General Stuff

[stuckinapril]

in light of israel's looming invasion on rafah, south africa implored the icj to call for the protection of palestinians with new preliminary orders. the icj denied this request, insisting that its january orders would be sufficient in ensuring the safety of people residing in rafah.

we have all seen how israel responded to the icj verdict earlier this month. they have all but intensified their attacks on palestinians, their favorite of whom seem to be children. this will end in a bloodbath. palestinians, already malnourished and living in literal tents, will be bombarded, they will be shot, they will be slaughtered. and when i say palestinians, a lot of them are actual toddlers. the videos coming out of this are proof enough.

at this point, it has been made amply clear that palestinians will never experience safety in their own homeland. a lot of the families in gaza are trying to raise funds to get out of it, because there's nowhere left to go.

there is nowhere left to go. if these people don't get the funds necessary to escape, they will die.

it's vital that you go to operation olive branch's spreadsheet, choose a family that resonates with you, and donate as much as you can to their gofundme. every last dollar counts. one dollar could be the difference between life and death for a family. please don't fall victim to the bystander effect. your contribution matters, however little it may be. and whether you're able to donate or not, spread this to as many people as you can. each second we stay silent is a second an entire family is brutally massacred.

[kit-screams-into-the-void]

statement statement

some extras i cut out from the comic + silly unrelated doodle based on what my friend said when i was drawing this comic on call:

[rumalas]

Drawing request from a friend. They also wanted me to include their (objectively phenominal) xanax nasa Tshirt. Its not as visible as I wanted it to be, but I'll live.

And tbf thats 100% something that Grace would wear.

Ive reblogged it already, bute heres the Jail Mary pic: (use it to your hearts content 👍)

Commission me! Said friend has a job and I dont, Im starting to feel the shame.

Post by @rumalas · 7 images

💬 11  🔁 7  ❤️ 35 · Ko-fi · Google Form MORE INFO ON THE SITE BELOW! (TOS, portfolio, etc.) siteofmine

[cassylvan]

they make me sick

[incorrect-the-pitt]

[wolfythewitch]

First | Prev | Part 12

[xnyre]

Know your place

[thatlittleegyptologist]

my partner moved to the uk from an extremely hot country, and has said that the heat here is far worse due to the humidity and variation. vindicating.

Yeah, it's always the thing isn't it? It's not that it's hotter here than anywhere else, not that it's more humid than anywhere else. Hell no, we know it's worse elsewhere! It's a combination of factors that make it unbearable and I sorta wish that people got past the 'wow they're all weak' to understand how and why we react like we do. It's not a competition, I don't care to compete for 'who has it worse?' I'm just saying what it's like here and having people continually dismiss it as climate change gets worse is not fun.

Variation is a big one! Especially in temperature. It can jump 10 degrees in less than 24hrs, and our bodies cannot acclimatise that fast. As much as we may deal with 34c on holiday and manage it just fine, suddenly jumping from 18c to 29c does things to the body. It's why it takes a few days for people going on holiday to adjust to temp changes too. Then, of course, it just drops off. We'll slide from 38c straight back down to 20c in less than 24hrs, and it's difficult to adapt quickly to that too.

Humidity and the dew point are usually pretty high during these periods to. I mean it's always humid in the UK because this land is green due to being Wet™. So it'll have rained the entire week before, and then suddenly it shoots up 15 degrees and now you've got that humidity that pushes the feeling of the temps up higher. I know several people who've been to Florida, and several Floridians who've been to the UK who say it's roughly similar. It's a soup that feels difficult to breathe in.

No AC! We have AC in buildings (commercial) and on some public transport (newer trains, newer tube lines, newer buses, all cars etc), but it's not common in homes. It's becoming more common due to aforementioned climate change, but for many people it's expensive (£2000+ for basic) or difficult to install for various reasons (I'd have no issue because I own my house and it's not a listed building, but others in leaseholds/rented homes/historic buildings/have a shitty county council will struggle).

Our homes are well insulated (by regulation!) to keep out the cold and keep in the warmth. That means that the advice of 'throw open the windows and let the breeze in' is a terrible thing because that lets in the heat and it won't leave. It took over a week after the last heatwave for my house to finally cool to normal levels and that was with all the windows open. It holds it. Which is why the health service advice is to keep all windows and curtains shut that are facing the sun, and don't open them unless it's cooler outside than it is inside, or it's literally dark. Otherwise you're letting all the humidity and warmth in to stay.

