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alexander mah kween

@jessevicoramon

24 | she/they | 🇵🇭 | 🏳️‍🌈 | ♏
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Fandom anti-Blackness can reach violent levels and every single time (normally, but not always) white fans engage in it, they quickly flip to the innocent card. "IM the one who's being harassed!" they claim as they say the ppl talking abt racism are ripping the fandom apart

Somehow they always know what real racism is. I was accused of harassing people for saying the bad batch was racist on my own blog to my own followers. I also had white people stalk me and lie both to and about me.

I complained about the George Floyd fic being a gross exploitation and how it's mere presence, regardless of how little attention it got, was a sign of some major racism issues. Someone called me a psyop, multiple accused me of being pro censorship, and a third

Said that we actually need racist books to show people that racism is wrong even though this was a stupid fanfiction and also that's not how racism works in the slightest. I said the world would blow up before ppl respect Black ppl and they changed their URL and

Acted like i had put a target on their back for being snappy.

Other Black fans get doxxing and death threats and have their jobs targeted. Some others get the cops called on them. The only thing that ever really rips fandom apart is racism, not Black people talking about it

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Controversial Truths About Ancient Egypt Masterpost

  • The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction
  • The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity
  • We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either
  • Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender
  • The gods didn’t actually have animal heads
  • Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)
  • The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous
  • Noses (and ears, and arms) broke off statues and reliefs for a variety of reasons, none of which are “there is a widespread archaeological conspiracy to hide the Egyptian ethnicity”
  • The carvings at Abydos aren’t modern machines but recarvings over old carvings. Sure they look like them but if you can read hieroglyphs and know that Ramesses II will even usurp the carvings of his own father just to be a little shit
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  • ‘No soot on the ceilings and walls of the Dendera temple!’ is actually because of extensive restoration works and not because Egyptians were in on shit like Baghdad “batteries”
  • While the Egyptians were fine-ass astronomers they didn’t align any of their enormous and/or important buildings to modern star constellations, because constellations look very different now than they did ~5000 years ago 
  • The pyramid is the simplest, sturdiest shape with which to build and many different cultures discovered this in their own time. There were never any weird fish humans/aliens involved
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  • The sphinx of Gizah is only an approximate 5000 years old; the 10,000 year/rain erosion nonsense is proven hokum
  • Speaking of that particular sphinx, the Napoleonic expedition is not responsible for its missing nose
  • Akhenaten was not a “heretic” by contemporary standards
  • Ramses II appropriated a lot of his predecessors’ buildings/reliefs and isn’t really deserving of the epithet “the Great”
  • The Battle of Kadesh ended in a stalemate (twice)
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  • While they had feline deities throughout their history, Egyptians didn’t actually worship cats themselves. This was a later Greek/Ptolemaeic addition
  • It was not, in fact, practice to shave off eyebrows after cats died; Herodotus lied about that
  • Herodotus lied about a lot of things and many misconceptions about ancient Egypt can be traced back to his Greek ass
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I can’t believe I forgot my favourite Hill to Die On

  • Seth was not the god of “evil”, and despite his chaos providing a foil to order, he wasn’t completely villified until very late in Egyptian history, when he became associated with despised foreign enemies
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Hats off to the few of you who’re reblogging this with tags saying you’re going to check my claims later. You make me not entirely despair of this hellhole.

Here are some vetted Egyptological books/sources (that are by and large appropriate for a lay-audience) you can find most, if not all of the above:

  • Lehner, M., The Complete Pyramids
  • Wilkinson, R. H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt
  • Hornung, E., The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt
  • Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C., Gods and Men in Egypt
  • Kemp, B., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization
  • Bard, K., An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
  • Stevenson Smith, W., The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt
  • Kitchen, K. A., The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt
  • Sweeney, D., Sex and Gender (in Ancient Egypt)
  • McDowell, A. G., Village Life in Ancient Egypt:  Laundry Lists and Love Songs
  • Te Velde, H., Seth, God of Confusion 
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Guys do me a solid and reblog this version instead of continuously asking for sources on the other versions thanks

You’re doing the good work, friend.

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brightbluecitylights

ok but can we go back to the ancient erotica pls

Just a few days before our interview, Jill’s (Ed: not her real name) immunologist sent her to the hospital to rule out pulmonary embolism, which happens when a blood clot gets stuck in an artery of the lung. In Jill’s case it would be a Long COVID symptom amongst many others she had been battling over the last year: including swelling around the tissue of her heart, memory deficits, sudden heart-rate surges, fatigue and abnormal kidney test results.

