@danashehab has been fundraising since may and is just over €15,000 away from their goal l. as stated in the screenshot people are starting to believe the rafah crossing will open so it’s important to make sure everyone has the funds in case they are allowed to evacuate.

thee shehab family consists of dana (13), sahar (14), mona (9), malak (5), yehya (1.5), fahed, (38), reem (32), and grandmother mona (60). they have been shadowbanned and deleted a few times. you can also find this family at @monashehab

[vetted]

🛑YOU ARE NOT SELFISH‼️

I need you to help me protect the rest of my family. I cannot afford to lose any of them. Any amount will make a difference in saving them.

🚨IF YOU IGNORE THIS, YOU ARE DOOMING MY FAMILY TO DEATH 🚨Guys, donations are slow, please don't leave me, I need your support

@schoolhater @mazzikah @irhabiya @terroristiraqis @watchnpray @stuckinapril@feluka @tortiefrancis @timetravellingkitty @flouryhedgehog @jinnazah @soracities @bloglikeanegyptian @handweavers @trans-axolotl @plomegranate @pcktknife @transmutationisms @sawasawako @anneemay @bedufairy @briarhips @dirhwangdaseul @mahoushojoe @rhubarbspring @schoolhater @starstrucksnowing @handsworthsongs @determinate-negation @khanger @kibumkim @qattdraws @brutaliakhoa @libraryposting @geeseareassholes @wellwaterhysteria @deepspaceboytoy @edwordsmyth @chilewithcarnage @psychotic-gerard @post-brahminism @bringmemyrocks @arslanjae @reduxskullduggerry @magnus-rhymes-with-swagness @kyra45-helping-others @log6 @7bitter @sharingresourcesforpalestine @neechees @mothblossoms @gothhabiba @mangocheesecakes @toiletpotato @fromjannah @palms-upturned @omegaversereloaded @vague-humanoid @lacecap @littlestpersimmon @socalgal @ghelgheli @northgazaupdates2 @vakarians-babe @ot3 @amygdalae @ankle-beez @communistchilchuck @dykesbat @watermotif @mavigator @capricornpropaganda @communist-ojou-sama @xinakwans @heritageposts @velvety

‼️ Please don’t skip taking a look 🍉🇵🇸

❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹 Here is my story 🍉🇵🇸

Thank you to everyone who donated and to everyone who participated and is participating in helping me save the lives of my family and children.

Please continue to support me💞💞

@90-ghost @el-shab-hussein @nabulsi @sar-soor @sayruq @queerstudiesnatural @appsa @communistchilchuck @fairuzfan @neptunerings @just-browsing1222 @appsa @akajustmerry @feluka @marnota @annoyingloudmicrowavecultist @tortiefrancis @flower-tea-fairies @tsaricides @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @vivisection-gf @belleandsaintsebastian @ear-motif @animentality @kordeliiius @brutaliakhoa @raelyn-dreams @troythecatfish @violetlyra @the-bastard-king @tamaytka @4ft10tvlandfangirl @northgazaupdates2 @skatehan @awetistic-things @nightowlssleep @baby-girl-aaron-dessner @friendshapedplant @mangocheesecakes @commissions4aid-international @rwuffles @mogai-sunflowers

Hello everyone,🌷🌷

We need your help

Trapped Family in Gaza Appeals for Help to Survive

@littlegermanboy @schoolhater @silicacid @killy @fairuzfan @90-ghost @el-shab-hussein @elierlick @norrriey @flower-tea-fairies @wellwaterhysteria @sar-soor @laios-thorden @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @apolloeroscupido @acepumpkinpatrick @silicatem-blog @sabertoothwalrus @pcktknife

Urgent urgent help Time running out 💔 Please don't skip! 🙏🏻🥺 Please consider sharing or donating, to save my family Thank you! 🍉🩷 Help me save my family🍉 Please guys keep donate and boost my link 🙏

