The world is dark and full of terrors, but it also has cats, mount Ararat, and sometimes the snow falls when the sun is out. This apparent dichotomy reminds me “Angel,” my favorite poem by Alexander Pushkin.
The world is dark and full of terrors, but it also has cats, mount Ararat, and sometimes the snow falls when the sun is out. This apparent dichotomy reminds me “Angel,” my favorite poem by Alexander Pushkin.
My 89 yo Lebanese-Palestinian-Italian grandmother, who fled the Nakba in 48 as a child to Lebanon, has essentially never lived more than a few years at a time in nearly a century of existence without being impacted by Israeli state violence.
And then they call this 'crisis in the middle east.'
Netanyahu shaking hands with Putin
It's amazing to me that there are still people who think they can be pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel at the same time. This is from Netanyahu's 2019 campaign, 5 years after Russia annexed Crimea. Keep on deluding yourselves that you can be moral on one cause and immoral on another.
“Children are dying. That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.”
To stay up to date, I encourage you to listen to, follow, and read:
Ukraine Without the Hype
The Eastern Border Podcast
Popular Front
It Could Happen Here
The New Voice of Ukraine
2025 was the deadliest year in Ukraine since the invasion began, and they’re experiencing a brutal winter.
There are plenty of worthy organizations to donate to, but I am singling these folks out because a good friend of mine recently volunteered with them.
1. Solidarity should not be conditional
2. Some folks will accept disinformation even when it’s refuted
3. I can’t force anyone else to care
It wasn’t just the choice to look up from my phone. It was my choice to go back and offer a hand. To provide help when I had the ability to do so. I can complain about the world and its dysfunction. I can say that indifference is a plague. These things are true. But I can also act, and so can you.
there is a subtle yet repugnant hint of ecofascism that unites takes from supposed leftists and liberals like “getting rid of people’s dependency on USAID is worth the human cost” and “air conditioning is a needless luxury, and some people will just have to die of heat to stop climate change.”
It wasn’t just the choice to look up from my phone. It was my choice to go back and offer a hand. To provide help when I had the ability to do so. I can complain about the world and its dysfunction. I can say that indifference is a plague. These things are true. But I can also act, and so can you.
thank you!
I feel bad when I read people who say they hate writing, especially to the extent they’d let an LLM do it. Writing was the path to making me feel human and the emotional journey of doing it all the time fills me full of purpose. I refuse to believe I’m the only person who feels like this!
Woke up to learn that a story of mine had been accepted, and I got to pet a friendly cat on my way to work.
One of the best mornings I've had all year.
This is my goal for the new year: that my words have a positive and helpful impact on the people in my life, whether it be the old friend, the new colleague, or the stranger. I hope I am able to live up to it.
The older I get, the less concerned I am with accomplishments, and the more concerned I am with answering these two questions: “How did I make others feel?” and “Did I offer to help to the best of my ability with the resources I have?”
Initially, I said I wanted to grow as a writer: get a larger following, a bigger platform, “make a name for myself." But as I said the words aloud, I paused, and realized that's not what I really want. In that moment, I realized that I simply want my words to reach the folks who need to read them.
I’ll spare you the details about what I was grateful for and what I wish to let go of. Instead, I want to share with you what I look forward to, because as I was telling my partner what that was, I abruptly changed it halfway through.
At the start of the new year, I light a candle, list three things that I was grateful for having occurred in the previous year, one thing I want to let go of, and one thing I look forward to in the new year.
Last month, my partner and I participated in a yearly ritual passed down to me by my friends.
Just dawned on me I could write my own prose superhero novels 👀👀👀
wrote another piece—this time about Epstein's early involvement in the "anti-establishment" movement that gave us Trump (mostly inspired by this post by @garbageday.email: www.garbageday.email/p/here-s-how...)
medium.com/@areidross/n...
I don’t understand why so many of you seem to think that the Trump administration is either made up of clowns OR genuinely evil people
Didn’t “It” teach you those aren’t mutually exclusive
I've personally met with survivors. I've seen the fresh burial mounds at Srebrenica. These experiences were supplemental, and not a requirement for recognition. People who deny the Bosnian genocide should be met with the same indignation as Armenian genocide deniers.
The following paragraph describes Parenti's denial.
It's frustrating that people are only now expressing shock at Chomsky when his Bosnian genocide denial has been public knowledge for years. This excerpt is from an article I wrote last year.
It's frustrating that this is public knowledge and people are still surprised. This is from an article I wrote last year:
I might have had all my pitches rejected so far this year, but I had one follower tell me that he found my writing accessible, and another friend said he feels like I'm in the room with him when he reads my work. So I'll end this week on a high note.
These people are sick.
