Hi Tumblr, Iâm Gemma and Iâm so incredibly sorry to ask this but I really need your help. Is anyone may be able to send me ÂŁ20 so I can buy myself food/supplies for today and tomorrow, or a little bit more to help me until the end of May (25th) when my benefit will be reinstated?
**Long story short, my U.C benefit is under a Work Capability Assessment (WCA)Â and has been sanctioned and reassessed due to it, it is currently pending appeal and due to that, I donât receive any help until the end of May. I desperately need help as I havenât eaten properly in a while and despite previous help, Iâm still really struggling to get groceries/toiletries and general household supplies (laundry powder, dish soap, pads etc..) for this month due to the benefit sanction.
I also understand that everyone is struggling to get by, but even just ÂŁ1/$1/âŹ1 makes such a difference and sharing definitely helps just as much a donations and nobody has to donate if they canât or donât want to, thank you.đ
âĄPayPal⥠Ko-fiâ
âĄMy old YouCaring post with all the evidence/information about my situation and benefit sanction.âĄ
To celebrate the funding of my Kickstarter I decided to giveaway 1 sigil enamel pins (+ a print!) to someone here!Â
To participate you must Reblog this post (Likes count too!)
Ends 04/08! (the 8 of April) Youâll be able to choose one pins from the six designs available! You can participate even if you already backed the project on Kickstarter, itâll be added to your original contribution if you win!Â
Check out the Kickstarter here:Â https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/544647136/pocket-sigils-sigil-enamel-pins
Iâll giveaway other pins on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter! Check it out for more chance to get one!
Lots of luck and witchy love to you all âĽ
#look#you donât go in a fairy ring and you donât fuck with a stone in the middle of a field#these are just facts#nobody does it#fairies will fuck you up#Ireland#folklore#fairies (Via @false-dawn)
This is truer than true. Especially the Irish part.
Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.
This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.
Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know⌠stuff happens there.
I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldnât go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, itâs ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: donât forget that the root word of âsillyâ, which used to be English for âcrazyâ, is the Old English _saelig_, âholyââŚ) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.
And you know what? Iâm never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.
You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesnât care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.
So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when youâre pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you donât go on about it afterwards. Because itâs⌠unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people whoâve screwed it up, of course. But you donât meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of âhereâ and various values of âbeenâ) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after youâre gone. Thatâs the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say â if asked by a neighbor â exactly what theyâre probably thinking: âPoor fuckers. Theyâre doomed.â And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)
Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe theyâll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.
The Southwest is like this in some ways. You donât go traveling along the highways at night with an empty car seat. Because an empty car seat is an invitation. You stick your luggage, your laptop bag, whatever you got in that seat. Else something best left undiscussed and unnamed (because to discuss it by name is to go âAY WEâRE TALKING BOUT YA WEâRE HERE AND ALSO IGNORANT OF WHAT YOUâRE CAPABLE OFâ at the top of your damn lungs at them) will jump in to the car, after which youâre gonna have a bad time.
If youâre out in the woods, you keep constant, consistent count of your party and make sure you know everyone well enough that you can ID them by face alone, lest something imitating a person get at you. They like to insert themselves in the party and just observe before they strike. Itâs a game to them. In general you donât fuck with the weird, you ignore the lights in the sky (no, this isnât a god damn night vale reference, yes Iâm serious) and the woods, you lock up at night and you donât answer the door for love or money. Whatever or whoeverâs knocking ainât your buddy.
I live in the south and⌠you just⌠donât go into the woods or fields at night.
Donât go near big trees in the night
If you live on a farm, donât look outside the windows at night
I have broken all these rules.
Iâve seen some shit.
If it sounds like your mom, but you didnât realize your mom is homeâŚ. itâs not your mom. Promise.
One walked onto the porch once. Wasnât fun. But theyâre not super keen on guns. Typically bolt when they see one.
You think itâs the neighbor kids.
Itâs not the neighbor kids.
