a million stairs and a million stares

I did some digging.

@unashamedly-enthusiastic

Scammers coming into my messages trying to tug my heart strings by threatening to hate me forever if I don't help.

Me:

@scam-alerts, are you really out here claiming randos in a message on tumblr might be trustworthy to send money to? When you can see the link in the message goes to gofundme, which doesn't pay out in Gaza?

Are you really out here trying to tell me that gazavetters is a trustworthy vetting source when it's been proven time and again @gazavetters are scammers????

Are you on the internet in the year of our go fuck yourself 2026 acting like Gaza scamming isn't one of the most successful tumblr scams of all time that was based on making people fear they'd be called racists or baby killers if they didn't assume every single rando in their inbox or messages was totally trustworthy??

"We don't call them scams, so you shouldn't either." No. That's not how that works. I call a scam a scam. You don't want to call it a scam, that's up to you. But it's real fucked up that you are here saying you're an authority on scams acting like Gaza scams are some rare thing or that MOST Gaza posts AREN'T provably horseshit.

Did I step on your scam? Is that what this is? Are you running this scam while running a so-called scam-alerts blog, and you're mad because you're worried my posting these messages could lose you money? Because that's what it feels like. Why fucking else would a so called scam-alert blog be trying to talk someone out of calling out a deeply suspicious scam that we all learned years ago is not trustworthy?

If a rando shows up in your inbox asking for money, they are most likely scamming, and the bigger the sob story, the more likely the scam.

So, someone who runs scam-alerts got into my replies to say gazavetters is trustworthy when it's very well known at this point that gazavetters ISN'T trustworthy and that I SHOULD trust randos asking me for cash when they have link that I know DON'T WORK IN GAZA.

And they just happen to be doing something so nice like drawing stuff for people who give money to supposedly valid campaigns that are very likely not valid at all because gazavetters has been proven to be scammers. And, if gazavetters is as crooked as we know it is, this person might very well be pretending like they're not getting a kickback from those donations to encourage further donations that they are very likely getting a cut from.

In short: I think this person who helps run scam-alerts is running a scam with gazavetters to get a payday off donations to the so-called verified list that has been proven repeatedly to be completely untrustworthy. This is my opinion based on the circumstances.

TdF Day Five: A Teal Unicorn Barf

~160g/275m, spun and plied today from a John Arbon limited edition falklands corriedale.

I love it and think it's a good gradient.. but it will be tonally jarring and visually buzzy next to its intended partner and I hate them together 😫 (I might still spin this up in the hopes the yarns are more complementary, but I do not have great expectations)

wound off this evening, but the skein pics suck because dark; ~1265m/245g of I actually really love it blurple gradient.

A: 575m/112g

Tour de Fleece day one!

Spun about 10g to finish this bobbin. 50g to go, split between two more bobbins.

This is an 80/20 Corriedale/Nylon blend, the one that caused me to learn how to knit socks. I'm now realizing that I think I have a second braid of it somewhere in case 100g isn't enough for a pair of socks. Hope I don't need it because the stash is deeply disorganized right now.

Did he have his name written down on something?

Or is that what the people who dug him up thousands of years later decided to name him?

And how TF does he even have a fanbase?

Ötzi is a 5300-ish year old mummy, found in the Ötztal Alps in Italy (hence his name). While the earliest form of writing was emerging from Sumer at the time, Ötzi likely came from a civilisation with no writing system.

Ötzi has a fanbase because frankly he's absolutely fascinating. For a long time he was the oldest tattooed person ever discovered (in 2018 older Egyptian mummies were discovered), with 61 tattoos, a series of lines and crosses, primarily on his joints. These tattoos were likely an early form of acupuncture since he had worn joints that likely caused him pain.

The amount we've been able to study and understand about Ötzi is incredible, and he has offered us an incredible view of the European Copper Age. He was 45. He was 5"3. He was around 50kgs. We know what his final meal was, how he dressed, where he came from and how he travelled to the Ötztal region (through pollen in his lungs). We know he was involved in copper smelting (high levels of copper and arsenic in his hair). He could still have 19 descendants alive today. We know he was sick three times in the last six months before he died. We know he had whipworms. We know he was lactose intolerant.

We know he was murdered. Not killed by a stranger, or robbed. He was murdered by someone, and it was probably personal, and he did not know it was coming. He bled out, from an arrow to the back, and nobody helped him.

His last meal was elaborate. He was not on the run, or in a hurry to get away. He was not chased up those mountains. Where was he going? Why was he being followed? His body was not looted. He was a wealthy man, for his time. He had good quality clothes, shoes that people have reconstructed and hiked up the mountain in (and found surprisingly comfortable, apparently).

Weapons, too. He was found with a copper axe, a knife, arrows and an unfinished bow, baskets and medicines. These were all valuable possessions. People were not so rich back then that they could easily discard items like this- so why were they left to rot on the mountain with him? Was the fact they'd been touched by Ötzi really so repugnant to whoever was on that mountain?

There are at least 4 other people's blood on his gear. On the knife. On the arrows. The arrow that they shot him with was left in his back but the shaft was removed.

We know so much about Ötzi. We know everything about his finals hours- except for everything about Ötzi. We do not know who he was, we do not know his name, and we do not know why he was killed. His murderers stand in the shadows and will never come out into the light.

my head's not yours, it's mine

How many woo-woo-to-fascism pipelines do we have to create before we accept that any system in which we agree to prioritize what makes people feel good and comfortable over objective, observable reality is inherently prone to radicalization. How many times are we going to act shocked that people who refuse to accept scientific evidence in regards to crystal energy and repressed memories then move on to refusing to accept scientific evidence in regards to vaccines and chemotherapy. How many times are we going to hold people's hands and tell them of COURSE it's okay to believe things just because they Feel Right and not because you have even a shred of evidence and then act shocked when they start believing the people who tell them that all their problems are caused by minorities?