I think I have it. OP was staying at a hotel when it was evacuated by SWAT. This evacuation event was notable enough that it wound up on the front page of the paper (A1), so OP wound up being a source for a front-page story. As a result of reconnecting with people at the paper, they decided to try emailing the editor about any job opportunities.
36 here too, two kids. I have been overwhelmed with fear the past few years that something like this will happen. I can only imagine that if I received the news you did, it would cripple me. Immediate shutdown.
I wish I had more to offer than my sympathy. I wish we could do better with cancer than we can…
Yeah, that’s fair, I did not have that context originally. I should have quoted the article I linked, because the salient parts point out that it was strange the graffiti evoked the Israeli flag, which I had noticed originally:
Also the message in the medium was confusing. Conceivably a blue Israeli flag, or what immediately evokes it, could be seen as a pro-Jewish sign. Surely any genuine antisemite would have found a clearer way of expressing their hate.
I’m inclined to agree with the BBC’s conclusion:
As for the purpose of Operation Star of David, like all dezinformatsiya it seems to have been to sow confusion and anxiety. The fact that the symbol could be either pro- or anti-Israeli made it all the more interesting: that way both sides would be suspicious.
I notice the Times of Israel doesn’t consider this months-old information when continuing to reference it as evidence of anti-semitism.
Marking buildings with Stars of David is how the Nazis marked Jewish homes and properties.
But that’s unlikely to be what happened here: BBC
All your sources rely on the same primary source: the interior ministry. And I don’t see a breakdown of the acts. In a number of articles, graffiti of stars of David across buildings in France was categorized as anti-Semitic, which seems really weird to me because they weren’t defaced or altered in any way, just stars of David. On its face I would think that was…pro-semitic.
Either way, I’m not denying there has been an uptick in anti-Semitism and that any and all anti-semitism is indefensible. But there also seems to be a deliberate effort to embellish the narrative by treating anti-Israeli or pro-Paletinian acts as anti-Semitic. Then people react to that narrative with fear, and their fear is used to further credit the narrative.
The insidious part is that these stories treat the narrative as support for Israel’s ongoing aggression.
I feel for anyone who feels unsafe in their homes and communities. I can’t imagine the weight of the decision to uproot yourself and your family to emigrate to another country for reasons beyond your control, especially discrimination.
It’s worth noting, though, that this article seemingly goes out of its way to obfuscate what qualifies as anti-semitic acts.
"This kind of expression is no longer coming only from the extreme right, but also by the far left — and while it’s doubtful that it’s always antisemitic, anyone sensitive can feel that it’s never far away in certain discourse,” warns Wieviorka.
Palestinian solidarity is not anti-semitism, and there are abundant indicators (from this article and its links) they’re being conflated in France.
I should acknowledge how easy it is for me to commentate from my position as spectator! You and the rest of the team have very clearly put a lot of research and thought into cultivating Beehaw and it shows. I’m very lucky that this was my gateway to the fediverse during last summer’s exodus.
I wish I could volunteer to help but I’m rather flaky and inconsistent with my online time, as it’s necessarily well down my list of priorities. If that still sounds like a situation I could contribute through, let me know.
I’ll try, hope this makes sense. As a leftist space, Beehaw is a bit of an echo chamber. On its own, this is kind of a neutral value, maybe even a positive one (we’ve seen with brutal transparency what “free speech” platforms actually are). But echo chambers are vulnerable to the creeping growth of some inhospitable characteristics (being dismissive, derisive, reductive, etc.) toward ideas outside the narrow lane of the chamber. We treat conclusions as foregone and perceived opposition as hostile. And that’s the main thrust: I firmly believe that internet culture, broadly, mistakes and/or conflates things like ignorance, diverging personal experience, or even sufficient inarticulateness as opposition and treats it accordingly.
One of the most frequent examples I see here is the devolution of a minor disagreement (there was a relatively recent example concerning the fairness of a news headline) into a hyperbolic declaration of someone’s overall character (e.g., “because of how you’ve conducted yourself in this conversation, or the ideas you’ve expressed, you probably would have supported the Nazis” as a demonstrative example). At other times, I’ve seen relatively harmless stubbornness responded to with blocks or bans, which felt extreme to me despite the fact that the stubbornness was indeed frustrating and potentially (but not actually, yet) malicious.
I want to be explicit that I don’t think any inclusive community is well-served by being tolerant of harmful ideas. Harmful ideas should be countered, blocked, banned, censored, and burned in a fire. But I’d like to see non-hostile opposition, ignorance, diverging personal experiences, etc. treated with more cordiality and grace up until the point that they are effectively exposed as malicious. I think there are good people with bad ideas (I’ve been one of them and expect to be again) who could learn and grow in a community like this with the right balance.
A holiday meal, I’d say, is defined by its rarity and specificity. Once a year, family members and close friends gather together for the purpose of being together. I don’t see that mapping onto online social media[…]while being kind and open etc is obviously a good aim for a social media space, so long as it is social media, which means open ended discussions/topics, (relatively) open membership, relative anonymity, constant activity, and, let’s be honest, some expectation of providing some form entertainment to lurkers … the personal bonds and purpose of a holiday meal just can’t exist.
