Why does it seem like fails?

I used to work as a live-in nanny for a pediatrician.

Now, the thing about hospitals in my country is that they are massively understaffed and massively underfunded. This is especially true outside the major cities. The staff are worked to the bone and receive little to no help in things like finding accommodation or childcare, making working in rural areas a very uninviting prospect; staff come out here, get lumped with the work of three people (because there's nobody else to do it), burn out under the workload and leave, meaning that those remaining have even more work because that person is gone. It's unsustainable and the medical staff are doing their best to sustain it, because people die if they don't, so to the higher-ups it looks like everything's getting done and therefore everything is fine.

My friend (and boss) worked one week on, one week off, swapping out with another pediatrician. This was necessary because it would not be physically possible for one person to handle the workload for longer periods of time. The one single pediatrician had to hold up the entire pediatrics ward, which was not only the only public hospital pediatrics ward in our town, but also the one that served all the towns around us for a few hours' drive in all directions. I regularly saw her go to work sick, aching, tired, or with a debilitating 'I can barely make words or see' level migraine, because if she took a day off, twenty children didn't get healthcare that day, and some of these kids' appointments were scheduled weeks in advance. She'd work long hours in the day and then be called in a couple of times overnight for an hour or two at a time (she was on-call at night too, because somebody had to be), and then go in the next day. Sometimes she would be forced to take a day off because she physically could not stay awake for longer than a few minutes at a time, meaning she couldn't drive to work.

Cue my niece's second birthday coming up in Melbourne. I'd been working for her for about 3 years, and she (and the hospital) had plenty of advance warning that I (and therefore she) needed one (1) Friday off. That's fine, we'll find someone to work that Friday, the hospital said. Right up until the last week where they're like "oh, we can't find a replacement; you can come in, can't you?"

No, she tells them; I don't have anyone to watch my kid that day.

Oh, surely you can hire a babysitter for this one day, they say. Think of the children! We really really need you to work that day. I know we said it'd be fine but we need you now, there's no one else to do it.

There are no other babysitters, she told them. Unless you can find one?

That's not our responsibility, they said.

But I'm not changing my plans, she's got plans by now as well, the hospital knew about this one day weeks in advance, and with absolutely no reserve staff they're forced to reschedule all pediatrics appointments for that Friday. Not a huge deal, it happens on the 'physically too overworked to get out of bed' days too. I go to Melbourne, she goes back to her home in Adelaide for her recovery week, all should be on track.

My niece gives me Covid.

This was way back in the first wave of the pandemic, and there were no Covid vaccines yet. The rules were isolate, mask up, hope. I had Covid in the house, and it would've been madness for my friend and her toddler to come back into the Covid house instead of staying in Adelaide. There was absolutely no way that a pediatrician could live with someone in quarantine due to Covid and go to work in the hospital with sick children every day. And no support existed for finding another babysitter, or temporary accommodation, so the hospital was down a pediatrician.

The other pediatrician wasn't available to do a three-week stint. They were also trapped in Adelaide on their well-earned week off.

Meaning that the only major pediatrics ward within a several-hour radius had no pediatricians. They had to shut down and send all urgent cases to Adelaide for the week. To the complete absence of surprise of any of the doctors or nurses; of course this would happen, this was bound to happen, it presumably keeps happening. But probably to the surprise of the higher-ups. After all, the hospital was doing fine, right? Of course all the staff were complaining of overwork and a lack of resources in every meeting, but they could always be fobbed off with the promise of more help sometime in the future; the work was mostly getting done, so the issue couldn't be too urgent.

Don't stretch yourselves to the breaking point to keep doing as much as possible, and don't cut corners where customers/clients/patients/patrons won't notice. Say out loud, "Due to low funding/staffing, we can no longer do X," where X is something visible but not mission-critical.

In the library world, this is usually a small reduction in hours: we lose an employee position, we stop being open on Sundays, or we close an hour earlier every day. (And we put up signs saying exactly why, and to whom patrons can complain.)

If you say "this isn't enough resources/we're understaffed/we can't go on like this," but then you continue to go on like this? You've just proved that you can indeed go on like this.

