Why the fuck is libro fm charging 88 dollars for A Game of Thrones audio book?!! that is 2/3s of the cost of the box set for the series!! This is one book!! Yeah, yeah, supporting local bookstores, I could buy that from my local book store for a little less than 30 dollars. Making audio books more accessible my ass you're charging nearly 90 dollars for it!!!! Are the voice actors getting a cut?? I could understand if the voice actors were also getting a cut but I have found no mention anywhere of paying voice actors, just local and independent bookstores. Could someone in this industry please explain why they are selling it for an -IN MY AREA- over 50 dollar mark up. Please explain I am angry and confused. I am also not a member
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with relating to characters, “they’re literally me” etc but if that’s the only way you engage with stories you’re kinda missing the whole point of Characters being vehicles through which we can see perspectives outside of our own. and also you’re going to get upset when the Character acts in a way that is not Personally Relatable to You
doubly for shipping. at risk if biting the hand that feeds me, a well written fictional relationship should ideally be more than a didactic template for how to have a nice relationship
There is no paradox of tolerance, because tolerance is not a matter of ethics. It's a peace treaty - an agreement that only covers the people who abide by its rules.
The title of this essay should disturb you. We have been brought up to believe that tolerating other people is one of the things you do if…
And for cis white guys who are always trying to figure out how to be an ally without talking over marginalized people, without reshaping the issue to be all about you - this guy shows how.
His tactics don't work for marginalized people. They can't get away with that.
Tolerance is the value of Hospitality. Hospitality only applies to those who adhere to it. An enemy invading is not subject to hospitality. A person who is making the space inhospitable to others is breaching hospitality, and shall no longer benefit from it themself.
There is no such thing as "Hospitable hate". There is no such thing as a "Safe Fascist" or "Equitable Bigot". So there is no hospitality to offer Nazis.
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#as a brown woman who'll always be seen as the angry brown woman #I won't stop being aggressive if a fucking Nazi ever shows up #but it is more effective when a white man or somebody who has a less marginalized identity uses these tactics #because that's what these brain dead nazis respond to #we as people of color as someone 'lesser' than them #unfortunately are just proving them right when we show our aggression #but once again it doesn't mean I would personally stop being violent towards nazis #it just means more white people need to do the same
Yo BE CAREFUL with things like this because Nazis can easily weaponize the court system against you.
This is not legal advice and this is me, just talking about some jurisdiction-specific things I happen to know, as a defense attorney who's done so many A+B cases...
Assault and battery are different things. Battery is actually making contact with a person (i.e., the root of the word "battered.")
Assault can be done one of a two ways in common law.
Attempt battery and miss (throw a punch and whiff it)
Make someone think you're about to do battery even if you don't intend to
That second one can be tricky!! Generally, words are not enough for an assault. There must be some type of accompanying behavior, such as violent gestures (balling up fist, advancing, raising an item threateningly). Whether or not your words are a threat is also relevant; we have some great case law in this state that a threat involves a direct threat, not a conditional statement.
(That means you're on safer ground if you say "I will beat the shit out of you if you continue to display your heinous Nazi sign" than if you say "I will beat the shit out of you in five seconds.")
I see in this video that this guy balled up his fist and pointed in some gestures to "get the fuck out of here." I would likely not recommend that anyone do that. I would also not recommend "The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi" because, while true, it could be construed as a threat and therefore part of the relevant behavior to reach an assault charge. (Probably ok in this instance because this guy's sign said "the nazis were right" not "I'm a nazi." This seems trivial but could be an important distinction.)
Mind that my analysis is particular to my jurisdiction and there are many variants of this law. It is actually extremely difficult as a layperson to get a good picture of this in my jurisdiction specifically because the law forbids "assault & battery" without defining it, and the definition can only be found in the common law.
Be safe and don't give anyone reason to call the cops <3
Maybe it's naive of me, but whenever I see portraits like this, with just a father and daughter, it restores my faith in humanity a little. Because people seem to love this idea that fathers never loved their daughters in the past and only saw them as bargaining chips for marriage or whatever, but look at the guy in the first portrait on the left, he loves that little girl! And the dad trying to do his work while his daughter bothers him with an Old Timey Barbie. The man teaching his daughter geography, his expression is so soft! The way the man in the last portrait holds the little girl's hand! And none of these are incidental, these aren't photographs, someone (probably the father) paid good money and sat down for hours so that they could have a painting of themselves and their daughter. Probably because they loved their daughter.
