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Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the ICC
“You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.” An investigation by the Guardian and the Israeli-based magazines +972 and Local Call details an almost decade-long secret “war” against the International Criminal Court.
Hamiltonを日本語で
Please enjoy “My Shot” from Hamilton in Japanese, translated and performed by actor and musical translator Gen Parton-Shin (辛 源).
🌈🐕ciao
窓からは柔らかな光が射し込み、Kabosu, the beloved Shiba-Inu behind the globally popular Doge meme, has passed away peacefully at home today at the age of 18.
[Soft light streamed through the window]
窓の外では鳥たちが歌う美しい朝に、
[Outside, birds were singing on a beautiful morning]
私に撫でられながら眠るようにそっと逝きました。
[As I petted her, she passed away gently, as if falling asleep]
長い間かぼちゃんを愛して下さったみなさま、本当にありがとうございました。
[To everyone who has loved Kabo-chan for a long time, thank you very much]
かぼちゃんは世界一幸せな犬だったと思います。そして私は世界一幸せな飼い主でした。
[I believe Kabo-chan was the happiest dog in the world, and I was the happiest owner]
The real life Lady Whistledown scandalised 18th-century society
The Guardian: Like the fictional pamphlet from Bridgerton, Eliza Haywood’s The Parrot, published in 1746 (here in archive.org) , has a distinctive, mocking voice that punches up and “speaks truth to power”. Now, a new book will republish Haywood’s funny, subversive periodical, which she wrote from the perspective of an angry green parrot, and seek to raise awareness of her groundbreaking work.
A prolific anti-racist, proto-feminist writer, Haywood used her transgressive newsletter to expose 18th-century hypocrisies about race and gender. It was published weekly over nine issues.
David Bowie Serious Moonlight Tour Full Show
David Bowie Live | 1983 | Sydney | Serious Moonlight Tour | Pro shot | Complete Concert [1h50m] "On the 20th November 1983, David Bowie performed his final Australian concert of the Serious Moonlight tour. This Betamax recording was taken from a sight screen feed made at that time. The first couple of numbers, plus the end have some artefacts but, as it hasn't been viewed in nearly 40 years, the quality overall has held up well. The audio was in mono and has been remastered to bring it out more."
The Sympathizer: Give Us Some Good Lines
As a reluctant consultant on a Hollywood film, the Captain navigates the egos and personalities of an increasingly chaotic production.
The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Martha and the Vandellas and so many more
Motown Junkies
is a blog where Steve Devereux is reviewing the entire Motown singles discography in sequential order from the beginning. You can also browse tracks by songwriter, label and artist. He’s currently up to 1966, though he’s been on hiatus for a few years. He also used to present Discovering Motown on Radio Cardiff, and the archive is on Mixcloud.
The Sympathizer: Good Little Asian
As he adjusts to life in Los Angeles, the Captain is forced to find someone to implicate when the General begins to suspect a mole.
Revolution in Tennessee
The NLRB announced tonight that UAW won a historic union election at Volkswagen in Chattanooga Tennessee. The union won by a margin of more than 70% as votes [continued] to be counted. With labor shortages throughout the manufacturing sector, many of the workers hired by Volkswagen were much younger and more diverse. Some had even moved from more pro-union parts of the country to work there.
“It’s a totally different ball game,” [Renee Berry] said. “The atmosphere is different. You see more pro-union than anti-union [workers]. A whole lot of people who were anti-union in the past have switched.”
No Tech for Apartheid organizers fired
In an internal memo Wednesday, Google announced the firing of 28 employees in connection to a protest of Project Nimbus. The previous day inside Google offices in New York and California, a couple dozen employees staged a sit-in to bring awareness to the $1.2 billion Israeli government contract. It began in 2021 and provides cloud computing services to Israel—specifically, we’ve recently learned, to the Israeli Ministry of Defense—and though it has faced internal criticism since its inception, efforts against it have naturally intensified since October 7th.
The memo from Google’s global head of security Chris Rackow was ominous. “If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies,” he wrote to the company’s thousands of employees, “think again.” From Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket.
"...If you love a story, let other people know!"
A Bronx Teacher Asked Tommy Orange to Visit His Class.
“In our 12th-grade English classroom, in our diverse corner of the South Bronx, in an under-resourced but vibrant urban neighborhood not unlike the Fruitvale, you’re our rock star. Our more than rock star. You’re our MF Doom, our Eminem, our Earl Sweatshirt, our Tribe Called Red, our Beethoven, our Bobby Big Medicine, our email to Manny, our ethnically ambiguous woman in the next stall, our camera pointing into a tunnel of darkness.”
