Pop off, my liege

This is going to be a really hard pill to swallow, but the truth is you might not be able to balance all your hobbies and all your projects the way you'd like. If you want to finish writing that book, you might have to reduce your daily drawing habit to a couple of times a week. If you want to do yoga every morning, you might have to accept not cooking from scratch as often. If you want to spend more time with your family, you might have to cut down on your yearly reading goal. I'm not saying give up on your hobbies; I'm be realistic with your time and your energy and be kind to yourself. Stop expecting yourself to do more and do better every single year. You don't have to constantly be growing upwards and reaching for the stars; you can be content with where you are, or even cut parts of yourself back to make space for other things in your life to bloom.

None of you were ugly.

The other day I found a class picture from fourth grade and I looked everyone in it, and then I saw the “ugly girl” – the one people constantly harassed, whose desk kids would pretend was contaminated, the one kids would invent complex songs about just to voice their disgust toward her.

And she looked like a normal little girl.

She looked no different than the rest of the class.

She was never ugly. And I know that you may be thinking to yourself “but I WAS ugly” – I just want you to consider for a moment that maybe you weren’t.

Maybe you were tormented by your peers for no reason except that they were experimenting with and learning the rules of callous human cruelty that would define the rest of their lives – and recognizing this, the adults who should have protected you, let it happen. Cruelty and social shaming – the foundations of how human beings police their society is learned and it is practiced.

Since I’ve become an adult, I don’t recall ever seeing an “ugly” kid. Kids are all just strange-looking works in progress that the artist seems to have abandoned intending to finish them later.

I want you to think about our racist and unhealthy “standards of beauty”. Are any of the things that society fixates on as “ugly” truly ugly? No. We take things that are beautiful and we associate them with ugliness and badness and coarseness – to control them – to batter the will of the already oppressed down to the point where they think the abuse they receive is justified.

The children who demeaned you were learning to crush the human spirit to the point where the target internalizes all that hate and keeps hating themselves even when the bullies are no longer there. Those children were learning the sadism that defines our social hierarchy – we live in a culture where success is achieved through exploiting others.

No one deserves to be treated that way. LGBT children shouldn’t grow up ashamed of themselves. Black children shouldn’t grow up thinking white children are inherently prettier.

You were not ugly. You were told you were ugly so that people could have an “excuse” to target you, to ostracize you, to other you, and to abuse you.

An “ugly child” wouldn’t know they were ugly until someone TOLD them they were. They don’t grow up ugly, they grow up emotionally abused.

And still if you feel that you were the exception and you were objectively and unquestionably so ugly as a child that everyone noticed – even if you feel you are still that ugly now…

That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve love. It doesn’t mean you won’t find love, and trust and happiness.

You are worthy of respect. You have worth. You have value.

And if the rest of the world doesn’t seem to notice your worth – look at the evil and vile things the world does value and count yourself lucky not to be among that number.

There are people who will see your worth. There are people who will look at you and not see “ugliness” – they will see a friend, a mentor, a hero and even, yes, a lover.

Her family's fundraising has been vetted by 90-ghost and shared by fairuzfan.

You can donate to her family's campaign here:

GoFundMe (hosted by @cannilyuncanny)

great question. while a lot of these gofundmes started to fund evacuations, since the border will not open they have shifted to covering the costs of daily survival in gaza

the cost of food alone in gaza right now has been reported by journalists on the ground (including @siraj2024) to be 20 times the normal price.

and it varies based on location. the north is currently being starved by the IOF so food prices are higher

and there is a lot of evidence on tumblr that proves that these fundraisers do help

@ma7moudgaza2 was able to buy a tent for his family and is currently trying to pay for a solar panel

@siraj2024 was able to secure rent for a (bombed out, but still) apartment for his family over the winter

@mohdiwais was able to fund medical care for his sister after she was shot by the IOF using funds he raised on tumblr

a gaza-based charity called care for gaza has also been directly assisting families with funds used from their gofundme. they even post videos of themselves giving out food

The pace of difficult events happened to my family in an accelerated and unexpected manner, like anyone living in Gaza.