From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough
(this is probably somewhat related to my other favourite genre of painting, Husband With Multiple Kids Making Come Hither Eyes At His Wife)
oh I love those! People being people is one of my favourite kinds of paintings and an important reminder that people in past times were not all that different. There were dads who loved their daughters fiercely. There were fathers who happily looked after their babies too. The German reformer Philip Melanchton for example had a cradle in his office. His wife was busy organising a household for 20 people- she was out and about, he mostly worked in his office, it made sense for him to look after their babies too babies while she dropped by at snack time.
in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:
The left is “the busy father” by Theodore Weber, the right one is “At the china repairer’s “ by Wenzel Tornoe. All dads who are actively involved in childcare and a painter who thought it was a cute topic rather than anything ridiculous.
"My family thinks because im a leftist it means im radical but like whats radical about that? I just want everyone to hug, no bad things to happen, free healthcare and be nice to everyone" - the coldest, rudest most judgemental person you know.
Yeah. This. It's the refusal to acknowledge that the world is messy and complicated, that tradeoffs are a thing, and that people can disagree in good faith. Because only a Bad Person could possibly disagree with "healthcare and hugs."
"Be kind" is a good foundational philosophy, but free healthcare comes with establishing robust tax policies, education priorities, procurement programs for all kinds of hardware from hospital beds to MRI machines, drug price negotiation at the national level, building initiatives because if you're going to provide comprehensive health care to a population that previously didn't have it you're going to need more clinics and hospitals... Etc etc,
I fully endorse the idea of free healthcare for all, but there's a lot of naivete about the amount of institution building it takes to make it happen.
Mayor Mamdani declared that the democratically elected leader of the world’s only Jewish state is a ‘war criminal’ who is ‘not welcome in Ne
[…] After acknowledging that New York City has no independent legal authority to execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant, the mayor nevertheless chose to transform that legal reality into a televised political spectacle. Respect for the separation of powers and the legal limits of public office is a bedrock of American democracy; those limits should not be treated as an inconvenience to be exploited for political theater.
Perhaps most telling was what the mayor chose to leave out. His address made no mention of Hamas or the October 7 massacre of innocent civilians. Instead, he delivered a sweeping moral indictment of Israel while erasing the terrorist atrocities that ignited this war. Appeals to universal humanity and justice ring hollow when they exclude the victims whose suffering does not fit a preferred political narrative.
This is no longer simply about Prime Minister Netanyahu. It reflects a broader pattern in which Mayor Mamdani repeatedly singles out Israel while using the prestige of his office to legitimize rhetoric that further isolates the Jewish state and deepens division here at home. At a time when Jewish New Yorkers are experiencing alarming levels of antisemitism, harassment and intimidation, they deserve a mayor who refrains from fomenting hatred against the world’s only Jewish country while maintaining the fiction that this is not anti-Jewish.
Throughout his campaign, Mayor Mamdani repeatedly insisted that his responsibility as mayor would be to focus on New York City and the issues affecting New Yorkers. New Yorkers elected him to make their neighborhoods safer, combat hate and unite a diverse city, not to conduct foreign policy or transform City Hall into a stage for ideological declarations about world leaders.
New Yorkers elected a mayor, not a prosecutor of foreign leaders. Mayor Mamdani should spend less time trying to demonize only one leader and one country from City Hall and more time protecting the New Yorkers he was elected to serve.
* * *
Leading Jewish groups castigate New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for inflammatory claims he made yesterday in a video announcing that he could not arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Before stating that the city could not make the arrest, Mamdani said Israel was targeting “neonatal care centers,” starving “countless people,” “gunning down hundreds of aid workers and journalists,” and that Americans were paying “for the bombs that do the killing.”
The claims are largely exaggerated or based on scanty or questionable evidence.
The UJA-Federation of New York, the leading Jewish group in the city, says, “New Yorkers elected a mayor to lead this city — not to make Israel the centerpiece of your political grandstanding.”
“Your video is rife with distortions and disinformation. At a time of rising antisemitism, repeatedly singling out and vilifying the world’s only Jewish state for perceived political benefit is repugnant, puts Jews at greater risk — and leaves many Jewish New Yorkers feeling targeted and unwelcome in the city we call home,” the federation says in a statement. “Shame on you.”
Mamdani has often sparred with leading Jewish groups, but the UJA statement marked an unusually harsh criticism of the mayor.
The head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Mark Treyger, says, “The Mayor already knew he lacked the legal authority to carry out this irresponsible campaign promise.”
