#stop the arms fair

[feckcops]

‘War is back. People want to stock up’: inside Europe’s biggest arms fair

“A body convulses on a table, with broken bones poking from a stump of torn flesh below the knee, one arm gruesomely peppered with gunshot wounds, as men in military uniforms look on approvingly. ‘He bleeds, he moves, he breathes, he has a pulse,’ says the smiling sales rep. ‘His eyes even react to light. We have a canine version too, which barks and whines – and it comes with interchangeable injured limbs.’

“I am perusing the medical zone of Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI), Europe’s biggest arms fair, which takes place every two years in the Excel convention centre in east London. It is a sprawling supermarket of modern warfare, where the world’s armies come to buy the latest AI-guided missiles and tanks, inspect giant warships moored in the Royal Docks, and queue to take a turn sitting in the cockpits of fighter jets ...

“‘This year feels much busier than usual,’ one bomb salesman tells me, standing by a gleaming rack of cone-shaped warheads, polished like trophies in a glass cabinet. ‘It seems war is back in a big way. People are looking to stock up.’ Whereas attendees of this great murderous bazaar may once have felt sheepish, they now proudly march through the entrance gates with their heads held high ...

“At the Israel pavilion, one company is promoting its ‘high-penetration wireless communication for indoor robotics and drones’, showing videos of drones swooping through bombed-out buildings, looking for prey like a swarm of deadly mosquitoes. Brazil features a stall offering ‘ammunition, bombs, rockets and fuses’, with a bowl of complimentary sweets, while a rifle company in the US section tries to lure punters with a free calendar of busty models draped across its anti-aircraft guns. (‘It’s been approved by all our female staff,’ the man at the desk assures me.) ...

“‘They all have onboard AI cameras,’ says Maj Matthew McGarvey-Miles, lead of the army warfighting experiment, a flagship programme where the latest technology is developed. ‘They can identify targets and track them automatically’ ... The nature of these unmanned weapons – and the kind of remote fighters the army is looking for – is having a knock-on effect on how the physical controls are designed ...

“‘The big thing now is thumb-stick controllers. So many people in the military now come from the Xbox generation, so they’re used to thumb-sticks. Gone are the days when you’d have big pneumatic or hydraulic controls.’ He hands me a controller that looks just like a gaming joypad – a deceptively playful device for something that could unleash hellfire on a pixellated target, hundreds of miles away. Nimble thumbs, it seems, will define the future of warfare. Tomorrow’s battles will be waged from the safety of a gaming chair (also on display), with the assistance of algorithms.”

[rocketbirdie]

The Rebirth B-Team that we deserved...

[mainalias]

thinking about compiling screenshots of golden/silver age batman exclusively calling dick his ward to combat the allegations that it was “initially a father-child relationship”

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

Neuvillette's body language in my mind ranges from curious feline, to Long Cryptid that lingers just outside the door when you're falling asleep

[cold--carnage]

if my boyfriend kills himself because of your cyberbullying online clique bullshit I'm killing myself too because this is absolutely insane and immature and unfair

[lesbianralzarek]

why does every article reporting on idf war crimes go "hamas, who started the war on october 7th with their brutal terrorist attack slaughtering innocent israeli civilians, has condemned the idf's use of-"? like, nearly verbatim every single time. we know about october 7th. we know by now. half the time, hamas isnt even relevant but they gotta find some way to sow doubt and numb any potential compassion responses. will you get fired if you show sympathy for murdered palestinian civilians without first adding a disclaimer saying its all their fault for being born in gaza? if you call "palestinians under 18" children? if you use the words "murdered" or "brutal" or "massacre" for acts that didnt occur on october 7th? if you call a spade a spade? why are israeli reports front page news without proper fact-checking but palestinian reporting is always "allegedly" even when theres video evidence? why does the idf not get the hamas treatment of reminding everyone that theyre biased before treating their words as law, like they havent been caught bold-faced lying again and again?

[miracle-wizard]

I did this trend as Errorink from my masked god au!!

I love girl Errorink I wish aroace lesbians were real

[phoenixcatch7]

Man I am just SO CONFUSED. About the time line of this game.

No one is telling me how long links been gone! Or how long the botw-totk timeskip was! They all just started selling my stuff again lol. I'm going to have to get everything redyed!

Me: hey random stranger! Lore dump? You look like a lore dumper.

Kindly npc: why hullo there, link ^^! My, I haven't seen you in a while since the calamity ended! I was so worried when they said you and the princess had gone missing! But it's good to see you're well.

Me: aw, thanks. How long has it actually been tho.

