Guys i don’t want to optimize you if you still care about genocide in gaza .

But the news saying the ceasefire agreement is done and they will maybe tomorrow Announce it .

Best thing is the isareli army will withdraw from all Gaza Strip that’s mean the Rafah border crossing will back to work again so i need your support your help so I could take my brother Mohammed out to be with his Son Zayed and his wife.

And didn’t told you before my brother Omar engaged and His fiancee still in north gaza. He asked me alot to tel you about her so he can also be with the love of his life.

Don’t think your contribution is small even the one dollar helps . Sharing also helping.

After the ceasefire started just received 50$

I would remember you that’s the situation still very bad and my brother still living in tent

The total progress is : 2230$

Can you help us to reach the first 5K

I think people doesn’t care anymore because there is no donations and that’s understandable but i hope anyone see the post keep helping me and my family

My brother now lives near our apartment our neighborhood doesn’t have any source of water

My brother trying to repair a room in our destroyed apartment he telling me that’s the north and our neighborhood not livable unfortunately

I hope you guys continue helping him as much as you can

Progress : 3000$/5000$

Last 2 days the donations was very slow

I hope you continue helping because there’s still fees to pay my brother pay 20% fee to cash the money from his account

I received one donation last night….!!!!

Don’t think 5$ doesn’t do anything

It does a lot every dollar can change.

You can help me and my family and especially my brother who still suffering in gaza and my relatives too

Last 4 days got just 4 donations

I’m very shy wallah because i keep asking you to help me and my family because we don’t have any source of income and without you we wouldn’t survive. Thank you all

The progress: 3500$ / 10,000$

Thanks for everyone who donated and sharing the post.

We reached : 4000$/ 10,000$

Al hamdulliallah we reached : 4650$ / 10,000$

What are you doing is incredible 🥹🥰

We still waiting the border open

Let’s reach first goal of 10,000$ so My nephew can be with his dad 🥹

After we reached 4650$ / 10,000$

Didn’t receive donations

I hope you don’t lose care about us after the ceasefire there’s still a war .

A war for finding good place to live in.

A war to find good drinking water and water for bathroom.

A war to pay 20% fee to withdraw your money.

Hello my friend, please help. We do not have money to buy food and drink. I have young children who do not know the taste of sleep because of the bitter cold caused by the rain. We do not have shelter. Our services are torn. Donate to me, even if it is a little. I ask you to help, my friend 🙏🙏😭 ✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #380 )✅️

I worry that today’s generation of kids on the internet have never gotten to develop much digital agency or form safe, empowering relationships with older people. More broadly, I think our current culture of isolating children from all unrelated adults, supposedly in the name of their “protection” only causes them to become more ignorant, lonesome, and vulnerable to exploitation.

There are many ways in which restricting youth access to information technology and training adults to avoid all contact with children makes kids even more powerless and dependent.

If a child cannot post their sexual health questions on Ask Alice or go searching around online, then they have to believe whatever they hear from their parent or priest. If a young person longs to taste the freedoms of adulthood but aren’t given any room to explore, then the grown-up in their DMs telling them that they are so mature becomes a hell of a lot more seductive.

And if a kid never gets to search for sexual content online, learn about adult sexual experiences, or touch themselves and find pleasure in the privacy of their own minds, they may never fully learn that their body is them, for them to enjoy and express themselves however they see fit.

For queer youth, the dangers of isolation are amplified. A study published in the journal Child Protection and Practice in April of last year found that LGBTQI+ children face an elevated risk of grooming and sexual abuse because they are discriminated against by peers, preached against within their religious communities, and mistreated or kicked out of the house by their families — and also, because an adult with no respect for boundaries might be the only person offering to talk with them about queerness or sex.

It’s very difficult to know the difference between a healthy relationship and exploitation when a predatory adult is the first queer person a kid ever knows. If a relationship with an abuser is the only way that a teen ever gets to live out their queerness or explore their budding sexuality, then it becomes immensely difficult for them to walk away — leaving the groomer is like tearing off a crucial part of themselves that never gets expressed otherwise, or even seen.

