”there has been a dire shortage of trained air traffic controllers for years”
“the FAA director resigned on inauguration day because Elon Musk demanded he quit”
“trump’s hiring freeze means no new air traffic controllers are being hired”
“Musk’s ‘resign or get fired’ email went to every ATC too”
First deadly commercial air crash in the US since 2009 occurs
“It’s because of DEI!”
holy shit fuck off
rules for thee and not for me
“There are so many outrages around the U.S. flights of 238 Venezuelan men to El Salvador’s CECOT maximum security prison that it’s hard to pick which outrage to focus on. That so many of these alleged gang members have no criminal record, and that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, an acronym that’s becoming as notorious as the KGB) seemingly singled out some for their innocuous tattoos, including the emblem of the Real Madrid soccer club? That ICE allegedly tricked its detainees into signing papers that falsely claimed they were going to Venezuela, and is weakly defending itself against the charge that it defied a federal judge’s order to turn the planes around? That Trump himself knows that CECOT is a vile hellhole, and joked about sending Tesla showroom vandals there, even as he claims no memory of signing the order that doomed the Venezuelans?”
—
The frog of democracy is nearly boiled. We can still jump out of the pot
I will never forget and I will never forgive the people who did this to us.
The tragedy of my life is that I keep acquiring and displaying fetish art and having to be corrected by my friends.
Most recently, a friend came over my house and saw my computer background and went, "Wow, um, I didn't know you were into that." To which I look at the picture of the well drawn muscular female minotaur in historically accurate Greek clothing and I start geeking out about how I love the detail the artist did with the clothing and I point out the period appropriate folds and pins, how the artist even inserted the native plant that was used to dye the clothing this particular shade in the background, and even how the belt has technology AND historically accurate weaving patterns on it.
Then I start explaining how I love the muscular choices of the minotaur, that I was so impressed with the artist's anatomically correct depiction of the muscles converging into the neck. That many people get an upright cow's neck wrong because cow's don't have collarbones, so it can be very difficult to merge the upper arms and a chest of a human with a cow's body. I draw her attention to the beautiful way they've merged the pectoralis major so smoothly while also staying true to how muscular they've depicted the rest of the body.
I finish up with my thoughts on the artist's bold choice to depict the minotaur as a female, and despite the underlying themes of a minotaur being violence, child murder, strength, and muscles. I segue into how unlike bulls, cow are perceived as mothers. That they are the major source of milk in human culture, and that idyllic depictions of them in a field usually depict calves frolicking nearby, yet the minotaur kills and eats children.
I finish and there is a long pause.
"Urban, this is fetish art." and she takes me to the artist's twitter and god dammit it's fetish art, not a bold statement on cultural perceptions of women and violence throughout history. I have been tricked again.
It's worth noting that there are some extraordinary people in the world who have been quietly doing the work for decades, and they should be celebrated with all the fervor that we denounce the villains. I first read about Harrison twenty-odd years ago, when he'd already been doing this for about fifty years, and this is one of those guys whose life can, indeed, be summed up by his headline.
James Harrison saved millions of lives. Millions. Not with anything flashy or dramatic, not with profound speeches or brilliant strategy or any of the things we insist are the ways to impact the world. He simply kept himself as healthy as possible so that every few weeks he could go and sit quietly in a room and give away a fundamental part of himself — quite literally his lifeblood — to people he'd never meet, for no pay and no expectation of acknowledgement. (He was, it should be said, acknowledged quite a lot per this article, but that's beside the point.)
When we talk about the kind of people we want to elevate and celebrate in our societies, I often think of people like James Harrison. I hope we get more of him; not just for his blood, but for his heart.
Lopunny but in Seonhee's fit from Yakuza 7
Just reminder:
Fuck ICE
Death to Trump and his billionaire buddies
Always punch Nazis