IT'S BEEN SO LONG SINCE I READ SUCH A GOOD BOOK SERIES...! I LOVED EVERY PART OF THE SERIES!

They are mike and will 😭💙💛

Dear people living on your own for the first time:

Here’s some advice I wasn’t told from the myriad of posts before that I wish I’d been given before

Wash the OUTSIDE of your pots and pans as well as the cooking surface. I’ve had a few roommates now who have only cleaned the inside and I’ve had to replace a $150 set of cookware twice.

“its only one time, how bad could using metal on nonstick cookware really be?” very bad. don’t do this.

Buy a rice cooker. Buy the middle tier rice cooker. Cheap ones will burn your rice, high tier ones are too expensive. Rice is good and cheap and, really, you don’t actually have to wash it if you don’t care about making gourmet food.

Buy band-aids. You don’t think you need band-ads until you need a band-aid, and by then it’s too late. (if you don’t follow this advice, a paper towel and some tape is an acceptable solution while you go get real bandages and neosporin)

You are on tumblr, which means you probably spend most of your time in one spot on a computer or phone. if this spot doesn’t have a trash can in arm’s reach, put one there.

 I spent 4 years piling trash on my desk in increasingly precarious ways until I had a designated area to put it. Trash cans can and should go anywhere there is a frequent generation of trash, typical locations be damned.

If you live with one or two roommates, discuss placing empty boxes in the back of your fridge and freezer. You probably don’t need all the space that the standard 5-person-family fridge provides, and tupperware will be shoved back there and left to stink up the entire appliance.

Get a wall calendar, put it somewhere communal, and have everyone put their household-relevant schedules on it. Communication is by far the weakest link with roommates (even good ones!) and having something to reference for appointments is always good

There’s a reason a sewing kit includes scissors, a wood shop has a saw, and a kitchen is full of knives. In order to build something, to create something on purpose, you have to be prepared to cut away what’s extra. A bolt of cloth does not a blanket make, a piece of wood a shelf, nor a loaf of bread a sandwich. When you snip off frayed bits of string, cut the wood into shape, or slice the end off a loaf of bread you are creating, with the act of removal, something closer to what you desire. 

Now let’s say you’re not sewing a blanket, you’re not building a shelf, not making a sandwich. Let’s say you’re crafting a life in which you are happy. You will end up removing things. You’ll leave partners, stop talking to family members, let go of friends. You’ll move apartments, lose jobs, change wardrobes. And you will feel their absence. You’ll look at the scraps of cloth, the odd angles of wood, the stale end of the loaf. But that cloth couldn’t keep you warm and that tiny corner of wood can’t store books. You wouldn’t be full from that little bit of bread or happy with that person. In the art of creating there is the act of removal and it is essential. 

This is just my 2¢ as a nonbinary person but I genuinely think that cis people's gender is just as constructed as trans people's. Cis people love to accuse us of having making up genders or artificially modifying our appearance but....the entire makeup, fashion, diet, workout, and haircare industry exists so that cis people can maintain the illusion of two entirely distinct genders with no overlap.

Can we please stop associating being a good person with how much you're willing to suffer in silence for other people? You can be a kind person and still say "no, I don't have the time/energy to help you with that." You can be a kind person and still say "this makes me uncomfortable, please stop." You can be a kind person and still say "I disagree and here's why." You can be kind and still say "I'm not okay with this." Being kind is about treating people with kindness and respect, not about being the human equivalent of a doormat!

Help the Pataxó people fight for the right for their land

I’ve made a few posts about this but they may have been a bit confusing, so after a few days of tourmoil of emotions and stress, I’ve decided to take some time to talk a little more in-depth about what’s been going on with the Pataxó people in Brazil and how we can help them prevent an immense injustice that’s just about to unfold

First off, an introduction!

The Pataxó inhabit the areas of the Brazilian states of Bahia and Minas Gerais, and nowadays have a population of about 13.000 people. The Pataxó were one of the first peoples in Brazil to come in contact with the Portuguese settlers, along with the Tupinaky’ia, Poti’wara, Tupinambá, Tabajara and others, and have been resisting colonization and genocide for over 500 years.

in the picture above, you can see a picture of the Awe ritual at the Coroa Vermelha reservation, 2006 taken from the website https://img.socioambiental.org/v/publico/pataxo/foto+20_+AWE+SARAH+MIRANDA.JPG.html

After centuries of colonization, the Pataxó, like many of the other first contact nations previously mentioned, have suffered many losses to their culture, including land sovereignty, language fluency, the right to practice their religion, the right to name their babies with traditional names, and many others. 

