Rutger Bregman Is The Dutch Historian Who Became A Global Sensation After An Appearance At This Year’s

A realization I have had about Riz and Adaine living together; Adaine would probably be the last one to see Riz before he dies and then would probably have to go through his things afterwards.

Adaine was the one to go through most of her friends things in the end but Riz was for sure the first. She could never throw out all of it though, most of his stuff ended up in storage boxes then placed inside his briefcase that lived in the spare room of any house she ever lived in.

Her kitchen cupboards always had a good half-dozen mugs she never used because they were Riz's too and every time she moved his furniture would be put right back the way he liked it.

Hey, I made a short, simple game that you can play here for free. It’s about helping others and finding the courage to confront your own darkest thoughts and insecurities ✌️💚

Putting powdered sugar on the post below

love reading about the Great Rapprochement. Arthur spends 1895 to 1915 metaphorically kneeling on the ground going pspspspsps in Alfred’s general direction mostly getting ignored but occasionally getting an increasingly half-hearted “go fuck yourself” in response. it’s fantastic. look at this.

German Ambassador Bernstoff, a shrewd observer, reported in 1911, “The British efforts [to cultivate America] are meeting with a certain return of platonic affection. The old rooted dislike to England is gradually vanishing… But it is not accompanied by any wish to offer anything in return.” In hard diplomatic coin, the Americans took but they did not give. British ministries from Salisbury to Asquith made important concessions of substance and form to the United States. These statesmen gained not alliance nor even true reciprocity, but the elimination of grounds of conflict, occasional and essentially “platonic” or negative support in world politics, and above all a transformation of American attitudes which would pay immense dividends after 1914. While other factors propelled America in the same direction, British policy from 1895 to 1914 was the indispensable element.

I love it. Arthur hasn’t been this nice to Alfred since 1754 and Alfred is completely weirded out and has absolutely no idea what to do with this. so he just keeps being belligerent and Arthur just keeps being nice until eventually Alfred is sitting at a table in Arthur’s garden wondering how the fuck he came to the point where he’s having literal tea parties with the old fucker. 

meanwhile Matthew, Jack, and Eliza are just as weirded out. maybe Matthew less so than Jack and Eliza but like. it’s still really fucking weird when Alfred says things that would get Jack sent to boot camp in the most remote part of the Canadian wilderness and Arthur just smiles. Duncan, Morgan, and Erin are much less surprised, since obviously they remember how much Arthur loved Alfred as a child. on the whole, Duncan thinks it’s funny, Morgan is relieved and pleased, and Erin is utterly disgusted lol. like c’mon, Al, don’t listen to him. he’s so full of shit you know he’s full of shit. 

alas, the end of WW1 proves Erin right and Alfred goes right back to belligerent and aloof (though perhaps not near as much as pre-1895).

thinking about Aasimar au warlock Kristen again (wow what a series of words lmao) so have some more silly thoughts about it:

- when Kristen first multiclasses Fig says "don't worry, I got you, I know a lady" and drags them both to see Zara. Zara looks at these two (Kristen, literally about to vibrate out of existence with excitement and happiness, Riz, looking like he's five seconds away from hyperventilating to death) and is like "oh this one's gonna be interesting"

- Zara Sool takes one look at this poor rogue-paladin-patron who looks like he's gonna have a mental breakdown, but deep in his heart trusts Kristen enough to dedicate his love and his time and his magic and his oath and his goddamn soul to this girl (warlock relationships are about exchange, after all, even if he doesn't know that yet. Kristen isn't the only one who's handed away her soul to safer hands with this) and says ">:) I'm gonna trick this boy into talking about his feelings." the following conversation goes pretty much like this:

Zara: look it's really safer for Kristen herself if you tell her what's going on with yourself emotionally, otherwise you might make a faulty contract, which will put her soul in danger.

passive investigation of 21 Riz: >:((( you're trying to guilt trip me

Zara: yeah, is it working????

