#ensures

[princehendir]

I swear to god that green day has had this exact same "scandal" like five times now.

[lonniemachin]

List of Palestinian Evacuation And Support Fundraisers

Last Update: 05/28/2024

All fundraisers have been looked into by me or vetted by others. If anyone notices issues in validity with any of the fundraisers listed please let me know. Funding updates daily!

Fadi Al-Sharif and family ($26,961/$62,500 goal)

Hayam Taha and family (€18,052/€30,000 goal)

Deyaa and family (€20,046/€30,000 goal)

Deyaa reached the initial evacuation fee for his family and they have extended the goal to pay to support themselves after they evacuate.

Fatima Alshanti (kr22,300 SEK/kr150,000 goal)

Shahed Ghazi and family ($31,049 CAD/$94,838 goal)

Little Yusuf and family (€33,893/€85,000 goal)

Sara & Huda Hajjaj and family ($9,807/$25,000 goal)

Mohammed JH Shamia's family (kr50,017 SEK/kr250,000 goal)

Maram Ahmed and family (€10,425/€30,000 goal)

Hamza Almofty and family ($7,331/$35,000 goal)

Mahmoud Jomaa (€3,143/€10,000 goal)

Dr. Mohammed Shaga ($2,785/$20,000 goal)

Abdulrahman Alshanti and family (kr148,607 SEK/kr350,000 goal)

Besan Almabhouh's family (€9,027/€25,000 goal)

Said Tanani and brothers (€33,829/€50,000 goal)

Donia Tanani and family (€78,277/€100,000 goal)

Hussein Shamiya, his pregnant wife, and son ($19,816/$40,000 goal)

Mohammed Shamia and family ($35,729/$50,000 goal)

Amro Bakr & kids Bakir and Tala (€15,294/€28,000 goal)

Almadhoun family ($27,523/$80,000 goal)

Child Mohammed and family (€20,297/€30,000 goal)

Sana'a and family (£28,657/£70,000 goal)

Noha Ayyad and family ($35,374/$95,160 goal)

Maryam Ayyad and family ($1,065/$15,000 goal) - Maryam is related to Noha listed above, who is managing her fundraiser.

Hamza Sameer and family ($6,940/$55,000 goal)

Hamza is related to Noha, he is her uncle’s son.

Nazmi Mwafi and family ($6,823/65,000 goal)

Ibrahim Almofty and family ($8,341/$40,000 goal)

Hamdi Hejazi and family ($25,552/$150,000

Mohammed Ali and family ($10,891/$25,000 goal)

Heba and family (€65,972/€80,000 goal)

Mohammed Abuhasanein and family (kr11,156 SEK/kr 350,000 goal)

Rawan and Yemna (kr52,492 SEK/kr319,315 goal)

Laila Auda (€7,784/€35,000 goal)

Ola Madi (€3,284/€40,000 goal)

Tawfik Satoom and family ($6,587/$45,000 goal)

Laila Abd El Bari, her husband, and unborn baby Sham (€8,088/€25,000 goal)

Abdullah Mohammed and family ($7,577/$47,000 goal)

Ruba Abushaban and family (€17,539/€50,000 goal)

Hala, her husband, and their daughter ($7,517 CAD/$50,000 goal)

Hoda and Abdul Rahman ($3,211/$18,000 goal)

Al Maghari family (£4,974/£74,000 goal)

Arwa Abudawaba and family (kr246,856 NOK/kr500,000 goal)

Hani Alhajjar’s family (€19,680/€50,000 goal)

Ouda family ($20,709 CAD/$50,000 goal)

Rawan Ahmed and family ($17,798/$40,000 goal)

Dr. Wael Eldahdouh's family (€6,001/€110,000 goal)

Abdullah Lulu and family ($8,881/18,000 goal)

Lara, Abdalla, and family (€12,812/€50,000 goal)

Firas Salem and family (€22,687/€65,000 goal)

Amal Abu Shammala's family (€49,805/€53,000 goal)

Dr. Mohammed Alshaer and family (€6,032/€18,000 goal)

Roqaya Al-Hayek and Mohammad Jamal Al-Hayek (€14,769/€25,000 goal)

Haya and family (€7,192/€60,000 goal)

Mohammed Dahdooh and family (£46,445/£65,000 goal)

INITIAL GOAL COMPLETE!!! Mohammed is now raising money for his family to support themselves once they evacuate.

