You can call me April or Phoenix / He/they + any gendered words ('hey girl' is chill but not 'who is she') / this blog runs mostly on queue, which I fill up a lot / Goes FERAL for small birds / Griddlehark brainrot (still halfway thru NTN) / Transgender grad student / Blog mostly SFW / Icon is the Sangled Picrew / [Icon image ID: pale person with buzz cut and glasses, wearing a floral buttondown. Background is the nonbinary pride flag] / [Cover photo image ID: photo of some hyacinths in almost trans pride colors - white and pink with some blue rocks]
specifically, it's their white guilt over the way muslim americans were treated after 9/11 (which was not good, for the record) so now they're projecting the other way and treating arabs as the group that can do no wrong, ever.
And all that awful anti-muslim hate in the US post-9/11? Never surpassed the then-baseline level of anti-Jewish hate crimes, and dropped back off to relatively low levels a year later. But somehow these leftists think that brief spike in anti-muslim hate crimes justifies all islamist violence in the world, and justifies quintupling the hate crimes against Jews, already the number one targeted demographic per capita for hate crimes in the US.
Jewish Organizations in the US repeatedly showed up for Muslims and Muslim orgs in the US, even CAIR especially during Trump's first term and the Muslim Ban because it was the right thing to do. HIAS showed up. You know, the organization that right wingers shoot up Jews over?
Remind me if we've gotten that solidarity in return from, IDK, CAIR? Anyone?
Any progressives showing up to form a human chain around threatened synagogues, or just trying to stand around it, block access or go inside and fuck shit up?
Has there been any meaningful progressive action to protect Jews or kick out the Nazis and Hamas fans and Soviet Propaganda mills from their movements.
Fucking anything? Any 6 year BA students complaining they got yeeted from a march for waving the Houthi or Hamas or PIJ or PFLP flags, or pictures of terrorists or chanting awful shit?
Nothing?
Wow it's almost like they just hate Jews and realized there's no social cost to being shitty to Jews, but you can still scream and yell about it like you're risking your life to 'speak truth to power'
Whose power? The Jews who showed up for everyone else and don't want to fucking die?
jews saw trump's muslim ban and immediately said "we've seen this before, this is disgusting. never again."
but when jews continue to make up the majority of victims of religious-based hate crimes despite being 2% of the population? when synagogues continue to require security cameras, police officers, and metal detectors? when jewish institutions continue to be regularly vandalized? when jews continue to be attacked in the streets? when jews continue to be afraid of being visibly jewish?
i can't help but wonder if the muslim man and (presumably) his daughter in the picture stand up for jews nearly as much as jewish stood up for them.
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"If we use titanium instead of steel we'll save a bunch of weight" baby you need to stop worrying so much about your weight! And maybe worry more about what happens to titanium when you expose it to deuterium plasma.
One of the things I love about watching people make art on the internet is clocking the way they use the tools they know. The way a nail artist makes miniatures is completely different than the way a polymer clay artist does the same thing. How a whittler and a painter approach printmaking.
Consider the ways in which you are a rocket engineer.
me using 10,000 intarsia bobbins because i went "oh this is just pixel art" and design knitting charts with absolutely no regard for the practicality irl
(i also have yet to buy a knitting pattern and willingly seam a bunch because I have already drafted sewing patterns that fit me perfectly so why wouldnt i just use a swatch to calculate the dimensions of a stitch and put that grid on top of my existing patterns? the idea of trying to find a pattern that will fit intimidates me)
recommending the x files to people is like yeah this is one of the most influential pieces of television created, it's the best and also one of the worst things you'll ever see. are there aliens? you'll never know. are mulder and scully lovers? worse. what do bees have to do with this? everything.
I keep seeing this picture and similar ones and it keeps giving me thoughts. Yeah I do agree with the message ! And these animals are hated by many peoole !! But let's be honest. These are still fairly conventionally cute. They're big eyed fluffy affectionate pretty intelligent mammals and birds. So today, I'm offering y'all my own version.
