2023 was a year when many people around the world woke up to the fact that US-backed Israel is a terrorist state that commits genocide and slaughters thousands of children, and that the US keeps supplying it with weapons despite claiming to have moral superiority to judge Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
plain text: 2023 was a year when many people around the world woke up to the fact that US-backed Israel is a terrorist state that commits genocide and slaughters thousands of children, and that the US keeps supplying it with weapons despite claiming to have moral superiority to judge Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. /end plain text
“We need to strive to be more accepting of POC” you guys can’t even handle religion.
White people, when it comes to religion you have to come to the realization that a lot of non-white cultures have a strong connection to religion. Religion isn’t just the thing that your parents used to be homophobic towards you. There’s millions of religions in the world and religion plays a big part in other cultures.
Also, Christianity and Catholicism aren’t the only religions in the world. Just grouping all of religions around the world and just watering it down to these two is not constructive.
I want to say that *this includes spiritual beliefs that you personally hate and think are stupid*
If I see one more white gorjer telling me that all fortune tellers and mediums are just sicko scammers who prey on the weak and the grieving and that after the revolution they’d be shot, I will scream.
Because yes, of course there are frauds and predators- just like how there are fraudulent therapists, fraudulent priests, fraudulent grief counsellors.
In plenty of spiritual traditions, including white English-speaking ones, mediums have acted as grief counsellors and therapists and confessors. The woman who goes to the medium to channel the spirit of her dead son, to tell him that she loves him but she’s angry that he ignored her and got in the car anyway, and who gets the reply of “I’m sorry Mam, I wish I’d listened, I don’t blame you for being angry - Don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault, I just wasn’t thinking” - Is doing the same thing as the one who goes to a therapist who talks her through her feelings and assuages her guilt and ‘what ifs’ by another route. The wife who goes to channel her husband to be told “I’m happy here now, you should be happy with a good man on Earth, you don’t need to live like the dead for my sake” is getting culturally specific permission to move on - again, the equivalent of going to a grief counsellor, or even of just being told “it’s time” by your friends.
There is a huge difference between the kind of mediumship that is exploitative and predatory, and the kind that is a spiritual service, and if your first response to the idea of mediumship is “Ew ick scammers ban it!” I don’t trust your ability to tell them apart.
If a religion/religious person respects tolerance then I will as well.
“We need to strive to be more accepting of POC” you guys can’t even handle religion.
White people, when it comes to religion you have to come to the realization that a lot of non-white cultures have a strong connection to religion. Religion isn’t just the thing that your parents used to be homophobic towards you. There’s millions of religions in the world and religion plays a big part in other cultures.
Also, Christianity and Catholicism aren’t the only religions in the world. Just grouping all of religions around the world and just watering it down to these two is not constructive.
I want to say that *this includes spiritual beliefs that you personally hate and think are stupid*
If I see one more white gorjer telling me that all fortune tellers and mediums are just sicko scammers who prey on the weak and the grieving and that after the revolution they’d be shot, I will scream.
Because yes, of course there are frauds and predators- just like how there are fraudulent therapists, fraudulent priests, fraudulent grief counsellors.
In plenty of spiritual traditions, including white English-speaking ones, mediums have acted as grief counsellors and therapists and confessors. The woman who goes to the medium to channel the spirit of her dead son, to tell him that she loves him but she’s angry that he ignored her and got in the car anyway, and who gets the reply of “I’m sorry Mam, I wish I’d listened, I don’t blame you for being angry - Don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault, I just wasn’t thinking” - Is doing the same thing as the one who goes to a therapist who talks her through her feelings and assuages her guilt and ‘what ifs’ by another route. The wife who goes to channel her husband to be told “I’m happy here now, you should be happy with a good man on Earth, you don’t need to live like the dead for my sake” is getting culturally specific permission to move on - again, the equivalent of going to a grief counsellor, or even of just being told “it’s time” by your friends.
There is a huge difference between the kind of mediumship that is exploitative and predatory, and the kind that is a spiritual service, and if your first response to the idea of mediumship is “Ew ick scammers ban it!” I don’t trust your ability to tell them apart.
Nothing like the gaslighting of your abusive parents into making you believe you lived a privileged childhood because at least they gave you food and shelter.
The Horrors of Insecticides You Can Buy at Home Depot
Since saving the bees is something I am passionate about, I did a deep dive into lawn chemicals, specifically: insecticides.
