Wandering Reader

Where better to get lost than in a stack of books ✨

[politishaun-deactivated20230409]

John Oliver Accuses Israel of Committing War Crimes, Practicing Apartheid

Although Oliver had a segment about stand your ground laws—they’re bad!—he devoted the first section of his show to a fiery monologue about Israel and Palestine, calling the week’s events “a pretty good reminder that while some things are incredibly complex and require a great deal of context, others are just wrong.” So if you have HBO Max, don’t content yourself with the YouTube clip from this week’s show, check out the full episode—it’s not every day an American talk show host calls Israel’s treatment of Palestinians “a form of apartheid,” or accuses the Israeli government of war crimes. Oliver ended the segment by condemning the false equivalencies and euphemisms that prevent us from talking honestly about the situation:

Look, there is a real tendency, particularly in America, to both-sides this situation. And I am not saying that there aren’t some areas where that’s warranted, but it’s important to recognize there are also areas where it’s simply not. Both sides are firing rockets, but one side has one of the most advanced militaries in the world. Both sides are suffering heartbreaking casualties, but one side is suffering them exponentially. And it’s not like the U.S. is operating from the moral high ground here. It’s obviously no stranger to drone striking weddings and saying, “We were just trying to target enemy combatants.” This country has blood on its hands too. And look, if you believe Israel’s actions are warranted and proportionate this week, you’re welcome to try and make that argument.

But we have got to start having this conversation honestly, and falling back on convenient, sanitized terms like “real estate disputes” and “airstrikes on militants” feels a little disingenuous when what you’re describing is forcing people from the homes they’ve lived in for decades and killing civilians and children. And again, none of this frees Hamas from responsibility, but Hamas doesn’t represent all Palestinians, just as what Israel is doing right now doesn’t represent all Israelis or indeed, Jewish people. Lots is complicated here. But some things are pretty simple. One side is suffering much more. And if America really wants to help, it might want to seriously consider changing its long-held position here, because for decades, the backbone of America’s policy in the middle east is that America is an unwavering friend to Israel. Which is a great thing to try and be, but at the end of the day, I would hope that a real friend would tell me when I’m being an asshole, and definitely when I’m committing a fucking war crime.

[tony-stanks]

PLEASE DO NOT THINK FOR EVEN A SECOND THAT YOUR VOICE WILL NOT HAVE AN IMPACT THIS IS LITERALLY THE BARE MINIMUM

I'm sorry for putting this in the BLM and stop Asian hate tag but in the last few days posts tagged with "Palestine" have not been showing up.

[genuinelyshallow]

Israel bombed Gaza this morning in a way that was not seen since 2008. Even after knowing that the world is condemning them! They are shamelessly making a parade of their violence in our faces! Keep going. Don’t let this go unheard.

35 deaths. 12 of which are children.

Edit : 119 deaths, 27 children.

Photos credited to AJ+. The woman in the video and her family, Thanks To Allah , survived

[genuinelyshallow]

Mona Alkurd , one of the Palestinians Israel is trying to kick along with 28 families out of their decades long homes in Sheikh Al Jarrah , the last Palestinian block in Al Quds ( Jerusalem ), to complete the restriction of the area to Israeli Jews .. simply an Apartheid by settlers.

“ Your posts and tweets are treasures to us “

Here a rough translation of what she said:

“ It falls on us and Palestinians and the honorable people supporting us with posts and tweets. You have no idea how much that means to us. Everyone who shares even one short post or tweet. Don’t feel like you’re doing nothing. Those posts and tweets are treasures to us. Help us get our cause heard. We are 28 families. 500 individuals. If we are removed, then there will be no Palestinians in Al Quds. And in the end, Allah is our hope. And it falls on us. And we will remain here to our last breath defending our lands and homes”

[wardisahi-deactivated20250625]

For those who followed me, you may have noticed the meme I posted on this reblog. Well, I decided to continue it based on the situation Palestine is going through due to Israel's terrorist acts.

[queenevanscent]

Why should Americans care about Palestine?

Oh and Bid-n just signed off $735 million weapons sale to Isr***l.

