elijah wood as frodo: pure boy, has never done anything wrong in his life, absolutely angelic and id die for him
elijah wood as himself: lives in a dumpster with a family of raccoons. sometimes when im alone in the forest in the dark during a full moon i can see him in the corner of my eye, stuffing his mouth full of moss and worms before hissing and running away. probably friends with mothman
ian mckellen as himself: pure boy, has never done anything wrong in his life, absolutely angelic and id die for him
ian mckellen as gandalf: lives in a dumpster with a family of raccoons. sometimes when im alone in the forest in the dark during a full moon i can see him in the corner of my eye, stuffing his mouth full of moss and worms before hissing and running away. probably friends with mothman
Donald Trump sending thousands of troops to the border isn’t just ridiculous, it’s horrifying. What exactly does he plan to do with all those troops? He just recently said he is prepared to gun down people who throw rocks… it gives you a clue doesn’t it?
I’m genuinely worried that these people are going to get hurt, I don’t trust Donald Trump and I’m worried as to why we are comfortable with sending thousands of troops to greet families and children with guns… horrifying.
it’s also a massive breach in military deployment protocol, specifically the Posse Comitatus act and Article 10 of the United States Code. Donald Trump is breaking the fucking law
HE’S GONNA HAVE TROOPS GUN DOWN & MURDER WOMEN & CHILDREN.
I’m hoping that none of them get an itchy trigger finger as another commenter pointed out, but there is no other reason for them to be there and he’s talking about shooting people who throw rocks and it just sounds like an excuse to open fire. Let’s pray that nothing violent takes place against those people.
And they will all say “I was just following orders”
We can afford all these troops at the border but not 15 dollars minimum wage, free college, or Medicare for all.
I live on the Border. It’s peaceful, beautiful, and very nice overall.
He’s just afraid of brown people. Even women and children.
and we still have sent no aid to Puerto Rico, alright
I saw someone in the tags say this is fearmongering but there’s fearmongering, and then there’s actual fear. All of the comments on this post are reactions of genuine, sincere concern for the people at the border. Nobody is trying to fearmonger.
WE ARE ACTUALLY AFRAID.
Just to provide some context here since I haven’t seen a single soul talk about the Caravan online, I only know about it due to the controversy caused by several local Spanish news stations that decided to air coverage despite many stations in Mexico forbidding it;
There are currently thousands of people migrating in a Caravan up to the Mexican border. They are escaping poverty, and violence amongst other things from their home countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. They’re hoping to find a better life or apply for Asylum.
They’ve been walking for nearly a full month now having started October 12th of this year (2018 time stamp for anyone seeing this in the future.)
[Pictured above is the Caravan as it reached the Suchiate river at the border between Guatemala and Mexico]
[Pictured above is the first wave of the Caravan reaching the Tijuana border -not apart of the massive wave that was seen at the river.]
[Pictured above are several caravan men who decided to jump into the river when the crowds on the bridge got too dense when it was decided that only Women and Children could pass, most were fathers, brothers, and sons who didn’t wish to be separated. Many mothers with small children were also lowered down into the rafts to avoid the crowd that was stuck on the bridge for 24+ hours.]
The Donald Trump political campaign put out an ad that was as dehumanizing as you could imagine towards the immigrants, who again, at this point are largely unarmed women and children who are trying to escape the violence in their home countries.
Donald Trump has deployed 1,000 troops to the border in anticipation for the Caravans arrival. Promising to more than double the number to about 5,000 troops lasting until about December 15th, 2018.
[Pictured above are children waiting in line for their turn on playground equipment.]
[Pictured above is what sleep and rest has typically looked like for them, many only having a backpack or so left of their personal belongings to take with them.]
[Pictured above is man holding up a sign that reads, “Thank-you Mexico for opening up your hearts.” After the bridge and border were opened.]
These are the faces of the people Donald Trump is sending thousands of troops over to shoot down because he sees them as a threat.
Usually, comparisons between Donald Trump’s America and Nazi Germany come from cranks and internet trolls. But a new essay in the New York Review of Books pointing out “troubling similarities” between the 1930s and today is different: It’s written by Christopher Browning, one of America’s most eminent and well-respected historians of the Holocaust. In it, he warns that democracy here is under serious threat, in the way that German democracy was prior to Hitler’s rise — and really could topple altogether.
Browning, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, specializes in the origins and operation of Nazi genocide. His 1992 book Ordinary Men, a close examination of how an otherwise unremarkable German police battalion evolved into an instrument of mass slaughter, is widely seen as one of the defining works on how typical Germans became complicit in Nazi atrocities.
So when Browning makes comparisons between the rise of Hitler and our current historical period, this isn’t some keyboard warrior spouting off. It is one of the most knowledgeable people on Nazism alive using his expertise to sound the alarm as to what he sees as an existential threat to American democracy.
Browning’s essay covers many topics, ranging from Trump’s “America First” foreign policy — a phrase most closely associated with a group of pre-war American Nazi sympathizers — to the role of Fox News as a kind of privatized state propaganda office. But the most interesting part of his argument is the comparison between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Paul von Hindenburg, the German leader who ultimately handed power over to Hitler. Here’s how Browning summarizes the history:
Paul von Hindenburg, elected president of Germany in 1925, was endowed by the Weimar Constitution with various emergency powers to defend German democracy should it be in dire peril. Instead of defending it, Hindenburg became its gravedigger, using these powers first to destroy democratic norms and then to ally with the Nazis to replace parliamentary government with authoritarian rule. Hindenburg began using his emergency powers in 1930, appointing a sequence of chancellors who ruled by decree rather than through parliamentary majorities, which had become increasingly impossible to obtain as a result of the Great Depression and the hyper-polarization of German politics.
