$LAYYYTER
tumblr dot com
Cosimo Galluzzi
shark vs the universe
Stranger Things
No title available
will byers stan first human second
Show & Tell
taylor price
ojovivo
styofa doing anything
Three Goblin Art
pixel skylines
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
No title available
noise dept.
Discoholic 🪩
AnasAbdin
sheepfilms
Today's Document
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Romania
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Mexico
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from T1
seen from Germany
seen from China
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from T1
@belgianreader2
“It's beautiful, yeah... The sky's burnt orange, with the citadel enclosed in a mighty glass dome, shining under the twin suns. Beyond that, the mountains go on forever. Slopes of deep red grass, capped with snow.” - The Tenth Doctor
Oil on Canvas, 40x60cm.
It took about 30 hours over the course of nine months, and I learned about four new painting techniques for this, and it was all so worth it to finally bring the Gallifrey in my head to something tangible.
im so confused about the artemis thing because theres that post going around about how its propoganda and they make a lot of good points but people i care about a lot are really excited about it and i dont want to hurt them and honeslty im tired of things that look good being bad
Hey.
The fascists don’t like NASA.
They don’t want stuff like this to happen.
They want to give NASA’s budget to the already bloated military.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s fine to celebrate a massive peaceful scientific achievement that’s a collaboration between the US and Canada space programs during a time when there’s so much bad news elsewhere.
I personally hope that this encourages a lot of kids to grow up and defend our space agencies.
but DO techbros like nasa? a lot of techbros i see are super into the idea of privatized space travel industry and colonizing mars, the first of which nasa is directly opposed to, and the second which nasa isn't really focused on.
the techbros i see really aren't into the type of science nasa does focus on researching, which is far less glamorous than what they want.
Not only do tech bros generally hate the quiet kind of science that NASA does alongside the flashy launches (NASA is a primary reason why we have literally any weather data in the US), but tech bros REALLY hate the other half of the Artemis Program that I don't really hear people talk about much
The Artemis Accords are one of the first large-scale civil policies about space and related activities to come about since the Outer Space Treaty in 1967. NASA wants to hold people (at least a little) accountable for the junk they're leaving in our orbit, and not enough people talked about this shit back when it got signed, so I wanna talk about it now
NASA, in coordination with the U.S. Department of State and seven other initial signatory nations, established the Artemis Accords in 2020.
I’ll add also, this is not just a successful collaboration between the US and Canada, but also one with Europe, whose space agency and industry supplied the Service Module (aka the engine that propulsed the astronauts once separated from the rocket, provided the Orion capsule with oxygen, water, temperature control, etc.).
Artemis is a good thing not only thanks to everything others have already said, but also because it’s such a wonderful example of international cooperation, peaceful use of space and scientific and human exploration.
Lesley Sharp: “When Sky is copying people’s speech patterns, we both had to learn the square root of pi to two or three dozen decimal places, but it was almost impossible to keep up with David. His speech pattern, the rate at which he speaks, is phenomenally fast. Really, really quick. He learns pages and pages and pages. And the rate at which he speaks is the rate at which he thinks. Russell explained to me that David’s Doctor has a lot to say, because that’s David. He’s so bright. Isn’t that brilliant though? The things that Russell thinks about and then re-interprets - I think they’re both amazing.” – from DWM #397
From the Midnight DVD Commentary (with David Tennant, Russell T. Davies, and director Alice Troughton): David Tennant: We did rehearse the pi-number quite a lot… Russell T. Davies: I remember you learning that the day after you got the script! DT: Yeah, I just thought, “Oh, I see…” RTD: You walked into the Sontaran read-though and just rattled off the square root of pi! DT: I got the script the night before, and thought, “He’s given me the square root of pi to 30 decimal places… I’m gonna show him.” RTD & Alice Troughton: [big laugh] DT: …and I got up early, and learnt it over breakfast RTD: And it was brilliant!
A Pi-Day on Tennant Tuesday! Happy 3/14 (to people who put the date in that order AND to everyone who doesn’t)
oh for fucks sake. did we do krypton as a conquering force again?? someone who saw the movie, yes or no question.
There is, in fact, a very easy fix to this frankly very fucking offensive plot point, where Lex Luthor deliberately cut and translated the message in the most bad faith way possible, (something that happens all the time with Jewish texts like the Talmud by antisemites), and Kara (someone who was raised within the culture) is able to help Clark understand what was actually said to him, instead of leaving him to rely on people who know nothing about his culture or heritage for answers.
But until James Gunn is willing to put that fix on screen, this plot point is going to continue to be antisemitic. And I'm tired of it.
i love finding out what degrees my mutuals have. like what the fuck do you mean you do law? you’re a doctor who blog
Ok, imagine you're comic accurate Clark Kent and you're a working-class immigrant raised on a farm. You grow up and dedicate your life to helping people while being a total malewife to your Pulitzer prize winner girlfriend. You're despised and targeted by an unethical, megalomaniacal billionaire who thinks his intellect and his power and his wealth entitles him to your inherent abilities and the adoration you've earned through years of nonstop altruism. YOU WERE CREATED BY TWO JEWISH MEN IN THE 1930S
And then people complain about a movie about you being too woke
Superman is an immigrant Jew created by two Jewish men who were watching things get worse in Europe while quotas for Jews were being cut lower and lower by immigration laws because of the eugenics movement around the world from the turn of the century and into the 20s and 30s.
Captain America was Jewish creators making a superhero who looked like the Nazi Aryan ideal but had the heart of a real American: a sick, poor, Irish immigrant kid from Brooklyn. He didn't punch Hitler on the chin on the cover of the first issue by accident.
Fantastic Four? Created by a Jew, who gave three of the characters super neat superpowers, and the Jewish character the inability to hide his powers at all. And then showed people reacting in horrified ways to Ben's appearance like, perhaps, he'd seen happen to his family and friends and neighbors because they looked "too" Jewish.
The list goes on (Magneto being the next obvious point). If you are reading/watching/taking in superhero media from Marvel or DC (Jack Kirby especially), you are looking at a character created by Jews who put their own identities into those characters.
The most notable exception? Wonder Woman, the superhero from Lesbian Utopia Island who was created by a polyamorous nonJew.
"we need to do a modern remake where Magneto is rwandan or Uyghyur" used to be the refrain and now it's "we need a modern remake where Magneto is palestinean"
and first off no we don't want a modern remake where he's not a holocaust survivor X-men 97 gave us a perfectly good story and people like it even praising how it references the holocaust without being too graphic
and do you really want to talk about which "updated backstory" to give Magneto to be "more with the times" because the answer is there and you are not ready to have this conversation maturely
Might want to stick with what Claremont wrote and keep him and Ashkenazi Jewish and Sinti Romani Holocaust survivor instead of whichever group it's most topical to shift it to
We also haven't had one where he's even symbolic of a Uhygur because American audiences don't want to admit they're profiting off of slave labor if they're buying Chinese.
