‘Where, on planet Earth, would a Jew not be considered a settler?

This is a serious question, one to which I have yet to get a satisfactory response. I posted about it and a few joke replies arrived (“Florida”) but it does seem as if a lot of people are stumped.

We’re living in a moment when much of the left has embraced the idea that social justice is the global struggle against “settlers.” Whether actual Indigenous North Americans want this or not, this is what the self-righteous have honed in on. It’s a line of thought that predates the current war in Israel and Gaza, but that is, let us say, having a moment.

As an ostensibly progressive worldview, it poses some problems for Jews. And no, not just pro-Israel ones, or Jews who are for some reason rah-rah 19th century colonialism. If you’re meh on Israel, and think Jewish rootlessness is our cosmopolitan charm, and say to hell with ethno-nationalist homelands and whatnot, let us be citizens of the world, then more power to you, but good luck squaring this with a progressive movement that classifies everyone across the globe as either home, displaced from home, or invading someone else’s house.

This is why I’m going to have to say that I do think, in this case, language matters. Insisting on a global anti-settler movement is different from, for example, supporting Truth and Reconciliation. Demanding human rights and fair treatment is different from declaring some percentage of the population as occupiers based on their ancestry.

So I will repeat the question. Where is a Jew not—per these definitions—a settler?

In North America, all Jews who are not Indigenous—and that would be the vast majority of us—are settlers, according to the understanding that defines all such populations as such. Not just Jews whose ancestors literally settler-colonized Canada back in the day, but even those who arrived last week. (Syrian refugees in Canada: also settlers, by this definition.)

In Israel, according to anti-Zionist understandings, all Jews are settlers. Not just Jews living in the settlements. Not just Jews living in the post-1967-specific borders. An Israeli Jew in Tel Aviv is, by the understandings of those who think Israel itself it illegitimate, no matter its borders or leadership, a settler.

How about Europe, then? I have this vague recollection of something happening, 1930s-1940s-ish, where it was decided that Jews, long understood by many to be a foreign element (thus the antisemitic hurling of go back to Palestine), were extremely not in their own rightful homes when on that continent.

If a modern Jewish nation-state had, as some are furiously posting these days, been put in Europe, rather than ever so colonially in the Middle East (never mind the historical connection of Jews to that land, never mind Mizrahi Jews), that theoretical state would have displaced someone and would have been a settlement, and therefore unacceptable. “Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.”

It’s even “settlement” when Jews are in our “native areas,” one is reminded, perusing the Wikipedia page of Birobidzhan.

Unable to settle in the areas they were from, some Jews were resettled within the former Soviet Union. How did that work out? Not great, but to stay on point, I have put certain words in bold: “Logistically and practically, settling Birobidzhan proved to be difficult. Due to inadequate infrastructure and weather conditions of the area, more than half the Jewish settlers who relocated to Birobidzhan after the initial settlement did not remain.”

It ought to be—it is—possible to care about currently or historically displaced peoples without dividing the world into those who have a historic right to live where they do, and those who are effectively gentrifiers (whatever their financial position) and should scram. The down-with-settlers approach is tricky for refugees generally, but is particularly weak when it comes to stateless ones, who show up, uninvited, and don’t even have a homeland to be sent back to. Jews at this point have a state, but a state that is itself often considered mere settlement.

There is nowhere on this planet that I could live without it being very problematic of me to do so. Which rather forces my position. As long as I’m alive, I have to occupy space somewhere.’

Just had a Thought

What if two time lords regenerate at the same time in the same place? Would anything happen at all or am I just lost in headcanon land as usual?

My brother is saying that their new faces would be identical (identical time lord twins, if you will)(lol imagine the trouble they could get up to with that)

And my friend is insisting that they would simply swap their previous faces. (So if we take two timelords, like I dunno the Doctor and the Master, and this was Whittaker! Doctor and Dhawan!Master, the newly regenerated Doctor would look like Sacha Dhawan and the newly regenerated Master would look like Jodie Whittaker.) (Which would be awesome)

Neither of these two people could back their theories up with any valid reasons but there's a reason its called "headcanon" after all, and the reason is that it doesn't have to make sense, so the people of tumblr, floor's open to you and please give us some answers before my two idiots end up murdering each other thanks

You can headcanon whatever you want but officially, it has no particular effect.

That being said, some timelords can control their regeneration enough they could make themselves twins or swap faces if they wanted.

i wonder, if someone is a good enough telepath, could they control BOTH regenerations while the other is out of it?!

