I have recently evolved my beliefs in the last 5-6 years where I no longer consider myself religious, in regards to religious beliefs while also just considering myself spiritual.
I do not follow a title of what I am or anything, but believe in my soul that it's important to do meaningful celebrations and traditions that align with my lifestyle, values, personal beliefs in order to honor my personhood and a healthy balance of ensuring I don't self-abandon myself.
I don't want to put myself into a box ever again, so I just focus on being intuned with myself.
I now think that life is just way too short to do stuff just because that's how you were raised or was taught to do.
I've overcome a lot of religious abuse as well as the mindset in which I was raised and that of my origin family. Some of my most traumatic life experiences happened on the account of my 'upbringing', the beliefs I was raised to believe, a result of religious abuse and generational trauma, where those dogmatic scriptures, beliefs and texts led me to continually go down roads that did not protect me for the simple fact that they pushed 'self-sacrifice' and 'religious-pleasing lifestyles' that do not compliment, protect, and support positive outcomes for women, and sometimes children. I was taught to just do it because that's what the religion inspires, or what the social constructs say to do.
It did not help that I just didn't know any better-I've let go the regret of this innocent ignorance and grief that it initially brought on. Looking back, I cringe at the decisions, choices, and 'enduring' I had survived from that awful upbringing-I now recognize that as, the 'hidden abuse' for a good internal family image-that I too was not aware of until recently, and just the disgusting dysfunctional family dynamic that has revealed itself since I've started to slash those generational curses.
I was abused by one parent growing up by the way, and told the other who did nothing but 'took ME to my extended family's church'. They never stopped it, protected me or stood up for me. Now, much later in adulthood I'm realizing that both of them were abusive, just in different ways and I understand my psycho-emotional disconnect from them and my origin family in general because I spoke up when it happened, even later in early adulthood and I never realized the pattern of describing me as 'dramatic' or continually trying to treat me like a child despite my very grown-up adult age, were and is their way of trying to force suppression of my voice, independence, growth, healness, and strength.
My other siblings are dismissive and become extremely argumentative or defensive of our 'loving parents' with any mention of how we grew up, or verbally attack me/talk about me to other family members like I'm the one with the issues with any effort I put forth to ask questions of why and to hold them accountable, or to just disassociate with an image I know is false, have my own life and live truly as a loving and peaceful person, or even just enforce the boundaries that I need that provide safety and continual psycho, emotional, mental, and antimanipulative protection.
I've finally realized that my growth, healness, counseling and the completion of my adult therapy program was and is a threat to the fake image they've all created after all these years. I did not tell them that I've done the work and have finally woke up from this reality due to therapy, because they don't know my current life business and just speculate and make up rumors and assumptions about me and what I have going on or why I'm 'acting' the way I'm 'acting' as truth, without ever even trying to even talk to me or not just assumes someone's continual triangulation is even the truth.
I am at peace, extremely successful and have overcome many things that would typically break the average person. Any reinforcement of boundaries, standing up for myself or attempt to distance myself from my parents since realizing how f'd up they did me when this was happening-even with my forgiving them for this throughout my life.
However, the older I get, when they continue to display the same patterns that were present during the abuse, now, including the thought of why did I even allow them a relationship with me in my life as an adult-because I get so disgusted with even the thought I'd ever allow a child to be abused by my spouse and let alone, stay married to them for decades afterwards. I can't believe I invited them to my wedding and we were the 'loving' bride's side...why was I so like "this is my family and we love each other, we're a close happy family" in my adulthood so long still? Until I woke up? There's so much I've since resolved with my therapist and have done the work to heal from-these are just questions to share the process I went through for insight. Also---It's really pathetic when I think about how different of a compassionate and truly loving person that I've become. I couldn't even fathom allowing abuse in my life or anything even remotely close to it or especially to be done to a CHILD...but here's more of how all my realizations have led me to where I am now:
I am SO glad that I am the VERY manifestation of 'WHEN you know BETTER, you DO better'...oh how the magicalness and bravery of individuals like Maya Angelou, Terrance Howard, and other past/currently alive ascended masters, who did and are leaving the breadcrumbs that nourish the souls of humanity on Earth today... The awakening and true freedom of thought and consciousness of myself has not only changed, but has elevated my existence, and my life.
I now experience the divine nature of love and revelation on a spiritual level that has brought abundance to me in every way and at every level.
I've done so much work, healing, therapy, service, reflection and growth, that the peace I feel daily, is what I never imagined happiness would be like.
To purely love and evolve as I truly am and meant to be, it's frustrating when the one group who we're taught is supposed to 'really' be your people, have been everything but that.
In the last 4 years, my life before now had been turned upside-down. In retrospect from now, I see why, as it had catapulted me into the healed, peaceful and abundant life that I have now.
...But, when everything started to happen, I really thought they were there for me. I went to them for guidance and advice-I hadn't awakened to my newfound wisdom-filled reality at this point yet-and they appeared caring, so I thought...
I went to them because I thought they were the only people in my life by this point, who truly loved me 'unconditionally'. Much happened. I took some of their advice in the very beginning, but at the same time I started to remember who the ... I am...and it was on and popping from there, Baby!
From the multiple crises that I'd found myself in all those years ago: I went to therapy, did counseling, shadow work and started reparenting my inner child. I journaled and started to meditate and the answers flowed through me. I allowed the plan for my life to take shape and one after another, I started to solve my problems, so gracefully, all while growing, healing, and finding the peace that I had in my life before these many situations developed. However, it was on a whole other level, an intrinsic peace that scaffolded into a snowball of peace in every area I've ever struggled.
In the last year though, I have survived what I would consider my dark night of the soul and I feel remembered, like, renewed into the person I always had been, but wasn't aware of until now.
I now have strong boundaries that not only protect me, but they also hold me accountable to gracefully standing up for myself, my own personhood, my values, my beliefs, and that which keep me committed to the lessons I learned so painfully over these last few years, just from the 'not knowing any better' and...whew...religion, patriarchy, and so much more of how I was raised that pain-wrenchingly just set me up for failure in this life, if I never had made a change.
I'm SO happy I learned about just how all these constructs and societal blockages were NOT for my flourishing in life, on my own. Finally, the realization.
The more healed, awakened, and spiritual I became, the more I realized the family system that I was raised in, saw me as a threat. Looking back, so much of what I went through and was done to me was beyond messed up and downright wrong and abusive.
So now, there's this awkwardness of not knowing the true extent of the abuse in how I was raised...
...I did try to call out the obvious stuff as I got older, but I didn't understand that I was covertly bullied and gaslit when I tried to stand up originally...I was always told I need to 'forgive and forget'...and what would ... do? And... 'as a .... we are here to love thy neighbor...' bluh blue bluh...-My whole life, I didn't realize that I was the family scapegoat until 2024.
No matter how much I tried with the things I knew were outwardly morally wrong then, it wasn't until therapy that anyone in addition to myself validated my experiences; that abuse is abuse, every last form of it, and it doesn't matter in what context it happens: religious or political and about 20 other different forms, is not okay...
-So back to the awkwardness of having this lifelong 'close family' that I once thought was so strong and healthy, loving, both parents still together and 'in love', all 8 siblings with decent relationships, my whole life...UNTIL I LITERALLY woke up within the last year to REALIZE how JACKED UP they were and are. Thinking back to all the times I was not supported or protected, I was the one in the family, out of all 10 who was ever truly genuine, purely intentioned, loved unconditionally...and had no complex with CONTROL...just, it was just me...
Ask me how I know...
The very situations I've found myself in these last 6 years, when I deconstructed from all things religious and political or anti-dignity, when I started to stand up against things without fear, that were not okay, or for the true safety and benefit of humanity of living beings...EVERYTHING started to crumble and I BECAME public energy number one in my origin family. At first it was covert while they 'mistakenly forgot my boundaries' or 'didn't know what I'm doing now'...or the 'assuming and then making up their own thing and spreading the lie-behind my back"...
Also, any attempt to speak up and honor the abuse and neglect in childhood that I've overcome and have healed from and ask simple acknowledgment for from my parents, turns into excessive triangulation bringing everyone into the mix (again, in the shadows without my knowledge and behind my back), to point out my downfalls I literally just overcome and healed from these last 4 years, and then continue making up lies about me, spreading false rumors to extended family I don't engage with, don't have a relationship with, or whom I've cut off for being too toxic never changing... making more false grandiose accusations, saying I've talked about or down about people, made claims that I'm better than everyone, that it's all about me...etc...literally because all I did was reiterate my boundaries I've set, called people out for it, who have done toxic things to me. This is in addition to being accused of being all kinds of things because I've 'distanced' myself (from people who are not kind to me and who talk about me behind my back and have called me cruel names for calling them out on the toxic behavior they display towards me for being my own person and holding my ground on my own decisions as a full 30+ year old adult with my own family).
-I literally have a ~8+ minute voice-mail of an origin family member talking to someone about the hardships I've survived in the last 6 years because they unknowingly butt-dailed me last month and I received it and haven't confronted them yet, because I know it'll be a waste of time).
They have everyone sharing lies about me between the family, calling me after not hearing from them for months and trying to start arguments over nonexistent issues we've never had, taking a statement out of context and championing as a 'see see see she's doing this or that to me when they are the one calling me out of the blue (after already having done previous things to me that I yet again addressed and was ignored about, never chaning the behavior or apologizing) and trying to start stuff with me while I was minding my own business...
...all this from a recent holiday that I no longer celebrate that they're fully aware of.
They know I'm no longer religious, I have different beliefs and values now and instead of respecting it, they spread rumors, accusations, lies, unproven opinions, attempting various forms of triangulation to target me.
What makes it worse is that my relationship with my parents are so strained. They both took part in the abuse I suffered as a child. Being that I thought I had a really good relationship with one of them until this recent realization (I realized recently that they both were guilty, not just the one who committed it, the other always acted like they didn't know-but they did and admitted it recently). No say strained is an understatement honestly, but I had trying to at least be LC because of their relationship with my own family I've had since adulthood.
However, it was becoming increasingly difficult to even be around their religious talk and 'fake I love all my neighbors, I practice the daily religious routines everyday and read the text daily I'm so devout' act...
On the outside they look like they are just the epitome of devout faith individuals and they are living in according to what religious dogma aim for, all while secretly knowing what they did and allowed in our household-all my memories are very clear to this day, especially since I've awakened.
First Xmas was an issue even though that was a boundary for me. I suggested they were welcomed to celebrate the winter solstice with me, they declined, and I respected that. I offered a nice dinner the week beforehand as an alternative.
Then it was Easter, I declined (as I've reminded them that I hold different beliefs and values now which have really cultivated my lifestyle being different from theirs now, and reminded them that it is not difficult for me to respect their beliefs and values; that I expect the same level of respect from them). As an alternative, since they too were interested in celebrating for a totally different holiday/celebration, as I honor the spring solstice, I suggested a nice lunch on a regular unanchored day to any meaning, and to drive to the country and have a day of exploration where we could end with a dessert picnic on a rolling hill in the place I mentioned. They declined.
Since fully coming out the spiritual closet, most of my origin family has either lied about their communication service being interrupted, they have to work-most don't have jobs, or that they are so busy in their schedules, but are on social media all day-secretly being judgemental talking about people in general (strangers on the internet) who are in very difficult life/hard personal situations where they judge them based on the patriarchal and religious dogma we were raised in. It's really sad to me I have no more interest in engaging with negative people.
But what's really pathetic is they make up rumors and lies about me and start drama for my having my own separate lifestyle now everytime a national political holiday (tied to some form of historical trauma) or a religious holiday comes around as they (mentally try to) attack me because I didn't celebrate or 'honor' them-all while not knowing I have proof of every last one of them talking about me badly behind my back with lies and/or spreading rumors about me that aren't true. Literally.
The last straw was the most recent holiday, not calling or contacting them because I refuse to have or remind them for the 1,000,000th time about that boundary and standing up for my beliefs-it's so exhausting.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to live around positive, encouraging and accepting people who live by love and honoring everyone's humanity no matter their religion, gender, sex, background, status, etc...and just being kind to people in general, as long as they're not murdering or harming others (outside of self defense, like TRUE self-defense and not the kind cruel people try to use as a cover to inflict harm), everyone has a right to believe in and have the values that make them feel safe and whole.
Long story short, I know I am not the AH for standing my ground and protecting my personhood and that NO ONE on earth is entitled to what I believe, value, or what I choose to celebrate or not.
*I'd like to add a note that I have done especially deep, caring, loving, and acknowledgingly beautiful actions throughout every year my whole entire life and not just since this recent change in these last few years, like 12-20 times a year.
I no longer try to keep explaining or trying to defend why I'm defending myself against disrespect and people who are not gentle towards me like I've been with them throughout my life, always there, always the one to support.
I just do not care anymore, if I have to be along or start my (chosen) family this time around, I will. I just despise drama and toxicity. I will not let it permeate into the peaceful life I've fault to build.
(Thank you if you've made it this far)
-The Recently Realized Family Scapegoat and origin family generational curse-breaker

