renza15

[renza15]

esims are low again. check out connecting humanity for more information on directly sending esims or for a linked to crips for esims for gaza's fundraising. you can also set up a recurring donation on chuffed for esims. i have a weekly donation here because being able to keep as many people as possible connected to the rest of the world is critical for documenting the situation and allowing individuals to continue their own grassroots fundraising/organizing

[renza15]

getting “desire is the root of all suffering”, “it is what it is” and “it’s out of my control” tattooed onto my forehead

[renza15]

Cute date idea

[renza15]

goddddddd i feel so fucking stupid all the time i feel like that meme of the ogre reading joyce

[renza15]

you ever think about how in july 2022 the then-covid response coordinator ashish jha said "this virus is going to be with us forever" and white house press secretary karine jean-pierre said "almost everyone is going to get covid" but the main thing to remember is of course "we have the tools to ensure that people can go about their daily life and work" and then biden said in september 2022 that "the pandemic is over. we still have a problem with covid. we're still doing a lotta work on it. but the pandemic is over. if you notice, no one's wearing masks. everybody seems to be in pretty good shape" and then in january 2023 said about the over 1 million people who had died of covid at that point "i sometimes underestimate it because i stopped thinking about it, but i'm sure you don't" and then anthony fauci in august 2023 talked about how new spikes in cases should not cause too much alarm because only "the vulnerable will fall by the wayside, they'll get infected, they'll get hospitalized, and some will die" and most others will only get moderately ill (this is after the cdc director rochelle walensky said in january 2022 that "the overwhelming number of deaths … occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so really these are people who are unwell to begin with" and that is "really encouraging news"). and of course do you ever think about how now in 2024, the DNC this year turned into a superspreader event even as they boasted on the floor about how four years ago under trump this would have been a superspreader event but it's so great that the government's taking such great care of us and it's great to not need any precautions like masking anymore so everyone can breathe freely and see everyone's smiling faces, and the DNC "play[ed a] montage of Trump botching his COVID response, causing economic catastrophe and leading to over a million deaths" and the kamalahq twitter account only ever mentions covid to talk about how trump botched it and over a million americans died even though over 800,000 of the 1.2 million total deaths happened under biden (he led a memorial for the first 400k that died under trump the night before his inauguration) and her "issues" page that she finally put up on her website makes no mention of continued covid mitigation or public health wrt infectious disease at all, and all the dems care to say about it beyond trump's failures is not to claim that covid is no longer killing people (because that is objectively provably false) but that it "no longer controls our lives" because that's what matters. we believe it's over, we stop thinking about it, we no longer wear masks, we go to big raucous events with no mitigations in place (we get sick when we get home), so it must be over. it's over but it'll be with us forever. it's just going to be like this, forever. but it's okay, because it doesn't "control our lives" and the people who allow it to "control their lives" by killing or disabling them were mostly "unwell to begin with"

[renza15]

Hello. I've seen some of your pists about Gaza. I'm unable to send money at the moment but I'd like to still help. How can I help? I was planning to reblog the link for the foundraiser but couldn't find it.

Thank you!

Hi! I am not sure which fundraiser you were trying to find so I will promote my friend Mohammed's. He has until Tuesday before his campaign organiser starts the next money transfer, so we're trying to raise as much as we can before then so it reaches his family ASAP!

As to your main question, I'm presuming you're asking specifically how to help with personal fundraisers (as opposed to, joining an organisation or activist group, which I would also recommend where possible). Here are a few ways you can help even when you are short on money yourself:

1. Boost and promote campaigns. Even having one person pay attention and post updates can help keep a campaign from entirely stagnating. Especially if you have a low follower count, you will want to use the tagging function to get some bigger blogs to reblog your posts and updates. It feels awkward but it can be a genuine lifeline for the person whose campaign might be going slowly or slipping through the cracks.

2. Consider 'spotlighting' a specific campaign. This is a great guide from @/feluka on how to do that. You might have seen me doing it with Mohammed's campaign and a few others. This involves keeping up with the campaign more closely and probably writing more of your own posts. It takes some time and effort but again, it can be invaluable for the person on the other end.

