interior crocodile alligator

I know I've said this a hundred times but if you're worried about palestinian fundraisers being scams at least consider donating to MSF. It's a highly reputable organization which has broken its long-standing neutrality to denounce Israel in front of the UN. Here's all the aid MSF is providing to Gazans (documentation available in multiple languages).

Since I know no one's gonna click on that link, here's a quick overview of some of the various ways in which Medicins Sans-Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) is aiding Palestinians

- Since Oct 7 2023, MSF provided for 14000 hospital admissions and 7500 surgeries, on top of treating 27500 people for physical violence causes, treating 34000 people for diarrhoea (very common condition in Gaza currently due to the sanitary crisis) and holding 18000 mental health sessions.

-MSF is currently operating in two hospitals, eight healthcare facilities and fifteen mobile clinics, providing surgical support, wound care, physiotherapy, maternity and paediatric care, basic healthcare, vaccinations, and mental health services among other things (more info on the treatments provided by each facility on the link above). Additionally, they provide training for psychological, medical and paramedical volunteers, and donate first aid kits to various camps (info on the specific locations on the link above).

- Via their partnership with the Palestinian Agriculture and Development Association, they're building latrines for over 30000 people in six camps, distributing hygiene kits to 2400 families, and ensuring clean drinking water for 25000 people, on top of equipping a camp for 70 families with accessible sanitary facilities for disabled people.

- Since October 7, 2023, eight of their medics have died. Seven of them are remembered here, and their latest, Hasan Suboh, in this statement that denounces Israel's allies for disregarding the fact that the protection of humanitarian workers is not being guaranteed as they claim.

MSF does not only stand for Palestine in humanitarian terms, it also does so politically to an extent, holding Israel and its allies accountable for sabotaging ceasefire negotiation attempts.

MSF also provides aid to Sudan, the Democratic Republic Of Congo, Haiti, Ethiopia and 76 other countries.

To better maximize your donation to MSF, I advise keeping an eye out for donation doubling and tripling periods, which occur fairly often and can be checked on their website.

alright everyone

Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me.

I know there is a lot of discourse (tm) around this right now but listen to me

sometimes you do just have to lie to children.

If, when my toddler is, you know, toddling around saying “mama? Big ball?”

If I were lean down and say “unfortunately the big beach ball for some reason fills you with such an unadulterated rage that is beyond human comprehension that you scream until you pass out, so mama had to remove the beach ball from the premises until you can better regulate your emotions” she would simply stare at me like I had 3 heads full of equal betrayal.

So, for now, instead “big ball went night night!”

Please understand when I say “removed the ball from the premises” I mean I popped it in a fit of exhausted confusion. I murdered the beach ball.

See I’ve lied to you all too and it was better this way.

you can’t just leave this in the tags etc.

You can’t be funnier then me on my own posts, I’m in tears from laughter

[ID: tags: "#that wasn't a lie though the big ball did go night night #it went to the great night night that awaits us all" /end ID]

just overheard my wife spelling something on the phone and i shit you not saying the words “E as in Eeyore” i am on my hands and knees wailing screaming crying pleading and begging people to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet

like the reason this exists is because none of the words sound like each other, which means that even with a terrible signal both parties should be able to clearly understand the words being spelled

i am dead serious that i believe this should be taught in school

Remembering when I went over to my female teacher's house in 5th grade and saw that she lived with another female teacher & went home going "wow, so teachers really do all live together!" & then my family had to explain to me what lesbians are

This reminds me of when I was a kid and my very Scottish grandma did child minding for extra money. At one point she looked after these three siblings that were adopted from Guatemala. The kids had two moms. It was the 90s and I'm Canadian.

Now, you would think that even in the 90s most adults would see two women who live in the same house and have adopted children together and think "Harold, they're lesbians". My mom certainly did, internally, but my grandma never brought it up, leaving my mom to wonder whether my grandma was being uncharacteristically discreet or if there was something about the situation my mom was misreading.

One day my grandma needed a hand with something to do with the kids, so my mom came over to the house, whereupon she noticed that the two women who lived together slept in one bedroom, and said "ohhh, they're lesbians."

To which my grandmother indignantly rebutted, "they're not lesbians, they're Scottish."

