Would you be willing to share your thoughts on The Odyssey by Nolan? As someone who has read the poems.
It was a good movie, but not a good adaptation. It was made by someone who didn't really care for The Odyssey but saw it as a framework to make points. Removing the Nobody/No one/No Man scene is a prime example.
Actually, the changes he selected meant he had to do more work to make points than he otherwise would have.
There was also a lot that, to me and my sister, felt like the viewer was supposed to fill in or assume so he wouldn't have to actually convey anything - and then he had his giant anvil smash moments with his points.
The dialogue was quiet, the soundtrack and effects were loud.
The whole civilization collapse element, especially due to the violation of Zeus's Law, wasn't the most successful explication for me - the Trojan War would likely have happened during the Bronze Age collapse (whether the singular conflict or the general pattern of conflicts and decline), but there were numerous factors involved and sometimes it felt like further effort to develop it wasn't entirely engaged with.
I think that's also because it felt like there were a lot of stories or themes Nolan was trying to address and he couldn't keep the balls juggling with it and they didn't always tonally work or match.
Having one of the most atheistic portrayals of Odysseus and The Odyssey also didn't help and didn't work. Making Odysseus the tragic noble soldier instead of the tricky smartass braggart was a poor character choice.
Also, the narrative and pacing were off - the flashbacks and jumping around made it more difficult to develop points or follow along and undercut, for me, a lot of the effort involved in trying to make those. Start with the Trojan War and establish the shit they did, then proceed to the journey back to Ithaca.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatibâa Palestinian-American analyst who grew up in Gazaâhas published a furious response to newly revealed documents attributed to Yahya Sinwar. He calls Hamas a âgenocidal cultâ that sacrificed Gazaâs population for an international propaganda strategy.
I understand his anger.
The document in question was seemingly handwritten by Sinwar on August 24, 2022, more than a year before the October 7 attacks. It was recovered in Gaza by the Israeli military and subsequently published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.
According to the document, Sinwar envisioned sending as many as 10,000 fighters across the border. They would breach the barrier at 25 different locations, seize junctions, attack military bases and enter more than 200 Israeli communities.
Residents would be expelled or taken hostage.
This was a plan for an enormous invasion of southern Israel.
Sinwar also considered how Israel might respond.
He was apparently uncertain about whether Iran and Hezbollah would enter the war. But he was certain that Israel would retaliate with overwhelming force.
He wrote that Israel would use every weapon available to it. He contemplated the possibility that Israel might use an atomic bomb against Gaza.
Nevertheless, Sinwar described the proposed attack as a âbattle of life or deathâ and continued planning it.
This is an extraordinary detail.
Sinwar understood that the attack would provoke an enormous war.
He knew that Gaza was a small, densely populated territory facing one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East. He knew that Hamas could not protect Gazaâs civilians from the consequences of the war it was initiating.
Indeed, in reality, they did not even try. There were no attempts by Hamas to build bomb shelters for Palestinian civilians. There were no attempts to secure Palestinian civilians alternative supplies of water, fuel, electricity in advance of the attacks, either. There was no plan to evacuate Palestinians away from the war.
Sinwar chose to attack anyway, without real preparation for the civilian toll.
(the rest of this essay is paywalled, but this section alone was worth sharing.)
'Kill everyone you encounter': Recovered this year in an IDF raid on a tunnel used by Sinwar's brother, the document mirrors intercepted Ham
god i wish more sources talked about "sex" hormones like this
ironically its in a book about female sex anatomy that ive come across it (Vagina Obscura by Rachel E. Gross). everyone only wants to focus on the secondary sex characteristics and not the bazillion other functions of estrogen, testosterone, and co.
every body uses both of them!! for a million reasons!!!!! aaaaaa!!!!!!!
[Image ID: Text reading: All these uses went by the same logic: that estrogen was a feminizing substance, used whenever you needed to add femaleness or subtract maleness. In reality, of course, estrogen is far more than a sex hormone. It contributes to the growth and development of all bodies, helping promote brain development, maintain heart health, regulate lipids, enhance insulin sensitivity, lower glucose, and normalize liver function. It is particularly important for bone density and closure; men with a rare inability to process estrogen end up growing taller and taller, their bones failing to knit together. That's why, in her 2000 book Sexing the Body, biologist and gender scholar Anne Fausto-Sterling suggested that the term "sex hormone" be changed to "growth hormone," to reflect the fact that these substances affect nearly every cell in the body. /End ID]
A new Israeli government wonât deliver peace overnight, but it could reverse the trajectory toward endless conflict.
