chess tournament put on hold briefly as White’s bishops are having a schism
Black’s pawns are taking the opportunity to discuss wages with their king, threatening him with the guillotine if they go further without proper care
the king obliges
while this may cause distrust in Black’s upper castes, particularly, his knights, the overall quality of Black’s army has greatly improved
one of White’s rooks has suffered structural damages. knights are investigating to determine if it was sabotage or simply a result of the rook’s old age.
meanwhile, White’s bishops have come an agreement: one will continue with traditional Catholicism, the other will modernize, translating their scripture from Latin to English
the royal family is yet to comment
the royal family is too busy dealing with an affair between the two queens, who somehow managed to escape both kingdoms
White’s pawns are jealous of Black’s pawn labor rights and have unionized, but are for some reason targeting the kingside knight
White has ordered a new rook to replace the crumbling ruins of White’s old rook, though due to a mixup with the delivery boy, White was given an albino rook (Corvus frugilegus)
both Black and White agree to play the rook as a normal rook, despite the difficulties of making a bird fight in a 12th century land battle
the bird keeps jumping when it’s not supposed to and frequently flies over half the board above several pieces. Black’s knights are jealous and try to teach a pawn the basics of falconry so they can capture the bird for themselves.
White’s kingside knight has used lethal force
White’s remaining pawns have deserted White’s army to join Black
Black’s queenside knight and rook has left to join White, frustrated over the pawns’ apparent privilege
White has successfully rebuilt their crumbled rook after White lost the rook (bird), though White technically now has three rooks
Black has replaced Black’s lost bishop with a rabbi
amidst all the chaos, the queens have returned to the board and are hosting a wedding ceremony in the center squares
White’s rook (bird) discovered it had free will and is functionally on a third side. it attacks every piece it sees.
White’s modernized bishop (both of White’s traditionalist bishops refused to hold a same-sex marriage) officiates the wedding, which was nearly crashed by Black’s remaining knight getting drunk at the minibar and getting into a fistfight with White’s rook (tower)
Black’s pawns are hiding in fear from White’s rook (bird)
White’s rook (bird) is circling ominously above White’s king
White’s king cannot run from a bird
it appears that Black has won the game, by White’s rook (bird) checkmating White’s king
the players shake hands, congratulating eachother for a good game
And that, ladies, gentlemen & all in between, is Tumblr Chess.
I feel like this would be a slippery slope towards making it illegal for people to choose to not vote.
that’s already how it is in australia
That’s just so fucked up. :( Do certain medical conditions exempt you?
?????? why is it be fucked up to have compulsory voting? that’s the way it is in most democratic countries? it’s a part of being a citizen, like paying taxes and obeying speed limits? the fine for not voting is only like $50 and because of the compulsory voting law, our country bends over backwards to make it accessible: it’s always on a weekend, lasts most of the day, and is set up at schools and community centers so there’s one within easy reach of almost everybody. you can also mail your ballot or vote early if you’ll be out of the country on the day. like, IT’S EASY TO VOTE, and the penalty isn’t even that ridiculous. i don’t understand why the usa doesn’t have this, except obviously it would make it harder to literally stop minorities from voting.
I think we Americans tend to forget that a lot of other countries don’t actively work to make it harder to vote.
Adding to this here, in Australia you don’t have to vote. Or, more precisely, there’s no way they can tell if you ruined your ballot. You have to turn up, get your name marked off, but you can put a line through the ballot if you don’t think any of the candidates are worth voting for. Or do this:
Or this:
Or this:
You have get your name crossed off (if you don’t want to wear the fine), but you don’t have to make your vote counted if you’re opposed to it.
And it is so, so easy to vote. Stuck at work or on holidays? That’s fine. Do a postal vote. Stuck in hospital? That’s fine. They’ll go to you. Stuck in an old people’s home and can’t get around? Again, they’ll go to you. It’s amazing to me that it’s so hard for so many Americans to actually vote. If you make it compulsory, than at least the government is obligated to provide you with the means to vote.
And look, I get it. Sometimes I don’t want to vote either. But I suck it up, I walk three minutes down the street, and I hope that this year they’re selling lamingtons again. Oh, and I buy a democracy sausage, which, even if all the candidates suck, makes the effort of turning up pretty worthwhile.
ALSO, you can see even on the fucked up ballots that you NUMBER CANDIDATES IN ORDER OF PREFERENCE. There’s no need to calculate whether I would be throwing away my vote on the candidate that I most agree with if they’re not from a major party. I can say, I want that independent person to get in, but if not them, give me Big Party A, and if not them, that minor party person is still better that Big Party B, and I’m not giving any preference to the Lunatic Fringe Party.
Our system certainly has some issues still, but I can show up to somewhere nearby, line up for a few minutes (if at all), vote exactly in line with my values (on paper, leaving a paper trail that can be recounted), and then buy a sausage and some home made cupcakes on my way out.
A country’s voting system matters a hell of a lot and every citizen deserves one that makes it easy to vote and results in a government that is representational and accountable.
And by the way, one time I had a bad asthma flare-up on Election Day and didn’t make it to my polling station. I got my fine in the mail, I filled out the form explaining why I couldn’t vote, no more fine. I would rather have, you know, expressed my preference for who should run my country, but they were cool with the fact that I couldn’t do it that day.
