Kagehina Band Au 𝄞 ⋆ˎˊ-

Fem!BokuAka

MHA is ending on the 4th but honestly Yona of the Dawn updates on the 5th so this is my formal invitation to MHA fans to read Yona of the Dawn if you like

Strong complex female characters

Societal flaws that actually get addressed

One of the best male love interests of all time.

Found family

An abused isolated blue haired 20 something with a dangerous ability voiced by Eric Vale THAT IS LOVED AND CHERISHED

Slow burn romance

Badass fights

Body/existential horror

Boyfailures and girlbosses

DRAGONS

Lesbians

Please give this manga a chance! It's really good if u can't find it online just shoot me a dm!

do you guys ever like forget you're interested in something until you start engaging with it again and you go "oh wait i'm like crazy crazy about this yeah"

the Guardian

New Mexico made childcare free. It lifted 120,000 people above the poverty line

The state, which has long ranked worst in the US for child wellbeing, became the first and only in the country to offer free childcare to a

"The state, which has long ranked worst in the US for child wellbeing, became the first and only in the country to offer free childcare to a majority of families

There was a moment, just before the pandemic, when Lisset Sanchez thought she might have to drop out of college because the cost of keeping her three children in daycare was just too much.

Even with support from the state, she and her husband were paying $800 a month – about half of what Sanchez and her husband paid for their mortgage in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

But during the pandemic, that cost went down to $0. And Sanchez was not only able to finish college, but enroll in nursing school. With a scholarship that covered her tuition and free childcare, Sanchez could afford to commute to school, buy groceries for her growing family – even after she had two more children – and pay down the family’s mortgage and car loan.

“We are a one-income household,” said Sanchez, whose husband works while she is in school. Having free childcare “did help tremendously”.

...Three years ago, New Mexico became the first state in the nation to offer free childcare to a majority of families. The United States has no federal, universal childcare – and ranks 40th on a Unicef ranking of 41 high-income countries’ childcare policies, while maintaining some of the highest childcare costs in the world. Expanding on pandemic-era assistance, New Mexico made childcare free for families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or about $124,000 for a family of four. That meant about half of New Mexican children now qualified.

In one of the poorest states in the nation, where the median household income is half that and childcare costs for two children could take up 80% of a family’s income, the impact was powerful. The state, which had long ranked worst in the nation for child wellbeing, saw its poverty rate begin to fall.

As the state simultaneously raised wages for childcare workers, and became the first to base its subsidy reimbursement rates on the actual cost of providing such care, early childhood educators were also raised out of poverty. In 2020, 27.4% of childcare providers – often women of color – were living in poverty. By 2024, that number had fallen to 16%.

During the state’s recent legislative session, lawmakers approved a “historic” increase in funding for education, including early childhood education, that might improve those numbers even further...

When now-governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced her candidacy in late 2016, she emphasized her desire to address the state’s low child wellbeing rating. And when she took office in January 2018, she described her aim to have a “moonshot for education”: major investments in education across the state, from early childhood through college.

That led to her opening the state’s early childhood education and care department in 2019 – and tapping Groginksy, who had overseen efforts to improve early childhood policies in Washington DC, to run it. Then, in 2020, Lujan Grisham threw her support behind a bill in the state legislature that would establish an Early Childhood Trust Fund: by investing $300m – plus budget surpluses each year, largely from oil and gas revenue – the state hoped to distribute a percentage to fund early childhood education each year.

But then, just weeks after the trust fund was established, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic.

“Covid created a really enormous moment for childcare,” said Heinz. “We had somewhat of a national reckoning about the fact that we don’t have a workforce if we don’t have childcare.”

As federal funding flooded into New Mexico, the state directed millions of dollars toward childcare, including by boosting pay for entry-level childcare providers to $15 an hour, expanding eligibility for free childcare to families making 400% of the poverty level, and becoming the first state in the nation to set childcare subsidy rates at the true cost of delivering care.

As pandemic-era relief funding dried up in 2022, the governor and Democratic lawmakers proposed another way to generate funds for childcare – directing a portion of the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund to early childhood education and care. Like the Early Childhood Trust Fund, the permanent fund – which was established when New Mexico became a state – was funded by taxes on fossil fuel revenues. That November, 70% of New Mexican voters approved a constitutional amendment directing 1.25% of the fund to early childhood programs.

