…mornin’ all…& apologies for the ropey header…I should have done a proper job but if I did that…aside from possibly making butcher’s day by having it be the entirety of the post on account of I’m too cheap for photoshop so I’d be working with the rather unfortunately acronym-ed GIMP…which these days I’m pretty rusty with, as I’m sure the world can see at this point…I wouldn’t have got a lot further…& it feels like we’ve all got a long way to go today
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/understanding-the-israelhamas-war/
…& some of us are hurtling places where angels fear to tread…emphasis on the hurt
As false war information spreads on X, Musk promotes unvetted accounts
As false information about the rapidly changing war between Gaza Strip militants and Israel proliferated on the social media platform X over the weekend, owner Elon Musk personally recommended that users follow accounts notorious for promoting lies. [NYT]
[…because…of fucking course that’s how it’s going…which may even be more or less precisely why we can’t have nice things…but more of that, anon]
…not to mention where they likely wouldn’t agree on the angels
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/opinion/letters/israel-gaza-hamas.html
[…that’ll be the letters to the editor]
…&…needless to say…some of them…probably ought to STFU
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/07/opinion/gaza-israel-hamas.html
[…that’ll be bedbug boy]
…but…& this isn’t any kind of endorsement or anything…even the man it’d be nice to believe is perennially covered in welts isn’t the worst of it…if only on account of you know what you’re going to get…& what it’s worth…which…where this shit is concerned…is a degree of certainty it’s hard not to get a little wistful about, to be honest
…&…in terms of inherent bias…I might know a couple of people currently located entirely too close for comfort to these particular interesting times…so…perspective is a struggle today
The Republican Meltdown Shows No Sign of Cooling Off [NYT]
…just…I dunno, man…in the face of the reality threatening to come down on our collective ass
…& I wasn’t kidding over the weekend about my deficiencies in math…so…I can’t even tell what degree of extra magnification that image on the left has over & above the one on the right…which makes it fucking impossible for me to really grasp how much faster I’m supposed to understand that behemoth to be shifting its ass…perspective is a bitch that way…though I suppose I ought to just be grateful it isn’t slouching towards bethlehem…but…frankly…there’s a disturbing amount of putatively-responsible people out there who do seem keen to see us off to the races
…damned if I even feel like I’m qualified to know where to turn to for the questions…much less definitive answers
…though…some people are remarkably prolific in the “just a thought” stakes…which if I’m honest…in some cases I can’t help but find pretty admirable…just some cases, mind…there’s no such thing as a know-it-all & anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something…trust me…I…uhhhh…know…?
…bugger…done gone & confused my own damn self…never mind…it’s not like I’m trying to get you to listen to me, anyway…so what does it matter if I impugn my own certainty?
…I know…kind of straying from the point…& that’s a lot of clips of just the one guy mouthing off…but…if you ask me…& I get that nobody did…you could arguably do a lot worse than cue up that channel in the background & let autoplay do its worst while you got on with your day…I generally revert to BBC radio for that sort of thing because the schedule (if you adjust for the time zone you’re in relative to the live-feed) kind of works for me like a clock I don’t have to look at to know to within 10-15mins or so what the time most probably is…but…again…I digress…probably because I can’t stress enough how much I would rather be talking about something else…but…it’s very hard not be affected by the gravity events are exerting just at the minute…from the geopolitical macro…to the microcosm of the individual
As soon as she heard that Hamas militants were launching attacks in Israel, Avital Brown sent a WhatsApp message to her friend Vivian Silver, a Canadian-born peace activist who lived near the Gaza Strip.
In less than a minute, Silver, 74, responded from her home in Kibbutz Be’eri.