Ahmad Iyd and family (£7,615/£150,000 goal)

Renad and family (£5,996/£25,000 goal)

Mohammed Aljbour and family (€5,501/€25,000 goal)

Sarah's mother (€6,266/€15,000 goal)

Sarah reached her initial goal to evacuate her mother and has raised the goal to provide support for she and her family once they are in Egypt.

Dr. Hasan Adwan and family (€6,149/€98,000 goal)

Marah Atallah and family ($2,285/$27,000 goal)

Dr. Nasrallah Almassri ($9,333/$30,000 goal)

Afnan Hasaballah (€12,011/€15,000 goal)

Muhammad Al-Thalateeni and family (€8,497/€20,000 goal)

Al-Zaeem family ($9,009/$50,000 goal)

Mahmoud Al Tibi and family (€9,193/€60,000 goal)

Almoghrabi family (€8,454/€25,000 goal)

Mohammad's family (€9,578/€30,000 goal)

Aziz and his mother ($3,063/$50,000 goal)

Mohammed, his wife, and their newborn son ($1,101 CAD/$50,000 goal)

Tala, her aunt, and their family (€20,588/€50,000 goal)

Ala Osama ($165/$50,000 goal!!!)

Aesha Balaha and family ($1,867/$10,000 goal)

Farah and family (€4,691/€35,000 goal)

Zinh Dahdooh ($6,991/$40,000 goal)

Rana and family (€9,285/€30,000 goal)

Al-Alami family ($3,798 CAD/$100,000 goal)

Khaled and family ($252/$15,000!!!)

Tamer Alnoaizy and family (€4,115/€20,000 goal)

Ahmed Dawoud and family ($2,300/$87,000 goal)

Omar and family (€7,869/€20,000 goal)

Haytham and family ($2,748 CAD/$70,000 goal)

Hamdi and family ($770 CAD/$62,000 goal!!!)

Mahmoud & Rawan (€1,154/€15,000 goal)

Hashem, Samar, and baby Omar (€385/€45,000 goal!!!)

Aseel Maher and family (€3,295/€30,000 goal)

Mayada Jihad and family (€2,220/€30,000 goal)

Amal, her children, and her unborn baby ($3,991/$15,000 goal!!!) URGENT! 6 DAYS TO COMPLETE!!!

Margaret, Sara, and Maxine's friend and her family (£38,325/£50,000 goal)

Tahani Shorbajee and family ($5,785/$50,000 goal)

Baby Youssef and family (€8,282/€50,000 goal)

Iman Eyad and family (£4,010/£60,000 goal)

Mohammed & Hamza Hilles and family (€755/€30,000 goal!!!)

Bilal Salah and family (€25,078/€70,000 goal)

Rabah Dawoud and family ($46,500/$70,000 goal)

Mayess and family ($357/$45,000 goal!!!)

Aahed Hisham and family (€2,807/€50,000 goal)

Hammam Hilles and family (€887/€30,000 goal!!!)

Hazem's family ($104,420 AUD/$100,000 goal)

GOAL COMPLETE!!!

Hazem has made it from Gaza to Egypt, but he and his family are still in need of support.

Mohamed, Samah, and family (€28,951/€63,000 goal)

[a2zsportsnews]

Vienna Open: Draper beats Musetti to reach final, ensures career-high ranking

Britain’s Jack Draper defeated Lorenzo Musetti of Italy in straight sets to reach the Vienna ATP final on Saturday, ensuring a rise to a career-high in the world rankings. Draper claimed a 6-2, 6-4 win in one hour and 49 minutes and will tackle either Australia’s Alex de Minaur or Karen Khachanov of Russia for the title. ALSO READ: Shelton outlasts top seed Rublev to face Fils in semifinal “I…

[demigods-posts]

would love it if the last god/goddess percy has to do a quest for is hestia. and all she only asks of him a simple, easy-to-do, done in two minutes task. and then that's it. no tricks or double meanings. and he just sobs into her shoulder at the end of it. and she just holds him and tells him that he's all done. he can go live his life now.

