eunhea ✿ 은혜

This is a draft of something I've been writing for a couple months. It is mainly focused on the culture of the USA. Feel free to repost or otherwise share, with or without credit.

Do not tell people what to do—help them do it! 

Give the gift of relief from being forced to engage in society’s unsustainable ways of life. 

“People need to eat more plant-based foods.” ->Talk about your favorite recipes, give others recipes, cook for them, and grow vegetables and plants in your garden and give them away as gifts. 

“People need to repair their clothes.” -> Offer to repair others’ clothes, and teach people how to repair their clothes. 

“People need to buy less clothes.” -> Give them old clothes that you don’t want, help them repair their clothes

“People need to buy less plastic stuff.” -> Learn to make things that can serve the same purpose, such as baskets, and give them as gifts. Let people borrow things you own so they don’t have to buy their own. 

“People need to stop using leafblowers and other gas-guzzling machinery.” -> Offer to rake the leaves. You can use them as compost in your own garden. 

“People need to be more educated about nature.”-> Learn about nature yourself. Tell people about nature. Be open about your love of creatures such as snakes, spiders, and frogs. Do not show awareness that this could be strange. You are not obligated to quiet down your enthusiasm for creepy crawlies to demonstrate awareness that it is weird. Point out at every opportunity how these animals are beneficial. 

“People need to use cars less.” -> Offer rides to others whenever you must go somewhere. Whenever you are about to go to the store, ask your neighbor or your friend who lives along the way, “Is there anything you need from the store?” 

You cannot control others’ behaviors, but you can free them from being controlled. 

If you think to yourself, “But this would be so difficult to do!” ask yourself WHY? Why does your society coerce you into less sustainable ways of living, forcing you to consume excessively? After thinking about this, consider that it is less simple and easy than you thought to make more sustainable choices, so why would you judge others for not doing it? 

Do not act alone—act with others! 

Environmentally friendly behaviors that can be done alone, without collaborating with or consulting another person, are the least powerful of all. Whenever an “environmentally friendly” behavior is suggested, figure out “How can I give this as a gift?” or “How can I make this possible on the level of a whole community?” 

“Personal choices” do not work because every single person has to make them individually. If you are focused on making your own personal choice, you are not focused on others. If you are not focused on others, you are not helping them. If nobody is helping each other, most people won’t be able to make the “personal choice.”

You inherently share an ecosystem with your neighbors  

            Start with your neighbors, the people physically close to you. You live on the same patch of land, containing roots from the same plants and trees. You can speak to them face to face without traveling, which means you can easily bring them physical things without using resources to travel. 

            Always talk to your neighbors and be friendly with them. Offer them favors unprompted and tell them about how your garden is doing. Do not be afraid to be annoying—a slightly annoying neighbor who is helpful, kind, and can be relied upon for a variety of favors or in times of need is a necessary and inevitable part of a good community. If you make the effort to be present in somebody’s life, they will have to put up with you on some occasions, but that is just life. We cannot rely on each other if we do not put up with each other. 

Simply spending time with someone influences them for good 

Every hour you spend outside with your neighbor is an hour your neighbor doesn’t spend watching Fox News. Every hour you spend talking with someone and interacting with them in the real world, eating real food and enjoying your real surroundings, is an hour you don’t spend only hearing a curated picture of what reality is like from social media. 

            Isolation makes it easy for people to become indoctrinated into extremist beliefs. When someone spends more time alone, watching TV, Youtube, or scrolling social media, than they do with others, their concept of what other people are like and what the world is like comes more from social media than real life. TV and online media are meant to influence you in a specific way. Simply restricting the access these influences have to yourself and others is helpful. 

A garden is the source of many gifts 

If you grow a garden, you can give your neighbors and friends the gift of food, plants, and crafted objects. This is one of the foundational ways to form community. When you give food, you provide support to others. When you give plants, you are encouraging and teaching about gardening. It is even better when you give recipes cooked from things you grew, or items crafted from things you grew. You can also give the gift of knowledge of how to grow these plants, cook these recipes, or craft these objects. 

More on gift-giving

            Some people are uncomfortable with receiving items or services as gifts. They want to feel like they are giving something back, instead of having obligation to return the favor hanging over them. 

            It can help to ask a simple favor that can be easily fulfilled. People generally like the feeling of helping someone else. 

When you give someone a gift, it can help to say something like “Oh, I have too many of this thing to take care of/store/eat myself! Do you think you could take some?” This makes your neighbor feel like they are helping you. 