BE NICE TO ALL ANIMALS. INCLUDING THE ONES WHO DON'T LIKE BEING PET. INCLUDING THE ONES THAT AREN'T FLUFFY. INCLUDING THE ONES YOU FIND UGLY. Be nice to the weird ass critters too >:)
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good representation is like armor. i don't feel like i need to hide or downplay my jewishness or be hypervigilant about who i interact with in the pitt fandom, not because the fandom is free of antisemitism (far from it) but because i know if someone tries to give me shit for loving this show i can point to the actual show and say "no, this show loves me, this show sees me, you are the one in the wrong here." it won't change an antisemite's mind, but it gives me permission to refuse to be erased.
Racists be like, "Maybe there's a reason why Jews and G*psies are hated and persecuted wherever they go."
And the "reason" is literally just racism, largely because Jews and Roma are seen as easy targets and scapegoats because there are so few of them.
"If Jews are indigenous to the Middle East, there must be a REASON why they were exiled."
And the "reason" is just the usual Colonizer Assholes. But the antisemites don't say that about any other colonized people. (Well, the Leftist antisemites don't.)
WHEN social media influencer Chris Caresnone made his first trip to Israel just over a year ago, he knew very little about the country — including nothing about the events of October 7.
But he is a fast learner and has embraced all aspects of Israeli society, including Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze, on his quest for good food.
“About a year ago, I was invited by a group called Reality to go to Israel,” the Chicago-based food blogger told me. “A lady named Debra Feinberg reached out and was like, ‘Chris, I’ve been following you for a while, and I think you’d be great for this organisation that gets people to Israel’, because my Jewish audience was starting to grow.
“I was thinking that I need to get to Israel because it would be good for the energy, ethos, brand, and content.”
Chris, who has hundreds of thousands of followers across social media, continued: “I’ll be honest, I had heard stuff about Israel and Palestine, but I was ignorant. I didn’t know much about anything until I was in Israel. I was wet behind the ears. I didn’t know about the bombs or October 7. All I knew was, I’ve got to get to Israel.”
Chris, whose real surname is Campbell, said the first thing that struck him about Israel was that it wasn’t all Ashkenazim.
“We ignorantly think that all the Jewish people on Earth are eastern European,” he told me.
“It’s not from a place of hate, just that we don’t know. But then when I went to Israel, I’m like, man, there’s people my colour who are Jewish and Israeli.
“As far as food, I would say excellent. It all felt fresh, even the fried food.”
Chris, who is known as the Babka King, was a little surprised about the lack of babka in Israel.
“There’s some, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not really Sephardic, Mizrahi,” he said.
There was another aspect of Israeli life which surprised him — the driving.
“It’s a little hectic,” he laughed. “I don’t know if I want to drive over there. I personally thought the vibe of Israel was super cool, and I plan on going back as often as I can.”
Despite being a six-foot two-inch black man with a beard, Chris said he has never encountered any problems getting into Israel, apart from being stopped constantly by people who recognise him.
“The reach is getting so big now, so many people notice me in the airport, and it’s not even just Israel, it’s back home too, New York, Chicago,” he smiled.
“I have to stop and take pictures every few minutes, so that’s not really a problem, but it’s something that’s a slight disruption.”
Although it was never his original intention, Chris’ social media feed is now heavily Jewish, leading to many Jewish dinner invitations, including from rabbis for Friday night dinner.
“I’m kind of Jewish now,” he joked, “I’m embedded and I see what’s going on, but my first time in Israel? I heard that this is apartheid, but I see all kinds of people there walking freely. I’m a black America dude, clearly not Israeli, clearly not Jewish and not only do I walk perfectly fine, people come up to me and show me love.”
Chris, who says he grew up Christian but is not very religious, had his babka obsession started by a Muslim.
“And that turned into this movement, so to speak, of humanity, which I think is the most beautiful thing ever,” he explained.
