#Launch institutional design

[gudmould]

Infusion bottle cap mold design and process parameter optimization based on CAE technology

1 Analysis of plastic part structure and molding plan Medical polypropylene plastic has advantages of high purity, non-toxicity, non-irritation, good chemical stability, no degradation, no inflammation, non-allergic reaction, good biocompatibility, non-carcinogenicity, non-hemolysis and non-coagulation, and can withstand ethylene oxide sterilization treatment. This material not only has good…

[mahmoudalmasrifund]

Story

I am Mahmoud Al-Masri, I'm 21 years old, living at the Gaza Strip, an academic student majoring in Graphic Design.

I am here to ask for your support to complete my university education outside my city of Gaza after the Israeli occupation destroyed universities and colleges in the Gaza Strip and destroyed education facilities, youth support institutions and training spaces that aim to provide training for all disciplines and then provide job opportunities for young people, most of which were destroyed.

We used to have a beautiful life, despite the siege on Gaza and the wars on it. We used to have a house and now we live in a tent "displaced", we used to have dreams and we pursued them and still do, we used to go to the sea which is the only breathing space for the people of the Gaza Strip, we used to live peacefully despite all the siege. We here in Gaza have brilliant and innovative minds that learn medicine, technology, professional specialties, agriculture, industry, trade and all specialties, we just need someone to support us, appreciate what we do and motivate us to keep going.

Help me

October 7, 2023 is a date that I will never forget, we were displaced about 8 times and lived through terror and destruction and are still living it, we saw death with our own eyes and survived death several times, our features changed, we became young people instead of worrying about our future, we became tired of securing water and food for our family and carrying water from a distant place to the tent is very tiring, our bodies are tired of the weights we carry daily and the diseases that spread and we don't know what's next.

I decided to pay back my knowledge and the information I gained from study, search, and workshops by share it on social media. I will answer on everyone's questions, and make webinars as my teachers do with us.

These ideas will help educational community to grows.

My goal in launching my campaign is to raise funds to complete my university studies outside my city, to cover the costs of travel, housing, food, the costs of the university I will attend, and I am currently looking for a distinguished university in the field of graphic design. I asked my friends who attended universities in Europe to suggest some universities, and among my goals after studying is to provide a safe and stable place to live with my family.

I would be very grateful for your support for me and my educational journey.

I wish you a life full of happiness and prosperity

@el-shab-hussein @ibtisams @nabulsi @90-ghost @tamamita @apollos-olives

[reasonsforhope]

"Doctors have begun trialling the world’s first mRNA lung cancer vaccine in patients, as experts hailed its “groundbreaking” potential to save thousands of lives.

Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor.

Now experts are testing a new jab that instructs the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells – then prevents them ever coming back. Known as BNT116 and made by BioNTech, the vaccine is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease.

The phase 1 clinical trial, the first human study of BNT116, has launched across 34 research sites in seven countries: the UK, US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey.

The UK has six sites, located in England and Wales, with the first UK patient to receive the vaccine having their initial dose on Tuesday [August 20, 2024].

Overall, about 130 patients – from early-stage before surgery or radiotherapy, to late-stage disease or recurrent cancer – will be enrolled to have the jab alongside immunotherapy. About 20 will be from the UK.

The jab uses messenger RNA (mRNA), similar to Covid-19 vaccines, and works by presenting the immune system with tumour markers from NSCLC to prime the body to fight cancer cells expressing these markers.

The aim is to strengthen a person’s immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells untouched, unlike chemotherapy.

“We are now entering this very exciting new era of mRNA-based immunotherapy clinical trials to investigate the treatment of lung cancer,” said Prof Siow Ming Lee, a consultant medical oncologist at University College London hospitals NHS foundation trust (UCLH), which is leading the trial in the UK.

“It’s simple to deliver, and you can select specific antigens in the cancer cell, and then you target them. This technology is the next big phase of cancer treatment.”

Janusz Racz, 67, from London, was the first person to have the vaccine in the UK. He was diagnosed in May and soon after started chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

The scientist, who specialises in AI, said his profession inspired him to take part in the trial. “I am a scientist too, and I understand that the progress of science – especially in medicine – lies in people agreeing to be involved in such investigations,” he said...

“And also, I can be a part of the team that can provide proof of concept for this new methodology, and the faster it would be implemented across the world, more people will be saved.”

Racz received six consecutive injections five minutes apart over 30 minutes at the National Institute for Health Research UCLH Clinical Research Facility on Tuesday.

Each jab contained different RNA strands. He will get the vaccine every week for six consecutive weeks, and then every three weeks for 54 weeks.

Lee said: “We hope adding this additional treatment will stop the cancer coming back because a lot of time for lung cancer patients, even after surgery and radiation, it does come back.” ...

“We hope to go on to phase 2, phase 3, and then hope it becomes standard of care worldwide and saves lots of lung cancer patients.”

The Guardian revealed in May that thousands of patients in England were to be fast-tracked into groundbreaking trials of cancer vaccines in a revolutionary world-first NHS “matchmaking” scheme to save lives.

Under the scheme, patients who meet the eligibility criteria will gain access to clinical trials for the vaccines that experts say represent a new dawn in cancer treatment."

-via The Guardian, May 30, 2024

[mortalityplays]

You need more free art.

I quit my job yesterday. Well, actually I quit my job eight weeks ago, but they finally released me yesterday for good behaviour. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do - but I do it for the wrong reasons. Working for major charities, you learn very fast that 'I want to make the world a better place' is a phrase you use to ask people for money, not to give them things. I was an ass-backwards fit for that world.

You need more free art. I need more free art. Everyone has felt the shift in our media landscape over the last ten years, away from access and towards nickel-and-diming the human experience. That lack of access is making life and culture worse for all of us, across the board. Paywalled news sites leave us less informed, attacks on the Internet Archive leave us less capable of research. Algorithmic social feeds and streaming walled gardens trap us inside smaller and smaller demographic bubbles, where we are increasingly only likely to encounter ideas that have been curated for us by marketing departments. Hasty efforts to resist AI commodification have only led to more artists locking their work away and calling for even more onerous systems of copyright law. This is not good for us.

We all need more free art.

So what am I going to do about it?

