reject the western gaze!

mutual aid means no hierarchy between givers and receivers

a new mutual aid org, Bridge of Solidarity, has been established in the gaza strip by 17 year old poet yazan mohammed in response to the exploitative practices conducted by some charities and encouraged by the existing charity-based model of fundraising for gaza. according to BoS: "the western attention economy and pity economy plays a large role in who lives or dies in gaza." essentially, people need to make themselves marketable in order to receive lifesaving aid; people who are not marketable die. yazan himself wrote about the damage this can do to one's self image, which you can read here.

after trying for a year to respect his own privacy, my friend siraj was also pressured into posting images of his son's emaciated body in order to gain sympathy from westerners.

we cannot keep forcing people to do this anymore.

here's a declaration of their values from bridge of solidarity's most recent post:

Our organization is against the Western gaze. We refuse to humiliate people. We refuse to force people to take photos. We refuse to force people to take photos with our flyer or logo. People will receive aid freely without being forced to pose. We will respect people's privacy completely. Our principles include autonomy, dignity, sovereignty, mutual respect, and mutual aid.

this org will prioritize giving aid to people without phones or social media, who do not speak english, and who do not have outside support or living parents. these are the people who are not palatable to westerners but who deserve to live with as much dignity as everyone else

as of five days ago, BoS are working on a water truck delivery

House of the Living

My friend Hydrapple :) ❤️

My "he would not fucking say that" is when people have Senshi hate on fast food or pizza, because Senshi is fully a "fed is better, just do your best" type of person and hed love fast food.

Man spends a day making candy and ice cream for everyone and then at the end is like "dang, really should have planned more well rounded meals, ah well lets fix that". He would not complain about someone knocking back half a pizza or having a big ass soda and greasy burger, hed explain how its cool to eat like that long as you try and make sure to keep yourself rounded and not neglect the food groups

The best thing about Fairy-types being added as a counter to Dragons is that the type no longer has to be given exclusively to Legendaries and Great Beasts of Immesurable Power and instead they get to go a little freaky with it

What if worm in an apple but like, wyrm in an apple haha. Let's make 5 of those

Open Printer is an open-source, repairable inkjet printer designed for makers, artists, and anyone tired of throwaway hardware. Built with standard mechanical components and modular parts, it’s easy to assemble, modify, and repair. You can print on standard sheets or paper rolls and choose between black or color cartridges, refillable at your convenience.

This project aims to reclaim our everyday tools. As such, it features no proprietary drivers, no cartridge DRM that locks you to a single vendor and is designed to never become obsolete. The Open Printer is built for longevity and customizability, ensuring that it remains fully under your control.

by the way guys, this deployment of ice to minnesota is largest ever. more agents than chicago. we are a much less dense state. we are being inundated.

my mom just recently started selling things on facebook marketplace, and earlier she was telling me about her first-ever interaction with a buyer from there, and i was expecting some sort of insane horror story because she started off describing how he was VERY direct and brief in the communication and was clearly in a hurry to meet up asap, but she went on to describe waiting outside at the rendezvous point and seeing this big huge guy pull up on a motorcycle "and you could tell he works with his hands and makes a lot of money" (paradoxically described as having dirty jeans but a clean and well-taken-care-of face(???)) and he just pulled out a wad of hundreds to pay her in cash. he was of course buying a pair of silver james avery earrings from the 1970s, and he explained the reason he was in a hurry because he was about to go meet a different fb marketplace seller to buy the matching pendant from the set, and that it's for his wife who collects all sorts of vintage james avery stuff. thanks for the sale big huge dirtyclean motorcycle guy, i hope your wife enjoys adding your purchases to her dragon hoard

"Friends outside of Minnesota please read. I'm sharing a post written by a personal friend and medical doctor:
Friends outside MN, you need to know what is happening here. Everyone knows that ICE shot and killed a woman here on Wednesday. But that’s not the only thing that’s going on:

• ICE agents are cruising areas with immigrant-owned businesses, and kidnapping patrons and employees alike. Yesterday they abducted two US citizen employees at a suburban Target, one who was begging them to allow him to go get his passport to show them.
• ICE is going door to door in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, asking residents where their immigrant neighbors live. Read that again. If it sounds like something out of your high school history textbook, that’s because it is.
• ICE is targeting schools and school buses. They pepper sprayed teenagers and abducted two school staff members at the high school up the street from me on Wednesday. Police are literally escorting school buses to ensure children can get to school and home safely. The Minneapolis Public Schools have moved to virtual learning for the next 4 weeks because it’s unsafe for children or teachers to physically come to school.
• They are targeting hospitals and clinics. Patients are scared and are cancelling their appointments or just not showing up. Kids are missing their checkups and vaccines, folks aren’t getting their cancer care, etc.
• They are smashing windows in cars and homes.
• ICE is increasingly picking up Native Americans—again, targeting folks based on skin color alone.
• They are arresting and beating legal observers. A friend of a friend had her arm broken yesterday. Folks are showing up at local hospitals, brought in in ICE custody, with severe injuries that are absolutely inconsistent with mechanism of injury reported by ICE. (Think: patient appears to have been beaten unconscious, while ICE agent says he slipped and fell.)
  I can’t emphasize enough that these ICE agents do not have warrants. There are 2,000+ agents here and they are simply hunting for anyone that’s not white. It doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen or a green card holder, they will kidnap you first and ask questions later.
  
