HaLevia retweeted
Pakistan expelled 1 million Afghans less than a year ago.
Yesterday, I gathered with residents at the Allama Iqbal Community Center’s Mela to commemorate Pakistan’s Independence Day and honor the contributions Pakistani New Yorkers have made to our city.
Today and everyday, we celebrate this community whose open arms, determination, and dreams for a better life have helped shape the city they call home.
bullseye
Palestinist: "What about the 700K who were displaced in '48?"
Idiot Jew: "Well, what about the 800,000 Jews who were displaced from Arab countries at the time?"
The Idiot Jew here wrongly...
- Accepted the made up 700K number from people who in 2025 lied about stuff from 2025 (such as #GazaFat people claiming they are in a famine, LOL).
- Ignored that Jews were displaced off of/in the land in 1948; thus mentions other Arab countries.
- Accepted the savage view that 1948 (a decade with 50 million displaced people and more displaced since), has any relevance to Palestinists executing Jews in the 2020s.
And then this Idiot Jew complains that "Israel sucks at PR"; totally unaware that he, the Idiot Jews, made things worse by accepting the savage lying premises of Palestinists.
learning about your kid's hobby is underrated
The most successful people I know (finances, fitness, family) all treat 30 minutes like its an extended vacation (because it is). Every broke finger pointing doomer treats 30 minutes like it’s 15 seconds. god the power of a half hour. I wish you could see. That 30 minutes per day is more than enough time to completely change the course of your life. 30 minutes in the gym, 30 minutes building a business, 30 minutes learning about your kids hobby. So much damn time. An eternity in this life. In many cases, as much time as you’ll ever get. What a waste to not take advantage of it.
"an impossible, beautiful debt that can never be repaid."
The best way to improve your own happiness and well-being is to practice gratitude. If you've never done this before, this sounds ridiculous, or silly, or maybe like someone is trying to swindle you out of getting less than you deserve. But I promise, gratitude is the only way to see that you are already overflowing with gifts, more than you can ever even appropriately conceive of, and that you owe your existence to an impossible, beautiful debt that can never be repaid.
I used to have a lot of bitterness in my heart, and I'd nurse it on petty miscalculations, an imagined ledger in which I was aggrieved and had been wronged simply because I wasn't getting whatever little thing I wanted in that exact moment. Letting go of that is freedom. A fundamental perceptive shift. It'll allow you to feel an unparalleled joy that cannot be taken away because of an errant whim or a stray thought.
And even after you've gone through this process, there will be people who will insist that you're being delusional and stupid, that actually you SHOULD be mad and bitter. You should nurse yourself on vengeful thoughts like you're drinking venom from a snake. The fact that you're not suffering because of this obvious injustice means you're an ignorant fool.
If only they could see it for a moment, a single moment, the freedom that comes when your ungratefulness no longer imprisons you.
horrible
Single Chinese man commissions triplet babies. Doesn't show up when they're born. Eventually sends two sketchy guys in a black SUV to collect them. Mother refuses.
She doesn't hear from him for a year and a half.
One triplet dies from RSV complications. She mourns like the grieving mother she is.
She and her husband are now fighting for custody. But he filed a challenge and now the babies are in foster care.
Welcome to the global baby trade. #Surrogacy.
firstcoastnews.com/article/n…
HaLevia retweeted
I think of myself as someone with a wide mental library & a brain good at making inobvious connections, but every time this guy posts I'm just in awe
This quoted post is unavailable.
You've already demanded Israeli withdrawal. Go ahead and work on step 2.
Thank you for sharing this!
Everyone has their own writing process. Here's mine:
1. I wait until I have something I need to say. It usually starts with annoyance or discursive itch--like when you're sitting at dinner and everybody is talking about something and you know they're missing something crucial and you have to figure out what it is.
2. I start jotting down the pieces of what I really want to say. First as brief notes, then as paragraphs, then as multi-paragraph arguments with sources.
3. If there are stories I need to tell, I start putting those in.
4. At this point the thing still has no structure. I'm writing whatever needs to be written, and I'll worry about what order to put it in later. By this point it's more text than the length of the final thing will be.
5. I scan over everything and try to see what stuff goes together. I start putting labels on sections in bold. I start moving stuff around so that the things that go together are together. Usually I discover that I've said some things a bunch of times, each time trying to really say it well and usually failing. Other things aren't developed yet.
6. I do more research--what do scholars or other sources say? What great quotes or facts can back up my point? What have I gotten wrong?
7. By this point there's a big junk pile at the end called junk. I haven't deleted anything yet.
8. I try to encapsulate this thing that I'm trying to say into a single sentence or paragraph up top, a thesis that helps guide me as to what parts to keep and what to leave for another time.
9. I build an outline--brief with bullet points--based on what I already have, and see whether the parts are enough or if I'm missing something. Does it flow? Is it really proving my point? Start filling in the blanks. Move sections around to match the outline. Introduction and conclusion.
