Count me o̶u̶t̶. IN.

My pregnant wife was shot in the chest as she prepared to receive our first child.

I never imagined that I would write these words or live this nightmare.

My wife is in her fifth month of pregnancy, and she was trying to live simple moments of joy in the midst of the war. I went out that day to see some of the children's clothes and prepare the needs of our first baby that we are waiting for impatiently.

But instead of returning home carrying clothes for our child, she returned to the hospital soaked in her blood after being shot in the chest.

In moments our dreams and joy turned into fear and terror. We ran to the hospital where she underwent emergency surgery to check on her life and the life of our unborn child. Due to difficult conditions and lack of medical capabilities, doctors have not been able to remove the bullet, and it is still stable inside its chest until now.

If you were able to help or share our story with others, you would have given our family hope at a time when hope has become scarce

Ok, maybe not that weird, seeing as how I’ve blocked multiple people over the years for saying things like “the Inuit were/are liars”. When you’re saying stuff that was considered racist by some Victorians, it’s time to reconsider your views!

i think this is a fair take/critique that i myself can also learn from! for my part i’m very interested in ada blackjack (though i know she’s not involved with the FE), and have also noticed how non-white figures in polar history (e.g., matthew henson) receive relatively so little attention despite how compelling their lives and the obstacles they overcame are. this is not to say everyone has to let go of their white boy blorbo/interest, but expanding your mind beyond them is both imperative and rewarding!

In case anyone is interested, and you don’t fancy crawling through Charles Francis Hall’s journals yourself, I’ll give a brief summary of these two men’s most significant interactions.

Kokleearngnun told Hall about seeing a white man’s ship that became overwhelmed with ice and sank. He met a man by the name of Aglooka and a “pee-e-tu” (commonly interpreted to be a steward or non-seaman) who was called “Nar-tar”. Hall believed that that was a way of pronouncing “doctor”. Kokleearngnun was given two spoons with the initials FRMC stamped on them.

He met qallunaat at least twice (IIRC). I think that the most interesting testimony he gave was set aboard a ship. It’s quite controversial account, but I strongly believe that it is of the FE rather than of a different expedition. Hall, April 1866:

The Pelly Bay men described the Esh-emut-ta as an old man with broad shoulders, thick and heavier set than Hall, with gray hair, full face, and bald head. He was always wearing something over his eyes (spectacles, as Too-koo-li-too interpreted it), was quite lame, and appeared sick when they last saw him. He was very kind to the Innuits;—always wanting them to eat something. Ag-loo-ka (Crozier) and another man would go and do everything that Too-loo-ark told them, just like boys; he was a very cheerful man, always laughing; everybody liked him—all the kob-lu-nas and all the Innuits. Kok-lee-arng-nun showed how Too-loo-ark and Ag-loo-ka used to meet him. They would take hold of his hand, giving it a few warm and friendly shakes, and Too-loo-ark would say, “Ma-my-too-mig-tey-ma.” Ag-loo-ka’s hand-shaking was short and jerky, and he would only say, “Man-nig-too-mé.” “After the first summer and first winter, they saw no more of Too-loo-ark; then Ag-loo-ka (Crozier) was the Esh-e-mut-ta.”

Kokleearngnun's wife, Koo-narg, as well as several other women, also took tea aboard the ship with Toolooark, who gave them all ulus and, to Koo-narg, a silver pocket watch. It’s curious, because in the accounts from other expeditions, the British mostly gave the Inuit worthless (and sometimes insulting) gifts in exchange for information and items (e.g. pieces of old barrel).

Meanwhile, Too-shoo-art-thar-u definitely met the men after they abandoned ship. His group hadn’t heard that there were qallunaat on the island, so they sent their two bravest hunters (Ow-wer and Too-shoo-art-thar-u) (to use Hall’s renderings of their names) to go and investigate. They meet them at an ice crack, putting distance between them; one of the white men had a gun pointing at the hunters, but the man who was in front told him to put it down. He showed them an ulu and used it to make a line in the snow. He then pantomimed asking for something to eat. Too-shoo-art-thar-u called this first man “Aglooka”. Aglooka couldn’t speak much Inuktitut, but Too-shoo-art-thar-u eventually understood that he had come from two ships up north that had been crushed in ice. Quoting Hall again:

After this first interview the two men went ashore with the Innuits. While Aglooka was trying to talk with the Innuits (Ow-wer [my note: probably a shortening of Ukuararssuk] & Too-shoo-art-thar-u), the party with the boat and one other sledge passed by going a little lower down to a point or cape of the little bay where they then were. On getting ashore Aglooka wanted everything - every pack opened & opened them himself, the dogs' saddle bag packs, the women's packs and the men's packs, for everything was ready for making a journey across the land. Aglooka wanted meat & for this he wanted every pack opened. The Innuits were all willing he should do as he did.