Might sound like coyotes but you never really /see/ the coyotes but then wow that one cow was reaaaaaally fucked up this morning. The next night when you hear another one screaming you just turn the tv up a little more. Maybe fire a gun in the air but you donât go after it. If it is coyotes then itâs probably a pack and you seriously donât want to fuck with that and if itâs the other thing you seriously REALLY donât want to fuck with that.
So in the south, especially near the mountains, you just go straight from your car to inside your house, draw your curtains and watch tv.
If you see lights in the fields just fucking leave it alone.
Eyes forward. Donât be fucking stupid. Mind your own business. Call your neighbors and tell them to bring the cats in. Thereâs coyotes out. Some of them know. Most of them donât.
Other than that everythingâs a ghost and they died in the civil war. Literally all of everything else is just the civil war. We used to smell old perfume and pipe tobacco in the weeks leading up to the battle anniversaries.
Shitâs wild and I sound fucking crazy but I swear to god itâs true.
Every time this post comes around, itâs my favorite to open up the notes and read the stories. Probably shouldnât have since Iâm sleeping alone tonight, but you know, itâs fine. đ
Austrian girl here who has lived in Ireland for 5+ years. This shit is LEGIT. Iâve seen it with my own two Catholic eyes.Â
Sure, visit during the day. Thatâs alright as long as youâre respectful. But you couldnât PAY ME ENOUGH to go there at night. These are also the last places where you wanna start littering.Â
I grew up in southwest Pennsylvania which is a weird mixture of American cultures and environments. I was in the heavily forested mountains (northern Appalachia) but had lots and lots of corn fields and cow pastures. Like the Smoky Mountains and fields of Kansas combined. And being so cut off from a lot of the world, we had our fair share of ghost stories.
We had âwitchesâ in the mountains (more like ghost-women who will snatch you up by making you wander in a daze around the forest like the Blair Witch before killing you or letting you back out into society but youâre⌠different). Or devils in springs or abandoned wells (donât look too long into one or something will follow you).Â
But we also had the cornfield demons. Iâve witnessed this many times. Youâll be in the passenger seat looking out the window and see red glowing eyes in the cornfield. No light shining in that direction. Just two red dots a few inches apart faintly glowing in a pitch black cornfield. Theyâre not the glow of deer eyes in the headlights. More like the embers of a dying fire. Sometimes, as you drive away, youâll look out the back window or side mirror and you can see the eyes have moved to the edge of the corn field, still watching you. If you bring it up with the driver, theyâll call you paranoid, but grip the wheel a bit tighter and driver a little faster.
I was walking to a friendâs house one night. It was about 20 minutes down a dirt road with forest on one side and a cornfield on the other. Iâve walked past it many times and wasnât really concerned. My main worry was coming across a skunk or porcupine. I didnât have a flashlight because the moonlight was bright enough and I knew the walk really well. Then I saw the eyes. I immediately averted mine (because for some reason thatâs how to not annoy it) but they kept wandering back. They were still there, watching. I heard rustling and saw the eyes come closer and I took off running. I got to my friends without a scratch, but I was terrified. I mentioned it to my friend and thatâs when I found out it was A Thing. Her parents agreed and shared their stories. I brought it up more and almost everyone knew what I was talking about. It was a phenomenon a lot of folks around town experienced but never mentioned. To this day, I donât linger around poorly light cornfields at night.Â
Seriously, y'all. If we continuously discover non-super/preternatural animals REGULARLY, y'all think there isnât shit we just donât know about it can succinctly label? And in somewhere like he US where youâve got Indigenous as well as immigrant entities? Whew.
And you thought Instagram's policy on nipples was ignorant
One week ago, the worst possible legislation curtailing free speech online passed and sex censorship bill FOSTA-SESTA is on its way to be signed into law by Trump.
Hours after the announcement, everything from the mere discussion of sex work to client screening and safe advertising networks began getting systematically erased from the open internet. Thousands â if not hundreds of thousands â of women, LGBTQ people, gay men, immigrants, and a significant number of people of color lost their income. Pushed out of safe online spaces and toward street corners. So were any and all victims of sex trafficking that law enforcement mightâve been able to find on the open internet.
The Senate has passed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA, and tacked-on FOSTA (Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act), by a vote of 97â2. Lawmakers did not fact-check the billâs claims, research the religious neocons behind it, nor did they listen to constituents. Significant organizations, including the Department of Justice, ACLU, EFF, and more had assembled to object to the bill both publicly and in letters to elected officials. In the process, law professors and anti-trafficking groups, along with sex work organizations, unearthed the billâs many alarming legal, constitutional, and human rights disqualifications.
Itâs dubbed the âanti-traffickingâ bill for the internet, but itâs really an anti-sex sledgehammer. The bill removes protection for websites under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and makes sites and services liable for hosting what it very, very loosely defines as sex trafficking and âprostitutionâ content. FOSTA-SESTA puts into law that sex work and sex trafficking are the same thing, and makes discussion and advertising part of the crime. Its blurry interpretation of sex and commerce, as well as the billâs illogical, incorrect conflation of sex trafficking and sex work is straight out of a bad movie.
If only the politicians who voted this Morality in Media (NCOSE) mess into law had fact-checked it with Freedom Network USA, âthe largest coalition of experts and advocates providing direct services to to survivors of human trafficking in the U.S.â Freedom Network unequivocally states that protecting the rights of sex workers, and not conflating them with trafficking victims, is critical to the prevention of trafficking. They also have the data to back up the fact that âmore people are trafficked into labor sectors than into commercial sex.â
Itâs already an unmitigated disaster for free speech in America. Which was, of course, predicted. The Technology and Marketing Law Blog wrote that thereâs no mistaking that FOSTA-SESTA violates the First Amendment; it plainly stated that âthis statute implicates constitutionally protected speech.â
Itâs unconstitutional, but the damage is already being done. Despite the fact that FOSTA-SESTA isnât even law yet â it could take anywhere from 90 days to until 2019 to take effect â online companies, always dangerously prudish with their algorithms, or hypocritical with their free speech rhetoric, appear to be in a rush to proverbially herd sex workers (and all us people who talk about sex for a living) out of the airlock into places where no one can hear us scream.
Safety resources disappear overnight
Websites are removing content and communities wholesale, the result of FOSTA-SESTA making safer working conditions more difficult by criminalizing digital conversations about sex work, screening tools and discussions about how to be safe doing it.
By way of its ambiguity, FOSTA-SESTA has begun the largest wave of censorship the open internet may ever see.
Craigslist removed its entire Personals section. All these amazing moments can never happen again.
As some may recall, Craigslist already voluntary closed its Erotic Services section in 2010 under pressure from conservative groups. This is despite a study from Baylor and West Virginia Universities, which found that Craigslistâs erotic services page directly reduced female homicides in the US by 17 percent, âprincipally because sex workers were able to use the free advertising service to move into safer indoor environments and screen clients more carefully.â Request for comment to Craigslist and our queries asking why Personals was removed ahead of the billâs signing were not responded to by time of publication.
Within days, Reddit removed entire communities. Notably, its r/escorts and r/sugardaddy subreddits. We asked Reddit for comment about its pre-emptive removal of those subreddits, and how that lines up with the companyâs controversial philosophies regarding freedom of speech, but did not receive a response by press time.
Right now, sites and safety resources are falling like dominoes. In short order, sex work networks NightShift, CityVibe, and furry personals site Pounced shut down entirely. Sites that facilitated safety in sex work including The Erotic Review, VeryfyHim, Hung Angels, YourDominatrix, and Yellow Pages shut down their discussion boards, advertising boards, and community forums. Other sites, like MyFreeCams, have changed their policies to ban any talk about transactions of any kind.
FOSTA-SESTAâs timing puts a dark spin on recent Terms enforcement by Google Drive and changes with Microsoft products.