Riz: ..............maybe

- following Zara's intervention, Riz and Kristen sit down and have a real conversation about their fears and their struggles and the things they want from their lives. Riz admits that he's scared that none of them will stay together after high school and that's why he's pushing so hard to keep them together. Kristen tells him that, yeah, she can't guarantee what will happen after high school, but that they're all prepared to work to keep their friendships, and that she in particular is gonna make sure she's always always friends with him. Kristen talks about the specific things she's been struggling with between school and her religion and they make a plan to help her and also actually talk to Jawbone and Sandra Lynn because Jesus this girl needs help. so after this conversation they make the most detailed fucking contract that has ever been (Riz's anxiety goes crazy) and they show up back to warlock class like "is this good?" and present Zara with an absolute mess of a document that is overflowing with footnotes and sticky notes and annotations and is written in this unholy mess of common-goblin-celestial-rogue cipher, but she kinda quizzes them on it, and lo and behold, they have it fucking memorized

- Riz is still pretty worried so Zara fully enlists her paramour to come down and talk him into being a little bit calmer. Zara and her paramour think this is the cutest thing ever.

- Zara tells Riz he can audit warlock class if he's still nervous about it but he's like "fuck no, if I'm taking a class I am damn well gonna get credit for it" and gets his mcat signed to do three classes. Fig-Kristen-Riz are the terrors of the warlock class but also the best students Zara has ever had. everyone both loves and hates them in there (but mostly loves. they're just too cool)

-after The Conversation, Kristen drags Riz to have another Conversation with the rest of the bad kids, and they echo all her sentiments about staying friends even if they go their separate ways after high school (except Adaine and Riz, who nail down that at least they are gonna go to college together). so even though it feels super unnatural, Riz kind of takes a breath like a whole half a year early. he stops pushing them so hard to perform academically, but the rest of them finally understand why he was doing that, and also understand the consequences of the party failing a little more. so they're all just trying their best, but more organically

- Kristen is technically borrowing from Riz's well of power, and he's not like, a full angel or anything (yet) but magic is a muscle. the more you use it, the stronger it gets. and again, warlock relationships are about exchange. so what happens is that as soon as Kristen starts using her warlock magic routinely, Riz finds that his smites are getting more powerful??? his radiant soul damage is increasing???? he suddenly has access to spell slots he shouldn't??? turns out, power borrowed is power returned, and while his power base is incredible, Kristen is a much more accomplished spellcaster than he is, so she exercises his magic more effectively than he does, and he starts getting more powerful as she gets more comfortable in her powers

-Riz can feel whenever Kristen is using her warlock powers. sometimes she'll start eldritch blasting shit for fun along with fig and five minutes later her crystal will start blowing up like "kristen what are your doing that requires eldritch blast every ten seconds" and then she has to admit that she and fig were seeing who could eldritch blast tin cans off the roof of mordred better

-Riz's wings kind of start to, for lack of a better word, calcify? like, they're still intangible, but they start sticking around even when he's not in radiant soul form. just two ghostly, intangible wings always hanging out, and they only start to really glow when he actually turns on Radiant Soul. he has a flying speed now. he's also frantically researching whether or not its possible for aasimar to start organically rising to angelhood because THIS ISN'T NORMAL, KRISTEN STOP TRYING TO GRAB THEM! (everyone else is so enamoured with his wings. he starts using them like his tail to wrap around people and even though they're intangible everyone swears up and down that they feel cooler and calmer and safer when wrapped up in a Riz wing)

-Kristen and Riz start to more or less have the same magical signature because they're sharing so much power. a side effect of this is that if Kristen is in the room, and Riz is stealthing, even casting something like Detect Evil and Good won't give him away, because his aura is so much like Kristen's and vice versa. they abuse this relentlessly to get Clues. kristen is team distraction and riz is team extraction

-at some point Adaine approaches the two of them like "hey all this stuff that's happening is totally fascinating, can I write a research paper about it?"

