#founder struggles

[blogtruth]

We entered India’s biggest startup challenge with zero expectations — what happened next changed everything.

We’re a small team with a big vision — and like many early-stage founders, we’ve had our fair share of uncertainty.

No massive funding. No press. No big names backing us.

Just belief. A product. And late nights fueled by coffee and conviction.

When we heard about the Startup Grand Challenge at Startup Mahakumbh 2025, we didn’t think we stood a chance. The platform is one of the biggest in India — with the best startups from across the country competing. Still, we applied... not expecting much, but hoping for insight, feedback, maybe a little validation.

The days that followed were surreal. We went from pitch decks in our living rooms to presenting among some of the brightest minds in the nation. We weren’t sure how we stacked up — and honestly, we doubted ourselves more than once.

Then came the announcement.

And I still get chills thinking about it.

I won’t spoil what happened just yet. But let’s just say: This journey gave us more than we ever expected.

If you’re in that early stage, doubting your progress, wondering if the grind is worth it — this might inspire you:

👉 Here’s what really happened.

[sonik-kun]

And to think there are Jiang Cheng antis who say their relationship was master and servant 🙃

Like literally.. The very thing that made Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian stand out was their relationship. So much so, that Jin Guangshan was able to prey on it..

JC antis love to accuse JC of being classist and act as though he is the brattiest, rich kid going, when actually, out of the main cast (who are predominantly upper class, gentry), he's probably one of the least classist characters going (before JGY ofc).

Like he was best friends with a servant's son. A fact that baffled everyone outside of the Jiang sect. That is very unusual of that time period where the line between servant and gentry is very clear.

I dont know.. To act as though JC is the ultimate classist asshole whilst other, way worse classist assholes exist in the story is just the biggest cope to me. He is no more classist than Lan Wangji is, if I'm being honest with you. Calling Jiang Cheng a classist landlord is just another shoddy attempt at bashing his character in a story where the main couple are of a privileged class. 🤷‍♀️

[x-files-polls]

[rikan-oo]

Not me watching mzds donghua for the first time and looking at Jin Guangyao with thought, "Who is this guy??? I don't know you. Why are we pretending that all is familiar with this guy? Is he a Jin Sect Leader? It the same asshole as before? He just decided to change style, and now he has a hat? Shouldn't he be older then? Maybe it's the other guy and hat is stylistic choice to tell them apart, huh" and then deciding to Google it like a fool.

And one of the first options for me was reddit post with title: "Jin Guangyao isn't a true villain."

Me: So he IS a villain then. THANKS. I just wanted to know whether it was him or his father in this scene, but now I know it even before checking wiki.

Rule number 1: Don't Google before finishing it, struggle with names, but continue.

And yeah, I don't think I'd figured it out by myself because I started following this guy, and he wasn't that suspicious.

Two weeks later, after finishing Untamed and rewatching donghua again because I liked fighting scenes, I realized that the story of defeating Wen Ruohan was supposed to lead us to understanding who is this guy, but in reality I confused him with Nie Huaisang and that was really awkward.

[deadpresidents]

What have you been reading since the last time you posted your latest reads?

It's been a few months since I updated my latest reads, so I'm probably going to forget a few titles, but here's what I've been reading since then:

•The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Pancho Villa: A Revolutionary Life by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and translated by Todd Chretien (BOOK | KINDLE)

•The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship That Saved Yosemite by Dean King (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day by Garrett M. Graff (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Too Rich: The High Life and Tragic Death of King Farouk by William Stadiem (BOOK)

•The House Divided: Sunni, Shia, and the Making of the Middle East by Barnaby Rogerson (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson by James Marcus (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Founders' Curse: James Monroe's Struggle Against Political Parties by Brook Poston (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Decade of Disunion: How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861 by Robert W. Merry (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Age of Reconstruction: How Lincoln's New Birth of Freedom Remade the World by Don H. Doyle (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Power and Glory: Elizabeth II and the Rebirth of Royalty by Alexander Larman (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis by George Stephanopoulos with Lisa Dickey (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Devils Will Get No Rest: FDR, Churchill, and the Plan That Won the War by James B. Conroy (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Ballyhoo!: The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling by Jon Langmead (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Rivals: William Gwin, David Broderick, and the Birth of California by Arthur Quinn (BOOK)

•The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives by Adam Smyth (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity by Michael Cook (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI: An Introduction to the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger, Third Edition by Aidan Nichols (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Avignon and Its Papacy, 1309-1417: Popes, Institutions, and Society by Joëlle Rollo-Koster (BOOK | KINDLE)

[jokerlennon]

fascinated by this guy who compared a day in the life to the waste land like i know ive just read several pages on how the beatles were getting accepted as artists not only by the youth but by "serious" art critics and artists and suchlike but hello

[citrlet]

I could see you playing the Groovy Legacy challenge!!!

omg i've never heard of this challenge so i looked it up and it looks so fun!! i'm 100% going to start that challenge!!

