^-^

Hansel and Gretel at a river, quenching their thirst. Gretel asks her brother to look at her. She wets her thumb with her tongue and uses it to wipe bit of dirt from his forehead and cheek. He watches her work and thinks: Our lives will never again be in such close proximity. It will always be a moving away from each other, from this point on.

Which is to say, to love a sibling is to anchor your life to a series of sanctioned departures.

You don't have to be a jerk about it. The most effective yet civil way of dealing with harmful "humor" is just pretending you don't get the joke and asking them to explain. "I don't get it, what's girl math? What's a girl dinner? What do you mean by you're just a girl? Can you explain the joke to me?"

It really does feel like we've done a massive backsliding in gender stereotyping over the past few years and it's honestly alarming.

Not just the "girl x / boy x" like "girl math" to mean being stupid and bad at math, or these "lol girl dinner" posts where it's a can of energy drink and half a jar of olives.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

Ibrahim and his family are starving. He's already lost several loved ones to starvation, and recently his elderly mother has been fainting due to malnutrition. As well as this, Ibrahim has been dealing with severe depression and ocd, made worse by the stress of living in a war zone. He's been prescribed medication, but he hasn't been able to afford it, leaving him too stressed to sleep. 

Ibrahim needs your support to get the food and meds he and his family need to live. Donations can make a big difference, but if you can't donate, sharing Ibrahim's campaign and following his new account @forgottenvampireshaman help a lot too. Please, do whatever you can to help my friend and his family survive!

Donate here with GFM Donate here with Paypal

On the evening of June 9, the USA, with what seems to be intent, attacked two reservoirs and a water treatment facility in southern Iran. Almost immediately afterwards, water was cut off to about 20,000 Iranian civilians who live around the southern Iranian town of Sirik.