[thegreatsylvando]

[rrat-king]

me too gorgug, me too

[spiderziege]

Mordred Manor! (with close-ups under the cut)

edit: i just put up some new drawings on my ko-fi, so if you wanna print this out as a poster or something, you can find it there at full resolution in the 'Misc Art' folder! :) (personal use only!)

[finchy-boy]

shout out to whoever is naming the animals at the denver animal shelter

[despitethebite]

matt rempe & his best friend, cash quick, are the children's adventure book we needed.

[blignick]

[airandangels]

that scene in The Two Towers where Gollum has a debate with himself and they change camera angles to show which personality is talking

[vesselforsale]

1992 CERAMIC COMPUTER MUG | LISTING 

[kyrianne]

[Image ID: A series of screenshots from a Twitter thread by Jason Coupet / professajay.

Text begins: Man voting in Georgia is so different than in Illinois. When I lived in chicago, during early voting, I went to the local elementary school, waited in line about ten minutes, and they gave me a sheet of paper. I checked people off then I put it in the machine and left.

Not Georgia. We drove downtown because *every* other polling place had a line >90 minutes. We paid ten bucks to park. We went in the building, then emptied out pockets to go through a metal detector. We then saw a sign about where to park to get our parking validated. Inside.

We then waited in line ~80 minutes. We got to the end and we were given a form to fill out (?). We were told *not* to sign it until told. Then we were moved into a waiting room where we were given a ticket number, like when you are at the dmv.

We were told to get our IDs out and wait. We waited here for 15-20 minutes. When your number is called they took your form, did some stuff on the computer, then told you to sign the form. Then you get a little green card. You insert it into the machine.

Then you go through three or four prompts, including a very serious™️ warning about perjury, a totally necessary warning given how huge a problem stolen identity is for the purposes of voting on behalf of someone else.

You then finally vote, and after an “are you sure” prompt you get a sheet. You then have to walk the sheet over to feed it into a machine. About half of these were working.

The bottleneck was clearly the weird application and waiting room thing. There are two dozen people at a time sitting to have their stuffed checked. Think of it as regular voting except when you got there they had to run a credit check for *each person* like you need financing.

It was easier finishing my PhD paperwork. Thankful for the kind people (nearly all black women) the shepherded the processes. But man if you are poor or disabled or whatever, good luck yo. That should have been easier. We finished tho. Text ends.

Image ID: Two Black people are standing beside a city street and smiling at the camera, a man and a woman. The man has close-cropped hair and a beard. He is wearing a black hoodie that says Southside and has a sticker on his chest with a peach on it. The woman has large tortoiseshell browline glasses and long twist locs. She has a light brown leather crossbody bag, and is wearing a salmon-colored windbreaker. She also has a peach sticker on her chest, which she is pointing to. Her hand has a wedding ring. End ID]

[alex51324]

Not-so-fun fact:  the reason this kind of shit is happening is that, in 2013, the Supreme Court killed the federal oversight provision of the 1965 voting rights act.  

Quick history lesson:  After the US Civil War, the 15th Amendment established that states could not bar Black people, including freed slaves, from voting.  This happened during so called “Radical Reconstruction,” the brief period where former Confederate officials were barred from political participation. 

 As soon as that period ended, white officials in the former Confederate states began making laws to prevent Blacks from exercising their right to vote--the poll taxes and “literacy tests” that you’ve probably heard of; there were also some other things like requiring a first-time voter to be vouched for by an established voter.  All of this was legal because the Constitution gives each state the right to decide how it’s going to conduct elections.   They could have any restrictions they wanted, as long as those restrictions could theoretically be applied equally to all races.  

After decades of Black struggle for civil rights, the Voting Rights act reiterated what the 15th Amendment already said, but added an enforcement mechanism, in the form of federal oversight of voting procedures in locations that, according to a formula laid out in the Act, had a history of discriminatory practices in the conduct of elections.  Those states could still set their own procedures, but they had to run them by the Department of Justice, and allow federal observers to monitor actual their actual practice.

In 2013, some of those states went to the Supreme Court and said, basically, “We’ve been doing this for 50 years now, we know how to run a fair election, some of our best friends are Black, honestly aren’t you the real racists for treating us differently due to our long history of racism?”

The Court agreed with this argument, despite critics predicting that removal of federal oversight would immediately begin a slow creep of practices that would make voting more difficult, in ways that would add up to a racially discriminatory effect.  

