heliophilia

Happy birthday to AO3 🎂🎉

Yawning is so contagious

(Source)

(speaking as a complete 100% techno-klutz of the first water, I use LibreOffice (which is free) and I use it to collaborate and share documents with colleagues who themselves are using MSWord. I honestly believe that if I can, then probably anyone with a computer can).

A lute in the shape of Godzilla.

FUUUUUUUCK YEAAAAAAAAAAAH

@skeleton-richard

I'm up to the "I dunno maybe children working 13 hour shifts is bad, guys" part of Capital and it feels important to inform people that haven't read it yet that capitalists in the 19th century were not by any means wringing their hands and twirling their mustaches about employing children to squeeze out profits, they were hiring "experts" to write newspaper articles for them, explaining how "well, the socialists have these big demands about an 8-hour work day, and taking Saturdays off, but it's actually just so complicated, it's too complicated for most people to understand, we just NEED to hire children for night shifts because the stamina of their strong, youthful bodies is the only way we can survive as a business! It's science, you see. Economics doesn't work like that, just ask our economics professors at Oxford. You CAN'T turn a profit only working people 8 hours! Trust the experts, they know. It's just so complicated..."

That exact infuriating cadence that you read in New York Times articles, in the Atlantic Monthly, in the WaPo and all the other bourgeois rags where "everything is so complicated, and it's actually a lot more complicated than you think.." that has been around since the beginning. It is nothing new. So the next time you see some op-ed from Matt Yglesias or any of those other guys huffing their own farts about how "complicated" everything is, and how "unrealistic" a 30-hour work week is, remember that Marx was dealing with that exact class of "intellectuals" "explaining" how working 13 hours at age 10 was "vital" to the "moral fibre" of those poor kids.

There was an attack on Jews in Amsterdam. Horrific levels of violence. I'm having trouble getting much information about this, but consistently, I'm seeing news sources try and shift at least some blame onto Israeli people.

This is antisemitism. This is virulent, violent, antisemitism. Many of us, Jewish and non-Jewish, saw this kind of thing coming.

You can say you're not antisemitic all you want, but when we tell you that your rhetoric is violent and dangerous, you should listen to us. Please listen.

Peace activism requires peaceful intentions, methods, and messaging. Nobody deserves to be attacked for who they are or where they are from. Not Palestinians and not Israelis either.

May all beings be happy, may all beings be free. 🙏

The lack of reaction to this news has been horrifying.

Fucking care. You need to care. You need to care when any people are being targeted on the basis of their race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality.

Nobody deserves to be treated like this. Pay attention, please.

With respect.

Please, before you leap to conclusions about this, check out the original footage.

[NB I AM REFERRING TO THE INITIAL EVENTS; I thought I had better add this, because I'm not sure whether OP is talking about that or about events happening later.]

There is footage of the Maccabi fans tearing down the Palestinian flag from somebody's home, and footage of them singing and chanting "why is there no school in Gaza? Because there are no children left there!" (NB this is not a language I speak and I am one of the many relying on translations - so obviously please check out the chants for yourselves).

Here is some actually filmed on the night in question.

There is also some other info here: https://mitchellplitnick.substack.com/p/the-lies-from-the-amsterdam-riots?triedRedirect=true

(I hold no particular torch for this source; it's just one suggestion among many to have a look at).

Of course there's a lot of stuff on xitter, such as:

And in this ten-minute news clip (if I've actually managed to link it - I'm crap at anything remotely clicky), there's a bit of handy info - including the before-and-after of the footage that Sky News first showed, and then suddenly took down and "edited" before putting it back up:

I support nobody getting their heads kicked in, actually, including far-right football hooligans - but I honestly believe that gaslighting in support of far-right football hooligans (as a lot of the media has done) and pretending that people defending themselves from far-right football hooligans (even if yes there was also some later retaliation) is "antisemitic" is dangerous for the real victims of the very real antisemitism that is still just as much of an issue as it always has been.

All evidence points to these attacks being premeditated.

I'm not gaslighting anybody by saying organized violence against Jews is antisemitic.

These soccer fans may very well have been assholes, they may have been awful people - but no matter how awful they are as people, they should not be attacked on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, or nationality.

Additionally, there were reportedly victims who did not participate in any behavior of the kind you listed, who simply were targeted for being Jews. There were people out searching for Jews to attack.

