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Folk tales for birds!!!
A zine filled with sparrow wisdom, a bulbul mantra, a condor lullaby, a hanging parrot parable, an ostrich creation myth, and a crow limerick!
Get it here
Support your local bird scientist and broke PhD student!
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🚪Can we?
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Sometimes all I think about is you
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my favorite “fake” family <3
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Trying to explain even one ounce of class/caste/ethnic/religious dynamics in South Asia to somebody completely removed from it is so humbling like sometimes I forget how cartoonishly insane all of it is. The racism factory that churns out new types of racisms
There really is no equivalent to the amount of social hierarchies in South Asia and how intricate they are which makes sense for a variety of reasons but do you know how sad it is to try and explain new types of oppression to people. To introduce people to social hierarchies they couldn’t have even dreamt up. The racism factory that produces new racisms
The notes on this 50 note post already shows how right I am. People don’t ask my caste because they can tell based off of the most basic level shit related to my life within the first few minutes of meeting me. the only people who ask my caste are white people who have no idea the gravity of what they’re saying
op feel free to tell me to shut up because I know I do not have a full grasp of this issue like I should BUT
I’m a child of indian immigrants in the west and I thought I understood casteism because we definitely brought that shit over with us to the new country, but I don’t think I really understood it until my dad was talking about his childhood.
we were talking about his childhood in the first place because he’s having some issues with his brothers right now (he’s the youngest kid and his brothers can’t accept that he’s a grown man that makes his own decisions (he’s 60)) and he was talking about how they used to be so close and their childhood was so good and blessed but then he was like ‘but maybe it was always rotten, maybe there was always this seed of judgement in us’
he was talking about how they, an upper mid caste family in a tiny farming village, would hire low caste workers to help out during the harvest. as part of their wages, they would get meals from the family. but because they were low caste, they weren’t allowed to use the same plates and cutlery as my family. it was thought that them using the dishes would permanently contaminate them. they weren’t even allowed to keep their own ‘contaminated’ plates in the house. instead, they would take their meals on banana leaf plates. and I was like ‘ok that’s fucked up but banana leaf plates are commonly used by all castes’
then my dad explained ‘if we were to give them sambar, they would dig a small hole in the ground and line it with leaves, and we would ladle the sambar into that. if they wanted water, we would ladle handfuls of it into their hands and they would drink it all and silently ask for the next ladle. this was part of my daily chores as a child, to feed grown men in such a degrading way. something about it felt wrong to me, but I was a child who couldn’t understand why.’
I was already shocked at that but then he continued ‘once, there were no banana leaves, so I went to give him the plate I was holding. the man wouldn’t even take it from me, knowing how the rest of my family would react. when he accidentally brushed against it, I was surprised and dropped the plate. he then picked up the plate and built a small fire from the branches nearby and threw the plate in. these were steel plates, so they could survive that. he then used a different leaf to pick up the plate once it had cooled enough to give it back to me. not once had I even spoken or asked him to do this, but he knew that the plate needed to be purified before it entered our house. I think I was eight years old.’
I think this was coming up for him because he was already realizing that his family weren’t always good people based on their interactions with him and this made him see their actions through a new light. my dad left the village and eventually the country fairly young so I think he hadn’t interrogated his fond childhood memories like that. honestly, it made me think less of my family.
I’ve heard some people compare castes to different sects of christianity and I don’t think that’s a good comparison. that’s bias based on thinking you’re the best. casteism is having a hierarchy and knowing exactly where you stand in that hierarchy and knowing that you can’t change that no matter what. that you are dirty and that you were born dirty and that you will never be clean.
being mid caste means we get shit from brahmins, so I thought I understood. I’d read about dalits, so I thought I understood. but that was the day I really started to understand.
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Midnight mantis 🌷 this month’s patreon print 💌 Patreon prints are made to a beautiful fine art quality! I’ll share some pictures later 🥰
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Stop for a moment you could be the reason my daughters survive on December 1st.
They say the Rafah crossing may open on December 1st, and for the first time in months, I feel there is one single chance for us to escape this darkness.
I am a father of three little girls: Alma, Lama, and Lina.
Every night they cry from fear and cold, and I can’t protect them the way a father should.
The opening of the crossing is our only path to safety,
and we still need 3770 Euro to reach the amount required to leave. Please DONATE NOW
Your donation — no matter the amount — could change my daughters’ future.
Vetted by gazavetters #520
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Hello everyone!
Today starts the LAST WEEK of the 3rd SICKO SELECTION, where 25 perverts came together (ha) to make a sale of horny prose, comics, and art books just for 25 bucks! I personally put together a two part bundle of The Temptations of Father Basil.
Check it out now, while you still can!
