#across all the major campaigns | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reasonsforhope · 1 month

Text

"For the first time in almost 60 years, a state has formally overturned a so-called “right to work” law, clearing the way for workers to organize new union locals, collectively bargain, and make their voices heard at election time.

This week, Michigan finalized the process of eliminating a decade-old “right to work” law, which began with the shift in control of the state legislature from anti-union Republicans to pro-union Democrats following the 2022 election. “This moment has been decades in the making,” declared Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber. “By standing up and taking their power back, at the ballot box and in the workplace, workers have made it clear Michigan is and always will be the beating heart of the modern American labor movement.”

[Note: The article doesn't actually explain it, so anyway, "right to work" laws are powerful and deceptively named pieces of anti-union legislation. What right to work laws do is ban "union shops," or companies where every worker that benefits from a union is required to pay dues to the union. Right-to-work laws really undermine the leverage and especially the funding of unions, by letting non-union members receive most of the benefits of a union without helping sustain them. Sources: x, x, x, x]

In addition to formally scrapping the anti-labor law on Tuesday [February 13, 2024], Michigan also restored prevailing-wage protections for construction workers, expanded collective bargaining rights for public school employees, and restored organizing rights for graduate student research assistants at the state’s public colleges and universities. But even amid all of these wins for labor, it was the overturning of the “right to work” law that caught the attention of unions nationwide...

Now, the tide has begun to turn—beginning in a state with a rich labor history. And that’s got the attention of union activists and working-class people nationwide...

At a time when the labor movement is showing renewed vigor—and notching a string of high-profile victories, including last year’s successful strike by the United Auto Workers union against the Big Three carmakers, the historic UPS contract victory by the Teamsters, the SAG-AFTRA strike win in a struggle over abuses of AI technology in particular and the future of work in general, and the explosion of grassroots union organizing at workplaces across the country—the overturning of Michigan’s “right to work” law and the implementation of a sweeping pro-union agenda provides tangible evidence of how much has changed in recent years for workers and their unions...

By the mid-2010s, 27 states had “right to work” laws on the books.

But then, as a new generation of workers embraced “Fight for 15” organizing to raise wages, and campaigns to sign up workers at Starbucks and Amazon began to take off, the corporate-sponsored crusade to enact “right to work” measures stalled. New Hampshire’s legislature blocked a proposed “right to work” law in 2017 (and again in 2021), despite the fact that the measure was promoted by Republican Governor Chris Sununu. And in 2018, Missouri voters rejected a “right to work” referendum by a 67-33 margin.

Preventing anti-union legislation from being enacted and implemented is one thing, however. Actually overturning an existing law is something else altogether.

But that’s what happened in Michigan after 2022 voting saw the reelection of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a labor ally, and—thanks to the overturning of gerrymandered legislative district maps that had favored the GOP—the election of Democratic majorities in the state House and state Senate. For the first time in four decades, the Democrats controlled all the major levers of power in Michigan, and they used them to implement a sweeping pro-labor agenda. That was a significant shift for Michigan, to be sure. But it was also an indication of what could be done in other states across the Great Lakes region, and nationwide.

“Michigan Democrats took full control of the state government for the first time in 40 years. They used that power to repeal the state’s ‘right to work’ law,” explained a delighted former US secretary of labor Robert Reich, who added, “This is why we have to show up for our state and local elections.”"

-via The Nation, February 16, 2024

#michigan #united states #us politics #labor #labor rights #labor unions #capitalism #unions #unionize #gretchen whitmer #democrats #voting matters #right to work #pro union #workers #workers rights #good news #hope

1K notes · View notes

not-terezi-pyrope · 3 months

Text

Often when I post an AI-neutral or AI-positive take on an anti-AI post I get blocked, so I wanted to make my own post to share my thoughts on "Nightshade", the new adversarial data poisoning attack that the Glaze people have come out with.

I've read the paper and here are my takeaways:

Firstly, this is not necessarily or primarily a tool for artists to "coat" their images like Glaze; in fact, Nightshade works best when applied to sort of carefully selected "archetypal" images, ideally ones that were already generated using generative AI using a prompt for the generic concept to be attacked (which is what the authors did in their paper). Also, the image has to be explicitly paired with a specific text caption optimized to have the most impact, which would make it pretty annoying for individual artists to deploy.

While the intent of Nightshade is to have maximum impact with minimal data poisoning, in order to attack a large model there would have to be many thousands of samples in the training data. Obviously if you have a webpage that you created specifically to host a massive gallery poisoned images, that can be fairly easily blacklisted, so you'd have to have a lot of patience and resources in order to hide these enough so they proliferate into the training datasets of major models.

The main use case for this as suggested by the authors is to protect specific copyrights. The example they use is that of Disney specifically releasing a lot of poisoned images of Mickey Mouse to prevent people generating art of him. As a large company like Disney would be more likely to have the resources to seed Nightshade images at scale, this sounds like the most plausible large scale use case for me, even if web artists could crowdsource some sort of similar generic campaign.

Either way, the optimal use case of "large organization repeatedly using generative AI models to create images, then running through another resource heavy AI model to corrupt them, then hiding them on the open web, to protect specific concepts and copyrights" doesn't sound like the big win for freedom of expression that people are going to pretend it is. This is the case for a lot of discussion around AI and I wish people would stop flagwaving for corporate copyright protections, but whatever.

The panic about AI resource use in terms of power/water is mostly bunk (AI training is done once per large model, and in terms of industrial production processes, using a single airliner flight's worth of carbon output for an industrial model that can then be used indefinitely to do useful work seems like a small fry in comparison to all the other nonsense that humanity wastes power on). However, given that deploying this at scale would be a huge compute sink, it's ironic to see anti-AI activists for that is a talking point hyping this up so much.

In terms of actual attack effectiveness; like Glaze, this once again relies on analysis of the feature space of current public models such as Stable Diffusion. This means that effectiveness is reduced on other models with differing architectures and training sets. However, also like Glaze, it looks like the overall "world feature space" that generative models fit to is generalisable enough that this attack will work across models.

