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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • A few weeks ago, a mom was at the hardware store with her young son – he was about five years old.
    For some reason, we crossed paths a few times, And each time she was talking with her son about the things they were buying in the projects that they were buying them for. But what Caught my attention first was he asked her ‘What if we can’t do it?’ and she responded with ‘Well then we learned how because we can figure it out.’
    This woman was endlessly, encouraging towards her son, and it was clear that she was setting him up to have an attitude of feeling like he was capable of tackling things in life. Which is something that I didn’t get us a kid - I was often told that I couldn’t do things or the things were beyond my capability and that if my mom didn’t know how to do something that it was basically impossible for me to figure out how to do it as well.

    I was so impressed by their interaction, that when I saw her later while I was checking out, I actually said something to her and after she figured out I wasn’t trying to pick her up, she took a moment and like… just looked satisfied. I was happy with the interaction.

    Beyond the fact that I mostly grew up without a father and my mother was very self focused to the point that it was pretty detrimental to me, I also grew up with undiagnosed ADHD that I only learned about in my early 40s. I am constantly discovering ways that I feel broken in the world, so you are not alone.


  • An ex from a meaningful, but fraught relationship tried to seduce me a few months after we had broken up. In the interim, I had started dating someone new, and I rejected the advances.

    My ex was angry and lashing out. She said a few random insults about my new partner (implying she had manipulated me with sex), before finally saying “well, I hope she enjoys your magical penis!” (It’s not magical. The tiny wizard hat is purely for decoration.)



  • Dies The Fire by S.M. Stirling.

    I didn’t hate the plot of the book, but something about the writers treatment of the character interactions, physical descriptions, and sex scenes creeped me out. I just… I don’t know. It was gross. I got the feeling that the writer was fulfilling their own fantasies through the novel. I told this to someone about 10 years ago, and they also felt that way, so I feel slightly vindicated and not like a weirdo who reads too much into things.


  • Mind you, the complaint from Israel is not that Adidas is engaging in the revival effort/advertising campaign. Their specific complaint was that Adidas picked Bella Hadid as the face of it.

    Bella Hadid, who has not publicly said anything negative about Israel. Whose only “offenses” are that she’s half Palestinian, and that she’s shared messages on social media that condemn all murder, (which explicitly includes condemning the murder of Israelis in that statement).
    Sure, she supports the right to a homeland by Palestinians, but that’s not explicitly a dig at Israel. It seems like she’s taken great pains to not condemn an eminently condemnable country that has personally wronged her family, and now, her personally.

    It seems like Israel is throwing their weight around to harm her career and erase the achievements of yet another Palestinian. Much harm to her, for no harm mitigation to themselves.






  • Why are Jews settling Palestinian land in the first place?

    Maybe, after forcing them from their major cities, laying claim to the most fertile land in their country, and then refusing their right to assert their own statehood (and using a superpower to back them up in that), then spending 70 years depriving them of ever-increasing amounts of their country, and blockading imports (why blockade spices for traditional foods?!?), that the presence of anything taking more of their land in the open air prison they’ve been forced into to offer a ‘peace settlement’ is not welcome.

    What are you on? Is there no ability for inductive reasoning there, or are you hoping that for all your words, there’s no logic, facts, or grounding in reality?


  • Oooh. I attracted a 1-day old account that conveniently doesn’t know about U.S. statecraft toward the Middle East for the last 70 years, doesn’t know about the long history of arms transfers to Israel, doesn’t know about the Balfour Declaration, the Jewish terrorism against Britain and Palestine until Britain left the area, or the genocides that happened as soon as Britain stopped offering protection to the Palestinians. You conveniently seem to fail to understand geopolitics in any meaningful contexts.
    And then you “Source?” my (very well informed) opinions.

    lol. No. Don’t waste my time.




  • Yeah - it’s about regional control, and defensive positions.

    This comment is sort of a continuation of this one, but not exactly. (Sorry about the link to my instance, I’m new and don’t know how to do the thing.)

    The U.S. has long needed a bully in the area to prevent the Middle East from being too unified, so the west can get relatively inexpensive access to its oil.

    The state of play right now is that the U.S. actually produces enough petroleum for its own needs, but our western allies do not, and supplying them with enough oil will raise the cost to an unacceptable level/a level where they’ll have to channel money to the Middle East (which hates the U.S. for its meddling, or to Russia, which also hates the U.S.)

    In about 10-15 years, technology and renewables will advance to a point where oil demand is going to have decreased to the point where the U.S. can supply all of its needs and those of its western allies without jacking the price up.

    That means the U.S. won’t need a bully. But it will mean that the U.S. will cut funding to Israel, and more or less stop coming to their defense. Israel’s plan is to push out every non-Jew, using Zionism as an excuse for awful statecraft, and they’re going to push their borders to easily defensible geographic areas.
    Once they do that, they’re going to basically become North Korea of the Middle East - armed to the teeth and hard to get into. Because if they don’t, everyone they’ve been bullying for the past hundred years (yes, this started before the declaration of statehood), is going to wipe them from the map - potentially leading to them launching the nukes they keep pretending they don’t have, so they don’t have to undergo international monitoring.

    Assuming, of course, the plot by other countries to destabilize the U.S. fails and U.S. is still major player by the time Israel’s plan is accomplished. If the destabilization effort succeeds, we may see a full scale war against Israel before their aims are achieved.

    That’s my take on it, anyway. They won’t stop because they don’t think they can stop, due to how horrible they’ve been. (At the behest of the U.S., who will begin dropping them once their usefulness has ended.)