#architecture and politics

[bassam-01]

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters , my number verified on the list is ( #439 )✅️

🚨 Your Help Can Make a Difference 🚨

Hello, my name is Bassem Al-Nadi, and I live in Gaza with my small family. I’m writing this message with hope in my heart that someone out there might hear our story and offer a helping hand during these incredibly difficult times.

The war has taken everything from us. We lost our home, our safety, and the life we once knew. Now, my family and I live in a small tent, exposed to the harsh realities of life, struggling every single day to survive.

My daughter Salma is my greatest blessing, but seeing her childhood being spent in such difficult conditions breaks my heart. She deserves so much more—clean water, healthy food, and a safe place to call home.

Our Current Situation:

💔 Homelessness: Losing our home has left us with nothing but a tent for shelter.

🍞 Struggling for Basic Needs: Food, water, and warmth are becoming harder to secure every day.

😔 Uncertain Future: My dreams for Salma are overshadowed by the fight for survival.

🏚️ No Stability: Without a home or income, our lives are filled with uncertainty.

How You Can Help:

I’m sharing our story with the hope that someone, somewhere, can help us. Even a small donation—$5 or $10—can bring much-needed relief to my family. If donating is not possible, simply sharing this message can make a world of difference.

Help Bassam and His Family

What This Means to Us:

Your kindness can bring a ray of light to the darkness we face every day. It’s not about solving all our problems but about giving us the strength to keep going—for Salma, for our family, and for the hope of a better tomorrow.

Thank you for taking the time to read our story. May your compassion return to you in countless blessings.

@fancysmutt-blog @brokenbackmolars @mothblogging @aleciosun @fluoresensitivearchived @khizuo @lesbiandardevi @transmutationisms @schoolhatergirl @timogsilangan @appsa @buttercuparr @sayruq @malcriada @palestinegenocide @sar-soor @akajustmerry @annoyingloudmicrowavecultist @feluka @tortiefrancis @flower-tea-fairies @tsaricides @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @visenyasdragon @belleandsaintsebastian @ear-motif @kordeliiius @brutaliakent @raelyn-dreams @troythecatfish @theropoda @tamarrabrunet @4ft10tvlandfangirl @queerstudiesnatural @northgazaupdates2 @skatezophrenic @awetistic-things @cameramator @baby-girl-aaron-dessner @nabulsi @synqra @junglejim4322 @heritageposts @chososhairbuns @palistani123-blog @illuminated-rush-blog @imjustheretotrytohelp @gazavetters @90-ghost

[reasonsforhope]

"Almost all new homes in England will be fitted with solar panels during construction within two years, the government will announce after Keir Starmer rejected Tony Blair’s criticism of net zero policies.

Housebuilders will be legally required to install solar panels on the roofs of new properties by 2027 under the plans.

The policy is estimated to add between £3,000 and £4,000 to building a home but homeowners would save more than £1,000 on their annual energy bills, according to the Times.

Labour has set a target of building 1.5m homes by the end of the parliament [May 2029]. The party has promised to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030 and cut household energy bills by £300 a year.

Ministers are also preparing to offer government-funded loans and grants for the installation of solar panels on existing homes.

The move is a sign that the government will press ahead with its net zero agenda after Starmer rejected criticisms of climate policy from Blair.

In a high-profile intervention days before the local elections, Blair said there needed to be a radical reset of “irrational” net zero policies that were “doomed to fail”.

The former Labour prime minister argued that the public was being asked to make “financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle” that would have “minimal” effect on global emissions. He said the drive to phase out fossil fuels in the short term was “doomed to fail” because their production and demand were rising.

His remarks angered government figures and triggered a response from senior No 10 officials, who called the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) and urged it to address the fallout. The TBI issued a clarifying statement on Wednesday morning saying it believed the government’s net zero policy was “the right one”.

Blair’s remarks were interpreted as an attack on Starmer’s policy agenda after the prime minister said last week that tackling the climate crisis and bolstering energy security were “in the DNA of my government”...

Campaigners have welcomed the news that the government is going to mandate solar panels on new homes.

Lily-Rose Ellis, Greenpeace UK’s climate campaigner, said: “For too long we’ve wasted the free energy that falls on the roofs of houses every single day. Now, people living in new-build homes will save hundreds of pounds every year on their energy bills, thanks to this commonsense decision from the government.”

A government spokesperson said: “We have always been clear that we want solar panels on as many new homes as possible because they are a vital technology to help cut bills for families, boost our national energy security and help deliver net zero.

“Through the Future Homes Standard we plan to maximise the installation of solar panels on new homes as part of our ambition to ensure all new homes are energy efficient, and will set out final plans in due course.”"