By that point, she’d had COVID four times, despite taking stringent precautions. She was born with a primary immune deficiency. And, without a fully functioning immune system she needs weekly injections of human immunoglobulins from plasma donations. A very small viral load can make her sick and she’s at a much higher risk of severe outcomes from COVID than most people.

“Every time I catch it, it adds new layers to my disabilities,” she says. “COVID is slowly killing me.” Her haematologist believes the past COVID infections have further damaged her immune system. She is looking at a possible lupus diagnosis.

Her voice is raspy and soft over the phone. She pauses when I ask how she is doing.

“Well, I got COVID,” she says. “Again.”

At the hospital appointment several nurses were not wearing their masks properly, and one kept pulling it down to talk with Jill, who had to remove hers to get her lungs checked. As someone who is very isolated with her family — everyone works and goes to school from home — Jill believes that the appointment led to her most recent infection.

She’s always been careful with her health but in the past, she worked in the school system. By 2020 she moved to a remote position and at that time still had many options for safely connecting with those around her and she could attend health-care appointments without concern. About a year ago, nearly all restrictions were lifted in Alberta and that’s when she got her first COVID infection.

Three years in, nearly everyone she knows has moved on including — most bafflingly to her — many of the medical professionals she sees. But, Jill says, moving on is not a privilege afforded to people like her.

Recently, PCR testing became inaccessible to health-care providers, who, in the past, were able to test regularly. And while Alberta Health Services (AHS) still requires masks, any health-care settings outside AHS can make their own rules. So, once masking was no longer mandated in public settings, many dropped requirements — this includes many of the specialists seeing immunocompromised people, including those Jill now sees due to Long COVID.

“The variants have been left to run rampant and I have really become more and more scared,” she says.

“Governments are saying: Oh we can re-open because we have all these tools. But they are not available to the immunocompromised population. So, the monoclonal antibodies are no longer effective against the current variants. Because the variants are so immune-based, the vaccines were never particularly effective for immunocompromised people because of the nature of our immune systems.”

As well, Jill says that there are many contraindicated drugs that cannot be taken with Paxlovid, the drug which is used to treat COVID patients in specific circumstances. According to Health Canada, Paxlovid “is used in adults to treat mild to moderate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in patients who have a positive result from a severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 viral test and who have a high risk of getting severe COVID-19, including hospitalization or death.”

She still takes the vaccines with hopes they will help, and while she believes Paxlovid is saving her life with this current infection, she says it is not a guarantee against more Long COVID symptoms. And, for the infection prior to the current one, the drug was not available due to a kidney infection caused by the virus.

“I have to access my medication, my health care. And by people not masking around me, I have no way to protect myself,” she says. “If you don’t want to wear masks as a society then you are going to leave the immunocompromised people behind.” And she says many high risk people are not able to work from home, or have their kids in online classes or maybe struggle to afford masks or air purifiers — many social and financial issues make individual protections far more challenging or impossible. She is currently in a court battle with her ex.

“He wants increased access, in-person school and group extracurricular activities. All things that put me at higher risk of infection,” says Jill.

Recently, she went to her cardiologist to find that no patients or staff were masking.

“I really realize now I have to be my own advocate,” she says.

She has to constantly think ahead. So, she now calls beforehand to see if the appointment can be done remotely or if the staff can mask. She’s also decided to start carrying around a laminated sheet that explains her medical condition as it is often something she needs to repeat at each appointment or in the emergency room. 

Like many others, she’s found ways to navigate her way around a harrowing array of risks. And yet, even with all these precautions, she can not control the actions of others which can directly affect her health.

Holly (Ed: not her real name), is retired and lives in a small community just outside Edmonton. She’s currently thinking about her next visit to her doctor, who hasn’t been taking precautions from the beginning.

“It’s exhausting always trying to get around how there is no protection for us anymore,” she says. “I’m thinking why am I made to feel crazy when my own doctor won’t wear a mask? Won’t acknowledge that it’s airborne?”

But the worst part, she claims, was that he minimized the effects of COVID, saying it was rarely an issue and only affects a certain demographic. Holly does not believe that is true, but regardless it is of little comfort when her husband, who’s in his 70s, has chronic health complications.

“I think patients are rightfully concerned, particularly when they go in for health care,” says physician Neeja Bakshi. “I think the medical community should be doing whatever we can to protect those who are coming in.”

