Vienna Waits

Profound script undercut by sponsorships and promotions

Timeless classic rendered timeful and fleeting by pop culture references

Captivating prose dulled by the need to self-censor for monetization

This Tumblr post is the first time someone has explained to me *why* I couldn’t feed them before those instances.

every single time i have had to say, "i understand that if he had food or water, he could aspirate it into his lungs under anesthesia. i am not lying to you." THEN someone would make a little note and i would stop being repeatedly asked.

not a single time was that risk explained to me. the only reason it came up was because i already knew. i still don't understand why it isn't standard pre-op counseling or pre-op check information, when me as a parent acknowledging the actual risk also put THE MEDICAL STAFF at ease because i conveyed that i had informed understanding as reason to not lie about giving my kid food.

According to a 2023 statistic Jews make up about 73 % of Israel's population. Let's compare that with some other countries. (While ethnostate actually refers to racial or ethnic groups and Judaism isn't 'just a religion', I will also give examples for the demographics of religions in countries)

Let's start with the EU: According to statistics from 2019 about 64% of the EU's population were Christian, a decline from 72% in 2012. So what? In 2012 the EU was actually a Christian ethnostate? Or at least consisted of ethnostates? I mean if we think about it, we have to follow the Christian calendar, Christian holidays are mandated by the state while other religious groups have to fight every year to be able to observe their most sacred days. Hell, where I live (in Germany) one of the currently ruling parties is called the Christian Democratic Union and our Grundgesetz (basic law) is built upon Christian roots. They even invoke God in the preamble!

Here some further statistics about Religion in Europe.

As you can see even just looking at individual Christian denominations, there are about 6 countries for which the religious majority makes up more than 3/4th of the population. IN THESE COUNTRIES ONE DENOMINATION OF CHRISTIANITY HAS A HIGHER POPULATION PERCENTAGE THAN JEWS IN ISRAEL. So I hope this shows that 'Israel is an ethnostate cause there is just one religion determining everything' is utter bullshit not just because Judaism is not just a religion but also because I can name 6 countries in Europe alone for which there is a higher percentage of people of a certain religion.

So now to actually look at specific countries. Ireland especially seems to have an antisemitism problem, so how about we focus on them.

As of 2022 the amount of Catholics in Ireland has decreased so that they actually make up 69.1% of the population as opposed to the over 75% from 2019. But the definition of ethnostates actually specifically looks at ethnic or racial groups. Let's see. As of 2022 the largest ethnic group in were White Irish, making up a whole 76.5% of the Irish population. Including other white people in this, this number increases to 87.4% of the population. That is 14% more than the 73% that Jews make up of the Israeli population. The next largest group in Ireland are Asians with 3.7% (or depending on how you'd like to spin it, the 6.16% who did not state their ethnicity. This still doesn't make Ireland an ethnostate though.

And some more examples:

China: 91.11% Han Chinese (2020)

Russia: 71.73% ethnic Russians (2021)

Saudi Arabia: 90% Arabs, 10% Afro-Arabs (2021)

USA: 57.84% White (2020)

Canada: 69.8% White (2022)

Germany: 71.3% Germans (2022)

Democratic Republic of Congo: no dominant ethnic group

South Africa: 81.4% Black

Poland in 1931, before the Holocaust: Polish, 69% of the population, Ukrainian, 15%, Jews 8.5%, Belarusian, 4.70%, German, 2.2%, Russian 0.25%, Lithuanian, 0.25%, Czech 0.09%

Please explain to me why Poland isn't blamed for their massive ethnic cleansing and the fact that their country is nearly homogenous.

People have been dangerously adulterating their products to make a bigger profit for THOUSANDS of YEARS. Rome famously had problems with people selling counterfeit bread and doctored wine.

If I go spend 20 dollars at a restaurant we wouldn’t call it a micro-transaction, but if I spent the same amount of money in a video game then it is a micro-transaction?

Then they made their way to video games. And it used to be that they presented a reasonably comprehensible bargain:

You get to play a full-featured videogame for free, in return for which the game will occasionally advertise a premium cosmetic or unlock of some kind, for prices like $.99 or a couple of dollars. This was considered slightly annoying, especially in the mobile gaming space, but the trade-off was clear. Free game, paid optional content for less than the price of a cup of coffee.

The absolute maximal price you'd pay for a League of Legends skin was about $30, and those skins were considered an absolutely outrageous expense for totally dedicated League of Legends lifers, and were expected to be the absolute peak of technical possible quality. And those were still mocked as ridiculous expenses for weirdos, the sort of thing that no normal or average player should ever be expected to blow money on.

Bethesda was mocked for MONTHS for trying to sell $2.50 horse armor cosmetics in Oblivion. Microtransactions? In a premium product? In a sixty dollar game? Absolutely unacceptable! That was a breaking of the bargain!

But Bethesda's transgression was the thin end of a wedge. More and more of those post-launch monetizations started creeping into premium products, and by sheer erosion, by sheer slow grinding normalization, they started to multiply and the prices started to creep up and up and up, and day 1 DLC became normal, and ultimate and premium editions and super ultimate exclusive digital deluxe collector's editions and battle passes and lootboxes and... yeah.

It used to be a... not amazing, but at least a reasonably fair bargain. A transparent bargain. You get to play a game for free, and the price you pay instead is the soft pressure of microtransactions—actually micro transactions—being advertised to you.

