Welcome to the Salt Mines

[fandomrantsandtwittertakes]

[aniseandspearmint]

Hey, anyone need spices right now? Good quality, knock your socks off spices?

Penzeys spice company is offering two (2) 25 dollar gift cards for 35 dollars! They’re suffering an annoying boycott bc they’ve chosen to publicly say Choose Love, not Republican Racism and could use some extra purchases right now.

They’re affordable and have some of the most potent rosemary I have EVER used, and cheerfully toss several sample packets in with every order I’ve ever gotten from them.

They have a ton of wonderful salt free spice mixtures, and (wonder of wonders) For people with allergies to certain spices, they’ve actually got LISTS of what’s in their spice mixes! They don’t just say ‘spices’ like most companies do!

@ ing this at several people who get more traffic than me;

@systlin

@deadcatwithaflamethrower

@prfury

[maculategiraffe]

today’s date is January 29th 2022 and this offer is current as of right now and according to the email I received ends tomorrow, January 30, 2022, at midnight (probably US Central Standard Time since Penzey’s is based in Wisconsin).

[dailyflicks]

And now, back again after 18 years, the new adventures of Galaxy Quest!

[beardedmrbean]

[dadpat--tactual-deactivated2022]

There’s a documentary on Amazon Prime I’ve yet to watch about how this movie helped revitalize the SciFi genre or something, and I can totally agree with that. It’s more slept on than Megamind or Clue or even Logan Lucky.

[beardedmrbean]

I think this sums up what it did pretty well

I had originally not wanted to see [Galaxy Quest] because I heard that it was making fun of Star Trek and then Jonathan Frakes rang me up and said “You must not miss this movie! See it on a Saturday night in a full theatre.” And I did and of course I found it was brilliant. Brilliant. No one laughed louder or longer in the cinema than I did, but the idea that the ship was saved and all of our heroes in that movie were saved simply by the fact that there were fans who did understand the scientific principles on which the ship worked was absolutely wonderful. And it was both funny and also touching in that it paid tribute to the dedication of these fans.

— Patrick Stewart

Reminded some of the people making the movies and shows who they were doing it for.

[zackisontumblr]

Income Tax Season PSA

Fuck Turbo Tax. Fuck it so fucking hard. Do not use that charlatan garbage. You will pay so much more. Look on Reddit for alternatives. Ask a friend. Do not give them your money. You can file your federal for free and some states are better than others with their filing systems. Not only has last year’s egregious price doubled, a simple W2 file + the form for student loan interest payments (2 documents, very easy level of taxes) qualifies you for the ultra mega deluxe edition $$$ SCAM SCAM SCAM SCAM. Fuck y’all. And to whatever executive thought it was cute to target college students like that, there’s a special place reserved for you, fucker.

[zackisontumblr]

In case you were wondering their CEO makes around $17,500,000 and they laid off 715 people in June 2020. 

https://wallmine.com/people/13274/sasan-k-goodarzi

https://fortune.com/2020/12/22/intuit-credit-karma-acquisition-ceo-sasan-goodarzi-ai-reskilling/

[bobcatmoran]

Intuit, the company that owns TurboTax, has lobbied for years against making filing your taxes free and simple, like most wealthy countries do [source].

If you want to be able to file your taxes electronically for free and you make under $73,000 (for filing your 2021 taxes, aka the ones due on April 17, 2022), you can use one of the IRS Free File options available here: https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free. If you use the “IRS Free File Lookup Tool,” you can even select a service that will file your state/local taxes for free as well. These Free File options will do the math for you — all you have to do is plug in the numbers from your W-2, etc.

Note that TurboTax is not one of the options, since, although they were the ones to lobby for this hidden free file option in the first place in lieu of doing across-the-board free file, they’ve dropped out of that program.

[heroofthreefaces]

I’ve filed with TurboTax from a link on the IRS page the last two years because it was free at my age. But @bobcatmoran is right, they’re not there this year. Fuck’em.

[doitninetimes]

Freetaxusa.com sounds like a scam website but are legit. It’s free federal taxes, no matter how complicated or how many forms you need. They do charge for state taxes.

My other hot USA tax tip is that most online tax prep software won’t charge you until they submit your info to the IRS, so you can go through and plug all your numbers in and have it do all the math for you and then use an alternate method for actually sending the forms and money to the IRS. On complicated years I’ve done this to double check that I did stuff right.

