Forgot I made these quick refs once!!
It’s not that you should feel obligated to portray every part of an animal correctly, but in some cases these are very unique, interesting features that very few artists are ever utilizing creatively!
You may have heard of what happened in Lebanon today and if not, basically, there was a big explosion in Beirut that affected many cities, destroyed shops, homes, cars, caused many injuries and deaths. The cause is uncertain.
As a fellow lebanese myself (that also lives there), today was absolutely terrifying, probably the scariest moments of my life. We heard a deafening sound as the floors were shaking. Some of us thought it was an attack, others thought it was an earthquake. As soon as it ended many expected a second one, which luckily never happened.
Here's a video of what happened that was sent to me, there are also many others that you can find online.
Windows were broken, doors wrecked, cars flipped over, buildings collapsed, people hit by flying or falling objects, and unfortunately, many didn't make it out alive.
We were one of the lucky ones, our families and friends were all safe and our homes were fine.
Some people couldn't even get out of the crumbling builings, so we saw corpses being pulled out, although some people survived the crash. But wherever we looked, there was blood, poeple were half covered in it, their shirts, pants, hair, everything. And that sight was traumatizing.
We watched the news with elders severely injured, children with blood-spattered shirts and people in pain that couldn't get in the hospitals because they were full.
Some people are missing. Just try to imagine the pain and fear their families and friends are feeling.
Articles about what happened, there are a lot more
Officials expect death toll to rise after huge blast rips through Lebanon's capital.
The explosion took place at the port shortly before 19:00 local time (18:00 CET) with a large cloud of smoke billowing over the city. Eyewit
Not only are we in the middle of a pandemic, but Lebanon is also going through a very serious economical crisis. To give you an example, before, $1 equaled 1 500 lebanese pounds. Nowadays, $1 equals more than 7 000 lebanese pounds. Not to mention that we obviously don't have any dollars at disposition, so yeah we're fucked.
People are hungry, homeless, unemployed. And even if they are getting paid, it'll be useless since the prices of everything went up because they were affected by the economical fiasco.
Important additional information
Today, I heard my 7 year old cousins scream in fear that they were going to die. I saw my aunt shaking, worried that her children won't survive. I saw my dad freak out while trying to reassure us when we both knew that we were uncertain about the next minutes of our lives. I heard the panic in the trembling voices of my family and friends as they couldn't believe what had just happened. I thought my loved ones and I were going to die in the next seconds.
I'm never forgetting those moments and feelings.
I don't think signing petitions will help, i don't even know if the following links will help either, I just know Lebanon and it's people are desperate for anything because the future of this country is extremely uncertain.
https://helplebanonnow.carrd.co/
How can you help?
https://lebanoncrisis.carrd.co/
Lebanon Needs You More Than Ever. Know more about the crisis in Lebanon, sign petitions, donate or explore volunteering opportunities.
Help families, domestic workers, and refugees in Lebanon with food and other basic needs during this economic and public health crisis
I think donating to the red cross would be the most helpful, so if you are considering it, it'd be great.
There are so many great threads on twitter about what you can do to help, just search help lebanon or something to find them. Also if you can, please donate, and as I said, the lebanese pound is pretty much worthless currently so USD is way more useful to us.
not to be Too Serious or whatever but i genuinely think channels like 5minutecrafts and shit like that should be wholesale banned from publishing content. a lot of this shit has moved from being just flat out fake to being genuinely dangerous? i just got recommended a 5minutecrafts makeup video that showed someone using deodorant to dissolve the ink off of a magazine page and use the inky deodorant slime as eyeshadow. like... what if some little kid does that shit and blinds themselves? that’s the issue is that these videos are targeted at little kids who don’t know any better and yeah parents should be monitoring their kids blah blah blah but the fact is that a lot of parents fucking DONT and even the ones who do can’t be there every second. kids shouldn’t be given easy access dangerous influences just because their parents SHOULD be keeping a better eye on them
like this shit has progressed from like “haha you can make a phone case out of a flip flop!” and “wear some shitty hot glue and sand jewelry!” to “put inky deodorant or oreos mixed with vaseline on your eyes for make up!” and “look what happens when you make slime with nail polish remover!” and it’s FRIGHTENING. it’s not just stupid ugly shit anymore, it’s genuinely dangerous stuff that can get kids in trouble and it’s only getting worse
Note to vacationing non-Americans: while it’s true that America doesn’t always have the best food culture, the food in our restaurants is really not representative of what most of us eat at home. The portions at Cheesecake Factory or IHOP are meant to be indulgent, not just “what Americans are used to.”