A Native Solution To Vancouver's Housing Woes
Vancouver, BC has been dealing with a major housing crunch for years due to a number of factors. But the Squamish First Nation has an answer - Sen̓áḵw, a major urban mixed use development on Squamish land in the Vancouver metro area - which means that it can be developed bigger and denser than Vancouver regulations would allow...and without NIMBY interference. (SLMacLean's)
"When will I lose all of this?"
In Gaza, death seems to be closer than water
- Maha Hussaini: 'During one of the relatively ‘safe’ times in Gaza, around the summer of 2022, I sat on a comfy couch, soft music playing in the background, a cup of cold fresh orange juice in my hand, and I thought: "When will I lose all of this?"' || Gaza as Twilight of Israel Exceptionalism (by Raz Segal & Luigi Daniele) - The very different ways in which Holocaust scholars, on the one hand, and those working in Genocide Studies, on the other, have responded to the unfolding mass violence in Israel and Palestine after 7 October point to an unprecedented crisis in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. We argue that the crisis stems from the significant evidence for genocide in Israel’s attack on Gaza, which has exposed the exceptional status accorded to Israel as a foundational element in the field, that is, the idea that Israel, the state of Holocaust survivors, can never perpetrate genocide || Killed in Gaza database (you can search either in English or in Arabic) || CNN visual presentation of dead children
History of Lettering Comics
The Art and History of Lettering Comics
is available free on letterer Todd Klein's blog. Originally planned as a print book, he's posted the whole thing online. From the early 1900s to today, Todd covers the evolution of word balloons, special effects lettering and comic book and newspaper comic letterers known and unknown and much more.
HBO and David Peterson De-Arabize Dune for the Screen
Writing for the New Yorker,
Manvir Singh asks whether the removal of Arabic elements from the language of the Fremen by David Peterson (the creator of Dothraki and other constructed languages) has more to do with making the language "realistic" or with Hollywood's inability to portray Arabs—especially desert-dwelling Arab freedom fighters—as good guys, rather than as terrorists.
A Closer Look at Self-immolations in Freedom Struggles
Dying in the Truth:
Self-immolation is an unthinkably costly and tragic method of last resort sometimes used by those striving for justice and freedom in asymmetric conflicts. The first person to perform this fiery protest as a modern political tactic is Thich Quang Duc, who sat in the lotus position at a busy intersection in Saigon in 1963 and set himself on fire to decry Buddhist suffering under a pro-Catholic regime. Since the birth of the tactic in 1963, the world has witnessed some 3,000 incidents of self-immolation, according to sociologist Michael Biggs. About 160 of these occurred in Tibet between 2011 and 2018, marking one of the greatest waves of suicide protests in history. Considering the extent of the practice, we, scholars and practitioners of nonviolent resistance, must ask ourselves: Why do some people prefer to die in the truth, rather than to live in a lie? And does the involvement of death, in and of itself, automatically place any tactic in the camp of violence?
enter the garden! 🌱
mixtapegarden.com is a collaborative mixtape making site. Make an account, make a mixtape, & then you (or anyone else!) add 7 YouTube videos to it. Once the 7th one is added, it's converted to a single, crossfaded MP3 you can stream or download! (by @tobyalden)
Joe Sacco: The War on Gaza
The War on Gaza.
The cartoonist Joe Sacco uses his medium to illuminate the plight of people in trouble spots and war zones throughout the world. His acclaimed books, researched during Sacco's long visits to these places and his many interviews with those affected, include Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza and Safe Area Gorazde. Today he begins a new series of short online strips titled The War on Gaza.
24 for 24
Happiness journalist Gretchen Rubin's 24 for 24 is a fun way to rethink the usual new year resolutions. She's doing a #Write24in24... what's the Metafilter 24 in 24? What's yours?
experiencing diaspora as an unexpected concentration of connections
There are foods I don’t associate with a specific memory so much as with the act of remembering. If all my favourite breakfast foods were laid out before me—smoked salmon and capers, ful mdammas, soft goat cheese and honey—I would reach for labaneh and zaatar first.
Read Palestine Week - Nov 29-Dec 5
Palestinian books shared this week by their publishers.
These are free to read at the publisher sites, and cover a diverse array of genres, ideas and languages, with more activities planned and shared from over 400 publishers. As Kazuo Isiguro said: "But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?"
