I like to look at pretty things and sometimes I'll even talk about them, mostly k-dramas and animation. I also write the occasional fanfic: AO3 @Gismonda
This is an ongoing list of Palestinians who've reached out to me to share their fundraisers. These have been vetted. Please share/donate where you can, thank you!
“'I got me slaves and slave-girls.' Tell me what sort of price you paid. What did you find in creation with a value corresponding to the nature of your purchase? What price did you put on rationality? For how many obols did you value the image of God? For how many coins did you sell this nature formed by God? God said: “Let us make human beings in our own image and likeness” (Gen 1.26). When we are talking about one who is in the image of God, who has dominion over the whole earth and who has been granted by God authority over everything on the earth, tell me, who is the seller and who the buyer? Only God has this kind of power, or, one might almost say, not even God. For scripture says that the gifts of God are irrevocable (Romans 11.29). God would not make a slave of humankind. It was God who, through his own will, called us back to freedom when we were slaves of sin. If God does not enslave a free person, then who would consider their own authority higher than God’s?
How can people be sold who have dominion over the earth and everything on the earth? It is essential that the assets of people being sold are sold with them. How can we value the contents of the whole earth (Genesis 1.26)? If these are beyond any valuation then tell me, what is the value of the one who is over them? If you said “the world in its entirety,” even then you would not have found anything approximating to the value (Matthew 16.26; Mark 8.36). Someone knowing the true value of human nature said that not even the whole world is worth enough to be given in exchange for the human soul. So when a human being is for sale, it is nothing other than the lord of the earth being brought to the auction room. This means that creation as we know it is at the same time being put up for public sale. That is earth, sea and islands and all that is in them. How then is the purchaser going to settle the payment? What will the vendor accept considering the greatness of the property involved in the transaction?
Did the little notebook, the written agreement and the calculation in obols trick you into thinking that you could be master of the image of God? What utter folly! If the contract was lost, if the writing was eaten by moths, if a drop of water fell on it and washed it away, where is there any proof that you have a slave? Where is there anything that supports you in being a master? You have somebody who is named as your subordinate, but beyond the mere name I see nothing. What did such power add to your real nature? It did not give you extra years or any genuine superiority. Your lineage is still human, your life is similar, the sufferings of the soul and the body prevail upon you both in the same way, with you as master and another in subjugation you are still both affected by agony and delight, gladness and distress, sorrow and joy, anger and fear, disease and death. Surely there is no distinction in such things between slave and master? Do they not draw in the same air when they breathe? Do they not see the sun in a similar way? Do they not both sustain their life by taking in nourishment? Is not the make-up of their bodily organs the same? Do they not both return to the same dust after death? Do they not both face one and the same judgment? Is not the prospect of heaven and hell the same for them both?"
—Gregory of Nyssa, “Homily IV,” Homilies on Ecclesiastes (~380)
Spinoza was one of those sort of kind of white people who rediscovered paganism and democratic republicanism and the love of harmonizing with a universalist principle through his own Abrahamic religion itself. Those types of people seemed to become so common after the Renaissance when the Europeans were rediscovering their past but weren’t yet driven by their growing capitalism into invading everything. They didn’t have a need for believing that they were part of a single superior force compared to the rest of the world even if they had begun to subject other people to the same slave trade that had previous taken many of them away as if that was just the nature of international law between unequal forces and different peoples. The only truly original ones who understood the original meaning of it were Müntzer, Montaigne, de la Boétie, Spinoza, Rousseau, Goethe, Hölderlin, and Feuerbach, Spooner, Thoreau, and Douglass (he went into the oppressor’s graveyards to understand them and found the methods to change or at least disarm their destructive ways). All of them were left dialecticians and immediateist abolitionists who believed that enslaving others meant bringing the state of war of all against all into civil society and that destroying them would mean allowing ourselves to become the agents of our own death. But maybe people voluntarily sacrifice themselves to this horrible thing because it satisfies the same desire for worshipping a single power. Maybe they misunderstand the meaning of it by trying to hard to crystallize it into something they can control and they end up unable to work with it freely again so they accept being a force of enslavement for everyone. They believe in the providence of absolute reason of the world. They let themselves become the well bribed servants of a world that gives them the bliss of pure forgetfulness and oneness with their lives in exchange for their own freedom and originality. From their perspective we’re the barbarians neglecting our duty and wandering around the city walls trying to find gaps to peer out from and new people to meet and talk to about the world
The most utopian form of this is that line in Song of Songs about love as strong as death and being absolutely committed to a caring relationship with someone who is a complete stranger and making society and the world your home. In general in the parts of the Bible, Quran, Dao De Jing, Popol Vuh, and any other cosmological stories that put thought into the things that were not purely products of labor but also spontaneous fragmentation that makes them just like that for no reason and comes to peace with them. I always look for what a meditative and theoretical text says about air, animals, gardens, and strangers to understand what its cosmological ethics are. When people justify attacking and killing everything that cannot make itself useful in the world today whether they’re animals, bushes, or immigrants they’re the fallen possessed zombies that enlist themselves into the ascetic slave force of a world devouring God’s vampirism on earth. They believe that they will live forever in death and have abandoned the things that love them and need their care to live
Had a shitty scary situation at work tonight + the nausea and stomach issues that seem to have magically started the moment I began hooking again are still lingering, so I thought I'd plug my fundraiser and my Ko-fi ha ha ha 🫠
Outtakes from work cos I forgot to put lipgloss on
I'm so in FUCKING pain... my face is disfigured by the burns I am a young girl now confined to a tent. I am ashamed of my disfigured face. The doctor told me he could provide ointments that would soothe the burns and conceal their marks, but they are expensive. I am very sad. For 11 months i haven't left the house cuz of my disfigured face...Please help me just to raise the price of the brahms
I can't touch my face; I feel a severe burning sensation and intense itching in my facial wounds. Please help me urgently raise money for ointments for my face. I lost seven members of my family due to the intense bombing. Please help me by donating here.or by paypal here
A mother's plea: Help us survive and protect my child who was born in war.
