gazafunds.com - Donate directly to a Palestinian family in urgent need of evacuation, medical attention, food, rebuilding homes/businesses etc. (Spotlights 1 verified gfm at a time so if you don't know who/where to donate to just go here and donate to the one they show you!)
Help provide tents (urgent):
The Sameer Project: Currently providing tents for displaced families in Gaza (emergency bc tents in Rafah are being burned as we speak) (paypal) (gfm)
Food, cash & essentials:
Care for Gaza: Working on the ground in Gaza to distribute food, cash, medicine & other essentials to displaced families. (paypal) (gfm)
Direct Aid for Gaza: also working on the ground in Gaza to distribute food, cash & other daily essential suppliess to displaced families. (paypal) (gfm)
Water:
Gaza Municipality's water project: The official Municipality of Gaza needs help rebuilding the water infrastructure in Gaza City to restore access to clean water and waste management services for the people of Gaza. (This campaign only has a couple of weeks left but it's still only at 15%!)
eSIMs (urgent):
guide to buy & send esims for gaza
crips for esims for gaza: If you don't know how to buy esims or don't have the capacity to manage them (e.g. topping up regularly), this team of volunteers are collecting funds to buy & manage gaza esims regularly
Medical Aid
Palestine Red Crescent Society: Provides emergency medical and ambulance services and humanitarian relief on the ground in Gaza e.g. rescuing and treating the wounded.
@huffy-the-bicycle-slayer honestly I think this was a massive missed opportunity on the part of the government. I literally learned stuff from osha-official that I proceeded to use IN A VERY REAL OSHA COMPLAINT that resulted in my (now-former) job facing some very serious consequences (as in “you have 48 hours to present a plan and timeline to fix this or we’re shutting you down” consequences). The OSHA employee who handled my complaint said it was one of the best-written and most comprehensive he’d seen in the 20 years he’d been doing the job. The bullet-pointing and management jargon I learned elsewhere, but the forklift certification issues and the lack of adequate safety exits? That was YOU.
It’s not a joke that your blog may have saved lives at my job, because out of eleven infractions I turned in, five were deemed to be “an immediate threat to life and safety.” The government should have offered you a paycheck to keep going as an actual OSHA employee, because you were absolutely teaching us stuff that makes our jobs safer and told us what resources to use if we needed to swing the OSHA club at our bosses and you were doing it in a format that was accessible and popular with your audience. That should be any organization’s absolute DREAM.
So if they won’t thank you, I will: on behalf of about 100 employees who are no longer working in a building full of flammables with no fire extinguishers and no exits from the entire back half of the building, a building where uncertified forklift drivers rammed into support columns and made the walls shake, a building where the HVAC system was full of black mold, thank you, for giving me the tools and courage to pick up the phone and fix the problem.
For me, tumblr is a recreational space. And am not political by nature.
BUT.
All you folks who are thinking you're not going to vote in the [fill in the blank] election because there is not a candidate you align with fully? Or one you even like?
Vote anyway. Vote AGAINST someone if you can't vote for someone. Pick the lesser of two evils.
And then pour yourself and drink, sit down somewhere, and realize that, depressing as it may be, you will likely never have a candidate that you are 100% behind.
I started voting in 1989 and have never once voted FOR someone. It's always been against the other candidate. There's no glass slipper, people. You have to make do.
Not liking both candidates is not an excuse. This is not about you. This is about your community and the world you share with the rest of us.
My Experience Buying eSIMs for Gaza by Maia Kobabe
instagram / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my books
Full transcript below the cut:
Cover:
My Experience Buying eSIMs for Gaza
Project organized by @ connectinghumanity_
by Maia Kobabe @redgoldsparks
Page 1
In Fall 2023, I saw instructions on instagram for how to purchase an eSIM card and submit it to be distributed to someone in Gaza.
Download an eSIM app-> Select Middle East as the region-> Purchase-> Screenshot the QR code-> Do not activate-> send to [email protected]
Image of Maia looking at eir phone. “That sounds easy, I’ll buy one.”
I emailed an Airalo eSIM QR code to gazaesims on Nov 17 2023.