When allowing others to borrow items, you might not get them back. Don’t worry about that. It just means the item found a place where it was needed the most. You can ask about the item if you think it might have been forgotten, and this can create an opportunity for a second meeting. But don’t press. 

If the person you give to insists upon some form of payment, this is a good opportunity to negotiate a trade. 

Ask to be given compostable or recyclable things 

Ask your neighbor to save compostable scraps, biodegradable cardboard and paper products, and any other items that might be put to use. Use them in your own compost pile. Or, start a compost pile at the edge of the yard where you both can add to it. Remember that “wet” compost like vegetable and fruit bits needs to be mixed with twice as much of “dry” and “woody” compost like cardboard, leaves, small twigs, paper and wood bits. 

Use the front yard for gardening

Overcome the cultural norm that the front yard is only decorative. Use the front yard for gardening so you can be seen by others enjoying your garden, and others can witness the demonstration of the possibilities of land. In the front yard, anything you do intentionally with your land can be witnessed. It also makes you a visible presence in your community. 

Grow staple foods 

Don’t just grow vegetables that cannot be the core component of a meal themselves. Grow potatoes, dry beans, black eyed peas and other nourishing, calorie-dense foods. Grow the ingredients of meals. You could even build a garden around a recipe.

Invite neighbors and friends over to eat food made from things you grew 

Be sure to send them home with leftovers.  

Grow plants for baskets 

Containers are one of the fundamental human needs. If we had more containers, we wouldn’t need plastic so much. You can learn to make baskets, and to grow plants that provide the raw materials for baskets. 

If someone rakes their leaves, ask to have the leaves  

If you see someone putting leaves in bags, don’t be afraid to ask if you can have the leaves. More likely than not they will be happy to agree. 

Collaborate with neighbors to plant things in the no-man’s-land of the property line 

In the border land between your neighbor’s yard and your yard, it is almost always just mowed grass because no one can plant anything without it affecting their neighbor. But these border lands add up to a lot of space. It would be much better if you talked to your neighbor about what would be nice to plant there, and together created a plan for that space. 

Give others the freedom to wander 

Make it clear that you will not get mad if the neighbor’s kids play in your yard or run across it. Invite the neighbors onto your land as much as possible. Tell them they are allowed to spend time in a favored spot whenever they would like.  

The power of the hand-made sign 

If there is a yard sale, you always know about it because of the hand-drawn signs placed around. Therefore, a cookout or unwanted item exchange can be announced the same way. In rural areas I have seen hand-made signs that say: FIREWOOD or WE BUY GOATS or EGGS. This is one of the few technologies of community that remain in the USA. If someone who looks to buy and sell can put up a hand-made sign, why shouldn’t you?  

Religious people or people with strong political opinions like to put signs everywhere. If they have the confidence and courage to do so, why shouldn’t you? 

So if there is a message you would like everyone to see, use the simple power of the hand-made sign. Proclaim “BEE FRIENDLY ZONE!” above your pollinator garden with all the confidence of a religious fundamentalist billboard. Announce to the world, “VEGETABLES FREE TO ALL—JUST ASK!” “WE TAKE LEAVES—NO PESTICIDES.” Instead of YARD SALE, or perhaps in conjunction with YARD SALE, you can write, PLANT EXCHANGE or SEED SWAP or CLOTHING SWAP. Who can stop you? 

Someone has to do it for society to change  

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE!! aka Halman as ENA!!

I actually love this concept sm I might do some more with it

War has stolen so much from us—our family, our home, and our sense of normalcy. My name is Mosab, and I’m asking for your support. I’ve lost 25 loved ones, and every day is a fight to survive.

💔 We are struggling to find food, water, and shelter. 📢 We need to raise $90,000 to rebuild our lives, and so far, we’ve reached $809. 🙏 Even $10 can help us take another step forward.

If you can’t donate, please share this post. Every share brings hope and a chance for help. Thank you for believing in us.

With appreciation, Mosab & Family ❤️

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Vetted by @90-ghost -vetted link

And I'm now waiting to be Vetted by @gazavetters 🙏

My baby ,Adam, suffers from club foot and will need an urgent surgery. It costs at least $3000 and he will need special boots fitted. This surgery is not possible in Gaza even without the war.

Please help us with any amount of money 🙏🙏🥺

I don't have many because I am a new nurse graduate and need to find a job and to live as anyone. I have a lot of dreams to achieve. I don't want to die or to lose my son or my husband. Please give me your helping hands and don't give up on me and my family. Remember that I depend on you and I trust on you that you will save us.

Please donate with any amount of money and this will greatly and surely make difference

You can donate here

I try to imagine a future, but right now, survival is the only thing we can focus on.

