A Plea from the Heart: I Am Fatima, and This Is My Story

My name is Fatima, a teacher from Gaza. I used to work in a small school I loved dearly, planting hope in the hearts of children and teaching them that tomorrow could be better. But the war took everything away. My school was bombed, I lost my job, and our home was reduced to rubble. Yet, I refused to give up. I set up a small tent amid the destruction and continued teaching children, showing them that knowledge is a light that cannot be extinguished, even in the darkest times.

My husband, Akram, was my partner and pillar of support. But he was severely injured in an attack targeting civilians. His abdominal injuries are so severe that he can no longer work or even lift basic items. Every day, I see the pain in his eyes and feel the weight of helplessness, but I try to stay strong for him and for our children.

Our eldest, Manar, is four years old, and she’s missing out on her childhood amidst this devastation. Our youngest, Ibrahim, was born under bombardment just a year ago. He has suffered greatly due to the lack of milk and proper medical care. Yet, sometimes, he smiles, and in those brief moments, I find the strength to keep going.

We now live in a fragile tent that doesn’t shield us from the cold or rain. Every day is a new battle for survival. I write these words while holding my children’s hands, with nothing left but my faith in God and the hope that your kind hearts will hear our plea.

Please help us provide milk and food for our children, ease Akram’s pain, and rebuild even a small part of the life the war has destroyed. Every donation, no matter how small, makes a big difference in our lives.

I ask you to share our story and be our support during this harsh and unforgiving time.

Donation link

Ghost 90 verified

Verified by....✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #651 )✅️

Three trees somehow grew out of an old dead one.

its not dead! its all one tree! enough bullshit happened that it was grievously injured whether in a storm or other event, and it had the nutrients to survive and put out new shoots that successfully matured and grew into new trunks! this tree is persevering!!!

anyway, @funnier-as-a-system

something something the poetry of science etc

woah

yeah

i'd devour you whole if you'd let me 🩸🫀

hand knit and crocheted, words by me

@ominous-signs

Official ominous sign

i thought this was cool so i made it into a blinkie

THIS IS SO COOL

free reaction pic

Maybe this is the wrong platform to pose this question given the average tumblr user but

Is it just me or did our generation (those of is who are currently 20-30 ish) just not get the opportunity to be young in the 'standard' sense?

Like, everyone I talk to who's over 40 has all their wild stories about their teens and 20s, being young and dumb, and then I talk to my friends and coworkers and classmates, and we just... dont.

My mom tells stories of skipping school to sneak across the border and spend the day at a bar in Mexico. I was threatened with not being allowed to graduate because of senior ditch day. One of my friends had to go to his first hour class on senior ditch day because the teacher, who almost exclusively taught seniors, arranged a huge exam that day with no available makeup days, specifically to punish kids who took part in ditch day. Our wild and crazy ditch day was playing mini golf and then stopping for ice cream on our way back to one of our friends' houses to play cards against humanity.

Don't get me wrong, we had fun. But all of that, threats of not graduating, threats of failing classes over a single test, over some mini golf and ice cream?

Throughout high school and early in college, my friend group got kicked out of malls, stores, and even a parking lot just for being there wrong. Not being loud of disruptive. Not causing problems. Just being there too long, or without buying anything.

My mom graduated high school, after repeating her senior year, without a single grade above a D, and was offered a full ride scholarship to a state university to play on their women's football team. I had a 3.8 GPA, multiple extracurriculars, a summer job, and over 100 hours of volunteer work, and barely got into that same university, and then couldn't afford to go there anyway.

We've made getting into college so important and yet so difficult that kids are sacrificing their childhoods for it.

Then they become adults and it doesn't go away. Your employer/ potential employers are searching your social media and internet presence so you'd better hope no one has ever posted a picture of you at a party, or with alcohol, or wearing revealing clothes, or whatever else they've deemed unprofessional. And if you want to go out it's a 10 dollar cover and drinks are at least 8 dollars, and you need to tip if there's any kind of live entertainment, who can afford to do all that regularly?

My physical therapist, when I was 18, told me about his 21st birthday, how the last thing he remembers is people taking body shots off him. I spent my 21st birthday alone, was in bed by 10pm because I had to be at work the next morning. My boss had already told me that they knew it was my 21st, and if I called out, she'd write me up for improper use of sick leave because you're not allowed to use sick leave for a hangover. I don't know anyone whose 21st birthday was a big deal. No one went out and partied for it.

