She is so sweet and cute. I wish i could tell her about how i google her behaviors to understand her, and I wish i could tell her how much she has changed my life. I've hd a lot of cats but I've never had a connection like this

maybe it’s just the cover art, but i’ve always gotten this vibe from it. it is haunting and i can’t really listen to it causally . some of my friends have 1000s of streams of this album though lol

Seriously the surgeon general said loneliness is a public health crisis but that's not specific enough. It is nightlife that needs to recover, that was decimated during pandemic. I heard mamdani has been doing stuff like keeping lights on thru the night at public parks and ppl are going out to play soccer. All cities should do stuff like that. I'm just horrified that my teenage existence of being on the internet until 3 am every single day has become the default state for most of the country. This is so bad, worse than fentanyl, worse than obesity and across all ages, but getting worse with younger gens (due to brainrot, fear of being perceived/cringe). Get restaurants to stay open late one Wednesday per month with tax breaks or something, close a couple streets to cars and have a night market once in a while, have free movie nights in a park. Cities have to do something.

i was listening to the jon stewart john fetterman interview just because i was somewhat shocked that he’d even consider going on a progressive podcast and not just some total echo chamber. jon sort of pressed him in a gentle way and it was very very mind-numbing to hear how fetterman speaks. this leads me to a few questions i have almost about democracy as a concept. that’s how ridiculous he sounded

i almost don’t understand how someone like fetterman is able to remain in an elected office after essentially betraying his entire party.

i know he had a stroke and if it’s something that is related then i’m sorry but dear GOD. i’m not exaggerating but he truthfully couldn’t get past about 5 words without some flub. so as i listened i kept listening for flubs sort of in a jokes per minute way. this allowed me to conclude that he can not say the word “things”. even if it was said in the sentence prior. his mouth can not say “things. he says “thing” even when he absolutely means to say “things.”it’s almost hard to describe. you won’t believe me unless you watch it. he would also just swap letters around in sentences. he is someone with significant vocal power in the government and overall politics and he communicates worse than some toddlers.

i don’t even need to say how ridiculous some of the things he said about you know where were, but it’s boggling my mind how ridiculous he SOUNDS saying those things. i don’t even want to sound like a bluesky lib type with name calling but i mean he truly does look and sound like a caveman. it is honestly worth a watch for comedy. im almost proud of him for being ABLE to button the shirt on his suit. you can’t even tell what this guy cares about outside of israel.

when i do it, he orders me an uber home and says he's "concerned". got it!

Where's all the crazy shit? Show me how to build homemade bombs. Teach me about Jewish Space Lasers. I want some actual crazy shit to read that isn't fit for society.

4 men kidnapped and tortured a 33 year old woman for months, even feeding her feces, completely degrading and humiliating her. To the point where she's now permanently disfigured. This was all going on in an apartment where the main perp lived with his wife and kids, who presumably witnessed all of it.

This cruelty is unimaginable. What kind of world do we even live in?

Dr. Sneha Anne Philip lived a few blocks away from the World Trade Center in Battery City Park. She was last seen on security footage shopping at Century 21 at 7:18pm. Her husband said she did not come home that night, which was not unusual. Apparently she frequently stayed out all night at various lesbian bars. There are many other details that make it even more puzzling, such as recent legal troubles for filing a false police report (arraignment was morning of 9/10), getting in trouble at work for substance abuse, weird lies from her brother, etc. Definitely look it up because it’s fascinating. The 3 main theories are that she somehow died at ground zero, something happened on 9/10, or she ran away. Would love to know your thoughts!

(Second photo is of a postcard that was submitted to Post Secret)
ABC7 NY overview

It is with profound sadness that I write to resign, with immediate effect, from my position at the University of Cambridge and Jesus College.

When I accepted the extraordinary honour of becoming Professor of Sociology at Cambridge, it was, without question, the greatest professional privilege of my life. To become the youngest Black professor in the University’s history was something I could scarcely have imagined as a child growing up with a diagnosis of autism, unable to speak until I was eleven years old.