This sweeping history starts back in 1799 with Napoleon
Al-Nakba
A four part video series on the Palestinian ‘catastrophe’ of 1948 that led to dispossession and conflict that still endures. Scroll down for the videos (4X 45 min) First aired in 2008.
"A similar purpose when they cook: to keep their heritage alive."
"There is no singular Palestinian cuisine.
Palestinian food spans our entire geography, from the mountains of the Galilee to the valleys of the south, from the coast of Yaffa all the way to the West Bank."
New Pack of Endangered Gray Wolves Discovered in California
New Pack of Endangered Gray Wolves Discovered in California.
The pack, which consists of a mother and her four offspring, is now the state’s southernmost wolf group. "California has reached another exciting milestone in gray wolf recovery with the discovery of a new pack in the southern Sierra Nevada," Pamela Flick, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife, says in a statement. "This recently detected group of wolves is at least 200 straight-line miles from the nearest known California pack and demonstrates the species’ amazing ability to disperse long distances and take advantage of the state’s plentiful suitable habitat."
“Don’t speak of how women can’t become heroes”
Qiu Jin was a Chinese feminist revolutionary
[archive link] beheaded by agents of the Qing empire in 1907, becoming a martyred hero to her cause. She was also a poet, and Canadian translator (and SF writer) Yilin Wang has been publishing new translations of her poetry in various venues. For more about her approach, you can read her essay about translating. These new translations have been widely appreciated, including by the British Museum, who stole them and published without attribution or compensation.
Time for a reset
I feel like variations of this question have been asked before, but here goes. I have the chance in a few months time for a complete reset. There are lots of habits I'd like to learn to inculcate, lots of opportunities for self-improvement. How do I prioritise?
The Nakba Never Ended
A speech by and an interview with Representative Rashida Tlaib, remembering the Nakba/The Palestinian Catastrophe. (mp3; Angela Davis's message begins at 14:25, Tlaib's speech starts at 22:22 and interview at 33:33)
youtube food channels that aren't hipster white millenial foodies
I really like watching cooking videos on Youtube, but it's hard not to notice certain demographic similarities, and I'd kind of like to expand a little bit.
Fudhalat al-Khiwan fi Tayyibat al-Taam wal-Alwan
Palestinian writer Mahmoud Habboush on how Medieval Arabic Culinary Literature Offers Lessons for the Present. [New Lines Magazine]
Aside from the excitement of knowing what people ate centuries ago, these books are priceless because they reveal the social life of the upper strata of Arab and Muslim medieval societies. Medical treatises, for example, abound, containing information about ingredients — their benefits and side effects — as well as some dishes by name, but rarely do they provide nonmedicinal recipes. Literary sources — also easy to find — shed a little more insight into the cuisine of the past, sometimes delivering the recipe in prose or as a poem, but that is the extent of it. They don’t reveal the full richness of medieval haute cuisine.
math(s) with friends
My first mathematical activity with students.
Fresno State professor Howie Hua teaches math to future elementary school teachers. TikTok (How to mentally calculate the decimal representation of elevenths), Twitter (Factoring quadratics), Youtube (Are you using rectangles when multiplying and dividing?)
What if climate change meant not doom — but abundance?
Rebecca Solnit: How to meet the climate crisis? Redefine 'abundance.' [ungated] - "Much of the reluctance to do what climate change requires comes from the assumption that it means trading abundance for austerity, and trading all our stuff and conveniences for less stuff, less convenience. But what if it meant giving up things we're well rid of, from deadly emissions to nagging feelings of doom and complicity in destruction? What if the austerity is how we live now — and the abundance could be what is to come?"[1,2,3,4]
Best Printer 2023
Just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine.
Functions as a buying guide, an extended joke about SEO, and a tribute to the only line of printers that will keep working indefinitely and leave you alone, from Nilay Patel at The Verge.
Meet the Money Monsters
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has an extensive set of resources for teaching financial literacy to K-12 students . For the youngest kids, they have a series of books featuring the Money Monsters, where kids can learn about various facets of financial literacy.
It’s about the sacrifice
"People think it’s this outlet for revenge [...] In reality, it’s this beautiful, consensual, celebratory dynamic. [...] One thing I do with a lot of my long-term clients is: I push them to get raises, I push them to apply to better jobs. Because the more money they make, the more money they can allocate to me, and the richer I get.” An exploration of financial domination, from findoms, finsubs, and others. (Photos mildly NSFW)
“I did not come to bury wuxia, but to praise it.”
