On Thursday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is scheduled to testify in a much-anticipated hearing before a congressional committee investigating the contamination crisis in Flint. If Tuesday's tense hearing—in which the committee grilled other key local, state, and federal officials—was any indication, he'd better prep a good defense.
The opening testimonies were an exercise in deflection—so much so that the committee's top-ranking Democrat, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings,called it "sickening." Former Environmental Protection Agency official Susan Hedman, who was in charge of the agency's Midwest region until she resigned in January, went so far as to say that this EPA had "nothing at all to do" with Flint's water contamination crisis. Darnell Earley, the state-appointed manager who oversaw the city's disastrous switch to the Flint River water, said, "I believe that I have been unjustly persecuted, vilified, and smeared—both personally and professionally—by the media, local, state, and federal officials."
In response to the testimonies, Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said, "I think this hearing is going to be known as the great finger-pointing hearing."
Here are key three key moments:
Virginia Tech professor: "Apparently being a government agency means never having to say you are sorry." In his opening testimony, Mark Edwards, a Virginia Tech professor who was largely responsible for exposing the contaminated water, came down hard on the EPA for not immediately warning Flint residents after an agency official found high levels of lead in the water in the spring of 2015. The agency, he said, "covered up evidence of their unethical actions by authoring false scientific reports" and never apologized for the ensuing crisis.
Rep. Cummings on the tainted water: "A five-year-old could figure that out!" Cummings grew frustrated with Earley, who said the Flint River water was safe even after a General Motors plant reported that the water was corroding its car parts. Earley maintained he was acting on guidance from the state's Department of Environmental Quality. "I'm not a water treatment expert," he said.
"You don't have a to be a water treatment expert!" Cummings retorted. "A five-year-old could figure that out!"
Rep. Jason Chaffetz to the EPA: "You screwed up, and you ruined people's lives." Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the committee chairman, laid into former EPA administrator Hedman for not quickly taking responsibility for the crisis. He wasn't the only one. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) said, "There's a special place in hell for actions like this." Later, Cummings added, "I'm glad you resigned."
Anyone who thinks that a child growing up to believe being queer is OK is somehow a WORSE outcome than that same child growing up to believe they don't deserve to be loved needs to have their values reexamined.
You want to get kids out of foster care and into good, loving homes? I’ve got a simple solution to your problem.
Did you know LGBT couples are more likely to adopt older, children of color and disable children than straight couples? LGBT couples tend to adopt ‘undesired’ children more (basically kids no one else wants.)
This is so important because I remember being in the system and being so scared that I would never be adopted or loved or whatever and seriously just fucking let them, take the fear out of finding a family
Exactly. I reblog this every time I see it. EVERY time.
“Being transgender is not easy. We live in a majority-enforced gender binary world. This means when you’re transgender you have to face the hard reality of living the rest of your life in a world that is openly hostile to you.
I am one of the lucky ones. Having the support of my family and the means to afford doctors and therapists has given me the chance to actually survive this process. Transgender people without support, means and privilege do not have this luxury. And many do not survive. In 2015, the transgender murder rate hit an all-time high in this country. A horrifying disproportionate number of the victims were trans women of color. These are only the recorded homicides so, since trans people do not all fit in the tidy gender binary statistics of murder rates, it means the actual numbers are higher.
And though we have come a long way since Silence of the Lambs, we continue to be demonized and vilified in the media where attack ads portray us as potential predators to keep us from even using the goddamn bathroom. The so-called bathroom bills that are popping up all over this country do not keep children safe, they force trans people into using bathrooms where they can be beaten and or murdered. We are not predators, we are prey.
So yeah, I’m transgender.
And yeah, I’ve transitioned.
I’m out to my friends and family. Most people at work know too. Everyone is cool with it. Yes, thanks to my fabulous sister they’ve done it before, but also because they’re fantastic people. Without the love and support of my wife and friends and family I would not be where I am today.
