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Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French author of graphic novel 'Persepolis', dies aged 56 - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/marjane-satrapi-iranian-french-author-graphic-novel-persepolis-dies-aged-56-2026-06-04/

Rescue dog Rosie’s cancer shrinks after world-first mRNA vaccine | The Australian

“It is one of the worst mass killings in contemporary world history.”

Updates on news, ongoing protests all over the world, Iranian activists and more

There’s a section for petitions too please make sure to check that out. It can really help us

And if you can, consider going to your local anti-regime protest event listed on the website to show solidarity with Iranians

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Like. I think I kind of know why. A myriad of sociopolitical reasons, including self-interest and racism and ignorance and misguided 'enemy of my enemy' thinking about the Islamic world vs bastards like Trump and Netanyahu. But I'm still appalled. None of that can justify turning a blind eye or cold shoulder to the worst massacre in modern Iranian history. And the Iranian people have suffered a lot of massacres! Mostly at the hands of their own government and police force!

I've been seeing and reblogging so many posts about the ICE situation in the USA (which makes sense, because almost half the users of this site live there), and... listen. That gives me a nice point of comparison. What's happening in America, with Trump and ICE and all of that, that's awful. It's horrendous. It makes my blood boil. It is the tip of the iceberg. What the Islamic Republic is doing in Iran is the entire frozen mass around the North Pole. On every front, it is worse. Totalitarianism? Oppression? Corruption? Unjust policing? Religious extremism? Misogyny? Homophobia? Environmental devastation? Economic divide and insecurity? Abuse of power? Name an issue you have with Trump, and the mullahs are doing it a million times worse. That's why I'm so disappointed that he's the only world leader who said - even temporarily - that he would provide the foreign aid that is urgently needed. He and Supreme Leader Khamenei (that is his real title) are cut from the same vile cloth!

So if the USA makes my blood boil when I live in the UK... you can imagine how I feel about Iran, my father's homeland. I'm going fucking crazy.

Yes, it is essential that people pay attention and spread the truth of the Ugly Shitstorm of America, in order to hopefully prevent that nation from going further down its dark path. The Islamic 'Republic' is at the end of that same path. It is a textbook dystopia. The rulers and servants of this regime have been starving, terrorising, brutalising, imprisoning, torturing and murdering countless citizens, both for protesting against it and for literally any other reason, since 1979. That's when my dad left at fifteen, when his parents sent him away to get out of there as the shit hit the fan. Right now, my grandparents are over there. Right now people are in crippling poverty, with a terrible water shortage due to the regime's management and environmental exploitation. People are being slaughtered. Gunned down in the streets. Locked away in horrific conditions. Children are being raped and executed. This is all routine.

What's different this time is the unprecedented scale and unity of the protests. This time, maybe, just maybe, some real positive change might actually be accomplished. But probably not without any outside help.

no one is spending enough time complaining about writing

hierarchy is wrong. your grad student TA is not a professor or faculty and might not even be considered an employee. that 32 year old man is not a full professor no matter how talented he is or how old you think 30+ is, and he should be talking more about "the tenure clock"

grad students only ever taking or TAing classes & never doing research or working on their thesis/dissertation. there are masters programs with no thesis component so i'm sure there are ones that have no research requirement, but you can't get a PhD only taking classes

everyone has too much money. but also if it's set in the US there's an obsession with accumulating student debt for positions that generally you would not have to take out loans for

relationship with academic advisor never sufficiently unhinged

Rainbow Valley, for all its macabre connotations, is also a literal trash heap.

Base Camp and ABC are worse. The entire route is lined with garbage.

The Sherpa population receive little credit for incredible amount of work they do, often doing most of the work of the climber or team so that the team takes all the credit. It’s true that there’s a monetary benefit for their communities, but their job is also one of the most dangerous in the world.

There are documented crimes on Everest. Theft and assault are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Theft of oxygen tanks and other vital equipment can seriously endanger climbers. Entire books have been written about this.

People have been left to die on the climb. In some places, depending on the altitude, it becomes unavoidable or near impossible to move someone down the mountain. However, there have been avoidable deaths, again well-documented. Some climbers even say they have something called “summit fever” where only the climb has meaning, and not their fellow climbers. 

