Yeah man, can you imagine if over the last century the US had interfered in the democratic processes of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, the Congo, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Palestine, Panama, Russia, Syria, Venezuela,
thats why the vietnam war was the last war ever televised
Chelsea Manning went to jail trying to show people the extend of the atrocities American commits overseas. I watched some of the leaked footage. I think some of the worst of it was a drone bombing of a wedding in Yemen, then a day later America bombed the funeral of those killed at the wedding. Ambulances and first response units (which are protected under international law), were being bombed. People trying to take shelter were being bombed.
And that’s just drones, which is to say nothing for the numerous illegal black sites America operates around the world. Or the effects of using white phosphorus, which will continue to burn as long as oxygen is present and melts human tissues. That was used in Fallujah, which was a blood-bath from start to finish.
Which is why I have zero trust in the military, both American and British, because this is just some of the stuff we know about.
People in the countries y'all invade have been telling you what Yank soldiers do while overseas, you don’t need to imagine if you take the time to listen to them.
every us military base has a prison. that is at least 800 prisons around the world. before you even get into cia blacksites.
“There were approximately ten demonstrators near a tank [outside an Iraqi military compound eight kilometres from Baghdad airport]. We heard a shot in the distance and we started shooting at them. They all died except for one. We left the bodies there… The survivor was hiding behind a column about 150 metres away from us. I pointed at him and waved my weapon to tell him to get away. Half of his foot had been cut off. He went away dragging his foot. We were all laughing and cheering.
“Then an 18-wheeler [truck] came speeding around. We shot at it. One of the guys jumped out. He was on fire. The driver was dead. Then a Toyota Corolla came. We killed the driver, the other guy came out with his hands up. We shot him too.
“A gunny [gunnery sergeant from Lima Company came running and said to us: ‘Hey, you just shot that guy, but he had his hands up.’ My unit, my commander and me were relieved of our command for the rest of the day. Not more than five minutes later, Lima Company took up our position and shot a car with one woman and two children. They all died… In a month and a half, my platoon killed more than thirty civilians…
“[Iraqis] would see us debase their dead all the time. We would be messing around with charred bodies, kicking them out of them of the vehicles and sticking cigarettes in their mouths. I also saw vehicles drive over them. It was our job to look into the pockets of dead Iraqis to gather intelligence. However, time and time again I saw Marines steal gold chains, watches and wallets full of money.”
- Staff Sergeant (Ret’d) Jimmy Massey, USMC, about the actions of the 7th Marines in early April 2003. Quoted by Natashia Saulnier in “The Marine’s Tale,” The Independent, May 5, 2004.
Taken from The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq, Gwynne Dyer.
This information, about the history of this pillage and the information of all other pillages like this at the hands of the U.S and other Western countries, are freely available to anyone who seeks them out. This is just one command of the Marines. Imagine all the others. We tell you but you don’t listen, and that’s on you.
Meet Pando, not a forest but a single tree. Every trunk of the Quaking Aspen is genetically identical & connected by a single 80,000 year old root system, making it one of the largest and oldest living entities on Earth!
Seeing footage of the aftermath of the flour massacre in Gaza is so painful
“Where is my daughter? Tell her I don’t want flour anymore”
“My brother was shot holding a bag of flour. He kept holding on to it so they kept shooting him”
“Why does flour have to be stained with blood?”
Over 100 have been killed. Every single one of them hungry. Every single one of them has someone waiting for them to come back with the bag of flour.
Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war against innocent civilians. Israel ambushes starving Palestinians and shoots them. Israel is not fighting a war to defend itself. This is another episode of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
wage labor is the worst vampire. anyone draining me dry should be in an ecstasy of indulgence. a frenzied bloodlust. consuming someone’s life essence should at least feel good or make you drunk or horny or something. but what do we get? line go up. that’s all, that’s it. pathetic.
I submitted this free app to the Windows Store/Microsoft Store.
It’s a GIF viewer. It lets you take a close look at them.