According to my grandmother, you see, it's cold in Scotland, so women live and sleep together all the time and women who do this are not lesbians, because it's cold (????). Therefore, upon noticing two women living together in Western Canada, adopting children together, and sleeping in the same bed together year-round, my grandma had mentally categorized these women as Scottish.

medieval heart-shaped prayer book in a medieval painting and in real life

much better footage of the haka that shut down parliament today

@endless-demon thank you so much for asking! it's a little complicated but I think simplification does a disservice to the issue and is exactly what people like David Seymour rely on to spread lies about historical context and current consequences. I'm putting this in a reblog because it's long, and I'm putting it on this post because I'd rather this video be the one to get seen. as always I'm pakeha and also not an expert, so I'm very open to corrections on details but im confident of the broad strokes.

so when the English first arrived to build settlements in aotearoa, they formed a treaty with Māori (te Tiriti o Waitangi), the people already living there, that the English can govern their own settlements, as long as they allowed for continued māori sovereignty (tino rangatiratanga). there exist two versions of the text, English and te reo Māori, which do not perfectly match. after this, the English settlers began acquiring massive swathes of land by legally questionable means, and asserting absolute sovereignty over these areas. these culminated in the land wars, which then lead to massive land confiscation as a form of both political punishment and colonization. the end result is that now the crown own nearly all land in aotearoa and claim absolute sovereignty over it.

now, the Māori text does not claim sovereignty over the property that the crown recognizes Māori own. the text promises, among other things, self determination for Māori, which is essentially impossible under a westminster system of government because they are currently a demographic minority. it's only very recent in our history that the crown has acknowledged the legitimacy of the te reo Māori text, and even more recently that we began to actually implement any of its principles. one of the biggest ways the treaty is used in modern day is to guarantee Māori have an opportunity at the table for major national decisions (particular those of environmental significance), and to defer organizational power for Māori issues to Māori communities.

the treaty principles bill seeks to water down these promises by allowing these rights to all new zealanders, "democratising" the treaty and removing those guarantees that have been so hard fought for by Māori. but, more importantly, it seeks to seed division and racism within this country to gather more support for the ACT party who are sponsoring this bill.

this bill was part of the coalition agreement by our current 3 party right wing government. the national party agreed to sponsor this bill to first reading (allowing public submission on the bill) but no further. I personally believe, along with many others, that when the time comes to vote for the second reading the act party will threaten to pull out of the coalition if the bill is not passed again, and our prime minister will not have the strength of character to stand up to his deputy. regardless, the relationship between the crown and Māori has already been damaged, both by the simple introduction of the bill as well as all the changes our current government has implemented.

as Paul Goldsmith, Minister for Treaty Negotiations outlined in his speech during the bill, the National party believe that te Tiriti must be killed, not in a single action, but by a thousand cuts, like the removal of references to the treaty from our legislation and curriculums, and the disestablishment of agencies like the Māori Health Authority, cuts to Māori advisors to govt departments, removing māori seats from local government, etc.

there's so much more to this issue, like the centuries of abuse and mistreatment of Māori by the crown authorities, how this abuse is ongoing to Māori children and adults today in state care, how iwi voices are our last line of defence against environmental and ecological damage by industry, the unilateral natural of the treaty reparation settlement process... but this is why this protest was staged in parliament today.

(in fact, there is a much larger protest taking place nationwide, scheduled to arrive the day the bill was supposed to be introduced. the bill was in fact introduced a week earlier, in a move many suspect was done to prevent exactly this kind of protest.)

as far as I'm concerned though? I think te pāti Māori achieved exactly what they wanted by this protest. they forced the government to drop the mask of civility, and force the protestors out of the building. and they showed their supporters that their protests are working - they felt threatened enough by this that they lashed out, felt a need to retaliate by suspending hana-rawhiti maipi-clarke from the house for 24 hours. the coalition are getting nervous

The way this lined up so many references I know feels like some bullet bending nonsense.

Idea: a post-apocalyptic novel complete with a young Chosen One where slowly you come to understand that in actuality it’s fourth-century Turkey and the chosen one is Santa Claus.

Seven years later I don’t remember writing this post but I do think it’s still a fantastic idea for a novel.

wow i love this

One of the truest things I’ve ever heard is that people who say they’re “brutally honest” are more interested in the brutality than the honesty.

*does this to you*

Frankly beautiful way of phrasing it

High fashion One Piece - part 1 of a series by Wisdm on Instagram