Be Pro-aging But Wear Sun Screen. Sun Protection Is Not Beauty Industry Propaganda It Will Save You.

I can't lie, I find it very odd that posts cautioning people against donating to individual* campaigns and promoting the idea of supporting mutual aid efforts and community kitchens in Gaza can rack up 10k+ notes--while a post promoting a community kitchen (that I can personally vouch for) struggles to get 1k notes, and has barely pulled in a couple hundred dollars over the past week.

I actively try to avoid using guilting tactics in fundraising, but this is weird to me. It's like people are using these posts as an excuse not to do things they already didn't want to do anyway, rather than actually taking their recommendations on board...

*In my experience, these campaigns often support large extended families + their neighbours

Chuffed

Mawasi Al-Qarara Mutual Aid Project

This campaign is a mutual aid initiative involving myself, my friends Mohammad Abu-Alwan and his two brothers in Palestine, and Shakhya Scri

MAQMAP is a community kitchen aiming to support families in the Mawasi Al-Qarara area.

Best Megatron Optimus Dynamic?

I really love the unrequited kismesis relationships Megatron has with Optimus in the G1 cartoon.

Megatron thought of himself as Optimus’s greatest arch-foe, while Optimus Prime only thought of him as “the current Decepticon leader”.

If Megatron ever found out that Optimus didn’t care about him as a person but only as a threat and symptom of the actual problem*:the Decepticon cause, I think he’d be crushed.

Megatron:“How can this be, I betrayed you and killed your coworkers back when you were a dockworker!”

Optimus:“You’ve killed alot of people. After a while its hard to take it personally. and unlike you I go to therapy”

*remember that in the cartoon they were on the Third Great War between Autobots and Decepticons. Megatron was not their founder in the original cartoon.

At-will employment is inherently ableist garbage.

I've seen my partner go through 3 different jobs that all found various ways to fire them or pressure them to quit because the "accommodations" given helped nobody but the company.

When you give companies the power to terminate employment at their own discretion, they will use it at every opportunity they can, especially towards people who are deemed "difficult" (i.e., disabled).

They will always find a way around discrimination laws.

Why I am not a fan of the interns from psychonauts 2 in terms of writing

spoilers for most of the game. please play this game it is very good. spoilers begin after the cut. Disclaimer 1: I love this game. If I hated it then I wouldn't be talking about it. I criticize the things i love because I believe in improvement from fair criticism. Disclaimer 2: If you are personally attached to said characters and feel as though you are being attacked by reading this, politely piss off. I don't know you personally, and if you think my opinion on fictional characters is some slight against a random stranger, then you need to touch grass instead of spamming my feed. With this in mind, this is my PERSONAL OPINION as to why i dislike these characters from a writer's standpoint

1- they are pricks. i have been told "hazing is just a normal rite of passage!" hazing is a dick move created as an excuse to prank newbies. I don't care how many fond memories you have of your frat house: hazing is something only assholes contribute to. and you know what else is a dick move? bullying a 10 year old kid for no reason. it is very normal for teenagers to group together with people that are the same as them, so i can believe this is a group of snobby little shits. If being bullies was the intended purpose of their characters I would be fine, but it conflicts with the story the writers want to tell. which brings me to my next point

2- We barely get any time for them to develop at the beginning of the game they are introduced as a group of little shits who bully kids for no reason. not great but i can forgive giving characters flaws so they progress. People like that do indeed exist. the problem: they don't seem to learn anything and they just randomly decide Raz is their friend during the casino mission. (and then later randomly shown up to save the day at the end even though they were missing most of the game) "don't forget how i taught you how to grind rail raz!" what???? you didn't teach us anything! you barely talk to us skateboard kid! Raz knew how to do that at the summer camp! and like, this scene is very cool. the artistic style and the characters popping up like comic book panels but none of that matters cus i have no reason to like any of these kids. "but Raz proved himself that he is capable during the lady luctopus fight so they respect him!" thank you for pointing that out obvious straw man I created to make up for my shitty argument skills. but the thing is: just because these kids were proven wrong does not equal character development. They didn't learn anything other than to not mess with Raz specifically. Which:

