While it is sometimes tempting, I do not fault people for being “late to the party” but I am infinitely pissed off how often “progressives” show up late and then go “wow, I am starting the movement”

a fun thing that happens during this process is you'll have these private companies hire the ejected government employees who are experts in their respective field. the private company will then contract with the government to replace the lost function or service

so you have the exact same people doing the exact same labor but now you have a CEO/board of directors and a shit ton of other overhead costs in addition to the base cost of labor. This means the amount of services per tax payer dollar falls drastically. All in the name of "efficiency" and "lowering costs"

my synagogue was set on fire last night during Shabbat at 3:00 AM in an arsonist attack.

no one was injured, which i am extremely grateful for. they have several security cameras, so there is a suspect in custody. the details and motivation haven't been shared, but it can be reasonably assumed to be a hate crime.

this was the first synagogue established in the state, the only one that's not hours away, and certainly the largest in the area. two Torah scrolls are destroyed beyond repair, 5 are damaged. the library where children have religious school and morning Shabbat service is held has been completely burnt down, much of that section of the building that's left is covered in soot and ash. the administrative offices were also lost.

our Tree of Life, which was for important life events like bar/bat/b'nei mitzvahs, was destroyed. i was just looking at it this past Tuesday while waiting for a meeting with my rabbi. it was dozens of bronze plaques in the shape of leaves with commemorations on them placed above a trunk. there is a photo of the wreckage that makes me cry every time i look at it.

we have a rescued scroll from Nazi-era Czechoslovakia (it is thankfully unharmed). we have a Holocaust memorial garden. we have names of dead loved ones displayed. memories in and on the walls. there are so many deeply meaningful and largely irreplaceable things here.

my rabbi was out of state for the last several days. i cannot imagine how he's feeling.

im fucking pissed at the police department. they said that they would patrol the grounds more often in light of the worldwide rise in antisemitism. I have not personally seen them once. they let the only area for our community to gather be set on fire.

i am exhausted. i am angry. i am thankful it is not any worse, because it easily could have been, but tonight i am grieving that little library full of vintage Jewish books.

The same Synogogue was also bombed in 1967. This is the best article I could find so far this soon after the fire.

yes, this is my synagogue. Beth Israel Congregation was firebombed by the KKK in 1967 along with the rabbi's house because he was an outspoken supporter of civil rights for Black Americans.

here are some photos of the aftermath of the most recent fire:

I have been asked about fundraising, so I will be providing a link to donations.

Please help us rebuild if you can.

i generally feel Very online but then sometimes I'll hear about a meme from usually specifically tiktok or roblox and feel like im in a tide pool and i just came across a sudden very steep dropoff and there are just all these low and distant roars echoing out of the dark

I think "People are always allowed to critique media, even indie media, for things that are lacking, ill thought out, or straight up bigoted" and "You should have reasonable expectations for indie creators capabilities, and really need to manage what you say to actual human beings" are two thought processes that really need to coexist

I guess a more general version of the point is that in the last 50-ish years, everyday language has borrowed more and more of both the terminology and structural features of technical language. This happens for a lot of reasons. But I think it's mostly not a good thing. For one, being abstract and technical is not actually very useful in the messy real world, where concepts are fuzzy and vague and most things of importance are not quantifiable. For another, if natural language borrows too much of the authority of science and the law, it might find that there's not enough left afterwards for science and the law to do what we need them to do.

Why are you saying 'minor' when you mean 'child'?

Why are you saying 'they're a narcissist' when you mean 'they're being mean to me'?

Why are you saying 'hyperfixation' when you mean 'interest'?

Why are you saying 'gaslighting' when you mean 'lying'?

Why are you saying 'plagiarism' when you mean 'rip-off'?

Why are you saying 'war crime' when you mean 'immoral act'?

Are you so afraid of your own judgement that you need to borrow authority from a more objective domain? Does using a word from a technical language actually make what you're saying more objective? Or is it just a way of hiding behind the ever-diminishing authority of academia? Why are you too afraid to speak in your own voice?