This is a question I have been asking myself for years. It's easy to sit here feeilng frustrated and thinking 'boy I hope SOMEONE does SOMETHING'. It's harder to take action in a world where I still have rent to pay. But hard doesn't mean impossible. Sometimes hard just means time-consuming, frustrating and slow. And sometimes it's worth doing something time-consuming, frustrating and slow because...I want to make the world a better place.

I'm going to do this:

1. From April 1st, I am relaunching as a freelance writer and editor.

This is the one that will (hopefully) help to pay the bills. I am a very good and experienced editor. I've worked on hollywood movies, I'm a member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders, I have clients who have been coming to me exclusively for more than 10 years.

Alongside bigger contract jobs, I am going to refocus on offering my services to small-press creators at a reduced rate. That means you, graphic novelists. That means you, itch and amazon writers. I want to help you develop your work, the same way I help large organisations. You can learn more about what an editor even does and what kind of pricing you can expect here.

2. I'm also going to start giving shit away. Like, constantly.

Next week I'm going to launch a new free shop. If you're unfamiliar, a free shop, giveaway shop, swap shop, etc. is an anarchist tradition of setting up a storefront where anyone can take what they like for no cost. Offline, this often means second-hand clothes, tools, furniture, food etc. Online, I am going to be giving away digital art. Copyright-free, no strings attached. It will (eventually) feature everything from print-res posters to zines, poems, tattoo flash, t-shirt designs and anything else we come up with.

Yes, I said 'we' - while this is a curated collection, it will feature work from a variety of credited and anonymous artists and activists, all of whom have agreed to give their work away to the public domain. Some of it will be practical, some of it will be political, but a lot of it will be decorative or personal. This is, in part, a response to recent difficulty I had finding somewhere that would print a one-off joke poster for a friend that featured the word 'faggot'. Enough. No middlemen - no explaining ourselves. Just print our shit and enjoy it.

I'm very, very excited about this project. I'll have more to say about it closer to the launch, but you can expect it to go live on March 27th.

2.2 I forgot to mention the ACTUAL LAUNCH GIVEAWAY

To celebrate my launch, I am going to be giving away a ton of physical prints. When I went looking for my old stock to see if it was worth setting a new (paid) storefront up, I realised I had way more old work in storage than I thought. This will be announced in its own right on Monday, but this is why I've been hinting you should go follow my Patreon.

On April 1st, I will pick 8 random patrons (from across all tiers including non-paying followers!) and mail them a bundle of assorted prints and postcards. The prize pool includes A3 and A4 posters, packs of A6 postcards, and printed minicomics that I've previously sold for up to £12 each.

You don't have to be a paying subscriber to enter - this is strictly no-purchase necessary. It is purely and entirely a celebration of the concept of GIVING ART AWAY FOR FREE.

3. PORN, YOU PERVERTS

Because I still have to pay to stay alive, I am going to be subsidising all this free art with the introduction of Fuck You Fridays. Starting from March 29th, I will drop a new 18+ short story on the last Friday of every month, over on itch.io (yes I know my page is desolate right now, don't worry I'll get there).

The first edition, Go Fuck Yourself, is about, well - telling your boss where to stick it. Julia has had it with her millionaire man-child manager, and is just about ready to let him know what she really thinks. It's a short and steamy 5k words, with a gorgeous cover illustration by @taylor-titmouse, and you can pick it up for $3 starting from March 29th.

4. ANOTHER BIG SURPRISE

I'm keeping this one under wraps for now, but April 1st will also play host to one more (FREE) launch. If you've been following me for a long time, you might remember the other significance of this date (no not April Fool's day, though that is certainly thematically relevant to this entire effort). That's all I'll say right now. Watch this space.

tl;dr: I'm sick of paywalls and career ladders. I'm literally putting my money where my mouth is. More free art for everyone and I'm not kidding around!!!

[empty-movement]

Welcome to Something Eternal: A Website Forum in 2023 wtf lmao

It's 2023, and a single belligerent rich guy destroyed one of the primary focal points of uh...global communication. Tumblr is, shockingly, kinda thriving despite the abuse it gets from its owners, but that I will call the iconic refusal of Tumblr users to let Tumblr get in the way of their using Tumblr. Reddit killed its API, removing the functionality of mobile apps that made it remotely readable (rip rif.) Discord, our current primary hangout, has made countless strange choices lately that indicate it has reached the summit of its usability and functionality, and can only decline from here as changes get made to prepare for shareholders. (NOTE: WROTE THIS POST BEFORE THEIR MOBILE "REDESIGN" LMAO)

The enshittification is intense, and it's coming from every direction. Social media platforms that felt like permanent institutions are instead slowly going to let fall fallow incredible amounts of history, works of art, thought, and fandoms. It kinda sucks!

A couple years ago, I posted about a new plan with a new domain, to focus on the archiving of media content, as I saw that to be the fatal weakness of the current ways the internet and fandoms work. Much has happened since to convince me to alter the direction of those efforts, though not abandon them entirely.

Long story short? We are launching a fucking website forum. In 2023.

If you remember In the Rose Garden, much about Something Eternal will be familiar. But this has been a year in the making, and in many ways it's far more ambitious than IRG was. We have put money on this. The forum is running on the same software major IT and technology businesses use, because I don't want the software to age out of usability within five years. It has an attached gallery system for me to post content to, including the Chiho Saito art collection. It has a profile post system that everyone already on the forum has decided is kinda like mini Twitter? But it is, fundamentally, a website forum, owned and run and moderated by us. We are not web devs. But we have run a website on pure spite and headbutting code for over twenty years, and we have over a decade of experience maintaining social spaces online, both on the OG forum, and on our Discord. Better skilled people with far more time than we have can and will build incredible alternatives to what is collapsing around us. But they're not in the room right now. We are. And you know what? Maybe it's time to return to a clunkier, slower moving, more conversation focused platform.

You're not joining a social media platform with the full polish of dozens of devs and automated moderation. Things might break, and I might need time to fix them. The emojis and such are still a work in progress. Because e-mails no longer route in reasonable normal ways, the sign-up process instead happens within the software, and has to be approved by mods. Design and structure elements may change. Etc. The point being, that the forum isn't finished, but it is at a place where I feel like I can present it to people, and it's people I need to help direct what functions and things will be in this space. You all will shape its norms, its traditions, its options...choices I could try to make now, but really...they're for us to create as a group! But the important stuff? That's there. Now let's drive this baby off the damn lot already!

Come! Join us!!

PS. As always, TERFs and Nazis need not apply.

