Occasional Art Dump

You have been on this earth for fewer years than my cat has.

They’re calling for an official boycott of the organisation.

“By trying to paint Israel as a tolerant, diverse, and normal state, and focusing on “hatred” rather than oppression as the problem, this organization is intellectually dishonest and outright complicit. It is serving a key role in Israel’s international propaganda strategy at this time.”

LOL NO WAYYYYYY BDS IS ON MY SIDEEEE

Excerpt from the PACBI Statement (25th Jan. 2024).

another excerpt:

‘Standing Together’s premise is that a shared home can be achieved for Palestinians and Israelis if they refuse “hatred and choose empathy.”’

israeli-american writer yoav litvin wrote an article in 2019 about how “empathy” is used as a propaganda tool by liberal zionists.

As an effective propaganda tool, Liberal Zionism promotes a normalisation which colonises the mind. “Empathy” serves to normalise, conceal and preserve the ongoing victimisation of Palestinians and provides a counterproductive and fleeting notion of progress.

he presents a simply, but rather apt analogy:

Victims of abuse require empowerment as a means to end their victimisation, ultimately bringing their oppressors to justice. “Empathy for the abuser” as a first step towards this goal, is a form of perpetuating exploitation. It empowers the abuser and cements the abusive dynamic by denying the essence of the unequal relationship.

These statements cannot be retracted.

Quote from the Israeli State Minister of Agriculture and Development.

i get the general sentiment of this but this is why peoples surface level anticapitalism that they havent reflected on much is a little annoying. like weve been in this stage of capitalism for about a century or more, i think its a good thing if you can understand the distinctions of capitalism in the epoch of international trade, finance capital and monopolies. anyways

and, from the preface:

There's a group of people on this website who continously spread zionist propaganda as supposedly criticism of 'pro-Palestine white liberals' but the only people ever present in the screenshots they include are Palestinians and other Arabs. They also never ever ever engage with Palestinian advocacy, or Palestinians at all (hint hint they have us all blocked, so we blocked them back). So for the logical observer:

1) either they're lying and claiming they're attacking white liberals when they're only ever attacking Palestinians and Arabs, because they're racist and want to deligitimize our pov, which is the center of this issue.

2) or there are white liberals they want to criticize but they only feel comfortable attacking Palestinians and Arabs, because they're racist.

But both of these answers are a detraction from the reality of these people's actions. It doesn't matter, because their criticisms are not even founded in reality. They literally take posts exclusively critical of zionism or the occupation, then somehow make it a bad faith interpretation about the destruction of Jewish people. And then suddenly, and only if you have bought into the racist propaganda, you are facing antisemites.

I'm gonna name names but only so some of y'all can go take a look at this shit yourselves. Spacelazarwolf / anshelsgendercrisis, tributary, athingofvikings, the-library-alcove, 2peachy, heroisrael, etc... after everytime one of these makes a post like this the Palestinians or the Arabs in the post get targetted with death threats, rape threats, and other forms of harassment very pointedly. Their actions are not without direct consequential harm to Palestinian and Arab bloggers. I actually forgot to mention that they don't limit this treatment to us, they treat Jewish anti-zionists with that same cudgel, and they get attacked too. In that vein, I ask of you not to interact with them, not to send them a message, just block and let the people around you know to block and avoid. Treat these people like you treat T*RFs.

It's very ironic that those Western zionists that call themselves 'non-zionists', who consistently present criticisms of 'white liberals' in their own words, will follow and reblog from Israeli zionists like 2peachy, heroisrael, mermer404, etc... whose arguments amount to justification for segregation through arguments of 'protection of innocent civilians', and at times justification for genocide. That's when they're not doing outright genocide denial of course.

This should be your biggest and most vivid indicator that these people are not leftists. They are fascists who speak the language of social justice. White segregationists in the South also wanted to protect themselves from Black people, who they called thugs and criminals. Nazi Germans also wanted to protect themselves from Jewish and Polish people, who they called rats. Americans wanted to protect themselves from the First Nations, who they called savages. It's only fair that you see the fascism when Israelis say they want protection from Palestinians, who they call terrorists.

As a former cakewrecks lover, I figured sure, I’ll bite. Let’s see this cake. Literally nothing could have prepared me for this cake. 

They paid $49 for this “frog-themed” cake and honestly no amount of money in the world could be put on this masterpiece:

this summer, an enormous and scathing review by adalytics (an independent media research website) came out criticizing google for a myriad of things which could be politely summed up as "fraud". we're talking like. theye were taking money to serve ads on pages that got 0 views regularly. thats not what people pay for lol.

as a result google mysteriously issued some refunds (""credits"", because "refunds" sounds bad) but insists it was all normal. adexchanger has a summary of an adage.com article

Google vehemently denies the report’s findings and that the credits are in any way related. “Issuing credits to advertisers is not uncommon,” a Google spokesperson says, adding that “Adalytics used a flawed methodology to make wildly inaccurate claims about GVP.”

so over the last four or so months, google has been making core updates to its adsense network with, apparently, very little warning to the people using it. and everyone's numbers tanked. hard. oct 2023 appears to have been esp brutal. both the search engine journal and lily ray from amsive, apparently a huge name in marketing, released reports that are completely nuts. the lily ray one is esp detailed and has a timeline of updates

73% of overall respondents indicated that they have seen their Google Discover traffic drop to 0 during the past 3 months. Among websites that lost Discover traffic, the most common complaints were dramatic traffic declines; dropping to 0 impressions and clicks; extreme percentage decreases in clicks ranging from 50-99%, and massive losses in revenue from AdSense and other ad networks.