My name is Sahar. Like any young woman, I dreamed of a stable and happy life. I was engaged to Mohammad, and together, we dreamed of building a warm little home where we could start our life. We spent years preparing our house, but just before our wedding, everything was destroyed in an instant by the war.
I was faced with a choice: to leave Mohammad in the midst of this chaos or to stand by him and begin our journey together, no matter how difficult it might be. I chose him. We got married, not in the dream wedding I had envisioned, but under the harsh reality of war. Our new home became a fragile tent, offering neither comfort nor security.
After we got married, I received the news that I was pregnant with my daughter, and I live in constant fear for my unborn child. I am terrified of the world she will be born into—a world of poverty, hunger, and bitter cold. We have been displaced from our home more than nine times, carrying with us nothing but the burden of loss and the hope of survival. The house we dreamed of is now rubble, and the tent we live in barely protects us from the rain and cold.How will I protect my daughter? We struggle to find enough food. Basic necessities like milk, blankets, and clothing feel impossibly out of reach. The cost of survival has become unbearable. Every night, I am haunted by the thought: how can I bring her into this world, knowing I cannot keep her safe?
After a long pregnancy filled with pain and fear, after nights without sleep, I finally gave birth to my baby girl. She was born in the middle of bombing, surrounded by destruction and poverty—not in a warm room, not in a safe place. Her first cry mixed with the sound of explosions, as if she was announcing her arrival into a cruel world she never chose.
I gave birth to her with nothing but my heart. I cannot promise her anything. Poverty surrounds us from every side, and the cold reaches her tiny body before night even comes. My baby and I are suffering deeply, not because we ask for much, but because I am unable to provide her with the most basic needs: milk, warmth, and safety.
When I look into her eyes, I feel strength. When I look at my empty hands, I break down in tears. I am a mother trying to save her child from hunger and fear, in a world that has shown no mercy even to the dreams of children.😢🥹
To donate or support us, here is the link 👇🙏
Help Sahar and Mohammed Build a Safe Home for Their Baby
Sa… Jordan Brusso needs your support for Help Sahar and Mohammed Build a Safe H
From the depths of my heart, thank you for your kindness and compassion🥹❤️🙏
What I like so much about this show and Shin Seo-Ri in particular is that she has no idea what is going on exactly most of the time, but she fairly quickly figures out just enough to know if it's good or bad for her and then goes for that. Like she sniffed out right away that Cha Se-Gye was wealthy and in charge from the way he acted, even if she didn't know what a CEO was in particular. She has her wits about her in a way that feels realistic to me, as someone from 300 years in the past.
An influential Black nationalist and Pan-Africanist activist of the Civil Rights era, Malcom X, born Malcom Little, grew up in frequently changing homes in the North and East, his father being a Pan-Africanist who was frequently harassed and may have been murdered by white supremacist groups. These experiences installed a racial consciousness in Malcom from a young age, and this would only grow as he aged. During a stint in prison, Malcom became a member of the Nation of Islam, and adopted the surname "X" in accordance with its teachings. He began ministering for the NOI after prison and began to gain national prominence for his political activities in support of Black self-determination, arguing that Black people should defend and advance their rights by any means necessary. He left the NOI in 1964 after growing conflicts with its leadership, and converted to Sunni Islam. Soon after, he went on Hajj to Mecca, and the experience strengthened his faith and his belief in Islam as a uniting force. He continued to speak in a variety of forums, denouncing American imperialism and racism. Malcom X was assassinated in 1965, allegedly by members of the Nation of Islam, which had continued to feud with Malcom after his departure from its ranks, but US government involvement has long been suspected.
"You don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution."
