Alon (they/them)

Dining at French Laundry during a lockdown you sign yourself is normal, right?

YouTube video by Zo Siam Cassettes-Engtin nge ni dawn (official music video)

Since @sharonk.bsky.social is getting people to talk about Christians in India, let me drop some music. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKbj...

The adjacent Presbyterian-majority state gave an award to a creationist book. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizo_li...

fun facts about the new-ish Seoul Metro Line 1 Yeoncheon Station:

-it is the only subway station north of the 38th parallel
-it is about 10km from the nearest border with North Korea
-the extension was created to help soldiers commute (many complained they've long been bilked by taxi drivers)

Apparently, the British welfare system with its monthly cutoffs doesn't know what to do when people get paid weekly.

Today, we do not criticize German digital governance.

Civil War made a choice to be about photojournalists who somehow don't get shot except by the one rando white supremacist, and not about people trying to flee by boat discovering what it's like to be at the other end of the hostile environment.

But the more central parts of the Tokyo waterfront are being redeveloped...

(Also, look at the location of Gimpo... or Changi.)

Eh, Haneda is even closer to the center than Heathrow is and airlines that can fly into it and not into Narita do.

You should hear what kind of basic anti-woke shit some Israeli pundits say. Some guy in a dodgy American conservative magazine lies that universities abolished military history and Israeli centrists repeat that without bothering to check if those unis did in fact eliminate mil history classes.

Wdym? The location for Heathrow is pretty rationalized. It's not fully consolidated but also it's a two-runway airport, what more do you want.

Korea is Israeli, confirmed.

Oh, interesting, I had assumed there weren't going to be corporate scandals in a socialist state. Is there a broad overview I can read about this kind of corruption in Venezuela?

About six times as many people were killed in the suppression of the revolt in the Vendée as in the Reign of Terror. And about 12 times as many people starved to death under Louis XIV because the state took their grain to pay for war abroad than were killed in the suppression of the Vendée.

The other issue re guns and Drag Queen Story Hour: there's a reason abortion rights activists tell people not to do this in front of clinics - having paramilitaries face off in front of a clinic is less safe to women seeking abortions or other reproductive health care than just dealing with antis.

He was inactive.

That's not "used for good," that's a dead cat bounce. There's a reason I bring up the UK only in the context of trans safety - in a country with a national bathroom ban and sports ban, there's less terrorism against trans people than in the US and when it happens it's prosecuted more.

What's the problem with what? PSL? They're pro-7.10, they're a sex pest cult, and their members commit terrorism.

Yeah, I just am looking at the US right now and not really seeing the political culture there of allowing armed protests as worth keeping. And it's not even a matter of law, unlike the legalization of assault rifles - there are legal tools that you guys choose not to use, out of not caring.

Brexit spread wealth outside London (made the entire country poorer but disproportionately London).

And no, it's important to drop the American cultural idea of generic repression. This literally never happened. After 9/11, *Muslims* were repressed, while anti-Muslim terrorism was encouraged through underrepression of people like Pamela Geller. It's entirely about minorities and collective rights.

In the UK, Palestine Action was proscribed for invading a military base; the people born so long ago they learned the Jews killed Jesus pretend it was just speech, but it wasn't. In the US, people who invaded a base would be shot so there wouldn't be anyone to complain.

My NYC Rail Crayon I’ve had this one in the backburner for years. There’s countless ideas out there on how to expand and improve NYC’s subway and commuter rail network, and they’re all probably better researched than…

NY rail crayon by @samuelsantaella.bsky.social: nycstreetsutures.wordpress.com/2025/12/04/c...

Not a game, but, Three Body was enormously popular in the West for essentially bringing back unreconstructed Golden Age SF complete with the characterization (esp. of women) of Asimov et al.

And also? Can the "our freedoms" language, I'm not American enough to react to it emotionally and I'm seeing far better safety for Jews and other minorities from terrorism here than in the US. Even in the UK, people who hate-murder trans people are prosecuted and convicted.

A member who had written for their mag doing what the group had been repeatedly inciting for. I bring up the glider line, which was an applause line at the protest, because it happened right after 7.10 and could not possibly be a response to what Israel has done in Gaza because it happened first.

Within the US, what the JDL did in New York when it was active was a lot worse than what the Kahanists are doing now. It was mainly anti-black because that was the group of POC they were physically around, not Palestinians, but the JDL was a bunch of thugs and this genuinely isn't happening anymore.

What, proscribing Kach? Yes, it led to a decline in extreme right violence compared with the 1980s. There was a separate resurgence starting in the late 2000s, 15 years later, led by separate groups that Bibi's government prefers not to repress. Same way the Second Klan was not the First Klan.

PSL didn't make jokes in poor tastes. They incited at a protest speech, and the organization's members listened. In the interim, there were lower-level violent attacks, which PSL and other terrorists (PYM, WOL, etc.) praised, WOL even attacking Mamdani for condemning vandalism of Jewish shops.

The actual Kahanist organization was proscribed, and only removed from the list of terrorist organizations in the US in 2022 due to inactivity. The same should happen to PSL due to its record of actively fomenting violence.

The groups advocating for such violence do get classified as hate groups! The ADL considers Betar, the people who got ICE to arrest Khalil, a hate group, for example. And Betar doesn't even do stochastic terrorism, just doxxing and occasionally incorrect narcing (they thought Khalil was on a visa).