It’s true, she says, that hospitals are no longer overwhelmed, and fewer people are dying; there is less of an acute emergency. But COVID is still circulating, people are still dying, and Long COVID (aka post COVID-19 condition) should be on everyone’s radar.

Recently, the World Health Organization announced an end to the global health emergency. But it also said earlier that “one in 10 infections result in post COVID-19 condition suggesting that hundreds of millions of people will need longer term care.”

COVID can cause organ damage — particularly affecting the heart, kidneys, skin. Plus, there’s risk of brain and immune damage, along with increased risks for cancer and autoimmune disease.

And, while no one knows yet how long that damage could persist, a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine says 59 per cent of Long COVID patients had organ damage a year later.

In 2022, Bakshi started a Long COVID clinic at her health facility Park Integrative Health, treating patients from across Canada. Every week she completes upwards of 20 disability forms for people who need to take time off work due to the debilitating effects of Long COVID.

While certain health complications make Long COVID more likely, anyone can be affected regardless of the severity of their infection or the state of their health. The indiscriminate nature of COVID is one of the things that’s been most shocking to Bakshi. She’s treated a number of elite athletes who went from performing at a professional level to struggling to have enough energy to brush their teeth.

Many patients struggle with stigma not just from medical professionals but from family, friends and employers. It’s an invisible illness, says Bakshi, so patients may look fine and are often misdiagnosed as something psychosomatic.

“I’m immersed in the world. But I don’t feel like you can deny it exists. And I think it’s a bit of ignorance on the medical community’s part if they say they don’t know anything about Long COVID. There are very specific disease patterns and symptoms,” says Bakshi.

There is also a lack of support. The most proven management strategy for Long COVID or even any COVID infection is recovery and rest, says Bakshi. But that’s not possible for many people. Initially, in 2020, there was forced rest through quarantine periods, but that time off has become shorter, as employers don’t have to pay for employees to be off at all.

“We are not a society that is built on support. We’ve already set ourselves up to fail from a recovery perspective,” says Bakshi.

Jill has found validation in Bakshi’s clinic as one of her patients. But that experience stands out amongst a sea of specialists who have given up on precautions.

“Instead of recommending upgraded masks, air cleaners and UV, or working from home, immunologists that manage my condition recommend wearing a mask if you want and enjoying your life—as short as that may be. I am not sure if this is complacency, or giving up… Either way, education and change need to happen or far too many valuable lives will be lost and disabled unnecessarily,” says Jill.

Savvy AF.  Blunt AF.  Edmonton AF.

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Children of Shatila’ (Lebanon, 1998) film by Mai Masri. In this scene the youth of the Palestinian refugee camp interview an elder with a video camera.

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Anonymous asked:

WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU EVER POST YOUR FULL NAME AND ADDRESS YOU STUPID FUCKING CUNT YOU DESERVE TO GET SWATTED

Do you honest to god think my full name is Walter Hartwell White and I live at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane

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not sure why people don't seem to understand that shiv being the victim of misogyny and vitriol from all the men in her life can and does coexist with the fact that she is not a feminist liberal hero fighting to save democracy. why is it that we never afford her any nuance? she's either the only good person on the show and deserves to kill every man in a ten foot radius (twitter) or a uniquely evil cruel sociopath with no heart fueled entirely by spite (reddit). is it not just so much more interesting for her to be a fascism aiding and abetting character like the rest of them who also views herself as more progressive in spite of everything else about her and who undergoes horrific treatment at the hands of the men around her yet has no interest in undoing the system that allows them to do so, only in ruling it herself? shiv is not any better than the others nor is she any worse than them. there's no Evil Olympics here guys, nor should there be. snook said it herself in the after credits sequence -- shiv was just lucky that her interests aligned with her sympathies. who knows what she would've done had mencken been her best personal option? yes she cares infinitely more about politics than roman, yes she is still very much interested in maintaining the capitalist, fascist structure and even strengthening it, so long as it ends with her on top (which either way would be a win for liberal causes bc Woman). fascism isn't one-size-fits-all. it's not just mencken and trump. it's also mattson. it's also logan. it's also roman and shiv and kendall. that's... kind of one of the main points of succession? but even so, that does not negate the fact that as a woman it is so hard to watch some of the scenes with her and tom/roman/kendall -- of course that misogyny will resonate with female viewers, as it should!!! but that resonance needs to coexist with a deeper understanding of her character -- if you want to root for a bad bitch fighting against misogyny go watch, i don't know, captain marvel or whatever. what makes shiv interesting is that she's so so so much more than that -- she is the product, victim, and perpetrator of misogyny and fascism, two concepts so heavily intertwined they're virtually inextricable from each other. tl;dr it's one thing to be like my god someone give shiv a gun and it's another entirely to say, entirely seriously, that shiv is the Good Liberal Feminist One and the rest are all evil. like i absolutely adore shiv but i would honest to god find her so fucking boring if she were actually the person these tweets make her out to be i'm sorry

This is hilarious to me, although it is sad that dogs being friendly is a bad thing, especially because it is so easy to trigger them back to "friend, friend, pets please".