Last week, Rahm Emanuel traveled to Tel Aviv University to deliver an unusually blunt warning: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is jeopardizing Israelâs long-term alliance with the United States. Emanuel, the former Obama White House chief of staff, urged Israel to pursue what he called a â23-state solutionâ: an agreement in which movement toward Palestinian sovereignty would be embedded in a larger normalization deal between Israel and the Arab world.
For decades Washington has oscillated between trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and trying to sidestep it. The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel exposed the limits of both approaches. The Palestinian question cannot simply be bypassed, but neither is another round of final-status negotiations likely to succeed. Emanuel is right that the only realistic path now is to embed the Palestinian issue within a broader regional strategy. Such a strategy can give Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States a way to reverse the regionâs dangerous trajectory amid the wars in Gaza and Iran.
I recently spent a week in Israel and the West Bankâmy fourth time thereâwith a delegation of former policy makers organized by the nonprofit J Street. We met representatives of the Israeli military and political parties, Palestinian leaders, survivors of October 7, humanitarian workers, settler representatives, and activists. We spent time at the Kfar Aza kibbutz, where 62 residents, including children, were murdered by Hamas on October 7. We walked the streets of central Hebron, which resembles a ghost town because of severe restrictions on its Palestinian residents.
A couple of things were clear to me. The future of the U.S.-Israeli alliance may depend on the outcome of Israelâs next election. And the Middle East is in the early stages of a period of great instability and conflict. Many Americans may be tempted to wash our hands of it all and leave the region to its fate. But forthcoming elections in Israel and the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority provide a glimmer of hope. A new Israeli government may not offer wholesale change or pursue peace on its own, but it could move the country toward accepting a regional bargain.
Israeli politics may be approaching a breaking point. National elections are scheduled for October 27. Polling has consistently shown the parties opposed to Netanyahu ahead of his coalition, though not necessarily with a clear path to the 61 seats required to govern. The leading challenger is Gadi Eisenkot, whose new centrist party has drawn even with or edged ahead of Netanyahuâs Likud party in some recent surveys.
Eisenkot should not be mistaken for a dove. As chief of staff for the Israel Defense Forces, he used force aggressively against Israelâs enemies but opposed all-out war, on the grounds that force should serve an achievable political objective. He was willing to oppose the far right when military professionalism was at stake, including in a 2016 case in which Elor Azaria, an Israeli soldier, was convicted of killing a wounded and incapacitated Palestinian attacker in Hebron.
Eisenkot has suffered personal losses that have given his criticism of the Gaza war unusual moral authority. His son and two nephews were killed in the fighting. Eisenkot served in Netanyahuâs war cabinet, but resigned when he concluded that the prime minister lacked a coherent plan for what would follow military operations and was allowing political considerations to shape the warâs conduct and duration.
Our delegation met with representatives of the opposition for discussions that made clear that, if elected, a new Israeli government would not embrace a two-state solution or fully reverse course on Gaza. Naftali Bennett, Eisenkotâs likely coalition partner, who also harbors hopes of becoming prime minister, has advocated that Israel pursue total victory in Gaza. He opposes Palestinian statehood and has previously championed settlements and other forms of permanent Israeli control.
Progressive critics of Israel argue that Netanyahu is less the source of Israelâs crisis than its most abrasive expression. They may dismiss a new government as a mere continuation of the old one and continue to pressure Washington to impose an arms embargo and disengage from the alliance. But this would be a mistake. A new Israeli government would not solve the conflict, but it might stop actively making the conflict insoluble. It might value relations with Washington and Riyadh enough to accept constraints that Netanyahu rejects. It would take some constructive steps to defuse tensions. Thatâs a limited opening, but limited openings are where diplomacy usually begins.
The deterioration of the situation in the West Bank makes such diplomacy a matter of particular urgency. Israeli efforts to exert control over the West Bank have reached new extremes under the current coalition, which includes far-right parties led by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. This government has tolerated and facilitated settler violence against Palestinians. It has also turbocharged the expansion of settlements by accelerating approvals for new settlements, retroactively authorizing existing outposts, directing billions of shekels toward settlement infrastructure, and weakening the Palestinian Authorityâs already limited powers and draining its finances.