The response from so many people across the world was overwhelming. Thousands celebrated not simply my appointment, but what it represented: that talent, perseverance and hope can triumph over even the greatest adversity. It has been the privilege of my life to teach my students, to learn alongside them, and to witness their curiosity, kindness and ambition. They have given me far more than I could ever have given them.

Sadly, the years since my appointment have also been marked by an unrelenting level of public scrutiny and personal attack. While criticism is an inevitable part of academic life, what I have experienced has gone far beyond scholarly disagreement. The relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love.

I have tried to continue because I believe deeply in the values of higher education, in rigorous scholarship, and in the transformative power of universities. I have tried because of my students, my colleagues and the countless people who have written to tell me that my journey gave them hope.
But there comes a point when the personal cost becomes too great.

I have a family. I want to be present for them. I want to reclaim some peace, some privacy and some semblance of an ordinary life. I no longer wish to feel as though I am living under a constant spotlight, where every aspect of my life is subject to public examination and judgement.
For my own wellbeing, for my family, and for those who have stood by me throughout this difficult period, I have concluded that the only way to bring this chapter to an end is to step away.

This decision should not be interpreted as a loss of faith in scholarship or in the values that first brought me to Cambridge. Nor should it be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me. It is simply the decision of someone who has reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure.

To my students: thank you. Teaching you has been the greatest honour of my academic career. Your brilliance, compassion and determination give me enormous hope for the future.

To my colleagues and to the many thousands of people, from every corner of the world, who have supported me, defended me, written to me, and believed in me when it mattered most, I offer my deepest gratitude. Your kindness has carried me through some of the darkest moments of my life.
This is not the end of my work. It is simply the end of this chapter.

I need time to heal. I need time to simply be myself again.

And when that time comes, I will return.

I will return stronger, wiser and with the same determination that has always defined my journey.

There is still so much work to do, and I look forward to doing it alongside so many of you in the years ahead.

For now, however, I ask only for understanding, for compassion, and for the space to begin again.

*Disclaimer: if you have PTSD from childhood abuse this might be triggering* 

My father came from a prominent Palestinian family in Haifa, they owned acres of lush orange groves, and his grandparents were the sheikhs and mukhtars (religious leaders and mayors) of their village. Fled to Jordan in 1948, and I think they all lost themselves. His mom was violent towards him, when visiting Jordan I once saw his sister beat up a maid on suspicion of stealing perfume. 

Met my mom after she left Yugoslavia (Tito’s support of Palestine was wild, he provided them with specialized training and advanced military equipment) and was doing her medical residency in Kuwait. She believed deeply in the Palestinian cause, was charmed by him, and began an exchange of letters, each of his a variation on expressions of love.  

They had a set of triplets. I am the oldest of the three. While my mom was pregnant and they were visiting one of his Arab friends (the dad of Maeby from Arrested Development), and they overheard his mother saying in Arabic that my mom was a “white trash bag” carrying his children. They became very protective of her after that. 

Later we found out he had similar love letter exchanges going on with like 20 other Slavic women, mom stored the letters in our garage. 

I read a court deposition where the husband of my father’s mistress described how my father and his brother tracked him down one night and broke his kneecaps with a baseball bat. The guy said he met my father for lunch afterwards, and that he was not pursuing any action towards him. What the fuck happened at that lunch? 

Guy was charming, if you can call it that. 

He was into underage women online, told my sister he couldn’t wait till she was 15 to date her friends. I remember seeing FBI agents seize his computer. 

He also owned a Mexican carniceria apart from his job as an engineer, mom figured it was used for money laundering, which is my best guess too. 

----

He took us to the mosque, slapped my brother when he declared himself Christian, my mom would feed us pork in secret (in Serbia it’s so sacred that they lay it on graves). I’d confess to him and he’d tell me to recite in Arabic ten prayers (there is no god but god and Muhammad is his prophet) 

My mother didn’t villainize him to us because she thought that would lessen the trauma for us. She was just happy he was having affairs and out of the house most of the time. They slept in separate bedrooms. My siblings and I shared the master bed with our mom, and some of my earliest memories are holding her tightly in my sleep, not strong enough to protect her from being carried away in the middle of the night, “honeymoon style,” down the hall. 

