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here we go

@resolutedoubt

1990, she/her, DC US

oh I'm so tired of people putting conditions on showing others basic human decency

like, "homeless people deserve housing as long as they work hard and stay sober" or "people dealing with addiction deserve support as long as they want to stop using substances"

because the moment you put conditions on human rights, they're no longer human rights. they become earned by the "deserving", and fuck everyone else. but that's not how human rights work, human rights have to apply to everyone.

I don't care if the person has no interest in working or being sober, they deserve access to food, housing, community, safe supply, etc. we all do!

and I think part of the reason why people are so willing to deny human rights to people who use drugs and/or are homeless, is that they don't view us as human. and that's a problem. rationalizing the denial of human rights by deeming some people subhuman is the exact reason why people die on the streets, the exact reason that there is no access to safe supply of substances, and why supervised consumption sites are so rare.

this shit kills people.

remember, it's imperative to turn your aesthetic preferences into moral ones. you can't just dislike neutral colors, or glass-and-steel skyscrapers, or flat design, they have to be symbols of neoliberal capitalism in decay. it's incredibly important that you make sure everybody knows that the only reason anyone could like the things you don't like is that they're an empty shell of a person.

Veep remake set in the Byzantine Empire

the lackluster third son of a fantastically wealthy and dysfunctional aristocratic family is appointed to some rarefied and completely decorative position in the imperial government. his job mostly consists of kissing aristocratic asses and schmoozing with the commoners but the grasping incompetence of him and his swarm of squires and eunuchs manage to fuck those situations up so bad that they imperil the geopolitical stability of Eurasia like every other week

it honestly writes itself. you can use pretty much any stock characters, the tone requires anachronism so the historical details don't need to be too precise, the most opulent and successful Byzantine dynasty was also the one with the most complicated and stupid court hierarchy and featured an emperor so anal about following it that he wrote an enormous manual on the subject, etc

plus you have actual life, death, and limb-risking stakes! the pilot episode ends with a secondary character's blinding, which will of course be handled not as a human tragedy but as an awkward social situation. the end credits scene is him walking directly into a priceless antique statue because his aides got distracted by mocking their annoying coworker who just lost like $75,000 in a failed attempt to fix a chariot race

there's a running joke about one of the lackeys being really into alternative medicinal treatments that are stark raving nuts even for the middle ages and suggesting them to extremely important people at very embarrassing times.

did you know, emperor, that if you collect the feces of a frog that has eaten three other, slightly larger frogs of the same species, and rub them on your forehead for six hours, I guarantee that'll cure your impotence. oh hello papal ambassador, didn't see you there, how's the ol' leprosy treating you?

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if you're a bad person you age ugly *photo of celebrity with bad plastic surgery*

but if you're a good person you age well *photo of celebrity with good plastic surgery*

If you’re upset about people studying the arts and humanities using government money but not upset about those academic disciplines existing in general, you’re just mad about poor people gaining knowledge in fields that you believe should be preserved for the rich.

i do think that maybe there does need to be some rehashing of super basic feminist theory on this web site because i've got a lot of pushback on saying 'marxism leninism should be for perverts' to the tune of 'but what about perverts who violate consent & expose unwilling people to their sexuality' to which i just have to say over and over again 'listen buddy i've got some really bad news about the normative cultural ideals about heterosexual sexuality in our society. you might want to sit down for this one,'

like, the guys implicated in the activision-blizzard sexual harassment lawsuit weren't 'perverts'. they weren't deviating from the sexual norm--in fact, quite the opposite, they were all participating in a culture that was normalized & expected of them! they were expressing their sexuality in a way that was perfectly aligned with decades of normative cultural images of masculine sexuality! 'deviance' or 'degeneracy' from the norm is clearly not the problem factor when it comes to sexual violence!

much the same when people say "oh so we have to accept pedophilia too huh?" -- you are fundamentally misidentifying the problem! there have been many times and places in history where adults having sex with children was or is entirely normal, accepted, & socially encouraged by the hegemonic cultural standards of sexuality. does that mean it was 'good'? no! of course not! because the problem with pedophilia, it turns out, is not that it is 'perverted' or 'abnormal', it is that it harms children -- and by conflating 'perversion' with 'harm', you are not only feeding reactionary sexual politics but you are reifying the aegis of 'normal' social arrangements (family, schools, churches) under which the vast majority of csa actually happens & is normalised!

