he is on his Betty and Barney Hill but with gay german guys shit again

there were quite a few more that I didn't take a picture of

...allegedly they are there no longer

Since everyone is posting about less apps, less phones, yadayada...

What are good ways for non-algorithmic and/or non-social discovery for media, articles, books, movies, and just... interesting shit?

I used to have a well-curated RSS reader, but that kinda went away when all the good RSS services died one after another. Just didn't move for a third time eventually.

I remember interesting (but very niche) approaches like Yahoo Pipes, where one could build their own customized feeds and "remix" RSS feeds. But stuff like that never took off – because agency is the enemy of maximum profit extraction.

Twitter is dead, but at least it used to be an okay way to know what favorite authors and journos are publishing, or where they have appearances. (Despite the social media brainrot aspect.)

The only non-social and almost-no-algorithm place for discovery I use is currently my library app. (Which unfortunately is also on the path to monopoly and extracting extortion-like gobs of money from public libraries. Meh....)

What methods and tools for discovering interesting shit don't feel... cursed in the year of the lord 2026? Or which ones at least don't try to be addictive?

Fuck Israel, Free Palestine!

Please call on your elected reps to have US government defend its own citizens. Our US taxpayer dollars are directly funding these settler terrorists. Please help spread the news of what's happening to everyone that you can. These are direct asks from the Palestinians that we met.

I’m bored at work and want to laugh at silly little pictures on computer

Here’s my low effort oc someone has probably done before

So when I was a teeager, I was really interested in the history of the crusades, and even after I got my history degree, I maintained some of that interest, and there are a lot of parallels between the crusader kingdoms and Israel, from the cirucmstances of their foundations, their relationship to their neighbours and (hopefully) their eventual fall.

At the dawn of the First Crusade 1096, which would lead to the conquest of Palestine, Lebanon and parts of modern day Turkey & Syria, the Middle East was divded into smaller, warring states following the spiltering of the Turkish Seljuk empire. The region was further divided between a powerful Shia state (Fatimid Egypt) and the Sunni Seljuks. The Crusaders' conquest of Palestine came as a deep shock for the region, causing political turmoil for decades to come among neighbouring states, and their conquest was particularly bloody even for the time, with large scale massacres, and even one famous case of mass cannibalism.

This might sound familiar, because at the dawn of the Nakba in 1948, the Middle East was divided into small, warring states following the splintering of the Turkish Ottoman empire. The Zionist conquest of Palestine came as a deep shock for the region, causing political turmoil for decades to come among neighbouring states, with large scale massacres and ethnic cleansing (no cannibalism as far as I know). By 1979 the region was again divded between a powerful Shia state (Iran) and a succession of Sunni states (Saddam's Iraq, then Saudi Arabia).

The Crusader kingdoms were subsequently maintained through support from Western powers; England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Italian city states, the Byzantines, etc. Whenever the crusader states became threatened by their neighbours, new crusades were called, placing an increasing burden on the Crusader kingdoms' sponsors. They took advantage of the divisions within the region, at times allying with one Muslim ruler against another as keeping the region divided was vital to their survival.

Likewise, Israel was subsequently maintained through support from Western powers; England, France, Germany, the U.S. , the EU, etc. This support allowed Israel a great deal of impunity, which has today placed an increasing burden on its sponsors. They take advantage of divisions within the region, allying with some Arab rulers against others as keeping the region divided is vital to its survival.

What brought about the end of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the primary Crusader state, was its inability to ever truly become a part of the region. This was not merely due to incompetent or misguided leadership. It was a result of the core ideology and nature of the state. The Kingdom was a tiered society, where Western Crusaders were at the top, Eastern Christians in 2nd place and native Muslims and Jews at the bottom.

It lanuched an increasing amount of ill-fated military campaigns as its ruling classes became dominated by more and more buffonish zealots. Several invasions of Egypt which failed, the 2nd Crusade which was a massive failure, and the war against Saladin, which would bring about the kingdom's end. No one person exemplifies this more than Raynauld de Chatillon, whose constant violations of the laws of war and audacious attacks against Muslim lands killed any chance of lasting peace.