-via The Guardian, May 1, 2025

[gluten-free-lap-dances]

State Capitol

Madison, Wisconsin 05.2025

[k-wame]

this is the level of information literacy i wanna achieve

[samubytheocean]

🚨 UNDERAGE PORNOGRAPHY USING DEEPFAKE AND TELEGRAM IN KOREA🚨

Please take a second to read and reblog.

In Korea, middle, high school and college students are taking screenshots, even sneaking pictures of classmates, family members (sisters, cousins, even their own mothers) to make pornography videos and pictures in Telegram, using AI and Deepfake. Most of the victims right now are underage, and some are even using the generated pictures to threaten the victims.

It’s really a serious issue, and there are more than 220,000 memebers in said chat (it’s an estimated number, and it’s certain that there are more offenders not included in this) There are separated group chats for each middle school, high school, etc, the high school I’m attending right now included.

But as the Korean government did with the Nth room, their actions have been very timid, as well as the media. There isn’t any news coverage even though it’s basically a child pornography crime, especially since most of the offenders are underage. The schools are also taking limited actions.

People, especially the victims themselves are doing their own research, based on Twitter, sharing information about the schools of the victims to raise awareness, and also to share information about the perpetrators. Girls are taking down their profile pictures, instagram stories, making their profiles private, as they all have been used for the crime.

Please share, talk, and ask about this issue.

[poweredinpeace]

Rape the violent crime! Rape is fueled by control which causes anger, rape humiliates, it takes dignity and respect from the person.

Rape is practice in many forms not just physical intercourse. Government rapes, drug companies rape, corporation do a lot of raping, woman can rape men's masculinity, men can rape their families from a good life.

Drugs rapes both the takers and the victims. Rape started with the Devil and ends in Christ Jesus.

Eph. 4:8 Therefore he says, "When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men."{Psalm 68:18}

2 Tim. 2:26 and they may recover themselves out of the devil's snare, having been taken captive by him to his will.

James 2:12 So speak, and so do, as men who are to be judged by a law of freedom.

[elixir]

Banner facing the Russian embassy in Riga, capital of Latvia.

[purplemoonfox]

Ramblings on the Senate Building in Clone Wars vs Andor and aesthetics IRL...and a tiny aside about the security presence there

Some spoilers for the end of s2 of Andor

I might be late to the party with this (I've never been super involved in fandom, I'm a lurker, so I'm usually on the outs) but oh well.

I cannot watch any scene in the Senate Building in Andor without wincing—and not because the show is bad.

Andor is so good it beggars my ability to describe how much it's what I've been begging for for years and knew Star Wars could potentially be. I cry a lot while watching it though. I’ve got my issues with Bix’s ending (what exactly did the generic baby ending add to the story or to her already crippled agency) but I can deal.

One of these days I'm going to get off my ass and think about the juxtaposition of culture as an active source of community and strength vis a vis Luthen Rael selling other peoples' provenance to rich consumers who keep things on sterile podiums. Maybe tie in that he doesn’t get along with the wider Rebellion somehow idk.

This is going to meander a little, please bear with me. Summary at the very end because I absolutely like to go on.

It’s not that the portrayal of the Senate building in Andor is in any way bad; it’s that it's so white it’s blinding. It's sterile, like a hospital room. And like everything else in Andor, that must be a deeply intentional choice apologies to Valencia, Spain for this entire post, your building seems like it would be very nice when it's not the home base of a shit ton of complacent fat cats content to do nothing until it affects them directly.

Coruscant in general also reflects this...cleansing, as we see in season one when Syril Karn goes back to live with his mother (is this purely a Topside thing?). In the prequels we see so many non-humans, whereas in Andor, 90% of everyone we see are human. Coruscant (and we only see Topside, tbf) is more colorful at a ground level in the prequels and TCW than it ever is in Andor. Hell, it even seemed to me like Coruscant's air traffic had been cut down by at least half, as well.

For comparison, here is a still from TCW of a concourse:

Note the dark, rich colors. Other areas are similar in theme and illumination.

Here's one from AOTC, and I believe this one is in the Senate building, not the Executive building:

Now here's Andor:

That is excruciating. I need sunglasses, my eyes are shit enough. Also, blue, like the Madonna, Mon? Fucking classic <3. Yes i know blue and orange are the Rebellion's colors but my limited familiarity with art history won't be ignored lol.