Of course the issue with 'don't open your windows until the sun has gone down' is that the sun doesn't start setting here until after 9:30pm and isn't 'gone' enough to no longer cause the heat until after 10:30pm. So it stays hotter for longer! Tonight it will still be 31c at 9pm! It's not going to be cooler than inside my house (bedroom currently sitting at 26c because I have heat reflective covering on that window this time) until midnight. When will the sun rise? 4am and it starts getting hot again. Nighttime is no reprieve.

All of this really only occurs for less than 3 weeks of the year. Sometimes less than two because it's all so spread out.

It's not supposed to be this hot here! 10+ degrees above normal temperatures isn't a 'lmao weak' moment, that's a 'climate change is fucking real' moment and the answer isn't 'just install AC and live with it.' It should not be so hot in my country that the birds stop singing and the insects stop moving. We've got to start yelling at governments and dealing with those data centres because summer should be 'it was a little uncomfortable to sleep last night but it's okay' not 'I slept on my living room floor because if I slept in my bed I would die from the heat.'

So with all that, we exist with tower fans (which aren't effective over a certain temp and humidity) and hoping that this is over quickly.

[writingdose]

this and also the only difference between fanfic writers and writers who sell their own original works as careers is that fanfics aren’t monetized. that’s all.

being a “professional” writer doesn’t mean your works are inherently better than fanfics. I’ve read so many fics that are more professionally written than some published books.

whether or not a piece of writing is monetized has nothing to do with its quality.

[raviolireptile]

A misunderstanding

[marithlizard]

It's been a while since I said "this person wins the internet", but today it is merited.

(via bsky)

(The classic XKCD comic)

[intersexelphie]

I want to boost everything this person has said and add on.

The reason I call myself a tomboy now, despite it being seen as a childish word and having had someone swear at me over it because ‘tHeRe’S nO suCh thInG as BoY thInGs anD giRL thIngS sHut uP’ is because I couldn’t call myself that or be like that when I was a kid. It was seen as a negative thing and I was already bullied enough. “Looking like a boy” was the worst thing that could happen to a girl.

And I’m not even 26 yet. We aren’t talking 30+ years ago, we are talking 2000s and even 2010s. It’s only since trans people have become more accepted in the past few years that gender nonconformity has too.

And the people who helped me accept my gender nonconformity more than anyone else? Were trans people. They taught me, “there’s nothing wrong with how you feel. You’re still a valid woman no matter what you wear, how you have your hair or what you’re into ❤️”

And don’t even get me started on how people treat gender nonconforming men. JK Rowling has a lot of nerve to be like “uwu boys can wear dresses and only us gendercrits accept that!” when she has, even in recent works, made femininity in men a negative trait, as well as making masculinity in women a negative trait also.

A lot of people still don’t accept gnc people even now. Just last year I had someone tell me they’d never let their daughter “dress like a boy”, and I’m always terrified to walk into a bathroom in case the next JK Rowling is in there, sees my gender expression and pepper sprays me or worse.

“There’s no such thing as boy things and girl things.” I don’t need to be told that and I’m sure 99% of trans people also don’t need to be told that. Tell that to the society that hates us both instead of actively encouraging that hate.

[androgynealienfemme]

Gonna point out the og tweet thread is now full of terfs saying that life was better for gay people in the fucking 80s, that it was super easy for them to be a tomboy in the 70s and 80s and therefore it must have been that way for everyone, and that it was totally acceptable to be a gnc gay person in the 80s! 🤪

They’re rewriting history as we speak to try to argue trans acceptance is making it harder to be gay and gnc for youth than it was to be gay in the 80s. This is a blatant lie.

[trans-mask-left]

The fucking 80s??? As in, “aids crisis” 80s?? As in, “the government actively avoided funding research to help gay people” 80s????

Man I knew terfism was brain rot but I didn’t think it was this bad.

[socialistexan]

Actually I'm not going to just keep this in the tags

[dogpuppy]

[mandywondering]

I mean, in some very interesting Technically Correct ways, they didn't actually die? Now, they're very much no longer alive. But the forces involved are such that they didn't get any of the usual cellular processes of death, they simply went from biology to physics in less time than it takes a signal to travel down your optic nerve.

[dramatic-dolphin]

a while ago I read this sci-fi short story from the 50s where a guy is kidnapped and interrogated by aliens using a very sophisticated lie detector, but he realizes that the lie detector works off technical truth, and with some careful phrasing and misdirection, he manages to make them believe that humans are a race of immortal, overpowered, omniscient telepathic beings. and it works.

my favorite part is when he tells them that humans are "capable of transportation without the aid of spaceships or any vehicles, just by using mental power to control physical matter". it's true, we can. it's called walking.