In the vein of the use of hyper-fixation when you mean interest:

Folks really need to stop pathologising preference.

You’re allowed to just not like something because you don’t like it. It doesn’t have to be rooted in trauma or neurodivergence or whatever else. It doesn’t need some longwinded explanation. You don’t owe someone a dissertation on your preference.

Nearly blocked someone for a vaguely annoying reply they made in 2017 then remembered 2017 was 9 years ago. They will live. We can change *opens their blog* nevermind they got worse. Guards

Follower cleanse!

Am Yisrael Chai!

Free Palestine from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Give them democracy.

Woman Life Freedom. Free Iran!

Free Ukraine! Russia is a terrorist state.

Free Kurdistan!

Free Sudan!

Free Tibet!

Romani people are still oppressed.

ICE are murderers, and the US immigration system needs to be dismantled entirely.

Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary people are non-binary.

Intersex people deserve to be respected and given proper medical care. And intersex issues need to be discussed in their own context without connecting them to trans people.

Sex work is real work. We need to protect the people who choose to go into sex work while protecting the victims of trafficking. The only way to protect people who want to leave sex work is to protect people who want to be in sex work.

Vaccines are good and should be mandatory with rare, medical exemptions.

People know themselves best and can define their identities best. Don't tell people how they should call themselves. If someone isn't causing active harm, they're fine. Just let people live and stop worrying about he/him lesbians or whatever. Let people choose their own pronouns.

All human beings are equally valuable. All human beings deserve human rights. Yes, even those people.

Pray for the Iranian people. Elevate their voices, especially now that the Islamic FUCKING Regime has cut off the internet so it can better hide the atrocities that the IRGC is committing against the Iranian civilians.

May the Iranian people soon be FREE of the Islamofascist Regime that has hijacked their country.

Western Leftists should get the fuck outta the way for a free Iran instead of emboldening the despot because they want to 'stick' it to the US and Israel. Iranians don't exist to be your sacrificial lambs. If the Iranian people are revolting and risking their lives to do so, who the hell do you think you are to stand in their way?

Already-existing laws that have been around for decades state the photo or video of a food product must contain the actual food itself. Everything else AROUND the food can be fake, but you must use the real food in the ad. You can alter the food in certain ways to enhance its appearance, but if you’re selling a hamburger, the burger itself must be the actual burger your restaurant sells.

You can use glue instead of milk if you’re selling cereal, but you can’t use glue instead of milk if you’re selling milk. You can’t falsely represent how chunky a soup is by adding extra chunks, but you can put it in a shallow bowl to show off the chunks it normally has. You can spray a burger with glycerin to make it shinier. There’s a lot you can do…as long as the actual food product is in the image.

This means ads of food for sale cannot legally be completely AI generated. I don’t know if this rule applies to other kinds of products, but it’s absolutely a rule for food.

So if you do see ads for food and the product itself in the ad is AI generated, I think you have legal recourse to report it to the FTC and the BBB as false advertisement.

When I look at the Left and how they speak about Israel, the rhetoric they use, how they view Jews, they antisemitism they use, the systemic antisemitism they uphold, what conspiracies they buy into, and how they talk about Jews it becomes very clear to me where it is majority rooted in.

So for a long time in the USA the right as taken a sort anti-academia, anti-intellectualism stance/position while the left has instead taken a very pro-academia pro-intellectualism stance/position.

Much of Leftist rhetoric is wrapped in academia rhetoric, uses academic language etc.

So when we look at the Cold War it would fair to say the USA won and that capitalism won. Capitalism is the predominate economic method and where most of the power is. This is not me saying I agree this is me just saying looking at the word. The USSR doesn't exist anymore.

However, Soviet rhetoric survived and succeeded in academia. It won in that arena. And with that came Soviet style antisemitism and Soviet antisemitic tactics.

And those long planted seeds are bearing their deadly fruit now. Because what we are seeing come from the Left is that Soviet antisemitism. And the majority of them utterly clueless about this.

