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bfpnola · 7 months

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ID 1: Screenshot from Let’s Talk Palestine’s Instagram text channel. Their most recent text reads:

“Hi everyone.

Gaza has officially run out of fuel and electricity. Here’s what this means:

Hospitals cannot operate without electricity. Emergency fuel will run out today.

Refrigerated food will now soon expire. As Israel has cut Gaza off of all food, this accelerates the threat of mass starvation looming over people, including more than 1 million kids. Children. Babies. Toddlers.

Media blackout: our access to information will become severely limited, as even foreign media outlets based in Gaza can no longer charge their equipment.

We have no words. Nothing can convey the horrors that will unfold unless the world forces Israel to stop. Nothing justified the deliberate starving and executing of children and civilians. SPEAK OUT.” Two red exclamation point emojis follow. At the time of the screenshot, 261 people had liked the message. End ID.

ID 2: Screenshot of Let’s Talk Palestine’s most recent Instagram post. First slide reads, “Israel is Pushing 2 million Gazans to the Brink of Death.

Israel has completely cut off all food supplies from Gaza. If not reversed, this decision sets Gaza on the path to mass starvation for all 2.3 million people living there.

Israel has destroyed the only exit out of Gaza. The Rafah Crossing into Egypt is effectively closed now after a third Israeli bombing in the last 24 hours.

This means that Gazans are now completely trapped with no way out to escape the bombings.” End ID.

ID 3: Continuing: “Israel has imposed a "total" siege on Gaza.

Cutting it off from electricity, water, and fuel. Without electricity, Gaza's already overflowing hospitals will no longer be able to save the lives of civilians attacked by Israel.

Israel is carpet bombing entire neighborhoods and cities - targeting residential buildings, hospitals, and UN schools.

An entire family has been wiped out in an Israeli airstrike, with all 19 members killed in their home, including children.” End ID.

ID 4: The next slide reads: “Israel threatened Egypt that it would bomb humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza, prompting Egypt to withdraw its aid convoys.

177,000 PEOPLE ARE SEEKING REFUGE IN 88 U.N. SCHOOLS THAT HAVE BEEN CONVERTED INTO EMERGENCY SHELTERS but these schools are no longer safe as Israeli airstrikes have been targeting them.” End ID.

ID 5: Continuing: “10% OF THE POPULATION HAS ALREADY BEEN DISPLACED FROM THEIR HOMES IN JUST THREE DAYS.

THATS 20,000 PEOPLE.

200,000 children, mothers, fathers, and elderly.” End ID.

ID 6: The next slide reads: “50% OF GAZA'S POPULATION IS UNDER THE AGE OF 15.

ISRAEL HAS ALREADY KILLED 260 CHILDREN

HOSPITALS ARE OVERWHELMED AS THEY REACH FULL CAPACITY AND PRE-RESERVED MEDICAL RESOURCES HAVE BEEN DEPLETED AS 13 ISRAELI ATTACKS HAVE HIT GAZA'S HEALTH FACILITIES.” End ID.

ID 7: The final Instagram slide reads: “THIS IS NOT WAR.

MASS STARVATION IS NOT WAR.

BOMBING HOSPITALS IS NOT WAR.

WIPING OUT ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOODS IS NOT WAR.

THIS IS MASS MURDER.

THIS IS AN ANNIHILATION OF MORE THAN TWO MILLION PEOPLE ALREADY PERSECUTED UNDER APARTHEID.

SPEAK OUT.

BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.” End ID.

ID 8: Screenshot of the caption for the aforementioned Instagram post. It reads: “This is not an exaggeration. This is not something we wrote lightly. Two million people are being dragged by Israel towards mass annihilation, and it's only escalating further every hour. The patterns are appearing, namely the policy of starvation.

And the thousands of people who adopted Israeli rhetoric in the last few days here on social media are complicit.

Before any mass atrocity is committed against a group of people, they are dehumanized. You called them terrorists, you called them barbaric. You naively played into Israelis' hands, having not at all learnt the lessons from the American so-called "War on Terror" where dehumanising rhetoric and accusations of terrOrism were used to justify and condition people to accept the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

We are shocked, we are terrified, but most of all we are enraged that the world - especially privileged Westerners - never seem to ever learn their lesson. There are too many celebrities and even too many so-called "progressive activists" who are now complicit in these massacres.

This attack on Gaza it's different. It's different from all the previous attacks. People are saying goodbye to their loved ones abroad. Israel is planning annihilation.

Our people are being murdered. Our people are being slaughtered in their homes. Israeli pilots are targeting schools, hospitals and neighbourhoods. You care about civilians? SPEAK OUT. SHARE.”

33,917 people at the time of the screenshot had liked the post and 655 people had commented. End ID.

#reaux speaks #resources #bipoc #israel #free palestine #palestine #genocide #apartheid #occupation #health #youth liberation #gaza #annihilation #signal boost #food #electricity

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cleolinda · 4 months

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I am so fucking pissed. We’re hearing forecasts that we might get FIVE FUCKING INCHES OF SNOW overnight from Monday to Tuesday. In ALABAMA, where we have no snow removal equipment. Like I think we got one bag of sand for the whole town. No snow tires, I don’t even know what those are. This isn’t cute “Haha it’s just barely below freezing! Snowball fight!!!” snow. This is 14° Fuck (-11° Come the Fuck On) snow. FIVE INCHES? We get flurries and the city descends into madness.

