#this is national news now and i hate recognising everyone in that photo of the mayor's supporters

[specialagentlokitty]

Steve x reader - The spirit of the forest

Part two:

You waited for him, year after year, you waited patiently for Steve to visit, but he never did. You assumed he died and sadness took over you.

The moment Steve got out of the ice, he was set on going to the forest to find you, and after nearly 2 years he could.

The others were insistent on going with him, but Steve firmly told them it was something he had to do. Which it was, he had to see you again, alone, with no one else there.

He traveled all the way to Alaska, all the way to Tongass National Forest, and he froze.

“Stick to the trails, there’s been weird sightings.” The ranger warned him.

Steve’s head snapped towards the ranger who thankfully didn’t recognise who he was. Steve pulled his baseball cap down a little lower and took a few steps closer.

“What do you mean?”

The ranger shrugged and looked up before going back to what he was doing.

“People have claimed there’s something out here, a woman dressed in orange with a fox mask. She usually appears only near the river, it’s just a myth, I’m just obligated to warn you.”

Steve nodded to himself and gave a little smile, it sounded like you.

“Thanks.”

With that, Steve adjusted the straps on his bag and stepped into the forest, completely unaware of the shadows watching him, the shadows that watched everyone enter the forest.

Reaching into his jacket, Steve pulled out a mask he had hidden, it was aged and cracked in a few places, but it was still the same. Your mask, the one he gave you.

You were sat on a rock by the river, minding your own business when a spirit, the form of a moose came over.

“Someone who holds your mask enters....”

You lifted your gaze, from under the mask you connected eyes with the spirit.

“Impossible, I gave that mask away over 70 years ago.” You muttered.

“The mask is aged, but the man is young...”

You frowned and turned your gaze to the water, watching as the sunlight reflected of its surface. Could Steve have survived? Had a child? Started a family?

It pained you to think, but you hoped he had. You hoped he had lived a happy and fulfilling life, but it still didn’t explain why there was someone carrying your mask walking in.

“Guide him safely my friend, lead him here.”

“As you wish...”

The moose turned around and ran off, getting lost into a mess of trees. He ran and ran until he found the trail, and then ran along it until he came face to face with the mask holder.

Steve heard the pounding of feet and he looked around, coming along the trail was a moose and he quickly jumped away, but the moose stopped and stared at him.

He stopped and stared back, something about this moose wasn’t right. Maybe it was the thin whips of smoke that seemed to come from his body.

“Follow...”

Steve nearly jumped from his skin, never had he expected that. He watched the moose turn around, casting a look to Steve, it started to walk.

“Are you a spirit?!” Steve yelled.

He jogged over to the moose and walked in line with it, insane, yes. But the creature had just spoke to him, so clearly it wasn’t an ordinary animal.

“Yes... one of many...”

“I’m... looking for a spirit...” Steve muttered.

“You seek the fox...”

Steve nodded his head.

The moose turned to him briefly before looking away and walking off the trail, Steve still following.

“Do.. you know where I can find her?”

“I shall lead you to her, you mustn’t touch her. Should you touch her she will disappear and he spirits will claim you...”

Steve swallowed nervously and nodded in understanding, not asking anything else.

It took a while, his legs were a little tired, but soon the rushing of water filled his ears, and he broke through the tree line.

He scanned the area, and found who he was looking for.

You.

You were sat on a rock, your face tilted towards the water, a mask just like his on your face, next to you lay a jacket he all but remembered.

He opened his mouth, but before he could speak you turned towards him and the spirit. The spirit walked closer, the pair of you having a hush conversation before it disappeared into the trees once more.

“Where did you get the mask from?”

Steve smiled softly fiddling with the mask a little.

“You gave it to me.”

“You are mistaken, I gave that mask to Steve, nearly 70 years ago.”

Steve sighed a little sadly, you had waited all this time. He felt horrible, you waited and waited, he wondered if you hated him for it.

“I am Steve.”

You didn’t believe him, he could easily tell.

“Steve was small, frail. My fragile soldier. He would be old by now.”

“I was part of an experiment, then I was frozen in ice. I’ve been awake for two years.

You scoffed and shook your head at him, clearly he weren’t buying a word he was saying. Steve had to think, there was something that had to make you believe him, then he had an idea.

“I can prove it.”

“How?” You asked.

You jumped from the rock, now standing barefoot on the grass.

Steve thought for a minute then nodded to himself.

“You’re name. I know your name.”

“Only one person knows my name.”

“(Y/N)...” Steve whispered.

Your eyes widened and you slowly reached up, pulling the fox mask from your face to reveal your shocked face, your mouth slight agape.

Steve’s heart fluttered, you really hadn’t changed a bit.

Slowly you walked closer. He was now taller than you, so when you got to stand in front of him, you had to tilt your head up to look at him.

Your (E/C) eyes stared into his, tearing up a little.

“My Steve...” you whispered.

“It’s me...” he replied.

You raised a hand to touch his face but quickly stopped yourself and lowered it.

Steve laughed quietly and took the old mask, carefully placing it on your face, he leant down and kisses that same spot you kissed all those years ago.

Steve pulled back and wiped a stray tear from his face.

“I love you, I love you so much.” He whispered.

“I love you Steve, my Steve...”

You took the mask off and placed it on top of the other, holding them back.

“Spend the day with me?”

Steve happily nodded and pulled out a bit of fabric which made you laugh. Both of you tied the opposite ends around your wrists and started to walk.

You picked up his jacket and the both of you wondered.

You talked, you joked, you caught up and informed each other on what you had missed. Steve told you all about the war, Bucky, the serum, his new team and friends.

You told him about the forest, and the few people you met, about what you did and how it was.

Steve took plenty of photos of the day, he wanted to draw you, he wanted to have you close in some way.

As the sun started setting, its orange and golden hughs lighting up the sky, reflecting off the water.

You stood by the river, your eyes locked into Steve blue ones, you could see his pain, and it reflected your own.

Slowly you untied the fabric from your wrist and let it fall loosely by Steve’s side. You placed his jacket and the masks on the floor.

“Steve...” you said softly.

Reaching up you pressed your palm to his face, and his eyes shot open, his heart shattered.

“No! (Y/N) you can’t!”

It was too late, you pulled your hand away, light blue orbs emitted from your fingers and you smiled a soft sad smile, you opened your arms and gave Steve the warmest smile he had ever seen in his life.

“I can touch you...”

Steve wasted no time in hugging you as more blue orbs pooled out from your body. He savoured how you fit perfectly against him, how you were the perfect height for him to rest his chin on your head.

You pulled away a little and placed your hands on his cheeks, your eyes shining with happiness. Slowly you leant in and kissed him, and Steve leant back, kissing you softly.

You were perfect, his perfect match. Your lips fit perfectly with his, but it was gone all too soon, he felt he pressure fade and tears streamed down his eyes, and he dropped to his knees.

Steve opened his eyes and watched as the blue orbs floated into the sky, the soft voice reaching his ears.

“Thank you Steve Rogers....”

“You’re welcome (Y/N)...”

Steve wiped his tears and can collected his jacket and the masks, cradling them to his chest, the last things he had of you.

Steve felt a soft hand on his shoulder and he looked up, there stood another wispy figure. Another spirit.

“She’s... she’s gone...”

“We know... we thank you...”

The spirit helped Steve up and he found there were a lot more, in the twilight he could see he spirits perfectly.

“All she ever wanted was love... you gave that to her...”

“I... I wanted to be with her...”

The spirit nodded its head, and placed a hand to Steve heart.

“You will find her again...”

Steve’s eyes lit up with hope, he eagerly awaited the spirit to speak again.

“Return to your city... there you’ll find her again... there she’ll be free...”

As the last rays of light faded, so did the spirits, all muttering their Thank yous as Steve started to run back to the trail, he could only pray the spirit was telling he truth

[ingek73]

08-06-206:00 PM POV

Prince Harry: Social media is dividing us. Together, we can redesign it

Amid a crisis of health, hate, and truth online, companies need to take a stand for a more compassionate digital world, writes Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex.

Prince Harry: Social media is dividing us. Together, we can redesign it

[Photos: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images; Pixabay/Pexels]

BY PRINCE HARRY THE DUKE OF SUSSEX

7 MINUTE READ

A little over four weeks ago, my wife and I started calling business leaders, heads of major corporations, and chief marketing officers at brands and organisations we all use in our daily lives.

Our message was clear: The digital landscape is unwell and companies like yours have the chance to reconsider your role in funding and supporting online platforms that have contributed to, stoked, and created the conditions for a crisis of hate, a crisis of health, and a crisis of truth.

We did this at the same time as the launch of a civil rights and racial justice campaign called Stop Hate For Profit, which sought to change online policies around hate speech—in this case, policies at Facebook—by urging companies that regularly purchase digital ads on the platform to withhold their advertising spending for the month of July. As of the end of last month, the campaign (led by respected organisations like the Anti-Defamation League, Color of Change, and the NAACP) sent a $7 billion message through withheld ad dollars.

Some may ask why a change campaign would take aim at online advertising. Well, many of us love and enjoy social media. It’s a seemingly free resource for connecting, sharing, and organising. But it’s not actually free; the cost is high. Every time you click they learn more about you. Our information, private data, and unknown habits are traded on for advertising space and dollars. The price we’re all paying is much higher than it appears. Whereas normally we’re the consumer buying a product, in this ever-changing digital world, we are the product.

While companies made their own decisions about what to do in July, we felt it necessary to say our part about the rise of an unchecked and divisive attention economy. We’ve always believed that individuals and communities thrive when the frameworks around them are built from compassion, trust, and wellbeing. Sadly, this belief is at odds with much of what is being experienced by people on social media.