When I talk about the Islamic world im talking mainly, about the main Arab/Islamic land and the North African region wish historically knows to help each other during tough times and the good times and every Muslims on this sub knows one or two historical examples.
However, im not here to talk about the history because I'm not a historian, second this is not the subject of this post, but I still need to give a historical context for what I'm about to discuss, first we can all agree that the birth of Mohamed be peace upon him change not only the fate of Arabs but also the entire world.

Mohamed be peace upon him was born in 632AD, and if you google you will get Saudia Meccah as if he have anything in common with current demented royal family in Saudia, who trying to claim him as a Saudian when Mohamed be peace upon himself wouldn’t want anything to do with those criminals who present pretty Mutch what he hate during his live they are the same type of people who fight his message and conspire against him and kill his followers.
Mohamed be peace upon him message wasn’t just Islam and a bunch of rituals people do in holidays Its was also a political movement as his main message was no one worthy of worship but god and god is the only one you should be afraid off, this is message that inspire people to fight back against their oppressor and not accept to be trailed lesser than everyone else, this idea look simple at first glance but it's have a big influence on people in that time it's not different from the famous quote of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Who said “how you can enslave people when their moms give them birth free” wish inspire France to revolt against the royal family in France In 1789, same way Mohamed and Muslims did against their Arabs oppressor in Makkah.

After Mohamed be peace upon him death his message continues to spread one of the people who accept his message is North Africans Amazigh who also continue to spread his message through the African continent, Amazigh didn’t accept Islam because Arabs were cool, they accept his message because it was genuine and united people of all kinds all skins and all ethnicity To no accept oppression.

Moving forward to the Ottoman Empire decay in 1900 wish the British took their chance to end ottoman dominance and took over the Arab land, bunch of ambitious family’s like al-saud took their chance conspire with the British to create a dynasty for themselves others who already exist like the Bano-Hachem In Jordan make deals to keep what they have and there dynasty going, this situation basically spread through the north African region.
Today Muslims rulers' leaders doing whatever they can to secure themselves to stay in power by allying themselves either with USA or RUSSIA and the worst part they will plunge their country in chaos to stay look at Bachar for example and what he done to Syria.
Muslim leaders love the national anthem food anything different to keep Muslims disconnected From each other as its give them a chance to control their people they claim every personality from the past this one was Moroccan, this one was Saudi this one was Tunisian and so on feeding this narrative to Muslims that they shouldn’t care about each other look for example Gazans dying few meters away and life continue normally in Egypt.*

The angle wish is Muslims leaders will operate from to further their interest is very disgusting, and if you are an ally of the USA then Iran Russia is your enemies and your propaganda is simple find few Syrian journalist and use Syrian people suffering to make Iran and Russia as the most evil nation ever exist but if you are in trouble make deal later with them and invite a bloody murder back to your country cause you are not up to the game in the first place looking at you Salmanco, Arabs leaders will also use the divide between Shia and Sunni to make there people hate Iran and there militants and the consequences of such a message don't matter to them , what matter is there agenda against Iran.
And of course if you are an allied of Russia and Iran then USA and the west is your enemies you represent yourself as a hero to your people a man who stand against imperialism and with those who are oppressed and the first one to defend Palestine, and if any other Muslim leader hate you use Palestine normalization card against him as if you are any better , and take some footage to show them to your people make yourself look good.

Today the entire Islamic world don’t have any direction, there is no plan or future we truly live in one the darkest time of Islamic nations history younger generation are either Muslims extremist or liberals morons who embrace west culture of degeneracy, Muslims rulers are feeding and growing the divide up further today morons fighting on social media in Tariq Ibon Ziad was Arab or an Amazigh as if the origin of person who die centuries ago should matter its only create Sens of degenerate empty pride for people who love the Muslims story hour as its make them feel good about themselves, the other think Muslims leaders constantly glazing USA as if the American culture machine constant brain watching wasn’t enough for them, just because its USA we shouldn't fight backs or just have a little bit of pride and faith and ourselves as Muslims to defend protect our owns.

I want to finish this with a little bit of hope and optimism, we are currently at bottom of the ocean so we only can go up from now, but its up for Muslims to accept and embrace Mohamed message to not be afraid of anyone but god in order for them to stand not only for themselves but for those who need us Sudanese Gazans Syrians, I truly hope one day we can control our destiny again and for Islam and Mohamad message to be a a way of life and death again.

