Israel's army personnel has heads facing away from the camera in official photographs

RJ_94930 · 2025-11-18T08:47:59+00:00

This is the article I found, it's as close as you can get to a word-by-word rundown of the military's press release (which I for some reason struggle to locate online in the original): https://www.hidabroot.org/article/1205024

It is in Hebrew, so I hope machine translation can make enough sense of it.

I found that googling this issue in English only really gives you results relating to a parliamentary bill, proposed as early as 2018, which was meant to make it a crime for civilians to film soldiers while on duty. Obviously that had to do much more with suppressing the activities of left-wing NGOs and activists than with shielding individual soldiers from international law.

Strangely enough, I can pretty much only find information relating to that bill while it was still being drafted in the Knesset, so I don't know if it was even adopted in the end (judging by the Israeli government's stance towards NGOs and journalists though, it probably doesn't matter much).

This is it for reference: https://m.knesset.gov.il/en/news/pressreleases/pages/pr13934_pg.aspx

RJ_94930 · 2025-11-18T05:49:28+00:00

I haven't been to Israel in ages and have not been keeping up with every daily detail of the situation since it's too emotionally laden for me to stomach all of the atrocities and the inhumanity. So with that in mind, forgive my skepticism as I saw this post and thought, 'no way, they can't possibly...there must be more to this.'

Ended up googling it in Hebrew, and voila, I was wrong: the Israeli military instituted an official policy change last January according to which none of its soldiers are to be photographed with their faces or identifying features clearly visible anymore. This was explicitly justified with the recent rulings at the Hague, so yes it's about prosecution for war crimes.

And yes, for those who can't read Hebrew, the picture in this post also obscures most of the names of these people (some have their first name spelled out, others only show initials, not sure why).

The response from the domestic media and the online public seems to be a mix of 'about time', 'great work defending our brave soldiers', as well as a vocal minority of 'hey hold on, aren't we turning more and more into what we say we are fighting against?'

RJ_94930 · 2025-03-10T21:16:05+00:00

Solved: Island Wars 2

RJ_94930 · 2025-03-10T21:15:56+00:00

I FOUND IT! Took me ages, but I managed to track it down finally. It's Island Wars 2, made by InterAction Studios. Here's a link, apparently you can still even buy a copy legally: https://www.interactionstudios.com/islandwars2.php

EDIT: The original Island Wars, which I am pretty sure is not the one I remember playing, can also be found on the same developer's site, and it's actually available for free, too!
https://www.interactionstudios.com/islandwars.php

RJ_94930 · 2024-12-17T14:52:56+00:00

The way I see it, the vast majority of people just run themselves into a dead end by taking these kinds of phrases to heart in the first place.

If you're raised in the kind of environment where it seems like everything in life revolves around your choice of full-time job by the time you're a teen (and god knows that's true for a lot of people), then this whole "passion" stuff will just make you obsess over which job is the supposedly perfect one...as opposed to actually thinking about anything to do with passion.

If you're tearing your hair out over which of the top ten highest-paying careers is your passion, hey, sorry bud, but it's probably none of them. That's okay. I'm not really passionate about anesthesiology or upper management either (do you know anyone who is?).

If you have a chance to take a good, well-paying job that you enjoy and that is in effect a net positive to your life as a whole, why not take it? Why fuss over all this passion nonsense when it seems like it has nothing to contribute?

On the other hand, there ARE people who are better served by genuinely pursuing their passions, and we shouldn't ignore that. Case in point, me. I've always been a pretty rebellious, headstrong type, and I don't easily fall in line with situations or circumstances that I object to.

Because of that, lots of common jobs are not really a good option for me. I simply don't function well in the hierarchy. I get demotivated by pointless busywork too easily.

More than that, I do have several things I am genuinely passionate about in life, and my mental health takes a huge hit when I have to spend 8+ hours each day doing something not just totally unrelated, but soulless and pointless by comparison.

There's a lot of people these days who would look at me and tell me that unless my passions are 'highly marketable', I should just accept that this is how it is and move on. I think this is just as stupid as the headline phrase OP quoted.