“I started making culture content, showing love to different cultures. I did like 50 cultures. I didn’t even make any Jewish or Israeli content for seven or eight months.
“I feel like I get so much love within the community, and I’m just treating y’all normal like how I treat everyone else.
“I was told the way you have to look at it is, imagine if someone gives you a glass of water every single day.
“Eventually, it’s just another glass of water. But imagine you’re walking through the desert for four months, and then someone gives you a glass of water, it’s a bigger deal. And it’s not because the glass of water is any different, it’s because the context of the situation.
“It’s so big and powerful, yet it’s a matter of just being human and showing humanity.
“And the whole food, the babka was really just life’s way of Hashem, the universe, God, whatever we wanna call it, it was the Trojan horse to get my energy amplified.
“It’s more than food. I don’t feel like a food guy at all. I feel more like a bridge builder.”
During his trips to Israel, he has also spent time with Ethiopian and Druze communities.
He described Ethiopian food as “ridiculously good”, adding: “I have tried other cultures that are mixed within Israel. That’s what makes Israel’s food scene so unique. It’s almost like the opposite of what people are trying to say.”
The 42-year-old was raised around the North Shore of Chicago, which, he said, has one of the largest Jewish populations in America.
“I didn’t really have a lot of Jewish cuisine outside of matzo ball soup,” he explained. “When I got a little older, I started working in restaurants in different areas, and sometimes affluent areas.
“I started trying things that I probably would not have tried had I not worked in a restaurant. So my horizons got expanded because of that.”
He said what he realised about kosher food was that the food was still good despite the restrictions (apart from gefilte fish, which he has never been fond of).
As expected, his videos from Israel, while garnering mainly positive comments, do receive a number of hateful comments.
He had changed his name to Caresnone to reflect the fact that he wasn’t letting hate get to him, but it is a situation that has provoked a lot of thought.
“Here’s something I’ve been asking myself a lot recently,” he said. “Am I trying to be right or am I trying to solve the problem? I have learned that a lot of times I was trying to be right, not trying to generally solve the problem.
“On my birthday, February 2, I went out with some people and I had a buddy bring a girl he had met like once or twice.
“He should not have invited some girl he had just met to my intimate personal birthday dinner, but it is what it is. So we’re all sitting there at this restaurant and it’s a good 10 of us. We were talking about food and I’m like one of my new favourite cuisines is Israeli food. I’ve been going to a lot of Israeli restaurants.
“And this girl who’s sitting next to me, she goes, ‘oh, excuse me, what did you say?’
And I’m like, ‘I like Israeli cuisine, it’s fire, I love it’. And she says, ‘there’s no such thing as Israeli cuisine, it’s all stolen, they steal everything’.
“She invited this new energy when we were just talking about food.
“I’m with my buddy Kareem KWOE Wells, who’s considered King of the Mitzvahs, a black Christian in Chicago who’s known for doing the most epic and powerful mitzvahs in the country. Me and Kareem went at her. We weren’t rude or ignorant, but I was starting to feel myself losing composure, because I’m part of the humanity tribe, but I’m also very entrenched in the Jewish community and Israel.
“Then she made a comment along the lines of ‘I should be able to say whatever I want to say’ and then I matched her with that.
“I’m a pretty intimidating figure. And I looked at her, and I’m like, ‘well, I can say what I want to say, too’. I was giving her energy that wasn’t welcoming. I didn’t cuss her out or anything. And everyone else at the table thought I handled it well.
“But I was trying to be right. I wasn’t trying to solve the problem. So much so that she said, ‘maybe I should get out of here’. And I looked at her and go, ‘yeah, maybe you should’.”
He continued: “Fast forward. I’m on the way to Israel, on a 10-hour flight. I get a DM: ‘F*** Israel, f*** you, you black monkey’.
“I was immediately reminded of my birthday. I thought about that moment and I asked myself, do I want to be right or do I want to solve the problem?
“Being right would be to either call that person a racist or antisemite, or to ignore the person, or to call them an idiot, that you’re wrong, you don’t know anything about nothing. Or am I trying to solve the problem genuinely?