@malcriada @appsa @economicinflationkink @buttercuparry @ahaura @timetravellingkitty @briarhips @akajustmerry @wellwaterhysteria @rhubarbspring @schoolhater @pcktknife @transmutationisms @sawasawako @feluka @fiqrr @irhabiya @3000s @sharingresourcesforpalestine @batmanego @lonniemachin @aristotels @watermotif @stuckinapril @chanafehs @psychotic-gerard @mavigator @communistkenobi @socalgal @chilewithcarnage @ghelgheli @determinate-negation @papasmoke @deepspaceboytoy @omegaversereloaded @xinakwans @givemearmstopraywith @loombreaking @killy @deathlonging @palms-upturned @blackpearlblast @littlegermanboy @loveaankilaq @sar-soor @fridgebride @27-moons @tamarrud @familyabolisher @fleshdyk3 @el-shab-hussein @decolonize-the-everything @heritageposts @palipunk @gothhabiba

IT'S VERY IMPORTANT 🚨

we trying to survive under all kinds of suffering including but not limited to fear, instability, and starvation, thirst, and poverty Thank you for standing by me ❤️.

Please donate and/or reblog 🥺🙏🇵🇸

🛑VERY IMPORTANT I ALMOST DIED‼️ Please do not ignore this after I escaped death several times after the bombing near me in my attempt to reach a good internet point to spread my campaign and reach the goal as quickly as possible to save the rest of my family from death In short

🚨🚨🚨🚨‼️please keep supporting me I feel we will reach the goal soon Every dollar will make a difference in protecting them.

@schoolhater @littlegermanboy @magnus-rhymes-with-swagness @determinate-negation @they-bite @norrriey @fancysmudges @brokenbackmountain @a-shade-of-blue @raccobell @just-browsing1222-deactivated20 @mothblossoms @aleciosun @serica-e @fluoresensitive @khizuo @lesbiandardevil @transmutationisms @schoolhater @timogsilangan @appsa @buttercuparry @sayruq @malcriada @palestinegenocide @sar-soor @akajustmerry @annoyingloudmicrowavecultist @feluka @tortiefrancis @flower-tea-fairies @tsaricides @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @visenyasdragon @belleandsaintsebastian @ear-motif @kordeliiius @troythecatfish @raelyn-dreams @troythecatfish @brutaliakhoa @theropoda @tamarrud @queerstudiesnatural @northgazaupdates2 @skatezophrenic @awetistic-things @camgirlpanopticon @baby-girl-aaron-dessner @nabulsi @sygol @junglejim4322 @heritageposts @chososhairbuns @palistani @dlxxv-vetted-donations @illuminated-runas @imjustheretotrytohelp

@littlegermanboy @schoolhater @norrriey @timetravellingkitty @deathlonging @briarhips @dirhwangdaseul @mahoushojoe @rhubarbspring @schoolhater @pcktknife @transmutationisms @sawasawako @feluka @birabiroo @irhabiya @commissions4aid-international @wellwaterhysteria @deepspaceboytoy @post-brahminism @khanger @evillesbianvillain @neechees @mangocheesecakes @kyra45-helping-others @jezior0 @7bitter @tortiefrancis @toiletpotato @fromjannah @omegaversereloaded @vague-humanoid @tododeku-or-bust @aristotels @komsomolka @xinakwans @heritageposts @nibeul @ot3 @amygdalae @ankle-beez @lonniemachin @dykesbat @watermotif @stuckinapril @mavigator @lacecap @yugiohz @socalgal @chilewithcarnage @ghelgheli @sayruq @northgazaupdates2 @vakarians-babe @wayneradiotv @paper-mario-wiki @rthko @decolonize-the-everything @velvetys @3000s @punkitt-is-here @ghelgheli @feluka @cruzwalters @yugiohz @akajustmerry @shesnake @tamamita @opencommunion

they should invent a doesn't kill you that actually makes you stronger

Vaccines

I don’t know how many boys follow me, but I gotta bet there’s some. I just wanna tell y’all to be careful.

Abusive girls exist and what they’re doing is seen as like “badass tough don’t take no shit” but your girl should not hit you. Ever.

She should not demand for you to hand over your phone to look through.

She should not yell at you and humiliate you either alone or in front of people.

She shouldn’t make you distance yourself from your friends or family.

She shouldn’t scratch you or twist your arms.