[quibbs126]

Porridge why do you have to be so difficult

[snapdragoned]

The roomies head into the real world and are met with the cold hard reality of No $20k Handouts. Torment Nexus... 2!!!!

I'll try to split up their rounds as I go, but here's just a little taste of the general floundering and suffering to come 🥲

[gaza-giving-tree]

Video: Hossam Al-Qazzaz has recently given us a glimpse of a day in the life of his family through a video he sent to us, featuring his infant daughter Habiba, son Bashar, and other daughter Diana. Despite their living conditions, Hossam does his best to keep his children's spirits high.

@hanon-qazaz

Story written by @rumiandroses

Imagine being born into a world where the first sounds you hear are explosions, the hum of drones, and the cries of your family fleeing for their lives. This is the reality for Habiba Al-Qazzaz, a precious baby girl who has known nothing but war, displacement, and hunger in her short life. Born in Gaza amidst the ongoing conflict that began on October 7, 2023, Habiba has spent much of her existence so far in uncertainty, hunger, and fear.

This precious little girl is not even a year old, and already, she has suffered through unimaginable hardship.

Her parents, Hossam and Hanan Al-Qazzaz, are doing everything they can to care for Habiba and her three siblings—Bashar (9), Hani (8), and Diana (4). But the relentless devastation of Gaza’s infrastructure has made survival nearly impossible. With no stable income and essential supplies priced beyond reach, the Al-Qazzaz family is fighting a daily battle just to keep their children warm, fed, and safe.

Their GoFundMe campaign has been their only lifeline, allowing them to afford the most basic necessities—food, water, milk for Habiba. Yet despite the thousands of people who have seen and shared their plea, donations have been coming in at a painfully slow pace. Since last year, they have managed to raise only €2,000, an amount tragically short of their €55,000 goal—the sum they had hoped would allow them to evacuate to Egypt with Hossam’s elderly parents and start anew.

Forced to Live on Top of Rubble

Images: (Top) Bashar, Hani, and Diana, still able to smile in spite of the devastation they've been forced to endure. (Bottom) Hossam Al-Qazzaz, as he does his best to clear their destroyed home of debris to make it slightly more suitable for habitation.

As time passed and donations fell short, the family was forced to abandon their dreams of escape. Instead, they now live atop the ruins of their destroyed home, sheltered only by a fragile tent that does little to protect them from the cold, roaming animals, or the ever-present danger of violence. Their reality is bleak, and their options are running out.

On February 8, 2025, Hanan reached out to us with an update on her family's condition:

Image: Hanan's update message to us, informing us of her family's current condition.

The freezing temperatures persist. Her children are crying for warmth in a shelter that provides no protection from the elements.

This is Not a Call for Comfort—It’s a Plea for Survival!

The Al-Qazzaz family is NOT asking for luxuries. They are asking for the bare minimum:

🧤🧣Warmth for their children.

🍞💧 Food and clean water.

🏠🚪A secure shelter.

With further violence looming, the time to act is NOW.

How You Can Help

🔹 Donate to the Al-Qazzaz Family’s GoFundMe to help provide food, warmth, and shelter for Habiba and her family. Every contribution—no matter how small—makes an impact. [DONATE HERE] 🍞💧🍼🧦🧣🧤🏥

🔹 Support the Chuffed Campaign created by our founder, Bethany-Grace, as an additional fundraiser to help the family rebuild their lives. This ensures they don’t have to choose between saving money for the future and feeding their children today. [DONATE HERE] 🌱🏠🛫🕊️

🔹 If you cannot donate, PLEASE share this post. The more people see their story, the greater the chance of reaching someone who can help. EVERY like, share, and repost helps.

The Al-Qazzaz family’s campaign has been vetted by @gazavetters and is #287 on their list of verified campaigns.

A Family of Resilience and Kindness

Hossam Al-Qazzaz is also the cousin of Falestine Asad, another courageous individual struggling to keep her infant child safe in war-torn Gaza. Both Hossam and Falestine are some of the kindest and humblest people you will ever meet. If you can, we encourage you to view and share both of their campaigns, and to donate if possible.

