To not want to hear any more about the Californian fires

[Viviennemary]

For a start I do feel a lot of sympathy for folk who have lost everything in those fires. But what is the point of telling us night after night about the devastation these fires are causing, we can't do anything about it nobody can. And America is a rich country and can afford to rebuild. Unlike Gaza where folk have been left with nothing, and hardly had much in the first place.

Ffs.

My friends have lost their home and literally everything of meaning in it. They and their children are lhomeless, with nothing except the clothes they are wearing. Their children’s school is gone. Their whole neighbourhood is gone. They are not rich, they are normal people living normal lives, running a small business.

They have insurance but if they rebuild on their land (which will take probably years to do), do you think any insurance company is going to insure the new house? Imagine trying to rebuild your entire life while keeping a business afloat.

Try to have just a grain of empathy.

God, people can be such assholes.

Yes, if empathy in the real world is in as short supply as it now is here, we are fucking doomed.

A friend of mine is currently collecting old clothes in order to fly them from London to LA, despite the fact local agencies are specifically asking people NOT to do this (the last thing this disaster needs is piles of old junk turning up for people to have to deal with).

I just met a woman this evening whose friend, age seventy-something, has lost everything in the fires. She’s a regular middle-class person whose family owned the house since before house prices in the area rose. Even in the richer neighborhoods, there are lots of elderly people in that same situation.

Some places in LA have said they want them, and some have said they don’t have the capacity to sort and distribute them.

Actually what's happening in the middle East can be entirely traced back to British meddling in the region or creating today's modern middle East drew lines on a map, signed treaties, gave away land that was not ours to give, because of a colonial mindset and European problems and guilt!

'rich people ...'???

Family homes, shops and businesses, local schools, theatres, doctor's surgeries - entire neighbourhoods have gone.

The point is, this is caused by climate change which is a global emergency and should be front and centre.

This thread is unreal. News that consisted only of things we could do something about it would be all " the lady down the street has lost her key" or "the number 11 bus is running 20 minutes late". I'm not exactly overflowing with the milk of human kindness but if I ever got to the stage where I moaned about how boring it is when people's towns burn down I'd be having words with myself.

@Iwiicit i was agreeing with you

excatly basically your local spotted groups on Facebook and thats it or pretty much

id guess in modern times its because no side wants to accept peace and its they do this, we do that and so on, etc (ill admit i need more research and understanding)

Just had to turn off the news as couldn't stand listening to the guy whining about losing his olympic medals in the fire...they are just things FFS...people in Gaza are losing their children every single day.

he didn’t moan about his medals, he said he got his most important things including insulin & his dog. He also said he wasn’t insured I believe.

When is the world going to help the children of Gaza? That's the news we need to hear.

The world has never managed to help all the children suffering across it. We can’t even manage it in this country let alone on a global scale.

This thread be like: ‘Gaza, fuck them, nothing to do with me, non-people anyway’, ‘Fire victims, fuck them, nothing to do with me, boring’.

Not looking for pity, but the fires are only part of the day to day reality right now. According to an email sent by our electricity provider, almost 500,000 people here are without power. We’ve had no power for five days and it’s not expected to be restored until sometime next week. (Thankfully, we bought a portable generator last year.) Power is shut off in grids, meaning no street lights, few businesses open, and only a half-dozen grocery stores open, to serve thousands of people. I had to get prescriptions this morning, took over an hour to drive less than a mile, and the pharmacy was only open as it’s attached to our local hospital. Everyone is wearing masks due to the air quality, and waiting in long lines to get bare essentials. If we have to evacuate, we’ll need to find an open gas station to fill up the tank.

all the best as best as possible

It's a bit more complicated than that. But nuance is so boring, right? Slogans and thought terminating clichés are much easier, and get more likes on bluesky.

@KnightsTemplar00 I don't know why Myrie bothers with all this international shit on News At Ten tbh. He should just read out a list of missing cats and ask if anyone else has seen a grey van driving slowly along Acacia Avenue.

Yes rich neighbourhoods were burned but also middle class and very ooor neighbourhoods too. Not everyone who lives in California is rich and Los Angeles has very poor areas and tent cities.

Not a single person is saying that people in Gaza don't matter

I just read this, of course we have a west leaning media, we are the fucking west.
How utterly ridiculous to think it would be anything else.

No I did not say LA is only white people 😄

I said white people were affected - which is why it has become a constant news story.

When half a million people were affected by floods in Yemen last year it was on the news for half an hour (ish)

Same here, I feel a lot of sympathy for the ordinary folk and hope they get help from the government, especially with Cali being the richest state.

However, I’m finding it hard to muster any sympathy for people like actor James Woods who tweeted #KillThemAll re Gaza.

You're talking about Yemen? What about Gaza, you horrible person?

@NeedANapAgain so sorry to hear that. Being in the middle of something like this means it's hard to make concrete decisions about anything because nobody knows the big picture, which is stressful day to day. I hope you don't have to evacuate.

It’s the underlying sentiment of some of what’s written on the thread. If people don’t want actual news they can look at Facebook, X, whatever hellsite they are on that gives them the ‘news’ that fuels their tiny world. And no, I’m not saying that the mainstream news agenda always has it right.