What if we lose POWER. Everything runs off USB cord stuck in the outlet charging nowadays. This is why everyone used to run out and buy Milk Bread Batteries. Listen. I have this memory of the power going out during this wild snowstorm when I was a kid--I want to say it was Winter Storm '93. Ask anyone who lived in Alabama at the time. Like we had Desert Storm '92 the military operation one year and Winter Storm '93 the next. It was that serious in our minds, and I'm not sure you can blame us:

The storm dumped several inches of snow each hour on Birmingham, which ended up with officially 13 inches of snow.

Due to the high winds some parts of Birmingham reported drifts 5 to 6 feet deep. One state trooper reported that the roads were in the worst shape he had ever seen. "People can't tell what's road and what's not."

Low temperatures during the storm were in the 5-to-10 degree range on that Sunday.

IN A TOWN WHERE WE DON'T KNOW WHAT A SNOW PLOW IS. I think we had one for the entire county. Like I'm only kind of joking here.

And our power went out.

The snow was so heavy that it pulled down power lines either by its own weight, or by the tree branches its weight broke off. Meanwhile, the power at my house already went off every time a squirrel sneezed. I don't how many days this lasted; it was probably like, 2-3 days, but in my head, I was 14 years old boxed up with my family with no heat and it lasted two weeks. Maybe three years. The four of us slept in sleeping bags layered with quilts, huddled on the floor around a wood burning fire. (In the haunted house, no less.) The carpet was really nice, at least. We had a--do people still call them boomboxes? A big portable cassette player--battery-powered--with AM/FM radio. We listened to whatever TV shows were broadcast from the ABC station at night. We did have hot water; I took a lot of hot baths. We cooked food over the outdoor grill (which we moved to the comfortably large area under the deck, to hold off the falling snow), sometimes using aluminum foil as a kind of thin impromptu frying pan, and kept perishables like milk and meat in a cooler. Oh, did we have a bag of ice for the cooler? No, we used snow. God knows there was enough of it. Of course, I'm sure the refrigerator was perfectly serviceable even without power, because it was TEN DEGREES FUCK ALL.

I remember going outside a good bit and playing, as much as a teenager plays, in the snow with my seven-year-old sister. I remember that all the neighborhood kids got big rubber trashcan lids and used them as toboggans, going up to the top of the hill on our street and pretty successfully sledding down. Maybe it was "lmao snowball fight!!" snow when I was 14. I'm 45 now, and the cold makes me hurt. It makes me hurt all over. Maybe Winter Storm '24 will be a fun core memory for my nephew. I am pissed. And also charging all my electronics.

(ETA: It’s ‘24 now, isn’t it. My brain hasn’t clicked the date over yet. What is time.)

#me for some reason #long post

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blazehedgehog · 3 months

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Do you agree with Gaming Journalists and what do you think of gaming journalism in general?

What does this even mean, dude.

"Do you agree with gaming journalists"? On what?

Do I agree with Shacknews that Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a 10/10, and with Digital Spy that it's also a 7/10? Do I agree with Let's Clear Up Those Halo Battle Royale Rumors?

Like, I've gotten some bait on this blog before, but this is 2/10 stuff, man. This is some hot 2014 garbage. Like no matter what I say, you're gonna go all

"Very interesting. Then do you care to explain why..." No thanks.

My real answer: Something I learned during my time at TSSZ and being around a few people who were deeper into "the biz" than I is that everybody needs journalism more than they realize. Corporations are pushing for consumers to become their personal cheerleaders more than ever before, which makes criticism and the journalistic exposing of information seem villainous.

After all: Xbox is my friend now, so how dare you attack the Xbox. Behavior that used to be reserved for the most dedicated fanboys is now the expected room temperature. I've talked about "The Cult of Naughty Dog" before, and that's the same thing. If a corporation can get you to be parasocial with them, then they have won, and being parasocial with a corporation means shunning real investigative journalism that would otherwise undo them. Journalists and critics used to be marketing tools, but by undoing the press pipeline and talking directly to fans, journalists and critics are painted as untrustworthy for being wildcards that don't always toe the company line.

And there has been more than a decade of people with a "I choose to be stupid and ignorant on purpose" outlook, which just makes that more frustrating. We've all seen screencaps where some brainless rando tries to explain something to a person who is an expert in that field. The rando thinks they're flexing their brain, but in some cases they are arguing with the person who literally wrote the book on their topic of conversation. Some people don't want to know anything but still pretend like they know everything, when there are real people out there doing real work to uncover real truths.

Misinformation is the real problem. It should not surprise anyone that there are people out there deliberately eroding the foundation of journalistic integrity, because the less people trust journalism, the easier it is to get away with lying. The easier it is to lie, the easier it is to control the mainstream, the easier it is to scam people out of their money, so on and so forth.

And misinformation is more than just "this one news article is fake." There are long running campaigns to install people into news organizations themselves to publish false information for all manner of different goals, but it's all the same: nobody trusts anyone and it's making everyone dumber.

That's when we get crypto currency. And NFTs. And now people claiming that generative AI will save humanity. Grift after grift after grift where the people at the top of the snake oil food chain make off with billions of dollars while the rest of the world is left scratching their heads.

The law isn't going to catch them. If they do, it'll take years. Look at how long it took for Sam Bankman-Fried to get caught -- he operated for almost half an entire decade. The amount of damage somebody can get away with in five years is significant.

We need journalism. Real journalism. Good journalism. Watchdogs that keep an eye on things and blow the whistle when it goes bad. Somebody to enforce accountability that isn't a cop.