Together, we can help the Al-Qazzaz family find the security, warmth, and stability they so desperately need.

No child should have to suffer like these poor babies have.

Let’s all be part of the reason they make it through another day, and into a brighter, more peaceful future. 🙏🏻🕊️💗

[wickedzeevyln]

Effluvium

There are people in certain places who cannot see beyond the walls of their ego; that everything they know is the be-all and end-all of existence without considering they are barely scratching the surface of life’s complexities; that change is an unnecessary construct. They have are institutionalized in their gilded glass cages without resistance to what their perception is feeding them. But…

[fairuzfan]

Please consider spending time to learn more about Afro-Palestinian experiences and living under occupation while Black and Palestinian, along with Afro-Palestinian resistance efforts throughout the years. Here are some valuable articles and resources:

Articles:

In the heart of the Old City, generations of Afro-Palestinians persevere in the face of occupation by Mousa Qous

Putting the pieces together: Fragments of oral history in exile by Samah Fadil

‘Afro-Palestinians’ forge a unique identity in Israel by Isma'il Kushkush

The Africans of Jerusalem by Mousa Qous

The History Of Afro-Palestinians, Past And Present by Fayida Jailler

African-Palestinian community’s deep roots in liberation struggle by Electronic Intifada

Remembering Fatima Bernawi: Historic Palestinian fighter and liberated prisoner (1939-2022) on Samidoun

Fatima Barnawi, founder of Palestinian Women's Police and veteran prisoner, dies at 83 by Middle East Eye

On Fatima Bernawi, Women's Struggle, and Black-Palestinian Solidarity by Elom Tettey-Tamaklo

Afro Palestine: the African Diaspora in Palestine (not an article but a quick video summary of Afro-Palestinian history)

Note: highly recommend checking out Mousa Qous, the founder of the African Community Society, for his writings above all!

African Community Society of Jerusalem:

Their website— organization centered around the Afro-Palestinian community in Jerusalem.

General info about the group

ACS's instagram to learn more about Afro-Palestinian history.

Here is a write-up about the African Community Society, their impact within Palestinian society, and Afro-Palestinian history in Jerusalem specifically. Highly recommend taking the time to read this if you can.

Please take the time to watch this Documentary by Stephen Graham about former Israeli prisoner Ali Jiddah where he takes the viewer on a tour throughout Jerusalem and describes the unique struggles the Afro-Palestinian community face. He is quite a friendly guy and very funny:

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/17/dastar-dly-deeds/#roast-in-piss-sonny-bono

In 1976, Congress set fire to the country's libraries; in 1998, they did it again. Today, in 2024, the flames have died down, and out of the ashes a new public domain is growing. Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate!

For most of US history, copyright was something you had to ask for. To copyright a work, you'd send a copy to the Library of Congress and they'd issue you a copyright. Not only did that let you display a copyright mark on your work – so people would know they weren't allowed to copy it without your permission – but if anyone wanted to figure out who to ask in order to get permission to copy or adapt a work, they could just go look up the paperwork at the LoC.

In 1976, Congress amended the Copyright Act to eliminate the "formality" of copyright registration. Now, all creative works of human authorship were copyrighted "at the moment of fixation" – the instant you drew, typed, wrote, filmed, or recorded them. From a toddler's nursery-school finger-painting to a graffiti mural on a subway car, every creative act suddenly became an article of property.

But whose property? That was on you to figure out, before you could copy, publish, perform, or preserve the work, because without registration, permissions had to start with a scavenger hunt for the person who could grant it. Congress simultaneously enacted a massive expansion of property rights, while abolishing the title registry that spelled out who owned what. As though this wasn't enough, Congress reached back in time and plopped an extra 20 years' onto the copyrights of existing works, even ones whose authors were unknown and unlocatable.

For the next 20 years, creative workers, archivists, educators and fans struggled in the face of this regime of unknowable property rights. After decades of well-documented problems, Congress acted again: they made it worse.

In 1998, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, AKA the Mickey Mouse Preservation Act, AKA the Copyright Term Extension Act. The 1998 Act tacked another 20 years onto copyright terms, but not just for works that were still in copyright. At the insistence of Disney, Congress actually yanked works out of the public domain – works that had been anthologized, adapted and re-issued – and put them back into copyright for two more decades. Copyright stretched to the century-plus "life plus 70 years" term. Nothing entered the public domain for the next 20 years.