They have no idea that they perspective on Israel, their viewpoint on Israel, and how they view Jews both in Diaspora and Israel has been shaped by the likes of Lenin and Stalin. They have no understanding of how Marx was antisemite and that Marxism itself is full of antisemitism.

Rather they just parrot these ideas without any thought and do not care about the harm because to them the harm it causes Jews is price worth paying for greater good and it is price that Jews deserve to pay for being Jews and because something something Israel.

They view jews as acceptable casualities to achieve political utopia

They view Jews as REQUISITE casualties to achieve political utopia

They know their views have been shaped by Lenin and Stalin, they just don't care. Many of them are flat out Stalin apologists and treat everything he did and said the way the right does Reagan...as gospel, and Stalin could Do No Wrong despite all evidence pointing out otherwise.

Remember, anything that is against the United States is Good in their eyes. That includes historical figures who were enemies of the US, even if they were objectively bad people.

So they know it, and they embrace it. Don't pretend for a second that they are ignorant of the origins of their beliefs.

Yeah a lot of these people are open and blatant tankies, a lot of them outright support Stalin and Lenin and Mao and all of these shit stains who murdered 61 million people.

They are fine with genocide and murder and rape and pillaging and suffering and annihilation as long as it happens to people they don't like. The hypocrisy and cruelty are intentional.

Never be fooled by the antisemite's obfuscating stupidity. They are VERY aware. They pretend they're just uwu innocent babies who couldn't possibly be advocating for accelerationist jihad, but the far left's love affair with militant Islamism and murderous authoritarianism and heinous Protocols bullshit is well-documented.

These ideologies are built on the backs of dead Jews, and for them that is the point.

It is not just like out and out Tankies though is my point.

It is how this style of antisemitism of antisemitism has worked its way in the mainstream of the left.

For example "The Great Replacement" is something that would have never been heard outside of extremist right wing circles, white supremacist spaces, and neo-nazis enclaves.

And yet it worked its way into mainstream of right.

The Great Replacement is the dog-whistle name, the cover name for something called that this same places call the "White Genocide".

And what happened was to get away with this ideology and to give cover to it particularly when speaking online they would call it The Great Replacement or Replacement Theory.

And like I said this made its way into the Right's mainstream to the point that it is just an acceptable viewpoint and position.

And I seen with the Right and the Left how so much antisemitism from their extremists make their way into each one's mainstream to the point that it is not seen as an talking points and ideology of extremist, but rather just normal.

With all that said there is another factor that is at play when it comes to Left and that is academia. In general when we looks at colleges and universities we see that both students and academics tend to lean more to left, be more liberal, and be more on forefront of various causes.

Which is not a bad thing. The problem is in once you ask where does this sector source its information from when it comes to Jews and Israel that it all falls a part.

(There are other places that we see this fall apart too and this hypocrisy as well, but I'm focusing on antisemitism specifically here)

Because the foundations of much the rhetoric, philosophy, schools of thought, etc. come from the USSR. And when I say the USSR I'm not talking about free exchange of thought from various academic within the USSR, no what I'm speaking of is specific sanctioned antisemitic propaganda by the government and leaders of the USSR.

So what we have is not a case of certain specific antisemitic beliefs working their way from Left extremist and making their way to the Left mainstream.

Rather it antisemitism that is starting in places that are seen as valuable and honorable and mainstream because it academia, it is colleges, and universities and then working its way out from there.

There is a reason that some of the most virulent antisemitism we saw happened on campuses and that some of quickest to rally and protest Israel were college and university students. By Oct 8th there were so many student groups and organizations that had all sorts of protests, marches, rallies, what haves set up and going against Israel.

This antisemitic indoctrination and propaganda has been going on for decades and decades. It has been happening for close to a century if not already that.

When we talk about how colleges did not want Jews in their schools and did everything to keep Jews out people tend to think that many of those schools must have been more ideologically to the Right or something and that over time that has changed.

