Leverage S04E04 The Van Gogh Job.
I just remembered one time in like sixth or seventh grade (we had the same teachers and class both years so hard to remember which) somehow we got into a debate of “who is better, boys or girls?” and instead of stepping in to stop it our teacher formalized it and egged us on by providing thoughtful prompts and counters to each side and by the end each group had built a barricade of desks on either side of the classroom and we were throwing balls of paper at each other and screaming about personal hygiene while our teacher just watched and enjoyed a Baby Ruth candy bar.
This was the same teacher that got the cops called on our school like three times and would reward us for being good by spraying our hands with rubbing alcohol and setting them on fire.
He was the best teacher I ever had.
STUFF MR ROBINSON DID THAT WAS VERY GOOD:
One time Mr. Robinson closed the door to the classroom furtively and asked a student near the door to keep an eye on the door’s window in case anyone from the administration was coming.
He explained the next curriculum was one he had been explicitly disallowed from, but he didn’t know how we were going to cover the next portion of our history work fairly without covering it first. He said if any of us were offended by it or felt it threatened our beliefs to be discussing it, please talk to him and he would gladly find alternative work for us to do instead. But he asked if we would be okay not broadcasting too loudly to the administration (our parents were fine) about it.
At this point we’re on the edge of our seat. Forbidden curriculum? YES PLEASE.
“All right, do I have a promise from you you won’t tell on me to the principal?”
We, of course, promised.
“Good. Then let’s talk about World Religions.”
-
(A side note here, if you ever have a not-forbidden courseload you want your students to really enthusiastically consume, I think pretending it’d forbidden will up interest levels immensely. The work was informative and we loved it, but the Secret Agent-ness of doing a SECRET ASSIGNMENTS and having SECRET PROJECTS and LOOKOUTS FOR THE FUZZ upped our investment in the material beyond description. Even if you DON’T have secret coursework, PLEASE DO THIS WITH YOUR CLASS SOMETIME. IT’S FUN.)
-
At the start of the Great Gender Debate when someone would try to say boys and girls aren’t different and they can do whatever the other does, he’d super respectively ask them if they really thought that, or if they were saying it because they thought that’s what they were supposed to say, and encouraged us being honest about how we actually felt about the difference between between boys and girls and who was better.
Then lots of super fun shouting and throwing paper at each other and making desk barricades and more yelling.
(Keep in mind, this was 1999/2000. A lot of people didn’t even have internet at home. This was a small conservative town. Being trans or nonbinary wouldn’t have even been an option we knew about.)
Then he eventually stepped back into the fray of the Great Gender Debate and made us break down our points, which he had been taking notes of, on the white board and then had us carefully and intentionally refute or discuss them one at a time. Until we had reached a real and honest consensus that actually we’d been tricked into thinking gender was anything at all. Now when we said we thought neither was better than the other and being a boy or girl didn’t mean anything about what you could or couldn’t do, we fucking meant it.
One of our male classmates started wearing nail polish the next week and we told him it looked rad.
-
One time it was a nice day out and even though we weren’t doing trig at that point he was like, “Wanna learn something cool? I’m gonna show you how to calculate how tall something is using shadows” and then we went outside and learned how to find out how tall things are by measuring their shadows and measuring the shadows of stuff we knew the length of, and then for fun we also independently worked out the world was round and how big it was.
-
One of the times the cops were called on us it was because we were having a Hot Air Balloon making contest and people thought there were UFOs or spy planes.
-
Another time we were just setting off dry ice bombs, lol.
-
They changed the milk at lunch and we hated it and Mr. Robinson may have given us ideas about civil disobedience and direct action that led to the lunch room sit-in the schoolchildren ended up staging until they would switch the milk back. At the time it felt like he was being really cool, and he was, but thinking on it he may have also been using us as props to prank the administration and also give himself an afternoon off while all the administration tried to get a hundred 11-12 year olds to leave the damn cafeteria while we chanted about milk.
-
We grew up in a town that was about 2% black. It was not uncommon for people living there to not know any black people at all.