So many of my comrades in the fight for the public domain were certain that this would happen again in 2018. In 2010, e-book inventor and Project Gutenberg founder Michael S Hart and I got into a friendly email argument because he was positive that in 2018, Congress would set fire to the public domain again. When I insisted that there was no way this could happen given the public bitterness over the 1998 Act, he told me I was being naive, but said he hoped that I was right.

Michael didn't live to see it, but in 2019, the public domain opened again. It was an incredible day:

https://archive.org/details/ClosingKeynoteForGrandReopeningOfThePublicDomainCoryDoctorowAtInternetArchive

No one has done a better job of chronicling the fortunes of our fragile, beautiful, bounteous public domain than Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle of Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Every year from 2010-2019, Boyle and Jenkins chronicled the works that weren't entering the public domain because of the 1998 Act, making sure we knew what had been stolen from our cultural commons. In so many cases, these works disappeared before their copyrights expired, for example, the majority of silent films are lost forever.

Then, in 2019, Jenkins and Boyle got to start cataloging the works that were entering the public domain, most of them from 1923 (copyright is complicated, so not everything that entered the public domain in 2019 was from that year):

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/

Every year since, they've celebrated a new bumper crop. Last year, we got Mickey Mouse!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/15/mouse-liberation-front/#free-mickey

In addition to numerous other works – by Woolf, Hemingway, Doyle, Christie, Proust, Hesse, Milne, DuBois, Frost, Chaplin, Escher, and more:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/20/em-oh-you-ess-ee/#sexytimes

Now, 2024 was a fantastic year for the public domain, but – as you'll see in the 2025 edition of the Public Domain Day post – 2025 is even better:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2025/

So what's entering the public domain this year? Well, for one thing, there's more of the stuff from last year, which makes sense: if Hemingway's first books entered the PD last year, then this year, we'll the books he wrote next (and this will continue every year until we catch up with Hemingway's tragic death).

There are some big hits from our returning champions, like Woolf's To the Lighthouse and A Farewell to Arms from Hemingway. Jenkins and Boyle call particular attention to one book: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, its title taken from a public domain work by Shakespeare. As they write, Faulkner spoke eloquently about the nature of posterity and culture:

[Humanity] is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance…The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

The main attraction on last year's Public Domain Day was the entry of Steamboat Willie – the first Mickey Mouse cartoon – into the public domain. This year, we're getting a dozen new Mickey cartoons, including the first Mickey talkie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse_(film_series)#1929

Those 12 shorts represent a kind of creative explosion for the Disney Studios. Those early Mickey cartoons were, each and every one, a hybrid of new copyrighted works and the public domain. The backbone of each Mickey short was a beloved, public domain song, with Mickey's motion synched to the beat (animators came to call this "mickey mousing"). In 1929, there was a huge crop of public domain music that anyone could use this way:

Blue Danube, Pop Goes the Weasel, Yankee Doodle, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, Ach Du Lieber Augustin, Listen to the Mocking Bird, A-Hunting We Will Go, Dixie, The Girl I Left Behind Me, a tune known as the snake charmer song, Coming Thru the Rye, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Auld Lang Syne, Aloha ‘Oe, Turkey in the Straw, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, Habanera and Toreador Song from Carmen, Lizst’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, and Goodnight, Ladies.

These were recent compositions, songs that were written and popularized in the lifetimes of the parents and grandparents who took their kids to the movies to see Mickey shorts like "The Barn Dance," "The Opry House" and "The Jazz Fool." The ability to plunder this music at will was key to the success of Mickey Mouse and Disney. Think of all the Mickeys and Disneys we've lost by locking up the public domain for the past half-century!

This year, we're getting some outstanding new old music for our public domain. The complexities of copyright terms mean that compositions from 1929 are entering the public domain, but we're only getting recordings from 1924. 1924's outstanding recordings include:

George Gershwin performing Rhapsody in Blue, Jelly Roll Morton playing Shreveport Stomp, and an early recording from contralto and civil rights icon Marian Anderson, who is famous for her 1939 performance to an integrated audience of over 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial. Anderson’s 1924 recording is of the spiritual Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.

While the compositions include Singin' in the Rain, Ain't Misbehavin', An American in Paris, Bolero, (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue, Tiptoe Through the Tulips, Happy Days Are Here Again, What Is This Thing Called, Love?, Am I Blue? and many, many more.

On the art front, we're getting Salvador Dali's earliest surrealist masterpieces, like Illumined Pleasures, The Accommodations of Desire, and The Great Masturbator. Dali's contemporaries are not so lucky: after a century, the early history of the works of Magritte are so muddy that it's impossible to say whether they are in or out of copyright.

