AHUS

My reaction to NYU’s guidance letter:

@ResilienceX3 @naziejoon 😩😩😩

White ppl really only scared of equality

#simplemath #believewomen and condemn men for upholding #rapeculture #toxicmasculinity #misogyny #misogynoir #sexism #patriarchy *sticker via @AmericaHatesUs

Barack moving like them abusive parents that try to be good people when they start hitting they 60s

Nothing has changed as far as Black people being murdered by police, by the way

Nothing about this dystopia feels natural. We all sense it deep in our marrow. We all know something has gone terribly wrong. If you lived in an alternate reality without wars or poverty, where everyone had enough and governments did what’s in the interests of the people and the ecosystem, it would never occur to you that there was anything odd about this. It would feel completely normal. Things would be more or less how you’d expect them to be. You can’t say the same about the present status quo. The whole thing instinctively scans as weird and counterintuitive. The more you learn about the way the world works, the more insane it all looks to you. Have you ever had to explain war to a young child? It’s terrible. If you’re actually honest with them about what war is and why it is waged, it completely shatters their understanding of the world. They look at you like they’ve suddenly been transported into a strange alien universe where everything is backward. Their reaction is correct. That is the sane and normal way to look at war. All the freakish mental contortions we do to try and normalize it is what’s crazy. Everything about this dystopia is like this. If you could see it all with fresh eyes, you would scream in horror. The only reason anyone finds any of this tolerable is because we have become desensitized and accustomed to the madness. Seeing somebody sleeping on the sidewalk should feel like a punch in the stomach. Seeing children killed by bombs on your social media feed should stop your whole world. The fact that there are plutocrats profiting from war and militarism. The fact that billionaire corporations are integrating surveillance technology into every facet of our society. The fact that we’re destroying our biosphere and driving families into poverty to maximize shareholder value. The fact that oligarchy has turned democracy into a sham where our votes don’t make any real difference. The fact that there are people in the global south who are living like slaves so that those of us in the imperial core can have cheap bread and circuses to keep us docile and distracted. We all know deep down inside that these are intolerable abuses, but they’ve been so normalized and compartmentalized in our psychology that it all just fades into this kind of eerie dissonance in the background of our attention. The more conscious you become of what’s going on in the world, the more that dissonance moves into the foreground, and the less tolerable this dystopia becomes for you. As Terence McKenna said, “The cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation.” And that’s a good thing. Injustice and abuse should not feel tolerable. We should allow our discomfort with this intolerable situation to drive us to action and resistance. And as uncomfortable as it can feel to stare into the unmasked face of the empire in all its beastly fury, this clarity also brings with it a degree of relief, because when it comes online you finally understand why nothing has ever felt right about this civilization you were born into. You understand that your intuitive discomfort and revulsion you felt as a child at the madness you were being indoctrinated into accepting was one hundred percent accurate, and that everyone who taught you to accept the unacceptable was wrong. Trust that childhood intuition. You’ve always had the truth inside you. Let it guide you as you read and inform yourself to help your mind catch up with what you already know in your heart. Let your heart inform your mind, let your mind inform your actions, and let your actions help awaken humanity to the truth we’ve been hiding from ourselves all these years.

Two Americas

Saturday reminder:

Using facial recognition tech, the Knicks surveilled a trans woman, tracking her every move out of fear she'd show up on MSG's tv broadcast And they can do it to any "enemy" of Jim Dolan, who's built his own deep state. From @NoahShachtman & me @WIRED wired.com/story/madison-…

Seems like a good time to remind Australians that our prime minister was the first world leader on earth to applaud and endorse the US-Israeli war that's about to cause a major fuel crisis in our country.

if i died and went straight to hell, it would take me a month to realize i wasn't at work anymore

You know what's really embarrassing about this conflict? Iran has a 90 percent literacy rate while 50 per cent of the US reads at the 6th grade level or below. Iran sent Phds to the ceasefire talks. The US sent realtors.

We keep hearing how Iran "killed its own people" and never how America kills it's own people. 68,000 of us are killed every year by a predatory for-profit health insurance system. Each and every year. 68,000 Americans dead because we don't have Medicare for All. Who's going to come and liberate us?

One man logging into “rape academy” should be enough for everyone to be concerned.

For those setting fires to warehouses, we all wanna let you know:

Mothers in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran love their children as much as you love yours.

Yall remember that McDonald’s hot coffee case a few years back? Where a woman sued the restaurant because her coffee was too hot; she won a couple million bucks; and everyone said the result was an indictment of the American legal system, because people shouldn’t be so litigious. But, in reality, the plaintiff in that case suffered horrific, life altering burns across 20-30% of her body, which required several days in the hospital, multiple years of disability, and skin grafting operations. The Alani case *may* prove to be a similar story. The lawsuit doesn’t say “kid drank caffeine. Kid died. Money please.” The allegations are that the company which distributes and markets Alani, falsely labels it as a heath and wellness drink— particularly targeting that advertisement to kids via things like influencer campaigns (which are more likely to have a younger audience). Despite this marketing, the drinks have significantly more caffeine than the rest of the market (having 200mg of caffeine, compared to 160mg in Monster, or 80mg in Red Bull). Equally, the girl who passed away had no preexisting heart conditions, and there’s plenary evidence that she was swayed by the aforementioned marketing. The case isn’t 1:1 with McDonalds and the coffee— hell, the causes of action that are most likely to carry the day, aren’t even the same. But the perception of the cases, certainly rhymes. To the extent that people want companies to behave ethically and safely (which is something we all want), lawsuits like this serve the purpose of sitting down lines as to the proverbial rules of the game. At why point does influencer marketing towards kids, on a product that is even labeled as being dangerous for kids— start to run afoul of law and common sensibilities? Honestly, that’s not my place to answer— it’s the jury’s. Everyone can have their opinion on whether this type of conduct is okay. But, the lawsuit is far from frivolous, or shaking a money tree.

@DavidDTSS @ClarissaMBrooks Happy born day, my G.

40.

We normalize mass shootings at people’s places of employment but a warehouse of toilet paper being burned sends shockwaves. Very unwell society.

What happened to all those Venezuelan “drug boats”? Funny how we don’t hear about them anymore.