A l'entrada del temps clar

A recent New Scientist cartoon.

henmazzig:

I hate how angry I get in this video.

“I’ll get into trouble for this.”

She won’t.

Nobody has ever gotten in trouble for this.

The takes get softer, the platforms get bigger, and the bravery is announced in advance like a tour date.

Robby Hoffman says antisemitism isn’t the worst thing. In a surprise to absolutely no one, she co-stars on Hacks with Hannah Einbinder, Hollywood’s loudest anti-Israel Jew. Maybe attacking and distancing yourself from your own people is just what that set does for applause now. It’s becoming a genre.

Since October 7th, “not the worst thing” looked like this: Matilda, a little girl shot dead at a Hanukkah celebration on the beach. Yaron and Sarah, shot in the back leaving a Jewish museum. He’d just bought the ring. Melvin and Adrian, killed outside their synagogue on Yom Kippur. Karen Diamond, 82, set on fire at a walk for the hostages. She died of her burns.

They weren’t offended. They were murdered.

My grandparents survived the Farhud in Baghdad, 1941. Two days, their neighbors, the streets full of Jewish dead.

Every massacre in our history started the same way— with someone influential shrugging.

Antisemitism is bad. That’s the whole sentence.

The original concept that humans complete the act of creation by making bread from wheat is from the Talmud! And the specific "wheat but not bread, grapes but not wine" phrasing is from Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel but it is missing "clay but not bricks".

And among trans Jews the sentiment was already popular before I ever started seeing this specific phrasing so I knew, knew, knew a Jew and likely a trans Jew was involved.

As it happens, Ortberg's friend Julian is Jewish and they have strongly negative feelings about the way the quote has been removed from the context of their life as someone trans and Jewish. They used to have a thread up on xwitter about it but have since made their account private and only have a very terse FAQ online from which you can glean the treatment they likely received when being more open about their Jewishness, relationship to transness, and the interaction of both.

Let me explain:

Grotesque fascist grifter, Nigel Farage, is the leader of Reform, the racist far right party he created because UKIP got what it wanted (Brexit) and it sucked.

Having tried and failed to be an MP many times (but somehow getting more screentime than any Liberal Democrat or Green politician), he finally succeeded in the last election because people were so overwhelmingly pissed off with the Conservatives, and many right-wing people saw Reform as the new Conservative Party; partly because it's full of rejects from the Conservative Party.

Speculation: he doesn't really want to be an MP, he wants to be a fascist grifter. He's annoyed by suggestions he do things like Be In His Constituency and Serve His Constituents.

He's recently been caught having accepted a VERY large amount of money from some unsavory people that he insists was a totally legitimate 'donation' and not breaking any rules.

Only it did break the rules and it's very clear that it did and things are in motion to hold him to account.

To avoid this, he has resigned as an MP, saying this is a protest at his treatment by the 'establisment' (he is a rich fascist grifter, but he likes to cosplay as a Man of the People). This has triggered a by-election, in which he is standing, with the hope that the people of his constituency will either elect him in a resounding win, indicating they don't care that he's corrupt (having not heard everything the investigation is uncovering), or someone from Labour or the Conservatives will win and he can swan off to America, free to grift again because of what the 'establishment' did to him.

Only, all the major political parties have agreed not to stand, stating openly that this is an obvious stunt and they won't legitimise it. So if he doesn't win, he can't say it was because he was too much of a rebel and the Establishment went against him, he'll just be a loser, which doesn't play too well with the right-wingers he wants to grift. And if he does get back in the investigation will go forward without any kind of 'mandate' from his constituency buoying him up.

But. There is another option.

COUNT BINFACE IS RUNNING.

Count Binface is part of the grand British tradition of joke candidates who stand as a protest option. They usually don't get enough votes to get their deposit back (which is supposed to deter unserious people) but they don't care, because DEMOCRACY.

Of course, Count Binface has never won, but it is hilarious to see a completely serious pathetic fascist concede defeat while standing next to a man with a bin on his head to whom they are democratically equal.

But if nobody else is standing. And if enough people in Clacton-on-Sea are finally cheesed off enough with Farage not doing anything for them, there is just a chance that one of the funniest things to ever happen in politics will happen.

Imagine. Imagine for just a moment that the Grotesque Fascist not only loses, but loses to Count Binface.

Dear David Attenborough,

Congratulations on reaching your 100th lap around the sun, young man!

Thank you for sharing the wonders of our world with such care and curiosity.

Here’s to many more years, slow and steady wins the race!