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Saw this post floating around, don’t wanna target anyone or argue with Zionists, but it is my duty (especially as an actually indigenous Jew) to educate well-meaning gentiles who might see this and think they have no right to speak on the matter. I’ll go point by point.

1) “Is it so terrible for a Jew to be a Zionist?”

If we were living in any other era, where the genocidal crimes of Israel were not as widely known (though they were very well documented), you could perhaps ask this question in sincerity. Many Jews (such as myself) grow up in religious educational settings which either fail to mention the human rights violations of the state or claim they’re justified because “they want to kill us!” Past a certain point, though, one can’t continue to claim ignorance of what Zionism actually does. Short answer: yes, it is terrible for anyone to claim to be a Zionist, but this will be more evident as I continue to analyze these arguments.

2) “Zionism is the belief in the inherent right of the Jewish people to return to their homeland”

First of all, Palestine is not the “homeland” of the Jewish people any more than Siberia is the homeland of indigenous american tribes. Is there a historical connection? Yes, but though assimilation and migration Jews have found homes across the world. For me, my homeland is Mexico, because my family has lived there for generations, partly through migration but mostly through having cultivated the land for millennia. Even biblically speaking, Palestine does not “belong” to the Jewish people, it belongs to G-d. Furthermore, there is no shortage of Jewish scholarship and activism that asserts that wherever we live, that is our homeland. Frankly, I’m more interested in fighting to stay where I am than fighting to force people out of their homes to accommodate me.

3) “Zionism is the belief in the Jewish right not to be murdered”

By murdering others instead? Once again, there is no shortage of Jewish scholarship and activism in favor of Jewish self defense where we live. Jewish resistance fighters lived and died fighting the nazis in Europe under the third reich. If Zionism was actually interested in preventing Jewish death, it would fight antisemitism where it is. “Preventing murder” is not an excuse to commit genocide.

4) “there are so many definitions of Zionism”

Sorry but I just think of this tweet from @jewdas on Twitter when I read this: “There’s a actual existing Zionism which practices apartheid and denial of human rights. But there’s another Zionism inside my head which is all rainbows and kosher marshmallows, so who can say which is the real Zionism?” In other words, the actual, material consequences of Zionist beliefs are more important than what any individual thinks their Zionism is. Once again, we live in the Information Age, where anyone can easily learn about the damage that Zionism has done in Palestine and abroad. There is no excuse to continue using the label that doesn’t presuppose complete ignorance of Israeli violence.

5) “zionists just want to be safe from antisemitism in the diaspora”

See points 3 & 4.

6) “and this is different from evangelical zionists”

Materially speaking, not really. Once again, see point 4. Until you pull all US/european colonial support for Israel, this claim falls flat.

7) “zionists just want to live peacefully with other indigenous people in the area”

That’s not what indigeneity is, it doesn’t mean “from there,” it’s a specific relationship to the land and to its cultivation. (On a side note, even biblically and historically speaking, Jews are not “from” Palestine.) See point 2. Zionism has proven it is not a peaceful ideology. See point 4.

8) “people refuse to see the difference in types of Zionism because they hate the Jews”

No, it’s because there are no material differences. See point 4. Evangelical Zionism and Jewish Zionism actually share quite a bit in common. The “Jewish state” would not exist without evangelical Zionists. See point 6. And the original Jewish Zionist thinkers had a vested interest in tying the two together.

tl;dr, Zionism is a violent ideology in practice, and no amount of making excuses can hide the fact that it is genocidal and serves European/American interests. Additionally, just because one is not Jewish does not mean one does not have a duty and an obligation to eliminate Zionism wherever it crops up. Zionism has had disastrous consequences for Palestinians, and as western citizens, we benefit from their suffering. It must end now. May Palestine be freed in our lifetimes.

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From 1947-1949, Zionist paramilitaries and Israeli forces dispossessed more than 750,000 Palestinians, destroyed or depopulated more than 400 villages, and committed at least 24 massacres. Today, there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees, globally.

