Every actual Pacific Islanders activism group I’ve been able to find has advocated for the use of “pacific islands” as an umbrella, and using the actual names of the peoples in question (eg: maori, samoan, hawai’ian maoli, etc) whenever possible. Specifically because “polynesian” is colonialism in action. It’s an attempt to smash dozens of unique cultures into a single uniform label, erasing their histories in the process.
At least “pacific islanders” while potentially doing the same thing, has the decency to be plural.
But, hey, why take that into consideration when you can just listen to one singular tumblr post I guess /sarcasm
Tumblr is self-destructing and the entire conservative government just got found to be in contempt of parliament for the first time in HISTORY this is the greatest 24h of my life
What did I miss?!
Oh man. This is absolutely golden.
So first off. What’s contempt of parliament? In short, obstructing parliament from its duties. In the UK that extends to publication of reports and papers that would be necessary for parliament to, well, parliament. Normally this extends to an individual person being especially obstructive.
Now. The Conservative government obtained legal advice for the Brexit shitshow. But they refused to publish it in full which means parliament (which includes, y’know, opposition parties and non-conservatives in general) can’t parliament.
What reason could they possibly have to refuse to publish legal advice on something that effects the whole country? I wonder. Hmm. Thinking emoji.
Anyway. Today the entire Conservative government have been found to be in contempt of Parliament. The entire government have been found to be obstructing the proper running of the country. We hold votes on that sort of thing, and the general consensus (18-vote majority) was “the Tories are obstructive little pigshits”
Also they have to publish that legal advice. In full. Tomorrow.
No word yet on whether the entire government is going to be sent to the Elizabeth Tower yet. We haven’t done that since the 1880s but I’m willing to bring it back.
Glorious!
Readers from other countries: you have to understand that, so far, Brexit has been about three years of nothing happening and still somehow dominating the news cycle. A random MP from Croydon will say that they don’t think Theresa May is doing well and it’ll make headline news. Like, that’s not news, that’s rolling above a nat 1 on perception. The ‘nothing happens’ is occasionally broken by Something happening, except it’s always terrible. At this stage, people keep arguing about whether to accept a shitty deal or no deal, because nobody took Critical Thinking at AS Level and the concept of a false dilemma is somehow unthinkable to them.
Meanwhile a good portion of the Labour party really do not want Brexit to happen, except the leader (Jeremy Corbyn, and I would require a whole other post to talk about him) who is like ‘Brexit is okay but ONLY if we do it.’
Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats are like ‘we’ll cancel Brexit! And we’ll legalise weed!’, but nobody’s forgiven them for double-crossing us on tuition fees and they keep accidentally electing bigots, so the twelve voters who support them can’t really do all that much.
The Green party do technically exist, and that’s all I can really say on them.
UKIP, the nationalist bastards who got us into this mess in the first place, haemorrhaged membership back to the Tories in the most recent election (shocking. i know). General cretin Nigel Farage quit as party leader when Brexit got voted for, claiming he’d done his job, and recently he just left the party altogether because he doesn’t like where it’s going. something something moral backbone of a chocolate eclair something
Also the Leave campaign were found to have lied, accepted dodgy donations and pulled some VERY shifty things, meaning that a lot of people who voted for Brexit now feel they made a mistake.
So the people have been trying to demand a second vote on Brexit, or to at least have some say on the conditions of the leave agreement (did I mention everything we’ve done so far is fully reversible?), but TMay just keeps repeating things like ‘will of the people’ and ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and then going home to relax by killing a few disabled people after dinner. You know how it is.
But then the actual Brexit agreement is released and ministers start dropping like flies. The guy who wrote it quits IMMEDIATELY after it’s published because he Doesn’t Like It. Cue the tiniest violin in the world. People are squabbling over the right way to do Brexit and keep mentioning just leaving without a deal, which is like quitting your cushy job by taking a shit on the counter and just hoping things will work out for you.
So, essentially, I’ve given up hope on this not becoming a complete clusterfuck. It already is a clusterfuck. My only hope is that it will be an entertaining one, as it’s been so astonishingly dull, and this has very much met my hopes. They fucked up so badly that the whole government is on the naughty step. The fucktangular omnishambles continue, and I for one say throw them all in the tower, vote them out of government one-by-one like Big Brother, and televise it to make money for the BBC.
