sometimes you reblog something because you personally want it on your blog. and some other times you reblog something as if you were scattering bird feed on ur porch and hiding behind the window to look out for the beautiful bird (beloved mutual) who will no doubt come peck at it
Hi! I’m still bank shopping (unfortunately) and it seems every bank sends a credit card. And I would get in a lot of trouble if it was found out that I’m getting a bank account. And the chances of me being able to sneak the card are pretty much nonexistent.
And the internet isn’t being helpful…I’ve been emailing banks to see if there’s an option to opt out, but no luck.
Maybe I should get a PayPal account for now…
Hi honey. It sounds like you might be in an abusive home situation, which has us really worried. Trying to gain some financial independence in such a situation is absolutely the right move, but we want to make sure you're pursuing everything safely.
So the first thing we advise is to get some help and resources from experts in the area of financial and domestic abuse. We
When Money is the Weapon: Understanding Intimate Partner Financial Abuse
Now, a few options to help right away:
Get a post office box (PO Box) where mail can be sent instead of your home. Or, ask a friend if you can temporarily use their address for mail.
You might be confusing a credit card with a debit card. They're slightly different, and a debit card is just a way to access your money, not establish credit. If you can visit a bank in person, you might be able to have them issue your debt card and account details to you directly, rather than sending anything through the mail.
PayPal and Venmo are both good options for getting and storing money without a huge paper trail. But you'll still need to be careful if your concern is hiding your moves from the people you live with.
Good luck, honey. Please be safe and reach out for help from seasoned professionals, not just us nosey internet aunties (National Domestic Violence Hotline: https://www.thehotline.org/). Here's more information on opening a bank account:
How the Hell Does One Open a Bank Account? Asking for a Friend.
If you found this helpful, consider joining our Patreon
Just want to add to this: the bank can't make you get a credit card. It is likely a debit card they are sending, but banks will also offer you credit cards sometimes. You have to agree to accept it, though. Accepting the offer will require you to do something (usually either log into your bank's website and accept the offer, call a number and accept the offer, or go into the bank and accept the offer in person).
If you get a credit card offer and do nothing, then you won't have that credit card. A credit card is a contractual agreement that you have to enter voluntarily. The bank can't do it without your approval.
Because of the new US regulations covering money apps like venmo and cashapp, some of them will require your SSN and info if you get above a certain amount of money in them /passing through them so they can send you a tax form at the end of the year. If you're trying to hide money and filing jointly, make sure you know what that limit is.
Because of some recent drama I had to deal with: even if you tell the bank as you open your account that you NEVER EVER EVER want a paper statement, there's a good chance their system is set up to automatically do so. Please please, please!!!!! Get a PO box first and have everything set to go to there.
Also, the bank WILL send you advertisements even if you opt out of all of them and have your name on the 'dont send me offers ' list that places are supposed to respect.
A fantastic lie if that happens to you: oh, I guess my credit score went up and that's why they are sending me unsolicited money offers. But I am firmly in the camp of 'what they don't know can't hurt you '. A PO box is your best bet
“Take year 3 student Emma Glenfield, who started with a simple question about magpies and wound up conducting some cutting-edge research almost by accident."
Emma Glenfield wants to know why magpies swoop. She's conducting some cutting-edge research — and displaying her results with Lego.
"I watched the people he swooped and I recorded it," Emma said.
"Then I got everything I recorded and I figured out that the people Mr Swoopsalot swooped were male, they were tall, and that they had thin or receding hair."
y'all i don't usually say this shit out loud but please read the link. she got 30 THOUSAND responses to her survey. THIRTY THOUSAND. And she's eight. So learning how to use MS Excel for that data wasn't really an option.
So she made a graph out of Legos. LEGOS!!
This kid is an absolute genius and I am so excited for her.
