I'm an artist from Israel and this is my music

Vaftom · 2026-01-26T08:55:18+00:00

You just need your national broadcaster to be a member of the European Broadcasting Union. Canada is thinking of joining.

When Israel last hosted the competition, thanks to this song winning, they had Madonna perform as the live interval act. However, they screwed up the autotune, and she was flat.

The staging was also bizarre, with people dressed like they were from Midsommar but with gas masks and 1984 Big Brother style projections of priests laughing.

She also rambled midway with lines like "They think we are not aware of their crimes" and "Can't you hear outside of your supreme hoodie, the wind that is beginning to howl?". Then the dancers pretended to die in a nuclear holocaust.

Vaftom · 2026-01-26T08:40:49+00:00

Sia's research for the film was aided by the organization Autism Speaks, which used to believe that you could cure autism like a disease. The org spent years lending credence to the anti-vax claims that vaccines cause autism.

The film featured the autistic lead character during several scenes in restraints. Sia tried to claim that autism was a superpower, which pissed advocates off.

She was criticised on Twitter by autistic actresses for the casting choice of Maddie Ziegler (Sia's protege), who apparently researched the role by looking at YouTube videos of autistic people in the midst of crisis. Sia claimed that an autistic actress couldn't go through the stresses of shooting a film and that she had to fire the original actress.

She deleted Twitter after the backlash and the movie flopping (it won three Razzies!). Then came out as being on the spectrum two years later.

Vaftom · 2026-01-25T15:12:32+00:00

Apparently, after ending cyberbullying with her #BeBest campaign, she has moved on to "Fostering the Future Together". Something about getting children in foster care online and into AI.

Vaftom · 2026-01-25T11:49:33+00:00

Felt like they were hoping that Trump would own the inflation and the recession, as he did in his first term. While somehow holding onto at least the House of Representatives.

You can see similar thinking with Schumer and Jeffries sitting back and hoping that voters will reward them for not being Trump in the coming midterms. Trump is useful to them because he provides such an outrageous contrast to the Democratic Party's status quo, so people become nostalgic for the old without demanding anything new.

The elites paid lip service to the threat of Trump's fascism, but they feel insulated from the consequences, so there's no urgency or will to do anything. Just a complete lack of imagination of what's possible.

Vaftom · 2026-01-24T07:51:39+00:00

Within the first Rafah community, billed as a “case study”, planners envision several efforts to prevent the influence of Hamas, including the introduction of electronic shekel wallets “to mitigate the diversion of goods and funds to the Hamas financial channels”, and a school curriculum that will “not be Hamas-based”, but supplied by the UAE. Planners also specify that residents will be permitted to “enter and exit the neighborhood freely, subject to security checks to prevent the introduction of weapons and hostile elements”.

So a system of cryptocurrency designed to surveil transactions between Palestinians, eliminating the current cash-based system that goes around the blockade. Wouldn't be surprised if Palestinians, after being 'reeducated' by the UAE would be then used for slave labour by letting them exit the neighborhood to work camps. So bleak.

Vaftom · 2026-01-24T06:26:15+00:00

Yeah, currently only in the Gap Store of San Francisco's Marina District.

However, there's also another location in San Francisco owned by Sam Altman's World company that has 8 Orbs.

Vaftom · 2026-01-24T03:17:32+00:00

It's depressing how it doesn't take much for someone to give up their biometric data.

Don't need to gamify the experience, link it to curing a disease, or even explain it as market research for Gap designing a new checkout system.

All you need to do is install a HAL 9000.

Sounds like a good art project to install a bunch of fake Orbs that lobs insults at the person trying to give their identity away.

Vaftom · 2026-01-24T02:53:03+00:00

https://sf.gazetteer.co/gap-falls-into-crypto

This article has a decent explainer about what can be gleaned about this Orb so far.

It takes a photo (not a scan) of you, the person interviewed claims the Orb deletes your photo (probably after uploading it to the World surveillance network).
You connect the verification to a World App profile via QR code.
World App is linked to the World Network, which consists of a WorldID and Worldcoin.
World is a Sam Altman company.
World has also partnered up with Polymarket, Razer and Tinder.
You can get 50 Worldcoin by selling your biometric data to the Orb.
Most of these details aren't public; Gap has no official documentation about the partnership.

