Another win for the Biden administration. They just made a lot of great changes to how people can get aid after disasters. It includes immediate payments, better protections for renters, and removing some weird hoops people used to have to jump through. It also has new stuff to help self-employed people replace lost equipment.
A great step forward in fixing some of our janky disaster aid system.
Making Accessibility Improvements: Survivors with disabilities can use FEMA funding to make certain accessibility improvements to homes damaged by a declared disaster. This change helps survivors with disabilities improve their living conditions by making their homes even more accessible than they were pre-disaster. Previously, FEMA could only help with accessibility items directly damaged by the disaster or that were not present before the disaster but are required due to a disaster-caused disability.
Because hell yeah! That’s awesome.
There is a lot in here which will substantially improve the lives of working-class people in the US. Because all of this falls directly under FEMA, these were changes that the Biden administration could make right now to improve people’s lives without Republicans in Congress being able to stop them. These changes also include increasing the amount of total help available, and not disqualifying a house for repairs based on existing conditions. (For example, previously if you had a leaky roof before half of your roof was ripped off, they wouldn’t fix the part of the house with the leaky roof, bc it was “pre existing damage.” With this change, they reprioritize repairs to “yeah, it was leaky before, but what matters is that we get your house to a safe, livable condition. We won’t disqualify repairs bc you had existing damage.”
It is really hard to explain how big of a difference that will make. We had a leaky roof on our old house for like 3 years bc I had gotten sick and we just didn’t have the money to fix it. If a disaster had happened during that time, we would have been screwed.
The changes go into effect for disasters declared on or after March 22, 2024.
I read “As Climate Shocks Women,” and I was like, we suddenly care because women are surprised??
I thought “pretentious” was supposed to refer to attempts at depth that end up grating and sophomoric because they don’t know what they’re talking about (been there), not just any attempt at depth whatsoever
Well when you don’t know how to swim, any depth looks deep.
STAR WARS REBELS 2.06, Brothers of the Broken Horn
Okay but I can never think about this too deeply because like most throwaway storylines in Star Wars it is above and beyond insane when you dig into it because the tragedy is utterly compounding.
The thing is - Hondo and Obi-Wan weren’t friends. They were platonic nemesis. Amusing opposites in terms of character, morality and generally speaking of the Law.
But they could have been friends. They knew each other through some harrowing self-induced shenanigans. Got to know and perhaps appreciate each other’s sense of humor. Admired each others wily cunning. Had an understanding, I think you would call it.
And Hondo was probably fond of Obi-Wan in the way you are almost compelled to be fond of someone who amicably thwarts your villainous deeds but never quite so well as to actually arrest you for them. That practically makes him an enabler, really, in a pirates point of view.
So this guy, right, this funny, tricky Jedi, it’s sort of a good day whenever you run into him, even if he’s always peskily getting in the way of your grand schemes and quest for riches. Whatever, he’s a damn fine drinking partner regardless!
Those are good times, all told. Good times.
And then one day you find out he’s dead. You find out that he was murdered. That every single one of his people, who, in your experience, are pretty similar under the surface ( they never give you too hard a time, after all. Good sports, and all that) has been murdered.
You liked him. You liked rather more than a few of them, actually.
You’re not sure if the two of you were ever actually friends.
(Surely you were, right?)
(You could have been.)
(There is no one left alive to ask.)
And it’s not - not this huge deal, right? I mean really, you barely knew the guy. Barely knew the funny young knight that was with him, or the spunky little padawan, or those brave and dastardly younglings.
But you just… think about that, sometimes. About them.
And you wonder.
The Law says they were all traitors. The government says they were corrupt. Says they bewitched people. Says they stole children and coveted power.
Hondo Ohnaka is a pirate. He’s never been on the right side of the law, or the government.
(Turns out we were both outlaws, eh?)
(So they say. So they say. I doubt it’s true.)
There is no one left alive to ask for the truth.
Whatever they were then, is whatever Hondo decides they were. There’s no one left alive to correct him.
So they were friends, he decides.