From conversations with experts in this space, we believe we have to remodel the architecture of our online community in a way defined more by compassion than hate; by truth instead of misinformation; by equity and inclusiveness instead of injustice and fearmongering; by free, rather than weaponised, speech. This remodeling must include industry leaders from all areas drawing a line in the sand against unacceptable online practices as well as being active participants in the process of establishing new standards for our online world. Companies that purchase online ads must also recognise that our digital world has an impact on the physical world—on our collective health, on our democracies, on the ways we think and interact with each other, on how we process and trust information. Because, if we are susceptible to the coercive forces in digital spaces, then we have to ask ourselves—what does this mean for our children? As a father, this is especially concerning to me.

In the 1970s, there was a groundbreaking study on the societal effects of lead exposure and kids. The research found a clear connection between lead accumulation in children and their mental development. There’s no debate over the dangers of lead today, but at the time, the development was met with strong resistance from industry leaders (lead was used widespread in products like gas, house paint, and water pipes). Eventually, sweeping health and environmental reforms were put in place to change this. We knew something was harmful to the health of our children, so we made the necessary changes to keep them safe, healthy, and well.

Researchers I’ve spoken with are studying how social media affects people—particularly young people—and I believe the book of data that we will look back on one day will be incredibly troubling.

WHEN WE DO THE RIGHT THING, WHEN WE CREATE SAFE SPACES BOTH ONLINE AND OFF—EVERYONE WINS.

Around the world, for many reasons, we are at turning point—one that has the potential to be transformative. In all areas of life, a rebuilding of compassionate, trustworthy communities needs to be at the heart of where we go. And this approach must extend to the digital community, which billions of us participate in every day. But it shouldn’t be punitive. When we do the right thing, when we create safe spaces both online and off—everyone wins. Even the platforms themselves.

Meghan and I heard similar arguments made by humane tech leaders we convened at Stanford University earlier this year, by internet law experts, by neuroscientists, and most importantly by young people who have grown up in a fully connected world.

We have an opportunity to do better and remake the digital world, to look at the past and use it to inform the future. We must take a critical eye to the last two decades, where advancements in technology and media have outgrown many of the antiquated guardrails that once ensured they were being designed and used appropriately. It shouldn’t be seen as a coincidence that the rise of social media has been matched by a rise in division amongst us globally. Social media’s own algorithms and recommendation tools can drive people down paths towards radicalism and extremism that they might not have taken otherwise.

There are billions of people right now—in the midst of a global pandemic that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives—who rely on algorithmically-driven information feeds to make judgments about fact vs. fiction, about truth vs. lies. One could argue that access to accurate information is more important now than any other time in modern history. And yet, the very places that allow disinformation to spread seem to throw their arms up when asked to take responsibility and find solutions.

We all need a better online experience. We’ve spoken with leaders across the racial justice movement, experts in humane tech, and advocates of mental health. And the collective opinion is abundantly clear: We do not have the luxury of time.

We need meaningful digital reform, and while the role of policymakers and regulators is important, we can’t just wait for them to take the next steps. This is a moment for companies around the world—companies with business and advertising models directly tied to digital platforms—to consider how they can bring about reform to ensure the betterment of all.

WE HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO DO BETTER AND REMAKE THE DIGITAL WORLD, TO LOOK AT THE PAST AND USE IT TO INFORM THE FUTURE.

It was reported recently that, for the first time, spending on digital advertising is set to eclipse ad spending in traditional media. Think about what this means. The standards and practices advertisers rely upon when placing their commercials on television, for example, do not apply when it comes to the online space—arguably, the largest broadcaster in the world. And for the first time in history, the ad spend in this relatively lawless space is beginning to overshadow the more traditional spaces. No manufacturer is likely placing their television soap ad next to this type of toxicity, yet due to the nature of the digital world, that advertisement could be sandwiched between inciting propaganda.

So there is huge value in advertisers sitting at the table with advocacy leaders, with policy leaders, with civil society leaders, in search of solutions that strengthen the digital community while protecting its free and open nature.

For companies that purchase online ads, it is one thing to unequivocally disavow hate and racism, white nationalism and anti-Semitism, dangerous misinformation, and a well-established online culture that promotes violence and bigotry. It is another thing for them to use their leverage, including through their advertising dollars, to demand change from the very places that give a safe haven and vehicle of propagation to hate and division. We’re hopeful to see this approach amongst industry leaders become reality. For one, the industry group GARM—the Global Alliance for Responsible Media—has committed to evaluating standards and definitions around online hate speech.

But this is just the beginning. And our hope is that it’s the beginning of a movement where we, as people, place community and connection, tolerance and empathy, and joy and kindness above all. The internet has enabled us to be joined together. We are now plugged into a vast nervous system that, yes, reflects our good, but too often also magnifies and fuels our bad. We can—and must—encourage these platforms to redesign themselves in a more responsible and compassionate way. The world will feel it, and we will all benefit from it.

Prince Harry is the Duke of Sussex

[innalterable]

[ park chaeyoung, 22 ] did you hear? there’s a new addition to the hypehens family! [ innalterable ] was starting to get known for [ speed paints, tutorials & supplies reviews ] and i think they will hit it big this time around as a part of the [ expresso ] squad at hypehens. [ kwang inna ] is known to be [ friendly & impulsive ] and enjoys [ collecting polaroids ]. with their vibes of [ singing horribly while taking a shower & enamel pins all over a denim jacket ] and a style that is unique, i think they are going to take the internet by storm!

hello everyone! i’m glad to introduce you to my daughter inna / danna! she’s a bit of a mess that only wants to spend the whole day in her home painting if possible. you can find her basics here, personality here, background here. if you're interested in plotting, you can find me in discord at internebula#6982!

without furher ado, here’s more about her: 

basic information

― full name: kwang inna ― nickname: nana ― age: twenty two ― date of birth: february 11th, 1998 ― birthplace: los angeles, california. ― current location: seoul, south korea ― ethnicity: asian ― nationality: (dual nationality) korean-american ― gender: cisfemale ― pronouns: she/her ― orientation: bisexual, demiromantic. ― religion: atheist ― occupation: content creator, freelance artist ― language(s) spoken: korean (fluent), english (fluent)

physical appearance

― faceclaim: park chaeyoung (rosé) of blackpink ― hair: naturally brown, currently dyed blonde. often put in messy buns, ponytails, french braids but also let loose with casual curls she gets from sleeping with her hair braided. ― eye colour: coffee brown ― height: 168cm ― weight: 45kg ― tattoos: four; the great wave off kanagawa on her right arm, flowery half sleeve on her left arm, moon arrow behind right ear and a matching triangle tattoo with her brother on her right inner forearm. ― piercings: lobe and upper lobe in both ears, anti-tragus on the left one, double helix on the right one. ― clothing style: high-waisted skirts, dresses that flow nicely with the wind, mom jeans that are a bit too long for her, graphic t-shirts she’s gotten from garage sales and thrift shops, oversized jackets she’s customized with either paint or enamel pins or patches, long coats that resemble those of classic detectives, her good ol’ dr. marteens in a variety of colors, knee and thigh high socks, athleisure outfits (consisting mainly of leggins and big sweatshirts), crop-tops, sling bags, whatever pair of sneakers she finds and matching bag or backpack.

headcanons

― born and raised in los angeles, her parents moved to usa right after they got married in their mid twenties only because of the feeling of adventure. they both got stable jobs there and even though her mom was the one that struggled the most with the different language, with the help of her husband she was able to improve steadily.

― ever since she was young, inna has showcased exceptional skills when it came to drawing and painting (if you consider the crayon scattered all over the walls of their apartment back in los angeles as art). always restless, she got easily bored with the common toys and games, only truly finding joy in the coloring books her parents always got her instead of dolls and an easy bake oven.

― she has always been heavily spoiled by every member of their family and inna grew used to this. it was no surprise that she always got what she wanted with a simple smile and her trademark grabby hands (she still does this till now and it’s absolutely gross). the one that spoiled her the most was her brother.

― inna holds dear every member of her family and despite being the ultimate spoiled princess, she always offered help around the house when she became older and realized that everyone had to do something for their household. she hated washing dishes though and always traded that task with her brother to the point that it became a natural thing for him to wash them and for her to mop and take the trash out. to this day, she will avoid washing dishes at any cost and her apartment often has a pile of dirty dishes which only makes it worse when she runs out of clean ones.

― the divorce of her parents hit her hard (spoiler alert: her father was awful when no one was seeing and cheated a lot on her mom, which she forgave every damn time until he crossed the line and brought another girl to their place) mainly because she didn’t understand what was happening at the moment and no one took their time to explain it to her. it was difficult to deal with her behaviour back then, she threw really loud tantrums and demanded to see her father almost daily and, whenever this didn’t happen, she’d go on a silent protest by not doing anything they asked her to. it’s years later that she understands everything (thanks to an argument she had with her brother for defending her dad and he just exploded). this, of course, greatly disappointed her and made her feel bad for still standing by her dad’s side.

― after that, inna just like her brother, closed a little to their father even though he was still as kind, loving and caring as ever with them despite everything. his attitude made her doubt her mother and brother several times, but then came the first girlfriend he ever introduced to them, and then the second… and so on.

― it was obvious that her mother drastically changed after the divorce and this scared inna a lot: letting someone in and become vulnerable with them only to have your heart broken sounded absolutely painful. and she didn’t want that. plus, her mom’s constant reminders of how she can’t trust anyone that its not her or her brother stayed deeply engraved within her.