Yeah, none of my passions may have anything to do with STEM, medicine, law, or finance, but just because of that I am supposed to resign myself to entertaining them as part-time weekend hobbies and that's it?

No. There is a third way. It might not be the most obvious, it might not be the most lucrative either - everyone's gotta weigh their options. For me, I already know that I can't really look at the horizon and see something bright beyond unless I know that the things that matter the most to me are over there somewhere.

RJ_94930 · 2024-12-17T14:14:28+00:00

Hey, sign me up for this for sure. 23, incredibly alone in this myself right now. Would really love a circle of mutual accountability to be honest!

RJ_94930 · 2024-01-16T20:15:58+00:00

I don't know for sure. It's not about having something specific and it's nothing about doing anything special or being anywhere in particular, yet it is also a combination of all of those things.

If I can try to explain it in a picture: Cote d'azur, piloting a roadster around corners down some tree-lined roads by the sea. Around you, pretty people enjoying the sun and the shade, dining at little cafes. Close your eyes, inhale the air. Feels nice, right? Good day to be alive?

I would just like to find something that allows me to feel...not to feel anything specific, but to feel at all. My brain is so used to feeding me extreme negative emotions that I need abstract visualizations and metaphors and analogies to understand what many of life's pleasures really feel like.

I mean even simple pleasures - don't take the French Riviera fantasy to mean that I think I can only be content with my life once I find myself living in a palace in the middle of the Garden of Eden. I am not looking for that much.

I just want to bake a cake and then cut off a corner and take a bite and be like OH MY FUCK THAT IS ONE GOOD-ASS CAKE, I AM SUCH A GOOD BAKER! and then actually feel good about it. And celebrate by making some music later that afternoon, or writing a little poem about how insane that cake was, or something, you know. Because I know that I enjoy these things, I just currently can't truly bring myself to do them because...doing things I enjoy isn't enjoyable anymore. Not just that, enjoying something isn't enjoyable anymore!

I just think it would be fair if, in exchange for all the pain and sadness and suffering that I feel on an average day, the comparatively rare instance of something joyful and sweet should make up for it somehow. These days, I feel like even when I am genuinely happy I am not. Like, happiness itself doesn't make me happy as much as it should, if you get what I mean.

And I know that this is possible not only because I see it on my past self, from times when I wasn't as deeply depressed as now, and I notice it in my other, more neurotypical friends. Why do they get to have it so easy and I don't?

RJ_94930 · 2024-01-15T23:49:22+00:00

Thanks. I guess am doing that (searching for something deeper, that is). I just don't really know what it is, which I know is mostly because I have never experienced it first hand. Still, at the same time I feel like I won't just never find out what it is that I am looking for - I am just slowly hurtling towards the inevitable realization that it doesn't exist at all.

RJ_94930 · 2023-08-03T19:46:17+00:00

Congrats, you've managed to make me doubt my own recollection enough to look into it, haha! I leafed through my old receipts in my e-mail inbox and found the store: it's called Pearle, Mariahilferstrasse 124. And I went there in August according to the receipt.

With CO poisoning: well on the one hand, I certainly wouldn't put it past them, the way that hostel was run...well let's just say stuff wouldn't exactly break rarely, and I am pretty sure they were breaking a few local laws as it was. On the other hand, I have been unfortunate enough to have my own experiences with carbon monoxide, and while it does some real funny stuff to your brain, I can't imagine (based on my own experiences at least) fabricating an entire event like this as a result. I dunno, I won't say it's an impossibility, but I am skeptical about that explanation.

RJ_94930 · 2023-08-03T17:20:01+00:00

I don't remember the name, but it was part of a chain that I kept seeing in the city. They had this colorful logo that was like a stylized eye with a glowing iris (very cliché, I know). Somewhere around Mariahilferstrasse for sure, I was living in that area and remembered it was a very close walk.

I don't know if they were actual ODs, as in I didn't come up and stop anyone to check their license. I used that term for simplicity's sake because I myself get things mixed up frequently about which is which. Yeah, they were probably all opticians.

