#you know it's bad when even the jerusalem post is talking about it

[normal-thoughts-official]

archived version as of march 24th 2024. i recommend using this one to avoid giving clicks to TJP, as they're active supporters of the genocide

(tumblr is showing this link as being from TJP, but if you click on it it'll direct you to the archived version. i tested)

[de8thm8rt]

[l0sercat]

Yandere alphabet with King Baldwin IV

MDNI because this is dark content!

Affection — how do they show their love and affection?

He shower's you in gifts and love. Anything you want or he thinks would look good on you he would buy you. He doesn't know how else to show how he loves you so he just spoils you.

Blood — how messy are they willing to get when it comes to their darling?

He will make sure anyone who disrespects you, looks at you funny, or talks bad about you will die. He won't kill anyone for just anything he is a king with a reputation after all.

Cruelty — how would they treat their darling once abducted?

He would treat you like a goddess. Your his everything and even though it's selfish to keep you and wrong before he dies he just wants to experience love and comfort.

Darling — aside from abduction, would they do anything against their darling’s will?

He doesn't like to do things your not comfortable with. But he sometimes just can't help it and forcibly holds you down and cuddles you. He likes to feel your warm embrace, it makes him sad that you fight him, but he understands he did abduct you.

Exposed — how vulnerable are they when it comes to their darling?

He is pretty vulnerable especially because of his disease. He shows his soft side and loves you with everything he has. He wants you to to feel comfortable and safe with him. Even when he feels weak he comes to see you even if you might attack him while he's weak.

Fight — how would they feel if their darling fought back?

He's understanding but it still makes him sad. He would've hoped you would warm up to him with his he spoils you. If you keep fighting back and are a risk to his safety he will have to begrudgingly tie you up in his chambers.

Game — is this a game to them? How much would they enjoy watching their darling try to escape?

He does not like to see you fight and struggle. When you kick him and dash out of the room and into the halls trying to flee his guards. He already told the guards before hand that you are not to leave the palace. So they surround you and wait for him to get you himself. Baldwin is deeply hurt and upset and stumbles his way towards you. Your sobbing and screaming, you apologize and then curse at him. Your a wreak and Baldwin just slaps you across the face. His one eye is glaring at you and that shuts you up. You've never seen him like that and he doesn't feel like arguing with you. Your stumbling behind him with tears running down your face. You thought you could've gotta way but you were apparently wrong. (Sorry for this long ass paragraph lmfao)

Hell — what would be their darling’s worst experience with them?

Similar to the experience I just wrote above lol. But this time they try sneaking out in the dead of night. He's tightly gripping you and having you pressed against his chest. You sneakily get out of his grasp and try to leave. But there are guards posted outside your bedroom, so they catch you immediately. Your kicking and screaming and Baldwin is just shaking his head. He decides to tie you to his bed. Your hands above your head and feet bound together. Your gagged and crying and Baldwin is just glaring at you, deeply upset. You'd be bound for a couple days only being untied for necessities like bathing, eating, and bathroom. He'd ignored you only giving you passing glances or untying you.

Ideals — what kind of future do they have in mind for their darling?

He wants a family but he doubts it'll go well because of his leprosy. He wants at least 4-5 kids and to live a long life but he knows he only has a couple years left to life. So he will settle with just you by his side and ruling Jerusalem.

Jealousy — do they get jealous? How do they handle it?

He hardly ever gets jealous because no one will ever get close to you. Maybe if you get to close to some of the ladies and your attention is taken up.

Kisses — how do they act around or with their darling?

He is always holding onto you. Wether it's your hand or waist. He's clingy especially when you guys are alone. Even during sex he is in the most intimate positions. He just loves being close by you.

Love letters — how would they go about approaching their darling?

He would court you as if you refuse he'd be sad, but then remembers he's king so he just takes you as his.

Mask — are their true colors drastically different from the way they act around everyone else?

Yes. You'll be treated like a god(dess) and he's happy with you. But in front of others he s fearless powerful leader.

Naughty — how would they punish their darling?

Ties you up in his room and kills anyone who tries to help you. He'll have them excuted and make you watch. He doesn't like seeing you gagged and crying but it's what'll happen if you try to leave him.

Oppression — how many rights would they take away from their darling?

Not many. He'll let you roam around but only with him around or one of his most trusted guards.

Patience — how patient are they with their darling?

He's a very patient man. He will wait for a long time for you to warm up to him. But he doesn't have long so he can't wait forever. If he has too he will force you to do things.

Quite — if their darling dies, leaves, or successfully escapes, would they ever be able to move on?

If you die he would mourn u til the day he dies. He'll never get over you and he's actually glad he'll die young so he can see you soon. If you escape he'll be crushed and have some of his men search for you. He'll be looking for you til he dies and he'll never get over you.

Regret — would they ever feel guilty about abducting their darling?

Yes but in the end he'll block it out and pretend like you wanted him and everything is normal.

Stigma — what brought about this side of them (childhood, curiosity, etc)?

Probably childhood. Never truly sharing a bond with anyone but his sister. He's lonely and need someone by his side.

Tears — how do they feel about seeing their darling scream, cry, and/or isolate themselves?

He hates it and will try to soothe you and make you calm down and if that doesn't work he'll give you space.

Unique — would they do anything different from the classic yandere?

He actually takes you out in public. Go to the local markets and stuff and you'll be able to talk to people.

Vice — what weakness can their darling exploit in order to escape?

Yes. He's very fragile because of leprosy. But because of that he will always have guards outside of his room because he knows you'll try to exploit this weakness.

Wit’s end — would they ever hurt their darling?

Yes but on accident. You'd get hurt from the ropes he tied you with or accidentally gripping your arm to hard. Nothing serious.

Xoanon — how much would they revere or worship their darling?

He worship's his darling so much. Like your his everything and he loves you so much. If you treat him the same way he treats you he will literally melt.

Yearn — how long do they pine after their darling before they snap?

He'll long after you for about a year then take you. During that year he'll court you but if you don't return the feelings he has no choice but to take you.

Zenith — would they ever break their darling?

No because he treat's you so good and actually doesn't abuse you like most yandere's would.

[areacodefan]

I am asking/hoping/praying that people who are NOT deeply, historically, and legitimately knowledgeable about

the history of the Middle East, Palestine, Israel, antisemitic terrorism, Gaza, Netanyahu, the Palestinian oppression, the two-state solution, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israeli resistance & protest, Palestinian resistance & protest, the West Bank settlements, the Kushners real estate interests, the intifada, post WW2 geopolitics, the Hamas covenant (I could go on and on and on and on and on)…

to please stop posting facile takes on how to stop terrorism and violence between Israel and Palestine.

You are, of course, fully entitled to your opinion and emotional reactions are totally understandable. But unless you have committed your life’s work to the study and remedy of these conditions, you are not qualified to offer (comment/share/repost/reblog/etc.) a constructive take on these matters.

These are two generationally traumatized people surrounded by multiple actors (some bad, some good) entrenched in a terrible, inhumane, and ongoing millenial conflict rooted in geographic claims and religious fervor. Some of these actors want to fully annihilate the human beings they oppose.

Your passionate plea for this or that while claiming an understanding of who caused what and when is 100% guaranteed to be oversimplified and misguided. You don’t know what in hell you are talking about if you think what needs to happen next is that obvious — or even the BEGINNING of a solution is that obvious. The history and circumstances involved here are shockingly complex. Seeing these self-righteous, ideological takes on social media only creates anguish in the hearts of those being harmed.

Please direct your energy toward compassion for the millions of innocent human beings, regardless of nationality or identity, who will suffer because of the insanity of corrupt and violent “leaders.” Any solution(s) must begin there anyway.

If you are interested in learning more, you might begin with the book “From Beirut to Jerusalem” by Thomas Friedman. I recommend this book mostly because you will QUICKLY realize that you are ill-qualified to claim an understanding or knowledge about these events from what you think you glean from takes on social media or the news. Even seemingly well-informed parties are not good sources when you lack broad historical context.

I’ve lived with varying degrees of exposure, study, and understanding of this experience my whole life. And I still don’t understand or know how to stop the cycles of violence and terrorism in this region. What I know for sure is that my heart is broken for everyone and people’s ignorant posts and comments are not helping.

[newpartnerincrime]

voting for biden is absolutely better than trump oh my god. do you know what trump did regarding israel/palestine when he was president? no matter who is in office israel will remain an ally of the united states, but i'd rather have an ally who is talking about establishing a two state solution/pathway to palestinian statehood than one who moved the embassy to jerusalem and was so buddy buddy with netanyahu that he has an illegal west bank settlement named after him. if you think biden is bad for sending weapons to israel then what do you think trump is going to do? send fewer weapons? hell fucking no. and that's not even considering the drastic differences in a trump or biden presidency for undocumented immigrants, unhoused people, trans people, and anyone who might need an abortion.

voting as a be all, end all does nothing. voting for not a man who is publicly talking about his plans to create concentration camps is literally bare fucking minimum. you don't get morality points for abstaining from an election because all us presidents are war criminals who fund egregious human rights violations. all you get is a higher possibility of the harm you claim to want to prevent.

biden is not just sending weapons to israel. biden is actively participating in and enabling the genocide. biden could fart in the right direction and end this but he won’t. biden’s goal is not statehood for israel and palestine his goal is to keep killing palestinians. the solution is not statehood for israel the solution is liberation for palestinians and an end to the occupation. BIDEN IS ALREADY CREATING A CONCENTRATION CAMP. IN GAZA.

obviously trump is also complicit in the israeli occupation. so was obama. they all fucking suck. that is my point. you are not helping this country or anybody by voting for biden. like you can vote for him but stop pretending you’re doing anybody a favor.

the country is not better for anybody because biden has been president. take the amount of anti-trans and anti-gay legislation in the past year alone. take the fact that he could have initiated student loan forgiveness and didn’t.

and like i’m sorry but the genocide is the number one biggest issue in this election. if your point is that trump is just as complicit then guess what: we agree. your vote is fucking moot. you are not helping a single person in gaza or the united states or anywhere by voting for biden. does that mean i’m helping anybody by not voting for him? not really. it’s not a moral high horse thing i just literally cannot stomach the thought of voting for that man because, what? trump is more overt about how awful he is? where’s that post that’s like should i vote for the candidate that hates black people or the candidate that hates black people? should i vote for the one that indiscriminately bombs the middle east or the one that indiscriminately bombs the middle east?

fuck off like well and truly fuck off

[ednav]

I don’t like to talk about politics here. But I see so many posts about the war in Israel/Palestine right now, and I cannot help saying my bit. It’s going to be long (read up until the end, or just skip) and messy and very personal. It’s not meant to be an essay that analyses all aspects of the situation. It comes after one of the worst months of my life—please, be kind. I’ve been on this earth for almost half a century, and it’s been one of the worst months of my life.

[If you prefer not to read at all, just skip. No harm done.]

I have both Muslim and Jewish friends in the Europe and in the US. Some of them wear a hijab, some of them wear a kippah. Every morning I check that they didn’t get beaten up because dividing the world into “good guys” / “bad guys” and releasing your frustration on someone who looks like “the bad guys” is an easy way to feel in control when you’re scared.

And now, the unpopular bit: I have Jewish Israeli friends. Every morning I check they came out alive from the bomb shelter. Hamas is still firing rockets—a lot of rockets—on both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I wait for them tell me if another disfigured body has been identified as a friend whom they thought that had “just” been kidnapped.

