ESCAPE FROM MIDWICH VALLEY

mutual aid means no hierarchy between givers and receivers

a new mutual aid org, Bridge of Solidarity, has been established in the gaza strip by 17 year old poet yazan mohammed in response to the exploitative practices conducted by some charities and encouraged by the existing charity-based model of fundraising for gaza. according to BoS: "the western attention economy and pity economy plays a large role in who lives or dies in gaza." essentially, people need to make themselves marketable in order to receive lifesaving aid; people who are not marketable die. yazan himself wrote about the damage this can do to one's self image, which you can read here.

after trying for a year to respect his own privacy, my friend siraj was also pressured into posting images of his son's emaciated body in order to gain sympathy from westerners.

we cannot keep forcing people to do this anymore.

here's a declaration of their values from bridge of solidarity's most recent post:

Our organization is against the Western gaze. We refuse to humiliate people. We refuse to force people to take photos. We refuse to force people to take photos with our flyer or logo. People will receive aid freely without being forced to pose. We will respect people's privacy completely. Our principles include autonomy, dignity, sovereignty, mutual respect, and mutual aid.

this org will prioritize giving aid to people without phones or social media, who do not speak english, and who do not have outside support or living parents. these are the people who are not palatable to westerners but who deserve to live with as much dignity as everyone else

as of five days ago, BoS are working on a water truck delivery

“A coalition of organizations that work with marginalized communities in Lebanon such as migrant workers are raising funds to provide support and assistance (food, medical supplies, pads, diapers) to the various communities. Please share and donate.”

March 2026 update:

Campaign Story: Starting at 42,000 USD (raised in the last war), Voices of the Unseen begins again.... Following the devastating events of 1 March, 2026, and the subsequent heavy bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs and South Lebanon in the early hours of 2 March, we are witnessing a terrifyingly familiar cycle of violence. At least 31 people have been martyred and 149 wounded in just the last few hours. Thousands more fleeing their homes under new evacuation orders. The recent escalation has pushed Lebanon back to the brink of a full scale war.

In 2024, we saw firsthand the systemic failure of the state. As bombs fell, the state offered no safety net for those most vulnerable:

Migrant Workers: Still trapped under the Kafala system a form of modern day slavery, many are being abandoned by employers fleeing the violence, left without papers or safe passage.

Syrian Refugees: Already displaced by over a decade of war, we are once again facing the trauma of being uprooted with nowhere left to run.

Palestinians: Facing an ongoing struggle for survival as the violence in Lebanon mirrors the aggression they have endured for 78 years.

Marginalised Lebanese: Families in the South, Bekaa, and Beirut are losing their livelihoods and homes, watching their society be torn apart once more.

I have shared our story so many times because I don’t know any other way to help my family.

Some people may think posting online is easy, but it isn’t.

It is difficult to admit that you need help.

It is difficult to ask strangers to care.

It is difficult to keep hoping when support becomes slower and slower.

But I continue because my children are worth every attempt.

They deserve safety.

They deserve comfort.

They deserve the chance to enjoy simple things that many families take for granted.

So I am here again, asking you not to forget us.

If you can help, please do.

If you cannot, sharing our story can mean more than you imagine.

My campaign is verified by @bilal-sala7

Donation

and in Spanish speaking circles online they sharing gore pictures of dead African babies in online chats so much it has a label named “BND”? Another Black teen was murdered recently by an Asian American store owner convinced he was stealing despite putting items back. He shot him in the back.

yall dont deserve nothing from Black people in any part of the diaspora, irdc. this shit makes me so angry but the demands for an expectation of actionable organizing and dismantling of the white supremacist project that is the US is laid at our collective feet and no one else’s is so crazy to me. how are Black ppl supposed to generate trust for nonblack ppl that hasn’t been demonstrated in a sustained, recent, manner, without us having to force the rest of the world to see us?

Idpol is divisive until it’s time to self adopt the moniker of the Global South and that often doesn’t include & backseats Black African exploitation/extraction. it’s hella transparent how nonblack leftists only mention Sudan, Congo, Somalia, etc. as afterthoughts to their awareness and solidarity posts focusing on Palestine but feel entitled to call Black leftists “zog slaves” for not making dedicated media to the issue they feel the most important, regardless if to these Black leftists making Black issues their focus and niche.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

2-YEAR CHEDDAR

from GRAFTON VILLAGE

I usually try to review cheeses virginally - that is, ones that I’ve never had before. In this case, this is a cheddar I’ve had many times before. But I couldn’t leave it off the blog, what with its obvious appeal to leather and rubber fetishists.

As far as cheddars go, Grafton’s 2-year aged isn’t going to shock you. It’s mild, light on the salt, with a slightly sweet and grassy flavour. It’s got a nice texture. It’s dense, more moist than I expected, and smooth.

So what is the deal with the gummi suit on this cheese anyway? Well, cheese has obviously been around a lot longer than fridges. Fresh cheeses like mozzarella are too moist to last very long outside of a cold place (bacteria and fungi do so love damp places), though I don’t think anyone was too mad about eating that stuff quickly. But cheeses that have been aged (and dried) more have some more preservation options, which is where cheese wax comes in. The wax is a physical barrier, stopping fungal spores from landing, and also blocks moisture and air, making the cheese a pretty unfriendly place to grow. Even drier cheeses can be bandaged in cheesecloth and then slathered in lard to preserve them while allowing some ventilation.

They are owned by the same corporation as bittorrent and are practically identical in all but name these days. They are proprietary, closed source, have built-in ads, and use telemetry to track usage. They are a privacy nightmare and a scourge on the torrent ecosystem.

qBittorrent is open source, full of features, modern, has a wonderful community, easier to use, has less cruft, natively cross platform, and tends to be more secure in their usage of up-to-date dependencies.