Another aspect of the Gaza Genocide that I want to talk about is the complicity of Internet banking and crowdfunding websites like GoFundMe.

I have seen multiple Gazans raise enough money to leave for Egypt, but the banks and the crowdfunding websites freeze their money or cancel their funds for "suspicious activity" or whatever. Every day that passes in Gaza supplies get more scarce, conditions get more deadly, and the price to cross into Egypt gets more expensive. I've seen people, like ghost-90 here on Tumblr, raise the full amount to get their entire family out of Gaza, but their money gets frozen for so long that the original goal is only a fraction of the price now needed to cross the boarder.

These financial institutions should not be allowed to get away with contributing to the death toll in Gaza. They are intentionally keeping people trapped in a kill zone by withholding money that is rightfully theirs.

I'm so pissed and angry that every avenue for relief for Palestinians is being cut of left and right. It is vile that Gazans are being extorted for 10s of thousands of dollars by the Egyptian gov just to save their family's lives, but even when they play by this corrupt game, the world still finds a way to make them suffer.

My heart is with every Palestinian for the rest of time, from river to sea you will all be free. 🇵🇸❤️

What the fuck is this??????????

Folks: you CANNOT censor trigger tags. When you block a tag, it doesn't block other "spellings" of it. Writing it as "r@pe" or "r4p3" means that someone who has "tw rape" as a blocked tag will still see that post because you didn't wanna say the word rape. You are hurting people. Do not censor words, because people do not have those filtered out.

And honestly if you can't even write the word rape to protect other people then you probably aren't old/mature enough to be on this website.

This right here, if you want to consor something post a tw but stop censoring the words! it defeats the purpose of someone being able to block the content. 

I honestly believe that tiktok has caused untold harm to online communities by discouraging people from typing sensitive words.

Guys. Guys. Calculating tips. Just. Look at your bill. And move the decimal point one step left. That’s ten percent. Double that number. Now it’s twenty percent.

$100.00 bill? $10.000. Ten dollars. Double it. Twenty dollars. That’s a 20% tip.

$67.50? Now it’s $6.750. $6.75? Might as well be $7. Double it. Roughly $14. You’re not going to miss the change.

Please. I failed math three times

FLAWLESS

FUCKING THANK YOU this is literally the ONLY math lesson my dad taught me and it wasn’t even for tipping but it’s so EASY

Despite every moment of life being indescribably precious and a wondrous mystery, I will spend it caring about dividends and how many rental properties I have.

Rich people are truly dead inside. 

I can't imagine caring this much about numbers that absolutely will never impact my life. This person is making more in passive income than I've ever made in my life and he's just like "but but I need more :(".

I mean, fuck that guy, but psychologically it's interesting.

Some desperate remnant of his soul knows what he needs. As soon as his debt is cleared, he goes on to live what many would call an utterly charmed life: working no more than 20 hours a week, travelling and spending time with friends (which he, at $150,000 a year and no mortgage, has ample money to do). He has a loving relationship also.

But his brain is so rotten that he cannot understand happiness anymore. He is incapable of conceptualising it other than in money.

A man who has everything except the ability to feel it.

How poetic.

But fuck that guy.

I want to hit this man.

I want to rob this man.

Meow appears beside Rogue, holding a sign: "Heist? Heist."

This man is so so so close to realizing a fundamental truth to how humans operate, but I genuinely don’t think he’s going to get there. Although I’m not sure he realizes it this man views the money he earns as a direct translation of his sense of personal achievement and engagement. 

Which means that when he says he regrets the months he didn’t pick up more hours to earn more money, what he’s describing here is boredom. He’s doing it in the crassest, shallowest, most income-obsessed and unattainable for most of us way possible, yes. But this man is expressing that once he achieved a certain financial goal he relaxed, enjoyed himself, got bored, realized on some level he was understimulated, and then started working more hours to meet whatever stimulated activity threshold he personally needs. 