One of these friends goes to the peace protests in Tel Aviv, so I have to check that he didn’t get beaten up by the police either.

(Dear US people: identifying Israel with Netanyahu is like assuming all of you are MAGA Republicans. Worse, actually, because Israel is not a two-party system—more like a twenty-party system—and it’s a mess. Decolonise your mind from assuming that every country works like the US.)

Some of my friends are Mizrahi. Their great-grandparents had to find refuge in the relative safety of Israel after being expelled by another country in that region—a place where they cannot go back to. Not-very-fun fact: they’re also dark-skinned enough to get “randomly checked” every time they get on a plane, unless there’s a woman wearing a hijab or a chador on the same flight. It’s not as simple as European or US colonialism.

(Once again: stop making it all about you. The world is more complex than your country. Especially if your country is less than 250 years old and hasn’t had a battle on its soil in more than 130 years.)

I don’t know anyone in Palestine, so I can’t say what it’s like to have friends on that side of the border. I imagine it’s even worse, given that most people there don’t have shelters, nor actual freedom to protest against their government, at least in the Gaza strip.

Anyway: I don’t wish what I’ve been through in the last month on my worse enemy. And I’m just a friend of some people who are not in the worst possible situation. I know that I cannot even begin to know what it must be like for Jewish, Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian people.

And now, let me tell you about a history book that might have saved the world. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

It’s a bit outdated, but it’s still quite good, and the writing is simply brilliant. It’s called The Guns of August, and it’s about the first month of WWI. Just the first month, and how we got there. How stubbornness, pride, rhetoric, and even “rationality”, led to a massacre that did nothing but cause another massacre less than a generation later. It was written by a woman, Barbara Tuchman, in 1962. Later that year, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F Kennedy gave it to read to all the generals in the US Army. The message was simple: escalation leads to disaster. Sometimes you have to compromise, accept losses and even a certain degree of “unfair”, rather than getting into a full-blown war.

Now, I’m not a pacifist. I know that some wars are the lesser evil. I have relatives who fought in the Resistance. They were proud of having risked their lives. They were proud of living in a country with free elections—even if fascists-in-all-but-name could get elected—and at peace. But they were not proud of having killed people whose children grew up as orphans.

I see a lot of people, especially younger people, who want Pure Justice. Bad people must be eliminated, good people must triumph, no excuses.

The thing is—there are no completely good people, nor completely bad people. There are people. Often scared and more traumatised than you can possibly imagine.

There are people who must pay for their crimes. There are people who will, and some who won’t. Just ask anyone who survived a war, or a time of almost-civil-war like the Troubles in the UK/Ireland or the terrorism of the 1970s In Europe—that’s something we’ve all seen. (I say “we” because I’m old enough to remember the 1980s. They sucked, trust me.)

The problem is: the more you lose sight of the common humanity of everyone involved, the more you escalate the tension, the more there will be people who are going to pay for crimes they haven’t committed. And the more I see of this world, the more I believe that if there’s one side it’s just fighting for, it’s theirs.

As I said—it’s messy. And human beings are precious, but fragile. Please, be kind.

[pineappleparfaitie]

Aight ill bite CW// talks about Israel and Palestine, talks about the genocide, talks about a certain person (if youre reading this please read fully even if you think im spouting bulshit) Ect...ect...

UPDATED on may 31st This post was in refrence to things S claimed/said in their posts and then later deleted said posts. This post made points /claims that i told them they should be ashamed of their jewish herritage, that the thing in palestine isnt a genocide, me saying this isnt about religion ,saying zionists are all evil/bad and that they are colonizers I alaborated on every point below trying to give some counter arguments and points. I poorly worded myself in 1 section (the religion section) . The point i was trying to make was that if the foundation of zionism is built on the idea a jewish state/isreal in this case needs to be there bcecause of things in jewish faith or myth- then by that logic shouldnt palestine only be there because in Islam its where Muhammed a.s was sent to by Gabriel before he went to heaven? The point was flawwed and S had a point that this had to do with religion but for the wrong reason.The motive for zionism is religion bassed and holds no weight because THEN we should take EVERY faiths interpretation of an area and then say ''well in my holy book it says THIS was HERE so therefor it HAS to be there !'' Im sorry onto the OG post.

Show me proof that I ever told you to be ashamed of your Jewish herritage cause I want threw our dm's and didint find that I will apologise for that because that would be awful

Here is the definiton of Zionism Zionists are actively encouriging the idea of a greater Isreali and the genocide of the Palestinian people. I greatly reccomend you listen to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xottY-7m3k&t=1179s&ab_channel=Shaun if you have the time. The Palestinian peoples land has been destroyed.Their chidlren killed. Their hosptials gone. I know what a zionist is- and their belief is what I take issue with, a belief you hold that being - letting the state of Isreali exist. I do not want a single Isreali dead apart from those who have killed children and enjoyed it, gone to destroyed homes and taken pictures with underwear and bras, and the leaders of the Israeli goverment. Isrealies didint choose the land they were born in, and those who even revoke their citizenship are doing a spectacular job. You say where will the Israeli people go IF their home is given back to the Palestinians- but not where Palestinians will go when Israel has murdered them. But Zionists in my eyes are BAD people cause they IGNORE what the existance of Israel will do - since look at what its doing.Is ''self defence'' killing 30 THAUSAND people and killing babies?Dididnt know babies carried guns..

This is exactly what Palestnine is going threw. now when this doesnt have to do with religion i meant this and I should have clarrified this that is my fault I mean that this whole thing has lost the point, religion is being USED TO JUSTIFY this genocide on the side of Isreal. That Jerusalem was the home to Israel in Jewish tradition. What about in Islam where Jerusalem where Mohammed went there when instructed by the angel Gabriel? Fyi im a muslim. Muslim herritage muslim everything. By archeological findings its said that around 4000BC its believed thats when the earliest ancestor of Palestine lived in whats now Palestine and Israel. When i say ''this isnt about religion'' i mean it stopped being about it long ago. It stopped being about a homeland of sorts and it became murdering people. But I will admit fault as much as I try to explain it- this does have to do with religion. You were right in the notion that religion caused this to an extent. ''Theyre all colonozers'' Okay this one rings less true on my part. I should have probably used ''settlers'' or something else. You were correct I used wrong terminology.Im sorry I should not have done that and it was my fault for using that term without properly going into depth on its meaning. But how am I a neo nazi? that means i want to reinstate the Nazi ideology?I want jews dead?I want queer people dead?I want people of color dead?I believe in a greater Germany? I hate the state of Israel, not jewish people. Israel has hurt RABBIS !They not only DONT CARE ABOUT PALESTINIANS BUT JEWISH PEOPLE!And their own! They have let their own people be hurt to paint a narrative. And I dont say ''Hamas bad'' CAUSE ITS COMMON KNOWLADGE!NO SHIT KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE WAS BAD!THAT FUCKING SUCKS!FUCK THEM TOO !But you want HAMAS to be destroye but not ISRAEL?Thats a bother to me too. I didint cut ties with you cause I thought you were a zionist, not cause youre jewish, not cause I think you have ill intent or less of a human being. But because I couldnt handle talking to you, due to personal expiriences and just not being able to take it. You have the right to feel hurt because of what I did. But what prompted you to calling me something as fowl as a neo nazi? Im sorry. If youre reading this Im sorry that I hurt you, Im sorry for my actions. Im sorry for it. But calling me anything else would have hurt less.

[miss-3625]

Soooo I got all the Assassin's Creed games for the XBox360 (AC1 - AC Rogue) and because I can't talk to anybody about my new fandom, I'm gonna post my thoughts during my plays on Tumblr, because maybe someone can relate :D

SPOILERS (obviously)

Assassin's Creed 1

(25.12.22)

- I like the trailer :) Altaïr is looking BADASS

- kinda confused about the colours (social status icon), but I guess I'll figure it out as I go

- I like how they made the eagle vision (the way you just get teleported into them and see the world from their eyes)

---

- sorry Malik and Kadar :(

- You dare attack Masyaf?! >:O YOU'RE GONNA REGRET IT!!

(Maaaannn, I'm bad at fighting...)

- I'm dead?!

---

- "The Farm"?! O.o What happend to the Assassins?

- Warren is a creep

---

- Oh no, I'm not dead.

- Why am I losing my learned abilities when I get deomoted? Like I get why I lose my armour (health) but my abilities? :/

- Why are there just women in the garden? (And why is it closed if there is a flag?)

- FLAGS!

- 20 Flags? Where?!

- I like Masyaf :)

- well, that's a clear interrogation I guess ...

- Oh your students don't know how to wield a blade? Do I look like I can it better?!

(-> I couldn't do it better...)

---

- why am I suspicious when I'm galloping my horse? O.o

- I kinda hate the guards ...

- who are these 60 Templars?

---

- Damascus look very pretty :)

- YOU DARE HARM INNOCENT PEOPLE?! >:O

- Awww the people I save, help me in return <3

- I should've gone to the Bureau first, before "starting" the pickpocket mission ...

- I just need 2? I'LL DO ALL 6!

- woah Tamir is ... aggressive....

- AHH THERE'S A CITY ALERT! THEY'RE CHASING ME! :O (man they are very persistent)

---

- Warren is losing his things all the time? Why is that so relatable...

---

- ohhhh new knife :D (and more lives)

- the garden is open! I have all 20 flags! :D

- You again, with your students?

  (-> Oh, I was better this time ^^)

---

- aahhh, the 60 Templars are the lonely ones, that wear white and protect a chest you CAN'T EVEN LOOT

---

- Acre is not looking good from the first glance ...

- Those people are just SLEEPING! Right?!

(26.12.22)

- the Rafiq of Acre kind of looks like Al Mualiam .... doesn't he?

- archer's on the roof - I repeat ARCHERS ON THE ROOF

- it's funny that I'm surrounded by dead people, I'm the only person around who wears weapons, but the guards still can't see me, because I look down... but I'm definitely not complaining

- the parkour is satisfying :)

- I can jump through those lonely market stalls? O.o

- Altaïr can't swim...

- An Informant? I'LL HELP YOU :D

- I hate those beggar women - CAN'T YOU SEE I'M TRYING TO ESCAPE?!

- the people who hold their hands weirdly in front of them, just push you away for no reason?

- another Informant :D

- I NEED TO RACE :O

- I did it with 1:56 to spare B)

- his information was pretty unhelpful.... but thanks anyway

- the guard with a helmet can jump away from your attacks

- I hate Garnier >:(

- Bye Acre, I'm not gonna miss you

---

- Throwing Knives :D

- Oh so this time I'm not supposed to show my new skills to anyone?

---

- Helloo Jerusalem, you're looking better then Acre :)

- archers!

- 100 FLAGS?!