― she’s never had a stable relationship, if anything, the longer she’s “gone out” with someone is a couple of weeks and after that, she ghosted them with no remorse. inna has had crushes in the past, but rarely ever actively pursues someone unless she’s really curious or interested to know more about them. nonetheless, she's a bit of a flirt and tends to get clingy and touchy when she's comfortable/close enough with someone.

― school is difficult in every stage for her, always getting rather mediocre grades in most of her classes except those that required a more creative and practical approach. simply put: she was bad at theoric classes and anything related to math and physics. though, inna was always close to failing but never did so. this was just one of the many reasons she didn’t want to pursue a college education.

― the creation of her channel is all thanks to her brother, her self-proclaimed number one fan and the one person that’s always encouraged her to keep going with her art. he suggested the idea and told her that they could do a testing video to see how comfortable she felt with it before uploading it. turns out, inna was more than okay with the camera for it focused on her hands and process the whole time. voice over was not necessary back then but as her channel evolved, so did the quality and content of her videos. steadily, she introduced different aspects of herself, starting with her voice by doing easy-to-follow tutorials and later on, her face was revealed when doing an art haul video. this helped her become more comfortable with the camera and now, every couple of weeks she posts vlogs of her visits to museums or events or just updates for her community.

― despite her popularity and some people even recognising her on the streets, inna has never considered herself to be a celebrity. in fact, she feels awkward with the title for she considers her channel to be just another one. she appreciates though whenever her prints get sold out or when someone asks for her autograph and a photo or even when she is invited to events as a special guest.

― the kind to get really excited when talking about things she likes. don’t get her started on her favorite medium or her favorite painting because she might go on for twenty seven minutes straight about how watercolors are the superior medium to work with.

― she likes experimenting with any and every medium out there, particularly enjoying art subscription boxes that always surprised her and push her out of her comfort zone. her specialization is landscapes and character design, though she’s recently learning to draw more animals and plants.

[astrofireworks]

cha eunwoo | astro

An introduction to Astro, lights of our lives, for new Arohas!

(done with @rockoaroundthechristmastree, @rockytheastroid​, @astrofireworks​, @jinwoosmile, @ongbins and @jakganim)

masterlist 

Born 30 March 1997

Gunpo child

How to recognise Eunwoo: look for a literal angel there you go there he is

Literally looks the same in all his eras bc he looks good with dark hair and fantagio Knows it

^ At time of writing anyway; he just came out with light brown hair for dream pt. 02′s jacket and everyone is fucKIN SHOOKT

Fuckin unreal smdh

Baby: light blue car

Visual 3/6

@jakganim (in a fic LOL but it was FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY PUNY LIL HEART) said once that Eunwoo’s as beautiful outside as he is on the inside and honestly i’ve never heard a sentence that describes eunwoo so perfectly 

in short, a heart as radiant and beautiful as he appears????

Researches everything bc he’s a diligent and worried bub

Whatever shows he goes on???? He researches them 

researched every single person going on law of the jungle and also researched what the climate was going to be like and how to build different things 

researched the MCs he was going on with when he went on Happy Together 3 and got exposed they read his unfiltered notes out loud in detail he got so shy ajsdfhlaskjd

researched everyone in crime scene 3 because he didn’t want to make a fool of himself 

got so nervous about variety show training programme bc they didn’t let him know who was going to be on the show with him so he couldn’t research them

puts so much effort into things what the fuck ! 

Real Name: Lee Dong Min 

Nickname: Buttmin (Lee Dongmin: 이동민) where second letter 동 sounds similar to the second letter in butt (엉덩이) because he thought he had a big butt asjdhlfakjsd

he can spell his name with his butt thanks variety show training

Actor 

Was MJ in The Best Hit/Hit the Top (and the members made jokes about it)

had a thing with the members where they’d call him Fake MJ 

Starred in their webdrama To Be Continued as the “lead” but not really (cries forever)

Was part of a miniseries called “Replies that Make us Flutter” where they took send-in answers for topics and incorporated them into short drama episodes. 

Bin starred in one with him as well. He tried to be a bad boy that hated Eunwoo. It was not convincing.

Won Male CF Star at the MTN Broadcast CF Festival

He’s currently in Revenge Note as the “leader” of Astro, it’s weird

#SmartBoi

goes to Sungkyungkwan uni, prestigious uni in SK

was also the top 3rd student in his school AND was student body president in middle school i’m truly weeping

Introduced on a few shows with the hashtag #차파고 (Cha-pha Go, a spin on Alpha Go) because he’s so damn diligent and detailed 

Also went on 1 v 100 with bin and mj but he got into the finals/semi-finals WOW WE STAN BRAINS AND BEAUTY 

Knows japanese and chinese and is nearly fluent in english bless his heart

Also speaks Chinese because his younger brother studies in China

DONGHWIIIIIIIIIIIII

Cute as fuck during new year’s when the rest of astro were in the fantz celebrating new year’s he went home to visit his brother bc he came back from china so he video called into vapp

I need to stop saying fantz someone shoot me i started ironically and now i can’t stop

Once upon a time was in the jungle with Yuri, apparently picked up aegyo there

Gets made fun of all the time by astro for the aegyo asjdfkhlskjd they make him sing the aegyo song literally every time 

And they annoy him by singing it too

Always gets iconic lines / killing parts in songs 

내꺼할래 !! (wanna be mine?)

같이 갈래? (let’s go together?)

Iconic line in polaris

Here’s a compilation you didn’t know you needed

Again made fun of by astro for doing the 같이 갈래

That one astro play where he’s just talking and then lil bitches sanha and jinjin pop up behind him and go 같이 갈래!!! and he just looks so done

The centre of all of Astro’s arm symbol formations 

Makes sure that you know who he is (bc he’s cHa-A e-EUN Wu-UU *thumps chest*) 

This ALSO gets mimicked by the other members, and poor boy tried to chug a soda and do this as well but ended up burping on camera as a result ;v;

Also the stiffest dancer my poor son

Got sent on some programme for idols who can’t dance it was Hilarious

But he also put so much effort into it i’m rly crying he made sure to get help from rocko in dancing the choreography right ;;;;

And he’s improved so much i’m !!!!!! so proud he puts in so much effort and he works so hard and he practices so much fuck i’m emo 

Literally ??? is perfect whatever he says his bad sides are are actually good points smdh 

Was asked once if there was anything he couldn’t do, to which he replied that he wasn’t good at relationships and the MC replied that wtf it just made him more attractive

farewell i am on the floor crying 

oh right okay yes one bad side:

MINIONS 

Smdh he loves them so much

The glasses he wore in the cicada video

that one video of them playing with the minion helicopter

that MINION HAT

160108 DDOCA when they’re playing with the minion blanket and jinjin opens it up and promptly looks horrified  

What the hell is this

European Bagel: once said he was eating an ‘european bagel’ on ok!ready episode 1 if anyone knows what that means pls let us know

He gets anxious about being a burden to astro

Talked about it in Astro Project watch at your own risk I cried

Listen he does so much he juggles acting and photoshoots for CFs and astro promotions he’s constantly trying to improve himself he’s never a burden and if there's one member in all of astro i want to hug and just !! tell him he's okay and that everything will be okay and tell him that he’s perfect and that he’s enough and deserves love it’d be Eunwoo for me ;;;;;;;;

Also Eunwoo: (sits quietly) / 5stro: let’s fuck with him

was playing with the ducks when jinjin and sanha come up behind him and screamed lmao he nearly fell on his face

A compilation or two… or three of Eunwoo being bothered by the other members lolol

Once Jinjin had to pull a secret camera on him and tell him that Astro accidentally broke a camera and without hesitating he offered to pay the full 1.5k$ that camera was worth adsfjkasd what a pure gullible bean ;A;

ICONIC BASEBALL DDOCA THAT SLAYED ALL THE BINU STANS THERE EVER WERE i’m writing this from the grave

Cutest whine? He goes like aaAAa or something like that idk but he does it when he gets annoyed it’s the cutest thing ;;;;;

Literally the (^▽^) face

Mouth opens up into a really wide triangle, width depends on how embarrassed he gets

My favourite laugh in the entire universe

heck I’m so in love,,,

LOVES KIDS 

during one ASC a baby came on and asked all of astro to go to their house to play for christmas eunwoo got out of his seat right away he was 1000% ready to run out of the studio and hop on that airplane

Actually a lil bitch lmao 

“Haha u were going 2 sleep?? Nah stay up & watch me on vlive fam”

Makes fun of hyung line’s height i live for this 

After arohas missed the “MJ” during the first fanchant he joked saying “why don’t y’all just come in on ‘jinjin’ instead?” #LetMJLive2k17 also #LetArohasLive2k17

Voice like moonlight 

Need him singing??? Here

Titles his v-lives “차은우의 Just one 10 minutes” but they’re never 10 minutes they’re nearly an hour long 

His voice is just really really soothing and comforting and if you ever need something to calm you down when you’re upset or if you need a background voice for when you’re studying here he is

Singing voice has improved so so so so so so much from Spring Up, his live singing shakes me to the core

Also sang opera in ASC so really hoo boy he’s improved so much I’m so !!! :’)

Literally can we pause and take a moment to appreciate his baby photos I looked like a rat when I was younger and here he is, snatching, 

My favourite baby ever ajkdlhsfakjsdf i lovE

Did some modelling campaigns pre-debut 

Shara Shara

I bet you needed all these pictures in your life

Cute lotion video :’)

Still king of CFs he recently did a baskin robbins one (with Yoo Seung Ho)

It’s pretty funny

He’s so cute what the heck

After the whole thing, he got addicted to ice cream; he mentioned in a vlive that at some point he could just eat sandwiches and ice cream the whole day

But fantagio also probably feeds all of astro ice cream for breakfast so really,  

A Lafuma ad with Seolhyun (AOA) 

A Polham ad with Doyeon (Weki Meki)

A Ceci spread with Doyeon too!! 