This is also true of children who have the early rumblings of kinky sexualities, too — when you long to be controlled or tied up, you need a safe outlet to learn and fantasize about doing such things consensually one day. If you do not know that such options exist, you’ll settle instead for abuse. The more options that a child has to learn about sexual practices, to meet other queer people of ages, and to form appropriate relationships with unrelated adults, the harder they become to manipulate, and the more power they have to walk away.

...

Being a minor is a position created by legal oppression, but most people consider a minor’s lack of freedom to be so natural and morally correct they don’t even recognize it as oppression. Instead, they see it as protection, a healthy separation between the world of the human and the not-quite-human yet. Though they would never admit it, a minor is not the same thing as a person to them, for a minor can be thrown out of public spaces, locked away, silenced, disregarded, and left to rot in the ways full persons are not.

I believe that we queer adults are failing our younger siblings by refusing to play a part in raising and looking after them. We have chosen to privilege our individual safety from accusations of ‘inappropriate’ conduct over the need for queer youth to see their own sexualities and identities normalized, envision a diversity of possible futures for themselves, and seek aid and understanding when they are mistreated.

For those of us who’ve had the liberty to escape our ignorant hometowns, get on HRT, have joyous gay sex in dark rooms, or even just dance tenderly with a sexy androgynous stranger’s cheek pressed against our own, we have a responsibility to pour from our filled cups, and to remember what it was like to have no such access. As terrified as we are of losing our documentation, our access to medicine, and our legal rights, we must remember those queer people who presently have none of those things, and do all that we can to extend our aid to them.

I wrote about the troubling culture of the "MINORS DNI" bio, and how it contributes to the mass isolation of young queer people. You can read the full piece or have it narrated to you by the substack app for free here.

“minors dni” does not protect minors. it's a fig-leaf of self-protection for authors like “seggs” and “unalive” on the other sites. A useless gesture made in a panopticon where essentially all authentic self-expression constantly pushes against boundaries like copyright, prohibition of sexuality, or other terms-of-use violations, ready to be weaponized by any aggrieved reader with a report button.

We are now in the happy Eid al-Fitr, but now it has become a sad Eid al-Fitr stained with blood and innocent martyrs, children and women.

This Eid is very sad and tearful. I don't know how sad anyone is. My father's health is a bit difficult. Please help me.

All people are supposed to be happy these days and joy fills the place but the opposite has happened please Think for a minute about donating to a 15-year-old boy who is trying to save an entire large family.

It is very difficult, things are getting complicated, and we are losing each person every day, despite the suffering, grief, and humiliation caused by the Zionist occupation. Food is becoming scarce, there are no necessities of life, and prices are rising.

they've already charged kashmiri protestors with uapa for the crime of standing in solidarity with palestine on youm al-quds

J&K police book pro-Palestinian protesters under draconian UAPA

They called him a liar. He posted the receipts.

Shit is flying.

an article from PBS that only has a snippet, but is not paywalled

Edit: here's MSN, which has more details

Fully unpaywalled Atlantic here. Finally.

I'm really glad they unpaywalled it.

It is a HELL of a read. There are screenshots!

The comments over at the Fox News site, of all places, are overwhelmingly upset and angry at Hegseth & Co. I fully expected to see them supporting the "it wasn't a war plan" lie, but they are laying into Trump White House staff.

This makes Watergate look like a kid accidentally telling mom what dad got her for Christmas.

Daring Fireball's latest today shares an observation from Hannah Arendt about how the ranks of authoritarian governments inevitably wind up being filled with “crackpots and fools” because they’re the people whose loyalty is most assured:

The Fireball article goes on to say: "When The Atlantic’s initial story hit, everyone responsible in the Trump administration, right up to the president himself, just immediately began telling bald-faced lies about what happened, despite the fact that they knew Jeffrey Goldberg literally had the receipts to prove otherwise. That works, until it doesn’t."

Keep yelling the truth, folks. Keep showing the difference between real and false.

It may seem obvious and not worth mentioning, but apparently it is.

just wanted to share the National Down Syndrome Society’s message for this year’s World Down Syndrome Day (21st March) 💛💙

Powerful message that lovingly includes multiple disabilities, united. I love this.

