#described under the cut

[wormthing]

Android designs of Selene and The Works. (Might be stretching the definition of android here lol.)

Some designs thoughts!

Selene is a research computer on the Moon. So, I gave her wheels inspired by lunar rovers for rolling across the rough terrain. Her lanky limbs are for gently reaching around and picking up samples. I'm not sure why I was so set on giving her a cape, but it can shield her inner mechanics from debris and rays. If I put more thought into it I would've given her compartments for storing samples too...

Her face design inspired by the moon (I'm a sucker for the half-moon-face design choice lol), but one idea is that she has a silver halo to illicit a full moon.

The Works is a military computer on the Earth. His design is more robust and clunky, sort of cobbled together over the years without any humans to maintain him. Colour-wise, inspired by those tan computers from the 1980s and camo patterns. He's a bit rusty and corroded. The hexagonal shelves of computing are pulled right from the script (only, in the script he takes up a whole room, so the hexagons are all over the floor).

His face is inspired mostly by his faceted face display, but I think a screen head would be nifty as well.

[schoolhater]

answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:

tl;dr:

israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.

with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.

the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.

as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.

the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.

ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.

and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.

all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!

long answers under the cut!

if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks

not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices

i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.

unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.

this was posted on abc a few days ago

it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.

even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.

with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.

[fagdykevash]

[ID: A screenshot from a TikTok with text over a person sitting outside that reads: "If yo girl forgives ya but then comes back at ya angry later on, she told her friends in the group chat and the board of directors did not agree". The second image is tags reading "sometimes a peer review is required". End ID]

Absolutely true

[c-rowlesdraws]

Hey tumblr.

I want to share a post from The Guardian that was published today.

“Inside the building, staffers said that Doge cultivated a culture of fear.

“It’s an extreme version of ‘who do you trust, when and how?’” said Kristina Drye, a speechwriter at the agency, who watched dozens of senior colleagues escorted out of the building by security. “It felt like the Soviet stories that one day someone is beside you and the next day they’re not.”

People started meeting for coffee blocks away because “they didn’t feel safe in the coffee shops here to even talk about what’s going on”, she added.

“I was in the elevator one morning and there was an older lady standing beside me and she had glasses on and I could see tears coming down under her glasses and before she got off her elevator she took her glasses off, wiped her eyes, and walked out,” she said. “Because if they see you crying, they know where you stand.””

Everyone should read this article about “DOGE” tearing apart USAID (and then read more reporting about how they are being allowed to do the same to other US federal entities). Elon Musk and his minions are violating our highest laws and destroying lives and livelihoods in the US and abroad. USAID is less than 1% of the federal budget— this isn’t about cost-cutting or “investigating fraud”. It’s about cruelty and seeing how much unlawful devastation and psychological warfare they can get away with, with the intention to repeat this process at one federal agency after another. They already have access to IT systems at the Treasury, NOAA, and other agencies, and have taken over OPM (essentially HR for the federal government), using the latter to send demeaning and threatening e-mail blasts to civil servants.

I’m urging everyone who reads this to recognize what’s happening here and how abhorrent and frightening it is. I wager that even most people who wanted Trump back didn’t want a centibillionaire technocrat making unilateral decisions on which parts of the federal government to “feed into the wood chipper” (as he has described his team’s actions at USAID in a recent post on X, The Everything App).

Please call your elected representatives and urge them to act against Musk now— before his actions make our legislative branch totally irrelevant.

I’ve been seeing posts about Musk’s coup-in-progress going around on here, but I feel like a lot of people still aren’t aware of the extent of it, and I really want to help get the word out. I’m heartsick for all the civil servants at USAID and beyond. Some of them, their unions, and some Democratic congresspeople and others are speaking out, but these workers need us everyday Americans to speak out for them, too.

Thank you for reading. And anyone who isn’t American, please keep us in your thoughts.

[kamitv]

Your best friend Sukuna is a complete slut.

Though you’d never say that aloud—albeit more than true. That's the only way to describe him because why else would he be in your bedroom, sitting on the edge of your bed, with his legs spread wide open, fingers wrapped around his thick cock, and groans of your name leaving his lips?

Because he’s a goddamn slut, that’s why. And normally when you interrupt his… sexual acts, you quietly apologize and rush off as quickly as possible.

Yet, here you were, being ordered by your best friend not to run away this time.

“I’m not gonna repeat myself,” Sukuna’s raspy and slightly husked voice drawls out to you, eyes boring into yours from across the room, “Bring your ass over here.”

Funny how he said he wasn’t going to repeat himself only to follow up with a literal repeat of his initial order-

“Now,” He hums, his voice sending a chill down your spine.

