.@GavinNewsom has made lots of showy announcements, vowing California would lead a smooth, equitable vaccine distribution plan across the state's 58 counties. He has propped up his administration as a leader & sought to reassure the public that he can handle it. Some comments:

one of the things i like about Batman is that it's fundamentally about being orphaned, and being an orphan — how this guy stays tethered to the world in his own weird, abstract, extrajudicial way when he feels that his link to it has been violently severed

Batman does this by permanently recapitulating his own trauma: solving crimes for other people, protecting them. But that's actually just the beginning; he also recapitulates his own experience of orphanness by essentially raising several orphans

Dick is an orphan in the traditional sense: dead parents. Batman sees it happen. Jason, less so: missing dad, known mom who eventually dies. Tim, even less so: parents are around a while, and involved, before both dying. Carrie, even less than that: negligent parents.

Steph: evil father, who openly works against her. And then there's Damian, whose parents are both alive and yet both have identities that totally obliterate their role as his parents. He doesn't relate to them as a mother and father; he can't, and neither can they.

In all these different cases, Batman tries all these different ways of making orphanness for them not what it was for him: Either by trying to teach them the (arguably poor) coping skills early that he learned over a very long time, or by literally legally adopting them, etc.

WHY BABUR NEVER TRIED TO ATTACK SRI KRISHNADEVARAYA ?

A🧵u must read

It is very well known that Babur considered Krishna Dev Raya as the strongest ruler of the entire subcontinent, and Vijayanagar empire the strongest during that time in India.

1/10

The Vijayanagar empire reached its peak during 1509-1529 around the reign of Krishna Dev Raya.

Vijayanagar’s famed elephant brigade 👇

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At his command there were over 50000 elite troops with a regiment of Portuguese gunners and 3200 cavalry with 600 elephants.

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Along with that more than four hundred thousand ( four lakh) peasant levies and irregular military made this empire one of the largest in all of South Asia.

A typical Vijayanagar levie soldier 👇

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During Baburs invasion, Krishna Dev Raya ruled supreme in all of deccan.

In fact, in an all our brawl, Krisha Dev Raya will beat Babur fair and square.

Babur could muster at max 50000 troops with 50 canons.

While Krishna Dev Raya had these numbers in Hampi alone

5/10

"How the Avengers would respond to the Capitol riot" (a thread)

CAPTAIN AMERICA - tells Falcon, "I fought Nazis once before. They're extremely dangerous." They then see the guy scaling the Capitol wall fall into the shrubs. Falcon: "You sure these are the same Nazis?"

IRON MAN - lands by the guy carrying the podium. Says, "Mind if I borrow this?" then tosses it to Hulk, who swings it like a bat at the mob. Guy: "Hey, that's MY podium!" Iron Man: "Actually it's the Speaker's. And technically, it's a lectern." Then punches him through a wall.

BLACK WIDOW - enters hotel room where Jack Dorsey is tied up. Rips duct tape off his mouth. Jack: "I'll do anything you want!" BW: "Disable POTUS's Twitter. NOW!" Jack fumbles with his phone. "Done. Anything else?" BW: "Yeah. Trim your beard for God's sake." *tosses him clippers*

HULK - grabs a selfie stick from one of the guys and beats him over the head with it. Deeming it too small, he grabs another guy's Confederate flag and takes out a whole swath of rioters. He then tosses the flag to Cap, who uses it as a javelin to impale a fleeing Ted Cruz.

HAWKEYE - hears Iron Man in his earpiece say, "Looks like Orange Julius is tweeting from another account." Hawkeye: "On it." He locks in on Trump through the White House window and fires an arrow, knocking the phone out of Trump's hands. Hawkeye: "Damn that felt good."

I'm gonna do my other star wars thread tomorrow, which will primarily be me yelling at a @RowanKaiser-shaped strawman for calling the First Order and The Resistance "cosplayers who the rest of the galaxy has to deal with"

the deal w/the New Republic, the First Order, and the Resistance is very weird and complex and I actually take issue with how Story Group frames the actual conflict.

pre-TFA stuff is presented as a "cold war" between the New Republic and the remnants of the Empire that form the First Order, which 100% makes sense.

But they frame the First Order's attack on the Hosnian system and the subsequent battle that takes place across TFA and TLJ as a full on war when it's very clearly a coup. A war implies at least equal standing, but the First Order completely wrecks shop and takes over the galaxy.

ok never mind I'm fucking doing this now.

The First Order fleet we see in TLJ is *not* the entire fleet of the First Order (I don't even think Starkiller Base was their main base of operations honestly, it couldn't have been considering they were operating out of Wild Space)

1. Let's talk about Albanians. No, not THOSE Albanians, in the Balkans. The Caucasian Albanians, the pre-Turkish inhabitants of the land now known as Azerbaijan. 🇦🇿

2. Yeah, I know, there's also an "Iberia" there, which should cause even more confusion (with Spain), but let's focus on "Albania".

3. This ancient church in the village of Nij (or Nic), just south of the Caucasus Mountains, belongs to the Udi people, a Christian minority in Azerbaijan descended from the area’s pre-Turkic Caucasian Albanians. 🇦🇿

4. Nearby are the ruins of the Caucasian Albanian capital of “old” Gabala (Qebele), where I was given a personal tour by one of the resident archeologists (just for showing up). 🇦🇿

5. Only a very tiny portion of the extensive site has been excavated. “Every place you dig,” the archeologist told me, “you will find artifacts.” This whole field is a city waiting to be uncovered.