"sure," says Riz, "but only if you list us as co-contributors for college credit and stuff"

"well, duh," responds Adaine, and the three of them proceed to make the most detailed paper the world has ever seen about the magical and physical effects of a patron-warlock relationship between two mortals. it comes out sometime in their senior year and the magical research community loses their shit

-Kristen gets up to second level warlock in junior year, and her eldritch invocations are Eldritch Mind and Eyes of the Rune Keeper. the first time she realizes she can just read every single language her friends speak she cries. also she's sooooo scary now. she can hold two concentrations at once AND has advantage on concentration checks. terrifying.

-soooo many prospective warlock students start approaching riz and fig for warlock powers. they didn't know you could just ask normal students!!! (riz and fig are not normal students but that is beside the point.) fig thinks it is amusing. riz thinks it is stressful. kristen thinks it is fucking stupid, like, it's not like he's gonna share, no, I'm not jealous, what are you talking about? at one point it gets so frustrating for riz that he gets up on a table in the middle of the lunch period and shouts "blanket statement for everyone who is not in my party, NO I WILL NOT BE YOUR PATRON, STOP ASKING!!!" the bad kids think it's the funniest thing, but they're also being hella protective of riz and fig. everyone stop BOTHERING them, no they're NOT interested in being your patron!! the number of physical fights that they've all gotten in because of this, in order of least to most, is riz (2, on behalf of fig), kristen (3, on behalf of riz), fig (5, on behalf of riz), fabian (7, on behalf of both), gorgug (8, on behalf of both), and adaine (14, on behalf of both). after about a month everyone has mostly taken the hint

-kristen develops a terrible habit of just. hexing anyone who even remotely annoys her. you were breathing too obnoxiously in class today? blocked hexed. you said something mildly shitty about one of her friends? hexed. aelwyn took the last bagel at breakfast and she really wanted it? hexed. she's experiencing the newfound freedom of being a hater. riz is texting her like "kristen why are you hexing someone at nine in the morning" and she's like "I am experiencing little sister rage for the first time in my life, leave me alone"

-Buddy Dawn does not know what the fuck to make of Kristen's warlock multiclass. she makes him fully bluescreen. Bobby Dawn and Kipperlilly, on the other hand, are absolutely incandescent with rage. they're gonna die mad about it.

-on the other end of the spectrum, Kristen and Riz break Bucky's brain open. he speedruns the emotional crisis that Kristen had freshman year when he Divine Senses their magical connection and nearly cries because he can feel this absolutely overwhelming love. he never knew anyone else could love kristen than fiercely. nothing that full of love could ever be bad

-ooouuuuuugggghhhhh there comes a terrible scene between riz and cassandra where she is like "she believes in you more than me" and riz has to be like "maybe. but that doesn't mean she doesn't believe in you. kristen has enough faith to go around. and so do I. I'm still counting on you too." it's about sharing the most important person in your life. self-recognition through the other (bittersweet). "I see why she loves you so much" says cassandra, and for the first time riz doesn't sort of still feel the nightmare king beneath her, and for the first time she feels him as someone to exist alongside without competing with. and riz, who is kind of sort of maybe ascending to angelhood, is not really becoming an angel of cassandra's pantheon, but he's also not not becoming that

-just. augh. kristen and riz are literally so sickeningly happy as patron and warlock. absolutely attached at the hip. best friends of all time. saint kristen applebees and her own personal guardian angel. they make me ill

anyway that is all, thank you for coming to my TED talk

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but this feels vaguely relevant…

Read the full text of It Can’t Happen Here on Project Gutenberg: X

since I’m thinking about this instead of studying for bar prep:

people in general tend to assume that a person who’s been arrested is either innocent or guilty. and if they’re guilty, then they deserve fewer rights than the innocent person.