Lo and behold, just four federal election cycles--two presidential election cycles--since oversight was ended, here they are, back on their bullshit. 

[iheartvelma]

This is why there needs to be a Constitutional amendment to establish federal and state level independent election agencies, not controlled by political parties, who handle:

fair districting (no gerrymandering)

election logistics and management

standardized ID checks - and whenever you do your taxes your address gets updated with them, opt-in

No purging of voter rolls, in fact you’re automatically registered at the minimum age and only deregistered when declared incompetent or dead

also handles limits on campaign advertising (only allowed during a declared period up to election day)

simplified, one-issue-only paper ballots, not giant forms for every possible race

[labelleizzy]

I'm postcarding for GOTV in Georgia. I'm super motivated to finish that job now 📬 🗳️!!!

[everydaylouie]

ghost choir 👻 🎵

[teacupfulofstarshine]

I DID NOT THINK ANYTHING COULD TOP GHOST DUET

I WAS WRONG

I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY TO BE WRONG IN ALL MY LIFE

[johnnywhistler]

Happy Halloween the 1st!

[herpsandbirds]

All of my friends that work at wildlife rehab centers have had to untangle animals from this stuff, or had animals brought in that died in it. This is especially nasty for small owl species.

[nintendo-3ds-official]

[meetmeinthesandbox]

In 1992, Sinead O'Connor ripped up a picture of the Pope on live television, in protest of the rampant child sexual abuse the Catholic Church was actively covering up.

Ten days later, she was scheduled to perform at Madison Square Gardens, as part of a celebration of Bob Dylan. As soon as she got to the microphone, the audience began loudly booing her, seemingly in unison.

The organizers tasked Kris Kristofferson with removing O'Connor from the stage. He instead went out and put his arm around her and checked in on her and stayed until she'd steadied herself and was ready to perform. When she came off stage, he wrapped her in a bear hug.

"Sinead had just recently on Saturday Night Live torn up a picture of the Pope, in a gesture that I thought was very misunderstood. And she came out and got booed. They told me to go get her off the stage and I said 'I'm not about to do that'

I went out and I said 'Don't let the bastards get you down'. She said 'I'm not down' and she sang. It was very courageous. It just seemed wrong to me, booing that little girl out there. But she's always had courage."

[thowawayuntilfurthernotice]

Said it a year ago and I’ll say it again.

Pirate all your favorite shows, movies and games while you still have the chance.

Oh, and never stop supporting physical media.

[midnightnautilus]

whistles

trips

Oh no!! I just tripped Over this rock in The Garden! They really need to put up some kind of Wall… and I dropped my Link all over the ground…

I really need To Watch where I’m going, geez…

[ultrafacts]

Source

Follow Ultrafacts for more facts

[morwenpost]

That sounds about right for Mythbusters.

[ultrafacts]

[mickeydraws]

- Blendo was put together before Mythbusters was a thing - Blendo was so strong and dangerous (for throwing debris into the audience) that The Boys were asked to withdraw it in exchange for a co champion title - they re-entered Blendo years later when the protective wall was much higher. It was once again asked to be withdrawn for a co champion title for the same reason. - copy cat Blendos started appearing and would tear each other apart - Blendo is in the robot hall of fame - Blendo is too strong and powerful

[rocketverliden]

Blendo cannot be stopped.

[torpidgilliver]

bonus fact: grant imahara also had a competitive robot named deadblow that would just fucking. hammer the shit out of other robots

[peppermintquartz]

fun fact shared by Adam Savage:

NSync was touring the ILM workshop (during the making of the Star Wars prequels). The model makers were used to big name visitors and had been told not to interact with the guests.

NSync (without Timberlake at the time) were admiring the models when suddenly they shouted “DEADBLOW!!” when they saw the robot in the workshop, and then they saw Grant, and proceeded to lose their collective minds. They were all fans of Battlebots and took pics with him.

NSync, one of the biggest boybands of the 90s, fanboyed over Grant Imahara.

[commodorez]

Grant was a judge on Battlebots in 2018. Two years later, Battlebots renamed the Best Design Award in honor of him, and it is now called the Grant Imahara Award for Best Design. His legacy lives on.

[luntfontanne]

thinking about the fact that in order to serve on the jury of a death penalty case you have to be willing to impose the death penalty (i.e. not be categorically opposed to it on principle) otherwise you'll be dismissed, so juries in death penalty cases tend to be disproportionately white and male and have been shown to be more likely to vote for conviction. just in general death penalty as a practice is horrific and barbaric but this specific part of it also just feels so insane to me

[luntfontanne]

The Sinister and Racist Practice Infecting Death Penalty Juries | ACLU

“Death qualification” is yet another way prosecutors stack the odds against Black defendants and in favor of capital punishment.