A Lotte Water Park ad with Sejeong (Gugudan)

Won an award for best male CF smdh 

Wears frickin glasses and makes everyone cry 

That one DDOCA where it’s him preparing for a hit the top shooting I would like you to know that this is coming to you from the grave

Got scouted by a Fantagio recruiter when he was in middle school, then bugged into joining the fantz

He was the school president, in the top three of the entire school, wanted Seoul National University to become a judge bless his fuckin heart

Apparently rejected Fantagio the first couple times they asked, but gave in bless him thank god

Astro claimed pre-debut walking anywhere with him meant everyone doing double-takes

Re-enacted on ok!ready: sanha and mj talking in a coffeeshop then stopping and sTARING THE FUCK OUT OF EUNWOO LMAO

Literally blew up on male-dominated sites for being PRETTIER THAN THE FEMALE MCs AT SHOW!MUCORE

So pretty that Hello Venus thought he was prettier than them when starring in their video

Some weibo arohas describe him as the kind of handsome where “even if you’re already married, you’d still take a second glance at him if you passed by him on the street” ("那种虽然有老公了但是对路过的帅哥还是想多看两眼的感觉") I 10000% agree 

weibo arohas also call him "车车" car car / cha cha i'm fuckinjasdfkjdf

In case you wanted a heart attack

Labelled a “Face Genius”, but wants to be acknowledged for more than his looks

“Someone who’s more reliable than anyone else and who always gives his all to the people he treasures, who’s very hard on himself and there are times where it gets too much but because of that, he’s someone who’s detailed and earnest.” (creds to @astrotranslations)

Dony on Weekly Idol called Rowoon (SF9) a face genius once but Rowoon politely deferred and said that title belonged to Cha Eunwoo :’)

Said once in an interview that he’d take whoever he likes out to dinner, give them a necklace then confess asdjfhlaskjd a true romantic bby

Also said that he was an “FM” boyfriend (field manual) asjdhflaksjd my heart is weak don’t attack me like this

You know what, Binu gets a section to themselves smdh 

Just so you know, arohas didn’t come up with the name ‘Binu’, they came up with it (”Team Soap”) themselves 

explained it by saying 빈 (Bin) + 우 (Woo) = 비누 (Soap)

Roommates!!

Picked each other in OK!Ready and have been living in the same room ever since 

in the recent Night Night show they did Eunwoo said that if he could pick roommates again, he’d still pick Bin 

Is apparently scentless to Bin 

Smdh we all know what habituation is it’s bc he smells Eunwoo too much Eunwoo doesn’t have a specific smell anymore

Also together like 24/7 stuck to each other’s side if you’re looking for eunwoo ever just look for bin you’ll find him there

Bin claims Eunwoo is the most beautiful creature on earth tbh same 

“Is he really human? How can someone that looks like him exist?”

Eunwoo thinks Bin is the most handsome too I love supportive friendships ;u;

IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN WAKE BIN UP AMAZING

Literally though sanha and jinjin posted a twitter video of them trying to wake bin up it doesn’t work it apparently only works when eunwoo gets him to wake up 

Sleeps through sanha and jinjin prodding him but wakes up when eunwoo starts talking in a vlive

Bin said in the harper’s bazaar interview that he doesn’t wake up when the manager calls him to get up but his eyes naturally open when he hears Eunwoo sighing (creds to @astrotranslations)

Bin’s mom even sent in a concern to hello counsellor bc he wouldn’t stop sleeping and couldn’t wake up so really… eunwoo = magic?

Want more Binu? Here, here and here!

Friends with Mingyu from Seventeen

Mingyu called him once for advice on what to bring to the jungle since he too was going on law of the jungle

Said in Night Night that he gets cold really easily

Yet in OK!Ready (as pointed out by @jinwoostro) he stood outside waiting for Jinjin and Sanha to come even though he was freezing ;u; 

A sweetheart!! Who cares so much !!!! for other members!!!!!!

Listen this boy works so hard and he does so much for a 20 year old: he models, he acts, he’s learning 3 other languages for Aroha, he handles university courses AND he still keeps up with astro’s promotions I’m really crying he’s worked so hard he deserves the world

Im rly fukcing criyng i gotta sotp i love this boy, 

[jisforjudi]

it’s only a partial screenshot - but it’s a gorgeous photo.  if you can lay your hands on the culture section of today’s times you’ll see the whole picture in all her glory.

Judi Dench on playing Victoria again

The diamond dame is celebrating 60 years in the acting biz with a second pop at playing the queen on film. This time with a rather beautiful young man — ‘Who wouldn’t?’ By Louis Wise

It was on September 9, 1957 that Judi Dench made her debut as Ophelia in the Old Vic’s Hamlet. Over the six decades since, she has taken hundreds more roles, won dozens of awards and ­plaudits, and become embedded in the national psyche. What is the greatest misconception about her? A pause. “‘National treasure,’” she purrs, in that distinctive Denchian croak. “F****** ‘national treasure’!”

 We are sitting in the library of the Covent Garden Hotel, in London, where she is doing promotional duties for her latest effort, Victoria and Abdul. At 82, she looks gorgeous, if a little shaky: the rattle of the bangles on her arms is complemented by a persistent cough, accompanied by streaming eyes. (She dismisses the suggestion that it’s hay fever, but isn’t sure what it is instead.) She is dressed in the expected boho-Denchy pale linen and has tiny feet, her toenails painted scarlet. Will she celebrate her 60 years in the biz? “Oh, I doubt it, no.” A small pause. “I might have an extra glass of champagne that day.”

Dench is, as you’d probably expect, both warm and brisk from the off, but the first time she gets properly animated is when I mention the “n******* t*******” tag. We know she hates it, she says it all the time, but I only bring it up to ask whether it’s an albatross when she’s looking for roles. As soon as the phrase even looms, though: “Oh, please don’t say that! Everyone says it, everyone. It’s horrible, it’s awful. I hate it.” So, yes, it’s the biggest misconception about her. She later qualifies her answer. “I’d like much more to be the Notes on a Scandal woman than the Marigold Hotel woman, do you know what I mean?”

It’s bizarre to define Dench’s career in terms of two roles, considering this is a woman who has been Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, Lady Macbeth, M from the Bond films and, yes, Queen Victoria, but you can see what she’s getting at. In 2007’s Notes on a Scandal, Dench was exceptional as the tortured, torturing Barbara Covett, unhealthily obsessed with her younger colleague (played by Cate Blanchett); in 2011’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, she had a far more fragrant, floaty time in the silver-surfers drama set in India. It’s the former that she hungers for, even now. “Oh, I loved it! I loved every second. That’s the part I’m always looking for.”

Furious old lesbian roles not being more forthcoming, though, she is back to playing the queen-empress for a second time, after Mrs Brown. Would she have liked to play any other crowned heads? “No, I don’t particularly want to play queens. You don’t actually think of Cleopatra [‘Cleoparrtra’] as a queen. You just think of her as somebody who behaves rather badly, now and again. But — if there’s a queen that behaves really badly...” She mulls it over. “You know, I long to find this film where this woman walks a tightrope and turns into a dragon. If that part is around, and she happens to be a queen, that’s fine, too.”

Sadly, perhaps, Victoria and Abdul does not require this of her. It’s another anniversary of sorts, since Mrs Brown dates from 1997, and it was this that launched her surprising, late-blooming Hollywood career. (It was a TV movie for the BBC until Harvey Weinstein snapped it up and put it in cinemas, earning Dench the first of seven Oscar nominations in the process.) “Is it 20 years since I did Mrs Brown?” she asks. Yes, isn’t it odd? It seems only about 12 years to me. “It seems like 40 to me.”

The role is not the only similarity. Like Mrs Brown, Victoria and Abdul charts the unusual relationship the monarch had with a man in her long years of widowhood. Whereas the first film concentrated on her intimacy with John Brown, roughly covering the 1860s to the 1880s, the second starts up in the late 1880s, when Victoria, even older, even grumpier and even more alone, is suddenly taken with a young Indian servant, Abdul Karim (played by the Bollywood cutie Ali Fazal), who has been brought over from Agra. Victoria makes him join her private household and he becomes a favourite, educating her on the country of which she is empress; she designates him her “Munshi”, an Urdu word for “teacher”.

All lovely, but of course this goes down like a lead balloon with the monarch’s stiff inner circle, for reasons of class and colour, and things get tricky and sour. The film, directed by Stephen Frears and scripted by Lee Hall, is a game of two halves: naughtily funny to start, achingly sad at the close, as Victoria reaches the end of her life and their friendship reaches its limits. Dench says she had “no intention” of ever returning to Victoria, but that the script won her over.

“I thought it just gave another huge insight into her life. The whole episode with John Brown was strange, but I thought it was totally understandable, which I believe that this relationship was, too. [Here was] somebody that she found, and she could just talk to him, and he talk to her, and she could ask questions and learn something.”

How much of Victoria’s rapport with Karim is an echo of the John Brown episode? “I think the need is the echo,” she replies. After Prince Albert’s sudden death, Victoria was left alone, without a man she could be utterly devoted to. “Yes, she liked a chap around,” Dench nods — which, with the lusty Victoria, is an understatement.