- the guards are wearing AMOUR

- MALIK :D

(27.12.22)

- those 60 Templars are also in the cities! (So far, I've seen 2 in Jerusalem and THERE IS AT LEAST ONE IN THE FORTRESS OF WILLIAM IN ACRE :O)

- I really hate archers -_-

- I'm sooo baaad at fighting, help

- THEY HELPED ME CHATCH HIM! I LOVE THE CITIZENS

- Bye Malik :D

---

- the closet is open O.o

(-> code: helps you unlock the door)

- well there is the pen of Warren

(-> time to stalk Lucy's e-mails :D)

- I STOLE HIS PEN :O

(-> he's so distracted by his coffee he forgets everything - relatable)

- fun fact: he gets annoyed, if you don't immediately get into the Animus ^^

---

- aannd the guards are more suspicious - nice -_-

- NEW ABILITIES :D (and life)

- aahh so now I'm supposed to help you(r students) again .. OKAY I'LL DO IT

- THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN HELPFUL IN THE FIGHT AGAINST TALAL'S MEN >:O

---

- I can immediately travel to Acre/Damascus/Jerusalem without having to ride through all of the Kingdom?! AMAZING:D

- I guess I'll go to Acre first, so that I'll never have to see the city again

- How many guards are here?!

- HELLO ACRE (I didn't miss you)

- those people are still just sleeping

- ARCHERS

- why can't I see where I'm supposed to go? O.o

(-> I'm supposed to go to the rich district)

- why are all the people in the rich district white?

- it is always day (there is never night)

- William's hair is UGLY

- BYE ACRE, HOPE TO NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN

---

- as an Assassin you're supposed to ask questions, but also to not ask questions and trust your master (without question)...?

- "no true peace without order"

- NEW ABILITIES :D

- and of course I'm helping you(r students) again ^^

- the fast travel across the world is so nice

---

- HELLO DAMASCUS, you're looking as gorgeous as last time :D

- "Altaïr my FRIEND HELLOOO, whose life do you come to collect today? :D" .... O.o (I like the Rafiq :))

- Awww Altaïr thanked the Rafiq! :)

- and again, I don't see where I'm supposed to go

(-> It's the rich district again)

(--> at least they're not all white this time)

- ARCHERS >:/

- I was so distracted by the skyline of Damascus, that I jumped from the view point without synchronizing first...

(-> and it was the biggest tower of Damascus...)

- killing 2 guards with TIME?! :O

- I did it! (Also I love the informant :))

- MAN RUNNING! MAN IS RUNNUNG FAST :O Abu'l is a fast man!!!

---

- Altaïr is asking QUESTIONS DEMANDING ANSWERS! HE SPEAKS AGAINST THE MENTOR!!! THE BABY IS GROWING UP :D

- more throwing knives :)

---

- HELLOO JERUSALEM (and hello Malik :))

- where are all those people going? O.o

- Malik is nice :) (he is slowly forgiving his bf ;) )

- and again, I don't know where to go...

(-> this time it was the poor district)

(28.12.22)

- I love this informant and if something happens to him, I will kill all responsible :)

(-> even if I already knew his information)

- "Novice" :D

- I have to save a BROTHER?! :O no pressure, right?!

- well that was the fastest assassination ever XD

(-> I tried to blend in with the scholars, but a man pushed me right into the arms of the guards. They of course became alert and attacked me. Addin walked right into my arms..)

- BYE MALIK :D

---

- the Assassin's are trying to save me

- Abstergo is a Templar Organisation

- everything is normal, I'd say :)

- "the answers [...] are right in front of you"

(-> time to stalk Lucy's e-mails again :D)

- naw. someone (Warren) is grumpy >:)

---

- why is he petting the Apple like a super villain would a cat?

- ACRE AGAIN?!

- they fear me >:D

- NEW ABILITY (and live - just one more and I have all) :D

- Oh and again I'm not supposed to help you(r students) >:/

---

- HELLO ACRE, I STILL HAD TO COME BACK BUT I SWEAR AFTER THIS, YOU'LL NEVER SEE ME AGAIN

- still as ugly as ever

- and those people are still just sleeping

- hello second Al Mualim

- Altaïr thanks the Rafiq! He is growing up :)

- THE GUARDS DRESSED IN WHITE ARE STRONG

- I LOVE the ability to grab/hold onto ledges (so you don't fall)

- I also love the throwing knives (sadly there are only 10 :/)

- GUARDS! A LOT OF (ANNOYING) GUARDS! >:O

- full synchronisation! :D

- so much water! Altaïr hates water! HE DIES!

- I don't want to tell you how long it took me to finish the informant mission (5 targets in 4 minutes) - I HAD TO RESTART AGAIN, SO.MANY.TIMES

- "William and Garnier were too confident" - well you're too scared

- naawww the Rafiq is concerned :)

- and Altaïr is feeling things

- I love the bonds between Altaïr and the Rafiqs <3

---

- damn Altaïr is getting poetic

- he has grown so much <3

- NEW ABILITY

- and again I'm not supposed to help you(r students) ... :(

---

- HEELLLOOO DAMASCUS

- STILL AS BEAUTIFUL AS EVER

- AND I LOVE THE MUSIC!

- it's so adorable that your horse follows you (at least until you actually get into the city) <3

- "the Hero of Damascus"

- They're burning all the books! The WISDOM!!

- and now I did all the 5 targets on the first try ...

- OH YOUR back hurts?! I've been running around all day, fighting dozens of guards! And I'm supposed to kill the boss! What about MY BACK? MY EVERYTHING?!!

(just joking, I love all the informants - they're SO definitely going to be in a fanfic)

(29.12.22)

- on my way to kill the last person before de Sable ^^

- THE BOOKS! THE WISDOM >:O

- I found him on the second try :)

---

- "Oh Desmond, you have no idea." YES, I DON'T, SO WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME SOMETHING USEFUL LUCY?!

- ok not gonna lie, the advertisement e-mail caught me off-guard, but I get it - "we will be there soon" (I felt like a spy - or should I say, like an assassin ;))

- OH I CAN ALSO LOOK AT WARREN'S COMPUTER! OF COURSE I CAN, I STOLE HIS PEN! HOW STUPID AM I!??! (Well If I were an assassin, I would be a novice...)

---

- NEW ABILITY :)

- MORE THROWING KNIVES :D

- and for the last time I'm not supposed to help you(r students) :/ Ok then...

---

- ON MY WAY TO THE LAST TARGET OMG

- WHERE EVERYTHING BEGAN

- HELLOOOO JERUSALEM

- Hi Malik :3

- ARCHERS!!

- the informants are scared of Malik XD

- "Just to be in your presence is a gift from god" <3

- ALTAÏR APOLOGIZED!!!! 

- AND MALIK FORGAVE HIM!!!!

- <3

- Well, time to kill de Sable I guess...

- SUPRISE SURPRISE - SEEMS LIKE ROBERT CHANGED GENDER

- Awww Malik is concerned

- FIGHTING! A LOT OF FIGHTING!!!

- the fight with Robert was easier then all the fights I had to do before XD

- NO AL MUALIM, NOO

- "Why? Why travel all this way? Risk you life a thousand times, all to kill a simple man?"

-> because he is a good man, a man that does everything for freedom and his believe

---

- Desmond haven't had any contact with the Assassins for YEARS. How is it his fault, that they come to rescue him? (Even though, at this point we know that it was Lucy (from her e-mails))

- NO MORE ASSASSINS?! WHAT O.o ("in the last YEAR" WHAT?!)

- Warren: Desmond you're gonna die soon, all the assassins are dead, you are completely alone and after we're gonna put you in the Animus tomorrow, we'll kill you. Sleep tight :)

Me: O.o ... >:(

Lucy: It's not as bad as it seems :/

Desmond:  >:O

---

- the village is looking so dark and sad :/

- HE HAS BEWITCHED THEM

- AL MUALIM IS A TRAITOR >:O ALTAÏR (and all the others) TRUSED YOU

- I HAVE TO FIGHT MY BROTHERS :O

- AHHH I'M SORRY

- AAHH NEARLY DEAD

- MALIK! :D

- "Your presence here will deliver us both" <3

- oh shit, here we go

- the doors closing behind me and a group of (innocent) people staring at me - welcome to the new horror game

- what did he do with all the women?!

(and why is the guarden called "Paradise" O.o)

- OH GOD, NICE TO SEE YOU ALL AGAIN I GUESS?!!

- AAHH HE MULTIPLIES (he glows golden!)

- HE TRIED TO BEWITCH ALTAÏR?!!!

- me the whole time during the end boss and after I killed him:  :O

- the apple is a giant compass? O.o Ah it shows where all the Pieces of Eden are (but it is weird that the Apple shows them a map from our time. (I don't think, this is what the world looked like in the 12. century (at that time they thought that the earth is flat)))

- Malik :D

---

- strange people watching Desmond behind the glass!

- Lucy saved me :)

- O.o What is happening? Invisible inc?

- 12212017 ? Is it gonna be important? We'll see..

- the door doesn't close behind me!

- nothing interesting in the bathroom

- blood?!

- THAT WAS IT?! O.O

---

- hey someone from the gameplay integrators is also named Malik :D

- a lot of testers

- Philip Shahbaz you did a great job in voicing Altaïr :D (they all did)

(-> even if it's weird that Altaïr doesn't have an accent)

- so Nolan North, the voice actor of Desmond, is also the voice actor of Abbas AND also the voice of Nathan Drake of Uncharted (seriously look at how much he has done!)

---

- "We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each of them lies an irreparable truth"

- "I've entered the Abyss and never returned"

- new e-mail at Warren's computer...

(-> subject 16, bleeding effect, THE WHOLE PUPULATION OF AFRICA IS NEARLY GONE?!)

Feedback:

- I liked it :) It is rather simple, but I like that. I liked the (way they did the) cities and I loved the parkour. There were times where I would get from one side of the town to the other just with using the rooftops (or the beams and poles sticking from the roofs), which I greatly enjoyed. I don't know why, but Damascus especially was a beautiful city form me. I spend many minutes on top of towers just looking across the city and remembering the rooftops.

Also, I liked the way they portrayed Altaïr's "road of forgiveness" - In the beginning Altaïr is an arrogant man, who assumes that everyone will do as he says, because he is better then them. That shows in the way he talks to the people in the beginning and the way he demands the answers of the Rafiqs and Informants at the beginning. He doesn't ask questions and simply follows orders blindly. In the middle of the game, Altaïr is beginning to see his mistakes and his arrogance. He begins to question, rather than demand and he apologizes. He is getting respectful. At the end of the game, the arrogant man from the beginning is gone. In his place stands a man, who questions things and wants answers, but doesn't demand them. He sees his mistakes and even begs for forgiveness. He is respectful to those around him and he is showing emotion (before the fight with Al Mualim, he said that he had to be careful not to hurt the innocent people). He is an honorable man now.

(Also I like the way, how the people around him, basically show his process. In the beginning they are rather short with him (especially Malik). Than in the middle, they begin to become friends (even Malik is getting nicer, but still isn't friendly towards him). In the end, all the Rafiqs and Informants respect Altaïr again and even Malik considers him a friend and brother again.)

I also appreciate the fast travel option. While I liked the horse riding, it annoyed me greatly that simply riding my horse can make me suspicious to the guards. In the cities, I could understand the near constant suspicion of the guards (especially towards the end), but that was it.

Another point towards the guards: you have to give it to them, they wouldn't give up. You either have to me miles away from them or hide.

All in all, I liked the game. It has it's points that frustrated me, but in general I really liked it. Can't wait to play Assassin's Creed 2.