Which is why I avoid buying China made goods as much as I can.
that another thing entirely that most people do Uyghyur genocide denial but i see it thrown around in some circles, Rwanda genocide survivor was way more popular
the other reason for Rwandan is because they want a Magneto who is black but not Jewish so badly
Sounds like they're a load of cunts.
Magneto being Jewish and a Holocaust survivor is very integral to his character. I honestly don't see how he could work any other way, to be honest. It just formulates so much of his ideology to be a victim of the Holocaust. The parallels between the Holocaust and what he sees happening to mutants, and the bad future for mutant kind that comes about.
A lot of stuff would have to alter for it to work having be anything but what he is now. Not drastically, I don't think, but still.
thanks for getting it!
It seems obvious to me, but maybe I'm just assuming.
Magneto would, I think, be a different character if he wasn't a victim of the Holocaust. His motives would also require a bit more explaining I think? Sure, he'd still be a victim of genocide if he were Uyghur or Rwandan, but the Holocaust and the events leading up to it just fit so well as a parallel with the struggles of the mutants. So it just makes sense that he would be so adamant of trying to defend mutants, given he is basically watching the events leading up to the Holocaust happen a second time. Not perfect 1:1 obviously, but close enough that it just makes sense why he would be seeing it that way.
Are people really asking for a Magneto without his Holocaust background?
yeah they are it’s Jewish erasure dressed up as modernization
Now it’s mostly either people who want the Malcolm X allegory instead of the Meir Kahane one and want say a specific gentile black actor in the role or hamasniks who hate Jews so much they have to extend their superseccionism to fictional men from comic books
it’s a vocal minority and a favorite fandom punching bag but they exist
gah magneto as a malcom x allegory is like the scene in the falcon & the winter soldier where bucky is like "steve and i didn't think about the ramifications of giving the shield to a black man" bro no he did what is this. the significance of the plot would have lost nothing if they said steve did it on purpose
i don't understand sabotaging jewish rep for the sake of black rep why can't we have both 😭
People who see Mageneto as the Malcom X to Professor X's MLK Jr (I used to be one of them) are missing the point. MLK Jr and Malcom X differed in methods, but they were both going at the same problem: racism in America. They may have had different end goals, but they lived more or less the same life and both saw progress towards equality as a good thing. Magneto and Professor X are not trying to solve the same problem. Professor X is asking "how can I ensure my people aren't discriminated against" while Magneto is asking "how can I ensure my people don't get wiped out. again".
And Magneto’s very consistent answer to that problem is mutant Zionism. He feels like the best way for mutants and humans to coexist without destroying each other is for mutants to achieve sovereignty over their own land. Any time the constant aggression and violence against his people doesn’t send him into a blinding rage, he turns his attention to establishing a mutant nation.
Reacting to frequent global massacres by establishing a universal safe homeland for a nation without a state is an ideal that, per my current knowledge, only exists among Jews. Since Chris Claremont picked up the X-Men, the core of Magneto has been rooted in Zionism. You can’t separate that from his character without fundamentally changing him.
Genocides aren’t cookie cutter molds— you can’t replace one with another and expect everything to stay the same.
The reason why they think they can is the Universalization of the Holocaust.
It also shows a lack of understanding about and actual care for any of the genocides that they are choosing to replace the Holocaust with.
Because while all genocides have certain things in common and they have to because that is what is gets classified as genocides.
The way they are expressed look different for each one. The realities of each genocide looks different for each one.
The Darfur Genocide was from 2003-2005, the Rwandan Genocide was from April -July of 1994, Holocaust was from 1933-1945, and the Armenian Genocide was from 1915-1920.
I'm using just these four, out of sadly far too many, as examples. They all have different lengths of how long each Genocide lasted. Each Genocide has a different death total, injury total, and missing total.
But each one is still classified as a Genocide.
You can not just replace one with another, do a some light ironing and expect it all to work just fine.
That is just not how it works.
Every Genocide is unique in its own way. The through-line that connects all genocides is dehumanization.
Dehumanization is the key to getting a populace to turning on others within the populace.
And when genocides are treated like this one is just the same as another and can be replaced with another it is damaging to the survivors and the communities that endured that genocide.
It treats their pain, our pain like it is nothing. Like it is meaningless. Like our pain, our loss, our trauma is their for you to take, to use, and to exploit.
And that we should be thankful for it, that we should thank you for doing us the favor of exploiting us.
So fuck all of this type of shit.
You can not replace one genocide for another because they are not replaceable. They are not copy and paste events. They are not your tv episode lesson of week.
They are real, they are scarring, they are traumatizing, and they don't just go away.
They imprint into the very genetic codes of the communities that survived.
Have some compassion, have some respect, and go educate yourselves.
People who want to reimagine Magneto as a victim of anything except the Holocaust are missing a fundamental aspect of his character because they misunderstand a fundamental aspect of the Holocaust.
Because Magneto would lose something even if you changed him to a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor instead of what he is, which is a German Jewish Holocaust survivor whose father was a war hero in WWI.
Magneto isn't just viscerally aware of oppression and violence, he is viscerally aware that it doesn't matter how much the dominant culture seems to be accepting you, it doesn't matter how much you think you've beaten the prejudice, it just takes one social upheaval and one hate movement to make the violence worse than it has ever been.
Anyone who can't grasp that is not only going to fail to understand Magneto, but they will never truly be able to understand antisemitism or Jewish trauma.
Exactly.
There were Jewish soldiers in the Great War, WW1, who after the war had been honored with the Iron Cross.
Those very soldiers would later be stripped of that honor by the army. These veterans would be blamed for Germany's loss and be scapegoated for all that went wrong with the war. They would be accused of purposeful sabotage as well.
This would be levied against them for the simple fact that they were Jews. Because these accusations were levied against all the Jews.
So it didn't matter if you fought in the Great War, if you had a family member who died fighting in the Great war, or if you even had medal honoring you or a family member for their military service in the Great War what mattered was that you a Jew.
So I agree that Magneto being a Holocaust Survivor and a German Jew is especially important to the core of him, why he is they way he is, he world view, his psyche, and to take that away is essentially creating an entirely different character.
I need to add that Magneto experienced Kristallnacht firsthand (his father's jewelry store was destroyed), saw his parents murdered by Einstatgruppen (fairly certain I misspelled but I don't want to Google it and risk images of it), gets sent to Auschwitz, becomes a Sonderkommando (the person who moved bodies from gas chambers to the crematoria), moved to the USSR after the war ended, got married, had a kid, watched his kid get murdered because of antisemitic/anti-Romani/anti-mutant sentiment (too long to explain here), then his wife left him. He worked for the US government hunting Nazis until the government told him not to kill one because he was part of Operation Paperclip. He settles in Israel for a bit until he meets Professor X. He stops being friends with Professor X because they fight Baron von Strucker, a Nazi, and Magneto kills him. Charles is horrified, but Charles is a lil bitch.
So his background is very much "minority person repeatedly gets punished and harmed for being a minority, minority person finds a country full of people like him where he's safe, he has to defend himself, other structures will not help him because of his minority status." And keep in mind, when he's in Israel, there's a war going on. (I forget which one exactly).
