Cas

Levi's said yes, actually. Assless chaps and a biker vest. Happy Pride.

It’s about anti Zionism my ass.

But these people don't think they're being antisemitic, they think they're arguing for a group of people being oppressed by an apartheid regime, which they are. The main issue at play is that the genocide in Gaza fosters antisemitism in people who are not antisemitic, because Zionists are belligerently intent on inextricably tying Israel to Judaism.

When the Zionist propaganda says Jews = Israel, and the news shows us that Israel = genocide, people will inevitably think Jews = genocide.

I love how even in your mealy-mouthed lukewarm defense of Jews you can't conceive that the people accusing random Jews of killing children aren't actually trying to innocently criticize Israel, and they're not only being antisemitic by accident

Let's be precise about what @queercodedangel got wrong.

What the IRD list actually was:

A private notebook, handed to one person at the IRD, listing individuals Orwell thought were unsuitable to write anti-stalinist propaganda - not people he wanted arrested, surveilled, fired, or harmed - and none of them were.

Orwell believed these specific people were Stalinist sympathizers who would undermine the work of countering Stalinism. You can legitimately think that was a bad call - it was certainly a morally complicated one for Orwell. It was not, however, the act of an imperialist snitch. It was the act of someone who hated authoritarian Stalinism enough to do something uncomfortable about it, while continuing to publicly criticize the British state.

The tension between those two things evaporates the moment you understand Orwell's position: Stalinism wasn't socialism. It was fascism with better branding, and it was destroying the socialist project from within.

History proved Orwell right.

Orwell:

Got shot through the throat while fighting fascists in Spain

Spent decades producing some of the most devastating critiques of British imperialism ever written, including Burmese Days, and Shooting an Elephant.

Called himself a Democratic Socialist his entire adult life and meant it.

Wrote that "every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism."

@queercodedangel is taking one late-life episode, stripping it of all context, and canceling one of the sharpest anti-totalitarian, anti-imperialist pens of the twentieth century - because he wouldn't excuse Stalin's crimes. That's apparently the price of admission to the 2026 left - being ignorant enough to deny that Stalin was a monster.

Calling that "snitching" tells you nothing about Orwell. It tells you that for some people, anti-Stalinism is a greater sin than imperialism ever was - and you can only take that position if you know nothing about what Stalinism was.

That sucking vacuum of ignorance where actual knowledge should be doesn't inspire a single second of hesitation before they confidently preach provable falsehoods. The less @queercodedangel knows about Orwell, the IRD list, or Stalin's crimes, the more confident the verdict. This is what happens when a generation decides memes and reels are sufficient substitutes for actually reading anything.

Orwell spent his life fighting this kind of epistemic laziness - the willingness to flatten complex realities into politically useful, emotionally resonant, self-affirming fictions.

This is why Gen Z desperately needs to read the Orwell and Huxley they've been told to avoid.

First Day of Spring, done in January 2026.

Tall and elongated

Flabby

Weak brain

Soft, spongy exterior

Random bits that stick out

Limited sensory capacity

Collapses under regular atmospheric pressure

Frighteningly permeable

Lacks vocal range

Contraction-based movement (weird)

I present my joke take on Adrian's first impression on Grace.