Your Villain & You is not doing very well on Blurb’s site, so I’m moving it to itch.io next month. That means that, for the rest of this month, Your Villain & You is on saaaaaaaaale! Color paperback is $6.79. Color pdf is $5.99. B/w pdf is $4.35.

Also you can use the code SUMMERTIME through June 19th to save 20% on Blurb bookstore purchases!

In case you need more incentive to buy it, check out those “endorsements” above! ...On second thought, maybe don't check them out... :p

Like, I absolutely 100% want to stick computer chips in my brain – I just don’t trust any of the organisations that presently have the means to produce brain-chips not to do something evil with them.

Using brain chips to “cure” neurodivergence? Dude, what the fuck are you talking about? I’d use them to give myself exciting new neurodivergences. Let’s cross-wire my amygdala with my olfactory bulb and find out what existential dread tastes like.

loving the thought of the cia/the council telling people about this big secret about the doctor whenever they get ranked high enough and every time the person’s like we been knew????

the cia: were sorry to tell you this but your brother,,,,is from a different universe

brax, who’s watched theta gnawing on boulders when peckish and seen his 50 eyes glowing in the dark: you don’t say

the master, thru tears: this whole time the doctor WAS special

the rani, not looking up from her experiment: a) you’ve always thought they were special bc you have the emotional maturity of a six year old screaming for its favourite blanket b) yes i know i sequenced their dna when i was 15

The Rani: “Do you remember when I spent two decades on my thesis, and then suddenly changed the subject two days before the deadline?” The Master: “We assumed you’d built your own TARDIS or something to do it in time.”

The Rani: “Of course not, I’m not an engineer. I had simply anticipated certain pushbacks on The Origin Of Time Lords, and simultaneously worked on a backup thesis on the applications of Endeavouran Tussle Fungus.

The Master: “Groundbreaking.”

The Rani: “In the correct dose, yes, it could cause people to do that. Weaponised aggression was something the council were particularly interested in. They used it for war crimes I believe. Either way, it became apparent that Theta’s genetic code was - and I quote the CIA operative who turned over my lab - “super fucking classified”. Given his habit of exchanging bodily fluids with people, I imagine most of his arrest warrants are for reckless distribution of restricted materials. That 100-people-in-100-days snogathon he did must’ve required quite the clean-up operation. No wonder we never saw most of them again.”

The Master: “I thought that was cus he labelled them to avoid repeats as soon as they’d finished.”

The Rani: “Look, it’s a hypothesis, I understand people on a genetic level, not a social one.”

The Book of the Ceasefires: The Eighth Man Bound, Introduction

This is not a straightforward chronology.

I don’t think it ever could be, really. I think historians as a whole need to forgo the idea of ever tying a Houseworlder to the concept of a “straight line.” It’s easy to make a simple timeline when they remain in their dark Cloisters on Gallifrey, certainly, where they gather dust by the inch and putter around like cardinals and clerics in a jade Vatican. But Gallifrey is a stagnant world of tradition and memory for a reason, and I think it’s more for the universe’s protection than anything else. Remember, the Houseworlders are not people. Sure, your typical Earthperson would only see the clumsy collars, the wrinkles, wizened hands clasping at ancient relics as they spout ancient protocols like Gospel, but that’s because human beings can only see three dimensions. When you look at a Time Lord, you’re only seeing as much as your brain can process.

I’m not implying that Gallifreyans are some sort of eldritch abominations, all tentacles and pinchers, drifting in the upper dimensions of reality. They’re subtler than that. They are, however, forces of nature, albeit sewn into the bodies of dusty mathematicians, philosophers, and librarians. They are beacons in Time. More than that, they are its architects. They anchored their laws and their will into the very fabric of creation. What we process as Time, the ever changing face on a clock, the ticking of seconds, minutes, hours, years, is the handiwork of Gallifrey. [1]

On their own planet, they may be inactive, all tedium and tradition, but they should not be viewed as the decaying relics of an old order. Instead, think of them as dormant. They are dammed up rivers, or thick clouds, fat and grey with the promise of thunder and lightning. They are brewing storms that could rewrite a textbook merely by disagreeing with it. The universe is perhaps at its safest when the Lords are in their glass castle, Time and Space free to shift, flow, alternate. It’s when they stand in the midst of the quantum foam that it has the potential to solidify, become ice of probability, and then the cold stone of certainty, an island of definition that forces possibles and maybes to part, to ripple, flow in numerous directions.