No hint of sex here, but certainly romance: a man “with whom she could actually relax, all formal protocol cancelled. A real, proper relationship, being able to speak her mind to somebody — I think that’s what it was. Apart from the fact that he was an extremely beautiful young man. Who wouldn’t?” She smiles gleefully. “If Ali [Fazal] walked in now, you wouldn’t recognise me. I’d be a spring chicken, all over the place. So beautiful.”

As she says, she is not quite a spring chicken today, but she fires on nearly all cylinders. The main thing that strikes me is how funny she is, specifically her timing and delivery; she can make all sorts of lines work. It reminds me that my first experience of Dench wasn’t as the great Hollywood matriarch, but on a much cosier and smaller scale, in the BBC sitcom As Time Goes By.

Time has indeed gone by, though she doesn’t want to moan about it. There are, of course, her eyes: for years now, her eyesight has steadily gone, as she suffers from macular degeneration. It’s always bad, but it’s getting worse. She says she’s finally going to tackle audiobooks, as she can’t read novels any more. I am politely surprised — I would have thought she had fathomed that a long time ago. “Yes, but you know, you think you can struggle on. But last week we ran over the only pair of glasses of mine that remotely worked.”

Television, though, she still tries at. “We’ve been watching Poldark, which for me is Pol-very-very-dark. I keep going, ‘Who is that speaking?’ I remember Robin Ellis doing the original all those years ago. You don’t remember,” she says, appraising me. “You were in short trousers then.” I wasn’t even born, I’m afraid. “You weren’t born? Oh, thanks so much. Thank you so much.”

If she can laugh about it, there are sadder sides, too. Recently her eldest brother, to whom she was close, died. She was close to her whole family, with whom she had a “glorious” time. “I’ve thought a lot about it recently. I keep wanting to refer back, and there’s no one to do that with. It is hard when that happens.”

In many ways, though, she seems to have been very lucky: she had a blissfully happy 30-year marriage to the actor Michael Williams, who died in 2001, and with whom she had a daughter, Finty, who has provided her with a grandson, Sammy. I ask Dench when she was happiest in her life.

“Oh, I don’t know. I have a happy nature. I have been very, very unhappy, like everybody, but usually I have quite a sunny nature, which is something you don’t manufacture. It’s either something you’re born with, or you’re not. And I think that comes from my parents. They had great, great senses of humour.” Her childhood in Yorkshire sounds glorious: play-acting and cycling and going to the theatre (her parents were involved in am-dram), and when she went to boarding school nearby, that was “heaven”, too. So you didn’t even have a tricky adolescence?

“Well, I remember my mother saying to me when I was at art school, ‘You are without doubt the most intolerant person I’ve ever met.’ I think I found fault with everything. And I remember not being able to say anything back, and just looking out of the window. She said it to my back.” A pause. “It’s very good to be told that early.” Did you take it on board? “I hope so. Because I think I am quite tolerant now. To a certain extent.”

What can’t you tolerate? “I can’t tolerate the bastardisation of the English language,” she says with a cackle. “I’m always screaming at Sammy. He says, ‘I was laying there.’ And I say, ‘Hens lay — lying, lying!’” She also says that she doesn’t like it when an actor turns up to rehearsals unprepared: “It’s not up to you to take up another person’s time.” This is easy to visualise. She says often how much she loves working in an ensemble, but you can be sure that once she’s in one, the dame is very much a dame.

I ask who, of all the people she has met, she’d like to talk to again. “Oh, Gielgud. So funny! Terribly funny and irrelevant — I mean irreverent! Oh, he would send me up for that.” Also, she would like to meet Shakespeare, “to see if he had any more plays up his sleeve, or doublet”.

Lots of interviews dwell on Dench’s grief after losing Williams (and her new relationship with David Mills, whom she met at the opening of his squirrel sanctuary). But I was interested in how she and Williams met, and how it felt at the time. She met him in a pub on Drury Lane, in the early 1960s. Did she find him attractive at first?

“No, we just laughed a lot. And we went on meeting like that occasionally, and having a good laugh.” Things came to a head when he joined her on a theatrical tour in Australia, and he took it upon himself to propose; they finally wed in 1971. Had it been her ambition to be married? In the early 1970s, I’d assume mid-thirties was late for such a thing, especially for a woman wanting children.

“Oh, I wanted to be married and have six children! That’s a big regret in my life. But at least I have one divine girl, and a grandson.” But was she panicked at all about whether she’d settle down? You see, Judi, I’m 34 and single. “No, 34 is fine,” she says firmly. “It’s fine.” Yes, yes, but did you feel that way at the time?

“Oh, I know, but I was in love so, so much, all the time,” she replies dreamily. Before Michael? “Oh yeah. Mmm.” With varying levels of success? “Oh, hopeless.” Unrequited? “No!” She gives a cough, which for once might be a planned one. “No. Requited! It was just the most glorious time, a wonderful, wonderful time,” she says. “So don’t give up because you’re 34. Certainly don’t.”

The Munshi’s tale

Victoria and Abdul’s story began in 1887, her golden jubilee year. As part of the celebrations, she was presented with two Indian servants from Agra. Victoria took a shine to the more handsome of the two and integrated him into her household. For Abdul Karim, a humble clerk, this was a vertiginous elevation, though he balked at the menial work she demanded and asked to be sent home. The queen, 68, besotted with the 24-year-old, refused.

Very soon, she promoted him from simple manservant to “Munshi”, or teacher, asking him to give her lessons in Hindustani. The fruits of these labours are her Hindustani Journals, all 13 volumes of which are at Windsor Castle. They are a symbol of the empress-queen’s fervour for all things Indian, as encouraged by Karim — not least a good curry. Chicken and dal were her favourites.

Victoria’s family and entourage detested Karim. They railed and plotted against him, even threatening a mass walkout in 1897, but Victoria stood firm. When she died, however, retribution was swift. The new Edward VII ordered that all trace of Karim be removed; the king’s sister Beatrice excised all signs of him from her mother’s diary. Karim was sent back to India, where he would die eight years later in 1909, aged 46. Luckily, though, he left a diary with his relatives — a huge help to the journalist Shrabani Basu when she started researching his extraordinary story a few years ago. It’s on her book that Stephen Frears’s film is based.

A small trace of Karim survives at Victoria’s private retreat on the Isle of Wight, Osborne House. Two photographs hang in her dressing room, one on top of the other: one is of John Brown, the Scotsman who guided her through the darkest years of her widowhood; the other of her dear Munshi, who consoled her thereafter.

[doom-doom-doom]

Nyugat-európai közhangulat

Independent-cikk, Magyarországon verik a négereket migránsokat. Vagy igaz, vagy nem igaz, de ez itt éppen nem is lényeges. Az érdekes, ami a cikk alatt van.

Kommentek (válaszok nélkül, hosszú, inkább csak átscrollozni érdemes - kiemeltem a cikkel egyetértő hozzászólásokat):

“ wouldn't believe a word the lying economic scumbags say, the same goes for the HRW who are a front to flood Europe with western hating, misogynistic, homophobic Islamic scum. Iran and Pakistan are not at war these lying economic scumbags need sending back.”

“ They have been told not to come, they have been warned not to come and still they have the arrogance to try and get into Europe! They are lucky they don't get shot! Sod off, get the message and go away!”

“Why don't immigrants respect immigration laws?  They have a very strong belief of entitlement.”

“How come Hungary can stop them and we can't?”

“Why are Iranian and Pakistani asylum seekers coming all the way to europe? there are multiple countries closer which they could claim Asylum in! (...)” 

“How can I donate money to the Hungarian army welfare??”

“Oh dear, what a shame, how sad. Better go home to Pakistan then.”

“Hungary doesn't need nor want Muslims. What is so difficult to understand about that?“

“So, it's OK to beat people up, strip them of their clothing in freezing cold weather, set dogs on them, because who do they think they are, trying to cross borders? And everyone on here seems to approve. Disgusting perverts, all of you.”

“Racist scum posting here“

“Boycott these barbaric savage countries like Hungary. Expell them from the UN.“

"This account given by Shahid Khan, a Pakistani asylum seeker..." Has seemingly not been verified but merely presented as truth.

“People treat other people terribly because we're just animals when it comes down to it. Humanist dogma tells us that we can never stoop that low, but we've let ourselves down on that front again and again.“

“Electrified fences work great the Germans used a fence to prevent Belgians seeking asylum in the Netherlands during WW1 it was nicknamed the "death wire" or "death fence", it ran for 332km. Estimated to have killed hundreds during the war.“

“So sorry for the poor treatment. PS we still dont want you.“

“ Zero sympathy for these parasites.“

“Tough guys beating on defenseless migrants, they must feel so proud when they go home and tell their children all about it“

“A genuine refugee who escaped from his country in fear for his life, would feel secure in Serbia. Why would he feel safer in Hungary?”

“The Hungarians continue to rise in my estimation.”

“There are 53 Muslim countries in the world, surely one of these countries would take these awful wretched people, or, are they economic migrants looking for a better life in a wealthy country with a good social security system. Why can't they claim asylum in Serbia?“

“Sounds hard but they have to be dissuaded from just turning up expecting a red carpet.”

“ These filth have been attacking guards, throwing rocks, screaming allahu akbar. Glad Hungary's guards are doing good work and celebrating a job well done.”

“So which war is Shahid Khan the Pakistani so called asylum seeker fleeing from?.“

“That bloke at the front with the grey hair and beard. Apparently he's only 13.”