Of course, not everyone is in a position where you can make decisions like this--reducing hours, or suspending a particular service; the reason we learn this in library school is that we usually have a clear bright line between operational management and funding. However, you can still ask. Management says, "For now this store is going to have to get by with 6 employees instead of 7," you say, "Okay; what are we going to stop doing, to make that work?"

And if the answer is, "Nothing," you just...let the problems happen. Someone gets sick, and they really need you to come on your day off? Sorry, but you made plans that you can't break (even if those plans are "lay in bed and eat ice cream"). But they can't open the store if you don't come in? Sounds like the store isn't going to be open. Hopefully we'll be able to get up to full staffing before this problem comes up again!

In the story above, the COVID quarantine situation was, of course, unpredictable, but if management had taken the lesson any of the times when appointments had to be cancelled because a doctor called off due to physical exhaustion, perhaps they would have had some options when both of their pediatricians were unavailable due to a global health emergency; who can say?

Shipping 5 Years Ago: hey guys let’s just ship whatever the hell we want and leave each other alone about it all right? cool

Shipping 2 years ago: Please write a minimum five-page feminist critique of your ship, examining any and all problematic aspects through the lens of queer and marxist theory, double spaced, 12-point font, MLA style citation, and wait 7 to 10 business days for council approval before shipping the thing

A colony is a group of people who settle in a distant territory to establish ties with their mother country, usually with the purpose of sending resources back. Carthage was a Phoenician colony established by merchants from Tyre. The Thirteen Colonies of America were English colonies established by settlers from Britain. French Algeria was a French colony established by France. A colony always has a metropole which directs it and to which it’s sending resources. For example: Britain in India, France in Algeria, Spain in Mexico, Turkey in Cyprus, USSR in Kazakhstan, Tibet in China.

As an aside, admit you were surprised by the inclusion of non-European powers. Funny how they always get a pass from modern academia. I wonder why…?

So, if Israel is a colony, whose colony is it? Who is Israel’s metropole? 

There is no single country from which the majority of Jews who immigrated to Palestine came from. Most arrived as immigrants and refugees without any support from the countries they left, often fleeing violence and oppression. 

Their goal was never to enrich a distant metropole. Rather, it was self-determination in a territory with deep historical and religious significance to the Jews. Israel’s indepdence occurred during a period of decolonization, not colonization.

Clearly, Israel doesn’t match the modern definition of a colony. However, the early Zionists sometimes used the term. Why?

Because words change meaning over time. 

The people who came from distant lands to form new settlements in swamps and deserts were colonists in the same sense that people moving to Mars would be colonists, but they were not colonizers. 

They used the word “colony” to describe quite the opposite of what is called a colony today, which is a form of occupation. Surely, even the worst critic of Zionism can’t accuse them of occupying anything in 1880…

So what is Israel? I’d argue that the best terms would be a “diaspora return.” While it’s a term one rarely hears these days, it’s hardly unique. 

The closest examples that comes to mind are Liberia and (to a lesser degree) Pakistan. 

Creating Israel was a reaction to antisemitism in the same way creating Liberia was a reaction to racism and Pakistan to religious prejudice. Israel is similar to Liberia in the sense that a persecuted group moved to a distant land to which it has historic ties to create a nation in which it would be free from persecution. Pakistan, much like Israel, was created by migration born from a partition of an area with mixed population.

The thread connecting all three national projects is that mistreatment and statelessness drives people to demand a territory of their own. The goal is not to enrich a foreign mother nation but to create a place where people can live with dignity.

Now we’re left facing the modern invention of “settler colonialism” which has nothing to do with the original definition of colonialism but instead combines two words leftists teach us are scary to create something very, very scary.

This is a 1919 American artist poster created to promote the “Palestine Restoration Fund” for the Zionist Organization of America.

Basically, settler colonialism means that a more powerful nation is expanding into the territory of a weaker nation, displacing the original inhabitants. At first glance it seems more suitable, but just like calling Israel a colony, it falls apart even at the most cursory examination.

Jews have a continuous, documented presence in the Land of Israel going back thousands of years. The modern Arab population is descended from various waves of migration and conquest over centuries. They certainly have some native blood, but they also have a lot of foreign blood. 

If “indigenous” means “first inhabitants,” the answer is deeply ambiguous in a land that has been conquered and resettled dozens of times over millennia. Basically, everyone in the region is a mutt at this point.

