Happy Halloween!! Eat Lots Of Candy And Stuff!!!

So this happened on November 14.

The bill that opposition party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke tore up before the haka suggests moving interpretation of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi from the courts to Parliament.

It is essential to understand that the courts have often been used to rein in Parliament's misinterpretation with respect to provisions in the Treaty.

The Waitangi Tribunal, set up in 1975 to investigate alleged breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, notes the bill "purposefully excluded any consultation with Māori, breaching the principle of partnership, the Crown’s good-faith obligations, and the Crown’s duty to actively protect Māori rights and interests". It also said that the principles of the bill misinterpreted the Treaty of Waitangi and that this "caused significant prejudice to Māori".

Act - a minor party in the ruling centre-right coalition, and the party that introduced this bill - claim that the Treaty has resulted in the country being divided by race. However, there's no suggestion that this measure will improve the fortunes of the 18% of New Zealand's population who are Māori. Many Māori remain disadvantaged compared with the general population on metrics such as health outcomes, household income, education levels and incarceration and mortality rates. There remains a seven-year gap in life expectancy.

The tabling of the Treaty Principles Bill comes following a series of measures introduced by the government that have affected Māori. They include the closure of the Māori Health Authority, which was set up to help create health equity, and reprioritising English over Māori when it comes to the official naming of government organisations, for example.

much better footage of the haka that shut down parliament today

hey don’t cry. spiro the bald eagle failing at catching a crab, okay?

The New Republic

Trump Wants Snitches to Report on DEI. There’s Just One Problem.

Donald Trump wants people to expose diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the federal government. The idea is already flopping.

The threat was loud and clear: Report your so-called “DEI” employees or else. What exactly “DEIA or similar ideologies” means is up in the air, but the message was out there. And so was the email address of the DEIA snitching hotline. Fake emails quickly started to roll in. ‘I don’t care, fuck these McCarthyite bastards,” one BlueSky user said, with an screenshot attached of an email to the hotline where he ironically reported Donald Trump and JD Vance for being “put in their positions solely because of their race and/or gender despite the fact that they are wholly unqualified for their jobs and, in some cases, have criminal records.” “Anyone have a script to fire off a billion e-mails an hour??” another user asked in the replies. “Anyone can email anything of any size even if it crashes the site,” one X user noted. The scope and effectiveness of this latest phase of Trump’s anti-DEI crusade remains to be seen.

I can see why Mastermind gets "disaster bi". What a great piece! Thank you for putting this together @beanthebugboi ❤️❤️

Canon/Headcanon likelihood chart

So I've been thinking about @macdenlover 's "levels of headcanon" chart (about how heavily a HC is influenced by canon), so I decided to make my own scale about how likely a HC is to be true (including different levels of canon) using queer cartoon characters as examples :)

I just spent an hour making this because I was bored. Enjoy.

Inspiration:

Tumblr

macdenlover

it came to my realization that 99% of my fandom related headaches would be cured if everyone understood this

I know it's not cool to remind folk that we're in an ongoing pandemic, but while COVID doesn't reset the immune system like measles, it can turn on and off certain genes in stem cells, altering how your immune system behaves in future.

VACCINATE YA KIDS FFS

Solid advice even for folk without ADHD. Especially those who have allowed their attention spans to grow short due to the endless stimulation from our devices.

Not to go "if you have ADHD just go for a run" or anything, but I am so serious if you have ADHD you should regularly go outside, no headphones no phone no nothing and just stand and observe for a while until you've had enough. Not until you get bored, until you've had enough. Drink your coffee without watching tiktok. Have a bath without music. Turn down the volume in your headphones. I cannot overstate how much learning to be bored is cruicial with ADHD. Life is not just about pleasure, no matter what your dysregulated dopamine system thinks, and when you teach your brain to be okay with being bored, then boring tasks stop feeling like torture. By letting yourself be bored you are yoinking your system out of the high/low binary and allow for the highs to feel like actual highs and not just anything that isn't low. I am so serious go literally touch grass. Listen to the sounds in your flat. Stimulate your body the way it was designed. It lowers anxiety and makes you feel like you're real and best of all it's completely free

oiiiiiiiiiiiiii, calling for readers again

i have a novel i'd like to share with you guys, if you're interested.

i'm not calling this a beta readers request this time, because more than anything, i just need people who can read my gay little forced proximity romance, and just tell me if they think it's good.

don't need line edits, don't need grammar checks, just people reading the story like it's a book they picked up at barnes and noble.

and then telling me what you liked or didn't like. that's all.

so. here's the summary, and uh...if you're interested in checking it out, pls contact me!

here are the warnings first: graphic violence, child death (death of an infant), self-harm (because their powers are blood-based, and they need to self harm in order to use them), implied sexual assault/incest (not graphic), animal death (a lot of it), and oh yeah, sex scenes. this is an adult romantasy. adult.

and now here's the summary:

In a world ravaged by war between the old gods and the new, demigods sow chaos and discord wherever they go, destined to be either legendary heroes or fearsome villains. But Marrow is not like other demigods. They are the child of the god of blood and slaughter, born with only one purpose: to kill in their savage father’s name, and bleed the entire world dry. The one problem? 

The only living creature they want to kill is their father.

But Marrow has been imprisoned within their temple for their entire life, unable to realize that dream…until now. A deal with a devil allows them to escape, making their way into a hostile world they know little about- and matters are not helped by the fact that their father can use their eyes to see what they're seeing at any time. To keep him from seeing their location, Marrow must remained blindfolded. But Marrow, an eternal optimist, won’t let their lack of vision stop them from fulfilling their lifelong dream. 

The demigod hunter might, however. Arlo Ren is a member of the Razor Watch, a religious order dedicated to the goddess of the hunt. He is clever, but impulsive, eager to prove himself to his goddess by capturing powerful prey. Soon after meeting Marrow by chance, and discovering what they are, he sees his opportunity and refuses to let it go. Literally. The demigod hunter handcuffs the demigod to his side, and swears to sacrifice them in his god’s name. Luckily for him, Marrow is an inexperienced, blind pacifist, who needs him to guide them through a dangerous, unknown world. They fully intend to escape him eventually. But perhaps a demigod and a demigod hunter have more in common than they might think. Perhaps they might even need each other...but they will, at the very least, need to learn how to live, work, and fight together as they are relentlessly chased by Marrow’s powerful demigod siblings, all hoping to kill their youngest sibling and please the god they abandoned. 

And that's all folks!

Pls let me know if you'd be interested, and I'll reach out!

Wow, mad skills

“First season of LEVERAGE - so he's 21 years old - he shows me his watch designs. I'm expecting, y' know, celebrity strap branding or faces. No, it's engineering schematics of GEARS and shit. Pages of them. Even then, there were none so cool.” - John Rogers

Keep your messaging simple:

“Trump fired everyone in charge of airplane safety, and a week later planes started crashing into each other.”

That’s it. That’s the messaging. Don’t get bogged down disputing Trump’s false claims. Just blame him, in short and repeatable sentences.