prophesy

i left later than i should have to pick up the car (of course), and arrived at the address to find no cars, having been explicitly informed by the app that no further instructions were necessary. i tried calling the car sharing service, but their lines were down, and it took a while (and some helpful people) before i happened upon the vehicle and realized that the directions were simply wrong.

i made the pickup, and told waze to get us to the airport, and it gave us all sorts of weird directions that neither my mother nor my son were able to read. so my stress levels were kinda high by the time we finally made it onto the highway going in the right direction. when we finally arrived and parked, the signage led us astray (it's incorrect on shabbat, at least, i'm not sure what happens during the week) and sent us in circles with broken elevators before we finally entered the terminal.

at least from that point things went smoothly, and we had time to be ripped off for coffee and sit down with my mom before her flight. after we saw her to the security checks, we made our way back to the car with only one incident (i didn't realize we could only pay for parking at the exit, and made the mistake of getting out of the car and walking all the way back to the locked up pay machines), and aside from the shock of how expensive an hour or two's parking was the drive home was uneventful (fortunately, because we encountered some really insane drivers on the way home). i dropped mr smear off at home, returned the car, and on my walk home managed to get hold of the service hotline and complain and was offered a voucher as compensation.

this afternoon, after returning from the car ordeal, we watched the starship troopers movie together. i've always loved starship troopers; it's not a perfect movie, but it's a fun action film with some interesting ideas. so i'm embarrassed to admit that it took me this long to finally get around to reading the book.

in addition to what i wrote earlier, it's also surprisingly prophetic, considering that it calls out the kind of irrational 20th century ideology that's infected the west and the movie producers who tried really, really hard to misrepresent, subvert and undermine everything the author was trying to say. that's not an adaptation, it's a deeply disrespectful bastardization. thank god the original ideas hold up so well that so many people didn't "get" the "satire".

we're about to enjoy a late dinner, mr smear and i have showered and taken out the recycling, and my nervous system is bouncing up and down because i keep thinking about tomorrow's tasks.

i guess i'm really grateful for having had a couple of days off, a lot of which felt like actual days off even though i was pretty busy.

the war that should not be

off the top of my head, the only thing that's given me any sense of achievement this week is writing and publishing Some Hope Amidst The Darkness: Perspectives From The Ground. i've spent a lot of time "discussing" things with acquaintences and strangers online, it's been exhausting.

work has been pretty miserable, but as i was discussing with my mom yesterday - i'm very lucky to have a job at all, under the circumstances, and my boo-hoo "hardships" are certainly a lot less than what most israelis are going through. i've got so much to be grateful for, not least of which being that my family  is intact.

tues/wed/thurs:

who knows. who cares?

yesterday:

i wrote all through thursday night until about 3am yesterday morning, crashed, woke up about six hours later and continued editing until i felt i could publish. or, at least, until gd advised me to just push the button and get it over with. then we walked to the vegan coffee shop nearby for coffee and sandwiches, then meandered home.

...

we had an unpleasant incident on the way home, from an unexpected source. mr smear suddenly complained about the hostage pictures everywhere, and gd and i were both upset by his initial responses to ours. we were initially quite angry, but i took a breath and tried to approach him with genuine curiosity, which led to a conversation, and an opportunity to do something that i wasn't sure i should do, but ended up proving effective without any apparent trauma: i asked him to imagine if it was him, or us, if he'd want everyone to not think about him (or us) quite so much. 

...

i spent most of yesterday anxiously online. "hasbara" - explaining what israel is doing and why we're doing it - is exhausting. it's thankless. it's anxiety-inducing. it's frustrating. and ultimately, it's demoralizing. it shouldn't be necessary to work hard to convince people of the truth.

combatting disinformation in the face of social media algorithms optimized to drive engagement feels like nothing more than farting into the wind.

this link is to a moment in a video where some journalists/pundits discuss how this is the first war where PR plays a decisive role. we've reached this disturbing point in technology and history where our tools combine with our lack of experience and critical thinking to render us susceptible to whatever's meme-able and goes viral, no matter how wrong, no matter how dumb.