I left my house, which was demolished, with the death of ten members of my family. I left with only the clothes I was wearing and was displaced more than 9 times. Every time you are displaced, you buy new clothes and new special supplies because the army orders for evacuation are quick and often at night and in the dark, so you just leave without taking anything. The aid helped me provide medicine, which was not available and was very expensive, and provide special needs, a medical wheelchair, and saved my sister’s life. She is now fine among her children. It also helped me buy a solar panel to charge phones and contact with my family and my dear friends (yesterday I updated that on GoFundMe). It also helped me buy more than one tent for my family because my family is large.

Please don’t forget that there are still many Palestinian families who really need your help right now. If you have the means, visit gazafunds.com or open this spreadsheet of vetted GFMs and donate whatever you can spare. Even if you don’t think it’s much, anything you can give can and will help.

SPECIAL MENTION:

whether we like it or not, we are complicit in this genocide. either because of our silence, or because our tax money if being used to bomb them. i thought that people would be more eager to help gazans, trying to 'reverse' the damage somehow.

contrary to what i thought, people are moving on. they're moving on from the al-shifa hospital strike, they're moving on from refugee camp massacres and from school bombings, they're moving on from dead children and orphaned children.

please don't be indifferent. help my friend alaa amsse [ @alaakh998 ]. she urgently needs money to buy a new tent. she needs medicine for her sick son. her tent was flooded and she needs to buy supplies. please please help her if you have the means to. her fundraiser has been verified by 90-ghost and the butterfly project (#307).

We have faced heartbreak after heartbreak, moving from one unsafe place to another, never knowing where safety might be. Each day is filled with uncertainty, fear, and grief. All I seek is a chance to rise above these overwhelming circumstances, to protect my family from the horrors of destruction and death, and to find a safe haven where we can rebuild our lives in peace.

Your support could be the light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. Please help us reach a place of safety and hope, where my child can grow up without the fear that has shadowed our lives for too long. Every donation, no matter how small, brings us one step closer to that dream.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your compassion and generosity.

Is it ? Is it really ? Let me break down the everyday economy in Gaza in the simplest terms I can for you:

Everyone wants to get out of Gaza. This is the primary thing you need to understand. Everyone needs money so they can pay predatory Egyptian border guards to be let through. But since the border is currently completely closed, they mostly need money to buy everyday things and provide for their families.

This is where Gaza's record inflation comes in. Everyone wants to get out as soon as possible so everyone wants to accumulate enough money as soon as possible, including vendors who are selling supplies and food in the first place.

Our current society makes us blind to the relation between product and producer but understand this: almost every vendor in Gaza is Gazan themselves and they have families who they need to take care of as well. This requires money.

@iyadsobhegaza and @rubashsblog (who this commenter was accusing) can't just wait till they've reached their final goal to withdraw the money. They need to withdraw whatever ammount they need every couple of days so they can continue buying supplies. Their campaign has been going for several months and they've been withdrawing from it based on what they need for all those months.

Say they raise $100 one day and know that the next day, they will need to buy medicine and vegetables. A box of meds costs $50 and a couple of vegetables together also cost around $50. So when they withdraw the $100 they raise that day, that means it's been used up.

This combined with the inflation means that money gets used up really fast. Furthermore, the ammount that the p*yp*l shows they have raised does not reflect the ammount they have saved up. It is simply the ammount that has been donated so far.

They have raised exactly $24 USD in the past day.

That's $1 per hour. The minimum wage in the US is $7 per hour. That is already very little, so why are you making them have to go by with even less ? They haven't raised anything even close to $100 for the past several days.

Eman, their organiser who is in Egypt (since p*yp*l doesn't work in Palestine), can't send them these meager amounts because p*yp*l and predatory banks have high transfer fees which will eat up everything if she tries to send it.

They literally have no money.

Now that that's over, I won't take up even more of your time. Here's the current most important points:

Both Iyad and Ruba have gotten their previous GFMs fucked over and lost $38k in total.

Ruba recently got a terrible stomach injury during displacement

Iyad has diabetes and fluctuating blood pressure which impacts his mobility. He needs meds for this.

Winter has come to Gaza and Iyad has several small children who he needs to keep warm and healthy.

