chapotraphouse Wheaties • Now • 100%

i am once again stealing content from tumblr

https://murderofsomeone.tumblr.com/

news Wheaties • Now • 99%

Bernie Sanders preparing resolutions to block $20B in US arms sales to Israel

web.archive.org

>WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Bernie Sanders is preparing several resolutions that would stop more than $20 billion in U.S. arms sales to Israel, a longshot effort but the most substantive pushback yet from Congress over the devastation in Gaza ahead of the first year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war. > >In a letter to Senate colleagues on Wednesday, Sanders said the U.S. cannot be “complicit in this humanitarian disaster.” The action would force an eventual vote to block the arms sales to Israel, though majority passage is highly unlikely. > >“Much of this carnage in Gaza has been carried out with U.S.-provided military equipment,” Sanders, I-Vt., wrote. > >As the war grinds toward a second year, and with the outcome of President Joe Biden’s efforts to broker a cease-fire deal and hostage release uncertain, the resolutions from Sanders would seek to reign in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault on Gaza. The war has killed some 41,000 people in Gaza after the surprise Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, and abducted 250 others, with militants still holding around 100 hostages. > >While it’s doubtful the politically split Senate would pass the measures, the move is designed to send a message to the Netanyahu regime that its war effort is eroding the U.S.'s longtime bipartisan support for Israel. Sanders said he is working with other colleagues on the measures. [...] >Under the Senate rules, once Sanders introduces the resolutions next week, he can force a vote almost instantly for consideration. The measures are being proposed as a joint resolution of disapproval of the arms sales, which is a mechanism that allows congressional oversight of foreign affairs. > >Sanders said he would have some backing for his proposal. But it is not expected to have support from a majority, 51 votes, in the Senate to pass. > >In the House, blocking the Israeli arms sales would face even tougher odds, where Republicans hold the majority, and have largely sided with Netanyahu’s approach to the war with Hamas.

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Political satire used to be indecipherable, to the point where people stop picking up on the politics in just a decade or so

Oh, *Wizard of Oz* is such a silly children's story! No, it's an incomprehensible screed about the gold standard, the lion and the scarecrow and the tinman are supposed to be biting depictions of, like, long dead guys in 19th century US politics. What was it trying to argue? Fucking no idea anymore. Let's make a Jack Black film about *Gulliver's Travels*! What... it's supposed to be about the British empire? What do you mean, it's just a funny story about little guys! Flatland is like 2% science fiction and 98% about class society, but don't tell that to the guys who spent a whole documentary misinterpreting what researchers mean by "observe" when talking about quantum physics. I'm tired of these obvious political satires, make it inscrutable again! It doesn't matter how clearly you spell it out, people are gonna miss it anyway, so why not give anime artists another weird thing to draw on for when they run out of source comics?

movies Wheaties • Now • 98%

I finished watching Deep Space 9

I liked half the ending. It's a shame that we had to slam the brakes for the other half of it so ::: spoiler . Dukat and Kai Winn can be satanists. I like the idea that Sisko ends up joining the Prophets outside time, but it never really feels like the writers knew what to do with him being a spiritual figure for Bajor. This ending just kind of happened. ___ ::: Anyway, I'm posting this 'cus there used to be a user here with the name SiskoDidTwoThingsWrong, and i'm wondering what those two things were? Keeping the cure to the changeling disease seems like the most obvious one. I'm curious what the second is

science Wheaties • Now • 98%

About their little necks was hung,

https://www.livescience.com/animals/birds/mice-on-remote-island-that-eat-albatrosses-alive-sentenced-to-death-by-bombing-scientists-decree >Invasive mice are devouring albatrosses alive on a remote island in the Indian Ocean, so conservationists have come up with an explosive solution — "bombing" the mice. > >Mice have been wreaking havoc on Marion Island, between South Africa and Antarctica, for decades. Humans accidentally introduced the mice in the 19th century, and the rodents have since developed a taste for wandering albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) and other threatened seabirds. > >The Mouse-Free Marion Project, a collaboration between the South African government and BirdLife South Africa, is trying to raise $29 million to drop 660 tons (600 metric tons) of rodenticide-laced pellets onto the island in winter 2027, AFP news agency reported on Saturday (Aug. 24). > >The project plans to send a squad of helicopters to drop the pellets. By striking in winter when the mice are most hungry, the conservationists hope to eradicate the entire mouse population of up to 1 million individuals.