...

i finally - for the first time in days - found bandwidth to play some more inscryption last night. this morning, mr smear wanted me to watch him play a scene from octodad. aside from the pride of watching my boy master something really hard, i don't remember the last time i laughed so much :)

"king bibi"

after many months of non-stop protests, i've come to the conclusion that all of these protestors chanting "democracy" are missing something fundamental about the situation we're in and about what the word "democracy" actually means.

firstly, no matter how loud and how consistent the protests have been, no matter how many people in raw numbers may have shown up, at the end of the day it's still a very small percentage of the population. most of the population? either doesn't feel affected, isn't concerned, or is happy for the government to proceed as it is.

secondly, unless you're the elected government's constituency, the government really doesn't care about your protests. they're only going to care if the respond to something that they're doing indicates that they won't get voted in next election.

thirdly, i think that our election system is thoroughly corrupt and getting in its own way. in order to achieve stability, we're demanding coalitions and forcing someone like bibi to align himself with minorities that he doesn't necessarily agree with, all in the interests of forming a "strong government". these minorities, over the course of two decades, have changed our country for the worse.

and bibi has demonstrated, time and again, that he will stop at nothing to stay in power and out of prison.

let's put this all together: we have "king bibi". he's in charge, but he's bowing to fringe extremists to stay that way. if it wasn't for those fringe extremists, he would only be beholden to his own constituency, which is the likudnikim. who are (for the most part) relatively moderate in their views.

i think it's time to put this farce of a democracy to bed. let's let bibi wear the crown, whether for a two-to-four year term or for good. whatever. hand him his get-out-of-jail-free card. let him do his thing, without having to answer to the extremists. at least that. if he's not on the defensive, he might actually do something good for the country, and we could avoid becoming the next iran / failed state with a civil war on its hands.

he has the mandate of the majority anyway, so what difference does it make? 

$25 to see the end of louis ck

 i watched louis ck | back to the garden last night.

a few months ago, we purchased his new special, sorry, along with all his other specials for $25. it was brilliant. it was louis ck doing what he does best, and doing so while acknowledging his behavior and (pretty much) apologizing for it.

let me very clear: what he did was awful, and i was (and am) disappointed in him as a human being.

at the same time, he didn't manage - in my entirely subjective opinion - to cross the boundary where i could no longer separate the art from the artist*. his whole schtick is that he's always been a bit of a piece of shit, and his comedy has always been absolutely brilliant. although, now that i think about it, his 2017 special didn't really strike my funny bone, so let's say that his comedy has mostly always been brilliant.

* only two artists have managed to cross that boundary in my eyes: ian watkins, the voice behind shinobi vs dragon ninja which i can no longer listen to without being filled with disgust, and marilyn manson, who turned from hero to zero and took all of his music with him a few years back when it turned out his personal corruption matches what he's been singing about all along.

anyway, aside from the 2017 special i was able to enjoy it even while he himself made me uncomfortable, and his older work is mostly fantastic.

back to louis ck | back to the garden.

the first disappointment: i could skip past the jazz, but not the two decidedly uncharismatic, unfunny comedians he wheeled out to open for him. this was just like bill burr presents: friends who kill: did bill burr actually perform? i couldn't make it through the opening acts. where did they find these people? why do these events smell like great artists selling out? wtf is going on?!

but this time, i pushed through, and i bore witness to each and every excruciating minute of louis ck's performance. it was... it was louis ck, and it was louis ck doing louis ck-style bits. but he just didn't have any funny. he didn't have that light shining out of his eyes. his jokes... his jokes weren't funny. they weren't even interesting. there were three minor chuckles in the entire set, and then an almost-clever bible reading bit, and then nothing less than a resounding disappointment.

relentless

 jesus, four days of this nasty whatever-the-fuck-this-is and not being able to sleep periods of perpetual coughing and nose-blowing and difficulty getting enough oxygen and i am sooooooo over it.

it feels like there's always something preventing me from getting a good night's rest. if it's not covid or this shitty running nose / chest infection thing, it's muscular discomfort or nerve pain or anxiety or just about anything.

i need to fucking sleep.

