tried to vent in a trans space about how, as a trans man who’s been on T for a long time (over 7 years now), i have noticed that the more i pass as a man, the less welcomed i am in queer spaces unless i go out of my way to feminize myself. and how that sucks! and it’s isolating!!! and it feels horrible to see ppl who used to like you and be close to you drift further and further the more masculine (& therefore more comfortable in urself) u become…
only to get ppl replying to me and saying “well if you dressed more fem then ppl wouldn’t be intimidated by you. you signed up for this”
i’m sorry but i didnt sign up for social isolation when i transitioned, i signed up for gender euphoria and comfort in myself and my life. and i had hoped that the ppl in my life would be able to see how much joy that brings me and continue to love me.
i need ppl to realize that telling trans ppl to change the way they present to make other ppl comfortable with their gender is fucking transphobic. it’s transphobic when it’s telling a trans woman to dress more femme or feminize her voice so she doesn’t ‘intimidate people’, it’s transphobic when it’s telling a trans man the same. it is explicitly and inexcusably transphobic and it is literally never okay. trans people belong in queer spaces. period. there is no dress code. we belong there bc we built those fucking spaces.
would also like to add that as a fat, balding, very passing bear of a trans man who DOES dress and present very femme, the whole "if you were more femme people wouldn't be uncomfortable" thing doesn't even fucking work for me because i pass as the Wrong Kind of feminine man. i'm not a skinny little 20 yr old twink, so it's gross and offputting when i crossdress, but if i go full masc i'm even more offputting, and even if i out myself i still get Looks or am treated coldly lmfao. you're only allowed to be a cute little genderbending boyprincess if you're palatable: thin and pale and hairless and harmless. i've said it before but the root of this problem, and the problem OP faces, is that queer people need to get the fuck over their fear of people who look like they might have a penis because it is isolating to trans men and fucking deadly to trans women. it's all "gender is fake you can do whatever you want forever" until you set off too many Penis Haver alarms and suddenly you're treated like a loaded gun. anyway butch tgirls and tboy fembears i love you
I can't get over the fact that the illusive man would say "his file (kaidan's) is well classified." Like.... God, imagine having all the resources of cerberus and you still can't access the file of this one dude who is considered "boring" and "average", "bland" and then you see that his history is classified because he's canonically one badass mfer who killed his bully of a teacher while he was a teenager.
Like, fuck, my love for kaidan really just grew by a bajillion percent when the first time I heard that line. 🥹
Shepard really has a weakness for bad boys and it's kaidan motherfucking alenko. 😭🥰❤️
Not to mention he would straight up square up to Shepard in ME3. Like, hello, yes, that's my man right there. 😩🤤
Here's the piece I made for @sweatyhanded for ShenkoSummer 2023 ! :D
Original post on AO3 !
After a few rounds in the Armax Arsenal Arena, Shepard and Kaidan finally get to be just the two of them together again, without millions of fans watching them trough their TV screens.
While walking out of the arena, Shepard compliments Kaidan about that one move he pulled a bit earlier, and takes the occasion to give him a quick kiss.
At least he tries to.
Kissing while wearing armor isn't an easy thing, but awkwardly trying surely lightens the mood.