That means that if this does get deployed at scale, it could definitely fuck with a lot of current systems. That said, once again, it'd likely have a bigger effect on indie and open source generation projects than the massive corporate monoliths who are probably working to secure proprietary data sets, like I believe Adobe Firefly did. I don't like how these attacks concentrate the power up.

The generalisation of the attack doesn't mean that this can't be defended against, but it does mean that you'd likely need to invest in bespoke measures; e.g. specifically training a detector on a large dataset of Nightshade poison in order to filter them out, spending more time and labour curating your input dataset, or designing radically different architectures that don't produce a comparably similar virtual feature space. I.e. the effect of this being used at scale wouldn't eliminate "AI art", but it could potentially cause a headache for people all around and limit accessibility for hobbyists (although presumably curated datasets would trickle down eventually).

All in all a bit of a dick move that will make things harder for people in general, but I suppose that's the point, and what people who want to deploy this at scale are aiming for. I suppose with public data scraping that sort of thing is fair game I guess.

Additionally, since making my first reply I've had a look at their website:

Used responsibly, Nightshade can help deter model trainers who disregard copyrights, opt-out lists, and do-not-scrape/robots.txt directives. It does not rely on the kindness of model trainers, but instead associates a small incremental price on each piece of data scraped and trained without authorization. Nightshade's goal is not to break models, but to increase the cost of training on unlicensed data, such that licensing images from their creators becomes a viable alternative.

Once again we see that the intended impact of Nightshade is not to eliminate generative AI but to make it infeasible for models to be created and trained by without a corporate money-bag to pay licensing fees for guaranteed clean data. I generally feel that this focuses power upwards and is overall a bad move. If anything, this sort of model, where only large corporations can create and control AI tools, will do nothing to help counter the economic displacement without worker protection that is the real issue with AI systems deployment, but will exacerbate the problem of the benefits of those systems being more constrained to said large corporations.

Kinda sucks how that gets pushed through by lying to small artists about the importance of copyright law for their own small-scale works (ignoring the fact that processing derived metadata from web images is pretty damn clearly a fair use application).

#not-terezi-speaks #ai #nightshade

1K notes · View notes

ahaura · 5 months

Text

(Dec. 1)

Article: Recruiters Drop Elbit Systems after Palestine Action Campaign

After weeks of action, the sole recruiters for the British operations of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, have confirmed via email to Palestine Action that they ended their association with Elbit on the evening of the 29th November. For two months, activists in the Palestine Action network had disrupted iO Associates at their premises across the country, to impede their ability to recruit roles for Israel’s war machine.

iO Associates recruited the likes of engineers, software developers, and finance staff for positions across the sites of the British branch of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems. Elbit are the largest supplier to the occupation military, providing the vast majorities of its drones, munitions, surveillance gear, and parts for its tanks, jets, and precision missiles. From Britain specifically, they manufacture parts for Israel’s killer drones, along with weapons sights, tank parts, and more, exporting these technologies to Israel in great volume yearly. This is the nature of the business that IO was Associates with, and were IO Associates biggest client.

In response to their facilitation of Elbit’s criminal activities, iO’s offices were stormed and occupied in Manchester on the 1st September, and again on the 7th October. Activists painted iO offices red on October 9th in London, Reading, and Manchester. They were forced to vacate their Manchester offices from the 11th October, after the premises were also stormed by the Youth Front For Palestine, and then finally targeted in Edinburgh twice, on the 11th and 17th October. After being forced to vacate their offices, having their online presence tarnished, and (as confirmed to us by former employees) losing their staff who resigned in opposition to their arms trade partnership, iO Associates have finally cut ties with Israel’s weapons trade.

This is part of an expansive strategy by Palestine Action, by disrupting the suppliers and facilitators of Elbit’s presence in Britain. It has seen Elbit’s accountants (Edwards), haulage providers (Kuehne + Nagel), landlords (JLL) and many other complicit companies targeted, alongside the hundreds of actions at Elbit sites themselves, continuing to resist the presence of Elbit warmongers in Britain, and constantly reminding those associated with them that they have blood on their hands.

As a result of iO Associates dropping Elbit Systems, the recruiters have been removed as a target of Palestine Action’s campaign. All targets who still facilitate Israel’s weapons trade are listed on elbitsites.uk

#elbit systems #britain #geopol #palestine action #📁.zip

1K notes · View notes

c-rowlesdraws · 3 months

Note

(Note: I’m writing this in good faith and not trying to come across confrontational)

Have u forgotten u can vote 3rd party? I know there will likely not be enough people voting independant party for a non red or blue president to be elected THIS voting cycle. But. If enough people vote independent maybe america will wake up and realize there are more than 2 shitty options. (It takes time to change, and change for the better)

Look the problem with the blue no matter who mindset is that these people know you are going to vote for them no matter what. Not because you necessarily like them but because at least they aren’t the other guy. Which gives dems absolutely no incentive to not be a piece of shit. Like do you get it? They will be awful and endorse genocides and all other terror because they know you will let them get away with it. Maybe biden isn’t as bad as a republican would have been but he is still pretty fucking bad. Personally, morally, I cannot in any way justify voting for him again.

voting for someone as damage control in an election does not mean you can't heckle the shit out of them once they are in office. You elect the officials you think you and groups you belong to have the better chance of pressuring into better policies, and who will do the least amount of damage in the meantime.

Democrats are relentless towards their elected officials-- at least the ones I know who are actually politically active are. They call, they protest, they campaign. Plus, as you're demonstrating, people on the left do not blindly vote (that's the other guys). It's totally unrealistic to say that elected Democratic officials just think they have an easy ride.

people can and should vote for whoever they want to in local elections, primaries, etc. But in the big one, the president one, the one in the fall, voting third party is like drawing up plans for a nice new extension on a house that is actively being set on fire. Voting for president is damage control. Voting is your hard-fucking-won civil right. Voting in smaller elections can also be damage control; when there is no-one to feel "good" about voting for, you vote for the less-worse one, because maybe that one is more receptive to the idea of climate change being real than the other one, and you can work with that.

