answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:
tl;dr:
israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.
with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.
the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.
as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.
the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.
ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.
and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.
all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!
long answers under the cut!
if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks
not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices
i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.
unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.
this was posted on abc a few days ago
it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.
even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.
with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.
plugging gaza soup kitchen for those with the means to donate! it's another gazan-led initiative currently providing food, water, classes for children, and medical care across the north and south. you can donate through their website or their gofundme, or follow them on instagram for news about their projects
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see this is exactly what I'm talking about. this labour is so incredibly invisibilised that there are real human beings, walking about amongst us, leading normal lives, etc., who earnestly believe that machines can make an item of clothing from start to finish.
Hey just in case someone on here doesn’t quite understand how labor intensive making a garment is, here is a list of things that (to the best of my knowledge) cannot be done by machine alone, from a costumer/tailor in training
Cutting - in my opinion, the most labor intensive part of the process. The amount of time/effort needed varies depending on the pattern and if seam allowance is included or marked separately, but no matter what this process can not be done by machine. Each and every panel and piece of fabric that goes into a garment must be cut by hand by a person.
Pinning/clipping - pinning (or clipping) is the stage at which you align the pieces you are going to be stitching together and hold them together with — you guessed it! — either pins or clips. This can not be done by machine.
Stitching - the actual sewing. This can be done by a sewing machine, but that machine still needs to be operated by a human being.
Ironing/pressing - two words that mean the same thing. The iron itself is a machine, but once again, it needs to be operated by a human being.
Finishing - depending on the technique you use, there are certain finishing techniques that can only be done by hand. But, let’s assume we’re talking about fast fashion, which is usually just finished with a simple overlock/serger. Once again: these machines need to be operated by people.
These are just the basic steps to making a garment, and don’t include textile arts that I am not as knowledgeable about, such as weaving, knitting, and crochet. Also, it is important to note that there are a lot of things that can only be done by hand, such as certain stitches and decorative techniques.
Also, the machinery being operated in textile factories is not equivalent to a domestic sewing machine. We’re talking about one of these guys:
See that gray cylinder under the table, behind the knee pedal? That’s the motor. These machines can sew through your fingers bones and all and not even stop. The people in these factories and sweatshops are operating heavy machinery, and are subject to all the risk that comes with that in addition to all of the work I mentioned above.
Please respect textile workers and continue the fight to eliminate the use of sweatshops and exploited labor in the fashion industry!
Reblogging with some additions from a different post o'mine:
" I'm taking a sewing class and I asked my teacher about how much machines can actually do. She said that while a lot of actual fabric we use in our projects is machine-woven, and sometimes there are machines for particular knitting patterns or for the same small thing over and over and over (i.e. socks), the overwhelming majority of pieces of clothing are in fact just sewn together by humans. Usually women. Underpaid and overlooked. Thousands and thousands of them, working 12 hours a day or more in huge warehouse-factories. You're probably wearing something one of those women created right now.
Most of the students (including me) were horrified. We had *no* idea. We figured that, given that we have supercomputers and massive industrial systems for almost every type of product you can buy, surely we would have figured out a better way? Surely there are machines that can put a t-shirt together by now?
She said, no, that's why fast fashion is really so bad. It's not simply about the quality of the product, it's about the human cost.
When you buy a cheap tee that says "Made in Bangladesh", this is where your clothing came from (and these are from one of the nicer factories):
(By Fahad Faisal. CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89582692)
Don't want to believe it? I understand. Here is the wikipedia page, you can read it in your own time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_industry_in_Bangladesh#Readymade_garment_(RMG)_industry
This isn't just true of clothes either. There's an astonishing amount of human labor behind most of our products. Even the steps that are automated are only possible because humans are constantly cleaning, maintaining, repairing, adjusting and fine tuning the machines.
I've noticed that the media that educates us often edits that out on purpose. In 'how its made' type videos, steps humans do by hand are often skipped because they don't make as smooth a video as watching machines do the parts of the production process that can be automated.
Do you think tumblr will ever learn the difference between “I’m defending this person because I agree with them wholeheartedly and I am also like this person” and “I’m defending this person because your behavior is dangerous and you need to stop”
IMO, blurring the lines between “I’m defending them because they’re right” and “I’m defending them because you’re taking this too far” is step numero uno to cutting down the very existence of fair trial and democracy–even in places where saying that might seem a little dramatic.
Mob mentality is extremely strong in humans and it’s also extremely dangerous. Mobs don’t think things through. Mobs kill and they destroy and they can’t be reasoned with. Someone trying to calm a mob down isn’t someone defending the ~problematic party~ It’s time we re-learn that.
how were so many of the things that were basic writing/plotting advice in Every Single craft book when I was a teenager just completely straight up wrong
the biggest and worst offender I think was plotting advice that encouraged me to build my plot around my characters "desires" or "goals"
protagonists were kind of forced into a flat dichotomy of 'active' (takes actions to further their own goals, thus driving the story) and 'passive' (is acted upon by events beyond their control, moving them through the plot) with 'active' being considered good and passive being considered bad
I think this framework is very locked within a certain cultural viewpoint... specifically of a 20th century western white male. For one thing it assumes a "protagonist" will have a certain level of agency, to have goals and pursue them, overcoming obstacles in the way. It is not very inclusive of characters that don't have much agency.
It also assumes that desire/want = orienting toward or pursuing.
As far as I am concerned, characters don't have goals. They CAN, but these goals aren't actually the functional gears of the plot, and are instead their conscious rationalizations of what's really running the show.
Rather, characters have instincts and drives. I don't like to say "desires" because desire suggests something that is explicit, a thing that the character can attribute their feelings to.