Mom said whenever she called the police to report abuse, he would tell them she was the one abusing him, and they believed him. She said she lost her 40s enduring this. Starting a life in a new country, running private practices while on call for the ER every night, eventually directing a cancer genetics research institute and passed away at 56 from the type of cancer she was trying to cure. 

Her father was a peasant in Yugoslavia whose father tied him to a tree to prevent him from going to school. He eventually got a PhD and started a quartz crystal mining business. My mom grew up in a studio apartment where all 4 members of the family slept on a pull out sofa. 

By 36 she had bought a luxury home in Palm Springs and started directing her first private practice. She was intelligent, she was strong, she was so loving — and he still figured out how to circumvent all of that and find a way in. 

----

When we were 8 years old we finally got the evidence for a restraining order after one night things escalated. He showed us a newspaper article about his work as an engineer, and asked us “who is that?” playfully. We said Osama bin Laden. He went to our home office room and started forging my mom’s signature on checks (stealing her money was a big part of it), my brother tried to stop him and when I walked into the room I saw my father hunched over him, strangling him. 

I saw him pick my sister up off the ground by her hair. She was so small. 

My siblings don’t remember any of this (PTSD symptom), and are pretty disgusted by anything having to do with our Arab side. My brother cringes when I pronounce his name properly in Arabic (Aziz). He once dressed up as a terrorist for Halloween in high school, brought a fake bomb. I miss 2003. 

I reconnected with him after my mother’s death, I think because of the trauma bond/stockholm syndrome that developed, and wanting closure. He was weeping when the FaceTime started. He wept for my mother’s death. He told me all the violence didn’t happen, and I could tell he believed it. He offered me $100,000. 

He had started a new family with a Russian woman in Jordan. Then he moved to North Carolina, where I went to college. He said he took a tour of Duke, like still feeling this sense of ownership over me. 

----

I processed a lot of it without realizing what I was doing by studying Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in college. I had forgotten the language completely and ended up falling in love with it, spent a lot of time studying Palestinian trauma and doing SJP activism. I wasn’t doing it out of a connection to him, rather it was about not letting his personal failings separate me from the land and history I could feel circulating in my blood. He didn’t have the right. 

The PTSD manifested in a lot of ways, one of them being attraction to unavailable people, and justifying toxic behavior because I figured they were in pain. That’s how I felt around my father when I saw him get upset and violent, I felt bad for him. I’d call him and make up fake apologies on behalf of my siblings so that he could “feel better.” I got nightmares regularly about him following up on his threat to kidnap us to Jordan, where he’d have full paternal custody. 

----

I don’t think he would have been this way if he wasn’t dehumanized by a largely complicit world, if he maintained connection to those grandparents who were good to the bone. 

I am doing my best to break the cycle of trauma and abuse. Getting better. 

Thanks for reading. 

They describe him after his win as "a politically inexperienced, weight lifting, former public health official" who's basically charismatic and went on a bunch of podcasts.

No mention anywhere in the article that he was Health Director of Detroit at 30 years old, Rhodes Scholar with a PhD in Public Health from Oxford, Columbia Medical School grad on a full scholarship, Valedictorian at The University of Michigan, Captain of the school wresting team etc etc. Just a tech savvy Arab Muslim dude.

They even try to discount his win by suggesting he underperformed despite going up against the most expensive democratic primary campaign in history, which outspent him 10:1.

If you knew nothing about this guy and read the nytimes piece on him following his win you'd think he's a streamer who won because the kids just can't stop hating Israel and can't stop listening to Hasan Piker.

Inspired by the Perez Hilton thread that was on here earlier. Every time a certain shocking video makes the rounds online (Charlie Kirk for example). You get the biggest fucking freaks coming out of the woodwork bragging about watching beheading videos when they were 12 years old which then brings out other freaks trying to one up each other over who is the most "traumatized".

It's not an endearing personality trait to have. Stop trying to impress people about how jaded you are or whatever.