shamefully, i haven't made a post about amal and her family @amal-ashour-new in some time. but amal has never left me, at least she has never left my heart. amal is one of the palestinians who has been on this website asking for help the longest, she's been verified multiple times and even offers her phone number to people who want to talk to her. she is a kind, gracious, and beautiful person

when i first spoke to her, her daughter maryam was just 1 and half years old. she needed milk. the genocide was raging worse than ever. now, maryam is 3, and she has a sister. amal had mina less than a month ago, and luckily the delivery went well, but mina was still born in beseiged gaza, and now amal has run out of milk and is trying to protect newborn mina from the freezing cold and floods that have already taken the lives of babies in gaza. mina's crying from chafing, her mother suffering from worry because she can't provide her baby milk! can you imagine? i'm sure many of you can

gofundme completely shut her fundraiser down because it's evil and complicit but she has a new fundraiser on chuffed and it's not even a fifth of the way to its goal. she is vetted by @bilal-sala7 (line #46)

tagging for reach

thank you for remembering us and sharing our story. it means so much that you see what we’re going through. i’m just trying to keep my daughters safe—maryam and newborn mina—through the cold, the floods, and the siege. mina was born in these impossible conditions, and every day i worry about giving her even the basics, like milk and warmth. your words, your support, and your voice remind the world that we’re real, that we’re still here, and that every bit of help matters. 🤍

Amal has unfortunately had the flu recently. luckily she was able to receive some treatment at a field hospital, but her immune system is strained from giving birth by c-section and from the harsh winter conditions and lack of nutritious food and clean water. without more reliable shelter and daily resources, other members of the family are likely to get sick too, and Amal herself could contract a different illness. if you have a dollar or two to spare today, please consider helping the Ashour and Shehab families stay safe and healthy, and get closer to being securely sheltered this season.

Your money would be going towards supporting a family of 12 people who are going through the unimaginable right now. The Shehab and Ashour families need your help to get through this difficult time 🙏 please donate whatever you can or share this post if you cant, there is no amount that is too small

― Alice Wong, Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century

Hate it when TikTok farm cosplayers and cottagecore types say stuff like "I'm not going to use modern equipment because my grandmothers could make do without it." Ma'am, your great grandma had eleven children. She would have killed for a slow cooker and a stick blender.

I’ve noticed a sort of implicit belief that people used to do things the hard way in the past because they were tougher or something. In reality, labor-saving devices have historically been adopted by the populace as soon as they were economically feasible. No one stood in front of a smoky fire or a boiling pot of lye soap for hours because they were virtuous, they did it because it was the only way to survive.

Taking these screenshots from Facebook because they make you log in and won't let you copy and paste:

The War Is Almost Over… but Our Struggle to Rebuild Has Just Begun.

Every day here in Gaza feels like a year carved into our chests. The war isn’t like it was in the early days—the sky is quieter, the air carries less smoke, and the nights hold fewer explosions. But the pain… it still lives under the rubble, inside our memories, and in the empty spaces where our loved ones once stood.

I’m writing this today not because the war has completely ended, but because for the first time in a long while, it feels like the horizon is opening a little. A small space where we can breathe, gather ourselves, and try to rebuild what’s left of our lives. Yet every step forward feels like walking on wounded memories, and every stone from our destroyed home whispers stories we never got to finish.

We lived through nights so heavy we thought morning would never come. We lost things that can never be replaced—homes, dreams, pieces of our hearts. But we are still here… holding on, trying, fighting to stay standing despite everything.

And in the middle of this long road… there is a house. A house that once carried laughter, warmth, noise, and life. Today, all that remains is an image holding a memory—and rubble longing for the people who once lived inside.

Today, we are trying to rebuild—not just the walls of a house, but an entire life that was shattered. We are trying to create a new beginning, to live with dignity again, to give our family a sense of safety that we’ve been missing for so long.

We’re not writing this to mourn what was lost, but to ask for a chance to start again. We ask for your support because rebuilding after a war is not something one person can do alone—it is a human effort, a shared act of compassion. We need you. We need your hearts. We need your help to stand again.

Every contribution—no matter how small—makes a difference. It becomes part of our story, part of rebuilding a home, part of reviving a life that nearly faded.

The war may be almost over… but our journey back to life begins now.

🌿✨ Thank you to every soul who still feels our pain, and to everyone who reaches out a hand to help us rise again.

Why must I watch everything around me crumble? My future, my life, my education, my home, my time, my loved ones, my friends—everything is being destroyed. Nothing is left. All this because of a war that took everything from me.

While everyone else sits comfortably in their centrally heated homes or at their beloved jobs, I sit wondering why all this happened to me. Why must I stay awake all night in the cold, fear, and darkness Why ?