I realized when reading Shakespeare's Othello that interesting characters often can't be understood in terms of "goals" or "desires" because they don't understand what they want or why they want that and they constantly act in ways that are contradictory to what they want or think they want. What a character consciously thinks is a whole layer on top of their actual instincts and feelings, which are primal and buried in traumas and needs and other aspects of creaturehood, and often is a fiction to resolve contradictions and dissonance in the demands of the creature-self. some characters can reflect upon their own thought processes and some cannot.
real humans don't often act rationally to pursue goals, they just do stuff based upon a seethe of inner instinct and the reasons why are post-hoc rationalizations. i like writing characters that reflect this and exploring the ways they do and don't understand themselves, the fictions they use to understand what's going on in there
many people ask 'how do i know my art is good enough to start a comic'. this is a very common mistake. you do not make a comic to make good art you make comics because its fun and looked yummy
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Some of you act like doing minor inconvenient acts of kindness is equivalent to donating a kidney as if it’s not those acts that form our communities and make the world go around.
Return your grocery cart. If you’re able-bodied offer your seat to someone who is not. Help your friend move. Drive your sister to the airport. Make sure drunk people have a safe ride or walk home. Pet-sit for your coworker. Participate in a meal train. Volunteer in your area. That’s what friendship and community is about.
The problem with studying the deep ocean is that humans need light to look at things, the depths of the ocean are extremely dark, and what lives there is accustomed to spending most of its time in that darkness. So when we go down there with submersibles and turn on Big Lights to see, we invariably and dramatically alter what's going on, in the same way that it's generally difficult to observe the natural behaviors of terrestrial animals if you whip out a megaphone and shout HEY GUYS WHAT ARE YOU DOING at them first.
I put this in the comments but feel it needs a reblog- Check out some of Dr Edith Widder’s work on light in the deep sea! Among other things, she used the bioluminescence of stoplight fish to deduce wavelengths which most deep sea animals can’t perceive and used that to create light filters to be able to film with minimal disturbance! And that’s how we got 25 minutes of giant squid footage!!!!
Look I love unconditional devotion love stories as much as the next person, but there's really something so deliciously raw about conditional devotion.
I have served you and I have loved you for decades, but I will not give up my principles for you. You cut out part of my heart and took it with you down that path that you insist on walking, but you walk it alone. Even when the bleeding, gaping hole you left in my chest kills me, I will not follow you.
The fastest way to accomplish The Project is to cease being afraid of The Project. The Project cannot maim you. The Project cannot kill you. The Project is more afraid of you than you are of it. It is okay if The Project turns out differently from how it was in your head, and it is okay if it has flaws. You are capable of engaging with The Project.
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my close friend from uni was a cis girl who had the audacity to wear pants and cut her hair short and like nobody at this school, a place OBSESSED with ‘respecting everyone’s gender identities,’ would call her ‘she.’ after MONTHS of this she started wearing a fucking pronoun pin to work and i dont even think that fixed it. me, im sorta androgynous; i have shaggy self-cut hair and go by a neutral name, but i always say my pronouns are she/her, and people ive worked with for months and have introduced myself in front of fifty times will STILL reflexively say ‘they’ for me. i respect the progressive circles i run in, but this IS evidence of misogyny. people’s definition of “woman” or “girl” is so narrow and high-maintenance that even the tiniest deviation from the norm gets you forcibly defeminized. but it’s a compliment, right? like who would wanna be a girl anyway?
Quick shout out to the Down syndrome kid from my after-school program back when I was in grade school. Like yea he had the usual issues but he was a sweetheart and quite funny; and one day both his parents showed up at the same time to pick him up and I had the experience of meeting a family of genetically disabled people that had jobs and a home and a kid in school and it was a profoundly normalizing experience for me like I couldn’t take eugenicists seriously after that because like “no they totally can have whole entire meaningful lives with marriage and children and work and hobbies have you not met Dennis??” Anyway quick shout out to Dennis you were a real one
But seriously though. Learning to draw fat people will make you a much better artist. Understanding how skin and fat behaves and folds in certain poses, and being able to adapt complex poses to fit a fat body (as usually references are with thin models) will help you TREMENDOUSLY. Drawing fat being properly affected by gravity will aid you in ALL figure drawing in the future. Like if you have any sort of interest in drawing humanoid figures (AND furries) you really ought to learn how to draw fat of all kind.
Or as I've always liked to put it, "No matter how suspicious you might find the neighbor who never opens their blinds, they will never be as suspicious as the neighbor who wants free rein to peek in through people’s windows."
Look, it’s a weird hill to die on, especially when I don’t really explain, but children deserve to experience fear, disgust, and discomfort in safe scenarios where they can process those sensations.
Media for children used to be scary and that’s important.
“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”
― C.S. Lewis
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"these researchers published a paper on something that literally any of us could have told you 🙄" ok well my supervisors wont let me write something in my thesis unless I can back it up with a citation so maybe it's a good thing that they're amplifying your voice to the scientific community in a way that prevents people from writing off your experiences as annecdotal evidence
People forget studies typically start with a hypothesis and the hypothesis is usually "the people who deal with this are right about their experiences and we should listen to them"
I don't know who my intended audience is here, so whoever needs to hear this, I am begging you to learn to participate in conversations that are about things you aren't interested in.
Part of socializing and having friends is being a good listener even when you don't actually give a shit about the subject.
Your are hurting other people's feelings when you bluntly respond with "Anyway..." and then change the topic.
It can not always be about your preferred topic.
You are being rude. Yes, even if you are neurodivergent. You can be both autistic and rude.
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