Mamdani’s video, including his call for federal authorities to arrest Netanyahu, “places the NYPD in an untenable position, further inflames tensions in the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel, and distracts from urgent local responsibilities… including responding to a deadly Legionnaires’ outbreak,” Treyger says.
The Orthodox Union, a leading national Jewish group that is headquartered in New York, says, “Mayor Mamdani’s video endangers Jewish New Yorkers.”
“He peddles lies and misinformation that risk inciting further violence against Jews. It is a betrayal of his oath of office and his own commitment to protect all New Yorkers,” the Orthodox Union says.
“The Mayor’s singular focus on Prime Minister Netanyahu is a telling reminder of his obsession with the actions of only one country, the Jewish state,” the statement says. “It is time for the Mayor to focus on the considerable needs of New York instead of playing prosecutor for the cameras.”
The Anti-Defamation League says, “Hate crimes. Rising cost of living. Legionnaires’ outbreak. Parasitic infections. Flash floods. But sure, let’s focus on trying to arrest Israel’s prime minister.”
“Glad to see the NYC mayor has his priorities straight,” the ADL says.
Statement on Brutal Attack in Upper West Side
We’re horrified — but not surprised — by today’s brutal attacks on the Upper West Side, when a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed two New Yorkers, one Asian and one visibly Jewish. We’re grateful to the NYPD for its swift response in apprehending the suspect and pray for the victims’ full recovery.
Words have consequences. Particularly, words from the Mayor of New York City. These attacks came soon after Mayor Mamdani once again used his official platform to viciously attack Israel, the only Jewish state. We cannot ignore the dangerous climate created when elected leaders relentlessly portray Israel — and, by extension, the many Jewish New Yorkers who feel a deep connection to it — as uniquely evil and illegitimate.
At a time of rising tension and polarization, our city needs a mayor who rejects the dehumanization of every community, lowers the temperature, and brings us together. Jewish New Yorkers — all New Yorkers — deserve nothing less.
now, it is, of course, overly simplistic to blame this on him, antisemitism has been steadily rising in NYC for years, as it has globally. Mamdani isn’t responsible for that, and violently radicalized antisemites don’t need him, nor any elected official, to help them commit hate crimes. such perpetrators always find their reasons.
the point here isn’t to uniquely call him out, or condemn him for anything except his own rhetoric. it’s not that he criticized Bibi and called him a war criminal, so do a lot of Jews and Israelis (may he soon be out of office, at the least). Mamdani purposefully used that as a springboard for inflammatory accusations, and this is a pattern of behavior for him (see: …multiple previous comments he has made).
as the UJA said, what is Mamdani’s responsibility as mayor is turning down the temperature and considering the wellbeing of all the residents of the city. he chose specific statements that raised tensions instead. that’s what’s being criticized.
State and city elected officials, communal figures gather at site of attack, claiming mayor's incendiary remarks on PM and Gaza war are enda
As a candidate, the New York mayor pledged to order the arrest of Israel’s prime minister if elected. The Mamdani strategist who says he pus
[…] “Believe me, he knew before the question was asked that he didn’t have the power,” says Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic political adviser, when I ask for his read on things as an outside observer. “I think the guy has enormous talent,” he adds. “I question his judgment, but golly, is he gifted.”
That’s because it appears the mayor turned a sour moment—admitting publicly that he’d made a campaign promise he could not keep—into a victory, or at least something with its own political momentum. Mamdani’s message on Netanyahu has been cheered by commenters everywhere from Ireland to Egypt and blasted by opponents like Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, who has accused the mayor of spreading “blood libel”—an apparent reference to medieval antisemitic rhetoric that was later harnessed by the Nazis.
But for Begala, a longtime critic of Netanyahu himself, the problem is that the speech was primarily a spectacle. “I think he understands the lessons of [Donald] Trump’s success, in that diversion is a superpower.”
When you get all of the major Jewish organizations and journalism outlets to agree you’re engaging in clown behavior.
🤡🤡🤡
Like, Mr. Mayor, we famously don’t agree about almost anything. But we do think you’re a populist, a Jew hater, and a one trick pony. You got (((US))) to agree. That’s a bad look.
i really thought the point of "being lgbt+ doesn't absolve you of racism as a white person" was that white people arent absolved of racism by being marginalized but it really seems like people think other marginalizations make it okay. no being disabled doesn't do it. no being poor doesnt do it. we need to fight against racism actively no matter what.
I want to pull this post open a little while agreeing with it.