735 million. Imagine what the government could be doing to better your lives with all this money , instead it's funding murder of innocent civilians.

This post isn't to make anyone pick a side. Just highlighting where the government's priorities lie.

Source to the OG post if anyone's interested

[politicalsci]

[swift8gyllenhaal]

[takingbackourculture]

Solidarity.✌🏾🇵🇸❤️

[antimonarchy]

we cannot ignore that the US has effectively blocked a statement by the UN Security Council to condemn Israel’s genocide against Palestinians through not engaging in negotiations (15 nations are members, the decision is reached through consensus)

[islamic-quotes]

Debunking misinformation around Palestine.

Please spread this truth!

[wanderingreader]

You know what absolutely ignites my wrath. When authors decide to almost kill a character, then miraculously save them giving you hope. Only for them to die ANYWAY

Oh and bonus points if they were pretending to be fine in front of their loved ones while literally experiencing indescribable pain.

[averageblackteen-deactivated201]

Reblog if Black Lives Matter to you

Where are those woke white people at!?

[neesie09]

The amount of notes this doesn’t have bothers me…

[tangdynastie]

Tumblr has 30-50 million active users. Why does this not even have 1 million notes?

[madqueensarah]

If you’re an adult, do the stuff you couldn’t as a kid.

Like, me and my sister went to a museum, and they had an extra exhibit of butterflies. But it cost £3. So we sighed, walked past, then stopped. We each had £3. We could see the butterflies. And we did it was great. We followed it up with an ice-cream as well because Mum and Dad weren’t there to say no.

I was driving back from a work trip with 2 other people in their early 20s, and we drove past a MacDonalds. One of the others went “Aww man, I’d love a McFlurry.” And the guy driving pulled in to the drive through. It was wild. But it was great.

I went to a park over the weekend and I was thinking “Man, I’d love to hire one of those bikes and cycle round the park.” It took me a few minutes to go “Wait, I can hire one of those bikes!”

I guess what I’m saying is, those impulsive things you wanted to do as a kid - see the dinosaur exhibit, play in the fountains with the other kids, lie in the shade for 2 hours - you can do when you’re an adult. You have to deal with a whole lot of other bull, but at least you can indulge your inner 8 year-old.

[kantarionovoulje]

you know when you’re born in a non-english speaking country bilingualism is kind of a default. we are taught english from a young age so when someone asks me what languages do i speak, i respond with “well croatian and english obv, but im studying french and russian too”. and that bothers me. because english is fucking hard. in my country bilingualism is default, trilingualism is expected, and people get impressed when you speak five fucking languages where as native english speakers are praised for learning one (1) foreign language. i get that english is a major global language and why it is taught, but it bothers me that even if i spoke 5 languages fluently it would be useless if i didnt speak perfect english. and along with that, all of my hard work that i put into my english is dismissed because english is expected of me. rant over.

[mapsontheweb]

The Mercator projection vs the true size of each country.

[capacity]

Africa outsold

[fagsexuality-deactivated2019090]

I don’t understand this ahshdhdhdh

[ramdaughter]

basically maps exaggerate the landmass of most regions for aesthetic purposes

africa is the only continent that massive in reality (probably cause the Sahara is super vast); I think the conventional wisdom is that you can fit most if not all of north america within africa

[tunnelsystem]

What’s the real size of Africa? How Western states used maps to downplay size of continent (CNN)

“Mercator initially made globes. Later transferring his map from a three-dimensional curved surface to a flat sheet of paper was problematic. Taking the equator as the logical map center left big, confusing gaps near the poles.Mercator’s solution was to stretch out the northern and southern extremities of the globe to fill those gaps, producing an elegant and usable map.”

“[As a political tool,] one of the dangers of the Mercator map is that it can make enlarged countries seem unnaturally powerful and intimidating.”