...

yesterday (as in sunday, i'm still in the middle of last night), to my wife and son's delight, i picked up "chipotle chillis" that promised to a) be entertaining and b) make my sinuses flow. over dinner i took out a large one, chewed through it (it's chewy) and it set my mouth and throat ablaze in a painful yet satisfying way. gd finally has a recording of me in tears hiccuping uncontrollably, and my son (i hope) now understands that concept of a non-dit ("we're going to get ten thousand likes on youtube!", he yelled enthusiastically while gd was recording).

i got through that first one without needing anything to wash it down / soak it up with food or drink. it was pretty hot, though, enough that my tongue actually felt like it was damaged burned.

after lunchtime breakfast yesterday (now i mean monday, because it is past 3am after all), i decided to give the chillis another go. i took small ones, and i was... disappointed. like, i barely tasted or felt anything. like, i was pretty certain that i'd burned off my tastebuds.

then in the late afternoon, convinced that it was barely going to have an effect, i picked up another little one. my wife and son were tooling around in another part of the apartment and being loud and couldn't hear me, but this single bite was the most powerfully hot chilli i've ever eaten in my life. it seared my tongue and cheeks and the roof of my mouth, it burned me so badly that i stomped my feet and hiccuped and cried and gasped for air and was entirely incapable of speech for a while, and boy was i grateful to learn that the half-cup of barista oatly we had left in the fridge could suppress the fire, even if i did have to hold it in my mouth and not swallow because the moment i swallowed all the pain returned instantly.

jesus.

i don't recall the last time i threw away an unfinished chilli, the entire thing was two teeny tiny bites and there was no way in hell i was going to take the second one.

...

i suspect this one might burn on the way out :(

...

after a month and a half of trying to make contact with my credit card company, i opened their app yesterday morning and browsed through their fake offer of a loan with good terms (i'd seen their promotions for it and was considering taking out a local loan to pay off my overseas debt). quickly realizing that it was just another bullshit corporate scam, i closed the app and forgot about it.

a couple of hours later, someone called me to "help me out" because they'd seen that i'd reviewed their advertising.

of course.

i told the guy i'd talk to him about the loan after he helped me sort out my incorrect phone number, without which i've been unable to communicate with them because every communication channel of theirs requires an authentication code via sms only and their systems - for some reason - cannot send an sms to my twilio number.

so anyway, he put me through to a support agent directly. and i was stunned when someone answered almost immediately - i actually needed a moment to compose myself!

the agent wanted me to authenticate myself. fine. i answered his questions with no hesitation until he asked me to give him an example of a recent transaction. i wracked my brain, remembered a purchase from friday.

"no, not friday. before friday."

wtf?! i have trouble recalling what i did yesterday without looking at my own blog (or scrolling through social media, my calendar and emails hunting for evidence), so in frustration i open the app and manage to pull up a list of my recent transactions. but no matter what i tell him - and i'm reading from the list of transactions they maintain - the agent tells me "sorry, i don't see that".

at this point i lose my composure entirely, because their systems are obviously broken if i'm seeing stuff that my agent cannot. i yell for his manager, he informs me that his manager was unavailable just now.

right.

i offer him a couple more transactions to no avail, then eventually he has an epiphany and triggers a voice authentication code to my phone. the same number they've called me on, the same number they cannot send me smses to, the exact functionality that is unavailable via website, whatsapp or the telephone call menu system.

holy shit.

so i put the agent on hold to switch to the call, catch the number on the second listen (i was beyond flustered at that point, and struggled to keep four hebrew numbers in my head while half-convinced that he'd hang up on me before i could switch back), say it back to him and *boom*

authenticated.

he agrees that i'm me, he updates my number. he agrees to send me an sms authentication code just to make sure that he's got my number right. i get the sms.

*whoosh*

a month and a half of messages and calls and visits to my bank and pure kafka-esque frustration with these morons is over.

achievement unlocked.

so.

me being me, i say something along the lines of "right, now you're going to do two things. first, you're going to escalate to anyone who will listen that your systems are broken..."

"that's not something i can do. and besides, our systems aren't broken."

"how do you explain that you couldn't see the transactions i was referring to?"

"what's broken? nothing's broken. the system only shows me a select few transactions, not all of them!"

a part of my mind exploded right there on the sidewalk.

"what the hell is the point of that?! how does that help anyone???" [and why the fuck didn't you say that in the first place, you stupid fuck?]

"they can't just show us everything, do you want us to be able to just give you the answers?!"

holy shit. the combination lack of iq and basic education that could generate such a stupidly illogical statement. i simply could not wrap my head around what i was hearing.

"and besides, sir, let me stop you right there. why are you even going on about a problem that we've already resolved?"

brilliant. he'd found my big red button.

"because i don't want to have to go through such a ridiculous challenge in the future! because i don't want other people to have to go through it either!"

"i can't escalate that, i don't have the authority."

