an Amis chant ("Weeding and Paddyfield Song No. 1") sung by folk music duo Difang and Igay Duana opens the song and is repeated throughout. Hailing from Taiwan, these Amis musicians were in a cultural exchange program in Paris in 1988 when their performance of the song was recorded by the Maison des Cultures du Monde and later distributed on CD.

This song popped into my head earlier and took me a while to look up. Throwback song for many of us Millennials.

Israel’s parliament on Monday passed a law approving the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis, a measure that has been harshly condemned by the international community and rights groups as discriminatory and inhumane.

The passage of the bill marked the culmination of a yearslong drive by the far-right to escalate punishment for Palestinians convicted of nationalistic offenses against Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to the Knesset to vote for the bill in person.

The law makes the death penalty — by hanging — the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of nationalistic killings.

...

Experts say the legislation has two key elements that will effectively limit the death penalty to Palestinians.

First, the bill makes the death penalty a default punishment for nationalistic killings in military courts, which try only West Bank Palestinians and not Israeli citizens. It says that only in special circumstances can military judges change the sentence to life imprisonment.

It gives Israeli civilian courts a greater degree of leniency in sentencing, with judges having the option to choose between the death penalty and life imprisonment.

The second element is how the bill defines the offense punishable by death: killing that rejects the existence of the state of Israel.

“It will apply in Israeli courts, but only to terrorist activities that are motivated by the wish to undermine the existence of Israel. That means Jews will not be indicted under this law,” Cohen said.

In case it is not clear, Nationalistic killing of Palestinians is not covered by this law at all, only Nationalistic killing of Israelis.

Literally creating a legal rule in which murdering an Israeli is worse, even if done with the same exact motivation, than murdering a Palestinian.

Parents who owe a significant amount of child support soon could lose their ability to travel internationally as the Trump administration expands and steps up enforcement of a 30-year-old law that allows the federal government to revoke American passports until payments are made, three U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

Horses, a first-person narrative horror game, was banned from the Epic Games Store just hours before it was set to launch on December 2nd. Then, a day after launch, the Humble store (temporarily) banned it as well. The decision shocked the developers at Santa Ragione, makers of the critically respected Saturnalia, as these storefronts were the homes they’d found for their game two years before it was preemptively banned from Steam.

Valve and Epic say Horses violates their sexual content policies. Humble hasn’t yet said why it banned the game.

The campaign against ‘woke’ is no ordinary culture war skirmish – it is a project to restore the violence of slavery and white rule.

This is what the anti-woke state is — the plantation: white supremacist America under the occupation of more open white supremacists. There is no daylight between the campaign to end wokeness and the desire to see Black populations suffer, however much anti-wokeness is presented as the reasonable middle ground between the extremism of both sides — the Ku Klux Klan on one side and the bodies they hung from trees on the other.

The anti-woke in power immediately set about resurrecting their shrines to the sex traffickers of Black children and merchants of Black flesh. They immediately set out to curtail Black liberties and reverse performative efforts to reduce police shootings — however insincere. Being woke has always meant being attuned to anti-Blackness and resisting the society of white rule — which is why it is hated the world over. The colonist leaders who have shaken hands in agreement that anti-wokeness is the new paradigm, from the conservative former grand wizard to the progressive governor, have all meant the same thing: to see resistance ridiculed and dismantled.

The people who decry wokeness are no different from the people who decried Emancipation. What, indeed, was the abolition of slavery to a Confederate, other than woke government overreach? What was the integration of restaurants and schools to the segregationist other than woke corporations and DEI gone mad? What the 19th-century Redeemers sought, what the millions-strong 20th-century Ku Klux Klan sought, and what the 21st-century MAGA movement seeks is the restoration of the whipping post.

Really moving piece on the road that MAGA is leading us down.

Saw this posted over on HackerNews, and loved it. I'm big on self-hosting, and this is an incredibly exciting idea to me.

The Promised LAN is a closed, membership only network of friends that operate a 24/7 always-on LAN party, running since 2021. The vast majority of documentation is maintained on the LAN, but this website serves to give interested folks, prospective members or friends an idea of what the Promised LAN is, and how it works.

