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Nonsense and the odd sensible thought

@its-our-paris

QUEEN sideblog @a-froger-epic. Currently dormant Whovian, Doctor/Master is my OTP. Pansexual. Married with children. Probably older than you.
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People talk about the right side of history a lot.

The right side of history entirely depends on current society, its moral compass and its values.

It means nothing.

You could say that being kind is at all times equivalent to being on the right side of history, but you could be extremely kind to the people who you feel need it, and be despised by the people who think they deserve your kindness instead.

You could say choosing love is at all times the right side of history, but people can love God and harm others in his name, people can love their own family and treat everyone else unfairly. Love is subjective, too.

You could say standing up for those who you believe are oppressed always puts you on the right side of history. Unfortunately, people as a whole can rarely agree on who is most oppressed and most needs defending.

You could be the most virtuous, amazing person alive to someone and an evil tyrant to somebody else.

Somebody could be remembered as a martyr and a saint at one time and a person of questionable character who deserved their fate at another point in history.

There is no right side of history.

There is only following your own moral compass while you are alive.

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So, I've not been online much in the last few months. To the point where I managed to avoid - as usual, for me - all news of Eurovision until it happened. I like to watch the Grand Finale without knowing any of the songs, and this year, I sat down with my two sons (7 and 10) to introduce them to it for the first time.

  1. They LOVED it. I never told them they had to watch all of it, but they were so into it. lol
  2. I was extremely shocked that Israel participated, seeing as Russia was banned before? But Israel wasn't. Of course not. I've read up on news since and, wow. I'm furious in hindsight. Anyway.
  3. We saw Nemo and at once all three agreed that we loved them and were rooting for them. My boys were beside themselves when they actually won! One of the best winners of Eurovision in a long time, imo.

Anyway, shame it was all (as I belatedly found out) overshadowed by Israel being allowed to be in it.

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quinnfebrey

do you think taylor is tanking her reputation on purpose as an easter egg for rep tv

Will someone fill me in on what Taylor Swift is doing exactly? *I* am out of touch. With celebrities, social media, the online world, etc., and I'm mildly curious. And too lazy to search through Google News.

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hacked-wtsdz

Every time I read or watch Lord of the Rings I can’t help but think about how Tolkien had survived one of the bloodiest, most cruel, most dirtiest and darkest wars in human history, came back and wrote this:

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

And this:

"'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'"

And this:

"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."

And this:

“Many that live deserve death and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the wise cannot see all ends."

And this:

“True courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one.”

And clearly they were all written partly because he survived the war, because of what he’d seen and done and learned. But at the same time the unwillingness to lose faith, the courage and strength that this man had to believe in these things after going through hell! It makes the nihilists look so cheap, so uninteresting! People who’ve went through concentration camps and wars believe in humanity anyway, isn’t that proof that hope and love exist? And many, many, many of them did not return or returned broken and cruel and traumatised to the point when no faith in others was possible for them, and nobody can blame them. But there were many who refused to lose faith and hope. They have seen some the worst that life has to offer and came back believing that we shouldn’t be eager to deal out death and judgement and should love only that which the sword defends.

No matter how many people say that humanity is horrible and undeserving of love, and life is dark and worthless, and love doesn’t exist I remember this and have hope anyway. Because there were people who have actually had all reason to believe in the worst and still believed in the good, so the good must be real. The good is real, even despite the evil, and we must trust in it.

The Good and love are real for anyone who believes that they are. You can put two different people through the same horrors, and one person will come out believing life is horrible and humans are evil, and another person will come out believing life and humanity are worth fighting and surviving for. The only difference is the choice they make in their outlook on life. But you know what else is the difference? Who do you think is ultimately more fulfilled, at peace and, above all, happy because they are grateful just to be alive? The person who resents everything or the person who refuses to stop loving? The person who focuses on all the bad and everything they don't have will never have enough and always think the world evil. The person who focuses on what they do have will always be content and will attract more positivity from others around them, because people who are positive inspire, attract and soften the hearts of those who meet them.

Believing in love, life and people is a choice. I don't think it's a choice anybody has ever regretted.

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Doctor Who needs to stop looking so good, I'm about to start watching again with no time at all to engage in fandom. And then what do I do?

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I think people need to understand that when someone says the situation in Israel/Palestine is complicated they are not necessarily saying that the discussion of who the oppressor vs oppressed is complicated. The Israeli government has been oppressing the Palestinians for a very long time, that is clear, and it is not complicated to understand that at least since the 80s they have had dramatically more financial and military power to keep control of the territory in the way they like.

However, it is reductive and dismissive to insist that there is no complexity in the potential ways to move forward to bring peace to the region. Despite what people on tumblr.edu like to believe, "Israel should never have been created" is not a practical solution to an incredibly heated geopolitical situation in the present day. Israel was created and it does exist. 10 million people live there. 74% of the population is native born and the country has existed for 75 years. Hand waving these fact away with the opinion that "they should move back to where they came from" may make you feel good about being a Radical Leftist, but it does not give anyone a road map for how exactly millions of people without dual citizenship are supposed to just up and evaporate. Nor does it acknowledge the reality that 21% of Israelis are Arabs, the very people you are claiming to want to give the land back to.

Insisting that there's nothing complicated about expecting an entire country's population to willingly dissappear with no consequences is not a productive way to think about this conflict. It ignores the many massive superpowers that have an interest in proping up different states in the region, the power dynamics involved in any land back movements, and the inevitably negative consequences of totally dissolving an established state without a plan. It is also completely and almost comically unrealistic, so much so that it makes it hard to believe that anyone who's opinion starts and ends with this idea really gives a shit about anyone who lives in the area as much as they care about their online leftist clout.

There's nothing complicated in understanding that the Israeli government is and has been maintaining an oppressive apartheid state for decades. It is, however, very complicated to come up with a realistic way to resolve some of the most intricately entangled land disputes on the planet without plunging the region into total chaos. Not everyone has to be deeply educated on every geopolitical situation, but it is very hard to take people seriously when they know nothing about the politics or history of a region and yet insist that there is nothing complicated about it at all.

There's a lot of people on this website who are getting dangerously smug about their own ignorance, and are starting to go down Qanon type anti-intellectual paths in the name of being sufficiently radical. Not knowing the details of a very convoluted land dispute isn't something to brag about online as you call for intentionally reductive solutions. You can support the Palestinian cause and be aware of the oppression they have faced while also holding off on calling people trying to do real analysis and de-escalation work bootlickers. We need to get control of the urge to fit every global issue into a simplistic YA novel narrative structure that appeals to Western revolutionary fantasies.

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Community Label: Mature: Violence

fun fact!! it turns out that now when u make a new blog, tumblr forces you to follow 3-4 people before you can change your icon or modify your blog in any way!! this, of course, means that, yes, some of the "potential bots" many of us have been automatically blocking could have possibly been genuine new users who were only just seconds in to having an account!!! tumblr is literally screwing new users over!!!!

Community Label: Mature

Violence

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It's funny to me now when people are all "everyone can see what's going on here!" (which I absolutely did too when I was younger) fully convinced that everyone must be in agreement with their point of view, when in actual fact, at least half the people who are seeing what's going on come away with the complete opposite conclusion.

Always assume that no matter how right you think you are, there will be a bunch of people who think you're 100% in the wrong. And be prepared to just... be okay with that, because you cannot and will not ever have everyone on your side.

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