Sometimes you get to vote for the option you align with the most. But sometimes voting is about picking the option with the cracks that you can dig your fingers into and pull open. Or at least the one who won't start taking a sledgehammer to civil rights and environmental protections (and, and) with all his buddies while you work to build support behind a candidate you can feel good about voting for in four years.

Biden has shown he can change his policies over time, with pressure. Democrats can be swayed in ways Republicans cannot. One major party can be pushed more left. The other one will drag us into a darkness that I don't even want to think about. The presidency is about so much more than just the individual sitting in the Oval Office.

Voting is strategic. It is strategic. It is not negative moral karma to vote strategically. It is one action amidst all the other actions you can take to fight for the future you want.

#please read my original post again if you're still unclear on my political stance #us politics #ask #catie talks #i don't want to publish more of these asks but I feel compelled to reply to at least some #this website was a fucking waking nightmare in 2016 and I'd feel sick scrolling through tag after tag on a political post #of people saying that hillary was a warhawk and a monster and just as bad as trump and they couldn't #morally justify voting for her #and seeing that attitude showing up again makes me want to throw plates

844 notes · View notes

luveline · 2 years

Note

Hiii I literally love you and your writing especially your Eddie writing!!! Anywaysss, could I request a shy!reader where they and Eddie are dating but they kinda kept it on the down low but reader was having a bad day and was being all clingy and like everyone found out and the hellfire club was just like 😮

hi i love u ty for ur request! hope this okay ♥️ shy!fem!reader | 1k words

You know you shouldn’t go to his club. It’s not fair of you. Hellfire is one of his sacred nerd rituals. As soon as he sees you like this he’ll put it on pause, and you also know – one of the only things you do know about Dungeons and Dragons — that stopping in the middle of a game interrupts the flow.

Still. You’re feeling a little selfish and a lot strung out. Today has sucked and all you’ve done is wish he was there to make you feel better, so you walk down the hallway to the club room and stand at the door, trying to summon the courage to open it.

On the other side, Mike Wheeler catches a flash of your clothes through the small glass panel and frowns. He jabs Dustin Henderson hard in the side, earning a, “What the fuck, dude?” that Mike quickly shushes.

“There’s a girl outside,” he says.

Girls are… uncommon, at Hellfire.

Dustin leans forward to look around Mike’s torso and forgets to whisper. “Is she crying?”

Eddie looks up, annoyed at being interrupted by the newbies and about to delve into a speech on respecting your dungeon master when his gaze slides past them. He spots your torso, your hands pulled up to your chest, and he knows it’s you. From the curve of your arm alone.

He’s half standing when you knock.

The rest of the group gawp as he stands. Usually, Eddie would either ignore whoever it is or have someone else answer, and his sudden willingness is downright shocking.

He cracks the door open. He’s barely had time to take in your tear stained cheeks when you’re whispering apologies. “I’m really sorry,” you say quickly, pulling the sleeves of your soft cardigan down over your hands. “I needed to see you.”

“What happened?” he asks, trying for hushed like you but missing the mark.

Mike and Dustin make incredulous faces at each other, eyes squinted in confusion.

“Who the fuck is that?” Mike asks.

Lucas Sinclair grins from across the table. “Who do you think?”

“You know her?” Dustin questions. He sounds pissed to have been kept out of the loop.

“Nope,” Lucas says, elbows sliding over the crinkling paper of his character sheet as he pulls in his chair. “I’ve never seen her before in my life. But that’s definitely his girlfriend.”

A handful of laughs from around the table. “Yeah, right,” Gareth says.

Lucas leans in even closer, practically conspiratorial as he points to Eddie’s dirty-white sneakers. “Look, see how close they’re standing?” When nobody looks convinced, Lucas glares. “I know what I’m talking about!”

He really does. The toes of your shoes are a hair's-width from Eddie’s, face to the ground as you scrub your wet cheeks. Telling him about your bad day has made it somehow feel better and worse, and your breathing comes shallow.

“I’m sorry,” you say again. “I know you’re playing your- um, your game.”

Eddie glances over his shoulder. The large majority of the group whip their faces back to their sheets, caught. He shoots a scowl at them all, though any annoyance slips away when he turns back to you. You look so sad.

Eddie doesn’t really think about it. He steps out into the hall and lets the door close behind him, arms wrapping around you placatingly. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“It’s been a really shitty day,” you say hoarsely.

“I know,” he murmurs, rubbing your back. Your shoulders tremble under his palm. “You should’ve found me earlier.”

“I didn’t want to ruin your game.”

“You haven’t. They’re on break,” he promises.

It’s a total lie but he couldn't care less about the campaign, not when you’ve come unraveled. You nod into his chest and worm your shaking hand around his waist, squeezing so tightly it aches. His head tucks over yours like it was made to and he wills some stillness into you, perturbed by your shuddering. He hates when you get like this. You're so wound up you can’t calm yourself down.

Inside the club room, there’s a riot of whispering, some quieter than others.

Lucas sits back in his chair smugly. “Dude, you have a girlfriend. You shouldn’t be so surprised,” he says to Mike.

Mike peers through the glass door with a mild disgust. “Me and my girlfriend don’t do that.”

“That is not true.”

“We don’t-“

“No, they really don’t,” Dustin agrees. “They’re too busy trying to swallow each other.

Anyone who’d been listening starts to laugh, worse when Mike’s cheeks flare red and he flips them all the bird. The laughter quickly dies when the door opens and Eddie returns, his sad maybe-girlfriend trailing behind him.

“Someone get a chair for Y/N,” is all he says.

You look like you might burst into flames on the spot. Everyone’s eyes are on you. You hate it.