  But the community is fighting back.
• Protests are happening every day.
• Community groups have been leading know-your-rights sessions for months, often to packed venues.
• Whistles are being distributed by the thousands, carried on keychains and worn on coat zippers, always at the ready to be blown in warning if ICE is spotted.
• Drivers are following ICE vehicles, blaring their horns in warning.
• Businesses are locking their doors even while open to keep employees and customers safe. As I type this, I’m standing guard at the locked door of our neighborhood burrito joint while I wait for my takeout order, so the employees can focus on their jobs. The place is packed with neighbors supporting this small business.
• Anti-ICE signs are posted everywhere. The community is making it crystal clear that ICE is not welcome here.
• Parents and neighbors are standing guard outside schools, organizing carpools, and escorting kids to and from school on foot.
• Parents of kids in Spanish-immersion daycare (there are a LOT of these daycares here!) are keeping their kids home so the teachers don’t have to take the risk of coming to work.
• Churches and community groups are holding fundraisers to buy and deliver groceries to families who don’t feel safe leaving home.
• Mutual aid money is going out to folks who can’t make rent because they can’t work or because a breadwinner was abducted, or who need a warm place to stay after their home’s windows were smashed.
  
  THAT is what is happening here. This fight is ongoing and it’s horrifying to watch. But we are not backing down. To my friends in other cities and states, don’t think for a minute that this won’t happen in your town. It will. Be ready. Learn from us, as we have learned from Portland and Chicago and New York. Fight back. Don’t let us get to the last line of Martin Niemoller’s poem.”
  
  -Grant Boulanger

ImmigrantJustice.org has tips about what to do if confronted by ICE btw

i don't usually like talking about this because 1) i am a very private person and 2) oh boy stigma is a bitch

however. this is important to say. so.

i have BPD. specifically, borderline personality disorder, not bi-polar disorder (we need more letters for this shit i think). I've had it for a Long Fucking While. since before any of y'all knew me. and let me tell you, I've had some days that were a gddamn struggle!!!! and i still do!!!! but here's the fucking truth:

it can get better, should you choose to work on it. it can get easier to manage. and I'm not saying that so that you can one day be a Functioning Member of Society or any of that bullshit. I'm saying it makes things better for yourself. speaking as someone with it, bpd is a lot of fear, and a lot of rage because of that fear. and life gets so much less fucking miserable when you're not scared out of your fucking mind all the gddamn time, and not fearful and hating everyone around you because of fear. or also a miserable ball of jealousy.

it gets better. you can work on the fear, and with it you can work on the anger and jealousy and lashing out. hell, even with only just going back to therapy (and only because i found a good therapist who knows about bpd and DBT) this past year, I've made a lot of improvement in the past 5 or so years just working on myself by myself. therapy personally has helped me, but everyone is different, so some folks it might help, some it might not, it varies qnd the medical system is shit. but you can work on things, and things can be made better

it gets easier and things improve for you and one day you're not as scared, and maybe you can keep your crying to a level Below the dry-heaving in the bathroom at three in the morning stage and you recover a little better and you wake up for another day/night.

and i won't lie!!!! shit sucks!!! a lot of us struggle with addiction, myself included!!!! we've all led shit fucking lives to get to this point!!!! lots of us go to early graves!!! people are fucking assholes!!!! massive fucking assholes actually!!!!!

but despite people being cruel, and our expensive habits and bad thoughts, you're not doomed. despite what our fear might say, we do not, in fact, have giant neon signs about our heads telling everyone they should throw us away before they ever get attached, and we should stop trying to put ones up. and guess the fuck what!!!!!! some folks just straight up don't give a shit that we have bpd!!!!!! believe it the fuck or not, if you stop putting up a disclaimer that you're Literally The Worst Person Alive, you may make some friends, and some of them might spend hours on wikipedia and the blogs of fellow borderlines reading up on what it actually means and how to be considerate and a good friend to you, and they'll listen to your own experiences too.

and best of all: they'll forgive you, and they'll understand, and they won't drop you like a fucking hot potato the second you Do Something Wrong.

they'll love you in their own ways, if you want that, and if you let that.

and you'll fuck up, but literally everyone fucks up!!!!! michealangelo probably painted something wrong and went "ah shit i can't undo that."!!! I've fucked up a lot, cause I'm a human who is working through Fear Of Connection and Rejection, and Lack of Good Coping Skills, and Tainted Pattern Recognition Disorder. there have been times where i told my friends not to be nice to me. there were times where i kept my early bird up until three in the gddamn morning!!!!! there were awkward next days, and serious conversations, and now they're renting a place for a few days so i can go up and see them because they still love me after many years!!

nkt every friend will be like this. and it sucks, and you'll get your heart broken again and you'll probably cry (cause i know I Would), but that doesn't mean you're Doomed. doesn't make you toxic sludge harvested fresh from an oil spill. just means it didn't work out. and maybe that that person was a dick. maybe.

but again. you're not doomed. you can work on things, you can find better ways to cope. this is something you've probably had for a while. you weren't doomed before. you're not now. you can have moments of being without fear, then days, then weeks, and maybe more. you can find ways to communicate and talk and it'll be okay.

and also. please never fucking google borderline personality disorder and look at things written by folks who don't have it. just don't. people can be dicks, and you are not a villainous two-faced split-dyed stereotype. and even if you are, i love you anyways. you deserve love. and i love you all.

a bpd diagnosis is not a death sentence.

and also. if you have any other cluster b disorder, i love you too. we're people.

it's oksy. it'll get better.

and, if you want somewhere good to look for help and info, april from @borderlinereminders is really fucking helpful, and also shows that you can have long-lasting and meaningful relationships as someone with bpd (sorry april, not to put you on blast)

i care about y'all. take some deep beaths if you can. it's gonna be okay.