darthbob88

[darthbob88]

It's the same sort of thing as "It's only gallows humor if you're actually on the gallows, otherwise it's simple cruelty".

I’m an American, and thus do not live in a country that is currently at war, so take my opinions with a grain of salt — but is it just me who finds jokes from Americans (and others in the Anglosphere) about preparing for WW3 to be so insensitive? Because while they’re joking about the onset WW3, there are so many people who are already, currently, at this very moment already at war?

[darthbob88]

the whole "lipstick on a pig" thing makes no sense because the second we gave a pig access to makeup she became god's cuntiest soldier

[darthbob88]

I mean, we also don't see people claiming that 90% of Chinese people support Chinese communism, so hating China means hating Chinese people outside of China.

This sort of thing is another way that Zionism hurts diasporic Jews.

Funny how Stuff (an NZ news site) will release a full on documentary about how the CCP has agents in other countries to harass Chinese folk to make sure they're still loyal to the CCP, and people don't en masse start to assume every Chinese person they met is either a CCP agent or supports the CCP.

But Israel just goes to war, and now everyone assumes all jews support the Israeli government. And that jews are more loyal to Israel, even if we have never been, than we are to our home countries.

[darthbob88]

saw this cute post and now I'm not going on reddit for the rest of the day. quit while you're ahead

[darthbob88]

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: march 18th 2025

[darthbob88]

Properly, I think it's Ih-rahn and Is-rah-el, though I think you can slur it to Is-rah-yel.

(I will continue pronouncing it Eye-ran purely for the joke about a geography lesson from Flock of Seagulls)

if you pronounce iran and israel like "eye-ran" and "is-ree-al" i should not have to listen to any of your opinions concerning either country

[darthbob88]

It's a fundamental part of who he is and why he takes certain stances and chooses to do certain things. His Jewishness cannot be removed without a complete re-write of his entire identitiy & ethos

I disagree with this. His identity and ethos, IMO, is "Holocaust survivor" and "Never again, to my people". Neither of those rests on Jewishness, and his story would work just as well if he was a Roma, queer person, or Slav who'd been sent to the camps. Looking over the Wikipedia article on Victims of the Holocaust, he could even have been a Jehovah's Witness, which is an amusing prospect.

I'll agree that he should not be retconned; if we're willing to have Steve Rogers, relic of WWII, around and fighting evil, we can have Magneto, Jewish relic of WWII.

You guys need to stop trying to re-imagine Magneto as anything other than a Jewish Holocaust survivor. His age is not nearly as much as an issue as y’all make it out to be. It’s fiction, he’s been de-aged numerous times, and there are still survivors alive today—and with the amount of antisemitism and Holocaust denial right now it’s just obscene.

If you want to make a new morally gray villain/anti hero who’s anger stems from their oppression do that. But don’t take away Magneto’s Judaism.

[darthbob88]

I think Israel should be dissolved because I'm convinced the only (acceptable) solution to the Zionist trilemma is for the country to be democratic and binational. That means giving up its specifically Jewish identity, which means dissolving the state of "Israel" to replace it with, IDK, "Levantine Republic" or something that doesn't obviously privilege one group of its residents in its name.

As someone who was living in Europe and the US during the apartheid era, I'm honestly trying to remember, and failing to remember, a single time I heard any activists in Europe or the United States call for completely dismantling South Africa as a country because it was committing crimes against humanity.

South Africa became a nation in 1910. When it started apartheid in 1948, it was about 38 years old. By the time apartheid was dissolved, around 1991, it was ~71 years old. Under international law, apartheid is a crime against humanity, and the South African government committed other crimes against humanity, as well.

The international campaign against apartheid focused on delegitimizing South Africa's white supremacist government and supporting the development of democracy in South Africa. It did not call for South Africa's dissolution or destruction.

Why am I thinking about this?

I keep seeing US and European leftists accuse Israel of crimes against humanity and then argue that Israel must therefore be dissolved. Besides, many of these people say, modern Israel has only been independent for 77 years, so it's not really valid as a country because it hasn't been around that long.

Even though South Africa had been around for much less time during the entire anti-apartheid movement, there was not a significant contingent of Europeans and Americans arguing that the international community should just dissolve South Africa because it hadn't been around that long.

