An Iranian man left this comment on my YouTube channel. This is without a doubt the single best explanation of the reality facing Iranian people today👇
"As an Iranian, I can tell you the situation is no longer just political--it's existential. We are trapped between two collapsing structures: one internal, one external. On one hand, we face a deeply dysfunctional government, led by the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic's unelected institutions.
Decades of economic mismanagement, suppression of dissent, and brutal ideological control have alienated multiple generations. No one believes in reform anymore--because every attempt has either been co-opted or crushed. But here's the paradox: We are also terrified of regime collapse--because we've watched the aftermath of Western intervention in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Each was promised freedom; each descended into chaos, civil war, or foreign occupation.
So no, we don't trust the U.S. or Israel. Not because we support our regime--but because we know how imperial powers treat 'liberated' nations in the Middle East.
Freedom, in their language, often means vacuum, fire, and permanent instability. Right now, many Iranians live with three truths at once: The Islamic Republic is morally and politically bankrupt. The alternatives offered by foreign actors are not liberation--they're collapse.
A bad government is survivable. No government is not. We are not silent because we agree. We are cautious because we've learned--too well--what happens when superpowers decide to "help." In a sentence: Iran is a nation held hostage by its own regime, but haunted by the fate of its neighbors. We are stuck in a house we hate, surrounded by fires we fear more."
4 star:
* Underdog (Sly & The Family Stone)
Damn, some show had this
* Sea Lion Woman (feat. Gaye Adegbalola) (Rory Block)
from the steam gay hockey series "Heated Rivalry"
* Don't Let It Bring You Down (Live) (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
from Lynette's playlist... I didn't realize it wasn't an original by Annie Lennox...
* Morning Song (Jewel)
Sweet song from Lynette's playlist
* L-O-V-E (Nat "King" Cole)
Lynette says she would prefer I sing this to her than my go to "us" song, the theme to "Diff'rent Strokes"
3 star:
* Highschool Lover (Air)
nice melancholy piano from "The Virgin Suicides"
* Feelin' Myself (Junglepussy)
I won a bet with Lynette - she was skeptical "Junglepussy" was both this artist and the actor playing a character of the same name in "One Battle After Another"
* Don't Look Back (Diane's Version) (Rick and Morty)
* What's the Difference (feat. Eminem & Xzibit) (Dr. Dre)
looked up tbe background music to anti-ChatGPT-ads ads
* All the Things She Said (Harrison)
weirdly slow-voice sounding cover from the hot gay hockey romance "Heated Rivalry"
* Little Known Facts (Ilana Levine, B.D. Wong & Anthony Rapp)
My mom and I listened to a cast recording of the Charlie Brown musical, and I always remembered "Snow blows UP, Charlie Brown, Snow Blows UP"
women are kinda like strawberries.
sometimes they at the grocery store.
no see it wasn't "Board of Peace", it was "BORED of Peace". Our mistake..
Good opening credits video.
Christian Jihad ahoy.
One rule of thumb in watching movies: the bad guys are the ones working to bring on the end of the world. This applies in real life as well.
And honestly, "Israel" is distinctive but not inflammatory in normal American social space. It's not like walking around named "Armageddon Netanyahu McCrusade." It's just a biblical surname that happens to share a name with a country.
Incompetence and suck-up-itism rules this land
Is Patel a DEI hire? And by DEI I mean "Donald's Ego-rubbing Intern"
Officers' clubs everywhere pulsated with blurred but knowing accounts of lavish, hushed-up drinking and sex orgies there and of secret, intimate nights of ecstasy with the most beautiful, the most tantalizing, the most readily aroused and most easily satisfied Italian courtesans, film actresses, models and countesses.
The "readily aroused and easily satisfied" concept has stuck with me. There's so much ego in sexuality.
Tonight I played tuba for the Concord Lantern Parade, inaugural year for what should be a new tradition. There's always a little bit of magic in a lantern festival.
Open Photo Gallery
(Also an earlier shot of the moon reflect thrice in the house's front window.)
ahahahaahaa, your president, ladies and gentleman, and the media cronies who will cover for him...
So, Trump decided to "honor" the six service members who got killed by his Iran war by wearing (and never removing) his merch store baseball cap (get yours now, just $55 at https://www.trumpstore.com/headwear )
To try and cover, Fox & Friends shows footage of him looking less like a disrespectful travesty at last December's similar ceremony, and when caught on it try to pretend it was a mistake...
"The Measure" is a plainly written "what if" story with an interesting, almost Twilight Zone premise: what if everyone (22 and older) received a box containing a string EXACTLY corresponding to their overall lifespan. Would you open it? How would would knowing people have long strings or short strings mean culturally? What would it mean for the concept of free will (especially since sometimes people's reaction to the length of their string leads to their demise...)
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Be groovy or leave, man.
"That's sort of why I hung [the vintage celebrity mugshots] up," Maura said, looking across the display. "They're a reminder that sometimes we screw up, and sometimes the system screws with us, but if you live your life with enough passion and boldness, then that's what you'll be remembered for. Not the crap that happened along the way."
It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.
Se il per sempre non esiste lo inventeremo noi. [If forever doesn't exist we'll invent it ourselves.]
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. That makes it hard to plan the day.
I'm not sure if this is worth posting about, but I just re-setup my long running speaker system; two of these rad Klipsch speakers and a subwoofer the size of big toaster oven or tiny microwave. (with a little Bluetooth doohickey)
These speakers must be pretty old, 2008? I remember getting a replacement fuse from radio shack.
And small speakers have gotten a LOT better in the past 10 years or so. Phones, laptops, those JBL mini-boomboxes - they all produce a LOT of good, often deep sound. I'm not a huge surround sound wonk (probably won't be until we do VR - with a movie, the PICTURE is in front of me, why shouldn't the sound be) but there is something great about stereo, about being in the middle of the sound. And a subwoofer with a bit of kick is nice too.
But it reminds me of this quote:
This, here," Rat said, indicating another giant piece of wooden furniture, "is a free-standing Fluchtzbesser turntable. Inside that wooden cabinet is an eleven-hundred-pound piece of granite. Yes, sir, this is about the finest hi-fi ever assembled in the city of Baconburg."
"And it only has the one speaker?" Winston Bongo asked. Rat gave Winston a sideways look.
"Stereo is for sissies," she said.