If you eat at a regular American household, during a regular meal where they’re not going out of their way to impress guests, you probably will not be served twelve pounds of chocolate-covered cream cheese. Please bear this in mind before writing yet another “omg I can’t believe American food” post.
Also, most American restaurant portions are 100% intended as two meals’ worth of food. Some of my older Irish relatives still struggle with the idea that it’s not just not rude to eat half your meal and take the rest home, it’s expected. (Apparently this is somewhat of an American custom.)
Until you’re hitting the “fancy restaurant” tier (the kind of place you go for a celebration or an anniversary date), a dinner out should generally also be lunch for the next day. Leftovers are very much the norm.
From the little time I’ve spent in Canada, this seems to be the case up there as well.
the portions in family restaurants (as opposed to haute cuisine types) are designed so that no one goes away hungry.
volume IS very much a part of the american hospitality tradition, and Nobody Leaves Hungry is important. but you have to recognize that it’s not how we cook for ourselves, it’s how we welcome guests and strengthen community ties.
so in order to give you a celebratory experience and make you feel welcomed, family restaurants make the portions big enough that even if you’re a teenage boy celebrating a hard win on the basketball court, you’re still going to be comfortably full when you leave.
of course, that means that for your average person with a sit-down job, who ate a decent lunch that day, it’s twice as much as they want or more. that’s ok. as mentioned above, taking home leftovers is absolutely encouraged. that, too, is part of american hospitality tradition; it’s meant to invoke fond memories of grandma loading you down with covered dishes so you can have hearty celebration food all week. pot luck church basement get-togethers where the whole town makes sure everybody has enough. that sort of thing. it’s about sharing. it’s about celebrating Plenty.
it’s not about pigging out until you get huge. treating it that way is pretty disrespectful of our culture. and you know, contrary to what the world thinks, we do have one.
Not only is the doggy bag thing real, but some restaurants make it EVEN COOLER. Here in Portland, there’s a restaurant that will literally create a foil animal sculpture with your food inside. Like. We love sending people home with leftovers So Much that we want to make them Even More Special than just eating out itself was.
I’m dying that people don’t realize doggy bags are a real thing. Even fancy restaurants treat that as normal and expected, even if one doesn’t usually need one because the portions are smaller. The only fancy places that look askance at taking home leftovers are ones that are trying to be more foreign as a fashion thing.
Many restaurants have branded bags and boxes with the restaurant’s name on them.
When Americans eat crap, it’s often more about food deserts and a complete lack of reasonable public transportation than about our restaurants having insane portions.
A food desert is an area with no supermarkets or grocers where the only place that sells food is a convenience store with twinkies. It’s very common to not live within walking distance of a place that sells ingredients. In the suburbs, it’s normal to not only live outside of reasonable walking distance of food but also for that distance to be a huge highway with nowhere you’re legally allowed to walk. From conversations with friends, this sounds relatively uncommon in most countries. Every place has some farms in the middle of nowhere, but US style suburbs aren’t the norm.
Meanwhile, at least in some areas, we tend to have a lot of storage space, so it’s common to go to the supermarket only occasionally and stock up for the week/month with things that will keep. We’re not usually buying 800 servings at once because we’re actually going to eat all that right now.
The way normal people shop for fresh vegetables a lot of places just isn’t possible in big chunks of the US, and it’s very much a class thing.
I’m kind of surprised no one brought this up yet but as a culture we had this huge economic disaster about eighty years ago paired with an androgenic ecological disaster in this big portion of the middle of the country that caused widespread famine and starvation
on the leftovers thing, if you’re only visiting for a short time (and thus wont be able to use any leftovers), try agreeing to order one meal to share with whoever you’re at the restaurant with, instead of each of you getting your own meal. It definitely shows off the portionability of almost all restaurant food. 1 meal per 2 to 3 people should work without creating any leftovers.