“Thank you,” you say, though you aren’t sure who you’re thanking as somebody passes you a chair. Eddie sits back in his ‘throne’ and you sit beside him, cheeks dry but eyes still red and face downtrodden.

Eddie leans back and rolls his eyes at the silence. “She’s my assistant for today's session,” he says concisely, before any of them think they have the right to ask.

Eddie can’t hold your hand and you don’t think you could survive it in front of so many people, but when the game starts back up and everyone is distracted he pushes his foot behind your calf and pulls your leg toward him. There’s a smile on his face as he orchestrates the next dungeon, his pen scratching down notes you don’t understand.

He rips a page from his notebook and passes it to you covertly.

You take it and let it lie against your thighs. When you read it, you struggle to suppress a giddy smile.

Prettiest assistant ever. Think she'll let me take her out tonight?

He likes his chances.

#eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x reader imagine #eddie munson blurb #eddie munson drabble #eddie munson x reader blurb #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson #stranger things fic #stranger things x reader #stranger things #stranger things 4 #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader fluff #eddie munson oneshot

10K notes · View notes

sl-ut · 28 days

Text

more streamer!ellie hcs

been wanting to make another one of these for a while now so here we goooooo

part one

ellie loves having her gf on stream as often as she can

they always let chat vote for who gets to choose the game that they play, but y/n wins probably 90% of the time

ellie pretends to be annoyed when she picks the sims or minecraft

but in reality she really likes sitting together and making each other and building their dream life

she made her simself have huge muscles, was mad when her girl just laughed and made them more realistic

when she won, she liked to pick horror and rpg games

she loves trying to act all big and bad and "protecting her girl"

meanwhile she's holding onto her for dear life and screaming at the top of her lungs

when she's on her own, she likes playing any type of game with voicechat

she always ends up fighting with and cussing at some random kids across the country

she gets so wild whenever one of them calls her a virgin

always freaks out at them before beginning to brag all about her super hot gf that they couldn't even dream of having and they wouldn't even know what to do with that

she gets a "???" text from her girl a few seconds later

she takes little gf breaks during the stream, where she literally sprints out of the room, kisses her, and rushed back

her insta is so dumbbbb

like its literally a compilation of stupid memes, random photo dumps, brand deals, and the most well edited and gorgeous photos of her girlfriend

her tiktok really took off after they started dating too

she makes thirst traps and also the most wholesome lovely dovey vids about her relationship

she loves reposting fan edits of them

as mentioned in the first one, ellie's gf is also in the public eye

i think i've decided that she's an up and coming singer/actress

ellie loves going to major events with her

she always looks like a wet dream like

she likes to wear suits of some kind where the top is partially unbuttoned and her hair is slicked back and ughhhh

don't get me wrong, she looks so good and fierce in her solo pics

but anytime you're anywheres near her that night, she's got the most obvious heart eyes anyone has ever seen

whenever ellie goes with her for press events y/n's manager immediately know its gonna be a gold mine

theres always some kind of promo that's literally just the two of them cuddling

once y/n gets her big break they 1000% get offered a ck campaign

the whole thing is them doing domestic stuff together and being all cute and sexy and ellie looks so DAMN GOOD in her boxers and bralette

she literally spends the whole day leading up to her stream with her gf bc she's "gonna miss her" during the 3-4 hours that they're apart (even tho she's calling her in every 30 minutes just to say hi anyways)

wears stupid shirts on stream that she custom orders

they all say stupid loser gf shit or just have a picture of your face on it

#reader insert #x reader #imagines #lesbian #ellie williams x reader #ellie x you #ellie x y/n #ellie x fem reader #ellie x reader #ellie smut

624 notes · View notes

odinsblog · 1 month

Text

During her arrest, Ayesh was subjected to assault, threats, and insults by Israeli soldiers, according to the Addameer human rights organisation. She was transferred to Israel’s Hasharon Prison before being later taken to Damon Prison, where she is now being held.

Ayesh’s work as a human rights defender rose to the fore during her time at the Ramallah-based Lawyers for Justice, representing Palestinian political detainees in PA prisons. In July, she attended a session on behalf of the group at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.

Tala Nasser, from the Addameer prisoners’ rights group, explained that Ayesh’s arrest comes amid a “violent mass arrest campaign” carried out by Israel since October 7.

The fact that the vast majority of the more than 6,900 Palestinians arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7 have been transferred to administrative detention highlights the arbitrariness of Israel’s arrests, she said.

“This campaign includes activists, human rights defenders and political leaders,” Nassar told Al Jazeera, noting that it is “an attempt to silence them and prevent the exposure of the occupation’s crimes across the whole country”.

In December, Israeli forces also arrested political and civil society leader Khalida Jarrar, who was similarly transferred to administrative detention.

Despite releasing all but three Palestinian female detainees during the latest prisoner exchange with Hamas at the end of 2023, the Israeli army rearrested dozens. Some 80 female prisoners are being held today, all of whom are in the Damon Prison.

Among the 80 are dozens of women from the besieged Gaza Strip, but lawyers are forbidden from visiting them or knowing anything about them.

Several reports have emerged of female detainees from Gaza being physically beaten and abused, including an unknown number of them being held at Israeli military bases and not in prison.

Lawyers say conditions for all Palestinian detainees, including women, are unprecedentedly difficult. Eight Palestinian male prisoners have also died or were killed in Israeli custody since October 7, most of them in the days and weeks after their arrest.

Over the past few months, many videos have emerged of Israeli soldiers stripping, torturing and abusing male prisoners from both the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

“It is important to note that every female that is arrested is violated in one way or another,” said Nasser. “They are all facing threats, intensive strip searches, verbal assault and physical violence.”

