Walking between gates 12 and 14 in the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, you might see a sign for gate infinity — and that’s when you’ll know you’ve reached the Interimaginary Departures. While the rest of this terminal services domestic flights, this lounge sends its passengers to Narnia, Hogwarts, Panem, Middle Earth, the Emerald City, the Hundred Acre Woods, and hundreds of other destinations from the universes of literature, film, and video games.

Your first clue that Interimaginary Departures isn’t a normal gate is the fantastical FIDS (Flight Information Display System) board. But look a little closer and you’ll see even more magic. There’s a bright white wall whose elegant molding is not only visibly incongruent from the rest of the concourse but physically too, slicing through the lounge’s chairs and furniture at a seven degree tilt. There are rabbits, a la Alice in Wonderland, woven into the carpet and carved into the machinery. And regardless of time or weather, the gate’s doors are cracked ajar with a stunning white light. (A brass sign warns you that this is a portal between dimensions and most certainly not an exit.)

Visitors to the lounge can use the interactive ticket machine to print their boarding passes for Interimaginary flights, though not without answering a few existential questions first. If you stick around long enough, you might even catch a couple announcements to prepare passengers for their upcoming trips.

The gate was designed by Janet Zweig in 2021, though a full list of credits can be found in the exhibit’s floating bookshelf that faces the rest of the terminal.

[That “ease of concealment” is going to be difficult to change.]

Police recently came upon a shocking crime scene, discovering hundreds of bodies with “their heads removed from their bodies and organized in neat rows by facial expression”. I urge you to ensure no young children are around before you gaze upon this gruesomeness:

That’s the work of one sick puppy.

Previously in LEGO Minifigs: A Wild Hair

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/us/lego-theft-california-arrest.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uk8.73kH.vtBjCxJcRAZa&smid=url-share

By the late 19th century, St. Louis was one of the largest cities in the U.S. Like seemingly all such growing cities, it faced the problem of where to source enough water for its population. Much of the Mississippi River around the city was polluted, so it was decided to locate the St. Louis Water Works further north at Bissell's Point. Likewise, the city's water intake structures were built nearby at the shallow Chain of Rocks rapids. From here, water was funneled to the Water Works in underground pipes.

The first of these buildings, capped by a conical tower, was built in 1894 in a Romanesque Revival design by William S. Eames. The second one, actually located across the state line in Illinois, was constructed in 1913 in the Renaissance Revival style by Roth and Study. In addition to water collection features, the second one has living quarters for caretakers who would work on week-long shifts. To keep the water clean, they had to do without bathrooms.

The intake towers have not been used since 1993, when a flood inundated the towers’ pipes with mud and debris. Despite that, the towers remain as city landmarks and unique features along the Mississippi. Once or twice a year, maintenance crews come to check on the towers. Docking and climbing the access ladders is reportedly a difficult process, as one could easily get swept away into the rapids!

If you were present on the Mount of Beatitudes at the original telling of the Lord’s Prayer, you would have heard the historical Jesus begin his sermon with the Aramaic words “Abwoon d’bwashmaya…”

Translated literally as a blend of “our father” (Abba) and “womb” (woon), the most sacred of Christian prayers starts with an acknowledgment of both the masculine and the feminine natures of divinity.

In the high, desolate hills of Maaloula, Syria, you can still hear these untranslated words of Jesus echo through the halls of the holy places, spoken in his native vernacular by modern denizens.

Maaloula and its neighboring villages of Jubb’adin and Bakh’a are the last places on Earth where Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, his disciples, and untold ancients, is still recognized as the common tongue. 

The name of the town itself is Aramaic for “entrance” and is based on a longstanding legend. Saint Thecla, a young disciple of Saint Paul, fled her home in Turkey to escape her pagan parents, who did not approve of her Christianity. When she arrived in Maaloula, she reached an impassable mountain. The legend says that her prayers caused the mountain rocks to divide into a valley, and, as she walked through to the other side, a stream began to run beneath her feet.

While the town alone is certainly a worthy destination, the Convent of Saint Thecla (also known as Monastero Saint Takla) and the Convent of Saints Sergius and Baachus are the real stars, and local historians will gladly recite the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic for visitors.

Today, Maaloula is an isolated village largely removed from the present, where saints once walked among humanity. And where the words of the divine are still used regularly to order a draught of wine, the local production of which is nearly as old as the language itself.