The thing about conservative bends is that conservatives tend to prefer "clean," modest aesthetics because they tend to look towards a mythical past where people "did an honest day's labor" and humbly didn't have even the desire for fancy stuff (haha so very false people have always liked nice things you just literally can't get nice shit if you're a subsistence laborer unable to go anywhere else because you're legally bound to the land and are one bad harvest away from starving to death while your God-ordained feudal landlord is a dick who deserves more because God said he's a better breed of person...no seriously the Brits still deal with class issues this many centuries later for a reason, and there's also a reason that in some shows somebody has the ONE somewhat pretty hair pin they pull out of an otherwise destitute hovel...although that being said the image of impoverished peasantry was definitely a tax evasion scheme in some cases so like...it's complicated LOL).

Famously, Shitler didn't like women wearing red lipstick, or any makeup really. These days, the "clean girl" aesthetic is apparently popular because men can't tell the difference between a sick person and a woman not wearing any makeup, so no makeup isn't an option.

It also plays into something I like to call "light is not always good, dark is not always bad." Light can be piercing, even blinding; dark can evoke rich and fertile soil. I'd be more inclined to describe the Clone Wars-era Senate building as less fertile and more antediluvian and decomposing, and really lived in like an old house, but there is meaning in gutting it and making it all bright white and almost airy, with no shadows.

Makes it a lot easier to keep an eye on everyone, for instance.

It's in the same vein that "clean aesthetics" creates a narrower definition of what constitutes an acceptable appearance, and makes it a lot easier to catch out and target any divergence from the expected norm. It makes even something as mundane as being sick that day stand out.

The Senate complex etc.

I tried very hard to find some pictures of anything outside the Senate building in Clone Wars, but it seems like that's relatively limited to establishing shots. But note the difference between these two; the below being in Andor:

This is what's between the two in Andor:

This area is, I believe, where Kloris waited for Mon Mothma, and Cassian took off from--and the landing pad images I can find from the prequels are located in the Executive building/Senate office building (when Anakin saw Padme after getting off the shuttle post battle of Coruscant in ROTS, and earlier where Cad Bane landed in TCW).

With architecture like in Andor, it's easy to keep people out in the open on predictable, observable paths (can't walk on water, you'll walk on the pathways around it, and the Empire’s apparent love of reflection pools as a repeated choice of external decoration, as seen outside the ISB too, deserves its own post), and elevated in a way that the amount of stuff between the two buildings does not make possible in the prequels; this is the Executive building in AOTC (also known as the Senate Office building, where Palpatine and the Senators have their offices, and I believe based on building placement that this is not from the side that faces the Senate building, so the Senate building would be hidden behind it):

I looked hard for landing bays for Senators/visitors to use attached to the Senate building itself but it seems like the Executive building is where the landing pad is (which, how the fuck they get between the two in the prequels, I'm still not sure, but in Andor it looks like they can walk). Mon Mothma mentions the loading bay in Andor when they're making their escape, which is in the Senate building, but that's it. If I am wrong, please correct me.

I'm reminded of the difference between Medieval cities and those that came after (and before, really, if we're being honest, as the Romans loved urban planning...they also loved conquest and control): Medieval cities were close, organic, warren-like, and hard to navigate for anyone but those from that area or very familiar with it. Later cities would be constructed with wide, grid plans because...well, aside from being a lot more navigable to an outsider, it's a lot easier to move around on wide avenues and keep your population under control. There is a lot less local knowledge and a lot more power politics in play.

And then irl there's the whole diminishing of the Commons and the ceding of the road to automobiles (it was not a given that cars should take precedent), and...anyway. I digress. I do that a lot.

The ultimate point is, the Empire seems to have done a thorough job of making it impossible for anyone to be out of sight in the Senate. There are no more shadows or warm colors, or columns to talk to your secret wife behind, just stark white to contrast against, on an elevated walkway. The architecture is structural, whereas in the prequels there are organic-looking statues and a lot less of a bottleneck (although I can't easily tell which side this plaza is supposed to be on, to be fair):

Apparently, this, the above Senate Plaza contained an Avenue of the Core Founders which was by the time of the Clone Wars subject to criticism for not being representative of the multi-species Republic, as it was basically of all humanoid peoples, who formed the Republic in the Core Worlds way back when--I think this place still exists during the Empire but as of 5 years into the Empire they were planning to put a statue of Palpatine in it instead, so maybe by the time Andor happens the multitude of statues in this area have been replaced by a statue of the Emperor.

In a rather literal sense by the time the events of Andor happen it seems the Senate has been put on a pedestal in a way that keeps them in the open, observable, and also effectively cut off from the rest of the populace of Coruscant, and differentiated and deprioritized rel. the Emperor can't imagine he wants too many visitors, he wants them squabbling on the floor.

