Do not fear your fate.

Link to mutual aid initiatives.

Recently I made some polls that would help me figure out who can afford to donate how much. I will base the following 'categories' based on the answers I received.

Preface: This is NOT a personal budgetting guide. This is just about telling you where you can donate what you've already decided you can afford to set aside for the month / week. Furthermore, if you have to struggle to scrape by, I strongly urge you to reconsider donating. There are others who can afford to donate and you should focus on urging them to do so and sharing fundraisers with them. You should also follow this guide on a dynamic basis. I.E. if you suddenly find yourself out of a job, don't keep donating weekly just because you used to. Likewise if you suddenly score a six figures, please consider increasing the amount / frequency you donate.

If you don't want to follow this guide, don't!! If you prefer donating differently, do so. This guide is exclusively for people who aren't sure what to do and need a little bit of a system but don't know how to start making one.

PS: please do not share what category you belong to in my notes or whatever. I don't need to know.

Those who can afford to donate daily:

According to the poll there's about 9 of you who can afford to donate daily. If you can afford to donate daily, it matches up with the amount of fundraisers for individual families that I queue to post on my blog per day. Please prioritize families that are struggling with difficult healthcare issues, or families who have one or more disabled members who need expensive specialized care. You can find fundraisers to donate to on the lists linked in my pinned post. I personally think this would be helpful because it provides these families in need with that extra help they need. Look out for the fundraisers that I post daily on my blog, or alternatively if you can't pick one you can consult gazafunds, which picks a fundraiser for you if you feel you can't choose one yourself. The people who run the website vet every fundraiser listed there as well.

Those who can afford to donate weekly:

There's far more of you who can donate weekly rather than daily ~ 40-50. I think most effectively it would be best to ask you to donate to mutual aid initiatives for 2 weeks in a row, and then to alternate on the 3rd week and donate to some of the individual fundraisers, prioritarily for people who are in need of medical aid. Having a large amount of people donating to mutual aid efforts every week helps make sure that people are fed through the week and allows for a steady stream of support over time. However it also helps to have people sustain the individual fundraisers with the little extra boost they need outside of the daily donators. This is why I think alternating between both would be most help.

Those who can afford to donate monthly & less often than monthly:

This is the largest donator group and for that reason I strongly urge you to donate to mutual aid groups. Because it consolidates a small amount of donations from hundreds of people and causes the most widespread positive effect. Mutual aid initiatives reach the people who cannot advocate for themselves online and who have no means to ask for donations themselves.

📷 Frans Mäyrä

Young Deer/Jungfern Rehn (1943) by Franz Traunfellner

Bust-a-Move 3000 / Super Bust-a-Move / Super Puzzle Bobble All-Stars

System BIOS (DSi)

Game Boy Camera

New Pokémon Snap

Tamagotchi Smart

Tamagotchi

Shadowgun: War Games

Hello

I hope you are doing well. I am reaching out to you with a humble heart during this blessed month of Ramadan.

My family and I are currently in Gaza, and we have lost everything. We are struggling to secure even the most basic necessities like food and clean water. Ramadan is usually a time of warmth and shared meals, but this year we cannot provide iftar for our children.

Our children are very young, and it breaks our hearts to see them go without. Our little girl, Habiba, especially needs milk and diapers, and we are unable to afford them.

I know many people are asking for help, and it is not easy to choose who to support. But if you can find it in your heart to help our family, even a small contribution would make a huge difference for us. If you are unable to donate, simply sharing our message would also mean so much.

Thank you for taking the time to read our message. May your kindness be returned to you many times over.

With gratitude and hope.

vetted by @gazavetters, and (#287) on their list of verified campaigns.

He is my favorite astronaut for any number of reasons, but he’s also one of my favorite visual artists.

Like, look at this stuff????

It’s all so expressive and textured and colorful! He literally painted his own experience on the moon! And that's just really fucking cool to me!

Just look at this! This is one of my absolute favorite emotions of all time. Is Anyone Out There? is like the ultimate reaction image. Any time I have an existential crisis, this is how I picture myself.

And then there's this one:

The Fantasy

For all of the six Apollo missions to land on the moon, there was no spare time. Every second of their time on the surface was budgeted to perfection: sleeping, eating, putting on the suits, entering and exiting the LEM, rock collection, setting up longterm experiments to transmit data back to Earth, everything. These timetables usually got screwed over by something, but for the most part the astronauts stuck to them.

The crew of Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Al Bean, and Dick Gordon) had other plans. Conrad and Bean had snuck a small camera with a timer into the LEM to take a couple pictures together on the moon throughout the mission. They had hidden the key for the timer in one of the rock collection bags, with the idea being to grab the key soon after landing, take some fun photos here and there, and then sneak the camera back to Earth to develop them. They had practiced where they would hide the key and how to get it out from under the collected rocks back on Earth dozens of times.

But when they got to the moon, the key was nowhere to be found. Al Bean spent precious time digging through the collection bags before he called it off. The camera had been pushing their luck anyways, he couldn't afford to spend anymore time not on the mission objectives. Conrad and Bean continued the mission as per the NASA plan while Dick Gordon orbited overhead.

Fast forward to the very end of the mission. Bean and Conrad are doing last checks of the LEM before they enter for the last time and depart from the moon. As Bean is stowing one of the collection bags, the camera key falls out. The unofficially planned photo time has come and gone, and he tosses the key over his shoulder to rest forever on the surface of the moon.

This painting, The Fantasy, is that moment. There have never been three people on the moon at the same time, there was never an unofficial photo shoot on the moon, this picture could never have happened.

"The most experienced astronaut was designated commander, in charge of all aspects of the mission, including flying the lunar module. Prudent thinking suggested that the next-most-experienced crew member be assigned to take care of the command module, since it was our only way back home. Pete had flown two Gemini flights, the second with Dick as his crewmate. This left the least experienced - me - to accompany the commander on the lunar surface.

"I was the rookie. I had not flown at all; yet I got the prize assignment. But not once during the three years of training which preceded our mission did Dick say that it wasn't fair and that he wished he could walk on the moon, too. I do not have his unwavering discipline or strength of character.

This is his art.

You can't forget this, the first art made in space.