10. When I have a lot of text that's more or less in the right order with no sections missing, I change the font. From sans-serif to serif. This gives me fresh eyes to imagine myself as the reader and editor.
11. Then I start massaging. Kneading the text. Cutting and filling in gaps. Deleting the junk (after saving a new version). Over and over until the structure and substance and voice all work.
12. Then I go through and cut and second-guess phrasings and discover more stuff I've missed.
13. Exhausted, sick to death of it, I either put it aside or show it to somebody.
14. I try to read it again when rested and fresh. At some point I just say "okay I'm done" even if I'm not. Because nothing is ever done. But there comes a point when you can submit. Anyway a good book or magazine editor will help get it across the finish line.
I'm sure there are more efficient ways, but I don't really care. I think the oddest thing about my process is that I never write anything in the order that it is published at the end. I write in order of my ability to say what I need to say, and that way I make sure I achieve what I set out to do from the beginning.
LOL
The World Cup has turned America into a discovery channel for the rest of the world.
And they are not handling it well.
In the best possible way.
Here is what they are discovering:
Free public restrooms. Europeans pay every time.
Free water at every restaurant. Just appears.
Free refills. Coffee. Sodas. Iced tea. Unlimited.
Free chips and salsa before you even order.
Free warm bread with dinner.
Ice in drinks like civilized people.
Air conditioning everywhere. Not a moral debate. A fact.
Parking lots attached to the actual place you are going.
Drive throughs where the food comes to the car while you sit in it.
Ranch dressing by the gallon.
Tex-Mex that cannot be explained only experienced.
Dental care that actually works.
Buccee’s. There are no words for Buccee’s.
Then they found the grocery stores.
Five of them within one mile.
Each one the size of an aircraft hangar.
Burgers. Steaks. Brisket. Ribs. Pulled pork. Lamb. Veal. Every cut of every animal ever domesticated by human civilization available in one refrigerated aisle at ten in the morning on a Tuesday.
The Germans stood in the meat section for forty five minutes.
In silence.
Processing.
They finally understand why we do not have trains.
We have roads wide enough for the cars we actually drive.
Parking lots the size of small European countries.
Airports in every city worth visiting.
Why would we need trains.
The Germans are taking ranch home by the bottle.
The Dutch found queso and briefly lost the ability to speak.
The Japanese are photographing HEB like it is the Louvre.
The Czechs are weeping in West, Texas.
Welcome to America.
Everything is free, enormous, air conditioned, comes with chips, and has five grocery stores within a mile that will sell you any cut of any animal you have ever imagined.
Write that down. 🦋
HaLevia retweeted
Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion
I hope. I hope
Here’s my competing thoughts about this MOU with Iran…
The fact that we are making a deal without unconditional surrender from Iran is a problem. Losing looks like losing.
Making a terrible deal is terrible no matter how much pressure is on you.
You either accept peace on your terms from a position of power, or you capitulate and make a deal that looks like a loss to anyone paying attention.
Now that I’ve griped a bit and assumed this is exactly what it looks like, let’s talk nuance.
This isn’t the final treaty, of course, so there is room for changes, demands, and even the old “give them enough rope to hang themselves with” mentality (yes, I get it, such would be silly from any logical perspective).
I don’t love these possibilities because it makes it seem like we are the ones pushing for peace without our goals being met.
We obviously don’t have the full picture, not most of us opining (and we won’t without clearance and a need to know), so I still think it is important to trust that Trump will fulfill the requirements he pushed at the beginning of this conflict.
The Unconventional Warfare aspect is the one I keep going back to, because it is the most important aspect and because it has the best chance at success without putting conventional boots on the ground.
The problem is that UW takes time… especially if the entire ecosystem has to be set up from relative scratch.
If nothing else good comes from all of this, the ultra denied aspect of Iran has at least been weakened enough to allow for an insurgency to have a real shot at success.
UW couldn’t have happened before the 13,000 sorties.
It can now.
I wish this was a faster process and that we had some confirmation, but it is not fast and if we knew, so would the IRGC.
Large aspects of UW happen in the shadows for a reason.
Also, sometimes certain plans require a public action that doesn’t make sense at the time to those on the outside looking in, but could be exactly what was required.
Again, we simply don’t have all of the answers.
If it turns out how it looks without any underlying rationale, then I’m pretty disappointed.
If it’s a ploy to move us forward to a place we need to be for the regime to collapse from the inside, then I will nod my hat in praise.
Until then, I have to have faith in the administration and the important people that hopefully understand what is at stake.
Two is twice as good as one, but one is infinitely better than zero.
Two is twice as good as one, but one is infinitely better than zero.
-One minute of making sales calls is infinitely better than zero minutes.
-One minute of meditation is infinitely better than zero minutes.
-One minute of writing is infinitely better than zero minutes.
Sure, it might be ideal to spend an hour doing these things, but one minute gets you in the game. Now you're learning. Now you're improving. Now results are possible. One doesn't seem like much, but it's something real. At zero, you're still dreaming.