Do I think these arguments for dissolving Israel are made in good faith? No, maybe, and yes. I don't think the people who originally came up with these arguments did so in good faith. I think those people don't like the idea of a country with a largely Jewish population, because they don't like the idea of Jews. I think those people would want Israel to disappear no matter what it did.

But I think a lot of the people who repeat these ideas somehow think they're valid, legitimate arguments rooted in logic and not prejudice.

So for anyone who considers themselves pro-Palestinian and thinks that necessitates the dissolution of Israel, I'd ask you to think about why you consider that to even be an option. It's a highly unusual demand for the international community to make. What makes Israel different from any other country whose government may have done unethical things?

[darthbob88]

How do you mean "free from the grip of global finance"? Please speak directly into the metaphorical microphone.

Israel must be stopped, only then can humanity be free from the grip of global finance, only then the People can know peace.

There is no peace, without justice for everyone and no pride in Genocide, we serve no kings including pale Israeli subverters.

[darthbob88]

Or the luxury that Gazans enjoy.

(Because I've spoken to you before, let me be clear, that is sarcasm.)

I’ve had with random people here explaining Iran to me, as I’m literally sitting in the bomb shelter !!! I know better than you!!!!

Yes please do tell me how Iran is great and how supporting them isn’t antisemitic!!

[darthbob88]

"I am currently being attacked by this country, so I know it better than you" is an unwise argument for an Israeli to make.

I’ve had with random people here explaining Iran to me, as I’m literally sitting in the bomb shelter !!! I know better than you!!!!

Yes please do tell me how Iran is great and how supporting them isn’t antisemitic!!

[darthbob88]

I think there's also a filter on jurisdictions; people who care about animals go to their local animal control, people who want to save lives become firefighters or work in the FDA, and people who think there are too many brown folk in the country work for ICE.

Feds playing dress-up in their little Desert Storm soldier-boy costumes always look so fuckin stupid

[darthbob88]

It might be about apportionment; (illegal) immigrants can't vote, but they get counted in the census that gets used to determine how many seats each state gets, so a lot of immigrants in California means a lot of House seats.

Everything after that falls down, though. A dozen House seats means approximately 9 million people. OP is suggesting that 1/4 the population of California are illegal immigrants, and that half of the high estimate for illegal immigrants in the US live in California. This is obvious nonsense.

[darthbob88]

I appreciate the description text for Cover Identity: Nuance. The other qualities of a cover identity get fairly reasonable descriptions, saying that you've developed your cover's childhood education, friends and neighbors, supporting documentation, and past influence up to "No history of the Neath would be complete without accounting for the (imagined) influence of your cover identity." Nuance, though? Your cover identity "has a favourite cheese and a preferred cut of boot", "carries a medal depicting the patron saint you have chosen for them", or "has unsound views on theology, but you know exactly how they arrived at these errors". It's wild and I love it.

[darthbob88]

That might be a risky trade instead of min-max. "You can either stop running short of the cliff, or you can keep running. If you keep running, you'll need to make a dex check; if you pass, you can keep running all the way across the valley, but if you fail, you fall to the valley floor."

a 40s cartoon-styled campaign where everything works on cartoon logic. you run off a cliff, make a dex save. if you roll high enough, you can leisurely walk back like nothing happened. got hit, make a strength save. if you roll high enough, you can push the attack back like nothing happened. but don't get too comfortable, as the same applies to the rest of the world. also, for flavor, the entire world is in monochrome and technology isn't as modern.

someone please tell me if this exists, like an even further throwback version of straight to vhs - paper

[darthbob88]

Ooh, yeah, they're deranged. They've also argued that Zionism is a vile perversion of Judaism, because Judaism is always progressive and good <3.

I've reported some of their posts for hate speech, but nothing seems to have happened.

this person is actually fucking insane. where do i even start holy shit

and the fact they used the antisemitism tag, like they're fully owning up to it too

[darthbob88]

Because I've been using this handle for over two decades and almost everywhere on the internet, ever since I got it when GMail was still invite-only. It is my name to nearly the same extent as my wallet name.

If you haven’t changed your url in years tell me why as someone in your same boat it’s for science