[mischievous-thunder]

One day later:

The evolution of Wade's thought process before and after meeting his Logan

[elizabro]

please consider how you engage with aaron bushnell's death. you may react to it as you will, but it's crucial to remember that his death was specifically a call to action. it was not meant solely to shock but to draw attention to a vast moral hypocrisy: that to many, a soldier dying in a campaign backed by the U.S. government is noble, even if the soldier kills innocents to do so, even if the cause is morally bankrupt--but this? this is insanity. a man taking his own life, on his own terms, in an attempt to help others while hurting nobody else, is somehow less rational and more horrifying than the mass killing of civilians.

of course aaron's death was horrific. but as he said beforehand, it is realistically no more horrific than what's happening in gaza. if we can't stomach this, then why can we stomach children being bombed? thousands being starved? for all that self immolation is, it brings death in a matter of minutes. it is a fraction of the amount of pain, fear, and grief that people in gaza are experiencing. it's just that we are able to quantify it. and this tiny, quantifiable sliver of horror is still so unbelievably awful. how can anyone bear to think about anything else when this horror is happening a millionfold in palestine? this is the question aaron bushnell was asking. and he wanted you to face it, head-on, watching him burn to death.

I've been seeing people make fanart. minimalist graphics to sell on t-shirts. to commodify his death, to mythologize it not a day afterwards, is not only in poor taste but a hindrance to his message. the answer is not commodification, nor is it defeatism, nor is it rejoicing in his death. if you want to honor aaron's legacy, take action. channel your horror and your outrage into making a material change. this wasn't about him. this was about palestine. remember that it was always about palestine.

[jcraindrop]

Leo is unpredictable.

That’s seems like something he would do.✨

[contact-guy]

CHRISTMAS EVE, 1890 - part 3 - part 1 - part 2 - bit of a cliffhanger on this one - Watson's Sketchbook will return with THE BLUE CARBUNCLE!

(this is the Watson's Sketchbook series!)

[canisalbus]

If only Machete wasn't so distinctly white and waifish. Otherwise one could possibly use a lookalike to fake his death and just run away with vasco. But finding someone that resembles machete would be almost as hard as making the choice to end a life to save your own.

.

[sunderwight]

PIDW but it's a game.

You play as Luo Binghe, the lowliest disciple of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect's Qing Jing Peak. The first part of the game proceeds more or less like a semi-normal fantasy dating sim -- Luo Binghe is bullied and downtrodden, but can seek help and opportunities to build relationships with various female characters, like Ning Yingying and Liu Mingyan. The game's interface implies a truly staggering number of potential romance candidates to unlock, however, so it makes sense that the first part in your disciple years doesn't get you very far in any of the routes.

But then for the second part, things start to shift. You get an option that seems to amount to asking whether you want to make things better for Luo Binghe or not. When you click the obvious choice, that you do, your previously cold and ruthless shizun seems to go through an inexplicable change of heart. You get a weird kind of fanservice-y scene featuring him during the Skinner Demon Mission. Then he features extremely heavily in the Demon Invasion Mission, only to turn up as your companion in the Dream Demon Mission.

After that, it seems like you've gotten onto his route, somehow? Why does the scummy male teacher even have a route in a game like this, though? You try to check for player guides but you can't seem to find any. You try reloading older saves and making other selections, but no matter what you choose, you end up finishing the Dream Demon Mission by moving into Shen Qingqiu's house, and the routes for Liu Mingyan and Ning Yingying and the briefly-encountered Sha Hualing are all greyed out.

But maybe that just means they're inaccessible for advancement for now, or something. And a lot of games have plot points that are on rails, and you can see where Luo Binghe actually getting a place to live would be one of those things. The format of the game changes as well, going from a relatively loose sequence of scenes and interactions to a daily management style, where you have tasks to complete (make shizun breakfast, go to morning lessons, cultivate, do chores, etc) and only a set number of hours in which to complete them. You have affection points, but any time you try to spend them on anyone other than Shen Qingqiu you get an error message. There are dialogue options for flirting with other characters, but they're always greyed out and impossible to select.