So I spent like 4 hours today on the Home Depot website with several tabs open to various google searches and chemical safety and properties databases, taking notes on the insecticide chemicals that a random American homeowner can buy.
Conclusions, in summary: OH MY GOD. WHY IS THIS STUFF BEING SOLD IN STORES. WHY IS THIS ALLOWED ARE WE A LAWLESS WASTELAND?????
So the first thing I want to draw attention to is how these chemicals are labeled and advertised, and how this is deceptive and misleading.
On the Home Depot’s website, I found many products advertised to kill a specific variety of pest. Examples include:
“Terminate” Termite and Carpenter Ant Spray
“Black Flag” Flea and Tick Killer
“Terro” Ant Killer
“Bioadvanced” Termite Killer
“Hot Shot” Spider and Scorpion Killer
“Spectracide” Wasp and Hornet Killer Aerosol Spray
“Ike’s” Lawn Grub Control
You will also see many products advertised as effective against a broad variety of pests:
“Bioadvanced” Spray Home Pest Insect Killer
“Cutter” Bug Control Spray
What’s wrong with this?
THEY HAVE THE SAME ACTIVE INGREDIENTS
All of these products, including the ones advertised for use against specific pests, are broad-spectrum insecticides that indiscriminately kill or harm almost all invertebrates, not even limited to insects. (We will come back to this in a second.) Often, the exact same chemical is advertised as a “spider killer,” “roach killer,” “wasp killer” and so on, just in different packaging.
“Black Flag” flea and tick killer, “Terminate” termite and carpenter ant spray, “Terro” ant killer, and “Cutter” bug control spray all have lambda-cyhalothrin as their active ingredient.
There are two other active ingredients in the products in the above list, prallethrin and imidacloprid. (See if you can guess which list items are the same chemical in a different bottle.)
The problem? This packaging makes people think they are buying a pest control with some level of targeted effectiveness against a specific type of pest, when they are actually buying an indiscriminate toxic substance that can kill almost anything alive enough to move.
The following information was mostly compiled from resources on the safety and properties of various chemicals found on pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. I also searched up documents from the EPA and various scientific papers studying the effects on specific organisms.
Lambda-Cyhalothrin
(mentioned above)
The US Environmental Protection Agency says this insecticide is “highly toxic to bees exposed to direct treatment or residues” and advises, “Do not apply this product or allow it to drift to blooming crops or weeds if bees are visiting the treatment area.” The EPA website also states, “This pesticide is extremely toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates. Do not apply directly to water or areas where surface water is present…Do not apply when weather conditions favor drift from treatment areas.”
Since “water,” “wind,” and “bees” aren’t exactly uncommon phenomena outside, this leaves me wondering what applications these requirements don’t rule out. I’m particularly bemused by the bit about not allowing the product to drift from the treatment area, as if the average person has telekinetic powers that allow them to direct and confine an aerosolized mist.
Carbaryl
(found in some sprays and powders marketed under the label “Sevin”)
I know my parents used this stuff on our garden plants when I was a kid, so I read all of the information I am about to relay with absolute horror.
Carbaryl is highly toxic to bees, causing entire hives to perish when the deadly toxin is brought back to the hive by foraging workers. It is incredibly toxic to earthworms even at incredibly low concentrations. In reptiles, it negatively impacts the ability to move and flee from predators. In one study conducted with leopard frog tadpoles, exposure caused deformities in nearly 18% of tadpoles, while only one single tadpole in the control group showed similar deformities.
According to the EPA website, humans exposed chronically to carbaryl (for example agricultural workers) experience symptoms such as headaches, muscle weakness, and memory loss. In experiments done with rats, dietary exposure to carbaryl results in reduced fertility, lower litter sizes, and higher mortality in offspring.
Regarding cancer risk, the EPA states that “No information is available on the carcinogenic effects of carbaryl in humans,” which comes off as weirdly ominous in spite of the reassurance that animal studies haven’t shown an increase in cancer.
It is banned in the EU.
Its manufacturing was also responsible for the Bhopal disaster.
Bifenthrin
(found in a wide variety of insecticides including Ortho Home Defense, Ortho Bug-B-Gon, and some products sold under the Sevin label)
Bifenthrin is very highly toxic to fish, other aquatic life, and bees. It has been shown to accumulate in the bodies of bluegill sunfish. One of the studies referenced by PubChem involved collecting sediment from creeks in a suburban neighborhood and exposing amphipods (tiny water animals) to the sediment in a lab. In half of the samples, the sediment was so contaminated with bifenthrin (presumably from lawn care applications) that almost all the amphipods died.
