I can only speak for the US, but if you think covid isn’t a big deal anymore you are being lied to. on multiple levels.

First and most important, covid is airborne. It was always airborne. This is a well-established fact in the medical community and has been for awhile. What this means is that, in indoor spaces and crowded outdoor spaces, it is chilling in the air and you are inhaling it with every breath you take. The more virus you inhale, the sicker you will be. The gov knows it, the cdc knows it, everyone knows it. Nobody wants to say this to avoid accountability that they fucked up the initial response with a focus on droplets, and they don’t want “panic”. Plus it will obviously cost them more.

herd immunity was never, and is not going to be, a thing with this virus

You can and will get reinfected. And with every infection, you’re at higher risk of severe disease and organ damage, including your brain.

Two very large studies on Long Covid have recently come out, and in summary, it is very real and you don’t want this shit. It’s estimated that 1 in 5 infected people will get it and there is no cure yet. Even if we find one, organ and brain damage is not reversible.

covid is causing an increase in brain disorders

this is an LA emergency room today as of August 27 2022 It’s like this all over as you can see in the comments.

children are at significantly higher risk for covid complications

masking doesn’t hurt kids’ speech development

earloop masks don’t do shit to protect you at this point and this is well established in the medical community. It’s N95 or higher or you have very little protection. Any mask is better than no mask. If you have absolutely no choice but to use ear looped masks, a mask brace helps significantly

you can get a p100, a mask with even higher filtration than n95, on amazon for $30. This is the one I bought. Here are more p100 and elastomeric masks you can buy safely

here is an indepth video on how to perform a DIY fit test at home using instructions from the US Army. You should be doing this with every mask you have (if you’re curious as to why federal mask mandates were never enforced or even discussed, it’s because federal law mandates that companies have to fit test every employee if masks are required for airborne protection and they can’t/don’t want to figure out how to work around this for the general public. You need to fit test for a mask to work accurately.)

one of the key components to actually returning life to normal for everyone, including the disabled, is air filtration. The Corsi-Rosenthal Box is a cheap, open source air filter that’s on par with more expensive filtration systems. At it’s best, it reduces 80% of the covid inhalation dose, which is the equivalent of a group of people all wearing decent quality, fitting masks. This not only helps against covid, but also reduces exposure to other respiratory illnesses and even allergies! People all over the country are making these and donating them to schools, businesses, people in need, etc. Here’s a video on how to make one yourself and I highly recommend you do if you can. If you don’t like masks for whatever reason, this is how we get rid of them

here is an awesome thread about traveling during covid

If you’d like reviews on various types of masks and if they pass fit tests, this is the guy you wanna follow

if you’re looking for graphs and charts and statistics, you wanna follow this account

if you wanna know more about air filtration, literally everyone in the medical community worth their salt is constantly screaming about it on twitter, but I recommend following this guy

and if you want accurate information about covid, then you should follow one of the first whistleblowers for the disease. He’s been right about everything so far, and he’s also posting accurately about monkeypox

NOW HOW ABOUT A FEW GOOD THINGS??????

a very promising prophylactic for covid, called Evusheld, exists and has been authorized for emergency use in the US. If you are immunocompromised, over the age of 12, and 88+ pounds, please harass your GPD and pharmacy to give it to you!!!! It is actively being suppressed and the us gov isn’t buying supply, so most medical professionals don’t know it exists and will fight you about it. Even if you aren’t in the US, it’s available in over 100 countries!!!!!

Novavax is a new and very promising vaccine that would be effective for emerging variants, and it’s working better than the current vaccines to prevent infection. But, again, the US is refusing to buy supply and the FDA is dragging their feet because the current administration is pfizer’s bitch :)

also, in general, I know it sounds scary that covid is airborne, but we have a lot of airborne diseases, and we know how to fight them. They aren’t magic. We can and do manage them all the time. It’s just that for some reason (capitalism), we’ve decided not to this time.

but the information is still available. We don’t have to lie down and let this thing destroy our communities and isolate our disabled and vulnerable neighbors. We have the ability, at any time, to end this shit for real and make our local communities safer, with or without the gov’s help.

N95s are absolutely the gold standard, cloth masks don’t do anything anymore (the newly evolving variants are too virulent).

Make SURE you are getting real ones. Some companies have been taking advantage and selling fake N95s and KN95s, especially on Amazon. The last stat I read was something like 66% of N95s/KN95s on the market in the US are fake. Fake masks don’t have proper filtration and won’t protect you or others (I buy mine through Project N95 they also have guidelines for spotting fakes).

If someone is selling these masks and it they have no numbers printed on the mask it’s fake. If someone is selling N95s with fun print or rhinestones on them they’re fake. If someone is selling N95s sized for children they’re fake (there are real KN95s that are child sized).

