rat!

“you reblogged conflicting posts” correct bc i’m having conflicting feelings abt the world rn.

People when you have a nuanced and conflicting opinion

Did the whole "Don't hate what you don’t understand" lesson we were taught a million times over in children's movies go over people's heads?

This is how we should be acting

Oh, you're Muslim?

That's awesome, I'm always so inspired by your creativity in fashion!

You're pagan, and worship several pantheons at once?

That must be a lot of work! That's impressive!

You're a girl but you use he/him pronouns?

Alright, it doesn't inconvenience me at all to respect that, and it's interesting.

You're cupiromantic, so you don’t feel romantic attraction, but you still want to do romantic things?

I don't see how that's any different than an ace person who enjoys sex, or even an allo person using a dating sim game, so go right ahead!

You're a therian that physically identifies as your theriotype?

That's fascinating, how does that work?

You identify as robotkin?

That's sick as hell, tell me more!

None of these things affect me personally, and none of them inherently harm anyone. Can we please treat things with curiosity instead of anger?

i think it is by now well established that hannukah is the most over-represented holiday in jewish-focused media and that this also applies to fanfiction. too many jewish [x character] fanfics about them celebrating hannukah. especially when the other holidays are filled with so much more potential for story settings. but in the context of my current obsession i want to invite everyone to contemplate the concept of spock celebrating purim. and furthermore: purim being his favorite holiday. he spends the whole time completely stone faced and unmoving, even while wearing the silliest costume, but he is having the time of his life. and of course he wears matching costumes with jim and bones. and he is the one who has to drag them to bed that night after they get drunk. unless he gets drunk himself on all the chocolate.

People who think they're being progressive in advocating for total hijab bans in response to harsh and repressive forced veiling laws in countries like Iran and Afghanistan can't seem to understand that forcing hijab and banning hijab are two sides of the same oppressive coin - patriarchal systems infantilising women, deciding they know what's best for them and taking away their right to make their OWN CHOICES.

Human Figures in the Cave Paintings of Southern Venezuela.

Credit: John Greer and Mavis Greer.⁣

🛒 winco checkout belt 🛒

Any travel advice site will tell you to travel like a local, but honestly you should local like a traveller. Go out with wide eyes and curiosity. Visit museums and parks and art galleries, try out the overpriced but highly rated restaurants that only tourists visit, take photos and video, stop to read those heritage information signs, treat yourself to an ice cream on a hot day. Don't let tourists be the only ones who take joy in your home.

>"nobody's gonna help you in the real world!!"

>go outside

>love and support in many places as long you have the courage to ask for it

If youre skinny im sorry that you'll never know the endless comfort of sitting with your hand cradling the underside of your belly. It is so warm and pleasant and i feel bad for you

you will not be surprised to learn that not only was the commercial spot in question not “about how we all need to stand with Israel”, but israel & palestine are not referenced or alluded to in any way whatsoever.

here’s the ad:

it’s not even an ad primarily about antisemitism. it’s a campaign called “Stand Up To All Hate” about standing up to racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, sexism, antisemitism, etc.—all hate, as the name suggests.

and, for a split second, there’s a kid wearing a kippah. that’s it. shaq appeared in an ad where a kid wears a kippah and that is what is getting him accused of “supporting genocide”

aaaand of course exactly the people that ad is directed at found my post

here’s the thing. even if literally everything this person said and more were true, the accusations leveled against Shaq, which my post was responding to, do not follow from what they said.

A reminder, the claim was that Shaq did a commercial spot:

…none of which is supported by the attempted character assassination of Robert Kraft or the FCAS.

FCAS could have been founded by Meir Kahane himself and that would not change the fact that nothing in the ad Shaq appeared in promoted Israel, its government, its military actions, told anyone to support Israel, made the claim that not supporting Israel was antisemitism, or made any statement that could in any way be understood as advocating for any genocide by any even semi-reasonable person. even if you believe FCAS’s position is “any criticism of Israel is antisemitic”, nothing in the ad made any reference to criticism of Israel, even passing. the word antisemitism didn’t even appear in the ad outside of the name of the organization; the only reference to antisemitism or Jews in the ad itself was the appearance of a visibly Jewish child for a fraction of a second in a half minute ad that featured multiple other minorities, including Black, Asian, Muslim, and disabled people.

and that would be the case even if what they were claiming about Kraft and FCAS were true. But, of course, those are bullshit too.

they claim that Robert Kraft is

…none of which is true.

I can find zero evidence of any specific statement from Kraft that expresses anything approaching hatred or racialized animosity for the Palestinian people, or saying that any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic.

What I can find is people like this chucklefuck making that claim with zero evidence, and articles about Kraft pulling funding from Columbia after the leadership didn’t adequately address antisemitism & safety concerns on campus.

“What antisemitism & safety concerns?” you may ask. People telling Jewish students to “go back to Poland”, calling them “baby-killers” (which is blood libel), and the self-described “militants of Hinds Hall” locking people in buildings they were forcibly occupying, obstructing campus grounds, and openly voicing support for officially designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas & the PFLP. That’s it. Those are pretty cut-and-dry safety & antisemitism issues.