Pieces of media to watch to educate yourself on Palestine’s long history of suffering from the zionist Israeli occupation :
“Jenin, Jenin” a documentary by Mohammad Bakri (available on Youtube)
“200 meters” a movie by Ameen Nayfeh (available on Netflix)
“Born in Gaza” a documentary by Hernán Zin (available on Netflix)
“Samouni Road” a documentary & animation by Stefano Savona (available on Netflix and Palestine Film Institute’s website)
“Edward Said on Palestine (1988)” a TV documentary style film by Christoper Skyes (available on Youtube)
“To My Father (2008)” a documentary style film by Abdel Salam Shehada (available on Palestine Film Institute’s website)
“Salt of this sea” a movie by Annemarie Jacir (available on Netflix)
“Children of Shatila” a documentary by Mai Masri (available on Netflix & Youtube)
“The Present” a short movie by Farah Nabulsi (available on Netflix)
“Frontiers of Dreams and Fears” a documentary by Mai Masri (available on Netflix & Youtube)
“The Crossing” a short film by Ameen Nayfeh (available on Netflix)
“Tantura” a documentary by Alon Schwartz (available on Youtube)
“3000 nights” a movie by Mai Masri (available on Netflix)
“Farha” a movie by Darin J. Sallam (available on Netflix)
“Arna’s Children” a documentary by Juliano Mer-Khamis (available on Youtube)
“Ma’loul celebrates it’s destruction” a documentary by Michel Khleifi (available on Youtube)
“A World Not Ours” a documentary style movie by Mahdi Fleifel (available on Netflix)
“Like Twenty Impossibles” a movie by Annemarie Jacir (available on Netflix)
“Omar” - a movie by Hany Abu Assad (available on Netflix)
[this list will constantly be updated with more movies & documentaries that i’m reminded of, or with new pieces that i find and watch… if you have any suggestions please send them my way so that i can add them to this list]
I can't get over the fact that the illusive man would say "his file (kaidan's) is well classified." Like.... God, imagine having all the resources of cerberus and you still can't access the file of this one dude who is considered "boring" and "average", "bland" and then you see that his history is classified because he's canonically one badass mfer who killed his bully of a teacher while he was a teenager.
Like, fuck, my love for kaidan really just grew by a bajillion percent when the first time I heard that line. 🥹
Shepard really has a weakness for bad boys and it's kaidan motherfucking alenko. 😭🥰❤️
Not to mention he would straight up square up to Shepard in ME3. Like, hello, yes, that's my man right there. 😩🤤
Happy holidays everyone! Love from the Normandy crew💖 Featuring Samantha's gay panic, Jack crudely flirting with Miri, Zaaed kissing his best girl, Tali being more than tipsy, and a space hamster on the loose.
<<Prints available>>
This was supposed to be an artwork for N7 Day, but 30+ hours into painting I knew I couldn't finish it in time, in the end, this took 50+ hours to finish, I poured so much love and effort into showing everyone's personalities so it doesn't look like early pandemic group photo ,which is how the in game photo looks like 😂 I am replaying Mass Effect again as I always do yearly, with Paragade Sheploo for the first time, so I finally get to hear Mark Meer 's renegade lines 🔥🔥 Oh and I tried the most endorsed mods on Nexus mods and it feels like playing an amazing Remake of mass effect trilogy. I highly recommend using mods at least once! ( "Diversification Project" for increased numbers of aliens , "Take Earth Back" for more impactful final part of the game, "Dreams Remade" to make you cry more)
[ ID: A thread of five successive tweets by C.W. Howell @ cwhowell123 that read as follows: So I followed @ GaryMarcus's suggestion and had my undergrad class use ChatGPT for a critical assignment. I had them all generate an essay using a prompt I gave them, and then their job was to "grade" it--look for hallucinated info and critique its analysis. *All 63* essays had / hallucinated information. Fake quotes, fake sources, or real sources misunderstood and mischaracterized. Every single assignment. I was stunned--I figured the rate would be high, but not that high. / The biggest takeaway from this was that the students all learned that it isn't fully reliable. Before doing it, many of them were under the impression it was always right. Their feedback largely focused on how shocked they were that it could mislead them. Probably 50% of them / were unaware it could do this. All of them expressed fears and concerns about mental atrophy and the possibility for misinformation/fake news. One student was worried that their neural pathways formed from critical thinking would start to degrade or weaken. One other student / opined that AI both knew more than us but is dumber than we are since it cannot think critically. She wrote, "I'm not worried about AI getting to where we are now. I'm much more worried about the possibility of us reverting to where AI is." /end ID. ]
Alt text is an accessibility tool for many people, primarily those who are blind or visually disabled. It is not appropriate to ever use it as a punchline for a joke to tell a joke. Doing so takes away its reliability and trustworthiness. There are people who are INCAPABLE OF SEEING AN IMAGE OR FULLY SEEING AN IMAGE OTHERWISE. Using alt text to tell jokes HURTS THESE PEOPLE.
This post has like 8,000 notes. I'm so disappointed in how many people think this okay, but even more sad that many people don't understand how this is harmful or what alt text is even for. Please don't propagate or encourage these jokes. You are misusing and actively harming an accessibility tool. If you didn't know that this is what it was for, now you do know! Please do your part and don't spread such things.