11:18 PM, December 24^th, 1952, Mayflower Hotel
Did Phil not do enough? Was locking up the fat old man and that crazy Cuban not enough to please the Blackshirts? Did the stress finally reach him? How could I have known that this would be the future that I would create? I can’t hide anymore, I must confront the monster I unleashed. I need to find a radio station…

12:00 AM, December 25^th, 1952, WTOP Studios
“Mr. Lindbergh, I’ll count you down from 10 seconds until we are live, then the light will turn red and you will be able to speak. Remember, you only have five minutes. Good luck sir.”

10,9,8… How did it come to this? 7,6,5… Where did it all go wrong? 4,3,2… Why has God made my cross so heavy? 1…

“Good evening America, I wish I could wish you all a Merry Christmas, however certain events that have transpired in the last two hours have cast a shadow over our holiday season. One of the events I am referring to is the tragic shooting of President La Follette, who I pray is able to recover. The other event is the Vice President’s ongoing attempt to seize power and freeze the system. I know that this must come as a shock to many, but I abhor the rising tide of violence we have seen in this nation. For too long have I hid away, afraid to confront the demons I unleashed. Now, I must attempt to put things right, both with God and my fellow man.
When I assumed the office of President fifteen years ago, I could not have imagined what the fascist movement would turn into. Once a vessel for the strengthening of American government and society, a noble patriotic endeavor, it has become corrupted by ego and evil. I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve. In the same way, fascism is now being used to destroy the America it is meant to serve. Musmanno, Tolbert, and the rest of the Blackshirts do not represent the best of us, no, they represent the worst of us, the basest and lowest of human emotions. They have shown that we Americans are a primitive people, that we seem to have little respect for the law or the rights of others.
Never was fascism supposed to lead to the destruction of those elements of American society that make us what we are. Never was there supposed to be thuggery and intimidation. For fascism to truly come about, it must come as the will of the people. Did I obstruct the counting of the votes when I lost to ABH? Did I refuse to concede the election? Did I attempt to call on misguided cultists to march on the Capitol? No, I accepted that the people, albeit narrowly, rejected my mandate, and so I left with my honor intact. This was the same course I urged my dear friend Phil to take, a course which I know the Vice President was not in favor of.
God made life simple. It is man who complicates it. The Lord has shown us the way to live our lives in peace and brotherhood, yet we choose to disobey, and by our disobedience, death and destruction continues to come into the world. When I saw the horrors of nuclear war, the newfound capacity that modern man has found to destroy their brothers and the Earth, I finally broke down and dedicated my life to the Lord. I am proud to name the Reverend Billy Graham as one of my closest friends. However, other friends, older friends, have been killed or nearly killed due to the monsters I have unleashed. Will lies dead because of an assassination carried out in the name of the ideology I brought to the fore of America’s consciousness, and Phil, our President, remains in critical condition because, in the end, despite all else he may have done during the last eight years, he was going to do the right thing and concede the election. The ghosts of the past haunt my mind, regret makes my soul shake and shiver, just as America’s soul cries out in despair as the daggers of partisanship are plunged deep inside it. Yet I remember, ‘for Godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.’
I have thought it strange that we talk least about the things we think about most. Such has been the case for me over the last eight years, however I cannot allow my most pervasive thoughts to go unspoken anymore. When the Blackshirts called for violence and let their inner beasts out at the ’48 Farmer-Labor convention, I hid away in my home, a coward. I could have said something then but chose not to. When the Blackshirts intimidated the opposition in the lead up to this now contested election, I once again chose to not confront the ugliness I helped create. This time I will stand up, and if I, in doing so, must rejoin the friends that I have lost amongst the ruins of my dreams, then let it be done. The Bible says, ‘Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.’ My sins are many, my virtues fewer, but when I meet the Maker, he will say to me ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,’ because in the end I finally stood up to evil. To all who hear me now, do not let our nation fall into the hands of thugs and madmen, do not let our nation’s spirit be torn asunder. ‘The Lord tests the righteous, but the wicked and the one who loves violence His soul hates.’ Have we forgotten the lessons that the Communist Revolution taught us? That violence is not the answer to political dissatisfaction. I implore the American people to not let this nation get ripped apart yet again because of the destructive words and actions of a wild few. I close with this quote from the late William Jennings Bryan: ‘These revolutionaries live and die by the creed of “might makes right,” but I present to you another creed, a creed that I hope you all will remember and retell to everyone you meet as we stand against these revolutionaries; Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.’”

12:05 AM, White House
“Turn the damn radio off!”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
Sigh, “Et tu, Brute?”

I plan on being a Lawyer in Wisconsin, so I'm hoping to be able to get into either UW or Marquette (preferably UW as I'll explain) for diploma privilege. I'll start with my current stats and then move into the extras.
Undergrad GPA: 3.86 (Psychology, BS)
LSAT: 153 (1 take, February 2023 test)
TLDR: Should I take the LSAT again before applying to UW and Marquette this fall?
Me beyond the numbers:

1. 25M, Married (currently a few weeks away from 1st anniversary)
2. Army National Guard Veteran w/ some VA disability. 1 deployment to the Middle East (split time between Afghanistan / UAE / Kuwait) during my 6 years.
3. Currently working at Epic Systems (<1 year) in Verona, WI as a Technical Solutions Engineer (healthcare tech; we created MyChart [among many other apps] to save you the googling). I work with hospital IT staff, their managers, and executives to help them work through immediate issues and to forward plan to ensure they meet regulatory requirements. Not super relevant maybe, but I've also learned how to code at Epic and have released a few small projects at this point.
4. I belong to the Brothertown Indian Nation. We're only recognized in the State of WI though last I checked, so not sure if this should even be included on applications.

As far as the numbers go, I'm pretty sure that these would likely be good enough for Marquette but quite a stretch for UW. Both are very solid school academically from what I can gather, though I know that UW has been rated higher than Marquette previously. My point here is that I believe either option would give me a solid education preceding work as a lawyer. That said, there are a few [non-academic] reasons I would prefer UW:

1. I am a veteran with Post 9/11 GI Bill (applies to any school) benefits and Wisconsin GI Bill (applies to just Wisconsin State Schools) benefits. This essentially means that if I get into UW it will be free(-ish). Only the Post 9/11 GI bill would apply to Marquette, so it would cost me considerably more to attend law school there.
2. My wife and I currently live in the Madison area and would like to stick around. Moving to Madison for Epic has been incredible; the area is amazing and we'd love to build our lives here.
3. Piggybacking off #2, since I want to be a lawyer in the Madison area I'd imagine that UW is quite plugged into the firms in the surrounding area (biglaw and other firms alike).

So, with that context, is it worth re-taking the LSAT in August/September to attempt to move my score up by 5-10 points? I think this is doable given both the recent changes and the fact that I have 3 months to re-study. If it makes a difference, I plan to apply Early Decision to UW.

Thesis

Sources:

• Tweet
  
• The ADL - Israel: A Guide For Activists
  

Elaboration

The ADL promotes 'replacement theory' in Israel, while condemning it in America.
Awhile back, the ADL put out a hasbara handbook - a guide to advocating for Israel.
In the handbook, on pages 59-60, the ADL espouses views that are word-for-word taken from 'replacement theory'.

• The ADL - Israel: A Guide For Activists

Excerpt:

A bi-national state, in principle and in practice, would mean the ideological end of the Jewish State of Israel and lead to the forsaking of Jewish nationalism and identity, along with its special status as a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution.
Furthermore, bi-nationalism is unworkable given current realities and historic animosities. With historically high birth rates among the Palestinians, and a possible influx of Palestinian refugees and their descendants now living around the world, Jews would quickly be a minority within a bi-national state, thus likely ending any semblance of equal representation and protections. In this situation, the Jewish population would be increasingly politically – and potentially physically – vulnerable.
It is unrealistic and unacceptable to expect the State of Israel to voluntarily subvert its own sovereign existence and nationalist identity and become a vulnerable minority within what was once its own territory.

• Alarmism about 'birth rates' = ✅
  
• Alarmism about immigration = ✅
  
• Alarmism about the demographic majority becoming a minority and losing its privileged status = ✅
  
• Equating the privilege of being a demographic majority with 'sovereign existence' (which in-turn negates the existence and/or concerns, agency, progress, etc. of the Out-group) = ✅
  

All of this is typical 'replacement theory' talking-points.
A commentator on Twitter points out that the ADL uses the same rhetoric as American and European ultra-nationalists, who fear-monger about PoC and immigrants.