[beguines]

Today, strawberries have replaced much of the citrus and olive trees in the strip, and despite the relatively small area of farmland used for this sector, it enjoys high economic and social value. In all of the ways that citrus cultivation has been targeted, strawberries seem designed to survive Israel's eco-colonial practices. Strawberries are able to survive on partially saline water, they have faster production cycles, are easier to cultivate and replant after destruction and uprooting, are more mobile after moments of displacement, require less space and distance between each planted crop, and enable farmers in Gaza's northern peripheries and along the buffer zones to remain visible to the observing Israeli occupation forces. As a crop with limited historical roots in the country, it adapts well and is highly versatile. The use of compost for the cultivation of strawberries enables significant increase in fruit productivity, saving Gazan farmers the use of precious water supplies and decreasing its need for the use of fertilizers.

Despite this, the conditions of Gaza's ongoing colonial isolation and erasure make it increasingly impossible for farmers to sustain their livelihoods off of the land, even with strawberry production. In today's Gaza, as the agricultural export industry is fully reliant on the Israeli permit system, strawberries are slowly being replaced with other low-growing, fast-yielding, cost-effective and high-demand fruits and vegetables. Indeed, as a colleague at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the largest agricultural development institution in Palestine, told me during my time in Gaza, the most recent crop to slowly begin its replacement of strawberries in this line of forced colonial transition is pineapple—with the first pineapple farm planted in Khan Younes in 2017.

Examining the conditions that make strawberry production more practical and fuel the transition from citrus production requires examining the ongoing Israeli colonization of natural resources that supplant and suppress traditional modes of relating to nature. Witnesses of Israeli neo-colonial violence, the disappearing orchards in Gaza mark its new disconnected reality. The transition from the orange to the strawberry—and perhaps later to pineapple—is more than a shift in markets and produce. They affect the history and identity of Palestinians in Gaza. The links between cultivation and national or communal identity are well-known and documented in other contexts, including their intersection with colonial nation-branding. But in the context of aggressive climate change the instabilities, tensions, and erasures that come with transitions in vegetation are growing increasingly stark. For example, in the case of the Swiss canton of Valais, global heating has resulted in the growth of cacti, Opuntia, that are proliferating on the mountainsides of the canton, encroaching on natural reserves and causing a biodiversity threat. Used to "seeing their mountainsides covered with snow in winter and edelweiss flowers in summer" warmer and drier temperatures have given way to what is named in media coverage as an "invasive species colonizing the slopes." Launching an uprooting campaign in 2022, the press release stressed that "this invasive and non-native plant is not welcome in the perimeter of prairies and dry pastures of national importance." Evidently the discourse mobilized is dominated by aggressive language of aliens and invasion, which contributes to the use of violent and war-like metaphors to push for pre-emptive and combative control. In the Gazan case, the transition, as well as local responses to it, are less pronounced and weeded through long-term colonial policies imposed by the occupation. That said, the transition to strawberry cultivation nevertheless carries a similar ecological, cultural, and socio-political impact. In place of the orange, the strawberry is surfacing as the symbol of Gaza, redrawing the boundaries of the identity of its besieged inhabitants. Whereas in the past the orange was a continuous link between Gaza and the rest of historic Palestine, with deep generational roots and a symbol of steadfast and continuous presence, the abrupt transition from oranges to strawberries distances Gaza from the constructed identity and vegetal knowledge production of Palestinian farmers elsewhere. Put differently, this symbolic and political transition at the level of fruit production can be seen as another mechanism through which Israeli neo-colonial violence reifies Gaza as an enclave: divided and partitioned from the rest of Palestine.

Shourideh C. Molavi, Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance

[komsomolka]

To sit in the comfort and safety of the West and condemn acts of armed resistance that the Palestinians choose to carry out – always at great risk to their lives – is a deeply chauvinistic position. It must be stated plainly: it is not the place of those who choose to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians from afar to then try and dictate how they should wage the anti-colonial struggle that, as Frantz Fanon believed, is necessary to maintain their humanity and dignity, and ultimately to achieve their liberation. Those who are not under brutal military occupation or refugees from ethnic cleansing have no right to judge the manner in which those who are choose to confront their colonisers. Indeed, expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause is ultimately meaningless if that support dissipates the moment that the Palestinians resist their oppression with anything more than rocks and can no longer be portrayed as courageous, photogenic, but ultimately powerless, victims. [...]

As a result, large swathes of the Western left express solidarity with the Palestinian cause in a generalised, abstract way, overstating the importance of their own role, and simultaneously rejecting the very groups who are currently fighting – and dying – for it. All too often, those who have refused to surrender and steadfastly resisted at great cost, are condemned by people who, in the same breath, declare solidarity with the cause. Similarly, it is common for these same people to either ignore or demonise those external forces that materially aid the Palestinian resistance more than any others – most notably Iran. If this assistance is acknowledged, which is rare, the Palestinian groups that accept it are typically infantilised as mere ‘dupes’ or ‘pawns’, for allowing themselves to be used cynically by the self-serving acts of others – a sentiment that directly contradicts Palestinian leaders’ own statements.

A specific criticism of Hamas that is frequently deployed in this context is the ‘indiscriminate’ nature of its missile launches from Gaza, actions which both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International regularly label ‘war crimes’. As observed by Perugini and Gordon, the false equivalence that this designation relies upon ‘essentially says that using homemade missiles – there isn’t much else available to people living under permanent siege – is a war crime. In other words, Palestinian armed groups are criminalised for their technological inferiority’. After the latest round of fighting in May 2021, al-Sinwar stated clearly that, unlike Israel, ‘which possesses a complete arsenal of weaponry, state-of-the-art equipment and aircraft’ and ‘bombs our children and women, on purpose’, if Hamas possessed ‘the capabilities to launch precision missiles that targeted military targets, we wouldn’t have used the rockets that we did. We are forced to defend our people with what we have, and this is what we have’.

This failure to support legitimate armed struggle is a part of a wider problem with the framing used by many supporters of the Palestinian cause in the West, that obscures its fundamental nature and how it must be resolved. Palestine is not simply a human rights issue, or even just a question of apartheid, but rather an anti-colonial fight for national liberation being waged by an indigenous resistance against the forces of an imperialist-backed settler colony. Decolonisation is a word now frequently used in the West in an abstract sense or in relation to curricula, institutions and public art, but rarely anymore in connection to what actually matters most: land. And that is the very crux of the issue: the land of Palestine must be decolonised, its Zionist colonisers deposed, their racist structures and barriers – both physical and political – dismantled, and all Palestinian refugees given the right of return.

