This year’s Cards Against Humanity secret Xmas surprise has begun, and on day one, they’ve delighted buyers (I’m one!) by sending us a share certificatefor an infinitesimal fraction of a stretch of US/Mexican borderlands, along with details of their plans to keep the land secure from Trump’s attempts to seize it and build a stupid wall on it.
The first line of defense is a pack of rabid attack lawyers from the firm of Graves, Dougherty, Hearon, & Moody, who’ve penned a letter vowing to fight any eminent domain seizure with everything they have, running out the clock on the Trump administration before any wall can be built.
The second line of defense is much more direct: Cards Against Humanity have built a 30’ trebuchet, a medieval siege engine used to knock down walls since the 12th century, as an object lesson in just how far behind the times Donald Trump’s mentality is. The have paid 300 gold to increase its attack damage, so it’s very powerful.
I have been thinking of a thing said at Friendsgiving last week. Because I am what passes for an elder, by dint of not having died of AIDS like so many of those older than me and my age, and because my lived political memory goes back to the Ford/Carter debates (I was doing puzzles on the floor during them, but I was paying attention), and my knowledge of American politics goes back to Jamestown, I get asked questions sometimes in hopes that my wider perspective will give a better idea of what is normal and what might happen.
The question’s wording I forget, but it was along the lines of what happens now? Re: Trump, the Republicans, the whole mess. I launched into my current strategic thinking, and carefully hedged best guesses. This is stuff I think about every day. I had done the part about hoping there was enough 45 taint on Pence to take him out too when the indictments begin in earnest, assuming we still have rule of law. Either way we keep fighting them one by one: Pence, Ryan, Hatch, Tillerson (assuming he’s still in office), as long as it takes. Then I said something like, “Mostly, whatever happens with Impeachment, we just need to hold on one more year, keep protesting and resisting our hardest, and rally the Millenials to vote in the midterms en masse.”
They stopped me there and the host said something about my hopeful vision being comforting. That stopped me cold. "Hopeful?“ I thought, confused. How is that a hopeful vision? I pondered it for a few days, and then I got it. It’s hopeful because there is a potential end point. If we can take even one chamber of Congress, if we can take State governments back, we might most of us survive this. Theoretically. If the damage isn’t to great. If we still have rule of law and a functioning electoral system. If 45 hasn’t started a nuclear war for funsies. From my perspective this is a lot of maybes, and grim as fuck. My way of dealing with terrible circumstances over which I have very little control is and always has been to stare directly the fuck into the abyss, access just how fucked I am, and then work out what I can change, what I can resist within the limits presented. I pick my battles sure, but I fight those battles like a cornered badger. I fight smart. I use all the leverage I can squeeze, but I do fight hard. The thing is though? At eight, my grim little war looked that way too and as far away as ten years looked to someone who had only lived eight, it was an end point. I mourned my childhood and that nearly imaginable expanse of time, but then I wiped my tears away and I figured out how I could and would resist. Knowing that if I could just survive long enough I would be free was a thing I clung to. It was the only hope I had once I realized there was no hope of outside help. I was trapped in this system and I needed to find ways to beat it, to eek out a little breathing room in which my spirit could nourish itself and live.
Last year, I said that this wouldn’t be a sprint, it will be a marathon. I wrote about how to nourish your body and spirit to stay in for the long haul. Even if we win in a year, we will still need to keep fighting, to regain all we have lost, not just in the last year and the year to come, but since the day Reagan was sworn in and republicans started dismantling everything that protected those that work for a living from those with trust funds, all those regulations that protected people and the environment for corporations, the extreme partizan gerrymandering, the damage to the fundamental structures of government and society. It won’t just be rebuilding physical, economic, and governmental infrastructure either. We will have so much work to do beyond that, to build new and better structures to protect us from this ever happening again.
It will be a huge amount of work. It will be exhausting. It will be a very long haul indeed.
It will be worth it.
We can survive this.
We need to keep protesting and resisting. We need to vote in numbers like they’ve never seen. We need to have each other’s backs and leave no one behind this time.
We can survive this. Please hang on. even when it’s really bad like it is right now. even when it feels like there is no hope.
They are counting on you to give up. DO NOT let them win.