Currently, Israel is the sovereign state of the people who settled there. The Jews who settled in Palestine became a self-governing nation, not an outpost of a foreign empire. 

The conflict between Jews and Arabs in Israel started as a civil war and in a way, this is still what it is, even if it had transformed into something unique due to Israel’s unique insistence not to kick out the hostile population like everyone else had during the previous century.

This is how most nations formed throughout history: migration, displacement, and sovereignty. Russia, Turkey, Britain, France, Spain—all were formed this way yet not a single one of them is referred to as a colony.

If Israel is a settler colony than all countries are, making the term meaningless.

Then, there is the issue of intent.

Settler colonialism involves a deliberate state-sponsored elimination of the native population in the service of the colonizing nation. Zionist immigration was not state-sponsored. 

Jews bought land privately and built institutions from scratch. Their intent was survival and self-determination, not the elimination of the Arabs living around them. Most early Zionists explicitly envisioned coexistence even though very few Arabs shared their vision.

The displacement was a consequence of a war fought between two nations, the collision of two conflicting national ambitions. This is hardly unique for a period that saw millions of people displaced as part of vast population exchanges in Europe and Asia, none of which were called settler colonialism by academics.

We saw this in Algeria, Indonesia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Bhutan, and countless other places. All of these events are largely forgotten because entire populations were expelled and the issue was resolved.

Finally, settler colonialism is driven by power: a dominant group expanding at the expense of a weaker one. 

Jews arriving in Palestine, especially post-Holocaust, were among the most persecuted and powerless people on earth, not an expanding empire projecting power outward.

Their victory over five invading Arab armies was nothing short of a miracle. Their decision not to do what everyone else had done in the 20th century and transfer the hostile population was nothing short of insane.

Nevertheless, Israel is not a colony. It’s a diaspora return.

How many palestinians did Hamas kill claiming "they're collaberators" without trial again?

Oh and while your looking that up, could you also look into how many times hamas has been caught deliberately making shit up, and how many times they admit that they add their own soldiers to "civilian" death tolls?

By the by, if you wanna claim ethnic cleansing you need to explain the sizable population of palestinian arabs living with full citizenship rights in israel, alongside the practice of roof knocking, where they literally warn people inside of buildings to get out of them because they are about to be bombed, an act no other nation on the fucking planet does.

That’s it.

That’s what Zionism actually is.

If anyone else is telling you that Zionism is some sort of right wing authoritarian Nazi like colonizer thing…

That person is either lying, ignorant, or a Nazi trying to smear the Jews.

Oh also, what Israel (the government) does is not reflective of what Israel (the general population) wants and believes. Stop condemning an entire country for the ignorance of the few. If you can make that distinction for the people of Palestine and Hamas, you can do so for the Israeli government and people. Don’t be a sheep.

however, the problem, at least as far as I can tell, is that the antizionist movement is a good representation of horseshoe theory in practice

both communists and nazis can agree on the destruction of the Israeli state, but for two different reasons

and when you have two political movements agreeing on one thing, elements of one are going to spill into the other, hence why actions like this are taking place

as far as I can tell, there’s been a general understanding (in the leftist community, at least) that the antizionist movement was never about hating Jewish people and culture, only about dismantling the state of Israel

Yeah, it's just about destroying a sovereign nation that just happens to be the world's only Jewish-majority country and then leaving it to the tender mercies of the terrorist groups who have the stated goal of driving all the Jews into the sea, how is it that so many Nazis are seeing that and thinking it's about killing all the Jews?

"You can't listen to these people because the source once said a bad thing about my side. I am totally not looking for any excuse to ignore my side's flaw."

as far as I can tell, there’s been a general understanding (in the leftist community, at least) that the antizionist movement was never about hating Jewish people and culture, only about dismantling the state of Israel

In order to be eligible for MAID (both Tracks 1 and 2), a person must have a "grievous and irremediable medical condition". This criterion is met only when assessors are of the opinion that:

the person has a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability;

the person is in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability; and

the illness, disease, or disability or state of decline causes the person enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable to the person and cannot be relieved under conditions that the person considers acceptable.

"the people I hate are sexually unsuccessful men, who as we all know, are detestable and worthless because the measure of a man's value is his ability to get the sexual attention of women. man I am so good at not being sexist you guys."