Still, you can unlock scenes. A lot of them are just long slow shots of Shen Qingqiu doing things, like reading, or lecturing, or eating. You get missions, and sometimes you meet female characters who seem to unlock new possible romance paths, even though they're still constantly greyed out. Maybe this part of the game's just especially on rails? Waiting for the actual harem-building segment? You kind of like a lot of aspects of it anyway, though. Luo Binghe is an especially compelling character, not at all like the usual sort of non-entity placeholder main guys in games like this. He definitely has personality.

But then you get to the third part. The Abyss. Shen Qingqiu pushes Luo Binghe in, and suddenly you're wondering if you've somehow reached a bad end. You were saving up some of those affection points for later, maybe you should have spent them all on him? Was there something you did wrong to make this happen? You're not even sure why he's thrown poor Binghe away, he was cold and cryptic about it, and now you're wondering if all the time you spent distracted by other things was time you should have spent farming a better relationship with him. You can't help but wonder where you went astray, because Luo Binghe will not stop wondering about it, and wondering about it in ways that make you feel oddly like he is accusing you, the player, of making the wrong choices... but in a way that could still plausibly be aimed at himself, as a character. You feel bad. You kind of want to restart, but you also can't bring yourself to abandon Luo Binghe. You have to see this through, to help him make it to the other side.

Regardless, the Endless Abyss seems like it must be an inevitable plot development. A lot of the game shifts to account for it. There's even an option to essentially select this "thought" from Luo Binghe's internal diatribe, that this is inevitable, and it seems to turn off the litany of recriminations for a while, although sometimes it also results in Luo Binghe... glaring at the screen?

At you?

Anyway the daily management system goes out of the window, and instead there's an energy bar now. Encounters with monsters or the occasional demon woman will lower the energy bar, how much depends on what you choose and how the encounters proceed. Sometimes there are romantic/sexy responses for interacting with the demon women you meet, and they aren't greyed out, but if you try and select them the cursor will jump to another option. You think there might be something wrong with your mouse? Sometimes you get Luo Binghe glaring at the screen scenes afterwards. When Binghe's energy bar hits zero, you're offered two choices -- "sleep" or "think of shizun". Sometimes even if you pick "sleep" the cursor will still jump to "think of shizun", and you'll be treated to another one of those slow lingering scenes of Shen Qingqiu. Except they are becoming increasingly strange, obviously warped by the exhaustion and trauma of the situation, so that aspects are eerie or even disturbing. For example, sometimes Shen Qingqiu seems to be missing limbs, or eyes. Sometimes there's blood on his hands. Sometimes the food he's eating is rotted, or the bamboo house background looks like the Qing Jing Peak wood shed. That kind of thing. You don't mind the idea of harm coming to the man. He deserves it, really, for pushing Luo Binghe into the Abyss. But the few times you try and select options along those lines, the UI glitches again.

Also the "think of shizun" option only restores a quarter of the energy bar, whereas resting restores all of it. But if you try to go for too long without doing it, it will lock you into choosing it successively for a long time.

In addition to the energy bar, there's a calendar. It's not all that sophisticated or even consistent, and it's clearly meant to reflect the fact that Luo Binghe has troubles accurately judging the passage of time in the Abyss. However, the longer you spend in the Abyss, the more violent and unhinged things start to become, and the more the UI starts glitching to reveal disturbing messages, and the more often Luo Binghe "glaring" scenes happen. So you decide to do your best to get Binghe out of here as quickly as possible. This part of the game must be broken, but hopefully if you can make to the next segment, it will work properly again.

Eventually you get to the Xin Mo Mission, which is the last part of the Abyss section, and Luo Binghe escapes.

But the weirdness continues. Worsens, even. You still get missions to like, take over the demon realms and infiltrate Huan Hua Palace, all cool stuff, and you still meet girls who seem to unlock possibly romance paths. But most of the time everything is greyed out. There will be 5 dialogue options but maybe only 1 or 2 of them will be selectable. Parts of the menu are inaccessible. You don't have an energy bar anymore, you have a Xin Mo corruption bar, and it just keeps steadily rising. Sometimes you're presented the option of propositioning a character to "mitigate corruption", but if you try and click it the game glitches or the cursor freaks out and it fails. Sometimes the game crashes outright, and when you reload your last save, it starts with Luo Binghe glaring at you through the screen. You still get the "rest" and "think of shizun" options at times, but neither one helps the corruption bar.