After being a vibrant, energetic, and hopeful person with a bright future ahead of me, everything has now been shattered. My biggest dream is simply to stay alive and seek help to support myself and my family and escape this situation. Adding to my distress is my father's illness (cancer), which requires urgent treatment, otherwise, God forbid, we will lose him. Just thinking about all this makes me choose death, but then I ask myself, if I die, will anything change? Will my family's situation improve? Will my father recover? Of course not. My family and I have pinned so much hope on this place, and I've come to ask for help. Please, if you are able, help me and my family. I would be very grateful.

Guys, the killing has not stopped. Hunger is crushing us slowly, day after day. Gunfire surrounds us, and even tents and the last remains of our homes are not spared. There is no safety anywhere. What is happening in Gaza is not a tragedy or a conflict. It is genocide. We are not asking for sympathy. We are asking to survive. Please help us. Please save our lives.

Currently at $526 USD! The last donation was made 21 hours ago! Please donate and share. Ahmed is only a teenager who is raising funds to support his family! Remember: You can give as little as $1 and in your own currency, such as AUD, CAD, EUR, GBP, or USD!

Verification: Shared by @/el-shab-hussein and @/nabulsi as #167 in the vetted fundraisers' spreadsheet. [The fundraiser is in the document is no longer in use since the organizer does not have access to it! So if you have donated to him before, please request a refund and give it to the Chuffed fundraiser linked above!]

Thank you so much for amplifying my family’s voice and for your support.

This campaign is our only lifeline right now.

If you can donate, please do. If you can’t, sharing this post truly saves lives.

From my heart, thank you to everyone standing with us.

listen to me, really. I am holding your two hands tenderly in mine. being part of a privileged group and benefitting from systemic exploitation without meaning to is not the same thing as being an inherently trash person who makes the world worse by living it in. that's not what that means. I'm telling you this for two reasons, 1) so you can chill the fuck out and be at peace with yourself without feeling like you're draining the universe of value, and 2) so you don't go onto oppressed people's posts about systemic privilege and exploitation and react like they've just told you that you, personally, should not exist because you're a man who lives within the vicinity of a supermarket that sells chiquita bananas. you're just gonna have to put some trust into your own brain and hold on to both the ideas that you're on one of the dominant sides of a set of global scales of injustice and that you don't have to shrivel out of existence about it. it can be difficult to reconcile those ideas at first, but it's completely possible and worth doing. if you don't, then you start constructing a worldview where you believe that either you have a civic duty to self destruct or you start vehemently denying that these systems of oppression exist, both of which are Bad and Not Good. peace and love x

Someone in Glasgow please go see this for me pls. I will be there in spirit 🙏

Brief report from the flute accompaniment:

It went well! At least 100 people attended, families dogs a solid portion of Glasgow's trans community. There was a really lovely atmosphere, nice weather and a very cheerful celebratory vibe.

After short speeches from the ballhaver and the large dyke (my wife), the ballhaver was given a chupa chup and blindfolded (execution style). The balls were then duly kicked; it made a surprisingly loud dull thumping sound. She fell to the ground to loud cheers and there was a moment of silence while Taps played on the flute. The large dyke wore solovair urban hikers.

Account from the Large Dyke.

Arrived early to find the crowd already gathering, so the kick got off to a prompt start. Following some introductions from everybody and some cheery folk music from our flautist (my wife!) we got on with the kick.

I think we got good contact, the top of my boot making a good solid noise on impact. Very good atmosphere all round, people stayed to chat for a while. Were it not January it would have been an excellent opportunity for a picnic.

10/10 queer event, would happily kick anybody in the balls in the name of community.

Account from the ball haver

7am: the pressure is getting to me; I wake up and drink half a bottle of diet iron bru from my bedside table; roll out of bed, and psych myself up in the mirror - "you can do this my little pogchamp" I say to myself over and over until I decend into a stupor.

8am: I play an hour of Okami on steam to replenish my chi levels

9am: I look at my balls for a while

10am: I spend 20 or so minutes trying to decide what to wear before realising it's the subartic in midwinter and I'm going to have to dress for -2C° regardless of what I choose and opt of my trusty black Schott thermal padded winter flight jacket and a pair of loose, warm Uniqlo trousers to give my testicles room to breathe.

11am: crashing out, texting my friends to arange a substitute kickee, an understudy, anybody so I can just become one with the crowd and not go through with it

12am: the homies have arrived, I'm drinking redbush tea in a small cafe by the park; god is in his heaven and all is right with the world

12.15: "you must be here to watch me get kicked in the balls?"

12.40: a circle emerges, from within the circle a palpable energy focuses like a lens down unto me and I feel like I'm gonna pee my pants a little

12.50: cheers begin, several complete families with dogs arrive - more friends appear and assort themselves into a gathering of 'real heads' ready to watch my groin be dessicated by the firm lace of a women for woman woman with a foot loosed through the gates of war as Augustus saw fit the dispatch and return of his troops from far corners through the blessings of Janus.

12.55: I think I left the stove on

1pm: Short introductions are made, grace is shown, beautiful flute music accompanies the gathering

1.03pm: what is left of my dignity disappears up my inguinal canal; I fall to the ground and languish a moment. I can feel it more in my lower chest than I can in my groin but the humour and adrenaline lift me and I'm laughing on my feet again soon. I kneel for the last post.