But these words, “transgender” and “transitioned” are hard for me because they both have lost their complexity in their assimilation into the mainstream. There is a lack of nuance of time and space. To be transgender is something largely understood as existing within the dogmatic terminus of male or female. And to “transition” imparts a sense of immediacy, a before and after from one terminus to another. But the reality, my reality is that I’ve been transitioning and will continue to transition all of my life, through the infinite that exists between male and female as it does in the infinite between the binary of zero and one. We need to elevate the dialogue beyond the simplicity of binary. Binary is a false idol.
Now, gender theory and queer theory hurt my tiny brain. The combinations of words, like freeform jazz, clang disjointed and discordant in my ears. I long for understanding of queer and gender theory but it’s a struggle as is the struggle for understanding of my own identity. I have a quote in my office though by José Muñoz given to me by a good friend. I stare at it in contemplation sometimes trying to decipher its meaning but the last sentence resonates:
“Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality for another world.”
So I will continue to be an optimist adding my shoulder to the Sisyphean struggle of progress and in my very being, be an example of the potentiality of another world.”
Soulmate au where when you write something on your skin with pen/marker/whatever the hell you want, it will show up on your soul mates skin as well.
Imagine having a super artistic soulmate who draws flowers and designs and really beautiful patterns all over their arms and person 2 just sits there and watches the little lines appear on their arms and they can’t stop smiling and it’s their favorite part of the day
Imagine person 1 being super forgetful so they scribble down all the places their appointments are and person 2 tries to decipher them and figure out where they’re at and they meet and they see their writing on their hand from across the waiting room/ coffee shop/ etc. and they scramble to find a pen and write ‘found you’ on the back of their hand and person 1 sees it and they lock eyes and
Wow I like this au
my soul mate’s hand: *slowly appears* toilet paper
Jewish women are the number one authorities on how Jewish men wield misogyny. It is not an issue of our religion being regressive or misogynist, it is an issue of men using whatever culture / ideology etc they can get their hands on as a lens for their misogyny. The day I let a goyische feminist come trampling into my culture and my religion, spew their unnuanced interpretations that are devoid of context and understanding, tell me how oppressed I am, spread antisemitic hate speech, and talk over me on my own experiences, is the day I die. Jewish women must and will be the foundation of our revolutionary liberation from misogyny. Jewish women will be the voices speaking up about how men do us wrong within our own religion and cultures. Not you. Us. If you really want to help us, listen to us. You are not our mouthpieces or better interpreters of our lives than we are.
re: ppl tagging this goyim don’t touch, I get if you personally don’t want this reblogged from your blog by non jewish ppl it’s a personal boundaries thing, however I just wanna reiterate that this post was meant for goyim to read, understand, and take note of. it needs to be read by goyische feminists because they are the ones perpetuating antisemitism by acting as though they wanna “liberate” jewish women and speaking over us.
so if goyim (especially women) reblog it respectfully I am not just okay with it, but encouraging of it. because I need you all to read. it. and understand it 100% with no fucking room for uncertainty - Jewish women are not oppressed by Judaism, we are oppressed by men who use Judaism as a lens for their misogyny and we, jewish women, are the primary catalysts for our own liberation. not goyische feminists throwing around antisemitic slander.
This is a tough question to answer, if only because it varies from animal to animal! I know it can be kind of hard to find the point of certain animals, so I hope this brief, handy guide will help.
Let’s start with an easy one. The point of this animal is fairly obvious
Sometimes the point can be harder to find, but once you know what to look for, it’s easy
There’s more point to some animals than others, obviously:
And, of course, it is fairly easy to identify animals that have no point whatsoever
Hacktivist collective Anonymous has threatened to take down 2016 presidential hopeful Donald Trump, this time declaring “total war” on the GOP frontrunner. Anonymous’ war plan against Trump includes dismantling the candidate’s online presence and digging for dirt on the business tycoon in an attempt to destroy his brand. And you don’t need to be a hacker to participate.
A few weeks ago, while reading an excellent DA fic - Exit Light, by dragonflies_and_katydids - I was struck by the following lines:
“I didn’t used to fall apart like this,” he says to the papers scattered before him. “Why now? I’ve been carrying it around in my head for ten years. Why have the last few months been so hard?”