Their manifesto is also worth reading. My personal favorite part:

We do not wish to, nor will we, rebuild the internet. We do not wish to, nor will we, scale this. We will never be friends with enough people, as hard as we may try. Participation hinges on us all having fun. As a result, membership will never be open, and we will never have enough connected LANs to deal with the technical and social problems that start to happen with scale. This is a feature, not a bug.

This is a call for you to do the same. Build your own LAN. Connect it with friends’ homes. Remember what is missing from your life, and fill it in. Use software you know how to operate and get it running. Build slowly. Build your community. Do it with joy. Remember how we got here. Rebuild a community space that doesn’t need to be mediated by faceless corporations and ad revenue. Build something sustainable that brings you joy. Rebuild something you use daily.

Bring back what we’re missing.

Israel launched a major attack on Iran, drawing their long-running shadow war into the open conflict in a way that could spiral into a wider, more dangerous regional war.

The strikes early Friday set off explosions in the capital of Tehran as Israel said it was targeting Iranian nuclear and military facilities. Iranian state media reported that the leader of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and two top nuclear scientists had been killed.

The speed and voracity with which Republicans have shed the mask speaks to their glee in being able to do so.

The instructions were published Tuesday in a Defense Intelligence Agency memo obtained by The Associated Press and affect 11 annual events, including Black History Month, which begins Saturday, and National Hispanic Heritage Month.

The other annual events listed in the DIA memo are Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, National American Indian Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Women’s Equality Day and Women’s History Month.

...

It also noted a pause on “special observances” hosted throughout the year. While Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth were included, the memo said the change would not affect those national holidays.

Here is the list of special observances. Can't be observing things like Harriet Tubman Day or National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day (or, "Loser Day", as Trump would call it).

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked at a briefing Tuesday whether Black History Month would cease to be celebrated.

“As far as I know, this White House certainly still intends to celebrate, and we will continue to celebrate American history and the contributions that all Americans, regardless of race, religion or creed, have made to our great country,” she said.

Any bets on how long before Black History Month gets renamed to American History Month?

Grim Dawn is a diablo-like ARPG, kickstarted in 2012 as the debut title from Crate Entertainment, an indie studio made up of devs from Iron Lore (who made the Titan Quest games). The devs describe it thus:

Players are thrust into the dark, war-torn world of Cairn where a once proud empire has been brought to ruin and the human race driven to the edge of extinction. Cairn has become ground zero of an eternal war between two otherworldly powers, one seeking to use human bodies as a resource, the other intent upon destroying the human race before that can happen. This cataclysmic war has not only decimated human civilization but is warping the very fabric of reality and, in its wake, giving life to new horrors.

I cannot recommend it highly enough if you enjoy the old-school style ARPGs. It hits perfectly on the loot-drop gameplay loop, class variety and differentiation, and world design (and it has excellent co-op!). Check out the homepage for guides, or the Steam page for the trailers.

It's on sale on Steam for $2.50 USD right now, which is 90% off of its normal price. It is an absolute steal at this price. If you're interested but still don't want to pay that for it, DM me.

A lead organization monitoring for food crises around the world withdrew a new report this week warning of imminent famine in north Gaza under what it called Israel’s “near-total blockade,” after the U.S. asked for its retraction, U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The move follows public criticism of the report from the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

The rare public challenge from the Biden administration of the work of the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System, which is meant to reflect the data-driven analysis of unbiased experts, drew accusations from aid and human-rights figures of possible U.S. political interference. A finding of famine would be a public rebuke of Israel, which has insisted that its 15-month war in Gaza is aimed against the Hamas militant group and not against its civilian population.

Bruh...

Good piece on the intersection between technology and politics, and the influence that the US government has on US-based technology companies.

Missouri voters on Tuesday resoundingly approved an amendment to overturn the state’s near-total abortion ban, making it the first state to do so in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated federal constitutional protection of abortion. The passage of Amendment 3, which enshrines reproductive rights in the state constitution, signals the potential to begin restoring access to health care in a swath of the country that has become an abortion desert.

“The people of Missouri — be they Democrat, Republican, or independent — have resoundingly declared that they don’t want politicians involved in their private medical decisions,” said Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the umbrella organization for the Yes on 3 campaign.

Taking the wins where I can, today...