Prompt 3: family

ALT

work leaves people with many issues and problems.

Do you prefer your potions with or without pulp?

ALT

The gang! Photo from my collection, no documented date/info.

The US having an entire city in the middle of the desert dedicated entirely to gambling sounds like a thing other countries would make up about the US as a joke but its real and no one bats an eye at it

They also do divorce

You know I held myself back from going off on an infodump about the history of divorce in Las Vegas for the sake of this joke but the amount of people reblogging this version from me and not getting my history based joke about how divorce was important in shaping the economy is Las Vegas is driving me a little bit crazy

The people want an explanation so an explanation I shall give.

Basically Nevada used to be like. Nowhere. Even more nowhere than it is now. They broke several rules when they made it a state actually because the population wasn’t big enough to justify it but they wanted Lincoln to get more electoral college votes or something. I dunno.

Point is, there’s not much in Nevada. Sure, there’s silver mines. There’s local tribes who are pretty cool. There’s wildlife. There’s some neat mountains. Not much water though and water is needed for most industries and large scale civilization.

This vast emptiness ended up making Nevada what it is today though mostly because of crime. It’s hard for the feds to stop your crime when you’re surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Is the state and federal government gonna trek through the Nevada desert to scold you? I don’t think so.

Local governments today in Nevada can often trace themselves directly back to criminal organizations and corrupt groups of politicians, including the city of Las Vegas and the very large unincorporated community of Paradise which is actually where the Las Vegas strip is. Why is Paradise, Nevada still an unincorporated community despite having over 180,000 residents? Because if there’s no city government that’s one less government entity your casino has to pay taxes to. Duh.

And these crime people and casino owners and easily bribable politicians despite their many problems did figure something out. Tourists like doing things that are illegal in other places. Californian tourists in particular. And one of the illegal things that all Americans really but especially Californians wanted to do was get divorced.

Around 1930 Nevada became one of the first states to make no-fault divorce legal. Not only that but the required waiting period became six weeks. Not only that but only one spouse had to live in Nevada for those six weeks. To this day, the waiting period for divorce in California is still six months. This was huge.

This becomes a whole industry. Not only is gambling legal in Nevada but now divorce is too. When a couple decide mutually that they want a divorce but there’s no legal reason for it where they live, one of them, usually the woman, goes to live in a resort in Las Vegas or Reno for six weeks (often called a divorce ranch) and then they can get divorced.

And while one or both spouses are there, they can gamble, get pampered, see entertainment, meet other people. Then they go home after their divorce and tell their friends all about it. Now all their friends know that there’s gambling and entertainment in Vegas. And now they know about the divorce ranches. More money in the Nevadan economy.

Las Vegas is a bright shining tax evasion island in the middle of the desert built on entertainment, gambling, crime, and divorce. God bless Nevada and god bless no-fault divorce.

This happened in 2025.

His name is Chris Gatlin. He’s a Black man. AI has, for years, been worse at recognizing Black people. Black activists have been speaking up for years about how police use of AI will perpetuate racism in the justice system.

The victim repeatedly told the police that he was not a reliable witness due to sustaining a head injury from the assault. On top of this, police pressured the victim into identifying Gatlin as the suspect, even though he had already identified two other suspects. It took 17 months police to finally hand over the bodycam footage, which they conveniently forgot to say existed in the first place. The case was dismissed soon after.

A story to boost the morale of a broken country.

they removed posting from tumblr. now there's only scrolling down through the vast blank expanse. great

There's something so poetic about the Bleeding-Heart Dove

A Door Closes - Aglaé Bassens, 2024.

Belgian , b. 1986 -

Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 in.

Young Sailor Reading”, c.1940 by Duncan Grant (1885–1978). British painter, theatre set and costume designer. oil on canvas

S1EP06 'Dalek'