gazafunds.com - Donate directly to a Palestinian family in urgent need of evacuation, medical treatment, daily necessities or more. Site run by Palestinians, all GFMs verified (full list here). Spotlights 1 stagnant GFM at a time. (*If you can't decide who/where to donate, just go to gazafunds.com & donate to the 1 GFM they show you!)
masterlist of 200+ verified Palestinian families' GFMs: Operation Olive Branch
Help provide tents:
The Sameer Project: Currently providing tents & transport for families in Rafah who urgently need to evacuate to Deir Al Balah. Has a team on the ground in Gaza who have supplied tents to 1% of the displaced population in Rafah. Run by Palestinians. (paypal) (gfm)
@helpgazachildren: Currently helping Palestinians in a refugee camp in Rafah flee the Rafah invasion to Khan Younis. Funds go directly to Hussam, a Palestinian in Rafah who hosts a refugee camp. Funds will cover the cost of tents & transport fuel. Managed by a Palestinian @.fairuzfan. (gfm)
Food:
Care for Gaza: Palestinian charity on the ground in Gaza distributing food, cash, medicine & other essentials to displaced families. Proof of their work found on their Twitter. (paypal) (gfm)
We Feed Gaza: Team of Palestinian volunteers in the heart of Gaza distributing food & water to 344+ families. More details & proof in their gfm. Vetted & promoted by LetsTalkPalestine on IG. (gfm)
Direct Aid for Gaza: A Palestinian activist on the ground in Gaza distributing food, cash & other essential supplies to displaced families. Proof of their work found on their twitter. (paypal) (gfm)
Water (*urgent and crucial!)
Gaza Municipality: The official Municipality of Gaza is doing vital, life-saving work to rebuild the water pipes in Gaza City to restore access to clean water & waste management services for the people of Gaza.
eSIMs (*very urgent):
guide to buy & send esims to gaza
Crips for eSims for Gaza: donate any amount to this team of volunteers who pool funds to buy & maintain gaza esims regularly (see their financial accountability document).
Medical Aid:
Gaza Wound Care: Palestinian doctors in central Gaza treating injured/sick children & mothers in neglected displacement camps far from hospitals. Facing a severe shortage of medicines, equipment, and medical supplies. Currently raising funds to support their efforts to battle infectious diseases in refugee camps. (gfm) (paypal) (gogetfunding)
international charities: Palestine Red Crescent Society, Palestine Children's Relief Fund, Medical Aid for Palestinians
How to help if you can't donate:
Share & amplify Palestinian fundraisers in your irl & online circles
Organize or help to run an online/irl event to raise funds for Palestine
Boycott
Get involved with a protest/strike/direct action in your area
Contact your reps
Educate yourself & others both irl & online
Daily clicks on Arab.org
(you can even adopt 1 fundraiser campaign to regularly boost it & make materials promoting it online, or print posters/flyers about Palestinian fundraisers to encourage others to donate. (poster/graphic about gazafunds.com: here, flyers about esims: here, flyers about gazafamilyfunds: here)
(longer masterpost of all ways you can help)
(*all these links and more now in this rentry page. will no longer be updating this post, instead refer to the rentry page)
Last updated 3/6/2024 with Gaza Wound Care & We Feed Gaza. Wanted to focus on Palestinian-run grassroots initiatives that will actually reach Gazans on the ground, so all of these except eSIMs, PCRF, MAP are by Palestinians. Donating to international orgs is not ideal rn as aid is still being stopped at the border. Please focus on Palestinian-run initiatives on the ground in Gaza.
Remember, small donations really do add up. Any amount counts, even $1!
the best piece of relationship advice i ever got was “a relationship isn’t 50/50, it’s 60/40 with each party excited to be the 60”. which to me means that you should be with someone who makes you want to do more, be more, open your heart even wider. why WOULDNT you like making life easier for your loved one(s)?
My amazing comrades recently went to Cuba to deliver donated medicine and other basic supplies that are very difficult to obtain there right now due to the US blockade. The US ruling class has subjected Cuba to brutal sanctions, blockade, outright invasion previously, and again the threat of a full invasion for daring to stand up to imperialism and for acting in solidarity with oppressed and colonized people around the world. If you're able to, please donate to the Let Cuba Live campaign to help bring life-saving medicine, solar panels, and other essential aid to Cuba as President Trump threatens to invade.
It is especially important for those living in the United States to stand with Cuba as our own government threatens to invade and brutally subjugate our dear neighbors, our peaceful friends to the south who have never invaded or subjugated anyone and who have instead brought doctors and life all around the world, just for the crime of pursuing their own freedom at nobody else's expense. Let Cuba live!
One time when I was younger I was refusing to take headache medicine and my mom said “the person who invented that medicine is probably so sad you won’t let them help you” and now every time I find myself denying medicine I just imagine the saddest scientist making those big wet eyes like “why won’t you let me help” and whoop then I take the medicine
Transphobia is about to be signed into law in the UK. We can fight this.
I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.
Last year we broke the record for an LGBT+ mass lobby of Parliament. Will you help us break it again? Join us on 25th June 2026 to demand be
The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.
Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.
A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:
Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.
Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.
Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns
Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.
I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.
It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:
Worried about what to say?
Bring your personal worries about transphobia being signed into law, and trans friends being excluded from public spaces. You are a living person who deserves dignity. Remind your MP of that. You will also get guidance and brochures from Trans Solidarity Alliance that outlines our demands. This is mine from last year.
Money issues?
Trans Solidarity Alliance provides a travel bursary that you can sign up for via the link.
Got a refusal or no response from your MP?
Come anyway! You can request a same-day appointment with your MP through a process called greencarding. They will come and see you if they’re already in Parliament. Even if they don’t, they’re made acutely aware of your cause because you showed up in person. This is my greencard from last year.
Here is the EHRC Code of Practice in full. It's a tough read, but some highlights are:
Organisations can’t provide trans-inclusive, single-sex services, or they risk being sued for discrimination.
e.g. domestic violence support for women including trans women, men’s rugby group including trans men (12.68).
Trans people will have nowhere safe to pee.
If you’re a trans man, businesses can't allow you to pee in the men's, and you can also be ejected from women’s bathrooms if you’re perceived as a man. Vice versa for trans women. EHRC suggests a ‘third space’ bathroom, which is discriminatory and unworkable for most businesses. (13.130-133)
Sports organisations must exclude trans people from single-sex competitions (13.73).
A women’s only sports competition must exclude trans women because of their biological advantage or face potential lawsuits (13.74), but a trans man who has undergone testosterone treatment can also be excluded based on fairness rules (13.81).
Trans women are stripped of the legal definition of ‘lesbian’, and therefore no longer have legal protections if they’re discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation. (2.50, 2.92).
Here is the Good Law Project's better explanation of the EHRC Code.
I have also made a PDF printout of QR codes for the government petition, email your MP tool, and mass lobby link to pass around your communities. DM me and I'll send it to you.
Daily reminder to Americans on this website that American war on Iran is bad because Iranians are getting killed not because you can no longer afford going to the movies in the weekends or refill your car 😒
just scrolled through an argument that kicked ass. OP made and posted an AI image, then defended themselves saying they’re disabled and can’t draw so AI is all they can do. someone chimes in “i understand that feeling, but Beethoven made music despite being deaf, i believe in your abilities!” to which OP replied that being deaf isn’t a real disability unlike their CPTSD that prevents them from drawing. Beethoven had it easy tbh. and that’s why i have to use AI to make Helluva Boss fan characters
Well it wasn’t just me, to be fair. I would have never been able to without @fireflowersims help and HugeLunatics trust in both of us. Thank you to both of them for their work and thank you @teaaddictyt for reaching out and doing the more public communication.
I’m super happy I got the chance to work to fix it. It wasn’t an easy undertaking. It seemed like every little thing would cause more errors, I fixed one and another thing broke. But now it seems stable, finally.
A lot of technical stuff below the cut, beware.
Fixing such an old forum is not easy. Documentation is rather sparse because the framework it runs on is old. There is however a more modern version, but updating is difficult. Here was the issue for the forum - upgrading failed.
A website (usually) consists of two different parts: 1 - The files. They contain the code, scripts, designs, images, attachment, profile pictures etc. 2 - The database. The database connects all the different parts and tells the website where to find something. Everything gets stored in tables, assigned IDs and given values. Everything written, each post and topic is also stored in the database. So without the database the whole page would be useless.
It was clear from the beginning that the database was the culprit for the failed upgrades. I got an earlier backup from HL and started working.
I set up a local environment with two versions of XAMPP. One running on php 7.4 (the last version having compatibility for the forum framework version and the upgrade script to the recent version) and the other on a modern 8.3, which was the same as the version the server @fireflowersims set up for GOS.
I ran the upgrade script (which consists of 4 separate parts) on the old backup and ran into errors right away. The script would just outright crash on me, most often without a log or message. The (local) server would just stop responding. My original plan had been to upgrade to version 2.0 first, then 2.1, since it was the recommended order. However the database backup had already been partly upgraded to 2.1. That was the reason my upgrade script failed. Reversing those changes could have been a possibility but extremely time intensive.
(This is the frontpage of the upgrader. I stared at it so much. Like you can see it has a ton of steps)
Instead I asked for the current database and HL provided it to me. This one was already further along on the upgrade and I could see the error HL had run into before handing over. I had to look at the upgrade scripts and source php files to diagnose what the framework was expecting - and failing - to find in the database.
That’s where I found the main culprit for *most* of the errors: Time tables. The framework saves every action that a user does in a log, a long table with the action, an id and a date. This was where everything had gotten wrong. The upgrader expected to see one column for the date, named *day*, while the current table had a different column for day, month and year. I tried fixing the table at first but that didn’t seem to work, so I completely deleted the table and created a new empty one myself. (By now I think the issue stems from forgetting to uninstall certain packages before upgrading, more on that later)
That was possible because the log actually doesn’t hold relevant information for the forum to work. It just records each step, probably for moderation purposes. Once I had done that step the upgrade script was finally able to proceed.
