells the earldom to the Bishop of Durham (Bishop Walcher), unifying the temporal powers of the earldom with the religious powers of the Patrimony of St Cuthbert. Most people consider Walcher to be the first true Prince-Bishop of Durham.
1080: Bishop Walcher gets murdered by a bunch of native Northumbrians. chaos ensues.
now, obviously Walcher didn't have legitimate offspring. he was a bishop and the Reformation hadn't happened yet. so the Earldom he had bought from William just kind of... the only natural inheritor is the next Bishop of Durham?
Technically, this does not happen. Technically, the Earldom is abolished, William gives up on the whole project of incorporating Northumbria as a whole, and he divides it into (roughly) the current counties.
at this point, County Durham does not exist yet, it's officially part of Northumberland. but you cannot tell this to the Bishops of Durham. for about 200 years there's this standoff where they just dispute the authority of the sheriffs of Northumberland at every turn. because, like, they bought that title. it's not just that they're good noble churchmen and you should respect their authority: the Bishops of Durham (in the person of Bishop Walcher) paid a lot of money for the Earldom of Northumbria, and they didn't do anything to piss off the King (in fact they sided with him despite him being responsible for another sacking of Church lands in the area), and he can't just take away the title without a reason. so they think they're in charge, northumberland thinks it's in charge, and the Kings of England are tired of dealing with the whole mess north of York so they're not touching that shit
so it goes until the late 12th century, when the bishops make another big purchase and buy Sadberge (the area around Stockton, Coniscliffe, and Gainford - Barnard Castle is on the edge of Sadberge, which I think is why it stayed disputed?), which was already a liberty because of OTHER complicated reasons involving Scotland taking it, giving it special rights, and then losing it back to England. so now the church in Durham has two titles which they will argue give them control in the region. but also officially they're still under Northumberland.
our last stop is at 1293, at which point there is an incident where the justices of Northumberland call the Bishop of Durham to court, and he just fully refuses to go. he holes up in Durham and like. what are you going to do? storm a cathedral and arrest the bishop? have another thomas beckett situation? hell no. the justices escalate the issue to Parliament (which exists now) and the Crown. the Bishop of Durham rocks up to Parliament and is like "hey everyone knows this is OUR jurisdiction tell these justices to fuck off."
(actually, he says that "from time immemorial it had been widely known that the sheriff of Northumberland was not sheriff of Durham nor entered within that liberty as sheriff", which is a bold claim when the sheriff of Northumberland had only existed for like 200 years which is not that immemorial ANYWAY)
and Parliament seems to have just shrugged and gone "you know what, sure". and that's how you end up with the full-blown County-Palatine enshrined in law by the start of the 14th century.
so
uh
basically i think it really is just like "oh my god if we give you the special rights and privileges will you all chill the fuck out?", and, to be fair: it does seem to have worked.