Note on Novavax: it’s great for those who refuse to get or can’t tolerate the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna), as it is not an mRNA vaccine. That being said, Novavax and the mRNA vaccines all work and you should get whichever one is available to you. Even if you get sick (which breakthrough infections are becoming increasingly more common due to variants), the vaccine greatly decrease your risk of hospitalization, long COVID, death, and decreases your ability to spread the disease to others.

GET YOUR BIVALENT BOOSTER SHOT. Yes even if you got the last booster. Yes even if you got COVID already. Staying up to date is the best way to protect yourself and the most vulnerable people in your community. Getting re-infected is *not good*, and increases your chance of getting fucked up by COVID exponentially each time.

Have a plan for if you get sick, and help your community out if you know someone is sick. Make sure you have someone to get you groceries, offer to get someone else groceries. Some grocery stores will deliver or do contactless pickup. Some food pantries are providing extra aid to people isolating with COVID. Mutual aid is fucking crucial throughout all of this.

Talk to your doctor about treatment options *before* you get really sick, it’s not easy to get the medications for treatment, there can be a lot of hoops to jump through.

Also I just wanna add on to OP talking about Long COVID. I saw a thing a bit ago where someone put it really well. We talk a lot about COVID in terms of deaths, which is a staggering number, but not enough about COVID as a mass disabling event. Long COVID, even for young healthy people who got a mild case and have no pre-existing conditions, can be debilitating. COVID fucks with your entire body, from cardiovascular, to neurological stuff, to gastrointestinal: we find new stuff out every day. COVID in kids increases risk of developing diabetes, even in kids with no family risk of the disease.

The good news is that taking these measures for prevention really does work. Getting vaccinated works. Wearing a mask works. Air filtration works. Testing before gathering works.

The peddling by various politicians and even the CDC that the “pandemic is over” and “returning to normal” is absolute bullshit. The current masking guidelines after exposure/infection are a joke. It’s purely to pander to elections and try and “boost the economy post-pandemic”. It’s a fucking offense to essential workers, people in high-exposure jobs/populations, and everyone who is still getting sick.

Y’all we’re not “post-pandemic”, and pretending like we aren’t still in it anymore is just going to get more people really sick and put vulnerable/immunocompromised people at greater risk.

Lastly, get your vaccine NOW. Don’t wait until mid-winter. COVID funding is being cut at the federal level, there won’t be anymore funding for vaccines, treatment, tests, etc. It’s all going to private insurance. Many vaccine clinics, aid programs, and public health programs are ending. Local public health organizations are doing their best to try and prepare for increased demand but it’s not gonna be great.

Also the current flu circulating is bad and flu season this year started in July so get that vaccine too for all of the reasons I just mentioned.

Firefox with build in tracker protection

Ublock Origin adblocker for Firefox

Adguard adblocker for firefox, for everything that gets past Ublock

Mullvad VPN, one of the most reliable, cheapest and safest VPNs at the moment

DuckDuckGo android app that blocks trackers for every app on your phone

DuckDuckGo for firefox for blocking trackers and the likes

SponsorBlock for firefox, skips the sponsor segments of youtube videos

Adaway Adblocker for android (works much better with root access but doesn't require it)

Is there any benefit to using multiple ad blockers at once? I honestly don't know, but I haven't seen a single ad on the internet in ages and I get to use this image:

ICE agents are cruising areas with immigrant-owned businesses, and kidnapping patrons and employees alike. Yesterday they abducted two US citizen employees at a suburban Target, one who was begging them to allow him to go get his passport to show them.

ICE is going door to door in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, asking residents where their immigrant neighbors live. Read that again. If it sounds like something out of your high school history textbook, that’s because it is.

ICE is targeting schools and school buses. They pepper sprayed teenagers and abducted two school staff members at the high school up the street from me on Wednesday. Police are literally escorting school buses to ensure children can get to school and home safely. The Minneapolis Public Schools have moved to virtual learning for the next 4 weeks because it’s unsafe for children or teachers to physically come to school.

They are targeting hospitals and clinics. Patients are scared and are cancelling their appointments or just not showing up. Kids are missing their checkups and vaccines, folks aren’t getting their cancer care, etc.

They are smashing windows in cars and homes.

ICE is increasingly picking up Native Americans—again, targeting folks based on skin color alone.

They are arresting and beating legal observers. A friend of a friend had her arm broken yesterday. Folks are showing up at local hospitals, brought in in ICE custody, with severe injuries that are absolutely inconsistent with mechanism of injury reported by ICE. (Think: patient appears to have been beaten unconscious, while ICE agent says he slipped and fell.) I can’t emphasize enough that these ICE agents do not have warrants. There are 2,000+ agents here and they are simply hunting for anyone that’s not white. It doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen or a green card holder, they will kidnap you first and ask questions later. But the community is fighting back.

Protests are happening every day.

