Three espressos from Greatness

pro palestiniks are so fundamentally stupid they’d hear about kibbutzniks draining israel's malaria swamps and call it ecological imperialism

Because they envision Palestinians as needing to fit the model of the Ecological Indigene™ whose close relationship with and stewardship of the land was in perfect harmony, and hence they envision the state of abject ecological degradation and collapse the land was in for centuries under imperial Greco-Roman and Islamic rule as a romanticized, natural state that had been carefully nurtured and undisturbed since time immemorial. When in fact the colony of Palestine was such a blight on the native ecosystems that dozens of keystone species went extinct, most of the land was unnaturally desertified and swampified, and during several historic periods experienced such long and intense famines and droughts that human population declined drastically because most of the country was uninhabitable. Invasive species like tzabar - originating in Mexico - were heavily adopted and spread by settler communities, many staple crops like our ancient grape cultivars and date palms were wiped out, and things like our terrace farms (madregot or ma‘alot) and other native landscaping practices that used to keep local ecosystems and water systems and soils were mostly destroyed. Almost all large carnivores like lions, bears, monitor lizards, and crocodiles were extirpated due to overhunting, habitat destruction, and extinction of a lot of their original prey species: oryxes, hartebeests, onagers, ostriches, etc. Ancient Israel was not filled with swamps and deserts. Romantic nationalists see images of "Palestine before Zionism" and interpret its decay and neglect as being the normative condition - or even a beautiful indigenous cultivation - when the truth is that before Zionism, the colony of Palestine's exploitation of, violence against, and apathy towards the land and its oldest inhabitants brought it to ruin.

the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.

america's birthday present would be a hell of a tag to keep for it

I'm probably someone's "not this guy again" on Tumblr

I find it deeply concerning that a lot of BBC’s live coverage of the Iran situation seems to be directly mimicking or even actually be drawn from the Al Jazeera coverage of the conflict. (Al Jazeera is a state-run propaganda from the Qatar dictatorship.) Also a number of times it quotes Iranian state-run propaganda as though it is a reliable source. Something is really, really wrong at BBC. This goes way beyond just simple bias.

#this is true#i don't know what's going on#i just know that my dad keeps coming out with regime propaganda and I keep saying 'that's not actually true'#and he comes back with 'the bbc confirmed it' and you can't argue with boomers about legacy media#but the bbc is now regularly passing along propaganda as news

#watched the channel for maybe a grand total of four minutes the other night and i was HORRIFIED#we are not exaggerating how INSANELY dangerous the bbc is#people TRUST it. the propaganda they are regurgitating will KILL people.