Rei Faraday

hey, hey. I don't know who needs to hear this, but--if you are a webcomic creator working with a publisher that tells you things like "your series is under preforming" as a reason why they can't meet certain, very basic requests you make, and leverages this vague statement against you as a way to position and request more from you--know that it is probably, definately, part of a script they use for every. single. creator. they work with.

If you are working hard, producing good work, meeting those deadlines, and communicating as well as you are able with the publisher, etc, you are a rockstar. Your series performance isn't YOUR job. It's their job to promote it and get those sales and numbers for you.

Don't let these companies get under your skin. They know you're working on something you are passionate about. They are banking on the assumption that you are trying to prove your own worth to yourself. They will say some extremely devaluing shit to you in their effort to squeeze as much out of you as possible.

When push comes to shove, if they can not provide what you need, then what you need is to walk away. You've got incredible skill and an incredible work ethic. If you didn't, they'd have never approached you in the first place. Know when a publisher is trying to tear you down for their own gain and leave 'em in the dirt. A publisher shouldn't be using language to make you feel like a disappointment. Nothing you've done for them is disappointing. They're not paying you enough.

I WROTE AN EIGHT PAGE FINAL PAPER ON VIDEO GAME SOUNDTRACK FOR MY COLLEGE PHILOSOPHY CLASS AND GOT FULL POINTS.

I've peaked. I'm done. I'm literally so happy. Professor just really saw me yap about Ace Attorney music and Toby Fox music and sound effects and said, "Yep. Super philosophical. A+."

I got to mention snd_weirdeffect, which is my FAVORITE sound effect in Deltarune Ch 1 and oh my gosh I can't stop yapping but I'm so happy. 8 pages of my biggest passion and it's 20/20 points! I WIN LIFE.

I know I've been posting more about politics lately, and it's caused me to lose a chunk of followers.

But I'm a queer person with a degree in political science and its an election year. I'm old friends with several of my city council members. I've been to trainings on how to run elections. I spent my college years working for nonprofits (and being the world's worst canvasser). I'm close with more than one person who works for unions, and I have family members who work for government agencies.

I think about politics in a very pragmatic "I know how the sausage is made" kind of way. We're in a vice press, and there's only one way to release the pressure.

The revolution ain't coming. There is no one to save us but us.

So yeah, I'm going to be pissed if your answer is "let them tighten the vice -- there's no way out of the vice, it doesn't matter if they loosen or tighten it."

There's a difference, and anyone telling you otherwise is likely a psyop or someone who fell for a psyop. This literally happened before, and it's happening again.

Stop falling for it.

I am begging everybody, fucking begging them, to slow the fuck down and fucking look things up. Right now, there are a lot of people who are making money off of creating headlines that are meant to make you mad, and it's going to get worse as we get closer to the election.

If someone tells you that there's a secret conspiracy to [do a thing you don't like] and that it's unique to Biden, you better fucking look that thing up, because chances are you're going to find that it's been happening under every administration for the last 50 years. Is that good? No! Should you want to change it? Probably! Is it a unique crime to Biden? Nope!

"Biden said [bad thing] [X] years ago." Well, this bad thing he said happens to be true, but it looks like it was 45 years ago, and he changed his stance 40 years ago. "Biden said [other bad thing] [Y] years ago." What's the source on that? So there's one person who says he said it? And nobody else who was there has corroborated that account? Who posted the story?

These are all random examples of things I've seen over the last couple of weeks, with the details slightly changed from the Tumblr posts and news articles I've seen, because the point isn't the details of the particular story, so I don't want to get bogged down in particulars that don't matter to the point I'm making.

The point of this post isn't the specific things I'm referencing but the fact that in each of these cases, the reality was not what was initially presented. Either the reality was wildly different, or this story can't be corroborated and was told by someone with a clear and very well-known agenda of their own, which means that at the very least, the story should be treated with extreme suspicion.

And on that note, please don't believe that because you're a leftist that you can't be radicalized in the same way that right-wingers are. You aren't immune to propaganda either. I'm not saying you have to like, or should like, any particular politician or political entity. I am saying, however, that you should view a lot of the news with a gimlet eye, and that goes double for anything that makes you real fucking mad.

You need - need - to stop and read the whole article and ask yourself if you can verify the claims and who benefits from this making you mad.

Please. For the sake of the people around you who have to patiently explain to you that you've gotten fucking bamboozled again by propaganda if for no other reason. We're all very tired of you thinking that leftists can't be propagandized.

(X)

Any support to my family in Palestine

Guys this family has been raising funds since May 10th and they've only received €30 out of 40,000

gofundme.com

Donate to Urgent Plea :Help Khalil &Amal Family to Rebuild their Life, organized by Nidal Kh

We, Amal and Khalil a Palestinian family, having 4 children, l… Nidal Kh needs your support for Urgent Plea :Help Khalil &Amal Family to

Khalil and his wife Amal have 4 kids.