I dont really know where I'm going with all of this. I guess I just don't understand the point of it all. We spend our youth working hard to provide a future that we still can't afford. We have to be responsible and professional as teenagers. And we get nothing out of it. We can't afford life or friends or fun. At least our parents got to have fun being young and dumb, we just got groomed on kik.

So I'm not the only one noticing this. I wish I had an answer or at least something to say about it. But I dont. I'm just tired.

Original report (waybacked PDF) is from 2007. That's Gen Z kids.

When I, Gen-Xer, was about 12 - in my rural home, I had about a three-mile range. (Could've pushed it to more, but didn't want to walk that far.) In the city, it was about a mile. Not that anyone was checking; again, that was about the distance I wanted to walk, and besides, that covered all of "downtown."

My kids? Closer to that 300 yards limit at the same age. Not because I wanted to restrict them, but we live next to a freeway on-ramp and between two sets of train tracks... and there is absolutely nothing kid-friendly within a half-mile for them to visit.

I spent my 21st birthday bar-hopping. My kids spent their 21st birthdays at home with a nice meal. I don't think either of them wanted to go bar-hopping - but yeah, as a society, we've removed a LOT of teen-friendly options.

See also: End of Third Places, switch from video game arcades to home consoles (hey, then every kid has to buy their own copy--great for game-makers!), shutdown of malls or restrictions on youth at them, closure of public parks, reduced/removed after-school programs, etc. Plus the places that think it's illegal for a 12-year-old to walk to the corner store unsupervised.

I am, however, DELIGHTED to hear that the booze & other vices industries are panicking over Gen Z not going out to party. Like, you spent 30-odd years removing all the places and ways people can hang out together and have fun outside of someone's personal house, and... guess what, when people hit milestone events (graduation, milestone birthdays, job promotion, whatever), they don't immediately flock to the Party Zone that they have never been welcome at. How shocking.

It sucks that Gen Z does not get to party, does not have good celebration options. REALLY sucks that that's often because school or job has decided to tell them not to celebrate, rather than just not having places to go. I'm just not upset over party capitalism taking a hit.

oh yeah as a teen librarian also this is so fucking real. like, i was a square so i didn't do anything anyways as a teen, but i did notice that people didn't really....do much when i was in high school.

and nowadays?? we've made the bar so fucking high for these kids. i participated in this mock interview program as an interviewer guest from the library, where seniors would get a chance to pretend interview for a job with me to get some experience before they entered the workforce.

and my god. the resumes on these kids. they're pumped full of sports, arts, extracurriculars, awards, volunteer work, like 60% of them had already had at least one job, and at least 2 of them had already started their own fucking businesses.

like. i'm impressed of course, overall this isn't a terrible thing. but when do these kids get to take a break? when do ANY of us get to take a break?? we have made society so back-breaking that 15 year olds are starting businesses while they run the student council, attend five clubs, volunteer on the weekends, and do ever increasing mountains of homework to maintain a 4.0 GPA.

Like again. I was a fucking square in school. I had all A's in everything and i did extracurriculars, i even did some volunteer work here and there. but mostly i went home, i read books for fun, i went rambling in the woods near my house for no particular reason. i chilled out with my friends and doodled pictures and wrote piles of fanfiction. i spent so much time in high school just...relaxing and playing.

when are these kids getting time to do that, between all the stuff we expect of them? where are these kids getting the space to do that as we continue to push them out of every single physical space, because teens hanging out in a gaggle of friends is somehow threatening?

why are we expecting this much out of kids, out of young adults, while we refuse to offer even a fraction of what our parents and grandparents were given for a fraction of the work we're putting in?

we're running ourselves into the fucking ground. and for fucking what?

They mad asf in the comments btw tho he’s right

A whistleblower at the fascist DHS has released the names of 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol agents, providing an unprecedented means to monitor and counter their local presence

Apparently ICE now has agents posing as utility workers to get into people's homes. The electric and gas companies have posted information on how to tell if it's one of their workers, and numbers to call to confirm whether they've sent someone to do utility work on your house.

Stay safe, friends.

