A Place to be Ace

I know you have all probably seen the esims for gaza posts circulating. Some of you have probably looked at them and thought maybe you should help out, but have weighed up the daunting process of signing up for something you're unfamiliar with vs. the gut-wrenching scale of the things people are going through on the ground right now, and you've put it off or questioned whether it will make enough of a difference vs. some other future kind of activism you could put that $6+ towards. I'm not calling you out or scolding you, it is natural to feel conflicted and ambivalent about the multiple calls for aid that you are seeing on social media.

but consider this: what would you do if you suddenly had to leave your home? how would you cope? how would you begin to plan where to go next, or figure out what to do to take care of yourself? most likely you would reach reflexively for your phone.

telecoms access is not a petty luxury in 2024. a loaded esim means the ability to call family members and find out where they are and whether they're safe, and whether they need anything you can provide for them. it means access to maps and regular updates on the situation unfolding around you. it means you can look up whether it's safe to drink rain water, or how to tie a type of knot you've never had to think about before, or how to treat an injury without medical supplies. it means the ability to tell people outside the situation what you are seeing, what you are feeling, what you are thinking. it is an absolutely crucial resource. and it starts at $6 for 7 days.

many many people have observed that internet access is changing the way the world understands genocide. internet access is life or death, and it is shaping modern history in front of you. and it starts at $6 for 7 days.

please, please visit gazaesims.com and spend 5 minutes and $6 to change the way this plays out for everyone.

let my bro out for fucks sake

definitely weird to see someone ive known since like 2020 be sentenced to life in hospital prison, but i guess it's to be expected with the work i do

this is about this story

and we haven't talked since my indictment for obvious safety/distancing reasons

ok so this is obviously a fucked up sentencing, but i do feel like i need to clarify this is not just about the GTA hack, by the time he hacked rockstar he had violated bail about 3 times (he hacked rockstar from an amazon firetv stick while on bail and banned from using electronics, actually the coolest shit anyone has ever done), this sentencing is still extremely disproportionate but it's about like 5 different hacks really

also i wanna clarify that being a risk to corporations is absolutely not the same thing at all as being a risk to other people and that's a bullshit money hungry accusation, because at the end of the day that's all this is about.

if you've stopped masking, you should start back up

are people aware that Palestine is unable to rebuild anything that has been destroyed because Israel denies them the ability to import any materials that could be used to build infrastructure? They struggle to get and make concrete, not just from a lack of concrete mix, but also from a lack of water. Israel destroyed nearly all of Palestine's agriculture, its water supplies, and they cannot get the materials to rebuild water filtration or manufacturing. People will continue to die from Israel's atrocities long after the bombs and bullets stop. Every chance Israel gets, it destroys more of the resources necessary to maintain human life because it has always intended to exterminate the indigenous people whose land Israel occupies and has stolen and continues to steal

The humanitarian aid that Israel is currently blockading is food, water, medicine and what Palestine desperately needs is building material too so it can replace the destroyed homes, schools, hospitals, factories, power & water plants, airport. Israel regularly uses its navy to kill Palestinians attempting to fish because it doesn't want Palestinians to have the ability to leave the area or to survive in the area, either. At every turn, the Israeli regime blocks any outside help from reaching Palestinians because Zionists are attempting to exterminate indigenous people to fully possess their land and resources. The Israelis learned from the US massacring Natives for their lands & resources, from the British occupiers and Nazi middlemen who worked together to sell as much Palestinian land to rich European Jews as possible in an effort to fund the Reich and establish a European colony in the middle of of the region to be a bulwark from which Europe could launch more wars of extermination. Palestinians on their own land have no clean water, no clean air, no shelter that Israel cannot destroy, little food & medicine, and no ability to fully replace what has been lost. And almost every so-called western country gives money, weapons, and trade considerations to Israel, knowing full well what Israel has done for the past 75 years and what it wishes to do now. Personally, I think that every single person who defends Israel should be put down as the bloodthirsty fascist they are, until at last people stop defending the Israeli occupation and genocide of Palestine and the land and its people can be reunited and begin the long centuries of healing.

In liberation of Palestine, we would see the extermination of fascists who oppose the liberation of indigenous people and the raising up of those who remembered their humanity.

Israeli's occupation has since destroyed half of all hospitals and medical clinics; all sources of food, water, fuel, power, & medicine and has only allowed through UN shipments of burial shrouds because the Israeli regime explicitly intends to massacre and kill all Palestinians it is able to unless & until it is stopped May every IOF soldier, cop, politician, and defender perish, to be forgotten and unmourned May such fates befall every regime and every person who has supported this and every other genocide

[ID: tweet by user evilscrapbook reading: You're not a monster," i said. But i lied. What i really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be.]

List of Journalists Killed During this Genocide. Say their names!

spent the whole day confirming all of these names and looking through multiple resources. the ones with dates are journalists who’s date of martyrdom and/or exact cause of death is stated by sources behind the government media office official list.

@mikewheelerfan2022 Israel are terrorists too

Today, Dr. Hani Al-Haitham, head of the Shifa Hospital's emergency department, was murdered, along with his wife, Dr. Sameera Ghifari, & their 5 children: Shireen, Tia, Sameer, Wafa & Sara.