Mohammed, 10, who you can see lost weight due to the genocide, famine and displacements

Sara, 16 years old, Ibrahim, 14, Karim, 12

The family is currently trapped in Rafah and they need our help to rebuild their lives. Donate. Boost if you can't

Sidewinder Snake

Noelle's funky family

nytimes.com

Israeli and Palestinian Activists Ask Americans to Take Side of Peace

Sally Abed, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and Alon-Lee Green, a Jewish Israeli, found polarization in America over the war in Gaza. They

When Sally Abed and Alon-Lee Green flew from Israel to New York last week, they found a version of the United States they’d never seen before: split by the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, with fractures tearing at the worlds of art, business, books, academia and even food.

Ms. Abed, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, said the situation felt so toxic that they feared their 10-day trip to talk about the ways Palestinians and Jews can work together would only lead to attacks from all sides.

Instead, in New York, Washington and Boston, they found packed auditoriums and eager audiences in community centers, synagogues, libraries and the offices of politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Their days have started at 6 a.m. and ended after midnight.

Their quest can be lonely, standing in the face of intense grief and anger — over Hamas’s attacks against Israelis on Oct. 7, and Israel’s retaliatory campaign in the Gaza Strip — and factions that have spent decades staking out positions against each other.

But the staff of their organization, Standing Together, is trying to teach Americans — anyone who will listen, really — about their lived reality and the only path they see moving forward. They describe that path as one that cannot be boiled down to a hashtag: one in which millions of Israelis and Palestinians would remain on the land they each call home, and one that would require enough popular political will to demand peace.

“We’re trying to play a different game in Israel and Palestine,” Mr. Green said on Nov. 9 to a group of people organized by a group in Brooklyn, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. “And this game is very simple. It says that both Jewish people and Palestinians are going to stay on this land. No one is going anywhere.”

“We need to start working from this point,” he said, receiving a wave of nods.

It’s a message that has not been prominently heard or seen in many American protests and rallies. Most events have taken place under an Israeli or Palestinian flag, focusing on one people’s pain, struggle or victimhood.

That type of narrow approach can erase everything around it, said Cara Raich, a conflict adviser based in New York.

“As with most conflicts one feels deeply and personally, a binary choice often offers the simple comfort of pro and con, or right and wrong,” she said. “The magnetic power of false binaries sucks everything that it touches into that paradigm.”

For that reason, the conversations Mr. Green and Ms. Abed came to have with Americans have, at least for their audiences they draw, been something of a spiritual salve. In dozens of talks up and down the East Coast, the two activists have described a desperate need for new Israeli and Palestinian leadership, including leaders willing to work together.

They have called Hamas, the group that controls the Gaza Strip, both “the enemy of the Palestinian people” and a “fertilizer for radical Jewish extremism.” And they have voiced a frustration over what they see as a war for the moral high ground, happening outside of Israel and mostly over social media, that denies their experiences.

Libby Lenkinski, a vice president at the New Israel Fund, an organization that funds and supports Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, has had a front-row seat as a moderator. She said she has seen a “palpable sense of relief” among attendees who audibly exhale or place hands over their hearts. The message is so resonant, she said, because of it offers a different kind of simplicity than choosing one of two sides.

“This isn’t, ‘Kumbaya, let’s all hold hands and love each other,’” Ms. Lenkinski said. “It’s: ‘There’s actually no way that one side is going to win. Our futures are intertwined and the only way that we can keep ourselves alive is by keeping each other alive.’”

On Sunday, a group of Israeli peace activists in New York City organized a vigil with that sentiment in mind. The demonstration called for both a cease-fire in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the release of more than 200 hostages held by Palestinian militants. All were welcome, flags and signs were not.

Some 200 attendees gathered to mourn and read testimonies and texts from people in Israel and Gaza.

Tamar Glezerman, one of the organizers, said she had protested in support of a cease-fire before, and does not “find myself in protests that don’t include the demand for an urgent stop to the bloodshed.”

“But at the same time,” she said, “I feel that, on a very personal level, I am being demanded to omit the humanity of my loved ones, those who have died on Oct. 7 and those who have friends and families among the kidnapped, in order to attend most of the protests demanding a cease-fire.”

She said that those demonstrations “have by and large completely omitted these civilians, for either ideological or strategic reasons, as if empathy for brutalized civilians was ever a zero-sum game. As if one war crime could ever justify another. As if acknowledgment means historical symmetry.”

Ms. Abed and Mr. Green were in Washington during that vigil, meeting with a range of Democratic politicians. They said that, sometimes, they struggled to get to the car for their next meeting because people swarmed to ask what more they could do to help.

Friendship has helped carry the pair on, they said, even as exhaustion has weighed them down.

They did not sleep much back home, and they have not slept much since arriving in the states. Mr. Green said he’s afraid to stop working. Ms. Abed worries that he’s not giving himself the space to fall apart, at least a little bit.

Midsentence, Mr. Green gasped. “A goose!” he screamed — Ms. Abed echoed, “a goose!” They laughed and gawked, getting closer to the bird. There are not many geese in Israel.

But it was not quite a wild-goose chase. They were summoned on to their next meeting, one with students, staff members and faculty at M.I.T. “So many people tell us ‘You are our only hope,’” Ms. Abed said. “It’s like, we’re your only hope?”

Mr. Green said that, despite the loneliness they often felt, they had no choice but to keep trying.

“We have only one home,” he said. “She’s Palestinian and I’m Jewish, but the only home we both have is the same home.”

Welp, hope yall who didn’t vote or voted third party are ready for this