ma

she/her • cycling, cat & fashion enthusiast (also worlds biggest KLEO fan)

[roycohn]

"the world you grew up in is gone" but not in a reactionary "there are too many brown people" way more like i woke up one day and suddenly everyone is illiterate and believes jewish people are literal demonic pedophiles, raw dairy and steak cure cancer, and AI chatbots are their friends. and i want the old world back

[gayvampyr]

me after a minor inconvenience: i hope i get hit by a [remembers i’m anti car-centric infrastructure] pedestrian

[anistarrose]

my only religious belief is that there is no afterlife except for the ublock origin team who are going to heaven and the youtube anti-adblock team who are going to hell

[monterey-gp]

At the conclusion of La Vuelta, I'd like to speak about something that has been weighing heavily on me for the past few weeks. Spanish protests have drawn attention towards Israel–Premier Tech cycling team, increasing pressure on the UCI and other organizations to take steps to halt the use of cycling races as a platform to advertise for a genocidal state. Let me be clear: I stand completely opposed to the genocide in Gaza, and I do not wish to detract from the rightful attention on and discussion around this issue. However, I feel that we must address the fact that the most dominant team in cycling, UAE Team Emirates XRG, is sponsored by a regime that is directly fueling a horrific humanitarian crisis in Sudan.

For nearly two and a half years, violence between the SAF and the RSF has resulted in 13 million people displaced and 25 million facing acute food insecurity (x). According to the UN, Amnesty International, and reporting by the New York Times, among others, the United Arab Emirates have supplied drones, bombs, and artillery to the RSF forces. This weaponry has directly contributed to atrocities committed by the RSF, including but not limited to: targeting of civilians, widespread sexual violence, and ethnic cleansing. In January of this year, the US State Department announced that it had determined that the RSF committed genocide in the Darfur region. Furthermore, credible reporting indicates that UAE is actively using humanitarian aid operations in the region, including the internationally recognized and protected Red Crescent, as cover for weapons smuggling.

UAE Team Emirates XRG is extraordinarily successful, having won seven of the nineteen contested stages of this Vuelta and 85 total races this year. Giuseppe Saronni himself has said that the team "is the team of the whole United Arab Emirates" and that they "won't have the name of a sponsor on the jersey but that of a nation that [the team] represent[s]" (x). After winning the team time trial in stage 5, the team chanted "U-A-E! U-A-E! U-A-E!" (x). The estimated budget of the team is more than double the median World Tour team budget. Throughout this post, I have been referring to the team by its full name: UAE Team Emirates XRG. This name includes the nation itself as well as Emirates, a state-owned airline, and XRG, a state-owned energy investment company. The exceptional success of this team is inextricable from its sponsorship by the sovereign wealth fund of a nation-state. To me, it is inarguable that this professional cycling team is being used to sportswash the international reputation of the ruling regime of the United Arab Emirates.

Again, I would like to emphasize that my intent is not to draw attention away from or to dilute the impact of protests against the presence of Israel–Premier Tech in the peloton. Rather, I hope that we can broaden the discussion surrounding the use of professional cycling teams for reputation laundering and begin to reckon with the impact of nation-state sponsorship on the sport.

If you would like to donate to humanitarian aid efforts in Sudan, Charity Navigator has a list of organizations providing relief. However, international aid organizations face many barriers including entry to the country, safe transportation, and looting by both the SAF and the RSF. Mutual aid networks including community kitchens and emergency response rooms may represent a more effective avenue for aid, though these organizations face significant barriers of their own. For my part, in addition to my standing donation to MSF, I have donated $70 to Khartoum Aid Kitchen and Sururab Community Kitchen. This donation represents $10 for each stage won by UAE Team Emirates XRG in this year's Vuelta. Please consider researching and donating if you are able. If you have any questions regarding anything I've discussed in this post, please feel free to reach out. Thank you for taking the time to read this post.

I've included the receipts for my donations here. As I said above, if you have questions, please reach out!

[whitager]

do you ever start writing a comment on the internet and then think “oh what the fuck am i going on about” and delete it

[remnantglow]

headache? not in the mood to partake in any of your hobbies because of the headache? consider simply staring at the Make Headache Worse rectangle!

[sabertoothwalrus]

for those who don’t remember, “mole interest” was an experiment I did 2 years ago because I wanted to test what causes tags to go trending on tumblr. My hypothesis was that all it takes is one (1) post blowing up in an established tag to make the entire tag trend.

