macarthurfranceshoweblog

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It's Juneteenth yall. And I'm not letting this day go unmarked.

Black people fight for everybody. We stand in solidarity with women, lgbt people, poor people all over the world of every skin color and background. Every religion and nationality.

Today, stand with us. Be with us. Tell a black person you love them. Hug a black person (with consent). Ask that hot black girl out today. Make a black person smile. Black lives matter to everybody and you matter to us.

Stand with us on Juneteenth like we stand with you all year round, and I hope a happy Pride month continues for all of us

💝

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And hell, do you know how many out of state licensed cars can be seized based on one, ever shrinking, baggie of meth?

Truly, what is it with small town cops and only caring about drugs? Guy beating his children within an inch of their life? Good old fashioned country discipline. Drunk driving? Off with a warning. Harassment? Both parties advised to chill. Animal cruelty? Who cares? Not them. Dime bag sized packet of meth found on some dude at a gas station? Need to photograph it and put it on Facebook so everybody can see how much we’re doing to keep the community safe. Does this do anything to stop the addiction crisis? Of course not. But we put away a 20 year old father of 2 who is taking stimulants to do physically grueling jobs to feed his kids and his dying mom, pat on the back for us!

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My first and last names are both fairly common. I have met several people who share one or the other, with no known family relationship. The closest to a match is a woman I knew who married one of the folks who shared my last name, without being a known relation. Our names are femininized/masculinized versions of each other's.

so I have a really unusual first name /last name combo and I don't think anyone else has it, so I'm curious what it's like for other people

Please reblog to reach more people!

PSA: do NOT share your full legal name on this post, please stay safe

[macarthurfranceshoweblog]

Oh no! The Pacific Northwest tree octopus is endangered!

Their usual predators are sasquatch, but overconfident foxes are always a risk.

Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes)

Observed by irkuem, CC BY-NC

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Yeah, it could be based on doubling, not each addition of 4 billion or so. Or it could be on a time function, with the doubling of the population being coincidental to the timing.

In the late 1970s a glowing orb appeared in the sky. Every day at about 5:00 Greenwich standard time, the orb would go somewhere new, shoot out something similar to a laser, and kill one person. Every day, always at the same time, always exactly one person.

The person killed by the orb seemed completely random, with almost fifty years of studying it we've been able to find no rhythm or reason to who it kills. It kills the old, the young, the rich, the poor, the urban, the rural, anyone. Every human on earth seems to have an equal chance of being killed by the orb. It's a headline the few times someone of note is killed by the orb: Britain famously lost a Parliament member to the orb, Brazil to this day remains the only country where a head of state was killed by the orb while in office, there was a short lived sitcom in the 1990s called Freinds that ended halfway through its first season due to the orb killing one of the main actors on set. However, these are outliers, on any given day the person who dies via orb is very likely to be someone you never heard of. There are billions of people on earth, and only one is killed by the orb every day. In almost fifty years only a little over 18000 have died because of the orb, which is nothing in the face of the sheer amount of humans that exist.

When the orb first appeared people were horrified. Both the US and USSR thought it was a weapon from the other side. Almost every religion made some claim of it being proof of their beliefs, oftentimes claiming it was divine punishment. Atheists claimed it was proof no loving God could exist. People were so very apocalyptic and horrified by it, they thought of it as part of the end times, because when it was new that's really how it looked.

However, it's been long enough so that's changed. Most people have lived their entire lives in a world where the orb exists. The orb isn't that scary a concept. People know their odds of being killed by it are low and that it's not going to end the world or anything. The orb has become normal, and we've accepted that the orb is just something that kills people the same way cancer, or heart attacks, or natrual disasters, or car crashes kill people. In the nineteen eighties there were efforts to find a way to stop the orb, but it's since proven to be extremely difficult, and it's as distant and nebulous as finding a cure for cancer. When a community is struck by the orb you'll see that community in mourning, but it's not a global thing anymore.

So people grow up learning about the orb, as part of science, like anything else. A lot of gen z remembers learning about the orb from Magic School Bus. It's just something normal. There are a few people with an orb hyperfixation, and a few cults that give the orb importance but it's not most people's concern. The orb is how we first confirmed that interdimensional objects existed and are possible. A lot of people theorize dimensional studies wouldn't exist without it, meaning without the orb we might not have thermitizers or grand drives, we might not even have a moon base without the orb. Some have even rather tastelessly claimed that the orb has saved more lives at this point that its taken with all the knowledge it's given us.

Which is why I regret to inform you, that just last week, without warning, the orb killed two people in one day. And for the past seven days it's been killing two people instead of just one. Nobody knows why.

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Non-Ridcully Wizards would not all be taken out by Bugs.

Rincewind would wisely nope out of the situation, though Bugs may be eaten by The Luggage. The Bursar would probably win in a way by either failing to notice the situation, or considering it completely normal. The Librarian would likely make friends win Bugs, unless Bugs fucks up and calls him a monkey. In which case Bugs risks being fed to the books.

I've been thinking of the "Can Granny Weatherwax beat Bugs Bunny" question and this is my full take for Discworld characters:

Vimes - Cares too much, too easy to piss off. Has the innate chase instinct that makes characters run into walls with realistic tunnels painted on them. Might get to arrest Bugs Bunny but the beast will just slip out of the handcuffs to help him lock them, then walk out of the jail cell to have a union mandated coffee break.

Ridcully - Classic hunting season scenario, but has enough charisma to probably still get a few good shots off before the inevitable.

Rest of the wizards - No survivors, only Bugs.