The sample size is so big that Emma and her mum worked out that her results have just a 1 per cent margin of error, and Professor Jones [professor emeritus and magpie experty] is now combing through the data to work out what else he can discover.
coming out of the tags to say that some of us have been saying this for years and have been called all manner of degenerates, perverts, and pedophiles over it, and we really deserve an apology we will never receive
We DO deserve a fucking apology we'll never get, and not to soapbox, but lemme just throw out another fucking explanation of exactly why this shit keeps happening in the slim chance that it helps at least one person not fall for it:
Fascism in ANY form will ALWAYS present itself as reasonable to YOUR sensibilities. It preys on a lot of things, your disgust reaction, your fear reaction, your own shame, your need for a tribe, your need to feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself, your need to protect your resources, your need to boost your own ego, your need to feel better than others, and in my opinion, the worst thing of all that it can prey on is your WANT TO DO GOOD.
It turns that Want To Do Good against you, gives you "acceptable targets" and sets you loose, thinking that you're being a fucking super hero. Fascism will ALWAYS feel okay when you're doing it because you understand why you're doing it because you've been told why you should be doing it by someone who's fucked the narrative to make you feel good about hurting other people because they've convinced you that you are protecting people by doing it!!
Fascism tells you: "The sort of people who value a sex scene in a movie are perverts, and perverts are dangerous, right? Oh god... What if they're a rapist and that's why they like that sort of stuff? Yeah, that trans girl that made that post about movies needing sex scenes... She pisses in a diaper, that's fucking disgusting right? And she likes weird fiction... And diapers are meant for kids... So... Yeah... Exactly, you got it! See you figured out what she was too! So you should trust your gut with these people, you're really good at spotting them! You know when someone is evil! And you DEFINITELY should not listen to a pervert explain themselves, because... Right, exactly, what's the point? They're just going to lie about it and probably say gross shit to you."
Did you catch how that worked? It let YOU make the conclusion. It let YOU answer the questions and start setting shit in stone in your own mind. And the next thing you know, you're using fiction as proof, anything outside of your own comfort levels as evidence, you've become an emotionally reactionary fascist who genuinely believes you are making the world better, and safer, for the people you love, and who love you in return.
Fascism doesn't begin with violence, it begins with a kind hand held out in your direction from someone else who believes they're helping. You might not even realize you've fucked up. Ever. That's how it works. That's how it thrives.
I’m seeing a lot of people saying this post changed their brain chemistry, and as a neuroscientist I wanted to say yes!!! Yes it does!
Wanting something requires dopamine signaling, but liking something doesn’t.
If you have a mental illness/disorder that affects dopamine, you might feel that you don’t want to do the things that you like. You do still like them. You will appreciate having done them.
Let your likes guide you.
(If you want to read more, here’s one experimental paper about it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5171207/ This theory called the incentive-sensitization theory was originally created to explain behaviors in addiction but can be applied elsewhere as well)
Rewards are both ‘liked’ and ‘wanted’, and those two words seem almost interchangeable. However, the brain circuitry that mediates the psych
for a while now i’ve been learning that some people kind of choose to hate themselves like you can give them tools and resources and advice and they’ll even follow some of it and go “i still hate myself” and i feel strongly at that point they’re kind of choosing to stay in that mindset because it’s comfortable and familiar or something but some people are truly [gotye voice] addicted to a certain kind of sadness and hooked on feeling low
you really do have to trick and teach your brain to stop catastrophizing and seeking out negative bias and like trust me i know how it sounds but if you wake up in the morning and say “it’s so shitty out i don’t wanna get up or do anything” your brain will Believe that and make it so. for months i had to force myself to follow up self-defeating thoughts with reasons why it’s still going to be a good day and what’s going good for me so i could teach my brain to work in the opposite direction and it works. takes a while and feels fake the whole time but you wake up one day and realize you actually really love yourself and there’s so much going for you and you can do everything you always wanted
My therapist told me if you've experienced many bad things in life your brain is pretty much wired to seek out negative experiences because they are familiar, comforting and the brain is used to do so. This can show up in different ways, such as doom scrolling, watching a youtube video you actually kinda hate, hanging out with people you don't like or aren't good for you and so on.
