he in the tree

Gaza is under siege, and the price of staples has climbed tremendously. Community kitchens have been forced to close due to lack of supplies, and have been unable to afford to replenish their stocks.

Gaza Soup Kitchen is a grassroots organization that uses money from global donors to feed thousands of people every day. Their most recent campaign was to provide food parcels for Ramadan, and they are going to struggle to keep people fed in the midst of this new, horrifying war.

Did you see the news about National Parks removing signage and information about the mistreatment of Native Americans by settlers, as well as about climate change and environmental protection? Read the article by Reuters for more information.

This is clear Native Erasure. We have a survey open to collect your observations:

https://forms.gle/SLoyCjLH4BBvx1rT6

Share photos, locations, and comments about signage you see that includes information about Native Americans and Tribal ancestral lands, or signs that do not. Documenting good examples is also a good idea as signs may be potentially removed. We continue to invite your observations that also highlight where signage is lacking this information on public lands. This info can be shared by the Tribe with staff from National Parks, National Forests, and other public land managers.

The Snoqualmie Tribe Ancestral Lands Movement promotes education and awareness regarding the integration of land acknowledgment and respect for the Snoqualmie Tribe within recreational activities. Our initiative also emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the ancestral lands of other Tribes when visiting public spaces.

Do you know whose ancestral lands you are visiting?

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

It's for your leftist buddy who got in with a leftist group that promotes eugenics.

It's for your feminist friend who was lured into radical feminism with "divine feminine" rhetoric.

it's a bias. it's a thing society has wired into their brains, and they don't have enough exposure-based repetition to meaningfully undo the years of societal conditioning. chances are, even you feel this way about yourself and others, despite how hard you try not to.

and that's not me saying you should stop trying; you should still keep up that effort. it's better than nothing, and maybe it'll culminate in something bigger than all of us.

but there is a certain solemn reality check many of us have. & I think many trans people who realize they will likely never pass have this moment of recognition as well. and not from dysphoria-induced brain worms pre/early-hrt, but from being years on various interventions & coming to a point of acceptance about the reality of the cards you've been dealt & finding a way of living happily in spite of that

I just find that there are many many trans people, especially binary trans people, who can't wrap their head around anything except a very "toxic positivity" version of being trans & our experiences. at some level, most nonbinary people eventually recognize that how we view ourselves is not likely to ever be fully reflected by others.

we persist onwards, regardless. we still live our lives because we have to. and it is that coming to face with our own mortality of sorts that I think causes many of the rifts in the trans community. it's a type of maturity that not everyone gets to, even many nonbinary people, but for those of us who do and are able to integrate that and accept that we should still keep trying anyways... idk, you look at discourse a lot differently.

being gendered correctly by strangers isn't as dire to me because that dysphoria has been so thoroughly exhausted that I've had to make a conscious decision to stop paying attention to it for my own mental health's sake, because there's literally nothing I can do to change that. that doesn't mean I don't care. it means I've taken a realistic look at the situation and decided to focus on what I can tangibly impact instead. because I'd be dead if I didn't do that.

I think many of the heavily mocked "femme presenting nonbinary theyfabs who don't take hrt and look and act like a cis woman" out there are in a similar position. I don't think these people don't care. I think it's that they know nobody will change no matter what they do & they've reached a point of acceptance with it, so they see little point in doing anything about it.

it's a place of apathy & source of heartache for more people than I think some people ridiculing them realize. that's why they react so strongly to people basically bullying them online.

because most of those people are just trying to exist in a way that they find fun or aesthetically pleasing, because they realize that there's nothing else they can do. so they distract themselves with makeup and clothes and "girly" things that appeal to their eyes because they are small happinesses that society only genders because cisheteromasculinity prides itself on being devoid of beauty and joy more often than not, and if you're stuck in a prison of biology's making you might as well choose the presentation that lets you paint your nails and look at pretty things and pretty colors with less overt pushback (i.e. fitting the status quo, not necessarily that femininity isn't routinely degraded, it just receives less immediate threats to your safety to do the things society expects of you).

it is a strategic choice that they do not even want to be making in the first place, because it inherently relies on their misgendering.

...but it's what makes the most sense to a lot of people. that's why it's so common. and when you ridicule that, you poke and prod at all of those wounds that you're unaware even exist, because you assume they don't exist.

meanwhile they may have faced more suffering and agony at this positionality than you have. but it's an invisible suffering. so it's easy to poke fun at. you don't live in their head, though. you make assumptions upon assumptions about people, failing to recognize that sometimes there's no "good" solution & you've just gotta do what you can to survive in the least miserable way you possibly can, and that being in that position itself (inside a society that you know will probably never accept anything even close to you, at least not in your lifetime) is a type of trauma that changes you on a fundamental level. it fucks with your head. that's why these people act this way.