I will not forgive anyone who sees this post and does not support me with a single word and ignores me.

I’m writing this with tears in my eyes. I can’t carry this anymore. I am completely exhausted because of my sister’s severe anemia and malnutrition.

All I care about is keeping my family safe. Please help me buy healthy food so her body can keep going.

GoFundMe – Vetted #213

The Butterfly Boy: a Fairytale.

A fairytale about the feeling of waiting on the edge of massive existential societal tragedies you are powerless to prevent, the way that we scapegoat the victims of broader societal failures as if they were the Cause, and the way that we treat children who will never grow into a "conventional" adulthood.

Thank you to everyone who followed along as I was sharing the pages for these past couple months! <3 :_:

Oh it’s lovely!

Guess what? Normal people make mistakes all. The. Fucking. Time. This is a secret my parents didn't teach me growing up, and I bet yours didn't either. But it's true. Humans aren't that great at avoiding messing things up. It's what we do. We miss things. We forget things. We make errors in judgment even when something should've been obvious.

I was raised to think that if you're smart enough and pay attention you can avoid making mistakes. If you mess up, it's a character flaw and you should be ashamed of yourself. Berated. Punished.

This is a terrible mentality to live by. I cringe when I see my parents perpetuate this by harshly criticizing others for honest, everyday mistakes. Yeah, some things would be avoidable if you chose differently. But you in that moment were just a person and honestly, shit just happens. People lose their wallets. People scrape their tires on the curb. People forget to write down appointments and use leftovers. People knock their drinks over. People misunderstand or struggle to follow instructions.

I used to get abused over that shit and it took a very long time to come around and realize I was never uniquely stupid or clumsy. It's just how people are. Maybe there are very capable people who rarely mess up, but they're not the majority of folks.

may 2026 bring us closer to a Palestine liberated from zionist occupation, and a Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan free from proxy exploitation. May 2026 see more people gain the courage to make the world a little better than before. May we all remember to tend seeds whose trees we may never sit beneath. Consider donating to/sharing The Sameer Project, or Khartoum Aid Kitchen or Focus Congo. All power to all the people. Happy new year.

original goodbye stranger script is soo heartbreaking because “i forgive you… i love you’’ isn’t a request it’s a blessing. dean had already tried the “cas, this isn’t you” and he had no way of knowing an emotional appeal would break the curse. in saying “i forgive you… i love you” he was only making sure cas knew he loved him and didn’t blame him before he died!!!!! i need you is a request but i love you… why does this sound like a goodbye

30 December 2025

This left only Gaza based mutual aid networks. That's why you need to donate to the following aid groups on recurring basis:

The Sameer Project

Dahnoun Mutual Aid

Mona's Initiatives

Hussein Team

Embossed braille should be standard on computer keyboards. 

It would raise braille literacy more than anything else I could imagine - among both the blind and the sighted. Currently braille is actually vanishing due to an increasing reliance on audiobooks and screen readers. 

I think that braille has a lot of potential use among non-blind groups. As an alternative to traditional writing for dyslexics. As a way to help photosensitive people type with their eyes closed. Or simply as a means to help sighted people find things without needing the lights on all the time!

Accessibility note: It’s important that braille doesn’t vanish because it’s one of the only written language that works for blind and sight-impaired people. It is necessary for them to interact with the real world where screen readers and audio devices are not available to them, such as elevators, most major metro systems, stairwells, doorways, the bumps in the sidewalk at corners are actually developed in conjunction with audio signals so blind people don’t step off the curb into traffic before the correct time. 

Digital technology has made accessibility so much easier for all of us disabled people, but we still *need* the real-world accommodations that we fought and died for

In Gaza, winter isn't a season of warmth and rain. Here, winter is a harsh test of patience and survival. Every cold snap, every rainy night, brings us new fears. The rain and wind have destroyed our tent, our few belongings, and even the mattresses we used to protect ourselves from the cold are now soaked and unusable.

My family and I are now living without proper shelter. We sleep on muddy ground, waking up in the middle of the night, terrified that the tent will flood or that the cold will become unbearable. In Gaza, we have no way to escape the winter, and we don't have the money to repair what has been destroyed.

We need your help. Please donate so we can repair our ruined tent to protect us from the rain, or buy a blanket to keep us warm and safe from illness, or a mattress where we can sleep with dignity after long days of exhaustion and fear. Please help us by donating and don't leave us to suffer.Please donate to us.

Please, please help my friend Ahmed. He and his family desperately. need funds to stay warm from the winter weather and to recover from illness.

Remember: it is not your job to make everyone merry around you this holiday season. It is not your job to keep your family or friends from being dysfunctional, it is not your responsibility to create perfect occasions no person will forget. Your responsibility is to make sure you have a good time wherever you are, feeling comfortable. The festive season is about compassion, but do remember to extend some of it to yourself.