Community groups have been leading know-your-rights sessions for months, often to packed venues.

Whistles are being distributed by the thousands, carried on keychains and worn on coat zippers, always at the ready to be blown in warning if ICE is spotted.

Drivers are following ICE vehicles, blaring their horns in warning.

Businesses are locking their doors even while open to keep employees and customers safe. As I type this, I’m standing guard at the locked door of our neighborhood burrito joint while I wait for my takeout order, so the employees can focus on their jobs. The place is packed with neighbors supporting this small business.

Anti-ICE signs are posted everywhere. The community is making it crystal clear that ICE is not welcome here.

Parents and neighbors are standing guard outside schools, organizing carpools, and escorting kids to and from school on foot.

Parents of kids in Spanish-immersion daycare (there are a LOT of these daycares here!) are keeping their kids home so the teachers don’t have to take the risk of coming to work.

Churches and community groups are holding fundraisers to buy and deliver groceries to families who don’t feel safe leaving home.

DO NOT CALL THE REGULAR POLICE.

If ice wants access to someone on your property, do NOT hand them over unless you are shown a warrant signed by a judge! Make as much noise as you can to attract bystanders - it was the fact that a crowd gathered and started yelling at them that made ice leave in the video. And DO NOT expect the regular police to help you - they are just another arm of the state and will only do or say whatever they think is necessary to make you comply.

All I have left of my family are my wife and children... Help me protect what's left of them.

$8,702 out of $50,000

i come from a long line of clocky cis women. i've spent my life alienated from my assigned birth gender because of my size and the way i look. i'm nonbinary, but being ostracized/excluded from female groups was a source of pain and fear when i was young, since i was desperately trying to fix what was "wrong" with me, and was terrified my repeated failure to be read as a capital W Woman by cis people would result in my being outed as queer. when i grew up and left home, the closest i ever got to feeling like a woman was when i made friends with transfems. not because of a shared misery or pain - though being able to safely talk about my internal struggle with gender openly was cathartic. because of COMMUNITY and shared joy. i learned to destroy the idea that being a woman meant looking only one kind of way or having only one kind of body. i was around women who looked and sounded like me, who provided the kind of female friendship i'd desperately wanted my entire life. if the afab transfems could get out of their own way, they could define their identity and their experience as women by something other than pain and loneliness. sorry if this comes off as weird or rude in any way, i just really liked your post.

next Tuesday I need 1000 thousand euros so that my father can leave Gaza to Egypt for surgery after he was shot by an Israeli sniper.

https://gofund.me/68daab3e

This was meant to be a quick warm up, but it turned into a comic that I’ve wanted to draw for a while. This is something that is extremely important to me, and I appreciate it if you read it.

A while ago, I heard a story that broke my heart. A family went a cat shelter to adopt. The daughter fell in love with a 3-legged cat. The father straight up said “absolutely not”. Because he was missing a leg. That cat was that close to having a family that loved him, but the missing leg held him back. Why?!

Many people have the initial instinct of “nope” when they see an imperfect animal. I get it, but less-adoptable does NOT mean less loveable. 9 out of 10 people will choose a kitten over an adult cat. And those 10% that would get an adult cat often overlook “different” animals.

All I want people to do is be open to the idea of having a “different” pet in their lives. Choose the pet that you fall in love with, but at least give all of them a fair shot at winning your heart.

This is Lenore. I first saw her in a little cage at the Petco I frequent (I used to take my parents’ dog in for puppy play time), and she looked like the grouchiest, old, crotchety cat in the world, and I fell instantly in love. She was cranky, she was anti-social, hanging out at the back of her cage. Her fur was matted because she wouldn’t let the groomers near her.

She was perfect.

But I didn’t have a place for her. I wasn’t living in my own space yet, and where I was, I wasn’t allowed cats. So I pressed my face to the bars of her cage and I promised that if no one had adopted her by the time I’d bought a house, I would come back for her.

I visited her every week for over six months while I looked for a house. At one point, they had to just shave her entire rear-end because the mats of fur were so bad. They told me she clawed the heck outta the groomer that did it, screamed the entire time, and spent the next two days growling at anyone that came near the cage.

A couple of weeks later, I closed on my house. I went back and I got an employee, and I said: “That one. I need that cat.”

They got the paperwork and the lady who ran the rescue that was bringing the cats in told me that Lenore (at the time, Lila) was 8 years old, had been owned by an elderly lady who had died, and brought in to a different rescue, who’d had her for six months on top of the time I’d been seeing her at Petco.

This kitty had been living in a 3x3’ cube for over a YEAR because she was older and “less adoptable.”

I signed the paperwork, put her in a cat carrier, and drove her to my new home. I had pretty much nothing; a bed, an old couch, a couple of bookcases, and a tank of mice I called “Cat TV”. I let her out of the carrier and onto my bed, and I told her “I told you I would come back for you when I had a place. It’s not much, but it’s yours too now.”