Where do you find that? That's the hardest question. I'm lucky enough that I know people I trust because they are long time friends, or friends of friends, and thus they've been properly vetted in my circle as The Real Deal. But there are a lot of outlets out there who claim to champion "truth" and "intelligence" in a way to prey upon insecurity. I mean, c'mon, Trump's social media platform is called "Truth Social" and is basically the furthest thing from the truth you will ever get from anyone, ever.

The more obsessively they try to convince you they're telling the truth, the less likely it is they actually are. Which in itself could be an attack meant to undo the foundations of trust in people who actually know what they're talking about. By casting doubt on the very concept of truth itself, they can lie with increasingly greater efficiency.

Any advice I give feels like it is incredibly circumstantial. Which is the point, and is why we're in the state we're in.

Here's a good pdf by The News Literacy Project that's probably a good place to start. The general gist is "you'll have to do a lot of fact checking for yourself" but that's unfortunately where we're at these days.

But by and large I would say life is a lot harder for real journalists right now than I think some of their critics have ever thought about. There are people out there trying to do actual good work and being a bubble-brained moron about it just makes everything harder for everyone.

#questions #Anonymous #journalism #games journalism #gamergate

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iww-gnv · 9 months

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Nearly a week after rumors about a new anti-mask policy at In-N-Out began circulating online, the fast food chain has finally broken its silence. The new policy, which SFGATE confirmed earlier this week via the company’s Mailchimp, will require workers in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and Texas to come to work without masks unless they provide a medical note. In California and Oregon, employees can continue wearing masks, but must wear an N-95 provided by the company. In-N-Out did not initially reply to several requests for comment from SFGATE and other outlets. However, on Thursday, In-N-Out’s communications department sent SFGATE a statement from Denny Warnick, the company’s chief operating officer.

#covid #covid 19 #coronavirus #news #in n out #labor rights

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yuurivoice · 6 months

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How have you been? Are you taking care of yourself and is the kitties doing okay and Haru how is the sweetie after the surgery?

Throughout the month of October while doubling my content output and going from being creatively idle to full speed ahead, I was going through the onboarding process of my ADHD medication. Half of the month was spent getting horribly tired in the afternoons. The other half was spent feeling gross as I tried to figure out how much I needed to eat with my food and adjusting to the final dosage.

Last week, for what may be the first time in my adult life, I was operating at what I can only assume was somewhere near 100% of what a neurotypical person feels like. I've cried about it, had to learn how to slow down because I'm used to the vehicle that is my brain not actually GOING when I put my foot on the gas, and have felt downright incredible.

I wrote my psychiatrist a message thanking her for being such a professional and helping me on this path, because I am approaching what I had assumed "best case scenario" would look like for me. I don't even know what's possible for me as I settle into my new normal. It's overwhelming in a positive way.

I feel like I have super powers. I'm able to just...do stuff. I begin my day and I just go. I'm fed, medicated, and ready to start being productive at 9am and I begin. I'm able to accomplish far more than the bare minimum and even have to tell myself to take time to do things that aren't strictly work.

I love writing again, and I was robbed of that nearly a decade ago. My beloved hobby became work, and while I've written things that I adore, I only rarely feel the magic I used to feel when I could write ~10k words in a day. INDEFINITELY!!!! I have written hundreds of thousands of words in my lifetime and I lost the ability to do what I loved. At a time in my life when I was desperate to find something that was meant for me, something I was good at, I lost it.

I thought I had simply fallen out of love. I thought my childish ambitions of being a writer were bled from me on the path to being a "real adult" and life had escorted me along the way, away from that passion.

I didn't know I was fighting against myself so much for so long. Being able to become YuuriVoice and create and find that outlet again was amazing for me and reminded me of what it used to feel like, but this whole time I've had to brute force my way through mental hurdles. I am proud of what I've accomplished to this point, knowing what challenges I've faced and battled along the way.

How do I feel? I feel like the me from a decade ago and the me of today bridged a rift so vast that I thought I'd never say hello to that part of me again, and now I'm whole. I feel whole. I'm no longer masquerading around as a cheap imitation of who I could have been.

So yeah, I'd say I'm doing well! So are the cats. Haru handled his neutering perfectly and is a happy, healthy boy. Aside from that, I've been consistently in the gym, trying to stick to my diet goals, and am the happiest, healthiest version of myself I've been in a long time!

If you've enjoyed the recent entries in Lost & Found, they've all be made while I've been feeling this good. So if that's a sign of things to come, I think we're about to remind people just how fuckin' hard we can go around these parts.

#yuurivoice

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copperbadge · 1 year

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I know you don't like Twitter, and I'm not sure how much of this has leaked into the mainstream, but Republicans are *freaking out* because gas stoves aren't all that healthy for kids and aren't great for the environment. And obviously electric stoves are terrible. Someone started talking about induction burners, and isn't that what you use? Or did once? Does it work really well? Or was it just better than what you had?

Yep, when I moved out of my old place (gas stove) and into my new place (elderly electric stove in a much smaller kitchen) I bought an induction burner and set it up. FWIW, Republicans are not the only ones freaking out -- pretty much every news outlet I've seen has covered the issue, some ongoing for weeks now. So it behooves us to talk about alternatives!

Point to know: the study found that gas stoves are dangerous because they tend to leak significant parts per million into the air when not turned on -- ie, they don’t have good seals against leakage when they aren’t in operation. In a well-ventilated home this is not a huge deal, but it’s still not great. What this means is that simply buying and using an induction burner instead of your gas stove is not a solution -- you need to have the gas line capped and/or gas turned off completely, in order to solve the issue.