THE END OF ASSASSIN'S CREED 1

[teachers-pet-snorting-meth]

I am in a similar predicament, but my friend falls into one of two categories: she either is a fallen angel or she was raised in a very, very strange cult, and here are the reasons why: 

(Little disclaimer before the list, I read this post together with her and she looked me straight in the eyes before telling me what I was waiting to write away about her with my heart content, so I actually have her okay to write all this things here).

1 I've known her for eight years now, but yesterday I took out some photos we took just after we became friends and she hasn't aged a day or even really changed her haircut since I've met her. I am also suspicious that her hair doesn't grow at all.

2 We have traveled half of the world together, but I've yet to see her breaking a sweat. Even in the hottest and humidest climate her skin is cold to the touch and when she is at home her fireplace is always lit. She also never got a sunburn, even if she is extremely pale and I've never seen her using Spf.

3 On another note she is completely obsessed with being warm and it has something to do with the place she was raised being extremely cold, which wouldn't be all that strange, if only she hadn't mentioned traveling to Palestine, Israel and Egypt more than once in her youth. When I asked her about it she simply told me it was her father's will.

4 After barely three weeks of knowing her she called me in the middle of the night and told me I needed to call my brother. When I, half-asleep and completely out of it, asked her which one I needed to call she told me, without missing a beat, to call the ginger one. We barely knew each other back then and I never had photos with my older brother on my ig or around my appartament. The only photos of my family she had ever seen were the ones of me and my parents and I am blonde, while they both have extremely dark hair and I never told her my brother is a red head. Two years later my brother told me that call saved his life, because he was struggling with depression (we are genethically predisposed for it) and he was thinking of ending it all.

5 The first time I saw her in a bikini I almost had a heart attack looking at her back. From the inside of her shoulder blades to the small of her back she has two very long, raised scars, which create a V shaped design on her back. When one of our friends asked about it she simply said something that can be roughly translated to:

"Sometimes not forsaking someone causes pain and loss and sometimes what you are losing is a part of yourself."

6 She was apparently born in the middle of nowhere, in the vicinity of an archeological site, during a guided tour. It wouldn't be all that strange if the site wasn't Ketef Hinnom,  the place in which the oldest surviving texts currently known from the Hebrew Bible, dated to 600 BC, were found. Her other siblings were primarily born in Jerusalem and Rome. 

7 She doesn't smell of anything and with that I don't mean she doesn't smell of anything bad, but that she literally never smells of anything at all, either good or bad, the same thing can be said about her home. 

8 I've never heard her talk about her mom, but I know her father is very very strict and kicked some of her siblings out because they had different religious views? I don't really know much about it but apparently she too had to leave her home for not having completely cut ties with said siblings.

10 When we met she only mentioned two siblings of hers, a brother whose name is a variant of Raphael and a sibling whose nickname is Lu. Now I've met thirteen of her siblings (no one of them really resembles the other, but they all share something vaguely familiar and off putting about them), they all share biblical names and all of the siblings of hers I met,  bar one of her sisters, named Ariel, don't like this Lu person very much. I know for sure she has other siblings I've yet to meet.

11 I also have yet to know anything about Lu, outside of the fact that they gifted her a massive (and extremely pricy) piebald tiger piton but, every time they visit her her odour-less home smells of sulfur for a couple of days after. Two years ago my friend went to visit them and her skin smelled that way for almost two weeks. 

12 From my understanding, one of her sisters, whose name is a variant of the name Eve, has two sons, and they are her only nephews. I've yet to gather enough courage to ask for their names. 

13 Her legal name isn't the name her parents gave her. Her legal name means light and (apparently) her father wasn't really happy about it and it had something to do with her sibling, Lu.

14 I once heard one of her brothers (whose name, is once again, biblical, being a variation of the name Gabriel) asking her why she chose to study Theology. She told him that knowing people's dirty laundry made the whole ordeal hilarious.

15 Her youngest brother was born after her father had a one night stand with a woman named Miriam who was much younger than him. Apparently said brother is also her father's favorite.

16 We have traveled together more than once and I've heard her talk in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese.  I know from some lectures we took in college she can read and understand Latin, Ancient Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, but while we traveled in the Southeast region of Turkey, I've literally heard her talk in Aramaic, which shocked even our tour guide.

After that I discovered that, most of the time she is on the phone with her family, she actually speaks a language that seems quite similar to Aramaic.

17 Every time she spends more than a couple of days in the same place all the light bulbs, one after the other, burn out. I have no idea how the ones in her own apartment stay alive. The same thing happens with elettronic devices of every kind.

Reasons I believe my friend is secretly some kind of deity

1) First time we spoke was a week after the beggining of freshman year she summed up my entire character and most of the events of my life Sherlock style. I asked her how the hell she knew all that. She just shrugged and said she figured out our entire class already.

2) The one time we had religion class instead of ethics she listened to the teacher for a few minutes, laughed and told me:

“Humans have wished to be gods so much they’ve forgotten they have to ability to create them. Imagination has truly suffered from this ‘monotheism’ stuff.”

I was confused and asked her if she was an atheist. She rolled her eyes and said:

“Oh I believe in god alright. I just don’t think the bastard deserves to be worshipped.”

3) Out of nowhere she gave me this advice:

“The only truth a liar ever told was that lies weren’t going to save you. Don’t become the liar who has to pass that wisdom on, because they speak from experience.”

4) To this day, she has one of those old-timey phones with buttons she only uses to ocassionally call someone. When I asked her why she never got a smartphone she got pouty:

“I hate social media. On Facebook they talk a lot but never say anything. If I wanted to listen to people moan about their problems and ask for help they don’t expect I’d listen to their prayers.” (Notice the choice of words)

5) I noticed she was stiff and I offered her a massage since I’m really good at it but when i started kneading her back I swear to this day those were not muscles I felt. I asked her what she did to turn her muscles into rocks covered with a thin layer of skin and she kinda froze then shrugged and said she was just really, really stiff. My hands hurt after ten minutes when I can usually go for an hour. Next time I offered she seemed surprised and laughed. She still has rocks for muscles.

6) We were having a debate over the way neural pathways are formed (I study biology and she forensics) and I jokingly asked if I could have her brain for study when she dies. She laughed.

“Sure, if you find a way to kill me you can have it. I’m actually curious what you’re gonna find.”

7) One time she was tired and miserable and I tried to comfort her. We both have really dark sense of humor so I told her she could scare the dead out of their graves with that glare. She told me the dead can’t come back and I rolled my eyes and said 'obviously’ but she continued:

“When you die you descend to the underworld with nothing to lose. To keep you, they give you something to lose. When you want to return, they will demand it back. That’s why nobody ever leaves. The only way out is to never enter.”

8) One day she just came up to me with a disappointed look on her face. When I asked her what was wrong she was quiet for a few seconds and then just told me:

“Betrayals committed in good intentions are still damning. Just… keep that in mind.” Then she left and didn’t speak to me for three days. I still don’t know what she meant but even three years later I haven’t forgotten it.

9) We were casually sitting on a bench when, out of nowhere, she asked me: “Is it just me or have humans gotten dumber? Or have they always been this stupid and I just haven’t been paying attention?”

10) She asked me if I ever wondered what it was like to die. I said no but told her I would tell her when I found out. I meant it as a ghost joke but she smiled at me and said:

“Great. I’ll wait for you to come back. Maybe you’ll even remember me.”

In conclusion, she is some kind of low-key god and she lost her faith in humanity even before we lost our faith in her but she’s stuck with us because immortality is a bitch.

P.S. I just remembered her name is a variation on 'Eve’. Maybe I should reconsider my atheist status?!

UPDATE (Jan 9, 2019): Since people liked this so much I’m making it a thing. All I have about Eve can be found under #god goes to college

[skiplo-wave]

Different anon here! LONG POST.

Omg I went down the rabbit hole on this Ark of the Covenant stuff. First off, good for Christians for finally waking up. Trump has been trying to issue peace between the countries since he was in his 20s. They legit have this so called "replica" at Trump's estate Mar-A-Lago. But if it's just a "replica" than how is Israel using it in battle? And also, from my understanding only the Levites are suppose to carry it using wooden poles. Touching the gold Ark itself would be a death sentence. Does Trump have the Levites there too?! In the Jerusalem article, they said they want to put it back to all the places it was before... Again, if it's just a "replica" how can that happen when it's never been there, right? If it's just a "replica", wouldn't it be sacrilegious to rebuild it?! Some people are saying they believe it's the real Ark of the Covenant due to how they are talking about it. Both the Jews and Muslims gave Trump the title "Prince of Peace". The Jews gave him a silver crown and the Muslims gave him a silver trophy. This is some weird shit. The Antichrist would bring peace between Jews and Muslims. And he will deceive them. Three in a half years into Tribulation. And you would think the Muslims would know better, because they believe in the Antichrist too like Christians. They call him al-Dajjāl -- "The Deceiver".

You know what makes this crazier? The Jews brought over red cows to Jerusalem just this past August. They are going through them and practicing for the building of the Third Temple. They use the blood or ashes of the red heifer to purify the tools. They said they are ready to build it. So either that peace deal involves letting the Jews build on the Temple Mount or they are going to build it in the ruins of the City of David.

In my personal opinion, I don't think Trump is the Antichrist for many reasons even though he was given the Prince of Peace title. I think he is going to usher someone in that is the Antichrist. Because the Antichrist is going to be someone with Middle Eastern ethnicity and he doesn't have a family. But then again, the Antichrist is the master of deception. It could very well be Trump. Maybe that's why his skin is orange and not a bad self-tanner. This mf is about to turn red!!!

Oh on what did I just let into my inbox

[jcmarchi]

Or Hen: Getting to the core of the matter

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/or-hen-getting-to-the-core-of-the-matter/

Or Hen: Getting to the core of the matter

Every now and then, Or Hen, who recently received tenure as an associate professor of physics at MIT, will refer back to a file that he has kept since middle school.

The file is a comprehensive assessment of Hen’s learning disabilities, stemming from dysgraphia — a neurological condition in which someone has difficulty translating their thoughts into written form. Hen was diagnosed with a severe case of dysgraphia as a kindergartener. In middle school, due to an administrative snafu, the school was unaware of his condition and, lacking proper support, Hen failed most of his classes. It wasn’t until one teacher took a special interest that Hen was sent for a detailed assessment of his learning abilities.

That assessment, which Hen did not read until later, when he was well into his undergraduate degree in physics, was for him a revelation and validation.

“I saw a lot of ‘he’s bad at this, and not good at that,’ and it went through all the things I failed at,” Hen recalls. “But there was one test where I did extremely well, and which they had bold-faced.”

It was a test of nonverbal thinking, or abstract comprehension, assessing Hen’s ability to conceptually pare down complex ideas to their fundamental core. In this test, Hen scored in the 99th percentile. Fittingly, by the time Hen read this, he was already immersed in studies of abstract concepts and systems in nuclear physics. On his own, he had gravitated to a field that suited his strengths. Reading the assessment gave him confidence in his own instincts.

“They wrote that ‘this skill is particularly strong in him, and you should push him toward areas that utilize it,’” Hen says.

He brings this up to students at MIT today, not to brag, but as a guide.

“I try to emphasize that there is more than one path to success,” Hen says. “Try to think about what you’re good at, and then do the hard work of finding out what area, group, subfield, can utilize that. Find the thing you bring that’s unique, and build on that. Because then you really shine.”

