I am really sorry 💔

I do sort of wish western anime fans would analyze anime and manga from a framework of japanese historical and cultural context. Specifically a lot of works from the 90s being influenced by the general aimlessness and ennui that a lot of people were experiencing due to the burst in the bubble economy and the national trauma caused by the sarin terrorist attack. I think in interacting with media that’s not local to our sociocultural/sociopolitical sphere it’s easy to forget that it’s influenced and shaped by the same kinds of factors that influence media within our own cultural dome and there ends up being this baseline misalignment of perception between the causative elements of a narrative and viewer interpretation of those elements. It’s a form of death of the author that i think, in some measure, hinders our ability to fully understand/come to terms with creator intent and the full scope of a work’s merits

Um... I have lived in "15 minute town" since 20 years. My nearest Biedronka (grocery store) is 5 minute away from my home. Next to it there is the post office, the bank, the stationer's, the drug store, the kindergarten and the greengrocer's (affordable greengrocer's on every corner make me more patriotic then the winged hussars... who care for some meme historical figures but fresh carrot is fresh carrot). On opposite direction there is the cafe with pancakes, waffels and ice creams, the bakery, the pet shop, the butcher shop, the library. There is also the catholic church (of course...) and the park with playground.

All these places within 5 minutes on foot. I am neurodivergent (most probably, still waiting for diagnose) person with minimal wage and I still buy my bread at the bakery and my kiełbasa to my żurek at the butcher shop, because you know I am not the peasant. All people who are working at these places are my neighbors. And there is nothing special about my neighborhood - most living places in Poland, Czech Republic or Lithaunia looks like this.

I am not saying this to brag. Poland sucks on so many levels. Typical Slavic neighborhoods aren't also as nice as western suburbs. On esthetic level they are mess, but they are functional and inclusive. I don't like saying good things about communism but a modernist utopia of housing estates for the people wasn't so bad after all.

I don't know why it didn't work in France but it is still working in Poland. I have hipotheisis that children of polish peasants who moved in to the typical slavic neighborhoods after WW2 had some expierience with Jewish shtetls - wich were basically "15 minutes towns" + some Isaak Bashevis Singer's magic.

It's things like this that make me still have hope for humanity after all.

Dear Slovaks, please know that we see your effort and we're incredibly grateful ❤️

You know, there's a lot of countries that joined this amazing Czech initiative and I'm grateful to each and every single one of them and to Czechia for organising this. But there's something to be said about people who's government refused to join in and who said "You know what? We'll fucking do it ourselves. Remember who the real power is." I just love this so much and tearing up a little from this.

I love when people say that war in Ukraine is constantly "shoved down their throats" in the news but for some reason I hear on a daily basis "oh I thought war was over a long time ago" lol

Jak oni, kurwa, nic nie wiedzą.

They don't know shit. They don't know how much I owe to polish Jews and jewish Poles as a polish leftist. They don't know how terribly we Poles failed them, polish Jews, not only during WW2 but after war too. They don't why any decent Pole after March '68 don't use word "Zionist". They don't know who was using it and why he was doing it. They don't know why Jewish people don't want to live in my country. They don't know that not only n..zis and their supporters but also their beloved pro-russian communists were guilty. They don't know, but their ignorance don't silence them.

This post has nothing to do with things that are happening in Gaza. I condemn war crimes against Palestinians. But I think that every nation has right to their own state - Jews and Palestinians. (And I don't know how to solve this mess. If I knew, I would get a Peace Noble Prize)

i think the world doesn’t know what it really means to live in a theocratic dictatorship. Let me tell you about our experiences living in the islamic regime of iran.

1. Your parents were born to muslim parents so they’re automatically muslim. You’re automatically a muslim too. You didn’t choose your religion and you can’t opt out of it or you will be executed.

2. The compulsory hijab law makes you a criminal if you choose not to wear hijab even tho you didn’t choose to be a muslim and you don’t consider yourself a muslim but the regime has forced you into that role whether you like it or not. And when you ‘break that law’, they can do with you as they please.