This is all GREAT. I turned 40 last week, so permit me to add what I learned in my 30s:
keep on not working for startups
sometimes there comes a point where the thing (fandom, hobby, friendship, romantic relationship) you loved no longer brings you joy. And that's okay. Try to mourn the loss, take joy in the memories, and don't burn any bridges in case ten years go by and you find yourself back in that fandom/hobby/relationship again
it turns out that (ugh) moderate regular exercise is (spit) good for you. The sooner you make it part of your life, the easier it'll be
related: if you throw yourself into a new exercise regime too hard and too fast, without stopping to rest or consider whether a particular move is good for you ... well, shoulder injuries are painful and consults with orthopedic surgeons are expensive
knees are bastards too
don't even get me started on ankles
there may come a time when your digestive system is too fragile for ibuprofin. I'm sorry
one day you're gonna wake up and realise you no longer give any fucks about some things that used to bother you
on the other hand, you might be alarmed to realise what you still give a fuck about
never get down on the floor without an exit strategy for getting back up
I turn 50 this year. what I have learned in my 40s:
"loving yourself" is less of a feeling and more of an action. you can start doing it any time and it will make your life better and better as you go on
this will happen incrementally - be patient
along those lines, if you haven't started making an active effort to quit shit-talking yourself, suck it up and do it
no, shut up. do it. "but it's haaaaard!" don't care. do it.
whether you like it or not, you are mortal and you need to go to the doctor for an annual checkup
stretch regularly - your future self will thank you
at some point you will encounter people much younger than you arguing passionately and incorrectly about history you personally remember and experienced
this will be infuriating and annoying
otoh, most other things just... will not matter to you as much
at some point you will shift from wanting to go out to being like "eh" and deciding to stay in. this is okay.
you will have absolutely no idea what The Youth are talking about and you will not care
but if you keep your mind open to new ideas you'll never be irrelevant
your company still doesn't love you - don't give them more than they pay you for
get a fucking hobby, especially a hobby that involves physically creating/handling something and/or moving your body in physical space. it will do you more good than you can imagine
I'm talking that massive, never-ending Discord chat with your bestie? The one that makes you giggle through the day? It's not a "waste of time," it's what time was made for
If that's fanfic for your favorite characters who never even met on screen celebrate that!
If that's building a tiny fleet of snake villagers for your snake town and they just cover your mantel hell yes!
If that's collecting pillows and making a fort of them every weekend I'll be right over
After their home outside Gaza City was flattened by Israeli bombardment, Rasha Ibrahim and her family fled south, hoping to seek refuge in n
Though her husband and three children are Palestinian, 31-year-old Rasha has Egyptian citizenship, which she hoped would help her family cross the tightly controlled Rafah border, Gaza’s only outlet since Israel laid siege to the coastal strip in October.
But she has not heard back about her repatriation request, which the family submitted through an online portal launched by Egyptian authorities in early December.
“We are dying in silence,” Rasha, who is struggling to feed and clothe her children in central Gaza, said through tears over the phone. “It is very cold in our nylon tent. We have no food … we live in constant fear and horror.”
There is a faster way to get through the Rafah border crossing. But that option is only available to those with thousands of dollars to spare.
For years, a network of Egypt and Gaza-based travel agents and fixers have offered fast-tracked passage through Rafah for a price, ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending in part on how frequently the border has been open for crossing.
The deeper the desperation to leave, the better the business. More than 100 days into the conflict, during which Gaza’s other Israeli-controlled exit has been shut, rates are soaring. While the prices fluctuate wildly, some brokers are now charging Palestinians between $4,500 and $10,000 to secure a crossing permit, according to more than a dozen interviews conducted by OCCRP and the Cairo-based SaheehMasr media platform. The rate for those with Egyptian nationality is lower, at around $650 to $1,200 per person.
Reporters spoke to 15 Palestinians and Egyptians who had reached out to brokers to ask about leaving. Two had successfully left the enclave by paying $4,500 each in fees, while three said they had been scammed by the agents and lost their cash. Others were desperately trying to raise money by selling their gold and other personal belongings, borrowing from friends and relatives, or through online crowdfunding.
Rasha said she was told it would cost a total of $40,000 to get her Palestinian husband and three children out through Rafah.
[...]
Even before the war, the Rafah border could not be traversed freely.
