Ugh. Mark 2.0.

[citrakayah]

I continue to fail at finding work! I've had interviews over the past month, yes. But it's been weeks and nothing's come of them. There's another one this week for a technician position (not going to go into the details on a public post), yet I've basically given up hope at this point. The final straw was a manual labor position saying they wanted to interview me, not sending me the Zoom link, rescheduling, not sending me the Zoom link again, and then after I tracked down their number and called them, promising me an interview and then not sending me one. At that point they're either malicious or wildly incompetent, but I'm still taking it as an omen.

The job market is shit. It's going to continue to be shit. The fact that it's shit is, I suspect, partially deliberate; HR departments are putting up fake jobs (those are estimated to be 30% of job postings, by the way) in part to intimidate employees and I'm sure some of them are thinking, "If we make getting a job as torturous as possible, our employees will never quit and any new hire will be pathetically grateful for scraps." There is a real possibility that by this time next year I still don't have a job.

And I've been applying for gas station attendant positions!

I don't want to hear optimism at this point. Pessimism feels better.

Winter holidays were at least pleasant. My brother was over for Hanukkah, along with his girlfriend (who I'd met before and whom I like). We did not have much in the way of latkes but did make some sweet potato ones. And we got to go hiking. There were ducks.

I wasn't able to give much in the way of gifts. I'm working on art projects that I'm going to give instead, and some of the gifts I got from other people will help me do that. I've started working with watercolors and will be working with glass again soon. And I was already creating kumihimos--no, not kumihos, I like my liver too much for that. I'm by no means that good at art, but I'm not terrible for a total novice. It'll at least be welcome on the wall for reasons other than them being family.

With the weather I'm not spending as much time outdoors as I normally do. The weather is frigid but it's not snowing, which is always the worst combination. I don't like snow or ice, but if it's frigid the world should look nice rather than just looking dead. And on that note I really do need to go through the camera trap at some point and see what wildlife we have in the woods pathetic strip of trees behind the house.

I've at least been able to spend more time with local groups. There's a local crafts group I'm going to join and the local game shop hosts some events. At this point I've long since stopped having anything to do with the local synagogue. I tried, but I can't go from reading about Israeli war crimes to hanging out in a building dripping with Israeli nationalist symbology* just because I share a religion with those people.

* This is not unusual for a synagogue. Yes I know that sounds stupid. It's still true. There's Israeli flags in the classrooms.

Comments

[injunjane]

my thoughts of support regarding job searches. Here in EU it seems horrible, especially for academics...a year and a half ago when my project ended and I was refused a new grant, it was awfully stressful :( Don't know how I managed to pass a medical lab course, exams and get an expensive diploma, but then the real job starts and shit...you see that all your diplomas are useless at manual jobs and you have to learn everything from scratch.

And the 'ordinary' people in the lab even bullied me for being 'high-educated upstart' even if I was super polite to them.

Actually, bullying at work is a big problem for sensitive and somehow 'different' people everywhere...

So I'm getting back for one more year to the academy and then...I don't even know what's then

Good luck and my sincere wish that you find the job that will satisfy you, and let you grow both professionally and as a personality

[injunjane]

PS Do you actually believe that Israeli are committing war crimes to the people who first killed some 1500 Israelis including women and children?

I have a friend who is a Palestinian Arab girl emigrated to EU, she hates Arab guys (for what they did to her because of their religion) and says that both sides of this war do bad things...

In the meanwhile some people in the EU are arduously explaining me that my nation are all Nazis (even though I'm the only Ukrainian they've ever seen and I definitely don't hate any other nations...although I really hate some particular individuals)

I think the best way to know about people is to speak directly to someone you personally know :)

The friend of my childhood who now lives in Philadelphia is a Jew, she was bullied all her childhood for being a Jew, my parents seemed to disapprove our friendship for the same reason, and this all made me really furious. We are still the same species - Jews, Germans, Slavs, Arabs, Nigerians, Australian aborigenies...only different populations of it, why should we hate each other?

