astheshadowslovethecastle - Tumblr blog

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I feel like someone is standing next to me talking about how I'm dead

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jiang cheng having a normal one on twitter (x)

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i really think one of the reasons the democrats don't really want to work on a ceasefire (and one of the reasons the israeli public is by a majority opposed to one) is that once the war ends, the extent of the damage becomes clear. you know the quote about how liberals are opposed to every war except the current one? once the war in gaza is hindsight, it will be impossible to deny the genocide. the war prevents international observers, it prevents foreign journalists, it prevents counting bodies under the rubble, it prevents saving lives and rebuilding hospitals, all under a security pretext. the 40,000 number will likely triple. the annexation of the west bank will be more noticeable. the obituaries will finally be written, the mass graves finally marked.

above all, the war prevents mourning. it prevents the world—the leadership of the world in particular—from humanizing palestinians. they are only humans when they are victims, and the war allows israel to maintain the illusion that this is a war with two sides, that these soldiers are fighting a symmetrical war with an opposing army, rather than a war of extermination against an entire people. you end the war, you end the illusion.

the idea that continuing the war will allow hamas to recoup or launch another attack is a joke—hamas don't need to. the damage israel will take once this is assessed in sober hindsight will be astounding. not just for the international community, but for israelis themselves. all those idf soldiers sniping babies in the head will have to go home and think about what they've done. and they'll talk about what they've done. they've filmed it, they've recorded it, but it will look very different when the war ends. this is also why israel continues to escalate. they are the only ones who benefit from a regional war. lebanon and iran know this well. so does the united states. politically and tactically, israel will not be the same once the war is over. this has always been true, and it has always been why it needed the occupation in the first place—it is a country that requires perpetual war to maintain itself. how can israelis live if they do not feel threatened? what is israel if it is not surrounded by enemies, but by victims and allies?

as the US knows, israel only switches from "high intensity war" to "low intensity war" with palestinians, but it has never actually chosen peace nor has it ever seriously engaged in a peace process. this choice has never been more obvious than it is today, but it will only become more obvious once the war ends.

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a lot of people have been hurt in the terror attacks in lebanon, i know this is a time where requests for donations are high and a lot of people are struggling financially. however, if you have something to spare please consider donating to the lebanese red cross, many people who have been injured or died in these attacks have been innocent civilians and hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients.

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FAVORITE CLASSIC FILM PERFORMANCES

ROSALIND RUSSELL as Hildegarde "Hildy" Johnson in HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) dir. Howard Hawks

Next time you see me, I shall be riding in a Rolls Royce giving interviews on success. So long, you wage slaves. When you're crawling up fire escapes and getting kicked out of front doors and eating Christmas dinners in one-arm joints— don't forget your pal, Hildy Johnson!

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how does electing trump lower the gun pointed at palestine?

how does electing kamala? how did electing biden?

you know what. let me answer this in good faith.

this ask is in response to my previous post, where i stated:

"keep your eyes open about what you are voting for, so that your vote does not become another vote in service of genocide, and you are part of a structure of accountability for your government. yes, you are voting in self-preservation. but no, you are not being asked to protect anyone to your own detriment. let me put it more simply: as a nation, you aren't being asked to jump in front of a bullet to save palestine from genocide. you're being asked to lower the gun."

as a matter of fact, the US is a partner in the genocide. through weapons funding, through diplomatic immunity, through the media apparatus and through boots-on-the-ground soldiers. this was only further reinforced by netanyahu's address in congress today, which affirmed (needlessly, as we already knew) that israel and the US are "standing with civilization against barbarism" and other genocidal dogwhistles. but he said that for a reason: he's letting american politicians know they are just as culpable for this genocide. it is their genocide too. under international law, biden is liable for delivering weapons to a nation plausibly accused of genocide, not to mention under american law as well for delivering weapons to a nation preventing humanitarian aid.

this is bipartisan policy. both democrats and republicans support the US war machine. US foreign policy has been uniformly bloodthirsty for the past few decades, with some variation that ultimately led to nothing. democrats might kick up more fuss about human rights, but they will ultimately wage the same wars with the same disregard for international law, and have shifted right on israel in ways that even george bush did not entertain.

