#Reconstruction

[short-wooloo]

I've seen it said that the Engineer is more villainous/evil in Superman (2025) compared to her comic counterpart but I don't think this is the case

I think the Engineer's "more villainous" portrayal is less a case of an adaptation making a character more evil and more a case of what happens when you genre transplant a character

See, I the Authority comics that Engineer and the titular team come from, they're not really heroes, nominal ones at best, but heroes they're not, the writer himself said they were only "heroes" because they were fighting people even worse than they were, which is a whole thing about the universe the Authority characters hail from, everyone is an asshole

So in a universe more like the one her comic counterpart originally hails from, in a darker, deconstructive, cynical, or satirical setting Engineer would be a hero, the alien with God like powers would be out to conquer, enslave, and/or exterminate humanity, and the Engineer and people like Luthor would be right to be suspicious and hateful of aliens

But that's not the setting Superman (2025) is, this is an optimistic, bright, reconstructive and ernest universe, the god-alien is here only to help humanity out of the goodness of his heart, and Engineer/Luthor are hateful bigots

[deadpresidents]

"I regard [the President] as a foolish and stubborn man, doing even right things in a wrong way, and in a position where the evil that he does is immensely increased by the manner of his doing it."

-- Senator John Sherman of Ohio, on President Andrew Johnson, March 1, 1868.

This sounds very familiar in 2025.

[blaczeko]

One of my favorite birds is the bittern and one of my favourite dinosaurs is troodon! That's why I combined them into one! By giving this prehistoric creature a marking inspired by this wonderful bird.

[thelostmuses]

Harry Pontefract 2014 graduate collection at Westminster

[datgreenmonstah]

Shaping and fleshing is now done, I can move on the paper macheing and then painting it finally. Really happy with how the mouth shape came out as they have a similar shape imo to eagles where it hooks at the top but smooths out instead of pointing up towards the upper mandible on the bottom compared to other theropods and raptors.

Hope to have this finished soon.

[contemplatingoutlander]

How Trump Upended 60 Years of Civil Rights in Two Months

An assault on federal protections may bring about a new era of unchecked discrimination.

"Since returning to power, Trump has used his singular authority as the head of the federal government to recast the white majority as the primary victims of systemic racial discrimination — though no evidence, not even self-reporting among white people, shows this to be true."

—Nikole Hannah-James, The New York Times Magazine (June 27, 2025)

Nikole Hannah-James does a masterful job of reporting on all the ways Trump has turned civil rights in this country on its head. She also provides a historical example of "how quickly racial progress can disappear" by showing how, in the late 19th century, the Old South rapidly dismantled the considerable Black racial progress that had happened under Reconstruction. This is a gift 🎁 link so there is no paywall. Below are some excerpts.

[...] On his second day in office, President Donald Trump labeled O.F.C.C.P.’s [Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs] efforts to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act illegal and discriminatory — presumably against white people. He signed his own executive order revoking Johnson’s on behalf of, as he put it, “hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American dream.”

Within the week, Trump’s acting secretary of labor ordered the O.F.C.C.P. to “immediately cease and desist all investigative and enforcement activity” and close all open cases. A few weeks later, O.F.C.C.P.’s acting director proposed slashing its staff by 90 percent. In fewer than two months, six decades of civil rights enforcement was essentially dead.

Trump has justified these actions by claiming he is rooting out racial discrimination disguised as “diversity, equity and inclusion.” Indeed, the other federal agency charged with investigating employment discrimination, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, recently created a page on its website dedicated to helping white Americans file complaints based on being victimized by diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

But to see what Trump is doing as simply eliminating so-called “D.E.I.” is to misunderstand the scale and the consequences. What’s at stake is not only corporate diversity trainings, equity offices and the use of pronouns in email signatures. Many diversity, equity and inclusion programs were put in place to help ensure compliance with civil rights laws and to foster integration in a society that for most of its history explicitly discriminated against Black Americans. No court has deemed these programs illegal. Yet in the opening months of his second term, Trump has capitalized on the unpopularity of equality efforts among some Americans, glibly wielding the language of D.E.I. to initiate the broadest and most significant assault on civil rights and racial integration in this country in more than a century.

Since returning to power, Trump has used his singular authority as the head of the federal government to recast the white majority as the primary victims of systemic racial discrimination — though no evidence, not even self-reporting among white people, shows this to be true. In addition to upending long-established enforcement of civil rights law in employment, he has undermined civil rights protections in housing and education and environmental policy; crippled or shuttered entire federal civil rights agencies; and retracted federal findings of civil rights violations against police departments. He has forced by mandate, threat and coercion the elimination of policies and cultural norms focused on integration and equality throughout government, education and the private sector. Trump has claimed — though he has no authority to do so — to have repealed birthright citizenship, which was embedded in the Constitution at the end of slavery to guarantee Black Americans citizenship by birthright and grants automatic citizenship to all people born on American soil.

[thesilicontribesman]

Rare survival of an embossed, high status leather shoe, excavated at Dundurn hillfort near St Fillans, 700-900 CE, Perth Museum, Scotland.

Displayed next to a modern reconstruction. Courtesy of Pictavia Leather.

[sparrow-the-tired-lesbian]

Sometimes I think about how the vast majority of western Christians that I’ve ever met use their religion as blackmail and really don’t care much about their God nor their people, and the vast majority of Hellenic Polytheists I’ve met have been kissed by the gods and seek to share that joy through love and compassion.

[yridenergyridenergy]

A gift to Kaoru fans: full-body reconstruction!

[fidjiefidjie]

L'éclat retrouvé ⛪️🗼de Notre-Dame de Paris

Source: Famille chrétienne

👋 Bel après-midi

[scipunk]

Battle Angel Alita (1993)

[the-spirit-of-yore]

Château de Pierrefonds, Picardie, France

[joitiks]

dilophosaurus wetherilli

~commission info~

[tobebuild]

Brouwerij Atlas, Brussels RE-ST, Atelier Kempe Thill 2024 (reconstruction)

[arinzeture]

During Reconstruction (1865-1877) approximately 2,000 African American men held public office at various levels of government, including two U.S. senators and twenty congressmen. However, the subsequent white backlash eradicated these advancements and omitted this period from American history books.