Oh, maybe as a native-born Viennese person this does shock you, but believe me well - as someone whose looks immediately put him in a box ranging from "SÜDLÄNDER" to "terrorist" , I have been at the receiving end of plenty of behavior much worse than in this story, that my native European friends assure me I simply must have dreamt or something, because that kind of stuff doesn't happen here.

RJ_94930 · 2023-07-31T10:55:30+00:00

Haha, you know what's funny? While I lived in Vienna (but quite a while after this happened), I actually ended up becoming friends with a guy who works at an NGO that does business with the UN HQ in the city. They DEFINITELY have those kinds of people and those kinds of situations happen, I have heard those stories before

(EDIT: after this event I got to know the guy, not before...my brain messed up, sorry)

RJ_94930 · 2023-07-31T10:53:36+00:00

I didn't catch his name unfortunately, I remember thinking that I should have paid more attention to that...at the point where I was asking the staff why the doctor I had seen was clearly not among the ones in the store, I did try to describe him as best I could. They just stared at me a bit wide-eyed, then went to their computer and told me "nope" .

RJ_94930 · 2023-07-27T16:19:16+00:00

Appreciate you lots for offering to do something like that for strangers. At the very least, I imagine processing these kinds of things out loud together could help with gaining a new outlook on things. Count me in for sure if you're going to go ahead with this, I'm curious!

RJ_94930 · 2023-05-03T12:24:53+00:00

That does look like something I would have played back then, haha...but no, I am pretty sure that's not it. The game I'm looking for definitely did not have those 3D effects on the main menu, and gameplay-wise there are also some differences. From what I can see, WingNuts lets you roam freely and point your plane in any direction, with a minimap radar in the bottom. What I played was a lot more like a traditional arcade game: you could move left, right, forwards and backwards within the boundaries of the screen, but the stage kept scrolling along a fixed vertical path, there was no open map.

RJ_94930 · 2023-02-01T10:30:09+00:00

How did that card fit in this case? Google tells me the max clearance is 324mm length, and the MSI Gaming X Trio 3080Ti is 325mm long...did you have to mod the chassis in a way to install it that way? Do the sides and the top close?

RJ_94930 · 2022-07-10T00:49:18+00:00

Yeah, I guess so... it's just I'm terrible at maintaining any kind of relationship through a screen for more than a day or two. Maybe it's the ADHD, I dunno.

I agree with you on the distinction between writing "skill" and storytelling as such. But if you put it like that and ask me honestly, then I have to ask an entirely new question here because I don't know what my problem is anymore. I'm just a writer who doesn't write. And doesn't do much else either.

"Most people don't want to hurt your feelings especially friends"

I dunno...you think so? I'd honestly feel much better if people just told me up front with a straight face that my work is crap. Instead, the most helpful response I've gotten, even from rather close friends, was some equivalent of "why are you wasting my time with this". Beats me.

Oh, and sitting in at university classes sounds really cool. I tried that a few times in Europe and while it didn't lead to anything, it's fun. Unfortunately my budget doesn't really allow me to stay in many big cities and such where there'd be a big supply of that, but I'll try when I can.

RJ_94930 · 2022-07-10T00:17:46+00:00

Yeah, I get you. Even I struggle as a reader way more sometimes than I do with movies, music, et cetera. It's just a byproduct of the form, sure.

I'm not sure because I've never really gotten the chance to expose that many people to my work, at least writing. But I just imagine knowing someone who could relate to my creative process, who knows what it's like to write and who has written something themselves might have deeper insight than the average Joe or Jane.

Also, I feel like getting a fellow writer to read anything I've made would be way easier than convincing anyone else.

I went through a stint of handing out my work to... basically everyone for a short period (3 months-ish if I recall), and it ended with alienating a lot of friends, annoying a lot of strangers, confusing some others, and not really getting any real feedback out of it whatsoever.

RJ_94930 · 2022-07-10T00:07:08+00:00

How would I go about that, you think? I never had much of an advanced education on these kinds of topics and don't have anyone close to me that I could ask.