This is infuriating because this man experienced the counter-argument to that nonsensical talking point that if we meet people’s financial needs with a universal basic income they’ll grow lazy and won't do anything. 

Anyone trying to develop $200,000 in passive annual income is not working three minimum-wage jobs to live paycheck-to-paycheck. This man’s basic financial needs were met. Working more hours to make more money is just his own personal code for ‘I still needed to use my mind to do things’ (using what might be the only metric of personal achievement he might actually have). This man lived the argument for universal basic income and I genuinely don’t think he realizes that. Once his basic income needs were met he still needed to do things to keep himself stimulated and engaged with his own life.

You see a version of this play out with retirees who leave their jobs, go home, and very quickly find themselves in need of new activities or friends or engagements to keep them present and stimulated in their lives. Ensuring someone’s basic financial needs are met doesn’t make them stop doing things, humans don’t work that way.

Reblogging for the psychology lessons

There is, I believe, a line in an Agatha Christie story about a man so desperately unhappy he doesn’t know he’s unhappy. “Ah, a rich man,” responds the nun.

Just a reminder to anyone who will listen! There’s a huge cold front coming up in America right now and I want to remind everyone to NEVER use or rely on a gas stove to heat up your home. You will die. If your power goes out, the best thing you can do is cover your windows, or get to an area in your house with no windows, and bundle up to the best of your ability to conserve heat. I know generating heat with whatever you have sounds good in theory, but we lost a LOT of people to carbon monoxide poisoning in last years Texas Freeze because many relied on gas stoves and other propane heat sources. A lot of people went to bed and never woke up. Please be aware of the things you can’t see, like fumes from your generator, built up gas when starting a car in an enclosed space, and of course, the excess carbon monoxide that can be generated by leaving a gas stove on for too long.

Via Schatky with thanks to Lickal0lli for the translation

This is actually such an amazingly motivational post because it explains visually exactly what art block is. Do you know what art block is?

Art block is that moment when you realise your skills could be so much more then they currently are. It frustrates you to draw because you can finally see your drawings differently. You can see where they can be better and you want them to be better.  It’s not a matter of “I can’t draw today”, it’s a matter of “I imagined this would turn out so much better” and “there’s something missing, I just know it. What technique did I miss.” You’ve got past that temporary phase of analysing and researching and now you’re able to incorporate it in your own work, you just need to figure out how, and when you get past that art block. Well, you’ll see the improvement before you know it. Slowly, but it’s there. And once you get comfortable with using those new skills you’ll move on and start analysing again, and you’ll see where you can improve.

Stay experimental and open to learn, it’s the quickest way to get over art block.

((Some inspiration to all the lovelies struggling with an art block right now~))

Whenever I take a long car ride I end up exhausted afterwards, and I'm always like "why am I so tired? I was just sitting around doing nothing all day."

But the answer, it turns out, is I was doing something. Riding in a car jars your body in many directions and requires constant microadjustments of your muscles just to stay in place and hold your normal posture. Because you're inside the car, inside the situation, it's easy not to notice all the extra work you're doing just to maintain the status quo.

There's all sorts of type of work that we think of as "free" that require spending energy: concentrating, making decisions, managing anxiety, maintaining hypervigilance in an unfriendly environment, dealing with stereotype threat, processing a lot of sensory input, repairing skin cells damaged sun exposure, trying to stay warm in a cold room.

The next time you think you're tired from "nothing", consider instead that you're probably in situation where you're doing a lot of unnoticed extra work just to stay in place.

opening my body's task manager to see what's taking up all my cpu

Thinking about how a year ago I was interviewed by a very popular radio show about my long COVID symptoms (I was over a year into experiencing them). They ended up not using my story because “it was too sad” and “I didn’t recover like other people”. They told me to contact them when I had recovered to potentially share my story in the future. I wrote back and told them that most people with long COVID will never recover, and that they weren’t accurately reporting on how COVID affects people. They never replied.