Nope, a lot of those schools were for their times fairly liberal and they still hated Jews and some were not liberal thinkers and they also hated Jews.

Because the reality is that both the left and right hate Jews.

Just look at FDR, he was know for creating and advancing so many social programs ones that we still use to this day (when the current gov. isn't trying to get rid of them) and he was know to be a virulent antisemite.

He even refused to let the army bomb the train tracks to Auschwitz when permission to do so was requested multiple times.

There is a veneer of civility, morality, rightness, and "oh its not antisemitism" to the antisemitism that comes out of academia because it is coming from academia.

Because it can't be antisemitism this is a place of liberalism or this is place of facts or its not antisemitism we are just discussing theory, or "its not antisemitism rather you Jew are wrong and we are right because we have degrees so we know history better than you and science and culture and etc so when you say that we are getting things about your culture wrong or your history wrong or etc no it is you who are wrong because where are your degrees" and more and worse.

Hope I'm making sense here.

wikipedia is fucking bullshit

there’s a REASON all your teachers said not to use wikipedia as your source. it’s not properly peer reviewed or verified.

if it’s not coming from peer reviewed sources that are independently verified as factual and unbiased it’s useless as a source

if anything, you can check wikipedia’s sources and figure out if those are proper sources before you use anything from wikipedia, and see how often those sources turn out to be shitty

“zionists wanted israel to have as few arabs as possible” — sourced from an article that’s obviously not biased against jews. nooo that’d be absurd! /s

and let’s not forget what that one brat did to the entire wikipedia on scots english

every time wikipedia is brought up i think about the fact that a TEENAGER nearly exterminated an entire language by vandalising articles for years and years and arguing with actual scots speakers

this still comes up in linguistic circles because people used those articles he wrote in fake scots as evidence for what the language is like! im not even sure if the dialect vs language debate would be this widespread if there hadnt been a fake version of scots on such a widespread internet resource.

theres been major vandalism issues for a bunch of indigenous tribes as well but ive not heard of any that is quite this large scale or quite this bonkers (he started doing it as a 12 year old!)

And let's not forget English wikipedia's numerous scandals for Shoah distortion in favor of Polish nationalist ideology, or the years that Croatian Wikipedia was de-facto ruled by a small circle of Nazi editors who ensured that every article would align with their ustaše conception of history and race, or English Wikipedia's favorite tactic re: zionism of selecting a scholar with a minority academic opinion and heavily citing them as though they represent academic consensus on the topic.

Quite telling that so called human rights organisations haven't said anything about whats happening in Iran right now. Even the mainstream media is attempting to spin and downplay what's happening.

People are dying attempting to stand up to the Iranian regime and none of the people that should be speaking out and supporting the people can be bothered to do so. Iranian regime forces are opening fire on crowds of innocent protesters and the world is hush hush about it.

Amnesty International? Silent

UN human rights watch? Also silent

Mainstream media? Silent or attempting to downplay it

The fucking BBC had people saying they couldn't report on anything happening because they couldn't get reporters in and therefore couldn't "verify" any reports. Fuck off with that shit, they spent the last 2 years running every fucking report out of Gaza even when like 80% of em came straight from Hamas terrorists 😑

Fuck the lot of em, stand with the people of Iran. I hope for a free iran very soon.

Hasan Piker is undeniably pushing the ZOG narrative, which is a neo nazi antisemitic conspiracy theory

What happened in Minneapolis was horrible. It is disgusting and vile that ICE agents killed that women.

It is also extremely harmful to be pushing the idea that Israel was involved. What lead to this happening was Donald Trump. Trump has kept pushing anti immigration and racist policies. Trump has emboldened and enabled ICE agents to continuously do more and more violence, culminating in what just happened.

Blaming Israel does a disservice. It shifts the blame away from the ICE agent who shot and killed a women, it shifts the blame away from ICE as a whole and shifts the blame away from Donald Trump.

This is what Hasan is pushing

x

Hasan is spouting neo nazi rhetoric. Of course this isnt anything new, he has been doing this for years.