But there's plenty of art with clearer provenance that we can welcome into the public domain this year, most notably, Popeye and Tintin. As the first Popeye and Tintin comics go PD, so too do those characters.

The idea that a fictional character can have a copyright separate from the stories they appear in is relatively new, and it's weird and very stupid. Courts have found that the Batmobile is a copyrightable character (Batman won't enter the public domain until 2035).

Copyright for characters is such a muddy, gross, weird idea. The clearest example of how stupid this gets comes from Sherlock Holmes, whose canon spans many years. The Doyle estate – a rent-seeking copyright troll – claimed that Holmes wouldn't enter the public domain until every Holmes story was in the public domain (that's this year, incidentally!).

This didn't fly, so their next gambit was to claim copyright over those aspects of Holmes's character that were developed later in the stories. For example, they claimed that Holmes didn't show compassion until the later stories, and, on that basis, sued the creators of the Enola Holmes TV show for depicting a gender-swapped Sherlock who wasn't a total dick:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/22/lawsuit-copyright-warmer-sherlock-holmes-dismissed-enola-holmes

As the Enola lawyers pointed out in their briefs, this was tantamount to a copyright over emotions: "Copyright law does not allow the ownership of generic concepts like warmth, kindness, empathy, or respect, even as expressed by a public domain character – which, of course, belongs to the public, not plaintiff."

When Mickey entered the public domain last year, Jenkins did an excellent deep dive into which aspects of Mickey's character and design emerged when:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/

Jenkins uses this year's entry of Tintin and Popeye into the public domain to further explore the subject of proprietary characters.

Even though copyright extends to characters, it only covers the "copyrightable" parts of those characters. As the Enola lawyers wrote, the generic character traits (their age, emotional vibe, etc) are not protected. Neither is anything "trivial" or "minuscule" – for example, if a cartoonist makes a minor alteration to the way a character's pupils or eyes are drawn, that's a minor detail, not a copyrightable element.

The biggest impediment to using public domain characters isn't copyright, it's trademark. Trademark is very different from copyright: foundationally, trademark is the right to protect your customers from being deceived by your competitors. Coke can use trademark to stop Pepsi from selling its sugary drinks in Coke cans – not because it owns the word "Coke" or the Coke logo, but because it has been deputized to protect Coke drinkers from being tricked into buying not-Coke, thinking that they're getting the true Black Waters of American Imperialism.

Companies claim trademarks over cartoon characters all the time, and license those trademarks on food, clothing, toys, and more (remember Popeye candy cigarettes?).

Indeed, Hearst Holdings claims a trademark over Popeye in many traditional categories, like cartoons, amusement parks, ads and clothes. They're also in the midst of applying for a Popeye NFT trademark (lol).

Does that mean you can't use Popeye in any of those ways? Nope! All you need to do is prominently mention that your use of Popeye is unofficial, not associated with Hearst, and dispel any chance of confusion. A unanimous Supreme Court decision (in Dastar) affirm your right to do so. You can also use Popeye in the title of your unauthorized Popeye comic, thanks to a case called Rogers v Grimaldi.

This all applies to Tintin, too – a big deal, given that Tintin is managed by a notorious copyright bully who delights in cruelly terrorizing fan artists. Tintin is joined in the public domain by Buck Rogers, another old-timey character whose owners are scumbag rent-seekers.

Congress buried the public domain alive in 1976, and dumped a load of gravel over its grave in 1998, but miraculously, we've managed to exhume the PD, and it has been revived and is showing signs of rude health.

2024 saw the blockbuster film adaptation of Wicked, based on the public domain Oz books. It also saw the publication of James, a celebrated retelling of Twain's Huck Finn from the perspective of Huck's enslaved sidekick.

This is completely normal. It's how art was made since time immemorial. The 40 year experiment in life without a public domain is at an end, and not a minute too soon.

You can piece together a complete-as-possible list of 2025's public domain (including the Marx Brothers' Cocoanuts, Disney's Skeleton Dance, and Del Ruth's Gold Diggers of Broadway) here:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/

[almoghaniosama]

Urgent Appeal: Support Our Humanitarian Mission in Gaza

My name is Osama , I am a humanitarian activist and founder of "A Sign of Hope team" a dedicated team committed to providing essential aid to displaced families in the South of the Gaza Strip. As a non-registered organization, our team operates with limited resources but with an unwavering commitment to supporting those in dire need amidst the ongoing crisis.