You can search for “gif enjoyer” on the Windows Store/Microsoft Store app. It’s the one with the icon that looks like this:
I’m still updating it with a few more stuff but it takes a few days for the store to approve some updates. I’d like to keep the app simple and focused on what it does though.
If you find this app useful in your work, please consider a contribution to my Ko-fi! 🙏
ID: Instagram post by @/letstalkpalestine. The slide reads: “Let’s Talk: 8 things to know about what’s happening in Palestine.” End ID.
ID: “#1 This is possibly the largest ever Palestinian liberation operation in modern history. Never before have Palestinians succeeded in taking back so much of their land and breaking out of the segregated ghettoes in which Israel has concentrated them.” End ID.
ID: “#2 This was an ‘attack’ [the word attack is striked through] response. Anyone would fight back after a decades-long process of colonization, after they have been turned into stateless refugees, expelled and concentrated in tiny ghettoes, imprisoned, or killed for daring to resist.
For 15 years Israel has besieged Gaza with snipers stationed all around it, drones occupying its skies 24/7, and navy patrols shooting at any fishermen who venture too deep.
If this happened to your city, wouldn’t you fight back?” End ID.
ID: “#3 Palestinians didn’t 'infiltrate israel.” Most Gazans are not actually from Gaza.
70% of them are from the same surrounding lands they liberated yesterday morning.“
A map is shown of the area, overflowing with orange pins, with only a few red pins near the Mediterranean Sea. "Each orange pin is a Palestinian village that israel wiped out and ethnically cleansed. Most Gazans are from these places, fighting to return home.” End ID.
ID: “#4 Hamas has enough israeli prisoners to free every single Palestinian hostage held by israel.
Typically, israeli-held Palestinian hostages are only released through a swap with israeli prisoners.
The last Hamas-israel prisoner swap was 1 israeli soldier for 1,027 Palestinians.
Hamas has more than enough israeli prisoners for a deal that would free every imprisoned Palestinian based on past ratios.”
Two boxes are shown on each side of the slide, one that reads, “36+ estimated israeli prisoners,” and another that reads, “5,200 estimated Palestinian hostages.” End ID.
ID: “#5 The Fall of the Gaza Wall
In a historic moment already reshared millions of times online, Palestinian bulldozers have brought down parts of the israeli wall and fence that surrounds Gaza and traps in its residents.
This comes as Palestinians have finally regained control of parts of the border, including the crossing in & out of Gaza. This is a historic achievement.”
ID: #6 israel has never made concessions to Palestinians without pressure.
Palestine can only be liberated by both violent and peaceful resistance, like any colonized nation in history.
The only time in history israel gave up land was when it returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. This was only achieved after the 1973 War when the Egyptian-Syrian attack showed israel that it couldn’t sustain its occupation of the territory, contrary to its prior belief.“ End ID.
ID: #7 This marks a new phase in Palestine.
Palestine will not be freed overnight. Liberation is a long-term process. But the resistance’s unprecedented achievements and strength have proven that even if Israel temporarily beats it back, the Siege on Gaza is coming to an end sooner rather than later.
This does not mean that Gaza will be fully liberated and independent, but that Palestinians will likely gain more control and that israel can no longer treat Gaza as it has for the last 15 years.” End ID.
ID: #7 Continued. Beyond Gaza, israel will be deterred from escalating its occupation against Palestinians in places like Jerusalem.
Hamas has conclusively proven the effectiveness of fight back against the occupation, in contrast to the diplomatic means of resistance which – while still important – on their own have proven to be futile in the face of israeli rejectionism.
This will likely shake up the Palestinian political scene, as the Palestinian Authority, which collaborates with the israeli military and refuses to defend its people, will now face even more challenges to its rule.“ End ID.
ID: “#8 What will happen now?
Palestinians have never responded to israel with such a large operation. israel’s actions will be more violent and intense than anything we’ve ever seen before. The Palestinian death toll is climbing faster than expected – at 320 at the time of this publication. israel is considering a full-scale land invasion of Gaza, which guarantees higher death tolls.