Love that I said out loud ‘oh it’s either gonna be Modesto or Bakersfield’ before looking this is so funny for me

Flint haters have never been to Bath

surely there’s more examples that i’m just not aware of but afaik the closest you’ll get to a n vietnamese perspective on the war is viet thanh nguyen’s the sympathizer (fiction and actually mostly takes place in america) and ken burn’s vietnam documentary series which actually interviewed pavn & vietcong soldiers for the first time maybe ever in american retrospectives of the war. i’m sure there’s more out there but it really is insane that it’s such a drop in the bucket compared to american-centered stories about how actually it really fucked me up to napalm your kids

bao ninh's the sorrow of war is one of the definitive books in the genre, as is novel with no name by duong thu huong for novels written by vietnamese. the mountains sing by nguyễn phan quế mai was published in the us in 2020 & is from a north vietnamese pov; both quan barry and ocean vuong have published quite popular novels & poetry touching on the vietnam war from a refugee/immigrant pov; lan cao has been publishing novels about the vietnam war from a vietnamese perspective since the mid-90s (though not necessarily of north vietnamese perspectives). i do understand why the sympathizer feels singular but um, a couple of notes: 1) while i adore the sympathizer, at least some of the pr for it is exactly that and detaches it from say a broader asian american lit tradition viz. karen tei yamashita's i-hotel novels (which do touch on asian-american diaspora left organising around the vietnam war + other race issues at the time) and 2) the novels from vietnam that make it into translation overwhelmingly come with the tagline "banned in vietnam" which also tells you what kind of narratives are privileged in translation and is very informative re. whether or not access to vietnamese literature & narratives about the war is limited to and gatekept entirely by a very liberal but essentially anti-communist us publishing industry.

a lot of people could stand to start viewing the nakba and the holocaust as a continuum rather than as competitive binaries

Genya and Henryk Kowalski's recollections of their 1948 arrival in Israel after surviving Nazi death camps, by Alon Confino in The Holocaust and the Nakba: a new grammar of trauma and history ed. Bashair Bashair and Amos Goldberg

Named for the 2014 law that created them, the Achieving a Better Life Experience Act, ABLE accounts have been available since 2016 to individuals identified by a doctor as having a disability before the age of 26. Next year, they’ll become available to those identified before the age of 46, which will increase access to an additional 6 million people, including 1 million veterans, according to Indiana State Treasurer Daniel Elliott, who administers the accounts in his state. An estimated 8 million people nationwide already qualify.

“The fact that it used to be that individuals could only save up to $2,000 or they could lose benefits — that was really restricting a lot of families,” Elliot said. “People were forced into a position where they couldn’t save for their futures. Now we’re seeing average account balances of (ABLE accounts) between $11,000 and $12,000.”

Generally, ABLE accounts may reach totals of $100,000 without affecting Supplemental Security Income. Lifetime balance limits for the various state ABLE accounts can range from around $300,000 to over $500,000. They’re administered by state treasurers, and the vast majority can be set up online via their websites. Some ABLE plans accept paper applications as well.

Anyone can contribute to an ABLE account — including the account owner, friends, family, organizations, nonprofits, and employers — up to $19,000 per year in 2025. If the account owner is able to work and not already contributing to a workplace retirement plan, they can contribute an additional amount equal to their yearly gross income. For 2025, that amount is up to an additional $15,560 to $18,810, depending on the state administering the account.

There are also tax advantages. Investment earnings from ABLE accounts remain untaxed as long as money taken from the account is used for “qualified disability expenses,” such as medical treatment, education, tutoring and job training. Account holders may choose from a number of investment options for the funds in their accounts or hold and save the money without investing it further.

Elliot said raising awareness of the accounts is the biggest challenge for the National Association of State Treasurers (NAST), for which he’s also the secretary treasurer.

“Many people are used to the idea that, ‘If I have a disability or my child has one, it could endanger their benefits to save money,’” he said. “We as a state and as a country need to start reaching out to people and saying, ‘Look, you actually can save money now. You could save towards the purchase of a home.’ The hardest thing right now is getting that message out. We need more people to be aware things have changed.”

