Margott Griffin

So in case anyone wanted more evidence of how government suppression of free speech is spreading globally, in the UK on Thursday evening (March 27th), twenty police officers broke into Westminster Quaker Meeting House in London and arrested six members of the group Youth Demand who met to discuss concerns about the climate and Gaza. The charge was apparently conspiracy to commit a public nuisance - this raid is a direct result of law changes in 2022 and 2023 designed to dramatically restrict people's ability to plan and carry out protests. In addition to breaking into the Meeting House, there have apparently been twelve related house raids and three other arrests.

This is horrifying. It is happening under an allegedly left wing government (our current PM Starmer is Labour, but that name doesn't really mean anything under his government). There is no harm caused in meeting to discuss ways to challenge the government, except to the government itself. Yet apparently, a simple meeting is enough to justify police armed with tasers and more than a dozen raids.

We are allowed to believe that change is necessary. We are allowed to discuss ways to make change happen - and across history, the most significant social changes have only been made possible thanks to protest.

Screw Labour and the UK establishment.

I want to add some more context about why this is so terrifying. The last time a Quaker Meeting House was violated like this in the UK was in the 1600s, to disrupt people who were exercising their right to freedom of religion. The state of free speech in the UK is apparently in a worse position than it has been for centuries - and certainly within living memory.

Our Meeting Houses are places of worship. They are places of peace and contemplation and it is so utterly disrespectful to break down our doors to stop people talking to each other. And I only know about this because I'm a Quaker myself, and I think it should be spread across the UK so people know how the state is actively working ageist us.

Please share this if you can.

changing elves from being assholes with a superiority complex and recharacterising them as just sort of weird guys that have an entirely different set of social behaviours to harken back to the days when people thought autistic people were a kind of fae for having odd behaviours. the entire reason why they dont particularly enjoy gatherings of men or dwarves or whatever is because they tend to be loud and the average elven social gathering is just a bunch of them sitting in a room in silence ignoring each other

like theyre still kind of mean but its more of them being blunt and lacking empathy rather than being condescending or purposefully malicious

my elven ass after spending 45 minutes in the pub with my dwarf friends:

I GROW WEARY OF MIMICKING YOUR OBNOXIOUS MANNERISMS TO ACCOMMODATE FOR THIS ENVIRONMENT. I WISH TO RETURN TO MY CHAMBERS TO REST AND SO I MAY PLAY SPLATOON 3 ON THE NINTENDO SWITCH. WE SHALL GATHER AGAIN NEXT HALF MOON AND I SHALL TELL YOU OF MY VICTORIES.

them:

okay man take care

you understand my vision

German Schandmaske (Mask of Shame) in the shape of a wolf’s head.

Source: 1, 2

“A German mask of disgrace in the shape of a wolf’s head, 16th/17th century. Forged iron. A mask made from riveted bar stock with pronounced teeth and ears attached by rivets. Two piece, hinged neckband. At the nape of the neck loops for a padlock. Length 40 cm. A mask of disgrace in the shape of a wolf’s head was placed on those pilloried for deeds of violence.”

About 20% of you think the wolf shame mask is sexy don’t you

You’re really lowballing that percentage, my dude.

i enter the shower. hours pass. i emerge from the shower, having mixed all of my soaps and scrubs and lotions and conditioners and shampoos and body washes together in the tub in precise alchemical quantities. i smell like 314 different herbs and spices. my hair will not need washing for the next 500 days. my skin has developed protective chitinous scales. i step out of the tub and immediately slip and fall on a stray puddle of mane 'n tail and sprain my pussy

It's not just to have a "do over" that doesn't involve the original cast, it's to cut them out of the royalties. Literally the entire point is to make sure all the money made by Harry Potter goes to transphobes or people willing to work with transphobes.

If you watch it, you are supporting bigotry, hate, and oppression. That's just objective reality. All for a story that you probably have already seen in movie and book form.

#the last point is especially true since the old cast receives royalties for anything with their likeness on it#meaning the original trio still gets money for every mug with their 14 year old faces on it#if they stop making those and replace them with the new cast which they will the old cast gets cut off completely#which is again exactly what rowling wants because she cannot stand those 'ungrateful brats' as she would likely put it#and as she has last say in anything that gets made in harry potter paraphernalia this might also explain the decrease in faces on products

via @discipleofkleio

I hate Rowling so much.