like, if the police break into an innocent person’s house and look for drugs, we recognize that it’s a bad thing and a gross violation of rights. but if the police break into someone’s house and do find drugs, well, that’s just what they deserved. we’d all be upset if the police started randomly murdering people on the street for no reason, but many wouldn’t mind if the police started randomly killing known child molesters. it’s not okay if the police plant evidence to frame an innocent man for murder, but if they know he’s the murderer and plant evidence to help the case along? well, that’s unfortunate but necessary.

there are three problems with this:

You cannot always know with certainty who’s innocent and who’s guilty;

A two-tiered “innocent” and “guilty” legal structure will always be used against innocent marginalized people;

Even guilty people have rights.

this happens a lot on tumblr. not exclusively on tumblr (it’s also a major aspect of most “gritty” police dramas and almost all comics), but it’s definitely there. like, calls to summarily execute rapists sound great in theory, because we all agree that rape is evil. except for when it’s used to kill innocent black men who looked the wrong way at a white woman. 

and there are people who will say that no, of course, the problem isn’t summarily killing rapists, the problem is summarily killing the wrong people (that is, innocent people). which, again, you can’t know who’s innocent and who’s guilty - lots of innocent people aren’t sweet old ladies who’ve never done anything wrong, or have perfect alibis and never contradict themselves. hell, being guilty of a crime in the past doesn’t mean that they committed this specific crime that they’ve been accused of.

and even if they are guilty - even if they are stone-cold, unrepentantly guilty - they still have rights. that’s what “innocent until proven guilty” means. it means that stripping someone of their legal rights is a big fucking deal, so no matter how guilty Obvious McCriminal looks, you still have to follow the rules we’ve set in place to prevent abuses. 

like, it’s not that every person who’s ever been treated shittily by police and the court system is actually innocent, so therefore the system is bad. it’s that we have a system that treats people like shit once we’ve decided they’re guilty, regardless of when the decision is made, and we’re okay with that. after conviction? definitely. after arrest? yup. before arrest, because we just have a feeling about them? sure.

and I get why people make posts or write stories about guilty people being treated badly. wanting vengeance is a powerful emotion. grief and anger are powerful emotions. it is not unnatural to want to hurt people who have hurt others. people like the idea of karma, of cosmic scales balancing out the hurt and suffering inflicted by a person by making them suffer back. I’m not saying that no one is allowed to have those feelings. 

I’m just saying that there are implications behind them that are deeply disturbing (“if I decide you’re guilty, you’re less of a person to me”) and that it’s the primary driving force behind most of the issues in our criminal justice system.

INTERSEX IS NOT LGBT. IT’S A MEDICAL CONDITION. DON’T INCLUDE US IN YOUR COMMUNITY UNLESS WE ARE LGBT.

I AM LGBT AND INTERSEX. I AM NOT LGBT”QI…” THERE IS NO I. I AM SIMPLY LGBT. DON’T INCLUDE MY MEDICAL CONDITION INTO YOUR IDENTITY. YOU CANNOT BE DIAGNOSED WITH GAY. YOU CAN BE DIAGNOSED WITH INTERSEXISM. THERE’S A DIFFERENCE. WE HAVE OUR OWN COMMUNITY. STOP BEING SO INCLUSIVE. YOU’RE GONNA END UP INCLUDING FURRIES IF YOU INCLUDE US.

Indigenous people in Attawapiskat cannot drink their water or bathe themselves, and haven’t been able to for weeks. They called a state of emergency.

What is Justin Trudeau’s response?

1 litre per day of water for kids under 2 years old. 1.5 litres per elder. The Tribal council must pay for this water in advance before they can be reimbursed next month.

This is shameful.

https://twitter.com/CharlieAngusNDP/status/1152558561496616961

Tagging: @abpoli @politicsofcanada @onpoli @torontopoli @ontarionewsnow

like to get jason verified next update

reblog if you want him to keep suffering

F for Jason Todd tbh 😔😔😔

p.s. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR THE LOVELY MESSAGES ABOUT ME GETTING THE POSITION!! it's not actually a job, it's a non-profit student organization!!! but i'm beyond glad to be part of it!!!