I love drug sniffing dogs, I cook bacon before heading to the airport and the drug sniffing dogs run up and love on me. It freaks other travelers out because they think it means I'm just loaded up with drugs but I know what the signal is and they never do that. They just love the smell of bacon and it kicks them out of work mode in two seconds and they just want cuddles and pets. One TSA dude was mad at me because he had specifically never introduced his dog to bacon and now me smelling like it had ruined things and completely distracted his dog. Hey man, not my fault you didn't train your dog properly.

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“available with premium subscription” “will be removed on the 31st” “available free with ads” “rent 4.99 buy 20.00″ “not available in your country” “not available on this device” what if every streaming service fucking killed itself and films ran around their fields free and organic in their natural state

What was the point in animal planet airing those incredibly convincing fake documentaries about dragons and mermaids

If the aim was to convince incredibly gullible children that they were real it worked on me

I distinctly remember watching these and being like why is no one talking about this this is INSANE and then my mom had to explain that it’s fake

Sorry for believing animal planet. The channel that tells me facts about animals 99.9% of the time

Note: the bulk of this thread was posed on 11/5/2020 and was added to sporadically thru 8/13/2021. This is Part 1 because apparently it's too long for tumblr? Part 2 Part 3

So you want to know more about antisemitism outside the context of Nazis ...

99.99999% of conspiracy theories are either rooted in antisemitism or antisemitism is a key component

Yad Vashem has a bunch of things, here’s a free online course about antisemitism:

Poke around the National Museum of American Jewish History’s site (it’s The Best Jewish museum in the US, IMO).

Handy guide with examples from social media:

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is great and has a number of informational threads.

On Antisemitism:

On Judeo-Christian and why you should delete it from your vocabulary:

On why you should stop using “Pharisees” as a pejorative:

Here’s an essay on why “fake Christian” and “not a real Christian” are harmful rhetoric:

(Look, I get the impulse. Ben Shapiro is shitbag. So are Laura Loomer, Stephen Miller, Mort Klein, etc. but No True Scotsman-ing isn’t actually helpful.)

“But Israel!” Nope. Stop right there. Explainers:

(My main critique of both of these is that they’re pretty Ashkenormative and gloss over the effect Israel’s creation had on Mizrahi Jews living in other MENA countries.)

Short thread/statement from a Palestinian activist that succinctly summarizes his distaste with folks using Palestinians to legitimize their antisemitism:

https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/980015842460016640?s=21

Thread from a Black Jew about how Jews are often perceived by Gentiles of Color, which is a helpful perspective on how positive stereotypes and proximity to whiteness can put marginalized communities in conflict. These conflicts doubly hurt those who belong to both:

https://twitter.com/thespinsterymc/status/1189266271923257349?s=21

self proclaimed schizoposter nervously typing '911' into their phone and hovering their thumb above the 'call' key as they hawkishly watch a disheveled guy at a bus stop make repetitive movements and ramble to himself

You know what lemme just come back to this post because I (physically disabled, joint pain, cane user) was on a full train last night with the biggest heaviest backpack you could imagine bcs I’ve just become homeless and I was on my way to a friends house. I tried to ask people for a seat and got flat out ignored. Nobody would even look at me. It got to a point where I was literally shaking crying sobbing dry heaving resorting to begging “I’m really sorry everyone but can someone please give me their seat I have joint problems I’m in a lot of pain”, speaking to people directly “excuse me but you’re in priority seating and I’m disabled and I really need to sit down” and the only person in the whole train who would even LOOK at me while I was wheezing and clutching my stomach and sweating about to pass out in some of the most rancid pain I’ve ever felt in my life. was an old disheveled guy with a tic who was mumbling to himself. and he quietly tried to console me and convinced me to just sit on someone’s suitcase. I hope all the unnatural hair coloured pierced 20 somethings on that train that night ESPECIALLY never know peace for the rest of their fucking lives

