Http://chng.it/L5khkpmJrH

PLEASE B00ST: HELP ME SAVE MY FRIEND’S EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ANIMAL

GO FUND ME LINK HERE

my friend is a brown muslim bisexual woman who’s family has hit hard economic times. Fleeing the Netherlands at one point due to extreme islamophobia, they decided to return for better access to medical mental health care. moving is expensive, being pressured to move is even more expensive. all of this compounds with the current COVID-19 pandemic, due to strict border requirements my friends cat Skitty is currently stranded in Istanbul. they are currently in need of money to both bring Skitty home AND contribute to their family’s rent and grocery expenses while they resettle. If she cannot gather the funding Skitty will have to be humanly euthanized.

We can all empathize with the lonely feelings of the pandemic. i personally can say i wouldn’t have made it through this all this far without my pets, and i’m sure some of you feel the same. Emotional Support Animal doesn’t come close to explaining how important this little cat is to her. They have spent agonizing months apart (for the both of them!) and it would mean so much to have them reunited.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-my-cat-skitty-return-home

gofundme.com

Help My Cat Skitty Return Home, organized by Ayşe Kafalı

I'll keep it as brief as possible. My cat- Skitty- has been stuck in a pet hotel in Istanb… Ayşe Kafalı needs your support for Help My Cat

all donations are appreciated and reblogging will always help more than you will ever know. thank you. here is her twitter post if you’d like to spread the word there.

Taras Shevchenko looks at you like... like as best as he can

[Image ID: An old format black box meme, featuring a photo of an embroidery portraying Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko. Something is wrong with that embroidery. The eyes of a legendary poet: two burning white circles, staring at you from the black void of the sockets. Eyebrows: there are no eyebrows. His mouth is open in a silent scream, but there's only emptiness behind his lips. The embroidery's haunted. Probably, by the spirit of Taras Shevchenko himself. And he has a hangover. The text at the bottom reads: "Taras Shevchenko looks at you like... like as best as he can." /End ID]

hey guys i seriously hate to make this post but i don’t know if i have a choice anymore

i’m a full time trans neurodivergent college student and my life is spiraling out of control (parents going thru a messy divorce, dad might disown me and i cannot survive without his financial help and mom can’t afford to help me, etc)

basically i’m more suicidal and dysphoric than i’ve ever been in my life and i only get 8hrs/week at my job. i live in alabama and i just found out the only doctor that does hrt here is violently intrusive and homophobic so i have to go to nashville (4 hour drive)

i can’t afford gas to get there and i can’t afford hrt, but i can’t live without it anymore. plus i’ve discovered i might have some other health problems and my upcoming rent will be 600/mo

i need anything i can get at this point. thank you so much

cash app: $catws

venmo: washingtonmoore

paypal (has my dead name)

if you think misogyny against women you don't like is acceptable, you are a misogynist.

“Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view. And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone. When you look up the stage directions, it says, ‘Exit Ariel.’”

— Tom Stoppard, University of Pennsylvania, 1996 (via flameintobeing)

Finally.

airk tanthalos appreciation post

My conure does exactly the same thing. He even talks to "the void" and gets upset when it doesn't answer.Why does he do that?Does he expect someone to come out?

When my parrot wants pets off someone he’ll go up to them, say hello, and lower his head to expose his neck. Recently, however, he’s been doing this to a pitch black crevice behind the couch, even trying to cajole the darkness with kissy noises and getting sad when the void won’t pet him. How do I explain that dark chasms are not friends?

Half of all US food produce is thrown away, new research suggests

The demand for ‘perfect’ fruit and veg means much is discarded, damaging the climate and leaving people hungry

Americans throw away almost as much food as they eat because of a “cult of perfection”, deepening hunger and poverty, and inflicting a heavy toll on the environment. By one government tally, about 60m tonnes of produce worth about $160bn (£119bn), is wasted by retailers and consumers every year - one third of all foodstuffs. 

But that is just a “downstream” measure. In more than two dozen interviews, farmers, packers, wholesalers, truckers, food academics and campaigners described the waste that occurs “upstream”: scarred vegetables regularly abandoned in the field to save the expense and labour involved in harvest. Or left to rot in a warehouse because of minor blemishes that do not necessarily affect freshness or quality. 

When added to the retail waste, it takes the amount of food lost close to half of all produce grown, experts say.

Retail giants argue that they are operating in consumers’ best interests, according to food experts. “A lot of the waste is happening further up the food chain and often on behalf of consumers, based on the perception of what those consumers want,” said Roni Neff, the director of the food system environmental sustainability and public health programme at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future in Baltimore.

“Fruit and vegetables are often culled out because they think nobody would buy them,” she said.

But Roger Gordon, who founded the Food Cowboy startup to rescue and re-route rejected produce, believes that the waste is built into the economics of food production. Fresh produce accounts for 15% of supermarket profits, he argued.

“If you and I reduced fresh produce waste by 50% like [the US agriculture secretary] Vilsack wants us to do, then supermarkets would go from [a] 1.5% profit margin to 0.7%,” he said. “And if we were to lose 50% of consumer waste, then we would lose about $250bn in economic activity that would go away.”

The farmers and truckers interviewed said they had seen their produce rejected on flimsy grounds, but decided against challenging the ruling with the US department of agriculture’s dispute mechanism for fear of being boycotted by powerful supermarket giants. They also asked that their names not be used.

“I can tell you for a fact that I have delivered products to supermarkets that was [sic] absolutely gorgeous and because their sales were slow, the last two days they didn’t take my product and they sent it back to me,” said the owner of a mid-size east coast trucking company.

“They will dig through 50 cases to find one bad head of lettuce and say: ‘I am not taking your lettuce when that lettuce would pass a USDA inspection.’ But as the farmer told you, there is nothing you can do, because if you use the Paca [Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act of 1930] on them, they are never going to buy from you again. “Are you going to jeopardise $5m in sales over an $8,000 load?”

Massive food waste is based into capitalist agriculture. If the vast majority of the food produced in America’s farms was brought to market, it would drive prices down rapidly, threatening the profits of retailers. Less than 1% of this surplus food ever reaches the mouths of the hungry.