She should not call you names.

She shouldn’t tell you ‘she’ll kill herself if you break up’

These are just a few examples of abuse and it’s just seen as okay when girls do it and god knows I’ve fallen victim to it a few times, but you shouldn’t have to.

Never worry about not being in a relationship. If they’re worth it, they won’t hurt you.

No one has the right to hurt you.

I wish someone had told me that these things are actually abuse. I would have been able to escape my ex so much sooner. Reblogging to help other people in similar situations

🚨PSA🚨

My stepmom was extremely abusive to my dad, using these tactics

It was dismissed by others as her “being a strong and independent woman”

For the love of God don’t take this shit. Break it off immediately

For the love of God

don’t take this shit. Break it off

immediately

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

I work in the domestic violence field and guys? Lads? Bros? I have seen some really awful women out there.

I have seen cases where women beat the hell out of their boyfriend or husband and then called the cops on him for finally responding physically to stop her.

I have seen cases of women sexually abusing their boyfriends or husbands and insisting that he must have wanted it because he’s a man and his body physically responded.

I have seen cases of financial abuse where women leveraged traditional gender roles of men as providers and then drained accounts and disappeared.

I have seen a ridiculous amount of stalking behavior from women, harassment, and/or tracking and monitoring their male partners’ or exes every move.

I have seen cases of women using children as pawns and/or making false allegations to child protection agencies.

I have seen cases of especially white women enacting horrific racial abuse on their black, native, or latino male partners.

I have seen cases of women who are caretakers for their disabled male partners using that caretaker role to control, manipulate, and abuse them.

I have seen cases of mental, physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse of mothers or other female caretakers to their sons/other boys under their guardianship or care.

I have seen cases of cis women outing stealth trans male partners to their communities, resulting in targeted transphobic violence from those communities and from the state.

I have seen cases of women intentionally getting their sober/recovered male partners back into drugs or alcohol as a way to control them and make them dependent on her again, and I’ve also seen cases of tiny! frail-seeming! women using drugs and then viciously physically attacking their much larger and theoretically stronger male partners or relatives to the point of putting them in the hospital.

I’ve seen cases of severe mental, emotional, and/or spiritual abuse of men by women go completely unaddressed for years because he wasn’t believed or it was downplayed to such an extreme that he didn’t seek help.

I’ve seen cases where women intentionally stopped taking birth control like they’d agreed upon as a couple in advance to force a permanent co-parenting relationship on their male partners.

And yeah! So many of these women showed up and tried to pretend that they were the real victim (against the great weight of the evidence) and/or that they were Strong Independent Girlbosses for doing this stuff.

This stuff happens to men, from women, all the time, and if it’s happened to you: 1) I’m sorry you had to go through that, and 2) the true promise of feminism is a world in which the victim’s gender does not determine whether or not they are believed or helped, and the abuser’s gender does not determine whether or not they are held accountable.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong and very possibly malicious.

So guys if you are going through any of this with your girlfriend, wife, or female relative, you don’t have to take it. You deserve help and love and compassion and safety. You deserve to heal. And you’re not alone.

Everyone say thank you american indigenous people for cultivating corn, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, cacao, pumpkin, squash, and anything i missed. Makes life more meaningful globally

yeah the common bean as well! (soy and peas are not native to the Americas, but black, kidney, pinto, and lima beans are!)

Best male Warriors characters to hit with the woman beam, go!

okay i am not sober but here’s why i said bumblestripe. i am a bumblestripe enjoyer i think im his only fan. also i havent read past oots

bumblestripe isnt super characterized in canon beyond “romantic interest in dovewing” and “overall pretty chill guy” and the way that i personally really like to interpret this is that he has a very particular idea of how his life is supposed to go and he does everything he can to achieve that WHILE also being really passive and generally wanting things to be Fine and Nice. so especially when briar gets paralyzed he’s just constantly not taking any sides but agreeing with whoever is talking.

and so making her a woman with the erins’ misogyny… i feel like it plays with that in interesting ways and also it makes her crush on dovewing gay <3

I personally believe if you told Snowfur that Thistleclaw was teaching Whitekit advanced battle moves she'd be like "fuck yeah can he teach him to do a backflip next?"