We're Challenging the Racist Practice That Excludes Black Jurors from Death Penalty Cases | ACLU

Death qualification goes hand in hand with mass incarceration and the racial bias embedded in our criminal legal system.

[animentality]

[queselevaaser]

Guys, it's time to drop Google.

Google isn't the only search engine in the whole internet, there are others! And we need to diversify our search engine usage or we're gonna end up where we were a decade and change ago with the Internet Explorer issue. We can't let a single brand monopolize everything! This is why Google Search can afford to suck so hard: because people use it regardless! And there are alternatives.

A little bit about search engines, there are 3 types: crawlers, which work by scraping the web and developing their own indexes; metas, which get their results from the crawler-type search engines and therefore depend entirely upon them; and mixed, those which have their own (small) index but also pull results from the crawlers.

Right now, there are a couple of independant crawlers apart from Google, Bing (from Mycrosoft) and Yandex (the Russian one): this are Mojeek and Wiby.

Supporting independant crawlers is the easiest way to fight the shittyfication of the internet.

Mojeek.com is an independant british search engine with its own growing index commited to fighting internet censorship. It's small, and therefore it's usability isn't as good as that of the Big Three, but it doesn't censor, it's fairly respectful of people's privacy, and it doesn't drown you in adds. For those old enough to remember, it's a lot like early 2000s Google: you can find what you need, but if you write "dig shelter" instead of "dog shelter", that's what it's gonna search for. That said, please try to use it and support it as much as you can before we end up entirely dependant on Google, Bing and big corps adds. [click here to go to Mojeek]

Wiby.me is a new indie project that is literally dedicated to bringing back the old-school web. It's goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. So, for those of you who can't find any answers to technical questions beyond highschool level because Google buries them under a gazillion commercial sites and other meaningless shit, keep an eye on this project! It has a lot of potential. And, if you know of any personal websites that have great stuff but have been murdered by Google, you can go over to Wiby and submit it to their index. [click here to go to Wiby]

Aside from those, there are also meta search engines you can use to ween yourself off Google and search for random, day to day stuff.

Qwant.com is my go-to here—it has its own index and pulls from Bing, has relatively little censorship, and is fairly private. This is the one I use on my phone for everyday stuff. [click here to go to Qwant].

Historically, DuckDuckGo has always been a go-to for those who want a search engine that respects your privacy and doesn't censor. Personally, I've never been a fan, and there have been a LOT of scandals in recent years. It supposedly has its own index and pulls from Bing, much like Qwant, but I don't know. I just don't like it. Still, I've added it here for completeness' sake.

If you have Firefox Mobile browser, you can set any of these search engines as your default search engine and you can also add the others as secondary search engines and switch quicky from the navigation bar. If you don't have firefox mobile though, what are you doing with your life??? Go get it!! It is So. Much. Better. You can have add blockers and watch YouTube add free, for free! You can have reader mode and dark mode add-ons! You can have the world oh my goshhhh, drop Chrome!!

4get.ca is my last recommendation: it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn't have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it's the best for reaserch, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can. It's also very privacy conscious, so that's an other plus, and it has that late 90s / early 2000s vibe that I totally dig. [click here to go to 4get]

If you wanna learn more about the topic, you can over to the Search Engine Map [click here] which shows you a bunch of Search Engines and how they relate to each other. Or you can also go over to this one dude's personal website whose done A Lot of reaserch into the topic (way more than me) and seems to be pretty legit, if a little extra. [click here to go to digdeeper.neocities.org] Hope this infodump is useful to someone =D

PS: here's to hoping all the links work!

EDIT: eliminated the "read more". Figured there are enough mega long posts in tumblr, one more won't make no difference lol (tho the version w the read more has been reblogged already, in case you'd rather)

[renthony]

I know people love "Waffle House Index" jokes, but please remember that Waffle House workers have talked about the company's blatant disregard for their safety. Waffle House SHOULD be closed when a storm is coming, just like everything else non-essential. Waffle House refusing to close until the last minute is a genuine labor rights issue.

This article from last year talks a little about the ways Waffle House workers have tried to organize to protect themselves from the company. Waffle House being open in a dangerous storm means that the workers can't evacuate or prioritize their own safety. And that's really, really fucked.

[prymaraa]