Carrot - The intense near-magical narrative aura of well meaning innocence should make him immune, Bugs will likely be forced to be the villain of the episode.

Lord Vetinari - Flattened by a comically large anvil in the first few minutes of the episode, unclear if it was all a part of his long term strategy or not.

Moist - Has the 'lovable trickster getting away with it' energy, but nowhere near Bugs level. Already fell for the "old lady who swallowed a fly" scenario with the stamp slugs once, won't fare any better here.

Death - Definitely one of those "character is trying to avoid death" episodes, would go back and forth. Might actually get to end Bugs but his spirit will reappear in Death's domain and ruin his garden.

Nanny Ogg - The ultimate in anti-Bugs technology, a gleefully annoying old lady who doesn't give a fuck and definitely won't be the first to instigate the plot bearing conflict. This is a full sweep, he's the episode antagonist.

Granny Weatherwax - Too win-motivated to not lose. Would have to break the story to have any chance. Might do it.

Magrat - Will have sappy ideas about helping the poor animal which honestly has the 50:50 chance of either getting slapsticked or Bugs ending in a ye olde stroller&pacifier gag.

Colon&Nobby - Designed in a lab to be totaled by Bugs Bunny.

Tiffany Aching - A child that also has a large pan that is the perfect thing to hit someone over the head with and make a BOIOIOINGGG sound, so great odds.

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Unmute !

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Getting rid of the unhoused population without due process?

You'll never convince me this wasn't part of the plan, though maybe not part that was written down.

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I think every lesbian who says she wouldn't date a bi woman is functionally on the same wavelength as men who say they would only marry a virgin

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I think I watched Cameron's Avatar a total of once, and only fully through because I was in a phase where I had to finish watching a movie I started or feel off until I did see it completely. There was no "there" there. Visually lovely, and that's about it.

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Trans women are women, pass it on.

Trans women are women. Pass it on.

[macarthurfranceshoweblog]

Just saw a post that reminded me that when i was in the botanical gardens today there was a new sign with a photo of a cat and so clearly i was like oho? botanical garden mascot cat?? (mascat even) and went to see what the sign said and the sign said . See this cat? This cat is here all the time. she WILL beg you for pets. do not listen to her she is a fucking liar she will bite bite kill you. we do not own her. we do not know who owns her. if you know please fucking tell us. which is funny enough as like a sign purely because you know some botanical garden employees found this out the hard way but particularly funny because i MET THIS CAT WEEKS AGO. in the botanical gardens. she was sunning on a bench and very politely asked me for pets and was very nice for like ten minutes and then she bit me (not very hard, didn't break skin or anything) at which point i sternly told her well in that case i would not be petting her anymore and left and she followed me OUT of the gardens DOWN the street for a good bit, again shamelessly begging for pets. what an accomplished little criminal. neighborhood famous for lying and betrayal. god forbid women do anything

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Valerie Valdes has a series of novels, starting with Chilling Effect, where the MC is a space captain from a Cuban diaspora planet. She mostly speaks English, as it was published in the US, She often breaks into Cuban Spanish, especially while cursing or speaking with family. (with some overlap) I am near completely incompetent in Spanish, but I could catch the connotations of most of the lines, if not always the denotative literal translations. Context helps. Some of the one star reviewers OTOH? Apparently this was comparable to forcing them to pull their own teeth without anesthetic.

This might be unpopular but I’m not going to use simpler vocabulary in my writing if it’s out of character for the narrator. If my POV character is a botanist, he’s going to call a plant by its name. If you don’t know what it is you can either Google it or move on just knowing it’s a plant of some sort.

I don’t like this trend of readers being angry that not everything is 100% understandable for them. I want my characters to be believable as people and sometimes people use words people outside of their field will not understand. That’s not a bad thing.

You don’t have to understand every word to get the gist of what’s happening. I’m not going to slow down an action scene to describe every weapon because someone might not know them by name. They can just assume it’s a weapon because that makes sense in the context of the scene.

[macarthurfranceshoweblog]

OK, a healing factor, that can also be used to directly help others? That right there is the most useful thing on the list. It could also lead to strength and durability beyond human standards, part of building muscle is straining/damaging them and healing.

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Part of it was also people who didn't want to vote for a Black/South Asian woman who they didn't believe would do enough for their pet issues. Never mind that she was running against someone with a stated goal of making those issues worse.

I've been saying for the past 7 months that the fundamental problem of 2024 was that people got way too comfy and cozy and complacent under the prosperity of Biden's America, and they couldn't be bothered to vote. That's it. This pig never won 50% of the vote. The majority of America has always hated Trump...but that doesn't mean a whole lot when those people do not vote against him and let his super fans decide elections instead.

It was all always so avoidable. We Hillary-Biden-Harris voters always knew to do the right thing instead of just saying the right thing.

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Smokes and lighter fluid. I may be fucked, the BBEG may be on fire.

Both could be true.

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i was at an event last night in california and i went to the bar to order wine bc wine was like, a thing, and i looked at the menu and saw i was completely out of my depth bc idk any wine names, so i turned to my right and there was a man in a gorgeous suit standing at the bar beside me and i said “do you know anything about wine?” and he said “a little, yes!” i told him i liked white and dry wines and asked if he’d order for me. he asked the server for two glasses and had one poured for each of us and then he clinked his glass on mine but he didn’t take a sip, he just watched me taste mine and then he asked what i thought and i said “it’s pretty good, but like i said, i wouldn’t know.” he laughed and told me to have a good time & i walked away. fifteen minutes later i found out he’s the winemaker.