We established this phrase that this specific part of my brain is the highway (easily accessible, broad and paved road) while what I personally would like to seek out is the less travelled gravel road through the countryside.
This mental image helped a ton because now I can catch myself driving on the highway when I don't want to (takes practice, like you said, Lucie!) and start changing to drive on the country road aka figure out what makes me feel good and pursue that instead.
So I had to return a book to the library today and I came straight from the horse farm. I went to the front desk because it was an item on loan from another library and I wasn’t sure if it had to be checked in differently. The librarian said no, it could get returned in the normal slot but she could take it and check it in right away.
It was only when I got back to the car that I realized I had walked into the library covered in dirt from head to toe and handed back a book about grave robbing.
her fur is such good insulation that she can sleep in a pile of snow without her body heat melting any of it (which means none of her heat is escaping her) and anyone who has done cold weather camping knows that without the right insulation, not matter how good your blankets are, the cold ground can suck ALL the heat out of you while you sleep. Her pup has not yet grown such a luxurious coat as the adults have, so this is a very caring embrace that keeps the puppy swaddled in her downy coat and insulated from the ground, which, on some nights, might actually save that little pupper's life
if you’re wondering why spellcheck and grammar check is worse now, it’s because they replaced it with AI! 🥰
now, instead of maintaining a comprehensive, nuanced, and human-maintained encyclopedia by which to check your document, they have switched to an AI that just compares what you’ve written to what other people write in, say, Google Docs, and use the most commonly used iteration.
ever have it change something like “all intents and purposes” to “all intensive purposes” or “should’ve” to “should of”? that’s why!
people make the same spelling and grammar mistakes so often, AI thinks that’s the way you say it because it is a PATTERN DETECTOR and cannot THINK let alone use language.
cooking show but the judge is just a random kid with autism related food issues. no one can figure out what criteria they use to judge "good food" from "bad food" least of all the judge themself.
starts off as a cooking show and devolves into a heartfelt comedy of errors as all these professional top chefs use their decades of training & skill to try to help this one kid eat a balanced diet
by the end of the season the chefs have combined their knowledge to more-or-less figure out how to consistently make food that the judge is willing to eat. at which point we start over with a whole new season and a new judge with all new food issues!
spin-off series where there is an entire panel of judges consisting specifically of one large family whose members have multiple dietary restrictions. the contestants must planning a week's worth of dinners that account for everyone's needs, using commonly available ingredients on a normal household budget. they are not allowed to repeat meals
The days of exclusionary signs at golf clubs have been replaced by open calls for jihad in Jewish neighborhoods. This will not end well, wri
(I will say this whenever something is from The FP: I do not agree with nor endorse a lot of their political and even social opinions. I do not agree with nor endorse every writer they have on staff or as guests. that said, they also do some valuable work and reporting, particularly on the issue of antisemitism. sharing those articles is not approval for their other reporting/op-eds. this is an important piece.)
Late last year I sat down to breakfast in Ottawa, Ontario, with Dr. Einat Wilf, one of the world’s foremost experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She had come to Canada’s capital to speak about the war in Israel, what Palestinians really want, and the future of a possible two-state solution. Near the end of our chat, I asked if she had seen any of the “pro-Palestinian” rallies that had become a weekly occurrence in the city. “One of them went by my hotel last night,” Wilf said. “There’s a very dark energy to them. Serious pre-pogrom vibes.”
The word pogrom is the Yiddish word for “devastation” or “destruction.” What it refers to, historically, are the mob attacks that were a regular feature of life for Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries—attacks that most often were passively or openly supported by the state.
Wilf chose it deliberately.
In the roughly six months since we sat down together, the situation in Ottawa and across the country has only worsened. Canada has become one of the most antisemitic countries in the Western world.