3. Even if you can't donate yourself, consider putting together a raffle, auction, or commission opportunity that can incentivise other people to donate. Visual art (digital or physical) is a common prize/commission I see offered on here; there are also raffles for handmade or rare items such as plushies, cross-stitch, hand-sewn clothing, knitted items, limited-edition books, fancy journals, writing requests, etc. Anything you can make, someone might be interested in. If you need help boosting a post about a raffle or commission, tag some users who reblog fundraisers! You can also send that kind of post to me and I will happily boost it for you :-)

4. Consider reaching out to anyone you see promoting a slow or stagnant campaign if you have the kinds of artistic or graphic design skills to create artwork or graphics for them to use. Visual aids, banners, etc can make a huge difference when you're trying to get people to read a post and click through to a donation link. Or, if you can't make graphics, could you learn how to write accessible image descriptions for any that you see, and offer to do that? It's easy for people promoting a campaign to get overwhelmed by alt text and image descriptions when a post might involve numerous visual elements, time-sensitive updates, and an urgent need for donations as soon as possible.

5. Some people contribute to Gazan fundraisers by raising the donation money through irl events like bakesales or charity drives. These may take a little more effort or upfront materials costs to set up, but they can also be a great opportunity to spread the word and connect with other people. If you have local activist groups or parties, this might be a good time to reach out to them and see if they can help facilitate such an event.

[renza15]

[renza15]

I love how every week in post-episode interviews, jacob anderson is just chilling and pondering louis’ precarious psyche and being like ‘oh louis is so fucked up. that man is Not well, can you believe how unwell he is??’ while assad zaman kinda looks like he’s been up all night trying to absorb armand into his soul and he’s like ‘armand is a little scheming bitch, he’s always scheming and planning and also he’s lonely. but mostly scheming’ and then every once in a while a wild sam reid appears and he goes ‘btw whatever they’re telling you about lestat, they’re lying and my close personal friend lestat de lioncourt is NOT happy about it’

[renza15]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[renza15]

youre telling me a ham fisted this metaphor??

[renza15]

so happy i'm bilingual because idk how i would have survived if i were only able to express myself in one language and had only one cultural context in which i can navigate through

[renza15]

sometimes i'm tempted to watch the dragon show again because i miss alicent so so bad but then i remind myself of the vietnam aesthetic shit and then i remember this quote from sapochnik about s1 and it fixes me. thank god

[renza15]

I'm Abdelrahman, 22 years old. My journey has been marked by loss and resilience. When I was 18, my father passed away from COVID-19. Determined to build my own future, I pursued an education in multimedia technology, balancing my studies with work to cover my expenses. I was preparing to establish my home and life.

My mother: the princess whom we strive to make happy and satisfy. ❤️️

However, the war in Gaza, especially in the north, brought devastating tragedy. My home, university, job, and family were all destroyed in the conflict. While my family moved to the south, I was in the north, facing famine and moving from place to place, trying to survive.

Our street used to be lively and full of people, but it is no longer like that.

I have witnessed countless difficult and painful scenes while escaping death multiple times. In northern Gaza, life is reduced to a cycle of fleeing from danger and searching for food amidst the rubble of destroyed homes.

I have survived many times,I was hit by a missile in previously destroyed house

This picture is enough to show our suffering in getting flour to survive.

My dream is to travel abroad with my mother and sister to continue my education and develop my practical skills. For the past eight months, I have been unemployed, focusing on self-improvement and hoping for a better future.

Your help can save a family from death, it can save a dream, an ambition, or a success, so please help me by donating or publishing my story so that I can save my family.

[renza15]

What's up, I'm not dead, please signal boost this!

[renza15]

"How many of you like have you ever been to Jerusalem? Raise your hand if you have ever been to Jerusalem. We have 60 students here, and we have one... two, probably three... That's that's very few of you! I've never been to Jerusalem. We're Palestinians; we live in Gaza; we can't go to Jerusalem because of the Israeli occupation.