By then, the Early Childhood Trust Fund had grown exponentially – due to the boom in oil and gas prices. Beginning with $300m in 2020, the fund had swollen to over $9bn by the end of 2024...

New Mexico has long had one of the highest “official poverty rates” in the nation.

But using a metric that accounts for social safety net programs – like universal childcare – that’s slowly shifting. According to “supplemental poverty” data, 17.1% of New Mexicans fell below the federal “supplemental” poverty line from 2013 to 2015 (a metric that takes into account cost of living and social supports) – making it the fifth poorest state in the nation by that measure. But today, that number has fallen to 10.9%, one of the biggest changes in the country, amounting to 120,000 fewer New Mexicans living in poverty.

New Mexico’s child wellbeing ranking – which is based heavily on “official poverty” rankings – probably won’t budge, says Heinz because “the amount of money coming into households, that they have to run their budget, remains very low.

“However, the thing New Mexico has done that’s fairly tremendous, I think, is around families not having to have as much money going out,” she said.

During the recent legislative session, lawmakers deepened their investments in early childhood education even further, approving a 21.6% increase of $170m for education programs – including early childhood education. However, other legislation that advocates had hoped might pass stalled in the legislature, including a bill to require businesses to offer paid family medical leave...

In her budget recommendations, Lujan Grisham asked the state to up its commitment to early childhood policies, by raising the wage floor for childcare workers to $18 an hour and establishing a career lattice for them. Because of that, Gonzalez has been able to start working on her associate’s in childhood education at Central New Mexico Community College where her tuition is waived. The governor also backed a house bill that will increase the amount of money distributed annually from the Early Childhood Trust Fund – since its dramatic growth due to oil and gas revenues.

Although funding childcare through the Land Grant Permanent Fund is unique to New Mexico – and a handful of other states with permanent funds, like Alaska, Texas and North Dakota – Heinz says the Early Childhood Trust fund “holds interesting lessons for other states” about investing a percentage of revenues into early childhood programs.

In New Mexico, those revenues come largely from oil and gas, but New Mexico Voices for Children has put forth recommendations about how the state can continue funding childcare while transitioning away from fossil fuels, largely by raising taxes on the state’s wealthiest earners. Although other states have not yet followed in New Mexico’s footsteps, a growing number are making strides to offer free pre-K to a majority of their residents.

Heinz cautions that change won’t occur overnight. “What New Mexico is trying to do here is play a very long game. And so I am not without worry that people might give it five years, and it’s been almost five years now, and then say, where are the results? Why is everything not better?” she said. “This is generational change” that New Mexico is only just beginning to witness as the first children who were recipients of universal childcare start school."

-via The Guardian, April 11, 2025

Kevin: I can't promise he'll ever speak to you

Jean:

when internet people are like “i love gothic literature but i hate anything that discusses incest, sexual violence, oppression, misogyny, abuse, torture, gore, murder, or death”

idk if youve written about this before but who do you think will heal like "fix" Rin: Isagi or Sae? (sorry for bad english)

(don't apologize!)

I kind of did

This was not too long ago and I still think feel the way I did when I wrote that.

I still think Rin's issues will be one of the core conflicts later on, seeing as how this entire PXG match was written to develop him further (make him more insane). Dedicating 200 chapters to developing one character means that character's conflicts are important and there will be more shit for that character later on. As far as fixing or helping (I get what you mean) I think it's gonna be a combo of both of them but more than that, Rin pulling himself together. Mostly because that's the pattern in Blue Lock so far. Nobody really discloses their baggage with anyone, the only one to do that was Bachira and that's because of how his relationship with Isagi is (very different from the other dynamics in the manga) and how Bachira just is as a person (very open about everything, esp w/ Isagi).

Bachira*, Chigiri, Barou, Nagi, Hiori, Yukimiya, Kaiser--> all of these people were "helped" by Isagi, but Isagi didn't do anything. He reached out to them to get them to collaborate and win matches. He was either met with resistance (Barou, Chigiri, Yuki) or willingness to make it work (Nagi, Kaiser**). Each time the outcome is the same though. Chigiri remembered why soccer was fun, so he jumped back in, Nagi realized what it's like to actually feel fired up about something, anything, Barou realized he can't just be The Way That He Is and win matches/be useful in matches/be a part of the team and given the opportunity/chance to score for the team. Hiori and Yukimiya found inspiration just playing with Isagi, Hiori moved past the pressure his awful parents put on him and found his own personal reason to play, Yuki and Isagi had a couple of Bad Moments and it worked out because they're both willing to admit mistakes and learn and change.