It's why Magneto is constantly pushing for a mutant state, and why he's created three himself and assisted with creating a fourth. Comics won't let mutants have their own country and be happy.
Magneto's early life is informed by people who are supposed to be on his side abandoning him because of his status as a minority of a different type. His wife leaves because he's a mutant (and also accidentally killed some people), even though she's Romani and they were imprisoned together. Charles Xavier has a break with Magneto because Magneto kills a Nazi, and I'd argue that Xavier's response is naive antisemitism. He doesn't mean to be antisemitic, but he's too goyish to understand why a Holocaust survivor can't let a Nazi keep on living.
Honestly, a lot of his life is informed by being at the intersection of multiple identities, and people not accepting all of those identities. (It's kind of why his first mutant country fails.)
"And keep in mind, when he's in Israel, there's a war going on. (I forget which one exactly)." If you do the math from 20 years ago in around the late 80s, it's clear UXM 169 is set either in the late 60s so just prior or just after the six day's war. Legion Quest confirms it's the latter and Erik (and other mutants) fought in it.
"His wife leaves because he's a mutant (and also accidentally killed some people), even though she's Romani and they were imprisoned together. Charles Xavier has a break with Magneto because Magneto kills a Nazi, and I'd argue that Xavier's response is naive antisemitism"
Yeah if my wife left me for being Mutant and my boyfriend left you for being a Jew who fights back isntead of a good little victim jew like his girlfriend I would go insane and become a supervillian as well.
reminder that the person who gets him back on the path of relative heroism is Kitty Pryde who both Jewish AND Mutant and finally understands him from the intersection of those oppressions
thank you for probably one of the best additions to this post since chaostocosmos’ addition
Just a quick aside: Magneto is supposed to be Begin, not Kahane.
Even X-Men: The Animated Series back in the 90s erased the Holocaust survivor aspect of Magneto's history. He's instead lost his faith in humanity in a generic war. (But I think this was because of the "no swastikas" taboo for European audiences.) A war is one thing, but a genocide is a whole other level of atrocity.
Claremont may have intended him to be Begin but I can see both of them in Magneto and I can show you THE essay by the forward which argues the perspective. We can argue about it but it's a perspective that exists and an interpretation I find at least in good faith.
Yeah I'm of the opinion that the animated series fucked up there because it didn't really think through his alternate backstory. And in 97 which in the same universw they retconned it back to being the holocaust
I like to think that Doctor Who from the Master's perspective could be called 'One Man's Quest To Get His Spouse To Come Back Home And Abandon His Massive Ant Colony'. Everything is so much funnier if you picture the Master being absolutely baffled at the Doctor defending Earth, because he's borderline immortal whilst humans die so quickly - killing a human is like stepping on a spider, and the Doctor is the guy who swoops in with a cup and paper to move the spider outside even if the decision seems nonsensical. I like to reframe the Master's attempts to take over the universe as him desperately asking the Doctor "we could get a dog? Or a cat? Or adopt? Are the ants really worth it, you have no other hobbies".
Fucking hate watching children go “um Actually UwU” about AO3. saw someone say that fixing a bug with bookmarks isn’t a good reason to close a site down for a couple hours and they’re all lying about what they spend money on
meanwhile this very week my actual day job shut down the internal programmes for idk how many hours to fix a minor bug that popped up out of nowhere. I mean??? I don’t know shit about IT but “shut down all functions while we fix a problem” is so damn common. And “oh this took longer than we said” as well.
AO3 is impressively transparent about their bug fixes and downtime. They communicate fast, mention the reason why they're doing things and actually keep their promises.
Meanwhile my workplace regularly shuts down entire applications for maintenance with minimal warning or explication and often keeps them offline way longer than initially communicated.
Also it was not just 'oh we need to fix a tiny bug with bookmarks'. It was 'there are more bookmarks than a normal database can handle'
Source
Migrating over 2 billion of *anything* is gonna take a while and I imagine having people using the site and adding more bookmarks while that is happening would be kind of a risk!
Doing it without losing any data is impressive as hell. I've seen commercial vendors shrug and say, sorry. You're losing 24 hours worth of transactions. Just re-enter them.
It would have been simple for AO3 to 'lose' a million or so bookmarks to buy some time. They're just bookmarks, who cares? It's not like anyone's paying for this.
But nope, they did it the right way.
I have a lot of things I could say about this (for context, I just retired a month ago as chair of the AO3 support committee so I have insight, but I am speaking only on my own behalf and not as an official representative).
First: this particular type of data migration (moving from INT to BIG INT) has happened twice in AO3's past already (for history, and for kudos) and it was the same each time - a large table with hundreds of millions of items being moved is time-consuming and you need to be cautious doing it, and it WILL require a few hours of downtime to be safe. It is not "fixing a bug". It is moving the content of all bookmarks on the site. It will have to happen again for other types of data in the future, because AO3 just keeps growing.
Second: They can't know exactly how long a migration like that will take, so they make their best estimate. They can't test it before-hand on the test archive and have it reproduce exactly what will happen on the live archive, because the live archive has so much more data. Estimating "how long will it take to move 700 million items" is a matter of experience and luck. (Yes, 700 million is more the actual number of bookmarks involved, I know people keep citing the 2 billion number but each bookmark is assigned an ID number, and bookmark numbers iterate by 3. The highest ID number available under the old system was the slightly over 2.1 billion number, so the actual total is about 1/3 that. It's still a lot.)
Third: In general, AO3 tries not to have downtime, and it does very well. My observation is that the process in this case was usually like "Ok, let's start doing this and see how it goes. *waits to see if things start to get painfully slow and a lot of errors start happening* Ok, there are lots of errors happening and the site is getting slow to use, let's block all bot traffic and see if that helps. *that helps for a while and then things start to pile up again* Ok, let's try flipping the site into maintenance mode (i.e. take it down) just for a minute or two and see if that lets it catch up. *that helps for a bit and then things start to get slow and not catch up with just a few minutes of downtime* Ok, we do need to actually take it down and just let the process run until it finishes. " My point is that they first try various options that, if they work, will not require taking the site down all the way, before resorting to downtime. If they left it up, the process would take a lot longer, and people would experience a lot more problems while using the site. Taking it down is safer and more efficient in that kind of case.
Fourth: The same people doing the work need to communicate it to the people who do the tweets/tumblr posts/status updates. So not just doing complicated database stuff, but also telling communications "hey we are about to do X and Y and it will take approximately Z hours". (Fortunately we have mostly moved on from the times when it was literally the SAME people trying to do both things, and have dedicated communications folks to help.) Sometimes when they are trying to do a lot of things at once, the technical volunteers might not communicate as quickly or clearly as would be ideal, or a comms person might not immediately be available to make a post, so a status update is a bit later than we prefer, but we try to always communicate to users before doing something big like taking the site down. In a normal situation with planned downtime, the ideal is to make a post a couple of days before, then an hour before, and then at the time the downtime happens, and then when it's done. Sometimes there isn't time for as much advance warning, when something is either unexpected or doesn't go as planned.