"you don't have the authority to do your damned job? or you're small minded?" [in hebrew: "you have a small head", it sounds much better]

"i'm not small-minded. it's not my job to..."

by this point i'd really lost my temper. i yelled at him for "having the smallest head there is" and did the "you have a good day now" thing, drawing some smidgen of satisfaction from his confused "you too" before hanging up on him.

...

i was utterly blown away.

i'm still blown away.

i somehow managed to put the episode on hold for a few minutes and took care of the errand i'd been on, but on my walk home, i mulled over our "conversation" and this past month and a half of fighting with these cretins, and eventually came to the unsatisfying conclusion that CAL visa is a financial company built on broken / badly designed systems held together by the earwax and drool of their otherwise unemployable employees.

...

i'm so tired that i want to just slide back into bed, but i'm so frustrated that i'm put off even trying to sleep. and this is the second last "sleep" before our big meeting on wednesday...

my evening in a nutshell (there's a theme)

1. filling out forms for travel insurance that will cover us for everything except the things we might actually need it for

2. signing up to try out disney+ and spending far too long figuring out that their parental controls are completely broken. now trying to get a refund as we haven't watched anything yet.

3. submitting a request to reverse my payment for my license renewal because the license bureau still hasn't responded to my requests and is now sending me letters telling me i haven't paid

4. giving up on payoneer, who've been messing me around for a week or two - they won't let me add my israeli bank account even though all my details are correct and match my profile

5. moving my patreon payouts to paypal after remembering that i have an israeli paypal account from before i left. even though i've added my new phone number as my primary number, they won't let me remove my old number and they insist on sending security codes to the old one only so i can't add my new israeli bank account.

tattoo taboos

on monday evening a stranger, an elderly orthodox jew, felt perfectly entitled to lay his hands on my tattooed arm and tell me, in a creepy and unfunny attempt at humour*, that he would like to take a grinder and clear the soiled skin off my arm. he then, in what appeared to be an attempt to rescue the clearly awkward situation, shared a wonderful story of his young female neighbour who has a tramp stamp, saying that when she bends over he can only see half of it and he always asks her to keep going so that he can see it all. shadowslight responded first and correctly, saying that her tattoo probably wasn't intended for him, and i spent the next while thinking of all sorts of things i'd have liked to have said but never would - certainly not in the context in which we found ourselves.

this story has been bugging me since last night, partially because i feel uncomfortable with having had that creepy dude lay his hands and ideas on me, but more because it's far from the first time i've encountered this kind of behaviour and it seems that there are a couple of misconceptions that need clearing up, in particular amongst the orthodox community which constitutes the vast majority of my friends and family.

1. let's talk about the tattoo taboo. if your reason to hate tattoos is because you're jewish, and (good) jews don't get tattoos, perhaps you'd be interested to learn where our tattoo aversion comes from?

a) there is a commandment in leviticus about not cutting or tattooing ourselves, which comes in context of not serving other gods and refers to a very particular marking. so as long as we're not tattooing ourselves in service of moloch, we're good on that count.

b) if your aversion to tattoos stems from the nazis tattooing our people in concentration camps, do you share the same aversion to trains? because the trains were a big part of the holocaust experience too.

the torah tells us - in that same set of commandments that that first commandment comes from - to keep our judgements of our neighbours to ourselves. which leads me to the second misconception:

2. for some reason, family and friends and strangers think it's acceptable "good" jewish behaviour to share their honest opinions about how gross and revolting my tattoos are. not "i don't like tattoos", but "those tattoos are disgusting". so let me make my forthcoming behaviour perfectly clear to as many of you as possible, so that when you mother / brother / cousin comes home telling stories of this terrible person that they encountered, you might have a little context in which to process that information:

if you feel like you have the right to tell me that my tattoos are ugly, or that it's a terrible shame that i'm getting them done, i will feel well within my rights to respond in kind. i will "call it as i see it". the following are sample responses depending on which physical "imperfections" are easily visible to me:

"your makeup is spectacularly awful today, did you look in a mirror on your way out the door?"

"you really need to invest in a new wardrobe, these clothes are not doing you any favours"

"has your doctor said anything about your eating disorder?"

"my goodness, you're looking terribly wrinkly today!"

"yuck! you've got botox injections, haven't you?"

"are those breast implants? ooh, i just can't believe you've done that to your body!"