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You seriously can’t call yourself a leftist or a progressive or whatever if you can’t treat other people like actual human beings. I’ve had disheveled people who a lot of ppl would assume are homeless, be quicker to offer me a place to sit on a train than 20 somethings with unnatural hair color and “Be Gay do Crime” pins and stickers do that (esp when I injured my ankle coming back from work nobody except a mumbling elderly lady offered me their seat). They’re also not the ones who threaten to call cops on me when I’m taking foodstuffs from grocery stores! You can post about anarchy and being progressive and unhinged all you want but the fact that you would treat people who are physically disabled and in poverty this way makes you just as an awful person as anybody else

saw a tik tok a few days ago that was like “gen z and young millennials want to fight for systemic change but don’t want to do the work on an individual level and like won’t even be nice to strangers because they ‘don’t owe anyone anything’” and it’s just so fucking true. we can’t demand systemic change if we can’t even be decent to the people we claim to fight for when we see them face to face.

speaking as a pierced physically and mentally disabled 20something year old with colored hair this is absolutely true. they "don't owe anyone anything" including basic human decency i guess. i have a tic t disorder and the amount of people that age who just stare at me like i'm ducking crazy....the ones who eye me when i'm struggling with my forearm crutches in the store, the ones who look at me funny when i'm half crying in pain. "be gay do crime" the do crime part matters actually. it's all "i would always look the other way if i saw someone taking food in the grocery store" unless that means you actually see someone do it. "radical compassion" until it means giving up your seat on public transport. y'all are so fake and these words mean nothing, it's sad.

as a bi person, the bisexual flag brings me infinite joy and always puts a smile on my face, however as a person who has a Passion for Graphic Design, that undersaturated shade of purple infuriates me when it's used digitally

like, on an actual flag - which was its original purpose - it looks great!

those look fine! lovely, even! with the semi-transparent fabric, the way it catches the sunlight, it looks beautiful!

but now look at how it looks digitally

the pink and blue are so vibrant compared to the sad, lonely lavender!

and let's look at this statement from Michael Page, the creator of the bi flag:

(sidenote: he created this flag in 1998, so if his takes on bisexuality is different from yours, it's okay to notice that! a lot has changed since the 90s when it comes to lived experiences and the way we describe them. but, it's also important to respect his thoughts about this and the way he presented them, even if today, we'd probably not say that bi people "blend unnoticeably into both the gay/lesbian and straight communities.")

so in pantone colors, the pink is 226 C, the blue is 286 C, and the purple of the flag is 258 C.

but...here's the deal

Michael talks here about how the key to understanding the symbolism is to know that the purple blends into both the pink and blue. and on a physical flag, I think you can see that!

but digitally, it absolutely does not blend. it clashes badly, and looks oddly separate from the other two colors.

which got me wondering...what purple do you get if you actually blend 226 C and 286 C?

oh! oh, my god.

look at that! look at how nicely it fits between those colors!

look at it next to the original color scheme! look at how much more vibrant the purple is!

and friends. this is just blending through rgb! you get even more purple variations when you use other color spaces!

let's compare all of them:

(top: original, lab. middle: lrgb, lch. bottom: rgb, hsl)

look at all of the different purple options you can get just by combining these two colors!

if you want almost too-vibrant saturation, you can go hsl, if you want something more relaxed that's closer to the original, you can go lab or lrgb. and if you want to split the difference, lch is bright and violet, while rgb is there with its saturated but darker purple.

anyway, I guess I don't really have a point here? this isn't so much an informational post as it is Me Getting Weird About Colors, but I think it is a useful lesson about how colors look very different on screens compared to how they look on objects in real life.

and sometimes, I think it's okay to compensate for that.

out of all of these, this is my favorite bi flag:

it's the one where the colors were blended in lab color space. for me, the lighter, softer purple is close enough to the original bi flag purple, while also feeling like a smoother blend of the blue and pink

but that's just me! and it might not even look the same to you, since every screen is different, because technology is a nightmare!

anyway, thank you for coming with me on this colorful journey! I will now retreat back to inkscape and make pained sounds about inkstitch gradients until something tangible pulls me back into reality

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One of the biggest LGBT center in China was shut down

International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia

Beijing LGBT Center, one of the biggest LGBT support group (NPO) was shut down by government on 5/15/2023, two days before International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. It was one of a few lasted after last year big-scale shut down, and only 16 of them existing after Beijing LGBT Center was shut down, Chinese LGBT people are facing more and more risks for only exisiting.