On the Survivors Against Sesta shutdown list of services, growing every day, Google Drive is listed as âdeleting explicit content and/or locking out users.â Google declined to comment on the record, but Engadget was assured via email from a source with knowledge of the situation that the enforcement wave on Drive has nothing to do with FOSTA-SESTA.
Similarly, Microsoft released a Terms update this week that got the company put on the FOSTA-SESTA censorship list as well. A spokesperson for Microsoft told Engadget in an email that the changes are not related to FOSTA.  Further, the spokesperson told us, âThe recent changes to the Microsoft Service Agreementâs Code of Conduct provide transparency on how we respond to customer reports of inappropriate public content.â
Human canaries in the free speech coal mine
The hashtag #LetUsSurvive is a current rallying point on Twitter, directing attention to the sex work communityâs determination to get out of this insidious wave of conservative anti-sex silencing alive. To that end, sex work websites feature guides to self-censoring, the kind of thing youâd expect belongs more in Weimar-era Berlin than coming out of modern-day San Francisco.
Sex workers are right to be scared. Theyâre facing all this sudden and casually disastrous censorship as a threat to their safety and livelihoods, and are well aware that few are willing or brave enough to fight for their free speech and human rights. Even sex writers such as myself know this; any of us whoâve tried to make a living off anything relating to sex online has a list of products, services, banks and payment processors, social networks, companies, and business tools that everyone else takes for granted â that we are expressly prohibited from using.
It has been a speech issue for a long time, one most people have turned away from as Instagram censors more nipples, as PayPal freezes and shutters the accounts of sex bloggers and book authors, Tumblr deep-sixes erotic artists, and more.
Hateful gamers? No problem. Death threats toward women? Hereâs a form to fill out. MAGA racists terrorizing women and people of color off the platform? Gotta hear both sides. But expose a nipple in artwork, discuss non-reproductive sex ed, or talk about making sex work safer by screening clients? Now thatâs a misguided business plan guaranteed to create lasting cultural harm. Letâs definitely keep Peter Thiel on the board. If you thought all that was bad enough, just you wait. FOSTA-SESTA is making us disappear before your very eyes â and it will affect you, too.
Under FOSTA-SESTA, weâd most likely have no Stormy Daniels. That Stormy Daniels is making headlines while the absolute worst is happening to sex workers online is not lost on anyone.
âIn a titillating cross-section of lawmaking and scandal,â wrote sex worker Morgan Claire-Sirene, âwe have on one side Stormy Daniels suing 45 for unlawful payoffs and calling him to account publicly for his associatesâ threats against her, and on the other side, legislation that has already silenced common sex workers, with the overlaying intersections of race and class; good whores and bad whores; victims and perpetrators; and misinformation all around.â
Daniels is a perfect lens with which to view the exact way FOSTA-SESTA harms one of Americaâs largest at-risk populations. Writer Ben Udashen points out, âThe level of sex worker whose lives will be harmed by SESTA are not at the same level of fame and notoriety as Stormy Danielsâ
âDaniels wonât be caught up in a sting sending her to jail because she had to work as a streetwalker to help pay her rent and feed her children. Â Daniels wonât have to carry a weapon to defend herself when she meets with a new client.
âMost importantly, Danielsâs children wonât be woken up to the news that their mother didnât come home last night because she was murdered by a serial killer, a class of criminal who have always targeted sex workers from Jack the Ripper to the Green River Killer. Poor and working class sex workers, regardless of gender identity, will pay that price.â
And for a short moment in history, the advent of the open internet reduced that horrible cost.
These stones encourage you to have faith in yourself, to try new things, stand up for yourself and others, take risks, and to go outside your comfort zone.
Never turn around to check behind you. Youâll see nothing, but once you start doing it you wonât be able to stop, and an ominous feeling will follow you until you donât lock your houseâs door behind you.Â
If you stand very still and listen you will hear the woods calling for you. Donât answer. Never answer.Â
Youâll hear things quietly following you, hidden in the trees by your sides. Itâs okay, theyâre just checking on you.Â
Donât be scared, but be really, really wary.
