apparentlyiwritesometimes

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You gotta give props to Mads Mikkelsen for playing such a pretentious character who constantly talks in metaphors because I know for a fact he didn’t understand at least half of what he was saying, but still slayed that role so hard

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im on a quest to create the perfect hot chocolate recipe for this Christmas and I want to do it from scratch, dont want to go down the hershey's/cadbury's hot chocolate powder route. there was this one hot chocolate I had in Melbourne when I was 10 and I have been trying to recreate that ever since. help me by dropping your recipes/family's ways of making hot chocolate I want it to be hashtag special.

#hot chocolate #christmas #I am bored and I want to leave my bed and do something productive and making hot chocolate will make me happy

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this is so true though. think of all the responses to the show You as well being like "if I were there", like baby girl,,,,,

those of us who felt hatred or a sense of "how fucking stupid and ignorant and blind and gullible could you be???" while watching Alana bloom in Hannibal is very. reminiscent of how on some level, a small part of EVERYONE likes to believe that if they were ever in close contact w a serial killer without their knowing, they would be spared because they are "special" and would be able to bring some unique side of him that other victims don't. or like to think that they wouldn't be "as oblivious as the other victims" because they are somehow "smarter" and have a keen unique eye for signs "unlike" others.

but I do think a small part of all of us believes that if the worst of serial killers somehow fell in love with us, we would be spared. and we would be "chosen" to stay alive due to some innate uniqueness in us that would "bring out" some softness in the killer that "others can't."

thoughts?

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those of us who felt hatred or a sense of "how fucking stupid and ignorant and blind and gullible could you be???" while watching Alana bloom in Hannibal is very. reminiscent of how on some level, a small part of EVERYONE likes to believe that if they were ever in close contact w a serial killer without their knowing, they would be spared because they are "special" and would be able to bring some unique side of him that other victims don't. or like to think that they wouldn't be "as oblivious as the other victims" because they are somehow "smarter" and have a keen unique eye for signs "unlike" others.

but I do think a small part of all of us believes that if the worst of serial killers somehow fell in love with us, we would be spared. and we would be "chosen" to stay alive due to some innate uniqueness in us that would "bring out" some softness in the killer that "others can't."

thoughts?

#hannibal fandom #hannibal lecter #hannigram #hannibal #hannibal nbc #nbc hannibal #nbc hannigram #hannibal meme #will graham #murder husbands #alana bloom #abigail hobbs #jack crawford #hugh dancy #mads mikkelsen #this is my design #bryan fuller

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one thing about me is i can excuse basically any crime if you serve enough cunt. murder, piracy, arson, cannibalism, theft, all of that is ok for me if you’re real sexy about it. i have a purely vibes-based morality system

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I was talking to my friend who has been going through a hard time and after ltrly listing every horrible thing that's been happening to him at work, school, family, etc. - after CLEARLY recognising what are the agents contributing to his current feelings, he goes "I don’t know, maybe I’m just exaggerating all of this and it’s just in my head."

,,,,,,GIRL

and that's when I started thinking- why is “it being in your head” immediately correlated with it “not being real enough” as though only whatever is observable outside your head is real? Whatever is “In your head” is a direct response to whatever is happening “outside” so it is logically impossible for you to be exaggerating it.

If what’s “in your head” seems exaggerated then that means your circumstances outside your head are exaggerated versions of insanity in themselves. Enough of gaslighting yourself into thinking what you "think" or "feel" may not be real or AS REAL as everything "outside", these things don't function in mutually exclusive vacuums.

#actually mentally ill #gaslight gatekeep girlboss #gaslighting #trauma posting #emotional abuse #burnout #mental health #mental illness #stress #mental heath support #feelings

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Palestine poetry: We teach life, sir.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits filled enough with statistics to counter measured response.

And I perfected my English and I learned my UN resolutions.

But still, he asked me, Ms. Ziadah, don’t you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children?

Pause.

I look inside of me for strength to be patient but patience is not at the tip of my tongue as the bombs drop over Gaza.

Patience has just escaped me.

Pause. Smile.

We teach life, sir.

Rafeef, remember to smile.

Pause.

We teach life, sir.

We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky.

We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies.

We teach life, sir.

But today, my body was a TV’d massacre made to fit into sound-bites and word limits.

And just give us a story, a human story.

You see, this is not political.

We just want to tell people about you and your people so give us a human story.

Don’t mention that word “apartheid” and “occupation”.

This is not political.

You have to help me as a journalist to help you tell your story which is not a political story.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.

How about you give us a story of a woman in Gaza who needs medication?

How about you?

Do you have enough bone-broken limbs to cover the sun?

Hand me over your dead and give me the list of their names in one thousand two hundred word limits.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits and move those that are desensitized to terrorist blood.

But they felt sorry.