"what on earth were you thinking when you got your hair cut like that?"

if any of those responses would offend you, i warmly recommend reconsidering how you talk to other people.

* i'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, but maybe he's actually a serial killer. who knows?

thoughts on education

[this post generated by a discussion on reddit]

the point of education has, and always been, about expanding one's horizons and advancing knowledge. over the course of the past century the universities have been corrupted by industrialization and are now businesses churning out qualifications to work, they're desperate to attract as much money as they can get away with and the only things that remain relatively solid are the STEM fields, medicine, the "impractical" humanities (psychology, philosophy, etc), and, arguably, law. it's 2019, and any company that demands a university degree is a part of one of the biggest problems the western world today, please listen to mike rowe on the subect. the economy is changing fast, and there're so many other ways to learn and get paid.

besides, to quote one of my professors, when it comes to work there's only ever been one model that's effective: the master-apprentice model. it's the reason why even those leaving university with engineering degrees still need plenty of on-the-job training before they can be trusted to operate alone.

if you can afford an education, that's great, pick a field of study that's interesting to you and it'll be well worth it. you might even make a career out of it. if you're into medicine or the STEM fields, all the better! but higher education is a luxury, it isn't for everyone, and it's not a job factory. if parents are concerned about quantifiable value for money, then they should save their money and let their kids pay their own way.

and for the love of god, never take a student loan. that's only an intelligent investment for a tiny percentage of graduates.

also, read this article on education and economic mobility

"family"

it makes me sad that people i care about feel that it's okay to make fun of us, directly or indirectly, about our life choices. that they're so deeply entrenched in their beliefs that they feel threatened by our refusal to participate in something that we know is wrong, and will find any angle they can to try and pick apart a case that decades of well-researched evidence has put together.

a long time ago we learned some very important facts, or "uncomfortable truths", and we choose to do what's right for ourselves and our child. it would be nice if we didn't have to be on the receiving end of disrespect and passive-aggressive "teasing", or have people joking about us behind our backs. this is bullying, plain and simple.

it's a difficult call to make, whether to tolerate such unpleasantness or to isolate ourselves from people we otherwise love spending time with.

most people are ready to cater for all sorts of strange things, whether it's extreme interpretations of kashrut, or pretending that santa's coming down south african chimneys, but somehow find that a refusal to eat animals crosses a line and doesn't deserve even the pretense of accommodation or understanding.

any advice or suggestions on how to navigate this would be greatly appreciated.

saffer santa

this "white christmas" in sunny south africa has been getting under my skin of late. not only is christmas in the middle east generally not white, but more of a desert theme, over here focusing on beach sand would be a lot more appropriate. and if you think santa's climbing down your chimney - what chimney?! how the heck is he getting through your burglar bars and trellidoors and electric fences?! how much is he bribing your security guards?! - if you think santa's climbing down your chimney in 30-degrees-celsius weather wearing snow gear while the reindeers try to fend of hijackers (do *they* wear balaclavas in summer?), you must be mad! not only that, can santa's sleigh operate in cape town's heavy winds? i can't imagine that him riding through a proper thunder-and-african-rain-storm would be good for those gifts...

... i wanted to post an image of a south african santa, but it's definitely not for everyone so if you're feeling brave just run a google image search for "santa mankini" and you'll get my drift.

trains, planes and psychopaths

there's a stigma attached to mental illness which i find utterly bizarre. in my opinion, if you're feeling relaxed and at peace tied up with hostages riding in the back of a rickety, crowded van driving waaaaay too fast on a winding road through an empty desert that's liable to either flip or explode at any moment while everyone's yelling "slow down!" at the driver who's wearing noise-cancelling headphones and occasionally taking his hand off the wheel to point to signs on the glass behind him saying "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" and "BEWARE TERRORISTS", then you're the one who's absolutely nuts.

it's all the depressed and anxious and crazy people who have, consciously or unconsciously, taken stock of the situation and realized that something's not right but they don't quite know what to do about it.

i know most of you - some of you being the people closest to me on this planet - think i'm just full of it, and i get it, i get the desire to just dismiss unpleasantness as ramblings and get back to the day to day. what the hell are any of us going to change, anyway?

but acknowledging that there's an oncoming train really is the only way to get off the tracks. human history is one long story of evolution and revolution. there's hope on the dark side. there's always hope.

