Romans 1:16
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
🧶 Crafter!
Sewing, crocheting, drawing, writing, you name it, if it's a creative pursuit, I've probably done it or thought about doing it!
✨️ Full of Whimsy!
I need to be more bright and colorful and insane and unhinged and whimsical and wonderful. I’m doing it all already but I wanna turn it up. If anyone has any ideas for how I can be MORE, feel free to lmk!
👻 Silly!
My Artfight:
https://artfight.net/~Notanotherusername
An art gifting game
My silly podcast where I and my friends and siblings say a bunch of silly nonsense. Only available on Spotify because this is for fun and trying to put it on all the platforms would be too overwhelming.
#fishie's posting
My original posts, or posts I have contributed to
#sibling shenanigans
For when I talk about the silly things I and my family say and do
as a kid i constantly watched roadrunner and coyote cartoons and i’d play roadrunner and coyote with my dad which involved me running loops in my house bc the rooms made a circle while he tied a couch cushion over a beam to fall on me like an ACME anvil
I know that there is more information available on this one specific bug than they put in the Wikipedia stub. I know that somebody out there is a real freak about this specific variety of ermine moth. Let me read about it.
While I do appreciate the good intentions of everyone saying that you can just email the author of a paper and ask for a free copy, that is not what I'm talking about here.
Like, it is definitely nice that sometimes people will let you read an article for free. However, that should be possible without having to 1) track down their contact 2) email them 3) wait days for a response 4) hope the response is yes. For every single article you want to read.
I would like for knowledge to be freely accessible without having to cold contact some dude in China and hoping he sends me a pdf.
actually I think you should be normal about ordinary citizens of authoritarian countries and yes that applies even to that country you're thinking of right now
"but they support [dictator] and [violent action]!" okay is it possible that a combination of propaganda, election rigging, and authoritarian crackdowns on dissent could lead a population to look like it supports something most people would find distasteful under more reasonable circumstances
Want to know a secret ? I have 12 stores in the city.
I thought you had 3 open.
Yes those are the officials, the ones I invest in the experience , the building , the staff, the security. Here, come to the window. See that lady over there ? Those hanged bags barely covered from the rain by a plastic tarp? I supply those too. I buy the cheaper material and distribution. I'm my own adversary. Of course there are other counterfeiters but I'm the best both in the real ones and the fake ones. I rotate them through the city to be in a different tiangis each day. I bribe the police to not touch my people and harass the other sellers. It's great for business.
Now, when I started reading Thrawn (2017) and got introduced to the wonderful little math nerd that is Eli Vanto, I found it important to periodically examine the fact that he, as a person, sucks. He is a lovable POV character who also works for a fascist regime and wakes up every morning and continues to work for a fascist regime. That is a very significant part of the book, in fact. I'd like to unpack the ways in which Eli's character, ethics, and politics work in the narrative to directly support the rise of the Galactic Empire.
Eli Vanto is a very, very good imperial soldier because his primary reaction is inaction.
In our introductory scene to Eli, one of the very first things we see him do is him biting back a retort.
This is a man who is very used to being spoken down to. Eli is smarter than almost every one of his commanding officers, and he knows it, but he never speaks out of turn. The other thing we get introduced to right off the bat is that his treatment by those people, and his long practiced reaction to it, is a product of his perceived lower class status as someone from Wild Space.
We very quickly are shown the picture that this is something Eli has been dealing with his entire life. Both society in general, and the imperial military in specific, have strict consequences for those who speak out of turn, so Eli has long since adopted a stance of keeping his head down and his mouth shut. It's simply safer, and as we are shown in the story, it is tacitly rewarded as the only way Eli can secure the upward momentum he craves. Because of the way he has been treated by those in power, Eli Vanto simply isn't a fighter.
Which means, when the Empire started piecing itself together and taking over the galaxy, the Vanto family, and Eli himself, had no qualms about it.
The social instinct has transformed from resignation to apathy. Why resist? It doesn't really matter. It's all the same result, in the end. Eli has learned that the way to get ahead in this world is through doing nothing. That's why, when Thrawn is attacked at the academy, Eli's gut reaction is to do exactly that: nothing.