According to NAST’s data, just 186,641 ABLE accounts existed at the end of 2024, despite an estimated 8 million people qualifying. When the age limit is raised, the accounts will also become available to people whose disabilities may have been the result of an accident in adulthood or developed later in life, such as after a COVID infection.

Andrew Warren, senior associate for policy and research at the Financial Health Network, who studies the financial circumstances of Americans with disabilities, said that the vast majority of people surveyed for a 2023 report by the organization did not know these accounts existed.

“Less than 1% of eligible individuals have these accounts,” Warren said. “Our research show that one of the major barriers to becoming financially healthy for this vulnerable group is asset limits. But there’s an information disconnect between caseworkers and direct services providers on the ground and (administrators of ABLE accounts).”

Two online resources — ABLE Today and the ABLE National Resource Center — can guide you through questions to determine if you or a friend or family member qualifies.

I honestly cannot articulate how HUGE this is.

It is not enough. Not NEARLY enough. But this is still HUGE.

This could mean the difference for becoming homeless and not becoming homeless, or having to stay in an abusive situation.

YOU COULD FUNDRAISE FOR HEALTH CARE AND NOT BE BREAKING THE MOTHERFUCKING LAW.

Nickel Boys (2024) dir. RaMell Ross

[image description: a comic starring the artist's fursona, talking to their sister.

artist: you've never heard of the whole "cold duke of the north" trope?

sister: no

An arrow pointing to the artist reads "he has spent months reading otome isekai."

Artist, gesturing to a made up character that embodies the trope: ah. it's, like, a guy who has a cold demeanor, usually dark hair. sometimes he's not a duke or he doesn't live in the north. he's usually ostracized from people and has a bad reputation

sister: so its like the guy from that one fantasy webtoon. he has black hair.

artist: that doesn't narrow things down at all. End ID]

for a couple months i went from not really reading romance to primarily reading otome isekai comics...

Feb 10 2025

Do we think "Israel" brazenly bragging about not allowing humanitarian aid through the border will be enough for people to stop scolding Gazans for making individual/family fundraisers because "it's better to donate to trusted orgs instead" or are they never going to get it?

Don't let your anxiety cause inaction, especially since there are people spending an incredible amount of effort to weed out the scammers and ease your anxiety about scammers. I don't know what else to do short of begging. Please don't let them starve. All my friends in Gaza are asking me why their campaigns are stagnating and I don't know how to answer them.

Anas is fighting cancer. (fundraiser) (vetting)

Amal needs to feed her baby. (fundraiser) (vetting #175)

Samir is in danger of losing his leg. (fundraiser) (vetting #428)

Mahmoud needs to pay remote tuition fees. (fundraiser) (vetting)

Please boost them and every vetted fundraiser that comes your way, and donate if you can. If you have any following and can think of anything like charity streams or giveaways to promote campaigns, please do so. This is a very crucial and difficult time for Gaza.

ceasefire today, accountability from tomorrow until the end of time. all my love to the steadfast people and martyrs of gaza

in common israeli behavior, as phase I of the ceasefire expires today israel attempts to sabotage the ceasefire again to avoid accountability.

they have violated the conditions for phase I and are refusing to move to phase II by announcing a war crime instead: resuming the starvation siege and preventing international aid from entering gaza during ramadan. this is all par for the course. israel has never met an agreement it wouldn't break, nor missed an opportunity to inflict more suffering. accountability will come regardless, but now is the time to be alert, especially as western media tries to obfuscate the reasons for the ceasefire violations.

Idk how many non theater nerds will understand how huge this is but holy fuck

Only a theater nerd would be so far up their own ass that they’d see this and immediately think “the US military is resisting trump!!” and not “trump specifically requested this song be sung at the gov ball bc he, however incorrectly, identifies as an oppressed revolutionary” .. like its giving ‘dr who fans grab your tardis’ its giving fandom delusional. Zero analysis zero cognizance. Critical thinking doesn’t exist to these people. Which is why they never actually take part in any tangible forms of resistance. Bc they see a video of the army singing a song from les mis and they’re like omg :) the U.S. armed forces is so on our side……one of us!!!! . Like Jesus fucking Christ. “Embarrassment” doesn’t even begin to describe