3- If you asked me their names, I can't tell you who is who other than sam (and we will get to her later) let me describe these characters to you -skateboard kid -kid who is in a really cool lawn chair hover thing -kid who got all of her clothing by stealing from construction workers and rodeo cowboys -the other bitchy one but with a beanie. - darius rucker with a yoyo -and sam. this shit is all i know from these characters. At best I know traffic stop clothing kid and the other one are sisters, but i literally only know that because Raz randomly pointed it out. (and personally, i think those two are the most unlikable of them all) "ah you probably hate them because they are teenagers" listen man. I am an original homestuck fan back when the main cast consisted of 13 year olds. The characters ages do not matter to me, but rather how interesting they are. in Psy 1 the campers were full of personality and depth, BUT they didn't shoehorn them in expecting them to suddenly be all buddy buddy with raz. They were designed as fun background characters, and they served their purpose. The interns problem is that they have the personality of very boring background characters, but they are not given enough time to develop as characters and are expected to be treated like a main characters. We spend all of our time with the Psychic 6 and not them (and i fucking love those guys!) the Psychic 6 are the ones we spent our time with. THEY are the real main characters because we understood their struggles and got to learn about them. I was closet to THEM because i spent time with them. I feel as though most of the interns were shoehorned in to appeal to a younger audience ok now we can talk about sam

4- I think sam is only interesting because she is attached to Dogan (please don't kill me i promise i am going somewhere with this) If you don't know, sam is basically the explodey head kid's sister. She has personality because she is attached to the most wholesome man of all time, and the weird kid from the first game with murderous tendencies. As a result of this, Sam has to be just as weird as her family members to make sense. I guess her character wouldent change if you removed her familial status with the Boole family, but also consider sam is basically pinkie pie. and Mable pines. And Molly McGee and basically every single quirkyyyyyy overly energetic female character in media with animal abuse sprinkled on top for comedy. there is nothing wrong with this. I think sam is fun too. But also she stands out like a real person in a room full of mannequins, mostly because her friends have the personality of mannequins. The poor writing of the rest of the interns essentially makes sam worse by the law of association because sam is grouped with these losers. in case you are curious, the "where did you get the milk" line cracks me up every time. poor Raz needs a hug.

5-They overplayed agent Forsythe a little bit too much and that does not help the interns in contrast. first: i love Raz's arch about learning not to affect peoples brains like it's nothing. It gave me emotional whiplash because i played the first game right before this game, but the games have a 16 year gap between each other and times have changed. I won't blame the game for that, AND the whole "mental health is a serious issue" grew on me. very good story this game has. Point is: Raz's consent arch was a really good thing for his character. but also agent Forsythe is kind of a bitch. first: your two agents brought you a kid who is enthusiastic about the psychonauts and your immediate instinct is to put him up with the mailroom clerk as his mentor? really? Thinking Cruller is a fucking nut and not validating Raz's honorary psychonaut status? yeah fair. she has no reason to think Ford isn't batshit insane. Getting on Raz for being late to class? also fair. She is a very strict teacher and needs to instill onto her kids that punctuality is important. but then some things rub me the wrong way. like you are an adult, how come you are letting these kids bully Raz? surely you saw the footage on the security cams? Or how come Raz got blamed for invading her thoughts when it was the interns that shoved him into it? How come you are targeting the kid for this and not everyone else who was involved in this? lets give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she didn't know about those things. Raz's story about him apologizing and learning from his mistake was still very good. Then sasha and Raz have a very charming fatherly moment about learning when to bail from a dangerous situation. made me smile. but then after all that emotional drama, you then talk to her and raz apologizes AGAIN and the emotional drama tries to continue. Lady you already had a talk to Raz about consent, why are you making him explain himself again out in the open? He is 10 years old and already learned his lesson, chill the fuck out.

and then later on she implies that she thinks Raz is the mole just because his family is from a fallen country related to the current issue. I understand not liking Raz, but is the racist remarks necessary? Do you seriously think some random kid kidnapped the head of the psychonauts? I know it is a serious issue but come the fuck on the kid barely knows how shapes work. i know this is about the interns, but Forsythe rubs me the wrong way and i feel like she is the reason why these brats are the way they are. I feel like she makes my distaste for the interns worse because she comes off to me as a sad fuck who targets kids to fuel her fragile power tripping ego. her level was good, and her arc with Raz was good, but she could use a bit of retooling. I feel as though I can forgive her nastier flaws if she acted more like an adult and gave the teenagers the same amount of lip she gave Raz. Perhaps if she had stepped up the interns would be more likeable because they and raz could have a nice bonding moment over their mistake. Tldr: Forsythe needed to act like an ADULT and discipline the interns just as much as she did raz instead of enabling them.