But we love Jerusalem, right? [A chorus of students saying "yes".] We love Jerusalem because of what it means to us. We've never been there, but believe me, when you go there you will feel that you've been there hundreds of times. Because you read about Jerusalem in literature, in stories. Of course it doesn't mean that that's it, that we should take the Jerusalem that's in the stories and that's it, no.

But in literature, Jerusalem comes back to us. It's true that there is suffering; there is pain; there is occupation, and that's why Tamim Al-Barghouti, as a young Palestinian poet, I think is doing a great service to the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian struggle.

When you listen to him reciting his poem from Al-Quds, or other poems, he takes you to Jerusalem. You live in Jerusalem. He takes you back to it. You liberate it for just a little bit of time.

And if there is hope; if you can imagine a free Palestine, a free Jerusalem, probably you will work towards that, and the same thing applies to occupied Palestine. We've never been to other parts of Palestine because of the Israeli occupation, but we've been told so many times by our parents and our grandparents, especially our mothers, they've been telling us stories about Palestine in the past, the good old days, when Palestine was all beautiful, unoccupied, unraped.

Therefore, I say in in this case how our homeland turns into a story. In reality, we can't have it; we don't have it, but it can turn into poems, into literature, into stories, so our homeland turns into a story. We love our homeland because of the story. We love our homeland because of the story, and we love the story because it's about our homeland, and this connection is significant.

Israel wants to sever this relationship, for example between Palestinians and the land; Palestinians and Jerusalem, and other places and cities, and literature attaches us back - connects us strongly to Palestine, so in my thinking, this is a very significant thing that literature contributes to. Creating realities; making the impossible sound possible.

In real life, again because we are here in Palestine and Gaza, I'll be giving you examples from Palestinian and Arab literature so we can compare and make things clearer. We all know Fadwa Tuqan, the Palestinian poet - and please do not introduce her as Ibrahim Tuqan's sister, let's talk about her as Fadwa Tuqan and then somewhere else mention that, "by the way, Ibrahim Tuqan was her brother". Let's not throw her under the shadow of a man, even if it's her brother, who was a great poet, we can't deny that.

So this is Fadwa Tuqan, a Palestinian poet, 40 years ago or 50 years ago, writing poetry... Of course, we always fall into this trap of saying "she was arrested for just writing poetry!" We do this, even us believers in literature, "Why would Israel arrest somebody or put somebody under house arrest if she only wrote a poem?!"

So we contradict ourselves sometimes. We believe in the power of literature, changing life as a means of resistance, a means of fighting back and in the end we say, "She just wrote a poem!" We shouldn't be saying that.

Moshe Daya, an Israeli general, said that the poems of Fadwa Tuqan were like facing 20 enemy fighters. Wow.

She didn't throw stones; she didn't shoot at the invading Israeli military jeeps. She just wrote poetry. And I'm falling for that again, I'm saying "she just wrote poetry".

So this is what how Israel's dealing with Palestinian poets, and the same thing happened to Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour. She wrote poetry celebrating Palestinian struggle; encouraging Palestinians to resist, not to give up, to fight back. She was put under house arrest. She was sent to prison for years.

And therefore I end here with a very significant point. Don't forget that Palestine was first and foremost occupied in Zionist literature and Zionist poetry.

Palestine was presented as these things, I'll be mentioning some of them, but there's a contradiction here, there's a paradox always. "Palestine is a land without a people to our people without a land", "Palestine flows with milk and honey", "there's no one there, so let's go". We'll see how later on, how many even Jewish people were disappointed when they came to Palestine. Number one, there was no milk and honey, because "flowing with milk and honey" sounds like you're just going to be groping around, and milk and honey will be thrown at you - and there were people! There have always been people in Palestine.

The fact that Israel worked hard to ethnically cleanse Palestine, to kick Palestinians out, first and foremost in literature - yes, in politics and everything - shows how significant poetry is.

To sum up, Palestine was occupied metaphorically in the poem long before it was physically and militarily occupied in your life, so let's do the same. Let's fight back; let's restore Palestine in in our writings; in our poetry; in our stories."

-Professor Refaat Alareer explaining to his students the power of poetry as a means of resistance, and why the occupation targets poets, during one of his lectures at IUG.