The blog of unpopular opinion

Helen Whitaker, England

" Sycamore Seed "

Hello everyone here, the suffering hasn't ended, and neither has the war.

They lied to all of us 🥺‼️

I'm here to help you and to appeal to you. I'm Raghad from Gaza, specifically from northern Gaza. I lost contact with my husband more than two years ago, and I don't know if he's alive or not.

I have two children, and I can't find enough to feed them. One of them is malnourished.

My house was demolished because it was located on the yellow line.

Now I'm living on the streets amidst polluted water, and I don't even have anything to feed my children because they're starving.

Please, you may not be able to alleviate the suffering or save my children from these hardships, but you can at least make sure they go to sleep with a full stomach.

OP: Why couldn’t traditional Chinese Yinpiao银票/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大明宝钞，渐越)

Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960–1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.

Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.

This mechanism is known as qifeng骑缝 (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BC), this idea evolved into hufu虎符/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.

The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetong合同" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960–1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912).

Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaozi交子) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohao票行 (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.

First they were called "chirographs", but later the word "indenture" (in its earliest meaning as just a legal document of any kind between two people) came to be used, originating from the practice of a contract being written twice on a single piece of parchment and then cut in half with serrated edges (as in dent, "teeth" -> indents -> indenture) in order for each party to take one half, so they could later piece them together and verify that there had been no forgery -- same as the Chinese silver drafts!

(Charter of the Clerecía de Ledesma, 1252, showing the serrated indents at the top -- presumably they are cutting rather than tearing because they're using parchment, which I expect is much harder to tear than wood-pulp paper like the Chinese were using)

Truth is a god in the way that gravity or magnetism is a god. He's just a manifested force of nature. He's sapient on some level, sure, which is a neat trick, but we managed to make meat think and we're not extraordinarily special about it either. He didn't invent humans and he didn't spawn the universe the way that Rose would have expected the god of her religion to have done; he has minimal to no interest in the day to day lives of any creature and only intervenes when someone actively wanders into his grip of influence. He's not a Capital-G God. Truth is to matter what fire is to flammable objects. He's a metaphorical (and perhaps even allegorical) chemical reaction.

Ed isn't an atheist because he saw god and cussed him out irl; Ed's an atheist because he doesn't believe that the brute force of Truth qualifies as a god. Quite frankly, I think that's a hell of a lot ballsier and a much more complete understanding of the situation. This perspective insulates him against idolizing the Truth as an ultimate divine force and makes Truth something that can be reasoned around or through, rather than with, which would never have worked.

Before this crisis, I was a Computer Engineering graduate from the Islamic University of Gaza. I had a house, a car, a promising career, and a life full of dreams. Now, I am a brother carrying the heavy responsibility of keeping my entire family alive.

I sacrificed absolutely everything before turning to this campaign. I spent my entire life savings and sold every single thing I owned, including my laptop. Out of pure desperation to feed my family, I took a grueling heavy-lifting job that my body couldn't handle. My back broke under the weight, leaving me hospitalized for an entire month.

Today, I am broken and in agonizing pain inside a tent, unable to even stand up on my own feet.

I feel completely helpless because my campaign is moving extremely slow—it doesn't even cover the cost of basic food for my family right now. We are starving, and the slow support is leaving us stranded on the brink of survival.

Please, do not look away from our agony. Your donations are our only way to eat and stay safe. If you cannot donate, please share my story. You are truly our last remaining hope 🙏😭🥀💔😔

My mother is sick, and my sister Mira is also sick. They both urgently need medicine and medical care, but we cannot afford it. I feel helpless watching them suffer while we have no food and no way to help them.

If you are able to help, your d.o.n.a.t.i.o.n can provide food for my family and medicine for my mother and my sister Mira. If you cannot donate, please share our story with others. Your kindness and support could give my family hope during this heartbreaking time. Thank you for reading my story.

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