A year later and my symptoms still haven’t improved at all. Anyways, here’s your reminder that the COVID reporting you’re reading (at least in the U.S.) is probably not accurate and is not actually reflecting the suffering of real people.

I'm not sure if this will come out right but:

Being loved is NOT a reward for being beneficial or useful in any way. You don't become less deserving of being loved if you aren't productive for a day or if you have a bad day and can't get out of bed.

I promise. Being loved has nothing to do with how you "help" the world or those around you.

not everyone finds you a burden, not everyone wants you to fail, not everyone can’t wait for you to stop talking. people like you

Ukraine (2/24/2022)

As most/all of you know at this point, last night/early morning Ukraine time, Russian military forces invaded Ukraine after Putin announced that he had decided "to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine.

I am not an expert on this, nor do I claim to be, so I'm not going to be talking about what's actually going on on the ground. But a few things to keep in mind:

Be very careful about the sources you read and trust. Russia is incredibly good at disinformation campaigns. Sources such as Reuters, AP, NY Times, and Washington Post are reliable. Sources such as RT are not. If you want to see what sort of disinformation Russia is putting out on this topic, Bellingcat has a database that's tracking it.

Be careful what you share. If something could be a disinformation campaign, don't share it. If something seems unreliable or out of date, don't share it. If something shares Ukrainian troop movements, don't share it.

This is not something to joke about, or to meme, or to treat callously. These are, and I cannot say this strongly enough, real people who are going to be hurt and killed, not some hypothetical thing that's just happening on CNN.

If you want to help, help in ways that Ukrainians ask for. There are a lot of Ukrainian people on social media talking about useful ways for foreigners to help, so I recommend checking out those. Here are a few:

Jane Lytvynenko's link to resources on how foreigners can help

A thread about what should and shouldn't be done to help Ukraine

If you're Ukrainian and have any other thoughts, please add them.

There are Russian citizens who understand that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is wrong, and they are showing up & showing out.

👉🏿 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-cracks-down-home-front-its-troops-invade-ukraine-2022-02-24/

For all the tankies and misguided “leftists” who somehow think that backing Putin is the way to show how “pure” their “communism” is—THIS is how you do it. THIS is how you rise up. These Russian protesters aren’t talking shit, while hiding behind a keyboard, in the safety of a country that’s safely not being invaded. These Russian citizens are openly protesting Putin’s war and their own government. They are putting it all on the line and literally risking everything to protest Putin’s imperialism. They are showing solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

Bravo. 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿 Bravo. 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿

Stand With Ukraine 🇺🇦

TO UKRAINIAN FRIENDS

If you are looking for an emergency exit from Ukraine, Poland will open EIGHT safety points on the border with Ukraine (you will get warm food, medical help and from there you will be guided to safety) in two of our voivodeships: lubuskie and podkarpackie. It is confirmed by the Polish Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, Paweł Szefernaker.

SOURCES:

https://www.rp.pl/konflikty-zbrojne/art35748991-szefernaker-na-granicy-z-ukraina-powstaja-punkty-recepcyjne-dla-uchodzcow

https://www.wprost.pl/polityka/10633681/polska-reaguje-na-agresje-rosji-na-ukraine-powstana-punkty-dla-uchodzcow.html

I've marked those voivodeships on the map!

Please share because it can save lives!!!!!!

EDIT: THERE WILL BE NINE SAFETY POINTS IN THE FOLLOWING PLACES: Dorohusk, Dołhobyczów, Zosin, Hrebenne, Korczowa, Medyka, Budomierz, Krościenko and in Przemyśl organized on the train station.

SOURCE: https://www.gazetaprawna.pl/wiadomosci/kraj/artykuly/8365281,punkty-recepcyjne-granica-z-ukraina-uchodzcy.html

EDIT2: ADDITIONAL HELP FROM MY UNIVERSITY LOCATED IN THE SOUTH OF POLAND (more precisely in Katowice or Sosnowiec):

"Dear!