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #209 )✅️

The Crisis: A Devastating Displacement

The recent escalation in violence has led to an unprecedented humanitarian disaster. Over 1.5 million people have been forced to flee their homes in the northern Gaza Strip, seeking safety in the south. This mass displacement has left countless individuals and families in precarious situations, having abandoned everything they owned in their desperate bid for safety. The dire conditions are exacerbated by the fact that approximately 390,000 of these displaced individuals have sought refuge in UNRWA schools. The remaining displaced persons, who were unable to secure shelter with relatives or rental accommodations, are left to live in makeshift tents scattered across various locations in the south of Gaza. These individuals face extreme hardships, with basic necessities like food, clothing, and medicine often out of reach.

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #209 )✅️

Our Mission: On-the-Ground Support

At "A Sign of Hope" our mission is to provide immediate relief to those who are suffering the most. We are actively working on the ground to assist families residing in schools and those living in tents, despite the substantial risks involved. Our team is dedicated to making a tangible difference by addressing the most pressing needs of these displaced families. To this end, we have begun assembling and distributing parcels containing essential supplies , including food , clothing , water , money , Entertainment programs for displaced children and medicine . These parcels are a lifeline for many offering a glimmer of hope amidst the overwhelming challenges they face.

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #209 )✅️

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #209 )✅️

How You Can Help

Our ability to reach more displaced families and provide for their basic needs depends heavily on the support we receive. We are reaching out to individuals and organizations to help us extend our reach and amplify our impact. Your support can make a significant difference in the lives of those who have lost everything and are struggling to survive. We humbly ask for your assistance in any form whether through financial contributions, supplies, or spreading the word about our mission. Every bit of support helps us deliver critical aid and sustain our efforts during this challenging time.

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #209 )✅️

Conclusion

The situation in Gaza is dire, and the need for humanitarian aid has never been greater. With your help, "A Sign of Hope" can continue to provide essential support to those who are suffering and help them rebuild their lives amidst the ongoing crisis. Your generosity and solidarity can bring much-needed relief and hope to countless families in their time of need.

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #209 )✅️

Thank you for considering our appeal. Together, we can make a difference and bring a glimmer of hope to those who need it most.

[the-faceless-bride]

More Ideas for KNY (demon slayer) different characters ♡ (SOME NSFW CONTENT FOR SANEMI AND MUZAN AND MENTIONS OF GORE IN SANEMI AND LIGHT NSFW IN GYOMEI)

<- Part 1

Imagine being dangerously in love.

Imagine being a demon, obsessed with the brash, and blood thirst Wind Hashira. the first time ever being in battle with him is what leads you down a path of want and lust for the cruel hashira.

Imagine going out of your way to always be where he is, always catching his attention and being attacked by him. He believes you're mocking him, following him just to show off that he hasn't been able to kill you. But that isn't true at all. When you fight, you never actively try and gut him, only blocking your neck and leaving the rest of your limbs exposed to be lashed in this masochism tango.

Imagine struggling to hide your enjoyment and ecstacy each time his sword ripped, teard, and scar your body. He had to have known how me made you feel. He must. The darkness of your cheeks must've been a giveaway. Right? His eyes bewitching you in how intense he glares into your soul. It sets a fire under your cold skin, a burning desire.

Imagine one time when you and Sanemi are fighting. Other slayers show up. But they don't instantly jump into the fight. 1. from looking at the fight, you hadn't landed a single strike and seemed to be a greater deal slower than the hashira, and 2. Tanjiro made an odd comment. "Huh, it's like she's avoiding striking him on purpose."

Imagine how Shinobu decided the fight was long enough and tried to sneak in and end the fight. Only for a switch to set off and catch her off guard and spin at the speed of light, leaving a large gash across her body from her left founder to her hip. And Sanemi instantly tried to help her. Only to be stopped by your own weapon pressed so close to his neck that even swallowing made his Adamsapple scrape against a sharp blade. "Don't you dare. Your attention is meant for me. Are you seriously letting her attempt to get between us work?" And that made Sanemi pause... "us? Wha-" -- "don't play dumb darling. We're soulmates, Sanemi~" you whisper to him. "What the fuck."

Imagine how now you make him feel so conflicted, how he hates you for what you are but loves you for how you make him feel... in his home in his spare time as the sun rises, his windows covered and locked tight as he has you on your knees, leaning forward and his chest pressed to your back. Your head locked between his bicep as his other hand held his sword under you. It nicks you each time he thrusts. If he pushed you forward anymore, his blade would surely cut your chest and stomach open. "I HATE YOU, YOU FILTHY DEMON. I DONT WANT YOU. CURSE YOU FOR DEMONIC TEMPTATION." You softy cry at the harsh words from your love, "I don't care if you don't want me... I'm yours right now..."

Sanemi Shinazugawa × Demon reader Trope: Yandere Lovesick/I hate you so much I love you.

Imagine being with Muzan his entire life... your family were servants to his family. And from a young age, you were assigned to be Muzans personal maid or companion as you were too young to really do any work than cleaning up his room. But since you can remember, you've always been with Muzan.

Imagine being the one he confides with most. His fears, his wishes, and despite his coldness. His shouldering eyes seemed to be less scorching when it came to you. His one and only friend. Even if you didn't have much of a choice in the companionship. It was you who sat in on his doctor's visits about his deteriorating health. When he got the news of how it would be a miracle for him to even make it to his mid 20s...

Imagine how one night after a particularly scary coughing fit, he simply places his head to your mid section as you blush his hair and pull it back into a braid. He softy thanks you as he tilts his head to look up at you, "Of course, I'm always happy to take care of you." But that isn't want he wants. He wanted to take care of you. Not you to him. And without thinking, he pulls you down to him.

Imagine His heat is pounding in his chest. You lay across him as his long and slim fingers tease you between your legs. You try and stay quiet, your face twisted with pleasure and guilt. You felt like you were taking advantage of the sick man who would never find love or feel the love of another in such a romantic and intimate way. You thought maybe that this was him just grasping for a moment where he didn't feel so useless being bedridden. But it was so much more. If this was the last thing he did, pleasing the only one who he cared for most. The one he wished he could've married... he would be happy to die. This surely isn't good for his heart, but he couldn't care less. You hovering yourself above him. As he tried weakly to pull you in to rest your whole weight. This was how he wanted to spend his last days, weeks, and months. However long he had left. He wanted it to be with you.

Imagine as days go by, and he feels more and more guilty. He starts to feel as though you let him do these things because you feel obligated as his personal maid to do so. Nights in the dark ask he fingers you, giving and receiving oral pleasure. But you still won't give him everything. You refuse to fully lay with him. Sometimes, he feels like it's because you don't really love him. Not like he does you. Or maybe you find him... pathetic... he can't actually make love to you. You'd be doing all the work. He doesn't want that, and it seems you don't either... eventually, his thoughts become too much, and he decides to let you go...

Imagine you were relieved of all your maid duties, not just to Muzan but to the family as a whole. You were heartbroken. And the heartbreak only worsened at the news of Muzan and his families and your families deaths. You'd cried more times than you'd ever had before in your life. And you were so very confused when you'd found a Man who looked exactly like Muzan sitting in your bed a few nights later. "Hello dear. I'm home." He invented to truly give you what you wanted, and he was eager to give it too you.

Muzan Kibutsuji × reader Trope: Unrequited/reunited love/soulmates

Imagine being Master Kagaya's faithful slayer, you'd always admired him. You and your Master had created a strong bond. Stronger than others. Moments like this reminded you that you were special. You sat on your knees as you just like you had the first time. Your head pressed to his chest and he dragged his fingers over your head.

Imagine trying not to tear up as you remember the first time you'd kneeled for him. You'd been reckless and impatient leading to a fellow slayer getting extremely hurt. You kneeled before him as you sat in the room alone waiting for him to speak. Doing your best to not make any noise as you silently cry. You'd failed him. Your beloved Master. But he didn't yell. He didn't make you feel like you were a problem. He merely hummed before knealing with you, one hand on atop your head and the other cupping your cheek feeling the wet stream of tears and wiped it away. "It's alright. You didn't mean for this to happen. I know you didn't. I know you're a good girl." And your breath hitched. He noticed. And from then on he gave you positive affrimations which encouraged you to do better. For him.

Imagine how as you sat there listening to his words letting yourself flow away and melt into your master. He thought it was innocent. He was simply your master helping you, if it wasn't him maybe you'd find these soft words from Gyomei or maybe even Kyojuro... but he was wrong. So wrong. It was him. Only him. You'd put yourself on the line so much more than you should've. All to hear those soft praises. His wife must not like you... you do take up more and more of his time as days go on...

Imagine how he softly calls to you. Late that night, he'd heard your footsteps. He sat with you talking. About anything that day. Soft and short conversations. Quiet but not uncomfortable. "You're my favorite you know." He sighed, before he let out a small chuckle "don't tell the others." You know he was teasing. But your heart told you other wise.