Fifth: Also the people doing this are doing it in their spare time, around real jobs, and often on their evenings, weekends, in the middle of the night, while they're trying to cook dinner, etc. and they're doing it better than many sites with paid employees and larger staff. So cordially, anyone saying that they're lying or not doing a good enough job can go to hell.
ffs ....
Additions from my husband: Bakers wear loafers and Zookeepers wear Crocs
Excellent additions.
Angels wear wingtips.
A lumberjack wears Timberlands.
Ice skaters wear slippers
Addition from my mom: delivery drivers wear vans
VERY good addition!
Achilles wears heels.
how is this post from this decade and not like 2012
“It's beautiful, yeah... The sky's burnt orange, with the citadel enclosed in a mighty glass dome, shining under the twin suns. Beyond that, the mountains go on forever. Slopes of deep red grass, capped with snow.” - The Tenth Doctor
Oil on Canvas, 40x60cm.
It took about 30 hours over the course of nine months, and I learned about four new painting techniques for this, and it was all so worth it to finally bring the Gallifrey in my head to something tangible.
@bubbletune6 Here you go
Very curious as to what led to this interaction, if you feel like sharing 👀 @lotus-ignis @bubbletune6
It's really nothing too exciting, I'm afraid. @bubbletune6 and I were having our weekly Doctor Who watch, and we got to the quote you used in the post. She said that she'd love to see/make a painting of it (at least that's how I remember it. I can't find the messages anymore). I remembered that I'd seen this painting and told her I'd show it to her.
This is extreeeeemely exciting to me thank you!!!! The fact that you remembered my painting means the world 🥹🥹
Enjoy your weekly watch!!
When you talk about why someone might want engagement with their fics, I do think there is one crucial reason you always overlook.
Sometimes the reason is not a bid for popularity or reassurance or even community, but for me at least if I am writing a fic, it is because I am passionate about the show and the characters and I tend to approach my fics as a way to sink my teeth into what makes the characters tick, how they might act like in different circumstances and so on. Therefore I post because I want to geek out with others about it. For that same reason, I cannot shut up in other writers' comment boxes if their story resonates with me.
I agree with you that community makes fandom infinitely more fun and rewarding but the rush of happiness at getting a (multi sentence) comment to me is not unlike when you say strike a conversation with a stranger in a museum in front of your favourite painting or finding out that a friend or an acquaintance shares a hobby or a passion for a dear book or movie with you, after which you jump into a fevered and lengthy discussion.
It is also for this reason that fandoms where I have gone to the trouble of building community in the first place are those where people generally want to tell interesting stories and to talk about them and have interesting things to say. Sometimes that's three fandom friends leaving wall of text comments on one another's fics (that no one else cares about), and sometimes it's a larger more diffuse group of strangers leaving short comments that say "I screeched with delight reading what Character A said" - but it always is a place where people are not afraid to share their enthusiasm and joy and passion about the stories told and the act of story telling itself.
That's an excellent point, anon. I think I'm mentally including that concept under the umbrella of community but it's a fair point that I should really break it out when I'm describing the concept.
It's one of the aspects of fandom that I really enjoy as well. Having a space where people feel comfortable being enthusiastic is a core component of community to me, but that doesn't necessarily mean that a "community" forms.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! It's an excellent reminder and food for people to think about.
Like I posted recently about how I love the small, random encounters I get at cons in cosplay from other people who love the same thing. That’s what I’m looking for with online fandom. Where is that?
It feels like if I don’t already have a following, you don’t get that. I had a conversation once with someone who is a bigger name and they were joyfully cataloging the fanart, the fic bind and other amazing stuff they got in response to their fan works and pretty much told me all they did on mine was a guest kudos. Why would you not want to share that joy you know you get from people?
When I bring this up as a point of frustration, I get told I’m wrong to be frustrated and I should write for myself. I do write for myself. I share for community. I find posting work lately ruins whatever joy I had in writing, to the point where I do not think I’m going to do so anymore. I wrote a lot this year. I wrote and posted my favorite thing I’ve ever written and to be told I should just be happy with an unknown potential and utter silent person out there who has this as their favorite instead of wanting to share? People who have never read my stuff (or apparently only read somewhere I don’t have access?) are telling me I should post out of spite or something and like… you guys won’t give me the time of day lol.
Like you can’t sit people on the sidelines for years and then wonder what happened to the community. If it’s just your personal friend group, it’s not community. Idk
I think this is evidence of a shift in the way people view fandom. Fandom, when I started back in the 90s and early 2000s, was less...commodified? Or at least the language and therefore the mindset behind it was. A fic wasn't talked about in terms of "content" and readers weren't consumers of content. People did write fic just to write it but often writing fic was a community conversing with one another. It reminds me of the old LJ fic challenges that was just strings and strings of fics that people added into a convo.
I do mourn the "old days" where there wasn't such a separation between fic writers and artists from the larger community. And I think a lot of people are feeling the absence of this more conversational form of fandom where we were all just community members, even mods were part of the community but had specific roles. Idk. Its a little sad. A big reason why I stepped back from writing fic was because people treated it more like I was a "creator" as opposed to just another fan.
To me, the bigger difference between now and the Good Old Days is just that we didn't have centralized social media back then.
If you were engaging in fandom, you were doing so on a forum built specifically for that fandom, a Usenet group, an email listserv, a LiveJournal community, or something along those lines -- or not even for that fandom, but for a specific subset of shippers or character fans. You were building friendships with that specific group of people, and so when you posted a fic it was you, as an individual, sharing a fic with other individuals who knew you and who were into the same character interpretations as you, and since they were your friends and you were a known quantity to them, they were more likely to read your fic and to give some form of feedback (whether that's comments or emails or whathaveyou - since not all of these sites allowed direct, public comment), or even build a kind of shared fic continuity.
And I think this still holds true! It's just that it feels way harder to build that kind of community now. You have to use Discord or Tumblr communities or join in on theme weeks on Twitter ... or create your own of any of these. Or, honestly, just reblog other people's posts with your own thoughts and have back and forth conversations with them. If you have friends, you have people who will probably read your fics and comment on them. And you read theirs and comment in return. This concept isn't gone! I'm an annoying bitch about how good OFMD fandom is but half the reason I think it's such a "good fandom" is that I have friends on here and on Discord who support each other and read each other's work. If I didn't, I might not think it was so much better about engagement.
I don't know what "community" is in a fandom sense if not a friend group of some kind, or a group of people who want to geek out about the same thing (which anon seems to think is totally different). The reason fan communities in the old days felt more egalitarian and engaged is because they were made up of smaller groups where everyone largely knew each other as a person even if they were also "the mod", "the artist with that very cool style", "my favorite fic writer", and so on.