So what should be done?

Well, for a start, I think it helps to actually fucking listen to the people risking their lives working on that mountain. They don’t want it closed, because again, their lives will be ruined if that happens, but they DO want better regulations about who goes on the mountain, and what happens there.

See, you need a permit to climb Sagarmāthā , one issued by either the Nepalese or Chinese government, depending on where you start your ascent. And yes, multiple governments being involved makes it even more complicated, but let’s just focus on the Nepal side of things for now; the Chinese route is a real bitch to climb compared to the Nepal route so it doesn’t have such a tourist problem, and also the first step to any real solution there is for China to stop fucking occupying Tibet. So let’s focus on Nepal.

The permits are a very good thing; you need to pay to be issued one, which brings in money to the country, and it’s just common sense to regulate how many people are going up there. What’s not good is that the Nepalese government isn’t doing a very good job of regulating the permit sales; guides have been complaining for decades now about the government selling way too many permits, overcrowding the mountain, and allowing wildly unqualified people to go. One of the main things the Sherpa guide community wants is for the Nepalese government to sell less permits for Sagarmāthā, and make the skill/fitness requirements stricter. One popular proposal is to change the rules so that you need to have climbed at least one 8000m peak to be eligible to get a permit for Sagarmāthā. Since eight of the fourteen are in Nepal, this would keep money flowing, since people would need to do multiple trips, and it would also scare most of the dumbasses away - they want to be carried up the most famous mountain in the world so they can brag about summiting Everest. Having to climb a harder mountain first would make that look a lot less appealing, especially since K2 is a hellish death trap, and none of the other 8000′s have the same name recognition. You can’t really brag to your buddies at the office about having summited Dhaulagiri or Manaslu the same way you can brag about Everest. So that proposed rule change would scare off the tourists, and ensure every single person on Sagarmāthā is an experienced mountaineer that’s already experienced the death zone, as opposed to the current issue of multiple people that have literally never climbed before buying permits to go up Sagarmāthā.

They also want better regulations for the guide companies that can be hired for Sagarmāthā - there’s a huge problem of tourists paying for the cheaper guide companies, not realizing that the whole reason they’re cheap is because they take extremely dangerous shortcuts in their equipment maintenance. Those companies are a massive problem, and the legitimate guides hate them. So, so much. They put their clients in danger, they put their employees in danger, and they put everyone on the mountain with them in danger.

Finally, the guides need better pensions and life insurance, because the Nepalese government has a real problem of not paying the families nearly enough when a guide dies on the job. That was the entire reason for the 2014 strike - an avalanche struck the base camp during the pre-season, killing sixteen of the Sherpas that were laying down ropes for the season. The Nepalese government offered to compensate the families of the victims with just enough money to cover the funerals, which infuriated the entire Nepalese mountaineering community. They demanded that the mandatory life insurance policy have its payout doubled in the future, more money to be given to the families of the avalanche victims, and government payment of medical bills for the wounded. None of the demands were met, and so they went on strike for the year. The government did agree to give more money to the families… provided they presented the appropriate documents in Kathmandu, which isn’t really feasible for most people living in the Khumbu region, making them angrier. The life insurance payout was also raised, but only by half the amount the Sherpa’s had demanded.

To summarize: shutting down Sagarmāthā will fuck over the entire economy of Nepal, leading to people dying and lives being ruined. Listen to the fucking people you’re trying to advocate for. They want the Nepalese government to sell less permits to climb Sagarmāthā, have stricter rules about who can buy the permits, tighter regulations for guide companies, and more government assistance for guides and their families after an injury or death occurs. And yes, Sagarmāthā is a sacred place to the Sherpa people, and their religious leaders want everyone off the mountain… but let’s be real here, that’s never going to happen.

So, if this is an issue you care about, and you actually want to do something instead of making vague, impossible demands to feel good about yourself online, what can you do?

