Not Where You Grew Up. Not Where You’ll Be Living Soon. Where You’re Living Right Now.

Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays :)

Please enjoy these chilly lil’ guys :)))

They’re arguing about asking Tom and or Maddie to have take out for dinner, but they take it as serious as possible

Middle East Eye

Thousands of pregnant women left without essentials in Gaza

As winter sets in, starvation, lack of sanitation and water scarcity exacerbate dire humanitarian conditions

@samiraaymaan A pregnant mother of four, facing malnutrition and asthma, has been displaced several times and is fighting to ensure the safety of herself and her children. Her campaign launched on June 22nd and has received minimal donations. Please support Samira and her family to help them survive and secure the funds necessary for evacuation as soon as the borders reopen.

DONATE HERE

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The Rights of Disabled Americans Are Under Attack

We need to take action as soon as we can! Texas v. Becerra is an attack on disabled people and needs to be stopped.

What's happening? In the court case Texas v. Becerra, 17 states are suing the US government and because they are unhappy with additions made to Section 504 under the Biden Administration. They are asking the Justice Department to rule Section 504 unconstitutional!

What is Section 504? Section 504 is an extremely important law passed in the 1970s that protects disabled Americans from discrimination. If an entity, such as a school or hospital, receives money from the US government, it cannot discriminate against disabled people without losing that money.

Why are they asking for it to be ruled unconstitutional? In May of 2024, the Deparment of Health and Human Services issued updated guidelines for Section 504 to be more comprehensive and more specific about types of prohibited discriminatory actions against disabled people. Among these updated guidelines is an introduction that says (among many other things) that depending on the context, gender dysphoria could be a disability protected by Section 504. Naturally, because Republicans love to attack trans people, the Attorneys General of the 17 states, led by Ken Paxton of Texas, have launched a lawsuit about it.

Which states are part of the lawsuit? The 17 states are Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

What can I do to help? The most important thing to do is to spread awareness about this. Very few people outside of the disabled community are talking about this case, which is terrifying because without Section 504, disabled people will lose part of what protects us from discrimination. If you are not disabled, please talk about this!

Another thing that you can do to help is to contact the Attorney General of your state and ask them to take action! If you live in one of the states involved with the lawsuit, you can call the office of your Attorney General and ask them to withdraw from the lawsuit. If you live in a state not involved, you can contact your state's AG and ask them to file papers with the court in support of Section 504.

You might also want to contact your representatives in Congress to tell them about the court case and ask them to take action to protect their disabled constituents. Your Senators and Representatives may be able to contact the AG of your state or take other action in support of Section 504. Here is a sample phone script to get you started:

"Hi, my name is [Name] and I am one of your constituents living in [City/Town Name]. My address is [address] (this ensures that your message/phone call will be counted). I am calling today to ask you to take action to support Section 504 and protect the rights of disabled residents of [State]. The court case Texas v. Becerra is trying to make Section 504 unconstitutional, which would leave millions of Americans, including those in our state, vulnerable to discrimination. Please contact [Attorney General] and ask [him/her] to [withdraw from this case/file papers for this case in support of Section 504]. [You may want to talk about how Section 504 is relevant to your life either as a disabled person or as someone who cares about disabled people and/or civil rights generally.] Thank you for your attention."

I will also be contacting my representatives for my state's government and asking them to commit to protecting the rights of disabled people in my state, regardless of the outcome of Texas v. Becerra. Here is the script I will be using:

"Hi, my name is [Name] and I am one of your constituents living in [City/Town Name]. My address is [address] (this ensures that your message/phone call will be counted). As you may be aware, 17 states (including our own) have filed a lawsuit against the federal government in a case called Texas v. Becerra, which if successful would make Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act unconstitutional. This would make millions of Americans, including those in our great state, vulnerable to discrimination. I am calling today to ask you to commit to protecting the rights of disabled [state residents], regardless of the outcome of this court case. I hope that you will support or introduce state legislation that protects disabled [state residents] from discrimination and other forms of harm. [You may want to talk about your experience as a disabled person or someone who cares about disabled people.] Thank you for your attention and for your work as a legislator."

Where can I find more information about this case and about actions I can take? DREDF, the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, has a page on their website talking all about this case and what you can do to help. They have sample scripts for contacting your state's Attorney General, as well as contact information for the AGs in all 50 states. They also held a community briefing recently where they talked about the changes to Section 504 that were introduced by the Biden Administration, what is happening with the court case, and what community members can do. The webinar recording is about 45 minutes long and can be found here.

Additionally, this website has information about the percentage of each state's population that is disabled, as well as other info. You may want to include that information when calling your various representatives.

The court will begin considering all information about the case on Tuesday, February 25th, 2025. This means that we need to act fast!

If we all come together to protect Section 504, I firmly believe that we can be successful. Let's do this!

Y'all have gotta get more insane about platonic relationships like you are about romantic relationships. We need to get more annoying about them NOW. I need to see more meta and losing our minds over them. Get more annoying NOW. More than that. More than that also.

One Piece | Manga Volume 47

↓ Full Blueprints of the Thousand Sunny Ship by Eiichiro Oda

Splinter said knock you out 💥 TMNT

YouTube

Star Wars Limbs Removed | by Inverse

the thing is, kanan and hera are So. Young. they’re so young!!!!

i think one of the (kind of unfortunate) side effects of the fandom placing them in these boxes of “mom and dad of the group” is that a lot of people forget they’re really not THAT much older than sabine and ezra (or at least, comparatively, the age gap between sabine & ezra and kanan & hera isn’t as big as the age gap between zeb and the teens).

like kanan and hera are 28 and 24, respectively, in s1 of rebels. putting kanan at only 32 when he dies (again, that’s so young!!). sabine and ezra are 16 (going on 17) and 14 (going on 15) in s1. which means hera is barely 8 years older than sabine. there are plenty of siblings around the world that have that much of an age gap. obviously, those age gaps are going to lend to some differences in thinking, life experience, etc. but given that they’ve all grown up under the thumb of the empire, they have a lot of similar experiences, even with the age gap.

yes, kanan and hers themselves make jokes in canon about being the “parents” of the group (“make mom and dad proud”; saw referring to sabine and ezra as their kids; etc.) and i think it's a fair enough comparison, considering they're the founding members of the ghost crew. but they're not just the "parents"; they're friends with the other ghost crew members!

and, importantly, kanan and hera are also still just young adults! (young adults, as in, not middle-aged adults; not young adults in the way that ezra and sabine are young adults/teens. you know what i mean). they've accomplished a lot, they're competent and smart and mature, but they're young. they still make mistakes and sometimes screw up when talking about their feelings and yes, they teach the younger members of their crew valuable lessons, but they also learn a lot from the teens too. because they're still learning and growing!

anyway, just thinking about how kanan and hera were practically kids when they met, and how they've grown up together (and done a lot of growing as people, together), and how they take these younger teens under their wings and also a middle-aged lasat with no home to go back to, and they all grow and learn from each other.

Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.