Then. Jinlan City. You reunite with Shen Qingqiu. There seem to be a lot of options for acting vengefully towards him, but they're all greyed out, except for a few which let you chase him down or manhandle him a bit. The whole segment is frustrating, full of weird fanservice-y moments but also mired in how little Shen Qingqiu will say, how often he insists on evading or running away, and how Luo Binghe doesn't seem to have the right prompts to actually get him to explain himself. At times it seems like the "think of shizun" mechanic is bleeding over into the real interactions with the character, so that you can't tell what's really going on vs what are the manifestation of Luo Binghe's trauma or even hallucinations. The Xin Mo bar has maxed out. You have to catch Shen Qinqiu. Catch Shen Qingqiu. Catch Shen Qingqiu--

Then suddenly the bar is at 0, and you're watching Shen Qingqiu's lifeless body fall towards the ground, his energy expended in the effort to push back the corruption. Like, all of his energy.

You catch Shen Qingqiu. Or at least, you stop his corpse from hitting the dirt.

Now the game art is crisp and clean again. All the weird UI artifacts and blocked-off menus are either gone altogether or else working properly. The sound, which had been very gradually deteriorating with low-pitched ringing and muffled portions, is normal. You can hear characters gasping and distantly shouting, and birds chirping somewhere, the ragged cadence of Luo Binghe's breaths, while the camera focuses on Shen Qingqiu's body.

Huh, you think. That's a sort of dramatic resolution to that plot arc, and it raised more questions about Shen Qingqiu than it answered, really. But at least it's over with now? Does this mean Luo Binghe can finally start to recover, or advance other plots?

Then everything blacks out. You get booted to the main menu, or something that looks like it, except the only option you can select now is the New Game+ one.

When you click it, it seems like you've started the whole game over again. Except that there is a Xin Mo corruption bar, greyed out, already waiting for in a corner of the screen. And instead of starting out with a view of Qing Jing Peak, you start out with the young Luo Binghe looking directly towards you. Like he's staring through the screen. It's the basic starting point character, except he already has his demon mark on his forehead, and his expression is way more cold and calculating than anything the junior protagonist would have worn.

"Don't get in my way," he warns.

Then the game proceeds like a visual novel with extremely limited choices. The old selections and the menu for various romance routes don't even appear, the menus have all changed again, this time oriented entirely around hiding Luo Binghe's demonic cultivation (while building it) and managing daily choices and Shen Qingqiu's relationship status. A romance game with only one romance route, and it's the treacherous crusty old teacher? Wtf? But otherwise it seems almost normal, except for the special faint-lettered red options that sometimes appear in weird places on the screen, suggesting things like preventing the Skinner demon from catching you unawares, or saving Shen Qingqiu from Without a Cure poisoning, or keeping out of the Endless Abyss.

Those options seem like they should create different outcomes, and you click them whenever they show up, but they consistently fail. As if there's some other force in the game pushing things back onto the rails no matter what you do...

Anyway, eventually you get through the main plot again, and Shen Qingqiu dies once more. This time the game keeps going from that point, however, with quests to try and find ways to resurrect him. You're starting to wonder why you're still playing -- after all, you signed up for a harem game, not this tragic gay love story? You're not even gay! It's just that Luo Binghe is such a compelling character. You decide it's time to take a break, though, so you get up, do some stretches, go to the bathroom, etc.

It feels like someone's watching you.

You've definitely been playing that game for too long. Sometimes you think you catch sight of Luo Binghe's face out of the corner of your eye, in the bathroom mirror or on the black surface of your phone's screen, just before you turn it on. But when you look twice or turn your phone off again, nothing's there. You call your little sister, to apologize for dropping off the face of the earth for a bit, and you joke about getting too invested in this weird game that might be broken? She hasn't heard of it, but she sounds a little worried as she suggests maybe coming over and taking you out to lunch, or something.

You decline -- she's got a lot on her plate, and she mentioned already having plans earlier -- but then you promise to get some fresh air anyway. But when you go to head out, somehow you find yourself turning away at the last minute. You try again, and yet it's like you just keep getting distracted before you can open the door. After a few tries you give up, swallowing down your growing unease. You take off your shoes and coat. When it comes to it, you really do want to find out what happens to Luo Binghe next.

