you lost the game

If you go without it you feel unwell in a way that you never usually feel unwell. Sweating, tired, sleepy, headaches, irritable, depressed, etc. For example when I was in opium withdrawal I got incredibly depressed in a way that I’ve never been before or since. When you quit caffeine you might get super bad headaches even if you never usually get any headaches.

Thoughts of it regularly bother you and the thoughts go away once you’ve taken it but only temporarily. Unlike with a food craving which usually stays away once you’ve satisfied it or distracted yourself from it.

You find yourself rationalizing with yourself why you should break your own rules about how much you can take and how often. For example you might only let yourself drink alcohol every four days but start thinking that three days is actually close enough to four days, right? Especially if this happens regularly.

You’re using it so often that you feel the need to lie about how much you use because other people might think it’s concerning

If the substance or activity is nearby it’s genuinely difficult to not consume it or participate in it in a way that’s really frustrating.

You feel bad when you’re not on it and your brain tells you “if you just take the thing you wouldn’t feel this way”

You can only feel “whole” or “normal” when you’re on a substance even though it’s a recreational drug

I often wonder if this is why you so commonly see the sentiment that we are in an era of uniquely bad literature, or at least that the fact that most books don't have artistic aspirations and are not aiming to be anything other than mindless entertainment is new. In fact what's new is the idea that everything is worth preserving (and also the internet making it easier to preserve it). The dumb artistically unambitious trash books of the past have survived only sporadically, because people thought of them as literally disposable.

Before the sinking, the Titanic victim had gambled the deed to the house away in a card game and in the present day, someone else was using that deed to claim the house so they could demolish it. The ghosts and the kids went to court to contest this, and the big twist was that they were able to summon the guy from the Titanic to testify about exactly what had happened.

I cannot remember what this book was called and “children’s book ghosts Titanic” is too vague a query to be useful to search engines.

What I remember is:

The judge who oversaw the court case was called Judge Lublock and people nicknamed him “Old Lawbooks”.

One of the rules for ghosts in the story was that ghosts can only leave the place they haunt on Halloween Night.

I read this as a kid in the early 2000s, when it was a library book already a few years old, so it was probably published in the 1990s or 1980s.

The cover showed the mirror image of the man on the sinking Titanic moaning because he was having a heart attack. I would say it was in a similar realistic art style to the covers of 80s/90s Bruce Coville books like My Teacher is an Alien and Nina Tanleven.

I do know that it was not a Nina Tanleven book, however. It was also not the Blossom Culp book that involves the Titanic. I did read both of those series as a kid, but it was not from either one.

It’s The Ghost From Beneath the Sea by Bill Brittain!

The cover I remember is from the paperback version:

Enslaved under ottoman empire for 400 years, being heavily taxed unless they agreed to convey to Islam and also their resistance was responded with slaughters (Psarra slaughter being one of them or the Mesolloghi sage ending etc)

Their children being claimed by the Ottoman army to form a ruthless army that later on was sent against their own people because they never knew them

People in Europe didn't support them at first because "there is not a single drop of greek blood in Greeks anymore" and they did only after Greeks showed their determination in war plus they managed to attract allies in Europe so many bended their opinions after that

Greeks even now accused for "begging for money" when they forget that Greeks alongside with other southern countries like Spain gave loans to Germany which they were later given away for free

Greeks were met with racism in the US in states such as Chicago they were treated the same way as any other minority in US and in fact racist opinions of KKK are heard to this day aka "Greeks are not white" which was the excuse used by racist groups in the US alongside with Italians for instance because they perpetuated that "modern Greeks and Italians are 'mixed' with African or Turkish DNA and therefore 'not white'" and so they used that as an excuse to abuse Greeks

In Chicago Greeks were constantly referred to as "dirty Greeks" as racial slur. In the 1900s they were bullied and pogromed beyond measure and even being pinned on the worst crimes even worse than black people and others such as rapes or murders. Also attacks happened to Greeks

The Greeks were made to sit at the back of the bus like other marginalized groups in America

They were pinned as the bad guys in novels for instance Britain or others and they were criticized as "barbaric people of barbaric language that have nothing to do with the ancient Greeks"

The KKK literally planned a whole attack against the Greeks and they were stopped in time because church in America cabled Greece and Greece reacted that "no one should touch a single Greek hair" through diplomacy (here's an article about the general climate with the Klan by the way)

In 1920s they suffered a great genocide of like half million people that is still not recognized to this day

They suffered a great loss of life under the Nazi regime where entire villages were slaughtered

They suffered pogroms in Turkey later even after the signature of the peace treaty and the exchange of populations in areas that were supposed to be excluded such as Constantinopole and the islands Imbros and Tenedos (and yes they are recognized as ethnic minority not religious minority). Constantinopole has only a few thousand Greeks left and Imbros and Tenedos (before Imbros had over 7000 Greeks and Tenedos 2500 which was over 90% of the island populations. These days they are approximately 800 and 30 respectably)

Even recently there were anti-Greek waves to the general area

Also the fact that there are greek communities in America actually shows that yes they are an ethnic minority for God's sakes and yeah they could just Google for once. It is not hard.

Also this comment more or less confessed that this casting choice of not even one greek at the team is obviously not representative of Greek people by stating "look at these obviously not oppressed people complaint" more or less admitting that casting is not Greek-looking.

14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."

and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.

so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.

on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.

the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.