[brooklynbookgirl]

Wait a minute…I’ve definitely heard of this before…

Oh. Right. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI

[jasper-rolls]

every time i fuck up plugging in the USB to charge my iphone and scratch it against the underside of the phone i think about that scene at the start of sherlock where sherlock assumes that john watson’s sister is an alcoholic because of the scratches around the charging port of the iphone she gave to him as a gift and i think to myself “man sherlock is a fucking idiot”

[tanoraqui]

#god if I could meet Sherlock holmes I would have a field day preparing my Look to throw him off #watch me wear an engagement ring for a week before hand and take it off and wear one of my mom’s blouses that has the shoulder all crunched #from years of violin playing and a pair of brand new matching socks and carry a brand new copy of a book i’ve read 20 times #and spill some coffee on my shoes and cuddle my neighbor’s cats so i have different cat fur on me #my dream is to throw off a sherlock holmes type with pure petty bs

[gay-jesus-probably]

Actually the thing about scratches around charger port=alcoholic was a reference to the original stories, where the phone was obviously instead a pocket watch, and the charger port was the spring wind, which was harder to fuck up than plugging in a phone. The whole sherlock scan thing worked well in the victorian era, because social roles were just that rigid - the slightest deviation from the norm said everything.

That obviously doesn’t fucking work now, and the only reason that was a thing in Sherlock is because Moffat is a pretentious asshole who thinks that a show being well written, sensible, and having a coherent plot structure is all for lesser writers, and the only thing he needs is to seem as clever as possible. Which admittedly, does work out for him for a few years, until the plot holes build up too much, and fans start to get pissed off about nothing ever being resolved but instead being thrown away for the new bigger mystery it led to, which then gets thrown away for the new bigger mystery that led to. Remember Doctor Who, how at the start of Moffat’s time as showrunner, he opened series 5 with ‘what caused the crack in Amy’s wall’? He never fucking answered that. He got distracted and wandered off into different plot threads that also never got resolved. He’s a very good writer when given a single episode to work with! His first episode on Doctor Who, he was just a guest writer, and he did the first Weeping Angels episode, and it was really good, because he only had that hour to tell the story. There was no follow up episode, no next season, just this amount of time, start a story, wrap it up satisfyingly, the end. He should NEVER have been put in charge of a show, because he’s the sort of writer that really needs something to reign him in and keep him on track, to remind him ‘hey you didn’t finish that plot, wrap it up before switching tracks’.

So it looks like he’s building this giant complex mystery, and keeps promising a satisfying answer to EVERYTHING once it’s over, but it’s never over because he doesn’t know how to let shit go - there’s always got to be another twist. The Weeping Angels can’t just zap you back in time and call it a day, they need to be made an EVEN BIGGER THREAT, they gotta be able to possess you! And steal the voices of dead people! and move while you’re looking! and be the statue of liberty! and instead of leaving you alone after the time warp, they hold you prisoner for the rest of your life now! No need to explain how or why, just escalate! And of course, Sherlock can’t just fake his death, take down moriarty’s organization, and then return to solving weird crimes, nope, there has to be a bigger threat than goddamn moriarty! he needs to have a secret evil sister! and secret dead childhood friend whose represented as a dog in his memories! and maybe moriarty isnt really dead - no wait, he is - no wait, he ISN’T - no wait, he is - OR IS HE? and john can’t just get married to a nice girl he loves, NOPE, gotta be more drama, she’s secretly an assassin and on the run from the government.

Moffat just keeps building and building and building, but eventually his stories start to collapse under their own weight because he’ll never let there be an end - he just can’t let go. And eventually fans will start to get bored and annoyed with the twists, and the show that used to make them feel smart will now just make them feel irritated. And they know there will never be a conclusion to the story, so they lose interest in the characters, because there’s no struggle - its never going to wrap up, so who cares? So they stop watching, and moffat starts dropping in viewers and ratings, and tries more desperate twists to bring people back, driving away the ones still holding on… lather rinse repeat until the network finally pulls the plug and makes him walk away.

basically the sherlock scan thing made sense in the original context, in a modern setting it’s just bad writing fam

[keepingaholdofthis]

I don’t even watch Sherlock but this was wonderful to read

[s-stark]

Someone explained very well how I feel about Stephen Moffat. I’m still pissed years later that he ruined the weeping angels for me by showing them move.