So Direct Action Is Not An Option Available To You. What Can You Do Right Now Instead?

and they were roommates 

by @bipercabeth

Finals being around the corner is about the worst thing that could happen to Percy and Annabeth, both as individuals and friends. Swim season intensifies, meaning that nearly every moment Percy isn’t working or doing schoolwork he spends at the gym or the stadium. He leaves earlier and comes home later. Annabeth can’t remember the last time they had a meaningful conversation.

That’s a dramatization, but even their Saturdays are changing. Annabeth is the first one up now, and she doesn’t have the heart to wake him knowing he barely sleeps on weekdays. Schoolwork also encroaches on their safe space, coming as much from Annabeth’s side of things as Percy’s.

Read on AO3

poem, “there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop,” by vinay krishnan (x). transcription in alt text

I was walking behind a woman for five minutes and she got catcalled three times.

I usually walk everywhere with my headphones on, but I had them in my bag and I was reading a book on my phone instead (I do that when the foot traffic is light).  A young Latina was coming down the street as I was coming up the avenue, and when she got to the corner a few paces ahead of me, she turned to walk in the direction I was going.  We were traveling at the same speed, but since she was like ten paces ahead and it’s bright outside in the middle of the day, I didn’t feel the need to fall back or slow down to give her more space. At night, I try not to walk too close behind women just so they don’t feel like I’m any sort of threat.

We got to a corner and this dude standing outside of the bodega was like, “Slow down mama where you goin? You don’t have to work today, you can stop and speak.”

She didn’t break her stride. “I’m going to the gym.”  The Walk sign was on, so I didn’t break mine either.  

A block later, a young guy was coming toward us on the sidewalk riding his bike.

“What’s good shorty?”

She didn’t respond.

“Well you was lookin, you can say something, stuck up bitch.”

We kept walking.

In the middle of the next block, an older man was walking toward us and he put on a friendly smile and said, “Smile young lady, it’s a beautiful day.”

I don’t know if she smiled, but we kept walking. She went into the gym and I kept on toward where I was going thinking about how that was just five minutes of her day.  How many other blocks of five minutes are just like that?  

Only one of them was truly aggressive. The other two guys seemed nice enough and it felt more like a pleasant compliment. It felt like the kind of thing a guy says who argues with women online about catcalling. “We’re not all bad guys. We can’t even compliment women? We can’t even say something nice?”

No.  You really can’t.  I was annoyed in that five minutes and I just happened to be walking behind her with no headphones on.  Can you imagine those five minutes over and over every day of your life?  Nobody wants to be spoken to by strangers day in and day out forever regardless of what they’re saying.  

So no.  You can’t say anything. The quality of your life has not decreased because you aren’t allowed to say nice things to strange women on the sidewalk, but your silence greatly increases the quality of hers.  So just be quiet, and let her go where she’s going.

to my fellow usamericans….in light of the supreme court overturning roe v wade, well known organizations like planned parenthood dont need your money right now - they have plenty - if you’re going to donate, donate to your local or state abortion funds

PSA

You know what bothers me the most about how little coverage the Australian fires are getting?

I could mention that 18 people are now dead, several are missing and over 1000 homes are lost. All at the start of a new year. +3 million hectares of land is gone. People feel a little bit of empathy, maybe they'll reblog this or give it a like, but they'll give it no second thought.

But if I were to make a post just solely about the fact that 500 million animals have been killed in these fires, including 30% of all koalas meaning they're close to being functionally extinct, people would share the fuck out of it. They would start GoFundMe pages, they would guilt people into reblogging shit with the classic, "if you don't reblog this you don't have a heart." You know that trope yeah?

You all fucking shoved posts about the Amazon fires down our throats. "Oh but they were deliberately lit on Native land." You don't think we understand that? Do you know that is exactly what's happened here? As a woman of Aboriginal descent, do you get how upsetting it is for me to watch my country burn? To watch my friends houses burn to the grown whilst they're left to flee to the beach in hope's of not being burnt? Do you know how upsetting it is to think that the house that I grew up in probably won't be standing in a couple days? All because the RFS are not allowed to backburn because of politics. Politics who don't understand a single fuck about anything that is happening.

Every night I have to try my hardest not to break down in front of my family because I am so upset and so angry about this whole situation. Men and women are out there fighting this fire, missing out on time with their family, time at work meaning they can't afford to feed their family either, they miss out on holidays too.

My brother was sent on a strike team up to Sydney for Christmas. He almost didn't make it back for New Years, even when he got home, he was so tired to go out so him and I stayed at home and played the PS4. And what makes me angry is that some families out there don't see their brothers come home, their sons, their fathers, their sisters, mothers, daughters.