It makes sense for people to be frustrated with the way fandom is centralized today, but it's important not to tint the glasses too rosily -- there were always BNFs, there were always people whose fics and art were more highly prized. But there was also a comfort and community in smaller groups, and we can and should try to bring that back by deliberately engaging in smaller groups, starting new Discords, and using the Tumblr community feature. (And IMO by using DreamWidth but I fully accept that that's not going to happen.)
Not a post submission. But I see you don’t have asks on. Just wanted to drop by and say hey thanks for the Bingo card, it’s very useful.
~
You’re welcome! I’ve made a few of them over the years. The general idea is twofold: Making a game out of dealing with Jew-hating bigots so we can have a laugh and a bit of joy, and also to really hammer home just how repetitive their hate is. It’s never “I haven’t seen that before!” it’s “Line 2, Column 3 on the Bingo Card of the Usual Stuff.”
(I also have Asks off because I was getting so many fake gaza-fundraisers that I just turned it off for my own sanity)
Oh, and as for the Bingo Cards, @jack-wess-wolf, here, have the unfilled ones for future use:
“It's beautiful, yeah... The sky's burnt orange, with the citadel enclosed in a mighty glass dome, shining under the twin suns. Beyond that, the mountains go on forever. Slopes of deep red grass, capped with snow.” - The Tenth Doctor
Oil on Canvas, 40x60cm.
It took about 30 hours over the course of nine months, and I learned about four new painting techniques for this, and it was all so worth it to finally bring the Gallifrey in my head to something tangible.
@bubbletune6 Here you go
Very curious as to what led to this interaction, if you feel like sharing 👀 @lotus-ignis @bubbletune6
Is what Israel is doing in Gaza genocide?
I expect to get lots of hateful Anon Asks from Israel detractors for this...and probably a couple from Israel supporters.
Is Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza?
If we want to hold people accountable for serious crimes, we need to be serious about the words we use.
"Genocide" is not a vibe or a metaphor. It isn't a synonym for "really bad thing" or "many people dying."
It’s a legal term with a specific legal definition. Using the word accurately matters - not just for justice in this conflict, but for justice anywhere the term is invoked.
Where the Word "Genocide" Comes From
The word "genocide" was coined in 1944 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin to describe what the Nazis were doing to Jews, Roma, and others in Europe. Lemkin combined the Greek word genos (race or tribe) with the Latin -cide (killing) to describe the deliberate destruction of a people.
His idea became the foundation for the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, or "Genocide Convention." This treaty - ratified by nearly every country in the world - defines what genocide is under international law. It's the legal standard we still use today.
The Legal Definition of Genocide
Under Article II of the Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as:
Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:" (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
[source]
Three key points matter here:
Intent is required. Accidental or collateral harm does not qualify.
The targeted group must be destroyed "as such." That means killing or harming people because they belong to the group - not because they are, say, enemy combatants.
The acts must aim at physical destruction. Displacement, hardship, or even occupation are not themselves genocide unless they're part of a plan to wipe out the group.
Does What Israel Is Doing in Gaza Meet the Legal Definition of Genocide?
1. Is there an intent to destroy Palestinians "as such"?
No. This is the core element of genocide, and it’s the one that is not present. Israel’s stated goal in Gaza is the destruction of Hamas—a terrorist organization that murdered over 1,200 civilians on October 7, 2023, and continues to fire rockets and hold hostages.
Israel has repeatedly said it is not at war with the Palestinian people. Its military objectives, whether you agree with their execution or not, are directed at Hamas fighters, infrastructure, and command centers.
Even critics of Israel’s conduct, including legal scholars, acknowledge that intent is not demonstrated.
Intent to destroy a group is very different from intent to destroy an enemy that embeds itself within that group. The tragedy is real—but tragedy is not the same as genocide.
2. Are civilians being killed because they are Palestinian?
No. Civilian casualties in Gaza are not being targeted "as such," but occur in the context of urban warfare where Hamas deliberately embeds itself in hospitals, schools, mosques, and densely populated civilian areas.
This is a tactic Hamas has publicly embraced. Hamas senior leader Khaled Mashal stated on October 19, 2023 that he views the current loss of civilian life in Gaza – brought about by Hamas' strategy of using human shields – as essential: "No nation is liberated without sacrifices... In all wars, there are some civilian victims. We are not responsible for them."
When combatants hide behind civilians, it leads to civilian casualties. That's tragic, and under the laws of war, precautions must still be taken - but this is not the same as intentionally targeting civilians for the purpose of destroying them as a group.
3. Are conditions of life being inflicted to bring about destruction of the group?
No. This clause refers to tactics like starvation, medical denial, or forced exposure that are part of a coordinated plan to kill off a population.
While there have been devastating humanitarian consequences from the war - including shortages of food, fuel, and medical supplies - there is no evidence that these are intended to destroy the Palestinian people.
In fact, Israel has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid, even while fighting Hamas. It has opened multiple aid corridors, coordinated with international partners, and even paused military operations to allow supplies in.
The IDF has also implemented leaflet drops, text messages, and broadcast warnings to urge civilians to evacuate combat zones. You can disagree with how effective or sufficient these measures are - but they are not consistent with a strategy of genocide.
Popular Genocide Claims From Social Media
"The International Court of Justice said Israel is committing genocide!"
False. South Africa brought a case to the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide. The ICJ has not ruled that genocide is occurring. They didn't even rule that a genocide could plausibly be happening.
Don't take my word for it, listen to the ICJ's president, Joan Donoghue:
So this claim based on citing the ICJ is misleading at best...and dishonest at worst.
"Israel’s leaders said they wanted to destroy Gaza - what more proof do you need!?"
Several inflammatory quotes have been circulated, and some of them are even real. A few Israeli politicians and military spokespeople have made irresponsible or dehumanizing comments.
They are fucking assholes and I hope the universe eventually delivers unto them the justice they deserve for their callous, disgusting rhetoric.
But genocidal intent is not proven by statements alone, especially not without context and intent. Courts look at official policy, military orders, patterns of conduct, and evidence of systematic destruction - not just quotes in the press.
Many of the quotes are mistranslated, edited, or pulled out of context. For example, the much-circulated quote "we will erase Gaza" was from a political statement about Hamas - not about the civilian population.
What Gallant said:
Gaza will not return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate it all.
In context, we can see that "It" = Hamas.
Hateful rhetoric is wrong and should be condemned, but hyperbole and cruelty ≠ genocide.
"Look at the death toll! That many deaths must be genocide."
Civilian deaths are horrible - but numbers alone don’t prove genocide. The US-led campaign against ISIS in Mosul killed thousands of civilians. So did Russia's bombing of Grozny. These were brutal campaigns, but they were not declared genocides.
Despite the intense scrutiny and global outrage, civilian casualties in Gaza are relatively low compared to historical benchmarks for urban warfare - especially given the population density, the length of the conflict, and Hamas's tactic of embedding itself among civilians.
The UN says 54,607 of 2.3 million Gazans have perished since the start of the war on 10/7/23. Even if we assume every reported death is a civilian (which we shouldn’t), that’s roughly 2.4% of Gaza’s pre-war population - a tragic toll, but nowhere near the catastrophic losses seen in other conflicts of similar scale.
