It sounds like Zohran agrees with you, in calling the Palestinian civilians seized by Israeli aggressors “Israeli hostages”.

I’m reading it that way, too. It’s unfortunate wording, but if you read past the first statement, he’s clearly discussing the attacks on Palestine by Israel. Immediately after that opening, Zohran writes “Relentless Israeli bombardment of Palestinians”; using “Israeli” to mean {enacted by Israel}. I’m going to go with the best and say that Zohran writing “Israeli hostages” means {hostages Israel held} and not {hostages from Israel}.

USAmerican here. When was Silicon Valley good? It certainly was not during my lifetime. Mark Zuckerberg was spying on us well before the Trump administration. I recall watching Zuckerberg being made to testify by a panel of representatives in 2018 for actions well before the 2016 election. Well before the Crypto bubble and modern AI bubble, there was the dot com bubble. And these other leaders mentioned in the piece – Bill Gates, Elon Musk… they were in Silicon Valley well before the 21st century. Silicon Valley corporations were among the earliest working to strip product ownership with all-encompassing legal agreements and forced arbitration. It’s not that Silicon Valley “lost its way”; it Got it’s way.

Absolutely. https://apnews.com/article/trump-ai-rfk-jr-health-tech-fa73703bd1fd557c787ef0b590e151f1 (second paragraph)

More than 60 companies, including major tech companies like Google, Amazon and Apple as well as health care giants like UnitedHealth Group and CVS Health, have agreed to share patient data in the system.

I find these articles so irritating. They sound so tone-deaf, throwing around clinical terms to say people are sad, while refusing to even consider any solutions.

I wish they’d stop all this “mental health” fluff that is just toxic positivity or a call for it; but if the people were talking amongst themselves instead of getting shepherded into 1-on-1 counseling, they people might go from “I’m feeling sad” to “this world makes us sad” and change things!! oohohooooo so scary!! :O

fully agreed, but I will note that “corrective” genital mutilation on intersex folks is still very much a thing.

female genital mutilation was practiced in the USA, and thankfully banned, for the same reasons male genital mutilation should be.

I’ve been trying to do what I can in this time, online and IRL. It is really disorienting living in this nation, not knowing what’s working or what’s not; or what the situation is going to look like in a week or two. So many assumptions that I had of basic protections and securities are just Gone. I genuinely do not recognize or understand the people or systems around me anymore.

At least if we’re doing something it’s changing the scenario. It’s not like things could get much worse. “rather live two days like a tiger, than two hundred years like a sheep” ~Tipu Sultan

Absolutely agree on refusing to stay ignorant. I do not ever want to forget this time or let myself slip into that willful naivety.

For me one moment that shocked me was the overturning of Roe v. Wade (USA abortion protections) by Dobbs. When that decision leaked early, I was nauseous, and kept checking the internet to see it debunked, only to see more proofs of authenticity. Then, watching as the protests stopped, energy trickled down, and life just… continued. Afterwards, I retreated into being a hikikomori for several years. That core right had been given, then taken away, and the people around me just moved on.

oh, yeah, of course Musk’s companies go on there… and I saw a few things about Oracle’s surveillance efforts.

I’ll confess this was me and now is me. Trump got elected when I was middle school-aged. I really, really believed that was the low point, and for the rest of my life, the USA would get better. I believed the USA population was just ill-informed, and I did not expect this global rise of fascism and digital surveillance. I assumed people would never vote to strip away freedoms if they knew that was going to happen. I assumed the internet would always stay anonymous, and always be a free space.

Obviously there was an immense amount I did not know about. I had heard of the Trail of Tears and Slavery and the Civil War, but I didn’t grasp institutionalized racism beyond police brutality; didn’t realize the Left was losing the internet, didn’t recognize the danger of the manosphere; didn’t understand how wide-spread the propaganda campaigns were, didn’t grasp that billionaires and centi-millionaires would want fascism, and would enact it across the Western world.

When Kamala announced her campaign, I deemed her president. Every step of that campaign, as the Republicans careened more extremist-right I became more certain that even their party members would deem them insane. I knew people were struggling financially under Biden, but, that guy’s holding signs reading “MASS DEPORTATIONS”, has two moronic side-kicks (Musk and Vance), and his term was filled with economic hardship. Also, Jan 6th, 2021.

In hindsight I’m ashamed of my naive optimism. I’d beat myself up for it more, if I wasn’t living in the middle of my personalized hell.

Benny Johnson is a serious prolific MAGA influencer that has been invited out by the administration to cover Alligator Auschwitz in Florida. Benny’s podcast was also why Jimmy Kimmel’s show got suspended - a member of this Republican administration made a veiled threat about Kimmel on Benny’s podcast and that is why Disney took the show down.

What happened to “Don’t share your real identity online”? Oh… Social Media.

Well before the UK online ID laws, I saw some memes about people getting asked for ID as proof of age for NSFW servers, just to send to server admins. I figured it was a ID fraud scheme of some sort, but now I’d chalk it up to manic “protect the children” believers.

Have you seen the USA? UK? Russia? China? I really don’t want the government making any system to tie internet to any identity. I really don’t want any government having any role in the internet.

So if we ever take back this country, we’ve gotta destroy Palantir, Apple, Google, Meta, Disney, Microsoft, Amazon, CVS (working to compile a medical database on all USAmericans)… and every company that backed Trump’s Nazi campaign. Start making a list now. The corporations alone will be a life’s worth of work.

My fear is that, in the event that we get a fair 2028 election, Gavin Newsom will be pioneered as the golden child, as Joe Biden was in 2020 – drowning out the actual Leftist voices. Then those progressives are pressured to drop out because this election is sooo important. Cue a Newsom presidency where we get 4 years of macro-economic recovery while the common folk suffer, and then the cycle repeats.

I agree with you. He’s 100% rallying up a presidential bid, and what worries me most is I see other liberals idolizing him, reposting his tweets at Trump, praising him as able to destroy Trump… Who knows if we’ll even have an election, but Newsom’s sure poising himself to waltz right in.

People need to stop posting Newsom tweets, and instead post content like this that frames Newsom as the corporate shill he is. Newsom is crushing homeless encampments, Newsom created the “CARE” courts that stripped autonomy from the mentally ill, Newsom is attacking transgender youth; and Newsom is going to continue doing all of this, harder, to poise himself as a “middle ground” between rational people and fascists – instead of upholding his responsibility to protect California residents.

“and himself, a true Democrat” uhh, Cuomo, you’re running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary. You’re opposing the Democrat Party. That’s the exact opposite of a Democrat.

ooh he means neoliberal corrupt corporate sellout. Got it.

and for workers who want to lose their jobs, and for tenants who want to be unable to pay their rent

“go get a job as an essential worker!”