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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: November 6th, 2023

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  • Genuinely awful for these two and their families, but the same can be said for ~53,000 dead Palestinians and the rest who are actively starving to death in a Israeli-made famine while aid rots onboard trucks across the border. Both acts are deliberate, and both were avoidable.

    And while they were both working for the current extremists in power atm via the diplomatic service, they were a lot more moderate too:

    Lischinsky “I’m an ardent believer in the vision that was outlined in the Abraham Accords and believe that expanding the circle of peace with our Arab neighbours and pursuing regional cooperation is in the best interest of the state of Israel and the Middle East as a whole. To this end, I advocate for interfaith dialogue and intercultural understanding.”

    Milgrim organised visits and missions to Israel. She was also a volunteer at Tech2Peace, an advocacy group training young Palestinians and Israelis and promoting dialogue between them.

    Tech2Peace said Milgrim was an active volunteer who “brought people together with empathy and purpose”.


  • If their candidate is the only thing standing between a half-assed working system of government, and an outright dictatorship- and you don’t vote for them…

    I did, so put the straw man away. In a swing state, because I understand that at a minimum I’m negating someone else’s R vote. I’m following politics outside the election cycle and aware of the FPTP game. You can make the “less shit” argument to me, and have it work because I recognize it’s true.

    But that’s exactly my point about the apolitical and/or low propensity ‘normie’ voters - Trump has confidence and an answer for everything, if you ignore the absence of details. Harris struggled/refused to define herself and her platform - effectively giving that job to the media and the opposition. “Everything will stay fundamentally the same” was a vote loser for most of America this cycle, and that was the Democratic platform.

    I don’t know about you, but I sure as shit am glad we dodged that “no policy having, pro-democracy” bullet, eh?

    In a way, kinda? Trump is on a fascism speed run through the Project 2025 goals, and has a sycophantic circle of incompetence around him that keeps making blunders atop his own. Going this hard and this fast has had blowback, with him tanking his approval rating accordingly in record time.

    Were he an actually steady hand that could play long chess, build coalitions, and quietly place plans in motion? Deport worst-of-the-worst criminals instead of literally whoever is brown, quietly subvert NATO and hamstring the unified command instead of JD and Hegseth chastising Europe and openly questioning Article 5, give Israel/Saudis a browbeating in public whilst increasing arms sales instead of ‘hell yeah, kill them all’ tweets, etc

    Effective dictatorship I fear a lot more than an incompetent strongman. People bend and mold themselves to the former over time, the latter rips off the bandage too fast and pisses off voters who form resistance coalitions.


  • Or, here’s the apparently radical third option… do what the voters want and reel Bibi/Givir/Smotrich in, or at the very least stop giving Israel outright political cover. “Israel gets to do war crimes and/or genocide… and you pay for it” was a uni-party stance in the 2024 cycle, and it’s fucking infuriating. I expect the right to back Israel reflexively, but I did NOT expect to see y’all pull the mental gymnastics make yourselves be okay with it. And then have the gall to shout down and bully away criticism of the party’s complicity.

    If your candidate can mostly be summed up as “less shit” then that damning sales pitch to get the ‘apolitical normie’ vote out to win elections s. Kamala barely stood tall on any firm policy - let along a coherent platform, didn’t distance herself sufficiently from Biden, and didn’t respond to voters’ legitimate economic anxieties. At that point a demonstrable lies become the sound bites differentiating Trump from Kamala.



  • I can’t handle the fact that sex is complex and it’s ok to need to work on it and figure out what works for both partners

    There’s working on it, and trying to flex on Twitter. After-care is working on it. Discussing go/no-gos or dominance roles is working on it. Asking why she’s not invested is working on it.

    “You can’t handle me” is a dismissal I have seen used on the ’alphas’ who won’t take a hint that she’s not interested


  • Edit: Man the downvotes, y’all really are telling on yourselves

    Imagine telling on yourself like this lmao

    I am so bad at pleasuring my partner that I have only experienced women tolerating me via starfishing

    I see no reason to question why these women aren’t more invested in sex with me; clearly she is a lazy pillow princess and not me who is the problem

    Also super gross how we’ve normalized/coerced women into “lying back and taking it” instead of asking why shes not active and engaged



  • Step into the arena, many many people far smarter than you or me have hashed this debate and still have no consensus.

    There is no general consensus on the definition of terrorism. The difficulty of defining terrorism lies in the risk it entails of taking positions.

    The political value of the term currently prevails over its legal one. Left to its political meaning, terrorism easily falls prey to change that suits the interests of particular states at particular times. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden were once called freedom fighters (mujahideen) and backed by the CIA when they were resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

    Now they are on top of the international terrorist lists.

    General Assembly Resolution 42/159 acknowledges that the cause of terrorism often lies in the “misery, frustration, grievance and despair” that leads people to seek radical change. The resolution identifies the root causes of terrorism as occupation, colonialism and racism. A definition of terrorism should thus be comprehensive, in order to avoid double standards.





  • “Must pass” is part of the language that ostensibly liberal media outlets like HuffPost use to cover for Democrats rolling over yet again.

    Literally nothing “must pass” we’ve had how many government shutdowns from Republican shitfits over stupid culture wars and cynical “fiscal responsibilities” whilst rubber stamping national defense budget blowouts?

    Democrats can add poison pill amendments too, or at least burn down the clock with the filibuster they cling too so desperately each time they achieve a majority. But they don’t, because deep down most of them are okay with this.



  • Someone did their Snowden reading:

    Parallel construction is a law enforcement process of building a parallel, or separate, evidentiary basis for a criminal investigation in order to limit disclosure as to the origins of an investigation.

    In the US, a particular form is evidence laundering, where one police officer obtains evidence via means that are in violation of the Fourth Amendment

    De facto illegal and shady as hell, but in use when the (feds especially) want to catch someone, typically via warrantless SIGINT mass surveillance. They’ll do the investigation using dragnets and broad searches through metadata and other means that are illegal and inadmissible in court, then an incredibly convenient cop/witness/informant will appear with information that permits an arrest/search under permissible means - under the hope that the suspect has incriminating evidence.

    This is wayyy too convenient to get him, with all the evidence on hand, from a ‘concerned citizen’. We live in a police state, that serves the ruling and moneyed class.


  • Despite a fairly obvious motive in general before this news broke, and now confirmation it was because of their policies, they are doing zero soul searching or reexamination of why their policies became a motive

    Thompson’s killing quickly sent shockwaves through the corporate world, with corporate security heads gathering in a conference call to Wednesday.

    “Many of my colleagues today are sitting down with their executive protection team leaders, their security leadership teams, and re-evaluating what they are doing and not doing,” Dave Komendat, president of Seattle-based Komendat Risk Management Services

    Who had neo-Pinkertons on their 2020s bingo?



  • Pick any rural county, and you can find a bus load of people who’ve been screwed over or denied care by health insurance. And for those who do not have a specific, personal grudge, healthcare options in the sticks are increasingly geographic monopolies run by a single provider, with a Byzantine network of in/out network insurers.

    Someone driving their mother four hours for biweekly dialysis or cancer care because the local provider is not covered is going to be pissed. A parent buying their child because the local provider ‘streamlined’ care while slashing nursing headcount is going to be a lot more than pissed.