Yesssssss
So… from the little I know about parliamentary systems of government…
Does “contempt of parliament” also mean “vote of no confidence”? Are y’all about to have another election?
As far as I understand it, contempt of parliament is like, ‘stop that right now! Stop it!We can’t govern unless you stop.’ and it can apply to one MP or a parliamentary group or in this case, a whole party.
Vote of no confidence is, ‘you’re all fucking incompetent, I have no confidence that you can run a foot race, let alone a government’.
If a vote of no confidence is successful then a general election has to be held, but people won’t vote against their party so it’s super rare.
But if they can’t govern, that would mean they’re fucking incompetent, and therefore a new election should be held? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Does this mean a vote of no confidence is going to be held, and then another election? (Because at least in Canada there are certain things that automatically trigger a vote of no confidence, like not being able to pass a budget. I was wondering if this is one of those things as well.) Or can you folks not recall the bastards who did this bullshit? (That’s one of the things I always liked about the parliamentary system… if the gov’t can’t run, y’all have an election, like pronto. Wish our system was like that.)
Latkes. I am talking about latkes, but I didn’t want to pass up such a mad good chance for some killer alliteration. You understand.
Yesterday some people expressed a wish to have my latke recipe, and being the obliging and benevolent soul that I am, I acquiesced. Am acquiescing. Whatever. Here it is!
6 large potatoes
2 large onions
1 ½ tablespoons of flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of salt
¼ teaspoon of pepper
½ teaspoon of baking powder
This is a flexible recipe. Last night I double-and-a-halfed it to 15 potatoes and about 4 and a half onions, because I fucking love onions. I like an oniony latke. To me this is the secret to latke deliciousness. However, the quantity of onion you like in your latke is up to you. The salt and pepper is also to taste, I think we ended up putting a bit more of each into ours last night as well.
STEPS:
Wash and peel the potatoes. This step sucks, sorry.
You’re going to want to grate them. You can do this by hand if you do not possess a food processor but boy howdy do I ever not recommend it. If you DO use a food processor, I extremely extremely recommend getting a grater blade to use instead of the regular one, as the regular one will just pulp the potatoes and that will fuck up the ESSENTIAL LATKE TEXTURE. However, if you cannot grate them by hand and do not have access to a grater blade for your food processor it’s not TERRIBLE to just use the regular blade. No one will come to your house and harm you or anything.
Press the extra liquid out of the potatoes!!!!! If your batter is too liquidy your latkes will not hold together well. This step ALSO sucks, sorry. If you have an overenthusiastic 16 year old stepbrother to boss around I highly recommend getting him to do it. My other ~trick of the trade~ regarding “"Hanukkah water”“, as Ari calls it, is to use a SLOTTED SPOON to dollop the batter into the oil, as you can then drain the extra liquid out of each spoonful just beforehand.
The onions you can pulp up, who cares about the onions. (You’re gonna wanna food process these pretty hard imo but if you cannot, again, grating them by hand is ok!!!)
Put potato gratings, onion pulp, flour, eggs, salt, pepper, and baking powder in a big ol’ bowl and mix that shit all up.
Get deep pans and heat them over the stove, or use an electric skillet, either way. Fill about ¼th of an inch with vegetable oil (BEFORE YOU HEAT THEM UP JUST TO BE OVERLY CLEAR. DO NOT PUT THE OIL IN AFTER THEY ARE HOT. LOOK. I REALIZE THIS IS OBVIOUS BUT IT PAYS TO MAKE SURE) (Heating the pans is an imprecise science as every burner/skillet is different, but I usually do pretty high. On our old electric skillet we used the next-to-highest setting, and on our electric stovetop last night I had them on 6 (on a scale from 1-9).
When the oil is hot, dollop spoonfuls of batter into it (roughly ¼th of a cup, but I just eyeball it). If you are using a regularish sized pan you should be able to fit 2 or 3 latkes in it at a time.