Our delegation traveled through the West Bank with the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence, which was founded by former IDF soldiers to raise awareness about the occupation. We moved swiftly along newly built highways, bypasses, and tunnels that connected settlements to Jerusalem and Israel proper. Then we switched roads to drive on a separate and far-inferior network for Palestiniansâone that is poorly maintained, interrupted by checkpoints, and vulnerable to closure without warning. Palestinians struggle to get around and in some cities, such as Hebron, are confined to their houses for days on end.
Settler violence has also risen dramatically. The pattern includes shootings and attacks on farmers, as well as arson, property destruction, road obstruction, and the intimidation or expulsion of entire communities. Israeli soldiers and police seldom intervene, and prosecutions are exceptionally rare. A settler representative told our delegation that the incidents were usually acts of vandalism committed by undisciplined teenagers rather than part of a systematic campaign. That description does not withstand scrutiny.
October 7 cast an ominous light on developments in the West Bank. In the years before the attack, Netanyahu came to see Hamasâs continued control of Gaza as strategically useful. As long as Hamas governed Gaza and the Palestinian Authority controlled the West Bank, there could be no credible negotiating partner for a two-state solution. Netanyahu apparently believed that Hamas was boxed in and posed no significant threat to Israel, whereas the Palestinian Authority could potentially create the conditions for a Palestinian state. Successive administrations tolerated his feed-the-beast strategyânot agreeing with it but also not bringing any pressure to bear. But his strategy of deferring problems instead of seeking constructive solutions to them eventually blew up, resulting in the invasion of southern Israel and the deaths of 1,200 Israelis. It also dragged the United States into a regional war that rages to this day.
Over the past four years, Yehuda Shaul, a co-founder of Breaking the Silence, told me, there has been a dramatic increase in isolated settler outposts, established illegally in Palestinian areas. At some point, Shaul warned, the situation could explode. In one scenario, a few young men might enter an outpost and slaughter a family. Settlers might then undertake large-scale reprisals; the Israeli military could get involved, leading to an outpouring of violence and the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, as well as putting enormous pressure on Jordan. The West Bank is a strategic time bomb for Israel.
Multiple opposition representatives told our delegation that if they were to form a new government, they would crack down on settler violence in the West Bank. They also told us that they would remain committed to ensuring that Hamas never again governs Gaza or threatens Israeli civilians. The Gaza goal echoes Netanyahuâs, but more than one approach to it is possible. Rather than insisting that every element of Hamas be dismantled and disarmed before any meaningful political transition can occur, for instance, a new government could accept a phased approach in which the Palestinian Authority, backed by Arab states, gradually assumes governing responsibilities, even while addressing Israeli security requirements in parallel. A new Israeli government could also provide immediate relief, for instance by facilitating humanitarian assistance in health care and education and allowing Gazan fishermen to operate again.
Under a new administration, Israel could find itself faced with a somewhat changed interlocutor, too. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority has scheduled legislative elections for November, the first since Hamas won the vote in 2006. Presidential elections are supposed to follow in early 2027. Reasons for skepticism abound: Elections have been promised and postponed before, Hamasâs role remains unresolved, voting in East Jerusalem will be contentious, and Abbas presides over an unpopular and ever more authoritarian system. Nevertheless, holding a credible legislative election would be a significant step toward restoring political legitimacy.
The Palestinian Authority has also made some moves toward reform. For decades, it maintained a system that allocated stipends to Palestinian prisoners in Israel based in part on the length of their sentences (ostensibly rewarding those who had committed the most serious crimes). Critics labeled these payments âpay for slay,â and the United States, Europe, and Arab governments pressed Abbas to put an end to them. Last year, Abbas formally abolished the system, replacing it with a needs-based welfare arrangement, though Israel still has concerns about implementation. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has pressed Palestinian leaders to reform, helped stabilize the Palestinian Authority financially, and treated the creation of a more credible Palestinian governing structure as essential to any regional agreement.
But modest progress in the Palestinian Authority can achieve only so much. It does not guarantee that the group could truly negotiate a final status agreement, effectively govern Gaza, or credibly ensure that a Palestinian state would not become a platform for attack. It suggests only that the means to improve Palestinian governance have become available at the same moment that Israeli politics may be changing.