Kindly npc: ^u^

[softgrungeprophet]

something something the frequency with which peter parker angrily wishes death upon people in his inner thoughts, a la "diebullseyediebullseyediebullseyediebullseye" (asm#596)

(he's pretending to be venom with a suit made of unstable molecules)

"Kill Johnny Storm! Dispose of the body!! Collect insurance!!!" (ff#17) etc...

this of course is only two (mostly) humorous examples but there are definitely more lmao

[theood]

Yo that’s crazy your middle school wouldn’t let you have water bottles. We were allowed to but it could only be water and they had to be see through because they had too many students sneaking alcohol into the school and getting drunk

Also in high school apparently a girl to came with a vibrator inside her and her friend had the remote and would use it on her randomly during the day. The teachers and admin knew about it but couldn’t do anything because they couldn’t prove it without major violations and probably worse

My middle school was fucking crazy. I had a math teacher who told me and all my class that we would never amount to anything and we we're all going to be homeless living in cardboard boxes and nothing happened to her 🤗. Because she was retiring the next year or something. They talked to about every kid in my class and we all said Yes That Happened.

They were also extremely detention heavy. Along with write-ups. It was an ongoing joke amongst me and other students they had a certain number of those they had to give out daily. I'm not joking when I say one kid got a write-up for forgetting a pencil.

I've been out of that middle school for years now. I met up with some kids before I moved at the playground who went and they STILL told me it was bad. My mom worked at a corner store and she also had kids always telling her that that middle school was fucking HORRIBLE. So it wasn't just Me

Also. Oh my God?? This is like when I hear people talk about kids masturbating in class. How are you guys doing that??? I guess whatever gets you through the day...

I have less highschool stories because. Well. Softmore year through senior year was COVID but once one of the principles in my public hs misgendered my friend who was out to the entire school (teachers included) and when I corrected him he went "we'll deal with that later". It's a situation that if I could go back in time I would've fucking chewed him out more for that.

Also, once, me and my friend Freddy before our last period (a study hall) were in the bathroom for ~10 minutes. We got out and went to class. The next day we both got called into the office with the principal because the bathroom "smelled like vape" and we were in there the longest. He then searched both our bags.

My dad was PISSED about this. It was for a lot of reasons but one of them was the fact they searched us without a female present, and he was also pissed off they searched us at all without anyone else in the room.

I had less to say about it. Again if I COULD go back I'd probably have doubled down and said they couldn't search my bag and that if they're going to I want one of my parents there. So that my mom or dad could rip them a new one because I've never even fuckin' TOUCHED a vape.

Also I got suspended for 3 days for something. I don't remember what. My parents called the Highschool over a detention I got that was such a bullshit excuse and they went "um well either he does the detention or we suspend him" so. I got suspended. As though that's like some law that a kid HAS to do the detention and it isn't their choice.

My online highschool has no stories because I was so depressed in that and I don't think I really actually Learned Anything. My grades TANKED and I had an insanely low GPA. I genuinely think I only graduated because they didn't have a GPA requirement

[cometconmain]

You understood the post re: what happened to middle eastern Jews around 1945 PERFECTLY and thank you thank you thank you for doing so. It feels like I've been going crazy. I'd like to add that when non-Jews come at us about Israel, It's also not immediately obvious that they don't know what happened to the other Jews in the region, or the long history of Dhimmi. We're used to being treated like we deserve to be killed for breathing, so it just looks like more of the same antisemitism - and when we try to explain it, we're told we're centering ourselves in someone else's tragedy. I do not have the words for saying what it feels like to see someone non-Jewish understand this. It gives me a kind of hope I hadn't anticipated seeing since I was little and believed in miracles, makes it feel like I can meaningfully work towards a solution without condemning my people to be horrifically killed, again, and told that it wasn't happening and if it was we deserved it. Thank you for giving me this hope.

This has really made my night and I am so happy that me trying to learn has made a difference for you in a world that's weirdly and horribly obsessed with opposing and ending your very existence.

I got here because some really REALLY patient Jewish people chose to sit me down and check where I was actually trying to come from, then helped me identify that my activism had been infiltrated by both bad faith actors and other history-ignorant people alike, and in my intention to help Palestinians without first being educated in the full history properly I was being dragged into the radicalisation rip without even realising it.

I am very sorry to anyone I made feel unsafe while spouting things I didn't understand and I'm really glad even this ultimately bare minimum act of trying to listen for once may have done something to hopefully start making up for that.

