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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I think an important consideration is who gets to decide what knowledge and culture get preserved. For example, I would say that medicine, agriculture, and human language would be much more important to preserve than computer science or economics, but I’m sure someone would disagree.

    In general, I think art is very valuable and should be protected when possible (and not just European art), but if the choice is between a painting or a human life… the painting goes every time.




  • I once worked at a hospital in the ER where the department director was a union-busting bastard, but the CEO was pretty reasonable. After I left, one of the other ER techs went to the CEO about our pay being messed up and got everyone $5-6/hour raises to actual market rate. Also, there were a few weeks when we were really understaffed that the hospital encouraged admin folks to volunteer as “candystripers” in the ER to do stuff like help clean/turn over rooms, and answer patient call lights for water, blankets, etc. And the CEO was down in the ER for a couple hours every evening helping out most of that time period. It was encouraging to see the CEO of the hospital putting on some gloves and helping us with basic stuff like cleaning and stocking.



  • For me, it just looks like he has a certain coldness in his eyes. It’s not a dead or vacant look, it’s just the way a smile, or any other facial expression for that matter, just doesn’t seem to make it to his eyes. There’s obviously life and intelligence there, but it’s not a friendly intelligence. I pulled up the most lizard-man pictures of Zuckerberg for comparison, and even at his most robotic, his eyes still look human. Like there’s some capacity for empathy in there somewhere. With Musk? His eyes just don’t quite read as human to me in an uncanny valley sort of way.


  • What strikes me is the complete discordance of the realities of Israelis and Palestinians shown in the pictures attached to the article. There’s multiple pictures of a grand funeral with flags, pomp, and circumstance…and compare that to the white sheets and mass graves in Gaza. The Israeli soldier gets a military funeral with honors and fanfare while innumerable Palestinians are interred in barely marked mass graves with little to no ceremony because the number of dead simply does not allow for paying respects to each victim.








  • You’re talking about a population with extremely limited resources that is literally 50% (or more) children that has been under two fascist boots for the last decade and a half. There does come a point where a level of desperation combined with a possibility of a better future will instigate a revolution, but right now? They don’t see a possibility of a better future. With Israel’s Likud on the other side of the wall and no resources to rebuild after a coup, what’s the point in gambling everything on maybe being able to overthrow the more local oppression?

    Also, education in Gaza is very inconsistent and most political revolutions are started by people with education and nothing to lose.



  • I think in this case it is more apt to realize that the artist painted this on the wall of his dining room in his house where he never had any visitors. The definition of “happiness” in this context would have to be a tad…malleable though.

    Although he initially decorated the rooms of the house with more inspiring images, in time he painted over them all with the intensely haunting pictures known today as the Black Paintings. Created without commission for private display, these paintings may reflect the artist’s state of mind late in a life that witnessed the violence of war and terror stoked by the Spanish Inquisition.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son


  • Would you get your kid out if you didn’t know whether or not they would be adequately cared for? Would you get them out if it meant that you will probably never see them again and that they will be taken to another country speaking another language with no one there to look after them and no plan for how to take care of them after the medical treatment is done?

    This would most likely be a permanent separation and the child would effectively, or maybe even literally become an orphan in a foreign country with nothing. Not their vital documents, not their family, not anything that would give them any hope of ever getting home. Getting your kid out in this situation means gambling your child’s life on the good will of strangers and most likely losing them for good.

    It is not unreasonable to demand to go with his child. Especially since he needs medical care as well.