How to leverage all of this into a lasting settlement to the regionâs turmoil is a bigger questionâone that suggests a bigger, more regional solution. Thatâs what Rahm Emanuel proposed with his 23-state solution. The notion has a history. Emanuelâs critics point to the failed Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which offered Israel normalization with the Arab League in return for withdrawal from occupied territory and an agreement on a Palestinian state. But that initiative arrived during the Second Intifada, when Palestinians were launching bloody attacks on Israel. It was presented to Israel largely as a settled Arab position, rather than as a negotiable process. And it appeared to require Israel to withdraw its forces and accept Palestinian statehood before receiving the full benefits of normalization.
A regional approach today could be different. During my time in the Biden administration, we were working on an ambitious deal that would normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, provide U.S. security guarantees and a civil nuclear-enrichment program to Saudi Arabia, and secure closer U.S.-Saudi cooperation on China. The deal was also to include an Israeli-Palestinian-relations component. I remember talking with my late mentor, Martin Indyk, who had served as Middle East envoy and twice as ambassador to Israel, about this component and whether the overall deal was worthwhile. I still have the memo he sent me a couple of months before October 7.
Indyk wrote that inserting an international peace conference, or a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian final-status negotiations, into the deal was tempting but doomed to fail. The factors that had confounded such efforts remained in force and had worsened. âSimply put,â he wrote, âthe game is not worth the candle.â Better, he added, to focus on the more urgent and tangible objective of changing the situation on the ground in the West Bank.
As Indyk saw it, the deal would have to include irrevocable commitments on Israelâs part to tangibly improve the lives of Palestinians, including by transferring control of some land in the Israeli-controlled part of the West Bank. This would be Israelâs bill for normalization. For their part, the Palestinians would have to publicly back the deal and continue making important reforms, such as ending âpay to slay.â Indyk believed that if such a package could be assembled, it could form the basis of a peace deal signed on the White House lawn. Out of that deal, he wrote, âcould come a commitment to seek the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, not as a precondition for the Israeli-Saudi peace deal, but rather as its natural result.â
Indyk didnât live to see whether that strategy would ever have another chance. The political conditions that he believed made a comprehensive peace impossible have become only more entrenched. But so has the logic of the alternative he outlined. The measures he described would not create a Palestinian state overnight, but they would halt the process by which such a state is being made physically impossible. And they would give Palestinians tangible evidence, for the first time in decades, that diplomacy can alter their daily lives by freezing and reversing settlement expansion, facilitating their freedom of movement, and empowering Palestinian self-governance.
For Israel, the strategic payoff would extend well beyond the Palestinian issue. After three years of war following October 7 and a war with Iran that most Israelis see as a failure, a regional deal could repair Israelâs fraying relationship with the United States, integrate Israel more fully into the Middle East through normalization with Saudi Arabia, and build a coalition capable of balancing Iran over the long term.
This approach will also be difficult for many American critics of Israel, on the left and the right, to accept, because it will require the United States to make commitments of its own. Riyadh has insisted that normalization will require a binding American security guarantee, regardless of how Democrats in Washington feel about Mohammed bin Salman. Indeed, the Saudis may be even harder to get on board with a regional deal after the Iran war than they were before. At the same time, the United States will need to recommit to its alliance with Israel if it embraces the regional pathway to peace.
There has been a clear recent push in both parties in the United States to punish Israel, but many of the proposed steps would be counterproductive. Broad arms embargoes on Israel or a hollowing-out of the alliance would make a regional settlement harder, not easier, to come by. Israel has legitimate security requirements against Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other armed groups. Targeted pressureâon people and organizations involved in settler violence and the seizure of Palestinian landâis another matter, and the U.S. could certainly show less deference to Israel when the two countriesâ interests diverge.
Another round of final-status negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians is very unlikely to produce a breakthrough. The more promising path is a regional bargain that changes the strategic calculus of Israelis, Palestinians, Arab states, and the United States. It would not deliver peace overnight. But it could stop and reverse a trajectory that has made peace impossible.
The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.
Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.