If you doubt that assertion, it’s important to note that’s how others have described it, too.
In a report released on May 6 by Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, it states that from October 7, 2023 through the end of 2024, antisemitism in Canada skyrocketed an astounding 670 percent. Further, between October 7, 2023 and October 7, 2024, there were 1,500 pro-Palestinian rallies in Toronto alone. That’s over four a day—every day—for a year straight.
While the outbreak of antisemitism throughout the West has been precipitous in virtually every country—the tenor, violence, and extremist nature of Jew-hatred in Canada has ratcheted up in a way few other places on Earth have experienced.
Consider the following—much of which has gotten scant media attention.
Targeting Jews in Their Backyards
In September 2024 protesters sympathetic to Hamas and the “resistance” jubilantly rallied outside a Jewish retirement facility in Ottawa where several Holocaust survivors live, and where 60 percent of the residents suffer from dementia. Chants of “Go back to Europe” and “We want bullets and missiles!” in Arabic could be heard from their bedrooms.
On Remembrance Day in 2024 at Sir Robert Borden public school in Ottawa, where there is a large Jewish student body, a Palestinian protest song was the only song played during an event to honor Canadian soldiers. When pressed on the choice of music, Principal Aaron Hobbs said it was chosen to add some diversity and inclusion to a day usually about “a white guy who has done something related to the military.”
There have been numerous instances where, in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods, protesters have dressed up like Palestinian terrorists, including the October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar.
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protests surrounded the Holocaust Museum in Montreal in March 2024, where they shouted, “Death to Israel” and “Death to the Jews.”
At a softball game for teenage girls between Canada and Israel as part of last year’s Canada Cup Women’s International Softball Championship in Surrey, British Columbia, protesters stood on the sidelines wearing keffiyehs, holding signs that read “Israel is a genocidal state,” with another equating Israel with Nazi Germany.
In April, a pro-Hamas rally was staged in Winnipeg, just steps from a Jewish community center where children attend school and day care.
During Israel’s official day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism on April 29, protesters stood in front of Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda Synagogue in Toronto waving Palestinian flags. One man wore a sweater that read “Palestinian Holocaust: Never Again Is Now.”
Earlier this month in Montreal, protesters were filmed chanting “All the Zionists are racists” through megaphones at a school for students ages 4 to 16 with intellectual disabilities and autism-spectrum disorders.
These activities aren’t normal protests. They aren’t in front of the Israeli embassy in Ottawa or the Israeli consulate in Toronto. They aren’t directed toward a specific Israeli policy, law, regulation, or act, and they certainly make no mention of Hamas, Hezbollah, or any other terrorist organization that has brought immense death and destruction upon the Palestinians. These are belligerent acts of aggression designed to intimidate Canada’s Jewish community, to coerce them into silence, and ultimately, to extinguish their public presence.
Open Antisemitism and Valorizing Terrorism
In October 2024, men masked with keffiyehs took to the streets of Ottawa, calling for Jews to “go back to Europe”—a phrase they’ve repeatedly used everywhere from flag-raising ceremonies to synagogues to university campuses.
In Vancouver, British Columbia, protesters gathered on the one-year anniversary of the October 7, 2023 massacre and declared “We are Hezbollah, and we are Hamas” while burning the Canadian flag.
Protesters have also gathered outside hospitals, such as Toronto’s Mount Sinai—a hospital founded by Jews—where patients could hear screams for an “intifada” from inside the building.
Last March, in downtown Ottawa—on the same streets where former prime minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act in response to the trucker convoy in 2022— a young man dressed as a Hamas terrorist taunted shocked onlookers, the flags of Lebanon and Palestine blowing in the wind behind him.
In November 2024, an estimated 50,000 students, as well as faculty, from universities including Concordia, McGill, and Dawson College took to the streets and campuses, where they overran buildings, destroyed property, and led schools to close. Chants of “Long live the intifada” could be heard, with one protester saying on camera, “The final solution is coming your way.”