Desperate Plea: A Call For Relife‼️ 🥀

Hello, It's Momen Al Madhoun, writing from the most miserable area in the whole world, I am deeply thankful to all of you. Your support means the world to my family

🍉🍉🍉 I urgently plead you to keep sharing our campaign with your friends, family, and acquaintances

15 months have passed as if it were 15 years, and suffering increasing day after day 😔 Our health is decaying, we have NO IMMUNITY to fight diseases. No healthy food to feed our worn cells. Finding a quiet, clean place for us to get some rest is IMPOSSIBLE! I'm in urgent need of serious financial support so that I can take action and save my family! Our faces speak the misery we're going through! my children can't bear the ruthlessness of war life… pain and cold does not allow either of them to sleep 💔

I found in drawing a way to relieve stress and describe what we are experiencing, but even this i was deprived of, due to the difficulty of obtaining good internet and electricity for a sufficient time If you are interested in art, you can check I my blog I and find my artworks, i hope you will share them and support me to continue fighting and trying Every share and donation brings us one step closer to saving my family's lives. Your support, no matter how small, holds the power to rescue my loved ones from grave danger There are no words can describe how many times we have been displaced The situation we're living now is really hard to imagine Where do we Go?

Imagine the vastness of this universe, we cannot escape to a safe place far from the war

🍉🍉🍉 We rely on your donations to have a shelter and provide basic daily necesseties. We need your contributions and support with us, no matter how small it may be for you, but it makes a difference for my family 🙏🏻 Please, Support us with 5$, 10$, or any donation you can make and it will be really appreciated 🙏🏻

🌟 Our campaign is vetted by 🇵🇸 @/gazavetters List at #291

Donation link 🙏🏻

Hoopla library app updated so that screenshots show up as black which is really interfering with my habit of sending my friends excerpts from whatever academic txt I’m reading for fun. I wanted to send them the heresy trial from the 1400s where a peasant got called in for declaring in the town square that Jesus was “created by fucking, just like the rest of us”

"advertising doesn't work" the increase in scentbird ads and people talking about a "personal signature scent" directly correlates with my family's interest in perfumes. Even if they're not using scentbird, something probably changed to make them want perfumes more, right?

let's put it this way: my brief exposure to tiktok directly correlates to a period of time where i was spending a lot more money on clothing items. Even though most of them were second hand, I still personally felt like i'd spent that money irresponsibly and largely on clothes that I no longer wear either because they didn't last long or I outgrew them. When I stopped being on tiktok, my spending on clothing has decreased a lot, and when I do buy things i spend money on clothing that i know will last me longer. I stopped being exposed to dozens of people showing me cute outfits every day (a lot of them talking about specific brands and talking about fashion news and releases), and correlating with that is a decrease in my own spending. Hm.

Let's just say. adblockers work in more ways than one.

So so so many people are trying to find ways to still say they’re immune to advertising directly after this post like do you people not think

*crying* you people are so stupid

The purpose of advertising, especially large scale, high budget advertising, is VERY rarely to make you go "ah yes I want That Thing, I'm going to go buy it for myself right now." It's to create an anchor point in your mind: this fast food chain is funny. The people I admire on social media are fashion-conscious. That store has things I think are cute. That way, when you ARE prepared to spend money, even days/weeks/minths later, there will be an association that makes you more likely to think of the thing that was advertised to you, especially in the absence of any personal preference. You get hungry while you're running errands, don't know what you're in the mood for, but you see That Fast Food Chain and remember their funny ads and decide to pop in. You're in the market for new pants or a new jacket because the weather is changing, and you remember an influencer you follow has an affiliate link so you buy the same brand they wear. You want to buy a birthday present for a friend, so you go somewhere with things you remember liking because you both have similar taste.