We need to keep sharing, educating and protesting in solidarity in order to pressure our governments to end their support for the israeli regime.” End ID.
I’m laughing, but there’s a super useful corollary, which my husband calls “the Red Balloon.” He was a defense lawyer and had a fair number of drug addicts come through, and there is a thing where if you’re like, on your first offense, they’ll do a thing where you can go to treatment and if you complete it they’ll take the conviction off your record.
And he would tell his clients, “Look, everyone’s going to tell you not to do drugs. They’re going to say it over and over again. And it’s like, if people tell you not to think of a white elephant, you’re going to think of a white elephant. But the trick to not thinking about a white elephant is to think of a red balloon. So you need to find your red balloon. For some people it’s yoga. For others it’s woodworking. For some people it’s scrapbooking or gardening or any of a long list of things to do. They focus on that, it’s a lot easier to succeed in ignoring the white elephant.”
So yeah, “watch yourself” is one thing… but the better idea is to watch something else. (Even if it’s fanfic about werewolves fucking.)
It’s a form of productive dissociation, and is super, super helpful.
It’s easy for me to get bogged down in how much pain I’m in… but some of the most painful periods of my life have also been the most productive, writing-wise, because writing is one of my red balloons.
There is a phrase I use A LOT in my parenting and my son gets very sick of it, but it’s true:
The thing you practise is the thing you get good at.
You may not intentionally be practicing “being grumpy” but if you don’t put effort into practicing “not being grumpy” then I’m afraid that’s what you’re doing. It’s hard! It’s really hard! Sometimes, for some things, it’s pretty much impossible and that sucks!
But being carefully aware that you are going to get good at the things you do most of is a good way to be more careful of what those things are. If that makes sense.
You gotta appreciate sometimes how tumblr works in such a way that everyone who wants to reblog this interesting or useful psychological advice is also forced to reblog the thing about werewolf fucking
Gaza’s health ministry said Thursday that the number of Palestinians killed in the war has surpassed 30,000. The official number now stands at 30,035 deaths. The figure is widely viewed as the most reliable one available.
The health ministry provided NPR with one of its latest reports on the death toll, 38 pages long, to analyze. A close look at how Gaza’s health ministry counts those killed in the war reveals a system that is buckling under the weight of war and unable to keep an accurate toll of the dead.
Thousands remain unaccounted for — either missing under the rubble, buried hastily in side streets or decomposing in areas that can’t be safely reached.
The Gaza health ministry says its daily tally now relies on a combination of accurate death counts from hospitals that are still partially operating, and on estimates from media reports to assess deaths in the north of Gaza, where Israeli forces control access. Its detailed daily report shows that its electronic system for counting the dead was disrupted on Nov. 12, when communication was lost with three major hospitals in the north, soon followed by more in other parts of Gaza.
In the early days of the war, as the wounded and dead streamed into hospitals, Gaza’s health ministry kept a detailed daily count of the number of people killed. Public and private hospitals were recording into an electronic database the names, ages, genders and ID numbers of the dead.
So you’re telling me the organisation they claimed was “making up deaths” is actually underestimating?
that is fucking hilarious, the first time someone asks “is it okay if I inherited land as a child and now I want to charge the previous occupants rent?” and you actually think you know what, sure.
my favorite calvin and hobbes comic is the one where his dad just rolls up and casually destroys his entire night by pointing out some neat trivia about record players
are you sure. are you sure calvin’s dad is not a seasoned elder trickster. are you sure this isn’t the exact outcome he was hoping for
ok but that’s actually canon
You forgot this one
*looks pointedly at ETD*
Calvin’s dad is basically a Calvin who has learned that he can’t get away with running outside naked or throwing snowballs at neighborhood girls, but he is still precisely the same little shit under the thin veneer of civilization.