Anyway, you can get a full induction stovetop (they're not cheap) and I've never worked with those, but the more common setup is a single induction burner that plugs into the wall, basically like a hot plate, but with the control, heat, and speed of a gas burner. That's what I have; I'm on my second, since my first wore out. They run about $40-$100 for a single burner. I got a decent one from Ikea of all places. When not in use, I hang it on a hook on the wall to make counter space, which is nice.

Induction burners do not in themselves get hot; they use magnetism to heat the pan sitting on them, which does get hot. Food cooks at roughly the same speed as it would on a gas stove, and you can control the heat in much the same way, although most induction burners have a digital touchpad where you raise or lower the temperature rather than a knob. The single burners can be a bit noisy -- “have to turn my podcast up while cooking” noisy though, not like “jet engine” noisy.

I don't really understand how they function other than “magnets are involved”. The downside of an induction burner is that there are limits to the pans you can use. The pan has to be made of a metal that is reactive to magnets -- so I can't use my lovely spun aluminum pans or the ceramic pans I have, and most nonstick pans don't work (teflon's bad for you anyway but sometimes you just need a damn nonstick pan). If you have an induction range or want to cook on an induction burner you need to take a magnet with you if you shop for pans, because if the magnet won't stick the pan won't work on the burner. Cast iron does work on induction burners, as do most steel and steel-clad pans.

I love my induction burner. I'd love to get a full induction stove but it just wasn't in the cards this time around, and electric stoves have come a long way so I’m not displeased with my electric stove. The induction burner I have works great, heats fast, functions like a gas stove in pretty much every respect, it just doesn't have an open flame and some of my pans don't work on it. Can recommend, especially if you are sensitive to gas or live in a home not piped for gas, it's a great way to go. Not cheap, but worth the cost.

#food #sam cooks

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tomorrowusa · 10 months

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A lot of people won't like hearing this, but the meat industry is terrible for this planet.

Last weekend, Elon Musk posted one of his more outrageously false tweets to date: “Important to note that what happens on Earth’s surface (eg farming) has no meaningful impact on climate change.” Musk was, as he has been from time to time, wrong. As climate experts rushed to emphasize, farming actually accounts for around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Musk spewing disinformation is not exactly news. But even by his standards, his contention regarding livestock agriculture and climate was on a par with George Santos's fantasies.

The tens of billions of chickens, pigs, cows, and other animals we raise and slaughter for food annually account for around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from cow burps, animal manure, and the fertilizer used to grow the corn and soy they eat. More than one-third of the Earth’s habitable land is used for animal farming — much of it cleared for cattle grazing and growing all thatcorn and soy — making animal agriculture the leading cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss globally. Deforestation causes emissions itself, but it also represents a missed opportunity to sequester carbon. If that land were “rewilded,” or retired as farmland, it would act as a carbon sink, sucking massive amounts of climate-warming carbon out of the atmosphere. But we keep clearing more and more forestland, especially in the Amazon rainforest and elsewhere in the tropics, mostly for beef, pork, and poultry.

Yep, livestock grazing accounts for almost a third of our usable land.

The message regarding livestock agriculture just isn't getting out.

Madre Brava also conducted a media analysis that found that between 2020 and 2022, less than 0.5 percent of stories about climate change by leading news outlets in the US, the United Kingdom, and Europe mentioned meat or livestock. Last month, two groups that work on issues related to animal agriculture — Sentient Media and Faunalytics — published an analysis with similar findings. The organizations looked at the 100 most recent climate change stories from each of the top 10 US media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN, and found that 7 percent mentioned animal agriculture. Of that 7 percent, most only discussed how climate change-fueled weather events like droughts, floods, and heatwaves impact animal farmers. “Across the 1,000 articles we examined, only a handful of stories reported in depth on the connection between consuming animal products and climate change,” the researchers wrote. The media is an easy target, and some criticism is deserved — it’s a disservice to readers to largely ignore a leading cause of the climate crisis. Part of the problem is that the media, like everyone else, operates in an information environment in which the meat lobby downplays and in some cases suppresses the full extent to which burgers, ribs, and chicken nuggets pollute the planet. But journalists could be doing more to cut through the noise.

We need to speak up more ourselves. Entrenched interests and powerful lobbying groups are not shy about promoting livestock businesses which harm the planet.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the industry’s leading lobby group, runs a “climate messaging machine,” food journalist Joe Fassler recently wrote in the Guardian, that trains influencers to confuse the public and downplay beef’s emissions. The list goes on. Last year, leaked documents showed that delegates from Brazil and Argentina successfully lobbied the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to remove any mention of meat’s negative impact on the environment, or recommendations for people in rich countries to reduce their meat consumption, in its recent report. Meat giant Tyson Foods spends a much bigger share of its revenue than ExxonMobil lobbying Congress to stop climate policy. Outside the animal rights movement, there aren’t many voices pushing back against these narratives. The US environmental movement has largely shied away from campaigning to reduce meat and dairy production, with some leaders outright rejecting the notion that we need to eat fewer animals. Policymakers largely avoid the issue too.

We have a lot of catching up to do – and fast.

“The food conversation is probably about 20 years behind the energy conversation, and it is catching up, but it’s not visceral to people in the way energy is — that they immediately know energy is a climate issue,” said Michael Grunwald, a food and agriculture columnist for Canary Media, in the Sentient Media panel discussion. But time is in short supply. Experts say that if we don’t change what we eat — especially reducing beef and dairy — we can’t meet the Paris climate agreement of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less.