One day Mr. Robinson told us we were going to be having a very important speaker come talk to us, and that he expected us to treat her with respect and deference. That she was one of the most important people we could be learning from, and we were honored to have her come to us. We all sat up, wondering who this important woman could be.
And he opened the door and it was one of the ladies who worked the front office, accepting our tardy slips and making us wait for the school nurse. A black woman, one of the only black people you’d find in the school.
She then sat down with us and talked to us about the racial history of our town. Explained to us what a Sundown Town was. Explained to us the racism she experienced growing up there. Explained the mistreatment of the police.
She wasn’t even that old. It struck us all. But you’re not even old. Is this still happening? Why didn’t you leave? Did anyone help you?
It was an incredibly powerful day.
When I went home to talk to my parents about it, they had no idea about any of it, even though this was the same town they had grown up in.
-
Mr. Robinson would occasionally repeat this habit of special guests were not academics, just people who had lived in our town for a while, bringing in a lunch lady or a janitor, making us talk to them, learn our town’s history, learn to respect their jobs, learn manners and deference for the working class.
-
One time he gave us bread, water, and ziploc bags and set us loose on the school to rub the bread on stuff, drip water on it, seal it, and watch what mold grew. The kid that got the grimiest piece of bread with the most enthusiastic mold would win.
We learned that many of the surfaces we consider the most dirty get the most regular cleaning, and so are in fact the least likely to produce mold. While many of the surfaces we eat off of and touch regularly are nasty as hell.
-
Similar to the Great Gender Debate, one time he let class go wildly off course while we debated hotly for over an hour about The Lion King. I do not, for the life of me, remember the substance of this debate. I think The Little Mermaid may also have been a point of conversation? I just remember it got HEATED, and Mr. Robinson always thought these heated debates were REALLY ENTERTAINING and would quietly sit back and egg them on.
-
One time he gave me detention and I cried through the whole thing thinking my parents were gonna kill me when I got home and instead when I got home my mom hugged me and told me how he’d called her and said I’d been really honest and showed moral fiber in standing up for a friend and taking the detention in the first place and she was really proud of me for being a good person or whatever and idk if he actually was impressed with my actions or if he saw that I was stressed about my parent’s reactions and wanted to mitigate that, but that was such a good move.
-
IDK. I just have a hard time thinking of any teacher I ever had both as capable of chaotic dry amusement and completely upright righteous anger. He modeled for us what it was like to evaluate things based on merit rather than based on rules and expectations, and you felt that energy constantly.
-
Plus like getting to set your hand on fire for good behavior is a way better reward than whatever dumb stickers or candies or whatever it is teachers usually use. “Behave and we will play with fire” is the BEST incentive.
Mob boss who gets equally passionate about rewarding loyalty as punishing betrayal. What?! Johnny Backstabs killed two of my rivals and saved my daughter from assassins?! Incredible!! I want him loved! I want him wifed! I want his bills paid! I want his rent gone! I want his dog pet! I want his gender trans’d! I want her car fixed! I want flowers on her doorstep! Get this DONE!!😡🥰😡
Please wish my cat a happy 15th birthday!!!
She may be considered a senior citizen but she is still baby
That sweet face! Happy Birthday!
Primordial Malzeno absolutely wiped the floor with me, but I still love it to bits
Had to make a quick colored sketch~
Neil Gaiman and the Good Omens team deserve so much better than to have something like this spoiled. It's one thing for Amazon Prime to accidentally spoil something, but it's entirely something else for "fans" to keep sharing the photo/video around.
It's just over a month to wait. I'm sure you're capable of waiting that long. Aziraphale and Crowley waited 11 years to see if their plans worked out, you can wait a month for season two.
And, no, I won't give context if you don't know what I'm talking about. Keep it that way. Show the show some respect.
This.
To make it clear, I'm not upset with the fans, whether they shared anything or not, although I would greatly prefer that the leaked stuff goes away, or at least is tagged in ways that allows people who don't want to be spoiled to avoid it, and would request that you don't further share it.
The Terrible Knitters of Dent
Illustration by George Walker, 1814.
—Hartley and Ingilby, The Yorkshire Dales, 1956.
