a whole bunch of gazan mutual aid projects and nonprofits. if the decision of which individual fundraiser to give to feels too daunting, or if you just want to help as many people as possible in one go, these are great initiatives to support.

• care for gaza - focuses on providing food and essential supplies. donate here or here.
• connecting humanity - securing internet access via donations of virtual sim cards (esims). if you can't afford a whole plan yourself, crips for esims is a communal pool that will use your donation to purchase and maintain esims
• gaza soup kitchen - provides food, medical care, and classes for children. also has a gofundme
• glia gaza medical support initiative - provides medical care through field clinics and tents at hospitals. donations can also be sent through their website.
• ele elna elak - provides clean water, food, clothing, and shelter. they also have a gofundme
• life for gaza - raising money for the gaza municipality to repair water and waste management infrastructure
• taawon - partners with local civil organizations to provide food, water, medical care, shelter, and basic supplies
• the sameer project - running various initiatives providing tents, medical care, and necessities. they have their own encampment project focused on sheltering families with children, sick and disabled members, or members in need of perinatal care
• islamic relief worldwide's gaza emergency appeal - provides food, water, hygiene kits, medical supplies, and psychological support
• baitulmaal - provides a variety of necessities, including food, water, shelter, and medical supplies
• gaza mutual aid fund - distributes food, hygiene products, water, and other essential supplies, including financial support. run by @/el-shab-hussein's amazing friend Mona. updates can be found on her instagram.
• hygiene kits for gaza - provides hygiene supplies including menstrual products, wipes, and toothbrushes/toothpaste
• anera - provides a variety of necessities, including food, water, hygiene supplies, medicine, blankets and mattresses, and psychological care
• palestine children's relief fund - provides supplies and support with a focus on children. also has an initiative for lebanon
• dahnoun mutual aid - provides water, food, tents, baby supplies, financial support, and other necessities. updates can be found through their instagram

certainly this is not an exhaustive list, so please feel free to add on other projects or organizations that i didn't include. and as always, please take the time to donate if you can and share. it truly makes all the difference.

Kashtanka (Каштанка)

Soyuzmultfilm, 1952

[eng sub]

just responded to that one text we all got that one unread text

my first favorite hobby is yapping. second is being extremely quiet and not talking ever at all ever.

love it when you look up a word’s pronunciation and only get the formal Linguist zalgotext-style version. like damn i guess i’m not using that word.

once you work out IPA you can experience this feeling with the second, weirder layer of IPA where people try to describe not the sounds people believe they're making but the ones that they "actually" make

damn i guess I'm not reading that post.

griddlehark modern college au because this book is metaphorically placing me in the jerma meat grinder hypothetical and i need something nice

your email has found me on the fucking brink

DOECHII & LIL NAS X
at the 36th Annual GLAAD Media Awards

suddenly in the mood to be helpful. is there any kind of art advice anyone would want me to give tips about

How do you get your head to....shut up?

I have a weird fear of failure where I struggle to start things as if there will be consequences if it's not good enough

oh that’s easy! Do Bad Art!

as long as “good enough” is your goal, you will never reach it. You can’t be “good enough” because “enough” doesn’t mean anything.

My favorite advice irt Fear of Starting is from Rebecca Sugar in this QnA, where she says just start. You can’t start over if you never start, and you can always start over.

When you think about it from a publishing perspective, an artist’s comics or animations will end up in bookstores or on tv. And OF COURSE there will be mistakes and it won’t be perfect! OF COURSE that artist is going to improve over time! But that doesn’t mean their art wasn’t worth getting published, or needs to get taken down as soon as they can do it better. Sometimes your “worse” art will be perfectly acceptable, so let it be what it is!

For complimenting (and critiques!) it's really useful to go back to art 101 and learn the Elements and Principles of art. What I think most people struggle to grasp is HOW you use the Elements & Principles is a neutral thing. There's no "right or wrong" way to do it. But they ARE useful for connecting visual aspects to your personal emotional response. Being able to say "the high contrast of lights and darks in this (describing the principle used) feels eerie and uncanny (tying it to an emotional response), and I think that's really cool! (adding your own opinion, this is where you would put your compliment, or suggest a change the artist could make if they wanted to get a different response)"

HONESTLY. this is why I always come back to tumblr. I've never had tiktok, and instagram isn't fulfilling to use. I don't care nearly as much about the numbers as I do about the comments. And frankly, I never once had "gaining traction/an audience" as a goal, and maybe that's why it worked out for me? Paying attention to the comments lets me know when my art is coming across the way I want it to or not. My art is a way to communicate, and it's a skill. Communicate in the way you want, and your audience will find you.

The other answer is to become a slave to the algorithm lol. I gained the most followers on ig when I had a backlog of two years worth of art, and posted once a day for 40 days in a row. The algorithm loved that. But it is actually unhinged to expect an artist to produce art at that rate continuously. Art is not content.

The other other answer is posting fanart helps getting more eyes on your stuff. People just... don't search tags like they used to?? But bigger, trendier fandoms will have more people sharing your stuff than only posting original content will. Once people follow you for your art, they might even follow you to the next fandom you move to, or will stick around for your original stuff!

Idgaf if you don't want to write essays for school. I don't care if you don't want to write corporate emails yourself. I don't care if you can't draw well, I don't care if you can't write well, I don't care if you just really really want to talk to your favorite fictional character but don't want to RP with a real person because you have social anxiety or whatever

If you're still regularly using generative ai, chatgpt or midjourney or character.ai or literally whatever the fuck, im personally blaming you when my utility prices start going up.

Why would utility prices go up because of ai?

(I am not defending the usage of generative AI/ChatGPT/Character.ai etc etc i am very much against it - I am just curious as to the correlation between using it and utility price surge please don't come at me this is a genuine question)

Happy to help.

ChatGPT uses so much energy that the US is literally reversing course on coal and gas usage to make up for it. In Santa Clara, for example, data centers used 60% of the ENTIRE CITY'S electricity.

ChatGPT uses 1-3 bottles of water for cooling for every query you put into it. This is FRESH WATER, which is evaporated and eventually mostly returns to the ocean, effectively removing a lot of it from our already dwindling fresh water supply on the planet. It also consumes 17 THOUSAND TIMES more electricity than the average American home.

The AI boom wastes so much electricity that we are very immediately risking US cities having to have rolling blackouts just to keep up with the energy demands, as early as NEXT YEAR

Gen AI's water usage is projected to hit 6.6 BILLION meters cubed by 2027

More AI use = more data centers = power drain on local cities = gas, electricity, and water utility prices rise because all of our resources are being funneled into a machine that makes garbage