Bifenthrin is classified as a possible human carcinogen and may cause a wide variety of other respiratory and neurological symptoms. It also interferes with hormone receptors in humans and is considered to be “of significant concern with respect to maternal-fetal health.” It has also been shown to mess with the immune system and potentially is a cause of asthma even at “acceptable” levels of exposure.
Cypermethrin
(found in Raid and many Spectracide products)
Incredibly toxic to bees and aquatic life, with one study showing 75%-95% mortality within 24 hours of exposure in bees. It has been shown to cause deformities and reproductive problems in many fish. It is a possible human carcinogen.
There have been a ton of animal studies where feeding animals doses of it over time, or giving them acute doses, causes a huge array of horrifying results, including incontinence, seizures, convulsions, dehydration, weight loss and unwillingness to eat, writhing spasms, hypersensitivity to stimuli, lowered testosterone, lowered sperm production, developmental delays in offspring, and “dopaminergenic neurodegeneration,” whatever that means.
Residues of the stuff have been found to last up to 84 days in homes (hopefully at low concentrations).
Cypermethrin is also particularly highly toxic to cats. This is why you do NOT use flea and tick shampoos meant for dogs on a cat.
Imidacloprid
(sold as “tree and shrub protection” products, which is insidious considering how awful this pesticide is, as well as “Bioadvanced Spray Home Pest Insect Killer,” “Ike’s Systemic Landscape Care,” and other products under the “Bioadvanced” or “Ike’s” label)
A neonicotinoid pesticide that causes toxicity effects at 10 parts per billion in bumble bees. It is also ACUTELY toxic to many birds. One study investigates an incident where 26 American goldfinches were found dead on the ground after some elm trees were treated with imidacloprid. A review of studies and reports of toxicity to birds tallies up 734 dead birds reportedly associated with this pesticide.
As a neonicotinoid, imidacloprid works by dissolving in water and being absorbed by a plant, which effectively makes the whole plant including flowers and pollen poisonous to insects. Because of this, neonicotinoids have been suspected to be a major cause of the decline of pollinators.
———–
This is only some of the most common or popular active ingredients for insecticides, there are many others. You will notice that each one listed is INCREDIBLY toxic to bees!
I wrote this out because I feel it’s important to raise awareness, because I think the branding and labeling on these products makes them appear much safer and more precise than they really are.
They’re labeled as insecticides, but that’s misleading. They’re poisons, and insects are only some of many things they harm or kill.
And it really hits me: is this the best we have??? These incredibly broad-spectrum poisons that kill not only “pest” insects but bees, fish, and songbirds too??? Killing pests with imidacloprid or cypermethrin is like trying to scramble an egg by throwing hand grenades at it!
People are spraying this stuff as a matter of course on their lawns. In their homes. Around their children. Even on vegetables in their gardens. Because that’s just what you do, because “bugs” make a space dirty, contaminated, and unfit for your children to play in. Yes there are warnings on the bottle, but they are no more compelling or eye-catching than the warnings on a bottle of dish soap. There are a lot of bug sprays with a “clean fresh scent,” which is a little troubling for a substance you really should not be inhaling at all.
People don’t know their “flea and tick killer” kills monarch butterflies and bumble bees, and they really don’t have an inkling of how seriously they should take the warning label.
I glimpsed at the questions buyers had asked for one of the products, I forget which, and I saw a lady asking if she had to remove the dishes from her cabinet before spraying the insecticide in the cabinet.
Ok, God, I am fucking wheezing, I got trained to work with mice today since I’ll need them for some experiments and the guy who trained me was like, “Yeah ok so if there’s a day where you just absolutely cannot get your mice to cooperate you can always do this” and picks up this cone-shaped bag and just put the mouse face-first into it and shows it to me and I lose my shit because deadass it was a piping-bag of mouse. Like, the whole mouse was pressed into this cone, fur and ears and feet all pressed up against the plastic, tail sticking up absurdly out of the top of the thing. It was so unimaginably fucking funny but like the mouse was perfectly ok with it, there’s a hole for air at the bottom so she could breathe and all but it was genuinely the most absurd thing I have witnessed in months
THIS IS FUCKING IT, IT’S SO FUCKING RIDICULOUS!!!!!