Above: a collection of North Country knitting sticks.
Below: decoration from the church in Dent.
I can’t begin to do justice to the stories of these Northern England knitters, so please check out:
sunscreen / SPF is for EVERYONE
it’s true that gingers like myself are more likely to acquire skin cancer from sun exposure
it is ALSO true that people of color are more likely to DIE of skin cancer (a very survivable cancer) due to late diagnosis, medical racism, and lower levels of access to care
pls take care of your skin. it’s your biggest organ
Remember physical barriers are the best sunscreens. Lightweight breathable clothes that cover you, big sunglasses, wide brim hats, or even carry an umbrella/parasol.
The teenager was asked to write a short scene or draw a short comic using a comedic trope from a list on a handout in their HS American Lit class. They chose to do the comic …
the Bard will never die.
and this comic is fucking genius.
Sassy bastard (affectionate)
Leverage S05E14 The Toy Job.
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?
Okay but the actual phone mishap I actually want to see most in horror is what keeps happening to me at work, which is that the building I work in has flawed iron deposits in a lot of the addition's brickwork (basically a technique that is used by not entirely honest companies to make brick cheaper to produce)
The other side of the building probably has lead in the walls.
Anyway this plays absolute havoc with my phone. Ninety percent of the time it works fine, but in large parts of the building the internet suddenly cuts out or texts won't send.
Three times, I have had a woman's voice inform me that my phone is not on any network when I'm in the middle of a paid cycle. The internet is often working fine when this happens but then I have to restart the phone to get it to recognize the networks again.
THAT'S creepy. The phone acts like everything is going through, but suddenly a ring is cut in half by a robotic voice informing you that your phone essentially doesn't exist?
Well basically I'm glad the only ghost haunting this building is probably related to me.
YES GOOD :D
Especially aimed at Florida, but available to anyone!
And if you want to help them out and have some extra cash, you can make a donation to help them continue their work:
Every reblog and donation is another slap to DeSantis.
If you can, it's time to warm up that pitching arm.
"Clearly," said the incubus, "I'm not your type." "Sorry." "It's okay. Want to summon a succubus as well?" "Tried that first. I'm sorry." "Don't be, there's nothing wrong with you." "Everyone else-" "Isn't you. You're fine. And you're not alone. Just the first to be scientific."
Apparently Serbia, and especially Belgrade, has a huge problem with air pollution.
Ms. Francine Pickup, Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Serbia, explained that: “It is estimated that cities are the source of as much as 75% of total CO2 emissions in the world, of which the largest percentage comes from traffic and cooling and heating in buildings”. She later continued to explain that 59% of the Serbian population lives in urban areas and that the number is constantly increasing. Because the population density is so high, creating green areas and planting trees – which represent natural air purification in urban areas– is a complex goal to achieve, as there is a lack of free areas for landscaping.
The microalgae replace two 10-year-old trees or 200 square meters of lawn. The function of the LIQUID 3 is practically an imitation of it. Both trees and grass perform photosynthesis and bind carbon dioxide. However, the advantage of microalgae is that it is 10 to 50 times more efficient than trees. The team behind LIQUID 3 has stated that their goal is not to replace forests or tree planting plans but to use this system to fill those urban pockets where there is no space for planting trees. In conditions of intense pollution, such as Belgrade, many trees cannot survive, while algae do not have a problem with the great levels of pollution.
The project is designed to be multifunctional. LIQUID3 is also a bench, it has chargers for mobile phones, as well as a solar panel, thanks to which the bench has lighting during the night.
Dr. Ivan Spasojevic also explained that “the Institute used single-celled freshwater algae, which exist in ponds and lakes in Serbia and can grow in tap water, and are resistant to high and low temperatures. The system does not require special maintenance – it is enough to remove the biomass created by dividing algae, which can be used as an excellent fertilizer, in a month and a half, pour new water and minerals, and the algae continue to grow indefinitely. This project aims to popularize and expand the use of microalgae in Serbia, because they can be used in wastewater treatment, as compost for green areas, for the production of biomass and biofuels, as well as for air purification from exhaust gases from the factories”.
