"The North Korean regime in the ‘50s developed a series of remarkably effective torture techniques, techniques that were so effective, in fact, that they were able to make captured American airmen admit to all sorts of atrocities they had not in fact committed, all the time, being convinced they had not, actually, been tortured. The techniques were quite simple. Just make the victim do something mildly uncomfortable—sit on the edge of chair, for example, or lean against a wall in a slightly awkward position—only, make them do it for an extremely long period of time. After eight hours the victim would be willing to do virtually anything to make it stop. But try going to the International Court of Justice at The Hague and tell them you’ve been made to sit on the edge of a chair all day. Even the victims were unwilling to describe their captors as torturers. When the CIA learned about these techniques—according to Korean friends of mine, they’re actually just particularly sadistic versions of classic Korean ways of punishing small children—they were intrigued, and, apparently, conducted extensive research on how they could be adopted for their own detention centers.

Again, sometimes, in Palestine, one feels one is in an entire country that’s being treated this way. Obviously, there is also outright torture, people who are actually being shot, beaten, tortured, or violently abused. But I’m speaking here even of the ones that aren’t. For most, it’s as if the very texture of everyday life has been designed to be intolerable—only, in a way that you can never quite say is exactly a human rights violation. There’s never enough water. Showering requires almost military discipline. You can’t get a permit. You’re always standing in line. If something breaks it’s impossible to get permission to fix it. Or else you can’t get spare parts. There are four different bodies of law that might apply to any legal situation (Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Israeli), it’s anyone’s guess which court will say what applies where, or what document is required, or acceptable. Most rules are not even supposed to make sense. It can take eight hours to drive 20 kilometers to see your girlfriend, and doing so will almost certainly mean having machine guns waved in your faces and being shouted at in a language you half understand by people who think you’re subhuman. So you do most of your dalliance by phone. When you can afford the minutes. There are endless traffic jams before and after checkpoints and drivers bicker and curse and try not to take it out on one another. Everyone lives no more than 12 or 15 miles from the Mediterranean but even on the hottest day, it’s absolutely impossible to get to the beach. Unless you climb the wall, there are places you can do that; but then you can expect to be hunted every moment by security patrols. Of course teenagers do it anyway. But it means swimming is always accompanied by the fear of being shot. If you’re a trader, or a laborer, or a driver, or a tobacco farmer, or clerk, the very process of subsistence is continual stream of minor humiliations. Your tomatoes are held and left two days to rot while someone grins at you. You have to beg to get your child out of detention. And if you do go to beseech the guards, those same guards might arbitrarily decide to hold you to pressure him to confess to rock-throwing, and suddenly you are in a concrete cell without cigarettes. Your toilet backs up. And you realize: you’re going to have to live like this forever. There is no “political process.” It will never end. Barring some kind of divine intervention, you can expect to be facing exactly this sort of terror and absurdity for the rest of your natural life."

-David Graeber, Reflections from a Visit to the West Bank

new pickup line I've been trying: hi

THE ADVENTURE OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON part 3 (part 1) (part 2) as promised here they are enjoying committing a crime (to quote Watson: "I thrilled now with a keener zest than I had ever enjoyed when we were the defenders of the law instead of its defiers").

Nearly made myself ill drawing them holding hands WHAT IS IT WITH GAY PEOPLE (me) AND HANDS

(This is part of the Watsons sketchbook series!)

I've always privately made fun of Watson for his apparent inability to focus on anything that isn't Holmes. If all the attention to detail that he has when studying Holmes was directed at the crime scene - rather than Holmes' reaction to the crime scene, client, etc. - Watson would make a good detective himself.

But since I started watching Granada Holmes I have to take that back given that so often I can't follow what's going on because I'm just mesmerized by the way Jeremy Brett moves and can't pay attention to anything else. I'm not listening to what this witness is saying, I'm looking at Jeremy's micro facial expressions in reaction to it. I didn't notice the rest of the room, I was looking at the way Jeremy moves his hands and swirls around and touches the furniture and walks and tilts his head and crawls on the floor and sniffs cigarette butts and

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If you're having trouble keeping up with what's going on in Palestine because of US news coverage of university protests, here are some articles you can read and a video you can watch:

While CNN & all the other mainstream media try to paint the university protests as "pro terrorism" (which they're not, they're literally anti-war protests.) Palestinians are being slaughtered by the minute.