I am a lifelong Democrat and civil rights advocate. Both Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel years ago warned about being silent in the face of the rise of antisemitism and racism in America. King and Heschel, working in solidarity were effective and transformational to attain advances in civil rights and human rights for all.

History has taught us that when Black and Jewish Americans unite to confront hate, both communities emerge stronger and with a deeper understanding of each other’s history and perspectives.

Today, I am alarmed by the growing tolerance of antisemitism emerging within the political party that the overwhelming majority of Black and Jewish Americans call home. The ease with which some leaders excuse away this hatred should haunt all Black Americans. What starts with one minority quickly evolves into the hatred of others.

Many in my party are creating creative excuses for Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo. He got it a long time ago. He got it while fighting for America. He didn’t know what it was. Would the same parade of voices coming to Platner’s defense be doing so if he had a KKK tattoo? What’s the difference?

Black America continues to respond and to challenge the resurgence of racism and hate across the nation. We also cannot afford to be silent today about the evil surge of the virus of antisemitism and the increase in hate-filled violence against Jews and Blacks throughout the country.

As a Black American, I know what it looks like when a political party decides one community’s safety is negotiable or ripe for triage. I know the rationalizations — the strategic hesitation, the “but the politics are complicated,” the quiet looking away. I have watched it continue to happen to Black America, even though many of us have been the most loyal and engaged supporters of the party. I will not watch it happen to others without saying it plainly and publicly.

Throughout this election season, candidates are being pummeled with questions about whether they take support from AIPAC – a pro-Israel advocacy organization. One is right to ask whether candidates are backed by one political action committee versus another. But this campaign is far more nefarious. Orchestrated online by a group known as Track AIPAC, this effort is not merely about whether the candidates take AIPAC PAC contributions, they are overtly targeting pro-Israel Americans who personally contribute to candidates. This is a dangerous slope to driving these Americans out of the political process.

Moreover, the focus of Track AIPAC is not merely AIPAC or AIPAC members. It also tracks donations from J Street members – a dovish organization more aligned with the far-left than with AIPAC. That should sound alarm bells as it exposes the effort is targeted at Jewish Americans. Effectively creating a list of who is a good Jew and who is a bad Jew.

If Black Americans await in silence to the tracking of Jews today in America, in the morning Black Americans and others will also be tracked and targeted with impunity.

Singling out American citizens and demonizing their political participation is counter to core Democratic values. Yet instead of calling it out, Track AIPAC is being tolerated — and celebrated — by some in our party. This is not transparency. It is a registry. We know where registries lead.

Black America has its own history with lists — with the government and private actors tracking who we were, who we gave money to, and what organizations we belonged to or allegedly affiliated. We called it what it was: racial profiling and intimidation.

History does not announce itself. It arrives through normalization — through the slow acceptance of things once considered unthinkable. The virus that entered our coalition did not arrive labeled as antisemitism. It arrived as anti-Zionism, then as anti-Israel sentiment, then as willingness to embrace those who celebrate terrorism against Jews, then as systematic targeting of Jewish donors, and now as the punishment of Jewish officials who dared enforce rules equally. Each step felt, to many well-intentioned people, like a defensible position.

That is how social viruses work and spread. Believe me, the lived experiences of Black Americans know this reality and the eventful fatal contradiction to the oneness of humanity.

The Democratic Party has spent decades insisting that the safety and dignity of minority communities are not negotiable. That “the enemy of my enemy” is not a moral framework. It is time to say it now — without the asterisks we seem to reserve uniquely for Jews.

If Jewish Americans, Black Americans and others are not protected from profiling, scapegoating, from registries, and from being driven out of their own party — with the same reflexive clarity we’d bring to protecting any other community — then our coalition is not what we say it is. And every underrepresented community must take note and act to end all forms of bigotry, hatred and discrimination.

A billionaire is not your friend. Not the one twirling a mustache, and not the one with the good songs who helped soundtrack your divorce, your first apartment, your drive home from college, or your daughter’s birth. Taylor Swift is a billionaire, worth around $2 billion by the time she married, the first musician ever to reach that milestone primarily through songwriting. That is a remarkable achievement. It is not a character reference. History has not produced an ethical billionaire yet.

The controversy surrounding her wedding was never really about the wedding. It was about what happened afterward.

Fiona is married so it's time to reunite with her parents. But instead of marrying a prince, she's married to an ogre. Not just that, but she's also an ogre. (Yes everyone knew she would sometimes be an ogre but that was when she was a child, she didn't know she would be an ogre for the rest of her life, and besides once she met the right prince she would stop being an ogre. She was supposed to stop being an ogre.)

But okay they're both ogres. We can still ask about when they'll have children because even if they're ogres they can still have kids, right? That's what married princes and princesses do so naturally that's what everyone does. Even if ogres might not be great parents (I've heard that ogres eat their young, is that something you people do?) it's still something that should be discussed.

And okay you can stay in Fiona's childhood bedroom filled with all the reminders that hey, everyone thought she was just a princess and princesses marry princes. Her toys left out from the last time she played with them. The prince slays the ogre. The princess offers a token of gratitude for slaying the ogre. Fiona wrote Mrs. Fiona Charming a million times in her diary because what else was she supposed to grow up to be?

And Harold, the Fairy Godmother says, you have to fix this, your kingdom can't be ruled by ogres. You were unfit to rule, to be loved, when you were a frog but I changed you, I made you better, I made you a prince. You know how this works. Think of your daughter's safety.