In April, a man wearing a keffiyeh in downtown Toronto climbed onto scaffolding, lit an Israeli flag on fire, and doused it with gasoline, while chants of “All Zionists are racists; all Zionists are degenerates” could be heard in the background.
Violent Attacks
Since October 7, 2023, there have also been nearly a dozen terrorism-related incidents in Canada or abroad involving Canadians. These include:
A father-son duo, who had been planning a violent attack in Toronto, were arrested in July 2024.
Two Ottawa youths, plotting to attack the city’s Jewish community, were arrested in February 2024.
The September 2024 arrest of a Pakistani man studying in Toronto who was planning an ISIS-inspired attack against Jews in Brooklyn, New York.
The April arrest of a Yemeni man in Canada planning to join a terrorist organization in the Middle East.
An attack on Edmonton City Hall in January 2024.
A Canadian who traveled to Israel in July 2024 to attack Israeli soldiers.
And this list does not include the Jewish girls school in Toronto that was hit with gunfire on three separate occasions, the multiple shootings at a Jewish school in Montreal, the firebombing of a synagogue in Montreal, the firebombing of a synagogue near Montreal, the endless vandalism of Jewish-owned businesses, the vandalism of homes with swastikas, and the destruction of campaign signs for Jewish politicians running in the 2025 federal election.
Nor does it capture the anti-Israel indoctrination occurring at public schools, universities, and unions across the country, among many other things.
What all of this has led to is the suppression of open Jewish life in Canada, the hiding of Jewish symbols, the need to host Jewish events in secret or with even more intense security, and even some people fleeing the country. Students at Toronto Metropolitan University who recently shared that they “can’t be openly Jewish” on campus aren’t the exception. They’ve become the norm. “I went in with people hating me right off the bat and me not being able to make any friends who are non-Jewish in my classes or in my program,” one student said.
What is unfolding in Canada is not a grassroots, spontaneous expression of solidarity for Palestinians, although the press covers it that way.
This is an orchestrated effort to normalize antisemitic incitement under the guise of political activism. The days of exclusionary signs at golf clubs have been replaced by open calls for jihad and terrorist cosplay—all animated by an obsession with intimidating Jews, including in their own neighborhoods.
Pogroms rarely begin with organized massacres; typically, they start with tolerated incitement, with mobs unpunished, and with authorities hesitant to act decisively for fear of political blowback.
And that is perhaps the most alarming thing of all happening right now in Canada.
On more than one occasion, protesters clad in keffiyehs, inciting violence, intimidating Jews and non-Jews alike, and calling for the erasure of Israel have been met with equivocation.
Too often, authorities have hesitated to enforce laws against harassment and incitement when masked by the rhetoric of “resistance.” Political leaders have downplayed the extremist nature of these rallies. Universities and unions have wavered in condemning overt Jew-hatred cloaked in the language of activism, righteousness, and progressivism.
On one occasion, for instance, police officers in Toronto handed out coffee and baked goods to protesters. On another occasion, they allegedly arrested a Jewish man, in a Jewish neighborhood this month, for confronting the terrorist supporters who have taken to the streets every weekend since October 7, 2023. For nearly 600 days, Jews in Canada have been asking themselves: Is the state still on our side? Is law enforcement willing to do what it takes to shut this down?
In this sense, Wilf was perhaps more right than she could have imagined.
Canada now faces a moral test. Our institutions—from police and prosecutors to politicians and civil society—must decide whether to confront antisemitic threats firmly or equivocate and excuse them as protest.
This is not a Jewish issue. It is a Canadian one. A society that allows a vulnerable minority to be openly menaced cannot claim to be safe or just for any of its citizens. Antisemitism is often the first sign of broader social decay. If mobs can intimidate Jewish schools and hospitals today, what do we expect they’ll do tomorrow?
snowghoul
kianamaiart
ellievsbear
gummygunk
annaxmalina
germansingergirl
andulkaphoto