#I just started dropping '2.5 Billion page views a month'#into conversations as early as possible bc they would Not believe me otherwise#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously#turns out those are the magic words#otw#op
The last part was kind of insane, honestly. When we started changing platforms for the donor database, I kept telling them that yes I was aware we already had an account for the volunteer database, and no that could not be connected to the donor database. And they said yes fine sure and then connected them anyway. And I called them back and said, excuse me, I'm confused, I can see both databases. And they said, well, yeah, but it's only you, someone has to be able to see both databases to give other users access. The other users can't see both. And I said, no, we have been asking for a completely separate database. I should not be able to see both. And they said, you are one organization, one organization can't have two databases. And I said, last year someone used our volunteer email list to commit approximately one thousand felonies. Please feel free to imagine how much worse it could have been had they had a way to use volunteers' email addresses to get their legal names. We do not want this to be something anyone can do no matter how much we trust them. Let me describe those felonies to you in more detail. And they emailed me two hours later and said, you can have two separate databases.
like, "CSAM attacks" are always exclusively because of fandom antis, right? I cannot think of any other context in which I have heard of this happening, and have heard of it happening multiple times to people on Twitter or Tumblr who express opinions antis don't like.
but it's only antis. and it is an extreme and extremely specific type of behavior, which takes a very very specific type of mental derangement to think it is okay. I've never heard of, like, a hate mob doing this, right wing or left wing. people get doxxed and get all kinds of harassment and death threats and SWAT teams called on them for the crime of being noticed, but only proshippers talking about or facilitating shipping that antis don't like get CSAM attacks. I feel like, if this did happen in any kind of remotely political context, the side it happened to would never ever shut up about it, and insane people can politicize anything.
How many people do this? Is this even an anti thing, or is there just one or two antis who do this? Has anyone seen that carlos dinosaur guy lately?
In the very very distant days of approximately 2009-2013, 4chan users would occasionally come into Tumblr tags and spam gore or what is now csam as a... game/harassment method? Unclear on the purpose except that it happened occasionally and presumably upsetting people was the point. People would reblog PSAs to not go into whatever tag was being spammed to avoid it until it either stopped or Tumblr staff cleaned it up I guess? Though I don't honestly know if they did clean it up or how long it might take.
My understanding is it was a 'raid' sort of thing against the [remembering woke wasn't a thing then] delicate snowflakes? In some sort of juvenile Tumblr vs 4chan users politics fight. As far as I know, this was not weird behavior on 4chan, where there was always a chance someone would anonymously link you to irl gore or csam as basically a scare, but tumblr having a userbase that was known to complain about misogyny was basically an invitation.
So it is definitely mostly anti behavior *now* and claiming to link it because they're 'against it' is new, but it's a tactic that's been used before for ??? I Guess Pseudo Political Shock Value Or Something.
if you ever get bored, find a worldbuilding community (doesn't matter which kind, can be a forum or reddit or whatever as long as it's got topics) and search "nile" to find the meanest arguments
if someone starts with what seems like a polite question and you can clearly see they've attached an image of the nile delta, that means they're so angry they want to kill someone
in broad strokes, to quickly give a(n admittedly simplified) serious answer,
there's a geographical rule that's usually shortened to "rivers don't fork because rivers erode. when a river temporarily forks, one flow becomes weaker and deposits sediment, which means less water flows through it, which strengthens the other, and this snowballs until it all becomes one flow again" which is basically true, but leaves out enough nuance that people like to bring up bifurcation, confluence, and deltas as exceptions to it
the nile has a lot of things that kinda look like they run counter to that rule, and if someone didn't take the time to explain why deltas seem to fork like that, or why the nile delta is exceptional and interesting among deltas, it'd look like a magic bullet you could drop on the table in bad faith to prove everyone in the room except for you is an idiot (which is why people usually post it)
people draw forked rivers enough that people shorten their critique down to "rivers don't fork" (which is a fair rule of thumb) and people post the nile delta as an attempted gotcha to this often enough that it reliably happens in every single worldbuilding-adjacent community at least once a month
If I say it's unrealistic for you to posit an entire million-person civilization on the moon, it is NOT in fact a reasonable counterpoint to gesture at the Apollo Program and say "well, we put one person on the moon, so actually my 1990s AU is totally realistic."
If you want to use a rare exception to try and defend something, you have to understand the actual details of the exception - there's reasons that the Nile "forks". It is extremely unlikely that those reasons apply to whatever river fork you're trying to justify.