In addition to publicizing the issue, we can lead by example. Eating less meat or even no meat lets people know we're serious about what we're saying.

There will be pushback from the industry and also from populist blowhards. We can imagine at least one saying something like: "Hunter Biden wants to steal your double cheeseburger. SAD!"

But no discussion of carbon emissions is complete without talk of livestock agriculture and its effects.

#the environment #climate change #carbon emissions #meat #livestock agriculture #livestock grazing #deforestation #elon musk #disinformation #rewilding #vegetarian #vegan

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workersolidarity · 24 days

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[ 📹 The residents of Przemysl, Poland put to rest Damian Sobol, a Polish citizen and one of the foreign aid workers killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting a convoy of humanitarian aid trucks leaving a warehouse in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing 7 aid workers, including Sobol, as well as citizens of Australia, the UK, Palestine, and a dual citizen of American-Canadian heritage.]

🇮🇱⚔️🇺🇳🇵🇸 🚨

ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES TURN 2023 INTO DEADLIEST YEAR FOR AID WORKERS IN THE LAST 30 YEARS

The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) murdered more aid workers in 2023 than were killed in the rest of the world combined for each of the last 30 years, that's according to an article published by Turkish news outlet Anadolu News Agency.

According to Anadolu, as a result of the the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with Hamas's attack on Israeli military checkpoints and colonial settlements just outside the Gaza Strip, on October 7th, 2023, no less than 203 aid workers have been killed in occupation strikes.

Of those killed, 161 aid workers were martyred by the Israeli occupation army in just the last four months of 2023, while another 53 aid workers have been wounded in occupation strikes.

The data was originally investigated and published by the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD).

According to the AWSD report, just since January of 2024, at least 42 aid workers have been killed, while another 24 others were wounded in Israeli attacks.

On Tuesday, a series of precisely targeted Israeli airstrikes hit a convoy of armored vehicles belonging to the aid organization the World Central Kitchen (WCK).

The convoy had just finished delivering food aid and were in the process of leaving an aid distribution warehouse in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, when an Israeli drone bombed each of the three vehicles in the convoy independently, resulting in the deaths of 7 WCK aid workers, including nationals of Palestine, Australia, the UK, Poland and a dual American-Canadian citizen.

Numerous countries have since condemned the latest Zionist atrocity, including the Israeli entity's closest ally, the United States, as well as Canada, Australia and several others, while Poland and Germany both demanded an explanation for the deadly attack.

By some accounts, the strike was intended to frighten foreign aid workers into suspending their operations in the Gaza Strip, exacerbating Gaza's severe famine conditions, which is rapidly spreading from the north of Gaza, into central Gaza, while even the south of the Palestinian enclave remains highly food insecure.

The strikes quickly achieved "Israel's" goal, with the WCK, along with several other aid organizations, including Anera, another aid organization responsible for delivering upwards of a hundred fifty thousand meals for Palestinians everyday, which also suspended their operations in Gaza for the time being.

In response to the attacks, the United Nations temporarily suspended nighttime operations in Gaza for at least 48 hours following the atrocity.

The Zionist entity, for its part, apologized for the massacre of the 7 foreign aid workers, claiming the strikes were caused by a "misidentification," resulting from "a war in very complex conditions," according to the Israeli army's Chief of General Staff, Herzi Halevi, who issued the apology.

Responding to intense international outcry over the slaughter of the aid workers, the IOF disciplined the brigade responsible for the "misidentification," sacking two Commanders, including the Commander of the Nahal Brigade, as well as another Commander within the same brigade.

As far as this reporter can investigate, this is the first major sacking of an Israeli officer since at least December 2023.

That's when a Commander with the 51st Battalion of the Golani Brigade was sacked after he "endangered fighters" under his command by disobeying direct orders to avoid entering buildings during "Israel's" assault on the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, where intense fighting took place against elite units with the Al-Qassam Brigades in early December.

Despite the latest Israeli war crime, the United States, led by the Neoconservative Biden administration, announced that it would not be changing any of its policies with regards to the Israeli entity, refusing to cut off munitions supplies and other military aid, choosing instead to let "Israel" investigate the incident itself.

As a result of "Israel's" Special Genocide Operation in the Gaza Strip, the death toll among the Palestinian population of Gaza has risen in excess of 33'037 Palestinians martyred, with over 14'000 children murdered and over 9'200 women killed, while another 75'668 Palestinians have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning on October 7th, 2023.

#source1

#source2

#source3

#graphicsource

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

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msbigredmachine · 8 months

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TARGETS - 31 - Naive

Roman Reigns is an agent in the secret organization The Authority and one of the world’s deadliest assassins. When he crosses paths with a mysterious woman during an assignment, he makes a life-changing decision that switches his role from the hunter to the hunted. (AU Espionage Story)

TARGETS MASTERLIST

--------------------

By early morning, Roman and Jasmine were gone from the W Hotel. Jasmine confirmed to Roman that their rendezvous with representatives of F.L.O.R.A. and The Authority for negotiation talks were still on for later that day. They were going to congregate in an area full of civilians. Though they were confident their former employers wouldn't open fire in a place as public as a shopping mall, the couple refused to risk being unarmed, so they kept only a single pistol and a dagger on each of their persons.