Oh, and those awful terrible evil MILLIONS supposedly going to “The Occupation”? Yeah, no. they went to a couple startup incubators that support underrepresented groups in Israel including Palestinians and Arab Israelis, and an Israeli kids football program.

idk, donating millions to groups that provide financial support to Palestinian-owned businesses doesn’t sound like the actions of someone who’s trying to exterminate the Palestinian people. it sounds like this person just heard “Israeli” and blacked out

I can find zero evidence of him “donating millions” to Israeli settlement efforts in either of the Palestinian territories (the only thing that could reasonably be described as “The Occupation”), so they’re either deceptively referring to any existence of Israel whatsoever as “The Occupation”—tipping their hand that they themself are the one advocating for the destruction of an entire national group & not Kraft or Shaq—or just pulling shit out of their ass.

after all that, I only have one question for the people spreading these lies:

It's so darkly comedic that they are all putting these flags,watermelon emojis,and mindless little slogans in their bio because it's the hip thing to do to prove their pure moral superiority and cultling status but the second I have my heart once again ripped out of my chest by seeing this hate symbol plastered on another "normal leftist's" bio, all I can think is: Great,so you are either a brainwashed,gullible,cowardly moron who wouldn't mind if,and will likely even cheer on me,my family,and my people being annihilated,or an actively maliciously ignorant bigot who would get your own hands dirty if you could get a cheap shot in. By this point there is no inbetween anymore. Even if some just put it there for leftist street cred deco,it doesn't matter anymore. The added silence on our suffering and continued spread of propaganda and misinformation in addition to that is enough of an indictment.

It's become as visceral as any (Neo)-Nazi or Jihadist symbol to me.

At least a swastika arm band is honest.

Just fucking come right out and say it.

If you are too cowardly or unwilling to express empathy for Jews,and unequivocal outrage over Oct 7th, if you continue to spread terrorist sponsored lies,if you refuse to listen to us,or condemn antisemitic attacks and the descent of your leftist movement into everything you claim to despise then you are not just an antisemite, racist,bigot and hypocrite, but have utterly failed at being a decent human being.

It's now or never.

Over a year of your cruelty and performative "activism" is enough.

You have had enough time to listen and learn.

You don't get to hide behind that convenient "anti-Zionist" dogwhistle of a label anymore.

What are you afraid of? You aren't the ones being hunted for sport,and not a single mindless,callous, bigoted thing you said,did or especially posted has helped even one Palestinian. You have accomplished nothing positive whatsoever.

Will that flag or watermelon "free Gaza"? Or is it there because that's all this ever was: a performance,and a socially accepted outlet for the most heinous thoughts and urges. If you aren't able or willing to fucking denounce Hamas & their ilk,demand our people be returned to us etc in the same loud mouthed breath you screech that slogan you are telling on yourselves loud and clear. Continue using that fucking phrase all you want but unless you add "from Hamas" just know that you are seen and understood for what you truly are - a hypocritical,deliberately clueless coward who folds to peer pressure,at the most charitable,or a maliciously ignorant antisemitic terror supporter, at worst. Take your pick.

Because as it stands you are no better than the right wingers who voted for Trump, and congrats on successfully turning the horseshoe into a fashionable little bracelet.

Same product,slightly different flavor.

going insane hearing talk about whether harris did enough to "earn" votes. no candidate has ever or can ever earn my vote because a vote is not a payment i send to a politician and it's stupid to think about it like it is. exact same thinking error that leads to people talking about not voting like it's a boycott. if anyone earned my vote it's the people i tried to use that vote to protect

you never owed kamala harris anything. you owed it to your fellow citizens of the world to vote for harris.

kamala harris is not even close to being the person who would have benefited most from her winning the election, and she's even farther from being the person who will be hurt the most by her loss, which makes thinking about it in terms of "but did she deserve my vote?" disastrously stupid. she simply is not the person whose deserving matters at all here

Exactly tbh

I don't go to the gym because it motivates me. I don't arrive to work on time because of how my job earned it. I don't eat fruits and vegetables because they inspire me.

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

Spotted rat again, idk if it's the same one but it would be funny

Smoking on that we'd

Johnny Eck was a performer from the 1930s who was born without any legs:

He's primarily known for appearing in the 1932 cult classic Freaks directed by Tod Browning.

However what I'm mostly obsessed with is this account of a magic trick he did with his non-disabled twin brother (text under the cut)

Like this is the funniest thing I've ever heard. Can you imagine

Easily one of the top 5 funniest things you can do as an identical twin

Dr. Gachey with foxglove, 1890

Some of Van Gogh’s best work was done during a period of his life that he spent in a hospital being treated for his mental health problems. I could be wrong but I think Starry Night was among those.

This is consistently the case. Creators tend to do their best work when they are in a healthy place and receiving proper treatment and not being self destructive in their efforts to cope. Go figure.

All our experiences, good and bad, inform what we create, but suffering is not the price of great art. Suffering is what prevents artists from completing great art.

(I bring to mind this @tkingfisher / Ursula Verson quote about once a week <3)