[solar-serpent]

🌈Based on your talents, what business should you launch?💰🪙

Hello! I hope everyone is doing great. I'm going through a phase where I started wondering if I wanted to go back to work for an employer, or even if it was worthy after I've acknowledged all my potential and the fact no one would ever pay for the real price of my work. Aquarium era is hitting me harder, and I bet you too are feeling this call to reach financial freedom. We deserve it.

I want to contribute with your awakening.

Please take a deep breath, focus on what's in front of you and pick the picture you feel more attracted to.

Pile I → Pile II

Pile III → Pile IV

🌱Pile I🌱

OMG, pile 1, you are so kind and empathetic that people want to open up to you and ask for your opinion/advice on topics such as recent breakups, petty fights with mom, best friend betrayal drama and so. Even though that's not the main purpose for them going into your store/business. If you weren't an entrepreneur, you could've been an excellent therapist since your serene demeanor and polite speech would make others believe they are speaking to a good friend. You show you care for what you are being told by providing meaningful replies, and I could swear people go crazy over your attentive gaze. Some of you are natural, others are really good actors (no one is to be judged here). Your patience and warm personality real or not sells, people could purchase anything from your business if you are the one assisting, which can be a boomer if you are aiming for leaving someone else in charge and doing the counts behind the scenes, knowing you are one of the best sellers.

You could own a coffee store given how good you are at building spaces where people will gather and feel safe. Not only that, you can create beautiful settings that will make others immerse in a new world like the tea room from a dollhouse or within a Monet painting. You will succeed at making them distance themselves from real world's problems, thus they could be more open to speak about something that feels so far away. To be honest, I don't think everyone that chose this pile would identify with this business idea. For some serving, cooking and simping chai latte over the daily gossips feels like a waste of their potential. You guys are right, another part of group which's artsy in nature is more aligned with fashion, beauty, and textiles. But I swear you all have the potential to manifest large amounts of money in one sale. I didn't have to crack my head open thinking about what type of business could allow that as designing is your strong suit. You are a master when it comes to making colors, fabrics. and whatnot march. A small part of this group loves sweets and how food can make others happy, therefore you could settle down for having a bakery and specializing on wedding cakes. However, some of you are contemplating the idea of running a drift or wedding dress store. For the ones willing to work with the brides, I assure your business will do well. You have the patience of a Greek hero going against the gods' will, so I see you nailing sales that took plenty of your time and energy.

I hope this reading was to your liking♡. I'm offering paid readings about this topic here. You can find more free content on my blog.

🌱Pile 2🌱

I didn't know "giving a fuck" was a talent until I drew your cards, dear pile 2. You are strong people, you don't care if others start hating you for doing your job. Like 5% of the people who picked this pile dreamed with being a hitman and go ahead guys, you'll do great. Now, a large percent of you have questionable morals, allowing you to work in fields where you can turn corrupted and earn wealth as a politician, lawyer, or even a doctor. I know those are career choices, but the real business for you is owning agencies, institutes, clinics, and funeral homes. I am not even making the latter up. Some of you won't care about the taboo-ish nature of your work. You approach business with level-headedness and practicality, thus if it pays wells as any other job related to humans needs... dealing with the deads is easier than their family but you will still do the job or you will hire someone to do it eventually. Curiously, you are great at making people feel better. You aren't that talkative, but you know how to make others laugh with your silly jokes, pulling weird faces, providing them with food or water and much needed space.

Some of you are radicals and into activism. You have plenty of pent-up anger and aggressiveness inside of you that you will directed at facing opposing forces. You might start a charitable cause and talk people into volunteering. Yeah, I know it won't give you money or not so much, but hear me out! You could own an institute for people with special needs or another for learning languages. There's a high chance you might end up working with foreigners, what gave you that business idea when you thought on how to help them improve their lifestyle. Some of you could be interested in farming or owning a supermarket. You would feel inclined to hire immigrants regardless of the consequences. Actually, what are consequences to you? You don't fucking care. You see people suffering, you help them. There's no other logic in your brain.

I hope this reading was to your liking♡. I'm offering paid readings about this topic here. You can find more free content on my blog.

🌱Pile 3🌱

Ok, guys, I love how unbothered you are when it comes to your line of work and what people have to say about it. Unlike pile 2, you are not interested in top positions that might lead to corruption, dirty money and living a very intense life. You are the complete opposite, you are humble and like to contribute to the community. You have a great intuition and observation skills, so upon checking your town or the place you want to install your business in, you will know what spot in the market needs to be filled right away. You can also tell what the community's needs are; you are not afraid of getting your hands dirty, so you could feel inclined to run a fish or convenience store. I feel like you want to belong, so not only your business won't cover a necessity, but also will turn into something traditional, even "iconic" for your neighbourhood. Is a music store still a thing? I feel like a small part of this group longs to have one.

You have all what it takes to manifest a long-lasting business. You are highly talented at nurturing and you might see your business like a "baby". It's not just your money source, but something to care about and fight for. Some of you might be interested in running an esoteric shop, where people is going to get their cards read or purchase herbs, incienses, candles, and so on. Mostly, this pile wants to have an unique business or for it to be the sole provider of something. E.g, you might own the only bookstore with coffee services at town. Also, I believe some of you will settle for moving out to a town or the countryside and start a business over there.

I hope this reading was to your liking♡. I'm offering paid readings about this topic here. You can find more free content on my blog.

🌱Pile 4🌱

Hello, guys! This pile is slightly different from the rest since I feel like going straight to the point and sparing unnecessary details, but I might annoy you as I'm not leaving nothing unsaid. You are known for being busy and most times you seem to be in a hurry. You are always working on something, even in high school your friends knew you were too invested on your studies and earning money than hanging out with people your age. You probably like technology and travelling, so you could own a business like a travel agency (in your country or another), transport or event planning company. In all honesty, you might end up running all three of them. The term "workaholic" does not make justice to what you are, but I will call you a genius. You were born to steal the spotlight by your innovative style at the moment of giving birth to your ideas into the real world. You can mix all your interests together and create a new business that will leave people gawking, like an app who allows users to match with vacation spots instead of people or something like that?