because this is so deeply entrenched in US politics for myriad historical, political and financial reasons, there is currently no electoral solution for palestinians within US politics, and more urgently there is no electoral solution for the genocide in gaza within US electoral politics. long-term, there might be. the increase of democrats boycotting netanyahu's speech, the election of democrats like rashida tlaib, and the pressure from constituents are indications of an enormous shift in US policy towards israel. but this is very slow change, and people in gaza are dying very quickly.

prior to 2020, there was a certain belief that democrats had some red lines that republicans don't wrt gaza. however, bidens management of the past nine months have completely disabused everyone of that notion. even someone like rashid khalidi, who believes firmly in the power of persuading americans in the imperial core, has been caught off-guard by biden's management of the war, stating that he will not vote for him.

as you might have realized over the past few years, the way the current system is set up leaves very little avenue for constituents to affect policy in the US right now, especially since democrats are extremely adept at pacifying the masses with nominal acts (notably on items like policing and environmentalism in particular) in service of their donors. mass protests are actually an indication that the political system has failed at providing an avenue for political participation except taking to the streets. it is normally a last resort. for some issues it is a first resort, because there are few other options unless you've got lobbying money. now multiply that x100 for foreign policy, where popular opinion has little sway and there are few democratic pathways for the average american to engage with, especially since it is not considered a priority as american deaths in wars have become negligible.

what does this mean? it means it is very, very difficult to pressure politicians on palestine, even though they are wholly involved in palestine and using your tax dollars to do it. in regular times, it is participation in apartheid and occupation, which is bad enough. but right now, it is participation in one of the worst crimes mankind can commit: genocide. the US is not just dropping bombs, it is also a partner in a starvation policy that is deeply sickening. it is medieval to deprive 2 million people, 50% of them children, trapped in a blockaded area of food and water, but this is a strategy the US has not only endorsed, but also assisted israel in carrying out.

because biden has been so batshit insane, there is functionally no way trump can be worse. biden (and blinken) spoke of red lines, but have gradually walked every single one of them back, because this is what democrats do: they pacify you until you no longer notice the boiling water. there is no more money trump can send, and there are no more weapons trump can send, that would make a difference to what israel is doing. they have enough money and weapons and diplomatic immunity to nuke gaza if they want to. they are not being held back by biden, they are being held back by their own limitations, their own internal disagreements, partially by saudi arabia, partially by egypt, by the palestinian resistance factions, and more significantly by hezbollah, yemen and iran. when people say "trump can do more genocide" they're not wrong that things can get worse, but they are wrong that they need trump to get worse. they can also get worse under the next democrat, just as they got worse under biden, because there is no mechanism in place to stop it.

now unlike biden who was ideologically and fanatically zionist, trump is an unpredictable opportunist. he might have done worse, and he might not have. he is actually far more likely to be influenced in any which way—but not by people, by other countries such as saudi arabia, egypt or russia. it doesn't really matter because again: the genocide didn't happen under trump. it happened under biden. it is an atrocity that the full scope of which has not been truly uncovered, and it is still really, horrifically bad—not just because we've seen kids being ripped apart daily for nine months, but because we've also seen the democratic establishment categorically prevent every international mechanism (including the highest court in the world) from stopping it. so even if trump wants to do More Genocide, the biden admin has conveniently removed all diplomatic obstructions that would stop him from doing so, and set a precedent for ignoring both the ICJ and the ICC, which was already in place since bush and further cemented since by obama and then trump and biden. it has simply been a two decades of Things Getting Worse in the middle east, and electoral politics of voting for the lesser evil have played no small part in that, and intentionally so, but there's no need to confront that right now i guess!

so where does kamala come in? well, as i said, there are few avenues for voters to influence foreign policy. the only window that exists is when a politician requires your votes. democrats are notorious for lack of follow through. they campaign, they lie, they hope you forget. if kamala is elected, she may be better on palestine. but nothing in her track record suggests that, and there would be absolutely no leverage to force her to be. but as long as she needs to be elected, there is still critical time for pressure, and it is also critical because people are dying right now.

this is also the answer to those of you stating joe biden is still president and its unfair to talk about kamala: joe biden is barely sentient, and when he is he's a geriatric genocidal racist who couldn't be moved on gaza even when he did want to be re-elected. but now he no longer needs to be elected, and has even less incentive to answer to his base (but will hopefully someday answer to the hague).