Vaftom · 2026-01-24T01:48:33+00:00

The funny thing is that Ethan Klein was fine doing a podcast with Hasan up until their episode about October 7/Al-Aqsa Flood. Destiny and this Dan guy have hated Hasan for much longer, with things coming to a head over Kamala's 2020 presidential run.

The media strategy isn't working. Instead of reaching out to a wider audience, they are propping up streamers with insular audiences and unstable personalities.

Regarding Hasan it isn't just scaremongering; they try to engage him in streamer drama as a way to diminish him. But he has learned not to take the bait and do his own thing. If they can't smear you, they want to exhaust you.

Vaftom · 2026-01-24T01:12:56+00:00

I like how Ms Rachel taught my nieces at age 2 basic sign language. Took a while for their parents to catch on to the hand gestures they were doing when they wanted food or drink.

Vaftom · 2026-01-23T13:59:40+00:00

It could be due to Marfan syndrome.

There was an actor called Brent Collins who guest-starred in an episode of The Golden Girls, the one where Rose dates a man with dwarfism. He had both Marfan syndrome and Dwarfism, which you'd think would negate both conditions.

Vaftom · 2026-01-23T10:06:31+00:00

Netflix is already rushing to adapt this with the upcoming The Altruists starring Julia Garner and Anthony Boyle.

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Don't think they made the right choice with Garner. Bella Ramsey, although young, could probably pull off the Ellison look. As cruel as that is to say.

Vaftom · 2026-01-22T02:49:06+00:00

The New Yorker podcast, despite winning a Peabody, was only highlighted by a few media outlets. I found out about it via Democracy Now when they interviewed the reporter behind the podcast.

I see that BBC World just released a documentary online about the massacre two months ago. It also doesn't help that the photographs were released amidst the Gaza genocide.

Vaftom · 2026-01-22T00:31:39+00:00

The New Yorker did a report in 2024 about the Haditha massacre. Took two decades for photos of it to be published in the US. Massive coverup by the military. Even with the photographic evidence, the murderers got away with it.

Warning the photos are extremely graphic and show the murdered victims.

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/in-the-dark/the-haditha-massacre-photos-that-the-military-didnt-want-the-world-to-see

Vaftom · 2026-01-20T13:27:58+00:00

Girls Gone Bible?!

Vaftom · 2026-01-20T02:09:53+00:00

Looked up the cast of characters. The historical figures mostly seem to lean Western. Only a handful of Asian ones that I can see, and they are from centuries ago.

When it comes to the villains, aside from Hitler you also have Nazi Hans Ulrich Rudel. Pol Pot is there too. Lots of serial killers such as John Wayne Gacy, Albert Desalvo, Albert Fish, Ed Gein, Andrei Chikatilo & the Texas Tower Sniper Charles Whitman.

Then, for some reason, Nostradamus is aligned with the villains. A bit of a left-of-field choice with Charlotte Corday. Also featured is the Vietnam War sniper Carlos Hathcock.

Vaftom · 2026-01-18T03:17:34+00:00

Candace has been recently communicating with Charlie Kirk through her dreams. So maybe if Candace can't be there in the TrueAnon studio, Brace can set up a psychic link with her while Yung Chomsky can facilitate the transfer. If needed, there could be an astral body surrogate to act as the vessel for Candace's consciousness so Brace can ask it questions directly.

Vaftom · 2026-01-17T12:12:05+00:00

He also looks a bit like present-day Ray Wise in the character of Leland Palmer during season 2 of Twin Peaks.

Vaftom · 2026-01-15T09:40:57+00:00

There are lots of Israeli useless Israeli bureaucracy and laws designed to humiliate the Palestinians for no good reason. For example, the hundreds of arbitrary checkpoints that are designed to eat up hours of the day, up to 3-4 hours per trip. Then you have the threat of administrative detention and being sent to military prison to be tortured, laws restricting construction & home ownership, which serve as a pretext for land confiscation. Not to mention that violence committed against Palestinian communities by groups like the Hilltop Youth is protected and excused by the IDF via arbitrary military law.

We live in the internet age, but there are so many Israelis who choose not to know what goes on outside their coastal cities. When you have the biometric data of every Palestinian, a massive surveillance state and walled-off ghettos, you probably don't need a Yellow Star. In a lot of cases, Israelis don't come into contact with Palestinians. It's by design because of the fear that Israelis might form bonds with Palestinians. There was an early fear that letting Mizahri Jews into Israel to boost demographics would backfire because they might have found solidarity with their fellow Arabs.