Page 2
By January 2024, it hadn’t been activated yet. I bought a second one from Nomad and sent my new QR code and resubmitted my old one.
Image of Maia looking at eir phone. “How long does this usually take, I wonder?”
By February neither had been activated, but Connecting Humanity kept posting about needing more. I bought a second Nomad and resubmitted all of them on February 15, 2024.
Page 3
The Nomad eSIMs are much cheaper than Airalo, but what I didn’t realize is that they expire even if they haven’t been activated. At the end of February I decided to try a third company, Simly. Here’s a price comparison:
AIRALO: $39 USD for 3GB, never expires
SIMLY: $22 USD for 3GB, never expires
NOMAD: $16 USD for 3GB, expires after 8 weeks even if unused, only offers in-app refunds
Page 4
Connecting Humanity asks folks to wait at least 3 weeks before resending a QR code that hasn’t been activated yet. On March 7 Mirna Elhelbawi posted:
We send EVERY esim we receive. Bear in mind that we are dealing with people at a war zone. They might take it and get killed before activating it, they might take it and their phone gets lost or destroyed. They might take it and search for days for stable internet connection to activate it, and some of them activate it unsuccessfully due to lack of knowledge and the horrific situations they are in. ~Connecting Gaza
By early April, my first Nomad eSIM expired unused. I resubmitted my three remaining eSIMs.
Page 5
Suddenly, two of my eSIMs were activated on the same day! The Airalo I’d purchased 4.5 months earlier and my second Nomad.
Image of Maia looking happy and surprised.
Image of Maia looking very intensely at eir phone. “I have to make sure these don’t run out!”
I began buying top-up packages immediately.
Page 6
I felt like I had planted a seed in the fall and waited all winter for it to sprout. Seeing it activated was like watching the first new leaves break the soil.
Image of Maia with a watering can labeled “data”, sprinkling water on two little sprouts. “Watering my eSIMs!”
Sadly, only .07 GB of data was ever used on my Nomad. It was never used again after that first day.
Page 7
But my Airalo has been in constant use for over a month now. I check on it every day.
I will never know the person I am buying data for and they will never know me. But we are connected by the same strings of hope and grief that connect us all.
Image of two hands holding a phone, which is connected to a flying kite.
Page 8
On April 5, 2024 Connecting Humanity reported they had sent more than 250,000 eSIMs to Gaza, equivalent to approximately $6.3 million donated! You can visit gazaesims.com for more info, instructions, and discounts. Here are my referral codes:
MAIA5367 for $3 off Airalo
MB772 for $3 off Simly
MAIA66GF for $3 off Nomad
If you need more incentive, the Cartoonist Coop is doing art rewards. Visit cartoonist.coop/esims4gaza
Page 9
Image of Maia, weighing two options. “Buying an eSIM is easy and can make a very direct impact. It can also take a lot of patience and could get expensive over time if you commit to keeping the eSIM topped up indefinitely.”
If an immediate one time donation is more your speed, I recommend Operation Olive Branch and Gazafunds, two places to find Gofundmes aiding Palestinian families.
This machine allows anyone to work for minimum wage for as long as they like. Turning the crank on the side releases one penny every 4.97 seconds, for a total of $7.25 per hour. This corresponds to minimum wage for a person in New York. This piece is brilliant on multiple levels, particularly as social commentary. Without a doubt, most people who started operating the machine for fun would quickly grow disheartened and stop when realizing just how little they’re earning by turning this mindless crank. A person would then conceivably realize that this is what nearly two million people in the United States do every day…at much harder jobs than turning a crank. This turns the piece into a simple, yet effective argument for raising the minimum wage.
I am a solo indie dev trying to overcome my anxiety and actually let people know my game exists. It is a cute physics based game where you are the level.
I love making this game with passion and I am so excited to share it with the world, but somehow I need to let the world know. Unfortunately the way steam works is the more wishlists the more visibility, so if you are interested it is super appreciated :)
Wishlist on steam or visit the website to find out more mightymarbles.com
This elderly woman was one of the leaders of demonstrations against the Vietnam War in 1968, when she was a student at Columbia University. Today, 56 years later, she returns to the same place and says, "Palestine must be free."