For comparison: In the 2004 U.S. battle of Fallujah, civilian casualties were estimated to be between 800 and 1,000 - out of a population of about 300,000, in just a few weeks of fighting. In the Battle of Mosul (2016–2017), where US-led forces fought ISIS in a densely populated Iraqi city, more than 9,000 civilians were killed in just nine months in a city of 1.5 million. And in WWII’s Battle of Dresden, tens of thousands of civilians were killed over a few nights of bombing alone.
I'm not trying to minimize deaths, but to contextualize them. Civilian deaths in Gaza are the tragic result of a brutal war - not a systematic extermination. Compared to other modern urban conflicts, Israel's operations, despite their flaws, have resulted in fewer civilian casualties per capita and per square kilometer than in accepted wartime precedents. That doesn't excuse mistakes or excesses, but it does challenge the narrative that what’s happening is uniquely or intentionally genocidal.
A legal determination of genocide is based on intent and targeting, not death tolls.
War Crimes Have Almost Certainly Occurred
There are strong reasons to believe that some IDF soldiers or commanders have committed war crimes. Civilians have been killed. Homes and hospitals have been destroyed. There's never been a war in which war crimes didn't take place.
Allegations of war crimes must be fully investigated by Israel's judicial system - and if it fails to produce accountability, by independent international mechanisms. Accountability is essential.
But again: war crimes are not genocide.
Genocide is a unique legal crime requiring specific intent to eliminate a group. Other violations - like disproportionate force, failure to distinguish civilians, or destruction of infrastructure - fall under different categories of international law.
The distinction isn't about excusing wrongdoing. It’s about naming things precisely so justice can be served correctly and according to the rule of law.
"Not Genocide" ≠ "No Wrongdoing"
Some of Israel's supporters seem to suggest if what has happened in Gaza isn't genocide, then everything must be fine.
That's not my argument here.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza is awful. The war has caused immense suffering. There are open questions about proportionality, humanitarian access, and command decisions.
You can believe Israel had a right to respond militarily and still believe that some responses are morally questionable or legally wrong. These are not mutually exclusive and criticism on these grounds isn't just fair, but necessary.
But moral revulsion is not the same thing as a legal definition. The difference matters if we want language and justice to mean something.
Genocides Don't Have Exit Ramps
Hamas could end the war at any time. Genocides are not conditional. The Holocaust didn’t stop when Jews surrendered because the goal was elimination, not negotiation. In Gaza, the war has clear and consistent conditions for ending: return the hostages and disarm.
Israel isn’t fighting Gaza because it exists. Israel is fighting Hamas because of what Hamas did and continues to do. If Hamas were to surrender and release all hostages, the war would stop tomorrow.
That alone disqualifies this war as a genocide.
Holocaust Inversion and the Weaponization of Language
If you've spent more than ten minutes on social media since October 7, you’ve probably seen some version of this grotesque claim: "Israel is doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to Jews."
This is not just a bad analogy. It's not just ignorant. It's part of a long-running strategy called Holocaust inversion - a deliberate rhetorical weapon that turns Jewish trauma inside-out and throws it back in Jews' faces. This tactic is central to the argument that Israel is committing genocide.
What is Holocaust Inversion?
Coined by scholars of antisemitism, "Holocaust inversion" refers to the practice of depicting Jews—especially the Jewish state—as the new Nazis. It doesn't just compare Israel to Nazi Germany—it implies that Jews, once the victims of genocide, are now the perpetrators.
It’s often paired with visual and verbal symbols meant to provoke:
Israeli flags with swastikas scribbled over the Star of David
Cartoons of Netanyahu in SS uniform
Palestinian children dressed in striped pajamas like Auschwitz prisoners
Protest signs reading “Stop the Holocaust in Gaza” or “Gaza = Auschwitz”
This isn’t subtle, and it isn’t new. Holocaust inversion gained momentum after the 2001 Durban Conference on Racism - where Israel was accused of committing "a new kind of Holocaust" - and has only intensified since.
It's not just offensive. It's deliberately false and strategically deployed.
Why It’s a Lie
Bluntly, there is no meaningful equivalence between the Holocaust and Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Holocaust was the state-planned, industrialized extermination of six million Jews - murdered in gas chambers, shot over mass graves, starved in ghettos, and reduced to ash.
Gaza is a battlefield, where a terrorist army rules over a civilian population and embeds itself in civilian infrastructure while carrying out war crimes against Israelis.
The Israeli government is not trying to eliminate Palestinians "as such." It is trying to eliminate a genocidal organization, Hamas, that publicly calls for the death of Jews, hides among civilians, and has vowed to repeat the atrocities of October 7 "again and again."
There are no gas chambers. There are no death camps. There is no plan to exterminate a people. There is no Wannsee Conference. There are military operations - some excessive, some tragically misjudged - but nothing even close to the mechanized genocide of the Holocaust.
To say otherwise is not only dishonest - it’s a desecration of history.
The claim that Jews are behaving like Nazis relies on DARVO:
Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.
Deny the Jewish people's trauma and history.
Attack their legitimacy, self-defense, and motives.
Reverse the roles - so that Jews are no longer victims of antisemitic violence, but perpetrators of racist evil.
This tactic allows people to avoid grappling with what happened on October 7, or why Israel is at war, by flipping the moral script. If Israel is the "real Nazi," then everything else is justified - even Hamas terrorism.
Why Holocaust Inversion Is Dangerous
This isn't just a matter of bad taste. Holocaust inversion is dangerous for three reasons:
It makes justice impossible. If Israel is Nazi Germany, then negotiation, ceasefires, and diplomacy make no sense. You don’t talk to Nazis - you destroy them. That framing encourages violence and eliminates space for peace.
It erases actual genocide. If everything is genocide, then nothing is. When we use Holocaust terms for conventional wars - even brutal ones - we cheapen the language needed to describe Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, or the real Holocaust. It becomes harder to name and stop actual genocides when the term is worn out.
It fuels antisemitism. By branding Jews as the new Nazis, Holocaust inversion turns one of history's most demonized peoples into villains. It justifies hate crimes. It encourages mob violence. It turns "Never Again" into a joke.
This isn't theoretical. Since October 7, antisemitic attacks have surged globally. Jewish students have been barricaded in libraries. Synagogues have been vandalized. Two were shot in DC. Senior citizens were set on fire in Boulder.
And when protesters wave signs saying "Keep the world clean," like these...?
The language of Holocaust inversion is helping to justify that behavior.
Imagine if it was a cross in the trash on those signs. Or the star and crescent. Would this seem acceptable? Would the ghoulishness of the glee on the protestor's face now be clear to you?
Words Matter
So, is what Israel is doing in Gaza genocide?
No.
Not by the letter of the law.
Not by the evidence.
Not by the standards we use anywhere else.
That doesn't mean everything is justified, it doesn't mean no crimes have been committed, it doesn't mean civilians haven't suffered.