[thcartierrug]

[srsfunny]

An Idea To Prevent A Nuclear War

[pocketrunner]

“My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. The President says, “George, I’m sorry but tens of millions must die.” He has to look at someone and realize what death is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It’s reality brought home.” - Richard Fisher, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1981)

[north-bi-northwest]

Never forget that part of the reason this system was never implemented was that when he presented it to his colleagues, their response was IIRC “George, that’s terrible! If he has to take an innocent life, he may never press the button.”

[maeamian]

why would u leave this in the tags!

[astriiformes]

Obviously at one point in time all their faces were being plastered across the galaxy for assorted bounties, but I like to think that as time goes on post-RotJ, Leia goes and becomes the extremely recognizable President of the New Republic, Luke becomes the still fairly-recognizable Grand Master of the Jedi Order (even if it’s mostly because of the robes/lightsaber), and Han becomes the galactic equivalent of Tony Hawk, who is still extremely famous but absolutely no one realizes it because his Just Some Guy energy is off the charts.

[astriiformes]

He’ll be out in public and something will prompt him to make an offhand comment about having been in the Rebel Alliance and people will be like “Oh, you were in the Rebellion? That’s so cool. Did you ever know anyone important? Like President Organa-Solo?” and he’ll wearily snap “THAT’S MY WIFE!!”

At least one assassination attempt on Leia’s life has been thwarted because the person planning on slipping something in her drink at an important function started chatting with him as cover not realizing who they were talking to and he sensed something was fishy before they could slip away.

One day he goes to the Jedi Temple to pick up his kids from a training thing and a new-ish Jedi recruit who’s a little too overzealous about security calls Luke in to make sure he’s the right guy, and when Luke shakes his head and, holding back laughter, very seriously says “No, I’ve never seen that man in my life” Han just looks him dead in the eye and replies “We were alone on Hoth, kid. I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.”

[astriiformes]

#oh im obsessed#han has the space equivalent of twitter where hes like ‘was in the spaceport with the falcon today#the attendant said ‘oh hey that looks like the ship senator organas always flying around in’ and i was like ‘yes. because it is.’’ just like#tony hawk’s twitter via @harriisonford

[moomoozuzu-deactivated20220918]

I can't wait until one of these billionaires moves a whole ass Scottish castle to New York City and perches it on top of a skyscraper, breaking a thousand year old curse and releasing my gargoyle boyfriend from his stone prison.

[dovesndecay]

i’m okay with fictional men becoming unhinged over the loves of their lives actually 

[tincanmans]

Of course I am. You’re my friend.

You’re being weird. Quit it.

Captain America/Iron Man (2021) #2

[the-night-picture-collector]

Nina Leen, Cats, 1952

[buttrockerbitches]

i’m watching this documentary about halloween and there’s a part where they’re explaining that ghost stories got really popular around the civil war no one could really deal with how many people went off and died and

the narrator just said 

“the first ghost stories were really about coming home”

fuck 

[buckleupbones]

#but wow let me tell you about how the american civil war changed the whole culture of grief and death  #because before that people died at home mostly  #where their family saw them die and held their body and had proof they were really dead and it was a process  #but during the war people left and never came home their bodies never came back there was no proof  #people died in new horrific ways on the battlefield literally vaporized by cannonballs or lost in swamps and eaten by wild animals  #and there were NO BODIES to send home  #and people simply couldn’t grasp that their son or father or husband was really gone  #there are stories about people spending months searching for their loved ones  #convinced they couldn’t be dead if there were no body they were simply lost or hurt and they needed to be saved and brought home  #embalming also really started during the civil war as a way for bodies to be brought home as intact as possible  #wow i just wowowow the culture of death and grief and stuff during this time period is fascinating and sad  #history  (via souryellows)

[glumshoe]

#quietly reblogs own tags  #also the civil war was when dog tags and national cemetaries became a thing  #and during the war there was n real system in place to notify families of the deaths  #like they’d find out maybe from letters from soldiers who were there when their loved one died nd stuff  #but there was no real system  #and battlefield ambulances were basically invented because so many people died on the battlefield when they could have been saved if they co  #…could have been moved frm the battlefield to a hospital  #like there was this one really inlfuential dude whose son died that way and he became dedicated to getting an ambulance system in place  

[thehighestpie-blog]

I’m not doing this in the correct tag-style, but.