Instead of just ignoring them or even comeing up with a single actual criticsm.

Also, I seem to recall who blew Sarkeesian up, and it wasn't Gamergate! It was the people Gamergate opposed!

They started before GG was a thing, and Anita just hopped on the bandwagon for attention!

They're doing the classic thing of attacking the other side's reaction and ignoring their own side's initial action.

"Oh, please! No one cares! Everyone does it! Just look at [Example]!" Yeah, "no one cares" until suddenly they do. It happened with music piracy (including a 12 year old girl getting sued) and it will eventually happen with monetized fanfic.

Sure, you can say that "oh, but I can prove my story is transformative enough to be fine," but do you have any idea how expensive that will be? You'll need lawyers; lawyers doing a LOT of research. You'll need proof and receipts and all kinds of shit and the case will probably drag on for years so the author/publisher/corporation can drain you of as much money as they possibly can. Even if you "win," the amount you lose will vastly outweigh anything you might have made by selling your little fanfic.

But hey, if you think you "deserve" to make money off your stories, go ahead. Just don't be surprised when the fic community doesn't rally to support you when you're in the crosshairs. Because most of us know better and are not going to get dragged down with you, you entitled sacks of stupid.

They insist that websites "don't have to" verify your age, but then they say, "if you don't when you have certain content on your site that kids may see, you will get a huge fine" which is going to cause most apps and sites to panic and do it anyway.

If you don't think it will affect you, that's where you're wrong.

They aren't just talking about sexual content. They are talking about gay themes in media (even if they are only holding hands and not even doing anything sexual). Discussions of drugs (not promotion of doing it, but discussions of people doing them and how to get help) discussions of self harm (how to get help) discussions about changes happening to your body (puberty, as well as health-related issues), cursing (as if kids haven't heard worse things at the back of the school bus.)

So, here are ways this hurts people in general, but let's focus on the fact that it hurts minors, the people these bills claim to protect:

If a kid has a friend who has started abusing drugs, they cannot reach out to anyone to ask questions to start the process of getting their friend help. Their friend could die because of this, or the one who wanted to help them could end up pressured into joining them.

2. A kid tries to look up how to get help for suicidal thoughts and how to get help stopping self harm and cannot get help and dies because these discussions are age gated.

3. A kid is being abused in anyway, including but not limited to sexually. They try to figure out what counts as that kind of abuse to try and get help, but because it has to do with minors being abused in that way, the search is considered illegal, as well as age gated so that they cannot receive any help.

4. A young girl has found a lump on her breast, and is having some scary symptoms, but she doesn't feel safe to talk to her parents because they're abusive. she turns to the internet to try and get help to learn what steps she needs to do next, but because the images that show what those symptoms look like are medical images that show images of breasts, she cannot learn more about her condition. Over time, the symptoms get worse. In America, we don't have free health care, and we are getting more and more impoverished. She doesn't get the help she needs, and eventually loses her breasts, or worse... it travels to the rest of her body, and she dies a slow and painful death.

This is not about helping minors. This isolates them and keeps them from being able to have online friends. Get basic information that could help them when they're in a scary situation.

What this is is a tool to gather information about people so that they are afraid to speak due to retaliation. This isolation is also good for both political parties--who both agreed that this bill is a good thing, by the way. Your political party is not "the good one" they are both your enemy--because they need us further isolated. If we cannot speak and cannot find ways to reach each other because the websites and apps eventually reach the point that to access them at all you have to prove your age, it will cause a greater divide in the people. Divided, we cannot rise up against fascism together. People have a difficult time meeting in public now to try and make friends, form alliances, or even share interests. There are no third spaces anymore. This has been in the works for a long time. This bill is the perfect tool to silence everyone.

We frogs are in a boiling pot of water right now. I know some of you are so sex averse that you want all of it banned, but because you wouldn't properly filter out that content and instead insisted everyone else curate the whole internet for your experience, you have vied for everything being illegal.

Your animes are going to be banned from viewing, and if you think fleeing this country will fix the issue, you're wrong. This will chase after you everywhere you go.

We have to fight this. this bill is called the KIDS Act. Please look into it.

Look up what is happening in the UK. I'm not overreacting. They have the most arrests over social media posts in the world now. If you don't think that could be you one day, you're a fool.