The first thing I usually do when I get a burger is cut it down the middle and decide which half I’m going to eat, and which I’m going to save for a rainy day. Then, I divide the side-food in a similar way (be it fries, vegetables, or whatever). If I’m visiting the south, known for its hardy portions (texas, alabama, etc), I’ll actually divide it further, eating (for example) only half (or less) of the burger, and none of the fries– which means it becomes 3-4 days of lunches… for the family I’m staying with. Yes. You can give your leftovers to someone else. In fact, it’s considered really kind, if they like that kind of food. And since they’re usually the ones that took you to the restaurant, it may even be their favorite type of food.
Food is really a sign of affection, in every possible way, from the trope of “mother’s day means serving mom breakfast in bed” to “cutting the wedding cake is one of the most important wedding photos” to “one of our holidays literally has kids running up to every house in town in costume to ask for candy” to “BBQ sauces are a generationally-passed-down tradition.”
It’s not about the food itself, the food is a symbol of working (or paying) for an experience that your loved ones will enjoy. It’s the stubborn grandmas remembering the great depression. It’s the parents that remember eating fish cakes and stewed tomatoes in 1965, and deciding to make something edible instead. It’s the inexperienced kids handing their parents a gross bowl of shredded cheese and cheerios because they want to show that affection and haven’t figured out how to do it right yet.
There’s a restaurant in DC that specifically, as part of its menu, gives you an equal portion of specific “traditional” foods to take home. They’re packaged separately and half-baked so they reheat well when you get home.
If you have a potluck with friends, it’s perfectly normal to leave your leftovers of whatever dish you brought with the hosts, as a thank you for them hosting. It’s also perfectly normal, if you are hosting friends for a traditional meal like thanksgiving, to give them some of the leftovers to take home with them (like your grandma would do).
I recently hosted a big dinner, and one friend couldn’t come at the last minute. So I brought her leftovers the next day anyway, because that’s one big way Americans show we care.
In many areas it is an actual thing to make friends with new neighbors by going over and introducing yourself with a plate of cookies or pie. If I go to a dinner at someone else’s house, the very first thing I ask after getting the invite is “what can I bring?” because it shows i’m not an ungrateful guest. And if they say “nothing,” I’ll probably still bring a bottle of wine or something.
I’m gonna reblog again because I realised I forgot something huge.
It’s tradition, across the US, that when your friends help you move, you repay them with pizza. This is usually because pizza is easy to order in when everyone’s tired and most people like it (so you could theoretically replace it with chinese or something), but the fact is we repay kindness with food. And it’s very specifically, always food. It can’t be replaced with buying them a drink down at the bar or something. Someone helped you out and showed they care by sacrificing time and effort for you? You show your appreciation with food.
the person I reblogged this from mentioned the Dust Bowl in the tags and yeah, if anyone’s wondering WHERE this food culture came from - a quick google search will tell you all you need to know!
In college for me, at a 95% residential college, most people didn’t have cars. It was extremely common for my sorority for people to post in our group with a request like “Hey I need a ride to the train station, I’ll repay with coffee/lunch/dinner/etc.” Pretty much every favor was repaid with some kind of food.
Highly recommend this book for those concerned about the treatment of Black girls in educational institutions.
Try searching for it on Bookshop.org and help support local bookshops instead of buying from Amazon. Even better if you can find a Black owned bookshop online and buy direct from them.
ADDITIONALLY: Contact your local school board and ask if the public school contracts with local police departments for their school resource officers (SROs). Demand that they terminate their contract and redirect resources plan a better way to serve their students. Minneapolis public school board did this last week.
Heard some important information on Twitter today, and thought I’d post it here for anyone who may not have heard it. This is actually a thing, devised by human rights organisation called Karma Nirvana.
areudirty
discoholicmusic
andulkaphoto
dailybridgerton
yousharknotpass