(continue reading)

#politics #palestine #gaza #diala ayesh #israel #political prisoners #israeli hostages #human rights abuses #administrative detainees

646 notes · View notes

heritageposts · 1 month

Text

An Israeli influence campaign is using hundreds of online avatars and fake social media accounts to attack Democratic lawmakers critical of Israel and promote news articles disapproving of the United Nations Palestine refugee agency (Unrwa), according to a report by the Israeli online watchdog, Fake Reporter. According to the report, the targeted campaign has used more than 600 avatars, sending out 58,000 tweets and social media posts to circulate articles published by The Guardian, CNN and Wall Street Journal, among other major news outlets that amplify Israel’s position on the war. The campaign relies on three major social networks, UnFold Magazine, Non-Agenda and The Moral Alliance, which were created prior to the war in Gaza. But the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel sent the accounts into round-the-clock posting. The sites, according to Fake Reporter, are geared specifically to a “progressive audience”, publishing content on climate change, AI regulation, and human rights, in addition to the war in Gaza. They have more than 43,000 followers across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The avatars promoting the content talk up their identity with lines like, “As a middle-aged African American woman” and use hashtags like #FaithJourney and #AfricanAmericanSpirituality.

Some examples from the report:

And continuing,

The avatars were all created on the same day and their profiles were written with the same formula, subbing out just a few words. The declared gender and ethnicity of the avatars don’t match the profile photos, which have been taken from websites selling headshots. The campaign works to amplify news stories published by major media outlets. First, the fake news sites share the reports. Then, the avatars share them across social media, including on the official accounts of Democratic lawmakers. Avatars also shared social media posts showing video clips of what appeared to be Pro-Palestinian protestors calling for "massacres to be normalised" and calling for the US to "go to hell", contrasting that with peaceful protests of pro-Israel protestors. In other cases, Avatars simply reshared widely published video clips of US lawmakers questioning the heads of Ivy League schools about antisemitism on campus. [...] According to the report, around 85 percent of all the US politicians targeted by the campaign were Democrats, and 90 percent of them were African Americans. Ritchie Torres, a black Democratic Congressman with generally pro-Israel views, garnered the most social media engagement from the avatars. Other lawmakers targeted included Cori Bush; Lucy McBath; House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries; and Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Israeli news site Haaretz reported in January that the Israeli government had launched an online influence campaign to respond to pro-Palestinian content and reports about Hamas. It’s unclear whether the campaign revealed by Fake Reporter is part of that initiative.

. . . continues at MME (20 Mar 2024)

#free palestine #palestine #israel #gaza #hasbara #bot network #if you're active on twitter you've likely encountered these israeli bot networks already #but note how targeted it is #''around 85 percent of all the US politicians targeted by the campaign were Democrats #and 90 percent of them were African Americans''

1K notes · View notes

reasonsforhope · 20 days

Text

Note: I super don't like the framing of this headline. "Here's why it matters" idk it's almost like there's an entire country's worth of people who get to keep their democracy! Clearly! But there are few good articles on this in English, so we're going with this one anyway.

2024 is the biggest global election year in history and the future of democracy is on every ballot. But amid an international backsliding in democratic norms, including in countries with a longer history of democracy like India, Senegal’s election last week was a major win for democracy. It’s also an indication that a new political class is coming of age in Africa, exemplified by Senegal’s new 44-year-old president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye.

The West African nation managed to pull off a free and fair election on March 24 despite significant obstacles, including efforts by former President Macky Sall to delay the elections and imprison or disqualify opposition candidates. Add those challenges to the fact that many neighboring countries in West Africa — most prominently Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, but other nations across the region too — have been repeatedly undermined by military coups since 2020.

Sall had been in power since 2012, serving two terms. He declined to seek a third term following years of speculation that he would do so despite a constitutional two-term limit. But he attempted to extend his term, announcing in February that elections (originally to be held that month) would be pushed off until the end of the year in defiance of the electoral schedule.

Sall’s allies in the National Assembly approved the measure, but only after security forces removed opposition politicians, who vociferously protested the delay. Senegalese society came out in droves to protest Sall’s attempted self-coup, and the Constitutional Council ruled in late February that Sall’s attempt to stay in power could not stand.

That itself was a win for democracy. Still, opposition candidates, including Faye, though legally able to run, remained imprisoned until just days before the election — while others were barred from running at all. The future of Senegal’s democracy seemed uncertain at best.

Cut to Tuesday [April 2, 2024], when Sall stepped down and handed power to Faye, a former tax examiner who won on a campaign of combating corruption, as well as greater sovereignty and economic opportunity for the Senegalese. And it was young voters who carried Faye to victory...

“This election showed the resilience of the democracy in Senegal that resisted the shock of an unexpected postponement,” Adele Ravidà, Senegal country director at the lnternational Foundation for Electoral Systems, told Vox via email. “... after a couple of years of unprecedented episodes of violence [the Senegalese people] turned the page smoothly, allowing a peaceful transfer of power.”

And though Faye’s aims won’t be easy to achieve, his win can tell us not only about how Senegal managed to establish its young democracy, but also about the positive trend of democratic entrenchment and international cooperation in African nations, and the power of young Africans...

Senegal and Democracy in Africa

Since it gained independence from France in 1960, Senegal has never had a coup — military or civilian. Increasingly strong and competitive democracy has been the norm for Senegal, and the country’s civil society went out in great force over the past three years of Sall’s term to enforce those norms.

“I think that it is really the victory of the democratic institutions — the government, but also civil society organization,” Sany said. “They were mobilized, from the unions, teacher unions, workers, NGOs. The civil society in Senegal is one of the most experienced, well-organized democratic institutions on the continent.” Senegalese civil society also pushed back against former President Abdoulaye Wade’s attempt to cling to power back in 2012, and the Senegalese people voted him out...

Faye will still have his work cut out for him accomplishing the goals he campaigned on, including economic prosperity, transparency, food security, increased sovereignty, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. This will be important, especially for Senegal’s young people, who are at the forefront of another major trend.

Young Africans will play an increasingly key role in the coming decades, both on the continent and on the global stage; Africa’s youth population (people aged 15 to 24) will make up approximately 35 percent of the world’s youth population by 2050, and Africa’s population is expected to grow from 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion during that time. In Senegal, people aged 10 to 24 make up 32 percent of the population, according to the UN.