That's a reasonable point if someone brings up Divide Creek, but tons of rivers "fork" at deltas. The better explanation is "deltas are a different phenomenon that inherently require the river flow to be stopping, that mechanism can't create inland forks that continue as rivers" not "the Nile is a super rare one-off event".
Of course, there's also the other big exception (which someone might bring up with a picture of the Nile but from nowhere near the delta), which is active human management. Which matches the Apollo Program in a different way: you can have them, but only in places where a lot of human effort makes world-building sense.
See, this is a good example of an actual rebuttal: it establishes you know the material and have a reason for your exception! And if you do that, I will totally buy that whatever you're doing is reasonable.
But I would still maintain that probably in 99% of examples, the shorthand works appropriately - most people making maps do not understand basic 101 things like "rivers don't fork", and getting in to deltas and whatnot is definitely more of a 201 topic. You gotta master the basics first, and you have to actually be able to explain WHY the Nile is a relevant example if you want to use it as a rebuttal.
Putting this as a reblog because it was getting unweildly for a reply.
I am genuinely very confused by this "rivers don't fork" statement? I⊠live beside a river and our location is at "[river] fork." In another reblog, 'Divide Creek' is brought up as an exception. Do you mean, rivers don't fork INDEFINITELY? Like, they split but one of the offshoots will eventually vanish/go underground and the other will continue as the "main" river..? Or that BIG rivers don't fork, in that, the offshoots are so small in comparison to the main body that they don't even count/show up on maps? Because I. Have just looked up our local river system and those things are splitting like hairs.
had a bad low blood pressure moment last night and messily asked my partner for saltines and water before realizing i should probably ask for the Blood Pressure Medication I Need To Take. while they went to go grab it though i still had water and crackers so in a daze i took a swig of water but didnt swallow and then tried to cram 2 saltines in my mouth. full of water. in bed. with mouth full of water
NPR has learned that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be finalizing its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming
"The Trump administration is abandoning its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally, according to an official document obtained by NPR.
The document shows that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be finalizing a proposed rule that would have blocked all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care."
A few years ago while trying to find ways to commit suicide as painlessly as possible, I came across a PDF of Dr. Paul Quinnett's The Forever Decision. Thinking it might go into actual methods of suicide (I read an article once that actually did that and was trying to find it again) I started to read it, and I think I only got about two pages in before I was crying too much to actually see the words.
I downloaded the PDF to my hard drive and I open it again whenever I'm feeling too suicidal to do much else, but not enough to start booking a ride to the hospital. And every time without fail I only go up to a few pages before backing off and choosing to live another day just because suicide suddenly seems even more unbearable than whatever the hell upset me in the first place.
All the book really does is [I'm pulling a summary from GoodReads here as, again, I've read no more than 5 pages] "discusses the social aspects of suicide, the right to die, anger, loneliness, depression, stress, hopelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, the consequences of a suicide attempt, and how to get help."
But it also starts with the author kindly asking the reader to complete the book before going through with anything, and for some reason I'm compelled to really just try to read it all before finalizing everything. Despite not yet completing it (hopefully never will) I think I can safely say it's saved my life at least a few times now.
It's intentionally legal to copy and redistribute this book to keep it as accessible as possible, and it's very easy to find, but here's a link for it anyways.
Said this before but it genuinely flummoxes me to never have seen a silent hill style survival horror with a wheelchair user as a central protagonist.
Like, the overwhelming majority of the mechanics of that genre would lend themselves absolutely perfectly to that. The tank controls early in the genre? character handling and turning their chair. The oft-joked part of you can't climb over knee-high obstacles? Well, yeah, even if the protagonist has enough mobility to stand and climb over, unless they can get their chair through with them they're out of luck. The often semi-cumbersome relationship with melee weaponry and use of firearms? A wheelchair user is someone who would have even more reasons to not want a demon from hell practically on top of them- both their body and their primary means of mobility is at risk.
Heck, Silent Hill even loves scattering wheelchairs around and using them as imagery anyway, just put the playable character in one.
Even the way these sort of games often herd and control the player character's movement through the setting, and how they have to solve puzzles to progress- that would have perfect intertextuality with someone who's not just lost in the middle of nowhere but also has to figure out how to, say, get up to a second floor of a space that doesn't have an elevator and they can't climb the stairs.