The world is changing:

Now that’s doing politics the right way.

Meanwhile this happened at what is by far the most right wing of the service academies:

A board of U.S. Air Force Academy graduates that was expected to vote Friday on whether to extend an honorary degree and honorary membership into the academy’s alumni association to slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk withdrew both of the motions.

In a statement late Friday, the Association of Graduates, which serves as the academy’s nonprofit alumni group, said its board of directors dropped the motions after hearing the past two days from “several hundred” Air Force Academy graduates, parents and other family members about the idea to recognize Kirk.

The board met in Colorado Springs on Friday afternoon to consider the measures.

“We are grateful to all who have taken the time to reach out by phone and email, and to those who attended today’s meeting in person, to share their views,” the Association of Graduates said in its statement shared with Military Times. “The AOG Board, serving as the governing body of the Association, took the thoughtful feedback received into account. The Honorary Member and honorary degree motions concerning Mr. Kirk were withdrawn.”

I guess the Christian nationalists who run the USAF have gone woke too. Somebody better parachute Stephen Miller in immediately so he can crush this newest antifa cell.

The post The kids are alright appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

holy-muffins:

myfatfuckingface:

feathersescapism:

Every time I see this quote I realize how poor even very smart people are at looking at the long game and at assessing these things in context.

One of my favourite illustrations of this was in a First Aid class. The instructor was a working paramedic. He asked, “Who here knows the stats on CPR? What percentage of people are saved by CPR outside a hospital?”

I happen to know but I’m trying not to be a TOTAL know it all in this class so I wait. And people guess 50% and he says, “Lower,” and 20% and so forth and eventually I sort of half put up my hand and I guess I had The Face because he eventually looked at me and said, “You know, don’t you.”

“My mom’s a doc,” I said. He gave me a “so say it” gesture and I said, “Four to ten percent depending on your sources.”

Everyone else looked surprised and horrified.

And the paramedic said, “We’re gonna talk a bit about some details of those figures* but first I want to talk about just this: when do you do CPR?”

The class dutifully replies: when someone is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse.

“What do we call someone who is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse?”

The class tries to figure out what the trick question is so I jump over the long pause and say, “A corpse.”

“Right,” says the paramedic. “Someone who isn’t breathing and has no heartbeat is dead. So what I’m telling you is that with this technique you have a 4-10% chance of raising the dead.”

So no, artists did not stop the Vietnam War from happening with the sheer Power of Art. The forces driving that military intervention were huge, had generations of momentum and are actually pretty damn complicated.

But if you think the mass rejection of the war was as meaningless as a soufflé - well.

Try sitting here for ten seconds and imagining where we’d be if the entire intellectual and artistic drive of the culture had been FOR the war. If everyone thought it was a GREAT IDEA.

What the whole world would look like.

Four-to-ten percent means that ninety to ninety-six percent of the time - more than nine times out of ten - CPR will do nothing, but that one time you’ll be in the company of someone worshipped as an incarnate god.

If you think the artists and performers attacking and showing up people like Donald Trump is meaningless try imagining a version of the world wherein they weren’t there.

(*if you’re curious: those stats count EVERY reported case of CPR, while the effectiveness of it is extremely time-related. With those who have had continuous CPR from the SECOND they went down, the number is actually above 80%. It drops hugely every 30 seconds from then on. When you count ALL cases you count cases where the person has already been down several minutes but a bystander still starts CPR, which affects the stats)

That Vonnegut quote brings this particular moment to mind:

Yes, it’s just a pie. Yes, the pie itself doesn’t do much direct damage in the grand scheme of things. But the pie is resistance, and resistance inspires resistance. Resistance inspires survival. Throwing pies sometimes starts a movement. Throwing pies sometimes saves lives.

And of course, we haven’t spoken about the inherent morality of throwing pies at oppressors in a world where oppressors have outlawed pie throwing. At the very least, pie throwing is a reminder to the oppressors that no matter how much money they have, no matter how much power they have, there are still some people, some moments they can’t control.

I’d rather go out throwing pies than just rolling over and accepting that pie throwing isn’t going to solve anything. Yeah, the pie throwing doesn’t immediately solve the problem, but it doesn’t have to because it’s just a starting point. So throw the damn pie.

So throw the damn pie