“These young people have connected to the rest of the world,” Sany said. “They see what’s happening. They are interested. They are smart. They are more educated.” And they have high expectations not only for their economic future but also for their civil rights and autonomy.

The reality of government is always different from the promise of campaigning, but Faye’s election is part of a promising trend of democratic entrenchment in Africa, exemplified by successful transitions of power in Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone over the past year. To be sure, those elections were not without challenges, but on the whole, they provide an important counterweight to democratic backsliding.

Senegalese people, especially the younger generation, have high expectations for what democracy can and should deliver for them. It’s up to Faye and his government to follow."

-via Vox, April 4, 2024

#senegal #africa #bassirou diomaye faye #elections #2024 elections #democracy #voting matters #young people #political corruption #coup attempt #good news #hope #international politics #african politics #fair elections #autocracy #macky sall

498 notes · View notes

emeritusemeritus · 5 months

Text

Squirm, Hellfire Queen [Eddie Munson X Reader]

Title: Squirm, Hellfire Queen.

Pairing: Eddie Munson X Reader {Established Relationship}

Timeline: S4, No mention of Vecna.

Summary: You’re a little uncomfortable at Hellfire Club and Eddie investigates.

Warnings: Mentions of smut, creampies, cum, cumplay, secret relationships. Swearing (it’s Eddie after all). Dustin being my favourite character to write once again. I don’t think ‘Freak’ is mentioned but it’s my own HC that he’s called Richard, in case that comes up. Not beta read nor spellchecked, we die like Chrissy.

"Dude, you okay?" Dustin asks, leaning over the table towards you, earning an immediate glare from the dungeon master from interrupting the game. Dustin holds up his hands in surrender sarcastically, falling back into his seat and focusing his attention back on the game, all under the watchful eye of the seemingly omniscient dungeon master.

A few minutes pass before you move again, adjusting your hips in your seat as you wince subconsciously, earning you another confused glance from Gareth, sitting directly across from you.

"You saw it too? Right!" Dustin speaks out again, clicking his fingers mid air as he turns to you with a questioning gaze.

Heat rushes to your cheeks as you feel a blush bloom over your face at the attention you were unwittingly receiving. You shake your head, trying not to meet anyone's gaze, pretending to focus all of your attention at the game, analysing your character sheet to study your hit points.

You attempt to keep yourself under control, not to draw any more attention to yourself then you have already but only a few moments later your eyes close and you suck in a silent breath, fighting every instinct you have not to squirm in your seat.

Your writhing and obvious discomfort had caught the attention of the dungeon master sat at the head of the table, his gaze focusing in on you as he watches your curious movements. You can feel his gaze blazing on you and so you finally find the courage to look up at him, meeting his gaze.

You thought initially that he would be angry with you, for drawing away attention from his, frankly brilliant, campaign but as you gazed in his eyes, it was clear that not a single ounce of anger was present. Instead, he looked upon with intense curiosity and intrigue, eyes wide and orientated upon your figure. The table blocked the majority of his view of you, but he watched with interest as you readjusted your hips in your seat, pulling down on your skirt, full lips parted in a small 'o' shape, eyes fixed on nothing in the distance.

When you met his eyes again, your blush deepened, eyes widening like a deer in headlights as you tried to avert your gaze immediately. A smirk tugged at the side of his mouth as he realised exactly what was happening. He took a brief look around at his little sheep around him, each of them blissfully ignorant of what was happening just a few seats down.

"Eddie?" Mike asks gently, trying to get his attention.

"Huh?" Eddie asks, not realising that he had zoned out, lost in his own thoughts.

"We decide to flee," Mike says slowly, gesturing with his eyes to look at the game board below, seeing that there was so way out of the trap Eddie had created.

"Oh yeah man, course," Eddie says, earning a mixture of questioning and confused glances from the boys, and girl, around the table, each of them expecting him to make a bigger deal of it.

"Tell you what, we hang it up right here, next week we begin from this point exactly and you give me your intelligent decision then," Eddie says, clasping his hands together as he sits back on his throne, eyes squinting as he smirks.

"Princess, a word?" Eddie says, using your nickname as he looks directly at you. You nod, silently, laughing gently as the rest of the boys 'ooo' at you, assuming you are in trouble.

They quickly gather their belongings, saying bye to the dungeon master and the princess as they head out the door, leaving the rest of the cleanup to Eddie as usual.

Once he is confident that everyone has dispersed, the dungeon master leaps up from his throne and strides over to the door, locking it from the inside. He turns and fixes his dangerous gaze upon you, a smug smirk pulling at his lips as he begins to saunter over to you.

"It appears you caused a scene Princess," he says threateningly, running his hands along the back of your chair. You open your mouth to apologise but think better of it, no longer feeling embarrassed by your 'issue' now you were alone with the perpetrator.

"I'm not really the one to blame here am I, master?" You snark back, your voice breathy and deep, exactly how you knew he liked it. He cursed under his breath, especially at hearing his title, something he always enjoyed hearing fall from your lips.

"Pray tell, what is causing the fair maidens troubles?" He asks dramatically, leaning down to tower over you, his lips ghosting you neck as he speaks. You were about to open your mouth with another sarcastic reply but instead, decided to show him. You scooted your chain back every so slightly, the chair grinding on the linoleum floor the only sound that could be heard in the silent room.

His gaze immediately fixes on the skin of your thighs, your skirt riding up as you took your seat.

With a dangerously flirty smirk, you open your legs wide enough for him to see exactly what has been causing your discomfort during the hellfire session, your skirt riding even further up with your movement, blocking any obstruction.

He breaths in a sharp breath, curses falling from his lips as his eyes bulge, his gaze fixated on the space between your thighs, showing him exactly what your problem was.