They pulled up at the massive shopping mall outlet, the venue of the meeting place, situated on the outskirts of town. Stepping out of the car, the two trudged across the car park towards the building. Approaching the glass sliding doors leading into the mall, they stopped when they saw the sign plastered on the right side of the door.

This is to inform all our customers that Lagoon Shopping Mall has been temporarily closed for renovation. This is to provide the better service our esteemed customers deserve.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.

Signed,

Management.

The sign looked fresh, not more than a couple of hours old. Roman immediately understood what was going on. "Motherfuckers...they shut the mall down themselves,” he mumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No one will be in there. That means they'll have clear shots at us."

Jasmine shook her head, her expression grim as she adjusted her backpack over her shoulder. "It doesn't matter. We stick to the plan," she said.

“What?” Roman pursed his lips. He was beginning to have a bad feeling about this. "Jasmine, are you sure about this? We can walk away right now, disappear. Go completely off the grid, just like you suggested before."

"You trust me, don't you? You trust yourself?" she asked.

"Of course I do," he replied.

Jasmine met his gaze. "Then we do this. It's our biggest chance to get out of this mess in one piece." When Roman’s doubtful countenance didn’t change, she let out a heavy sigh. “What is it, Roman?”

“Look. I know how risky this is, but it don’t mean we should make it that easy for them,” he answered.

She let his words digest, and then, looked away for a moment, her beautiful face hard, focused. "Okay. To ease your mind, I'll take the back door of the mall, check out the perimeter before we go in. Make sure there are no surprises. You take the front, and then we meet in the middle. I believe that’s the food court. You got your gun?"

"Jacket pocket," Roman answered, "You?"

"Same." Jasmine tapped the side of her coat where her Glock was situated. For a long time, they looked at each other, communicating without saying a word. "We got this," she said.

"We got this," the Samoan echoed. “Be careful in there.”

"I will. I'll see you soon."

Roman watched her leave, making sure she disappeared safely round the back before turning back to the door. At least, he supposed, on the bright side, when it all went down...no civilians would be caught in the crossfire. And he would be naive to think there wasn't going to be crossfire.

The fire exit next to the sliding doors was open, unchained. A building of this size 'undergoing renovation' had no business leaving the doors open like this. He knew it was deliberate. They were being waited on. For a brief moment, Roman considered changing his mind again, grabbing Jasmine and disappearing off the face of the earth, somewhere much more obscure than Jamaica. But they were here now. There was no turning back.

The former Authority operative walked inside and patrolled his designated area for several minutes, eyes and ears open and alert like a bat at midnight. That such a large place like this was empty and silent was eerie to him. He wondered how Jasmine was doing. He eventually arrived at the vast food court, in the middle of the mall, where she had said they would meet. She wasn't here yet. She was supposed to be here by now. Roman's eyes kept moving, looking for anything suspicious. There was a lot, but he couldn't put his finger on it. The place was quiet. Too quiet. It didn't feel right.

"Mr. Reigns."

Roman turned at the sound of the unfamiliar voice. Expensive high heels clicked, growing louder as they approached him. A beautiful woman emerged. Hauntingly exotic features. Her smile was broad, terrifyingly artificial. Her movements were calm but deliberate, as though she never let a move go to waste. Thanks to Jasmine, he instantly knew who she was.

"Lily." He kept his tone curt, business-like, keeping his hands in his black jacket pockets. His fingers were already itching. His brown eyes continued to shift, subtly darting left and right.

Lily's smile tightened on realizing that Roman knew her name.

There was no one else in sight, but a new smell suddenly permeated through the air, a smell he knew all too well…the lead of not one, not two, but a multitude of bullets awaiting him. His eyes continued to scan the surroundings, and they widened slightly as he looked closely now. The weapons were in clear sight now; the sniper rifles, the Remingtons, laser lights – dozens of them, pointing at him from all corners of the mall. He could see the faces now, most of which he recognized. Authority agents, former colleagues. He could see Owens and Bianca. Others were ladies, just as beautiful as Jasmine and Lily were. F.L.O.R.A. agents. Clearly most of them had survived the explosion of their HQ from months ago and wanted revenge, he jokingly assumed, despite the fact that this was no time for jokes. He could almost hear them talking into their hands-frees, status-checking, reminding the other to stay in position. Seth and Dean were nowhere to be found. Hopefully they were already in Jamaica by now.

"Looks like everyone's all here," Roman commented, raising an eyebrow. "To take out just two people? Isn't that a bit extreme, Lily?"

"One can never be too thorough," Lily nodded good-naturedly. "And speaking of…you're probably wondering where Jasmine is right now," she said, peering at him. "Am I right?"

At the mention of his girlfriend's name, Roman's gaze immediately snapped back to the older woman, his shoulders squaring, his eyes hard, cold and dangerous. "Where is she?" he growled.

"Oh, calm down you big brute," Lily waved him away with a flippant smile. "She's perfectly fine. Although...I don't think she'll be joining us just yet. But she'll be here to pick up her payment soon."

"Payment? What are you talking about?" Roman demanded quietly.

"Did she tell you she'd take the back route? Meet you in the middle?" Lily asked with a smile that shouldn't have looked so ugly on such a beautiful woman. "Did she tell you you're here to negotiate your freedom?"

The dark-haired man went quiet, his hard dark gaze still on the F.L.O.R.A. boss. Tense silence fell between them. Lily continued to smile at him, but the expression was different now, as though there was something she knew that he didn't.

"Honestly...between Hunter and I, we've always known she was the better agent," she went on. "Of course, it took her a little longer than usual to deliver the goods this time. But at least she got it done. She always does, because she's the best. Better than you even, which says a lot." Her smile widened at the gut-punched expression on the former Authority agent's face.

