cathrynemoon

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NAOMI ACKIE & ALIA SHAWKAT as Frida & Jess in Blink Twice (2024)

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Hanif Abdurraqib, in “Why this poet sees grief as its own kind of spiritual practice”

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James Baldwin in conversation with Nikki Giovanni

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It’s that time of the year again :)

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Richard Siken… Richard Fucking Siken. You asked RICHARD SIKEN if his poems were inspired by BUDDIE. Gay men do not exist in people’s heads except as props huh?

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the thing is by ellen bass

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عاجل! يرجو القراءة لي الغزاويين: رابط

UPDATING SOON!

Vetted fundraiser masterpost-masterpost

TRY MY NEW DONATION ASK GAME!!! (COMING SOON)

This is a collection of links to various posts concerning fundraisers I've vetted and instructions on how to submit fundraisers to me. These are primarily ones for Ghazzan families although some fundraisers for Sudanese families are also listed (I'm more familiar with my own country's politics and dialect and am more capable of vetting fundraisers for Palestinians as a result).

I know that people do not like clicking on links, but please actually look through the posts / Google Sheet and choose a fundraiser to donate to. Please.

Instructions on how to submit a fundraiser. (for those not Ghazzan) Paused تعليمات لتقديم طلب توثيق و نشر حملات التبرعات الخاصة بالغزاويين و عائلاتهم (للغزاويين فقط) واقف

Google doc list compiling vetted fundraisers.

List of fundraisers for my direct contacts from Ghazzah & Sudan. - PRIORITY.

Unvetted but highly likely legitimate fundraisers.

Additional fundraisers for various purposes - (TO BE UPDATED)

About the targeted harassment campaign against Palestinians on tumblr, from August 2nd to August 3rd 2024.

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I have a question, and i mean this neutrally. When a gfm says it is “verified” and the verification is (as it often is) simply a blogger reblogging the post with no info, how are we meant to understand the gfm was verified? the handful of palestinian bloggers on here that verify gfm cant exactly spend so many hours for every campaign to make absolutely sure its legit. I mean they are human and most likely in troubled conditions themselves (or have family in difficulty). So we cant expect this vetting to be that thorough. How are we meant to know they didnt just rb the post without checking, or fall for the scam themself?

the palestinian and arabic speaking bloggers who have been verifying campaigns have been giving info on how they verify, mostly i think through messaging people in arabic and asking them stuff but i dont know for sure. i know that some arabic speaking bloggers on here have said that they dont want to post publicly in detail how they verify people because scammers will see and figure out how to look more legit. there also is a specific palestinian dialect of arabic that people who arent actually palestinian will most likely not speak.

please refer to things like the vetted fundraiser list or other fundraisers on @/el-shab-hussein @/nabulsi @/sar-soor blogs as i think those are some of the most authoritative bloggers on here for this. if something is verified by multiple people its likely its real.

i dont really know what else you want people to do. i understand your concern but your skepticism is just based on your belief that the people verifying this are too busy to really look into it. you also can look into peoples accounts yourself you know. reverse image search their photos, look up their name to see if they have other social media. a lot of people might have instagram or facebook but only recently made a tumblr. just use some critical thinking and information literacy for gods sake instead of immediately being suspicious of everyone to the point where you are accusing random people of being scammers just because they dont know how this site works. or on the opposite end, reblogging things like insulin paypal campaigns which are the most common scam on here. just think and use context clues pleaseeeeeeee. because accusing someone of being a scammer without evidence and spreading that information could actually have life or death outcome. i just dont answer asks that seem ambiguous and arent verified, i think thats better than potentially hurting a real person asking for donations by publicly calling them a scammer or reporting their blog

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More Palestinian GFMs to please check out

Hi, I have been circulating some gofundmes on the KCM instagram that are either close by stalling in their targets or just not getting ANY funds. Plus, some folks here are taking it upon themselves to promo GFMs with added art incentives that I wanted to highlight as well. They are various forms of vetted but I urge you to please check them out and spread the word:

@iyadsobhegaza's previous GFM was shut down, you can find more info here about it! @heliopixels is offering to do art in exchange for donations, please donate here ($1,015/$60,000)

Mohammad and Yazan GFM - (£32,104/£50,000) - @combaticon has been offering art in exchange for donations, but I encourage you to donate as the brothers are sick and close to their goal!!

Mohammad Alrayes GFM - ($2,079/$20,000)

Ayman Alaloul GFM - (€4,733/€20,000)

Ibraheem Hadi GFM - ($5,710/$10,000) Halfway there! For food for his kids

Help Tia Evacuate her Husband GFM - (€3,095/€20,000)

Mustafa Alarini GFM - ($12/135/$12,500) LESS THAT $400 AWAY!

Reham GFM - ($37,275/$50,000)

Help Haya Abu Karesh and her Family GFM - ($1,231/$25,000) VERY LOW please donate!