You stiffen up where you stand, trying your absolute best to keep your eyes anywhere and everywhere else except for the hand he had stroking his cock.

Gulping, “Sukuna-,” He shoots you a pointed glare and you start getting nervous. “You can’t just… j-jerk off in my room and expect me to… to help you.”

“Fuck,” He hisses, your eyes nearly falling on him again as the low noise makes you fidget, “Fine, then get out,” Sukuna tells you.

Your brows push together at the audacity of him, not that it really surprises you anymore, “But-“

“Out. I’ll be done soon,” He cuts off, sitting back and fisting his cock at a quicker pace, eyes drinking in every inch of your still figure.

You didn’t want to look at him. Nor did you want him jerking off in your bedroom. But, you also didn’t want to leave for some strange reason.

Hence why you just stand there and look around your room as if you don’t know the interior already. Sukuna can’t help but crack a smirk as you stand there, his breath growing heavy before he calls your name— watching the way you flinch at the sound.

“Kinda’ awkward if you just stand there, y’know,” He chuckles out to you, finding you oh so amusing.

You frown, “Kinda’ awkward if you just jerk off in my bedroom.”

“It wouldn’t be if you came over here,” He snaps back.

You hate how quick he always is with his responses, something you still haven’t gotten used to throughout all your years of friendship. Swallowing, you just barely glance at the man, “What?” You huff out.

Your eyes were on his and his were on yours. Tension was vexed into his gaze, desire pouring out of his maroon shaded eyes and making you so utterly nervous as you stood across the room from him.

All as he just sat there, shirtless, tattooed and chiseled chest very difficult not to gaze at, large thighs spread lewdly, and hard curved cock twitching within his grasp as precum oozed out his tip.

You couldn’t help the way your gaze dropped for a moment, catching sight of his cock and the way his plump tip glistened under your dim bedroom lighting. His hand movements got noticeable faster as you watched and you drew your thighs closer together.

Sukuna lets out a deep sigh, “Y’know,” The sound of his voice makes you flinch yet again and you lift your gaze as though you’d been caught doing something wrong, seeing the smirk on his face, “You can come get a closer look.”

You bat your lashes at him, “W-What?”

“Is that all you know how to say?” He chuckles, “Hah, just c’mere already,” He suddenly requests, voice softening ever so slightly. “I won’t bite.”

And that’s… roughly how you ended up on your knees in between his legs. With a mouthful of his cock, you don’t even remember what’d come over you after you listened to his request and came close to him.

One moment you started shyly teasing him about being a pervert who jerks off in your bedroom and the next you were curling your fingers around his shaft and making your way down to your knees. Sukuna had let out a long shaky sigh as he watched you settle in between his spread legs, his urge to tease you dying off as some other emotion swelled within his chest.

He’ll never admit it to you but, he was shy. How could he not be when your soft hand begins stroking his cock like he’s just some kinda toy for you to play with—what’d you expect him to do when you look up at him and lean forward to wrap your lips around his drooling cockhead? 

Unfortunately for him, his expression gave away everything and as soon as his dick began disappearing into the warm caverns of your mouth, he was a goner. A hand was now tightly gripped onto your scalp, his breathing unsteady as he watched you suck him off with that pretty ass mouth of yours.

He’ll never be able to forget the sight of drool spilling out from the corners of your mouth while you tried your best to take him all the way into your throat. And his mind just about blanks when you move your hands to his thighs, push them further apart, and then sink down completely—your lips meeting his base.

Now that was a sight to see. 

“F-Fuck,” Sukuna stammered, the sound alone leading you to choke a bit as a moan attempted to leave your throat. His darkened eyes were seconds away from rolling to the back of his skull with how sexy he found the sight of your lips bulging around his thick cock.

When you finally do pull your mouth off of him, he doesn’t even get a moment to breathe before your hands are wrapping around him. He goes from leaning back slightly to sitting up a bit straighter and moving his hands down to one of your wrists, his lips unknowingly quivering.

Then a pant escapes him and you’re bringing your eyes back up to look at him. “Slow, woman—fuck, go… hah, slow.” He says hoarsely.

Oh the desperation on his face was priceless. Why ever would you listen to him when using two hands to jerk him off is all it takes to receive a slightly pouted lip and furrowed brows from him. He probably doesn’t even realize the face he’s making at the moment, too grumpy trying to take control of the situation to feel his features faltering. 

You coo, “Aw, go slow? But, ‘Kuna, I thought this was what you wanted?” 

The nickname you just threw at him has to be evil in some way, shape, or form because the wild twitch it invokes is enough to have your hands tightening their grip around his thick cock. 