“Maybe because you’ve been carrying it around for ten years?” Dorian asks dryly. “It is possible to get tired, you know.” His hands flex but stay where they are, pressed to Cullen’s stomach. “Just because I can pick up my staff without thinking twice about it doesn’t mean I want to carry it around for a decade without ever putting it down.”
When I say I was struck by this, I mean I read it and basically stopped breathing. I cried, because this, right here? This is what happens when you grow up internalising a fucktonne of toxic bullshit about your gender and sexuality and personhood: you don’t always realise the magnitude until later, when you finally have a healthy yardstick against which to measure it all.
Once, as a kid, I crashed a friend’s bike in such a way that my momentum drove the bare, welding-spiked metal handle into my stomach. It ripped open an entire circle of skin, a shallow sort of impalement, but I vividly remember that it didn’t hurt until I lifted my top and looked at the damage. It wasn’t looking that injured me - the fall did that - but actually seeing the wound is what catalysed my awareness of the pain I was already in, and twenty years later, there’s still a scar on my ribs.
A common refrain in our culture is that adults ought to easily get over everything and anything that happened to them in high school, or university, or at any younger point, as though time alone is capable of healing wounds we haven’t yet plucked up the courage to examine. And often, I think, repressing that fact, or leaving it unacknowledged - that’s our way of trying to get to relative safety first, to a place and point where we finally do have the luxury of self-assessment. And then we look, and it’s like, Oh. OH. So that’s why I’ve been hurting all this time. I thought I was just meant to feel like that forever.
And if you have to take time to deal? That’s not you being a bad adult. It’s just you being a person.
Well, that was an interesting Tuesday night in American politics, wasn’t it? A few thoughts about it.
1. First, sympathy for Sanders supporters out there, who after last week’s emotionally satisfying win in Michigan — even if Clinton ended the night with a net gain of delegates thanks to Mississippi — had to deal with their candidate going 0-5 in state results last night. To be fair, there’s still a small possibility that Sanders might pull ahead in Missouri once absentee votes are tallied in, but after the other results of the evening, winning by the thinnest possible margin in a single state is the political equivalent of “playing for pride.”
However and more importantly, Clinton yet again expanded her pledged delegate lead. Leaving out Missouri for the moment, Clinton netted more than 100 delegates over Sanders in the other four states voting last night. Given the closeness of the Missouri race, and the proportional nature of delegate allocation in Democratic primaries, it doesn’t matter if Sanders eventually squeaks out a win there — Clinton still ends the night with a triple-digit delegate gain.
2. I had someone on Twitter last night say, yes, well, but Florida is a closed primary state where Clinton was favored; okay, but she also took Ohio by 13 points, and that’s an effectively open primary (technically “semi-open”). I do see some Sanders supporters pinning hopes of victories based on whether a particular state has caucuses or open primaries, which is fine, but it’s a bit of fetish thinking. There are four types of primaries and caucuses: Open, closed, semi-open and semi-closed. Leaving out semi-closed caucuses (only one state has that and hasn’t voted yet) Clinton has won contests in every format but open caucuses; Sanders has won contests in every format but closed primaries. I’m not sure Sanders can rely on voting format to save him.
Even if he did, a) the next set of contests features a closed primary (Arizona) with the largest delegate count of the evening, and Sanders hasn’t won any of those yet, and there are nine more of those including New York and Pennsylvania, b) there are only two more open caucus contests left (that being the format Clinton hasn’t won in yet). So, uh, yeah. That math doesn’t look great for Sanders.
Ultimately Sanders’ problem isn’t format, it’s that he doesn’t win enough contests (nine to Clinton’s nineteen), doesn’t win enough big states (he’s won only one contest with more than a hundred delegates; Clinton’s won six), and the one big contest he won, he won by a slim margin (49.8% to 48.2%) meaning he netted only a few pledged delegates over Clinton (four). Meanwhile Clinton’s pledged delegate net in the large state contests she’s won is 218 over Sanders.