This is very similar to the state of Israel today. Its existance as a Jewish supremacist ethnostate makes it impossible for it to become integrated into the region, even with the game rigged in its favour by virtue of 80% of the region being Western puppets. It has launched several ill-fated military campaigns in the last few years, from getting bogged down in Lebanon (again), eating up more and more of Syria, starting a war with Iran, and now trying to get involved in the Yemeni civil war. Pretty much the entire Israeli political spectrum are different shades of Raynauld de Chatillon, whose zealotry makes it impossible for them to make politically astute decisions, and whose genocide in Gaza killed any chance of integrating them into the region.

The key to ending the Crusader states however was the Muslim Middle East finally unifying under Saladin, who brought the warring factions of Syria and Iraq under control and conquered Egypt. Faced with a unified Middle East, which in part had been forged together by the Crusaders' disruptive and aggressive nature, the Kingdom of Jerusalem fell. Some Crusader states lingered on in diminished form due to Saladin being a softie, the Mongol invasion of the Middle East bought them some more time and subsequent crusades managed to very briefly regain territory, but the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 spelled the end for the Crusader states as a real power in the Middle East.

Thanks for reading my schizo history rant, any questions from the class? If not, turn to the person next to you and discuss.

Fun fact, this guy was last in the news for offering a potential candidate tens of millions of dollars to primary Rashida Tlaib

Just saw the Fielder meta documentary which was great as a work of art and comedy but it got me wondering if there was more to the story.

1. Henry Kissinger and several top military officials were involved in Theranos as the board of directors. Did they really just let their money and their reputation get played with by Holmes without any idea at all it was a scam? And then only punish her within the typical bounds of the law?

2. At one point in the documentary in 2025, her husband says he got followed by three cars on his way to see Nathan for that particular interview; and was talking wildly about how if anything happened to him or his family they would “release everything”. And Nathan asked him what do you mean and the husband replied something like “oh it means I have insurance/leverage”. The guy also said he carries a gun 24/7 365 because of “threats”. Granted that husband is a dumb conservative tech guy who loves Charlie Kirk so maybe he is just being paranoid. But it did give me pause.

I haven’t read anything in detail about Theranos besides a few Wikipedia articles so I dont have any further specific suspicions beyond these two details.

While all you sissified libs are sleeping I’m up at 7am firing up my badass stove putting cams and lifters on a piece of shit Chrysler #grindsetmindset #getyamoneyup

But naw it’s nice to have finally been cold enough to fire the old girl up. I have so much waste oil I’d like to eventually make a setup to run the stove on it via a dripper, and also start filtering it to run black diesel in my truck, but you know one thing at a time. I also have so many trees I need to cut down here im good on wood for a long ass time lol.

What yall got goin on today?

Any principled leftist will tell you it was a joke from the beginning, billionaire backed vent moments meant to tied people over until the midterms, have people get together but in a very “non-political” political environment, very few pro palestinian messages (if any) very few pro socialist messages (if any) instead we’re (we being like 2/3rds boomers) here to listen to a speaking slate of liberals from around the state who decided to show up today, it’s a Blue MAGA rally (sorry, not sorry)

One of the things that really pisses me off about them is that it’s just boomers, that makes me rather demoralized for the future of the country if it seems the only ones who cares about politics are boomers. But the reason why they care about politics is because politics cared about them. The reason it pisses me off is because if your solutions are to vote your way out of this crisis and that “we can all agree trump is bad” you do not have a message that will ring true with anyone under 60. It’s so infuriating because i know (we know) how bad the economic crisis is and how bad the political crisis is (i mean we’re at war, not that the liberals care) and yet the left protest movement is so blue MAGA captured it’s sad. There’s barely any discussion from the speakers about real solutions to the war or the housing crisis or the cost of living, just liberal platitudes and virtue signaling. Even my gen X parents think it’s a day late and a dollar short and a bit of a joke.