Via:  IMEU

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Today is Nakba day, please take the time to educate yourself - 

The Nakba, meaning catastrophe in arabic, is the event marking the mass murder and expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 during Israel’s creation as a deliberate and systemic act to create Jewish Majority state. 

It is critical to understand the Nakba if you want to support Palestine, and how Palestinians, 74 years later, cannot reclaim their stolen land, homes, and belongings.  And not only that, but to many, the Nakba never ended. Palestinians are still having their homes stolen or demolished, still in refugee camps, still having to deal with settlers encroaching on their land and committing acts of violence against them, Palestinians are still being murdered and left under brutal settler military occupation. 

If you want to read and learn more about Palestinians from Palestinian voices please check out Decolonize Palestine. Al Jazeera has a database here on destroyed Palestinian villages as well you can look at

And I will leave my friend’s post here about more ways to amplify Palestinian voices. From river to sea, Palestine will be free, we will return. 

There is no level at which the site can be said to function effectively, except as a representation of Musk’s priorities. In that regard, though, it is fascinating. The (poignantly small) percentage of Twitter users who paid for Musk’s subscription service received, for their money, the right to have their replies slotted in atop everyone else’s and algorithmically boosted in a special feed. This means that some strange people who previously believed that their posts had been unjustly suppressed are now finding a bigger audience, very much against that audience’s will.
The various scammers and hustlers and aspiring drop-shipping magnates and inexplicably self-assured freelance life-coach types are all there, of course. They are drawn to Musk because they aspire to be rich and epic themselves, and post as if their livelihoods depend upon it, holding forth at great length and with little depth on whatever they think might redound to their benefit. As in all the worst online spaces, there is a sense that the hucksters outnumber the marks; a trench of jostling anglerfish, gaping and preening and starving for lack of prey.
Source: defector.com
But ERs became bigger money-losers in the 1980s, as patient volumes soared while both insurers and the Medicare program moved reimbursement formulas toward flat fees for certain diagnoses. Hospitals began to hire consultants to advise them on how to maximize their revenues and “dump” their most unprofitable patients on charity hospitals, a practice that was most widespread in Riggs’s home state of Texas. In 1985, Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), requiring all acute-care hospitals to keep ERs staffed 24 hours a day with physicians who would provide “stabilizing treatment” to patients, regardless of their ability to pay. The statute was vague—hospitals were explicitly required to deliver the babies of uninsured women, but not go out of their way to diagnose a patient who might have broken bones or a brain bleed—and it was also unfunded, meaning hospitals were effectively required by law to finance the treatment of uninsured patients by overbilling those who could afford it.

Ahh yes American socialized medicine

i have become radicalized as a pawpaw agent, pollinate a flower or two on your local tree!

More isolated, further north = less likely to be self-pollinated. You need different genetics around and enough awake pollinators to make sure you get fall fruit, so lend a helping hand

i do think that one of the worst things “activist” spaces on the internet ever did was convince young marginalized people that individual people, complete strangers, were their oppressors. no, matt from chemistry class isn’t personally oppressing you because he’s a guy, that old lady at the bank isn’t personally oppressing you because she’s cis, your waiter isn’t personally oppressing you because they’re white. individuals can and do contribute to systems of oppression. but seeing random individuals you encounter in your daily life as your oppressors will do nothing but trick you into punching laterally or punching down because you think it’s “empowering.” you might get a momentary rush of endorphins from snapping at the male cashier bc #menaretrashuwu but all you’re doing is being shitty to a random guy making poverty wages.

i saw a tik tok the other day that like perfectly described this phenomenon, how gen z (and some young millennials too tbh) pushes for systemic justice and equality, but refuses to give that on an interpersonal level, and like. y’all. you simply cannot achieve systemic change if you’re not also working toward interpersonal change. you will do more for your own liberation by treating others with sensible patience and kindness than you will pushing this toxic individualist narrative of “i don’t owe anyone anything and i get to act however i want to people i view as my oppressor.” we need class solidarity now more than ever.

Interesting to call this “confiscating” when it’s just making the rich pay their fair share, especially considering all the stolen wealth from the bottom 99% and historic tax evasion.