They literally just got displaced a few days ago and had to spend all their savings on re-buying their tents and supplies

Yes, they're vetted. (No. 90 and 173 on the spreadsheet)

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admitting powerlessness outside the voting booth means you concede you have no power over kamala and you've conceded all your negotiating power in the voting booth. we've had exactly one year of seeing that the democrats will not be moved by popular protest, will adopt restrictions on free speech so authoritarian it has prompted a warning from the UN human rights office of the high commissioner (to absolutely zero reaction from either the party or its base) and will embrace dick cheney, brett mcgurk and all the architects of worst war crimes of the bush administration

you guys can talk about realism all you like, but i also think you're vastly underestimating that fascism doesn't just come from conservatives waving a red hat, it can come from neoliberals—i am speaking to you as someone with experience in this exact phenomenon who lives in your future.

there are people who care about this and there are people who don't, but i don't respect the people who pretend to care about it and then lie to you. they're lying when they tell you organizing will be easier under kamala, or that they will 'continue to fight the good fight' once she's elected, because if they were going to do that they would be doing it now, when it's most urgent, and they clearly aren't. they're campaigning for her, as she continues to endorse policies and wars so abhorrent even reagan would cringe. the only people really trying to do both are the democrats of the uncommitted campaign and its ilk, who are being continuously humiliated by this administration even as they desperately beg for any concession they can grasp. it is a questionable approach.

the difference between me and the people telling you to vote blue no matter who isn't that i necessarily care about you voting or not voting, it's that i think the people who tell you to vote are not telling you the truth about what you're voting for. they're telling you you might get some nominal policy protections for queer rights, but they won't question if this is a sufficient payoff for relinquishing the rights and lives of millions of people across the world. under trump you would be relinquishing your own rights, certainly, but i think it is insidious to be voting for 95% of trump's policies and then balk at the remaining 5% because they affect you personally, and have the audacity to claim losing your health insurance is equal to being vaporized by a bunker buster bomb in your own home (especially when MANY of you lost your health insurance under biden already).

i think it's insidious that the people telling you to vote are not telling you that your vote for some nominal policy improvements in your life is at the cost of co-signing some of the worst crimes in modern history. this is the reality of voting for kamala, this is the reality of conceding your power to her. this isn't something to be taken lightly and it's not something that can be brushed aside as strategy.

this is also in the difference between voting for someone and endorsing or campaigning for them, a dichotomy we saw with chappell roan last week, who struggled to articulate this basic principle while other celebrities warmly pinkwashed and purplewashed kamala's despicable platform. if you're voting for kamala in self-preservation, as the lesser evil, as the trolley problem agony as so many of you are claiming to, then you wouldn't exactly be shouting that choice from the rooftops. you would be angry that you're being forced to vote for genocide.

'well, what do i do?' you're going to ask. you can do whatever you feel is right. vote for kamala, don't vote for kamala, vote down the ballot, get militant about your local politics, do whatever you think is right. but when it comes to the presidential election a year ago i felt like pressuring her was the right strategy, and unlike the uncommitted movement i don't believe in bluffing. the pressure didn't work, she fucked her constituents over to continue killing children in the middle east, and she shouldn't win. this is my personal opinion, i have my justifications for it based on my own life experiences. you don't have to agree.

the question is, what do you do when you vote for her and nothing changes? what are you going to do about the genocide? what are you going to do about the regional war in the middle east? what are you going to do about people dying at your border? what solutions do the voting realists have for you now? they have nothing. just vote some more. when it's millions of your own people (when it's your entire country) on the chopping block, you'll start to see how this strategy is fucking useless.

the accelerationists (people who believe trump winning will usher in broader support for antifascist movements, empower the left and force people to confront the structural realities in place that allow fascism to breed) had a weak argument in october 2023.

the anti-racism movement (arm) is fundraising to help support migrant workers during this time.

arm-lebanon's instagram

donate here

A small donation can make a big difference 🙏🍉🇵🇸

I am Noureddine from Gaza, I am 32 years old, and I stand before you as a person trying to achieve healing.

I am married and the father of two children. My wife gave birth to my second son, 4 months old, in the war

He was born during the war and in very harsh conditions that no human being can bear. Our family moved from the hospital directly to the tent, and I cannot describe the extent of the suffering and difficulty of living in the tent

‎We have been forced to go to Al-Hawl more than 7 times, and the burden has been completely lifted, and there is not enough cheese, medicine, and vitamins for my children. Now he specializes in the livestock in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, in the tent. Life is very difficult in the tent, there are harmful insects.