(via $4.6 billion and 40,000 jobs lost—thanks to the artistry of our politicians. : r/clevercomebacks)

Literally making it my mission to shame anyone I see going to the USA.

Given that a German tourist has been detained by ICE for the past month and prevented from returning home, I wouldn’t be encouraging my non USA friends to come visit here anyway

As a Nasty Canadian I would not put my foot in the US if they’d pay me. Legal visas are not legal, valid green cards not valid, anyone can be Hamas supporter, or, as some years ago an officer on the Canada-US border told my friend, whose car was searched for hours to find nothing: “WHY? BECAUSE I DON’T LIKE YOUR FUCKING FACE, THAT’S WHY”.

I’m an American living in Germany, with a German spouse; we were planning on visiting the US to see my family, especially my new nephew.

My entire family has told us not to come, because it’s not safe for us to do so.

people are traveling less within the country as well, also for safety reasons

My partner is supposed to go to the US basically every year for a business trip. There are literally discussions about if it is safe to travel now.

THE WAY IT CUTS OFF AT THE END IS SENDING ME

star wars heritage vid

life imitates art

I FUCKING LOVE NYLE xkjsjndkjansd

filmmakers and audiences and critics alike all need to start suspending their disbelief again

‘this doesn’t make sense’ so?????

important edition

Airbnb bathroom in Malta, taken from the wet floor of the shower. Don't like the lip on that shower.

tags pass peer review

cant stop thinking about this video

For context this was in response to someone saying their cybertruck was heavy duty

oh no no NO no no I am sorry my dear @thebirdtm you are NOT underselling one of the most seminal pieces of television of my entire childhood like that on MY watch.

"How is claiming they drowned a Hilux possibly underselling it" GREAT question.

To start with a little disclaimer, Top Gear's Hilux did not start off, as in the video above, in pristine condition. It started off with nigh-on 300k kms (for you yankees, that's about 8.4 million Boeing 737 wingspans) and a condition to match.

And it's only once careless driving around town yielded zilch in given shits...

(look, I found a local newspaper picturing it being driven around!)

...that they decided to drown it. Now, the underselling part: if you told me that they drowned a pickup the first place my mind would go to would be "driving it through a river a bit too deep for it, perhaps as deep as its height, until it stalls and then tugging it back out. You will concede that's rather different from tying it down on the seashore with the second highest tide in the world...

...and leaving it there until it engulfs the whole truck...

...only for the ropes to snap...

...and for the truck to be lost to the tides for FIVE HOURS.

(and for those wondering, yes, just as promised, well within an hour and the mandatory limits of basic tools and no spare parts, up the mechanic made the thing fire and away the presenter drove it - I must imagine doing a number on his clothes in the process.)

Oh also I would have mentioned the caravan.

Or at least the wrecking ball.

But hey, at least the fire was mentioned.

Still, I feel it's criminal to leave out how they celebrated it surviving all it did: by parking it at the top of a 23 story building for all to see! :)

Wait NO-

Well, that was uncalled for. Given what it survived, it deserved to rest in a museum instead of being unceremoniously cleared out with the other chunks of public housing that buried it.

Or at least, given that buried it wasn't...

...to be tumbled down from the rubble utop which it sat...

...and be fueled up.

"be fueled up", pfft, what for?, I hear you say. And you are right.

Look at that thing, you say.

Let's be serious now, however pretty of a story it would be that's not a truck that will do anything remotely in the ballpark of firing up, let alone running.

And again, you are right.

The battery was disconnected.

Sorted that, tho

"You can't be serious." Oh darling I sure can! "Well the presenters can't then" no no, I assure you, it lived. Go see it for yourself! It's at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieau, England!

I grew up watching Top Gear and it shaped me in many ways. My adoration of old Toyota Hiluxes is one of them.

The Toyota Hilux is absolutely the small god of endurance and defiance (and possibly masochism).

yes I'm reposting about a small god truck are you kidding me

One of the rare times where a comment section is delightful the moment I open it

*heavy southern accent*: terfs aint got no friends