A known Houseworlder Renegade, self titled Marnal, said it best in his reiteration of the first Law of Time (written in his 1976 novel The Hand of Time):

There was structure, the universe was a web made not of spider’s silk but of space and time. But in such a cosmos, one of fluxing quad-dimensionality, who was to say what was cause and what was effect? Even the newly woven children of his world understood the solution to that solemn inquiry: there was no history, don’t you see, only established history. Time was an ocean of broth, rich in elements and possibilities. Observations could be made to spot trends and to predict, for the oceans of time were subject to the laws of temporal mechanics. But these were projections of reality, not the re- ality itself as long as the Lords of Time remained in their Citadel, merely watching. Yet, if a single one among them were to cease observation and to step out into the universe, they would freeze time wheresoever their feet touched the ground, wheresoever they drew breath from the atmosphere. At that moment, their mere presence would change time, from a fluid to a solid thing. If one of the Lords of Time but glanced into the night’s sky, the stars would become true in the instant they were seen, and thence back for every picosecond of the ten thousand years of the stars’ photons’ jour- ney. When a time-traveller swam in this ocean, it solidified around them, crystallised, became transmuted into that which could never change. And so was written the most sacred law of all – for even the softest touch of a Lord of Time could condemn a man to existence or nonexistence, bring empires into being and destine them to ruin, and blot out the sky or fill it with heavenly radiance. Observe. Never interfere.

A Time Lord cut off from the Homeworld, either by choice or exile, can be a very dangerous thing. They can also be a very confusing thing to document.

The Doctor, known Time Lord renegade (and perhaps the most infamous renegade, next to the Master) is no stranger to the notable temporal tangles caused by his reckless travels through history. His exile to late 20th century Earth is a prominent example, his presence and activities seemingly having combed the 1970s and 1980s into a conflicting mass of a single decade (a dating controversy many Earth experts are still bickering over). However, the Doctor’s life is incredibly hard to document once he enters the shadow of the War.

Many theorists and historians (this author included) have tried fitting the life (lives?) of the eighth incarnation of the Doctor into a single timeline. However, recent discoveries and analyses have led me to, instead, embrace the impossible contradictions, and see that the branches and alternate paths of this incarnation can still be connected. The life and times of the Eighth Doctor can be nothing but contradictions. This was an incarnation of temporal orbits, paradoxes, rewrites, and biodata shifting, who not only crossed the War, but two iterations of it. [2]

A note regarding this chronology… 

It is understood that Time Lords are immune to the memory lapses expected with having one’s history rewritten. While there are (several) clear, documented cases of the Eighth Doctor experiencing amnesia, it can be assumed that many of the diverging paths, some of which led to completely separate Ninth incarnations, are not guaranteed divergences in memory.

This author would also like to make clear that the universe is a sprawling, ridiculous, messy place. Oxbow realities, parallel timelines, alternate dimensions, and bottle universe are just as real and genuine as ours to the people living in them. At no point does this author attempt to make an assertion that any of these realities, all linked by the same Doctor, are more “real” than the others.

[1] It has long been speculated that there would be some sort of chronological dimension without the “Time” decreed by the Time Lords. The little information gleaned regarding other dimensions such as the Divergent Universe certainly show that, without the presence of what certain Time Lords call the “universe of Time,” lesser species can still force the quantum muck into an adequate, if hazy, definition of cause and effect (however, as the only lesser species known to have experienced this sort of environment are known companions of the Doctor, it is unclear how much of this was due to the holding influence of a timeship).

[2] Technically speaking, the eighth Doctor is not the first incarnation to have encountered a time war. Ignoring the implications that the Doctor’s link to the Other creates (regarding the Time Wars at the beginning of Gallifrey’s history), the Doctor has either brushed against or been caught in several temporal conflicts. The Fourth and Fifth incarnations became tangled in Melanicus’ Millennium Wars, while the Sixth experienced the aftermath of the Millennium War of Bophemeral (which are more than likely linked to the former event anyway… it is possible that Melanicus’ symphony of war continued to race down the strands of history after he was killed and the Event Synthesizer’s function restored).