Sukuna grits his teeth and you can see a vein popping out in his forehead—he’s so annoyed with you now that the roles have reversed, it’s cute. “Fuck you,” He curses, as if that’ll help him avoid the embarrassment bubbling up within him right now.

“Oh, there he is,” You purr, removing one of your hands just to angle his cock back toward your lips and then tapping it against your skin gently. “S’kinda hard to be mean to me when I’m makin’ you feel so good, isn’t it?”

He swears you’ll be the death of him. He’s never experienced this side of you, nor was he aware it even existed. All he’s ever known you as was his shy roommate who’s so unintentionally attractive that it pains him to be around. Is this really the same woman who was stuttering moments ago when she walked in the room and caught him jerking off??

Sukuna huffs out an almost bratty breath of air, “Stop… talking.” Just as he’s never seen this side of you, you’ve never seen this side of him and fuck is it hot. He’s usually such a big intimidating man and yet here he is literally folding and gasping to your touch.

You completely strip your hands away from his cock and then open your mouth, staring right up into his eyes as you whisper, “Make me.”

All that embarrassment and temporary shyness is gone within the blink of an eye. Sukuna’s stumbling up slightly to his feet and grabbing a firm hold of the top of your head, letting out a gruff sigh while taking his dick into his hands and properly aligning himself with your mouth.

His chest is glistening in sweat and his head is pounding, he was all nervous seconds ago for what? Because of you? Oh please.

It only took those two words of yours for him to remember who the hell he is as he then thrusts his hips forward and quickly fucks himself into your mouth. “That’s more like it,” Sukuna grunts, giving your mouth some mean thrusts as he forces your head to move and meet each one of his motions. “Fuckin’ slut, m-makin me nervous,” He admits hoarsely, his tone aggravated with you. “Who do you think you are, huh?”

You’re obviously too busy getting your face fucked to answer that properly but the moan you let out that leads to drool filthily dribbling out your mouth is enough of a reply for him. Especially when he catches how it drips down onto your thighs. 

Sukuna releases a pretty groan out into the air at the mere sight of you. He thought he was losing his mind before but now it’s even worse. You don’t even have your hands on his thighs to try and brace yourself or control what’s happening—you just let him have his way with your throat, taking things a step further and moving your hands behind your slightly arched back.

Fuck, he needs a picture of this. He desperately needs this display of you burned into the forefront of his mind for the rest of his life. Especially as he starts hitting the back of your throat and you purposefully choke against him. Sukuna’s other hand lifts to cover his mouth because he swears he almost whined.

Your throats too fuckin’ tight, you’re holding eye contact with him for too damn long, and if he feels your tongue flick against that specific vein of his one more time—

“Hnngh—” Sukuna moans, his grip almost bruising as his head flies back and his cock presses right against the very depths of your mouth, hips stalling with the way his orgasm comes rudely rushing out of him. 

Then he feels you swallowing and even though he was trying to keep you head still, you begin to bob yourself back and forth on his cock while he’s cumming and that’s when a whimper is choked out from his lips. Sukuna’s whole body just clenches and he’s letting out all kinds of sounds as his hand, now shaky, holds onto your head for dear life.

Even when he stops cumming, you’re still sucking and his eyes roll back, voice coming out strained. “S-Shit, fuck—stop,” Sukuna moans again, “Please?” Never in all your years of living did you ever think you’d hear Sukuna Ryomen begging you for something and yet here you are.

You steadily pull your mouth off of him with a slick pop, sting after string of saliva hanging in between his tip and your glossy lips. He’s above you panting for a moment before stumbling back to sit down on the edge of your bed again.

A hand of yours moves to causally wipe your mouth off and you don’t even know if you wanna tease him now or later about what just happened. “So, that was—”

“Don’t speak,” He cuts off immediately, his voice surprisingly airy. “Ever. Never bring this up again.”

You snort, “Promise me you won’t jerk off in my room again, first.”

Sukuna scoffs. “Tch. Whatever.”

Like the vixen you are, you begin to lean toward him again and you don’t know if you image it but he flinches ever so slightly. “Promise me,” You say as your hands meet his knees and you begin to lift yourself up.

His eyes go wide and he internally panics at the sight of you moving. “Fucking fine. I promise.”

Smiling, you move to lean over his tensed body and plant a kiss on his cheek, “Good boy.”

…

Yeahhh, his brain just powered off.

pt. 2

[no-passaran]

Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people

Who are the Shompen?

The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.

Why is there risk of genocide?

India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".

Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”

The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.

This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.

The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).

And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.

Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”

On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”

How to help

The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:

From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.

Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.

Sources:

India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.

‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.

Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.

The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.

[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.