I'm going to keep trying to listen and learn because while what's happening to the Palestinians is also still fucked up and needs to end (and I want to listen to Palestinian voices on horrific things that are being done to them by their own military and the Israeli military I just need to figure out what's truth and what's Al Jazeera propaganda which those Jewish people I mentioned are currently helping me with), spreading incorrect history, denying that Jewish people are also indigenous, refusing to recognise our (non-Jewish Westerners') massive part in causing this conflict and continuing our oppression of Jewish people doesn't achieve that in any way and just adds more horrors into the world, both for Palestinians and Jewish people, a group who have never seen an end to their persecution and many of which have understandably given up hope in seeing.

You're not imagining it, you are being gaslit about your own history both by already-bigoted people who are doing it intentionally and slowly-radicalising people who don't know any better (but who really need to stop and check where their info is coming from; it's not like we don't know about propaganda on the left or that misinformation is rife and we have a responsibility to try to filter it out. There's no excuse to keep insisting on not looking when people ping us about issues in our activism and information), and you are entirely valid in feeling hurt, angry, endangered and betrayed by that.

We are out here and we genuinely want to help everyone. Unfortunately, our ignorance of history, politics and how to find reliable non-extremist news sources is being leveraged by shitty people who see an opportunity to take our anger at what's happening to one group to sicc us on the other, a time honoured fucked up but horribly effective tactic of bigots the world over.

We can be reached though. There is hope. And when we're reached we will try to reach others (I have an overdue conversation with a good friend coming up neither of us are looking forward to because I'm pretty sure she thinks I've been hijacked by the evil totally-all-the-same-beliefs Zionists who want us to turn a blind eye to war crimes against Palestinians so they can push them all out and take everything for Israel or whatever, when I literally just want her to learn the actual history/different types of Zionism/etc with me and stop applying settler-colonial theory to a place where the problems are actually very different in nature and require a different approach neither of us know how to do yet because we need to remove all the antisemitism bugs from our activism database on this first or it'll keep infecting the rest of our system until it takes over and whoops when did we become Nazis? Fuck. I know she wouldn't want that so I'm hoping to use the same approach that worked with me without her deciding she should just throw out our over ten-year-long friendship. Wish me luck. 😆 )

You are also valid in trying to make sure you're safe. Deradicalising people is always a risk and you are so valid in not being able to pick good-faith-but-ignorant people from the raging dickheads when we all share and spread the same stuff. We usually can't pick out the differences either; that's why we fall for it slowly without even realising it's happening.

One last thing.

You never deserve it. It did happen, it is happening, and you NEVER DESERVE IT.

Anyone saying otherwise has been radicalised and needs a serious wake-up-call kick up the arse. All the best intentions in the world of helping other people who are suffering and don't deserve it do not suddenly make it ok to attack Jewish people or say they deserve oppression, disenfranchisement and genocide. They do not and they never will. That is bigot talk. That is actual Nazi talk and it is never warranted or remotely justified.

(I, too, am ignorant of what Dhimmi is. Do you want to tell me about it? I'll look it up now too but I'm open if you feel safe to share. DMs are fine too if you prefer.)

[stochastiz]

regular and metallic watercolors, black acrylic paint pen outlines

i saw this post by @obsob a few days ago and was inspired to make this as a bday gift for my brother

i broke out my paints for the first time in a long time and spent a few hours working on this today. i wish the outlines were thinner and the stars more scattered, but i'm pretty happy with it overall. i haven't made something specifically for someone in quite a while, this felt really good

go make something to give to someone you love ♡

[worstloki]

Thor, rambling while Loki reads: --and yes, we are brothers, but I would kiss you if you asked!

Loki, suddenly much less interested in his book: What?

Thor: What?

Amora: *'sneakily' watching with her head peeking over the librarian's desk* HE SAID HE WOULD KISS YOU IF YOU ASKED.

[roraimae]

all the romancable DAO companions really just start falling for the warden if you're simply nice to them, huh

[reinemichele]

Wait hold on

Do we count not regenerating as suicide??? Bc if we do, that means that the master has killed themself out of spite 4 times, 5 if you count the Lumiat as canon (I do), and 2 of those were simm!master and 2 of those were missy, and 4 of them were motivated by the doctor

[eclipsecrowned]

i said that and then i remembered per personal lore the in-universe assumption was that hel couldn't be found after loki's children were cast out because odin killed her. possibly strengthened by games of telephone with mortals furthering the belief that she dwelt within the mists as a euphemism for her no longer being alive. two sons bound, and the blood of the daughter on her uncle's hands.

it isn't until the baldr incident that the rumors are rectified and it's made clear that hel was not killed but simply locked away, alive and well, in another realm.

i'm sure debate rages endlessly about which decision would have been more cruel on odin's part: killing a child in cold blood to spare her having to face the world alone, or having forced that same child to an eternity in endless darkness and restraint.