so again, when you tell me about "electing" trump or "electing" kamala—none of this is what affects palestinians right now. we have no evidence either way of what they might do. we don't even have a promise from kamala to be better right now, aside from generic vp statements on humanitarianism. she boycotted netanyahu's speech, but neither she nor pelosi have mentioned palestinians, who are still undergoing a genocide they are knowing participants in, nor have they acknowledged that israel is formally an apartheid state and netanyahu is a war criminal (bc of course, then they'd have to admit so is biden). everyone is hoping that she is better, and that she can be pressured, but as of right now that remains to be seen.

your concern is the election, my concern is the present. kamala, as a partial incumbent, will be affected if she can't change anything within the next four months. she doesn't have joe biden's record on israel yet. but as netanyahu's speech showed, the genocide was not joe biden's alone. it is a bipartisan genocide from the US political establishment that joe biden presided over and allowed to escalate unencumbered. kamala was part of this, and doesn't have anything to the contrary—yet. all we have to force her to lower the gun is the knowledge that she wants to be elected. trump's base does not want him to lower the gun, but presumably you (kamala's base) do.

so to answer your question: the upcoming presidential election is not the solution for palestine right now, but it is one of the tools that can be used to stop a genocide that both parties are responsible for. electing kamala may be beneficial in the long run—or it may not. but pressuring kamala is now, and it is urgent.

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Didn't you retweet incest porn on 9/11?

we all mourn in different ways

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Thousands of Tennesseans were illegally denied Medicaid and other benefits due to programming and data errors in an algorithmic system the state uses to determine eligibility for low-income residents and people with disabilities, a U.S. District Court judge ruled this week.

The TennCare Connect system—built by Deloitte and other contractors for more than $400 million—is supposed to analyze income and health information to automatically determine eligibility for benefits program applicants. But in practice, the system often doesn’t load the appropriate data, assigns beneficiaries to the wrong households, and makes incorrect eligibility determinations, according to the decision from Middle District of Tennessee Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr.

“When an enrollee is entitled to state-administered Medicaid, it should not require luck, perseverance, and zealous lawyering for him or her to receive that healthcare coverage,” Crenshaw wrote in his opinion.

The decision was a result of a class action lawsuit filed in 2020 on behalf of 35 adults and children who were denied benefits.

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The funniest thing about this situation is that Elon Musk is so pissed off at not getting to do something illegal and get away with it by being a billionaire for once in his life that he has been -and I’m 100% serious here- making photo edits of our Supreme Court minister dressed as fucking Voldemort. Literal little kid taping a picture of someone they don’t like to a dartboard kind of behavior.

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DO YOU LOVE THE COLOR OF THE SKY?

《苍兰诀》 Love Between Fairy and Devil (2022)

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The Olympics but high fashion by Wisdom Kaye

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A boy can dream, can't he?

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By the way! BBC Merlin, in its ongoing quest to achieve ren faire levels of historical accuracy, used Actual Old English as the magic spell language. They got a professor to do a lot of the translations, though they didn't spend much effort on the pronunciation.

There are two ways that this is very funny if you watch the show while knowing OE. One is that usually when they do the "wave your hands to smash your enemies around" type spells they're literally saying very simple stuff like "jump back" and "fall." The other is that whenever they have a long incantation to read, they say vaguely related stuff for a sentence or so and then just transition into reciting Beowulf.

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Galavant 1x04 + raisins

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Who is Elizabeth bik?

She's a microbiologist who has a supernatural level of perception that she's been using to catch fraud in scientific papers.

Specifically, scientists will try to get away with duplicating parts of images they publish in order to make something look more meaningful, or to prove something that they actually didn't prove. They'll copy and paste western blot bands, cells, etc, and she can catch these tiny almost imperceptible jpeg artifacts and see repeats or cuts in extremely nondescript imagery, and know that it's been manipulated.

Bik combs through hundreds of papers in a day and doesn't get directly paid for this work other than through her patreon. She gets death threats from shady scientists who don't want their misuse of data and financial fraud to come to light.

The extent of what she has uncovered has been massive. It includes potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds that have been granted to scientists who have falsified data. She was also behind the unmasking of the Alzheimer's research scandal 2 years ago. She is legitimately changing the entire landscape of scientific research, and bad scientists are scared.

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As a new weaver i find that warp speed is in fact not very fast