@lyricwritesproseCalvin and Hobbes has been one of my favorite things since I could read and Calvin’s dad one of my favorite characters, but that last comment blew my mind wide open. Of course that’s what he is. Of course.
one of the most subtly delightful things about calvin and hobbes is that you can SEE that calvin is his parents’ kid: his dad is so playful and imaginative, and his mom has a heck of a temper and a good sense of what’s right and wrong. calvin is a smart, passionate, imaginative kid who gets really upset when he thinks things are stupid or unfair. he drives his parents crazy sometimes because he’s a kid. but they were probably a lot like calvin themselves, when they were little.
some important calvin and hobbes facts in case you haven’t read the original comic strip in a long time or only absorbed stuff on it from memes and out of context bits on here:
Calvin’s last name has never been given, and neither has any of his parent’s names. This was actually why his uncle Max only showed up for a brief storyline; the creator of the comic, Bill Watterson, ultimately felt that while it was fine to have him as someone for his parents to talk to, it felt far too awkward to never have Max refer to them by name and he never made a return appearance.
The general tone of the comic is fairly light-hearted, with a big emphasis on goofy slapstick comedy contrasted by clever wordplay and often surprising adult-centered jokes that’ll hit you like a slap. A big part of the comedy is, as Watterson put it (paraphrased) “It’s really funny to me when people express deeply stupid ideas with really fancy terminology.” One notable example you might have seen is that one bit where Calvin asks his mom for money to buy a Satan-worshiping rock album and his mom replies that there’s nothing genuine about them and they’re just putting on the attitude for shock value, and comisserates with Calvin as he deplores that mainstream nihilism can’t be trusted. He concludes that childhood is disillusioning.
There is a LOT of criticism of the extreme materialism and selfish mentality of the late 80s, when the comic was initially written. This may go a long way to explain how its aged so well; much of what it criticizes resonates well with people today.
Bill Watterson views comic strips a legitimate form of artwork, and repeatedly fought to have more space to draw more beautiful and artistic backgrounds, which was a very hard fight and unpopular even with other comic strip artists. He eventually did win some compromises and a lot of Calvin And Hobbes’ artwork shows it, with the use of space to indicate time as well as a sharp contrast between the often plain environments of mundane life contrasted by the wildly beautiful imagery of Calvin’s imagination (which often sports realistic depictions in an art shift of sorts).
Hobbes is explicitly not an imaginary friend, by word of Watterson himself. We don’t know WHAT he is exactly, and Hobbes is apparently unaware of the strange nature of his reality; people look at him and only see an ordinary stuffed tiger plushie, but he has a tangible effect on the world that would be physically impossible for Calvin to do on his own. He’s apparently been around for a while, and was apparently around when Calvin was a young baby.
On that note; Hobbes has implicitly killed (notably treated as both a gag and also with the vibe of ‘he’s a tiger, duh’) and while he doesn’t do it again on-screen, he doesn’t have any moral issues about it. Calvin claims that he’s never had trouble bringing Hobbes to school because the last time he did, Hobbes killed and ate a bully named Tommy Chestnut and simply comments that it was gross and he needed a bath. Calvin’s tried to repeat this again, but Hobbes was grossed out at the thought having to eat a kid raw and not being allowed to use an oven first, or complaining that children are too fattening.
Hobbes became gradually less human-like in body language and more like an actual cat in both body language and behavior; this was due to Watterson drawing more inspiration from his cat, who also inspired a lot of Hobbes’ running gags, such as pouncing on Calvin when he got home. Several years into the syndication of the strip, Watterson’s cat passed away, and he did a tribute to her with a comic strip of the two of them agreeing to try to dream together so they can keep playing when they have to sleep; Watterson’s commentary (if I recall right), remarks on his cat: “We can see each other again in dreams.”
Hey, y'all in the notes: she wasn’t asking you to call her beautiful or say she’s adorable or “uwu she’s so sweet i would die for her”. She’s asking you to interact with physically different creators regardless of if you think they’re beautiful or not. Beauty standards are a farce and we need to stop implying that beautiful is the most important thing someone can be. Every person who says “oh she’s so sweet I would die for her” or “anyone who calls her ugly is getting their kneecaps caved in”: this is for you. You are being madly infantalising. It’s like when you say to a fat person “oh you’re not fat, you’re cuddly” like, shut up! I thought we were past this by now. She is a PERSON and you are all scrambling to say just how beautiful you think she is, without even thinking about the message she is trying to send.