In the video, he is holding a week old baby that was not yet named and was the only one saved from an airstrike.

if i'm totally honest from day 1 everything that is possible to help palestinians in gaza is a drop in the ocean—you can literally chain yourself to the walls of the white house and go on hunger strike, you can set yourself on fire in front of an israeli embassy, hundreds of thousands of people can march in washington, and israel will keep killing babies with impunity. all of this has already happened and it's been seventy-one fucking days.

in the short term, there are some things that help—largely done by yemen. donations to families who ask, e-sims, the field hospitals and aid trucks are some of them too. they are limited in scope but they help. but these global protests and global actions and global pressure—this is long term work. it's more about you and your coworker and your friend than it is about gaza because you and your coworkers and your friends are laying the groundwork for the global shift. it's about your politicians first then israeli airstrikes second. it's the result of decades of organizing and awareness palestinians have put in and it is facing one of the most brutal, well-funded and coordinated suppression campaigns in history. this is a slow-shifting tide and you have to be part of it without overestimating or underestimating your place in it.

i don't mean to understate this support for palestine and the urgency of doing everything possible to help gaza rn. its actually the opposite. this is all of the utmost importance.

but i mean to say there is no "stop the genocide now" button. i wish there was. this genocide was 75 years in the making, 75 years of groundwork laid by both israel and the US to make it possible. half of this is appealing to the forces who already agree and believe palestinians should die to show mercy. it is slow, excruciating, sabotaged work. anyone who believes that there is some magic organizing that would've made this better doesn't understand the reality palestinians have been living under or the political reality at stake. all the magic organizing was decimated years ago—entire countries were destroyed in the process. instead these are the tools at our disposal now. we don't have a "stop the genocide now" button because it doesn't exist. to stop the genocide you must liberate palestine from apartheid and occupation. to liberate palestine you must seek life, dignity, freedom and self-determination for the palestinian people. this isn't a button. it's better to picture it as a lever, and all we can do is pull it as hard as we can until it reaches a critical mass. everything you're doing right now is pulling it, slow but constant pressure. it will inevitably fall. the genocide will stop as we pull, but we keep pulling after.

Awe, you're "frustrated"? You're having a pity party for yourself because someone renamed your fucking couscous salad? You're feeling victimized because someone spray painted "STOP THE GENOCIDE" on a sidewalk? You're feeling sad cause your imagined first world persecutions aren't being "centered" by people trying to stop a fucking GENOCIDE?

Let us know when someone bombs off your fucking hand. Write back when your entire family are killed and your legs are amputated. Let us know when thousands of your people are being left to rot under rubble.

Until then take a cue from the MANY Jewish people standing against this madness or GO FUCK YOURSELF.

wow almost like everyone saw this coming and it was grossly irresponsible to get rid of the recommendation in the first place

Funny how these are dated 2022 and

It's almost like people don't think

calling the cops on an unhoused person for being weird/rude/"scary" in public is so weird to me on such a fundamental level... like even before you get to political beliefs about jail and homelessness, you are beefing with a dude who has to live on the sidewalk. like sorry if he was rude to you dude sorry if he made you uncomfortable but to be fair he lives and sleeps on the fucking sidewalk. sorry if hes being too mentally unwell on the street late at night but like you gotta understand that he lives on the fucking sidewalk. sorry if he seems a little bit "off" today dude i think maybe its because he lives on the fucking goddamn sidewalk

"The Biden Administration last week [early December, 2023] announced it would be seizing patents for drugs and drug manufacturing procedures developed using government money.

A draft of the new law, seen by Reuters, said that the government will consider various factors including whether a medical situation is leading to increased prices of the drug at any given time, or whether only a small section of Americans can afford it.

The new executive order is the first exercise in what is called “march-in-rights” which allows relevant government agencies to redistribute patents if they were generated under government funding. The NIH has long maintained march-in-rights, but previous directors have been unwilling to use them, fearing consequences.

“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.

But just how much taxpayer money is going toward funding drugs? A research paper from the Insitute for New Economic Thought showed that “NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $230 billion.”

The authors of the paper continue, writing “NIH funding also produced 22 thousand patents, which provided marketing exclusivity for 27 (8.6%) of the drugs approved [between] 2010-2019.”

How we do drug discovery and production in America has a number of fundamental flaws that have created problems in the health service industry.

It costs billions of dollars and sometimes as many as 5 to 10 years to bring a drug to market in the US, which means that only companies with massive financial muscle can do so with any regularity, and that smaller, more innovative companies can’t compete with these pharma giants.

This also means that if a company can’t recoup that loss, a single failed drug can result in massive disruptions to business. To protect themselves, pharmaceutical companies establish piles of patents on drugs and drug manufacturing procedures. Especially if the drug in question treats a rare or obscure disease, these patents essentially ensure the company has monoselective pricing regimes.

However, if a company can convince the NIH that a particular drug should be considered a public health priority, they can be almost entirely funded by the government, as the research paper showed.

Some market participants, in this case the famous billionaire investor Mark Cuban, have attempted to remedy the issue of drug costs in America by manufacturing generic versions of patented drugs sold for common diseases."

-via Good News Network, December 11, 2023

Essential medicines should not be subject to market whims.

Why redistribute the patents at all?

Why does it have to be some sort of for-profit enterprise?

The government should have its own manufacturing plants. Like, maybe contract with pharma companies to do the research, but the government, aka The People, owns the drugs at the end, and they should be manufacturing everything that's off-patent anyway.

BTW for my fellow ADHDers, the stimulant shortage is very real as of December 2023. I used to be able to get a prescription filled within a week, now it's delayed, and you still have to hunt around to see if any pharmacy has it in stock.

Also, the US system is really annoying. In Canada, I used to be able to get 90 days' worth of pills at once, and I never really paid huge amounts out-of-pocket. Here, you only get 30 days' worth, and insurance won't pay for the good medicine, so they try to shift you to generics that have weird side effects, or aren't as effective!

So I have to get my doctor to refill every 30 days, and THEN on top of it take a periodic drug test to make sure I'm not abusing things, AND have to chase insurance to pay it, AND then it's not even in stock??

Like, if I can't concentrate on work, I lose my job. Will the insurance companies pay me to stay home if they won't provide me with meds?