Today, Hen and his research group are probing the inner workings of the nucleus, the interactions between protons and neutrons, and their even smaller constituents of quarks and gluons, which are the basic ingredients that hold together all the visible matter in the universe. Hen seeks connections between how these particles behave and how their interactions shape the visible universe and extreme astrophysical phenomena such as neutron stars.

“A lot of physics, in my mind, is taking complex systems with lots of details and abstracting away the details to seek the main principles that drive everything,” he says.

A frontier of ideas

Hen grew up in the countryside of Jerusalem, Israel, as part of a moshav — a small Jewish village, where his family worked as farmers, raising chickens for their eggs. In kindergarten, once Hen was diagnosed with dysgraphia, his parents sought out any available resources to help him with his writing.

“I think my mother’s entire salary went toward corrective lessons,” Hen recalls.

In middle school, once the records of his condition were transferred to the school, and an assessment was made of his abilities, Hen was given permission to take his exams orally. Rather than writing his answers, he would sit with a teacher and talk it out. To this day, he credits his loquacious nature to those early, formative years.

“Everyone who knows me knows I talk a lot,” Hen says. “And part of that was the way I was able to learn by talking about the material.”

Once he could work around his dysgraphia, however, Hen soon became bored by the content of his lessons, and in high school, he routinely skipped class. A teacher, seeing his potential, told his parents about an outreach program at the nearby Hebrew University, which Hen’s teacher thought might challenge the boy in ways that high school could not.

In his last two years of high school, Hen took part in the program and enrolled in a couple university classes in programming, which he quickly took to. After graduation, he attended Hebrew University full-time, double-majoring in computer engineering and physics — a topic that he thought he might like, as his older brother had also majored in the topic.

One class, early on in his first year, was especially motivating. The class explored ideas in modern physics, and students got to hear from different physicists about the concepts and phenomena they were tackling in the moment.

“It showed us that the beginning of our studies may be hard and annoying, but this is what you’re working toward,” Hen says. “In that class, we learned about quantum mechanics and nonlinear solids and astrophysics, and it just gave us a view of the frontier of the field.”

At the core

After completing his undergraduate degrees, Hen joined the Israeli Defense Forces, which is a mandatory service for all Israeli citizens. He spent seven years in the army, working as a researcher in a physics laboratory.

In tandem with his military service, Hen was also pursuing a PhD in physics, and would make the short trip to Tel-Aviv University once a week and on weekends to work on his degree. There, he got to know an eccentric and beloved professor who took a chance on Hen and offered him a rare opportunity: to travel to the United States to help build a new particle detector. The detector would be based at Jefferson Laboratory, a facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy that houses a huge particle accelerator, designed to collide beams of electrons with various atomic nuclei.

With a particle detector, physicists could essentially snap pictures of a collision and its aftermath, to tease out the subatomic constituents and their properties, and how they interact to make up an atom’s nuclear structure.

Hen spent a summer at the facility, helping to build a neutron detector that physicists hoped would shed light on “short-range correlations” — extremely brief, quantum-mechanical fluctuations that can occur between some protons and neutrons within an atom’s nucleus. When these particles get so close as to touch each other, their interactions become stronger, though only for a moment before they flit away. It’s thought that these short-range correlations are the source of most of the kinetic energy in a nucleus, which itself is the basis of all visible matter in the universe.

“More than half the kinetic energy in a nucleus comes from these weird states,” Hen says. “If you ever want to understand atomic nuclei and visible matter at its core, you have to also understand short-range correlations.”

Helping to build the neutron detector was a gratifying combination of hands-on work and abstract thinking, and from then on, Hen was hooked on experimental nuclear physics.

After completing his PhD, and a thesis on short-range correlations, Hen headed to MIT, where he interviewed for a postdoc position as a Pappalardo Fellow in the Laboratory of Nuclear Science. As he chatted with one person after another, he eventually found himself in the office of then-department head Peter Fisher, who encouraged Hen to also apply for an open faculty position.

A few months later, in 2015, he found himself in the fortunate position of starting at MIT as a postdoc, having already accepted a junior faculty position he would start at MIT 18 months later.

“MIT took a bet on me,” he says. “That’s the unique thing about MIT. They saw something in me that I didn’t see back then, and they supported me.”

Particle connections

In his first years on campus, Hen continued his work in short-range correlations. His group used data from particle accelerators around the world to develop a universal understanding of short-range correlations in a way that can be applied across many scales. It could, for instance, predict how the interactions would determine correlations in one type of atom versus another, and shape the behavior of much more dense and extreme phenomena such as neutron stars.

Hen also expanded into the field of neutrinos, which are nearly massless particles that are the most abundant particles in the universe. The properties of neutrinos are thought to be the key to the origins of matter, though neutrinos are notoriously difficult to study in detail because their detection requires detailed understanding of their interaction with atomic nuclei. Hen found that, instead of depending on the elusive interactions of neutrinos, there might be a way to abstract that behavior to that of a more detectable particle, to better understand the neutrino itself.

By analyzing data from electron-beam accelerators around the world, his group founded the “electrons-for-neutrinos” effort, which developed a framework that essentially transposed the interactions of an electron to describe how a neutrino would behave under similar circumstances — a tool that will help physicists interpret data from hard-to-pin-down neutrino experiments.

Reflecting on how he determines which direction to take his research, Hen says: “I have a big nose, and I like to talk to people and understand what they’re doing and whether can I do something there or not. I like to build communities, bring in people with different abilities, and do something big together, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Big science

Hen got a chance to start up a big-science collaboration, as part of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a concept for a particle accelerator that collides electrons with protons, neutrons, and nuclei to study the particles’ internal structures and how they are held together by the “strong nuclear force,” which is known as the strongest force in nature.

In late 2019, the EIC was a focus of a meeting at MIT, in which physicists from around the world gathered to discuss the project’s recent go-ahead, granted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). The next step was to design a detector, and multiple versions were considered. Hen, who stopped in out of curiosity, wound up joining a community-wide effort to develop a menu of possible detectors that could be built at the EIC.

Hen then took a leadership role in the next step to put forward a specific detector design for the DoE to fund. Working closely with physicists Tanja Horn and John Lajoie, they called experts to join the effort, eventually gathering physicists from 98 institutions. Thanks to their collaborative efforts the DoE ultimately chose their design over a competing one. Hen and his colleagues subsequently reached out to that other group to join forces to further evolve and fine-tune the design.

“We combined strengths,” Hen says. “We are doing big science. And when you do big science, there’s lots of talented people involved. I’ve learned through this process that it’s all about how you interact with people and adapt yourself to do science, together.”

Today, Hen is overseeing aspects of the EIC’s science community that is leading its development, which is projected to break ground in the next few years. In the meantime, he continues to expand projects in his research group, and works to mentor his students and postdocs, just as he was supported through his early career.

“I’m a very fortunate person, in that I had so many mentors in my life, and they all believed in me and saw things I didn’t,” Hen says. “They noticed that I’m different in whichever capacity, and tried to squeeze that lemon. That was a big thing for me.” 

[greenbagjosh]

Saturday 11 July 1998 - First time across the Oberbaumbrücke into East Berlin - Alexanderplatz and the world clock - Love Parade from 2 PM to 9 PM - supper at Escados and a long S-Bahn ride home to Nikolassee

11 July 1998 Love Parade in Berlin

Hi everybody,

Today 20 years ago, is part two of three, of the weekend in Berlin. It was also the day of the Love Parade 1998 - hence the hearts from my last post. It would not start until about 2 PM on Straße des 17 Juni, so I could get some sightseeing done before that and still take the U-Bahn.

The night was not too bad. My other roommates were not particularly noisy. The temperature was fair, about the low 50s by 7 AM. The showers were located in the hall.

My hostel had a breakfast room and breakfast was complimentary. It was the usual kind of breakfast at a typical Deutsches Jugendgästehaus, breads, cheese, butter, jam, hazelnut spread, sliced deli meats, orange juice, coffee and tea. I spent about half an hour. Then I went back to my room to get enough film for sightseeing. What I did not know was, I should have packed an extra camera battery. With the Samsung Evoca 115, it does not use conventional batteries. It uses a special U-Shaped battery about 5 volts called a "CR123". Will talk more about that for Sunday the 12th July. Then I walked the half mile to the Nikolassee train station but did not board a train, but a bus. This was because I wanted to go to Krumme Lanke along the U-1 into downtown and then take the S-Bahn from Heidelberger Platz to Innsbrucker Platz and take the U-4 to Nollendorfplatz. As for the Berlin U-Bahn map, please bear with me, as the lines have been reconfigured in the past twenty years that I last visited on my own, so I will likely mention the lines I remember from back then, rather than refer to the current line structure. As long as I still had the 72 hour pass, I did not need to worry about any "Fahrscheinkontrolle" that charged 80 D-Mark for not having a valid ticket.

I took a double decker bus from Nikolassee to the Krumme Lanke U-Bahn station and took the U-1 to Heidelberger Platz. The line ran at-grade up to Podbielskialle and went underground for two more stops. I had to come out of the tunnel for the S-41 that went to Innsbrucker Platz. The entire U-4 is still underground as it was in 1998. When the train arrived in Nollendorfplatz, there were two underground levels and one elevated one. That is what makes Nolledorfplatz unique. I went farther on the U-1 to Warschauer Straße, across the Spree by the Oberbaumbrücke. I believe I already mentioned, that up to 1995, the U-1 terminated only at Schlesisches Tor on the east, as that was where the wall was, and Warschauer Straße happened to be in the Soviet-controlled "East Zone". Many of the stations in the East Zone in 1998 appeared to be preserved as they existed in the Cold War, but have in the last twenty years been renovated, so if you happened to be born after 1989, you might not be able to recognize which stations were in the East Zone and which were in the Allied sectors. Allied being the USA, UK and France. It was a profound feeling to see the Warschauer Straße station, as it was cut off from the rest of the U-Bahn network for decades.

I had to walk across a pedestrian bridge at Warschauer Straße to be able to access the S-Bahn line. I wanted to see Alexanderplatz, the tower and the interesting world clock that must have 24 faces. The clock for many years did not have Tel Aviv or Jerusalem mentioned until that was changed in 1997, as it was GDR policy to not recognize the existence of Israel. I think The Bourne Supremacy had a scene in that particular square years later. I found a place where I might want to eat dinner, the Escados steak restaurant. They would be open until very late, I guess just before midnight, so I made a point to come back later that evening.

After seeing Alexanderplatz, I wanted to go back to West Berlin, and the Checkpoint Charlie museum. To get there from Alexanderplatz, I needed to take the U-2 to Stadtmitte and then south to Kochstraße by U-6. In the Cold War, the U-2 was an operating line on both sides of the wall. However the U-6 had several "ghost stations" that had just the lights dimly lit while the trains just passed through and did not reopen until after Reunification.

What luck, when I arrived at Kochstraße, the location of the iconic Checkpoint Charlie border crossing, the eponymous museum was open that day, so I decided to go inside for an hour or so. It was very interesting inside, with so much Cold War memorabilia. There was a Trabant that had a secret compartment to smuggle out people from East Germany to the West. And yes there was a controversial painting of Erich Honecker and Mikhail Gorbatchev, I will not go into any detail, you might look it up for yourself. As I had my passport with me, I paid 2.50 D-Mark to get a historical East Berlin border crossing stamp.