For a start, begin calling the mountain Sagarmāthā instead of Everest. Everest was only used as a name because Nepal and Tibet were closed to outsiders when the British were surveying the Himalaya’s in 1800′s, so they were unable to learn the mountains real name. And the surveyors were surprisingly serious about labelling mountains with the correct local names, which is why Everest and K2 are the only standouts among the 8000 meter peaks - K2 is so remote it never actually had a name, and the placeholder label of K2 stuck, while Sagarmāthā was believed to be the same situation and given a name instead. The only reason it’s still called Everest is because that’s the name that became famous. Getting the proper name into common use might make things right. It’s about respecting the culture of the Sherpa’s… and it will also respect the wishes of Sir George Everest, who absolutely fucking hated the proposal to name the mountain after him, and fought tooth and nail to leave a placeholder and keep searching for a proper local name. The poor bastards been rolling in his grave for over 150 years now, let’s get his name off the damn mountain already.

For improving the actual conditions, push for the Nepalese government to make the changes the guides want. International pressure is necessary for that; if nobody cares about the Sherpa’s, the government can do as they please, and the guides just have to put up with it. Pay attention, raise awareness, advocate for their wellbeing, and, again, listen to what they actually need/want.

Finally, rookies climbers going up Sagarmāthā should be judged, and judged hard. They’re not impressive. They’re fucking idiots being carried up a mountain by the real professionals so they can claim bragging rights. If someone brags about climbing the tallest mountain in the world, ask about their climbing experience and training, and if they’ve ever climbed/considered climbing any of the less famous 8000+ meter peaks. If they’re not an experienced climber that respects the mountain, mock them relentlessly. They’re not impressive, they’re an idiot that burned their own money to be carried up a really big rock and steal the credit for their guides hard work.

That being said, also show respect towards the people that have died on Sagarmāthā, AND the people that have witnessed death on that mountain. I’m not going to blame anyone for bad decision making at 8000 meters of elevation. The death zone was named that because the conditions cannot support human life; you are slowly dying as soon as you enter, and the trick is just to get back down before you succumb to it. The human brain does not enjoy being slowly suffocated to death, and you sort of lose your shit as a result. That’s just biology, happens to everyone. There’s a reason why disasters high up on the 8000+ peaks are so confusing - there’s always multiple different stories about how events played out, because short term memory loss and delirium are a very common side effect of being at an altitude unable to support human life. That’s also a large part of ‘summit fever’ on those peaks; people genuinely cannot make rational decisions up there. It’s a well documented problem. A fair amount of lethal falls up there are technically suicides, as people get confused and wander off cliffs, or begin removing protective gear, or other things nobody in their right mind would do. That’s why so many people die attempting to summit after the cut-off point of it being too late to try - they can’t process that if they continue, conditions will become extremely dangerous on their descent. They can only understand that their goal is the summit, the conditions are good right now, so that means they’re fine and should keep going.

It was an hour now since they’d left Liverpool, and in the absence of anything else to do, Crowley was standing watch. And in the absence of anything else to watch, he was watching the passengers. In return, the passengers barely spared him so much as a sideways glance. [x]

See the two versions of her first line below:

What I was most struck by were the ways accounts at the time spoke about the audience’s reaction to her speech:

From the line “The power and wit of this remarkable woman convulsed the audience with laughter,” it’s immediately clear how skilled she was at public speaking.

The way that The Liberator’s account above emphasizes “eat” and the article below says “all she could say was, if she had a pint of intellect, and man had a quart, what reason was there why we should not have our pint full? [Roars of laughter]” really show the way she used humor to deliver her points.

The blog also talked about the way The Home Journal account of her speech that was circulated widely altered her final line, changing the meaning entirely to something that cast white men in a “paternalistic, protective role.” (Still better than re-writing the speech in a racist dialect and adding entire sections to cater to a southern white audience, but gross nonetheless.)

It also concludes with her most famous obituary, which it says was at least partly aiming to correct misconceptions about her from Gage’s version of her speech. It reads “Sojourner Truth was no more remarkable for her longevity than for her intellect and moral worth. Her mind was uncommonly penetrating, clear, logical and original. She saw the pith of a matter instantly and reasoned upon it with great swiftness. On every subject she entertained clean-cut and independent opinions which she defended with ability and obstinacy. Although she could not read a word, her language was not only grammatically correct, but singularly perspicuous and nervous. Her enunciation and pronunciation were faultless.”