It is difficult for me to find the words to describe what we face every day in Gaza. No food, no medicine, no clean drinking water, oppression, helplessness, psychological pressures, doubts, and daily trauma due to the loss of loved ones. In Gaza, it's not just hunger and fear; Rather, it means actual death.

During the ten months, I have no source of income at all.

Every day I struggle to bring in food for my children

Nour is a family friend of Mohiy (currently @/mohiy-gaza2) and Wafa (currently @/wafaaresh6), you can see 90-ghost's reblog of both of their campaigns here and here.

Tagging for reach:

@a-shade-of-blue @ana-bananya @amvs

@c-u-c-koo-4-40k @90-ghost @appsa

@schoolhater @transmutationisms @eastgaysian

@dlxxv-vetted-donations @ot3 @northgazaupdates2

@ibtisams

@magnus-rhymes-with-swagness @komsomolka

Please Share, and consider donating if you have the means. Minimum donations can be the reason a gofundme succeeds!

Even if you can't donate, Sharing still helps by getting more eyes and support on the campaign.

its always been really obvious who considers genocide just another day in US foreign policy and who considers it a red line but it's really disappointing to see how easy it has been for democrats to exploit the idea of "palestinian rights or your rights? shut up about genocide or vote for trump?"

this is a false dichotomy. you are under no obligation to perpetuate it. vote for whoever you want but don't say say the biden administration supports a ceasefire because this is disinformation

white house propaganda #1: kamala has called for a ceasefire

since january the white house has rebranded a "humanitarian pause" as a ceasefire

joe biden has called for "a ceasefire" since february

in may joe biden said rafah was a red line and the US would not support the invasion of rafah (rafah has since been invaded and destroyed, after which netanyahu was invited to congress)

in early may the white house proposed a three-step plan to an actual ceasefire, which israel rejected and then killed the hamas leader they were negotiating with

the white house has not been forthcoming about israel being the one rejecting the ceasefire, nor israel's escalation within the region

the white house has not been forthcoming about the contradiction between "calling for a ceasefire" and continued weapons shipments to the people preventing a ceasefire

as such, the repeated calls for "ceasefire," just like the articles about biden's strongly worded calls to netanyahu, are political threatre to pacify the masses that have allowed a genocide to continue for ten months unabated. insofar, kamala's call for ceasefire is exactly the same as biden's call for ceasefire.

white house propaganda #2: the biden admin has actually stopped sending offensive weapons to israel

literally untrue: the US paused ONE shipment of 2,000 pound bombs and some 500 pound bombs in may after denouncing a potential rafah invasion, then resumed the 500 pound bombs in july after the invasion occurred with multiple massacres

a 3.5 billion military aid package was sent on august 9th, 2024, to be spent on pretty much whatever israel wants

previously imposed symbolic "sanctions" on only one unit of the IDF accused of crimes against humanity was overturned

imposed "sanctions" on 7 (seven!) extremist settlers were clarified to make sure they still had access to their assets

the biden admin opposed ICC warrants on israel as early as 2021, leading to consistent delays in the ICC doing its job, and rejected the announcement for warrants in 2024, which have still not been actually sought due to the US continuing to exert pressure against the ICC

the white house also criticized the advisory finding from the international court of justice that israel is an apartheid state

the white house has vetoed multiple security council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in gaza

the white house vetoed resolutions calling for the admission of palestine as a member state

the white house also called the case for genocide at the ICJ "unfounded" although the ICJ did find sufficient evidence for genocide and had imposed provisionary measures (which israel did not fulfill)

the white house has reaffirmed full backing for israel "against iran" even after its escalatory assassinations of both lebanese and palestinian political leaders, and deployed more troops, aircraft carriers, and missile cruisers to the middle east in august

therefore, while the biden admin acknowledges that israel stands in the way of a ceasefire, they are not pressuring israel to stop and instead providing both diplomatic immunity and military support to its escalatory actions in the region

white house propaganda #3: the US can't control israel, it acts on its own, and kamala can't do anything about it

once again, reagan ended the israeli invasion of lebanon with a single phone call to menachem begin, where he intentionally said "it looks like a holocaust"

since obama, every single US president has been fostering and empowering increasingly extremist elements within israel, moreso than republicans who came before them, including bush(!!)

while trump moved the capital to jerusalem, defunded UNRWA, and approved annexation of the west bank, biden... did not move the capital back, also defunded the UNRWA, and has overseen the largest theft of west bank territory since the peace process began, as well as delisting kahanist terrorists from the terror list after they joined netanyahu's cabinet.

