apologies with regards to when i wrote that cal poly humboldt students, who have fully occupied a second building, aren't reaching the level of 1968. i wasn't familiar with their game.

sorry about posting about what's happening in nyc nonstop. it will happen again.

i think its so funny that alumni from schools like harvard and columbia that were there during the protests in the 60s-80s are expressing support for students currently protesting against the genocide in palestine, and random zionists that were NOT at these protests in the 60s-80s have the never ending audacity to tell these alumni "well thats different, what you protested was good and what they're protesting is bad." as if protesters against the vietnam war and apartheid south africa were not also demonized, arrested, brutalized, and even killed for their activism. history only remembers them fondly after the damage has already been done.

Multiple instances of harassment were reported at a “United for Israel March,” which drew hundreds of protesters on Thursday and was organized in part by the nonprofit StandWithUs and right-wing media figures, including Christian musician Sean Feucht, conservative radio host Eric Metaxas, and pastor Russell B. Johnson. [...] During the demonstration, Spectator captured on video numerous incidents of harassment and inflammatory language primarily targeting individuals inside Columbia’s gates and counterprotesters outside. [...] Multiple pro-Israel protesters moved toward them, with one man repeatedly yelling, “You want to get raped, you want to get murdered” at the group. [...] At around 6:33 p.m., a group of protesters, led by Feucht, began marching west on 115th Street before heading to the 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue gates, chanting “Israel will be free, from the river to the sea” and “hate will not win.” The crowd also sang Israel’s national anthem. [...] One NYPD officer stood next to the counterprotester as pro-Israel protesters shouted at the individual, “Go join ISIS, I heard they like Jews,” “You’re a fucking Nazi,” and “You would get killed in Gaza, they hate you.” Protesters shouted that he was a “fake Jew,” “coward,” and “traitor,” called him a “kapo,” and tried to untie the back of his mask. [...] A protester shouted at a Black man holding a pro-Palestinian banner: “You don’t know where Gaza is. Where is Gaza? It’s not in Africa, buddy.” At one point during the protest, Johnson, one of the organizers, held up a sign reading “Hamas Universities,” with the names of several universities, including Columbia, written inside a swastika. At the Amsterdam Avenue gates, around 7:30 p.m., a protester leaned over the barricade to shout at a group of observers and counterprotesters within campus. One outside protester shouted through the gates that “Hamas would love you,” “You got nice lips for Hamas,” and “You’re sexy.” At around 7:50 p.m., the protesters breached the NYPD barricade separating the demonstration from the Amsterdam Avenue gates. Multiple protesters climbed up the gates and continued to shout at students on College Walk. Protesters at the gates chanted “Terrorists go home,” “Go to Gaza,” “cowards,” “Hate will not win,” and “Bring them home.” (x)

(x)

yesterday, a group of zionist pro-israel protesters in tandem with the proud boys and christian nationalists like sean feucht, brandishing israeli, american, and lehi flags, a zionist terrorist organization that carried out massacres in palestine, as well as swastikas, tried to climb over columbia's campus gates while yelling things like "go back to gaza," "kill all palestinians" at students, unimpeded by police until they were almost over. yet this isn't receiving widespread coverage

congress also sat on its hands for 7 months, preventing aid from reaching ukraine, causing innocent civilians to die under russian bombs and artillery, quite possibly throwing the whole war into russia's favor because republicans and putin are berries plucked from the same field; that aid instead reached israel almost immediately, causing innocent civilians to die under israeli-american bombs and artillery. then those same people show up to columbia uninvited and try to call the national guard on students while looking them in the eyes

even congress said it's antisemitic but you do you

my word!... even congress, that polestar of morality..

i hate the cops so much, so much. they are never there for you, they will never help you, they are never on your side. you can trust on their appearance to take a situation from bad to catastrophic. they are the same everywhere on earth, just presented with different means and opportunities. they beat their women. they are stupid and don't understand directions from higher up, and they won't obey them if they don't want to anyhow. they will lie, and they will lie in court. they rape their own colleagues. they brutalize prisoners. they will murder any good apples. they are not just aligned with white supremacists — they are white supremacists. they are worse than trumpists. and they hate you, personally! everyone using this website is a target. they will go after someone even if they're on their side. they are vermin, human scum. the most neutral position you can take is to steer clear of them.