But like the aforementioned nations, the Pataxó have been doing an amazing job going back their traditional lands, getting to teach their children their traditional language, the Patxohã (pah- tsho-han) language, strengthening their ties to their spirituality, culture and land.

this a video of the IX Pataxó games, featuring competitions of traditional sports and practices

The most difficult part about fighting for their land when you’re a first contact nation in Brazil though, is that, as you can see torwards the end of the video, our traditional land is the coast, the beaches and the forests that sorround them (Mata Atlântica). And the thing with the Brazilian coast, is that it is heavilly disputed by multimilionaire hotel companies and construction companies, gringos and rich Brazilians wanting to build summer houses and buy private beaches, basically EVERYONE has their eyes on this land. Because having a hotel in the brazilian tropical coast, or building summer houses by the beach to rent is pretty much guaranteed to bring in a LOT of money. It’s all about money.

this is a traditional build (kijeme) destroyed last year in results of a conflict with white land owners. many other builds were destroyed in the occasion. The criminals destroyed them in the middle of the night and no one even saw them. Picture posted on the village leadership Thyara Pataxó’s twitter account

So there are enormous and lengthy legal conflicts between the Pataxó people and the big business owners and private land owners (because of course the Brazilian government doesn’t give a shit) over the land. And of course, like all indigenous people, the land is SACRED and fundamental for the Pataxó’s lives. But sometimes the Pataxó are able to kick out invaders and rebuild villages* on their regained land. 

in this video, Pataxó youtuber Tukumã Pataxó shows us traditional body paint done by artist Janarô Nuhay 

SO HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED A FEW DAYS AGO

An aviation club owner (we still dont know his name) claimed that the entirety of the Pataxó village Novos Guerreiros, which is a part of the Red Crown reservation to be his, somehow arguing that he owned the land before the Pataxó reoccupied the area. This process is called Land Repossession.

The village were notified out of the blue that there had been an judicial ruling against them and that they will be FORCED TO LEGALLY AGREE LEAVE THEIR LAND IN FIVE DAYS. So of course everyone is absolutely angered and has started a big campain to fight against this judicial ruling.

Today (27/08/2020) was the deadline the federal police gave them to peacefully leave the land. But of course they resisted and said they weren’t going anywhere. After an entire day of arguments between the caciques (chiefs) and village leaderships and the police, the Pataxó were given a week to leave their land, under the threat to face police brutality. But obviously they still aren’t going anywhere.

Pictures of federal police on Pataxó land earlier today

OVER 2.500 FAMILIES LIVE IN THAT AREA. CHILDREN, ELDERS, PREGNANT WOMEN, PEOPLE WHO WERE BACK TO THRIVING ON THEIR TRADITIONAL LAND. THEY’RE ALL GOING TO BE HOMELESS AND HAVING TO BEG FOR FOOD BECAUSE THEY WON’T BE ABLE TO HUNT FOR FOOD OR HAVE ACCESS TO THE FOOD THEY CULTIVATE. LAND LOSS IS AN IMMENSE LOSS FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLE.

“Pataxó people againt land repossesion! Land Sovereignty NOW“ picture taken today, posted on Thyara Pataxó’s twitter account

AND WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP??

There are a few things that the caciques and village leaderships have asked us (who are not Pataxó) to do:

First, spread the news so that everyone knows what’s going on, cause the traditional Brazilian media doesn’t care to notify this

Second, SIGN THIS PETITION: https://t.co/0fqeoifqIs?amp=1

Third, send this e-mail to the judge who ruled the order against the Pataxó land sovereignty (all info is in the google document): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sygR9_utO214UneqYCxHcjyCBTbW4fXuf5SWk2YmXI0/edit

Fourth, and this is optional, you can donate to their gofundme (originally created to help fight covid-19 related issues). Keep in mind that dollars and euro are worth A LOT in Brazil, so donating 2 dollars is SOMETHING lol: https://gogetfunding.com/pataxoyouth/ . 

You can keep up with the news through the twitter account https://twitter.com/PataxoYouth/

THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP AND TIME! PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THIS!

*village is a rough translation of the portuguese “aldeia”, which is pretty much our equivalent to what you call in North America a “tribe”. But the direct translation of tribe (tribo) is considered offensive to us. Anyway, just clarifying.

Everyone says love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love, but in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt.

— Meša Selimović

@stvksn on ig

Hamlet adaptation where Hamlet is a vlogger and all his soliloquies are breakdowns he uploads to YouTube