FYI: perspicuous means “plain to the understanding especially because of clarity and precision of presentation” and another meaning for nervous is “marked by strength of thought, feeling, or style” (both according to Merriam Webster Dictionary)

This emergency need is compounded by the government mass firing of conservation officials and the pulling of funds from many of the country's conservation organizations.

If you can help please donate here:

Key points from the Amphibian Foundation.

Our building will be demolished in 2026, and we need to identify a new location (or locations) for 7 labs and over 1,000 animals, many of which are endangered and part of critical conservation programs.

We've identified a new location for most of AF, but not our research and conservation programs. We have an amazing lead, but it's not confirmed yet.

Our first fundraising project is the AF Emergency Fund as the minimum cost estimates to move this many labs and animals safely is $50,000. (It costs about 50 USD per animal to move them)

They were also forced to be identified in camps with the brown upside down triangle

They were considered racially impure, much like the Jews. In many nations they were hunted by their fellow countrymen, who had an existing bias against them that was fuelled by war propaganda. The Einsatzgruppen (basically a moving, mobile killing squad) had Roma as a target. And, yes, there was a "Gypsy Question".

Their population was absolutely decimated. But worse.

August 2 is a date that some acknowledge this genocide. Some other dates....some not any dates at all. This date was chosen because of the huge killings on that night of those in the Zigeunerfamilienlager. Roma families were kept together in a camp in Auschwitz.

The Nazis decided to "clear" most of the camp that night, killing many children and elderly on purpose. There was a lot of fighting, they fought back with improvised weapons. Let no one ever say that they walked wearily to their deaths. They fought for themselves and their families with every ounce of strength they had.

Thousands were killed in gas chambers that night, the women, children, elderly and infirm. The rest were sent to work camps.

Germany only officially acknowledged this aspect of the holocaust in the early 80s. In the Former Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic Roma women were forced into sterilisation through a number of means, in the 70s, the 90s and into the 00's, with some reports that this is still ongoing.

The Roma are not a footnote in history. Their suffering was immeasurable, like so many others. In ways that some places will still not acknowledge or account for.

An upside down brown triangle.

I know some people have seen the news recently and may be doubtful of it. To the uninformed, Google Docs has started using AI to find "inappropriate" and "problematic" content, scraping your documents and deleting it. I know some people are unsure if this is real or think this is not going to affect them.

I regret to inform you that this is real.

As I was on a call with some writers and we were moving our documents as a precautionary measure, one person discovered entire pages missing that they did not delete themselves. This is happening to us, it's not a hoax or a rumor, it's happening right now. You need to move everything if you want to preserve it.

If you're a writer with writer mutuals, please reblog this so they know. I rarely write on Google Docs anymore, but I started my fanfics on there, and I would be devastated if I lost works more than ten years old because people decided marketing appeal is more important than creative freedom.

EDIT READ THIS: https://www.tumblr.com/bravehyde/790422701153157120/hi-can-we-have-any-sort-of-source-about-the

this excerpt is from the single article op uses as a source - a story about k. renee, an "open door" romance writer who had her documents restricted. "open door romance" refers to books where sex and intimate scenes take place on screen and in explicit detail; k. renee writes full on erotica. her works were restricted, with a warning message, not deleted out of no where. it is from over a year ago (may 2024, the incident took place in march 2024). the sentence is in front of you - adult content wasnt why the doc was restricted. google docs cannot and is not randomly deleting peoples works for having sex in it. and the article most certainly does not say that google is "using ai to find inappropriate content". the article mentions ai once, to say that k. renee had ai functions turned off and did not think that was the problem.

there is not a single other credible article about this happening to people and people in the notes havent given much testimony either. i, personally, have dozens of explicit works in my folders that ive shared with people and they havent been touched at all.

op has claimed they are looking for sources, but has also admitted they dont have them. like, guys. seriously. lets think rationally for a moment. do you think if google was mass deleting peoples works it would be this hard to find news stories about it? there are millions of erotica writers who use gdocs. its not just small fanfic writers, its published authors with companies and lawyers behind them. if google was deleting works abruptly there would be outrage. not to mention the amount of trouble they would get in with academics and scientists who use their platform - can you imagine years of someones research being completely deleted without any sort of warning by an incorrect ai flag? people would sue them. there would not be one tumblr post.