Scribbles in the Dark

The US federal government (via DHS/ICE) is murdering citizens in the street in broad daylight with witnesses and multiple camera angles, and claiming total immunity. Worse, they're acting like it's justified.

Renee Good might, possibly, potentially have bumped an officer with her car - we don't know, because the feds are stifling all attempts at investigation - but federal rules clearly state that use of force is not permitted in that case. If the officer is able to move out of the way of the vehicle (which he did!) then shooting the driver is not allowed. Her speech beforehand, regardless of whether it was disrespectful, should not even be a factor in justifying her murder.

Alex Pretti had a gun at his back, holstered, licensed, and permitted by his state to be carried openly, with one hand bare and the other holding his phone while he helped balance a woman who had been shoved by ICE and was slipping on an icy road. ICE troops beat him into the ground and then shot him several times while he was down. The fact that he had a holstered weapon and was resisting assault does not justify his murder.

What the fuck.

It's exhausting trying to keep up with the craziness coming out of the White House right now.

Tariffs are go- oh wait, just kidding- gotcha, they're happening for real! I'm sure my 401k has tanked, but the cheeto who shall not be named told all his cronies to buy cheap stocks right before he cancelled the tariffs and they increased their wealth by billions in a day... I brought it up at work and my (conservative) coworkers were all, 'oh it's a good time to buy, we have time, we aren't retiring for decades, this will be good for us in the long term'. Well what about all the people on the cusp of retirement who just lost all their savings?

And I'm partially thinking that this just goes to show why we should be doing pensions and not betting our retirement livelihood on the damn stock market.... but it's not like I have a choice, do I?

And meanwhile the SAVE Act is once again on the table, which its supporters say will stop voter fraud by making everyone provide extra documentation for proof of citizenship before registering to vote. But voter fraud has been consistently proven to be nearly non-existent - certainly in too small of an amount to sway the outcome of any vote - and the only impact of the SAVE Act would be a chilling effect on voter registration, making it harder for large swathes of people (myself included!) to be registered.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/13/g-s1-59684/save-act-married-women-vote-rights-explained

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-passes-bill-require-proof-citizenship-register-vote/story?id=120691270

Thankfully it hasn't passed the Senate - yet - but it's taking up a lot of space in my brain.

And that's really what I wanted to write about at the moment - how much of this noise is bouncing around in front of me, grabbing for my attention, and how exhausting it is to be constantly pulled to the next thing, the next outrage, the next human rights violation, the next power grab from the cheeto who must not be named. I feel like I'm drowning under wave after wave of malicious political action that I'm powerless to do anything about.

It's terrifying how much of this rhymes with the Diary of Anne Frank. If we're making history, I'd rather rhyme with the French Revolution and break out the guillotines.

i'm mad at myself because i went through all my kids' school photos today and realized that the one fucking time in the last three years that i didn't order any photos is the one fucking time they took really good pictures. i have the thumbnails but it was 15 months ago and they don't keep the images after 9 months. damnit.

So excited!!

I've been wanting a new phone for like a year, and desparately needing a new one since January when Eldest dropped my then-current phone on the back porch and shattered the screen. The only thing holding it together was the sticky film of the screen protector.

Wow ok the keyboard on this new one makes it very cumbersome to type limited html. That's annoying.

But still. NEW PHONE!!!!

uuuugghhh i'm feeling grumpy today. dealing with the fallout from the car accident on Monday, trying to get the other person's insurance on the phone so they can get all their paperwork sorted and pay for my repairs. work meeting in fu@^*$g Conroe this afternoon, so i gotta drive an hour each way for that. and Eldest damn near gave me a heart attack yesterday, jumping off the slide at the playground and landing on his head. T_T i need some time to relax.

I just took an afternoon nap for the first time in.... longer than I can remember, and I feel so different. Is this what it's like to be well rested?

I'm solidly in the center of the Millenial age range, and these articles are spot-on.

https://amp.businessinsider.com/millennials-mental-health-burnout-lonely-depressed-money-stress

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work

https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-last-graduating-class-affordability-crisis-student-loans-housing-2019-5

Except for this one:

https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-wiping-out-starter-homes-real-estate-2019-4

My reaction to this last one was, "uh... this is not the direction I expected this to go". My husband and I bought a house in our 20's, but we are by nearly every metric a rare and lucky success story among our generation. Even so, we started looking in the $125,000 range because that's what we thought we could afford, and ended up buying at $135,000 because it had nearly everything we wanted for not much more money. We are middle class poor - no savings outside our 401k's, living basically paycheck to paycheck.

I do know some couples who either a) have salaries much higher than mine and can afford a fancy house, or b) rented until their 30s and bought a more expensive home. But in the latter case, that "more expensive home" was a starter home, which in our market is priced at around $190-$275k depending on various factors. The median home price in my area is $184k; the average monthly rent for a single family home is $1,846. I make over $60k annual salary and I couldn't afford either of those amounts. New home prices start at $190k and go up to a million bucks for high end custom homes. The only reason the median price is so low is because of the existing stock of older, cheaper houses.

3 of my bookmarks on AO3 are for deleted fic, and it doesn't even have the decency to tell me what the fic was called, so I can't even know what was lost. T_T

I guess I should post stuff on Dreamwidth too now, huh?

This already went up on AO3 and Tumblr, and I haven't posted Chapters 1-4 on Dreamwidth, but here is Chapter 5 of my Clone Wars-era slow-burn Rex/Obi-Wan Sentinel AU fic:

~

“You can be in charge of this one, Rex,” Rex mocks under his breath, taking aim with his ascension gun. “Nothing like a little bit of trouble to test your limits, Rex.” His comm is on tightbeam, broadcasting solely to Cody’s helmet, mostly because the three rookies between them are already tense and they don't need the distraction. Rex is thriving on the distraction of bitching out his brother; there’s no better pastime when they're gearing up to shoot some clankers.

“You said you wanted a trial run,” Cody replies mildly.

“Hell of a trial run,” Rex mutters. He lets fly with the ascension gun, watching carefully as the line goes up and latches to the underside of the landing pad. A firm tug proves that the claw has a solid grip. “If I get shot I'm telling Kenobi it was your fault.”

( Keep Reading )

looking for advice on dyslexia learning tools for my coworker... because he's bugging me by asking the same basic questions repeatedly, and I want to him to actually LEARN stuff so that I can get back to my own work and not constantly hold his hand through his projects.

These articles had actually actionable advice instead of just woo-woo buy-my-book teasers:

https://www.dyslexic.com/blog/helping-your-student-with-dyslexia-learn-5-strategies-to-rely-on/

https://www.edutopia.org/article/accommodating-students-dyslexia