I’ve been to many there’s always plenty of the organizers complaining about the left and the pro palestinian crowd and how that “lost Kamala the election” , like sure it’s nice to be out there with likeminded people (not sure how likeminded) but the messaging is years behind average consciousness. Plus you just go home at the end, nothing else to do (except vooooteee). People will also remark “my conservative dad went” yeah if he wanted to there’s probably a problem

It makes me angry because it’s basically saying that liberals are the joke we think they are, trump is threatening marshall law and they’re over here saying vote harder, it’d be funny if it wasn’t so bleak. It’s crazy to see the state barrel towards fascism at an increasing speed and you see the liberals get even more cucked and scared, what fucking losers. The worst part is is that liberals are the only institutional force that is nominally anti Trump and they refuse to act, putting more of their constituents lives at risk (a risk they’re willing to take)

The issue of the democratic party remains the same as it was from Bernie’s runs, they prefer MAGA to progressives, let alone socialists/communists. So of course the “protest movement” will reflect that which also comes along with zero demands (not even impeach or remove)

I hope people realize that we don’t get a million do overs there are real consequences to our actions and if history is to be understood then we’re just rolling over and letting things happen. WHERE IS THE URGENCY. We need what they have in france but unfortunately we live in yankeestan where there is simply not the institutional capacity for that, at least not that type of planned confrontation.

However, i do think we could be on the precipice of a revolutionary crisis in America (lame duck Trump)

If you went I hope you at least counter messaged, because this shit is a dead end (but we all knew that already)

Good introduction to people not following the war or following the state of how anyone knows anything about what's going at the front and as a bonus you don't even have to translate a bunch of cyrillic telegrams.

Introduction starts at 15:55, although the preamble should be listened to if you have the time.

https://podcastaddict.com/war-nerd-radio-subscriber-feed/episode/242864142

Also swakupmund was where Germany learned the art of genocide on the Herero people, shout-out gravity's rainbow, having one of the first concentration/extermination camps. Palmer lucky and Karp are also obvious literal Nazis. I really don't understand why people find it hard to understand the laterality of the statement that we live in the 4th Reich. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa

I’ve been thinking about trying to trim down useless apps on my phone because the amount of time I spend on it is insane. I don’t think I’m going to completely quit reddit, in large part because of this sub (although it’s really not that good at this point) but I think I’ll only come back to see what people think after something big happens. There really isnt any use in scrolling and participating in endless online discourse that never changes anyone’s mind.

I miss forums. Even old 4chan was healthier for me than modern social media, at least I learnt how to cope with autism on there. Instagram, YouTube, Reddit etc. are just pipelines of slop being fed to you with no little to no input. I didn’t want to watch a bunch of random tv show clips, or read some bullshit lgbt infighting discourse, or literally anything, but the algorithm decides so.

Couldn't have been said better.
Source NYT.

plurality on council with a friendly mayor

majority on park board

plurality on school board

incumbent party lost the mayor's seat, council majority, park board majority and school board majority after one term. they have a single deeply unpopular councillor left.

8th largest city in canada, largest in british columbia. won off a campaign of principled left wing politics, communicated extremely well, with a particular talent for Being Normal. good things can happen. electoral politics aren't the answer, but damn this is really fucking good.

And it sucked, we took full repression from beginning to end, we were allowed maybe an hour of peaceful protest before the police hit us with decaliters of tear gas, grenades, flasball, charges, everything

The rest of the day was just a chaotic fight against the police which went on well into the night

And I was not in the capital, it was definitely less violent here but it really shows that the position of the authorities will be to just send the police to break us as soon as possible every time there is even a small protest until we are exhausted

DRUNK POSTING: I am currently reading a book named “Arab Ba’th Socialist Party: History, Ideology and Organization“ by Dr. Kamel S. Abu Jaber and Phillip Hitti. I’ve seen bits and pieces on this sub, and the old deprogram sub, of users closely following the Syrian civil war in real time.

It seems like this horrible war is unfortunately a blueprint for our future as humanity. From books I’ve read about it, like ”Syria; a history of the last hundred years” by John McHugo there’s a lot of awful western propaganda regarding it.

Anybody got recommendations for research about this war that isn’t bullshit lol

It seems like anywhere else on this site, I can't read 2-3 comments or posts without running into typos that are so bad that I have to twist my brain in half to figure out what the hell someone is talking about. I hate it cause sometimes it seems like someone has something important to say but they clearly don't care enough to make it understandable. But I don't notice it here as much. In fact, somewhat related, I see people here commenting in different languages and people replying in english and they go back and forth and fully understand each other. It's really good stuff, you're breaking barriers like I've never seen before.

I just saw you can see everything and I am dying to hear the three of them talk about it a la primetime