(We were friends, weren’t we? )
He just… would like to be able to have said they were. In the end.
(The Jedi still had friends in the galaxy. They did. They do.)
The first rule of tragedy is to be yourself. The second of rule of tragedy is to be literally anyone else. The third rule is that however much you try there is no escaping being yourself forever.
i don´t think im capable of understanding what twitter people talk about anymore
Hey r/relationships, I’m sure by now you’re all aware of the recent break in the timespace continuum that resulted in several characters from various animes “becoming real” for lack of a better word. In the wake of this event, I (34F) divorced my husband (37M) to try and persue a relationship with a character I’ve had a crush on since middle school. It took a while to track him down and ask him on a date, but to my surprise he accepted my offer and we went out to dinner at the local Olive Garden. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a great date and we don’t seem compatible as I’d hoped. I’ve been trying to get back together with my ex-husband but he seems to have blocked my number. Where do I go from here?
oh you’re in a horror film/book and your phone died/has no bars? how boring. I think phones in horror SHOULD work. they should ding only to have the protagonist check and find nothing. they should get calls from somebody you don’t know but is still somehow in your contacts. google maps should lead you to one place, no matter what address you type in.
phones are such a big part of our daily lives, removing them from horror removes the horror from our experience. what if the horror felt like it could happen to you, right here, right now? what if it felt like it was already happening?
call 911 and something that is definitely not a person picks up.
call 911 and get an operator only for the call to become increasingly weirder and more sinister until you realize that whatever picked up is not there to help.
text messages from someone who’s dead. voicemails that sound like dead air until you turn the volume all the way up.
emergency alerts for weather that doesn’t happen on earth.
Your phone rings - but it’s your phone number on the screen. You answer it, but all you hear is heavy, laboured breathing. You go to say something, only to hear your voice on the other end tell you “It’s too late,” and hang up.
You get a message from a number you don’t recognise. It’s a picture of you from behind. You turn and see there’s nobody there. When you look back at your phone, you see the sender has sent another text - “Sorry, wrong number.”
Your phone rings - it’s a private number. You answer it, only to feel the sensation of something licking your ear.
You wake up to find a voicemail. You play it back, only to hear an autotuned version of your own voice reciting a Bible passage - 1 Peter 2: 18-20.
This is just so sweet? Like she’s just so happy and pleased with herself, and being kind of a dork about it with her victory dance? And he’s like… he just looks so fond. Like this is embarrassing, a little, but he absolutely does not mind. Also they’re wearing the same kind of boot/bracer/loincloth combo, and even though they’re both sexy neither of their poses are sexualized? This is a picture of two people who just really seem to like each other, and that makes me smile.
You ever think about how the Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest stories we still remember, even incomplete, and it may be a deconstruction? The implications? Gilgamesh citing other stories, some of which we’ve lost, as to why he won’t accept Ishtar’s proposal. The whole concept of ‘this is Gilgamesh, he’s unbelievably arrogant and handsome and strong and he’s two-thirds god and a king– and now we’re gonna explore why he’s a complete asshole and his subjects dislike him, and how for all his greatness he too is just a human with very human faults and fears, and how he had to walk a VERY rocky road to become an ACTUALLY wise and benevolent king.’
Just like. One of the lessons of my theatre classes that always stuck with me is that every play is a point in an ongoing conversation about dozens of different things, and I think that applies to other mediums of art as well. You see enough of a specific trope or argument made, you make your own response by deconstructing or subverting or reconstructing or defying that trope. If the Epic of Gilgamesh was a counterargument, how many original arguments as stories existed, until someone went ‘you may all have a point. But listen to this.’
I’m familiar with a few other Mesopotamian myths that may have been earlier, fragmented as they are, but it just makes me feel So Many Things to consider if the Epic was a deconstruction and how that implies prior existing works– conversation!– and how long humans have just. Told stories. How many of those works we’ve lost were counterarguments? How long back does it go? Probably to the beginning, but man. To just someday die and look down at the world and see the conversation of humanity in its entirety… what I wouldn’t give…
Asked by Anonymous
