tanyao

[tanyao]

[tanyao]

Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic primary. He will be the next mayor of New York City.

[tanyao]

[tanyao]

[tanyao]

if you're in Europe PLEASE consider signing the Stop Destroying Games initiative. the deadline is July 31st 2025. i've posted about it before; it aims to create legislation for publishers to stop killing the games you pay for and to provide an end-of-life plan for live-service products. thank you!!!

[tanyao]

Problemista (2023) dir. Julio Torres

[tanyao]

Fight the power

[tanyao]

[tanyao]

According to estimates by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, published recently in the New York Times, Israel has “at least 90 [nuclear] warheads and enough fissile material to produce up to hundreds more.” President Jimmy Carter, who was in a position to know, said in 2014 that he believed the number is closer to “300 or more, nobody knows exactly how many.” In either case, this is more nukes than another country we’re routinely told to be terrified of: North Korea, which the Center estimates possesses “20 to 30  possibly assembled warheads.” These Israeli warheads can be delivered in a variety of ways, including by U.S.-made fighter jets, by German-made “Dolphin” submarines, and by a variety of missiles—including the Jericho 3, an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that came online in 2011. Describing the early tests of this missile, Isaac Ben-Israel—who was both a scientist, a retired IDF general, and a member of the Knesset at the time—said in 2008 that “everybody can do the math and understand… that we can reach with a rocket engine to every point in the world.” If that’s not a thinly veiled threat, nothing is.  Of course, we don’t know exactly how many nuclear warheads Israel has, because Israeli leaders refuse to publicly admit they have any. The whole military program is kept in near-total secrecy, under a policy called “strategic ambiguity,” meaning the existence of the bombs is neither confirmed nor denied. Historians believe Israel first got a nuclear weapon in 1967, after secretly refining plutonium at the Dimona facility and running a “full deception campaign” to convince U.S. inspectors the purpose of the reactors there was civilian rather than military. (Ironically, this is exactly the kind of deception Israel now accuses Iran of practicing.) It’s also strongly suspected that Israel tested a nuclear weapon off the coast of South Africa in 1979, in partnership with that country’s apartheid government. It’s called the Vela incident, after the spy satellite that spotted the nuclear flash. But “strategic ambiguity” means there’s little international oversight or accountability involved with any of this, and much of it takes place in violation of international law. Like North Korea and a small handful of other nations, Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), despite United Nations resolutions that it should do so. It has signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, but likely broke it with the South African incident. And most importantly, its leaders refuse to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to access Dimona, so we have no way of knowing what’s going on in there.  Under U.S. law, Israel’s rogue nuclear program means that the United States should not be supplying it with military aid of any kind. The law in question is the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, and its language is unambiguous. But for more than 50 years now, U.S. leaders have been willing to ignore their own laws and accept this uneasy state of affairs. A 1993 report by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment, titled “Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Assessing the Risks,” sums up the rationale well: “would the United States be willing to sacrifice its relationship with Israel—and possibly risk Israeli national survival—to pressure that state to give up a nuclear arsenal it believes essential to its security?” For successive administrations, the answer has been no.

20 June 2025

[tanyao]

[tanyao]

I know this is going to make me sound pretensions but I have to get it off my chest. I feel an unimaginable rage when someone posts a photo and is like "this picture looks like a renaissance painting lol" when the photo clearly has the lighting, colors and composition of a baroque or romantic painting. There are differences in these styles and those differences are important and labeling every "classical" looking painting as renaissance is annoying and upsetting to me. And anytime I come across one of those posts I have to put down my phone and go take a walk because they make me so mad

[tanyao]

the great thing about the wuxia genre is you can start a sect called the Evil Blood Cult in a place called Demon Mountain that’s a volcano full of poison and you all wear crazy gothic black and red hanfu and practice Sinister Backstabber Style kung fu and like. that’s not a deterrent to prospective disciples. do all that and a fuckton of bright eyed youngsters will still show up at your door and say hello i would like to join the demon mountain evil blood cult where do i sign up?

[tanyao]

Personally I think I'm shockingly normal for someone who has spent every day on the internet since they were 12

[tanyao]

[tanyao]

 I got a couple of movies from Netflix and they had these cool Halloween-themed mailers. Maybe I’m easily amused, but they’re kind of nifty!

[tanyao]

Like I said: Republicans are mindless fucking idiots who don’t know anything and will change their opinions instantly when instructed to. In the span of one single week, their opinion shifts by 40-45 percentage points. They went from 23/53 approve to-disapprove ratio of getting involved, to 68/13 approval of the strikes.