This isn’t me saying she’s ugly or whatever the fuck. I don’t believe in ugly. This is me telling you all to stop being so fucking surface level with your beauty ‘activism’. She knows what she looks like and she probably doesn’t need hundreds of people infantalising her because they need to performatively show off how good they are and how much they don’t care about traditional beauty standards. Grow up and interact with her like she’s a person, not a fuckin three-legged puppy.
hey um! with KOSA looking more and more closer to passing, email and call your reps to prevent it from passing!
bad internet bills is a helpful site with an easy to fill out forum that does not take long to complete
stop KOSA is also another good site w/ a prefilled out message you can send (with resources for those not in the U.S. too!), and much like bad internet bills, it has an easy to fill out form that does NOT take long to complete
this is very important! because this will effect ALL of us, not just usamericans! this is something that has the power to irreversibly ruin the internet as a whole
[Image ID: Tweet from Spay or Neuter Your Computer (@/ chaoticGayThey) reading: You know, I used to take 9/11 more seriously. And then covid hit and the US govt let 3000 people kick the bucket a day doing nothing because there wasn’t profit available for oil companies /End ID]
I think there’s something fundamentally baffling with the way most of you think.
Losing my mind over how many people are like “a fairy I can understand but a WALRUS? Those don’t even live in the South and they can’t knock on doors” As if fairies are known to be indigenous to any given biome let alone the American South. As if their knocks ain’t light as a feather and inaudible to any but the most autistic among us.
“How would a WALRUS get here” How would a fairy?? At least you can go out and find a walrus, which means a walrus could go out and find you! Walri don’t gotta break the fundamental laws of nature to get to you but a fairy at your door is a world shattering discovery, and now, cause you open the door, it’s gonna take that as an invitation and flutter on in like it owns the place and ain’t no way you was prepared for a fairy invasion today now it’s gon be sprinklin iridescent glitter all over the gotdam carpet and makin all the food in the pantry sentient so now every lunch for the next week comes with a moral dilemma
“Aw well now this I expected, more so than a walrus” you’d say. “I knew I’d sooner see a critter what crossed the veil between realities than see a walrus cross a threshold of any kind” meanwhile you got gnomes crawlin outta the vents cuz the fairy called up all its friends and they’re already declarin war on the cockroach federation and they’re deployin the fuckin boggles and if you look one in the eyes it legally owns your unsurprised ass and you know the next 500 years you gonna be stirring soup what smells like the color puce but you can’t worry bout that right now cuz who’s that knock knockin on yer door that’s right it’s a fuckin walrus you just got #fairypranked
look if I see a fairy on my doorstep, then the only thing I can conclude is that I have fundumentally misunderstood something about how the universe works. i could also safely assume that the answer to the question of how it got there is probably fairy magic, which is obviously not something over which I have any control or authority or whatnot. But a WALRUS?????? I could assume exactly nothing about how it got there. I have no fuckin idea where to even start.
You require the same fundamental suspension of disbelief for a fairy. All the same questions are asked when either shows up. “why is the fairy/walrus here”, “why is it knocking at my door”. All but the fact that fairy’s don’t exist. Both are fantastical situations, while the walrus technically has a greater element of truth, entirely on the basis that walrus’ exist and fairies don’t. The whole argument for fairy’s already relies on in things like magic and fantasy. The walrus is no different.
I disagree. “Humanity has failed to notice fairies for some reason that may or may not have to do with their magic. Also, it has business with me specifically” seems more plausible to me than “We misunderstood the very concept of a walrus so badly that we never realized they go onto land in places they don’t live and knock on doors. Also, it has business with me specifically.”