The Seventh Doctor was destined to, in some form or manner, take part in a conflict that eventually destroyed Gallifrey and left only a select few Time Lords in the universe. However, this was the timeline that followed the Sixth Doctor’s original regeneration into Time’s Champion and a true “God of the Fourth.” The Seventh Doctor, in this timeline, had powers and abilities beyond the normal capabilities of a Time Lord, as did the few survivors. This timeline, and the mysterious conflict, was unwritten when the Sixth Doctor replaced his regeneration with another, similar but different, version.

To come… 

The Eighth Man Bound, Part One: Now Unto War 

The Eighth Man Bound, Part Two: The Last Contact 

The Eighth Man Bound, Part Three: Journey to the Needle 

The Eighth Man Bound, Part Four: The Gallifrey of Charlotte Pollard 

The Eighth Man Bound, Part Five: The Ninth Doctors

sir that’s my emotional support autistic headcanon

To my USA followers

I’ve seen far too much misinformation on my dashboard as of late, and it’s been grinding my gears badly. I’m not surprised for it, because this is a trend that has been happening since I first set foot on Tumblr, but I think I’ve reached a breaking point and I need to at least make an effort, however pointless it may prove, to help you understand what’s happening in distant contexts you don’t fully grasp.

Latin America is a political disaster. It has been one for ages, probably since further back in history than I dare talk about because I don’t know enough that far back about the whole region. But in recent, modern times, Latin America has been a mixed bag of dictators of all sides of the political spectrums, with each country as good as taking turns between democracy and tyranny, some for longer or shorter periods of time.

Yes, there’s a far-right psychopath in power in Brazil. That is an undeniable truth and very much something to be feared. I’m not an expert on what’s happening in Brazil right now, but I’m 100% sure he’s up to no good and will end up causing a lot more harm than good to his people, especially the poor and the minorities.

That being said… there’s also a far-left psychopath in power in Venezuela, and I could spend HOURS talking about all the crap we’ve been through over the past 20 years because I’VE LIVED IT. I have literally not known anything but the Chavez-Maduro governments, I’ve spent my entire life here, and I have watched my country go from liveable (as a child) to tolerable (as a teenager) to basically apocalyptic levels of chaos (the past 4-5 years), to the point where I’ve even had periods when I stopped eating just to spend less money, and I’m not even amongst the people who are worse off in the country, who literally scavenge in trash for food because they can’t afford anything at all.

Part of why Maduro and Chavez managed to stay in power for so long is because all the systems are rigged. There’s no separation of powers: our equivalent of the electoral college is helmed by someone who had been a member of the government’s political party. The company supplying our electoral machines admitted their results have been rigged. When this happens in a country, IT IS NOT A DEMOCRACY.

And that same thing is what detonated the Bolivian crisis right now. I keep seeing people claiming it’s a cover for a war on resources, a conflict of interests where somehow an allegedly hyper-competent US government is infiltrating and destroying Latin America, despite some of these US officials can’t even string two sentences together and barely get anything done in their own country.

Evo Morales was legally FORBIDDEN from being a candidate thrice in a row. There’s only one chance for reelection in Bolivia, and Evo Morales outright ignored that law, with no consequences, for one whole period by finding loopholes in the law. This new round? It would have been his FOURTH presidential period, and there were no loopholes to validate his candidacy anymore. They’ve had the same guy in power since 2005,  he’s even had the same vicepresident for all 14 years, from my understanding. This is NOT what a democracy looks like. Can you imagine how outraged you’d be if you had Trump for four presidential periods in a row? After questionable electoral results that indicated a second round of voting was necessary, only for him to conveniently decide he would just declare himself president for the FOURTH TIME, regardless of the law? Would you be out here saying it’s all a plan by the powers that be, or would you be outraged to be living in an unabashed tyranny?

This is not to say that the vandalism, that the violent protests, are right or good. I don’t see any worth in destructive protests, be them from one side or the other. Chile’s left wing is currently setting their cities on fire to protest over social imbalances and useless retirement systems: the very legitimate grounds for such protests DOES NOT justify the levels of destruction seen in either country. And these things are what most Latin Americans are worried about, as far as I can tell: destructive protests, social conflicts, the difficulties of living in ANY of these countries and the ineffectiveness, corruption and outright illegality of many of our governments…

Whereas all I see from US blogs I follow is “USA is just after all of Latin America’s resources, hurr durr, that’s all there is to this.”