After each man Innuit had given him some seal meat, it was all put on a (one) dog's back & then by the request of Aglooka all 4 Innuit men with the dog laden with meat went down with Aglooka and the man with him to where the men and the boat where, the men erecting a tent. As they approached the tent, one man came out to meet them. Aglooka spoke to the men when he and the Innuits were near the tent. The men along side the tent and the men alongside of the boat stood in line holding up their arms and open hands above their heads, showing they had nothing (that is no weapons) about them.

The men stayed for a bit. One of them caught a fish and one shot down a bird. In exchange for helping them, Aglooka handed out gifts.

The strange thing is that, several years earlier, in 1864, Hall heard a different story from the one above. That one was given by Too-shoo-art-thariu's cousins, and in it the white men stay for one night. The 1864 testimony was given by Too-shoo-art-thariu's mother and son. In that one, the white men stay all winter. They travel with Too-shoo-art-thariu and his family. They hunted and travelled in an inflatable boat. One of them died of illness, and the others left so that they could go back to their country. In thanks, Aglooka offered Too-shoo-art-thariu his rifle - Too-shoo-art-thariu turned it down because he didn’t know how to use it, so Aglooka gave him a “long knife” instead.

Ten years later, Schwatka met Ahlangyah, his wife, who claimed that the family had met ten qallunaat who stayed for five days. Just like in the previous accounts, two of the men were called Aglooka and Toolooah, but their physical descriptions don’t match Kokleearngnun's descriptions of the men he had dinner with. Furthermore, Rasmussen collected the testimony of a man whose father (Mangaq) had been with the group. It has similar features - the hunters meet the white men at a crack in the ice, the qallunaat (three this time) stay in their own tent (which is peculiar because it is not made of animal skins), they say their ships were crushed by the ice, they exchanged a knife for seal meat, and the white men leave because they want to go home. Rasmussen, as quoted in Unravelling the Franklin Mystery by Dave Woodman:

Father and his people would willingly have helped the white men, but could not understand them; they tried to explain themselves by signs, and in fact learned to know a lot by this means. They had once been many they said; now they were only few, and they had left their ship out in the pack-ice. They pointed to the south, and it was understood that they wanted to go home overland. They were not met again, and no one knows where they went to.

However, there was not a caribou hunt like in the first account, and this time they share a tent with Mangaq and the white men stay at least three days.

I’ll admit, I chose Too-shoo-art-thar-u at sort of random, because he’s a candidate for the man who was given the sword of a great officer , but when I checked my books and notes the story turned out to be more complicated than I remembered! But I decided to relay it to show everyone how difficult it can be to interpret Inuit testimony.

the only reason ammar is still alive right now is because a doctor took pity on him and bought him the injection before we raised enough money. the extended delays made ammar have his first seizure.

israel has also been bombing the hospital again, photos on this post - and their planes + drones are still circling the hospital now, threatening to shoot people. ammar, samah, and mahmoud are all outside in the courtyard and will be immediately wounded if they do so

we need to raise $1471 by tuesday 4 pm at gazan time, which is roughly about 50 hours from now. this is for his food, as well as his injection, and the iv fluids. this is now the bare minimum required to be urgently raised

if he doesn't get this by tuesday, he would need an intensive injection that costs $6k+ total alongside the fact he would need extra medicine and this original injection too

i have nothing else to say. donate as little as $3 or $5 for him, or you'll be letting him die. this is extremely time sensitive.