I know the game Endoparasitic has a protagonist with only one working limb as its central conceit but as-said it baffles me how few games feature mobility-limited protagonists when so many genres but especially survival horror feel like they'd lend themselves perfectly to that sort of thing.
Almost every survival horror concerns itself at least partially with navigating an environment that seems set against you and often having to specifically solve problems to get place to place in crumbling environs.
A more moody, introspective Silent Hill-style title could also make a lot of hay out of the vulnerability that visibly disabled people experience in our world, while a more bombastic Resident Evil-esque approach could have a lot of fun with the protagonist mad max-style customizing their wheelchair as well as the more pointed take of an """imperfect""" person's attitude towards all these clownlords who keep babbling about perfecting humanity by making bigger and worse beefcake monsters.
It wasnât long after Hamas carried out its attack on Israel in Oct 7, 2023, that Taryn Thomas found herself swept up in the chorus of pro-Palestine activists mobilising against the Jewish state.
Even before Israelâs ground invasion of Gaza following the Oct 7 massacre,âI was scrolling through social media, and I only saw support for Palestine,â she recalls. âPeople I know, whether it was activists or people I look up to, were already posting their thoughts.â
Then aged 19 and studying biomedical science at the elite Stanford University in northern California, Thomas, an African American, was first introduced to the anti-Israel movement at Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, where Palestinian flags were flown by some activists. âI never really understood why, but we were told that in order for us to be free, Palestine has to be free,â she says.
She subsequently helped lead large protests against Israel and, within two weeks of Oct 7 2023, had joined an encampment of activists on campus protesting against Israelâs invasion of Gaza. Like many others, she donned a keffiyeh, the headscarf worn to demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians. âI really loved it because of the sense of belonging and the sense of purpose,â she says of the encampment. âIt was like an instant community.â
Besides fellow students, Thomas was encouraged by âfaculty members like history professorsâ who âvalidated the movementâ. âIt seemed like everyone was a lot more educated than me and very certain and sure of themselves that this is a genocide,â says Thomas, who is now 21. âThe only safe position was the more radical one in the encampment.â
âI was confused by what our mission wasâ
Thomas grew up in Riverside County, one of the few Republican counties in the otherwise âvery liberal Californiaâ. That, together with racist abuse at school, influenced her political outlook. âI thought going further to the Left would be the solution to the extremism I was seeing from the Right,â she says.
Huge demonstrations took place at universities across the US in the months that followed Oct 7, with protesters confronting the educational institutions with their demands â including to divest from Israel and cut ties with counterpart Israeli institutions.
While the movement was largely peaceful, some demonstrations turned violent and led to clashes with police. âOne of our protests got out of hand, and that kind of made me take a step back,â says Thomas.
This was in June 2024, when several militant students broke into the office of Stanfordâs president, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. âThey spray-painted disgusting things, such as âPigs taste best when deadâ, âDeath to Americaâ, âDeath to Israelâ, and âKill copsâ,â Thomas recalls.
âI was confused by what our mission was. At what point did the pro-Palestine movement turn into this anti-Israel, anti-America movement? We completely lost sight of the victims we were claiming to be supporting and fighting for.â
Yet those behind the vandalism âdoubled downâ, she says, and justified their actions, âeven though Jewish students said they felt unsafeâ. She explains: âThey felt like they couldnât go to their classes, they were getting harassed and doxxed [having personal information published online] and things like that. Essentially, we completely lost our minds.â
A drastic change of heart
Then, in October 2024, Thomas was one of many students who received an open invitation to the Nova Music Festival Exhibition in Los Angeles. Recently opened in London, the exhibition aims to recreate the festival site where 413 people were murdered by Hamas, and many more were injured or taken hostage.
Nova exhibition
The recently opened Nova exhibition in London commemorates the 413 young people murdered by Hamas at the festival Credit: Jeff Gilbert
âInitially, I laughed, thinking, âWhatâs this propaganda?ââ Something piqued her interest, however, so she decided to go. âIâd heard about the festival and was curious, but Iâd only really heard the reasoning, âWell, why would you have a festival next to a contested border? Essentially, they were asking for it.â
âI was hoping it was going to reaffirm my position, that I would find Zionist lies and whatever. I went with a very closed mind.â Three hours later, Thomas emerged feeling âso lostâ.