I think at Alexanderplatz, during the Cold War, that was one of the official border crossings for the U-Bahn and S-Bahn. One of the rules for entering East Berlin from West Berlin, was that you would have to change 25.00 D-Mark into 25 Ostmark. More information about the Ostmark at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_mark. And all the Ostmark was required to be spent before returning to the West. Because the cost of living in East Berlin as compared to West Berlin was so cheap, it made spending money difficult. One way to tell the Ostmark from the D-Mark, is that the Ostmark coins were made out of lighter metal than the D-Mark coins. There were also Intershops that accepted only hard currency and sold western wares. All I am aware of, is what my high school German teacher taught in class, and also other peoples' experiences.

After visiting the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, it was getting close to 1 PM. I stopped at a Kaiser Tengelmann store to buy food to make sandwiches, as I wanted to save money for a nice steak at Escados later. I love my Lyoner and Blutwurst so I bought some of that with slices of good looking white cheese, and some more soda cans. After that, I went on to Alexanderplatz, and then walked along Unter den Linden past the Berliner Dom and the then-standing Palast der Republik. The Palast der Republik was up to 1990, the parliament building for the East German government. Appearancewise, the Palast der Republik was made out of brownish copper and similarly tinted glass. It was a postwar brutalist style. People were gathering east of the Brandenburger Tor, as the Lovemobiles with the loud music were along Straße des 17 Juni.

So what is the Love Parade supposed to be? It was started in 1989 by DJ Dr Motte as a non-partisan political demonstration for peace and international understanding. And a great deal of electronic music which evolved from that of Kraftwerk. The Love Parade drew in later years up to 2003, about a million participants. To have a successful Love Parade, it is necessary to obtain funding and sponsors. In 2004 it was starting to be difficult to find sponsors and also the required permits in a timely manner. As for the music variety, I think there were 20 Lovemobiles in total, DJ Motte was at the head, there were others like DJ Marusha, Paul Van Dyk, Sven Väth, and Da Hool

Two of the drawbacks are, one of which, getting inadvertently dirty as a result of others drinking on the streets - glass was allowed as was aluminum and plastic, so it was necessary to watch one's step around areas where glass bottles were broken. There must have been an inch of garbage along the Straße des 17 Juni on average. I would not want to be part of the sanitation crew the next morning. Also, 11th July 1998 was one of the days that Germany had forgotten about its Mehrwegflasche recycling scheme - sad. The other drawback is if you do not have proper ear protection, you might have a horrible ringing of the ears. Foam earplugs were given out for free (someone donated for a bulk of them). Also during the Street Parade, the weather did not cooperate very well. Though it was in the upper 60s to lower 70s, there were periods of drizzle, alternating with periods of sunshine, and the DJs took special care to protect their equipment, so the music would last well into the late hours of about 10:30 or 11 PM.

The Love Parade was very large, in comparison to the little Marlboro cigarette garden parties from 1997 that I attended July 1997 in Hamburg and Munich, similar attire as the Love Parade, turnout of a thousand people each at most. Statistics show that there were 800,000 participants for 1998, so good turnout.

Recommended videos Da Hool - Meet her at the Love Parade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO4y3nkJXDA Dr Motte & Westbam - One world, one future (the theme for the 1998 Love Parade in Berlin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDJ20spGymE

There have to be about a dozen Love Parade 1998 videos online, some lasting as long as six whole hours. I leave it to you to decide whether to watch those, especially if you are on a mobile data plan – be careful of how much bandwidth you use unless you’re on Wifi or ethernet.

I have to give the cleanup crew, security and first responders compliments on their professionalism. There was a little bit of humor when an ambulance was driving through the Straße des 17 Juni, and he said "Please clear the street. You know how to do that, right? We all went to school didn't we?". Then some silly person shouted "Not I! Not I!". Both exchanges were in German.

The next such parade I would attend would be the Street Parade, on 8th August 1998 in Zürich. That had a good turnout. I will tell more about it early next month.

I got tired about 10 PM and thought it was time for dinner. I had to walk past the Brandenburger Tor, along Unter den Linden to Alexanderplatz. Escados was still open for late dinner. I ordered a 5 ounce steak with chili and summer vegetables, and had a Berliner Kindl beer with it. It was a fairly relaxing dinnertime after a long afternoon and evening with loud electronic music. But it was fun nonetheless.

To return to the hostel, I should have taken the direct S-Bahn to Nikolassee, but I chose a different route. I took a line 100 bus to Rosenthaler Platz to catch the U-8. This was part of the U-8 Ghost Station line in East Berlin, up to Gesundbrunnen which was considered to be in West Berlin. Then I took the S-1 "the long way" back to Nikolassee. Somehow Ingo Ruff's voice put me to sleep until about Mexikoplatz. I made it back to the hostel about 11:45 PM and I went to sleep.

The next day I would have to check out and make my way home to Munich. I did not know about the Third Place match for FIFA 1998, but I later found out Croatia beat the Netherlands 2 to 1.

Tomorrow, Part 3, including Spandau and my impressions of Cold War Berlin’s U-Bahn line U-5.

Gute Nacht, bis morgen.

[totheidiot]

OKAY INFODUMP TIME THANK YOU JESUS. tw of suicide, death, and the general and obligatory warning because this focuses on christianity and the new testament and the bible. i will also be quoting bible verses in this post and i know that people just don't want to see that. ALSO INSANELY LONG AND DESCRIPTIVE.

so time to establish the fact who judas is. jesus christ probably doesn't need any introduction so it's just judas. so judas iscariot (not to be confused with judas the apostle. there are two people named in judas in the original gang of twelve apostles. the guy that is the most notable, the one everyone likes to ship with jesus is judas iscariot) was one of the original twelve apostles of jesus christ. in the new testament, the apostles were primary followers of jesus, they were the closest followers to him during his lifetime.

he, like all the other twelve apostles, was present during the last supper and that was when jesus made the prediction that someone among his followers will betray him. but before that, jesus and his disciples were heading to jerusalem. over some couple of days, jesus was just giving his sermons, talking to people. they all stayed in the mount of olives and that was where jesus told them about the coming end of jerusalem.

so rather than staying in jerusalem, jesus stayed with a bunch of friends of his in bethany, mary, martha and lazarus. one evening, mary (not the mother mary btw there are other mary's) was rubbing jesus' feet with ointment and judas saw this and got mad, telling her that she could have not wasted the money that she bought this expensive ointment with and used the money for better reasons. in the gospel, john mentions that judas was the treasurer of the group and he kept a portion of the money before giving it to the poor. that's the perfume thing you guys mentioned.

jesus defended mary and later that night, judas went to the leaders and made a deal with them. he would get 30 pieces of silver and he would lead the authorities to a place where they could arrest jesus. now, the authorities were already going to do that but they couldn't bring him to a place private enough where the guards would stop them. so that happened.

fast forward to the last supper !! jesus asked his apostles to prepare a room where they could eat the passover, they all gathered around to eat the meal. but instead of following the standard procedures of passover, he began to wash the feet of all the apostles, one by one. as he washed all of their feet, he said, "one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet but is entirely clean. and you are clean, though not all of you." (john 13:10). meaning like, all of them might be physically clean but morally, one of them isn't really clean actually, hinting at judas. after washing their feet, he announced that one of them will betray him. "and when they had taken their places and were eating, jesus said, ‘truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.’ (mark 14:18)

bit of a side note, this feet-washing scene is sometimes depicted in a very homoerotic and just, in a very intimate sense because like, jesus knew that judas betrayed him but still, he kneeled forward to wash his feet, knowing full well of the betrayal. it's paralleled a lot in other media, most notable, uh death note, with that scene with L and light. just to preface about the tension of judas and jesus of that scene like think about it !!

so the apostles were all scratching their heads, wondering who it could be. nobody suspected judas because he didn't have a bad reputation. peter (another apostle) asked for more info. this incident is narrated in both the gospel of matthew and john, the event in john is more dramatic.

version of john 13:26-30 goes

jesus answered, ‘it is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.’ so when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to judas son of simon iscariot.

after he received the piece of bread, satan entered into him. jesus said to him, ‘do quickly what you are going to do. now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. some thought that, because judas had the common purse, jesus was telling him, ‘buy what we need for the festival’; or, that he should give something to the poor. so, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. and it was night.

to summarize, jesus is like "whoever i give this bread to, after i dip it in this dish, that's who betrays me." and he dips the breath and just hands it to judas. after receiving the bread, satan entered into judas and jesus tells him to quickly do what he was going to do. judas leaves after that and the rest don't really understand why. since he was the one with the money, they just assumed that jesus meant to tell him to go buy something. so, judas leaves.

the version in matthew is a bit different from this. "he answered, ‘The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me.' the son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! it would have been better for that one not to have been born.’ judas, who betrayed him, said, ‘surely not I, Rabbi?’ he replied, ‘you have said so.’" key difference, no mention of satan. it's kind of a shame because like judas' kiss is such a huge thing all of the time and rarely is it mentioned that that moment had probably happened under satan's influence, but moving on from that.

just long story short, jesus did a new ritual with his other apostles, something i am not going into because this is a post about judas, not the last supper. it's the bread and jesus's body and stuff. so after judas leaves, he goes to the authorities who were planning to make his arrest and he knows that after the supper, the apostles will go to the garden of gethsemane. judas tells the authorities that whoever he is going to kiss, that is going to be jesus christ and they are free to take him into custody. so finally, jesus and the apostles come and judas greets jesus with a kiss. "at once he came up to jesus and said, ‘greetings, Rabbi!’ and kissed him. jesus said to him, ‘friend, do what you are here to do.’ then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested him." also, in luke 22:48, jesus said to him, ‘judas, is it with a kiss that you are betraying the son of man?’ i feel the need to mention that because i love this line for reasons.

the whole deal after that. the arrest, the crucifixion all of that. following jesus' death, judas also died and there is a bunch of theories on how he died, most of them being that he died from suicide because of all the guilt and remorse. in matthew, it says that judas went back to the authority people and in a fit of guilt, tried to return the coins he had been bribed with. the people wouldn't take it back because it was blood money. so he just threw the money to the ground and later, he hangs himself. acts 1 gives a more violent description of his death, which is a little different.

SUMMARIZATION because holy shit, this is a long post and nobody is going to read all of that. judas was an apostle, one of jesus' loyal followers. all of the apostles and jesus, on the road to jerusalem, stopped at bethany and jesus stayed with some of his friends. one of his friends, mary, rubbed some perfume on jesus and judas argued about it while jesus defended her. judas went to roman authorities people and told him that he would hand jesus over to them. before last supper, jesus washed his apostles feet and hinted that one among them was bad. the last supper, he explicitly hinted that it was judas. judas leaves, goes to the authorities and tells them that jesus will come to the garden soon and whoever judas kisses, that's jesus. jesus comes, judas kisses him, identifying him. crucifixion. judas regrets it, tries to return the money but cannot. he dies.

THAT'S ALL. if you read all of that, I am going to platonically fall in love with you. goodnight, it's 2 am now.

The kiss from Judas

...