If you have a bad feeling about taking a certain path, donât. Youâll avoid whatever is waiting for you at the end of it.Â
You never know what may be buried under the soil youâre walking on. Remember that every time you take a step. Pray that whatever it is, it wonât wake up.Â
Be careful not to step on any beetle, or youâll never get rid of them.Â
If you bring a knife with you, name it. Otherwise the blade will turn against you as soon as you try to use it.Â
Make sure you remember the way back home. As soon as you get lost, youâre just another piece of fresh meat.
in honour of st patrickâs day please remember that people in ireland still cannot legally access safe abortion unless they are literally dying, and even then i wouldnât wanna bet my life on it.Â
if you can, please donate to the abortion rights campaign this st patrickâs day so we can help to repeal the 8th amendment, which equates a womanâs life to that of a foetus and does absolutely nothing but endanger us.
I got asked for clarification on this (but canât reblog that particular post cuz on mobile), which Iâm more than happy to provide.
In this post, a faerie is asking for âyourâ name. The way he is wording it, however, and the accompanying beckoning motion, makes it seem as though he is asking for you to physically hand your name over. Which, because of how some faeries operate, he is.
In this instance, saying your name aloud to the fae would be literally giving your name over to him, the exact consequences of which are left up to the imaginationâusually, a fae even knowing your name gives it some measure of power over you, but giving something your name would likely let it completely take over your life.
In this instance, the wording you want to use is something like âI will not give you my name, but I will tell you that itâs [name].â Alternately, you can just lie to him.
Might i suggest the less direct yet still name-preserving âyou may call meâŚâ? It dodges the request while still giving an answer of a name, which does not even have to be yours, but any name you feel like telling the fae they can use to refer to you. I would recommend âAinselâ.
When I was a baby witch, it was really difficult for me to understand the Sabbats and the wheel of the year. To help all my baby witches, I made a short summary to make it easier.Â
đ Yule (Date: on the winter solstice, dec. 20-23)Â đ
This is the Sabbat for celebrating rebirth. Many people celebrate it similarly to Christmas, with gift giving, feasting, and wreath making. People will often kiss a consenting partner under a sprig of mistletoe for good luck.
đ  Imbolc (Date: feb. 2) đÂ
This Sabbat celebrates the return of spring. People make corn dollies and set them in a basket next to a symbol of masculinity. Many Witches will clean out their homes during Imbolc.
đŁ Ostara (Date: on the vernal equinox, Mar. 20-23) đŁÂ
This Sabbat celebrates the coming time of fertility. Egg decorating is common during this time.
đĽ Beltane (Date: May 1) đĽ
This Sabbat focuses on fertility. Many Pagans choose to conceive children at this time (or just to enjoy themselves sexually with a partner). Beltane festivals are often high energy, with plenty of dancing and bonfires.Â
âď¸ Litha (Date: on the summer solstice, Jun 20-23) âď¸
A Sabbat for celebrating the longest day of the year, as well as for mourning the shortening days after. Some Witches burn bonfires or light candles to represent the Sun.
đž Lughnasadh (Date: Aug 1 -> 1 day before my birthday!)Â đž
I love this Sabbat but Iâm not able to pronounce this name :). This is the first of the three harvesting Sabbats. There are festivals of grain and bread. People make gingerbread men during this time.
đ Mabon (Date: on the autumnal equinox, sep. 20-23)Â đ
This is the second of the three harvesting Sabbats. Witches give thanks to the Earth and the harvest. Celebraters will make and drink wine at this time.
âď¸ Samhain (Date: nov. 1) âď¸
This is the last of the three harvesting Sabbats. It is also the festival of the dead. The veil is at its thinnest at this time. Witches will sometimes hold a big feast during Samhain.
Feel free to contact me if you have more questions!
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