How is "from the river to the sea" NOT genocidal? What exactly do you suppose would happen when Hamas-ruled Palestine occupies Israel? Would they be able to peacefully coexist with all of the Jews who live there?

lots of interesting implications buried in such few questions

one major difference between now and 1968 is that current students are unbelievably, incomparably more peaceful, non-confrontational, and compliant. it is a stark difference, like night and day. even CUNY and cal poly don't hold a candle to what was going on around the country then. the students at kent burned down buildings

anyway, CUNY 2 — PIGGY 0

thanks very much for adding on additional primary source material that reinforces many of the points i've been making, including the smear against current protesters. those students were right then, and they won all their demands; these students are right now, and they will win all their demands

City College, CUNY, 1968 /// 2024

When people get a little too gung-ho about-

wait. cancel post. gung-ho cannot be English. where did that phrase come from? China?

ok, yes. gōnghé, which is…an abbreviation for “industrial cooperative”? Like it was just a term for a worker-run organization? A specific U.S. marine stationed in China interpreted it as a motivational slogan about teamwork, and as a commander he got his whole battalion using it, and other U.S. marines found those guys so exhausting that it migrated into English slang with the meaning “overly enthusiastic”.

That’s…wild. What was I talking about?

Advice/hard truths for writers?

The best piece of practical advice I know is a classic from Hemingway (qtd. here):

The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work.

Also, especially if you're young, you should read more than you write. If you're serious about writing, you'll want to write more than you read when you get old; you need, then, to lay the important books as your foundation early. I like this passage from Samuel R. Delany's "Some Advice for the Intermediate and Advanced Creative Writing Student" (collected in both Shorter Views and About Writing):

You need to read Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and Zola; you need to read Austen, Thackeray, the Brontes, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy; you need to read Hawthorne, Melville, James, Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner; you need to read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Goncherov, Gogol, Bely, Khlebnikov, and Flaubert; you need to read Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, Edward Dahlberg, John Steinbeck, Jean Rhys, Glenway Wescott, John O'Hara, James Gould Cozzens, Angus Wilson, Patrick White, Alexander Trocchi, Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Vladimir Nabokov; you need to read Nella Larsen, Knut Hamsun, Edwin Demby, Saul Bellow, Lawrence Durrell, John Updike, John Barth, Philip Roth, Coleman Dowell, William Gaddis, William Gass, Marguerite Young, Thomas Pynchon, Paul West, Bertha Harris, Melvin Dixon, Daryll Pinckney, Darryl Ponicsan, and John Keene, Jr.; you need to read Thomas M. Disch, Joanna Russ, Richard Powers, Carroll Maso, Edmund White, Jayne Ann Phillips, Robert Gluck, and Julian Barnes—you need to read them and a whole lot more; you need to read them not so that you will know what they have written about, but so that you can begin to absorb some of the more ambitious models for what the novel can be.

Note: I haven't read every single writer on that list; there are even three I've literally never heard of; I can think of others I'd recommend in place of some he's cited; but still, his general point—that you need to read the major and minor classics—is correct.

The best piece of general advice I know, and not only about writing, comes from Dr. Johnson, The Rambler #63:

The traveller that resolutely follows a rough and winding path, will sooner reach the end of his journey, than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hours of day-light in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

I've known too many young writers over the years who sabotaged themselves by overthinking and therefore never finishing or sharing their projects; this stems, I assume, from a lack of self-trust or, more grandly, trust in the universe (the Muses, God, etc.). But what professors always tell Ph.D. students about dissertations is also true of novels, stories, poems, plays, comic books, screenplays, etc: There are only two kinds of dissertations—finished and unfinished. Relatedly, this is the age of online—an age when 20th-century institutions are collapsing, and 21st-century ones have not yet been invented. Unless you have serious connections in New York or Iowa, publish your work yourself and don't bother with the gatekeepers.

Other than the above, I find most writing advice useless because over-generalized or else stemming from arbitrary culture-specific or field-specific biases, e.g., Orwell's extremely English and extremely journalistic strictures, not necessarily germane to the non-English or non-journalistic writer. "Don't use adverbs," they always say. Why the hell shouldn't I? It's absurd. "Show, don't tell," they insist. Fine for the aforementioned Orwell and Hemingway, but irrelevant to Edith Wharton and Thomas Mann. Freytag's Pyramid? Spare me. Every new book is a leap in the dark. Your project may be singular; you may need to make your own map as your traverse the unexplored territory.

Hard truths? There's one. I know it's a hard truth because I hesitate even to type it. It will insult our faith in egalitarianism and the rewards of earnest labor. And yet, I suspect the hard truth is this: ineffables like inspiration and genius count for a lot. If they didn't, if application were all it took, then everybody would write works of genius all day long. But even the greatest geniuses usually only got the gift of one or two all-time great work. This doesn't have to be a counsel of despair, though: you can always try to place yourself wherever you think lightning is likeliest to strike. That's what I do, anyway. Good luck!

anarchists are bringing food, water, and are teaching protesters how to survive the cops. PSL shows up to city college and GW and immediately starts saying "vote for us"

April 24, 2024 - The father of a student protester for Palestine eloquently explains why he is out in the streets to support the students. [video]

download killing upload pain. instant thousand deaths to brain. motherboard on murder spree. blood computer victory.