They De-Tumblrized Ms. Frizzle

Still frame from WikiLeaks "Collateral Murder" video, captured moments before U.S. helicopter pilots would go on to kill civilians and journalists in Iraq in 2007 while casually joking about it. Whistleblower Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, none of the perpetrators were charged

String of Small Pink Pearls: Your muse is writing a secret-admirer letter; since they cannot use their true name, how do they sign it?

Eluvianna is something of a fan of a particular enigmatic hero who used his power to cloud the minds of his enemies. Many of his unusual tales can still be found in visual novels scattered across Azeroth...and beyond.

As such, she will often sign her more mysterious missives, romantic or otherwise, with his title:

The Shadow

She never truly intends to impersonate the legend. But the idea of leaving recipients bewildered—perhaps even mildly entertained—is a source of endless amusement.

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!”

Thank you for the ask @dawn-blossom! Of course referencing the exalted character from our own dimension.

Oh.

We're at "traffic tickets are justification for disappearing people off the street and sending them to death camps with no due process" levels of fascism now.

Okay yeah we're like fucked, fucked.

She fully didn't watch the segment because Jon did a very nuanced, thoughtful segment. He drilled down to kids just wanting to have a community and have fun.

What these TERFS are pissed off about is that he showed how disingenuous y'all are when you go "omg that trans athlete hit a ball really hard and it hurt a cis women" because when you look into it cis women even on their team hit harder then them. Because he pointed out that cis girls harm each other in sports all the damn time. He pointed out that when there was a bill to protect cis women athletes against sexual predators like coaches. Y'all decided not to pass that while passing an anti-trans bills all while claiming you just care about protecting women.

Texas may keep sodomy law for hate in it

This is Texas, where sodomy is still in the penal code and its conservative leaders like it that way.

Legislators criminalized such behavior back to the 1800s.

When the Texas penal code needed updating in the 1900s, lawmakers saw fit to keep their anti-sodomy law on the books, banning “deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.”

Texas is also where, in 1998, a Houston police officer arrested a gay couple in a private residence for breaking that law by engaging in “homosexual conduct.”

It’s also the state where a lawsuit over that arrest reached the U.S. Supreme Court. It ruled in 2003 that anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional.

Lawrence v. Texas told states — Texas wasn’t the only one — to stay out of people’s bedrooms, because, you know, due process, liberty and privacy.

Policing private, consensual behavior between adults is also ridiculous, even if the couple engaged in such sexual relations is straight and married.

But this is Texas, where far-right extremists continue to meddle in places where they have no business, including who uses what bathroom, what sex one was at birth and what teams they can play on.

They especially want to control what Texas women do with their bodies, limiting their health care options to death.

What certain men do in private is also a concern for the far-right, so keeping a so-called “zombie” sodomy law in place is important to them, even if unenforceable.

It’s the symbolism of hate that counts.

The Texas House of Representatives bravely but narrowly voted 59-56 to strike the law and send House Bill 1738 to the Senate.

It’s interesting to note that an early ballot came in at 72 for repeal and 55 against.

Sen. José Menendez, D-San Antonio, is offering to sponsor the Senate version and hopes it’s assigned to a committee.

Time is against him.

The Legislature wraps up its session in early June.

I expect that the state’s Republican leadership, headed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in the Senate, will determine that repealing the anti-sodomy law isn’t good for politics.

Giving Democrats and sane Republicans a win isn’t good in the hate business.

Instead, by letting a so-called “zombie” law stay in place, Republicans can look to the next election and use it to feed its extremist masses.

They haven’t seen enough zombie movies.

Zombies are capable of rising from the dead.

So, this is still the Lone Star State, where politicians can be cruel and their voters more so.

It’s part of our nation’s legacy of intolerance, starting with colonial statutes that criminalized sexual acts.

Those early arrivals were hell-bent on enacting laws that punished homosexual activity in particular.

Those found guilty got the death penalty.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, things started to look up after the American Revolution.

It found that “in 1796, New Jersey passed ‘An Act for the Punishment of Crimes’ that made sodomy punishable by a fine and solitary confinement with hard labor for no more than 21 years.”

The center said 20th-century state legislatures continued to focus on criminalizing homosexuality.

“Several sodomy laws were expanded to include oral sex,” it said.

“In the 1950s, state and nationwide ‘witch hunts’ of homosexual men ensued, and hate-based rhetoric equated consensual adult sex with child molestation.”

Human Rights Watch, the independent group that monitors and investigates human rights abuses worldwide, maintains the origins of anti-sodomy laws rest in British colonialism.

Here’s the hope in this story.

A bipartisan team led HB1738. It’s the first time a bill has gotten this far in several decades of trying.

That’s a remarkable feat.

Rep. Venton Jones of Dallas, who is openly gay and was born when this fight to repeal the law began, authored the bill. In his success, he remembered those who came before him.

“I am standing on the shoulders of people who have carried this bill before me, and that’s where I get my strength,” he said.

Jones didn’t build his case on the Supreme Court ruling.

Instead, he asked his colleagues “to vote for a law that upholds the principles that Texans should have the freedom and ability to make their own private decisions without unwarranted government interference.”

Even one of the worst lawmakers in the state, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, supports repealing the state law.

But this is Texas, where an unconstitutional law is likely to remain in the penal code.

Far-right Christian nationalists will raise their Bibles in unison.

The rest of us can carry on the march toward sanity that the Texas House began.

Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of Equality Texas, said people hear “gay rights” and imagine all sorts of things.

But their struggle is simple. It’s “the privacy to live our lives in peace.”

And no one — gay or straight — can live in peace when zombies can come back from the dead.

If the shoe was on the other foot, hell would break loose.

Reminder when the IOF killed Shireen, a journalist, on duty, wearing the press vest, and the attacked the funeral and beat up her mourners who were trying desperately not to drop her coffin.

Reminder that Shireen was christian. None of this was about Muslims vs Jews

Reminder that none of this madness started on Oct 7th. Israel always targeted the press to cover the truth.

Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa have all seen their right-wing parties collapse in popularity since Trump took over.

We were headed for a hard-right turn, but this shift is absolutely unprecedented in modern times. The stark reality of a right wing nationalist future really got people to pay attention.

Unfortunately, it's at the cost of the millions of us in the US who will now suffer