Side note

Also where the abject fuck are my goddamn Corries. Last known sighting of Corries in red paint besides seeing how they held on to the red in TBB is of shock troopers in the comics in 14BBY. Mon Mothma's speech in the Senate happened like twelve years after the comic appearance, and the Stormtroopers we see pursuing Mon Mothma and Cassian aren't wearing any red paint.

There's also no Senate Guards in their Roman-esque armor. The blue-uniformed fuckers with shitty breastplates are probably what's meant to have become of them. Shitty riot gear (also seen when they stormed the safe house) seems to be a mainstay in any security force that isn't the Imperial military itself. In my mind, if the Coruscant Guard still exists at all, it was probably just stripped of of its paint and had its ranks filled with conscripts, even though the Guard evidently managed to hold on to theirs longer than most.

That is very much a choice as well; by stripping the Senate Guard itself of effective armor and stripping the troopers assigned to the Senate (they showed up hella fast if they weren't) of any distinguishing marks, and not even having the Guards on the floor as visibly as they were shown in TCW or the prequels, it essentially keeps all the aesthetic...uniqueness? On the Emperor, and keeps the main source of any actually effective security in the hands of an indistinguishable Imperial military.

In short the flattening of aesthetics is likely meant to emphasize the Emperor's position and importance and erases the diversity of the species within the Empire.

Summary:

The Senate building and attendant security forces' aesthetic changes between the prequel era and Andor could reflect a desire to expose and control the Senate, and emphasize the preeminence of the Emperor while also downplaying individual elements of the Empire.

Oh shit I actually managed to make that a short one

[manal-ghorab99]

My forgotten children🙍 go into the unknown⁉️

Please do not skip the video.

Don't leave my children to the unknown.

📝Vetted by @gazavetters , my number verified on the list is ( #184 ) and the butterfly project (#1117).

donate here 🎁

@omegaversereloaded @noble-kale @paparoach @butterflyfritillary @galactic-mermaid @neptunerings @heydreamchild @myceliacrochet @buttercuparry @girlinafairytale @jezior0 @nabulsi27 @aflamethatneverdies @meshitsukai @gatorinanicesuit @saesyndrome @yakourinka @theyaoiconnoisseur @shineypebble @meatcute @operationladybug @saintverse @septiphadrean @imjustheretotrytohelp @stupidpop @pathogenic @fuyunoakegata @gakupo7 @fearfylsymmetry @clamorybus @rhubarbspring @eremes @marsmartens @eelthekruppe @volfoss @femmefitz @seekerofthesightlessway @somewhatlargerobot @miluciole @iamabrokentooth @unwinni3 @earthyumgiggles @rosawo7 @jaylung101 @palhelp @tiredguyswag @innovatorbunny @heliopixels

[mysharona1987]

[krispyfoxhottub]

Who's gonna wake me up on bed today lol

[brainrotcharacters]

whatever level of insanity odysseus was under when he spat "you don't think I know my own palace? I built it" I'm down

[cuttledreams-bugs]

quickie question-

Anyone got any blog recommendations that have a focus on posting/writing about neat things like bugs, plants, space, architecture, etc? I'm aiming broadly at science-adjacent topics but tbh I'm always open to curiosity about things unfamiliar as well :v

I'm specifically looking for such accounts that post that sort of stuff, and don't post/reblog a lot of misc, memes or news stuff. Especially the latter, my main goal is to refocus my online experience away from constant doom-news-spam and into a place of rest and learning, while keeping news reading boxed into its specific place and time.

Some examples of the vibe I'm loosely aiming for:

Artifacts and Arthropods, Arsanatomica, Snailfish Enthusiast

Also down for really neat artist suggestions like Plastiboo and Mason Lindroth too :o

[mommyplaysworld]

You felt that, didn’t you? Not everything I do is for show. Some of it is an invitation.

[yamenpalestine]

At first glance, you might think it's a painting by a famous artist.

Sadly, this is a little girl who was bombed while in a displacement center at Al-Jarjaawi School by Israeli occupation warplanes.

Her entire family was killed, and she is the only one who survived, suffering from severe burns.

This is genocide.

Where is the world?

Where are human rights?

Where is humanity?

@xxx-sparkydemon-xxx

@sar-soor @90-ghost @sayruq @taylermadeboy @artof-mirage @artemis-fowl-wannabe @artghost-here @art-ixia

[typhlonectes]

Building collisions kill 300 million to a billion birds each year, and many of these needless deaths can be prevented.

This Bird-Safe Buildings Act is a common-sense solution to help birds avoid collisions with buildings by promoting bird-friendly materials and design features at federal buildings.

Please urge your U.S. Representative to cosponsor and support the Bird-Safe Buildings Act.