“So I typed to that person ‘I love you, brother’. Then we’re going back and forth, but I’m always bringing it back to humanity. I’m trying to solve the problem.
“And instead of looking at this person as a racist and antisemite, which he’s showing himself to be, I saw him as this person who’s hurt, who believes a narrative, who thinks he understands something, he obviously doesn’t know me, and that’s what I saw now.
“So I was able to not take it personally because I want to solve the problem. I don’t care about being right. I don’t care that he thinks I’m this. I’m trying to solve this.”
He added: “That guy who called me a black monkey. He equated me being aligned with Israel as equal to hating Muslims.
“I know Jewish people for a fact do not hate Muslims. But this person believed that all Jews and all Israel, or anyone who stands for that, hates Muslims. I’m like, brother, a Muslim sent me my first babka.
“A Muslim has created a lot of this, you know what I’m saying? He was the one who sent me the babka.”
The guy eventually apologised for his ‘black monkey’ comment.
Chris has also received death threats because of his Israel content.
He joked: “How you gonna hate me because I’m eating the babka? I’ve never once come out and said I’m pro-Israel or pro-Jewish. I said I’m pro-humanity, which includes Israel.
“I don’t think that’s controversial. I’m looking at a Jewish person, you got arms, you got a head, you got feet, you’re one of us. If the aliens come down, I don’t care if you’re Jewish, Muslim, green, yellow, it’s us versus the aliens?
“Like I said, people coming at me crazy for eating the food, which is interesting, because whoever’s throwing out that slur or that energy, I’ve probably done their culture too.”
Chris describes his job as to move “in a light, which is very Jewish! Very tikkun olam, from what I’ve been learning. And I feel like before I even knew what tikkun olam was, and before I even knew what being chosen people was, and before I knew any of the core premises of Judaism, I align with a lot of this stuff.”
Chris is hoping to spread his wings more. He is keen to “get my butt out to Europe, I know there’s a lot of people telling me I need to go to Australia and Mexico City, where there’s a big Jewish population.”
One of his favourite restaurants in Israel is called Pitmaster.
“I have learned that the Israeli community loves to dance,” he said. “Pitmaster is an experience. Everyone’s dancing. They stop between the meals and they dance and it’s like a vibe. They are gonna bring two more to the United States. And in America, you’re gonna have to make alcohol more of a thing, because these people weren’t dancing because they were drunk, they were dancing because they were joyful. In the States, you’ve got to get people drinking.”
He added: “So when you ask me, am I aware of how what I do affects the Jewish community and the people of Israel specifically. I want to be clear and say I’m not a Jewish content creator. I am not an Israeli content creator.
“I’m a humanitarian creator who happens to also include Jewish and Israel on the humanitarianism, and also, I just happen to be really cool with them like anyone else.”
In one of his newer videos, Chris talks about volunteering in Jerusalem with Colel Chabad.
“It reminded me that sometimes the best part of travelling isn’t just what you experience. It’s what you can give back. If you’re visiting Israel, I genuinely recommend adding this to your itinerary.”
You can follow Chris on all social media platforms @chriscaresnone
Ah yes the "internationally agreed upon commitments to end NATO's expansionist drive" that exist only in the minds of ruzzian nationalists and their simpering western fellow travellers.
The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.
Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.
#I just started dropping '2.5 Billion page views a month'#into conversations as early as possible bc they would Not believe me otherwise#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously#turns out those are the magic words#otw#op
The last part was kind of insane, honestly. When we started changing platforms for the donor database, I kept telling them that yes I was aware we already had an account for the volunteer database, and no that could not be connected to the donor database. And they said yes fine sure and then connected them anyway. And I called them back and said, excuse me, I'm confused, I can see both databases. And they said, well, yeah, but it's only you, someone has to be able to see both databases to give other users access. The other users can't see both. And I said, no, we have been asking for a completely separate database. I should not be able to see both. And they said, you are one organization, one organization can't have two databases. And I said, last year someone used our volunteer email list to commit approximately one thousand felonies. Please feel free to imagine how much worse it could have been had they had a way to use volunteers' email addresses to get their legal names. We do not want this to be something anyone can do no matter how much we trust them. Let me describe those felonies to you in more detail. And they emailed me two hours later and said, you can have two separate databases.