To clarify from the article: the man in question was lured OUT of his home by ice agents posing as utility workers, they did not enter. The gas company did say that their employees generally don't ask for entrance to the inside of a home, so please also do not LEAVE your home unless you're sure you're dealing with a legit employee.

protest today down at the capital… wish me luck and safety 🤞🏼

some dragon ball themed protest signage i spotted! i think next one we go to i’ll make a new sign with trunks and vegeta on it that says “proud child of an illegal alien” because these have inspired me

i wrote text and drew the ball, but a stranger came up and started doodling goku’s face next to my block as i was drawing LOL

I hope this is true.

I'm starting to go the opposite direction of all the "you're a literal baby infant until 25 bc your bwain is a baby bwain :(" shit

We should be treating teens as more adult than we do. I don't mean some lowering the age of consent creep shit, I mean presuming competence. Get a job, learn life skills, learn to cook, be fully responsible for a pet, walk places alone (in daylight) or with a friend, have intergenerational friendships, teach skills to littler kids, be someone people can trust with more than wiping their own ass. Be someone they themselves can trust to do stuff and go places. We're stealing children's confidence by treating them like they can't do anything. Treat them like they can and should do many adult things and more will find the confidence to practice at them.

Yes, the brain isn't finished growing when you're like 15. No, you shouldn't get treated like a preschooler till it is. The general experience of adulthood is like 90% practice 10% maturity I think. The maturity is needed but it doesn't account for much if you just do nothing.

YES. And with support! Teach your teens to make their own doctors appointments by sitting by them in case something comes up they don't know the answer to. Show your elementary schoolers how to cook a meal. Teach them how to read a map and guide you where they want to go. Kids are capable.

Your brain develops when you fucking use it, so let teens use their brains!

Everything here except 'get a job' because education is already a full-time job.

I say this as a person who did labor for money as a child and teenager and should not have had to.

And especially: *teach your kids, however small, what they can do in emergencies." That learning (because you trusted them with it as important) will sink deep into their brains and help them cope for the rest of their lives. They will know, from tiny times, what coping looks like. It'll lead them toward strengths they never knew they had.

When I was still nursing in NY and occasionally helped out our colleagues in ER, several times I saw small children who'd been taught what to do save their whole families from burning buildings by having been coached in how to use the phone to call for help and say what the trouble was, even when their parents and other older kids were unresponsive.

Teach your kids to rely on themselves, even when "people who'll tell them what to do if they're not sure" are unavailable. ...Because they may not always be available.

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

So what is a rain shadow?

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

Oh yeah nothing is more annoying than fantasy maps that can't get mountains, rivers and rain shadows right.

May I recommend my new favorite tool: Mapgen4. You start with a random seed and then add mountains, valleys, shallow water, or oceans as you like. You can adjust the wind direction to make wind shadows off the mountains fall where you want. You can adjust overall raininess to make the rivers larger or smaller, or have more or fewer tributaries. It works best for small, isolated landmasses (think islands more than continents) but as there’s no scale bar and it’s all slightly abstracted anyway you can do whatever you want with it. I’ve only just started playing with it but it’s SO FUN.

I do think this could be useful for writers! ...Caveat, if you're going to use this for making a map for anything published (digital or paper, even if it's only in a fanfic archive or whatever), please, please credit the creator and their program as how you made that map! The more ways information like this gets out there, the more useful it'll be to other writers, roleplaying game DMs/GMs, creators, etc.

One of my favourites for mapping plates, biomes, etc is Tectonics.js. If you're familiar with how tectonics shape a planet, you can guess where the features go by toggling plates, crust thickness, etc. Between Mapgen4 and Tectonics.js, we've got some pretty sweet tools at our disposal.

More stuff!:

Also I would recommend looking into Landscape Archaeology as well! That's because Landscape archeology is basically adding the social/cultural layer on top of all that geology and geography. Environments change when communities live in them, and communities likewise adapt to various environments.

This is a short free introduction to the concept: "Notes on Landscape Archaeology." To summarize, Landscape archaeology sort of like...studies the relation of people to places/spaces (that is, landscapes) in time.

Also this paper [An Archeology of Landscapes] breaks down/introduces the key concepts that I learned which is first that you can form the "construct paradigm" of a landscape from settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes.