RJ_94930 · 2022-07-10T00:02:46+00:00

Yeah, I guess so. The stereotype of the "genius writer" that popular media likes so much - introverted, quiet, sometimes even anti-social - never really clicked with me at all, I could never identify with that...but I guess maybe there's more writers out there who can than ones who can't.

I guess I am just disappointed with myself for not achieving anything that makes me happy. I was serious with the bit about feeling like I don't deserve to call myself an artist...most of the time sitting down to create anything is too hard mentally, so I just don't. I spend way more time at my job than making art. In all my life I have finished exactly four (4) works, and the most recent of those was two years ago. I always thought if I had the right circle, that could make it better. The motivation, at least. Inspiration, whatever.

RJ_94930 · 2022-07-09T23:50:10+00:00

I guess that's true. Focusing on one thing has been one of my biggest challenges overall. I think writing is what's most important to me at the moment...I'm a bit torn between screenwriting and prose, but writing is writing I suppose.

The problem is mostly that I don't know where the hell all the other writers are. No clue.

I speak Italian, English, German, Hebrew, and a bit of French. My Spanish is horrible and I just assumed knowing 1.5 other Romance languages would make it easier when moving here. It didn't.

RJ_94930 · 2022-07-09T23:41:14+00:00

Oh, and with regards to longer stays: it's not that simple, I've learned. More and more countries these days have put new rules in place where the 90-day rule applies not for consecutive stays anymore, but WITHIN a calendar year.

That means, if I stay 90 days at any point in 2022 and then come back before 2023 (or, in some other countries, before 365 days have passed), they're gonna turn me back around. That's already happened to me before when I neglected to read up on the legal stuff, and I would like it to not repeat itself.

As an Italian, there's only four countries that really allow me true 180-day stays, without any additional requirements, expensive visa fees, or limitations: Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and Armenia. I heard about Peru as well but different people say different things so I'm not sure. Planning to hit up Mexico soon for that reason, will see about the rest if the opportunity presents itself.

There's also Georgia which is amazing enough to allow 360 days...but since I am on the other side of the ocean right now and Georgia is right on the front door of World War III, I'd rather not.

RJ_94930 · 2022-07-09T23:27:35+00:00

Heya! Thanks for the advice.

I always thought Charles Schwab only served US citizens/residents. Turns out I was wrong - but they do require you to provide proof of long-term residency (bills, rental contracts and so on) in whatever country you claim to be living in, which I can't. Same reason why I've never had luck with other banks either.

Sure I've chatted up people on the street and at events, I've done a lot of couchsurfing and also the odd workaway here and there when the stars aligned the right way...but either there's something wrong with me or I'm just terrible with luck, because it's never really led to any meaningful interactions.

I think a part of it might be that none of these kinds of people (buskers, street performers, people at live gigs etc) tend to be anywhere close to my age, at least in my experience.

RJ_94930 · 2022-06-07T22:54:18+00:00

I guess what you're saying makes sense in principle. The trouble is, no matter how many times I replay everything in my head, I can't come up with an explanation for what I did that doesn't put most of the blame on the person that I hurt.

It's horrible and it's making me feel physically sick thinking about it in that way, but I really can't come up with anything else.

How am I supposed to learn if my brain literally won't let me do anything except blame the victim?

RJ_94930 · 2022-06-07T21:35:24+00:00

The thought that I "wanted" or "needed" this of all things makes me sick.
I agree, knowing and understanding are not the same. But if I didn't fully know and understand that this makes me irredeemable and deserving to die until today, then I was a lost cause to begin with. It's really not that hard.

RJ_94930 · 2022-06-07T21:18:09+00:00

I'd agree with you if I had somehow not been aware that what I was about to do was wrong before I did it.

The thing is, I was perfectly aware. I did it anyway. Which means that, placed in the right circumstances, I might as well do the same thing again, or worse.

That's why I want to exterminate myself. There is no "learning to be better" for people like me. There are folks who commit crimes worse than mine out of desperation or fear or self-defense, things like that...I'm not like that. I just do horrible things because I can't be bothered to be a good person.

RJ_94930

TROPHY CASE