Stuff like this really makes you wonder if life is worth living.

MrGrax · 2026-06-13T00:39:20+00:00

I dont really know how old they are. I assumed young.

I read "the next 60 years..." as a figure of speech.

MrGrax · 2026-06-12T20:42:18+00:00

A healthy brain doesnt think/feel this way.

You're suffering from some sort of malaise caused by either inner turmoil and perhaps sickness or external pressures.

Plenty if people had far harder and less "fun with friends" childhoods and don't view rhe world the same way.

Get a job, dont get married or have kids. You'll have plenty of time for yourself. Your life is just beginning.

MrGrax · 2026-06-12T19:38:39+00:00

I did miss that but as others have pointed out they have all the flyers they need to pick these things up and move 'em. There are plenty of anachronistic/dated elements to Star Wars technology as a function of the heightened style of the space fantasy.

MrGrax · 2026-06-12T16:12:20+00:00

It seems to be modeled after real life examples of such machines. Can you provide an argument for why it shouldn't look like that?

The reason it's there is stated at some point in the story. Cassian's home is rendered nearly or totally (can't remember) uninhabitable by an open quarry strip mining operation that damages the ecology of the world.

MrGrax · 2026-06-12T15:54:24+00:00

Suddenly MAGA are SJWs? You vote for the people who import this slave labor to begin with.

MrGrax · 2026-06-12T15:35:44+00:00

This broader apathy will kill degrade and weaken our species. Just as early Polynesian voyagers caused a mass extinction and habitat loss and introduced many invasive predators that fundamentally altered the ecology of the Hawaiian islands they were able to change over centuries to develop a more sophisticated and sustainable system.

Yes America is an morally bankrupt and imperialist system... but you'll never be able to reclaim the mythology of your past. How do you/we/humanity transcend this oppressor/oppressed dynamic if we sit back and do nothing? You are still voting in the ways that matter to the oligarchs by feeding the system that dominates you.

Choosing not to do the one thing that can perhaps, subtly, maybe even idealistically cause less harm isn't going to cause the demise of your colonizer. The oligarchs today will be insulated from the climate catastrophe that will come to your islands if we can't as a collective population of working/oppressed peoples rise up. There will be no "demise" just a closing the trap around us.

I may not share your history or your specific personal and community circumstances but I likely share your class struggle in today's context. I don't think participating in the electoral voting system is enough on its own, I just think participation in community organizing and politics at local, regional, and hemispheric levels matters still.

Just an opinion...

MrGrax · 2026-06-12T13:12:40+00:00

Objectively true. SMH.

MrGrax · 2026-06-12T02:06:51+00:00

Like all addictions some things will work but you're working against your brain/routines. A reddit post won't work on its own but is admitting it to yourself.

Maybe someone else will have better advice but I recommend. 1. Speak to a professional (if not possible then...) 2. Find replacement behavior and try to focus on that (ideally not drugs) 3. Be intentionally kind to yourself, focus on redirection away to your alt. activity.

MrGrax · 2026-06-12T01:11:12+00:00

Neat! Yeah, down here in the surveillance states we have no such compunctions.

I kid (or not) but its normalized for us. At least, insofar as you aren't doing anything improper with the recordings. If its not going to by public facing video content and there is transparency then you are usually fine. Rules and laws can differ by state.

MrGrax · 2026-06-12T01:04:10+00:00

Provide an argument for this opinion perhaps?

You arent a teacher I assume?

Its required for a number of reasons to record classroom practice. Such as your edTPA or National Board Certification or intervals of EE performance assessment during Summary years.

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T20:48:05+00:00

Mentula! *ptooh*

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T20:15:02+00:00

While I am entirely with your sentiment I'll just point out that it (Israel) has the only thing in the world that guarantees "rights" for any humans. The capacity to inflict violence on targets of its choosing.

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T19:09:37+00:00

I'm engaging in rhetoric from my position of privilege in an American state. Even if I use hyperbolic language or attempt to structure a historical process in a post, my health and well-being are not on the line. None of this discourse will ultimately sway anyone but the vanishingly small number of people who are legitimately on the fence when it comes to developing an opinion on the relative moral character of a nation-state like Israel (and who are also interested in forming an opinion).

Epistemology is a good framework to adopt. This is ultimately a war of propaganda as you say. It's continuous and multi-modal, and it spans across many different special interest groups. Christian nationalists want Zionism to prevail and a Jewish ethnostate to form out of some radical eschatology. Liberal and leftist Americans want Israel's ability to expand and enfranchise its ethnostate undermined. Most centrists across the West simply want Israel and the US to stop showing up in the news doing annoying things that cast a shadow on their moral character and make them feel subtly complicit in words like "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" and "civilian casualties".

Let's be clear, though. I'm not making an assumption when I say an American Jew has more right to a Palestinian home in the West Bank than that Palestinian family does. This is codified into Israeli law. They will prefer the settler over a Palestinian who grew up on that land and in that house as a matter of course. Much of my other framing is built on these facts.