3. little girls as young as 7 yrs old are forced to wear hijab at school even tho the islam itself says the age is 9. and all the schools are gender segregated so imagine how they force you to get used to hijab even when you’re just surrounded by other girls. And all day long at school they tell you horrible stories about what will happen to you in hell if someone sees even a strand of your hair.

4. the regime modifies all the textbooks, story books, cartoons and movies to represent the ideal woman with full on hijab. The iranian media is ordered to photoshop every photo of a woman that may be showing a little skin. And if they’re iranian, no hair is supposed to be seen or that will be photoshopped away. Women are mostly excluded from billboards and tv commercials.

5. imagine going to work or meeting up with a friend when suddenly the morality police kidnap you in broad daylight and force you into a van to take you to a station where they will treat you like a criminal and if you don’t agree to get humiliated and do as they say, they will put you in prison. And in case of Mahsa Amini and so many more before her, they will beat you to death. My sister was barely 18 when she got kidnapped and they didn’t let her call home and she’d been so fucking scared and we had no idea where she was. Imagine all the psychological trauma.

6. If you’re in a car and not wearing hijab they will fine you and seize your car. So when u get into a taxi the driver will ask you to keep your hijab on otherwise they’ll get fined. And if you refuse they’ll ask you to get off the car.

7. And its not just about hijab. In Ramadan, they get even more vicious. If they catch you eating or even drinking water on the street they will give you lashes as punishment and even imprison you for breaking the law. If you work in a state-owned company it’s even worse. They will close the cafeteria and take away the water dispensers. All restaurants are banned from delivering food before iftar. It’s a fucking mess. Everyone has to pretend they’re fasting or they’ll be severely punished.

8. And how could I forget about this! iranian women are banned from singing! the islamic regime prohibits women’s singing voices to be heard by men so imagine the horror of having 50% of the population banned from ever becoming a singer. If they identify a female singer in iran, they will take her to jail and force her to repent her sins in the most humiliating way so that she will never dare sing again.

9. And every time the regime gets wind of a private gathering of men and women trying to have fun and live their fucking private lives, the police crash the party and take everyone to jail bc the Islamic regime bans iranian men and women from having fun.

10. Did you know that the islamic regime doesn’t allow women’s faces to be printed on their obituaries or headstones? They put a flower for our faces instead and if they see a headstone with a woman’s face printed on it they’ll smash it to pieces. That’s how religious dictatorship continues to oppress and erase women even after their deaths.

11. For some reason, women aren’t allowed to ride motorcycles and the government won’t issue any license for them. In some cities, women are barred from riding a bicycle.

So if you see Islam has become for many iranians a symbol of oppression and torture and discrimination, that’s why. The regime uses islam as a weapon to silence and punish anyone who opposes them. You can love islam all you want from the safety of your home in a free country and talk about how kind and benevolent the religion is, but in iran, it’s a whole different story.

Our economy is fucked. All govt officials are corrupt as fuck. Most websites are banned in iran. Even tumblr is banned. The world has cut the iranian ppl from many services. We don’t have intl credit cards like visa card. Amazon doesn’t do delivery to iran. We cant get netflix, spotify or even a gamepass subscription. we don’t get any Apple services here. iran isn’t listed as a country you could choose when signing up for a lot of services. and when we decide to leave iran and escape this hellhole, every country out there will make it sooo much harder for us to get a visa just bc we had the misfortune to be born in iran at the wrong time.

This is the story of iran for the past 44 years. Held hostage by a corrupt regime that uses religion to suppress and torture the people and being abandoned by the rest of the world bc our lives don’t matter.

Please be our voice. Once they shut down the internet completely and silence our voice, they will start slaughtering us to stifle the protests just like they did in 2019. Please help us. We want this fucking regime gone.

Today is a 37st anniversary of the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant disaster. It's hard to talk about one unprocessed national tragedy while living through another.

