bomberqueen17: The soldier began to cry and said:

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bomberqueen17:

The soldier began to cry and said: ‘It’s not my fault. They give me orders. They forced us to come here and if we don’t obey, they kill us.’ He said: ‘We take orders from a captain, and we do what this captain says. If I go into the army, I’m an enemy of the people anyway, and if I lay down my arms, I’m the army’s enemy. If one side doesn’t kill me, the other will. I don’t know what to do.’ So we told him that if it was difficult for him, from now on he should hide or find something else to do, but that he must stop being evil, like the army. And he told us a lot about how they tortured in the barracks. He said: ‘From the first day I arrived in the barracks, they told me that my parents were stupid,’ –he was an Indian too– ‘that they were stupid because they couldn’t speak and that they’d teach me how people should speak. So they started teaching me Spanish. They gave me a pair of shoes which I found very hard to wear but they beat me into wearing them anyway. They hit me until I got used to them. Then they told me I had to kill the communists from Cuba and Russia. I had to kill them all and then they gave me a gun.’ But we asked him: ‘And who do you kill with this gun? Why are you hunting us? Do they say that if your father or mother are on the other side, you must use this gun to kill them too?’ ‘I use this gun the way they tell me to use it. I’m not to blame for all this, they just grabbed me in the town.’ He cried and we felt sorry for him, because we are all human.

I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman In Guatemala

more on the Guatemalan genocides of 1981-83

marthawells: worldsnest: Ile-Rien of Martha Wells. Huh,

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marthawells:

worldsnest:

Ile-Rien of Martha Wells.

Huh, I’ve never seen this map before.

I thought there was a big wall-like mountain range in the ocean, though. 

I guess I hadn’t really thought so clearly about how the two… universes?… could be layered directly over one another. I’d have to reread it with that in mind, I tend to focus on character stuff when I reread… 

Man now I just have to reread the series anyway. I bought it all in hardcover when it came out, except the last one in paperback, and then I bought the other two in paperback and the last one in hardcover to complete the set, so I have a loaner set and a hardcover keepsake set I guess, but I never bought them in ebook form, and now I mostly only read ebooks, so I guess I should go get the ebooks for my trip… 

Old man customer, a regular, came in and gruffly greeted the 19-year-old girl behind the counter...

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Old man customer, a regular, came in and gruffly greeted the 19-year-old girl behind the counter with “hey good-lookin’” and I was like, grr, though she seemed okay with it. Then the store manager, a 48-year-old man (the young woman’s father) came out from the back room, and the old man greeted him with “hey handsome!” so I felt a lot better about the whole thing really. 

lettersfromtitan: theglasschild: “Icarus. The

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lettersfromtitan:

theglasschild:

“Icarus. The original myth had two parts. Daedalus said to his son, ‘I fashioned these wings for you. Two rules. Don’t fly too high, or the sun will melt the wax. But, more important, son, don’t fly too low. Because if you fly too low, the water and the waves will surely weigh down the wings, and you will die.’ We’ve left out the second part of the myth. We don’t say to people anymore, ‘Don’t fly too low.’ All we do from the time they are 4 years old is warn them against hubris. We have created this industrially led structure that says: How dare you.”

– Seth Godin

I will reblog this every single time I see it

lcn71 replied to your photo “Thruway

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I just followed bomberqueen based solely on the fact that she has “new york–state not city” in her bio. We are of the same tribe.

LOL, you and me and approximately 11 million other people! (I just looked it up, 8.4 million in NYC, 19.8 million in NYS as a whole.) I’ve lived in Rensselaer, Monroe, Westchester, and Erie Counties, too, and currently divide my time between that first and that last one, so I feel like I’ve had a representative sampling of The Upstate Experience, if you know what I mean. 

Man I’m a one-issue voter at this point. I keep

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Man I’m a one-issue voter at this point. I keep seeing all this bullshit where apparently Bernie fucking Sanders thinks a woman’s right to choose is just totally incidental to the progressive platform, and like– fuck you, bro.

I’m a one-issue voter. Bodily autonomy is the only thing I care about. Neither party guarantees it, they’re all willing to fuck with it for points. No, man. One issue. One fucking issue. Either you think humans have a right to bodily autonomy, without exceptions– I don’t care if your brother will die without that kidney transplant, you don’t have to give it to him (maybe he was a dick to you; maybe you’re a jerk. It’s not the place of the law to decide that). I don’t care if that clump of cells will die if you cut it out, if you don’t want to host it you can’t be forced to (maybe it was forced on you, maybe you’re just an idiot, maybe you’re too sick to carry it; it’s not the place of the law to decide that). It’s between you and your doctor, and you’ve got the final say, and I don’t care what the extenuating circumstances are, I don’t care about some old white man’s God book or somebody’s idea of virtue, it’s your body and you do with it what is correct for you. You are the only expert in yourself. You can seek the advice of anyone that seems helpful to you, but it’s absolutely fucking not the role of the law to take the place of your free will in this intimate an issue.

I say this as a person who has never needed an organ transplant; who has donated blood; who is registered with the state as a voluntary organ donor in the case of my death; who has never had so much as a pregnancy scare, let alone an abortion; as a bisexual, queer person, as someone who has in the past used hormonal birth control and hated it, as someone who doesn’t use the stuff now, but as a human person whose body belongs to herself. 

I would give a kidney or a piece of my liver to someone I loved, maybe, but that would be up to me. If I were dead, I would give up my heart or corneas or anything they could use, but that’s because my religious and personal beliefs permit it and I’ve thought it through and signed the papers. I would bear a child if the circumstances were right, but that would be up to me. I would accept a donated organ if I needed one and one were available– but that decision would be up to me and the donor, and I would be horrified to take one not donated willingly. 

That’s what this issue is, and anyone who makes it about anything else is fucking full of shit and has no place making decisions for anyone else. Fuck you.