how much does israel actually rely on US weaponry? that's impossible to tell, but national security correspondent greg myre told NPR:

The IDF is a primarily American-equipped military. Most soldiers probably still have the M-16s. And there are certain kinds of artillery and guided rocket systems that Israel produces, but, again, most of it is American. Tanks are actually made in Israel but with an American engine, and aircraft are American. These are American-made systems. [...] So Israel has its own advanced military technology. It's been a leader in drone warfare. The Iron Dome system, we noted, was developed jointly between the U.S. and Israel. A lot of cyber systems have military applications. But when it comes to the hardware - planes, artillery, guns - it does rely heavily on the U.S.

the US might not have as much influence on israel as it used to (and certainly israel would like to think so) but in the most basic compliance with international law the US can halt weapons shipments and recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC and ICJ, ending the diplomatic immunity it affords israel in the international arena to continue its genocide of gaza.

the UK is hardly much better, but it has withdrawn its intention to block the ICC warrants for israeli leaders and it has resumed funding the UNRWA, two low bar concessions that the US has refused.

these are regular political maneuvers. your civil rights should not be held hostage so the US can protect israel. it makes no sense for democrats to frame it that way while also claiming to want a ceasefire.

if kamala wants a ceasefire, why isn't she agreeing with the pro-palestine movement? their demands are all things that are in-line with wanting a ceasefire. an arms embargo is the natural step to a ceasefire, because you cannot say you want a ceasefire and then send 3.5 billion in military aid to the people who assassinated the negotiators for a ceasefire.

if kamala wants a ceasefire, and you want to vote for kamala, then you should encourage her to take the steps towards a ceasefire. otherwise you are running cover for genocide, just as biden's admin has been doing. your civil rights are not based on continued support for palestinian genocide, and they shouldn't be. to pretend otherwise is a betrayal of all the civil rights activists in the US, who knew that US foreign policy, from the war in vietnam to the iraq war, were unjust imperial wars, and they opposed them unconditionally, regardless of who was perpetrating this war.

propublica investigation on anthony blinken lying to congress about israel preventing humanitarian aid in order to continue sending arms to israel

israel launches war on lebanon with the highest first-day death toll in recent memory

The death count is also one of the highest daily tolls in recent global wars, and could rise because people are still believed to be trapped under the rubble in Lebanon. War death tolls are estimates, and exact comparisons between conflicts are difficult. But the toll on Monday in Lebanon exceeded most daily tolls in Gaza over the past year and more than doubled the average daily death rate during the deadliest year of the Syrian civil war.

despite this, the US refuses to admit this is an escalation of israeli aggression, nor a regional war despite the DNC changing its language on lebanon:

instead the US is calling this "de-escalation through escalation" also known as "war is peace" also known as war-mongering propaganda

the US has since sent more troops to the current 40,000 troops stationed in the middle east to support israel

the US has (today, september 26th 2024) secured 8.6 billion in military aid to israel as netanyahu prepared to address the UN in nyc

i think we can dispense with the idea that the democratic party (and of course, the republican party) has any interest in de-escalating, and that joe biden and kamala have decided to let israel's problems become their problems despite the upcoming election.

what the democratic party has an interest in is gaslighting you. they will continue to pretend they are not whole-heartedly facilitating an increasingly bloody regional war that is continuing solely because israel refuses to stop genociding palestinians in gaza. this is the highest death toll in a single day in lebanon, and the highest death toll in palestine since 1948, and democrats want you to believe it is simply business as usual in the middle east. it is not.

Current progress: €23,568/€35,000

Randa needs support to raise €7,000 to pay off her family's debts and help them cover rent. The debts are left over from a visa rejection her relatives encountered when trying to join her in Rwanda.

The funds will also help Randa evacuate her two brothers, who were unable to evacuate with the rest of the family and remain trapped in Sudan.

Please share and donate to Randa's campaign to help her care for and reunite her family. Every previous attempt to reach the short term goal needed to help pay off their debts has failed. Let's make sure they reach it this time.

This video by @/jinforjustice on ig provides more details on the family's situation

long post version for the autobio comics crowd. stop what you are doing and, let the pain and anger in, then donate to @save-mohamed-family here now