It's not always evil and insidious, but it IS usually meant to be slow and subconscious. You are not immune to advertising just because you don't immediately buy every pointless product you see in a commercial.

having an adblocker and going out of my way to avoid advertising makes it really easy for me to notice how vulnerable i am to it.

i watched tubi one night only on a tv without an adblocker. there was an ad for dishwasher soap that i thought was fascinating, because it was targeting changing behavior rather than switching brands. that makes sense, right? if your parent company owns most of the competing brands, then your only opportunity for growth is to get people to buy MORE of the product they're already buying. same principle as the giant laundry soap caps you're only supposed to fill 1/8th of the way up to a fill line you can barely see.

so this ad puts up a statistic that using the dishwasher is more water-efficient than doing dishes by hand [small print: a full load of dishes]. then it flashes back and forth between that statistic and a bunch of smiling people of different races and family configurations all saying that they run their dishwasher every night, no matter what. "every night! every night!" even a lady who lives alone does it every night!

i literally deconstructed how manipulative that ad campaign was while we were watching it. i was paying attention! and still, i swear to god, after ONE evening of seeing it 5 times, it disrupted a life-long family rule that you can only run the dishwasher when it's totally full. now, if i have a 1/2 full load but i'm out of glasses or whatever and don't feel like washing one by hand (who does?), my social animal brain goes "it's okay to run the dishwasher when it's not full! lots of people do it!" and, if i'm feeling lazy, I DO!!

so maybe you're less gullible than me or don't have a dishwasher to fall for this particular trap, congratulations. but by the very fact that we are social animals and that PR companies are very good tapping into that, we are ALL gullible.

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD THERE’S NEW ALAN LEE LOTR ART! I’M SCREAMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

These are from the new limited edition of LOTR published by the Folio Society

"fandom obsesses over two men even when their relationship is underdeveloped compared to either of them with a woman, and will often completely ignore or demonize her-" 👍 so true

"-because theyre obsessed with homosexuality and think two men cant just be friends anymore" 👎 who gives a shit

people really just walk into horror movies and expect them not to deal with uncomfortable things despite the genre being dedicated to discomfort.

i saw so many people complain that lisa frankenstein, a movie where one of the leads is famously a rotting corpse, was too gross for them. when i walked out of nosferatu, i heard people say that the nudity was uncalled for... in a vampire film. nudity? in MY gothic horror?! unheard of!

a LOT of people really need to accept that maybe some genres just aren't to their taste, idk. not every movie needs to be cookie-cutter clean. sexuality is a staple of gothic horror, if not the wider genre horror in General. you don't need to enjoy it, but it doesn't make these things uncalled for.

Lowkey fascinated (positive) with your turn of phrase here. "Loadbearing taboo." I am rotating it in my mind

FYI iPhone users!

Oh... oh that's disgusting.

For emphasis - YOU HAVE TO TURN THIS OFF FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL APP

You can get to all these faster (marginally) by going to Settings > Siri > Apps.

Okay but can anyone articulate the mindset that leads older people to feel like they NEED to know people's gender identity all the time? Like what's going on there

Cause it feels like I've had a hundred xonversations with cis straight people around 40-60 years old that goes like

Person: Did you see that?

Me: See what?

Person: That. It, him, whatever they're called

Me: (Sees a femme with masculine features)

Me: What about them

Person: Well what is that? He's dressed in women's clothes, so is he-it, they- What does that mean?

Me: I mean. If you're concerned about pronouns you can probably ask

Person: But do I call it a Mister or a miss?

Me: Well uh. That depends on what they tell you but "them" is usually safe.... but based on their makeup, hair, and heels I don't think they'd be mad if you assumed thry were a lady

Me: So like. I'd say she's probably just. Here for the event

Person: That's fine, I get that, I don't have a problem with trans people, I just don't get how you're supposed to know

Person: Like how do you know if someone is transsexual or just cross dressing?

Me: Uhhhhhhhh

Me: I mean

Me: I don't know. Any cross dressers. Who would be offended by being pronoun'd by their outfit. But like.

Me: I guess if you choose wrong. And they correct you. Then you just.... apologize and use what they tell you?

Me: .... Do you plan on talking to them?

Person: No

Me: Then why d. Why does it matter

Person: I'm just trying to understand

Me: And that's great! But like. You don't need to

Person: What

Me: You don't need to. Necessarily. Understand. You know?

