Futurology Today

https://archive.ph/Xr0em

https://xcancel.com/disclosetv/status/1958923175850332368

This is a question that for some is easy to answer and for others may not be as easy to answer. So all input could help other people find and make a more knowledgeable choice and one that helps them towards their privacy goals.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Empathy is usually regarded as a virtue, a key to human decency and kindness. And yet, with increasing momentum, voices on the Christian right are preaching that it has become a vice.

For them, empathy is a cudgel for the left: It can manipulate caring people into accepting all manner of sins according to a conservative Christian perspective, including abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, illegal immigration and certain views on social and racial justice.

“Empathy becomes toxic when it encourages you to affirm sin, validate lies or support destructive policies,” said Allie Beth Stuckey, author of “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.”

Stuckey, host of the popular podcast “Relatable,” is one of two evangelicals who published books within the past year making Christian arguments against some forms of empathy.

The other is Joe Rigney, a professor and pastor who wrote “The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits.” It was published by Canon Press, an affiliate of Rigney’s conservative denomination, which counts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth among its members.

These anti-empathy arguments gained traction in the early months of President Donald Trump’s second term, with his flurry of executive orders that critics denounced as lacking empathy.

As foreign aid stopped and more deportations began, Trump’s then-adviser Elon Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

Even Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, framed the idea in his own religious terms, invoking the concept of ordo amoris, or order of love. Within concentric circles of importance, he argued the immediate family comes first and the wider world last — an interpretation that then-Pope Francis rejected.

While their anti-empathy arguments have differences, Stuckey and Rigney have audiences that are firmly among Trump’s Christian base.

“Could someone use my arguments to justify callous indifference to human suffering? Of course,” Rigney said, countering that he still supports measured Christ-like compassion. “I think I’ve put enough qualifications.”

Historian Susan Lanzoni traced a century of empathy’s uses and definitions in her 2018 book “Empathy: A History.” Though it’s had its critics, she has never seen the aspirational term so derided as it is now.

It’s been particularly jarring to watch Christians take down empathy, said Lanzoni, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School.

“That’s the whole message of Jesus, right?”

Brett Wilkins
Aug 24, 2025

Thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv Saturday in multiple demonstrations demanding an end to their government's genocidal war and engineered famine in Gaza and a deal to free the remaining hostages held by Hamas since October 2023.

Israelis—both Arab and Jewish—rallied in Habima Square holding signs reading "Stop the Genocide" and photos of some of the at least 115 Palestinian children who have starved to death in what the world's leading authority on hunger has officially declared a full-blown famine.

'help' can include 'interacting positively with' and anything else done specifically for their benefit.

Egypt has been rocked by an unprecedented online blackmail campaign, targeting one of its most senior security officials just days after Cairo signed a landmark natural gas agreement with the Israeli Occupation.

A shadowy, anonymous account that goes by "El Malak", or "King," circulated an eight-minute video online this week, claiming to show Deputy Interior Minister Maj. Gen. Khaled Arafa engaged in a sexually explicit video call.

4chan asks US to “invoke all legal levers” in fight against Online Safety Act.

Sorry for bad close-up on this little guy. Somehow my phone camera only recognize his body than his head

Paywall bypass: https://archive.is/oWcIr

You may notice a comment/post of yours being removed for "suspicious activity" by AutoMod. If you see it's still gone, ping me.

Apparently it went crazy and started doing that to a lot of people.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/35167663

By Imran Mulla
Published date: 22 August 2025 17:47 BST

Now, he is organising a Gaza Tribunal of his own. "We have on 4 and 5 of September, for two days in Church House in Westminster, an open public inquiry," Corbyn says.

"It will be live on YouTube and lots of other platforms and channels, and that inquiry will be hearing voices from people in Gaza, in the West Bank, aid workers, journalists, lawyers, international legal experts."

[Note to our Fedi friends in the UK - it would be great if someone could get this tribunal streamed via Peertube in some fashion.]

The new party was announced on 3 July, when MP Zarah Sultana left the Labour Party and said she would co-lead a different outfit with Corbyn.

That party doesn't exist yet. It doesn't even have a name. But it has already received more than 800,000 sign-ups.

Polling this week found that a third of 2024 Labour voters would consider voting for a Corbyn-Sultana-led party, as well as over a quarter of Labour members.

https://xcancel.com/covie_93/status/1958275327668486232#m

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/35128021

Abdel Qader Sabbah and Sharif Abdel Kouddous
Aug 22, 2025

GAZA CITY—Umm Jana’s two-and-a-half year-old daughter, Jouri, died earlier this month from malnutrition. Now, her other daughter, five-year-old Jana, is also slowly starving to death and there is little Umm Jana can do to save her.

“My daughter Jouri—because of the famine—was deeply affected. She developed severe malnutrition and health complications that led to her death. I hope I never have to go through with Jana what I went through with Jouri,” Umm Jana told Drop Site News in an interview at the Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society Hospital in Gaza City. Jana was lying on a cot beside her, barely stirring.