Gabrielle Hecht • 🇵🇷 • she/elle/ella

Airstrikes hit Iran-Iraq border as US and Israeli plan to mobilise Kurds gathers pace Experts say backing Iran’s ethnic communities could ‘open up a hornet’s nest’ and increase risk of chaotic civil war

"Experts say backing Iran’s ethnic communities could ‘open up a hornet’s nest’ and increase risk of chaotic civil war"

Yeah, pretty sure that's the point of doing so. Criminal chaos acceleration.

Surely these attacks count war crimes.

SA’s biggest data centre ‘monster’ set to consume 25% of Durban’s electricity Durban is pressing ahead with plans to build a massive 400MW artificial intelligence data centre in partnership with a South Korean power consortium. It would be South Africa’s biggest digital data ce...

Hard to overstate how bad this is.
South Africa gets 80% of its electricity from coal.

If they do manage to build enough renewable capacity for this, then why not the rest of the country?

Also, Durban may be wet, but as a country SA is rushing toward Day 0 water.

Etc

Right? It's tempting to dismiss it as disposable/low quality/material wastage. And some of it is. But a lot is surprisingly sturdy. I finally got rid of my Poäng chair bc it was no long comfy for me at 60yo, but a 30-something bought it for $10 and will probably keep it for 20 years!

Fee schedule for a session of hammam/scrub/light massage, ranging from €43,20 for the highest salaries to €14,40 for the lowest. What follows is in French but the meaning is obvious bc the words are cognates. Here, "agent" = employee. Tarif amU : 72 € Subvention minimale de 40% pour tous les agents AMU. Le prix d’achat est déterminé en fonction de votre subvention (voir dossier d’ouverture de droits). 40% - participation agent : 43,20 € - participation amU : 28,80 € 60% - participation agent : 28,80 € - participation amU : 43,20 € 80% - participation agent : 14,40 € - participation amU : 57,60 €

You know how US unis spout shit abt work-life balance & well-being?

Here's the largest Francophone univ in the world, this month subsidizing a session in a hammam, including a scrub and light massage. The less you make, the higher the subsidy. Minimum wage = 14€ for the session.

I'm just saying.

TWAS-DFG Cooperation Visits Programme

The DFG (German Research Foundation) has a programme funding stays of up to three months at German academic institutions for researchers in early career phases and of all disciplines from MENA (www.dfg.de/en/news/news...) and Sub-Saharan Africa (www.dfg.de/en/news/news...).

WikiDati : le camp de Rachida Dati demande la dépublication d’un site internet recensant ses problèmes judiciaires Le directeur de campagne de la candidate LR à la mairie de Paris a saisi l’hébergeur OVH pour mettre hors ligne WikiDati.fr, qui se présente comme « l’encyclopédie des affaires de Rachida Dati », car ...

Le saviez-vous, Dati ne veut pas qu'on partage un site internet.

WikiDati : le camp de Rachida Dati demande la dépublication d’un site internet recensant ses problèmes judiciaires.

www.nouvelobs.com/politique/20...

Repostez pour emmerder cette authentique fasciste complètement corrompue

Gotta say, I still have Ikea bookshelves I bought in grad school. 40 years ago. Turns out that melamine crap holds up, who’d have thunk it!

We’ll see if they survive one last transatlantic trip

Explicitly wishing ppl ill gets you a timeout

Well, this website…

Yes. And when the infrastructure breaks down (as you know) people can be simultaneously flooded and waterless.

AOC FOR PRESIDENT

I will be posting this randomly until it happens

Ça va plus vite pour rapatrier les évadés fiscaux que pour déclencher le plan Grand Froid pour les SDF.

I dunno who these particular clowns are, but as a Puertoriqueña all I can think is “pues claro, cubanos de Miami”

I write those emails & sometimes check w/ sweetie to see if I’ve gone too far. “Yes Gabrielle this is too much, no one wants to read that many words about X.” So then I cut it in half and try to remove the aggravated tone… and it’s still too much🤷

Tbf, I myself am often too much so there’s that…

Okay! Will click next time I see a gift link to one of his interviews. 😊

Yeah, that sounds like me

the fact that those in power in my previous country want to kill my family members and revoke my citizenship. Not to mention the ppl they’re already killing and wars that they have started and are gleefully escalating because hate hate hate)

Solidarity! I’m in the “to get A you need B, but to get B you need A” phase of settling into a new institution in a different (not new to me, but still impressively bureaucratic) country.

I don’t know the source of your sadness, but sending 🤗 hugs.

(My sadness comes from

Oh okay! Thanks.😊

By this logic: Donald Trump is married to a woman & has offspring who were once minors. So he can’t possibly be a misogynistic pedophilic rapist.

Think, Ryan. You can do it.

(Actually I dunno who this clown is, so I dunno if he can think. Number of followers, as we know, is not an indicator)

He just needs to think, dontcha know

White on white violence.

White1 is a Repub. Shall we start a betting pool on whether he’ll be indicted and jailed?

I saw this earlier this evening, but after I filed my column. This is astonishing. It’s just a naked hatred of his own constituents and the soldiers who could die in this war.

It’s fucking incredible. I’ve lived in Durban & Joburg. Like all others I’ve experienced both load & water shedding. My current research is in Mpumalanga (for non SA readers: the province hosts most of SA’s coal plants & mines), specifically asthma-ridden eMalahleni.

THIS IS CRIMINALLY CRAZY

Articulating most of my thoughts about this horrific shitshow would be grounds for expulsion…

…but at least I can say that I do hope your friends are safe, ideally on their way north.

Oh god now I have to look up who Chotiner is. I will doubtless regret it. But at least I’ll be au courant.

PEPFAR, the program to stop hundreds of thousands of children and adults from dying of HIV/AIDS, was $6.5 billion a year.

Sorry I'm not more open-minded about LLMs, it's just some fucking maniacs shoveled out a bunch of useless bloatware featuring that technology, did not give me any chance to opt out, reorganized the entire economy around it, zeroed out gains made by green energy, and made it impossible to buy RAM

Juan Cole on Iran War: “Shock and Awe didn’t Work in Iraq, either” (TRT, Bradblog) The US petroleum companies, I think, bear blame for this war, because they want to get into Iran and develop its petroleum

Juan Cole on Iran War: “Shock and Awe didn’t Work in Iraq, either” (TRT, Bradblog)