Ok, God, I am fucking wheezing, I got trained to work with mice today since I’ll need them for some experiments and the guy who trained me was like, “Yeah ok so if there’s a day where you just absolutely cannot get your mice to cooperate you can always do this” and picks up this cone-shaped bag and just put the mouse face-first into it and shows it to me and I lose my shit because deadass it was a piping-bag of mouse. Like, the whole mouse was pressed into this cone, fur and ears and feet all pressed up against the plastic, tail sticking up absurdly out of the top of the thing. It was so unimaginably fucking funny but like the mouse was perfectly ok with it, there’s a hole for air at the bottom so she could breathe and all but it was genuinely the most absurd thing I have witnessed in months
THIS IS FUCKING IT, IT’S SO FUCKING RIDICULOUS!!!!!
one of the most important things, perhaps the most important thing I have learned in my life is that nice people can fuck each other up in monstrous ways. people can be bone deep kind and loving and self reflective and still lash out under pressure. people can be earnestly neighbourly and charitable and hospitable and generous and still find themselves in situations where they become selfish. people can be well meaning and easygoing and gregarious and hold deep seated opinions that turn them into vicious little bullies under the right conditions. nobody is just one thing, and nobody stays one way. every person is a kaleidoscope and they will surprise you. you will surprise yourself. it’s not a warning and it’s not a judgement and it’s not an excuse, and it’s certainly not a reason to stop trying or to stop trusting. it is just a fact.
Me: *doesnt connect emotionally or socially with my peers*
Adults: 😊🙏😊 Look at you!! 😊🙏😊🙏🙏 you’re so mature for your age 😊😊😊🙏🙏 Such an old soul!!! 😊🙏😊🙏😊😀😀O h m y g o o d n e s s 😀😊🙏 a truly G I F T E D child 😄😄🙏🙏😊🙏🙏
Me: *doesnt connect emotionally or socially with my peers except im 20 now*
Adults: You need to get out there. Why don’t you go see your friends? All you do is sit in your room all day. I don’t think this is healthy for you. Why are you like this?
Any conspiracy theory about people going missing in National Parks is automatically silly to me. Like “Why are National Parks such a hotbed of disappearances???” because they’re full of idiots. You’ve got thousands of people who’ve never pissed outdoors in their life wandering around the woods/desert/mountain with zero experience and zero gear and zero understanding that this place can kill them. You don’t see as many disappearances in wild areas because people don’t go to them unless they have some background knowledge. Whereas you get tour buses full of old folks and suburban families shuttling people into National Parks 365 days a year. If you took the same amount of buffoons and dropped them in the actual wilderness the disappearances would be significantly higher than at the parks. Use your brain.
Some fun stuff from the notes:
park ranger who has seen people spread bacon grease on their campsite in the hopes of seeing a bear
British person who is appalled that North American national parks kill people
people who lure bison calves away from their mothers to photograph them
a lot of it involves bison
a LOT of it involves people trying to swim in the yellowstone thermal vents
woman who tried to retrieve her dropped cell phone from a pit toilet and FELL IN
Lots of people reminding me that caves are a problem too. I know, I just try to forget that caves exist because I hate them.
Guys who tried to hike the entire length of Florida in flip flops
Someone who approached a bear cub because they thought it was a raccoon
Someone who works at an unspecified national monument and says dead bodies keep turning up at the picnic area (Hello???)
A few Alaskans laughing at everyone
Scottish person who wishes their parks were as effective at killing tourists as ours are
A few NPS staffmembers saying the NPS is far, far too incompetent to wage any sort of large scale conspiracy about disappearances
Several death threats against David Paulides
People accusing me of being Bigfoot (I plead the fifth)
A group who got on a raft in a river assuming it would loop back around… like at a waterpark
Person recalling a time they saw a hiker “saved by monkeys” but did not elaborate on that
There is still hope. Say it out loud. Palestine will be free. The Palestinian people will celebrate their culture and heritage with each other. We will love and be loved. Do not fall into the trap of despair.
“It’s necessary for Palestinians to die because otherwise Israelis would never be able to exterminate Hamas!” “Iraqi citizens had to die because the US had to retaliate for the Iran-backed drone attack!” When will you learn that Arab people are not just collateral fucking damage. When will you learn they are not a means to an end. When will you stop dehumanizing Arab people in your endless attempts to justify the mindless slaughter that has been taking place for years, but which has intensified beyond belief the last four months. Why do you need to be told to treat Arab people like they’re human. Why do you need to be told this. Why do you need to be told.