Some of you will rather work with tourists, renting cars, boats, and properties so their basic needs are covered. I don't know how many of you are sporty but you are adamant about turning one of your interests/hobbies in your business. You might run your own indoor rock climbing centre. If you were to ask me for specifications on what's your talent, I would say you are a natural when it comes to businesses and you hold such control over your emotions. You put your sole focus on work, nothing can distract you from achieving your goals. Not even your family, so I can see you making up to your dear ones with expensive gifts or generous check after you missed an important family event again.

I hope this reading was to your liking♡. I'm offering paid readings about this topic here. You can find more free content on my blog.

[fromchaostocosmos]

Claims that Israel has been committing a genocide of Palestinians date to long before October 7. Yet the population of Gaza was estimated to be less than 400,000 when Israel captured the territory from Egypt in a war against multiple Arab countries in 1967. It’s now estimated at just over 2 million. Population growth of almost 600% would make it the most inept genocide in the history of the world.

Those repeating the word genocide over and over, turning it into a mantra that penetrates the public consciousness, smearing Israel and anyone who supports it, ignore the facts of this war. This is not an unprovoked war, like Russia’s against Ukraine. It’s not a civil war between rival militias, like the one raging in Sudan — which, by the way, is being ignored by almost everyone, even though the UN describes it as one of the “worst humanitarian crises in recent memory,” where a famine could kill 500,000 people. No, Israel was attacked. On October 7, Hamas launched a gruesome assault on Israeli civilians, killing some 1,200 — including many women and children — and dragging hundreds of them as hostages into Gaza. Today dozens — including many women and children — remain in captivity. Those who keep saying that Israel’s response is an act of revenge rather than the strategic, defensive war that most Israelis view as a fight for national survival against a determined enemy backed by a powerful country are deliberately distorting reality. In doing so, they are perversely evoking the same false blood lust and grotesqueness embedded in the blood libel archetype.

Indeed, Hamas’ actions, which precipitated this war, don’t seem to exist in the minds of ostensibly humanitarian-minded protesters. Nor even the fate of the hostages, still captive in Hamas tunnels. Although the campus protests vary in their message and actions from school to school, we never hear protesters chant that Hamas should release the hostages or accept a ceasefire. Quite the contrary. Accusations against Israel at times include praise for Hamas, one of whose aims — the end of the Jewish state — is shared by some key organizers of the student protests. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said, “It remains astounding to me that the world is almost deafeningly silent when it comes to Hamas.” Accusing Israel of genocide and putting the entire onus for stopping the war, putting all the blame for the deaths, on the Jewish state is even more astounding because Hamas — designated a terrorist organization by the US, the European Union and many other countries — is a group whose explicit goal, according to its founding charter, is not just to destroy Israel, but to kill Jews. That is the definition of genocide.

Still, the death toll, even by the Hamas count, does not in any way suggest a genocidal campaign. The terror organization puts the total at about 35,000. The figure, disputed by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy among other think tanks and researchers, includes Hamas fighters. That means the number of civilians killed, whatever the total, is actually lower. Compare that to the death toll in Mosul, Iraq, where coalition forces uprooted ISIS from a city that had some 600,000 people at the time. Estimates of the exact number of deaths vary, ranging from 9,000 to 40,000 (the latter is the estimate of Kurdish intelligence). The lowest figure is on par with the rate of total deaths reported by Hamas authorities in Gaza that does not distinguish civilians from Hamas fighters, while the highest is four times greater. I don’t recall hearing the term genocide used there, or in any of the battles that led to more than half a million people being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq during America’s wars there. And yet, Israel has been repeatedly smeared with this damning accusation.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a message from Yahya Sinwar (the Hamas leader inside Gaza) was passed to Hamas leaders who live outside of it, and the essence of that is not to worry, because Sinwar believes they have Israel exactly where they want it. In other words, when Hamas is estimated by Israel to have at least 12,000 of its terrorists killed, and despite the fact that they could stop the death of Gazans by releasing the Israeli hostages and surrendering, Sinwar doesn't see any issues with where the war is at. I think the most important part is this: "According to the report, Sinwar also told the Hamas officials that the terror group is prepared for Israel’s expected operation in Rafah, the Gaza Strip’s southernmost city, and is relying on the high civilian death toll reported by the Hamas-run health ministry to cause enough global outcry that Israel is forced to withdraw" (my emphasis). At what point do people realize that they are serving the interests of Hamas' mass murderers, kidnappers and rapists?

A few days ago, I wrote about the attempt to allow aid trucks into northern Gaza directly from Israel, instead of bringing it to the south, and waiting for Gaza-based elements to deliver it to the north. This means an escort of Israeli soldiers is accompanying the trucks. This is the route the aid trucks cross:

Today, these aid trucks were stormed by a huge crowd, and according to the IDF, many people died from pushing and trampling (at the link you can see aerial video footage of the stampede), not an unheard of phenomenon when a huge herd of people all rush in at the same time. On top of that, some Gazans were also advancing at the soldiers securing the aid trucks. The soldiers felt undr threat, and they opened fire at those charging at them, but according to their estimate, this accounts for only 10 of the dead. Still, you can count on the anti-Israel crowd to adopt a narrative that, immediately and without investigation, calls this a massacre and blames every single death on Israel, not on Hamas, which started the war that made even aid supply into a dangerous and complicated situation.

Here's a reminder that even in the middle of the war, when no one is paying attention to it, Israel continues to demolish illegal homes built by Jews. But you're never gonna hear about it, not even during more normal times, because it doesn't fit the anti-Israel narrative, so anti-Israel sources will only ever tell you about it, when Israeli demolishes illegal homes built by Arabs.

As threats to British Members of Parliament (MPs) are rising due to threats from the anti-Israel crowd, the UK has allocated bodyguards to some of them, along with 31 million pounds designated for the security of British democracy. If some of the most powerful people in Britain are that scared, what do you think Jews there are going through? Indeed, today we heard that 72 million pounds are meant to help secure Jewish centers and institutions in the UK. The problem is that until the root of the problem will be tackled, this is just taking care of the symptoms, instead of curing the disease.