The Chornobyl disaster was totally preventable and it took away countless lives of people living in the region, especially in Ukraine and Belarus - both the liquidators and the civillians. Despite the very air and dust being literal poison, the soviets had not only hid this information from the people, but forced everybody to partake in the May the 1st parade - because god forbid we lose our face before the international community as a working class paradise! If not for the nuclear scientists in Sweden who raised the alarm about the dangerous levels of nuclear particles coming from northern Ukraine, who knows what would have happened. It definitely would have been swepped under the rug and forgotten by the international community, together with its victims - just like Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan is barely known abroad.

With russia constantly threatening to turn Zaporhizhzha nuclear plant into second Chornobyl, the wound caused by this tragedy is cut open again.

We all love the HBO Chornobyl series, and I genuinely am grateful to Craig Mazin for the amount of empathy and respect he brought to the series; but for today I indulge you to watch something made by ukrainians, to try to understand what this tragedy means to us and how it influences our lives even today.

For the documentaries, my favourite series by this day remains the "Dragons live here" by Your Underground Humanitarian School Youtube channel, which, unfortunately, can only offer automated english subtitles - they should, however, be sufficient.

As for the feature films, I recommend "Gateway" (you can stream it online with english subtitles here). And here is the official english trailer:

Sincere thank you to all the Americans who called or emailed to their representatives, demanding aid for Ukraine ❤️❤️❤️

Russian missile strike on the Dnipro: 2 dead, 15 injured.

ukraine downed a strategic (!) russian aircraft. for the first time it seems

🫡🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

I'm so numb and exhausted. Our "allies" abandoning us means even more deaths, even more destruction. Today I was walking home and thinking how much I love my city, my country, people around me, but we can't catch missiles with our bare hands, we need air defence, we need weapons. The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that we owe persistence to the people who died. We owe them to keep going. We owe our defenders, they can't just give up because they feel like it. My level of tiredness isn't even 1% of the one our defenders, first responders and volunteers feel. Call your representatives, ask for air defence for Ukraine. We need it to survive.

It is actually mindblowing how all these Western "leftists" support the regimes of Russia, Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, etc., to the point of telling the very people suffering from those regimes that it is very progressive actually for them to keep suffering.

You have your human rights and freedoms, but have the nerve to tell, say, women in Iran that they should not have the same freedoms that you enjoy.

You claim to support queer rights and then go and say how other countries must accept russian occupation/influence, knowing full well that the queer people there will be prosecuted.

Human beings deserve to have human rights, you know. And there is nothing progressive about denying those rights to other people just for the sake of the edgelord fiction that works as your worldview.

Either you support people fighting for their rights, or you are on the side of fascism.

Here is more details

Taras Shevchenko and Ira Aldridge by Heorhiy Melikhov, 1963

Famous Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko befriended the African-American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge, while the latter was on tour to the Russian Empire in 1858. Shevchenko did his portrait in pastel. It is recounted that the two men got along very well. While posing for the portrait, Aldridge sang African-American songs to Shevchenko and in return, the artist taught him Ukrainian songs. 

The truth is that the EU cannot properly help Ukraine without switching to a war economy. But there is no political will for that, even though russia forms a danger to all of us and we no longer can rely on the USA. But our leaders prefer to stick their heads in the sand.

Switching to a war economy is now a must if we truly want to help Ukraine win. As someone said in a dutch newspaper: Don't make pencils, make bullets.

double tap strategy again and again: an hour ago russians bombed Kharkiv, and when first responders arrived, russians hit the same place again, killing at least three rescue workers

“Ukrainians are also fighting for our safety and for everyone’s freedom. By resisting Russian dictatorship, they show that democracy can defend itself. By defending their borders, they are protecting the international order and holding off chaos. By fighting Russia alone, they protect Europe. By showing how hard offensive operations are, Ukrainians make a Chinese war in the Pacific less likely. By fighting a conventional war against a nuclear power, they are making nuclear proliferation and nuclear war less likely.”

Tell Speaker Johnson to support Ukraine now:

+1-202-225-4000

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/10/opinions/sean-penn-barbra-streisand-imgaine-dragons-congress-ukraine-snyder/index.html