IIRC, the Civil War also played a huge part in forming the modern American conception of heaven as this nice, domestic place where you’re reunited with your loved ones.  People (particularly mothers) responded to the trauma of brother-killing-brother by imagining an afterlife in which families would once again be happy together.

[pilferingapples]

(also not doing this in the correct tag-style, because I wanna KNOW— )What documentary is this? Or is there more than one? Any books on the subject? THIS IS FASCINATING.

[elizastrange]

cool (ghost) story, bro.

[mswyrr-deactivated20181203]

reblogging because, as a us history phd student, i want to say YAY for how much of this is totally on point. i also want to rec the book where a lot of this is covered very, very well, which is Drew Gilpin Faust’s “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.”

a lot of books on the Civil War are deadly dull because they’re about battles and shit, but as a transformative moment in mindset and ideology, it becomes *fascinating*

the other book I’d even more highly rec is David W. Blight’s “Race and Reunion,” which is about how the “(white) brother against (white) brother” image of the war was invented and how throwing African Americans to the merciless viciousness of post-Reconstruction racist whites was part of constructing this “oh everybody was white men and everybody was noble let’s celebrate them all” approach to Civil War remembrance

very good stuff

[pilferingapples]

Thank you! This looks like exactly the sort of reading I’m after! *adds to wish list*

[mazarin221b]

Also, look for David Blights recordings of his Yale  lecture series on The Civil War. 21 hours of class lectures, and its FASCINATING. He barely touches on the battles other than to use them as timestamps as to what was going on. Most of it focuses on what the mindset of everyone was going into the war, and what happened on the way out. It’s an amazing series that will change your entire perception of the war - how it happened, and how it wasn’t going to be possible to avoid it, because of the inherent evil of slavery and how it was destroying damn near *everyone* except rich white people.

[sonneillonv-deactivated20220218]

Link

[lokihiddleston]

If Loki was a cat.

[thisobscuredesireforbeauty]

Dress designed by Eiko Ishioka for the film The Fall (Dir. Tarsem Singh, 2006).

[roguetelemetry]

She really would have made obscenely good Dune costumes.  

[greymatter13]

Hardison: “You know, Fermi’s paradox says that it’s improbable for other life forms to exist.”

Eliot: “Yeah? Well, Drake’s equation shows that orbiting around the hundred billion stars in our galaxy there’s up to ten thousand planets with technological civilization. [smiles at Hardison who gives him a surprised look] You never know when you might have to fight an alien.”

–Leverage (The First Contact Job, S5E3)

[bethanyactually]

“I’ll tell you, the Stargate, I wish you had it because there’s a lost shot, one we could not do. When we bring the team back together at the beginning of Season Two, we had little moments of what everybody said what they did during the break and Eliot’s was going to be ‘What did you do?’ and we were gonna flash to the Stargate with him in the gear: ‘All right, but this is the last time.’ And then flash back and him going ‘No…’ But the Stargate was broken! It was thrown away.” 

–John Rogers to Dean Devlin, DVD commentary for “The Last Dam Job” 

(x) (x)

[letsstealsomethiefjuice]

Listen. LISTEN. You can pry “Eliot was on a gate team” from my cold dead little hands for a whole list of reasons but mainly because nothing would be more hysterical then watching Hardison trying to understand Eliot working at Cheyenne Mountain. Know why?

The cover story for the Stargate Program was that it was doing deep space telemetry for NORAD. Please imagine Hardison trying to wrap his brain around Eliot spending what, four years?, doing deep space telemetry. And Eliot just shrugs because

“I can’t have a hobby, Hardison, is that what your saying? That’s just stereotyping, man, that’s wrong.” He keeps it up until they’re actually in the gate room and then he slaps Hardison on the back and grins.

“I’m just messing with you man, I was fighting aliens. Come meet Teal’c, bet he’ll let Parker climb him like a rock wall, it’s fun.”

[ousia-poetica]

From defeat it is false to say that you always learn, they are simple conformist phrases. Illustrator James_Films

[olympain]

Happy 20th anniversary to Lord of the Rings, the best ’trilly’ of all time