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i think one of the worst things the left wing internet ever did was push the idea that oppression is basically a virtue, and being oppressed is a sign of your morality. it has made it like…impossible for some of you to hold the idea that most people are privileged in some ways and oppressed in others. AND a lot of you seem to have it in your mind that terrible people cannot be oppressed, and that oppressed people cannot do terrible things, which is a dangerous rhetoric to hold imo.
i think one of the worst things the left wing internet ever did was push the idea that oppression is basically a virtue, and being oppressed is a sign of your morality. it has made it like…impossible for some of you to hold the idea that most people are privileged in some ways and oppressed in others. AND a lot of you seem to have it in your mind that terrible people cannot be oppressed, and that oppressed people cannot do terrible things, which is a dangerous rhetoric to hold imo.
i think one of the worst things the left wing internet ever did was push the idea that oppression is basically a virtue, and being oppressed is a sign of your morality. it has made it like…impossible for some of you to hold the idea that most people are privileged in some ways and oppressed in others. AND a lot of you seem to have it in your mind that terrible people cannot be oppressed, and that oppressed people cannot do terrible things, which is a dangerous rhetoric to hold imo.
It's still a Republican talking point. I don't know why any Dem is suddenly jumping on this train of repeating Republican nonsense.
And she's factually wrong. If the money wasn't going to Israel, it would either a) go to a different country, where the US military would get less in exchange, or b) go into the regular US military budget.
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and may I add that many of these countries have laws on the books designating non-Muslims as second class citizens. Israel has a lot of issues with racist and islamophobic laws, the same as most nations, but discrimination does NOT an ethnostate make.
And while we're at it can someone explain why Spain, some 2000+ miles from the Arab peninsula, uses a word that resembles THEIR word for blue and not their neighbor word for blue? Any guesses? Anyone? Beuller?
We all know what erectile dysfunction is but literally no one is ever taught what vaginismus is and it can cause people to feel extremely lost, broken, and cause people to take their own lives.
Raise. Awareness.
For the uninformed, vaginismus is when the vagina painfully tightens and spasms when faced with pressure, usually from anything trying to insert into the vagina. It’s the reason I can’t wear tampons, and why many people can’t have vaginal sex without severe pain.
There’s not a lot of treatments, and there isn’t a single one that is for vaginismus exclusively - they’re all medications or treatments to treat symptoms, but not the causes. In fact, for a long time doctors waved off vaginismus as a purely psychological disorder in cis women.
Seriously, this is so unaddressed and uncared for in medical circles. Please spread awareness, even if all it’s for is to let those who have it but don’t have a name for it finally be able to understand what’s happening to their bodies.
Hi hello! This post is almost 10 years old and there ARE treatments for this. Vaginismus is otherwise known as pelvic hypertonia and it is a MUSCULAR condition that can be caused by many different factors including endometriosis, trauma, chronic UTIs, and connective tissue disorders.
It’s incredibly common! And it can be treated by physiotherapy.
I know this because I’m currently undergoing physio and although it can take months to recover, I’m already seeing improvement. A lot of the pelvic floor exercises are available online, but if you have these symptoms please TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR and see if you can get a physio referral (or investigation for underlying causes like endometriosis).
Also, my additions to posts never get reblogged so a note to my followers: this is SUPER IMPORTANT ISSUE that affects many people and is rarely talked about. Please reblog, and please share this info with as many people as possible.
Pelvic hypertonia/vaginismus is incredibly debilitating and psychologically damaging but it CAN BE TREATED. Spread the word, and you never know who you’ll be throwing a lifeline to.
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