*Again, Bachira's situation was quite different from the rest, so we won't dive into his stuff here **Kaiser is unreliable and this comes with a grain of salt and that is an entire other post in itself, but the point still stands

Soooo moving back to Rin...I expect him to follow the same pattern. When you compare Rin's reaction to Isagi just PLAYING SOCCER and literally EVERYONE ELSE'S REACTION to Isagi just PLAYING SOCCER it's really wild.

Everyone else:

Rin:

Even fucking Kaiser started out acting like Rin and then shifted to feeling like everyone else (Kaiser and his unreliable narrating is a whole other post so I won't get into that here).

Everyone figured their own stuff out on their own terms (Not Kaiser lol). Rin should probably work out the same seeing as how he is seeing the same Isagi as everyone else but having a total 180 reaction. Rin is very much an anomaly though because unlike everyone else in the manga, he's stuck in his emotions and broken heart and can't get past it, and *his issues/narrative conflicts actually involve other characters who participate in the story (Sae). We're never gonna see Hiori face his parents or anything like that, so Rin is clearly a different type of story than everyone else.

*Kaiser and Ness but again, different post

Rin has two obstacles:

Figuring out what Sae was trying to tell him when he dumped him (in a fuck awful way, Sae is an idiot)

And the way he views Isagi

I didn't include "fixing relationship with Sae" as an obstacle because THAT will not happen unless he realizes #1. This story is all about "egos" (ego meaning finding your reason/motivation and not relying on anyone else). Rin always just wanted to be in his brother's shadow and Sae got really tired of that because he knew Rin was capable of more than that, so he dumped him.

Rin loses his shit a little (understandably honestly, really sad), uses his anger as a motivator (still missing the mark, that makes Rin codependent on Sae still), realizes there is finally someone who isn't just one of Rin's stepping stones (how Rin used to view everyone around him, first character flaw we see), and lost his shit a little more. Decided that beating Isagi was his next goal, which setting more reachable goals like that is good (it's what Isagi did with Kaiser), but because Rin has so many other unresolved issues he wasn't able to be normal about it and he let Isagi send him into a spiral/borderline meltdown on the soccer field in the PXG match LOL. Rin placed Isagi in the same playing field as his brother, literally compared the two saying he needs someone who makes him suffer in order to play to his fullest potential.

I don't think I need to explain why that thought process is completely fucked up lol. Sae legitimately hurt Rin. Isagi did nothing to him, so this comparison is evident of how desperate Rin is to keep finding a reason to play (his own ego).

I think the order of events for Rin has to be:

Get over this weird fixation on Isagi. Shift from letting Isagi ruin his life to letting Isagi inspire him like everyone else. View Isagi as someone to fight alongside and compete against without escalating into a mental breakdown lol.

Realize why he's playing soccer---> he SHOULD come to the conclusion that this sport brings him joy and it's fun. So far we've never see him really enjoy it. That's been the core of several arcs, Chigiri, NAGI especially my god (that's literally been the whole reason anything in blue lock has gone the way it has for Nagi lmao), Hiori. And even Bachira calls him out on it.

If things go that way---> THEN I think Sae will see this change and their relationship can mend itself. Sae just sees Rin as an annoying sibling who wants to ride his brother's ass and annoy him forever being happy with settling for living in a shadow (literally, this was confirmed by Kaneshiro that Sae does not view their little spat the same as Rin does, he thinks Rin is just being annoying, Sae is an idiot lol).

I also think Rin needs friends. He has none. Realizing that people are playing WITH him is started this WHOLE downward spiral in the U20 match, so for me it seems that Rin's endgame should be embracing the 10 other people he's playing with and enjoy it with them, not feel like he has to be alone and do everything himself otherwise he's not good enough. I think Isagi (and Bachira too tbh) will be key to this part of Rin's story.

To answer your question:

Yes. Lol.

🫢