[palestinianliberator]

To be Palestinian is exhausting

You will not find a single Palestinian who hasn’t had to endure all of the following and more:

Constantly having to prove our existence

[This is going to be a tremendously long post, but I implore you to read through what you can]

Constantly having to educate everyone around us on our history and people while we continue to be slaughtered

Constantly having to combat Israeli propaganda and dehumanization campaigns against us

Constantly having to combat liberal propaganda from those who simply cannot understand the pain and damage they are doing

Constantly having to defend ourselves from the overwhelming forces that stand in our way, from the Israeli forces to the global institutions that help support it to the structures in the US that mean that any Palestinian who dares speak out risk both their lives and livelihood

Constantly in fear of whether or not you’ll end up on another “list” as a result of daring to speak out

Constantly having to do it all again as soon as we’re back on the news

Constantly having to answer for all other Palestinians in a way that nobody else is expected to

Constantly being seen as the “crazy one” when trying to share your narrative, having to defend against an endless barrage of accusations of antisemitism

Constantly being put into situations by bad-faith actors who attempt to engage in “debate” or “discussion” or “dialogue” with talking points that demean and duhamanize you, all while being expected to maintain a smile and cool composure while someone literally debates to your face your own existence or how “actually it’s YOUR people’s fault you’re being slaughtered! Israel isn’t the bad guy here!”

Constantly being forced to choose between engaging in bad-faith debates framed in a way to make you look like the unreasonable bad guy while the person implicitly defending your ethnic cleansing is made to look like the “rational good guy” or looking after your own mental health, knowing that even refusing these “invitations” is itself a mark against you and your people

Constantly being told that you’re too “biased”, too “close”, too “emotional” about the literal slaughter of your people to be seen as a valid source, while Israelis and complete outsiders are given all the space they want to speak for us endlessly

Constantly seeing people being actively mislead and wondering if you have the capacity to reach out to them and attempt to share your narrative with them, knowing that if you don’t, they’re going to go on to propagate the same lies justifying your ethnic cleansing

Constantly having to combat GENUINE censorship throughout the media, social media, and society itself. It’s a fact proven by former Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube employees that Palestinian voices have their reach censored in a way no one else does, which is why it’s so important to amplify and actively share Palestinian voices rather than just liking or indicating support

Constantly being told you don’t know your own history by people who’ve educated themselves on Youtube and Wikipedia despite having lived the reality yourself and dedicating your entire life to studying every single aspect of it

Constantly seeing those who have the courage to stand alongside you being shut down with accusations of antisemitism and seeing them lose their courage to stand by you out of fear of their own image and livelihood and having to rush to their defense as well

Constantly having to see photos of your people, sometimes even people you know, maimed, injured, murdered, or burned to ash by Israeli aggression but knowing you have a duty to share what’s happening and must stomach the images to show the world the true extent of the suffering we endure

Constantly having to worry not just for your own safety, but the safety of your family and loved ones who can be punished or targeted because of things you yourself say

Constantly wondering who you can actually trust, from new friends and acquaintances to professors to even other Palestinians because we’ve been so heavily infiltrated by Israeli intelligence looking to blackmail Palestinians using anything from their sexual orientation or even made up “evidence” meant to ruin their lives

Constantly having your heart sink every notification you get wondering if it’s news that a loved one has been killed

Constantly seeing the corpses of loved ones shared on social media and reliving the trauma all over again, yet again knowing that you WANT the world to see what’s happening

Constantly seeing the effects this has on your own family and feeling helpless to do anything

Constantly on alert for the FBI at your door as they often “visit” Palestinians who dare speak out, myself included on numerous occasions 

Constantly wondering if your advocacy for your people is going to result in the loss of your job, scholarship, license

Constantly being asked to “humanize” and “feel for” those who live their lives day in day out completely unfazed by your suffering despite living in a society that couldn’t even FUNCTION without our subjugation

Constantly being told “don’t blame regular Israelis, blame the government!!” as if the state itself wasn’t founded on our ethnic cleansing, as if it isn’t “normal Israelis” who make up the entirety of the Israeli Military and have actively brutalized you and your people

Seeing allies you fought for suddenly SILENT when it’s their time to speak up

Studying on a US campus where those SAME SOLDIERS WHO ENGAGED IN YOUR PERSECUTION AND ACTIVELY SERVED AS THE ENFORCERS OF YOUR OCCUPATION then re-enact the trauma against you and you’re meant to simply ignore the fact that THEY ARE THE SAME PEOPLE WHO MURDERED YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY, and not being allowed to even be ANGRY at that

Trying to navigate this half-life in the diaspora where it’s a struggle to connect with other Palestinians given the distance between us and yet not being able to connect with anyone around because, again, they simply can’t understand

Constantly being expected to simply give up your time to those who demand you answer them and debate your existence and narrative with them, who them take you blocking them for your own mental health as a “victory” to be lorded over you when you simply can’t take it anymore

Constantly having to EXPLAIN all of this because nobody but other Palestinians can truly understand just how pervasive, overwhelming, and incapacitating this unique form of exhaustion is

Constantly seeing your erasure and ethnic cleansing defended all over the media, all over social media, throughout your academic career, while those ENGAGED in your ethnic cleansing have the audacity to claim that the media is biased against THEM

Constantly on guard with everything you say and write, knowing that unlike those promoting our ethnic cleansing, we don’t have the luxury of making mistakes or getting lazy in our writing and advocacy. One mistaken source, mistaken information, being imperfect is enough to discredit your voice entirely

The crippling obligation you have to share the narrative of your people, knowing that so many people will view you as the spokesperson of your entire people, knowing how unfair it is, but also knowing that if you DON’T speak out, nobody will on your behalf, and even the most well-intentioned, involved allies can simply never understand how it all truly feels

Seeing the entire world stand by and do absolutely nothing while your people are slaughtered time and time again

Seeing your history misconstrued by people implicitly defending your ethnic cleansing and settler-colonialism

Knowing that our parents have been through this and more, seeing them have to go through this yet again while still being forced to go about their daily lives and given no time to mourn or recover

Not being able to even share our culture without being attacked for it

Knowing that so many of your friends and family won’t ever be able to return to their homeland while foreigners from around the globe are flown into Israel free because it’s their “birthright”

A “birthright” denied to even my own parents, born in Jerusalem yet unable to enter it

Having even self-proclaimed “allies” question Palestinian resistance, policing our tone, never /really/ understanding our pain and anger and how they themselves contribute to it

Screaming from the moment you can about what’s happening to us, desperately trying to get people to CARE, and having it often fall on deaf ears

Knowing that if you’re not the source of information for those genuinely seeking to learn, they may find themselves mislead by sources that claim to be fair and balanced while imprinting subtle lies about Palestine and Palestinians on those they engage with

Not even being able to find the energy and ability to respond to genuine messages of love and support, which are greatly appreciated, and feeling bad about it because you don’t want to seem like you’re not genuinely happy to hear it

Feeling a sense of overwhelming exhaustion in times like this while at the same time being unable to sleep

Seeing the effect all of this has had on your people, knowing your people have among the highest rates of depression on the planet and yet we’re all suffering together with no way to ease the pain

Being constantly exposed to the ways in which your people are erased and questioning if you have the energy or sanity left to deconstruct such aggression to help outsiders understand the severity of it all

Seeing allies suddenly call for “peace” when Palestinians are finally fed up enough to rise up and fight back against an overwhelming military force

I could go on, but in case you it’s not already clear, I’m tired and exhausted

Always wondering if any of this is even worth it when the world has ignored your slaughter and ethnic cleansing for nearly 8 decades, knowing that nobody is about to step in to help now.

Constantly wondering if any of this is even worth it, and then feeling inspired by fellow Palestinians, our resilience, the fact that despite ALL of this and more, we continue to fight.

Despite all of this, I would never even consider or entertain the thought of being born as anything other than Palestinian

[fuckyeahisawthat]

I already wrote a long post about the siege of Jerusalem but there is something I keep coming back to about the fact that the historical event in which Yusuf and Nicolò meet each other is not just a battle, it’s a mass killing. It is a large mass killing (exact numbers are somewhat debated but we’re talking, like, on the scale of tens of thousands of civilians killed), perpetrated by Nicolò’s side, in which he is, at the bare minimum, complicit.

That is just...fundamentally different than meeting on the battlefield as armed combatants who are equals. It’s not just that it’s inaccurate to frame their meeting as “oh they were both equally blinded by religious hatred.” We can dispense with that fallacy pretty easily. One of them was a defender and one was an invader and those are not morally equivalent positions. But I think it goes further than that.

Like, at the point that he decides to stay and fight in Jerusalem, Yusuf may have had general (justified!) hatred toward the Franks for thinking they can just march in and take things that aren’t theirs. He may even have had specific hatred toward Genoese if, say, he’s from Mahdia, which had conflicts with Genoa within his lifetime. But after 1099 he has vivid memories of a specific and extremely bloody event, that he was present for, and like...that’s Nicolò’s side. And even if Nicolò himself wasn’t participating in the worst atrocities, he was part of the invading force that conquered the city and set the stage for that violence to happen. That is a big obstacle to get around on the road from enemies to lovers and I think it’s a thing that would be there, between them, resurfacing in various ways, for a long time.

At the same time, I do think they would have felt a connection to each other right from the beginning. Which was probably extremely confusing! Even if they don’t like each other, they are (as far as they know) the only two people in the world who are sharing this same weird experience that isolates them from everyone else they know.

(Personally, I do think they separate from each other after 1099, maybe even for decades. And I think they do still dream of each other, like a lot, during this time, because yes technically they have met, but they haven’t really “found each other” in the way they will eventually come to think they’re meant to.)

On Yusuf’s side, I think he might initially feel disgust, even revulsion, at the idea that some part of him wants a connection with someone who was on the side that did that. Is he a traitor for having feelings and/or attraction (whichever he recognizes first) toward someone from the other side, when the crimes of the other side are no small thing? Like, imagine having mysteriously compelling dreams about Nicolò (whose name he maybe doesn’t even know yet) in between having nightmares about Jerusalem and how deeply disconcerting that would be.

(Imagine later, at a point where they are at least sleeping in the same bed, Nicolò admitting that he also has nightmares about Jerusalem, admitting it reluctantly in a way that makes it clear he feels like he deserves no comfort for it, and how confusing that would be.)

On Nicolò’s part, I do think the way Jerusalem goes down would lead him to have a hard break with Crusader ideology. It’s hard to imagine a more pointed statement on what holy war really means than wading through blood up to your knees on the Temple Mount, which contains sites sacred to Christians, Muslims and Jews, and from which some of the goriest bits of the eyewitness accounts of the sack of Jerusalem come.

Atrocities like that tend to force people to one side or the other. Because no one wants to believe they’re a bad person, you have to do one of two things. You either have to say, well, I’m not a bad person, so all that killing I did must be justified, those people must have had it coming, and maybe they’re not really even people at all. And from there you can see how easy it is to get into a self-perpetuating cycle where the acts of violence and the ideology keep reinforcing each other and the psychological cost of admitting that you’ve been involved in something horrifying just gets higher and higher the longer that goes on. And that’s how ordinary people end up participating in genocide and justifying it to themselves.

The other option is that you say, wait, this is an atrocity, how did I, a good person, end up on a side that can do that? Which usually leads people to questioning and aggressively rejecting the ideology that brought them there.

To be clear, the second option is much harder! It’s painful to realize you were on the wrong side of history. Shame and remorse for your role in past horrors that can’t be undone are very uncomfortable. But that is like, the bare minimum psychological journey that Nicolò would have to undertake to become a person Yusuf could trust, let alone like and eventually love.

