horizon dreamer

30 December 2025

This left only Gaza based mutual aid networks. That's why you need to donate to the following aid groups on recurring basis:

The Sameer Project

Dahnoun Mutual Aid

Mona's Initiatives

je vais laisser la communauté parler:

Place opens at 10, usually a couple minutes late, when Michael arrives. Ryan, Karen, and Alice are in the habit of arriving almost 2 hours early and chilling in the open foyer. Only six people at a time are allowed to chill in the foyer to adhere to the fire code, which Michael enforces with an iron fist. There are sometimes three chairs for them; lately there have only been two, also probably due to the fire code.

Today when I show up, Karen and Ryan are posted in the chairs. Alice is uncharacteristically absent. Because there are only three people in the room (K & R + another regular), I squeeze in against the wall. Things get out of hand shortly after, because then three other people pile in, putting the count at seven. In an (also) uncharacteristic show of gallantry, Ryan offers his seat to one of the other women. Unfortunately for all involved, Alice shows up at that moment.

Alice immediately requests that the woman give her the chair. When the woman, who speaks English as a second language and also literally just touched her ass to the seat not one minute ago, does not respond within 0.5 picoseconds, Alice repeats her question in a loud and aggressive shout. Karen tries to tell her that Ryan gave the woman the seat. Alice immediately begins to fuss and yell because she's 84 and needs to sit, and it isn't FAIR because she ALWAYS shows up early (she didn't) and that's HER chair (it isn't).

She is still outside shouting when Michael arrives. Michael is immediately irritated by the noise and the fact that there are too many people in the foyer, and chases out the stragglers. He mollifies Alice into quieting down, and at some point the woman who took the chair gives it up so as not to deal with this bullshit any further. As one problem settles, another begins when Michael tells Ryan he doesn't have an appointment.

To give Ryan some credit, he did attempt to make an appointment. Given that he's eighty or whatever, and the online form to make an appointment is coded like spaghetti and requires two factor authentification, he refuses to make one himself and instead will ask a volunteer to make one for him. The trouble with this is that the system used by the volunteers is the same spaghetti, and there is no guarantee it won't just eat your inputs.

Ryan does not know or understand this. Michael is not sympathetic. Neither of them are particularly good communicators. More shouting ensues. ("I do have one!" "You don't!" "Yes I do!" "No you don't!")

This has happened every Tuesday for the past five weeks.

Michael eventually bullies Ryan into stepping off to the side and waiting for an arbitrary amount of time as punishment, and at that point I head inside to grab my spotty bananas and day-old bread and miss the remaining fallout. I think Alice managed to muscle her way in front of everybody anyway because of her forceful personality and position in the chair near the front, but I was entertained enough at that point that I didn't care.