50 to 99%?! yeah that's a small sample size but that's a fucking hell of a swing and a trend.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health released a report on Thursday, including the names of more than seven thousand Palestinians who were martyred in the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip.

Red color highlights 0-4 years old age group

Green color highlights age group 5-17

White color highlights the age group between 18 and 59 years old

Gray color highlights the age group over 60

These are not just names, but people killed in the midst of a brutal war. Remember their names.

When people say they enjoy things, they usually mean one of two things. The first is that these things are fun; that is, they satisfy immediate emotional needs or desires for pleasure. Candy Crush is fun, for people who are into that sort of thing; waterslides are fun, watching TV is fun. Fun, in the way I'm defining it for this post, is the party food of pleasure; immediately and usually temporarily satisfying, and after that, mostly satisfying only as a happy memory (although some of these activities, like watching a TV show, can generate further opportunities for pleasure down the line like daydreaming, discussion, and making fanart). Like party food, this kind of fun is a good thing to have, and someone who doesn't get enough of it is at high risk of stress-related health concerns. Also burnout. A lack of fun is a major contributor to burnout.

The second kind of pleasure that most people talk about is rewarding activity. The lack of rewarding activity in one's life is a major contributor to depression. It creates a sense of purposelessness and worthlessness and generates a low attention span, sapping the ability to feel long-term motivation or pleasure. People usually try to pick themselves up with the first kind of fun, which is a band-aid but not a very sticky one; the lack of rewarding activity grows and festers over time. Rewarding pleasure involves working on something long-term that feels worthwhile. There are usually also spots of fun (or you wouldn't have gotten into the activity enough for it to become rewarding), but there also tends to be long slogs that aren't that fun. Nevertheless, when people report on doing said activity, they will speak about it with great enjoyment and remember it being enjoyable and claim they like it. (I like being a writer. Writing can sometimes be boring as shit.) (Look into Csíkszentmihályi's work on experience sampling and flow states for more info on this, it is FASCINATING.)

In Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal sums up what she thinks are the most important contributing factors to rewarding activity. These are not the only factors, but I agree that they're a good baseline of the critical ones. I'm going to paraphrase them using different language. The four big contributors are:

Satisfying work. This is the vaguest one because different people find different things satisfying. Basically, the task itself should feel productive, and you should not feel bad about doing it to the point where it causes you distress. Satisfying work involves clear goals with actionable steps and a clear product, preferably something that you can see, touch or use. A clean house, a new high score, a freshly built table, a happy child.

Mastery. Rewarding pleasure is often something that you can get better at. There are things to learn, practice, improve. Improving your ability to solve tricky code problems, getting better at painting landscapes, figuring out fun new strategies in Magic: The Gathering, being able to build computers better or faster or cheaper. Mastery does not require becoming the best at something (although some people enjoy that specifically also), merely seeing progress in yourself and being able to take pride int he fact that you are better than you were.

Social connection. Rewarding pleasure often involves social or community connection. A long-term social group that discusses fan theories of their favourite show. Your weekly tabletop rpg. Teaching a room full of kids who to make leather belts. Working at a small bookshop and making small talk with all the tourists. Some people find social activity to be fun in the 'immediate pleasure' kind of way, some don't, but it is a critical factor in mental health and in the long-term... rewardingness (?)... of a hobby. Animals can also partially fill this niche, but be warned, they are far, far less effective than people. Your cat might be able to stop you from committing suicide today. You cat alone will not make your life satisfying.

Contribution. Humans are community animals and have a need to be something larger than ourselves or, more specifically to be of service to something larger than ourselves. Looking after kids, cooking big meals for others, creating art or physical products for others. Teaching the next generation how to read. Serving your God. Saving a species of small fish from extinction. Volunteering at your local charity shop or soup kitchen. Being a member of a crowd to reach the Guinness World Record for "most people fit into a storage crate". Making useful tutorial videos, being an entertainer, joining your local queer support group or political organisation. Humans fucking love to be part of something bigger than their own brain and they fucking love to help people.

The world is full of rewarding activities, and not all of them rate high in all four categories. The woman working in the charity shop warehouse and chatting with her coworkers isn't necessarily all that interested in mastery of her job (although I've worked in these places and some people do take pride in learning to be as efficient as possible), the musical hermit training to become the best violinist in the world might not be all that interested in social connection or how the audience actually feels about him. You might have noticed that I've listed hobbies, jobs, and non-employed but important life work (volunteering and childrearing) as possible rewarding activities; you can find rewarding activities everywhere. (In fact the lack of rewarding pleasure in our work lives is a very serious problem that companies keep trying to condescendingly band-aid over. The late David Graeber had a lot to say about this and I highly recommend his work, particularly Bullshit Jobs, which is a book specifically discussing the lack of above points 1 and 4 (satisfying work and sense of contribution) in so many modern workplaces and its distressing psychological ramifications). Rewarding activities are not 'fun' all the time; in fact, Csíkszentmihályi's work found that many of them are quite unfun most of the time. They do, however, create long term pleasure, and are emotionally and psychologically critical.

Type 1 fun is fun (climbing the mast on a nice day, a good cracking sail in the sun, seeing dolphins, singing with your shipmates, all that good stuff).

Type 2 fun is satisfying. (Standing watch knowing you're taking care of the ship and everybody on it, work aloft to stow sail really nicely, working hard hauling lines to set sail, etc etc.)