Boston area writer, artist, and explorer.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • I feel like people forget about this. Hamas wants their constituents to die. They want to put their weaponry and bases inside hospitals and places of worship because they know IDF will have to seize or attack them and making them look bad for damaging health facilities and mosques. I am pro-Palestine and pro-Israel, but I notice there’s a lack of nuance too often in the pro-Palestine movement. I know most Gazans are not involved in Hamas. But few realize that most Israeli citizens are uninterested in destroying Gaza. Israel’s military and executive leadership has made poor decisions. But this does not necessarily equate to the country at large being genocidal.


  • I almost feel bad how little personal emotional and/or spiritual time he takes for himself. He continues posting this crap after his brother died, after his first wife/mother of his three eldest died, while he was getting ready to attend his younger daughter’s wedding, and more recently, after his sister died. He’s so relatitory. Just be happy or somber in these landmark occasions. His sister Maryanne who just died even seemed to be pretty important to him. He wanted to transfer colleges and Maryanne had a friend who was on their admissions team, so she set up an interview for him, and even drove him to the interview. Not to mention her being a circuit judge in New Jersey helped his casino get its gambling and liquor licenses issued quickly. She really looked out for her little brother, and he’d rather post about how due process is against him than how much she meant to him on the day she died. She’d said in Mary L. Trump’s book that Donald’s comments on how the death of their older brother Fred inspired his sobriety was emotional manipulation. Now that more impactful events have come in his life and he’s only focusing on the ones that effect him directly, I realize she was right.




  • Mckenzie needs to read that Reddit story about the bartender who kicked out a guy with the Third Reich eagle ensign on his shirt despite him quietly minding his own business. I really don’t want Substack to “suddenly become a Nazi bar.” I’m just a reader, but if I ever start a newsletter I may reconsider my platform. I am on a basic free plan for all Substack channels I read. I’ve thought about upgrading my subscription to some, but now I will hesitate.


  • This thread has already mentioned a lot of artists I was already going to mention…and I’ll add a semi-recent one for me, Scott Adams. I started reading Dilbert while I was still learning to read and my exposure to it helped me recover from my literacy anxiety (which I sometimes still have to an extent). I’ve mentioned a bit of my associations of it in previous posts but to recap, my mom worked at another “Baby Bell” company, Nynex, later Bell Atlantic then Verizon, (like Scott who worked at Pacific Bell and Dilbert and friends who worked at an unnamed company implied to be in the telecom sector) I liked the simplistic designs a lot, as well as the introduction of new vocabulary. I soon started making my own comic strips. Scott Adams’ views on race, medicine, politics and several other subjects are perplexing. If I could logically follow them, I’d be offended. My dad’s high school experience was diminished by segregation apologists during Boston bussing mandates of the 1970s when they would protest at school campuses. The fact that Adams was on board with such a stupid practice in that infamous vlog is upsetting. Then again, Adams is a contrarian so I can’t be sure if he sincerely feels that way, especially since he tweeted something afterwards saying “I’m not actually bothered by black people. I am actually just annoyed by white people who advocate for black people” (paraphrase). Maybe it’s a true clarification or maybe he’s just trying to walk back his statements. He needs help. There’s probably something traumatic in his life that made him snap. Off hand, I know his wife filed for divorce from him and his stepson died of an overdose, and he may still be mourning in a strange way. Still, if I see Dilbert merch at a secondhand shop or in the library, I’d gladly take them out. I will not subscribe to his new pay-walled comic, but if his distributors and publishers ever decide to re-sign their contracts with him and start printing new Dilbert books again, I may buy them. Anecdotally print publishers seem to do more vetting than web publishers, so I’d hope that if they ever reunite he’d be in the right headspace. Anyway, great comic, troubled person. Hope the guy gets some help.



  • Sometimes I wonder if he became pedophilic because of his sad life. Between losing family in the Holocaust and losing more family and friends in the Tate/LaBianca murders by the Manson family, he must felt like his life was out of control. But it’s easy to control teenaged girls into having sex with you. Or maybe the genocide and murders he experienced had nothing to do with his sins. But it’s something I think about occasionally. I’ve seen only a couple of his movies so far but I notice some themes from his life, like the death of babies or babies being evil, and I feel like it’s some personal allegory.


  • I’m hardly an expert, just someone who loves studying law by myself until I can afford formal law school, and I did a little PR work during my internship, but despise my rudimentary exposure, Trump, his spokespeople, and legal team are approaching these indictments in the completely wrong way. They are too adversial and argumentative. Speaking little and gently would be much more helpful, and maybe even opting for a guilty plea. Trump needs to stop whining about how much he hates being prosecuted and the publicists and attorneys on his payroll need to stop regurgitating his bellyaches. It’s not like I think he won’t be sentenced for being agreeable. He likely will, but maybe they’d be able to make some compromises. Now I know why Ivanka will not work on her father’s current campaign. Her style of arguing is much more reserved, while her two eldest brothers have an aggressive style which seems to be the only one their father seems willing to emulate. I bet Trump did not listen to his daughter’s advice often enough. Edited a word.