Between your thighs, your panties were completely soaked, melded to your puffy pussy lips, with extra wetness leaking out onto the seat below you, pooling under your butt.

He's frozen to the spot, fixated on the sight before him, unable move, unable to speak.

"Seems like it's more of an 'us' problem to me, dungeon master," you tease, lifting your hand to run one finger over your panties and into the little pool below, feeling the mixture of your arousal and his cum beneath your finger.

"Jesus Christ," is all he manages to spit out, his eyes following your finger diligently as it trails gently over your panties, still sensitive from your activities earlier.

One of the most wonderful things about Eddie is just how much he cums. It's like he's hoarding it, right up until the last second where he unleashes everything he has, flooding you and leaving no doubt to where he's been.

"No wonder you were squirming sweetheart," he says, finally breaking his gaze to look up into your eyes, seeing a smile on your lips that completely knocks him for six. The mixture of your sweet smile, deliciously used body and evidence of his defilement was enough to render him completely useless, brain turning to mush as he looks at you with all the love and adoration he can. His tone is gentle again, using the pet name he favoured for sweet moments, if that was what you would call this. "To think I was going to ask you to stand and address the class," he smirks, shaking his head slightly.

"Yeah something tells me that would have been a disaster, I could barely keep your load in sitting down!" You reply, giggling. His lips part and his eyebrows shoot up as he lets out a strangled groan at your words, your beautiful, dirty mouth always affecting him. "You think the guys noticed?" You asked suddenly, worrying that someone would have caught on to your discomfort.

No one knew what was happening, what had been happening, between you and Eddie for quite some time. You'd been best friends from your first encounter, though the friendship was laced with innuendos, teasing, flirtation and downright mutual pining right from the very beginning. Your relationship had bloomed organically, never having felt so right, but it was locked away as both of your dirty little secrets. You'd become close with all the hellfire club and the bigger friendship group around it and were concerned about the implication it could have on your friendships if you just became 'Eddie's girl'.

You'd been successfully hiding your relationship for nearly 7 months and so far, not a single person had caught on.

"Sweetheart, I say this with all the love and devotion in the world, those guys wouldn't have a single clue about this sort'a thing," he smirks, leaning in to kiss you.

"Two of them have girlfriends!" You reply, breaking away, trying to argue the point. He snorts, shaking his head, leaning in for another kiss.

"Trust me baby, they're clueless nerds," he says with a sarcastic smile.

"As opposed to you... dungeon master," you reply sarcastically. He immediately reaches out to grab you, tickling your sides but he stops when you let out a strangled gasp, thinking he'd hurt you.

"What, baby, wh-?" He panics, causing you to laugh.

"Lets just say, I'm pretty sure I'm empty now," you blush, gesturing down to the chair below you where even more of Eddie's cum has leaked out in your frantic movements. He bites back a groan again at the scene before him and immediately looks up at you with a smirk.

"Can't have that can we sweetheart? Just gonna have to fill you up aaaall over again."

"Promises, promises," you smirk, pulling him down for one last kiss, before attempting to stand up, your face twisting into a grimace as you do. Eddie offers his hand out for you and helps you up onto the seat, his eyes flicking to your now unoccupied chair and he tries to fix the image to his memory for later use.

"We really need to start using condoms," you mutter, feeling the sticky residue clinging to your lower half, frowning at the state of the chair. You were on the pill, so no risk there, but situations like this were growing ever more frequent... and uncomfortable.

"Blasphemy!" Eddie mutters, pulling you in to him arms as his ringed hand comes to play with your hair and your jaw. You laugh sweetly at his outburst and he chuckles deeply to himself as his eyes wonder over your face.

You both pull away and immediately set to packing away all the game pieces, books and sheets that litter the table, both ready to be out of this room.

You grimace as you walk over to a cabinet at the side of the room, the wet clothes becoming increasingly uncomfortable as you bend down to reach for a pack of antibacterial wipes which are stored in the little cleaning cupboard. You make quick work of cleaning up the chair you'd defiled and can't help but laugh with Eddie as he sees just how many wipes it takes to clean it up.

Throwing the used wipes in the trash, you look over to Eddie who has packed everything into his cardboard box and is waiting for you.

You pause, weighing up your options before bending down and peeling off the wet panties, feeling an immediately chill as your bare pussy hides underneath your skirt. Eddie doesn't bother to hide his groan as he sees you take off your panties, before stuffing them inside your lunch bag so that they wouldn't ruin any of your notes.

"You're telling me, I've got to walk these halls, get across the car park and drive us all the way home, knowing that there's nothing under your little skirt?" He groans, pulling you towards him as you walk closer. You immediately feel the telling bulge pressed against you as he holds you tightly to him, causing you to smirk.

"That depends," you tease, running your fingers over his neck, making his breathing deeper and shaky with arousal.

"On what, Princess?" He asks, eyes blazing.

"We could wait... tease each other slowly and let it simmer until we get back to your trailer where you can have me however and wherever you want," you tease, your mouth pressing kisses to his throat as you speak, smiling as you feel his bulge jumping and throbbing at your hip. "Or, I could offer you some relief right now..." you say, pouting your lips in such a way that he knows exactly what you mean. "Though, if you can't wait, I can't promise that I can wait till we get home to play with my little pussy myself."

"Fuck," he curses, followed by a near painful groan as he takes in your words, his entire body shaking to try and calm himself. He reaches down to adjust himself completely without subtlety and groans again at the slightest touch. "Van. Now."

#emeritusemeritus #emeritusemerituswrites #eddie munson #Eddie Munson x reader #eddie munson smut #stranger things #Hellfire club #Eddie Munson masterlist

782 notes · View notes

zvaigzdelasas · 4 months

Text

The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history. In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group. The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are U.S.-made. They say the weapons include 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) “bunker-busters” that have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.

With the Palestinian death toll in Gaza surpassing 20,000, the international community is calling for a cease-fire. Israel vows to press ahead[...]