“ See para 2. There is no such thing as a Pakistani 'asylum seeker'in Hungary.”

“There's a country much nearer than Hungary, with the same culture as they have, with the same religion, with the same respect for human being, with plenty of jobs on offer, a super rich country with plain gold flushes ... Its called Saudi Arabia ... Why don't they go there ? ... Bonus : the president of the UN Human Right commission is a Saudi :)“

“That Pakistani is lying! We never took selfies with them...”

“ "Migrants wait to receive free food" - all men of fighting age who've run away, leaving their families to die - can't wait until this stalwarts of honour grace our handouts system!”

“ Whilst these allegations are troubling, it's the first time I'd heard of them and would treat them with a pinch of salt. We know that NGOs and the media lied through their teeth in July 2015 when violent, criminal migrants attempted to storm the border crossing at Roszke. NGOs and the media lost all credibility for their biased and misleading reporting. (...).”

“What part of 'we put this fence up to keep economic migrants out' didn't they understand ? Hungary doesn't want you, they had enough of Moslems from 1526-1686, they don't want you back again: period.“

“Perhaps then, the message will have got through?”

“Get the photos up on Facebook and send the link to all their iPhones 7s.”

“Pakistani and Iranians - amongst refugees What war are they fleeing? This story is more than likely made up B.S “

“Citizens of other EU nations are Hungary to see such border controls implimented by their own government's.“

“Wished this newspaper would stop calling them migrants, they are refugees from a war torn country on the behest of Israel“

“The failure by the EU to take effective action against Hungary is more than likely a sign of tacit agreement with such brutality.“

“From Pakistan, I must have missed that they were in a war too.“

“No war in Pakistan. This is an economic migrant.”

“This could be the new craze like the ice bucket challenge”

“A man from Pakistan, 28 years old man from Iran, 34 years old man from Iran and millions others, all military age male gangsters. Refugees, huh? (...)“

“How is it that when forces eventually retook the city of Raqqa from ISIL all that they produced was a wave of refugees,& now again as they take Mosul we again have more waves of so called innocent refugees fleeing persecution.Were are the Head chopping Terrorists ??“

“Swift justice, good to see, the lawless 3rd world lying immigrants broke the law and entered Hungary illegally. “

“ “They treat us like animals, and we are humans.” Says it all about the way these savages see animals.  We don't want them.” 

“ And next door Slovakia is set to ban the building of Mosques where Islam is not recognised as an official religion because of its misogyny, homophobia etc. (...)“

“Instead of 'migrants' it should say 'invaders'.”

“I am not aware that there is war in Pakistan and Iran. But if there was, refugees are supposed to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.“

“The story of the beaten migrants pushed for the white guilt! I've gone way passed guilt! It stopped at the border of the first safe country they invaded through! “

“Besides heat sensors,cameras,loudspeakers, and building a new electrified fence the Hungarians should use mobile and GPS jammers. The migrants and smugglers depend on mobile phones and GPS to navigate through the terrain.“

“ Soros  falsehood  - pitiable trash journalism  - “

“(...)  Well, it's not asylum seeking, it's breaking in. Keeping them out requires force and not nice articles in a biased journal.“

“They will do anything to get sympathy! Humans? Not the kind I want to live next door to! They are nothing but scroungers and parasites.”

“ It is somewhat curious that despite of the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine there are no Ukrainian refugees trying to illegally enter neighbouring Hungary, but there is a constant influx of economic migrants from places as far as Bangladesh and Senegal (countries where there is no war).”

“In case these evil guards took selfies, there must be some evidence somewhere. No evidence? Then you're just making fake news, Independent ("independent?" haha). (...)”

“Is there any evidence of this?”

“ Thank you, but we (in Hungary) don't need more and more parasites who can not (or dont want) to comply with the law of a civilization, but claims free food, free money (for nothing), free women, property, car; everything for free. (...)  And we have an other horde of parasites: our whole government.”

“(...)  It seems that these days we in Hungary started to tell the truth about mass migration, and opinion leaders in the West do not like it.”

“To avoid being abused stay out of Hungary. That's the message. Maybe the Hungarians can't afford to fed and take care of more refugees”

“Hungary is leading by example and the rest of Europe should follow suit!“

“ This is pure fake news, spread by the globalist media.  Hungary has been a black sheep since PM Orban took office in 2010.  There have been many similar media campaigns against the Hungarian government since then but the Hungarian voters support them (very!) firmly. So just get over it, liberals:  Hungary is not going to go 'multicultural'.   That's why Hungary is, and will stay, a safe and civilized country. “

**********************************

6 : 53

Ez a mese is hogy megváltozott!

[asynca]

Rumour Has It - Pharmercy - SFW

FF.net | AO3

Overwatch has fallen, and the media is full of terrible lies about the work of Dr Angela Ziegler. Speed prompt, written in 65 minutes.

Blanket around her middle, early morning sun shining in from their bedroom window, Angela sat up in bed. Her phone had been ringing off the hook with notifications all night; she couldn’t bring herself to look at them. Instead, she took a deep breath, reaching out with shaking hands to touch ‘play’ on the holovid she’d opened in from of her.  

A reporter’s solemn face popped up. Before she’d even opened her mouth, Angela’s heart was pounding. “Disgraced organisation Overwatch—decommissioned by the United Nations itself after the truth was leaked by brave unknown sources—has been found to have conducted extensive medicals experiments on innocent people.”

Beside her, Fareeha turned over in bed. “Don’t do this, Angela,” she said, touching Angela’s cool arm with her hand that was warm from the blankets. “Don’t do this to yourself.”

But Angela couldn’t look away. She couldn’t. She just listened to the so-called ‘news’. “Reports were made available to this news stations showing extensive medical experimentation on subjects identified simply as numbers—a practice likened to the events in Nazi Germany last century—”

Angela’s lips were pressed in a tight, thin line. This reporter had no idea what she was talking about; Angela’s family had lost nearly an entire generation last century. Her ears were ringing.

Fareeha knew this. “—Angela, please. Turn it off, it doesn’t help you to—”

“I need to know, Fareeha.”

It didn’t stop. “…Ironically enough, the experiments were actually carried out by a doctor whose family was originally German before they moved to Switzerland last century, Doctor Angela Zeigler, a woman who newspapers have now dubbed ‘Dr Death’ because of the reports identifying how many of the people she experimented died as a result of her cruel torture, and—”

Angela couldn’t hold her breath any longer. “They died because of the war, you idiots!” She hissed at the screen. The reporter just kept droning on in the background as Angela shouted at her. “They died because everyone is still fighting each other, and I couldn’t save them because you took away my research based on nothing but hearsay and rumours!” It wasn’t fair; she could fear tears welling in her eyes.

Fareeha’s hand reached up and switched off the video. “Angela, please don’t—”

“How dare they?”

“It’s just tabloid media, people will forget that—”

“Just—how dare they?” Angela was shaking. She turned to Fareeha. “I dedicated my whole life to eradicating death! To making sure parents returned home to their children, that grandparents would live to see four beautiful generations of their family, to making sure that no child—no child ever—would ever lie awake at night with no one to tuck them in, or tell them that they love them, or make sure that—”

“Angela…” Fareeha sat up in bed, putting an arm around her. “I know that. You know that. Anyone who matters in the medical community knows that, don’t listen to—”

“And now 10 billion people in the world thing I’m a monster!”

“I don’t think they really believe this. No one would believe that—”

“Fifty newspapers. Every news station…” Angela tabbed through the menu of the holovid, showing Fareeha the headlines. “All of them are about Dr Death.”

“Angela…”

She knew Fareeha was only trying to help. But she felt sick, so sick. She could hardly breathe. What had she done to deserve this? She couldn’t bear it any longer. “I’m getting up,” she said neutrally, and went to have a shower.

The warm water didn’t help. Angela could see her reflection in the shower screen; bags under her eyes. Sallow skin—she hadn’t slept properly in days. How could she, when people were saying such horrible things about her? When people believed these things without even questioning them, or asking where they came from?

She dressed mechanically. She ate her breakfast; cold, chewy toast. Her coffee was bitter, and at the breakfast table—a place where she’d normally read her emails and watch the news—she just stared at the table in front of her. ‘Dr Death eats breakfast, contemplates new evil scheme’, she imagined the newspapers saying about her staring at the table like this. She couldn’t finish her toast.

Behind her, she could feel Fareeha lingering in doorways, watching her. Wanting to help. “Can I do anything to—”

“No.” She paused, wincing. “Thank you. No.” Fareeha eventually gave up hovering and went to do something else.

After her breakfast, Angela would normally get to work; reading the latest research, following up on correspondence. She didn’t think she could do that today. Her phone was still going—message after message, notification after notification. Everyone wanted a piece of Dr Death, it seemed. I’ll have to get a new number, she thought; she’d had this one for twenty years.

After a few minutes of watching her phone light up nonstop, she pulled her phone in front of her on the table, staring down at it. The little notification panel was full. A little red ‘4677’ was above her email inbox.

Apparently, 4677 people want to tell me what they think of me, she realised, watching that number tick to 4678, 4679, 4680. She wondered what they were saying.

Fareeha would tell her not to do it, and that she should delete the messages and throw away her phone. Fareeha was always so strong on that point: what matters is what you do, because on Judgement Day—Angela knew she quoted her mother on this one—Allah would weigh her actual deeds, not what people said about her.

It was good, practical advice. But Angela never had been very good at taking Fareeha’s advice.

4681.

4682.