It means we need to be careful, responsible, and honest when we use words like "genocide," because once those words are emptied of meaning, they lose their power to stop the very horrors they were meant to prevent.
if you’ve ever wondered whether or not you’re someone who can’t see past the most obvious propaganda ever invented, look no further past op and analyze the bullshit they say.
imagine being this much in denial. No clue where to even start with this word vomit of untruths.
you people truly cannot cope without deluding yourselves into justifying/downplaying Israel’s crimes.
“if Hamas were to surrender and release all the hostages, the war would end tomorrow” in 2025 is diabolical. You people aren’t real, it’s like arguing with a wall.
The remaining hostages (who weren’t killed by Israel’s bombs unfortunately) are idf soldiers, meaning they’re prisoners of war. Hardly innocent, and clearly Israel does not give a shit about them since they’re the ones refusing ceasefires and refused every offer to take them from Hamas since day one.
there’s no way in hell you see all the things happening and still think Israel’s issue is solely with Hamas. Either you’re dumber than rocks or the only news you watch are the ones war criminals spit out.
“3. Are conditions of life being inflicted to bring about destruction of the group?
No. This clause refers to tactics like starvation, medical denial, or forced exposure that are part of a coordinated plan to kill off a population.”
As if 12 activists weren’t kidnapped on INTERNATIONAL WATERS, DESPITE NOT DOING ANYTHING ILLEGAL, just a few days ago because they were going to send humanitarian aid to Gaza.
as if Gazans aren’t being starved to death by Israel.
as if the maternity wards and cancer wards in hospitals weren’t specifically targeted and bombed by Israel.
as if Palestinians aren’t being shot in the head everyday right now while lining up to get food.
as if there hasn’t been an ILLEGAL blockade against Gaza for decades, controlling what they can and can’t get.
as if Israel hasn’t been controlling the waters and refusing to allow Gazans to fish.
you have to be so far up a Zionist’s ass to not see what’s right in front of you.
imagine taking Israel’s word that it has no intention to harm civilians as fact (despite over 17,000 children being murdered) but then brushing off their genocidal statements as “immature and disgusting, but doesn’t represent popular sentiment or speaks for the government”
imagine pretending to know shit-all about tragedies and war and still act like the confirmed number of deaths FROM A YEAR AGO means that’s the only number of people who died and that shitty math based on that suggests not enough people died to be classified a genocide.
you don’t think the people being starved, those dying from infections and lack of hygiene/medical supplies/preventable diseases, and the thousands of now disabled people with no access to care will result in more deaths in the future?
we’re supposed to believe that Israel has the ability to target precise locations when taking out Hezbollah members and Iranian officials but somehow loses that ability in Gaza and needs to massacre thousands of children “as casualties”?
Nevermind the scholars use happening, the journalists being targeted, the chemical weapons being used, the targeting of residential buildings and schools and hospitals and churches, all of that is just “a mistake” and “bad, but there’s no bad intent 🥺”
God I wish I was this brainwashed and this much of an ignorant dumbass, you freaks seem so happy.
Okay. Let's see where you're using facts and where you're using vibes.
The remaining hostages (who weren't killed by Israel's bombs unfortunately) are idf soldiers, meaning they're prisoners of war. Hardly innocent, and clearly Israel does not give a shit about them since they're the ones refusing ceasefires and refused every offer to take them from Hamas since day one.
"Only IDF soldiers"
Nope. 53 hostages are still held, including women, and nearly half of them are foreign nationals. Only 11 are military personnel. We think as many as 20 hostages may still be alive. Here's a list.
Your casual dishonesty about them and your disinterest in their wellbeing sort of dampens your vibe of supposedly humanitarian incandescence.
"Israel doesn't care"
Israel has negotiated multiple ceasefire deals for hostage releases, most were rejected by Hamas.
"Refused every offer"
Hamas has demanded conditions Israel won't accept, like a full military withdrawal leaving Hamas in charge and armed, despite having vowed to repeat 10/7/23 "again and again."
(You've...you've never studied a war, have you?)
Hostages ≠ POWs. Israel has actively pursued exchanges - Hamas just keeps moving the goalposts.
As if 12 activists weren't kidnapped on INTERNATIONAL WATERS, DESPITE NOT DOING ANYTHING ILLEGAL, just a few days ago because they were going to send humanitarian aid to Gaza.
"Kidnapped"
No, legally detained. Please show us a single international/maritime law Israel violated?
"International Waters!"
100 miles from Gaza, maritime law still exists. Please show us a maritime law Israel violated?
"Not illegal!"
Attempting to breach a blockade is…illegal. This got litigated back in 2010.
"Humanitarian aid!"
There are designated crossings for that. These activists ignored them, but Israel delivered the token aid they carried anyway.
The activists wanted a headline. They got it.
For more on Greta's allegations, see also.
as if Gazans aren't being starved to death by Israel.
There's no starvation happening in Gaza. There's definitely risk for future famine, but not even the UN claims there's starvation in Gaza. If you disagree, please provide evidence of starvation in Gaza?
No nation in history has ever facilitated more aid to an enemy's civilian population than Israel has in this war.
as if the maternity wards and cancer wards in hospitals weren't specifically targeted and bombed by Israel.
When Hamas puts control centers, troops, ans weapons inside these things (which is a war crime) they become legitimate targets under IHL. Please provide any evidence that Israel has ever targeted a facility which wasn't being used this way by hamas?
as if Palestinians aren't being shot in the head everyday right now while lining up to get food.
That story has been thoroughly debunked and mostly retracted.
as if there hasn't been an ILLEGAL blockade against Gaza for decades, controlling what they can and can't get.
You know that "illegal" has a definition, right? That words mean specific things?
"Decades"
The blockade began in 2007. Look up what happened in 2007 to cause it.
"Illegal"
The San Remo Manual allows blockades in wartime-Israel cites security concerns.
"Total control"
Egypt also enforces restrictions along their border with Gaza and has designated crossings exist for aid.
Super weird how Israel haters always ignore that.
as if Israel hasn't been controlling the waters and refusing to allow Gazans to fish.
"Controlling the waters"
Israel enforces a legal maritime blockade. We covered this above.
"Refusing to allow fishing"
Gaza's fishing zone fluctuates-sometimes expanded, sometimes restricted based on security assessments, but fishing is absolutely allowed.
... despite over 17,000 children being murdered...
The devastation is undeniable, but "murder" implies deliberate targeting, which is not supported by evidence. Words mean things.
Pretending they mean other things doesn't make it so.
Ask Orwell.
imagine pretending to know shit-all about tragedies and war and still act like the confirmed number of deaths FROM A YEAR AGO means that's the only number of people who died and that shitty math based on that suggests not enough people died to be classified a genocide.
Yes, because genocide math is just vibes now?
"Confirmed deaths from a year ago"
Death tolls continue to rise-not frozen in time. I'm using the most recent numbers from the UN and from Hamas itself. Where do you get your numbers?