Israeli security forces have stopped two Palestinian cousins, one 17 years old and the other 29 years old, from carrying out an independent terrorist attack. I refer to such attacks as independent in order to point out that they're not a part of some greater plot, unlike every single terrorist attack on Oct 7, which were all interconnected, and rocket attacks since, which are launched as a part of the war that Hamas started waging against Israel. However, some of these attacks ARE connected to Hamas. Apparently, these two cousins contacted Hamas in Gaza to get help in committing their intended crime.

This is 59 years old Michel Nissenbaum.

He made alyiah on his own from Brazil when he was 13 years old. Friends say that coming to Israel saved him. He worked in hi-tech, as well as a tour guide, and volunteered with Bedouin kids. Here he is with one such group:

On Oct 7, Michel heard that the Re'im IDF base was under attack from Hamas terrorists. Knowing that his granddaughter was there, visiting her dad, Michel decided to go there and get her out. While he was making his way to the base, he stopped responding to messages. His granddaughter was rescued from the place hours later, but Michel himself had disappeared. He's believed to be kidnapped in Gaza, but his family is scared, because he wasn't spotted in any of the pics or vids released by Hamas.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[covid-safer-hotties]

Needle-free COVID-19 intranasal vaccine provides broad immunity, study finds - Published Agu 27, 2024

A next-generation COVID-19 mucosal vaccine is set to be a gamechanger not only when delivering the vaccine itself, but also for people who are needle-phobic.

New Griffith University research, "A single-dose intranasal live-attenuated codon deoptimized vaccine provides broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants" published in Nature Communications, has been testing the efficacy of delivering a COVID-19 vaccine via the nasal passages.

Professor Suresh Mahalingam from Griffith's Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics has been working on this research for the past four years.

"This is a live attenuated intranasal vaccine, called CDO-7N-1, designed to be administered intranasally, thereby inducing potential mucosal immunity as well as systemic immunity with just a single dose," Professor Mahalingam said.

"The vaccine induces strong memory responses in the nasal mucosa, offering long-term protection for up to a year or more.

"It's been designed to be administered as a single dose, ideally as a booster vaccine, as a safe alternative to needles with no adverse reactions in the short or long term."

Live-attenuated vaccines offer several significant advantages over other vaccine approaches.

They induce potent and long-lived humoral and cellular immunity, often with just a single dose.

Live-attenuated vaccines comprise the entire virus, thereby providing broad immunity, in contrast to a single antigen which is used in many other vaccine platforms.

Lead author Dr. Xiang Liu said the vaccine provides cross-protection against all variants of concern, and has neutralizing capacity against SARS-CoV-1.

"The vaccine offers potent protection against transmission, prevents reinfection and the spread of the virus, while also reducing the generation of new variants," Dr. Liu said.

"Unlike the mRNA vaccine which targets only the spike protein, CDO-7N-1 induces immunity to all major SARS-CoV-2 proteins and is highly effective against all major variants to date.

"Importantly, the vaccine remains stable at 4°C for seven months, making it ideal for low- and middle-income countries."

The vaccine has been licensed to Indian Immunologicals Ltd, a major vaccine manufacturer.

Dr. K. Anand Kumar, co-author of the publication and Managing Director of Indian Immunologicals Ltd. Said, "We are a leading 'One Health' company that has developed and launched several vaccines for human and animal use in India and are currently exporting to 62 countries."

"We have completed all the necessary studies of this novel COVID-19 vaccine which offers tremendous advantages over other vaccines.

"We now look forward to taking the vaccine candidate to clinical trials."

Professor Lee Smith, Acting Director of the Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics, said he was delighted with the research findings.

"These results towards developing a next-generation COVID-19 vaccine are truly exciting," Professor Smith said.

"Our researchers are dedicated to providing innovative and, crucially, more accessible solutions to combat this high-impact disease."

More information: Xiang Liu et al, A single-dose intranasal live-attenuated codon deoptimized vaccine provides broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-51535-y

[girlactionfigure]

Here's a story for you about how the news industry works.

Earlier tonight, the group that invaded Israel, massacred 1000+ people, burned families to death in their homes, took hostages back to Gaza, and recorded it all with GoPros – this group announced that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds.

Then, instead of waiting for more information from the Israeli side, the editors of the world's most important media outlets said to themselves: "This is enough for us. Let's run with it."

Headlines screamed that Israel bombed a hospital. Push notifications were sent to MILLIONS of people.

CNN push: "Hundreds of people may have been killed in an Israeli strike on a Gaza City hospital, according to the Palestinian health ministry"

BBC push: "Hundreds feared dead or injured in Israeli air strike on hospital in Gaza, Palestinian officials say"

NYT push: "At least 500 people were killed by an Israeli airstrike at a Gaza hospital, the Palestinian Health Ministry said"

Do you see what they did there?

They put the dramatic news in the beginning of the sentence and then they cited the source at the end so that the assertion is technically true. The Palestinian Health Ministry DID say that.

The thing is, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza is a Hamas institution.

What do you call people who amplify Hamas propaganda not just as news, but as the top news story in the world?

There is no way that a professional military such as the Israel Defense Forces can give an instant answer about a catastrophe in enemy territory during a war. It took around two or three hours for the IDF to share the results of its initial investigation – that the explosion at the hospital was a due to a rocket launched by Islamic Jihad that malfunctioned and crashed back into Gaza. More evidence is coming out as I write this.

The sad fact is that it appears that hundreds of Palestinians are dead at a hospital because terrorists in Gaza tried to fire rockets at Israelis and ended up hitting their own people. It's unbearably stupid and tragic.

None of this is new, unfortunately. Journalists in the Middle East know – they absolutely know – that a significant percentage of Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s rockets misfire and crash into residential areas of Gaza. 

I've attached a famous example. This video is from May 2022. It shows a live broadcast of a rocket being launched from a residential area of Gaza. The rocket malfunctions, turns sideways, and crashes into the city. The overexcited broadcaster tries to pretend that nothing unusual happened and asks the camera man to turn away. The video went viral at the time. There are other known instances where this happened. 

These rockets are designed to kill people. Don't act surprised when they do.

I say all of this to remind you to treat breaking news from Gaza with caution, even if it's unpopular to do so.

Daniel Rubenstein

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Very cool study titled "Recommendations for Gaming and Play in Holocaust Memory and Education" just dropped on my linkedin feed, via study contributor Dr. Christine Beresniova.