The interplay between right-wing nationalism & support for Israel

The ADL's primary purpose now is to defend Israel's apartheid regime.
Note how Rep. Stefanik is pictured in the ADL tweet. She is the one leading the charge right now with these public antisemitism inquisitions of college administrators.
Right-wing nationalists support Israel because they want to emulate Israel's policies towards Palestinians (as a stand-in for immigrants, PoC, leftists, etc.).
A study on European antisemitism found that xenophobes (who rated higher in antisemitism) tend to support Israel due to its immigration policies. Whereas those critical of Israeli policy were less xenophobic & less antisemitic.

• This fits the American Right too.
  
• Former New Republic editor, Peter Beinart, wrote about this in an article titled 'The Beinart Notebook - Are Zionists more antisemitic than anti-Zionists?'
  

Since Zionism is a form of cult-like nationalism, it's no surprise that the ADL would adopt 'replacement theory' talking-points when discussing their concerns about the political agency of the Jewish demographic majority in Israel.
In order to maintain that demographic majority, Israel uses discriminatory legislation & enormous State violence.
A lot of Zionists obfuscate what Zionism means now (for all practical purposes) by signaling some support/empathy for Palestinians. So the primary question one must ask, is whether you support a Jewish demographic majority in Israel.
If the answer is 'yes' - then you're justifying massive discrimination & violence against the Palestinian out-group. It no longer matters what games one plays with the 'definition' of 'Zionist'.
Get straight to the functional point. Are you morally consistent?

The ADL, Mike Pompeo, and the Jewish National Fund

Peter Beinart, in a discussion with FMEP's Lara Friedman & political strategist Rania Batrice, talks about how the ADL supports discriminatory policies in Israel that it would never support in America.
Peter notes that Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, has to 'code-switch' when advocating for Israel, for this very reason. Whereas, someone like Mike Pompeo, who is also a cultish nationalist, is more forthcoming in what he wants for America (a Christian nationalist State).
For Pompeo, it's perfectly fine to support an analog to the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in America (ie a hypothetical Christian National Fund; an organization that would support land access/development for Christians only). Greenblatt would lose his mind if a CNF existed in America - but he won't propose abolishing the JNF in Israel.
In Israel, the government controls 93 percent of the land¹ - directly or indirectly through quasi-governmental bodies like the Development Authority (DA) or the JNF. But all of it is administered by a governmental body, the Israel Land Administration (ILA).
The JNF's mandate is to develop land folease land to Israeli Jews, so 13% of the land in Israel excludes Palestinian citizens of Israel & everyone else. Thus, when the ILA tenders a lease owned by the JNF, they are directly complicit in "outright discrimination".²

1. The Israel Land Administration
2. Human Rights Watch - Off the Map: Land and Housing Rights Violations in Israel’s Unrecognized Bedouin Villages
3. Human Rights Watch - Israel: Discriminatory Land Policies Hem in Palestinians

Israeli historian at Tel Aviv University, Prof. Gadi Algazi, explains how the Ben-Gurion utilized the 1949 Absentee Property Law to facilitate the JNF acquiring stolen Palestinian land.

• The Real News Network - Israeli Tree Campaign "Judaizes" Expropriated Land

Ben-Gurion circumvented any future international legal intervention by 'selling' (absolutely illegally) the land entrusted to the custodians (Ben-Gurion appointed Israel the custodians of the stolen Palestinian land following the 48' War) to the JNF so that Israel, in the case of an international debate, could say 'sorry, it's not in my hands anymore'. Within days, about a million dunams (1M dunams = about 250K acres) of land were sold for a price well below their value to the JNF. Another million would be sold later on.

Then-Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion appointed the Israeli government as custodian of the land and then sold 250,000 acres to the Jewish National Fund. The problem of the Arab refugees was forgotten in the main despite the United Nations trying to resolve it. Ben-Gurion thought that time would eventually solve the problem. The abandoned village land and houses were given to Israeli soldiers so Arabs couldn’t return.

• The Berkshire Eagle - Leonard Quart: A documentary about Israel's past digs at the roots of its present uncertainty

Some speculate the JNF never even paid for the land. Instead, the Israeli government agreed to subsidize the purchase in exchange for assurances the land would be set aside for Jewish settlement.

But the Israeli cabinet ordered the JNF to stop all efforts at buying land from Palestinians directly, and the men returned to Israel.144 Ben Gurion told Weitz and Danin in December 1948 that “The JNF would buy land only from the State. There was no need to buy land from Arabs.”145
[...]One month after Ben Gurion told Weitz that the JNF should buy land only from the state, the two sides finally concluded a major deal by which the JNF would purchase a huge amount of refugee land in January 1949. Despite his mistrust of sharing power with the JNF, Ben Gurion had long wanted to sell captured Palestinian land to the JNF. In fact as early as May 13, 1948, the day before he publicly read Israel’s declaration of independence, Ben Gurion offered to sell a massive 2 million dunums of land to the JNF for £P0.5/dunum. He was trying to sell land he did not yet control to raise money for arms.

• Fischbach, Michael. Records of Dispossession (Institute for Palestine Studies Series) (pp. 61-63). Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition.

The deal involving the so-called “second million” dunums was finalized on October 4, 1950, and involved the transfer of an additional 1,271,734 dunums by the Custodian of Absentee Property on behalf of the Development Authority to the JNF, 99.8 percent of which (1,271,480 dunums) was rural land. Granott later placed the amount at 1,278,200 dunums. The amount of £I66 million was to be paid to the government over a ten year period. Some sources indicate that the JNF was actually to turn the money over to the Jewish Agency on the government’s behalf; the amount then would be considered a loan by the government to the JA. Others claim that the JNF never actually paid the amounts it owed under the two deals.163

• Fischbach, Michael. Records of Dispossession (Institute for Palestine Studies Series) (pp. 65-66). Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition.

Thus, Israel confiscated Palestinian land and held it in trust - only to sell it to an organization that would only allow the land to be used (sold/leased/etc.) by Jewish people only.

The JNF faced no such obstacles and was free to discriminate against Arabs in favor of Jews. Its charter mandated that all land that it purchased thereafter would be inalienable, to be held by the JNF on behalf of the Jewish people in perpetuity. Because the JNF could not sell land it acquired, it leased land to Jewish settlements and individual Jews on the condition that it not be re-let to non-Jews and that only Jewish labor be used on the land—the policy of “Hebrew labor” [Heb.: ‘avoda ‘ivrit]. Thus as a nongovernmental organization free to manage its own land on an exclusivist basis within the new state, the JNF argued for its control of refugee land on this ideological base: if the JNF obtains the land, it will be the best way to guarantee that it is used for Jewish settlement only. This attitude was expressed by a JNF official at the 23rd congress of the World Zionist Organization held in 1951, the fiftieth anniversary of the JNF’s establishment, who stated that the JNF “will redeem the lands and will turn them over to the Jewish people—to the people and not the state, which in the current composition of population cannot be an adequate guarantor of Jewish ownership” [emphases in the original].

• Fischbach, Michael. Records of Dispossession (Institute for Palestine Studies Series) (pp. 59-60). Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition.

It's important to note that all throughout the history of the JNF, its officials openly talked about dispossessing the Palestinian people and taking their land.
In Records of Dispossession, Michael Fischback writes about the culpability of Zionist organizations in the expulsion of the Palestinian people - and singles out one important figure, Yosef Weitz of the JNF.

The question of to what degree Jewish authorities deliberately expelled Palestinians is a hotly contested one.13 For many historians of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the issue comes down to whether Zionist authorities ordered the deliberate expulsion of the Palestinians according to a master plan of ethnic cleansing. It is beyond dispute that some expulsions occurred as it is that, even before the fighting began, various figures in the Zionist movement were actively investigating the idea of what they euphemistically called “transferring” the Palestinians out of the country. One such person was Yosef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund [Heb.: Keren Kayemet le-Yisra’el]. Weitz was born in Russia in 1890 and immigrated to Ottoman Palestine in 1908. He began working for the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in 1918. The JNF was established by the World Zionist Organization [Heb.: ha-Histadrut ha-Tsiyonit; later, ha-Histadrut ha-Tsiyonit ha-‘Olamit] in December 1901 to acquire land in Ottoman Syria for the establishment of a Jewish state. It acquired its first land in Palestine in 1904. In 1907, the JNF was incorporated in London as the Jewish National Fund, Ltd., although its offices were located on the continent and moved several times over the decades. Starting in 1932, Weitz had risen to serve as the director of the JNF’s Land Development Division. He was also involved in the establishment of the Histadrut, the all-encompassing Zionist labor federation.

• Fischbach, Michael. Records of Dispossession (Institute for Palestine Studies Series) (pp. 4-5). Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition.

