“I heard so many arguments which have failed to turn the head, and which have turned enough heads to make them agree to the murder, That I came to realize that the misfortune of men is just that they did not speak the same language.”
― The plague (1947)
“J’ai entendu tant de raisonnements qui ont failli me tourner la tête, et qui ont tourné suffisamment d’autres têtes pour les faire consentir à l’assassinat, que j'ai compris que tout le malheur des hommes venait de ce qu'ils ne tenaient pas un langage clair.”
― La Peste (1947)
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Home by Warsan Shire
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here
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Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating!
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so i’m back from my loooong hiatus and all i have to say for myself is that i’ve been dabbling in some html/css and i’ve made things here.
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Luke takes center stage in another vintage promotional poster from Coca Cola. (#2 of 4)
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On the Millennium Falcon, and the issue of Parsecs...
I’ve heard the discussion about Han Solo’s famous “Kessel Run” time and time again - both inside the Star Wars community and outside it. Common consensus seems to be that Han Solo’s boast that the Falcon could do the run in 12 parsecs indicates that Solo has no idea what a parsec is, or else relies on the fact that his audience doesn’t know.
This discussion relies on two main facts:
A parsec is a unit of measurement equivalent to roughly 3.26 light-years. This means that a parsec is a unit of distance, not a unit of time.
The Kessel Run is a smuggling route in the Star Wars universe, running illicit spice from the spice mines of Kessel to its destination worlds. It is not a commonly-used trade route, partially because the route is fraught with danger - especially “The Maw” cluster of black holes.
The main mistake people seem to make when discussing this issue is believing that Han is boasting about the Falcon’s speed. This is understandable, because Han often boasts about the Falcon’s speed in other situations, and it is natural to assume that a vehicle owner boasts about the speed of their vehicle because that is what we Earthlings are used to when discussing cars and other machines.
As such, they think that Han is purporting that “12 Parsecs” is a quantification of the Falcon’s immense velocity.
This is an incorrect assumption, however. What Han is actually boasting about is the Falcon’s ability to safely navigate the dangerous Kessel Run by the shortest possible route.
Travelling at hyperspace is not a simple matter of moving the ship directly from A to B, since there are doubtless hundreds or thousands of intervening planets, stars, asteroids, and other dangers. A ship’s computer must be programmed with a route which avoids such obstacles - usually giving them a wide berth, just to be on the safe side. The computer can also adjust itself en route if an unforeseen hazard presents itself.
Han Solo programs the Falcon’s computer system to fly as close to these hazards - especially the forbidding Maw Cluster - as is possible without being destroyed. Most other pilots would see this behaviour as foolhardy, but Han apparently doesn’t care. Because the Falcon is programmed to fly closer to these obstacles than most other pilots would dare consider, it needs to “steer” far less, and so can traverse the route in a straighter line than any other starship. This means that the Falcon completes the Kessel Run in a shorter distance than other ships - a mere 12 parsecs.
This is backed up in The Force Awakens when Rey, impressed that the ‘hunk of junk’ she’s aboard is the Millennium Falcon, marvels that “This is the ship which ran the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs”. Han corrects her by saying “12″. This therefore implies that 12 parsecs is more impressive than 14 - something which is totally in keeping with the above.
Han isn’t talking out of his arse when he boasts about the Falcon’s record, nor is he demonstrating his lack of understanding of interstellar measurements. He’s just not talking about what many people think he’s talking about, which is their own lack of understanding, not Han’s.
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You've never gotten high?
one time i was at this party where everyone was high and i was the only one not smoking and this dude told me “those that are above the influence….. are always the highest of them all” and that will stick with me forever
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Get out.
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JETTE STOLTZ
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