There is no amount of awful behavior by one group of Israelis or Jews that can justify violent actions against Jewish people as a whole.

There is no amount of awful behavior by one group of Israelis or Jews that can justify violent actions against Jewish people as a whole.

If that is what happened after the Maccabi hooligans chased down and attacked local residents in Amsterdam, then yes I 100% agree with you.

Regrettably, the official statements on these events from the government of the State of Israel - just like their entire track record of statements for many years - consistently and actively seek to conflate all Jewish people everywhere with Israelis and call us all one and the same; they want all Jewish people everywhere lumped together, so that they can pretend all opposition to Israeli State policies and actions is "antisemitic".

This actively encourages the appalling tendency to assume that all Jewish people everywhere are somehow guilty of what the State of Israel is doing - which is obviously not true, of course. Assuming that all Jewish people everywhere are essentially one and the same with the State of Israel (and therefore share its guilt) is itself absolutely antisemitic. But the State of Israel actively encourages this, as a smokecreen for their own actions.

There is no amount of awful behaviour by one group of people that can justify violence against all those who share some characteristic with that group. On this I believe we might very much agree.

(PS I am not suggesting at all that you are gaslighting, btw! Sorry, I may have failed to make that clear. I am referring to what the media have been doing; the contrast between the before-and-after versions published by Sky News is just one particularly egregious example.)

your statement that there is no action that can justify violence against Jewish people as a whole kind of comes off like you are saying that the actions against Israeli fans are justified if only Israeli fans and not Jews in general were attacked. violence like this is never justified. the Maccabi fans' chants were not justified; neither is the response. there is no excuse for stopping people and demanding to see their passports and then beating them. there is no excuse for hit and runs or stealing people's passports for being fans of a different team, and these attacks were decidedly not on people they knew for sure were part of the Maccabi fans' actions. but frankly? even with the inflammatory actions of those fans, that still doesn't justify the incredibly violent and widespread response.

a Londoner was beaten for helping Jews. not Israelis. they explicitly said Jews. Dutch authorities have verified that the attack against the fans was planned in advance. a Ukrainian man was forced to pull out his passport to prove he wasn't Israeli so he wouldn't be attacked. a Greek man was attacked because he could not prove he wasn't Israeli. people were stopped and demanded to show their passport or answer if they were Jews--not Israeli. Jews. if that doesn't speak to targeting anyone who's Jewish, I don't know what does. anyone perceived to be Jewish or Israeli was attacked--regardless of if they may have participated in inflammatory actions or not. there has been a second attack since. it has been explicitly called a Jew hunt. this was a pogrom.

you want us to do our research. perhaps you should do your own and at least attempt to verify the claims that were made instead of simply saying "if that is true."

also, saying "well it's the state of Israel's fault that people are being antisemitic and attacking Jews" is blaming Jewish people for their own oppression.

Nope, I am very explicitly blaming the Government of the State of Israel and I am very explicitly not blaming Jewish people.

The Government of the State of Israel =!= Jewish people. As I'm sure you are aware, there are millions of Jewish people all over the world who utterly abhor the Government of the State of Israel and abjure their crimes against humanity.

How you have managed to twist what I said to mean the exact opposite I am really not sure.

Also, if you would care to read what I wrote in good faith, you might note that I also said explicitly that I don't want even violent far-right football hooligans to get their heads kicked in (though obviously I would prefer that violent far-right football hooligans did not rampage through cities attacking locals and chanting about the deaths of children).

The person responded to you in good faith, actually. And explained very well why what you said does not make sense.

The State of Israel does not equal Jewish people as a whole, yes, but nevertheless narratives about Israel are used as a foundation for antisemitism. Your claim about millions of Jews disliking Israel also seems completely unfounded - there are not very many Jews in the world, and while many may object to various actions that the Israeli government has taken, most do not object to the existence of the Israeli government (which seems to be what your point is). Many more object to the *current* government, I suppose.

Now, let me spell this out for you. A group of antisemites plotted an attack on Jewish people in their city, and they did it ahead of time. You are using the behavior of some of these Jewish people, on the day of the attack, to provide an explanation for why this occurred. Clearly though, if this was planned in advance, that is not an accurate explanation. Additionally, you are laying the wider blame for a pogrom on Israel, a nation made up of primarily Jewish people.