Person: Huh

Me: They're here for the event. You don't have to interact with them. In two hours they'll go home and you'll never see them again

Person: I'm just confused

Me: You're allowed to be confused

Me: You can stay confused

Me: It's not illegal

Like

I don't know how applied statistics works

Thats fine

I'm probably gonna die confused about that one

I don't need romance know the gender and physiology and medical history of a random stranger I'm never gonna talk to

Why do you need to know

Do you think they're gonna quiz you before they leave

Are you worried you're gonna get a bad grade

For my parents, who are more 70-80, it's because they grew up with gendered rules for social interactions, and it's an anxiety thing. (I also suspect they're both autistic, which might explain the panic about following social rules.) To them, interactions with men allow x,y,z and don't allow a,b,c. And the same for women. And if they don't know what someone's gender is, or if they know someone is nonbinary, they don't know which rules apply. And it panics them.

There is some of the usual pearl-clutching about "dangers" and such, but I'm not sure they really believe that under all the nonsense they've internalised. The more I've talked to them about these things and seen them interact with people, it really does seem to be about anxiety and not embarrassing themselves. They were taught to put people into boxes, and interact with them based on that. And that works well for them in 95% of conversations, and you can see the code switching, especially in my mum, when she's talking to a man vs a woman. But if she doesn't know which code to use? Pure panic. I've seen her basically have a meltdown once we get home about whether she handled the interaction properly. Whether she slighted the other person by doing something wrong. Whether they're off muttering about how terrible she is for something she said.

There's a lot of comments on this post about discrimination and such, and people like that definitely exist. Just wanted to point out that it isn't always that. Some people just got taught such strict gendered social rules, and nothing about just treating people like people, that they don't know how to navigate social interactions when those rules don't apply, and it stresses them out.

In addition, societies often run on a level of "knowing" that's used, oil-like, to smooth out social interactions---that you can look at someone and know a number of things about them: their gender, their class, their profession and/or the general nature of their immediate purpose (you dress differently to go to a funeral than you do to go to the grocery store), something about their relationships, and their general willingness to share a set of standards about how people should convey themselves.

A medieval Londoner could look at any stranger and tell if they were a servant or an apprentice or a storekeeper or an unmarried woman or a housewife (and how prosperous her husband was) or a lord or a nun or a priest or whatever; if two strangers came upon each other they knew at a glance who was to bow to whom (and life was a succession of giving and receiving small bows by way of passing acknowledgment) and whether they were of sufficiently compatable status to have a conversation or seek a friendship.

People's entire constructions of social interactions RAN on this shit for thousands of years. The intricacy and the importance of it has largely dropped, but when parents freaked out in the eighties over their son's long hair or housewives in the fifties refused to step out of doors without gloves, hat, and handbag, they were running on the social programs they grew up into and being protective of a type of status and respectability that had had real consequence in their lives.

And that consequence depended on the understanding that they didn't just have those things, they were those things. A lady was someone who had the personal skill and poise and attention to detail to pull off ladylike behavior (and the money to buy the necessary quality clothing and the leisure time to put herself together); faking it would have been no more expected than that an amateur would present herself as a prima ballerina by dancing across the stage; ladies, as well as other sorts of people, were self-proven by success.

A child who's grown to teenage years learning the concepts of freedom and truth and applying them to self-expression has largely inverted the order of operations their parents have used; instead of "I am a good, respectable high-status lady and therefore I wear the proper clothing and accessories with good grooming and good poise, and express my personal aesthetic preferences within that context" they get "I feel most myself and most comfortable with long hair and T-shirts and jewelry, this is WHO I AM, Dad, why are you persecuting me?" and the rigid standards that allowed Dad or Mom to access the securities of high social status according to the mores of their generation are subordinated or dismissed entirely, to the embarrassment and terror of their parents who viewed that respectability of dress and behavior as both security and privilege were aghast that their children would so willingly reject it, when it arguably was barely REAL to their children in the way it was to them, and functions more as prison than social status buff.