Its opening paragraphs read:

Digital games are becoming increasingly significant within Holocaust memory and education as professional memory institutions continue to explore the affordances of integrating digital technologies. The so-called Holocaust gaming taboo which has burdened both the mainstream gaming industry and small indie studios seems to show signs of lifting. Scholars have pointed out that major FPS (first-person shooter) franchises such as Wolfenstein and Call of Duty have only teetered on representation of this past, often taking liberty with Nazi themes while placing the Holocaust within the margins or completely eliding the persecution of European Jewry altogether. At the other end of the spectrum, game designers working with small budget proposals had been “promptly pressured to abandon the project” due to the backlash in public discourse, often prompted by professional Holocaust organisations denouncing the very premise of Holocaust games. However, the rising prominence of indie studios such as Paintbucket Games responsible for the historical resistance sim Through the Darkest of Times (2020), as well as the recent Forced Abroad (2022) and The Darkest Files (forthcoming), and Prague-based studio Charles Games who have produced Attentat 1942 (2017); Liberation Svoboda 1945 (2021) and Train to Sachsenhausen (2022) mark the significant shift underway. Indeed, professional Holocaust memory institutions such as the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial and the Arolsen Archives are working in collaboration with game designers and developers to produce digital games on the subject. Furthermore, one designer, who faced public backlash for a game project designed as early as 2013, has since released The Light in the Darkness (Voices of the Forgotten, 2023) and is responsible for creating the first Holocaust Museum in Fortnite (Epic Games, 2023). This would not be the first Holocaust museum in a gaming environment, however. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum launched ‘Witnessing History: Kristallnacht, the 1938 Pogroms’ in Second Life (c. 2008). The proliferation of interest in the medium’s potential to offer new modes for engaging with the past raises critical questions regarding opportunities for digital Holocaust memory practice, while also bringing into sharp focus issues regarding player/user experience, contextualisation, accessibility, funding and digital obsolescence. This report serves as an important first step in this work.

You may read the full report here. I'll be reading it later today or tomorrow. Very excited engage with this new(ish) terrain of Holocaust memory construction!

[reasonsforhope]

"Seven federal agencies are partnering to implement President Biden’s American Climate Corps, announcing this week they would work together to recruit 20,000 young Americans and fulfill the administration's vision for the new program. 

The goals spelled out in the memorandum of understanding include comprehensively tackling climate change, creating partnerships throughout various levels of government and the private sector, building a diverse corps and serving all American communities.

The agencies—which included the departments of Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Labor and Energy, as well the Environmental Protection Agency and AmeriCorps—also vowed to ensure a “range of compensation and benefits” that open the positions up to a wider array of individuals and to create pathways to “high-quality employment.”  

Leaders from each of the seven agencies will form an executive committee for the Climate Corps, which Biden established in September, that will coordinate efforts with an accompanying working group. They will create the standards for ACC programs, set compensation guidelines and minimum terms of service, develop recruitment strategies, launch a centralized website and establish performance goals and objectives. The ACC groups will, beginning in January, hold listening sessions with potential applicants, labor unions, state and local governments, educational institutions and other stakeholders. 

The working group will also review all federal statutes and hiring authorities to remove any barriers to onboarding for the corps and standardize the practices across all participating agencies. Benefits for corps members will include housing, transportation, health care, child care, educational credit, scholarships and student loan forgiveness, stipends and non-financial services.

As part of the goal of the ACC, agencies will develop the corps so they can transition to “high-quality, family-sustaining careers with mobility potential” in the federal or other sectors. AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith said the initiative would prepare young people for “good-paying union jobs.” 

Within three weeks of rolling out the ACC, EPA said more than 40,000 people—mostly in the 18-35 age range—expressed interest in joining the corps. The administration set an ambitious goal for getting the program underway, aiming to establish the corps’ first cohort in the summer of 2024. 

The corps members will work in roles related to ecosystem restoration and conservation, reforestation, waterway protection, recycling, energy conservation, clean energy deployment, disaster preparedness and recovery, fire resilience, resilient recreation infrastructure, research and outreach. The administration will look to ensure 40% of the climate-related investments flow to disadvantaged communities as part of its Justice40 initiative.  

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the MOU would allow the ACC to “work across the federal family” to push public projects focused on environmental justice and clean energy. 

“The Climate Corps represents a significant step forward in engaging and nurturing young leaders who are passionate about climate action, furthering our journey towards a sustainable and equitable future,” Regan said. 

The ACC’s executive committee will hold its first meeting within the next 30 days. It will draw support from a new climate hub within AmeriCorps, as well as any staffing the agency heads designate."

-via Government Executive, December 20, 2023

-

This news comes with your regularly scheduled reminder that WE GOT THE AMERICAN CLIMATE CORPS ESTABLISHED LAST YEAR and basically no one know about/remembers it!!! Also if you want more info about the Climate Corps, inc. how to join, you can sign up to get updates here.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Victor Davis Hanson

Scan news accounts of anti-Israel campus and street protestors. Read their demands and manifestos. Collate the confusion after October 7 from the Biden administration.

“Progressive Hamas”: Gay and transgendered student protestors in America would be in mortal danger in Gaza under a fascistic Hamas that has banned homosexual acts and lifestyles. Anyone protesting publicly against Hamas or its allies would be arrested and severely punished.

Women are segregated in most Hamas-run educational institutions. Under the Hamas charter, women are valued mostly as child-bearers. By design, there are almost no women in high positions in business or in government under Hamas.

“Colonists and Settlers”: Students scream that Israelis are “settlers” and “colonists” and sometimes yell at Jewish students to “go back to Poland.”

But the Jewish presence in present-day Israel is deeply rooted in ancient tradition. Dating back at least three millennia, the concept of “Israel” as a distinct Jewish state, situated roughly in its current location, is ingrained in history.

By contrast, the much later Arab invasions of the Byzantine-controlled Levant and their arrival in Palestine occurred about 1800 years after the establishment of a Jewish Israel.

“Two-state Solution”: When student protestors scream “from the river to the sea,” that is not advocacy for a two-state solution. It is a call to eliminate the state of Israel—lying in between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea—and its 10 million Jewish and Arab citizens. The Hamas charter is a one-state/no-Israel agenda, which we saw attempted on October 7.

“Occupied Gaza”: Gaza was autonomous. The Israeli border is closed, but so is the Egyptian border. There have not been any Jews in Gaza for nearly two decades.

