Jennifer Brandes Hepler

There are a ton of far right influencers selling themselves as pro-Palestinian who are building up their progressive audiences right now.

When the time comes, they will:

1. Recruit some of the new audience into the far right

2. Use their audience to spread far right propaganda further

Any time you’re writing off an entire group for its existence, not specific behavior, you’re ripe for being steered into more extremist versions of that hatred.

The symbiotic relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas With Hamas in power in Gaza, coupled with a deliberately emaciated PA in the West Bank, Netanyahu could claim there was no Palestinian partner for negotiation.

Haaretz is paywalled, but this coverage from The Hill is not.

thehill.com/opinion/inte...

Opinion | In a total betrayal of principle, Mike Johnson accepts election results Just because it was an election that happened to make him speaker, did that make winning a majority of votes suddenly a legitimate way of obtaining power?

a piece exploring this concept www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Detroit synagogue president Samantha Woll found fatally stabbed outside her home Samantha Woll, 40, led the Isaac Agree Downtown Detroit Synagogue since 2022. Police have not announced a motive or suspect.

This is horrific, horrific news. May Sam's memory be a blessing that reminds us that we are all in this together.

May her murderers be found and may they experience just consequences.

May there be no more deaths of any kind. May there be safety and freedom for everyone.

you don't sound any less like a nazi just because you swap in someone else for the jews

I thought I had a clear pitch! “I have never passed any legislation, I want to burn everything down, and I am friends with Sean Hannity. Put me in charge, or someone will send you a series of weird texts!” Yet this has not been working! I also tried tweeting that it was time to put aside our differences and come together, but apparently nobody could read that sentiment from me without bursting into hysterical laughter. So you understand now what I was doing. Why I have made it my business to undermine our democratic institutions! You thought I was trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election for my health? Just because I love chaos and want to throttle any thriving institution until it perishes? No! I was doing it because voting does not work out for me.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Extremely well put.

"The defense of innocent civilians on all sides is not an obstructive legal doctrine or battlefield annoyance but the entire purpose of a just war against an enemy that set itself against humanity. Contempt for civilian life is the hallmark of terrorist regimes and actors, not liberal democracies."

Man kann einfach nur heulen

(interviewing Twitter CEO)

Interviewer: Musk said all users of X will be “combined into a single giant ball of flesh” and “the ball will be sentient, it will remember the people it used to be.” Is that true?

CEO: He said that? Yes, he said that. We discussed it. I know all about the flesh ball

This is such a hard time, doing it with a new baby must feel impossible. All the support.

Can’t decide if it’s hopeful or just deeply ironic for Italy to project the Israeli flag onto the literal monument celebrating their destruction of Judea. I think right now I need to believe it is hopeful.

Speech and Speechlessness On the world of words, and the world beyond them

I wrote about the compulsion to speak about things we can't change, the confusion between posting and doing, the emptiness of meaning that pushes us to silence, and children facing death in Israel and Gaza: https://theswordandthesandwich.substack.com/p/speech-and-speechlessness

Happy Indigenous People's day, the crimes of the conquistadors were known and recorded not just by their victims but by their cultural and linguistic contemporaries.

Sending thoughts of love to my dear friends & family in Israel. The pain is immeasurable. Seeing story after story come in from loved ones about those passed, captured… words cannot express the horror.

May this be the end, even as many of us are preparing for it only beginning.

A reminder that you do not have to personally observe violent images in order to bear witness to history, and no one is under any obligation to do so as a means of activism or showing support.

Anyone who has witnessed the mountain of misinformation around Israel on X/Twitter should know now just how dangerous it is.

Imagine what it will be like in the 2024 election.

This is what Musk wanted. He succeeded. Stop framing his purchase as a failure.

Abandoning Twitter is not only a moral imperative, but also an epistemic one. Any oxygen given to it through people’s content or engagement provides further reach for the misinformation, disinformation, and worse that now swamp the platform.

“we’d go bankrupt if we paid our workers what they’re asking” yeah me too, that’s why I do not get to have a company

Now we're talking!
A trivalent nasal vaccine vs mumps, measles and Covid, broadly effective vs SARS-CoV-2 variants, with expected long duration (using preS-6P), in multiple experimental models pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Seems kind of like union busting www.polygon.com/23903782/dra...

Kind reminder that even just "playing around" with AI tools (as they exist now) contributes to this in a way that matters. Just don't do it.

Bad working conditions for nurses literally mean bad patient care. Endless solidarity for every health care worker striking for better.

How red-state politics are shaving years off American lives Along Lake Erie, three states show how Republican lawmakers’ decisions over decades on cigarettes and seat belts are shortening life spans.

One reason that American life expectancy is declining is GOP opposition to public health practices that save lives https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/republican-politics-south-midwest-life-expectancy/

Not to get too on my high horse, but this is one of the reasons anti-vaxx has had such staying power in mom communities in particular.

Medical sexism like this feeds pregnant person distrust, which drives folks to "natural" approach quacks, who then preach anti-vaxx to those same folks postpartum.

GOP learns the hard way: Turning the base up too high blows out your Speaker

A great week for vaccines:

-mRNA vaccine researchers win Nobel Prize

- second malaria vaccine approved by WHO

- Novavax COVID-19 vaccine approved by US FDA