Now, we all know that having gruesome and cruel thoughts does not make one a bad person. In fact, Eli almost immediately dismisses it and takes action instead. But it is suggestive of Eli's basic instincts. Also, unlike the passive and quiet expansion of imperial power, this is direct harm happening in front of him, to a living being he can see. And Eli fights back.
It's practically the only time in the book he does so.
This is the scene. Up until now, Eli's passivity have been a faraway thing, background radiation to his actions, or lack thereof. His choices to support the Empire have been personal ones, centered on things like his continued employment and comfort. But this is when Eli looks in the face of the suffering he is helping to perpetuate. And he looks away.
That is what Thrawn (2017) is about. The dangers of everyday, self-serving people supporting the rise of fascism because it is helps them. It's a book about the dangers of looking away. Whether it's for some broader ideal:
Or simple and human selfishness:
All of them skirt their gaze over the atrocities of the present. Eli, Thrawn, and Arihnda are a three-legged beast whose personal motives all contribute to the war machine. And they do that through inaction. Because that's what the empire thrives off of. As much as it is fueled by its military and its power, it is equally powered by the apathy of its own citizens. And its why Nightswan, the real hero of the novel, is presented as the direct antithesis of Eli Vanto.
Nightswan is someone who sees people. He contributed to the empire, but the second he saw the damage he was unknowingly building, he left. He turned down comfort or safety for a chance to fight a losing battle, simply because he couldn't abandon the people he saw. All his lines drip with the themes of the rebellion, of the original trilogy. And through all of it, he speaks of all the off-ramps Eli has failed to take over the course of this story.
Nightswan is Eli's foil, and he is the final nail in his narrative coffin that he is here by his own choices. Eli is not some helpless autistic nerd who is batted about with no agency. His apathy, his inaction, is what has placed him here. Supporting a fascist regime. And how dangerously easy is is for other people to end up doing the same.
under US law, it's illegal for anyone who's not a member of a recognised native tribe to own an eagle feather. the penalty is a $100,000 fine.
14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."
and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.
so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.
on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.
probably a good thing I don't intend to move back there anytime soon. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on bird crimes.
@freedomisscaryshit I'm fucking dying I think you forgot the word "feathers" in your tags?? or do you just wish you could grab whole ass eagles that land in your yard??
As an Indigenous person, it continues to astound me that there are such strict laws (written by White people) in our name, laws against...picking up things just found on the ground. Like, stop pretending this is "for" us. We don't want this.
so, for clarity, that's not what this is. the law against possessing feathers is an anti-poaching measure, derived from a North American treaty protecting certain migratory bird species from hunting. that treaty has an exemption for indigenous people to allow tribes that use eagle feathers in ceremonial or religious practices to continue doing so.
i used to collect feathers (illegally) as a teenager and the thing is that it's incredibly important for feathers from wild birds to be illegal to possess because it ensures that they never become fashionable to wear. the reason we passed the migratory bird act was because the american and european fashion industry was driving species to extinction in a timespan of years. not just decades. the ecological devastation of exporting birds for hats was absolutely insane and people were watching wetlands and forests and meadows just empty out in realtime. look at the wikipedia article for the plume trade.
the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.
these laws, as harsh and ridiculous as they seem, saved flamingos, spoonbills, egrets, and all kinds of hawks and eagles from extinction. the minute these laws weaken and people can make money off killing them again, they're fucked.
this is one of those "no actually this regulation exists for a reason" laws much like work place safety and building fire codes (that Republicans keep trying to roll back) and is written in blood just like them as well. it's just not human blood this time, and the fact that people actually cared enough about long term future over short term profit to get it put in place is nothing short of astonishing. That it didn't get put in place in time to save several species is heart breaking.
Do you think Jesus ever got many carpenter requests after he started preaching? Like did anyone ever go up to him and be like; "My Lord! My Lord!" And the disciples are all: "The Master won't do anymore miracles today." But obviously Jesus is like; "Yes, my child?" And they just ask what his basic rate is to fix their door.