You are blaming Jews for a pogrom. This is textbook antisemitism. It is foaming at the mouth, rabid, white supremacist antisemitism.

Narratives about Israel are indeed often woven into antisemitism, I agree! And that's precisely why it's so irresponsible of the Government of the State of Israel to keep very deliberately and actively conflating Israel with all-Jewish-peope-everywhere!

I don't normally get into this kind of conversation with online strangers, funnily enough - believe it or not I actually posted initially purely as a point of information, since I thought there might be some chance (due to the media coverage which has been misleading to the point of dishonesty) that you genuinely might not have been aware of the violent hooliganism! (obviously I have no idea where you are or what kind of media coverage you might have seen).

Of course there may very well have been antisemitic elements involved in the events in Amsterdam! It would hardly be surprising; there is racism and bigotry to be found everywhere, after all, and antisemitism is as vile an example as any other. However that in no way diminishes the importance of acknowledging the presence and actions of a bunch of violent, far-right, racist and apparently pro-genocide football hooligans. Indeed, it would be strange to erase them and their inexcusable behaviour entirely - hence my wish to add information when I saw your post cross my dash.

You accuse me of foaming at the mouth, rabid, white supremacist antisemitism (I'm not quite sure where you get that from, but you do you I suppose). Still, at this point I will wish you a good evening (or whatever time it might be in your timezone); like most people, I usually spend my time on tumblr on things I actually enjoy or find intriguing.

The "tactics" of torture, forced disappearance, and clandestine warfare used by the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976-1983 were taught to the Argentine military by their French military "professors," who used them extensively in their miserable attempts to maintain their empire over Vietnam, Algeria and other countries. These techniques of state terror were first used in French colonial violence, and then were applied here, with the approval of Plan Cóndor supported by the United States. The same tortures that were inflicted on Vietnamese peasants and Algerian activists were also inflicted on Argentine students, the same cruelty that the military dictatorships used from Mexico to Chile was dictated as a method at the School of the Americas. In Argentina, 30.000 people were forcibly dissapeared, tortured, raped and killed, and countless others were brutally repressed with scars they, and our entire society, still bear today.

Here is an article (in Spanish) about it.

Imperialism is a never-ending fractal of cruelty.

so many things try to emulate the Beatrice/Benedick relationship and so few of them get it right bc they’re like ‘oh it’s about the banter’ and YES, obviously, but if you make it JUST about the banter you’re going to fail! it’s about the RESPECT!!! it’s about the scene after Hero’s shaming where Benedick drops the banter entirely and sits there with Beatrice as she rages and weeps and then chooses to side with HER instead of the boy’s club that he’s been hanging out with for the entire play, both because he loves her and because she’s RIGHT!

like, it’s not some impulsive thing to make her like him, and it’s not just talk; he asks her if she’s sure and then he agrees and then he remains cold and determined when he meets Claudio and Don Pedro and they try to get him to joke around with them like old times.  i think that’s one of the things that gets me the most; that there’s a scene that you half-expect to fall into that same sort of joking, where Claudio and Don Pedro are specifically like, “Huh, we inexplicably feel kind of sad after ruining this woman’s life and reputation, I bet Benedick will cheer us up!” and he just. utterly refuses to engage. and it’s so powerful and it’s such a tonal shift and such a strong indication of just how much he loves and values Beatrice and!! anything that gets the banter but doesn’t get that completely fails to understand their relationship! THB!!

I love how Discworld introduces Granny Weatherwax.

She is introduced as a witch, but it's not actually clear if she can do any magic for quite some time. At first all she does is herbal medicine and Headology, aka make-believe, mind tricks, placebos and basically tricking people.

Even when it becomes clear that she flies around on a broomstick and can project her mind into other living things, it's still not obvious if she can do any magic beyond that.

And then she and her buddies magically move an entire country 15 years into the future, and it becomes very clear that she's not only very much capable of doing magic, but she's one of the strongest, if not the strongest magic user in the entire world who can do stuff like summon death himself with nothing but a candle, and I am not even sure she really needs the candle.

Compare that to the wizards. The first impression you get of them is that they're powerful magic users, I mean they are wizards in a fantasy world, people fear them for their magic, and they got a whole magic college, so they must be powerful, right? They even look down on witches because they "don't use real magic"... and because they're usually women.