The idea of dressing purely for one's own aesthetic pleasure, let alone being a whole new gender, comes across as part neglect of a very important social function, and part pure dishonesty, to someone who depends on the structure granted by standards and assigned places in the standards. A paradigm shift in which rights replace responsibilities and in which gender is understood as a social construct rather than a force of nature, is not something they're well equipped to handle, and the translations and explanations have not been as useful as they could be.

Social mores and their use are a technology, in the widest sense of the word, and a lot of old people are in their "you met your fiance OVER THE INTERNET?!!! They could be anyone, you'll be murdered!" stage regarding the ability to choose to become something other than your family status and birth assigned you.

We're saying "assigned" as in "assigned gender at birth" should be a suggestion, and they're trying to wrap their heads around it not being a rule, and what it means when an island they've stood on since birth reveals itself to instead be a really big whale.

Finally, some good fucking discourse on this site.

To the point raised in teaboot's second post, one of the things my mom (mid-70s, politically progressive, genuinely wants to do the right thing and be kind to people, big on grammar and politeness, also a retired English teacher) struggles with is literally "to be respectful, one should call people we don't know by Mr, Ms, or Mrs So-and-so - how do I know which one to use as a default without offending them".

Yep, I've heard that one too. I've seen older adults confused when they say stuff like "well what's [the nonbinary] version of sir or ma'am" and I have to explain that almost nobody in the US says sir or ma'am anymore unless they're a Black person being racially profiled by the cops or a service worker who's tired of your shit, and the polite thing to do is either use the person's name or ask how they'd like to be addressed.

I've had a fair few people call me "sir" because they were raised that that is polite (and also they see my goatee and automatically presume "man" despite my generally prominent pin that says they/them with the genderfluid flag), and it's usually a 50/50 if they listen when I tell them I'm "not a sir."

A couple have "sir" so ingrained, that they'll reflexively say it, then go "whoops, sorry, [name]."

Exactly. And like...I don't get mad if someone ma'am's me. That's their social script. I take it in the spirit it was meant and will quietly ask them at an opportune moment to please just use my name. If they persist I know they're being an asshole on purpose and will tailor my response accordingly, but if you're genuinely trying, like, I get it, social shifts are hard. If you genuinely work with me I'll genuinely work with you.

The ceasefire agreement was reached and joy is floating among the Palestinian people

The joy is indescribable here all over the Gaza Strip. This thing seems like a literal miracle.

Rafah crossing will be opened tomorrow, God willing. We need help, friends. Please donate.

The State of Qatar announced a full agreement on all the details and said that the ceasefire will be implemented on Sunday.

These four days will be more difficult than the past 15 months because the occupation will commit a large number of massacres and the crossing will be opened soon. We want you to donate to us so that we can evacuate from Gaza in peace.

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Your donation, my friend, can get us out of here, so please donate so we can evacuate soon.

Many people have been killed in the last 24 hours who were waiting impatiently for a ceasefire, so my friends, I am asking you to donate to us so that we can leave at the first opportunity. Please donate.

all the palestinians i know are celebrating but also braced for the indiscriminate bombing that will take place until the ceasefire goes into effect on sunday. i don't know if you know this but israel has always bombed the most indiscriminately right before a ceasefire up until the very last second, just to kill a few hundred more palestinians. this was once considered one of its worst war crimes because it is demonstrably utterly unjustified. now it's considered par for the course because the vast majority of the bombing of the past year has been unjustified (even militarily, israel's bank of targets ran out long ago.) but between now and sunday people who have survived 476 days of genocide are going to be desperately hoping to make it until the ceasefire. the bitterness and fear of losing friends and family right before it is a psychological torture of its own.

over the past year i think a lot of people around the world have been sickened by the awareness that a trapped people are being starved and bombed to death as they go about their day. personally i haven't been able to truly enjoy anything without the awareness that for almost every half hour of the past year a child in gaza was killed. a lot of people in gaza have said they haven't had a proper night's sleep since october 7th. this is the smallest demand of humanity and the first thing a ceasefire means, and why it has been so wretched to have to scream and beg for it for over a year. people will be eating and sleeping again. let's just get there, on sunday, and then we can talk about everything else we need to do.