"You think she doesn't know you'll kill her the first chance you get?" Roman challenged.

Lily stared at him for a moment, then nodded. "We considered it," she conceded, "but let's just say she gave us an offer we couldn't refuse. We may not be able to kill two birds with one stone, but it's better than nothing, right?" she said, clearly reveling in Roman's defeated demeanor. It seemed to have sunk in now, he seemed to realize the seriousness of the predicament he'd suddenly found himself in. Lily tilted her head to the side, looking at him with what resembled pity. "Come on now, Mr. Reigns. You didn't really think this would have a happy ending, did you? You take down F.L.O.R.A. and The Authority all by your lonesome and run off into the sunset with the girl of your dreams? For a man as revered as you are, I never thought you would be that naive."

Lily moved, walking slowly to the side, hands still tucked in her pockets. Roman never took his eyes off her. “We have one thing in common, Roman. We are master assassins. You know damn well that our kind can never be trusted. I'm slightly disappointed that you did, so soon too. I mean, how long have you known Jasmine for? Seven, eight months? And she isn't just any assassin. She's F.L.O.R.A. through and through. It's nothing personal, Reigns. I'm sure you understand that. I think it's admirable that you thought you could be the knight in shining armor today and try to save Jasmine. But all this time, you should have been trying to save yourself. F.L.O.R.A are strong women, smart, resourceful. And we don't care who we use to try to preserve ourselves. Because all we should be concentrating on is trying to survive and thrive. And that's exactly what Jasmine has done. She takes her job very, very seriously and we pay her handsomely for it." As she spoke, she turned her head to the side. "Isn't that right, Jasmine?" she called into the air.

Roman watched with darkened eyes as his girlfriend slowly stepped out from behind her boss, her arms crossed, the triumphant smirk lighting up her beautiful face as she glared arrogantly at Roman.

"Absolutely right, Lily."

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Eeeek!

Credit to the owners of the gifs.

#roman reigns #wwe #roman reigns fanfiction #roman reigns smut #roman reigns fanfic #targets #roman reigns x oc #roman reigns x reader #roman reigns imagine #roman reigns x black reader #roman reigns x black oc

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fat-oc-battle · 4 months

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mirabelle "mimi" crassi (she, splatoon) character & art by @bombcollar

Mimi is what's known as a "mimic" octoling, a soldier whose genetics were tampered with in order to give her a greater degree over her chromatophores. This was done in service of allowing her to disguise herself easily and work as a spy called a "surface agent," even passing as other species of sapient sea life. However, tensions have eased in recent years, so these days she works as a diplomat, using her knowledge of her former enemy's culture to facilitate communication. Although more than capable of diplomacy, Mimi is not a warm or friendly person, often gruffly encouraging at best. She has spent much of her adult life dealing with disrespect from both her fellow soldiers (who consider her surface agent position easy and soft) and from those she was trying to blend in with. She is extremely loyal to her people and worries about what will become of them in the future. In her free time she runs an extremely scathing food review blog.

VS.

jake martin (he) character & art by @maxinstoresnow

Jake is 18 and fresh off the divorce of his superhero parents. His father has just moved him from Primrose--the city of superheroes--to the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania and he's looking for an outlet for his angst. Luckily, they've arrived just as a strange new team of young superheroes has just started operation. He plans to impress them with his (limited) shape-changing ability and join the team.

He collects vinyl, is a bit obnoxious, listens to punk music, and cares very deeply for both of his homes. He's bisexual and he loves his mom. He plays guitar and gets his kicks being a nuisance to his new friends.

#oc bracket #oc tournament #splatoon

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the-gone-ton · 1 year

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The Wayne Heights Mall is a micro mall in Waynesboro, PA, that currently has no anchors and few tenants. It was built around 1971-1972 by Commercial & Industrial Properties, Inc.. It was anchored by Martin's Food Market and Murphy's Mart and featured tenants such as Hardee's, Miller's Auto Supply, Phillips Music Land, Village Book Store, Nichols Discount City, Fabrific Fabric Centers, and Thrift Drug.

Hardee's remains outside the mall to this day (though it may have originally been inside the mall) and Thrift Drug lives on in a sense as Rite Aid. But Martin's closed in 2015 to move to a new location, and Murphy's was bought out by Ames in 1985, which in turn went bust in 2002. Today, Tractor Supply Co. operates in the former Martin's, and the old Murphy's is split between Dollar Tree and Bealls Outlet. Neither of these former anchors actually connects into the mall anymore, which nowadays is sort of a glorified lobby for Rite Aid, a Chinese restaurant, and maybe that "House of Time" place that wasn't open when I was there but looked like maybe it was still open on other days.

It's a cute little mall past its time, but I have a soft spot for those types of places.

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hellsgate-roadhouse · 1 year

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Article by: noel kirkpatrick (September 5 2018)

Call it Apocalypse 2040.

In the early 1970s, a computer program called World1 predicted that civilization would likely collapse by 2040. Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had programmed it to consider a model of sustainability for the world.

The prediction has resurfaced because Australian broadcaster ABC recirculated a 1973 newscast about the computer program. The program's findings, however, never really went away, as its results have been re-evaluated over the nearly 50 years since they first appeared.

The bad news for us is that the model seems to be spot-on so far.