3.But Sanders can still take it! Well, as a matter of pure mathematics, sure. As a practical matter involving real voters in real states and territories going to actual polling stations or caucuses, it’s pretty much over at this point. It’s not to say that Sanders can’t or won’t win more states; I suspect he will. But the question is will he ever catch up in the pledged delegate count, and the answer is, that’s going to be a hard row for him to hoe. Someone on Twitter last night suggested that they said the same thing about Obama in 2008, and look where he is now. But on March 16, 2008, one, Obama was ahead of Clinton in the pledged delegate count, not the other way around, and two, as a matter of percentages, Obama and Clinton were substantially closer than Clinton and Sanders are now — Clinton had 92% of the pledged delegates Obama had then; Sanders has 72% of the pledged delegates Clinton has now.
And while we’re considering this, bear in mind we’re only talking about pledged candidates here, not superdelegates. With superdelegates, Clinton is already two thirds of the way to the magic number of 2,383 delegates needed for the nomination. Adding in Sanders’ superdelegates, he’s 35% of the way there. Superdelegates can change their mind between now and the election, but if I were a Sanders supporter I wouldn’t be holding my breath. Again, it’s not impossible for Sanders to win the nomination, but at this point it’s gone from “unlikely” to “really goddamned difficult.”
If my Twitter feed is any indication, I suspect a number of Sanders supporters have begun the grieving process — the disbelief that Sanders lost Ohio (it was supposed to be like Michigan!), the glumness of looking at the Florida result, the glimmer of hope in Missouri, extinguished as Clinton ground out a .2% victory. As I noted before, I have sympathy for Sanders supporters. It was not a good night for them. Clinton supporters, on the other hand, have to be feeling pretty good.
4. On the other side of things, oh, hey, look, John Kasich won Ohio! Which is nice, and deprived Trump of its 66 delegates, which means for the first time since early February, Trump is below his Fivethirtyeight delegate tracker number, that being the number of delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nomination ahead of the convention. He was at 104% of that number going into the evening; now he’s at 96% of that number. As someone who voted for Kasich basically to achieve this very goal, I feel I had a vote well cast (note well, this number may not include his Missouri delegates).
Not, mind you, that I think Kasich can win the nomination; some folks have suggested that he would have to win 110% of the currently available GOP delegates from here on out to do so, and, well. That would be a stretch, wouldn’t it. Nor do I think Cruz will get it either; Fivethirtyeight has him at 54% of his delegate goal. At this point, and despite Cruz’s self-lathering nonsense suggesting he could win the nomination outright, Cruz and Kasich are in the race to keep Trump from hitting his delegate number, forcing a contested convention.
At which Trump is already hinting there will be riots if he isn’t given the nomination! One, bless his heart. Two, he’s not wrong, especially if Trump is close to the number of delegates he needs going in. The sort of folks willing to cold-cock protesters at rallies aren’t folks who will be willing to let some back-room bureaucrats snatch their man’s rightful nomination out of his famously not-short fingers. It’s of course keeping with Trump’s personal idiom to give a speech last night about the party needing to come together, and then this morning strongly hint that his people are going to wreck shit if they don’t get their way. Congratulations, GOP! Your frontrunner is a classy dude.
5. That said, let me go out on a limb and suggest Trump is going to hit his number. Why? Because Ohio was a semi-open primary, which meant people like me, who don’t normally vote in the GOP primary, were able to cross the line and do so, and it appears that a lot did — there were 1.6 times as many voters in the Ohio GOP primary last night than in the Democratic primary, at least some of which were folks like me voting against Trump. Which is nice, but there’s only two more open primaries on the GOP docket (Indiana and Wisconsin) and one open caucus (American Samoa). The rest of the contests are closed or semi-closed, limiting the number of people willing to save the GOP from itself. From here on out it’s up to GOP voters to do it.
And will they? Unclear. There have been four closed primaries so far, and they’ve split half for Trump and half for Ted Cruz (who, to be clear, is not exactly an optimal alternative). The closed caucuses have also split between Trump and Cruz (and Minnesota and DC for Rubio). As most of the upcoming contests are winner-take-all, Trump wouldn’t have to share most of his delegates when he wins, so if he wins, even by a tiny margin, he still leaps ahead.