[citrakayah]

PS Do you actually believe that Israeli are committing war crimes

Yes. There is no doubt. Israelis have:
* Been shown raping Palestinian prisoners in leaked CCTV prisoners
* Established burning down Palestinian homes as standard practice, as well as permitting soldiers to shoot civilians
* Deliberately permitting scabies to spread and keeping arbitrary detained Palestinians in unsanitary conditions that put them at risk of disease
* Established vague, undefined, constantly shifting kill zones and then designated those people as terrorists. They also gave orders to shoot civilians with their hands raised bearing white flags. Their military leaders say "there are no innocents in Gaza."
* Begun planning to settle Gaza
* Fantasied about genocide. Seriously there's been so much genocide ideation in the Israeli government it's absurd.
* Shot three people who were shirtless and waving a white flag, the last after he'd hidden from them and they lured him out by promising that they'd not hurt him. Turned out they were Israeli hostages but they thought they were Palestinians.
* Played videos of children singing "We will eliminate them all" on national television
* Blown up medical convoys
* Whined that they're not allowed to just starve everyone in Gaza

This exists in the context of a country where:
* More than half of Jewish high school students oppose equal rights for Arabs
* The Chief Rabbi is pro-rape
* The government sends money to military schools which say that Hitler had the right idea but the wrong master race. As far as I can tell neither were fired; at least one of the rabbis mentioned is still employed at the yeshiva.
* There is widespread support for discrimination against even Arab citizens of Israel, to the point where 33% of Israeli Jews say they shouldn't be able to vote

Even if we didn't already know they were doing war crimes because we were seeing it, given that context and the statements by government leaders we'd know they were doing war crimes because that is what people who talk like that and have opinions like that do.

I am past giving a shit what Hamas did. There is no justification for this. Only the ignorant and the wicked can deny the atrocities.

Unfortunately, both have a deathgrip on Diaspora politics. It's mostly the second, though. Many of the Diaspora's leaders prize Zionism over advocating for the Diaspora. The head of the ADL buddies up to noted fascist and anti-Semite Elon Musk and our organizations invite anti-Semitic pastors to speak at rallies because they're Zionists.

[injunjane]

Thank you for these links, I have ignored those sources that have reputation of being biased, but to my surprise, there are a couple of links the authors of which doesn't seem to be politically engaged.

I still think that 7th October was the main trigger of the current situation in Israel, I've got colleagues and friends' relatives living there, and they are normal peaceful Israelis (who are very critical about their government). But your information shows another side of this.

Any news about rape, unimportant from which side of the barricades, make me furious. Insanely_furious. As a woman, I condemn any use of sexual violence, to men, women or children, of any nation, as a weapon of war. This is a universal shame, this is outrageous. And the same goes for slavery - it's 21st century and any person thinking of it seriously is a criminal.

I think that there are normal secular people in Israel who just want peace. And there are insane religious fanatics, of several religions, who just dehumanize people based on not belonging to their faith.

The father of my Jewish friend whom I mentioned, he stopped talking to her forever after she married a Christian guy and converted to Christianity. He never communicate with her right until his death. This is crazy, this is fanaticism.

But as a person who for some time practiced Greek Orthodox Christianity (and then left with the intention not to belong to any official religion anymore) I can say that such examples exist in many (most likely all) religions, even in those who declare themselves to be peaceful.

I think any religion as a personal belief may help some people to cope with injustice and misery of their life, but if it becomes an official cult - it is evil. No matter if it's Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, you name it.

IMHO the only good religion is humanism :)

[injunjane]

Extreme Zionism is another name for Nazism but with different leader, it seems.... :(

[injunjane]

is it actually possible for all intelligent, sensible, kind people to agree between each other that we are sharing this planet equally? Without wars, with peaceful trading and cultural exchange?

I would very much liked it. What about you?