Weitz countered with a hard-line vision of transferring the Palestinians completely out of the country. He detailed his ideas in his diary:

It should be clear to us that there is no room in Palestine for these two peoples. No “development” will bring us to our goal of independent nationhood in this small country. Without the Arabs, the land will become wide and spacious for us; with the Arabs, the land will remain sparse and cramped . . . . The only solution is Palestine, at least Western Palestine [i.e., Palestine without Transjordan], without Arabs. There is no room here for compromises!14

Weitz and Lifshits agreed to try to work toward this goal. In fact, in 1948 they served together on a committee that investigated transfer (see below). When the fighting broke out in 1948, Weitz believed that it provided a golden opportunity to effect such a transfer. By the spring of that year, thousands of Palestinians were already in flight and leaving behind large stretches of land. For Weitz, the proper course of action was simple: prevent their return and take over their land. On May 20, 1948, Weitz noted in his diary that the refugee flight would create “a complete territorial revolution . . . . The State is destined to expropriate . . . their land.” 15 Once the fighting was underway, he would move to realize this.

• Fischbach, Michael. Records of Dispossession (Institute for Palestine Studies Series) (pp. 6-7). Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition.

The ADL's history of anti-Palestine activism: the spying case

Historically, the ADL surveilled Arab-American and Jewish-American activists who were sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle.

• The Los Angeles Times (1993) - New Details of Extensive ADL Spy Operation Emerge : Inquiry: Transcripts reveal nearly 40 years of espionage by a man who infiltrated political groups.
  
• The Associated Press (1993) - Arab-Americans Sue Anti-Defamation League Over Alleged Spying
  
• The Los Angeles Times (1999) - Anti-Defamation League Settles Spying Lawsuit
  
• The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (2002) - ADL Settles Privacy Lawsuit, but Denies It Did Anything Wrong
  

Excerpt, from a JTA (2002) article on the ADL spying on anti-Zionist Jewish-Americans:

Both sides had filed appeals in July when a San Francisco Superior Court judge dismissed the cases of plaintiffs Anne Poirier and Steven Zeltzer, but not that of Jefferey Blankfort, who claimed the ADL obtained his Social Security number "for nonjournalistic purposes." Because the settlement took place before the appeals came though, the ADL agreed to compensate all three.

Blankfort explains the court case:

• The National Press Club - Jeffrey Blankfort: The ADL: Covert action, censure, and courting law-enforcement.

In earlier decades, the ADL put out dossiers on pro-Palestine activism with titles like, 'Target U.S.A: The Arab Propaganda Offensive' (1975).

• Source: Stanford University, the Berman Jewish Policy Archive.

News article coverage from that time, reporting on then-director of the ADL Jerome Bakst's speaking engagement in town.

• Source: The Evening Herald of Pennsylvania, November 1975.

In the present, the ADL still keeps tabs on pro-Palestine activism & activists like Mohammed El-Kurd.
With so many more Zionist groups now, the ADL no longer has to be a one-stop-shop for all things Israel advocacy. They no longer need to spy on Americans when plenty of other organizations do. They no longer have to profile people, because other Zionist groups like Canary Mission do.
So while the ADL isn't outright spying people as it did years ago, it's not out of some moral shift. It's because they no longer have to.

I'm away on holidays...for from my computer.
You'd think that would mean I'd stop thinking about how to optimise my start game in imperator rome...You'd be wrong.
I've been thinking about a conundrum. I want to use mercenaries because I can get a 14 level general and save manpower. BUT...I desperately want to maximise my military experience because I want innovations and to build roads.
My idea...
Why not hire mercenaries to shadow my troops - aiming to minimise how often and (emphasising) how long they fight for.
Could I use mercenaries as a blunting instrument that only fights for ~5days or as long as it takes to hurt enemy morale before retreating just before my normal army swans in to take all the glory???
I just need to make sure I get my mercenaries to retreat just days before my normal troops join. This technically means the mercenaries (and by extension my nation) are defeated...but I don't think that matters much?
From wiki, I think military xp is from enemy deaths so loses don't matter??
Brilliant or crazy like a fox?? (Hopefully not just crazy).
Would value feedback and/or advice.

Haa anyone used this website fo buy ferry tickets before? Ww want to buy desaru ferry tickets for the national day holidays but Batam fast's website shows the tickets as sold out. Saw that this website have tickets:
https://www.singaporeferrybooking.com/mobile/index.php

Hi everybody.
I do not know if this has been already asked here, I did not see anything.
When you have a Cv what is the most important? experience? age? nationality? time spent in each company? Are there things that you consider a red flag ??
I am sending my Cv to another country, right now I am in Scotland, and one from HR told me that I was expensive for the company because of the flights to take me there and holidays, etc.. for me it sounded bullshit but you never know, these things are company politics or is different to the person of HR ?
Thanks a lot !

Hi, I will be going to National Taiwan University as an exchange student in Fall 2024 (Aug - Dec). I was wondering if there were any week long holidays during this period and if so, when will they be? Thank you!

I, Betty, am your first president. June will be a month long national holiday. Happy Pride!

I am not much of a cyclist, but I've been convinced to go on a cycling holiday this summer. It's one of those group tours where they provide the bikes and transport your luggage, and it's supposed to be suitable for beginners, since the terrain is pretty flat and easy ("quiet backroads, paths through national parks and coastal cycle tracks") and temperatures are expected to be mild (it's in the Baltics: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). I'm pretty fit, but my usual mode of active holiday is hiking, usually somewhere hilly.
I am wondering what equipment I actually really need for this holiday, since I'm not even sure if I will like it and will go on more cycling holidays in the future. I'm fine to spend some money on stuff that will make a big difference in safety or comfort.
So far I've bought or intend to buy:

• A cycling helmet
  
• Padded cycling shorts
  
• Fingerless gloves
  

The bike is a Kross Trans 4.0., and they say it's possible to bring "SPD pedals or clipless pedals, your own saddle (excluding the seat post), or gel saddle cover for the hire bikes." What else should I absolutely get?
Distances covered, as maybe that makes a difference in what you'd recommend:
Day 1 - 18mi (29km)
Day 2 - 33mi (53km)
Day 3 - 32mi (52km)
Day 4 - 29mi (46km)
Day 5 - 19mi (31km)
Day 6 - 27mi (43km)
Day 7 - 38mi (61km)
Day 8 - 24mi (39km)
Day 9 -11mi (18km)
Thanks for your help!

/LonghornNation Daily Off Topic Free Talk Thread

Today: 6/9/2024

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1. My left eyebrow is suddenly turning white
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3. The reporter asked him about his personal fortune and this was his answer - One of Steve Irwin’s last interviews before he died while Filming a documentary in 2006.
4. My buddy drew a dick on my back in sharpie while we were at a hotel in mexico, this is what i woke up to.
5. A critical highway linking Idaho and Wyoming has closed indefinitely after a portion of the road cracked and then collapsed in a “catastrophic landslide,”

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4. ESPN’s John Anderson last night on conference realignment: “Stanford and Cal, they’re in the Atlantic Coast Conference. I’ve seen a map; that’s the wrong ocean. It’s not just stupid geographically, it’s sad and stupid.”
5. [Caple] Washington's move to the Big Ten requires the construction of an on-campus production studio, which will come at a total cost of about $24 million: $18 million for construction and $6 million for equipment to replace the Pac-12 Network Studio
6. [Directors’ Cup Updates] For the 3rd time in 4 years, the Texas Longhorns, led by athletic director Chris Del Conte, have won the Directors’ Cup, awarded to the top athletic department in the country.
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4. [Gerry Hamilton] Texas basketball strength & conditioning coach Cory Schlesinger is departing Texas for the Detroit Pistons
5. Arkansas-Pine Bluff special teams coordinator Chris Forestier is taking a special assistant role at Texas, sources tell FootballScoop.
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Hi all,
Really hoping someone can help here. In 2008 I saw a painting in London that I loved. I believe it was in The National Gallery. I remember it being at the top of a staircase, because when I reached the top of the stairs I saw it and it blew me away instantly. The only thing that I can recall about the painting is that it had a woman dressed in brown with long hair and she was in some sort of distress. Maybe there was someone there harming her? I can't recall. I ask because I have been dreaming about this painting (at least of what I can remember of it) for months now. I have looked through the entire online collection of The National Gallery about a dozen times and can't find it. I also searched the Tate Britain and National Portrait Gallery online collections to no avail. I'm guessing it was at The National Gallery way back in 2008, but has since been moved to another museum. A painting I think it is similar to is "A Struggle in The Desert" by an unknown French painter. Anyways, I know this isn't a lot to go on, but I need to know!
Thanks for any leads.