âI experienced a lot of cognitive dissonance â what I was seeing versus what Iâd been told. It was like I arrived a year too late to a funeral. I had so many questions, but I really had no one I could talk to about this. All of my friends were from the encampment. Iâd never met an Israeli or talked to them about their experiences â I was fluent in the stateâs sins, but I was illiterate in its people.â
Seeing pictures and footage of the young festival-goers hit home for Thomas. âThey were kids my age, just dancing, and then fleeing for their lives the next moment. I could see myself in them. I could have been sending a last âI love youâ message to my mum. I felt so much empathy and sadness.â
One element in particular changed everything â an audio clip of a jubilant Hamas fighter phoning his father to let him know heâd killed 10 Jews. âMy heart sank because these [were meant to be] our martyrs. [This was] the resistance we were claiming we wanted. When we called for any means necessary, I didnât realise thatâs what it meant.â
Months later, Thomas was invited on a trip to Israel organised by a group combatting anti-Semitism on campus. âI knew if I was going to continue to speak on this, I needed to see it for myself,â she says.
During the 10-day trip last March, she met with Israelis, Ethiopian Jews, Palestinians, Druze and Bedouin. âI was shocked at how much diversity I saw â I didnât even know Israel had black people,â she said.
On the fourth day, the group had to take cover during a missile attack. âOur guide told us to get on the ground, and I put my hands over my neck and prayed. âI thought about the irony of how Iâd called for the divestment of the very system I was praying for,â she says. âIt [the missile] didnât care about my politics or what I posted or any of that. I was a target, a body on the ground, and I felt utterly useless.â
Fortunately the missile was intercepted and the trip continued, but the experience left Thomas shaken. She says it made her realise âhow cushy and comfortable a lifeâ she had in America, and that sheâd not realised the âreal consequencesâ of what sheâd been calling for.
âIt felt like being stoned publiclyâ
Back home, she posted a picture of her trip online â a decision that cost her dearly. âMy best friend of three years asked, âIs this in Israel?â I said, âYeah, do you want to talk about it?â She immediately blocked me. I hadnât even expressed anything. I literally said I went. Period.â
Her post opened the floodgates. âI lost every single friendâ, while her classmates âposted really disgusting thingsâ, including labelling her a âgenocidal apologistâ. Thomas says she was doxxed, and received death threats and racist abuse â and that her family was also targeted. âIt was like a crusade and felt like being stoned publicly.â
She now takes a dim view of the encampment atmosphere. âIt completely insulates you in this echo chamber and indoctrinates you. If you had any questions, youâd lose your social belonging â the last thing you wanted to be called was a Zionist.â
She adds that the protestersâ âattention turned into this hatredâ and there were constant calls for the ânormalisation of violenceâ. Some activists, for example, celebrated the assassinations of Charlie Kirk, the Right-wing political activist, and Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare chief executive, she says.
The mental toll had become so heavy on Thomas that she stepped away from her studies late last year. What helped get her through this tough period is the new friendships she has formed, including some with Jewish students.
âThey knew I came from the encampments and they engaged with me, intellectually argued with me, disagreed with me, but we still broke bread on Shabbat,â she says. âI learned from my [now] best friend that she was doxxed because of people within our movement. I know I have to repair some of those damages.â
âOpen your heart and put down those megaphonesâ
Thomas says her family are not politically engaged in the issue of Israel and Gaza and she has faced questions from her mother about her involvement. âShe was just like, âWhy are you doing this? It isnât your burden to shoulder.â She just wants her family to be safe and protected.â
But Thomas hopes that by sharing her story it will encourage others to experience the Nova exhibition. âI hope the people who are protesting will come â I just want them to go inside,â she says. âNone of this is political. Just look and learn the stories â you donât have to agree. Come in with an open heart and an open mind and put down those megaphones.â
As for Thomas, she hopes to return to university in September, but in the meantime, she is determined to do what she can to increase cross-community understanding. âA lot of us on the pro-Palestine side were recruited through empathy, so I think we can be reached through it too. Because of this unique perspective I have of what changed my heart, I think I can hopefully change other peopleâs.
âIâm not Jewish. Iâm an African American woman. But a lot of our struggles are parallel,â she says. âWeâre seeing an increase in anti-Semitism, weâre seeing an increase in extremism and political violence. Thereâs just no way that I can now sit back, kick my feet up and call it a day.â
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