There were a few more errors where I had to look at what the script was doing, find the corresponding code in the sources and edit the database myself. Thankfully the code is relatively well commented and named, so I was able to find what I needed.
Finally I got the upgrade script to run to the end and I was actually able to open the forums (local) page. I hadn’t been able to for now so it was a first. But a lot of stuff was still missing, like all the topics. I could see that the posts were back, but not sorted correctly.
The fix was simple but annoying. The forum framework comes with a repair_setting.php file which I had run several times to fix all the paths, but apparently it didn’t fix *all* of them. So back to the database I went, ran some queries and fixed them myself.
Then the forum finally worked again!
(This is what the forum looked like when I first opened it. It ONLY had recent posts)
(The working local forum, no files yet with the default theme. Seems wrong to look at GOS without the dark theme, right?)
There were still a few things I needed to fix but the database seemed to work fine now. I had never done so many queries in my life. I know SQL, and had to fix databases before but not this intensely. So I guessed I learned something new haha.
Next was the exciting step to upload my clean install to the server. @fireflowersims and I had some directory issues, but I was able to fix them manually once again.
Then I had to take a look at the files which mostly consist of avatars and attachments. They didn’t work at all once moved to the clean install. Once again I took a look at the code and realized that the upgrade script would have changed those files as well, but because I ran it on a clean install it didn’t actually do this step.
I didn’t want to run the upgrade script again, worried that it would mess up a now working database. Instead I wrote a script myself that sorted through all the attachments, looked for the IDs of the avatars from the database so it could move and rename them.
Last were the attachments. This was an easier fix. They just had to be given the ending .dat. @fireflowersims ran a command through the console and then the attachments worked too!
We were getting closer!
Next was the theme. The old theme didn’t work on the modern framework anymore so @fireflowersims looked for a new one which I customized with CSS, trying to get it closer to the way the forum looked before. I think it turned out quite alright, hope you guys think so too!
(Trying to find out what CSS class addresses what? Make everything red and green!)
(All the spider webs)
Next was packages, or mods, to the framework. Fire and I encountered some hiccups here too, since there were some leftovers in the database. The packages hadn’t been properly deinstalled before running the upgrade script, which was another source of the errors. I tried fixing them manually but one of the packages would continue to just break the site no matter what I tried, so we settled for an alternative.
Some more work was put into SSL and making the forum secure. Once again some settings seemed to just break the page and each time I had to go back in the database and manually fix what had gone wrong. It was tedious but by now I knew my way around quite well.
@fireflowersims handled a lot of the server administrative work and DNS settings. I know very little about that part so having @fireflowersims there was great and they made sure the page is reachable at the correct address.
So yeah, I hope the site stays online for a long time now. It’s such a big part of our community and communities history. I used to download so much from there when I was younger. I wanted to give back to the community I love so much. That was the reason I spent many many hours digging through code and old forum threads.
talking of surplus labor one time my father and I calculated how much money he moved at his warehouse job with one single shipment and it was several times his monthly salary. the technical base of capitalism is so advanced that a warehouse peon can generate the value necessary to sustain themselves for an entire month in mere hours, having the rest consitute surplus labor that can be reinvented to economic development exclusively. the monumental amount of value generated by a mature capitalist economy is large enough to sustain its entire population multiple times over, but at the same time, the parasitism of the small class that owns all of this surplus labor is monumental enough on its own that those workers are barely paid enough to take care of their own health and their working hours cannot be reduced a couple of hours without sending shocks through the entire capital chain. never has the degree of separation between producer and production been so large, never has the chasm between the classes been so ample
of course he didn't produce the commodities being moved, his job was to put them into various boxes and shipments. this warehouse moved textiles, as part of a large international textile company. this one single shipment that could have fed him for multiple months came from an unnamed place in Bangladesh. Even greater is the dispossession and alienation suffered by the proletariat of the parasatized nations, paid for cents on the hundredth euro. Were those textile workers paid fairly, the parasitism of the capital owners wouldn't be sustainable at its current magnitude, but the products would still be sold and the materials would still be paid and the supply would still be more than enough. and the price or production wouldn't even rise that much or at all.
instead of the marjane satrapi quote you can use this one 😊
To:
... all the heroes of the masses who, martyred under torture, or facing murder squads, raised the red flag of their cause,
... all those dedicated revolutionaries, who died fighting the enemy of the people, and watered the tree of our people's liberating revolution,
... all the political prisoners whose resistance and fortitude strengthen the people's front, and to all those warriors of the masses, who have joined the path to people's liberation ... the path of revolution.
Iran, my land,
Look how the ugly hyenas plough
clots of blood into your rich soil.
Look how the clear water from
your depths is sucked into the
sewage that is imperialism.
But Iran, my land,
I vow, I vow to answer
the silence of your night
with the clamour of bullets;
the darkness of your night
with the flame of bullets;
the cold of your night with
the warmth of bullets.
And I vow
As long as there is one drop of blood
in my veins, I will not let your flag fall,
I will not let your people bow
I will not let your enemies sleep.
Torture and Resistance in Iran - Ashraf Dehghani, 1970
shoo flee @theresalwayspeng-blog - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
