#helping-others

[thepersonalquotes]

We all have the power to influence others. It is up to us, whether we are going to abuse that power to manipulate people or use it to help them.

Abhijit Naskar, The Film Testament

[thepersonalwords]

The thing I regret the most is that I cannot help everyone who really needs it.

Debasish Mridha

[evilgoodguys]

he’d forgotten how much he missed that smile.

[3liza]

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/theyre-not-human-how-19th-century-inuit-coped-with-a-real-life-invasion-of-the-walking-dead

Indigenous groups across the Americas had all encountered Europeans differently. But where other coastal groups such as the Haida or the Mi’kmaq had met white men who were well-fed and well-dressed, the Inuit frequently encountered their future colonizers as small parties on the edge of death.

“I’m sure it terrified people,” said Eber, 91, speaking to the National Post by phone from her Toronto home.

And it’s why, as many as six generations after the events of the Franklin Expedition, Eber was meeting Inuit still raised on stories of the two giant ships that came to the Arctic and discharged columns of death onto the ice.

Inuit nomads had come across streams of men that “didn’t seem to be right.” Maddened by scurvy, botulism or desperation, they were raving in a language the Inuit couldn’t understand. In one case, hunters came across two Franklin Expedition survivors who had been sleeping for days in the hollowed-out corpses of seals.

“They were unrecognizable they were so dirty,” Lena Kingmiatook, a resident of Taloyoak, told Eber.

Mark Tootiak, a stepson of Nicholas Qayutinuaq, related a story to Eber of a group of Inuit who had an early encounter with a small and “hairy” group of Franklin Expedition men evacuating south.

“Later … these Inuit heard that people had seen more white people, a lot more white people, dying,” he said. “They were seen carrying human meat.”

Even Eber’s translator, the late Tommy Anguttitauruq, recounted a goose hunting trip in which he had stumbled upon a Franklin Expedition skeleton still carrying a clay pipe.

By 1850, coves and beaches around King William Island were littered with the disturbing remnants of their advance: Scraps of clothing and camps still littered with their dead occupants. Decades later, researchers would confirm the Inuit accounts of cannibalism when they found bleached human bones with their flesh hacked clean.

“I’ve never in all my life seen any kind of spirit — I’ve heard the sounds they make, but I’ve never seen them with my own eyes,” said the old man who had gone out to investigate the Franklin survivors who had straggled into his camp that day on King William Island.

The figures’ skin was cold but it was not “cold as a fish,” concluded the man. Therefore, he reasoned, they were probably alive.

“They were beings but not Inuit,” he said, according to the account by shaman Nicholas Qayutinuaq.

The figures were too weak to be dangerous, so Inuit women tried to comfort the strangers by inviting them into their igloo.

But close contact only increased their alienness: The men were timid, untalkative and — despite their obvious starvation — they refused to eat.

The men spit out pieces of cooked seal offered to them. They rejected offers of soup. They grabbed jealous hold of their belongings when the Inuit offered to trade.

When the Inuit men returned to the camp from their hunt, they constructed an igloo for the strangers, built them a fire and even outfitted the shelter with three whole seals.

Then, after the white men had gone to sleep, the Inuit quickly packed up their belongings and fled by moonlight.

Whether the pale-skinned visitors were qallunaat or “Indians” — the group determined that staying too long around these “strange people” with iron knives could get them all killed.

“That night they got all their belongings together and took off towards the southwest,” Qayutinuaq told Dorothy Eber.

But the true horror of the encounter wouldn’t be revealed until several months later.

The Inuit had left in such a hurry that they had abandoned several belongings. When a small party went back to the camp to retrieve them, they found an igloo filled with corpses.

The seals were untouched. Instead, the men had eaten each other.

[ffverr]

Leaks of the cut scenes from the team up preparation !!

Source: trust me

[bamsara]

"youve already written that trope" yesss. i like it a lots. i will be writing it again. 1000 stories of the same trope over and over again for ten million years

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[reasonsforhope]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

[wheelie-butch]

Fun game for Pride Month:

When you're at a event, count how many people with mobility aids there are. If it seens low, think about why that might be. Count how many disabled bathrooms. Count how many unavoidable steps. Try and find one accessibility issue at the event and afterwards contact the organisers to ask them to fix it.

Many disabled queer people are left out of the Pride month celebrations due to accessibility issues, so if you're able to be there, you're already in a position to make it better.

Don't forget your disabled siblings this Pride!

[hansoeii]

promise.

[nooling]

LOOK I JUST REALLY ENJOY THEIR FRIENDSHIP OK?? You can't tell me they wouldn't hang after their respective personal quests (spawn ending ofc)/emotional breakdowns over their own mortality

EDIT: I forgot to watermark these so now more than ever PLEASE don't repost

[thepersonalwords]

Leadership is not about the power and status of one but the empowerment and service of all. That is what it should be and that is how it should be measured.

Rasheed Ogunlaru

[seratlantisite]

Nice try Bioware, but I know the state of Southern Thedas better than you do.

First off, it matters if the Hero of Ferelden is alive or not. When the First Warden recalled all wardens, our hero knew that was a bad call and refused, finally splitting off from Weisshaupt after years of mismanagement and taking scores of wardens with them. Their presence and leadership makes all the difference, rallying southern Thedas once more against the blight. If you have only an Orlesian Warden Commander in Amaranthine they’re less inspiring, but as long as you’ve done Awakening they are a boon nonetheless. There is someone to lead the fight against the darkspawn while other focus on the Venatori.

If you 100% completed Awakenings and also Soldier’s Peak, the Ferelden wardens have never been so prepared. They’re organized, they’re outfitted and they’ve been ready for this for years. Also, if you allied with the Architect then you have scores of strange research to give you an edge.

If Merrill completed her Eluvian then she moves south once again and joins the effort. She’s managed to cleanse the blight before and she’s ready to try it again. And her knowledge of the crossroads gives the south an edge on their movement and supply lines. If Hawke’s sibling is a Warden they accompanied her.

If the Inquisitor let Briala have power in any way, the Dales become the leaders in the war against the Venatori, forming a formidable alliance with Ferelden, Orzammar and the Marches, the likes of which have never been seen. And if you completed Jaws of Hakkon then their alliances with the Avvar and Chasind are stronger than ever.

Of course, if the Inquisitor kept the Wardens around after Here Lies the Abyss then their numbers are bolstered. It may cost Wiesshaupt later, but that’s Rooks problem. And if you completed the Descent, then the Inquisitor and Warden had a much better idea of what was coming and spent ten years getting ready.

They will not be broken.

They will weather this storm.

[trans-androgyne]

Genuinely, what happened to “feminism is for everyone”?

That’s the feminism I grew up with: encouraging people to recognize that fighting sexism and restrictive gender roles helps folks of every gender. We’d push back on the idea that feminists hate men, pointing to inclusive feminist literature and how many men are feminists.

Now, there are so many people insisting that the solution to patriarchy is to openly hate and ostracize men no matter what. Why? What is the benefit? It’s certainly not effective in fighting oppressive structures to exclude half the population from your cause on the basis of immutable traits. It may feel cathartic to say horrible things about men and try to punish them for your frustrations with patriarchy. But the only actual effect I see is the increasing right-wing radicalization of young men, who are being told that the left hates them for the way they were born and presented with an abundance of proof that it’s true.

Why are we going back to treating men and women as different species? It doesn’t fix things to say “well women are the good gender and men are the bad one” this time. If you sincerely want to dismantle sexism, you’re going to have to unpack and let go of all sex and gender essentialism—even that which considers women inherently pure and men inherently immoral.

[noodles-and-tea]

Continuation of this