Familial relationships are the product of time-tested, intimate bonds. They can’t be manufactured, and attempting to do so is likelier to limit comfort and expression from users in the absence of functional knowledge of others’ boundaries. Social media should, ideally, encourage cordial free expression, dissent, and disagreement, when (1) the focus of those activities are on ideas rather than people (e.g., other users), and (2) those ideas are not harmful to any other person or people. I actually don’t think Beehaw is great at this currently, with the strong caveat that I also believe it is much, much better and more earnest in its endeavor to do so than any other alternative I’m aware of. But I fear further seclusion would be a move in the wrong direction.
the moment you make a social media space more closed or exclusive while trying to still be a form of social media, it will become quieter, duller and less compelling to users (for better or worse) and eventually fall into relative disuse and so seem to fail at social media.
Observing from my own experience here (and the admins would obviously be well-suited to prove otherwise), too much of the contributions to this community are weighted toward the admins and mods rather than general users. Discussions get decent traction, but I notice that many of the posts themselves are coming from the elevated accounts. If this is accurate, it’s a significant point of failure that would conceivably hasten the “fall into relative disuse” in the event that just a few of these power users are unable to contribute as prolifically. Federation helps fill this gap.
All this being said, I want to counter-balance my criticisms by extending my gratitude and admiration for the admins and mods who’ve made this community what it is. I have an account on Kbin as well that can view much more of the fediverse, but I spend roughly 85% of my time here on Beehaw because of the strength of the community (and, admittedly, to a lesser degree because there are no good kbin mobile apps). It’s clear to see the amount of time, effort, and diligence it takes to create this space, and I am extremely grateful for it. For my own sake, I hope that Beehaw remains here (or on another federated service), but whatever direction is chosen I wish the experiment enormous success.
Hey go easy on yourself, we’re all phallic.
Haha, sorry to confuse things further but this is not true .
Tldr, “till” is its own word and is actually older than the word until, and they’ve been used synonymously for centuries. 'Til with an apostrophe is acceptable but has been less common, and til without an apostrophe is even less common.
Pride can actually be defined as pleasure derived from an achievement. There are meadows in your community right now with a sizable population of randy toads that would otherwise have been ripped out and replaced by cheap, cookie cutter (I assume) housing, if not specifically because of your interest and contribution.
Intent needn’t be part of the equation. Pleasure + achievement = pride. I’m proud of you for saving those meadows, for goodness sake take some for yourself!
Calibri is not actually the default font anymore! In M365, at least. Granted, it will be a long time before it’s not recognized as such.
My company uses Roboto. I like it a lot, but I think it’s gotten pretty popular. Do you know about fonts.google.com? Huge library that you can apply filters to, makes it really easy to browse.
Courtesy of my expansive Google skills (I searched “comic child sick exorcist” lol).
I’ve lost two animals early: my dog, Sparrow, about 10 years ago, who succumbed to chronic kidney disease that we didn’t even know he had until his kidneys went into failure, and my cat, Gus, last year who got a hold of something toxic (he had a habit of eating silicone and foam products, and despite our best effort to ban those products from the house or hide them if they were necessary, he still found something) and also went into kidney failure.
The worst part about both of them was knowing that there would come a time when their absence felt more normal than their presence. When you invite a companion into your life, make them your family, their loss can feel like a death of self, especially when it’s early and unexpected. I found myself resenting the idea of becoming a person who isn’t enduringly devastated by that loss, as painful as it is.
For better or worse I have reached that stage for both of them. But I also still think of them both often. I can still feel the twisty fur behind Sparrow’s ears (he was a border collie mix) in my fingers. I can still feel the pressure in my chin where Gus would would dig in for a face rub. I am still capable of devastation over their loss, but I find the devastation comforting, and welcome it warmly.
I have a soft spot for Jee-woon Kim, a Korean filmmaker probably best know for The Good, the Bad, and the Weird or I Saw the Devil. He’s gotten some big recognition, and even made an American debut with a regrettably forgettable post-gubernatorial Arnold Schwarzenegger movie (The Last Stand).
But in the 2000s, he made a string of really phenomenal genre flicks (the two mentioned above, as well as A Bittersweet Life and A Tale of Two Sisters) that got me into Korean cinema even moreso than Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho, who I was also paying close attention to at the start.
His career has been less consistent though. The Arnold movie and his adaptation of Illang we’re both misfires. He does get good performances from his actors, and he can elevate a good script to it’s maximum potential, but he doesn’t do the same for bad scripts. I think his greatest strength though is his visual flair, and that just doesn’t generate as much attention as his contemporaries.
I read this more as “Heads of 3 top US colleges refuse to trap themselves in what was likely to be a performative thread of anti-Palestinian questions from one of Congress’s most shameless clown-people (Elise Stefanik).”
To be clear, from the article itself:
The university leaders all personally criticized anti-Israel activism.
On second thought, it may not have even been anti-Palestinian per se, but rather more careless exploitation in pursuit of CRT-adjacent nonsense.
Some Republicans sought to paint campus antisemitism as a product of universities embracing “the race-based ideology of the radical left,”
You seem really passionate about consuming inedible objects, and I admire your forthrightness.
I agree that it’s super early for much speculation, but Dan Houser and a few other key players left Rockstar after RDR2. He and Michael Unsworth (who I think also left the studio with Dan) were two-thirds of the GTA 5 and RDR2 writing team. Without their involvement, I fear a scenario where the core single-player narrative has less gravitas, around which much of the detail and realism of the gameplay and game world has previously resolved, and the company leans more into the success of its GTA Online style gameplay.
I’m sure they can still be wildly successful with that formula, but it will be a huge disappointment for me personally.