The Biden administration has quietly continued to supply arms to Israel. Last week, however, President Joe Biden publicly acknowledged that Israel was losing international legitimacy for what he called its “indiscriminate bombing.”[...]

Israel’s offensive has destroyed over two-thirds of all structures in northern Gaza and a quarter of buildings in the southern area of Khan Younis,[...]

The percentage of damaged buildings in the Khan Younis area nearly doubled in just the first two weeks of Israel’s southern offensive, they said. That includes tens of thousands of homes as well as schools, hospitals, mosques and stores. U.N. monitors have said that about 70% of school buildings across Gaza have been damaged. At least 56 damaged schools served as shelters for displaced civilians. Israeli strikes damaged 110 mosques and three churches, the monitors said. Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian deaths by embedding militants in civilian infrastructure. Those sites also shelter multitudes of Palestinians who have fled under Israeli evacuation orders. “Gaza is now a different color from space. It’s a different texture,” said Scher, who has worked with Van Den Hoek to map destruction across several war zones, from Aleppo to Mariupol.[...]

By some measures, destruction in Gaza has outpaced Allied bombings of Germany during World War II.[...]

“Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” said Pape. “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”[...]

So far, fragments of American-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) bombs and smaller diameter bombs have been found in Gaza, according to Brian Castner, a weapons investigator with Amnesty International.[...] In an Oct. 31 strike on the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya, experts say a 2,000-pound bomb killed over 100 civilians. Experts have also identified fragments of SPICE (Smart, Precise Impact, Cost-Effective) 2000-pound bombs, which are fitted with a GPS guidance system to make targeting more precise. Castner said the bombs are produced by the Israeli defense giant Rafael, but a recent State Department release first obtained by The New York Times showed some of the technology had been produced in the United States.

22 Dec 23

404 notes · View notes

dailyadventureprompts · 5 months

Text

Homebrew Mechanic: Meaningful Research

Being careful about when you deliver information to your party is one of the most difficult challenges a dungeonmaster may face, a balancing act that we constantly have to tweak as it affects the pacing of our campaigns.

That said, unlike a novel or movie or videogame where the writers can carefully mete out exposition at just the right time, we dungeonmasters have to deal with the fact that at any time (though usually not without prompting) our players are going to want answers about what's ACTUALLY going on, and they're going to take steps to find out.

To that end I'm going to offer up a few solutions to a problem I've seen pop up time and time again, where the heroes have gone to all the trouble to get themselves into a great repository of knowledge and end up rolling what seems like endless knowledge checks to find out what they probably already know. This has been largely inspired by my own experience but may have been influenced by watching what felt like several episodes worth of the critical role gang hitting the books and getting nothing in return.

I've got a whole write up on loredumps, and the best way to dripfeed information to the party, but this post is specifically for the point where a party has gained access to a supposed repository of lore and are then left twiddling their thumbs while the dm decides how much of the metaplot they're going to parcel out.

When the party gets to the library you need to ask yourself: Is the information there to be found?

No, I don't want them to know yet: Welcome them into the library and then save everyone some time by saying that after a few days of searching it’s become obvious the answers they seek aren’t here. Most vitally, you then either need to give them a new lead on where the information might be found, or present the development of another plot thread (new or old) so they can jump on something else without losing momentum.

No, I want them to have to work for it: your players have suddenly given you a free “insert plothook here” opportunity. Send them in whichever direction you like, so long as they have to overcome great challenge to get there. This is technically just kicking the can down the road, but you can use that time to have important plot/character beats happen.

Yes, but I don’t want to give away the whole picture just yet: The great thing about libraries is that they’re full of books, which are written by people, who are famously bad at keeping their facts straight. Today we live in a world of objective or at least peer reviewed information but the facts in any texts your party are going to stumble across are going to be distorted by bias. This gives you the chance to give them the awnsers they want mixed in with a bunch of red herrings and misdirections. ( See the section below for ideas)

Yes, they just need to dig for it: This is the option to pick if you're willing to give your party information upfront while at the same time making it SEEM like they're overcoming the odds . Consider having an encounter, or using my minigame system to represent their efforts at looking for needles in the lithographic haystack. Failure at this system results in one of the previous two options ( mixed information, or the need to go elsewhere), where as success gets them the info dump they so clearly crave.

The Art of obscuring knowledge AKA Plato’s allegory of the cave, but in reverse

One of the handiest tools in learning to deliver the right information at the right time is a sort of “slow release exposition” where you wrap a fragment lore the party vitally needs to know in a coating of irrelevant information, which forces them to conjecture on possibilities and draw their own conclusions. Once they have two or more pieces on the same subject they can begin to compare and contrast, forming an understanding that is merely the shadow of the truth but strong enough to operate off of.

As someone who majored in history let me share some of my favourite ways I’ve had to dig for information, in the hopes that you’ll be able to use it to function your players.

A highly personal record in the relevant information is interpreted through a personal lens to the point where they can only see the information in question

Important information cameos in the background of an unrelated historical account

The information can only be inferred from dry as hell accounts or census information. Cross reference with accounts of major historical events to get a better picture, but everything we need to know has been flattened into datapoints useful to the bureaucracy and needs to be re-extrapolated.

The original work was lost, and we only have this work alluding to it. Bonus points if the existent work is notably parodying the original, or is an attempt to discredit it.

Part of a larger chain of correspondence, referring to something the writers both experienced first hand and so had no reason to describe in detail.

The storage medium (scroll, tablet, arcane data crystal) is damaged in some way, leading to only bits of information being known.

Original witnesses Didn’t have the words to describe the thing or events in question and so used references from their own environment and culture. Alternatively, they had specific words but those have been bastardized by rough translations.

Tremendously based towards a historical figure/ideology/religion to the point that all facts in the piece are questionable. Bonus points if its part of a treatise on an observably untrue fact IE the flatness of earth

#homebrew mechanic #d&d mechanics #research #tableskills #tabletop inspiration #dm tip #dm advice #exposition

455 notes · View notes