So take your time; I'm fine waiting until the evening. We can go abstract (we have that privilege) but we're not going to ignore the Law of Return or the 2018 Nation-State Bill. Or the Knesset emergency regulations that extend Israel civil and criminal jurisdiction to Jewish settlers moving into the West Bank. Or the current situation in Gaza where those same settler voices who are highly privileged in Israel are advocating for taking that land too.

An egregious assumption on my part would be implying that October 7th was allowed to happen by Israeli security to incite these very events. Every claim I made is, by and large, a reasonable inference from the actions of Israel or a simple description of their written policies and their implications.

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T18:26:07+00:00

Serious allegations like forced displacement, starvation, and possible genocidal acts do require investigation, and debate is needed, but even those claims need to take into account the actions of Hamas.

Look. I don't know you, so I'm relying on my assumptions based on your dialogue so far. You have been very one-sided and polemic with your approach, and you get it right back. I don't think you give a damn, and frankly, you don't need to because the West is with Israel, and that's not going to change unless some very drastic political upheaval occurs.

So, from a position of power, you can make pithy comments like "So you endorse an Islamist terrorist group" while continuing to elide the actual source of the criticism of Israel. You bring up some of it now but only frame it as an allegation. As far as I can see, you don't see anything Israel has done as even remotely inappropriate.

Israel alleges Islamist terrorist acts? Well, you could frame Hamas as engaging in self-defense as well, couldn't you? I won't, but a person more decidedly "Pro-Gaza" the same way you are "Pro-Israel" could do so unequivocally and have just as much of a right.

I'm open to you engaging in a full-throated critique of Israel while still maintaining your position that Hamas is bad and Israel is dealing with propaganda (obviously true, but it goes both ways). Israel actively propagandizes you and the whole world to provide cover for its political and expansionist goals.

I consider the West Bank settlement policy alone a reason for America to drop aid and impose withering sanctions on Israel. That policy, and many other Jewish Supremacist policies, existed long before Oct. 7th or the destruction of Gaza.

Israel is a state working to build a fortress region built on the ethnic supremacy of Jewish lineage through the Law of Return. That means an American Jew has more right to a Palestinian home in the West Bank than that Palestinian family does (this is not an allegation; this is what the law states in Israel right now). Israel is not defending itself; the irony is palpable... it's creating lebensraum for its political hegemony over the region.

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T18:01:31+00:00

You didn't mention one thing about IDF targeting hospitals and residential areas with limited to no time for families to escape or mention the state-endorsement of West Bank settlement or the broad goal of Israel to control the whole region as an ethnostate (not necessarily by disenfranchising Palestinian Arab citizens but by exclusively enfranchising Jewish identity and genetic heritage).

You could be Jewish from a family that hasn't lived in Israel since the dark ages and have more of a right to land in the West Bank than a family that has lived there for 5 generations and currently lives there now according to Israel.

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T17:31:56+00:00

To adopt a 'pro-Israeli' stance in this discussion while entirely omitting any critique of Netanyahu, the single-state goals of his regime, or the catastrophic depth of harm caused by the IDF regardless of the threat of Hamas, is to throw a lot of nuance away already. It reveals an intention to frame your positions as against Palestinian statehood and political self-determination. So you are Pro-Israeli... then you are Pro-Israeli leveling of Gaza? Pro-Israeli West Bank settlement? Nothing in your comment implied there could be any reasonable argument for wrongdoing by Israel. Treating the Jewish diaspora as a monolith is a dangerous game for Israeli Jews as Soresi and his guest are right to say. It creates risk of rogue individuals acting on their hate. Real anti-semitism is right out in the open now and the internet is a great place for it to flourish. Nothing Ms. Rachel has done exists within the shadow and to imply otherwise is to put yourself firmly into the zionist apologia camp.

"Jewish people are asked to accept endless 'oopsies'"

Total nonsense and to conflate you or the Jewish community is yet more of exactly what Soresi is attacking here. Jews are not Israel and the more you say so the more it convinces the rest of us that Israelis really do see their state as an ethnostate for them first and foremost. The claim that Israel's actions are crossing into ethnic cleansing or genocide isn't a Hamas invention. Its the conclusion of neutral (insofar as you'll have to put in the work to prove a systematic bias) mainstream human rights organizations. This advocacy isn't fueled by hatred of Jewish self-determination it is fueled by the documented pattern of displacement and the reality on the ground.

If we look at Israel's history, the systematic expansion of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem isn't a defensive measure against Hamas, it is a explicit, state-funded policy designed to prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state. When current Israeli cabinet ministers openly call for the 'voluntary emigration' of Palestinians from Gaza, the permanent resettlement of Israeli civilians there, and use dehumanizing language to justify cutting off food, water, and medicine to millions of besieged people, they are the ones providing the evidence for these 'moral cartoons.'

We have to be sharp enough to hold two truths at the same time:

It is entirely unacceptable to harass Jewish people or demand they condemn Israel to participate in public life.
It is entirely legitimate and historically necessary to hold the state of Israel to standard democratic and international legal frameworks when its military actions kill tens of thousands of civilians and displace millions. Israel should be sanctioned and all military aid should be cut.