Trump is going to win more, and it seems likely to me that Cruz and Kasich, the other guys in the race, will probably eat each others’ lunch to Trump’s benefit. One of them should probably drop out if at this point they really aim to stop Trump. Kasich is the obvious one to drop, since he has no chance to win the nomination outright, and because Cruz won’t, no matter what; he’d rather push an entire troop of Girl Scouts under a bus than give up his run. Also there’s the matter of who are Kasich’s supporters at this point. He presumably would pick up whoever was still voting for poor Marco Rubio. Those three people won’t help him.
On the other hand, Cruz is an overripe pustule of hateful need who deserves to be dropkicked into historical oblivion, and the rest of the GOP primary schedule doesn’t really match his political strengths, so maybe he should drop and let Kasich roll as the sane alternative to Trump. But again, Cruz has no intention of leaving the race until the race leaves him. So onward Trump will likely go, to the nomination.
6. And what about Marco Rubio, who exited the race last night? Honestly, I can’t be bothered to think of him any further. He was always underready, and the fact that the GOP ever seriously considered him as their answer to Obama is a reminder that the GOP neither understands Obama nor understands anyone who isn’t white as paste. Look! A young ethnic person! The kids love that! Surely we shall win the White House now! Meanwhile, Rubio’s politics were those of a conservative 73-year-old white dude shaking his cane in the yard at the kids riding their bikes in the road (Cruz’s politics are the same, except the 73-year-old is also praying for God to send a bear to rip the children to shreds). Dear GOP: Voters do pay attention to policies and positions, not just packaging. Which is why (among other things) an old white man is more popular with under-30 Democratic voters than his opponent.
But now Rubio is gone, and good riddance. He’ll soon be gone from the Senate as well, and where he goes from here I have a complete lack of interest, so long as it is in the private sector and I never have to deal with him again. I’m sad for the GOP that he was their Great Establishment Hope for ’16, and that what we have left is Kasich, who has no chance, Cruz, who should have “well, actually” in blinking neon over his head, and of course Trump, the walking embodiment of political nihilism and sub-standard cuts of beef. The GOP deserves no better than this, but our nation certainly does.
people will say how things are “in Africa” like it’s one big place that’s homogenous throughout
but god forbid you say “Britain” when you mean “England”
But when you’re referring to Britain you can also be referring to Scotland and Wales… I’ve met some English people that got offended when I called them “British” and just wanted to be called “English”. Others didn’t care. I guess it’s all relative.
Yeah, and when you refer to “Africa,” you could be referring to Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, or Zimbabwe, and those are just the 54 recognized sovereign states listed on wikipedia
Not to mention the fact that there are around 62,641,000 (62 million) people in the handful of countries in the UK, while there are around 1,032,532,974 (just over a billion) in the dozens of countries on the continent of Africa
Do you see why it’s a problem that people get who don’t give two shits about the “Africa” thing but still get super worked up about the “Britain” thing?
Ready to be mad about Flint all over again? An EPA official argued in a September email against using state money to resolve the crisis saying the city may not be the community “to go out on a limb for.” The rest of the email explains why it would “set a bad precedent.”
Whenever designing any sort of realistic armor, always remember that it’s owner will almost certainly have something like this beneath it and it will effect her silhouette accordingly.
- wincenworks
Yes, yes, YES!
It can not be stressed enough: if you wear heavy armor, gambeson (or something similar) beneath is a must!
This week we’re bringing back this spectacular example of what, assuming you want some degree of realism, is worn underneath most fantasy/medieval armors.
Parveen Sadiq being interviewed by Assed Baig for Channel 4 News regarding Prime Minister David Cameron’s English language policy. The screenshots are by Buzzfeed.
HK Project is a video game where you play cat exploring Hong Kong’s densely populated, mostly ungoverned Kowloon Walled City. Players control a cat as it explores its stylized world by jumping and crawling around the city. The game is being developed using Unreal Engine 4 by Koola & Viv who recommend that anyone interested in updates follow them on Twitter and Facebook.
"This is how Donald Drumpf talks about our mothers, our sisters, our daughters," You know, I have a hard time taking seriously a group who would do an ad like this, and end on this line. Because when you reinforce sexism, you're not really doing much to defeat sexism, you're just really, really hoping that the loud dude will be sexist a little more quietly, so you can go back to being quietly sexist, and not have to examine your actions or motives any.