Please raise Caine about this. We need to stand together, or we will fall. The next thing that would be required to fix this is revolution, and you don't want to know what it's like to be in a post-revolution country. You have no idea what we will lose. You do not go from dystopia to utopia immediately. There is a very long transitionary period of the country being lawless with people rioting in the streets, people killing, stealing, and raping just because they can. You will be hungrier and thirstier and dirtier than you have ever been because the services you have come to know and love will disappear. The stores will be ransacked. Please, for the love of god, I know you hate what we currently have, but don't take this for granter. Don't be a fool. God, please.

If you feel uncomfortable with reblogging things from me due to disagreements you have with beliefs I hold, please just steal the post and copy-paste it as if it's you're own post. This information needs to be seen. It doesn't have to come from me. I don't care. Just please get this in front of as many eyes as possible.

This is not the time to be like "I won't share or even look at posts made by someone I disagree with" this is a life and death situation. We have it GOOD here. Do you understand? I know we have our struggles, but they are nothing in comparison to the other countries. Does the fact that you won't have electricity anymore if we end up having a revolution do anything for you? What about the fact that your dopamine-fulled activities will go away? what about the fact that you won't see new updates on the video games you love to play for years, or maybe even the rest of your life while the country rebuilds? We don't have to have a revolution. We just need to work on our foundation, and rebuild some rooms of the building instead of breaking the whole thing down just because one room is moldy.

So.

To clarify.

They are asking for the right to ‘Execute’ the whole population of an Entire Country which is the Ancestral Homeland of an oppressed Indigenous People —

— because ‘service’ is Mandatory in Israel, whether you’re cooking or doing fitness training or, idk, providing therapy maybe? Doesn’t matter. You ‘served’ in The Army….. So they are asking to Execute…… Literally Everyone.

(Yes, yes, some people refuse, so it isn’t Literally 100% Total Population, but it may as well be)

And the Alternative is…..

* being brainwashed in A Camp For Holding Political Dissidents

* in order to convince members of this tribe that AKSHUALLY, Sovereignty And Self-Determination In One’s Ancestral Homeland is a Bad Thing but also this only applies to You,

* You, Specifically, Members Of This Tribe That My Own People Almost Certainly Have Historically And Currently Continue To Oppress

* And Also I think that it would be an understandable Good And Moral Thing for Absolutely Nobody to offer you ANY kind of safe harbour from this genocide

Right.

And……. And these Jew-Haters Who Call Themselves ‘Anti-Zionists’ …… they think of themselves as the Good Guys here.

Somehow.

‘I should be allowed to engage in the mass murder of fully half of this oppressed indigenous people and be considered a shining example of morality for it! uwu’ is something they consider to be …. Praxis. Justice. A Meaningful Discussion About The Genuine Future Tasks Which Will Have To Be Addressed And Brought About uwu

…… and they either are fully aware of how wildly, teeth-gnashingly bigoted this is, or somehow fail to notice how they are DROWING in violent hatred of a micro-minority that has been violently oppressed for Literal Millenia;

‘no bro, u don’t understand, this time they really are evil, this time they really *do* Drink The Blood Of Christian[/Palestinian] Children!

All The Ugly Lies I Have Been Told Since Birth About A Minority Are Actually True this time, bro!

This time they really do deserve all the violence and hatred they [don’t uwu] face, bro!

No, I don’t need to unpack the things I’ve learned since birth bro; What A Relief That I Can [Finally] Just Safely Let Go Of The Need To Unlearn Bigotry And Just Immediately Believe Every Nasty Thing I’m Told About Those Evil People, PHEW! That was So Exhausting! 🥰’

….

And they consider themselves Leftists. Progressive. Kind, Gentle, Compassionate, Loving People Who Want To Improve The World And Protect The Vulnerable. Smol Beans who have Never Done Anything Wrong In Their Lives [and desperately want to protect this self image above all else].

The cognitive dissonance is fucking STAGGERING.

Has *been* staggering since October 7th. Each new revelation of the depths of evil they were willing to ignore, bury, excuse or outright Exalt [or decry as This Is What Israel Did Actually] so long as they got to Harm Jewish People. The willful and LOUD abandonment of EVERY progressive value, while making utterly unhinged accusations. The sheer, maddening dedication to *Opposite World* levels of hypocrisy and ignorance.