Palestinian landmarks have been completely demolished in the name of exterminating Hamas. Thousands upon thousands of Palestinians have been killed in ways so brutal that some on-site journalists have admitted that they couldn’t bring themselves to press down on the camera. Children and women are living in famine, in sickness, in agony every day. How could you look at all that and use the same tired excuse of “Well we have to take care of Hamas!!” like why are you so anti-Arab racist that it causes you to be out of touch with your own humanity? How do you have it in your heart to see innocent citizens murdered as nothing but collateral damage? How would you react if it were your family that was genocided? How would you react if it were you?
do you all remember in the early 2010s where people were talking about freeing the nipple and that mixed-gender sports should become a thing and the removal of period tax and all of that and then some people realised that would mean trans people too ans they instantly decided to revert to bioessentialism 101 and now i have to see grating sentences like Well maybe jeopardy should be gender-segregated because males have a biological advantage in pressing a button
Did you see the video that shows where the ambulance that went to rescue 6 year old Hind was from the car she was trapped in?
Mere meters! Meters! The paramedics would have been able to see the car from where the ambulance was before it was struck by Israel.
The paramedics were there. Hind was moments away from being rescued. Israel is fucking monstrous. They lured paramedics in so they can kill them before killing the child.
The are no words to describe how inhumane Israel is. Fuck Israel.
It’s fun that you can either believe that Israel is bombing indiscriminately and killed all those people by accident, in which case they need to be stopped because even if you agree with them attacking “Hamas” their total lack of accuracy is counterproductive, or else — note that you literally cannot believe these two things at the same time — that Israel, as it claims itself, has total control over who they are killing, in which case they need to be stopped because they are deliberately committing mass murder. There is literally no way to interpret this without Israel being criminally negligent at the very least.
An Israeli entrepreneur who participated in the genocide in Gaza has pitched a plan to a European firm for the territory’s future.
The Gaza Strip – which the plan assumes would be conquered and controlled by Israel – would be divided into two zones. In the northern zone, Palestinian collaborators would be permitted to live in relative comfort, while those who refuse to serve and obey their Israeli masters would be banished to a southern “area of terror.”
Headlines would, he hopes, “turn to ‘Israel brought a solution’ instead of ‘Israel kills children.’”
Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza during its genocide. The United Nations has acknowledged that most victims are women and children.
Bokobza also markets his plan as an effort to bring “a success story” that will aid US President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
Realizing Bokobza’s terrifying vision would begin with the total destruction of all buildings still standing in northern Gaza.
“We have taken over northern Gaza, most of the population evacuated south, we are eliminating all of Hamas’ infrastructure,” he writes.
“We will eliminate any infrastructure in northern Gaza that limits us from building the Gaza of the future.”
He repeatedly calls for total destruction.
“Demolition: Complete demolition of existing structures in Gaza City, paving the way for a fresh start and the construction of a robust infrastructure.”
The person behind the camera is talking to someone sat at a computer wearing a headset and using the mouse and keyboard. Camera person says, “Hey, I need you to roll this.”
They hand over a blue and white marbled D20.
Computer person: What?
Camera person: I need you to roll this.
Computer person: What for?
Camera person: Just roll
The computer person rolls the dice on the desk. It lands on a 9.
Computer person: 9
Camera person: She rolled a nat 20 for her initiative
Camera pans round to behind the computer screen showing a brown and white medium to large dog with a knife in her jaws.
The computer person pulls a sword apparently out of nowhere and yells, “Come at me.”
The dog barks twice, “Woof woof,” as she lunges at the computer person who screams loudly and reminiscent of the Wilhelm Scream. Arghhh.
one time a dude came into the pet store I worked at and bought nine dollars worth of dog treats with a 100 dollar bill that had clearly been made from green construction paper. when I hesitated and ran it through all the methods of testing we had (it failed all of them) he asked for my manager. she had been shitty with me all morning, and came to the register in a huff, grabbed it from me, slammed it in the register and told me to “just do my job.” this dude and I are looking at each other, both of us 100% aware that he’s getting 90 dollars from me in exchange for a piece of construction paper that had been cut a little crooked, and he’s just smiling at me and I’m standing there, overworked and tired, getting paid minimum wage, which, it turns out, is not enough to speak up any further, so I just said fuck it. When I got to work the next day there were cops there to inform us we were the fourth or fifth shop on the road to get hit by the same guy. My manager was going HOGWILD. I just looked at her like
ALT
