Vined two thousands (years since BC)

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"Before the new order, the beneficiaries of the program could stay in the U.S. until their parole expires, although the administration had stopped processing their applications for asylum, visas and other requests that might allow them to remain longer."

One thing that has struck me is how much this goes beyond even right wing statements about what immigration ought to look like.

"If you follow the rules that's one thing, but if you try to stay illegally obviously that's a sign of bad faith"

has been replaced by

"If you follow the rules we will abruptly change the rules and deport you anyway."

The fact that everyone thinks it is Russia and that Trump would do nothing says it all.

Her cause of death at the moment is suspected by the family to be her long standing epilepsy issues, and there is no evidence so far of non-natural causes

This is stated in some shape or form in basically any news coverage I can find

Y'all, this is literally just conspiratorial fearmongering and you're falling for it because it happens to be left of centre

Do better

As much as people have tried to make liberal a dirty word, I legit feel like this when I think about my liberal politics

still a pretty great concept tbh

did liberalism defend minority rights when the United States- perhaps the most significant experiment in liberalism in human history,- committed genocide against thr native americans and engaged in the chattel slavery of Africans?

is liberalism defending minority rights right now while the liberal nation of Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians? using rhetoric claiming that they're committing that genocide in the name of defending minority rights, even! ("well gawrsh we gotta genocide the Palestinians, since they're so antisemitic and homophobic!")

obviously the United States was far from a liberal utopia at its founding: women could not vote, men without property could not vote, and it had literal slavery! the philosophy that all persons are born free and equal drew slowly closer to realisation over the centuries as the franchise was extended, slaves were freed, racial discrimination was outlawed, and of course globally there was progress towards the universal declaration of human rights and international conventions on racial equality and the rights of women.

the fight for the liberal dream continues today, with the US finally recognising same sex marriages in 2015 and ruling in 2020 that employers cannot discriminate on the basis of sexuality or gender identity, and while the US faces recent setbacks with the swing against reproductive rights and trans rights, I'm hopeful that we will see these reversed and further progress made in my lifetime.

sadly Israel is far from a liberal nation: much like the early United States treatment of the Native Americans, it is an ethnostate aggressively expanding its territory and purging an unwanted minority through military force; a liberal solution would be to grant full citizenship and democratic voting rights to the Palestinian people and find workable compromises to live peacefully together.

one can quibble over the best tactics to achieve the liberal dream, but the dream itself is one of the best that humanity has yet devised, and the closer we get to it the better the world becomes.

@argumate I was with you until "ethnostate." 25% of Israeli citizens are not Jewish, which by definition means it cannot be an ethnostate. They have the same rights as Jewish citizens (including being able to hold public office), but unlike Jewish citizens are not required to do military service, so they actually have an additional right. (Two, technically. Jews aren't allowed on the Temple Mount.) An actual ethnostate would be Qatar, where you can only hold Qatari citizenship if your grandparents were Qatari and non-Qatari citizens can't own certain kinds of property and have far fewer rights and protections.

Israel was founded on liberal policies--indeed, portions of it are based entirely on socialism!--but has fallen far short due to years of attacks and reactionism. Even so, some liberal policies shine through--for example, it's a queer-friendly country with equal and open democratic elections, and when it comes to protesting it's possible that only France has Israelis beaten for frequency and vehemence.

It's also untrue that they're "expanding their territory"--indeed, Israel ceded Gaza to the Palestinians in 2006 and has made multiple two-state offers, all of which the Palestinians have refused--and that they're "purging an unwanted minority." The deaths in Gaza, now that we have a mathematical breakdown, are:

1) a fucking tragedy (war is hell)

2) consistent with most theatres of urban warfare, with a roughly 2:1 civilian:combatant ratio.

Please note, because people love to say I'm "excusing genocide" when I say this (ignoring that the UN has admitted the actual legal definition of genocide would have to be changed for that to be true), I'm not saying these deaths are okay. War is hell, war is stupid, war makes a lot of innocent people suffer. What I am saying is that if you're going to scream "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" over Israel's actions, but not say the same about other wars, then you're holding Israel to an unfair double standard. I'm saying the numbers can be horrible and also still disprove the claim.

If you're going to speak on Israel as an influential blog, please have the facts.

I am not going to scream anything, I am simply going to observe that Israel is very much continuing a slow trend of what looks very much like genocide against the Palestinian people, and that's not holding Israel to a different standard to other nations, it's holding Israel to the same standard as other nations: the Israeli destruction of Gaza seems consistent with the Russian destruction of cities like Mariupol in Ukraine or Grozny back in Chechnya.