Imagine being hurt. In battle you were hurt. But even in your pain you still made your way to your master... your beautiful Kagaya... the married man, the family man, that you had fallen in love with. "My dear, you still come and see me while you're in such pain?" He seemed shocked. But you aren't sure why, you'd walk on hot coles and crawled on your hands and belly to kneel for him. You'd do anything for your master. And you could only hope as his favorite... you wouldn't let him down. Finally you lifted your head from his chest, pulling his hands from your hands, leaving a kiss to his knuckles. One day. One day you'll have him.

Kagaya Ubuyashiki × Slayer reader Trope: unrequited love/lovesick/slow burn

Special Part two of Forbidden love with Gyomei × demon

Imagine how the rest of the slayers flock around Gyomei, asking him so many questions. And he couldn't even answer them all. Too consumed by his disbelief that the person he'd fallen in love with so deeply, had turned out to be a demon.

Imagine how he layed in bed lonely and... missing you. He began to long of your cold touch, your voice, your laugh that was so contagious to him. He missed you. He'd fallen for you. Demon or not. He laid in his bed trying and failing to get even a wink of sleep. But just as he had almost fallen asleep he was awoken by a sound. 'Tap tap' was the sound, 'tap tap' on his window. "Gyomei... my love..."

Imagine how he practically leaped from his bed. Demon or not you had carved yourself a spot in his heart. Slamming open the window and pulling you inside, his hands instantly feeling over your cheeks, your nose, your neck. Kissing the knuckles of your cold hands.

Imagine being the one that made Gyomei for a moment stay from his faiths. Gyomei devoted his life to his beliefs, that includes waiting. Waited all his life for the one. Saving himself and waiting. But you both were in a unique circumstances... so from that point on Gyomei promised himself to you. You would stay with him in his home and he would always come back to you. That night he would kiss you, love you, lay you under him while he whispered for you to be his.

[makingqueerhistory]

"To do the work of suggesting how and why sexuality matters in a discussion of family and kinship, we reached out to community members to collect personal stories from queer Chicagoans for the section’s main video. We conducted inter- views with a wide array of people, but the most controversial interview came from Chuck Renslow, the founder of leather culture in Chicago. Renslow established the country’s irst leather bar, the Gold Coast, in Chicago in 1958. Over the course of a ninety-minute interview Renslow talked about the origins of leather in Chicago and how the city served as a mecca for people who integrated leather products into their sexual practices. He also described the dynamics of dominant and passive relation- ships and their role in leather-based sexual practice. Renslow talked about the use of the terms “leather daddy” to refer to the dominant partner and “boy,” not “son,” to refer to the passive partner. The distinction between boy and son was incred ibly signiicant, according to Renslow, because the terminology resisted the baseless attack that leather men were incestuous or pedophilic. Renslow spent a good deal of time explaining that leather people grounded their sexual practice in consent among adults, and described multiple relationships that encircled long-term ones, exempliied by his forty-three-year relationship with his partner, Dom Orejudos. He expressed a sense of family based on shared sexual and social practices. It became quite clear that Renslow belonged in the family section of the exhibition, but that he spoke about family in ways that might be anathema to many visitors, LGBT or straight, and therefore needed to play a critical role in how we curated this section. Trillium Productions, our video collaborators, produced a two- and-a-half-minute version of the interview that brought tears to our eyes with its poignancy. It began with the premise that while leather practices were often deemed immoral and illegal, they were in fact grounded in a deep and abiding respect for ideas that exist at the basis of our legal system — namely that adults, whether they refer to themselves as leather daddies or boys, can consent to one another. The museum’s leadership demanded that Renslow’s description of leather daddies and boys be removed for fear that people would deem Renslow a “pedophile.” While we tried to explain that this was precisely what Renslow struggled against, and that the presumption was based on a myth that gay men were predators and perpetrators of sexual violence against children, we failed to convince the leadership that our visitors would see the piece as we hoped they would. The vignette was reedited and the ref- erence to boys was removed, along with images that represented Renslow’s family as he described it. In the piece that appears in the gallery, alongside eleven other stories from LGBT Chicagoans, Renslow names himself a “leather daddy” but does not identify as a dominant or top, or call the men he cared for “boys.” Despite our serious concerns about the editing of Renslow’s testimony, the results bore out the leadership’s decision to change the content. Visitors, whether LGBT or straight, consistently report that Renslow’s piece is one of the most powerful and thought-provoking stories in the entire show and has fundamentally altered their sense of what family means."

-When the Erotic Becomes Illicit Struggles over Displaying Queer History at a Mainstream Museum, Jill Austin, Jennifer Brier, Jessica Herczeg-Konecny, and Anne Parsons