How had so many people gotten her private number, she wondered? As far as she was aware, no one outside the medical community or any of the odd patients she’d attended over the years had it. Someone had probably doxed her, she decided. That was likely; she knew there were some powerful people with terribly technological know-how out there.

4683.

Morbidly, she wondered if she could reach 5000 by the end of the morning. 5000 people sending hateful messages to Dr Death. Maybe she’d even make 10,000 by dinner?

4684.

She wondered what people would have to say about her; if they were truly comparing her to the Nazis, and if they did, if they knew she was Jewish herself.

4685.

She couldn’t stop thinking about that, though. About the awful comparison. About the haunting photos she’d seem of the emptiness in her great-great-grandmother’s eyes, how people said her great-great-grandmother couldn’t answer the phone because every time the phone rang, she thought it was them. That they’d found her. How her throat would close over and she’d stand paralysed and stare at it, trapped in a different time. How the damn tabloid media had no idea.

4686.

Well, damn them, Angela thought vehemently. Damn them all.

Fuelled by bitterness and a sense of horrible, painful injustice, she reached out and tapped the little red numbers, opening another window in her holovid.

“Let’s see what you’re all saying about Dr Death,” she said flatly, feeling sick.

There were so many emails. Even other doctors were emailing her, random people, names she didn’t recognise, some names she did. It was all about the news, she could see that from the subject lines. And it was all so, so sarcastic. So much hate.

Feeling sick to her stomach, she opened the first one, the one at the top of the list.

Mouth dry and heart pounding, she braced herself to read the words she knew she was going to. She prepared herself to read that barrage of lies, to feel the hatred seeping from every word they said.

“Dear Dr Ziegler,” it began. Her stomach was in knots as she kept reading. “You probably don’t remember me. You operated on me about ten years ago when I was bleeding out after being shot. I saw the reports about the terrible things you’ve done today. I sat and watched all of them from beginning to end, about how you’d killed people and experimented on people and pretended to be this innocent, sweet lady when you’re a terrible person, and I want you to know that I don’t believe a word that they’re saying. I’m alive because of you. Last year, my wife had our first child and every time I look at her beautiful sleeping face I’m thankful to you for saving me.”

Angela sat back.

She had to read that again. And again, looking for the barb. Looking for the hidden nastiness she’d expected, but she couldn’t find one.

Stunned, she opened the next letter.

“Dear Dr Ziegler,” it read. It had clearly been typed by a child. “Thank you for saving mummy from the soldiers. She can walk really good now! I put a photo here for you to see.” Attached was a photo of a woman Angela remembered operating on in the field last year. It was a Christmas photo; the woman had a crutch under one arm and a Christmas tree behind her. There was a little girl with a big gap-toothed grin wrapped around her waist. The woman was smiling, and holding a sign that said ‘Thank you, Dr Ziegler’. It had been cross-posted to social media.

Angela swallowed.

When she tabbed down the list, her eyes jumped to a familiar name.

Genji. “Dear Angela,” it began. It had been hand written on a screen. “Pay no attention to the media, it is poison. Take some time away from the news and the papers to reflect on what you know to be true, what we all know to be true about you. I have said some awful things to you in the past, but now I am truly grateful to you for giving me another chance; another opportunity to save myself. I have taken it, and I am happy now. That is partly your doing, Angela. Thank you.”

She tabbed down the list, scrolling and scrolling. Each message read like this. All of them. One after another, filled with joy and hope she’d given people.

She tabbed down the list, opening message after message, waiting for the shoe to fall, for the ‘trick’ to be apparently.

But there wasn’t a trick. The ‘thank you’ subject lines weren’t sarcasm. People weren’t mocking her, or insulting her, or hating her. It was all genuine.

Despite everything, in her darkest hour, 4685 people had sent her beautiful, heartfelt messages to thank her for saving them. So many children who still had parents because of her; so many families still whole, still in one piece because of her. So many lives saved and lives touched.

Every message. Every one of them.

She closed her email windows, put her head in her hands and cried.

--

Dedicated to the many wonderful people who stopped offered me support after what happened to me yesterday. I appreciate every one of you <3

[planetarywho]

What the hell is going on with the world? It feels like only yesterday I came here to write an eulogy to Brazil's National Museum. St. Sulspice burned, what, weeks ago? And now this. Notre Dame. Another piece of history up in flames.

It's so hard talking about this one. So very difficult. More than all the others, in my heart, even if there are no such things as rankings in history: objectively, it's all equally depressing. But seeing Notre Dame burn felt visceral, knowing it had been built in a time we no longer can access, reflecting in its walls, in its construction, ideals that are foreign to us, but ever so present in as far as we keep hoping for something better, and seeking to shine our own colourful reflections in the world.

I babble. Yesterday - the day of the fire - I started writing, but couldn't go through with it. It just hurt. So, today, I shall try again, to find catharsis somehow, to be able to look at the photos, be them from before or from now, without it feeling like it does.

I know it is selfish and self-centred to write about the impact a tragedy such as that has in my life, and not in the world. But, honestly, what more can be said about its lost for humanity that hasn't already, and by people far more talented and knowledgeable? Having Notre Dame burn is shocking wherever you are, whoever you may be. It's an icon, one of the most recognisable images out there, and it means many different things to different people. What to add, so, other than one of these tiny meanings, these small pieces of a collective mind and memory?

Yesterday, as I was leaving my Modern History class, I saw students covering their mouths, whispering and pointing at their phones. A girl ran out of the classroom. Another went to show whatever it was to the professor, who seemed completely incredulous. I had no clue what was going on, and no desire to know it, and so left the class peacefully. The History floor was filled with people in hushed conversation. There were muffled sobs coming from a side corridor. Still, it was a surprisingly silent commotion. It felt like mourning.

I kept on walking. Being someone who's only finishing leftover courses, if I knew five people in that crowd by name it would've been too many. Their pain felt foreign, and I believed to be so.

After Modern History, as irony is, I went to Medieval Art History. There was also conversation in this corridor, and people wondering if the professor would be there at all, at least on time. Finally, I asked a girl what had happened.

"Don't you know?" She said, pointedly. "Notre Dame is on fire. The spire fell a few minutes ago."

I stared at her for a beat, than thanked her for the information, and just... Paused. Tried to connect those words with what I had in my mind, with the idea of that place, and simply couldn't. It felt unreal.

When my grandmother died, a few years ago, I didn't cry. I was polite and helpful, answering people, helping my dad with funeral arrangements, choosing flowers and calling relatives. It took me months to actually be able to mourn her properly. For the first few days, I felt unreal, as if I was the ghost, floating through other people's lives but never touching them more than in passing, never being solid enough to have a purpose of my own. I was functional, but not quite human, not in a way that could be fully described as such. Until finally crumbling down, all that time later, though I talked about her to people, I did so without picturing her face, or voice, or stories. To think of her was impossible if I wanted to remain in control of myself, so I didn't. Something very similar happened years before, when a close friend died of cancer while I was out of town, and, believing I knew already, someone commented on his funeral (that had taken place less than a week before) during my birthday. The shock took a while to set. It is still bittersweet to see December arriving, every year, after this.

The fire at Notre Dame feels somehow similar to that. When the National Museum crumbled in ash, I actually wept, and could talk about it clearly, be it in real life or online. Now I can only seem to ramble on and on, circling the subject, but never approaching it, never reaching close enough to feel it all. The margins are already overwhelming.

Said Art History class was about gothic vitrals. I think it's fairly obvious that about half the images in the professor's presentation were of said cathedral. I have never seen a classroom like that before. It was as if we all feared making any noise beyond the bare minimum, trying to keep the silence. The professor tried to talk about it at the start. She mentioned how Notre Dame had survived many fires before, as would remain - and if she added a bitter comment under her breath about this being avoidable these days in a way that wasn't in the past, who can blame her? We went through the motions, and dutifully wrote down common themes, techniques, and ecclesiastical changes that were behind the passage from Romanic to Gothic. We asked questions when expected to. She very quickly finished both this subject and the next - paintings, and similar arts -, and said an early goodbye. We left in silence.

It is rare to feel this kind of collective shock in a History course. If you don't know historians, let me tell you: we're loud, when confined in close quarters with our peers, and argumentative as hell. There are little cliques inside de Academia formed by those who follow a certain method, and/or study a certain theme. The ones who follow Foucault are friendly with the ones who like Certeau, and often with the postmodernists. Everyone else - including, on occasion, ourselves - hates the postmodernists with a passion. Most medievalists scoff at the Foucaultians, and are not terribly fond of the Marxists. The Marxists don't really like anyone, but specially the Cultural Historians.

I think I painted the picture: we don't agree a lot. To truly unite us is no easy feat. But everyone was in one kind of mourning or another yesterday. We were all together, working as a collective mind - or, perhaps, a collective heart. There was no place for anything else other than pain.

When I was three, I asked my parents - with all the solemnity only a clueless kid can have - for a very specific present for my fourth birthday: to go to the Louvre. I had seen images of the art on a kids show, you see, and a few books, and believed Paris to be no further from Curitiba than the nearest beach (which is an hour or two by car). So, they sat down with me, and talked about Paris, and explained where it was, and what this distance meant. They showed me yet more pictures in encyclopedias: of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Molin Rouge and, of course, of Notre Dame. Paris became a new Neverland in my mind, a place filled with adventure and magic, as far from boring reality as it could be. I had images of all those places stapled to my walls, talked for hours about the works of art there, and about all the things I'd visit when I grew up ("see, it's not all the Louvre, there are things I wanna see all over the city"). Through the years, my obsessions shifted around, going from one monument or historical site to another, but never truly leaving. At around age seven, during my ancient mythology fase, It was all in the Egyptian and Greek collections, the neoclassic art, the Obelisk. Later, about age twelve, it were the catacombs, and the graves of writers and poets. At around fifteen or sixteen, it was time for the Molin Rouge, and the cafes of Montmartre. There was a time for Versailles, other for the Tower, other for Monet's Gardens.