The computer model was commissioned by the Club of Rome, a group of scientists, industrialists and government officials focused on solving the world's problems. The organization wanted to know how well the world could sustain its rate of growth based on information that was available at the time. World1 was developed by Jay Forrester, the father of system dynamics, a methodology for understanding how complex systems operate.

When deciding the fate of civilization, the program considered several variables, including pollution levels, population growth, the availability of natural resources and global quality of life. These factors were considered in tandem with one another as opposed to separately, following the Club of Rome's perspective that the world's problems are interconnected.

Such an approach was novel in the 1970s, even if the forecast World1 produced wasn't intended to be "precise." The program produced graphs that demonstrated what would happen to those metrics in the future, without even accounting for things like climate change. The graphs all indicated a downward trajectory for the planet.

According to the 1973 ABC segment, World1 identified 2020 as a tipping point for civilization.

"At around 2020, the condition of the planet becomes highly critical. If we do nothing about it, the quality of life goes down to zero. Pollution becomes so seriously it will start to kill people, which in turn will cause the population to diminish, lower than it was in the 1900. At this stage, around 2040 to 2050, civilized life as we know it on this planet will cease to exist."

This was not the end of the model. In 1972, the Club of Rome published "The Limits to Growth," a book that built off the work of World1 with a program called World3, developed by scientists Donella and Dennis Meadows and a team of researchers. This time the variables were population, food production, industrialization, pollution and consumption of nonrenewable natural resources.

"The Limits to Growth" pushed the collapse of civilization to 2072, when the limits of growth would be the most readily apparent and result in population and industrial declines.

Criticism of the book was nearly immediate, and harsh. The New York Times, for instance, wrote, "Its imposing apparatus of computer technology and systems jargon ... takes arbitrary assumptions, shakes them up and comes out with arbitrary conclusions that have the ring of science," concluding that the book was "empty and misleading."

Others argued that the book's view of what constitutes a resource could change over time, leaving their data shortsighted to any possible changes in consumption habits.

The tide for the book's finds have changed over time, however. In 2014, Graham Turner, then a research fellow at the University Melbourne's Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, collected data from various agencies within the United Nations, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other outlets, plotting their data alongside the findings of the World3 model.

What Turner found that was that the World3 model and then-current statistical information tended to coincide with another, up to 2010, indicating that the World3 model was onto something. Turner cautioned that the validation of World3's model didn't indicate "agreement" with it, largely due to certain parameters within the World3 model. Still, Turner argued that we were likely on "cusp of collapse" thanks to a few different factors, in particular what Turner called the end of peak easy oil access.

Writing in The Guardian, Turner and Cathy Alexander, a Melbourne-based journalist, explained that neither the World3 model or Turner's own confirmation of it signaled that the collapse was a guarantee.

"Our research does not indicate that collapse of the world economy, environment and population is a certainty," they wrote. "Nor do we claim the future will unfold exactly as the MIT researchers predicted back in 1972. Wars could break out; so could genuine global environmental leadership. Either could dramatically affect the trajectory.

"But our findings should sound an alarm bell. It seems unlikely that the quest for ever-increasing growth can continue unchecked to 2100 without causing serious negative effects – and those effects might come sooner than we think."

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eretzyisrael · 5 months

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by Troy O. Fritzhand

The hostages released by Hamas over the past four days as part of a temporary ceasefire with Israel suffered severe weight loss during their captivity in Gaza, according to preliminary health reports.

Israel’s Health Ministry found that initial assessments showed the hostages, seized by Hamas during the Palestinian terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, lost an average of 17-33 pounds in seven weeks, Hebrew media outlets reported.

News of the initial assessments came as the first testimonies from the released captives and their families revealed the hostages’ diet was minimal, consisting mainly of bread, rice, and in some cases canned food.

The weight loss was especially striking given that many of the hostages who were released and received medical assessments — all women and children — were little kids, including toddlers, and the elderly in their 70s and 80s.

One of the hostages, 84-year-old Elma Avraham, has been hospitalized in serious condition since her release on Sunday. The hospital said on Tuesday that her condition had improved.

The now-former captives have reported that alongside the poor diet and lack of medication, some were forced to sleep on plastic chairs in small rooms guarded by heavily-armed terrorists. Child hostages were also subjected to threats and psychological abuse, according to relatives. In one case, a 12-year-old boy was beaten by Palestinian civilians, his aunt said.

Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas kidnapped over 240 people as hostages and brought them back to Gaza during their Oct. 7 onslaught, in which they murdered more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel responded with a military campaign of air strikes and ground operations seeking to destroy Hamas in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave ruled by the terror group.

Since the truce between both sides started on Friday, Hamas has released 69 hostages — 50 Israeli women and children, as well as 19 foreigners, mainly Thai farmworkers. In return, Israel has released 150 prisoners from its jails, all women and teenagers, detained for violent crimes or terrorism.

The four-day ceasefire in Gaza, initially set to expire on Monday, has been extended by at least two extra days to allow for the release of more hostages.

Israel has decried clips of Israeli hostages waving goodbye to Hamas terrorists during their release as propaganda, urging the public not to buy the forced act.

Hamas-affiliated media on Monday released a letter supposedly written by Danielle Aloni, an Israeli mom freed from captivity, praising the terrorists for their “extraordinary humanity” towards her 5-year-old daughter, Emilia. Relatives warned the public not to believe the letter, similarly dismissing it as propaganda.

While most reports have focused on the hostages’ physical health, it is unclear how captivity will impact their mental health after experiencing such trauma.

#hamas #gaza #hamas hostages #hamas abuse #ceasefire #truce

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