“It’s absolute chaos here,” she wrote in Hebrew at 7:54 a.m. Saturday, according to text messages shared with NBC News. “Terrorists have infiltrated Be’eri. There is shooting and screaming.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/revered-peace-activist-missing-sending-harrowing-text-message-hamas
…&
Hamas Is Not the Only Problem We Must Reckon With [NYT]
We Just Saw What the World Is About to Become [NYT]
…not that there isn’t plenty of shit still going down in all sorts of other places
Historic warmth grips Europe as summerlike weather refuses to relent
Climate crisis costing $16m an hour in extreme weather damage, study estimates [Guardian]
…not to mention a lot of them being in places we can’t see as a rule
The rush to map underground fungi networks before they’re gone [WaPo]
…or…depending on who gets to decide
The US library system, once the best in the world, faces death by a thousand cuts [Guardian]
…not
Criminals without borders: the transnational gangs terrorising the Amazon [Guardian]
…as the case may be
…which isn’t even necessarily the only sort of default position that seems capable of putting the fear of god into me these days
Evergrande Investors Warn of ‘Uncontrollable Collapse’ [WSJ]
…let alone provide answers to questions I recall hearing heareabouts
Russia’s Economy Is Increasingly Structured Around Its War in Ukraine [NYT]
[…that one’s for you, lemmy]
…it’s hard not to look to the commonly-accepted biggest dog in the fight for a sense of how bad things are fixing to get
What We Can Do to Make American Politics Less Dysfunctional [NYT]
…even…or possibly particularly…when the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach won’t let up & you begin to wonder if you & reality might be in danger of parting ways on the grounds of “stop the world, I want to get off”
…that these posturing fuckwits are *still* trying to exploit what they consider to be their cunning angles & deserved leverage…is…instructive?
…not to mention what it means for a power struggle being viewed…as the saying goes…through a glass, darkly
The Israel-Hamas War Is Drowning X in Disinformation [Wired]
…so…before we go getting all pro patria mori about the whole ball of increasingly dripping & uncomfortably flammable-looking wax
Where heat could become ‘unlivable’ for weeks or months at a time [WaPo]
…& though…while they could very well blow up in a lot of people’s faces…I might lean towards the belief that when it comes to putting together a hand from the cards on the table…I might pick favorites when it comes to which ones strike me as potentially astute
…as that beau fella remarked in another of those clips that I don’t think I found room for this time…it’s most likely unwise go to picking any fights with old men if you can help it…although while we’re on that subject…if you want a laugh…& fuck knows I could use a few…maybe check out terry pratchett’s “rule #1” from “thief of time“…& before you jump to any conclusions…no…it’s not about me & all the second-hand scrolling…anyway…it might be tempting…since I’ve become accustomed to the possibility that he might know a thing or two about a thing or two…to give beau the last word before I face the music
…but…what I’m accustomed to doesn’t alter the odds that actually…unlikely as it might seem…very possibly all you need to know has been summed up by some random on the internet none of us know from adam
…mind you…at the end of our respective days…some things most of us can only aspire to
…as you were?
Little Marco with an interesting choice of words:
https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiWmh0dHBzOi8vdGhlaGlsbC5jb20vcG9saWN5LzQyNDYzODAtcnViaW8taXNyYWVsLXNob3VsZC1jb21wbGV0ZWx5LWVyYWRpY2F0ZS1oYW1hcy1pbi1nYXphL9IBXmh0dHBzOi8vdGhlaGlsbC5jb20vcG9saWN5LzQyNDYzODAtcnViaW8taXNyYWVsLXNob3VsZC1jb21wbGV0ZWx5LWVyYWRpY2F0ZS1oYW1hcy1pbi1nYXphL2FtcC8?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
…not a massive surprise to find him keeping company with brett & the guy determined to musk up everything
…but even comparing like for like that seems like an extraordinarily poor choice of words…even for him?
Irony is lost on these people.
Little Marco represents South Florida, which has a HUGE Jewish population. I suspect he’s saying what he thinks they want to hear.
Then irony is apparently lost on them, too.
I can’t tell you how irritated I am that this scumbag is still in office.
‘None of this is remotely legal’: George Santos under new scrutiny over phony loan
…right there with you if it’s any consolation?
Well, you know, “we have to let the voters decide”. As if that’s within a light year’s distance from a good faith argument. These districts are so heavily gerrymandered, that they could put a rabid squirrel up for office and it would get elected.
The impulse I have to disengage from the world is so strong. I have to fight it every day.
My sentiments exactly after watching the unfiltered the horrors happening in Palestine and Israel…and reading more than a couple pro-Israel opinions.
I only fight it on (checks calendar) Wednesdays. Any other day, I withdraw.
We need a lot more posts like the IG message from Isthebruce, and a lot less from politicians. I just went ahead and followed the guy.