“oh no, what if people actually have to participate in picking the government officials who will impact their lives” jesus christ
For the last time, for everyone who still doesn’t understand: not voting is not a tool of resistance, it’s a tool of surrender.
so i’m currently working at a law firm and the other day one of the attorneys was talking to me and he mentioned that he’s “not very confrontational” and i was like you are?? a lawyer???
and he said “yeah but in court there are rules. i can argue with some shmuck in a suit in front of a judge no problem, but when i leave the courthouse and go home i’m not gonna argue with my wife about dinner. there are no rules in our kitchen. i would die.”
one aspect of avatar canon i feel like isn’t talked about nearly enough is the fact that zuko canonically has prophetic dreams
like during zuko’s Morality Coma in season 2 he has an incredibly vivid dream about two red and blue dragons, and then in season 3 he just fucking. meets the exact same dragons for real? there are slight differences in how they look but otherwise he genuinely just dreamed about ran and shaw months before actually seeing them in person? and it’s never elaborated on but huh???
zuko: yeah i had some weird fever dreams. there were like these two dragons circling me, and the blue one sounded like azula and wanted me to die or whatever, and the red one sounded like you and was telling me not to do that—
iroh, the only person in this house who should know what those fucking dragons look like: hey What
zuko for sure keeps having dreams like this for YEARS without connecting the dots that it’s weird spirit shenanigans. aang eventually has to point it out to him and even then he thinks it’s Uncle Bullshit for several more years
anyway all that is to say that there exists a version of avatar in my mind where instead of him just running straight through Makapu with june that one time, we get to see a full 20 minute ep of aunt wu trying to convince zuko that he has The Gift, and zuko just sitting there like ugh god why are old people so weird
well unfortunately it really fucking didn’t, is the thing
not enough people really know what credit is for, so it bears repeating:
if I see art I like and want to see more of it, Credit is what gets me to the artist so I can see more of it.
If I’m writing a novel and I see an art style that would be perfect for a cover design, credit is what gets me to the artist so I can pay them for a commission.
If I see something I know my partner would love, credit is what takes me to the website of the artist where I can buy a poster that the original artist gets paid for.
If I see Plagiarism, I need to know who to notify to stop stealing my art, and if they don’t who to report.
Most artists (even the ones with thousands of followers) have a hard time making a living off of art. Giving credit means giving a pathway to the source.
Saying you didn’t make it isn’t the point, you need to say who did.
Saying you didn’t
make it isn’t the point, you
need to say who did.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
There’s a user called Erika Horn (@erikahorn.art) on tiktok who made a “duet me” challenge so technically impressive that all of the duets are exactly like this LMAO
“In 1984, when Ruth Coker Burks was 25 and a young mother living in Arkansas, she would often visit a hospital to care for a friend with cancer.
During one visit, Ruth noticed the nurses would draw straws, afraid to go into one room, its door sealed by a big red bag. She asked why and the nurses told her the patient had AIDS.
On a repeat visit, and seeing the big red bag on the door, Ruth decided to disregard the warnings and sneaked into the room.
In the bed was a skeletal young man, who told Ruth he wanted to see his mother before he died. She left the room and told the nurses, who said, “Honey, his mother’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming!”
Ruth called his mother anyway, who refused to come visit her son, who she described as a “sinner” and already dead to her, and that she wouldn’t even claim his body when he died.
“I went back in his room and when I walked in, he said, “Oh, momma. I knew you’d come”, and then he lifted his hand. And what was I going to do? So I took his hand. I said, “I’m here, honey. I’m here”, Ruth later recounted.
Ruth pulled a chair to his bedside, talked to him
and held his hand until he died 13 hours later.
After finally finding a funeral home that would his body, and paying for the cremation out of her own savings, Ruth buried his ashes on her family’s large plot.
After this first encounter, Ruth cared for other patients. She would take them to appointments, obtain medications, apply for assistance, and even kept supplies of AIDS medications on hand, as some pharmacies would not carry them.
Ruth’s work soon became well known in the city and she received financial assistance from gay bars, “They would twirl up a drag show on Saturday night and here’d come the money. That’s how we’d buy medicine, that’s how we’d pay rent. If it hadn’t been for the drag queens, I don’t know what we would have done”, Ruth said.
Over the next 30 years, Ruth cared for over 1,000 people and buried more than 40 on her family’s plot most of whom were gay men whose families would not claim their ashes.
For this, Ruth has been nicknamed the ‘Cemetery Angel’.”— by Ra-Ey Saley
She’s 60 now, she’s still doing activist and advocacy work, and working on a memoir.
my favorite thing about this story is that ruth had inherited a large family graveyard and never really knew wtf she was going to do w dozens and dozens of empty grave plots but then the AIDS crisis happened and she realized what she could do with it
When Burks was a girl, she said, her mother got in a final, epic row with Burks’ uncle. To make sure he and his branch of the family tree would never lie in the same dirt as the rest of them, Burks said, her mother quietly bought every available grave space in the cemetery: 262 plots. They visited the cemetery most Sundays after church when she was young, Burks said, and her mother would often sarcastically remark on her holdings, looking out over the cemetery and telling her daughter: “Someday, all of this is going to be yours.”
“I always wondered what I was going to do with a cemetery,” she said. “Who knew there’d come a time when people didn’t want to bury their children?”
She hasn’t been back to Files Cemetery since her stroke. While she made sure it was kept up back when she lived in Hot Springs, it appeared to have been let go a bit when the reporter visited in late December, some of the tombstones pushed over and broken, the snag of a dead oak left to rot among the graves. Even without knowing the story of the place, it might have been downright spooky if not for the constant stream of traffic cruising by at 10 miles an hour over the speed limit.
Before she’s gone, she said, she’d like to see a memorial erected in the cemetery. Something to tell people the story. A plaque. A stone. A listing of the names of the unremembered dead that lie there.
“Someday,” she said, “I’d love to get a monument that says: This is what happened. In 1984, it started. They just kept coming and coming. And they knew they would be remembered, loved and taken care of, and that someone would say a kind word over them when they died.”