Because an ever-shrinking base of support for traditional conservatism made it impossible to carry out their authoritarian revision of the constitution, Hindenburg and the old right ultimately made their deal with Hitler and installed him as chancellor. Thinking that they could ultimately control Hitler while enjoying the benefits of his popular support, the conservatives were initially gratified by the fulfillment of their agenda: intensified rearmament, the outlawing of the Communist Party, the suspension first of freedom of speech, the press, and assembly and then of parliamentary government itself, a purge of the civil service, and the abolition of independent labor unions. Needless to say, the Nazis then proceeded far beyond the goals they shared with their conservative allies, who were powerless to hinder them in any significant way.
McConnell, in Browning’s eyes, is doing something similar — taking whatever actions he can to attain power, including breaking the system for judicial nominations (cough cough, Merrick Garland) and empowering a dangerous demagogue under the delusion that he can be fully controlled:
If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyper-polarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more. Nowhere is this vicious circle clearer than in the obliteration of traditional precedents concerning judicial appointments. Systematic obstruction of nominations in Obama’s first term provoked Democrats to scrap the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations. Then McConnell’s unprecedented blocking of the Merrick Garland nomination required him in turn to scrap the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to complete the “steal” of Antonin Scalia’s seat and confirm Neil Gorsuch. The extreme politicization of the judicial nomination process is once again on display in the current Kavanaugh hearings. …
Whatever secret reservations McConnell and other traditional Republican leaders have about Trump’s character, governing style, and possible criminality, they openly rejoice in the payoff they have received from their alliance with him and his base: huge tax cuts for the wealthy, financial and environmental deregulation, the nominations of two conservative Supreme Court justices (so far) and a host of other conservative judicial appointments, and a significant reduction in government-sponsored health care (though not yet the total abolition of Obamacare they hope for). Like Hitler’s conservative allies, McConnell and the Republicans have prided themselves on the early returns on their investment in Trump.
This is the key point that people often miss when talking about Hitler’s rise. The breakdown of German democracy started well before Hitler: Hyper-polarization led Hindenburg to strip away constraints on executive power as well as conclude that his left-wing opponents were a greater threat than fascism. The result, then, was a degradation of the everyday practice of democracy, to the point where the system was vulnerable to a Hitler-style figure.
Now, as Browning points out, “Trump is not Hitler and Trumpism is not Nazism.” The biggest and most important difference is that Hitler was an open and ideological opponent of the idea of democracy, whereas neither Trump nor the GOP wants to abolish elections.
What Browning worries about, instead, is a slow and quiet breakdown of American democracy — something more much like what you see in modern failed democracies like Turkey. Browning worries that Republicans have grown comfortable enough manipulating the rules of the democratic game to their advantage, with things like voter ID laws and gerrymandering, that they might go even further even after Trump is gone:
No matter how and when the Trump presidency ends, the specter of illiberalism will continue to haunt American politics. A highly politicized judiciary will remain, in which close Supreme Court decisions will be viewed by many as of dubious legitimacy, and future judicial appointments will be fiercely contested. The racial division, cultural conflict, and political polarization Trump has encouraged and intensified will be difficult to heal. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and uncontrolled campaign spending will continue to result in elections skewed in an unrepresentative and undemocratic direction. Growing income disparity will be extremely difficult to halt, much less reverse.
I’ve observed this kind of modern authoritarianism firsthand in Hungary. In my dispatch after visiting there, I warned of the same thing as Browning does here: The threat to the United States isn’t so much Trump alone as it is the breakdown in the practice of American democracy, and the Republican Party’s commitment to extreme tactics in pursuit of its policy goals in particular.
We are living through a period of serious threat to American democracy. And Browning’s essay, a serious piece by a serious scholar, shows that it’s not at all alarmist to say so.
so metropolitan museum of art has a register of books they’ve published that are out of print and that you can download for free! they’re mostly books on art, archeology, architecture, fashion and history and i just think that’s super useful and interesting so i wanted to share! you can find all of the books available here!
You sure have seenthis post. It has spread like wildfire over the past few days so I doubt there is any artist out there who hasn’t seen it. But even if you didn’t, you should read on because I’m about to tell you a handy little thing that can help you to protect your art from such assholes as the anon who submitted this bullcrap, as well as art thieves in general.
The magic word is Metadata.
Metadata is like an invisible signature that is embeded into a file. It can contain all kinds of information, like Title, date, keywords for online seach engines, and copyright information. And the best thing is, since this information is “hidden” in the code of your picture, it’s hard to remove it.
There is a nice basic tutorial on how to add Metadata, or “additional file information” to your images in photoshop. It’s really, really easy so check it out!
I’m not sure if you can do the same with any other art program. If you know how to do this in other programs / can confirm that it works the same way there, please tell me so I can add the information to this post.
Adding the Metadata will not stop idiots from taking and reposting your art. It also won’t make them stop editing out your signature. It WILL however, help you prove that you are the original artist whenever you have to. Always remember my friends. You, the artist, are protected by law. No one has the right to take your intellectual property and hard work and repost, use or edit it without your permission. Ever.
art thief: well how can you prove its yours??
me: /opens metadata
I spread the word as it is important to all artist who ever suffered from art thieving or so.
You guys, metadata is super important, you guys. In an everday and legal sense. People legitimately look at and rely on metadata to know the basic, but important bits of information about a digital product (paintings, photographs, exe files, etc.), ESPECIALLY the source.
valar apologist 