Granted, the very first (and best) wizzard we're introduced to can't even do any magic, but he seems like an outlier. Then you hear more and more about the magic college and other wizards, and it becomes clear that most wizards are arrogant and lazy fucks who can't do much magic beyond basic fireballs, turning people into frogs and maybe teleportation. Even the head-wizard of the college was completely helpless after running out of juice from a single teleportation spell.

Even when all the wizards become incredibly powerful, thanks to circumstances beyond their control, all they use their magic for is building really tall wizard towers and raging wars against each other. Wars which are ripping holes into reality, which threaten to release unspeakable horrors from the unspeakable horrors dimension.

Like... the books used most reader's assumptions and expectations, aka 'Headology', to make them underestimate Granny Weatherwax while overestimating the Wizards.

Just *chef's kiss* world building.

Not feminist as in "women should be included in the draft" but feminist as in "being drafted is a violation of bodily autonomy for any gender".

The draft should not exist. Drafting people into the military is a violation of human rights. You should not be able to force someone to risk their life. If you can't find enough people who care about a conflict to keep it going then it simply shouldn't keep going. You can't even force someone to donate a kidney using government power, why the fuck can you force them to donate their whole body and life to a cause they don't agree with or don't care about?

The paradox of tolerance is only a paradox if you think of tolerance as some sacred and unconditional moral duty. Some ultimate and absolute law with no exceptions, and if you ever slip into the sin of intolerance, you must repent yourself and beg for forgiveness. Yeah no fuck that. Tolerance is a social contract. You're in the game as an equal player for as long as you play by the same rules as everyone else, and if you don't, your ass is fucking out. You're not entitled to the same respect you won't give others.

"Oh so you all tolerate each other just because you tolerate each other, but if I want to destroy you, then all of a sudden you want to destroy me?" Literally yes. That's the gist of it. What's not clicking. This equation is so simple it barely counts as math.

"I refuse to sign the social contract if it means I have to be polite to people I don't understand" said the bigot

"Well then you aren't protected by the terms and conditions" says everyone who has signed

There was an attack on Jews in Amsterdam. Horrific levels of violence. I'm having trouble getting much information about this, but consistently, I'm seeing news sources try and shift at least some blame onto Israeli people.

This is antisemitism. This is virulent, violent, antisemitism. Many of us, Jewish and non-Jewish, saw this kind of thing coming.

You can say you're not antisemitic all you want, but when we tell you that your rhetoric is violent and dangerous, you should listen to us. Please listen.

Peace activism requires peaceful intentions, methods, and messaging. Nobody deserves to be attacked for who they are or where they are from. Not Palestinians and not Israelis either.

May all beings be happy, may all beings be free. 🙏

The lack of reaction to this news has been horrifying.

Fucking care. You need to care. You need to care when any people are being targeted on the basis of their race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality.

Nobody deserves to be treated like this. Pay attention, please.

With respect.

Please, before you leap to conclusions about this, check out the original footage.

[NB I AM REFERRING TO THE INITIAL EVENTS; I thought I had better add this, because I'm not sure whether OP is talking about that or about events happening later.]

There is footage of the Maccabi fans tearing down the Palestinian flag from somebody's home, and footage of them singing and chanting "why is there no school in Gaza? Because there are no children left there!" (NB this is not a language I speak and I am one of the many relying on translations - so obviously please check out the chants for yourselves).

Here is some actually filmed on the night in question.

There is also some other info here: https://mitchellplitnick.substack.com/p/the-lies-from-the-amsterdam-riots?triedRedirect=true

(I hold no particular torch for this source; it's just one suggestion among many to have a look at).

Of course there's a lot of stuff on xitter, such as:

And in this ten-minute news clip (if I've actually managed to link it - I'm crap at anything remotely clicky), there's a bit of handy info - including the before-and-after of the footage that Sky News first showed, and then suddenly took down and "edited" before putting it back up:

I support nobody getting their heads kicked in, actually, including far-right football hooligans - but I honestly believe that gaslighting in support of far-right football hooligans (as a lot of the media has done) and pretending that people defending themselves from far-right football hooligans (even if yes there was also some later retaliation) is "antisemitic" is dangerous for the real victims of the very real antisemitism that is still just as much of an issue as it always has been.

All evidence points to these attacks being premeditated.

I'm not gaslighting anybody by saying organized violence against Jews is antisemitic.

These soccer fans may very well have been assholes, they may have been awful people - but no matter how awful they are as people, they should not be attacked on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, or nationality.

