The Darth Plagueis novel also added a ton of context to The Phantom Menace for me. It’s a long history of Palpatine and Plagueis that goes all the way up to the Battle of Naboo, so it really feels like you can see clearly Plagueis’ influence on Palpatine and his scheming. If I remember correctly, Luceno even does a couple of the scenes from the movie, with way more detail. I rewatched it after finishing the book and got a lot more out of it.

It has definitely become more obvious lately, but this isn’t new. Anti-Zionism has been conflated with Antisemitism for as long as I can remember. I remember being called a “self-hating Jew” more than 20 years ago, for probing the myth that the IDF was the “most precise and humane army in the world.” That was a common trope in the 90s and 00s, but has always been utter bullshit.

I was told I couldn’t be Jewish and called an “Arab-lover” for talking about my countless positive experiences being friends with Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslims in general. That they thought this was an insult just exposed their bigotry.

Terminology changes, but there is rarely logic to raw hatred.

If you have a general interest channel that includes most/much or your company on slack or something similar, you could post links to articles that explain the problems with relying on chatbots or best-practices for using them in a professional setting, and hope the person in question sees it. That way you don’t have to call them out personally, and the whole company can benefit from a reality check on how these things should or shouldn’t be used.

This is really well said. Throughout history, you can reliably find people on both sides of moral and humanitarian issues like this. There were Roman elite who spoke out against slavery in antiquity, there were Brits who mocked the American Colonies for owning slaves while founding a country based on freedom, there have always been men who believed in equal treatment and rights for women. Right and wrong is usually pretty clear, and in general regular people throughout the ages have been able to recognize which is which. Our values haven’t changed much, but our systems of power and accountability have.

That said, I also believe a good amount of the right wing backlash against the internment camps was performative. Because up until relatively recently, many racists themselves understood that their beliefs were terrible, so they at least tried to hide their true feelings and spoke out against obvious atrocities like this in public. But that was only so they could be accepted by the wider culture, and so they could continue to participate in left-coded spaces. They don’t need to hide how awful they are anymore because the president is leading by example.

Your whisky preference is indeed correct.

In the early aughts, I asked my high school history teacher where he thought was the likeliest place for a global conflict to start. His answer was Kashmir.

I’m all for contraception, especially for men since women have had to shoulder much of this responsibility for some reason, but can we please stop naming products like this after people? It’s confusing, adds a strange biblical vibe in this case (it’s not as clever as they think), and is just not a creative way to name a consumer product or drug.

Same goes for tech products like Alexa, Claude etc. Those are already peoples’ names, come up with your own names ffs. I knew someone named Alexa a while back, and she absolutely hated that shit. She felt like her name wasn’t her own anymore.

Yeah that’s very true…

Culturally? I’m not positive. Personally? Damn straight that’s a burrito.

When I make burritos at home, they’re almost exclusively made with leftovers.

Hell yeah! That’s a great looking burrito. Love cabbage salad. What’s the question?

This is state-sponsored terrorism. Absolutely despicably evil that anyone would wake up one day and think to themself “what should I do today….oh I know, let’s go traumatize some Palestinian kids by kidnapping and torturing them.” What the fuck.

What sets this government apart is the level of support and encouragement it provides to settlers, whether through supplying them with weapons or funding the creation of new outposts. This backing has enabled and emboldened settlers to carry out attacks on Palestinians, with the aim of displacing communities and annexing their land.

I wonder if I can still find my grandparents’ yellow Star of David patches…seems like I’m going to need it.

I like this idea a lot, but I wouldn’t want it to be an either/or setting. It’d be perfect if I could set my swipe gesture to hide on upvote, and the upvote button to just mark as read on upvote. Or even just a different swipe gesture for each, would be awesome. Usually I want a post to go away immediately, so I do a lot of vote and hide swipe gestures one after the other. But sometimes I’m weird and want to leave a post in my feed in case I want to go back to it.

Damn that’s a lot of cash. I like to carry some cash for emergencies, but shit, $3000??

Not only tiresome, which he really is, but he’s also just a stereotypical politician who talks in speeches and doublespeak, even in intimate settings, so you never actually know what he believes. Listen to him give an interview to a friendly reporter from a liberal outlet. He can barely answer the simplest questions without sounding like the most cookie-cutter mainstream Democrat. That’s not what people want anymore.

We need a down to earth candidate like AOC who communicates like a human being. Not a greasy rich white guy who talks like the most generic politician with no genuine values.

But I don’t want him to die, I just want him to go away and stop pushing himself on us.

Wow. That’s some seriously evil bullshit.

For me, if I read a post in a browser instead of the app, and then switch to the app those posts are marked as read, so greyed out a little, but aren’t hidden in the app. I’ve noticed it a lot, and it’s kind of annoying, but it may not be exactly what you’re describing. Pretty sure they persist as read but unhidden in the app even on refresh, which maybe is a bug? Hard to say.

Omg those pupils…better watch out, they’re definitely planning something evil…

Beautiful!

The Volcano Hybrid was my daily driver for the last few years, and it’s still one of the best vapes around, but I recently bought a Venty and absolutely love it. I produce the same amount of vapor as a full Hybrid balloon, with less flower. The cleaning really isn’t that bad at all, you just need a toothpick and maybe some alcohol. Though to be fair I didn’t realize how much plant matter would end up in the cooling unit, but once I figured out how it all works it’s super straightforward to keep clean.

Edit: I forgot to mention the two best things about the Venty: the adjustable airflow means at the highest setting it’s basically unrestricted, so it feels the same as pulling on a Volcano balloon, and the other is that it goes from cold to fully heated and ready to vape in less than 20 seconds. It’s wild how fast it heats up.