Members of the community of the University of Silesia!

Today we are all Ukrainians.

Twice in our history we have been deprived of our own state by the aggression of empires, and thus cut off from the sovereign exercise of the rights and values of a free, democratic world. Without this foundation, the real university cannot exist as well.

Our Ukrainian friends, we understand your suffering, we join in indignation and protest against the aggression of the Russian regime, we declare all possible help.

Our community consists of students, PhD students and employees from many former Soviet republics. We assure you that everyone who respects the rights of our community will find peaceful shelter, and good conditions for studying, research and work here. Please, be attentive to anyone who needs help in this difficult time.

For specific activities, Plenipotentiary of the Rector for Aid for Ukraine was appointed (Sylwia Ledwoch, phone number: 573 490 580), to whom you can report both the need for aid, and support initiatives, including the willingness to individually get involved in helping (food collection, support in finding a job or a flat, medical assistance, etc.). Additionally, we are preparing system support for studying and working people from Ukraine regarding education, legal advice, health and psychological advice, as well as support in finding a job or a place to live. You might also be interested in help from our translators and interpreters.

The Student Government of the University of Silesia, the Doctoral Student Government, and the Student Legal Clinic at the Faculty of Law and Administration is at your disposal and declares any help in matters related to studying and residing in Poland.

We are available via e-mail: urss@us.edu.pl, spp.us.kontakt@gmail.com, doktoranci@us.edu.pl

In the following days, we will launch a website with all necessary information on our actions and support.

We hope that Ukraine will defend the most precious value of any country – independence – and the civilised world will save the global peace.

Let’s be together in mutual help.

HM Rector of the University of Silesia

Student Government of the University of Silesia

Doctoral Student Government of the University of Silesia"

SOURCE: https://us.edu.pl/solidarni-z-ukraina

The letter written by the university authorities was posted in four languages!

SMALL ADJUSTMENT: AUTOCORRECT ON MY PHONE MISSPELLED THE NAME OF ONE VOIVODESHIP: IT SHOULD BE LUBELSKIE INSTEAD OF LUBUSKIE.

Reblogging in case someone who needs it, sees it. Please read comments for more information about other neighboring countries' borders and where and how to enter them.

Stay safe out there in these terrifying times.

Надеюсь что это может кому-то помочь

I JUST FOUND THE CUTEST AND MOST USEFUL ANIMAL CROSSING RELATED ITEM!!!!

THESE REUSABLE MENSTRUAL PADS HAVE 5 SUPER ABSORBENT LAYERS

WITH TWO BUTTONS TO GIVE YOU THE OPTION TO FASTEN IT TIGHTER

AND A REUSABLE WATERPROOF POUCH TO STORE YOUR USED OR UNUSED PADS WHEREVER

FREE SHIPPING WITHIN USA!! CONS? THERES ONLY 25 PACKS PRODUCED AT A TIME!!! 

PS You bleed on the black bamboo fiber part and not on your favorite villagers!

STOP. SHILLING. FOR CARIONA.

THEY GIVE 10% OF THEIR PROCEEDS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES.

STOP.

stop saying you're ugly stop saying you're stupid stop saying you're worthless just stop. stop cursing yourself. stop turning the rotten hatred that doesn't belong to your true essence into the physical act of speaking. don't materialize it. don't naturalize it. no person was born to hate themselves and no person deserves to hear that they are worthless from the one person who needs to care for them the most. don't speak of yourself in a way you wouldn't let someone else speak of your best friend. don't normalize it. it will never be true no matter how many times you claim it. you will never make yourself believe it so you can be at peace with it. you will never trust yourself if you keep lying like that. stop trying to turn the hate into truth. it will never happen. stop rotting your lips with curses. fight the impulse back with what you really know from birth, and that is love. you will never make it right by attempting to destroy yourself because you will never believe this cause. your only weapon is overwhelming yourself with love because that is what was born with you and love will follow you to the grave. stop cursing yourself