F☆ck am I doing with my life?

Please help my family out.

One of family members was detained by ICE while he was out. He's a good dad and granddad, he's literally one of the kindest individuals you'll ever meet. He's literally dedicated his life helping people with trauma. We are all horrified this happened to him. His family didn't have much in savings, especially not for a lawyer, the bond, and the immigration fees they'll have to pay to keep him here.

He's 67, he isn't in the best health (he was experiencing chest pain before he was detained but refused to go to the hospital in fear of being deported). The family doesn't want us to share many details on how he was detained in fear of it causing retaliation from ICE or worse, causing him to face violence within the detainment center.

The judge granted him bond and he's currently home with his family.

After hearing his story especially with his work with non-profit organizations and helping in the iconic features on some of the famous buildings within his city, he was granted bond after it was determined he wasn't a dangerous individual nor a flight risk.

He's still in the process of fighting the deportation and will need help with legal fees. One of his daughters is helping him access the money for his legal fees as they are afraid his assets may be frozen if worst comes to pass. Unfortunately, his daughter isn't very tech literate so she doesn't know how to update or edit the gofundme, and his other child (creator of the gofundme) is busy helping him fight this.

All his family including extended family has been warned to not share many details of the case by their lawyer as it could damage his chances of winning his case.

The legal fees include the bond, the lawyer's expenses, the immigration physical, the vaccinations, and the fee for the immigration paperwork. For the time being, he cannot work due to the situation and needs finacial help. Even a $1 donation would be miracle for them.

He hasn't lived in Mexico for decades, if he'd be deported not only would he be returning to a now unfamiliar country, but he'd be returning to a country and area within the country that has been labeled as a travel risk area, high in crime and corruption. Deportation isn't a quick process either, many individuals aren't given a deportation date and are left within the centers for months or even years before being transported to their country of origin.

Please help his family keep him here and keeping him safe. They're currently living in fear of the worst coming the pass.

If possible, please share this and help spread this. His family has been struggling to spread this far.

In the United States, there have been only four openly transgender officials elected to a Federal office position. Of them, only one is a transgender man, while the other 3 are trans women.

In the United States, only 22 openly transgender officials have been elected to a State office position. Of them, only one is a trans man, five are nonbinary, and the remaining 16 are trans women.

In the United States, 61 openly transgender officials have been elected to a Local office position. While hard to verify due to less information being available, only around 6-10 of those officials are potentially trans men, with a similar number potentially being nonbinary, leaving the remaining majority as trans women.

For full transparency, I compiled these numbers via a (fairly brief) analysis of the Wikipedia article for transgender US officials. It’s by no means exhaustive and I did not go and verify each individual entry, but it was the best up-to-date compiled information I could find and generally, Wikipedia’s community is quick to catch errors especially in a highly trafficked article like this. For another source, this 2023 report by the LGBTQ+ victory institute shows a similar trend, as is represented in their provided graphic:

A 7 year report by the institute of elected officials by gender identity also shows this disparity, providing the following percentages and data table:

For every year since 2017, at least twice the number of transgender women have been elected to a US office than has a transgender man, sometimes as much as 6-7x the amount. This is not data that supports the idea that trans men have any meaningful political privilege or power over literally any other group in the US, with the exception of Two-Spirit people (who are also inherently racialized.)

The recruiter is not your friend. The military employs child psychologists to learn how to make you think the recruiter is your friend.

The recruiter is allowed to lie to you and makes more money if they do.

The recruiter is paid a commission to groom children into cannon fodder.

The recruiter will tell you you're special and will go into special smart soldier programs instead of combat. They're lying.

The recruiter may tell you they can tell if someone can get PTSD or not and only recruit people like you, who won't. They're lying.

The recruiter may tell you you'll be too busy attending free college (!!) to go overseas. They're lying.

The recruiter may ask what countries you want to travel to and promise you bougie placements on military bases in those countries. They're lying.

Even "It's just four years!" is a lie - the government is allowed to hold you past your enlistment period with a stop-loss order.

The recruiter actually has zero power to decide anything that happens to you after you enlist and they more importantly don't care what happens to you.

If you enlist, you will be brainwashed to make you willing to do things to other humans that you would never be willing to do today.

You will be ordered to do things that will kill children. And you'll do them.

The military is not the only way or even the best way for you to go to college or start a career.

Military brainwashing will actually make you into a terrible university student because it degrades your ability to think critically and question your sources.

Having PTSD and/or a TBI will make it harder to be a student and keep a job.

Veterans' benefits suck these days.

Being a veteran drastically increases your risk of homelessness, suicide, alcohol and drug dependence, prison time, and becoming an abuser to your loved ones.

The military will expose you to chemicals that will drastically increase your chances of developing cancer.

The military will withhold information about your rights to conscientiously object after enlisting.

I've taken a lot of iNat observations of fungi this year while contributing to MycoMapBC!

After seeing this post by tidepooldaydreams on Instagram, I was inspired to make a post showing off the fun colours of mushrooms I've come across since September.