The game is running.

You don't remember turning it back on...?

The screen is focused on the familiar image of Shen Qingqiu's preserved corpse. You can see Luo Binghe's hand in the frame as well, transferring qi in yet another familiar sequence, the one that seems to run at the end of every in-game day. There's some text.

Is it you? the red letters ask, scrawling and flickering, as if someone is attempting to write directly onto the screen. Are you the one behind all this? Thwarting me at every turn?

Yes/No options appear in the game's usual font and position. You try to click "no", even though you're unsure and feel like you must have missed a scene somehow. But the interface warps and when you hit "no" it changes to Stay Silent.

I can't figure out. Are you here to help me, or get in my way?

Help/Harm. You click "help" but again it changes to "stay silent" afterwards.

What do you want from me?

This time there's no option to select at first. Then, as if being shoved onto the screen by some alternative function, a text box opens up. Like the kind that some games have for implementing cheats or selecting character names. This particular game has never shown such a function before, Luo Binghe's name was locked in and you don't even know if it has cheats. The cursor blinks, and somehow it feels as if you have only one chance, and if you don't take it now, it will be gone forever.

You type in "help" and barely manage to hit enter before the interface blinks out. No list of prompts or possible options appear.

Shizun? the red text scrawls, shakily.

Then the whole game crashes.

You wait, but it doesn't start up again. You try to run it again, but you can't find it on your system, somehow. Really weird. Even if it had crashed, it shouldn't have gotten deleted? But you still can't find it. You start to feel genuinely alarmed. Not only can you not find the game on your system, but when you try and search for it absolutely nothing comes up. You try and go to the online shop page for it, but you can't remember where you actually got it from in the first place, now that you're thinking about it.

What bullshit is this?

What, was the game actually some kind of virus? It couldn't have been. Also who would make a virus like that? You get up and pace, trying to make sense of it.

It's gotta be some kind of mistake. Maybe you've just missed too much sleep, you're not thinking right. You'll take a break and when you come back you'll realize that you were just looking in all the wrong places, somehow.

You head over to the fridge to grab something to eat.

You can't remember the last time you went shopping, but the food in there is probably still fine. Right?

[crowlion]

[snowluthor]

"I'm your first, not your last" The fuck does that even mean? Buck has to date other men before he can be sure of which one he wants to be with? He's bisexual, who's to say he'll even end up with a man or date another one at all? He chose Tommy. That's what who he wanted to be with. I'm not even saying they necessarily had to be endgame, but what a shitty excuse for a breakup.

[a2zsportsnews]

Salt proud of England as rain ensures Australia T20 series ends all square

Stand-in England captain Phil Salt said he was “very proud” of the side after rain denied it the chance to complete a comeback T20 series win against Australia at Old Trafford on Sunday. Australia overwhelmed its arch-rival by 28 runs in Wednesday’s opener in Southampton before England, with all-rounder Liam Livingstone making 87, bounced back courtesy of a three-wicket success in Cardiff on…

[letsplaythermalnuclearwar]

Homer!Odysseus and Epic!Odysseus would try to kill each other if they ever met

[vyeoh]

(The Washington Post)

For those who don't know, the US Supreme Court just ruled that states are allowed to enforce trans healthcare for minors. Undoubtedly, this will trigger a wave of other states that either hope to pass or have already passed policies to do the same. This is going to kill children, and harm more in long-lasting ways.

So, how can you help?

FUCKING VOTE. I don't care if you don't like Biden, he's not the only one on the ballot. Vote representatives into your city council who will turn our city into a sanctuary city. Vote for governors and state reps who will, even if they don't pass new protections, oppose bans being pushed through. Chsllenge and kick out conservative incumbents who are banking on their races being obscure enough for people to not vote in.

Anyone telling you voting is useless is either lying to you or grossly uninformed and think saying this is the edgy new take that will make them look hip and informed. Yes, the system is broken. But short of burning the whole thing to the ground (which personally I'm not a fan of as I quite enjoy having like. Roads and the FDA) what we can do is to change it for the better, by starting with the local races and working our way up.