TL;DR : 23(M) in bay area trying to figure out how to position myself for the future in order to survive the shit show without too many scars and be able to be apart of the rebuilding process in an impactful way. What skills/direction do people think are good bets for myself and people my age or anyone reading/interacting with this?
Gonna share my Situation for background as well as perspective on areas that I see decline in across the board. Feel free to build off anything you resonate with or disagree with.

Housing Market/Migration:

Housing market is obviously fucked right for various reasons economically. The new houses that are being built are all of terrible quality by companies such as DR Horton in order to maximize profits which lead to inefficiency when it comes to home value retention and resell ability if they are able to sell at all. The new construction are like I said all shitty but are also being built in general in really shitty areas that don't have high qualities of life or massive weather problems among other cultural, energy, water, immigration or political issues(ie. Texas, Florida, Arizona, etc.) Not saying that other places in the country (New York & California) are perfect or even close to it, but people moving like they are moving to these places is like putting a band aid over the wound(the economy) instead getting to the root of the problem and currently we can see the result of this in said areas. Rising Unaffordability, crime, insurance rates, property taxes(Daddy government always gets his), and general gimmicky shit. Now those same people are moving back to California or New York if they can afford it or most of the time north to the rust belt to do the same thing with probably the same outcome. Interest rates won't come down for probably another 15 years and even if they do everything will be bought up by institutions.
Boomers are locked into houses with low rates and massively high equity but instead of passing that on to the next generation they choose to lord it over everyone and tell people to not buy coffee because that's obviously gonna make the difference in terms of being able to afford a downpayment. Telling everyone to work harder when they have literally have had it the easiest of any generation in human history without showing any gratitude or recognition of that fact.

The Dollar:

Its been talked about on here non-stop but national debt is absurd and currently unrepayable unless..... we just print more. Which is what the government does. I don't know if this is fueled by private banks( Look up private banks effects on history specifically during world wars; here is a solid video). But lowering the value of tomorrows dollar to pay off todays debt seems to be the government's only plan in terms of paying things off. This strategy is the only reason the media is able to manufacture delusion in the populous that stocks are high and real estate won't crash. What's really going on is the the prices are staying the same relatively or slightly increasing but that is because the value of the dollar is going down not because the value of the asset is going up. This is a overall assessment, obviously things fluctuate more when you zoom in and look at the fundamentals of individual assets but you get the general point.
Myself personally I am a little neutral in terms of if or if not the dollar will remain the world reserve currency for the next 150 years. My gut would say that it won't but that being said things don't really look too much better anywhere else in the world. People talk about BRIC but but they all have worse problems than the US. India is a shithole with poor infrastructure hence so many Indians moving the America specifically the bay area but also they consistently get outsourced by Americans once companies realize they need an ounce of quality in their service or product. The high quality ones leave and the low quality ones stay. Both China and Russia while boasting huge amounts of natural resources and reasonable militaries have dire demographic problems and have been lying about their numbers for years. Europe doesn't look any better either. Realistically I know it sucks in America but it kinda is better than anywhere else. What makes me hesitate is the cycles of history that Ray Dalio talks about where the world reserve currency is kind of destined to change every X amount of years. Have heard some interesting contrasting theories on this specifically the Dollar milkshake theory which I suggest checking out.

Job Market:

Job Market is ridiculous especially for younger people my age. Even my colleagues who went to an alright university are having a hard time getting and keeping a job due to the market. There are tons of ghost jobs that don't actually exist and are only posted in order to make it seem like the company is currently profitable. Just to get a job you not only need to apply to probably around a thousand jobs with a 3% response rate but also you need to be messaging recruiters and people who work at the company in order to get a referral. Even if you were able to get a job, most people I know are searching for another job whether it be part time or full time because they are afraid of being laid off.
Things also don't seem to be getting easier. The pandemic was extremely profitable for everyone but ever since then it has been harder and harder with no real let up or cooling off. I don't see how this can continue without turning to resentment or potentially complete stagnation since young people really don't have any reason to work. They are unable to find someone to have a family with in a healthy way. Unable to afford a house. Can't keep a job to no fault of their own. And can't afford to have kids.

Design/Consumerism:

Design and Consumerism are in my opinion evidence of a decaying society currently. There is very little differentiation in design from cars to houses to public or government buildings to art and even products at retail stores. Everything is designed with speed and Price in mind which spirals consumerism further downward(look up refinement culture on google). This promotes things like fast fashion and previously mentioned single use products which make corporations a large amount of money but isn't sustainable for the environment or for individual people's wallets.
Also the general lack of beautiful design in people's lives makes our lives even more dull than they currently are. Living or working in a McMansion that looks like the inside of a Chick-fil-a is fun for the first five days until its not and then you are back to keeping up with the Jones' in order to fit in: falling back into consumerist culture. I think debt and peoples personal finances are being stretched which makes this problem slightly disappear more and hurt the corporations' pockets but it doesn't solve the problem just reveals the cancer underneath.

Crime:

Crime obviously is increasingly on the rise and not just with violent crimes. Shoplifting as you know is a huge issue as well as personal stealing to such a prevalence that the sentences on those crimes are being reduced because prisons and jails are being maxed out completely. This doesn't seem to be slowing down and is even shifting to different parts of the country due to internal migration previously talked about above in the housing portion due to unaffordability, interest rates, debt, and population increase(by migration or birth).
Another huge issue is homelessness and specifically illegal immigration which I think partly is done by the Democratic party currently in order to bolster their election chances with November coming not realizing that they are turning away their existing demographics. Another feature of homelessness specifically but also crime and illegal immigration is it inadvertently destroys third spaces which are currently and rightly so being talked about a lot. I will go into this more on the next section.

Day to Day Physical and Mental health:

Being able to socialize and hang out with people casually and at no to low cost is becoming increasingly impossible. Being out in public now costs money and that cost is rising day by day exacerbating isolation especially among young people who don't have that much money do begin with. This is a huge reason why I think young people are still willing to go to college the way they still are. even if they go into debt they want access to these third spaces to improve their social, physical and mental Health. I KNOW, myself included, that young people are desperate for third spaces and community even though many are addicted to their phones, don't have good social skills or it costs a significant amount of money to engage in it which is unfortunate and leads to people kind of giving up or at least having a general feeling of hopelessness. The predatory nature of social media companies and targeted advertisers don't help this issue at all either leading to worse mental health as well as more consumerism. Mental health as we all know is a huge issue especially with younger people and even though we have more resources/understanding about it which I am proud of my generation(and others) for being interested and interacting with, dealing with the issue becomes more and more difficult based on our decaying environment day by day.
In terms of physical health again, I am proud of my generation(and others) for caring more about the products that they are putting into their body. Seeds oils, red dye, processed food, micro-plastics, animal and plant products raised in the right way, etc. However the way the food industry is currently set up, being able to have access to clean healthy food is a lot of times unaffordable to most people or the food itself is up for speculation by the media because why would industries do studies on products of hygenic methods that can't make money? Again this seems to be an issue that there is awareness and information on but day by day it seems to be harder and harder to give your body what it needs to feel good based on the current decaying environment.
I'm also going to add a spiritual section here because I feel it needs to be added. We need to hold religious organizations more accountable. I am seeing more and more people being turned away from ideologies that are legitimately beneficial to their lives because of poor leadership, predatory behavior, and fraudulent/scam activities. This may be a result of a society being submerged in decadence but it is really disheartening seeing people being moved away from spirituality because it has been weaponised for the personal gain of those at the top. Feel that needed to be added since it is something I want to engage with more meaningfully in the future.

Dating/Families:

This is my opinion will be the breaking point for most people. I think if people were really honest with themselves family would be something that you don't fuck with; future or current. Dating currently is really tough for everyone regardless of what is between your legs. Animosity between genders has been manufactured and in general people have tendencies within this context to be more competitive rather than cooperative which should clearly be indicative that things aren't or are going to work out. The destruction of third spaces, addiction to phones, predatory corporations profiting of loneliness(regardless of sex), inability to buy a house, inability to afford kids, etc have really made people sit back and wonder is any of it really worth it. Should I just indulge in primal desires since my self actualization needs seem so unattainable @ Maslow.
I said it before but this will be the breaking point in my opinion. If people don't feel like no matter how hard they work, they won't be able to get what they want in terms of normal human desires and needs; Then they will fight and rebel for it which is where I think we are headed, especially concerning young dudes.