We’ve raised $1,580 so far, and while there’s still a long way to go, each act of kindness reminds us that we are not forgotten.

If you’re reading this, please help us keep going—through a donation, a reblog, or simply by keeping us in your thoughts.

🙏 If this message reached you unexpectedly, I’m sorry . Please feel free to ignore it if needed.

I am reaching out on behalf of my dear friend, Mohamad S., who is facing one of the most challenging times of his life. Mohamad is 37 years old and left his homeland in 2015 in search of a safer and better future. He’s a kind, hardworking man, and his small family has always been his greatest priority.

Living abroad, Mohamad has recently endured unimaginable loss and financial strain. Amidst the ongoing conflict in his homeland, his mother passed away, leaving behind his sister and her five young children—the last remaining members of his immediate family.

As the situation worsened, Mohamad managed to help his sister and her children escape to safety in Egypt, covering their immediate needs and securing a temporary refuge for them. Since then, he has been fully responsible for providing everything they need to survive during this transition.

In his efforts to support his family and cope with this devastating loss, Mohamad has found himself deeply in debt. To make matters even more difficult, he recently underwent knee surgery, which limits his ability to return to work for the foreseeable future. This has made it even harder for him to manage his financial responsibilities and the pressing need to provide his family with a stable future.

Mohamad is now working to bring his sister and her five children to join him in Belgium, where he hopes they can find stability and opportunity after all they’ve endured. This transition, however, requires significant resources that he is currently unable to meet alone.

For privacy reasons, we are not sharing Mohamad’s full name, as he has chosen to keep his identity discreet. While he initially refused the idea of asking for help, I couldn’t stand by and watch him struggle alone. I insisted on doing this for him because he deserves a chance to overcome these challenges.

Your contribution will help Mohamad repay the debt incurred during this difficult time, cover ongoing living expenses for his family, and assist with the costs involved in bringing them safely to Belgium.

Mohamad has been a good friend of mine for years, and I’ve always admired his resilience and generosity. Any support, no matter the size, will make an incredible difference in helping Mohamad and his family rebuild their lives after these painful experiences.

Thank you for reading his story and considering helping a man who has always done everything he can for his loved ones.

Adam

✅ Vetted by Association: @bilal-salah0

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I have lost my mother. My sister. My home. My brothers and I have been displaced twice. Every day is a battle for survival.

But we don’t just want to survive—we want to live.

🎓 We Want to Study, to Rebuild, to Dream Again

🔹 I want to go to university.

🔹 My brother wants to be a doctor.

🔹 Another dreams of becoming an engineer.

🔹 The youngest just wants to be a kid again.

💙 How You Can Help Every donation, every share, every bit of support makes a difference.

2010: The Year We Make Contact

Like... The only animals we see bigger than an insect that survived the glorious evolution were NEWTS?

They bar the door with Viktor’s cane, so when the Enforcers break in, the cane breaks too.

And then the next thing we see is Viktor floating, with his amazed smile, his childlike wonder.

There’s this sweet, almost bittersweet implication that he’s transcended his body, just for a moment.

He won’t feel so free in his body again for years, until he drops his crutch and runs on the docks.

The ways that their partnership is imprinted on his body, and the stages of it reflected through his body—how he finds freedom and joy that first night; how he’s wasting away during the period when Jayce’s attention was elsewhere; how Jayce reconstructs him through love and it’s too much for him to take; how Jayce’s body comes to mirror his; how they’re both bodiless in the end, and free, like it’s taken them years of suffering to reach the purity of that first free moment again—will always be so moving to me.

We don’t see what Piltover is like in that universe. In fact, aside from Heimerdinger who has also been sent there by the Arcane, we don’t see a single Piltover character.

But his silence/hesitation regarding Jayce’s existence in this world speaks volume. We know that Vi died in the explosion. Many viewers — me included — assume that Jayce probably did kill himself in that universe. Viktor is most likely either dead or dying too.

Without Vi, Cait also doesn’t meet the love of her live. AND her bff Jayce is dead.

I don’t know what Mel is doing in that universe, but the black rose is still coming for her. And in this world she has no one to tell her that she could never be a passenger, no one to give her strenght. Hell, aside from Elora, who literally works for her and whom the black rose will kill, we never see Mel have any other friend in her life.

What I am saying is that when you think of it like that, this AU is pretty fucking bleak on the piltover side. Sure the city is probably thriving, but none of our main characters there are happy nor will they likely be any time soon.

And I think that’s part of the idea. Either Piltover can be happy with hextech, or Zaun can be happy without it, or….

Zaun is still not free. They're still suffering from the Grey's pollution.