Lenore spent the next three days straight purring non-stop. She followed me around the house purring. Sat next to me purring. Slept next to me purring. Leaning into every touch, purring, purring, always purring. She still purrs if you so much as think about petting her. She’s amazing, and I love her.

REGISTER FOR LENVAL BROWN'S "VOICE OF THE NARRATOR" EVENT WITH WORKSHOPS4GAZA HERE

Saturday, Oct. 19 3-5pm EST

This workshop will feature voice actor and musician Lenval Brown, who narrated the widely popular role playing game Disco Elysium. Released in 2019, Disco Elysium is a video game whose surreal yet politically lucid narrative places the player in fictional post-revolutionary Martinaise, Revachol. Its 2021 update added full narrative voiceover work by Brown. Join Lenval for a benefit livestream where he will play the game and talk about his experience as a voice actor for Disco Elysium.

Lenval Brown is a voice actor known for his narration role in the award-winning RPG Disco Elysium. He also appeared as Sisyphus Prime in "Ultrakill" and narrated many of the episodes for the 2022 PC Gamer short documentary series "Tales From The Hard Drive." He is the lead singer of a South London 8 piece ska band called Maroon Town. He lives in London.

I forget exactly where I saw the initial post asking for volunteers, but on July 10th, I reached out to the listed email. Jane, the organizer, got back to me right away and within an hour I was added in their discord.

Up until this point, I had been maintaining an average 8 ESims myself, so I already had experience checking in on them on a daily basis. The folks there helped me onboard with the spreadsheets for keeping track, and now it's very easy for me to catalog new ones I buy and record daily data usage. The whole process takes me maybe 20-40 minutes a day depending now on how many ESims actually need to be topped off.

Jane has been very up front with lots of the group's information, with frequent announcements about the groups current funds and amounts of daily ESims sent out. She and the others have been super helpful with getting funds to us when needed, and I've almost never had to actually spend any of my own money for any of this.

In the time that I've been volunteering, they figured out how to run a Business account with the Nomad ESim company. Which means that now and then they can just send 15 or so ESims my way, and I just catalog them and send the QRcodes towards Mirna and the Connecting Gaza folks. No more wasting time with the purchasing process, while getting a bit of a bulk discount on top of that.

We also share updates on whatever brand of ESims are most needed. When folks on the ground tell us that one network doesn't seem reliable, we are able to switch over for a while until either the networking issue is fixed, or we all pressure customer service enough to replace them for us.

There's also lots of complaining about new UI updates an general website bugs. There's surprisingly a lot of them and it's good to know other folks are getting info from customer service when things go wrong.

In August they made a meme channel

Anyways....

Lets get into some stats for myself. In 2 months (July 10- Sept12) I have:

Send off 171 ESims

Maintained around 60 active ones

Topped up these active ESims 139 times

Spend over $6400 donated dollars

I have multiple power users who have burned through close to 100GB. 2 of them have broken 200GB. These are most likely being used as hot spots.

Why am I sharing all of this? Mostly to show how easy it has been to make a marginal difference. I have helped at least 60 people stay connected with the outside world in just 2 months. Probably more if we assume some of the power users becoming hotspots for other folks. This is 20-40 minutes of my time a day, and I honestly regret not signing up to do this sooner.

I was specifically limiting myself to this workload because I wanted to test the waters. Those stats was me specifically not wanting to push myself and see what impact a normal person could make with 20 minutes a day. At this point I think I will be taking more advantage of Nomad's Tuesday discounts to really bulk up my numbers. It's pretty easy to buy 15 or so every Tuesday, and then send em over.

If you would like to join us in this endeavor, please reach out to Jane at cripsforesimsforgaza(at)gmail

We are specifically looking for people in European time zones, since a lot of us are in the Americas and that's quite a difference between us and Gaza. If not, that's no problem!

If you can't participate, that's totally fine, but please donate what you can! Folks like you are the ones who keep us going!

I'm worried I'm going to lose my friend but all we can do now is wait. If you want to support them further Mahmoud's wife posted her sister's paypal which will be used to pay for medicine and solutions that can help clean his wound.

however, after almost 2 weeks of extremely spotty connection, we've heard from mohammed again, and he's going to need to raise his goal. he's providing for 27 family members in total, and as we approach the one-year mark of this ongoing genocide, conditions in gaza are still only getting worse.

please keep sharing this post and donating to his campaign. mohammed is trying his best to make it to a hotspot in the next few days, and as soon as i hear from him, i'll let you all know any relevant details. in the meantime, he wanted me to let you all know that he is incredibly grateful for the help you've given so far, and he hopes that you can find it in your hearts to keep supporting this absolutely critical lifeline for him and his family.