Overall, the interns are poorly written and I dread seeing them on screen. I am not attached to them in the way i am attached to the Psy 6. The story of Helmet and Bob touched my heart, Agent Boole's mission about social anxiety related to me personally, the story of Cassiopea coming to terms with her past and identity issues, Learning about ford's mistakes and the trauma he collected, everything! I love these characters! I guess the lesson is that just because a character is superficially the same as you, does not mean they are relatable. I am in my 20's. I am not a teenager anymore, but I am not elderly either. I am actually closer to the interns in age than i am to the Psy 6. And yet I relate to the Psy 6 more because these are human beings that i have grown to know and learn about. I am a girl who plays videogames. Shocker I know. and I have seen debates about "we need this and this and this or else i can't relate to the character!". There is not a lot of female characters in media and i agree that it would be nice to be represented more. but a character being the exact SAME as you does not equal relatability. I am not a grandfather with a tendency to make people explode, but i relate to Bool because we both share in our self judgement issues and the struggle to not want to hurt people with your personal problems. We have nothing in common physically, but we share in our struggles. and that is why the interns failed as characters when the Psy 6 succeeded. please don't spam my inbox about how much you disagree with me and how much you actually like the interns. this is just my opinion with writing advice sprinkled in it, much like Sam's personality.

Why I don’t like the first IDW Transformers

Rebooting a franchise so the good guys are former oppressors and bad guys are freedom fighters is the laziest way to try and put in grayness for the sake of grayness.

Seen it in lots of fanfics as a kid.

Just ends up with pretty much all your childhood faves unlikeable, and unfocused moderate politics of writers muddling things.

Sorry, didn't know about that, I always viewed the Jewish people getting Israel back as the opposite of what happened to Native Americans, they finally got their native land back that they were forced out of, and fought to keep it, it kind of inspired me in high school, after learning the travesties committed against Native Americans, that times had possibly changed. Glad to know the truth though.

it’s okay, tumblr is kind of terrible.

yeahhhh a lot of pro-israel people like to spin the tale like that, that they’re people fighting to get their land back. but it’s much more accurate the other way around; palestinian people are an indigenous group fighting to keep foreigners from stealing their land. they’re the ones who were just on their land chilling when a group comes in and invades.

also, it’s better to refer to the people behind israel as zionists, as not all jewish people support it. in fact, large parts of the israeli government actually support things that go against jewish interests. one example is netanyahu celebrating trump’s election as meaning an end to palestine, despite the number of neo-nazis he’s appointed to office.

Brawl Tier List (Based On The Relevance of What They Were Doing When We Meet Them In Subspace Emissary)

I'll explain some of my choices under the cut

So a lot of these choices are pretty obvious, although some are a bit iffy or require explanation of the Subspace story which can be found in trophy descriptions & The Dojo.

The first category was for characters who were engaged in the Subspace plot from the get-go and were the "good guys". In case you didn't know, King Dedede is the hero of Subspace, and if it weren't for him, Tabuu would have won, since he made the "reset badges", and his initial plan was to hold onto some people and give them the reset badges in case Tabuu used his Off Waves. Meta Knight is considered to be a good guy, even though he mostly just wanted to get the Halberd back. Fox I put into this category as well since he's first seen giving chase to the Halberd in his Arwing, so I consider that pretty engaged, even if we don't know the exact reasoning.

The second category is open and shut. They're the Bad Guys. Ganon, Bowser, and everyone's favorite winner, Wario. Technically Wario kinda defected from Tabuu and wanted to just steal all the trophies, but I'm counting him here.

Next was the "Used by Tabuu" tier. According to the lore, the entire Subspace Army is made from the power of Game and Watch (although it says the Game & Watch are unaware of this). Pikachu's electricity was being used to power a lot of the operations (most notably the Subspace Bomb Factory iirc). And it's implied that R.O.B was coerced into helping Tabuu, feeling so ashamed that he put on the Ancient Minister garb to hide himself out of shame.

The "Was Doing What You Expect" Tier is a tricky one, since some characters like Mario & Kirby weren't doing what you'd expect in their normal games, but they were fighting, which is something you'd expect in Smash, but I was kinda lenient. Pit was watching from Skyworld, which is in character. It's shown that Pokemon Trainer was looking for Ivysaur and Charizard, so we can assume he was on that journey when we found him in the Ruined Zoo. ZSS's motivations are kind of unclear about whether she knew about the Subspace Bombs and tried to stop them or if she just knew her Power Suit was there and wanted to get to it. I always figured it was the latter, so I'm putting it in this tier. Marth was defending a castle, which sounds right (I haven't played Fire Emblem). Ice Climbers were climbing ice. Monkeys were getting their bananas. Link was getting Master Sword. Yoshi was sleeping (which only gets him out of "Just Standing There" tier because he is Yoshi).