If there was one single thing I wish I could impart on American citizens it would be … well, OK, it would be empathy. But the second thing I wish I could share is the realization that well-adjusted people do not become terrorists because they think it’s fun or they’re all evil — they do it because they feel so boxed in a corner that the only possible method of communicating how dire their situation is to quite literally throw a bomb into it.
I don’t agree with terrorism because I don’t like violence and a lot of people who turn to violent means then tend to shrug off moral concerns about it going forward and the violence rolls on against increasingly innocent bystanders … but the Palestinians have been boxed into a corner and like, at some point, what can you expect the outcome to be?
I’m Jewish and to be quite honest, I have no sympathy for Israel’s leadership because they have sought excuses to commit genocide since the ’90s peace process died. I have limited sympathy for Hamas because their methods are horrifying, but at least I understand the why. Israel’s steadfast refusal to consider a solution and their actions are why we’re here, and until they either do that or finish the genocide they’ve wanted for decades, we’re gonna still be here.
I’ve been doing some reading simply because I felt very ignorant. Your statement about being boxed in and having no choice is on point, pretty much literally. Gaza is one of the most heavily populated areas on the planet, and the populace is pretty young. Estimates say that 50% are children. Sanctions have kept them in desperate poverty for years. It’s a powder keg waiting to explode, and nobody’s been trying to defuse it for a while now. It’s pretty much inevitable that it’s come to this. And it shouldn’t have been that way.
…last I heard it’s down to one potential point of egress, too…which I think would be this one
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_Border_Crossing
I understand Israel needing to retaliate from the Hamas attack.
But they’re doing to Gaza what Russia is doing to Ukraine and people go oh wow Russia is committing atrocities yet with Israel it’s all “well they have to make their point against terrorists.”
SV Date had a really great writeup, about the info that Trumpty-dumpty told the Russians, which goes basically hand-in-hand with Jollett’s tweets;
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-israel-leak_n_652439aae4b0102e6962ed7c
And Rip, I’ll be thinking about all your folks over thereabouts & hoping they stay as safe as possible, until things are calm again.
And when I have some time later today, I’ve got *some* more perspective that can be added to the Ford’s racing to the scene, for now, the Wikipedia pages on her & Dad’s Zippo–note the *overall* length of both ships IS incredibly similar–as is their “First in Class” status & speed (Ford is 50-oddfeet longer, but 2 mph slower);
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Gerald_R._Ford
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Forrestal
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-navy-newest-supercarrier-deployment-unexpected-turn-israel-crisis-2023-10
In slightly a more cheerful comment thread: Hey, it’s that picture he said he was gonna use! 🙂
If you would like to know about the temp speaker, here you go…
https://www.levernews.com/swamp-thing/
Today is World Mental Health Day.
…bloody hell…& I thought I was a fan of irony?
…it’s been drawn to my attention that, to take a quote from one of the videos up there & apply it to something I said about another…I should
cop to a mistake“amend a former position of mine”…the never pick a fight with an old man thing is the allegory he uses in the last one in the block of six when he’s talking about trump spontaneously endorsing jordan in the speaker’s race…so…that’s pretty much an untruth I spoke right there in front of (maybe) god…& certainly everyone here…which I do try not to do if it at all possible…doubtless not the first & probably not the last because there’s only so much coffee I can ingest before these are due up…but feel free to point that stuff out if you spot it…maybe not the typos because they drive me nuts enough already if I spot them when I haven’t the opportunity to correct them…but even if I wasn’t of british extraction…there’s no particular need to spare my blushes when you can’t tell how red my cheeks are looking?
…oh…& the one with the amended position is one or other of the ones where he’s wearing the spy-vs-spy patch on the cap in place of what generally defaults in most of the ones I’ve seen to curious george…& talks about “spooky people doing spooky stuff”…in which he amends his previously stated belief that being an ex-president would mean the courts would tweak things so that donnie the elephant wouldn’t be looking at jailtime
…in light of the quantities of potential evidence pertaining to the one-of-so-many-you-lose-track times that he flapped his gums about something to someone he shouldn’t have which involved a discussion of submarines with an australian business man…forget if that one made into anything anyone posted hereabouts but I remember reading a bunch about it…he amended that to being sure of no such thing
…it’s…in his own words…just a thought…but…put a smile on my face the first time I heard it, anyway?