So on October 7, Gaza was not occupied by Israel. It was under the control of Hamas, designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization. After being elected to power in 2006, Hamas cancelled all subsequent elections and ruled as a dictatorship. Gaza forbids Jews from entering Gaza and has driven out most Christians. Israel hosts two million Arabs, both as Israeli citizens and residents.

“Netanyahu is the Problem”: The U.S. and Europe claim that the conservative government of Benjamin Netanyahu is alone behind the Israeli tough response in Gaza. Thus, both the EU and the U.S. are doing their best to undermine or even overthrow the elected Netanyahu administration.

Yet, most Israelis support Netanyahu’s coalition government’s agenda of destroying Hamas in Gaza. There is no evidence that any other alternative Israeli government would do anything differently from the present policies toward Hamas.

“Targeting Civilians”: After murdering nearly 1,200 Israelis on October 7, Hamas scurried back to Gaza and hid in tunnels and bases beneath hospitals, schools, and mosques. Its preplanned strategy was to survive by ensuring Gaza civilians would be killed. Hamas has indiscriminately launched more than 7,000 rockets at Israel, all designed to kill Jewish civilians.

Outside assessors have concluded that Israel has not inadvertently killed a greater ratio of civilians to terrorists compared to most other urban fighting conflicts elsewhere, and perhaps even fewer than American engagements in Mosul and Fallujah.

“Protestors Are Pro-Palestine”: Increasingly, protestors make no distinction between supporting “Palestine” and Hamas. Their chants often echo the original Hamas eliminationist charter and recent genocidal ravings of its leadership. Some protestors wear Hamas logos and wave its flag. Many cheered the Hamas massacre of October 7.

“Anti-Israel Is Not Anti-Semitic”: When protestors scream to Jewish students to “go back to Poland” or call for the “Final Solution,” or assault them or bar them from campus facilities, they do not ask whether they are pro-Israeli. For protestors, anyone identifiable as Jewish becomes a target of their anti-Semitic invective and violence.

“Genocide”: Israel has not tried to wipe out the Palestinian people in the fashion of Hamas’s one-state solution plan for Jews. Before October 7, some 20,000 Gazans a day requested to work in Israel—on the correct expectation of much higher wages and humane treatment.

If Hamas had come out of its tunnels, separated from its impressed civilian shields, released its surviving Israeli hostages, and either openly fought the Israeli Defense Forces or surrendered the organizers of the October 7 massacre, no Gaza civilians would have died.

According to Hamas’s questionable “genocide” figures, roughly 4 percent of the Gazan population died during the Israeli response to October 7. At least a third to almost half of those deaths, according to various international observers, were Hamas terrorists.

“Disproportionate Response”: Iran tried to send 320 missiles and rockets into Israel. Israel replied with three. Hamas launched 7,000 rockets into Israel and slaughtered 1,200 Israelis before the IDF responded in Gaza, often dropping leaflets and sending texts to forewarn citizens.

Israel has been disproportionate only in the effectiveness of its response. Hamas and its Iranian benefactor intended disproportionately to hurt Israel but utterly failed.

So Israel proved to be competent, and Hamas incompetent in their similar efforts to use disproportionate force.

[oldguardleatherdog]

Today's Wall O'Text: We've got just under two months to get the first things done.

Timothy Snyder is an American historian whose book On Tyranny made him a household name in 2017, followed this year by On Freedom. His take on what we need to do this time around to mount an effective resistance to Trump's insane agenda is urgent and essential:

Start now. We can get a lot done between now and the Inauguration on January 20th.

Here are excerpts from Snyder's interview in the Rolling Stone article linked above where he describes ways ordinary people can take meaningful steps right now to lay the groundwork for stopping Trump's agenda in its tracks:

~~~~~

[From the article, emphasis added:]

“You can’t despair,” he tells Rolling Stone. “Because that’s what they want. They want you to think that it’s hopeless. It’s never hopeless.”

Snyder’s first rule in On Tyranny is “don’t obey in advance.” He emphasizes that Americans opposed to Trump’s designs should take stock, and action, now. “The period of November, December, January, becomes very important,” he says.

For normal people, Snyder insists the key is “to get out in protest” — now and through the inauguration. The understandable impulse of “keeping your head in,” Snyder says will only embolden Trump’s reactionary team.

“You’re giving them even more confidence that they’re gonna be able to do what they want in January.” What’s demanded of activists in this moment is to “deflate that confidence,” Snyder says, and you do that by “showing that you’re not afraid, by cooperating with your neighbors, and by organizing.”

Snyder emphasizes a lesson of the “Wall of Moms” in Portland, Oregon, in late summer 2020, who helped drive up the political cost and terrible optics for Trump’s most heavy-handed crackdown on public dissent. Launching tear gas at Black Lives Matter protesters looked different on TV when the feds were brutalizing a wall of white mothers in gold shirts, locking arms at the front of the crowd. “It’s about corporeal politics,” Snyder says. “Getting your body out where there are other bodies — with people who are maybe not like you or maybe less privileged than you.”

Here, Snyder insists, is where the American public has its most important, and perhaps most challenging role to play. “The Trump-Vance initiatives can only work by getting the population involved — and basically corrupting us,” he says. Snyder argues that even Americans who might share anger with Trump about immigration may yet be recruited to block the border camps promised by Stephen Miller. 

“That’s the kind of active thinking that folks have to do — am I going to become the kind of person who takes part in this sort of thing? Am I going to become the kind of person who denounces my neighbors because they are not documented?”

“If Their Rights Are on the Line, My Rights Are on the Line”

A key to resisting authoritarianism, Snyder says, is standing up for the rights of the least powerful first. “If protest comes down to the people who are protesting only because they have to, then you always lose,” he says. “It has to be people who are one, two, three, four, even five steps away from being directly affected who show solidarity — and who also show pragmatism and wisdom by getting out early. 

“If you’re more privileged, you should be thinking, ‘What can I do for the least privileged people?’” he says. “If their rights are on the line, my rights are on the line. That’s not just a moral position. It’s actually, politically, 100 percent correct.” 

In the meantime, Snyder advises, America’s system of federalism offers hope for democracy at the state and local level. “Many things are going to be terrible. But controlling the federal government doesn’t mean you’re controlling everything,” he says. He exhorts Americans to support the institutions closest to them that uphold democratic norms — “whether that means some civil society organization, or state government, or a local mayor” — and collectively try to strengthen those bodies.

[End article text.]

~~~~~