I had randomly generated 2 words, which is where “mole interest” came from. I failed to consider that by generating a new tag, it wouldn’t have had enough posts already in it to prove what I now call “the mole interest effect”.

But now it does.

In 2023, we said “fuck it” a la mythbusters and ended up doing whatever it took to get #mole interest to trend. And it did. And it happened to be September 11th that day, and we managed to get #mole interest to trend ABOVE #9/11.

So, in the name of science, I ask you to reblog just this post. Let’s put the mole interest effect to the test.

[busket]

everyone was joking about trump dying today and I think that's really horrible and cruel. PLEASE do not joke about trump dying unless it's true and confirmed!!! I got really excited and then when I found out he was still alive i was really disappointed!! like that's so mean to do to people

[gefdreamsofthesea]

This is.....niche. Do period-appropriate chickens even still exist? Idk anything about chickens. I like the fancy ones.

[vergess]

Period appropriate chickens ("heritage breeds") do still exist, and even include some very fancy ladies, such as:

The Brahma, a popular giant known for its massive meat production and comically large eggs.

The cochin, seen here with gold and black 'lace' pattern

The barred plymouth, an incredible forager for lightly wooded terrain

The fayoumi, often regarded as The Oldest Breed of chicken

The wyandotte, a particularly good forager as well as a bulky, meaty bird.

The Minorca, a Spanish bird with stunning black feathers

And of course, the famous indonesian ayam cemani, which has black meat and bones

Old timey chickens often ARE the 'fancy' ones!

[bethanydelleman]

I love this incredibly niche complaint! Get some heritage breeds, they do totally still exist. Same could likely be said about some other animals like pigs, sheep, and cows.

[earhartsease]

heritage chicken post

[kosmogrl]

[deedzreads]

[loulooser]

Can’t wait to not sleep at all on September 11th

[spinostarz]

i know ur from the uk(?) but reading this as an american is really really funny

[loulooser]

why 😭 it’s about twenty one pilots???? Their new album is out sep 12th????

[jarsjam]

THERE'S TWENTY ONE THIS TIME???

[vyeoh]

Lil nas x getting charged with 3 counts of battery against a police officer and resisting arrest as a black man going through a mental health crisis where the police approached aggressively and tackled him to the ground is depressingly par for the course for police and specifically the lapd and it should piss people off and instead people are making jokes about it in instagram comments :/

[vyeoh]

I hate the lapd and the california department of corrections. If the california criminal justice system has 1 hater its me. If it has no haters then I have probably been killed by the lapd for being a critic

[amilkyway]

fireflies lighting up a rural Pennsylvania field at dusk

[redstonedust]

advice for men: whore up! slut out! and never forget to be yourself.

[g-w2020]

quit the discord server bc you're all evil pieces of shit. will elaborate later ^_^

[g-w2020]

you guys are so obsessed with being politically correct you are whitewashing a LIVESTREAMED GENOCIDE. you have absolutely zero political consciousness and absolutely do not realize (or choose to ignore, a lot of you guys are old enough that i'm believing it's the second option) the importance of public image of israel and the way the country has bought public acceptance again and again and AGAIN. and how ipt's boss is such a crucial part in this (i actually have a good article about that but it's french, i'll translate it and post it later), and how the whole structure of israel premier tech exists SOLELY TO PROMOTE THIS GENOCIDAL SHITHOLE OF A COUNTRY. your fucking lukewarm takes were already insufferable (it's not the riders' fault! protests should be peaceful!) but those last few days have just been a new low. you care more about your fucking comfort (uwu jonas winning a stage, your fucking velogames, holding one over groupama for whomegalul askey transferring to ipt, a stage being stopped, those losers being stopped in the TTT) than, idk, kids being deliberately BOMBED. EXPLODED. for trying to fetch water in the gaza strip just today.

other cycling spaces have managed to hold debates about the subject JUST FINE, and yeah they're not always nice, and yeah things can and will get heated BUT THAT'S BECAUSE IT'S SUCH A MAJOR SUBJECT THAT OF COURSE PEOPLE ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT IT.

and please, just please, ask yourself if your fucking bike race and bike riders are worth it. maybe pushing for political action anywhere, everywhere, might be more important.

[eraserheadadult]

tbh the current default state of operating systems & internet browsers looks fucking indistinguishable from when i gave the family desktop one billion viruses downloading Free Neopoints Hack in 2005

[eraserheadadult]

not to be a millennial but back in my day getting blasted in the eyeballs by ads on your desktop the instant you turn on your computer used to mean something was extremely wrong