I disagree with the word 'absolved;' no one comes into this world with a mark of sin that needs absolution, including white people. After all, I didn't ask to be born. Neither did y'all. We didn't do anything wrong.
However.
Existing in a world where the structure of society, as well as the racist disgust of a subset of individuals, favors one group unfairly over another I think simply cannot be alleviated without confronting it.
If a white person wants an excuse to not confront racism, they can find one. Their excuse might be that they already confront so much prejudice along another axis of their life that their bandwidth is full up. But, realistically, the thing about being white, specifically, is that you can ignore racism. Just like the thing about being straight is that you can ignore homophobia. The thing about being male is that you can ignore misogyny. Black & brown people, queer people, women, cannot ignore these things.
There's no get-out-of-jail-free card on this one. You only get credit for fighting racism if you fight racism. You only make progress in fighting racism if you fight racism. You only overcome what our culture has ingrained into you by overcoming it.
There is no virtue in being born to an oppressed class; there is no virtue in being born into a class of oppressors. There is virtue in continuing the fight to erase that distinction.
has YOUR favorite fictional woman over the age of 30 experienced fandom misogyny from people who are mad at Their Mom From Real Life? call our offices, toll-free, day or night. we're the nation's #1 law firm that specializes in defending adult women who make choices and have character traits. if the prosecution has started calling her a selfish bitch, pick up the phone today!!!
Excuse me, does your firm also represent women under thirty who experience fandom misogyny from people who are mad at That Girl From College/Work/High School?
"Excuse me, does your firm also represent women under thirty who experience fandom misogyny from people who are mad at That Girl From College/Work/High School?"
Hey. Look at me. Please leave yourself a note somewhere you'll see it later that says "it is going to take years if not decades to get the United States government to the level of functionality it had in November of 2024." If we elect a democrat in 2028, we are not going to be up and running by 2032.
Please make sure you have a reminder in your phone reminding you to not look at 2028/32/36 Democratic candidates and say "why are they not promising/delivering Cool Shit?" because you are going to understand that to get Cool Shit we must have competent people running a decently funded government, and we are not going to have that.
We are not getting UBI. We are not getting single payer healthcare. We are not getting free college or free preschool. We are not redistributing wealth on a large scale. We are not getting free internet. We are not getting ranked choice voting.
If we are lucky, we are going to get an IRS that can collect taxes, qualified schoolteachers, research grants, Social Security, and a government that thinks maybe it should be a priority for people around the worlds to not have AIDS, malaria or TB.
Hey. HEYYYYY. We will see major positive political change in our lifetime. This post is not saying we won't. This post is saying that the next democratic president is not going to put the government back together in 4 years. Those are not the same thing. That doesn't mean there won't be positive political change in that time. And your life is going to be longer than 4 years!!!!!
Fuck there's positive political change happening NOW on the local level too. Virginia's up to some cool shit
honestly im very tired of peoples inability to recognize stereotypes that stem from sax rohmer novels i think white people especially owe it to asian people to do a cursory reading of the premise of fu manchu novels and read the characters are associated with them just so they can get their heads out of their asses and stop blindly reading fu manchu and fah lo suee reskins without any critical thought
like an asian daughter trying to get away from her evil dad or trying to usurp her father with the help of white men is a anti asian stereotype i need yall to know that. the daughter who is actually good and is just a helpless victim of her father and she needs help from a white man to either get away or kill her father is a racist stereotype. Id take it a step further and say that even if its not a white man getting help from any outside force to usurp or run from her father is in fact racist. An asian woman falling in love with a white man and that white man basically making her realize that she shouldn't be following her father is racist it comes from Daughter of the Dragon. It comes from Sax Rohmer. We need to recognize that its a thing. We need to be critical of how we talk about characters that fall into that trope
if you reblog anything from me I wish it were this. the anti asian stereotypes from sax rohmer novels are so prevalent in literally everything its difficult to find anything with Asian people that doesnt have at least a few. especially comics
There's been a number of people reporting over on the AO3 subreddit that they're getting messages like this posted in the comments shortly after posting new fics.
The AO3 team are NEVER going to try and contact you about TOS violations via the comment section (or about anything else for that matter)
Don't click any links. Report the accounts involved (which might claim to be things like "LucySupport"), delete the message and move on.
please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.
you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.
first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.
now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:
in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.
and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.
and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.
it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:
• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.
• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.
• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.
• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.
• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.
• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.
and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.
what i'm asking:
if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.
if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.
india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.