Appatently I am too casual when it comes to talking about erotica tropes. Like friend. I’m not sure what to tell ya, it was my job at one point to manage kink safety for an erotica publishing house. Outside my own personal hard stops which are fairly few, nothing phases me anymore.
And not even in a “ha ha I’m dead inside” sort of way, more of a “wow humans sure do think of a lot if interesting ways to use their bodies for fun. Amazing. Inflatable spinning dildo helmets you say? What a time to be alive.”
Like shine on you crazy diamond bastards, so long as it’s between consenting adults and you’re being safe with each other, shine the fuck on.
While most school districts across the country are cutting back on recess time and ramping up the Ritalin, one Texas school has kindergartners and first graders sitting still and “incredibly attentive.”
What’s their secret? Their recess time has tripled.
Instead of 20 minutes of recess per day, Eagle Mountain Elementary kindergartners and first graders now get an hour, broken up into four 15-minute breaks, in addition to lunchtime.
Their teachers say it’s totally transformed them.
The kids are less fidgety, less distracted, more engaged in learning and make more eye contact.
Eagle Mountain is one of dozens of schools in Texas, Oklahoma and California testing out extra recess time as part of a three-year trial. The pilot program is modeled after the Finnish school system, whose students get some of the best scores in the world in reading, math and science.
Wait…are you telling me that allowing kids to have fun play time to channel their exuberance makes them better learners? That we should treat kids like kids instead of like tiny adults and then doping them up to eyes in meds “to help them focus”?
MADNESS!! /s
But in all seriousness though, I’m surprised that people are surprised that letting kids play for a bit is a better solution than putting them on Ritalin or something.
I fucking adore this.
I think it’s great schools are finally figuring out the obvious – that all children need more play time and that letting them play longer will increase the amount of attention any child can give. That’s legitimately great.
My only problem is that this is being described as “destroying” adhd. At best this will reduce the amount of misdiagnosis. As beneficial as the additional active time will be for students with adhd (very) it won’t reduce most symptoms, problems with executive function, emotional control, short term memory, etc. will all still be there.
Nevertheless this is a really great thing for all children and I hope everyone starts doing it.
Yeah, even though proper recess is beneficial to everyone it’s no ADHD cure it is claimed to be here. I would know since I am from Finland where this amount of recess is very much the norm ( We had lunch, one 30 min recess and two 15 min) but I also have ADHD(as do many other finnish children) and could be very disruptive in a class as a child no matter how much I could run around during recess. More likely the kids whose ADHD seems to completely disappear due this were misdiagnosed from the get go and wouldn’t have benefitted from medication anyways. Kids who actually have ADHD will continue having it no matter how much recess they have and it’s unrealistic to expect that this would fix it to the point where no kid needs medication.
Please call your Senators tomorrow and tell them to oppose the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
This bill is an attempt to steal from the poor and give to the rich, and to sneakily repeal the ACA. It would repeal the individual mandate, raising premiums so much that thirteen million people would lose health insurance. (link)
It would also increase the deficit by over a trillion dollars over the next decade.
Here is a slightly changed script from Indivisble:
“Hello! My name is [NAME] and I’m calling from [PART OF STATE]. I’m calling to let Senator [SENATOR’S NAME] know that I strongly oppose the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
This tax bill is a scam that will give massive cuts to the wealthy, paid for by leaving tens of thousands of people in [STATE] uninsured, raising premiums, and raising taxes on middle-class families. This tax bill won’t help middle class families get ahead. Every single provision intended to help the middle-class expires, but the corporate tax cuts are forever.
Even worse, the CBO estimates that health insurance premiums will increase 10% more per year than they would without this bill and we know 13 million more people will be uninsured!”
Encourage your friends and family to call. If you can’t call, ask someone to call your Senators and let them know they are calling on your behalf. You can also give me your full name and zip code or street address and tell me it is for the tax bill, and I will call for you.
Cranston, Rhode Island, has just established a voluntary registry to record information on autistic people between the ages of 6 and 21. The registry is managed by the Cranston Police Department and is intended to help autistic young people who interact with the police. Autism registries aren’t limited to Cranston. Several US states and Canadian provinces have databases that require or encourage…
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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