Trevor Noah interviewing Judith “Badass” Heumann

Judy Heumann believed in the inherent value of each disabled individual and would never back down on what she thought was right. Her friends and fellow activists remember her as a strong leader.

Judy Heumann

December 18, 1947 - March 4, 2023

She’s Jewish and born to immigrant german parents who migrated in the 1930s

She has been in a wheelchair for nearly her entire life due to contacting polio at a very young age.

Due to her wheelchair, she was actually barred from most schooling including kindergarten as her wheelchair was deemed as a “risk.” because it could be “in the way” if there was a fire.

She was the first wheelchair teacher in New York after suing when she was once again denied her license for the same reasons she was denied kindergarten.

She worked as the Assistant Secretary of Education for OSERS for 8 years

Her parents, especially her mother, were big parts in her becoming an activist as her mother Ilse was a community organizer and fought hard to get her daughter as much education as she could, it was her activism that helped her daughter and other disabled children be allowed to enroll in High School instead of being separated into a specific disabled school. (We don’t have time to go into all that but tldr; those schools sucked and its a genuine accomplishment disabled kids no longer have to learn in like, cramped attics that didn’t teach anything)

She was a founder of the organization Disabled in Action! She didn’t just organize sit-ins, she helped RUN the organization that was organizing them!

The president she butted heads with the most was Richard Nixxon, this isn’t that important I just know everyone loves when he gets dunked on

She helped CREATE THE INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION ACT!!! I cannot express to you just how important that is, if you have basically any kind of disability, this act is a big reason you were able to go to a public school instead of being shoved into a warehouse.

The Black Panthers helped with the 504 sit-in! They helped bring food because the organization also included black disabled people, and one of the members of both, Brad Lomax, asked for help!

She had a podcast! You can go listen to that podcast right now!

Honestly just check out her website in general

She also founded the Berkeley Center for Independent Living!!

Honestly I could keep going on but she’s genuinely one of my heroes and was an amazing person who it is not an underestimate to say changed the world for the better.

This disrespects the characters, the story, the author, the entire point of the book, and every single trans Discworld fan.

Context, for my non Discworld followers: Monstrous Regiment is a book which plays with the trope of "girl dresses as not to join the army", in which the protagonist slowly realises she's not the only one; all the other new recruits of her squad are similarly disguising themselves. Shenanigans ensue, and at the end of the book it's revealed a lot of the military higher ups are actually women with a facade of maleness, putting on the part so they can do their duty.

Sergeant Jackrum is also one of the people who ran away as a girl to join the army, but unlike the others he doesn't wear a facade. It's entirely himself. He is canonically a trans man. He doesn't want to leave the military and return to civilian life, cos he doesn't want to re enter the closet and live as a woman, and his squad's like oi mate you're literally sergeant fuckin Jackrum, there ain't a kid in this kingdom who hasn't heard of you in all your decades of service. Return to the family you left behind, the kid you birthed doesn't need to know you're trans, you can just say you're the guy who fathered that kid. Go be a grandpa and be happy.

I just did some quick research, though, and it looks like they may have gone back and fixed it? I'll have to listen to the audiobook again to see if that is indeed the case.

EDIT: Nope, still the wrong pronouns. However, in my search I also came across something interesting: there's two versions up on Audible. One released 2/23/23, published by Transworld Digital and one released 9/25/23, published by Harper. Both exactly the same length, both with the same narrator/cast. The Harper edition is the one that I have. But I think, the Transworld Digital one is the correct one.

Simply because I had to use address trickery to purchase Nightwatch's audiobook back in 2023, and it, too, was published by Transworld Digital. I think I'm going to spend a little extra money soon and buy that version and see if it's correct.

Source

People have been dangerously adulterating their products to make a bigger profit for THOUSANDS of YEARS. Rome famously had problems with people selling counterfeit bread and doctored wine.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill deployed state troopers Friday to help keep the peace, but clashes have occurred as troopers have used horses, tear gas and metal gates to push away protesters.

On Sunday evening, an emergency curfew went into effect at 9 p.m. in a half-mile zone around the facility. Some protesters were arrested after they “refused to comply with repeated orders to leave the area,” state Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said in a statement.

Marvin Mendez, 40, of Long Island, New York, was also released on Monday after spending more than two months in Delaney Hall. He held back tears as he spoke about the hardship of his detention and the excitement of knowing he would get to hug his three children again.

“I can’t believe I’m outside,” Mendez said.

Mendez said he was arrested without warning when he went to an immigration interview on Long Island on March 12.

After 23 years living in the U.S., Mendez had built deep roots in the country. He said he feared the possibility of being deported to Honduras and having to leave his wife and children.

Mendez said that inside Delaney Hall, sanitation was poor, food was inadequate and access to medical care was limited. Detainees were only allowed outside for an hour each day, and fights frequently broke out. Officers also pepper-sprayed some detainees.

If anyone is ever training you to replace them in a position and tells you 'its an easy job I don't do much' what this means is that you are about to spend six months to a year catching up on all the stuff they didn't do and sorting out the stuff they did poorly.

north american - individual living in or a national of a country located on the continent of north america

south american - individual living in or a national of a country located on the continent of south america

canadian - definitionally, especially lately, person who does not fucking want to be called an american, because "american" in both canadian and american english has the semantic weight of "national of the united states of america"

and this is not, in fact, limited to english

amerískur - icelandic adjective for american (loanword, more on the slang side, bandarískur more often used)

ameríkani - icelandic noun describing a national of the united states of america

américain - french adjective or noun describing a national of the united states of america