Personal Response:

Grew up in Middle class home in San Jose and had a pretty normal childhood. Don't remember anything too ridiculous around 2008 but we were also renting as well. Things however really ramped up when I got into college specifically during the Pandemic. I spiraled downward and had severe mental and physical issues that resulted in me hitting rock bottom(don't want to play oppression olympics here). Now I'm currently heavily considering going back to finish my degree in Philosophy just to have it. Afterwards looking at sales, one of the trades, or any other opportunity that presents itself in order to get by while things get adjusted.
I feel we are headed towards extremely turbulent times within the next 4 years. With the boomers dying and leaving the workforce to the rising animosity and resentment that younger people feel with the system regardless of your political ideology it seems we are moving towards some kind of global or civil war. We already see China preparing to invade Taiwan, Russia looking to move further west for expansion and I think similar conflict will happen in the United States. The United States and its dollar are weakening by the day which is why you see the dollar being removed from countries trading oil and why there have been more international conflicts like Armenia, Israel, and Ukraine with more to come.
We are due for a war , turbulent time period, rebalancing, whatever you want to call it but its coming(@ Ray dalio cycles of history)probably this November if I had to guess. I feel like I am gifted to be able to see this stuff and put it into words as many of you guys reading this also probably are but I am feeling lost currently and don't want to lose hope. I know that this is an opportunity for me to go through a hard time and become stronger because of it and hopefully become a responsible and respectable steward for the future when the rebuilding happens assuming I survive without too many scars. But what do I do now? How should I act? Should I go back to college and continue to try and go the old path with the clarity of what I think will happen waiting for my moment to adapt? Or should I be proactive and try something new in order to put myself in a more advantageous position when things inevitably get turned upside down? Combination of both?
My current focus is on my body & mind in terms of food, drink, substances, exercise phone use, media, information, agendas, and mental frameworks since that is all I can realistically invest into currently. I'm naturally an over thinker and a pessimist but think it is important to take the white pill on this one and look to the future with hope in terms of seeing opportunity in the decay of the current flawed system we are in regardless of the fact that I feel as though myself and people around my age currently have it pretty tough right now across the board. I'm emphasizing this because I feel as though this reddit(especially the posts) sometimes just reports the pain and fear instead of trying brainstorm the best ways to adapt and handle what we currently face. I want to have a wife, kids, and a family and feel it is my responsibility to make the best of what I have and be positive in order to get what I want in this life.
Would love to hear from you if you are in a similar situation or a different one. What are your thoughts, feelings, plans, and mentality heading into the future? Are we cooked? Or just waiting for our turn.

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Featured: Castle by IcyFunky
Featured: NewEra Map by Loliw

Latest big project: I have created 211 of the world’s countries. There are only 205 recognized independent states (193 UN member nations, 2 non-member nations, and 10 “others”), but I also made a few that are functionally independent but claimed by other states.
I didn’t always get the full name due to AI being weird and the max element length. Many were trivial, some were super challenging. For fun, I also got the capital city and official language of each 😜
Here’s my list if anyone wants to give it a try:
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
American Samoa
Andorra
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cabo Verde
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros
Congo
Costa Rica
Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
DR Congo
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Eswatini (Swaziland)
Ethiopia
Federated States of Micronesia
Fiji
Finland
France
French Guiana
French Polynesia
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guam
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Greenland (Denmark)
Grenada
Haiti
Honduras
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
North Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Moldova
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar (Burma)
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands
New Caledonia
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
North Korea
Norway
Oman (Omani)
Pakistan
Palau
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Réunion (France)
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Saint Helena (Britain)
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome & Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
South Korea
South Sudan
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Tibet
Timor-Leste (East Timor)
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Vatican City
Venezuela
Vietnam
Wallis and Futuna (France)
Western New Guinea (Papua; Indonesia)
Western Sahara
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

Would you call this a stingy act? Date with my girl gone wrong. Short recap: Several years ago (probably around 2008), i and my girl had spent a year together dating at the time, and I was in my final year. We lived as neighbours in the same off-campus student's lodge. The school was located in a rural area, hence no access to good restaurants, supermarkets, malls and other places a couple could go to have fun. So we hardly ever did go out. On some fateful day, we had a break from school, due to public holidays and I decided to go to a nearby town to do a market survey/window shopping of some computer parts (I am a computer enthusiast). She had complained earlier on, that she was quite bored, so I decided to kill two birds with a stone, by asking her to come along with me so that we could have the experience together. Long story short, we went on the survey, which took about two hours plus and by time we were done, we were hungry and exhausted and luckily there was an eatry around that area. I decided that we should go in and have lunch. I made a rough estimate in my mind, that it would probably cost the both of us 5k to have a meal and drinks similar to other eatries which I was accustomed to at the time. But on getting to the checkout, I realised it was almost twice my estimate (at this time I was not working and paying for this meal of almost 10k was to come from my monthly allowance from my parents which was basically 20k). I quickly improvised given the situation i found myself and asked my girl to take her order. She requested for some fried rice and some chicken, while I just requested for a meatpie and drinks to subsidize the cost and then requested for 2 spoons so we could share the rice (Total cost now came down to roughly 6k). The waiter promptly obliged and hence i paid and we proceeded to our seats with the food. She asked if I wasn't going to order food for myself and i replied by telling her that I ordered for two spoons so that we could share (I could have some of her rice and she could have some of my meatpie). I noticed her countenance changed and she didn't like the idea. I asked her why she was upset and she couldn't mention. She commenced eating and I picked up my spoon to dig in to her rice (we always eat together from a plate at home, the difference now is that we are in public) and immediately I put my spoon in she stopped eating and refused to eat the food any further, safe for the few spoons she had eaten before I joined her. I tried to cajoule her to continue eating but she refused and at the end of the day I had to continue eating the food alone. I tried to make things lively on our way home by making one more stop before heading home, where I bought her some novels. (she loved reading romance novels back then) she picked 2 of them but still her countenance didn't really improve much. On getting home and some days later, when she was finally able to talk about it, she opened up and told me that she sees what I did at the eatery of not ordering for 2 plates of food for the both of us as a very stingy act. I tried to explain to her why It had to happen that way but she took it with a pinch of salt. Recently after all this years have passed she reminded me about that incidence again in an unrelated argument and I was shocked that despite my explanation of that event she kept it at the back of her mind as a reason to judge me as a stingy person. Now my question to the ladies (mainly because I am a man and understand that we see things from different perspectives) and anyone patient enough to have gotten to this point: Is this act really a stingy act? And please explain your answers. Probably telling me how you could have handled the eatry situation better if you were in my shoes.

First of all, a premise which is the reality of today but 99% of the public is blissfully ignorant of.
The economy collapsed in 2008. Since then, the entire thing has been propped up completely artificially with Federal Reserve money. The Fed has literally bought half the stock market and bought out bad mortgage debt to keep asset prices high. This is a "we owe the money to ourselves" situation, but it's also a "if we don't keep making the system work this way, it will fall apart". So it's not a matter of running out of money to "borrow", it's a matter of at some point things stop working and inflation takes off.
If you are confused about this, here you go:
Assets: Total Assets: Total Assets (Less Eliminations from Consolidation): Wednesday Level (WALCL) FRED St. Louis Fed (stlouisfed.org)
This graph is insane. I studied it in college in 2010 when the 2008 "blip" was like niagara falls in reverse. You have to actually be a mentally ill sycophant to look at it now and think everything is fine.
Anyway, when the Federal Reserve "bought" the global economy on credit in 2008, it didn't just give the money away. Its helicopter bux came with a mandate.
First "are there like any academic studies that demonstrate what you're claiming?" Yeah.
Corporate social responsibility and financial stability: evidence from the Troubled Asset Relief Program Emerald Insight
For you zoomers and Daily Show watching nitwits, more here: Obama Plans Financial Triage for Bad Bank Troubled Assets :: The Market Oracle ::
Keep in mind the financial sector bailout was started by Bush, but he was basically working hand in glove with Obama at that point, and then Obama took over and greatly expanded it. Reddidiots can't wrap their brains around what this was: a government takeover of the financial sector.
I remember reading that federal bail out money came with strings attached. I think this has been scrubbed from the internet, even the Russian search engine can't find anything (google is less than worthless by the way). But there was this:
Obama limits bailed-out bank CEO pay - MarketWatch
So we do see some reporting that the bail out money came with strings, and in a similar manner to Dodd-Frank, Wall Street was easily able to get around the ones that actually hurt.
Still, the fact of the matter is that when we hear about BlackRock and so forth, where companies like Disney WASTE 100s of millions of dollars OVER and OVER again on films they know piss off their audience, no one can make sense of why this is happening. Until you realize that BlackRock is the primary broker for the Fed.
Remember when the Fed bought half the stock market?
How Larry Fink’s BlackRock Is Helping the Fed With Bond-Buying - Bloomberg
Now we have to look at another tentacle of the Obama-Bush era octopus. Behavioral science.
Obama’s effort to ‘nudge’ America (politico.com)
Governments are trying to nudge us into better behavior. Is it working? - The Washington Post
Obama's Nudge Brigade: White House Embraces Behavioral Sciences To Improve Government (forbes.com)
Corporate America also employs "nudge" units.
Lessons from corporate behavioral-science units McKinsey
First the basics of what's wrong with behavioral science:
Behavioural Science at its Worst – The Daily Sceptic
But here is a good breakdown of practical nudging and a peak into the HELL of behavioral science's brave new world:
Nudge Theory: The Psychological Trick Influencing Your Behavior - Goalcast