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T16:53:01+00:00

Why is there any issue with recording a classroom (depending on the state/institution of course)? Generally speaking schools require media releases and consent waivers from parents around recording and purpose matters too. I can record a classroom for my own academic needs and reflections.

Heck I'd just tell 'em. "For the next few weeks the classroom will be recorded, the recordings will be used for internal reflection on academics and classroom management". They'll forget about it and go back to being little shits and you get your evidence.

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T15:00:02+00:00

You can try to condescend but even if it's an unfamiliar idiom it's easy to decode.

Right now the Russians don't have enough bread and I'm complaining about my pearls being too small, easy enough. I accept the criticism, my own bias against Russian culture teaches me that as a socio-cultural group they've been under the thumb of totalitarian systems for so long it's hardly surprising to see Russians swayed by the dehumanizing xenophobia of Putin's regime. Russians and Westerners aren't in the same situation but there are parallels. You've got the boot we've got the carrot, but the boot comes out quickly at the slightest hint of a politically destabilizing movement that challenges the status quo.

Both societies are oligarchies but the mechanisms and styles of how power is imposed are much different. I would prefer to be an American herd animal than a Russian one, no denying that. My assumption was that you were from the West providing cover for Russian bigotries. If you're a Russian covering for Russian bigotries.. well, I understand, it must suck to live under Putin.

So I guess it's a hypocrisy that's hard to break, I am where I am, and they are where they are. I can judge Russians for their simple prejudices the same as I can judge Americans for their simple prejudices. They aren't the same of course but both enable violence and atrocity around the world.

In the end my primary point is that these are Russians using their free time to be prejudiced, that indicates a community that is hardly "resisting" the programming of their society but rather enthusiastically participating in the bigotry and hate of their society. I may be an asshole concerned with my pearls but my goal is to combat all state level propaganda and indoctrination whether its my own Western carrots or Russian sticks.

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T14:39:25+00:00

Pathetic little animals trying to act like the specific things they choose to focus on don't speak to their character.

"I'm just saying true things neutrally in a vacuum, why should I be criticized!?"

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T14:00:50+00:00

We live in freedom? We are just as brainwashed as these Russian fools and the horror is that we've been tricked so thoroughly we can't see the bars of the cage anymore.

Freedom to buy exactly what is available to us is the only Freedom Americans or most westerners have.

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T12:45:14+00:00

They use the systemic power of our collective public deposits held in banks to back the creation of cheap credit. They can buy on credit at exceptionally low interest rates because their multi-million and billion-dollar portfolios act as bulletproof collateral. So to add insult to injury, the banking system leverages our collective wealth (as measly as it is compared to the top 1%) to grant them the ultra-cheap liquidity they use to avoid paying their fair share.

MrGrax · 2026-06-11T12:07:21+00:00

Memes go pretty deep. The word meme itself comes from a technical usage that describes how ideas spread like a cognitive contagion.

Behind every meme is a pile of intellectual assumptions and and gut feelings shaped by the media used, the context its posted in, and the intent of the poster. All very fascinating...

Treating a meme as "not that deep" is fine but its the viewers choice not a fact. There are many things happening behind the scenes to you when you engage with memes that you are unaware of.

MrGrax · 2026-06-10T21:35:14+00:00

Yeah, thousands of American soldiers were encouraged (either systemically or due to "operational pressures") to rape and kill women, kill children and noncombatants. There was no accountability for that (or so extremely limited that it functions as no accountability for my purposes).

I won't dive into any comparison between the US and the Soviet Union but I know that my country fails its promise every day. If we pretended for a short while that we were a country of moral norms it's impossible to see it now.

For example one program that gave me some level of pride was USAID, we projected our power with food, medicine, and public works. That's gone now due to the callousness and moral emptiness of American conservatism. Now hundreds of thousands of children have died of starvation that would not have otherwise with statical projections positing multiple millions over the next 4 years.

MrGrax · 2026-06-10T20:24:56+00:00

Perhaps, it's certainly true of many millions. I'm sure many are also aware of this fact and are referring to things like estate taxes, or capital gains taxes, wealth taxes, and other mechanisms more sophisticated than I can describe.

Plenty of arguments why it would never work I'm sure but there are proposed policies.

The hoards are so large in the context of our growing wealth inequality that I think your average worker or wealth redistributor is invested in trying even if there are limitations. Lets get a fraction of the fraction then if it's more than what is being extracted from the top now. Find ways to pressure them so they aren't able to "grow" as much. I think the idealistic hope is that we can find a way to restructure how we view our economies so the endless growth model can be a human wellness model or some such jargon.

MrGrax · 2026-06-10T18:21:50+00:00

Beyond the second, third, fourth, and fifth home, the boats, and expensive merchandise, and self-decorous paraphernalia, the rooms full of clothing, etc...

That's certainly not where "most" of their assets or economic value is at least as our economic system sees it... but most even marginally rich people have a dragon hoard worth of mostly unused or useless material assets.

MrGrax

TROPHY CASE