$0 / $3030

vetting

adopts for donating

pwyw commissions for donating

further offers for donating

thank you so, so much to the person who generously donated $1400. this was enough to get the money of everything we needed at the bare minimum, and it's now guaranteed that ammar's digoxin injection will not be delayed

our next intermediate goal is to raise the money for his immune globulin injection, as well as the rest of the costs for his iv fluid last week (i undercalculated how much it would be, so we still need more), by tuesday 4 pm, and then this will have been raised on time as well. this is in about 26 hours, i believe

this is $1,137 more - that will have us at $2654. then the remainder will be the transport cost, and this will allow ammar and samah to finally return home

ammar's birthday is on thursday, so i hope we'll be able to raise the money before then and he will be able to go home for his birthday instead of being threatened in the hospital

It can almost certainly tell different species apart based on the shape of those air bladders. And it can tell if a fish has something weird inside it, like a metal hook. In Hawaii, false killer whales often pluck tuna off fishing lines, and “they’ll know where the hook is inside that fish,” Aude Pacini, who studies these animals, tells me. “They can ‘see’ things that you and I would never consider unless we had an X-ray machine or an MRI scanner.”

This penetrating perception is so unusual that scientists have barely begun to consider its implications. The beaked whales, for example, are odontocetes that look dolphin-esque on the outside—but on the inside, their skulls bear a strange assortment of crests, ridges, and bumps, many of which are only found in males.

Pavel Gol’din has suggested that these structures might be the equivalent of deer antlers—showy ornaments that are used to attract mates. Such ornaments would normally protrude from the body in a visible and conspicuous way, but that’s unnecessary for animals that are living medical scanners.’

I'm not sure if I ever shared this story before here, but in Curacao, when I was allowed to assist in a guest interaction programme, there was suddenly consternation in the pool behind us. A guest had entered the water and the dolphins were going crazy, paying no heed to the trainers anymore. The lead trainer that was with me gave the dolphins to me to watch over while she went to help. When she came back she told me what had happened. The guest that had caused so much uproar had left the water again and was asked if he had done anything to upset the dolphins. He hadn't, and he couldn't imagine what was wrong... until he mentioned he had a pacemaker. The younger dolphins in the pool had never seen someone with a pacemaker before and apparently it rocked their world.

Companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and Alibaba are working with industrial agriculture firms to influence what crops are grown and how, according to a report by the thinktank International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). The result, the experts say, is a “top-down” approach to farming systems where large companies tell farmers what to grow, often focusing on the most productive and profitable crops. “Companies are playing with the food system, and we can’t afford to have that played with,” said Pat Mooney, a Canadian author and expert on agriculture who contributed to the Head in the Cloud report, adding that these companies tend to focus only on five crops: corn, rice, wheat, soya beans and potatoes. “Their advice is going to be: ‘Well, we don’t know about your using [the grain] teff in Ethiopia – we never heard about teff – but we do know about how to use corn in Ethiopia, so we’ll advise you on the ways you can use corn, and we know how to link corn to pesticides, because that’s our expertise’,” he said. Farmers are at risk of being locked into a globalised system where, instead of growing locally adapted crops they have cultivated for generations, they are forced to buy seeds manufactured by industrial companies that come bundled with machinery and chemical inputs from other parts of the world, Mooney added.

[...]

Lim Li Ching, co-chair of IPES-Food, said “farming by algorithm” is not something farmers want and there should be more focus on a bottom-up approach that prioritises the knowledge and needs of farmers. “Innovation that actually works for people has to be grounded in their realities … [It should support them] as guardians and stewards of agricultural biodiversity,” said Lim. “[We need] innovations that genuinely support sustainability, that empower farmers, that are governed locally and that can strengthen agroecological practices and not entrench further industrial agriculture or monocultures or a heavily chemical-driven agriculture.” She said those examples already exist, pioneered by farming communities in places such as Peru, where families are protecting hundreds of varieties of potatoes; in China where farmers are conserving seeds; and in Tanzania where they are using social media to communicate with each other about weather conditions and market prices.

Please increase your contribution to The Sameer Project.

More info from GLAAD:

https://glaad.org/fcc/

They have some good tips about writing a comment and protecting your privacy which, fuck it, I'll just paste here:

Providing an email address is optional. If you have concerns about privacy, you may use your initials or public address in your local area, such as City Hall. Do not use a joke name. It diminishes the comment’s credibility.

Your submission does not need to be long. A single, well-reasoned paragraph is sufficient.