Because people are dying.

And no one other than Australians give a single fuck!

Canberra currently ranks at number 8 for worst air quality in the world right now. The elderly in nursing homes are being evacuated and have nowhere to go. People were jumping in lakes, were swimming out into the ocean to get away from the fire as it started to burn the beach.

And what does our Prime Minister do?

He arrives at fire impacted towns, in a nice and expensive 100k BMW, to give his thoughts and prayers. Not aid, not water and food, not money. But thoughts and prayers.

"I'm sure he's just tired."

"No, no. He lost a house."

"Oh."

How more insensitive can the fucker get? This isn't a Prime Minister. This is a disgrace. May I also mention we are in our worst drought yet but "we" just sold 409 million dollars worth of drinking water overseas.

I am begging all of you by this point. Please, help out our victims of fire and drought. Donate to whatever causes you can, search the internet, I'm sure there are plenty out there. Donate packs of water, toiletries, food that doesn't spoil, socks, sleeping bags, anything.

Every small gesture you do makes a big impact on somebody who lost everything.

If grandmothers around the world had a rallying cry, it would probably sound something like “You need to eat!”

Photographer Gabriele Galimberti’s grandmother said something similar to him before one of his many globetrotting work trips. To ensure he had at least one good meal, she prepared for him a dish of ravioli before he departed on one of his adventures.  

“In that occasion I said to my grandma ‘You know, Grandma, there are many other grandmas around the world and most of them are really good cooks,” Galimberti wrote via email. “I’m going to meet them and ask them to cook for me so I can show you that you don’t have to be worried for me and the food that I will eat!’ This is the way my project was born!”

The project, “Delicatessen With Love”, took Galimberti to 58 countries where he photographed grandmothers with both the ingredients and finished signature dishes.

He acted as photographer and stylist during each shoot with the grandmothers, taking a portrait of both the women and the food they made for him.

From top to bottom: 

Inara Runtule, 68, Kekava, Latvia. Silke €(herring with potatoes and cottage cheese). Grace Estibero, 82, Mumbai, India. Chicken vindaloo.

Susann Soresen, 81, Homer, Alaska. Moose steak.

Serette Charles, 63, Saint-Jean du Sud, Haiti. Lambi in creole sauce.

The photographer’s grandmother Marisa Batini, 80, Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy. Swiss chard and ricotta Ravioli with meat sauce.

Normita Sambu Arap, 65, Oltepessi (Masaai Mara), Kenya. Mboga and orgali (white corn polenta with vegetables and goat).

Julia Enaigua, 71, La Paz, Bolivia. Queso Humacha (vegetables and fresh cheese soup).

Fifi Makhmer, 62, Cairo, Egypt. Kuoshry (pasta, rice and legumes pie).

Isolina Perez De Vargas, 83, Mendoza, Argentina. Asado criollo (mixed meats barbecue).

Bisrat Melake, 60, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Enjera with curry and vegetables.

HEY IF YOURE IN THE US. CONGRESS IS TRYING TO END ENCRYPTION SO THEY CAN POSSIBLY LIMIT OUR FREEDOM OF SPEECH UNDER “FOR THE CHILDREN” ITS BEEN AT THE START OF THE PANDEMIC AND NOW AT THE SENATE, CALL YR REPS AND TELL THEM YOUR AGAINST THE EARN IT BILL. TELL THEM ITS THE END OF FREE SPEECH.

PLEASE PLEASE SIGN THIS AND REBLOG! IF YR NOT IN THE US AND WANNA TRY* AND HELP. REBLOG THIS AND LET OTHER US CITIZENS KNOW. edit; i didn’t realize apparently signing if your not a us citizen invalidates it, so please DON’T sign it if youre not in the us. please reblog this version if you can. also the thing about this bill is it fucks over digital security in general as in you can get hacked easily, or hackers can gain access to things without encryption.

Please, reblog! IIt’s called self defense. Apart from having here, in the US, one of the highest cases of homicide and rape in the world and high rate of GBV, think about how this could help your mother or sister

the Guardian

WWII: eighty years on, the world is still haunted by a catastrophe foretold | Peter Beaumont

Shock greeted the news that German tanks had rolled into Poland on September 1, 1939. But the slaughter of the continent’s Jews that was to

also see: from a 1937 documentation of gassing/torture methods of the Dacchan concentration camp in Nazi Germany reported emulations of America's "jail holocaust". this was flagellated onto El Paso immigrants who were bathed with kerosene and sprayed with vinegar due to their "racial impurity" much to the rise of eugenicism in the US, parallelistic to of how one of the key annihilators of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany was this chemical.