Help Suleiman and his Family GFM - ($690/$25,000) VERY LOW

Help Ayham's Family GFM - ($240/$15,000) VERY LOW and had previous money withheld

Help Hossam GFM - ($2,140/$10,000)

Help Taghreed's Family GFM - (£884/£50,000) VERY LOW

Help Ahmed GFM - (£300/£5,000) VERY LOW

Help Bilal Salah GFM (€64,947/€70,000) ~$5K AWAY

BUST COMMISSIONS from @gundamcalibarney if you donate to any of the organizations linked in this post!

This is only a handful, but especially for the low campaigns I would appreciate spreading and donating, thank you!

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Marcelat Sakobi of Democratic Republic of Congo, at the end of the women’s round of 32 boxing match against Uzbekistan's Sitora Turdibekova, made a strong gesture to raise awareness of the ongoing genocide in the DR Congo by placing her hand in front of her mouth and pointing two fingers at her temple.

Resources for Congo:

Friends of Congo

Panzi Foundation

War Child

CammeDRCongo

Genocide Watch

A guide to the decades-long conflict in DR Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo: Industrial mining of cobalt and copper for rechargeable batteries is leading to grievous human rights abuses.

An explanation thread from 2019.

Books on Congo.

Feel free to let me know of other resources to add.

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I've walked past the Barbie branded selfie booth, sat through the reel of old commercials that precede the previews, and watched Margot Robbie learn to cry, and I’m still not sure what “doing the thing and subverting the thing,” which Greta Gerwig claimed as the achievement of Barbie in a recent New York Times Magazine profile, could possibly mean. This was the second Gerwig profile the magazine has run. I wrote the first one, in 2017, which in hindsight appears like a warning shot in a publicity campaign that has cemented Gerwig’s reputation as so charming and pure of heart that any choice (we used to call them compromises) she makes is justified, a priori, by her innocence. This is a strange position for an adult to occupy, especially when the two-hour piece of branded content she is currently promoting hinges on a character who discovers that her own innocence is the false product of a fallen world. But—spoiler alert!—the point of Barbie’s “hero’s journey” is less to reconcile Barbie to death than to reconcile the viewer to culture in the age of IP.

“Doing the thing and subverting the thing”: I haven’t finished working out the details, but I think the rough translation would be Getting rich and not feeling feel bad about it. (Or, for the viewer: Having a good time and not feeling bad about it.) One must labor under a rather reduced sense of the word “subvert” to be impressed with poking loving fun at product misfires such as Midge (the pregnant Barbie), Tanner (the dog who poops), and the Ken with the earring, especially given that the value of all these collectors’ items has, presumably, not decreased since the film opened. Barbie may feature a sassy tween sternly informing Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie that the tiny-waisted top-heavy billion-dollar business she represents has made girls “feel bad” about themselves, but if anyone uttered the word “anorexia,” I missed it. (There was a reason Todd Haynes told the story of Karen Carpenter’s life and death with Barbies, and it wasn’t because an uncanny piece of molded plastic has the magical power to resolve the contradictions of girlhood and global capitalism.) There’s a bit about Robbie going back into a box in the Mattel boardroom, but Barbies aren’t made in an executive suite; they come from factories in China. On the one hand, it’s weird for a film about a real-world commodity to unfold wholly in the realm of ideas and feelings, but then again, that’s pretty much the definition of branding. Mattel doesn’t care if we buy Barbie dolls—they’re happy to put the word “Barbie” on sunglasses and T-shirts, or license clips from the movie for an ad for Google. OK, here’s my review: When Gerwig first visited Mattel HQ in October 2019, the company’s stock was trading at less than twelve dollars a share. Today the price is $21.40. 

Christine Smallwood, Who Was Barbie?

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The state department falsified a report earlier this month to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, overruling the advice of its own experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week. Stacy Gilbert left her post as senior civil military adviser in the state department’s bureau of population, refugees and migration, on Tuesday. She had been one of the department’s subject matter experts who drafted the report mandated under national security memorandum 20 (NSM-20) and published on 10 May. The NSM-20 report found that it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel had used US weapons in a way that was “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, but that there was not enough concrete evidence to link specific US-supplied weapons to violations. Even more controversially, the report said the state department did not “currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance” in Gaza. It was a high-stakes judgment because under a clause in the Foreign Assistance Act, the US would be obliged to cut arms sales and security assistance to any country found to have blocked delivery of US aid. Gilbert, a 20-year veteran of the state department who has worked in several war zones, said that report’s conclusion went against the overwhelming view of state department experts who were consulted on the report.

31 May 2024

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Star Wars’ Billie Lourd Would “Do Anything” to Reunite With Rose Tico

[...]

Lourd is certainly open for a reunion, but there’s one sequel alum she’d especially like to team up with in a new project: “Honestly? Rose [Tico], baby. Kelly Marie Tran is one of my favorite people of all time, and I would love to team up with her. We should do a buddy comedy: Rose and Connix.”

A Rose and Connix team-up would be an intriguing sequel follow-up. Rise of Skywalker faced scrutiny for sidelining Rose: she appeared for little over a minute in the two-hour film. It felt like a considerable downgrade from her appearance in The Last Jedi, and the filmmakers never quite explained her diminished role.

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The destruction of Gaza, by USA weapons.

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Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it, you’ll never make it through the night.

(x)

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Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet