the universe: okay, you’re a human. I gave you free will and a conscious mind, so you’re free to do whatever you want. So what do you wanna do?
human: GO FAST
the universe: well, you’re a perfect pursuit predator but if that’s the way you want to evolve, go ahead.
human, climbing on a horse: GO FAST
the universe: wait what
human, inventing the carriage, the car and the bullet train: GO FASTER
the universe: I IMPLORE YOU TO STOP
human, trying to figure out lightspeed travel: FAS T ER
human:
THEORETICALLY MAXIMUM FAST
the universe:
How will the people in the ship not get gibbed?
Because the warp drive doesn’t actually accelerate the ship, it just makes the space in front of it smaller and the space behind it larger. Or something.
it works like this
Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime; instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space without breaking any physical laws.
Microsoft has a DRM-locked ebook store that isn’t making enough money,
so they’re shutting it down and taking away every book that every one of
its customers acquired effective July 1.
Customers will receive refunds.
This puts the difference between DRM-locked media and unencumbered media
into sharp contrast. I have bought a lot of MP3s over the years,
thousands of them, and many of the retailers I purchased from are long
gone, but I still have the MP3s. Likewise, I have bought many books from
long-defunct booksellers and even defunct publishers, but I still own
those books.
When I was a bookseller, nothing I could do would result in your losing
the book that I sold you. If I regretted selling you a book, I didn’t
get to break into your house and steal it, even if I left you a cash
refund for the price you paid.
People sometimes treat me like my decision not to sell my books through
Amazon’s Audible is irrational (Audible will not let writers or
publisher opt to sell their books without DRM), but if you think Amazon
is immune to this kind of shenanigans, you are sadly mistaken. My books
matter a lot to me. I just paid $8,000 to have a container full of books
shipped from a storage locker in the UK to our home in LA so I can be
closer to them. The idea that the books I buy can be relegated to some
kind of fucking software license is the most grotesque and awful thing I
can imagine: if the publishing industry deliberately set out to destroy
any sense of intrinsic, civilization-supporting value in literary
works, they could not have done a better job.
If you’ve got an ereader and want to actually own your books, I heartily recommend using cailbre to scrape the DRM off and so you can backup the files.
Seconding calibre as a brilliant tool for ebook management in general.
calibre is good
and it’s free and open source software!
Cailbre helped me properly access ebooks my dad bought for me ages ago whose encryption keys had been outmoded and were no longer available for my new laptop’s os! Nearly 15 of the books he’d given me I hadn’t even had a chance to read before then, but the free copy of cailbre I got online had all of the old, outdated encryption program keys!!
When Aziraphale says, “the southern pansy,” it is a defining character moment for him. It is proof that he is not obliviously pinging everyone’s gaydar. He is making an active choice to appear as gay as possible, and is proud to do so. He intentionally chose to live in the gayborhood, and go to discrete gentlemen’s clubs, because he identifies strongly with gay culture. In this essay I will
From the beginning, I expect Aziraphale felt strangely disenfranchised amongst his own people, even though he’s never done anything specifically wrong. Even though they never see him in his private moments, or perhaps his time with Crowley, they can clock just in conversation that he is Not Like Them, and they treat him curtly, stiffly, accordingly. They probably feel awkward and uncomfortable around him, even though he isn’t doing anything like, unkind or unpleasant, just that he’s different. It isn’t anything he can help, either: it’s just the way that he is, and much as he might try to appear angelic in the right way, it’s impossible to keep it up, because it’s something undefinable that makes him noticeably different in conversation.
So why, indeed, would Aziraphale identify so much with gay people?
Why, indeed, would he go out of his way to present himself as a gay man? Not just as a matter of being non-threatening, then, but as a matter of kinda clicking with people like him – also subtly (or not subtly) pushed out by their own families, without being pushed out all the way. Gossiped about, and undergoing a great personal risk just while living his life, constantly worrying about presenting in the right angelic/straight way, constantly tiptoeing this line between being himself, and being disgraced, cast out by his family.
Folks let me talk about Crowley and sunglasses, because I have a lot of emotions about when he wears them and when he doesn’t, and Hiding versus Being Seen.
We’re introduced to the concept of Crowley wearing glasses even before we’re introduced to Crowley, by Hastur: “If you ask me he’s been up here too long. Gone native. Enjoying himself too much. Wearing sunglasses even when he doesn’t need them.”
Honestly Crowley’s whole introduction is a fantastic; we learn so much about his character in a tiny amount of time. The fact that he’s late, the Queen playing as the Bentley approaches, the “Hi, guys” in response to Hastur and Ligur’s “Hail Satan”. I like this intro much better than the one originally scripted with the rats at the phone company, but I digress.
Crowley wears sunglasses when he doesn’t need them. Specifically, he still wears them around the demons, and when he’s in hell.
You know where Crowley doesn’t wear glasses? At home.
We never once see him wearing glasses in his flat, except for when he knows Hastur and Ligur are coming. That’s an emotional kick to the gut for me. Here’s one of the only places Crowley’s comfortable enough to be sans glasses, and when he knows it’s going to be invaded he prepares not just physically with the holy water, but by putting up that emotional barrier in a place where he wasn’t supposed to need it.
An argument could be made that Crowley actually never needs glasses. We’re shown that it’s well within the angels’ and demons’ powers to pass unnoticed by humans. Crowley and Aziraphale waltz out of the manor in the middle of a police raid, and going unnoticed by the police takes so little effort that they can keep up a conversation while they stroll through. Even an unimaginative demon like Hastur apparently doesn’t have trouble with the humans losing it over his demonic eyes. The humans in the scene at Megiddo are acting like “this guy is a little weird” and not “holy shit his entire eyeballs are black jelly”
That means that Crowley’s glasses are a choice, just like Aziraphale’s softness. Sure, he could arrange matters so that nobody ever noticed his eyes, but he doesn’t want to. Crowley wants acceptance, and he wants to belong, and he’s never, ever had that. He didn’t fit in before the Fall in Heaven, he doesn’t fit in with the demons in Hell. With the glasses, and with the Bentley and his plants and with the barely-bad-enough-to-be-evil nuisance temptations, he’s choosing Earth. This is where he wants to fit in, perhaps not with the humans, but amongst them.
Even after Crowley is at his absolute lowest, when he thinks Aziraphale’s dead and he’s on his way to drink until the world ends, he takes the time to put a new pair on when the old ones are damaged. He needs that emotional crutch right now, even with everything about to turn into a pile of puddling goo he’s not ready for the world to see his eyes.
Which is why I swore out loud when Hastur forciblytakes them off.
It’s about the worst thing that Hastur could have done. Rather than leading with a physical threat, his first act is to strip away Crowley’s emotional defences. It’s a great writing choice because god it made me hate Hastur, even more than all the physical violence we see him do.
It’s also the moment that Crowley really truly gets his shit together, and focuses all of his considerable imagination on getting to Tadfield and Aziraphale to help save the world. He’s wielding the terrifyingly unimaginable power of someone who’s hit rock bottom and realised it literally could not get any worse than this. He doesn’t put another pair of glasses on after discorporating Hastur, and he spends the majority of the airbase sequence without them.
He puts them back on again, I think, at the moment that he really lets himself hope. When he thinks ‘shit, there may be a real chance that we get through this to a future that I don’t want to lose’.
The vulnerability is back, and he needs Adam to trust him. In Crowley’s mind being accepted by a human means he needs to have his eyes hidden. Someone give the demon a hug, please.
Interestingly, there’s only one time in the whole series that we see Crowley willingly choose to take his glasses off around another person. Only one person he’ll take down that barrier for, and even then he’s drunk before he does it.
Dear God/Satan/Someone that makes my heart ache. Crowley’s chosen Earth, but he’s also chosen Aziraphale. He’s been looking for somewhere to belong his entire existence, and it’s with the angel that he finally feels it.
When the dust settles and the world is saved and they finally have space to be themselves unguarded, I like to imagine Crowley takes off the glasses when it’s just the two of them; the idea of being known doesn’t scare him quite so much anymore.
talking about Rosie The Riveter, fun fact: while the We Can Do It picture has become the most-well known depiction of her in modern times, it wasn’t really a famous image when it was made–in fact, it wasn’t even intended to be her
the most famous depiction of Rosie The Riveter during WWII was probably Norman Rockwell’s painting
note what she’s resting her foot on
i fully support anti-fascist/anti-nazi butch lesbian rosie the riveter
To @kushandwizdom this is a rather unfair portrayal of Africa as a whole since half of these are literally just South Africa. So Instead to add to this post and better dispel the myth of Africa as the vast wasteland of poverty most people think, I found a much more mixed collection of pics from various countries.
Luanda, Angola
Agadir, Morocco
Lagos, Nigeria
Cairo, Egypt
Port Louis, Mauritius
Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire
Algiers, Algeria
Tripoli, Libya
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Tunis, Tunisia
So, there, a much better case demonstrating the various major cities around Africa showing it isn’t some technologically backwards continent, but actually pretty up-and-coming in the world of commerce.
I once was talking to my Ethiopian manager about ignorant people asking her dumb shit about her life before she moved to the states…
the worst story she told me about was when she told a fellow student (at a fairly prestigious university) about a concert she went to back home. The other student responded with “omg you have music there!?” 🤦🏾♀️
Rebloging, because we need to see these pictures.
As for stupid questions: “do you have grocery stores in Ecuador?”
These are great!
A redneck neighbor once asked my mom (in the 80s) if they had cars in Peru. Sigh.
This is the product of poor world history in school & little current affairs coverage outside Western Europe, except for catastrophes, so all we see are the war torn, poverty stricken, disaster-affected parts on the news. And racism, of course.
I bet most Americans who think that African countries are just completely poverty stricken have no idea what the US looks like in its poorest areas, not everywhere in the US is nice suburbs or unrealistically large apartments on tv
Los Angeles, California
Hartford, Connecticut
New Orleans, Louisiana
Camden, New Jersey
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
McDowell County, West Virginia
Flint, Michigan
Washington, D.C.
this American girl asked me if we had sparkling water in Korea…. sis….. I have a soda maker at home….