I’m sorry to be so blunt, but honestly, shut up. Start having at least a modicum of empathy with people who have entirely different living experiences from your own. TALK to people who aren’t USA-based and learn about what they go through with their current presidents or leaders. Believe me, there are more than enough Latin Americans in this site and beyond it who can communicate in English without that much trouble, me amongst them. Want to understand what’s happening down south? 

TALK TO PEOPLE WHO ARE LIVING IT. 

EDUCATE YOURSELVES BEYOND THE TYPICAL CONSPIRACY TALK.

 STOP PRETENDING EVERYTHING GOES BACK TO USA. 

HELL, EVEN IF IT DID, IT NEVER OVERRULES THE ACTUAL PLIGHT OF PEOPLE LIVING IN DICTATORSHIPS, WHETHER THEY’RE LEFT OR RIGHT-WING.

And if you can’t do any of these things? If you can’t find anyone from those countries to talk to, anyone with a genuine grasp on Latin America’s problems beyond absurdly biased political analysis? Then please, do a favor to all of us in this shithole of a continent and STOP SPREADING MISINFORMATION. STOP JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THE FULL CONTEXT OF ANY OF WHAT’S HAPPENING. STOP PROMOTING ABUSE OF POWER OR SIDING WITH TYRANTS JUST BECAUSE THEY IDENTIFY WITH THE SAME POLITICAL SPECTRUM YOU DO.

And alongside with all this… stop pretending Latin America is plagued by the same problems you are in USA. You can’t judge an entire continent with the exact same standard if you don’t know what’s happening in it. Do some problems coincide? YES. Do they ALL coincide? Hell, no. Heck, there’s problems in countries within Latin America that are 100% different or even absent in the neighboring one.

Yes, of course USA has a history of intervening and infiltrating Latin American countries, and committing heinous crimes in the process. But if this crisis in Bolivia is convenient for USA, it does NOT negate that the Bolivian people have a right to stand up against Morales for breaking the law and acting like he’s above it. It does not negate that Venezuela has been through a shitstorm over the last 20 years with next to no hope of recovery in the immediate future because all our structures and systems have been destroyed by a gang hellbent on holding as much power as possible, and in being as corrupt as possible.

And if you outright decide to ignore the valid plight of people in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and more, all of it just to validate your own political agendas… then congratulations. You’re no better than an anti-vaxxer or a flat-earther who’d sooner deny science, history, and even geography just for your own benefit, without caring about how many lives can be lost while you’re flaunting your willing ignorance. Good going.

I don’t think that they’re oblivious but I’m pretty disappointed by a lot of coverage of Donald Trump blaming the family separation policies on the democrats. A lot of the commentary has focused on how this is a lie because right now, the democrats don’t control any branch of government, can’t easily pass laws, and have a bill in play that could stop policies like what’s going on right now.

But that’s the thing. Trump’s not ‘lying’– he’s just behaving like an abusive husband. To him, the democrats ‘pushed’ him and his party to employ such cruel policies for not allowing progress on the border wall among other things. He isn’t trying to spread misinformation that the democrats made the policies. Trump is trying to say that if the democrats truly wanted the cruelty to stop, they’d give him everything he wanted and never cease to please him again.

It’s useless to treat this like he’s senile or a panicked man trying to spread direct misinformation– it’s not like that. He is actively threatening that unwillingness to submit to his demands will ‘make’ his administration escalate violence. But any abuse survivor knows that just caving doesn’t actually stop an abusive person from just continuing their abuse, or make them reverse the damage that has been done.

it doesn’t surprise me though that widespread culture isn’t immediately zeroing in on this angle, because the Trump administration brings abuse dynamics to people who would never otherwise have experience with them. People who would never be in a position to be gaslighted are baffled when Sarah Sanders comes on the news. People who’ve never been told that their refusal “pushed” a family member or partner to violence go away scratching their head when Trump says the Democrats are to blame for his administration’s atrocities. 

To someone who doesn’t recognize these tactics because there is no one in their life that wields that power over them, these seem like inane lies, easily rebuked “no, that’s literally not true.” But can you imagine telling that to an abusive husband that says his wife serving dinner late ‘pushed his temper?’ What would that even accomplish?

I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to PROVE you’re allistic. Are you SURE you’re allistic?

Because my brother is allistic and is NOTHING like you.

Can I just have this on a card, and I can hand it out to people who say shit like this to me, and on the reverse is a series of questions tthey have to answer before I will validate their existence. Intrusive questions.

(Neurotypicals)