I don't think there is any workable two state solution, and Israel will not stop its campaign against the Palestinians as long as the rest of the world sits by.

General "you," sorry. English really needs to bring back thee/thou/thy and I'll die on that hill.

The problem here is that you're saying it "looks like slow genocide," but it...really doesn't. The numbers say the exact opposite and it doesn't meet the legal definition (which is what "genocide" actually is, it is very specifically a term created to define a legal standard, like "manslaughter" or "grand theft auto"). It's a war, it's shitty, there are war crimes, but it's not genocide.

You can say it's awful and unfair and needs to be rectified without employing incorrect and loaded language.

I'd also note that Russia IS meeting the legal definition of genocide, but unfortunately I just got back from my lunch break--no time to elaborate at the moment. And yet, nobody screams "stop the genocide in Ukraine." It's only aimed at Israel, for some reason.

I feel like this is focusing on specific details to the detriment of keeping the larger picture in mind; missing the forest for the trees, if you will

And the larger picture is that Israel has consitently practiced something between a persistent failure to malicious negligence in their target selection, care for collateral damage, and following proportionality of military effects with civillian casualties. See, for example, the recent story of them shooting up an ambulance convoy, or the numerous earlier war examples of them attacking hospitals, or just plain levelling entire cities with bombing. Or consider that one time when some of their own hostages managed to escape and then got shot by IDF anyways - that's not a kind of story you'd expect to see from a force with tight rules of engagement.

Add to that the consistent settlement programs, or stuff like Israel blockading Gaza ever since 2007. Or the fact that, while Israel claims it has ceded Gaza in 2005, and US happens to agree, "the United Nations, international human rights organizations, International Court of Justice, European Union, International Criminal Court, most of the international community and most legal academics and experts regard the Gaza Strip to still be under military occupation by Israel, as Israel still maintains direct control over Gaza's air and maritime space, six of Gaza's seven land crossings, a no-go buffer zone within the territory, and the Palestinian population registry" (Wikipedia, empathis mine)

So, back to the larger picture, if you take that second half, and you put the conduct of the IDF in the context of that, the result appears, prima facie, as probably war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity and/or ethnic cleansing, and maybe even a genocide. But, while legally those are all distinct, and personally I wouldn't be confident arguing for genocide in a court of law, in common parlance, and for purposes of meaningfully refuting criticisms, the difference between those is extremely minor. "They aren't doing a genocide, merely war crimes" makes sense to say in a court case, but is kind of missing the point in normal conversation

Regarding Ukraine, and I say this as Ukrainian, while the stuff Russians do prima facie meets the legal definition, and I am extremely concerned for what would happen if they ever got control of large portions of Ukraine, at the present moment there's a cruical difference that they don't have that control. They are doing horrible things to individual villages and cities, but I don't expect people to start screaming about a genocide yet or even argue for it to be one myself, because it's missing the scale commonly associated with genocide, if only because of successful Ukrainian resistance There's also the obvious fact that in Ukraine, the side that is alleged to be resisting the genocide is recieving western/US military aid, whereas in Israel, the side that is alleged to be doing the genocide is recieving military aid. If somebody thinks that both are equally genocidal and equally terrible, it makes sense to scream about the latter much louder.

Bow is the character in She-Ra who is notionally the best at relationships, or at least the one who puts the most conscious effort into relationship maintenance, but his approach has pathologies of its own: trying to be best friends with everyone you meet has obvious limits as some people simply won’t like you no matter how likeable you are and sadly you may not like them either, trying to paper over this fundamental issue will simply lead to awkward fake friendships and devalue the relationships with people you are actually close with.

it’s okay not to like some people, Bow! and for people not to like you! the world won’t end! it doesn’t make you or them a bad person! you can be politely distant instead of BFFs for life and it’s not a crime.

He also seems to prefer nonconfrontational denial to confronting any potentially unpleasant issues. See how he lied to his dads about being a history student for literally years

yeah, hiding your entire life from your family and hiding your family from your life doesn’t seem like a sustainable strategy for someone who prizes open and honest communication, the very fact that he feels compelled to act like that indicates some deep unresolved issues that he’s unwilling to think about.

90% of discourse on the conflict in Israel is boring because it's just people accusing each other of being stupid and evil for supporting the wrong side, plus 9% wishful thinking that the next deal will somehow end the problem forever.

i think what i find so exhausting about it is the huge gap between what the Israeli government has said about it and then the arguments we have on the english-speaking internet - Israeli cabinet officials have openly called for the ethnic cleansing and resettlement of Gaza and you can still have arguments online about whether this is actually a defensive war attempting to free hostages.