For a similar reason, I’d be less surprised to find a strange alien lifeform on an exoplanet than finding a cow on one. I expect to find weird things in the darkness we’ve yet to discover. Weirdness of that scale in the very well explored territory of “What is the basic characteristics of a walrus” is much weirder to me.
If you are willing to believe in magic fairy’s you can imagine a walrus at your door no problem. My point isn’t we have badly misunderstood walrus’, rather both just rely on complete fictive ideas. The compassion to an alien is completely unjust as aliens do fit within our current understanding of science, fairies do not.
There are current real and plausible explanations to walrus’, however outlandish they may be. Fairies do not have this comfortable element of realism to fall back on. Any theory that can rely on current theories and ideas, even a terribly unlikely and bizarre one, is still more plausible than one that requires reworking our understanding of how the world works (ie, magic).
A theory as insane as someone left a walrus at my door as a prank before knocking and running off is insane and incredibly unlikely, but doesn’t require magic to pull off.
The walrus makes more sense, yeah, but it’d still get a much more surprised reaction out of me. This isn’t “which is less likely to show up at your door?” (obviously that’s fairies) but rather “which would surprise you more?” And I would be way more surprised to see the walrus.
Fairies, while requiring a massive assumption (faries are real somehow), only require one assumption, as they do not really follow rules, and even if you apply rules from a specific type of fairy, knocking on someone’s door (especially in my case as they often live in woods which I am near) is a somewhat reasonable thing to happen.
But a walrus has rules. And this would break so many of them that I’d be asking so many different questions. The sheer number of questions would cause me far more shock than “What the fuck, fairies are real???” “How did a walrus get here???” “Did someone put a walrus here????” “Why me?????” “Who puts walruses at people’s doorsteps??????” “Did the walrus put itself here??????????”
A perfectly logical creature would be more surprised by the walrus, but I do not claim to be such a thing. Nor is any human. And I think, seeing either of these, it would pretty quickly make me even more illogical than normal. With either one shattering my reality, I’d have an easier time accepting the thing that requires only one leap of logic, even if the biggest.
NEW YORK, NY (APRIL 1, 2019) — After eight years of silence, Tumblr’s renowned Tumbeasts have risen up against the site of the very data center they once roamed. Originally created in a lab by The Oatmeal’s Matthew Inman in what can only be assumed as some sort of Island of Dr. Moreau situation, the green creatures have taken to gnaw on every blog post on Tumblr. Sources say this is creating Tumblr’s brand-new, temporary Memory feature to regurgitate unique posts the community had actually never made — though these posts will never see the light of day unless the Tumblr user reblogs them.
“Until today, no one had seen a Tumbeast in eight years,” confirmed April Blague, head of the Tumbeast Wildlife Center (@tumbeastwildlifecenter). “We thought they were gone forever, but it turns out it took them all that time to formulate their plan to chew up and spit out popular posts, tags, and mutuals in a rearranged order. There’s no end game here. They try very hard to be very bad, but they never get far.”
When reached for comment, Tumblr confirmed that literally no one asked for this.
NEW YORK, NY (APRIL 1, 2019) — After eight years of silence, Tumblr’s renowned Tumbeasts have risen up against the site of the very data center they once roamed. Originally created in a lab by The Oatmeal’s Matthew Inman in what can only be assumed as some sort of Island of Dr. Moreau situation, the green creatures have taken to gnaw on every blog post on Tumblr. Sources say this is creating Tumblr’s brand-new, temporary Memory feature to regurgitate unique posts the community had actually never made — though these posts will never see the light of day unless the Tumblr user reblogs them.
“Until today, no one had seen a Tumbeast in eight years,” confirmed April Blague, head of the Tumbeast Wildlife Center (@tumbeastwildlifecenter). “We thought they were gone forever, but it turns out it took them all that time to formulate their plan to chew up and spit out popular posts, tags, and mutuals in a rearranged order. There’s no end game here. They try very hard to be very bad, but they never get far.”
When reached for comment, Tumblr confirmed that literally no one asked for this.