Next are the ones who just kinda showed up. And it so happens that all five of them make a pretty grand entrance. Sonic is the obvious example here. Ness also counts since there's no implication that either he or Lucas actually live in or even near the Ruined Zoo, but then again in the dialogue-less cutscenes tying together over 30 characters, I don't think that detail was important. Falco makes a grand entrance, although you could argue that he was meant to be Fox's backup. Ike makes a grand entrance with this Great Aether. Captain Falcon literally shows up to jump out of his car, punch a robot and kill approximately 50 aliens in one fell swoop, so either there was an F-Zero track around the Island of the Ancients that we don't see and he quit in the middle of his race to do that, or he just did that. Either way there's something wrong with him.

And then finally we have the characters who were Just Standing There. Luigi obviously was minding his own business when he got got by Dedede. Peach and Zelda I almost put in the "Doing What You Expect Tier" (or at LEAST Peach since she knew Mario at least), but honestly? They were just standing there. No hate, obviously. Sometimes you just gotta Stand There. Olimar was minding his own business letting his Pikmin eat a robot before they were murdered. Lucario was vibing on top of a mountain (as you do). Lucas was just being sad. And Snake? We don't see any sign that he's on a mission. We just see that he's been on the Halberd for an undisclosed period of time before dramatically revealing himself way way later. I like to imagine he accidentally fell asleep.

And then the last tier are for the 3 characters that are unlocked after Subspace, so I don't really count them.

Anyway in case you can't tell I am back on my ADHD meds! Hope you enjoyed this. See you all for the Nuzlocke stream later.

Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people

Who are the Shompen?

The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.

Why is there risk of genocide?

India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".

Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”

The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.

This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.

The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).

And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.

Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”

On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”

How to help

The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:

Survival International

The Shompen face obliteration: they urgently need your support

Take action for the Shompen now! The Shompen are one of the most isolated tribes on Earth. They live on Great Nicobar island in India, and

From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.

Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.

Sources:

India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.

‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.

Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.

The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.

[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.

One of the main reasons why Sir Pentious getting to Heaven felt so underwhelming and unwarranted to me is that HH paints it as Charlie's redemption theory being valid and true and her methods actually working

When she barely did anything to help Sir Pentious as the show barely showed us what Charlie's methods are beyond that trust fall bit you can see in summer camps

It doesn't help that redemption is about correcting the wrongs of the past after fully admitting you were at fault when you did them and feeling legitimately regretful that you committed those wrong acts

... We still don't know what Sir Pentious did in his past to end up in Hell. We as an audience know JACK about his backstory and I don't think the cast knows anything about it either

By all means, SP might have gotten to Heaven for doing things that had nothing to do with his mistakes back when he was alive. If that's the case, then not only is Charlie's redemption theory false as what happened with SP has nothing to do with redemption, her methods to reach Heaven are pretty basic and already standardized which brings the potential for the show down to zero. The premise got shot with this finale twist as it's pretty clear Charlie's methods at her Hotel are formulaic and don't depend on the sinners' past wrongs

You know what could have been a good concept ? Have Charlie show SP's progress to the Council of Angels through the globe instead of Angel Dust's only for them to ponder about it and see rather positive on the matter, Sera included, before saying: "As final trial, we will bring them here and have them be his judges."

The doors open and a dozen angels walk in having seemingly been summoned

The Council motions to the globe: "You have been called today to make an important decision. We would like you to first observe this fully then answer a simple question."

The angels do that, they watch the entire reel of everything SP did while under Charlie's care, with Charlie nervously anticipating their answer

The Council: "Now for the question: From all that you've seen,

Would you consider this man worthy of redemption and as such ready to join this side of the Afterlife?"

Many of the angels are just dumbfounded at hearing this, a bunch just storm off and others look scared at the thought.

What remained decide between each other before whispering the answer to Sera

Sera then declares simply: "The Jury have made their decision :

Sir Pentious hasn't done what it takes for his soul to be redeemed and accepted into Heaven."

Charlie: "What? Why not? Not that I have anything against your Jury but what power do they have to decide that you lack for this decision?"

Sera: "The Jury overseeing your Sir Pentious is made up of every soul he has wronged in his past. You have to understand: They have fairly earned their Afterlife regardless of what awful and unjust things he has done to them. To have us decide ourselves if he can join them up here after all the wrongs he has done to them in the living would be unfair; as such the final decision is theirs. If they see his new ways as a true change on his part and choose to forgive him, he would have indeed earned his place in Heaven.

This wasn't the case today."

I want this so much. I want Hazbin to be in the hands of someone mature enough to actually write this.