I think it is a solid prediction that when the hostage crisis is over, the effort to expel Palestinians will continue.

if I ever talk about opening animatic commissions I need you to take me out back and put me down like a dog

I don't think we'll need to do that you already won't survive the first one

mercy kill me

anecdote i think about often is my mom telling me how back at the family farm way back when, there was a pair of polish guys helping out over the winter (probably through the wwoof program or something similar, it's how my mom came to norway, too). they took a liking to a norwegian equivalent of nutella (either nugatti or hapå, can't remember which) and started eating absolutely bonkers quantities of it. they had to buy more and larger containers of it to keep up with their ravenous hunger for chocolatey spread. when it was their time to leave, they each got their big bucket of it to take home with them.

they stayed in touch, and much later the polish guys admitted to not understanding how they could eat so much nugatti. they had barely made a dent in their souvenir buckets for all the time that had passed. as it turns out, when you're toiling outside in the arctic winter, the body Craves the sugar to keep up with the phsyical demand. it makes sense right!!! turns out bodies crave things for a reason and it's not a personal failing!!!

Not "humans are inherently good" or "humans are inherently evil" but a secret third thing (humans are inherently social animals which means that we're very good at cooperating and being compassionate towards those we perceive as being part of our community but we're also very good at being tribal and violent towards those we perceive as threats to our community and everyone defines their community differently)

"So what, you think humans are inherently bigots? You think it's natural to be racist?" Look man, I wish I had an answer for you. I really do. But unfortunately all my funding requests for an experiment to put a thousand babies of varying ethnicities on a big island to be raised by silent robots in complete isolation from any existing societies to see what happens when they grow up and form their own society keeps getting rejected because it's "implausible" and "horrifically evil" and "my god, first the linguists and now you, what is WRONG with you people" or whatever

eyelid twitching is NOT just a convenient visual shorthand for a character on the verge of cracking into madness I insist, my eyelid twitching fitfully

I guess the other possibility is that Trump "cuts a deal" with China where they agree to buy a billion dollars worth of American soybeans or something, claims victory and reduces the tariffs, restoring the status quo and resuming the trade deficit but now it's an epic maga win or whatever.

Me when I smush my face into the wall

Listen, if you want to understand how emanations work, it's like this:

If you're an infinite thing like God, and you want to become a finite thing like the world, how do you go from infinite to finite? Answer: emanation.

You know when youre at a wedding, and there's a big pyramid of wine glasses? And they fill the wine glasses by pouring champagne into the top, so it overflows and then fills all the glasses beneath it? Imagine the wine bottle is infinite. That's God.

Each of the glasses is called a hypostasis. God can emanate through many hypostases to reach it's final emanation.

As for how many hypostases there are, and how they're arranged, that's the tricky one. Every religion has a different answer, and it's never simple.

I GET NO RESPECT ON THIS DAMN WEB SITE

over a century of economic and foreign policy to make the US dollar the worlds reserve currency falling apart right now lmao

I think the US dollar can still be the world's reserve currency in a technical sense without the US running persistent trade deficits? for example, imagine China runs a trade surplus for three years, accumulating several trillion US dollars in currency reserves, then winds down its trade surplus and runs balanced trade; isn't holding US dollar reserves merely a constant offset if you will, that doesn't require a persistent imbalance, just a one off imbalance?

it seems less about "the dollar being the reserve currency" and more like "the US economy must absorb a constant and massive influx of foreign investment", which is a slightly broader thing.

But the problem here isn't US no longer running a trade surplus, it's the perception of ironclad reliability

For example, for decades, US treasury bonds were the safest investment you could possibly make. It was probably safer than just putting your money in a bank and getting interest. They were the baseline of the economic world and their yields were as predictable as the sun rising in the morning. Which drives a lot of demand for the dollar, and makes it embeded in the world financial market as more than just any other asset

And now we're getting stories about the bonds being actively sold off, and the yields shooting up in one day! Now, of course, "shooting up" here means going off by, like, a bit over a tenth of 1%, but the fact that counts as significant movement is kind of the point. They're not supposed to move by 0.1%

This is just one mechanism making dollar into the "world reserve", but I think it's very illustarive of what's going on broadly

over a century of economic and foreign policy to make the US dollar the worlds reserve currency falling apart right now lmao

funnyjunk is ok sometimes

Shocking revelations

BONUS:

this got so many notes but no one's reblogging it with my very important addition