[dramatic-dolphin]

okay I found it, it's The Best Policy by Randall Garrett

and it has other gems such as "I know beyond a shadow of a doubt what every member of my race thinks of you" (they don't know you exist) and "every human knows exactly as much about the location of your home planet as I do" (nothing)

[nenastrology]

light was such a loser cuz he didnt just google the 100 richest people and start writing down names

[wyrmzone]

how would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and find out exactly 100 of the world’s richest people died of heart attacks at exactly noon universal time. can you imagine the theories. light is absolutely a loser for not doing this

[jotaillustrator]

[exigencelost]

[ID: Reply from elumind that says: “Do the richest one every week and see next in line lose their shit and try to get rid of the money. I think of this almost daily.” /end ID.]

The notes on this are wild because people are legit passionately arguing about why this wouldn’t work. No one said it would work. They said he’s a loser for not doing it.

[athingofvikings]

There has to be a *pattern* to it, though, to really get their attention. Like it has to be the same time of day, the same day, each week.

[hazeldomain]

The first one stands up and draws a massive A on the nearest wall before dropping dead. 

Exactly one week later, Thursday at 3:13 PM, the next one looks up, blank-faced, and uses a car key to scratch the word ‘CAMEL’ into the side of their car. There are memes. 

The week after that, in the middle of an interview, the third victim turns to the camera and says ‘THROUGH.’ He drops dead. 

The man who writes “EYE” is in a private underground bunker. Enough radiation shielding to survive a direct nuclear strike. There are fifteen guards posted at the door- surveillance confirms not one of them left their post. 

By the time “NEEDLE” is scratched into the upholstery of a private yacht, people are starting to give money away. 

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Like most of us I’ve thought extensively on this since I first saw Death Note and came to the conclusion that the most likely reaction would be people creating more byzantine ways of keeping hold of their resources while not technically counting them as personal resources and not technically being so rich. With enough shell companies, fake charities, and resources stashed in secret or illegal places or the bank accounts of relatives, people could keep most of what they have while dropping right off any list of wealthiest people. The wealthy are often experts at this for tax fraud reasons. Light’s response, of course, would be to start taking these things into account, seeking out hackers and accountants and various other experts to keep track of the actual wealthiest, and the wealthy (many of whom would be willing to risk their lives to stay that way) would use the dying as a metric for what the mysterious killer was using to score wealth and try to find ever more secret methods of resource hoarding. An accountancy arms race would be underway.

I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. I’m saying it would make a fantastic Death Note rewrite. Instead of Light making stupid mistakes against L, he could actually put his genius to work in Death Note: The Accountancy Wars.

[leikeliscomet]

Obviously not expecting a (white) American site to gaf about today so lemme talk a bit more about Windrush Day and the Black British experience:

I feel like the Black British experience is constantly one of work and struggle. Our parents and grandparents lived through colonial and post colonial (using the term lightly) rule just to end up working and serving the imperial core, targeted by the same government that invited them here. A lot of the time its phrased as a choice but in reality what else could they have done? Ts and Cs apply bc for some West African Brits their parents were middle class back home but for me and others our families grew up in poverty in places still recovering from slavery and colonialism.

Britain whitewashes the history of Black immigrants, literally in the sense we're not taught our own history of Black people in Britain and metaphorically by applying British individualist myths; that as long as you work hard, don't complain about it and love Britain you can be British too. But it erases, ignores and distorts the truth that the British state used our community as nothing more than a labour force to rebuild after WWII and actively targeted Black British communities with police surveillance, brutality and systemic racism. All whilst denying it of course and turning their nose up at the very accusation. Very British.

Black British contributions, West African and West Indian to be more specific don't just apply in terms of work but in terms of shaping culture. 'Roadman' has become a meme and a caricature (including by some Americans on here ik u lot love 'chav') with barely any connection to its Black British roots, even when the term gets used as an insult to mainly Black working class men or used as a British version of 'thug'. The grime scene is undeniably a staple of Black Britain yet it is pathologised and judged, moral panics about Black people's violence and yet capitalised and profitted off of by non Black Brits as an aesthetic. Everybody wants the tracksuits, the tunes and the terminology innit. To be 'road' means to be Black British yet when its time to talk culture, nobody wants to credit it us. All of a sudden its 'London culture'.

But it isn't all doom and gloom. There's so much history and culture here in our spaces. I'd be lying if I said growing up where I did was easy. But it has shaped my outlook and made me and I'll carry that with me forever. Our grandparents and parents came here with so little and made so much out of nothing. And I'll always honour that. Justice for the Windrush generation.

[thememedaddy]