Notre Dame's first time in the spotlight of my dreams came, like for so many, right after I first saw Disney's Hunchback for the first time. Yes, I know. Such a silly reason, in a way. One of the least contemplative ones. But the place, all the songs with its name, the mixture of scary and wonderful, stuck with me, and it became, for a few months, all I researched and talked about. It came back during my teenage years, when I first read Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and again after I started learning French for the first time, and when I started liking medieval architecture, and when discovered the off-Broadway Disney musical, and...

After time, it became such a pinnacle of my inner Paris, that remembering it, and going to look at its pictures, became a comfortable thing, like talking to an old friend. Sure, we didn't talk as much anymore - sticking to the metaphor - , but whenever we did, nothing had changed. When I got enough money to visit Europe for a couple weeks (after a year of making use of still being with my parents, and saving every penny from all my wages), Paris was at the front of my mind as to where to go. But money was short and the city expensive, I had a new historical obsession (medieval Ireland), and while I can read French well enough, and understand movies when in a good day, I never learned enough to communicate in it; English was so much easier. So, despite a lifelong dream, I went backpacking through Great Britain and Ireland, entering every old church I could find, visiting every castle and fort, seeing as many museums as possible. Paris would always be there.

About a month ago I started studying French again. A friend needs to learn it, and I decided to form a study group with him and a couple others. As the one with some previous knowledge, so far I function almost as the teacher, giving homework for us all to do and guiding pronunciation and grammar. The first week, I looked for musicals in French, and found subtitled versions of both Mozart L'opéra Rock and Notre Dame de Paris, and promptly told them to listen to them. Every day, I fell asleep hearing lyrics about the cathedral, its gargoyles, its majesty. We discussed themes, and sang "Les Temps des Cathedrales" together loudly and boisterously. And all along, it was there. It was a theme, a symbol, something as integral to our existences as most monuments in our own country - moreso than those, in many cases.

Knowing the world continues, but Notre Dame is not there - at least not as before? It's unimaginable. It's utterly surreal. It is to painful to be mourned, to giant to be looked at. Even now, as I try to write something, to find words, what I manage is a giant text about routine, and history, and meaning. Not about the individual feelings, but their shadows, the translucent colours the superimpose on the world. Maybe this is appropriate in some way, and keeping with the foundations that lay with all its architecture. But it is still detached, contemplative, an exercise in prose, not an actual in memoriam, or at least a proper confessional. And it deserved much more, from History just as from all individual statements. It deserved more even than the adoration (be it historical and artistic, like this, or religious, like that of so many) that is being layed at its scorched feet. Honestly, as it happens with all beloved that pass away, it simply deserved to be there, still, and appreciated like we wish it now that it is gone.

Maybe in a few weeks, or months, or years, I can finally cry, and write something coherent, something as heartfelt as it should. Now, I fear too much the idea of staring it in the face, and swing only empty eyesockets looking back. I either face the loss, or remain functional, and breaking down is not s luxury that can be had at the present time, with thesis to finish, classes to give, sick dogs to look after. I'll continue to wiggle around the hole that this new fire burned into my soul, and walk on, until the second it decides to swallow me hole - for a bit, at least.

I thought of many good phrases for an ending, but don't really feel like being poetic or clever is an honest conclusion to a memorial - which, in a way, this is part of. So, I'll simply stop writing, go to bed, and hope I wake up and realize this was nothing but a really bad dream.

[harindersingh]

Three Indian Americans have been targeted in hate crimes in the past few days. Srinivas Kuchibhotla was fatally shot in Kansas, Harnish Patel was killed in South Carolina and now Deep Rai was shot at, in Seattle. Deep Rai is a Sikh, and reportedly the partially masked gunman said “Go back to your country” to him, before shooting.

In the ten days following Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States, as many as 867 “hate incidents” were reported to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which the US advocacy group termed as a “national outbreak of hate.” In recent days, though high-profile incidents have been reported in the media, the number of such reports to SPLC has declined.

But wait a minute. “This movement is in the top of the first inning,” remarked Steve Brannon, the “president” behind the president who thinks “darkness is good… Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power.”

Top of the first inning is baseball lingo and I delve in this favourite pastime of America to seek some answers. American football politics might not work given the Super Bowl still uses Roman numerals instead of Arabic, but let's give it a go.

Baseball player compositions have changed since the Jackie Robinson era. 70 years ago, the only place where a black man could swing a bat at a white man, and get away with it, was in the “Field of Dreams” in Brooklyn, New York. Baseball now is more global than American football, and minorities (Hispanics, blacks, Asians, in % order) are about 40% of the Major League baseball players.

Brexit and Trump have already become a reality and with Le Penn just around the corner, there is no doubt that right-populism is going global.

The Ipsos MORI poll which tracks percentages of people who think their country is on the wrong track. Their latest poll is quite revealing: USA (63), Britain (60), Australia (57), Canada (47), and India (26). Of the aforesaid five nations, in USA and India, the top worry is terrorism.  And that is what the “haters” now in charge of policies are fueling via “Muslim ban” and “ICE-forced deportations.”

All indicators point to a possibility that in their upcoming elections during 2017, the Germans, the French, and the Dutch may elect populist far-right governments. And that’s just in Europe.

Back to Trump, since that phenomenon is going global. Let’s first understand the South Asian minority “leaders” of President Trump. Shalabh Kumar is of Indian Hindu descent; he is a “powerbroker” industrialist backed by the ruling far-right Indian government. Whereas Jesse Singh is of Indian Sikh descent and Sajid Tarar of Pakistani Muslim descent; both have negligible support in their respective communities and belong in the “token” or “photo-op” categories. Jesse Singh had also rendered a Sikh prayer at President Trump’s inauguration ceremony, along with some other “leaders” from different faiths, lending it an ecumenical aura.

In the same vein, globally minority leaders, without consultation of the communities they represent, are making absolute policy statements which come across as pandering to the populist right and without any doctrinal basis. For example, Bawa Singh Jagdev’s (National Sikh Council of Australia) statement that same-sex marriage will “destroy the whole human race” has no Sikh doctrinal basis. Rather, it counters the very notion of “Ik Oankar” (One Force that radiates in all) which forms the basis for zero tolerance for bias due to race, gender, sexuality, belief, etc. And of course, he cites no Sikh survey conducted in Australia to gauge the community sentiment.

Immigration has become a major concern worldwide. In the US, the visa ban targeting Muslims has already been deemed illegal by its courts. India’s far-right Modi government is meddling with 1955 Citizenship bill which deems Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan as “persons belonging to minority communities” who “shall not be treated as illegal migrants for purposes of this Act.” The current Citizenship amendment bill is targeted towards, you guessed it, Muslims.

It has been a month since President Trump’s inauguration; I suppose the bottom of the first inning is over. Hate events continue to evoke sentiment and enrage sections of the community. Even South Asians are organising beyond the conventional “brown-folk” minority stereotype as part of the ‘Resistance’.  And so too are United Colors of America with Love: gender, ethnic, and religious minorities in partnership with the majority white privileged ones. An atypical American Resistance! Recall “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” where it successfully demonstrated evidence-based approach conquers the flawed insiders? That minority-majority complex is something that is being replicated worldwide.

In Panjab’s context, which can also be extrapolated to the whole global North and South, poet Surjit Patar proclaims, that the responsibility to identify the villain rests with people:

   When do I say demanding justice is not right?

   When do I dissuade you from waging a fight?

   To identify the foe is so essential,

   To get mutilated without reason is futile.

And he draws attention to change transcending all conflicts:

   Thrones did last, but not forever,

   People betrayed, but not forever,

   Drip by drip flows the water,

   Urge to change is subdued,

   But inevitable is the change.

A month of Trumpism in command has seen utter chaos in governance. Cultural icons, mental health professionals, journalists, policy-makers, conservatives and liberals are all converging on this thought: Donald Trump is not fit to be the president of the US. In baseball terms, it is the beginning of the second innings, when will the umpire (the Judiciary) and the manager (the Republicans) change the player? And this ‘stranger-than-fiction-reality-game’ in Washington is being played with hate and lies. This game may be shorter since it is incessantly interrupted by bad weather-temperament, the newest target being the free press. Who will be around for the seventh inning stretch?

Darkness must be addressed.

A Jedi trains to confront Vader. The Jedi Order values wisdom, the Light. They are teachers, philosophers, scientists, engineers, physicians, diplomats and warriors, who join the Rebellion to fight the Empire.

Jaswant Singh Khalra, Jedi of our times, remarked in Canada before his extrajudicial killing in India:

There is a fable that when the Sun was setting for the first time … the light was decreasing … and the signs of Darkness were appearing … Darkness set its foot on the earth, but it is said — far away, in some hut, one little Lamp lifted his head. It proclaimed, ‘I challenge the Darkness. If nothing else, then at least around myself, I will not let it settle. Around myself, I will establish Light.’ And … watching that one Lamp, in other huts, other Lamps arose. And the world was amazed that these Lamps stopped Darkness from expanding so that people could see.

Recognise the darkness of ignorance within you, your vicinity. Use your intellect, wealth, and strength to access the light, and allow the light to enter you, to enlarge you.

The Light brings out Love: the love that shapes a collective will.

And yes, eventually, love does trump hate.