on gender identity and transitioning

scrapper just posted a link to a very, very long article on the state of transitioning research. fortunately, he advised me to skip to the conclusion and it pretty much summarizes what i've come across of late.

from what i've read i've begun to believe that "educating" children about gender is not only unnecessary but confusing to them, and that both encouraging (more than just accepting how your kids feel) and discouraging (just accept how your kids feel) are both forms of abuse. if there's a serious body dysmorphia issue when they're older, then make sure they have the support (family and professional) that they need.

what we really need is to - as a society - stop caring about an individual's gender preferences and behaviours. seriously, who the **** cares if a boy or girl behaves like the opposite sex or what kids wear or any of that crap. constructing identity based on these kinds of things is precisely why we have such messed up identity politics in the first place.

build your identity on things that matter, like values and principles and tastes, and let's move the **** on! as gd says: it's time to step out of the anal phase.

if it's not bell, it's telkom

CRIMINALS AND ENABLERS THE LOT OF THEM.

i have spent my morning furious, but i'm starting to find the humour in the absurdity. just after discovering that telkom had significantly overcharged me a while back and i hadn't picked it up (not the first time, i really do need to remember that they're a bunch of bandits) , i then received a message from FNB informing me that telkom had unexpectedly taken a whole lot of money out of my account - the exact same amount i'd paid them a week ago.

livid, i abandoned my morning responsibilities and went straight to the closest fnb branch where they informed me that although the money was stolen today, and i know about it, i can only report it tomorrow. WHAT - THE - ACTUAL - F***.
i was also distressed to learn that the reason telkom was able to take the money was because of a watch they'd put on my account (and forgotten to remove), which i don't recall agreeing to.

shocked, perhaps even angrier than before if such a thing was possible, i fumed for a bit before finally getting hold of telkom's billing department (i know, i'm impressed that i got through too!). after getting all my details and my payment reference for the previous week, the agent agreed that they had received the payment and took the money in error.

and could i please call back to open a dispute tomorrow, because that can't be done on the same day.

WHAT.

THE.

ACTUAL.

F***.

bell bill bull

after months being hounded by collection agencies on behalf of bell for a clearly fictitious bill that i disputed (it was for a period i'd already disconnected my service and left the country), i finally got through to the right people (bell employees can't communicate by email or make phone calls out, apparently). after a breakdown of the final months and my payments, we finally established that bell bills are actually for the two months prior, meaning that a bill for march is actually the bill for january. it suddenly struck me that they'd been doing that since my first bill, which means that although i only signed up with bell in november 2012 my first bill in december was actually for the month of september. a time when i didn't receive any service from them.

it took the supervisor, who's clearly been working there for years, a few moments to process this information. i explained to him that as a human being, he had two choices: the first was to cancel the debt and call it a day, the second was to leave it as is and let me take all this information before a judge if and when we return to canada.

to his credit, he acknowledged the absurdity of the situation and cancelled the amount. this story has only cost me a few dollars in calling costs, but it's cost me a whole lot in hours that i don't have and in stress i have way too much of.

i knew all about hydro quebec doing crazy shit to steal customers' money, but this just blew my mind. and apparently videotron's similar.

wow, canada, you guys put up with a lot of shit.

everyone knows

i don't believe that there are fundamentally malicious people. i believe that most of us are simply misguided. or, perhaps, complexly misguided. i believe that when you're conditioned to accept things that require activating cognitive dissonance, whether its owning slaves, or killing jews, or fighting undesirable sexual urges, or advertising useless products, or destroying the planet, or producing and destroying animals in their billions, or grinding eight hours a day in jobs we hate in the hope of not starving or losing the roofs over our heads; the struggle to operate without fighting back or losing one's mind can make one depressed and resentful and frustrated and cruel.

i don't think of the people who can step back and say "this is wrong" as "compassionate". i don't believe they're any more compassionate than everybody else. i believe they're enjoying the privilege of being able to identify the wrongs and the empowerment to do what's right, regardless of the consequences.

that's true freedom, in my opinion, the freedom to be a hero and face down adversity even when the consequences are life-threatening. the courage to stand up to the world will always be more of a blessing than a curse, because whatever ill may come you'll know in your heart that you did the right thing.

i think it's the same freedom that motivates heroes as the freedom that motivates (misguided) terrorists. it's the power to serve one's ideals to the very death, in an age where most people feel trapped in the industrial machine while being shown glamourous pictures of a life of excess that they can only dream of buying their way into.