Setting A Default Option
Typically, people won’t deselect a default option to choose something else. So when a certain option is intentionally selected as the default, this increases the chances that people will “choose” it, just like the organ donation example described above.
Making Certain Options Easier Or Harder To Select
This one depends on the level of ease when choosing certain options. For this nudge, either the so-called “good” option is easier for people to choose or the so-called “bad” option is harder to choose. This steers people toward selecting the good option.
Making Certain Options More Noticeable
Another way nudging can encourage people to choose a good option over a bad one is to make the good option more noticeable or the bad option less noticeable. This attracts people’s attention toward the good option, making them more likely to select it.

And here we come to an anecdote.
I have rich parents. They bailed me out of my last semester of college because I lost my scholarship because of having bad grades in my second to last semester because a girlfriend faked a pregnancy before being committed (more like she quit work to spend a year with her parents) with a b-series disorder. I didn't live in poverty growing up, and I was able to go on a couple family trips to disney world - I'm grateful - but my parents' success never bought me anything in life. I never used their connections, they never paid for more than a few clothes from JC Penny. I went through college on a scholarship and they demanded I work too.
When I started working, I paid them back with my first six months of surplus savings. Just to make it clear when I say I had rich parents.
My sister is a basket case with drugs and other things. They pay everything for her. She basically has a venmo recurring payment, though it's only recurring in practice since there's always some new bullshit she's charging like a sick dog, running over a tree, forgetting to pay a fee and incurring late charges, and insane wastes of money you haven't even heard of.
Anyway, paypal, zelle, venmo, her bank account. Every 6 months or so, chunks of $500-1500 just disappear from her accounts, or my parents' zelle/Paypal accounts. Like, 3 $500 charges. The typical notification doesn't occur, my sister's account doesn't see the money (they checked). My parents aren't slouches. They've filed claims, wrote letters, threatened to involve a congressperson who's a family friend.
These banks won't budge. The payment systems themselves are untouchable.
One bank in particular, Suntrust, was notorious because you look up online and see hundreds of poor people with the same story of money that just disappears in chunks. Fraud shouldn't even be possible. It's the type of thing where if hackers or fraudsters COULD hack that, they're jacking directly into the bank's infrastructure, not the individual's personal account details. Meaning, even if it's true conmen, it's like the bank leaving their vault door cracked open and making you pay for it.
I began to seriously wonder if these banks were just stealing the fucking money! But wait, they couldn't get away with that for long, it would be the story of the decade, right!
Well, unless this is POLICY.
These bank bailouts, they ended the idea of market-driven distribution of resources. It's all funny money now, a money printer casino for rich people. What happens when shortages come up? How do you unfuck real economy hiccups without price mechanisms and markets to actually convey this information to entreprenuers?
Enter, Aladdin.
Aladdin the terminator of Blackrock Financial Markets by Jorgeacevedoarnaldo May, 2024 Medium

How would you react if I told you that a robot has more wealth than all the nations on Earth combined? A robot so strong that, in the last ten years, it has secretly built the largest corporation on the planet. This is the narrative of the robot Aladdin, born on Wall Street. The best kept secret, capable of consuming all asset classes in all sectors. To put it in perspective, Aladdin currently controls $21 trillion of the global economy.
Aladdin has become a system responsible for more than four times the value of all the money in the world this robot directs stocks in the United States.
from the federal reserve of almost all major banks and investment funds on Wall Street and more than 17,000 traders. It controls half of all ETFs, the bond market, the global stock market and makes a quarter of a million trades every day and billions of forecasts every week, year after year, accumulating trillions of data points in each market.
In 2008, the global financial crisis arrived and with 21 years of existence. The US government used Aladdin to decide which assets to keep and which assets it wanted to leave in the $30 billion bailout package. It was the robot that saved the United States from disaster. It is a little-known story. With that first success, not only the American government but now the European and Japanese central banks began to trust Aladdin to determine how
The $5 trillion of new money they printed should go, most of it into bonds and funds to prop up mortgage companies and banks, assets in which Aladdin and Blackrock were already invested. Money printing expanded
causing assets controlled by America to grow rapidly to $11 trillion in 2013.
In the last decade, Aladdin has gone from being a leader to dominating all financial markets with the acquisition of Barclays by Blackrock, obtaining Barclays shares, units of exchange-traded funds or ETFs, and with that Aladdin went from dominating bonds and stocks to ETF dominator, just like everyone else. The biggest investors moved from mutual funds to ETFS and that’s when in 2017 everything changed, on Aladdin’s 29th birthday, Larry launched a top secret project on blackrock under the code name Monarch which led to the firing of its managers. funds and By replacing its funds with Aladdin funds, the robot was now removing humans from the equation entirely and, as a result, today more than 70 percent of all transactions in the US stock markets are made by it. They decide robots with Aladdin leading the way these transactions are completed from the beginning.

BlackRock Boosts Aladdin’s Forward-Looking Sustainability Analytics and Reporting Capabilities Through Strategic Partnership with Clarity AI Business Wire
Oh and look at this, Aladdin is being used to focus on funding sustainability AKA ESG.
Hmm..
So what happens when your financial uber-robot fucks up and runs short on a cash, or needs to take cash out of the consumer market? Is there a way to enable it to just simply STEAL from people (it already controls your pensions, folks, your "wealth" is already stolen and will be nationalized soon enough, de facto or otherwise)?
So here's what happened when my father say $1000 of charges to his bank via venmo, without receiving a venmo notification, and without my sister - the beneficiary - receiving the money

1. He tried to log in to the venmo app "server error try later".
2. He went online to see if he could file a dispute "disputes are filed from the app".
3. Finally the app came back "to file a dispute, click get help on your transaction under the me tab". This button was missing
4. He called the bank and filed a dispute "well since this was money sent to your daughter, not a vendor, there's little we can do."
5. "But my daughter never got the money, and the vendor I'm disputing is Venmo."
6. "Well, Venmo's not a vendor but we'll see what we can do."

This shit reminds me of when I tried to cancel/change my cable bill a couple times. Have you ever tried to do that? It's typically like this:

1. Oops the web site is down try later
2. Okay, you're logged in just click here
3. Oops there's a server error, why don't you try our live chat
4. "Hi, I'm pradeesh from India, what can I help you with?"
5. "I want to cancel my cable"
6. "Ok, I'm absolutely going to help you with that, but first maybe I can save you money with this other deal"
7. "No I don't want that"
8. "Okay, but I can save you $50 a month for a year if you sign up for this 2 year plan"
9. "What about year 2? You know what, just cancel please"
10. "Okay, sure, I'll help you with that. Just let me work out the details.
11. 10 minutes on hold
12. "Okay, I've sorted out some of your details, but there's actually this great new deal I found."

THAT SHIT is behavioral science.
They want you permanently subscribed to service based systems, and while your wages will slowly, barely increase over time, the amount of your money bogged down by this shit will see your saving be next to nothing. They will make your life hell if you try to escape or manage this, but not so much that you wake up enough to see what's happening and make radical changes to your life.
With data science, they can tell exactly who you are, exactly whether you have access to money from somewhere to keep paying these charges.
For instance, I'm 1000% certain that a data science platform identified my sister as a poor, dysfunctional, high-spending, unlikely to notice or address fraud kind of person. Then, it identified my parents as high-income who, no matter how pissed they get, will never stop sending money to my sister in semi-regular increments.
So, based on this data science, their accounts were targeted for literal fraud that I'm certain has to be built into the algorithm of even the Venmo app. Like, conveniently timed "server errors" so my parents quit trying to fix the problem. Or mysteriously absent dispute claim buttons.
Reddit does shit like this all the time. You try to post when your post has controversial keywords, or you have controversial karma? "I'm sorry there's some sort of server error." Lol, okay, so I just go to old.reddit and it posts fine.
Anyway, we're ALREADY LIVING IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE HELL.
Also the economy is 1,000,000% fake as hell.
This is literally the reality we're in, and probably 99% of the country doesn't even have any idea.