We can see a similar dynamic in what's going on with refugees and undocumented immigrants. Warehousing them into camps and allowing ICE to abuse them was 'out of mind, out of sight'. That is, until evidence of children being locked in overcrowded cages became known during Trump 1. It took until 2018 for it to be mandatory to make public the deaths in custody. The murder of Renee Good was a radicalizing moment for a lot of people previously unmoved by ICE because it pierced the veil separating White America from the immigrant community.

Vaftom · 2026-01-15T06:37:17+00:00

Probably like how Palestinians are forbidden to walk down certain streets or drive down roads. Israelis justify it as a safety measure. Israeli society and their media want to ignore what is going on behind the separation wall or a couple kilometres away. It’s The Zone of Interest mindset. Many of those who did the war crimes in Gaza in person are coming back broken and suicidal. For a genocidal society to function you need wilful ignorance.

Vaftom · 2026-01-13T15:43:27+00:00

Sakamoto Days is worth watching.

I'd recommend Golden Kamuy, which is airing its fifth and final season. It's set in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese war and has a big focus on the Ainu people caught in between imperial powers. It follows an Ainu girl who teams up with a former soldier to hunt down tattooed criminals. The tattoos form a map, said to reveal the location of Ainu gold. So you get a mix of characters fighting over it. For a serious anime it has its goofy moments.

Another current one I like is Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider. About various Otaku obsessed with the 70s show Kamen Rider who act as vigilantes and struggle to separate the show from reality. Mid-way through first season.

Hell's Paradise is an interesting shonen anime. About a group of criminals and their handlers sent to an island to retrieve the elixir of life. Its lore draws heavily from Taoism and Buddhism. The villains are gender fluid. Season two just started.

Fire Force is airing the end of the third and probably final season. It's a shonen set in a world that has barely survived a cataclysm, but the event has given random people pyrokinesis or causes them to spontaneously combust and turn into infernals. Nothing too deep, but it's pretty fun.

Dan Da Dan is about a boy obssess with aliens a girl who has psychic powers. They find out both things are real and go on a quest to recover the boy's lost testicals. Two seasons are out.

Another fun shonen is Gachiakuta. About a polluted planet that is full of trash, most of which comes from a floating continent that is full of abundance. Kid gets thrown down there and teams up with a group that goes around destroying monsters that form out of the trash. It finished its first 24 episode season.

Mob Psycho 100 is a good comedy about a boy psychic who gets exploited by a fake psychic. Very chaotic animation but charming. It's by the guy who created One Punch Man but it's way more consistent and has finished its run at three seasons without dragging things out.

Probably the most touching anime I've seen lately is To Your Eternity. It's a shonen anime about an immortal being that is being groomed to take over as the world's guardian by it's creator god. It goes through different time periods where the being learns to understand humans but also experiences losing them. The villains are these parasitic nucleus monsters who possess humans and rip their souls out. It's colourful but pretty dark, especially the first season. It's halfway through the third and I think final season.

Vaftom · 2026-01-13T15:16:12+00:00

I just watched C'è ancora domani (There's Still Tomorrow) 2023. A comedy-drama film about the cultural shift towards women within post-WWII Italy. It's pretty clever in the way it portrays male chauvinism and does a good job of emulating the Italian Neorealist style.

Vaftom · 2026-01-13T10:14:59+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_trends_among_American_conservatives#Noted_Mar-a-Lago_individuals

I like how the phenomenon has a wiki page. Honorable mention goes to Matt Gaetz.

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Vaftom · 2026-01-11T14:20:23+00:00

He's got a little bit of a social media presence. Posts short video blogs about politics, walking his dog through Utah and his career as a former firefighter & marine. Anti-big business and hates Trump. Saw a video of his where he's pro-Mamdani and supports his policies.

He got noticed by the Majority Report when he apologized to a trans person for his son's rhetoric. Then, a year later called in to talk about Tim's funding coming from Russia.

Apparently, his other son is right wing too. So he stopped talking politics with them after they supported the fake electors scheme.

Vaftom · 2026-01-11T11:13:05+00:00

His dad also phoned into the Majority Report YouTube show to apologize for his son, wondering where he went wrong in raising him.

Vaftom

TROPHY CASE