"Not enough for genocide"
Tell us you didn't actually read the OP without telling us you didn't actually read the OP. Genocide isn't just about numbers - it's intent to destroy a group.
"Shitty math"
The UN and Hamas say they're tracking ongoing casualties, not outdated figures. Please, show us the shitty math? Is it...is it in the room with you right now...?
Genocide isn't, as noted in the OP you didn't read, a counting contest - it's about intentional, systematic destruction of a people. There's no evidence for that.
you don't think the people being starved, those dying from infections and lack of hygiene/medical supplies/preventable diseases, and the thousands of now disabled people with no access to care will result in more deaths in the future?
Oh, war is hell. I haven't disputed that at all. I'm certain there will be more deaths and long-term suffering, because that comes with every war.
Your selective outrage in this instance doesn't make it a genocide.
Perhaps you'd like to tell us more about your activism in advocating for the dead and hungry in Yemen, Syria, and Sudan...?
we're supposed to believe that Israel has the ability to target precise locations when taking out Hezbollah members and Iranian officials but somehow loses that ability in Gaza and needs to massacre thousands of children "as casualties"?
"Loses that ability in Gaza"
Urban warfare complicates precision and Hamas embeds in civilian areas. Even the regime in Iran doesn't do that. Think: what does this tell you about Hamas?
"Massacre thousands of children"
The death toll is tragic, but combatants are the targets. If you disagree, please show us the evidence of a policy targeting civilians?
Nevermind the scholars use happening, the journalists being targeted, the chemical weapons being used, the targeting of residential buildings and schools and hospitals and churches, all of that is just "a mistake" and "bad, but there's no bad intent
A Hamas fighter in a Press vest doesn't magically become a civilian or a journalist. Targeting Hamas operatives isn't a mistake or bad, and I'd never claim such a thing.
Please tell me more about the use of chemical weapons in Gaza? That's a new one to me - haven't heard that one before.
Again, if Hamas didn't use schools, hospitals, and houses of worship as military assets, they would be left alone. It is a war crime for Hamas to use civilians and civilian infrastructure as shields, and that crime makes those facilities legal targets according to IHL. If you disagree, please show us the IHL you're referencing?
--
There's a lot of selective outrage here, but no facts, no media literacy, and no critical thinking.
Want to try again, this time with facts and/or reasoning?
My question is why do some people so strongly feel it NEEDS to be labelled a genocide when the definition does not fit? Is it because they feel other more correct labels such as “war crimes” are not bad enough?
Is it the Holocaust Inversion because Israel happens to be predominately Jewish, and Jews are also connected to the most well known genocide in history?
None of this excuses the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinian civilians, but why isn’t it enough? Why do people fight and argue and demand to have this one specific label applied?
I’m genuinely asking. “Israel has killed innocent civilians in Gaza” doesn’t change whether it is or is not a genocide, so why do people get upset if you don’t call it that?
Since you're genuinely asking, @transmotel:
We use it as a legal term. They use it as an emotional term
Their calling it genocide isn't an attempt at legal classification. It's a way of signaling absolute, categorical evil, an evil so uniquely heinous that it demands immediate action. In public discourse, "genocide" has become a kind of moral superlative, so people reach for it not because it's accurate, but because it feels like the only word strong enough to match their emotional reaction.
Many activists and influencers are trying to grab attention, stir outrage, and mobilize people. "Genocide", whether true or not, has mobilizing power because it provokes emotion.
Yes, its partly Holocaust inversion
Because Jews are the most well-known victims of genocide, some people feel that accusing Israel of genocide is a way to turn the tables and to make Jews into the new Nazis...and Palestinians into the new Jews. This is antisemitic at its core. It treats Jewish trauma as a cudgel to be thrown back at Jews for political leverage. The goal isn’t justice there, it's humiliation.
Narrative Control
Most scholars, including many even harsh critics of Israel, say that the legal standard for genocide hasn't been met. For many activists, that's irrelevant because the genocide label isn't about law, it's about winning the narrative. If Israel is "committing genocide," then Israel is not just flawed, wrong, or aggressive, it's illegitimate. Remember, their goals are eliminationist.
Righteous Feelings
In an age of moral absolutism, nuance is treated as betrayal. If Israel is guilty of war crimes, people might still have to wrestle with context like Hamas, civilian shields, or regional politics.
But if it's genocide, Israel is pure evil, and anyone who defends it is an accomplice. The genocide label lets them feel moral clarity where there is none, and some people need that simplicity to keep their ideology intact.
Social Media = Engagement -> Strongest Terms
On social media, "Israel is committing genocide" gets more likes and shares than "Israel is possibly committing war crimes while fighting a terrorist group embedded in civilian areas." Activists know this. Outrage gets amplified. Complexity gets ignored.
That's what makes the algorithm do what it does.
The Queen of Spades, the asexual pride knight! Her armor is engraved with constellations and in her hands she wields a sword forged from the fabric of space itself ♠️✨ The Pride Knights Playing Cards, art prints and uncut sheets are now available for pre-order here: prideknights.com
It's literally an illegal phrase in several countries, classified as hate-speech.
But, oh kay gurl... 🤦♂️
Article 1
And in Germany
Source
It's literally classified as hate-speech
And then we have:
Source
Also the original phrase is literally
“From water to water Palestine will be Arab”
min el-maiyeh lel mayieh, Falastin arabieh
(In case someone thinks it’s a “Zionist lie”)
Let me ask you something
How in g-ds name do you expect “water to water” to be Arab without a massive campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing?
Israel being referred to as "the Jewish state" makes it an EVIL ethnostate (despite the Declaration of Independence and, y'know, the law, protecting minority rights) which is WRONG and shouldn't exist
But a chant calling for the entire territory to be Arab is about freedom and, somehow, equal rights for an ethnoreligion that isn't mentioned in the slogan
I think my main issue with Feygaleh’s claim is this: even if they argue the chant doesn’t explicitly call for the expulsion or killing of Israeli Jews, it does imply the eradication of the State of Israel.
They might believe that's a just cause — but it would still mean another tragedy.
If Feygaleh truly thinks that simply offering Israeli Jews civic rights in a future Palestine will resolve the conflict, they’re missing a fundamental truth: this is also a conflict over national rights.
It doesn’t matter what Feygaleh believes is fair or deserved — in practice, "Greater Palestine from the river to the sea" would mean endless armed resistance. Israelis will not identify as Palestinians. They just won’t.
You can think that a settler-colonial ethnostate is the most disgraceful form of a country on earth — but Israelis will fight if they’re stripped of national rights.
Sure, you could theoretically advocate for a binational state that guarantees both civic and national rights for Jews and Palestinians. But honestly? That idea is so far removed from the reality on the ground, it's not even worth entertaining for the sake of Western performative politics. And please spare me the “I don’t believe in nation-states” spiel. Nation-states exist, they’re not going anywhere in your lifetime, and you’re going to have to deal with that reality.
Date: 6/13/25
Note: The amount of ignorant global gaslighting of Jews by people who have no idea what they’re talking about is astounding
