Hegar

This is a common refrain online but doesn’t really make sense.

Antisemitism means prejudice against Jewish people.

Separately, the technical term “semitic” is used to mean a subgroup of related afro-asiatic languages including Hebrew, Arabic, Akkadian, Phonecian, Assyrian, et al.

The fact that the word for prejudice against Jews contains a root word that refers to a different classification is just one of those weird language things - antisemitism has only ever meant prejudice against Jews.

About an hour before Iranian state TV first reported loud explosions in Tehran, pizza orders around the Pentagon went through the roof

there are “a multitude of fast food restaurants in the Pentagon complex, but no pizza places”

the account noted three hours later that a gay bar near the Pentagon had “abnormally low traffic for a Thursday night” and said this probably pointed to “a busy night at the Pentagon”.

Just some truly incredible analysis.

Pizza and gay bar traffic tipping the hand of global events is the cyberpunk dystopia I was hoping for.

It’s also important to remember that non-violence serves the interest of entrenched power. The state is at its core a violence-control structure. When people excersize the power of violence in their own interests, the state must reassert it’s dominion or risk collapse.

Non-violent requests can be accommodated without elites feeling like their ill-gotten power is threatened. But it’s often the violent demands that scare them into doing so.

the deputy marshal “fit the general description of a subject being sought by ICE.”

100% chance the description was “Mexican”.

It’s only a crime to be an exploited worker. It’s not a crime to exploit workers.

I have no idea if you’re being serious.

Tbh I struggle with that myself sometimes.

But mar-a-lago face is a real thing and while the first instinct is to recoil in horror at what these people have done to themselves, elites have a long history of this kind of extreme identity signalling. And I do think this phenomenon is best understood as part of that tradition.

2, 3 & 4 are examples of what’s called “Mar-a-lago face” - really blatant plastic surgery to emphasize your ability to afford plastic surgery.

Elites frequently engage in body-modification intense enough to look grotesque to others as a way of marking their status. Mayan and Hunnic cranial deformation and Chinese foot-binding are prominent other examples.