that freedom isn't something anyone else can bestow - not a person, not a government. it's something we can only choose for ourselves. others can rig the game, but we can play it on our own terms. or we can change the game entirely.

israeli apartheid

people who claim that israel is an apartheid state to a captive audience upsets me in a special way. to suggest that the palestinians are israeli citizens when they refuse to accept israel's very existence and who operate entirely under the control of the arab nations and their proxies is absurd.

that's like claiming that the pakistanis are suffering under indian apartheid.

do you know who suffers the most from these outrageous and inflammatory claims? the palestinians. as long as they can't see a way to negotiate some kind of resolution with israel they will continue to be neglected, tormented and deluded by their own leadership.

people say i'm a dreamer

one of my dreams is to live in a world where people aren't afraid to be honest, and don't need to be afraid to tell strangers when they're infringing on their rights.

i shouldn't have to be afraid to tell someone not to smoke in a gas station, or standing next to me and my kid under a no smoking sign. or not to let their dog poop on my doorstep. the absurdity of being threatened physically on these kinds of occasions almost makes me ashamed to be ineffectually behaving in a civil manner instead of stooping to their level.

racism online

why am i getting into debates online about racism?

i was asked for my opinion on this article entitled 100 ways white people can make life less frustrating for people of color and wrote the following:

some of it i agree with 100%, some of it is silly and some of it is overtly racist. one of the biggest reliefs i've experienced since returning to south africa was working in a company where i was part of a white minority of peers, being able to have healthy interracial relations without the marxist left politics overshadowing every interaction and making people disconnect. people were happy to laugh at differences and have real dialogue, which is not what's happening in the rest of the west. not that things are perfect in this country, there's plenty of racism from all walks of life, but it doesn't have to be everywhere and run / ruin everything. i actually just watched a very interesting breakdown on white privilege and intersectionality by jordan peterson in which he makes the amazing point that intersectionality taken to its logical extreme shuts down the foundation of its own argument, i recommend giving it a watch: white privilege isn't real

at the end of the day, people need to learn to be respectful to people who are different to them and to be fair to everyone. anything more or less than that is wrong. there's plenty of systemic racism (see Filming Cops if you don't believe it) but fighting it with a different kind of racism is counterproductive. if you're privileged, use that privilege to make the world a better and more just place for everyone, but feeling guilty or acting purely out of guilt for being privileged in one aspect or another isn't helping anyone.

my opinion was challenged, and so i broke it down:

i don't believe the current state is "good enough", but i also don't believe that the way people are trying to fix things is going to make it any better. if anything, things are becoming worse as more and more white people are feeling shut out of the conversation and stop making any effort, in particular those who weren't and aren't already allied to anti-racism. it's divisive, and divisive isn't good. but that's just my white opinion, right?

i did read the list, let's exhaustively go through the items.