Do not copy/paste a template comment. The FCC values unique perspectives, and an original comment carries significantly more weight in the public record. You can explain why this matters to you without revealing private or sensitive personal information.

Here's what I said:

“Free speech is a fundamental American freedom. I do not need a warning about seeing queer people, much like I do not need a warning about women, veterans, or any other group of people.”

Here's the link to submit your comment by May 22:

This part of my heart is now breaking. Amal, who's been on a poor diet because she can't afford better food, is unable to breastfeed baby Mina any longer, and is unable to afford enough formula to compensate, and now both mother and baby are weak and malnourished.

Amal is suffocating from the stress of having to provide for her daughters. Her husband Motasem is doing everything he can (recently, he was almost caught in a bombing while trying to get food) but they're both overwhelmed. I wish there was anything I can do for them.

I'm begging you to donate if you can and share if you can't. I want, more than anything in this world, for these kids to grow up healthy and for their parents to be able to rest.

2000-Year-Old Mummy Portrait Looks Way Ahead of its Time

A funerary portrait from Roman Egypt will go up for sale next week, featuring a strikingly modern-looking male subject with piercing hazel eyes and graying hair.

The painting is one of 900 or so known as the Fayum mummy portraits, created during the 1st and 3rd century AD and placed on the deceased’s mummified bodies like a mask.

Archaeologists found dozens of them in the late 19th century at the Hawara excavation site in Egypt’s Fayum region, and some other examples were known earlier, according to Sotheby’s, but much of the research into them is recent and ongoing.

Though naturalistic and individualized portraits have often been celebrated as a triumph of early Italian masters, this portrait was painted some 1,200 years earlier, in the 1st century AD. Together, the works represent some of the earliest examples of realistic portrait painting still in existence today.

Painted in encaustic using hot beeswax and pigment on a wooden panel, the piece will be a highlight during Sotheby’s Masters Week sales in New York. It could sell for $350,000, according to high estimates, for its skill in rendering both likeness and emotion, from the wrinkles in his skin to his self-assured air.

“It invites you to want to know more about him and to feel his presence,” said Alexandra Olsman, a Sotheby’s specialist in ancient sculpture and works of art. It has been in the collection of Baltimore’s Goucher College for well over a century, acquired by its founder, Reverend John F. Goucher, in 1895. But it has been on a long-term loan with the Walters Art Museum, and has also exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of the Arts, among others.

The auction house has sold upwards of 15 Fayum portraits over the years, but she said this lot is the most compelling one they’ve offered since 2007. That year, a mummy portrait of a young man with curly hair sold for $936,000, more than triple its high estimate. Its loose brushstrokes and the sitter’s deep gaze appeared unusually contemporary.

The painting currently up for sale also stands out for the subject’s age — though his identity remains unknown, he is visibly older than others depicted in mummy portraits, implying he lived a longer life, Olsman said.

It is still unknown whether they were painted deceased, alive, or some mix of the two, she added, but she said she would be surprised if this one was painted after his death, based on the intensity of his presence and his eye contact. Like other subjects of this tradition, he was likely part of the upper class to be able to afford both the mummification process and the artisan who painted them, she said.

The subjects may have also had political or social standing within the Roman Empire, given this type of portraiture “was very much favored among those connected to the Imperial family,” she explained.

The Fayum mummy portraits sit a nexus in art history, representing the artistic traditions of both Ancient Egypt and Rome, as well as those of Greek classical paintings that are largely lost today.

“The realism and the naturalism conveyed in the sitter is coming from a Greek classical painting tradition, of which not much survives,” Olsman said. “It originated in the Mediterranean, which was incredibly humid; paintings were less likely to survive into modernity.”

She calls it a rare window into this tradition. The vivid naturalism achieved in these works was not seen for another millennium, and is often more credited to artists living during the late Middle Ages, including Cimabue and Giotto, who laid the groundwork for the Renaissance.

Olsman recalled when the chairman of Sotheby’s Americas division, George Wachter, first saw the mummy portrait going up for sale this month. “He was like, ‘Why do we keep talking about Giotto and Cimabue, when this guy was doing it 1,200 years before?’” she recalled. “This classical naturalism was happening in painting in the first century — and that’s where we need to start.”