We can assume that due to hextech not being there we won't have widespread of shimmer and that due to silco not being a kingpin we don't have much chembarons, child exploitation etc etc but that isn't saying that those things aren't there it's just that they aren't a glaring problem.

There's still a divide between the two cities its why vander and silco still want an independent zaun but the political climate isn't as bad as it was in the Canon universe because heimerdinger has finally stopped just talking and has started to act to heal the two cities although he has a long way to go.

Essentially, in this AU, we can assume that the council is somewhat more considerate of zaunites due to heimerdinger, but that's all. The reason why hextech didn't benefit zaun was because the council had majority control over hextech. This isn't to say that jayce and viktor are innocent because they aren't and they definitely contributed to the mess by making their gauntlets and hexclaw but a major part is that they barely had much of a say in how hextech should be utilised and its why jayce keeps his position as Councillor

she learns lessons from her fights and uses them to better herself like a cyberpunk Professor from Gilligan's Underground. her arm's equivalent of a power button goes from an external potential bullseye to an internal compartment. even gives herself a longer-range weapon so she can keep herself at a little more of a distance next time, maybe even cut through fancy Topside metal if needs be!

AND she mentally rushes into head-on confrontations with Piltover, convincing herself of advantages that don't actually hold up. the first time we see her, she's insisting that they bring the fight to a city currently vastly ahead of them in terms of scientific and technological capability, on the strength of numbers alone. Shimmer hasn't even hit the streets yet, the majority of people we see in our short walk through Zaun are not battle-ready, successful community-led armed resistance is apparently such a pipe dream that even after Silco & Co. increase the city's wealth and access to resources, they STILL have to rely on chemically enhanced children to guard their means of production.

even in s2 when the chem-baron specifies once and for all that they ain't got the numbers lady, she insists that a 1v1 is potentially winnable because their enemy isn't used to their terrain. which would have SOME merit as an argument...if it wasn't for the fact that their enemy also has ultimate control over their entire infrastructure, including the literal air they breathe. 'they don't know the first thing about fighting in the fissures' holds water for foreign invasions, for drawing an uninitiated enemy into your territory and making the battle more trouble than it's worth for them. not for your centuries-long oppressors who literally live above you and have their sticky, oppressive little fingers in all your pies.

then her last ditch attempt to rally 'everyone she can bring to the table', to gather the force she proposes to successfully battle her oppressor with...only for them to be swept up and packed away in jail with barely a sweat broken. now granted, this was done primarily by a contingent of Noxus soldiers, and we don't know for certain if she intended to head to the bridge immediately with what, 200 odd people?? or if this was more of a rallying of spirits - but it still demonstrates Sevika's less-than-realistic perspective on Zaun's chances. Sevika wants to fight. she wants to bring the battle to them, to resist with the violence she knows is necessary because they're already in a violent conflict, oppression is violence under a veneer of legitimization and she knows this intimately; she wants to believe that they have a chance to win if they give it the old college try, even though the facts prooobably don't support her belief.

Sevika, so emotionally savvy that she knows how to soothe Silco's worries over Jinx and get him back on track with that boring liberation thing they've been working on, also thinks there's a point when she will become Too Much Of A Liability for Silco and he'll drop her. she recognizes Silco's affection for Jinx but misjudges its nature and therefore its depth, doesn't realize that there's nothing, not even his own death at her hands, that could make him 'give her up'. Jinx's usefulness wasn't Silco's ultimate motivator like it was for Sevika, who, because her dedication to her cause is so strong, seems to genuinely believe that triggering a mental breakdown will push them into red line territory because Jinx's damage to that cause will be a dealbreaker for Silco like it is for her (/was? who knows where the writers' minds were in s2).

Sevika's smarter than anyone gives her credit for, while also being blinkered by her own motivations; she navigates an impossible situation with astonishing strength of character, insisting on being a dynamic player in the game and not just a passive recipient of others' machinations, but with the very real element of not having perfect judgement while she does it. she believes Silco's as dedicated as she is, i mean that's why she joins him after all - they agreed on necessary sacrifices and had the determination to make them, and the fortitude to accept the consequences of taking action in an unjust world. she believes open war is ultimately necessary, and wants to liberate Zaun so badly that she tries to get to warring faster than might strictly be advisable. she's not a general or a leader and never claimed to be, but she is a person suffering the injustice of subjugation, and that clouds her judgement in all the ways we'd expect of a woman who never claimed to be a general or a leader, yet decided with terrifying resolve to do whatever she deemed necessary to get herself and her people out of that subjugation, by hook or by crook.