The History and Politics of Wuxia by Jeannette Ng [Tor]
“These are stories, after all, that are about outlaws and outcasts, existing outside of the conventional hierarchies of power. And they certainly do have plenty to say about these big universal themes of freedom, loyalty and justice. But this is also a genre that has been banned by multiple governments within living memory. Its development continues to happen in the shadows of fickle Chinese censorship and at the heart of it remains a certain defiant cultural and national pride intermingled with nostalgia and diasporic yearning. The vast majority of the most iconic wuxia texts are not written by Chinese authors living comfortably in China, but by a dreaming diaspora amid or in the aftermath of vast political turmoil. Which is all to say that the world of wuxia is fundamentally bound up with those hierarchies of power it seeks to reject. Much like there is more to superheroes than dorky names, love triangles, and broad universal ideals of justice, wuxia is grounded in the specific time and place of its creation.” [Bonus: Wiki, 30 Essential Wuxia Films, An Introduction to Wuxia Novels]
Din Tai Fung Is Causing Drama in Los Angeles
The Great LA Dumpling Drama
- "Last August, moments after news of the Din Tai Fung move broke, the man who runs the Americana at Brand Memes Twitter account was out to breakfast with his mother-in-law when his phone began buzzing."
it’s nice when it’s nice I’m sure it’s super horrible when it’s horrible
I was trying to explain the plot of The Matrix to this 15-year-old once, and that the character I played was really fighting for what was real. And this young person was just like, “Who cares if it’s real?” People are growing up with these tools: We’re listening to music already that’s made by AI in the style of Nirvana, there’s NFT digital art. It’s cool, like, Look what the cute machines can make! But there’s a corporatocracy behind it that’s looking to control those things. Culturally, socially, we’re gonna be confronted by the value of real, or the nonvalue. And then what’s going to be pushed on us? What’s going to be presented to us? from Keanu Will Never Surrender to the Machines [Wired]
All the deepest hues of P!nk
I can't admit I've followed P!nk's career all that closely, but she's been on my radar. So when I clicked through and watched P!nk: 'TRUSTFALL', Touring & Motherhood [52m], her interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, I was pretty pleased with the honesty, openness, and depth of the conversation. I thought you might like it, too!
Today's Most Surprising News
Bill Watterson, creator of "Calvin and Hobbes", has a new book coming out,
a project done in collaboration with John Kascht.
A sign of what lies ahead
The FDA's power to approve drugs faces sweeping challenge in lawsuit seeking to pull abortion pill from U.S. market
- "Just how far the FDA's authority extends into states with abortion bans that conflict with the agency's decisions on mifepristone is a question which will be decided in federal courts in the months ahead, [ASU Center for Public Health Law and Policy's Jennifer] Piatt said."[1]
The Lathe of Heaven
Kelly Link in Praise of Ursula K. Le Guin's Genuine Magic
- "It is also, notably, Le Guin's deliberate foray into Philip K. Dick's territory, with its hallucinatory beginning, its drug-using protagonist, and its surreal, literally world-melting alternate realities. Dick and Le Guin were admirers of each other's work and occasional correspondents."
The Traditional Cultures Behind Genshin Impact
Open-world RPG gacha game Genshin Impact heavily draws from and features traditional cultural arts, particularly Chinese arts - such as engaging a professional Chinese Opera artist to sing for operatic character Yun Jin (live concert version). For this year's Lantern Rite (the in-game equivalent of Lunar New Year), their YouTube channel features collaborations with more traditional Chinese artisans, such as a short film set during the Shexian Lantern Festival and art handmade using Chinese woodblocks.
“The real question is why he decided, at age 33, to learn”
‘What’s up! I can’t read.’ O.C. resident goes viral after schooling left him functionally illiterate
by Sonja Sharp for the L. A. Times, is a profile of Oliver James, whose TikToks chronicle his daily progress in learning to read. The article goes into why it was that he never learned to read before, but he also tells his own story in this short video.
WooHoo*!
Katie Porter is running for Senate.
(*to the tune of Song 2)
Exploring Jim Morrison's poetry notebooks
Jim Morrison wanted to be a poet. Instead, he became a rock star. Here are his poetry notebooks
Jim left behind over two dozen notebooks, even though he died at 27 and destroyed his high-school notes. He gave them titles like “Tape Noon,” “GOLD,” “Paris Journal,” and “Lizard Celebration.”