I’m sure this is a long and many-layered process for Nicolò, but I think he’d be pretty resoundingly certain after the First Crusade that he is done with that ideology. This is why I can’t really see him joining any of the later religious orders like the Templars or actively fighting in another Crusade. (And definitely not wearing any of that stuff in the modern day when it’s so heavily associated with white supremacy. In the movie I think it’s notable that the only thing he seems to hold onto from that time is his sword.) I can maybe see him tagging along with another Crusade specifically because that’s the only way he can think to find Yusuf, but not with any faith left in anything those people claimed to stand for. I think he does keep his Christian faith, but the idea of associating it with anything martial is just something that makes him feel sick now. (Yes, I know we see them in paintings of later crusades but for all we know they just inspired all the Renaissance “Christian and Muslim fall in love” stories.)

And like, we don’t really know what Nicolò was like when Yusuf first met him, but I think a lot of what he’s like in the present day comes from the fact that he had to go through an intense reckoning with himself and like, completely remake parts of his identity because he realized he’d been on the wrong side and that’s a path he doesn’t want to go down again.

[regina-del-cielo]

Immortal Siblings AU | Four, then three, then four again

I mentioned that the bulletpoint post describing how the Guard from the Immortal Siblings AU found Joe had totally run away from me. It has, in fact, become a study on them grieving over Lykon and then finding Yusuf. 

I have, somehow, reached a sort of natural end to the amount of bullshit my mind can add to this list/fic draft. So, if you want to give it a read... grab a snack. It’s long. I’m sorry.

Warnings for Wikipedia levels of historical accuracy - I added links to the relevant pages when quoting historical events, but since I was just trying to work out a timeline (famous last words), the research wasn’t extensive. There’s a lot of hand-waving.

By the end of the 11th Century, I think Andy, Quynh and Nico haven’t been in Europe for a while, not really. They moved south, and then east, after the sack of Rome of 410 CE. Seeing the great cities fall has become hard for them, especially for Nico, who is a nomad at heart but has a soft spot for cities, together with Lykon, the true city boy in the group. He’d seen it happen to Athens, he wasn’t sure he could deal with seeing Rome wilt.

For reasons I cannot fathom, my mind is settled on them having been in India when Lykon dies (possibly sometime around the middle of the 6th century, in the mess that was the crumbling of the Gupta Empire???)

Seeing him die destroys them, and they take a break from any battlefield to grieve their friend and brother. They wander, occasionally helping but almost never raising their weapons, too leery of injuries and of losing each other.

(Quynh, who was the first to notice Lykon’s wounds, has nightmares that make her cry in her sleep. Andromache holds her so tight Nico can feel the tension on her muscles against his back. He and his sister barely sleep, scared of the open spaces of Asia as they’d never been before. Lykon was the youngest of them and he died, what if they stop healing too?)

(If Nico stands guard over his sisters and feels an ache in his chest seeing how they hold onto each other, he’s never going to say it out loud. His Mache deserves the love she shares with Quynh. But sometimes he wishes he had someone to hold him like that, one he can call his heart.)

The first time they go to battle again like in the old days it’s almost the end of the 10th century, and they’re helping Quynh’s lands gain independence from China. They have a reason and a specific side to root for, and it’s the kind of cause Lykon would have approved of. They find purpose again.

They are distantly aware of how things are holding up in the west – they know Constantinople has crowned itself capital of the Roman Empire (what is left of it anyway); they know of the new religion, Islam, and how it was brought further east with the armies conquering Persia. They met the Varangians on the Northern Plains of the Rus’, when Andy insisted on going back to their steppes for a while.

They acquire new swords, repair the old weapons, make improvements on their bows. They travel, and help, and listen. They learn new languages. They heal.

They’ve just spent the winter in Samarkand when they hear merchants newly come from Constantinople talk about the Frankish armies that took Antioch and making their way further into Palestine. 

The words ‘freeing Jerusalem from the infidels’ make Andy sigh in exasperation and twist Nico’s guts. The three of them don’t really understand the point of going to war for a god, but Jerusalem is old, and she’s been coveted by many throughout their long lives. Things like this never end well, they know it intimately.

But they’ve been away for a long time, centuries at this point. Things are very different from when the Romans had the power. They are less eager to throw themselves into the battlefield now, and there’s much they don’t know about the dynamics of Europe and the Levant. Still they’re worried, and decide that they’ll move west to see if something can be done, for the civilians at least.

At first they travel slowly, keeping an ear out for gossip spoken by the caravans coming from the west. Things radically change, however, when they dream of a new immortal (a man, with a curly black beard and shining dark eyes) dying on the walls of Jerusalem and reviving to an unprecedented slaughter – said man is, obviously, absolutely terrified and they feel it.

He’s also woken up surrounded by living enemies, with high risk of being killed or injured multiple times, and of being seen.

They are still too far away to do anything more than hope that the new guy is clever enough to keep himself alive until they can reach him, but now Nico is all for moving west at full speed to get him out.

“What the everloving FUCK is happening over there?!” is the common theme in their thoughts; nothing about this war they’re walking towards is making any sense.

Yusuf al-Kaysani is, in fact, clever enough to keep himself (and a few other civilians to boot) alive and get out of Jerusalem when it becomes clear than no matter how many Franks he kills he can do nothing to stop them alone. (It’s a fucking carnage, and he’s so tired). He walks away from the battle and tries to reach some sort of safety in the desert.

When he’d decided to stay in Jerusalem and fight instead of escaping the siege, Yusuf had considered the possibility of dying. He had not accounted for waking up from a fatal wound with no sign of having been hit in the first place.

And then there are the visions. Or dreams, he’s not sure. They don’t seem to make any sense? Who are those people?! Is his mind so addled by the war that he’s conjuring scary warrior women and a stupidly handsome man, armed to the teeth and camping in the desert?

(fantasizing about handsome men in his sleep isn’t exactly news for him, but there were never women in those. And none of his usual dreams involved weapons. Something is definitely off)

For the following days, Yusuf makes sure to stay away from human settlements while putting as much space as possible between Jerusalem and himself – the last thing he needs is to become a potential target for any invader that may cross his path.

But he’s alone, having nightmares, constantly on edge, and in a body that suddenly doesn’t feel like his own anymore, since he doesn’t even have the scars to prove that the injuries he sustained were real to begin with.

After a couple of weeks, the appearance of the strangers in his dreams starts feeling safe and comforting; they seem to operate like a little family, and God knows how much he misses his own.

(should he try to go back home? Would news of the siege reach his family before he does? Would he be able to go back to his previous life in the state he’s in? Could he keep this secret from them? Would they still love him or think him a monster?)

Despite their impressive warrior appearance, they feel... kind. And gentle. Sometimes, it feels like they’re trying to reassure him, even. Especially when he dreams from the perspective of the man.

The sensation those dreams leave on his skin is like a cape. You’re not alone, it whispers. Wait for us.

Andy, Quynh and Nico have just left Baghdad when the dreams change, and not for the better - Yusuf was passing through a village when a band of marauding Franks started harassing the locals. He moved to defend the villagers, but was overwhelmed and what’s worse, the Franks saw his wounds close too fast. Their reaction was vehement: they called him a demon, incapacitated him and then brought him back to their garrison, with every intention of ‘properly getting rid of him’.

Nico wakes up screaming and Andy has to sit on him so he doesn’t just sprint ahead without actually knowing where the fuck he’s going.

“We can’t just raid every single Frankish encampment in a twenty mile radius around Jerusalem, Nico!” “TRY ME” *Aggressive Sibling Bickering follows* *Quynh doesn’t bat an eye and just rolls out a map of the area she purchased and starts mapping out the fastest routes*

Yusuf is having a Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week at the hands of his captors, who are getting disturbingly creative in their tortures, but whenever they let him fall unconscious he sees the people of his dreams travelling much faster than before, looking Royally Pissed Off, and the surroundings are... starting to look familiar too? 

If he tries to pay more attention to the conversations his torturers are having with each other outside of the tent he’s in and hoping the dreams go both ways, so the maybe-real trio can find him easier, now that’s nobody’s business but his own.

(spoiler: it works)

When they are in sight of Jerusalem, the immortals find a drunk “pilgrim” boasting about his band capturing a ‘pagan demon’ while coming back from their victory at Ascalon, follow him back to his camp, and as soon as it’s feasible they attack.

(Andy will later gripe that Nico didn’t leave her anything to do because he just paved his way through the Franks like he was harvesting wheat.)

seeing the Stupidly Handsome Man of his dreams standing in front of him covered head to toe in blood, with a double-bladed axe in one hand and a sword in the other, staring intensely at him as if to peer directly into his soul is... an experience for Yusuf.

(he may have composed a lot of poems about that first vision of Nico through the centuries. The words ‘avenging angel’ have been used quite profusely, too)

The protective instinct that Nico has felt for the newest immortal since the first dream clutches at his throat when he finally sees him, chained to a pole and so thin his clothes barely cling to his body, but with the softest dark eyes staring back with a glint of recognition when he comes closer.

(he could cry with relief at the knowledge that he’s not scared of him. Nico has seen the faces of the men that were keeping him captive, he knows he looks a lot like they did, and that he paints a gruesome picture.)

“Are you alright?” Nico asks first, in Greek. (He knows, from the dreams, that his captors prayed in Latin. He wants to make sure that the other knows that he’s not like them.)

“You were in my dreams. You came.” Yusuf answers back in the same language, although his sounds much newer than Nico’s.

“Of course. We’re not meant to be alone… and no one deserves to be in a cage”.

Nico uses the axe to break the chains, and by the time he’s done Andy and Quynh have reached them and his sister throws the keys at him to open the shackles.

“Couldn’t take a moment to get them yourself, little eagle? You wanted to show off your skills to the new one?” Quynh teases, just to see Nico blush. Andy stares at her brother and their new companion for a few beats, before finally asking his name.

“Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Al-Kaysani, known as al-Tayyib” he answers, letting out the first smile in weeks at the raising eyebrows of his saviours. “Just Yusuf is fine.”

“You have a sense of humour, brother. I like you!” Andy snorts, before cutting her palm with the edge of her axe, and showing him her fast healing.

“We are like you, Yusuf. That’s why you dreamt of us, and we of you” Nico adds gently, while Quynh offers her waterskin to Yusuf. They also offer their own names.

“We need to clean up this mess and move away from here” Andy says, while Nico helps Yusuf up. “One of those fuckers was boasting about an undying demon with others in a tavern, the last thing we need is to fight our way out against their whole army because someone else decided to come check if he was saying the truth.”

“It’s been a long time since we were in Kush” Quynh whispers, and Yusuf sees their faces open in a look of affectionate grief he remembers seeing on his Baba’s eyes when he talked about his own mother.

“We can talk about it more when we’re somewhere safer” Andromache suggests, before moving to set up the stage of an ‘accidental’ fire.

As they’re riding away, Yusuf turns slightly to watch the camp burn, leaving no trace of the invaders that hurt him. Jerusalem looms in the distance - lost, and wounded. If he were a little less exhausted, he could  easily work out a metaphor about his own situation.

But then he looks at the three people of his dreams – Quynh, Andromache, Nikolaos – that came for him. Who are the same as him, immortal.

His world has turned upside down, and there are so many questions to ask, and he could sleep for a month straight – but one thing is certain. 

He’s not alone anymore.