rpmaniac

[rpmaniac]

[rpmaniac]

Israel doing well in Eurovision is a completely predictable result of the boycott. The people who are watching & voting in Eurovision are now at best willfully ignorant and apathetic and at worst actively pro-Israel, meaning there will be a disproportionate amount of people willing to vote for Israel and even people voting for them because of the boycott.

But saying that means that boycotting Eurovision was the wrong call completely misses the point of the boycott. The point is not "Israel should not win Eurovision", it is "Israel should not be allowed to compete in the first place". The point of the boycott is not to give the EBU views or money, so if you've been boycotting... don't give them money or legitimacy by voting for someone tomorrow to prevent Israel from winning. If Israel does win, that does not mean boycotting failed; it only further delegitimizes the competition and confirms we should burn the whole thing down.

[rpmaniac]

Hi friends. Today I offer

Tomorrow? Probably the same thing

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It technically is a form of welfare.

Welfare is not a bad thing. It's your tax money being used to help you and others, when you retire, when you need medical care, making sure your kids get access to education, etc.

[rpmaniac]

to the casual observer it may look like i'm trying to summon a demon but anyone who knows me will realize that i am simply calling my wife

[rpmaniac]

What city pigeons talk about.

Patreon | Mailing list

#this #they're basically stray birds #they deserve better

[rpmaniac]

Please go watch Sex Explained on Netflix. Not only is it a great resource for the basic sex education that is sorely lacking in the U.S., but some of ya’ll need to take a deep breath and remember the difference between fantasy vs reality. This purity culture thing that we’re going through right now is directly harmful to responsible, healthy sexual expression. BTW this woman, Lisa Diamond, is a noted psychologist and has been pushing for greater understanding of womens sexuality as a whole.

[rpmaniac]

the leader|the centre|the guide

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Today I painted a little out of boredom

And my victim was the beautiful Fantine

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🛌les amis de l‘abc having a sleepover

just a big pile of them sleeping in whatever positions

please 🙇‍♀️

🛌: characters sleeping next to each other

—Post-barricades happy ending AU; injured and tired they all take shelter in someone's flat to recuperate (and celebrate!).

Here's a version with all their names in case some of my designs are unrecognizable :')

Thank you so much for the ask!! I'm so sorry for replying to this late; I was in the midst of finals ;-;

[rpmaniac]

Thought of the day: it is a historical trufact that Javert could not have been a full-time inspector in M-sur-M and nothing else besides.

An inspector in a small town like M-sur-M, which didn’t even have a commissaire de police but only Javert to carry out policing duties, got paid between 150 and 300 francs a year.

For the purposes of comparison: Fantine at her most hopelessly indigent, sleeping five hours a night and sewing the rest of the time, made 12 sous a day - the annual equivalent of 219 francs, and as a prostitute, she is said to have made 100 sous a day - the annual equivalent of 1,825 francs.

Javert, as an inspector in a town with fewer than 5,000 people without an octroi (customs barrier) to pay for municipal policing, would have made between 8 and 16 sous a day.

When Hugo describes Javert as a man of honor and probity with a crystal-clear conscience performing “unpleasant” duties in an “inferior” position, he is drawing a huge distinction between Javert and the typical inspector of the day. Reports of those days describe inspectors as “brutal, ignorant, lazy, and venal, drawn from the lowest rung of society”, helping themselves to whatever wasn’t nailed down. Javert’s neat and proper clothing is also presented in direct contrast to the usual state of things: inspectors dressed exactly as you would expect an indigent person to dress, namely in whatever was available. They were issued no uniform or any outward signs of their functions - except the lead-headed cane, issued for patrols and crowd control. Mayors complained that this shabbiness got in the way of their work: “Poorly dressed, they inspire no fear, and no one defers to their demands. Often at night, they are even taken for thieves; their air of neglect and misery undermines any moral influence” (John Merriman, Police Stories: Building the French State, 1815-1851, pp 30-31)

Inspectors actually had no judicial authority to arrest people. The most they could do was alert the commissaire - or the mayor, if the town had no commissaire - to various wrong-doings taking place in the town. They usually were not even allowed to draw up proces-verbaux (statements detailing the facts of a case). When Javert arrests Fantine instead of Bamatabois, it’s pretty much because Fantine is the only one he *can* arrest: slapping the cuffs on a citizen and an elector is simply outside of the boundaries of his authority.

Because they were so underpaid, inspectors usually had to either rely on income from their spouses or work other part-time jobs, often several at once, to make ends meet. Owning property was pretty much out of the question - these guys were at most one severe illness away from total destitution.

So what we have in Javert is a perfectly honest man with an innate need for being neat and looking respectable who gets paid 150 francs a year - enough to buy at most one half-decent meal a day AND NOTHING ELSE - for doing boring and unpleasant work like inspecting gutters and sorting out petty feuds between citizens. Everyone in town hates him, because he belongs to the police, and the French detest the police on principle.

Meanwhile his direct superior, an old ex-convict and now, somehow, a millionaire and magistrate, throws money at every beggar who sheds a tear his way. No wonder Javert at some point flat out tells Madeleine, “Your kindness roused sufficient bad blood in me when it was directed to others”: what kind of a world is it where working hard for the government to the best of your abilities brings a man poverty and disrespect, while begging would get him showered with money and pity?

Riddle me this: how did Javert survive in M-sur-M for five years?  I don’t mean, how did he stand it - I mean on a purely physical level. How the hell did he keep body and soul together? How did he manage to buy and maintain clothing? How did he pay rent, since inspectors were not given any kind of housing?

(I like to imagine that he part-timed as a savate instructor to the rich idle men of the town and a nude art model, but that’s just me.)

[rpmaniac]

[rpmaniac]

I was suddenly reminded of that scene in Les Mis where Cosette cries for like two hours and Marius stands banging his head a tree because she’s going to England

anyway more people should really read the brick

[rpmaniac]

I am mad about cellphone cameras hiding the processing they do, and I am glad about software that lets me control it and opt in and out, and I dictated this rant on insta so I am resharing the images here and will attempt to turn this into a useful text post on my blog in future, when my hand is working better 🤘👍

[rpmaniac]

enj outfit thing i started in JUNE and remembered the other night ⚔️

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Rambunctious