Since 2007, it has been managed by Hamas’s Interior Ministry on one side and Egyptian security forces, including the General Intelligence Service, on the other. Israel also monitors the crossing from a nearby military base.
Prone to sporadic closures, the border has long been “perceived as random and unpredictable,” said Lorenzo Navone, a sociology lecturer at the University of Strasbourg. “Nobody could foresee when it would be open, who would be allowed to cross and [according to] which rule or criteria or principle.”
From Gaza, the formal process required registering a request with the Hamas-run Interior Ministry. Approvals often took between two months in winter and six months in summer, while those traveling for medical purposes might see their applications processed faster, according to interviews with travelers.
But even securing a permit was no guarantee — Gazans could be turned back at the border by Egyptian authorities for various unforeseen reasons.
That’s where companies like Hala Consulting and Tourism, an Egyptian travel agency, stepped in. In 2019, the company started offering a VIP service referred to as “coordination,” or “tanseeq” in Arabic, to cross the Rafah border quickly and comfortably. For $1,200, the company would provide a permit within 48 hours, and a hassle-free trip from Gaza to Cairo, according to media reports at the time.
This was made possible through the use of a separate list of travelers approved by the Egyptian authorities, distinct from the registration process organized by Hamas.
This “two list” system explained why some applicants were able to receive approval more quickly than those who had registered months earlier, the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA wrote in a 2018 report.
According to figures published on Facebook by Hamas’s border authorities, roughly one quarter of travelers in the two years prior to the war crossed the border through Egypt’s “coordination” list.
[...]
While there are a number of travel agencies and independent brokers active in the business, Hala is one of the most prominent. Gazans who posted online asking for services were often directed to the Egyptian firm, which lists offices in Cairo and in Rafah on its website, but also works with at least seven local agents in Gaza, according to its social media posts.
The company has powerful backers: it is owned by the prominent Egyptian businessman Ibrahim Al-Organi, who heads the Tarabin tribe in the Sinai desert bordering Israel and has other business partnerships with Egypt’s state.
Hala is one of eight companies operating under his Organi Group, which also includes a joint venture, Misr Sinai, with the Defense Ministry’s industrial conglomerate, the National Services Projects Organization (NSPO), Organi said in a 2014 interview with the Egyptian outlet Youm7.
In the interview, Organi said the NSPO owned 51 percent of the company’s shares, in partnership with two companies owned by the General Intelligence Service. OCCRP could not confirm whether there have been any changes in ownership in the years since.
“As you can see, all state entities are in this company. This gives us an advantage,” Organi said in the interview.
In 2016, Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi inaugurated the company’s new seven-factory complex for marble production.
some very important and brave reporting on a very open secret, for those of you wondering why and how palestinians have to pay so much to get through—even egyptians in gaza are being extorted at the border to their own country. it is also worse and more arbitrary than you can imagine. latest reports have had asking prices of 13,000 USD per person.
various past eurovision contestants are campaigning for the removal of israel and some national finalists are now choosing to boycott. olly alexander, who will rep the uk, condemned the palestinian genocide and was subsequently attacked by israeli media (in a blatant rule violation the ebu did nothing about)
slovenian broadcaster rtvslo is purportedly trying to negotiate the removal of israel
1000 artists from host country sweden are preparing to send an open letter to the ebu to ban israel; the swedish left wing has also called for israel to be removed immediately
iceland is officially threatening to boycott eurovision pending the removal of israel
word on the street is that if iceland does compete, it will send palestinian artist bashar murad who is openly anti-israel and has collabed with previous icelandic reps hatari, aka the guys who did this back in 2019
iceland is now leading in the odds whereas israel has been steadily dropping, suggesting that the bookies are aware israel is becoming increasingly unpopular
lastly, in a move so ridiculous i'm beginning to suspect eurovision is a figment of our collective imagination, israel is seemingly gearing up to enter eden golan, a moscow-based russian singer. while russia is still banned for terrorism.
if you're european: please contact your participating broadcaster and demand for the removal of israel, or try to contact your nation's selected artist to put pressure on the broadcaster. if you're swedish, please try contacting svt or authorities with security concerns regarding the inclusion of israel. if israel does enter eden golan, complain about her selection and ties to russia. and absolutely DO NOT vote on, watch or promote this show if israel does end up competing.