The trick I use for telling if a latke is ready to flip is twofold. One, look at the edges. They should be golden brown before you even consider it. Two, nudge the latke gently with your spatula. If it kind of “floats” across the bottom of the pan without any resistance, it’s safe to lift the edge and check if the bottom is brown.
Flip yer dang latkes!!!!!!!!
NOTE: See all those floating brown crunchy bits? Remove them from the oil with a spoon or spatula before they burn and flavor the oil with burning. Put them on a paper towel to cool and then EAT THEM THEY’RE DELICIOUS AND YOU HAVE RIGHTFULLY EARNED THEM AS THE LATKE COOK
Once they’re brown on both sides, take ‘em out of the oil!!! The ideal way to serve latkes is as they come out, which unfortunately means that you, the cook, will be standing around in an unfortunate apron avoiding splatters of scalding oil while everyone else enjoys themselves, but there are some sacrifices you have to make. If you are unable or unwilling to do this, it is OK to put the latkes in the oven to stay warm until everyone’s ready to eat, although they will be SLIGHTLY less crispy if you do this. Layer them on a big metal oven tray with paper towel in between each layer and set the oven to 250 F or so.
NOTES: This recipe probably serves about 3 or 4 people, I’d say? For reference, last night I more than doubled the recipe and we had 5 people and a ton of leftover latkes, with everyone eating probably between 3 and 5 latkes each. Regarding leftovers: This morning I put 4 of ‘em in our toaster oven on a sheet of tin foil and toasted them on the highest setting and then ate them and they were delicious. Slightly soggy, but delicious. You can also do this in the oven or even re-fry them if you’re feeling ambitious. I have never tried the microwave and it sounds vaguely sacrilegious to me but considering that I like my latkes with ketchup on them I am not in an overly great position to remark on that.
SPEAKING OF TOPPINGS! Applesauce and sour cream obviously are the staples but hey, look. Listen. Ketchup is REALLY good, alright, look, just try it, the Jew Police are not going to kick your door in if you do, I promise. Another note regarding toppings: If you use the quantity of onions that I am advocating, putting powdered sugar on these particular pancakes will probably not be that rewarding, but 1. you are free to try and 2. SOME SACRIFICES MUST BE MADE IN THE NAME OF ONION.
Last note for those of you who have never latke’d before. Your entire house/condo/tiny studio apartment/regular apartment/bullet trailer/mansion WILL smell of latke so strongly you cannot even believe it. It will smell this way for days. YOU, also, and everything you own and love, will smell of latke. You will come home from work or school or whatever the next day, after a long day of having the Jews you know sidle up to you and take a big whiff of your hair or coat and knowingly announce what you had for dinner last night, and be BOWLED OVER by how much your home smells of latke. This 1. will dissipate in a couple of days and 2. is part of the experience. ENJOY!!!!!!!
Tumblr gifsets have me believing a movie is seventeen kinds of gay at once then I watch it and it’s just a two second shot where one character barely glances at another.
This is something of a follow-up to my first Dreamwidth primer, because I completely forgot to talk about it. The features discussed in this post will be old hat to people familiar with LJ/DW style comments – this is mostly for Tumblr users.
So, one of the big advantages Dreamwidth has is that you control your posts. If you’ve ever had a post take off, you’ve probably had to deal with a bunch of people you don’t know having a fight about shit you don’t care about in your notes. And sure, you can block them, but there’s only so much you can do when a post really takes off.
On Dreamwidth, it’s way easier to deal with that. You may still run into it from time to time, but it is so much easier to manage. Enter comment screening and freezing.
the basics
If you’ve made a DW post, you’ve probably noticed these three icons in the comments of your entry:
From left to right, those are the icons for delete, screen, and freeze. There’s also a checkbox next to each comment, and at the bottom of your entry you’ll find a dropdown:
And while there’s no way to select all comments at once, you can also just disable them all by editing your post. On the old editor, the option is here:
And on the new editor (which you can enable by going here), you can turn on comment options from the settings.
Note: If you disable comments, no one – not even you – can see them. They’re still there, they’re just hidden until you enable them again. (Alternatively you could just make the post private, but that’s not usually an option in communities.)
This got long again so the rest is behind the cut.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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