Additionally, there were reportedly victims who did not participate in any behavior of the kind you listed, who simply were targeted for being Jews. There were people out searching for Jews to attack.

There is no amount of awful behavior by one group of Israelis or Jews that can justify violent actions against Jewish people as a whole.

There is no amount of awful behavior by one group of Israelis or Jews that can justify violent actions against Jewish people as a whole.

If that is what happened after the Maccabi hooligans chased down and attacked local residents in Amsterdam, then yes I 100% agree with you.

Regrettably, the official statements on these events from the government of the State of Israel - just like their entire track record of statements for many years - consistently and actively seek to conflate all Jewish people everywhere with Israelis and call us all one and the same; they want all Jewish people everywhere lumped together, so that they can pretend all opposition to Israeli State policies and actions is "antisemitic".

This actively encourages the appalling tendency to assume that all Jewish people everywhere are somehow guilty of what the State of Israel is doing - which is obviously not true, of course. Assuming that all Jewish people everywhere are essentially one and the same with the State of Israel (and therefore share its guilt) is itself absolutely antisemitic. But the State of Israel actively encourages this, as a smokecreen for their own actions.

There is no amount of awful behaviour by one group of people that can justify violence against all those who share some characteristic with that group. On this I believe we might very much agree.

(PS I am not suggesting at all that you are gaslighting, btw! Sorry, I may have failed to make that clear. I am referring to what the media have been doing; the contrast between the before-and-after versions published by Sky News is just one particularly egregious example.)

your statement that there is no action that can justify violence against Jewish people as a whole kind of comes off like you are saying that the actions against Israeli fans are justified if only Israeli fans and not Jews in general were attacked. violence like this is never justified. the Maccabi fans' chants were not justified; neither is the response. there is no excuse for stopping people and demanding to see their passports and then beating them. there is no excuse for hit and runs or stealing people's passports for being fans of a different team, and these attacks were decidedly not on people they knew for sure were part of the Maccabi fans' actions. but frankly? even with the inflammatory actions of those fans, that still doesn't justify the incredibly violent and widespread response.

a Londoner was beaten for helping Jews. not Israelis. they explicitly said Jews. Dutch authorities have verified that the attack against the fans was planned in advance. a Ukrainian man was forced to pull out his passport to prove he wasn't Israeli so he wouldn't be attacked. a Greek man was attacked because he could not prove he wasn't Israeli. people were stopped and demanded to show their passport or answer if they were Jews--not Israeli. Jews. if that doesn't speak to targeting anyone who's Jewish, I don't know what does. anyone perceived to be Jewish or Israeli was attacked--regardless of if they may have participated in inflammatory actions or not. there has been a second attack since. it has been explicitly called a Jew hunt. this was a pogrom.

you want us to do our research. perhaps you should do your own and at least attempt to verify the claims that were made instead of simply saying "if that is true."

also, saying "well it's the state of Israel's fault that people are being antisemitic and attacking Jews" is blaming Jewish people for their own oppression.

Nope, I am very explicitly blaming the Government of the State of Israel and I am very explicitly not blaming Jewish people.

The Government of the State of Israel =!= Jewish people. As I'm sure you are aware, there are millions of Jewish people all over the world who utterly abhor the Government of the State of Israel and abjure their crimes against humanity.

How you have managed to twist what I said to mean the exact opposite I am really not sure.

Also, if you would care to read what I wrote in good faith, you might note that I also said explicitly that I don't want even violent far-right football hooligans to get their heads kicked in (though obviously I would prefer that violent far-right football hooligans did not rampage through cities attacking locals and chanting about the deaths of children).

Surprised Evekin the manul-sparrow 😺

Can't believe I'm saying this but the weather is slowly changing in Gaza again and it rained quite heavily this week. Knowing this while literally 90% of Gaza's population has been displaced, many living in makeshift tents, is a terrifying thought. Since last week's rain, many people are left without a place to stay and their belongings destroyed by the rain.

The cost of tents is between $700 and $800 which is beyond practically everyone in Gaza right now. However, the Sameer Project are crowdfunding and providing these families with tents. You can help out by either donating and/or sharing their initiative with your friends and community members. Just add "tent" in the note when you donate:

Chuffed / Venmo / PayPal

RB to give prev a heartfelt gift: Patch of Moss