Please don't stop speaking about Palestine.

Bit telling that for years and years evangelical religious extremists have been allowed on university campuses with their bullhorns and horrific imagery where they harass students into physical altercations and when students complain to the university’s administration they just shrug their shoulders citing freedom of speech but when those same tuition-paying students start protesting against war and genocide they call SWAT

the circus was in town that day 🤡

In the kitchen straight up "chopping it". And by "it" haha well. Let justr say. My vegetble

art comic

hello!

my name is samira, your local brown disabled dyke

I'm currently not able to work more than a few hours a week and I don't have a lot of money

while I don't have an urgent fundraising goal at the moment, I'm trying to pay off my credit card debt bit by bit, so I figured I'd make a general post with information on how to help me with that

this is my paypal link, I also have etransfer set up so you can dm me for that info

thank you in advance to anyone who shares and/or donates, every little bit helps!

Finally making more progress on the pile of ST books I own but have yet to read. Here’s some good stuff from The Vulcan Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah.

First of all, what is going on with this cover? Nothing like this happens in the book.

Interesting interesting. 👀

This book is way too casual about Kirk sleeping in Spock’s childhood bedroom. Also, there’s no mention of where Spock is sleeping while they’re there???

We love reflecting on our past mistakes. 👏🏼 We love character growth. 👏🏼

I love them. I can picture this so perfectly.

Kirk will bring up Abe Lincoln whenever he has a chance. That’s canon now.

Yes! Let’s talk about our feelings! Let’s resolve those daddy issues!

Spock wanted to take them camping. 🥹

Spock being very concerned about Kirk’s injuries. Bones saying Spock is the only person Kirk would tolerate while in pain. Spock asking his father about expressing love for an outworlder. It’s a lot.

personally if i’m out walking and smell laundry or someone else’s cooking or campfire i immediately get hit with a wave of nearly overwhelming comfort. on account of the joie de vivre

he’s very special to me

These carne asada tacos from Germany....

It pisses me the fuck off that yoga is actually ancient and really good for you. Part of me still feels like it was invented to extract wealth from white socal moms.

The student protests for Palestine have been an amazing show of solidarity and support and seeing thr way that so many young people are willing to stand up for their values is admirable when so many others stay silent. But this is all to say that we are entering a pattern of glorifying these white “martyrs” from the global west to put all of this effort and resources and media coverage into instead of the actual cause they are fighting for.

I saw the same thing happen with Aaron Bushnell, when his self immolation was being talked about more than the actual genocide in Gaza (which went against everything he said he was self immolating for in the first place).

And again this happened with the prisoner from the US who worked 136 hours just to be able to donate his $17 check to Palestine aid efforts. In response to this, people wanted to help him and ended up raising over $100,000 in a gofundme for him. This feels almost satirical, as every gofundme to help Gazans evacuate Palestine and get to safety has a goal of less than $100,000 and most of them are not even close to reaching it.

And now, there are more and more posts on how to get aid to the college student encampments, and the “urgency” of getting enough bail funds for the students who have been arrested during them. Talking about Palestine itself and getting resources to Palestine has almost been put on the back burner in favour of making all Palestine related news about college students in the United States.

It think it is valuable to recognise the selflessness and importance of these protests, and getting these students resources but what is MORE important, and what these people are truly fighting for, and protesting, and make a statement about is PALESTINE. We have unsurprisingly reached the point where there are people who care much more about the white people fighting for the cause from the comfort of living in the global west than they care about the Palestinians undergoing a genocide in Gaza. It’s become almost blatant racism, the way people begin to drop everything the second a white/usamerican person does something in regards to helping Palestine, but will not put the same effort into a Palestinian IN Gaza who is telling their story or asking for help. I respect anyone who has done absolutely anything to help Palestine, but I hope people are starting to see the pattern of how the media gravitates towards the “white saviour/perfect martyr” instead of the first hand accounts coming from those in Gaza.

Anyway FIND A GOFUNDME AND DONATE TO HELP FAMILIES IN GAZA ESCAPE GENOCIDE

Is it really possible for me and my family to escape from Sudan? I really hoped, after a few days, 5 months will have passed since the launch of my campaign and I have not even reached half of the goal. It is very frustrating. With your humanity, I hope you will not ignore my request to help me.🙏