1-5, 7-10: 100%
6: meaningless
11: i don't know what "rinse" means, but cultural appropriation is a positive thing and trying to stop it is divisive. cultural appropriation is a form of cultural evolution and it works both ways.
12: that's not a race thing, it's a being a dick thing. i'm fairly certain it doesn't fall under "things white people do", but if it does then i agree
13-15: 100%
16: questioning anyone's blackness or whiteness is wrong regardless of your race. don't do it if you're white, don't do it if you're black.
17: this is a logical trap to ensure that white people can't be a part of a conversation on race. "shut your mouth, oppressor!" is not making things better.
18, 19: that's treating somebody of a different race as a "man on the inside", which is covered in points 1-10
20: inversely treating people as representatives of their race
21-23, 25, 26, 28: 100%
24: maybe, but also make sure to read up on psychology, philosophy and literary theory that isn't race-bound
27, 29, 32, 33: support art and projects you like, don't support something on principle because it's non-white. make sure you're not only exposed to all-white art and projects, THAT'S important.
30. it depends on what that means, if it's using something "culturally apporpriated" in a positive way it's fine, if it's making a joke of another culture that's different.
31. 100%
35: this is a long conversation, but in summary i don't agree
36, 37: what has this got to do with anything?
38: it's reasonable to expect immigrants to follow the rules of the dominant culture. if you don't like the rules of a dominant culture, move somewhere else. there's a difference between not letting people trample on your freedoms and on imposing your way of life on others.
39, 40: 100%
41: by race, 100%. by culture, factually incorrect. islam is inherently more homophobic than western society. russians are white, they're more homophobic than americans.
42-44: i don't know why this is in the list, but sure, okay.
45, 46: this isn't about racism, it's about being a dick. it's like thinking you have the right to touch a pregnant woman's belly. except if you're in a relationship with a woman of color, in which case don't assume that your partner is "woke" and just tell them not to touch your damned hair.
47: make sure you have whatever you need when you sleep over at a partner's home, this is not a race thing.
48: sure
49: again, the example is a cultural one not a race one. but sure.
50: silly, but whatever.
51-54, 56-58: 100%
55: do what you can with what you have
59: 100%, but the solutions are often societal ones and not personal which is not implied in this point.
60, 64: interesting, it certainly depends on the context but i generally agree
61, 63. 100%
62: rubbish.
65,66: that's one point, and the point is "be fair"
67: i heartily disagree. if you have something to say you should be able to say it and be argued with. simple.
68. which situations? oh, when you want to have a conversation?
69-75 100%
76: i don't know what ICE is
77: depends on how you define islamophobia, and that's a LONG conversation and not for the faint of heart.
78, 79, 81: 100%
80: *sigh* really? all of it, or just the fact that those kinds of racists are real?
82, 83 back to cultural appropriation, it's a ridiculous and divisive idea that we shouldn't celebrate things we like in other cultures. pull the other one.
84: i just did, go ahead and block me if you're afraid of confronting uncomfortable ideas
85 100%, unless it's done in a way that highlights its wrongness, like in bamboozled or tropic thunder
86: don't sing along to our rap songs? no. but don't use the word unless you're actually talking about the word itself. see louis ck on "the n-word", he's on point.
87: yay! let's whitewash history by rewriting historical texts like huckleberry finn! seriously, this is a dangerously stupid idea.
88. sure
89: and a bunch of other reasons, but those certainly contributed. not really relevant.
90: i dunno, i think it's okay to care about race whenever it's relevant, just like every other issue we have to deal with.
91: does anyone actually do that?!
92: again, when relevant. people of color shouldn't have to, so let's move towards a reality in which they don't instead of one in which we all have to be uncomfortable all the time.
93, 96: please watch that video i posted earlier from before.
94: 100%
95: first make sure that the white person in question hasn't experienced racism, because we're not all the same. being shut out of a conversation because you're white is racism. full stop.
97: sure thing
98: 100%
99: that's phrasing of a very particular ideology of victimhood that's only accurate to a point, but i agree with the intention
100: 100%

i invested so much time in that response that i had to post it her for posterity. you're welcome.

holocaust memorial day 2018

i'm fascinated by some of the stuff in my feed from holocaust memorial day - posts claiming that the holocaust wasn't a unique historical event, and posts claiming that we should focus on the other victims as well.

1. never in history has a people been so brutally destroyed on such a massive scale, under such inhumane conditions and with such inhumane efficiency. to claim anything else is to claim ignorance of what actually happened, and i warmly recommend locating a holocaust museum close to you and paying it a visit.

2. yes, there were most certainly other victims of the holocaust. absolutely. but there were six million of us, and as the prime target of the holocaust we're allowed to take one day of the year to remind ourselves and others just how far antisemitism goes - yesterday, today, and tomorrow. that's not to say that the other groups of people who suffered shouldn't be remembered, or aren't welcome to join us in remembering, but i think it's fair to say that they were swept up in something that was created exclusively with us in mind.

---one "friend" actually blocked me for responding to his post about how the holocaust wasn't special, when my response was an explanation about what made the holocaust unique, how an act of genocide demands the complete dehumanization of the enemy and is not the same as violent subjugation. slavery is awful, yes, and lots of people have suffered and died tragically as slaves, but slaves are still seen as having some value to their owners. jews were seen as vermin, not "less than human" but utterly devoid of humanity.

NEVER FORGET.
it was ordinary humans who built and ran the death camps. people like you and me.

movember: a public service announcement

movember, the month of masculinity when men grow amusing facial hair to remind other men to find someone to stick a finger up their bums to find out if they've managed to give themselves cancer yet with the meat-heavy diets they've been manipulated to believe make them more manly.

you know what's manly? eating food that doesn't give you cancer, and being healthy enough to take care of your family and have cash to burn on good experiences and educations instead of meds and medical procedures and funerals.