And then the highlights of their summary of what constitutes defining a landscape:

Basically a "landscape" is made by a community living in an environment. Once you have a geological environment that makes sense, landscape archaeology is like... Basically how I feel confident knowing where trade routes would be on a map, where there are areas of continual high conflict, what kinds of agriculture exists where, etc. once the geological stuff is hammered out, it's like...I know how that would influence the local cultures and vice versa. At that point, it's easy to start marking the natural borders, settlements, trade/port cities, and even strategic fortresses. If you have properly put rivers on a map, then marking your port cities is effortless, basically.

Also:

If you are like me and find it helpful to have video reference for a process/activity in addition to a written guide, Artifexian is a YouTube channel that does a LOT of world building stuff and specifically he's in the process of creating a world following a lot of Worldbuilding Pasta's methodology!

you tell me that all the bad people are stupid. you tell me that stupid people should be killed, bred out, that evolution will leave them behind. i tell you that's not funny, that i have an intellectual disability, that i want to be allowed to love and to have children of my own. that maybe it's not the end of the world if "stupid" people get to stay. that my caregiver loves me and takes care of me. that she reads to me. that i get by with my little accessibility tools scattered about the house, my aac, and by being gentle. you tell me it's a joke. clearly you aren't like those REAL eugenicists, you only talk like them. you tell me surely i must agree- all the bad people, the ones who take away my rights, they must not be smart, they must be lacking some information to make them like this. i tell you smart people have hurt me more than anyone else because they know better and they still choose cruelty. these people in power aren't lacking anything. they have all the resources in the world and brains that work the way they want. they don't know struggle, they doom everyone who does. you don't stop talking about "stupid people" like we're a disease to eradicate. i note you down as one more smart person who has failed me by choosing to be cruel when you knew better

This is a long read, but worth it. Some takeaways:

-Don’t use “buy now pay later.” The fine print isn’t what it seems.

-The fine print on medical financing, store credit cards, and contactless payment is also not what it seems.

-Payday loans are still predatory, even when offered by your employer

-Rewards programs are an income stream for the companies that run them. The points systems are manipulated so that the house always wins. They depend on people leaving money in rewards accounts and not in interest-bearing traditional bank accounts.

-Electronic payment apps like VenMo are not banks. You don’t earn interest. Your money is not protected.

-Your financial information is not private if your money is not kept in a regulated bank.

-None of this is regulated by the FDIC. Your money is not protected if it is held by a non-bank doing banking business. Our economy is not protected from the collapse of financial institutions that are not banks.

-The Biden administration was making progress in increasing accountability for non-banks operating as predatory financial services providers. The current administration is reversing those protections to favor corporations.

Oh boy.

 A third of younger Americans hold their savings on nonbank tech platforms like Venmo

PEOPLE! DO NOT LEAVE YOUR MONEY IN VENMO OR APPLE PAY OR ANY OF THIS SHIT. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GO FIND A REAL BANK OR A CREDIT UNION.

If Venmo were to close tomorrow all your money would vanish. There's no insurance or guarantee on any of these things. I know banks aren't great but legit banks will have the "FDIC insured" logo on their doors and websites, which means if my bank goes under tomorrow I still get my money back. Also I guarantee you there is a credit union somewhere in your town, go find it.

You can leave some money in Venmo or Apple pay or whatever, but NOT ALL OF IT for the love of God.

FYI this is what the logo looks like and Apple Cash is FDIC insured.

No, it's misleading. Go to Green Dot's T&Cs, search for "FDIC," and you'll come across this:

In the event Green Dot Bank fails. Meaning the only time your money is protected is if Green Dot goes under. Not if Apple goes under (unlikely, granted). Or if Apple changes its terms (entirely possible). Or if you got scammed. Or if Apple freezes your account because they think you're the one scamming. Or any of the other countless mishaps your money could suffer. Green Dot is insured, but Apple Cash is not.

This is the disclaimer (highlighted) you see before you set up Apple Cash:

I really need my followers, especially younger ones, to read this.

And DO NOT get store credit cards, they are money sucks and difficult to cancel.

As someone who's worked in the industry for a decade now, here's a quick rundown (US specific,) of what your schools and parents didn't teach you:

Take this information and do your own research so that you can make an informed decision. Now you know what to look for! Don't be taken advantage of!