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Actually let me go ahead and say this because people have been commenting about Twilight on some of my La Push photos, and people get nostalgic for the Twilight series in autumn so there’s always an uptick in Twilight content across social media platforms this time of year:
It’s not only outrageously disrespectful to record ‘funny’ Twilight content at La Push, it’s also in direct violation of the Quileute Tribal Council’s media policies. Yes, even for personal use:ALT
I’ve seen several videos on Instagram, Tiktok, and Tumblr of people running in slow motion on beaches in La Push to the Twilight soundtrack. It’s not funny. It’s not cute.
If you’re planning to visit La Push, take 2 minutes to review that policy and the Quileute Tribe’s etiquette expectations.
Please stop making Twilight jokes & references on posts about La Push that have nothing to do with Twilight. I delete those comments from my posts.
Yes, plenty of people will remember several popular posts I made years ago about the Twilight vampires. I read the first book once, in 2007. I made posts about Twilight without remembering many details of the story, and I was ignorant to the damage the series had done (and still does) to the Quileute Tribe. I’m not posturing as 'pure’ or better than anyone else in that regard.
Only that I learned, and now I know better. You can too: Read about Quileute Facts vs. Twilight Fiction.
And I’ve said this before: I can’t actually stop you from engaging in Twilight media. But consider donating what you have or would spend on anything Twilight to the the Quileute Tribe’s Move to Higher Ground fund:
What’s at stake?
Living in a tsunami zone at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, a catastrophic earthquake can wipe out our community in less than 10 minutes – an entire generation of the Quileute people will cease to exist. We need your help to move our tribal community from a disaster zone to a safer, better, and higher ground.
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It’s a good day to pay reparations. Natives may reblog with your own payment links.
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genuine question — how is donating money going to help Palestinians if no food is going in? What is the money for?
Medicine, water, supplies, food, fuel (much of it black market being upsold at egregious prices) — these all cost money and pretty much all Palestinians in Gaza have no source of income now. It’s drops in the bucket compared to ending the siege and occupation but it’s one way to do at least something small to help. Others are in need of money to evacuate when the border opens again (which hopefully is asap…), tuition and supplies for school to continue studies despite it all. Another fund is focused on trying to rebuild farmlands in Gaza to get food again that way.
I can’t tell anyone what to do with their money but I don’t think this mindset of “well nothings going in so we can’t help” is helpful for people on the ground who are the ones saying that donations can and do help them survive.
The Sameer Project also explained where they’re getting food:
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donate to the sameer project:
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HIGH FASHION BIRDS BY - Deserted In Urban
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“They asked me to tell you what it was like to be twenty and pregnant in 1950 and when you tell your boyfriend you’re pregnant, he tells you about a friend of his in the army whose girl told him she was pregnant, so he got all his buddies to come and say, “We all fucked her, so who knows who the father is?” And he laughs at the good joke…. What was it like, if you were planning to go to graduate school and get a degree and earn a living so you could support yourself and do the work you loved—what it was like to be a senior at Radcliffe and pregnant and if you bore this child, this child which the law demanded you bear and would then call “unlawful,” “illegitimate,” this child whose father denied it … What was it like? […] It’s like this: if I had dropped out of college, thrown away my education, depended on my parents … if I had done all that, which is what the anti-abortion people want me to have done, I would have borne a child for them, … the authorities, the theorists, the fundamentalists; I would have born a child for them, their child. But I would not have born my own first child, or second child, or third child. My children. The life of that fetus would have prevented, would have aborted, three other fetuses … the three wanted children, the three I had with my husband—whom, if I had not aborted the unwanted one, I would never have met … I would have been an “unwed mother” of a three-year-old in California, without work, with half an education, living off her parents…. But it is the children I have to come back to, my children Elisabeth, Caroline, Theodore, my joy, my pride, my loves. If I had not broken the law and aborted that life nobody wanted, they would have been aborted by a cruel, bigoted, and senseless law. They would never have been born. This thought I cannot bear. What was it like, in the Dark Ages when abortion was a crime, for the girl whose dad couldn’t borrow cash, as my dad could? What was it like for the girl who couldn’t even tell her dad, because he would go crazy with shame and rage? Who couldn’t tell her mother? Who had to go alone to that filthy room and put herself body and soul into the hands of a professional criminal? – because that is what every doctor who did an abortion was, whether he was an extortionist or an idealist. You know what it was like for her. You know and I know; that is why we are here. We are not going back to the Dark Ages. We are not going to let anybody in this country have that kind of power over any girl or woman. There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness. We are not great powers. But we are the light. Nobody can put us out. May all of you shine very bright and steady, today and always.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin
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Aranyer Din Ratri (1970) dir. Satyajit Ray
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Good Substack post from a financial analyst who did a deep dive into poverty line calculations…some of this is written in a really irritating cadence but I do think people on here who are convincing themselves they’re class traitors for making $50k a year need to read this 😭
I also love the point he makes about the “participation ticket” mindset regarding certain goods & services: