what an artful form of apartheid apologia. people are lapping this shit up in the notes. Even if we set aside the titanic amount of weaponry and equipment created and built by engineers and chemists, all the mapping software that guides missiles and drones and planes created by computer scientists and geographers for a second (science that the state is very much interested in!), zionist apartheid policy, administrative policies, planning and logistics, urban planning documents, you name it - that all apparently just popped into existence one day. for someone claiming to be concerned about social science academics you sure are dismissing all of their hard work! but if you just frame every academic in Israel as a poor little individual victim being randomly attacked for no reason then it’s easy to hide what’s actually going on, which is academics as a group experiencing the harsh end of a boycott. they are being targeted specifically because they are an intellectual class of a colonial state whose genocide is being live-streamed to the world, but if you obfuscate the academy’s role in training, educating, and providing intellectual architecture for the bureaucratic class and institutions that make up state governments, then you can frame a principled pro-Palestinian position (boycotting Israel) as misguided, stupid, overzealous, ineffectual, and most importantly, detrimental to the cause of freeing Palestine, all of which is of course so obvious to everyone but Palestinian activists. this is naked concern-trolling for the zionist project of annihilating Palestine and it is no less disgusting than any other zionist cheering on the mass murder of children
marine biology is so scary because it’s such a small field. i was giving a talk on cetaceans and afterward a woman approached me with her husband and she said, “you did very well. [husband’s name] actually pioneered the research and published the first paper on that. We were very impressed by you.”
Which is such a scientific interpretation/public education win I will cherish forever but also for the rest of my life any time I give a talk I will be haunted by the knowledge that the world’s leading expert who literally discovered/invented the topic might be in the room,
which is like, the opposite of what you’re supposed to do for stage fright. In fact I never used to experience stage fright but now I will.
my mom had a nightmare years ago that george costanza tried to kill her and sometimes when we're watching seinfeld and george starts yelling about something she'll be like "that's what he sounded like when he tried to kill me"
I hate how if you want to do anything or go anywhere interesting you have to work a full time job to afford that but if you have a full time job you dont have time to do anything or go anywhere interesting!