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Don't Buy the [Boar's Head] Liverwurst

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/28/health/cdc-warning-boars-head-deli-meat/index.html

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oh....

 https://www.tumblr.com/aquasine0/759552071146094592/j-aliens

chapotraphouse Wheaties • Now • 97%

it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

>Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good. > >It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong. > >Shame and guilt are ***DE***-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into *not* doing bad. > >Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues. > >Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)* > >Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to ***start*** to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame *does*! > >You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to *motivate* for that stuff! > >If you want it in a simple phrase: > >You can shame someone *out* of being a bad person, but you can't shame them *into* being a good person. --- It was nice to see this put so clearly. This election cycle has left me exhausted and demotivated, and this hits it square on the head. stolen from https://grungekitty-77.tumblr.com/post/754482938951892992/fun-fact-that-was-literally-what-inspired-me-to

badposting Wheaties • Now • 100%

I'd like to apply to illiteracy class

Hello, I think i'm done interpreting shapes as the phonemical representation of ideas and meaning, how do I go about not doing that?

music Wheaties • Now • 100%

it's weird to me that Phantom of the Opera was put together in the 80s

It's such a cornerstone of theater, the music is so damn good. Somehow I expected it to be from like the 1800s

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International Court of Justice says Israel’s presence in Palestinian territory is unlawful

www.aljazeera.com

>The court said Israel has no right to sovereignty of the territories, is violating international laws against acquiring territory by force and is impeding Palestinians’ right to self-determination. > >It said other nations were obliged not to “render aid or assistance in maintaining” Israel’s presence in the territory. It said Israel must end settlement construction immediately and existing settlements must be removed, according to a summary of the more than 80-page opinion read out by Salam.

effort Wheaties • Now • 92%

Civilization is such a funny word

It gets bandied about as though it's in contrast to nature, separate from it. Like, *"I'd take civilization over nature any day; there's lions and tigers and bears out there!"* As if we left evolution, red in tooth and claw, behind. There's a reason Marx and Darwin are contemporaries. I'd like to here propose a distinction; a difference in kind and scale. There's Generational Evolution -- Darwin outlined this while sketching finches and pinning insects to corkboards. It's slow. Generations upon generations, infinitesimally small changes seeping through populations bit by bit. He described it as "survival of the fittest" but I think *"perpetuation of the first thing that just so happens to work"* better captures it. And then there's Behavioral Evolution. If the first sort of evolution was slow, this one is a lightning-strike. Genetic Evolution needs a bottleneck to up the pace - needs to crawl right up next to extinction for a new trait to propagate in only a lifetime or two. *We*, on the other hand, just need to talk to each other. We learn. Our behavior changes at the rate we allow it to. Of course, it's not as if we're no longer subject to that older sort of evolution. Genes still do their thing - but, again, that wheel turns *slow*. It's got a great and terrible momentum. We don't harness it. Not this century, or the next. Hell, probably not even this millennium. We have a much more attainable goal - harnessing Behavioral Evolution. At present, we use words like "civilization" as though we already have. As though we're not still stuck ***perpetuating the first thing that just so happens to work***. As though liberal-democracy nation-states were some deliberate design and not just classes of people acting out of material self-interest, reacting to others doing the same, enriching themselves via the latest scheme that happens to work. It's funny; here in the US, the people who deny evolution and the people who champion market economics have such a broad overlap. --- this, I believe, is how we frame the struggle of the 21st century. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the *evolution* of class struggles." Communism is the belief, the dream, of putting consciousness in the driver's seat. Of making dialog *the* defining evolutionary pressure, rather than a mere component.

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more than half a century of Holding Actions; what an achievement, stardust!

written in the fucking 1970s

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cobbling together an understanding of written Chinese - 世大

I thought i would try to learn to read Chinese characters. I saw a thing somewhere once that said characters are organized by the number of brush-strokes in them, so in the past you kinda had to already know what you were looking up to find anything on it. I got the internet though! 世 - this is the first character I learned, and according to Google translate, it means 'world'. Wiktionary says it means other things to, like 'society', 'generation', even 'woman' and 'marriage'?? those last two feel like they're more contextual.  [stolen from wiktionary] seeing it written out, it makes me think first of the horizon, with pillars or towers rising above it. shadows extend from them. it makes me think if how people discovered/verified the curve of the Earth by measuring shadows, so it seems fitting. The next one I've learned is "大", which appears to be a suffix meaning 'big/much/very'. it's supposed to look like a little guy with arms stretched out to emphasis how BIG something is! ...again, going on Wiktionary for this... Which gives me 世大 - BIG WORLD (google thinks this says university...) ::: spoiler or, alternatively ___ Very Society :marx-joker: ::: ...am i doing this right? Or, at least, not terribly wrong? I kinda wanna hit the point where I can read Mao or *Three Body Problem* in the original text.