They felt sorry for the cattle over Gaza.

So, I give them UN resolutions and statistics and we condemn and we deplore and we reject.

And these are not two equal sides: occupier and occupied.

And a hundred dead, two hundred dead, and a thousand dead.

And between that, war crime and massacre, I vent out words and smile “not exotic”, “not terrorist”.

And I recount, I recount a hundred dead, a thousand dead.

Is anyone out there?

Will anyone listen?

I wish I could wail over their bodies.

I wish I could just run barefoot in every refugee camp and hold every child, cover their ears so they wouldn’t have to hear the sound of bombing for the rest of their life the way I do.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre

And let me just tell you, there’s nothing your UN resolutions have ever done about this.

And no sound-bite, no sound-bite I come up with, no matter how good my English gets, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite will bring them back to life.

No sound-bite will fix this.

We teach life, sir.

We teach life, sir.

We Palestinians wake up every morning to teach the rest of the world life, sir.

- Rafeef Ziadah, Palestinian poet and human rights activist.

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The Palestine Reader

The following is a collection of articles, essays, and books on Palestine. These are not introduction texts to the question of Palestine or the Palestinain-Israeli “conflict”. If you need one read The Palestine-Israel Conflict by Gregory Harms and Todd Fery. Further, this is not an “unbiased” or “neutral” readng list. Everything listed below is counter-hegemonic. I feel absolutely no need to provide anything from the Zionist or Israeli point-of-view when that is the dominant narrative. With that said, I believe this provides a diverse, but in no means comprehensive, overview of the discourse on Palestine. A continuously updated page of this list can be found here.

On Theory

Orientalism by Edward Said

Orientalism Reconsidered by Edward Said

The Question of Palestine by Edward Said

Reading Said in Hebrew by Ella Shohat

Notes on the “Post-Colonial” by Ella Shohat

On History

History of Palestine by Dr. Mohsen Mohammed Saleh

Sabra and Shatila: September 1982 by Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout

Peace and its Discontents by Edward Said

On Being Palestinian

What It Means to be Palestinian by Dina Matar

A Narrative of Palestinian Dispossession by Samia Costandi

The Palestinian Exile as Writer by Jabra I. Jabra

My People Shall Live by Leila Khaled

Memoirs, 1948 Part I by Fauzi Al-Qawuqji

Memoirs, 1948 Part II

Palestinian Identity and the Performance of Catastrophe by Ihab Saloul

On Zionism

Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims by Edward Said

Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims by Ella Shohat

Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism by Judith Butler

The Invention of the Mizrahim by Ella Shohat

Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky

Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Israel Shahak

The Ends of Zionism by Joseph Massad

The Persistence of the Palestinian Question by Joseph Massad

On Imperialism and Settler Colonialism in West Asia by Jamil Hilal

The Hidden History of Zionism by Ralph Schoenman

How the Zionists Took Over Palestine by Adel Safty

Imperial Israel and the Palestinians by Nur Masalha

After Zionism by Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moor

On the Holocaust

Respecting the Holocaust by Howard Zinn

The Holocaust: Learning the Wrong Lessons by Boaz Evron

The Victimhood of the Powerful by Jennifer Peto

On Media

Propaganda, Perception, and Reality by William A. Cook

Israeli Cinema an interview with Ella Shohat

Israeli Cinema by Ella Shohat

Palestinian Cinema by Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi

On Al Nakba

The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe

The Saga of Deir Yassin

The Fall of Lydda by Spiro Munayyer

Returning to Kafr Bir'im

How Palestine became Israel by Stephen Hallbrook

The Palestinian Exodus of 1948 by Simha Flapan

Why Did the Palestinians Leave by Walid Khalidi

Selected Documents on 1948

The Limits of the New Israeli History by Joel Beinin

On Genocide

Genocide or Erasure of Palestinians by Kathleen and Bill Christison

Israel’s Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine by Steve Lendman

Ongoing Palestinian Genocide by Gideon Polya

The Lessons of Violence by Chris Hedges

The Brutal Siege of Gaza Can Only Breed Violence by Karen Koning AbuZayd

The Olive Trees of Palestine Weep by Sonja Karkar

Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust by Richard Falk

Gaza is Dying by Patrick Cockburn

Israeli Immunity for Genocide by Andrea Howard

Palestinian Misery in Perspective by Paul De Rooij

A Slow, Steady Genocide an interview with Tanya Reinhart

Gaza’s Holocaust by Dr. Elias Akleh

Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion by Adi Ophir

The British in Palestine, A Conveniently Forgotten Holocaust by Robert Fisk

European Collusion in Israel’s Slow Genocide by Omar Barghouti

Genocide in Gaza by Ilan Pappe

Genocide Among Us by Curtis F. J. Doebbler

Bleaching the Attrocities of Genocide by Kim Petersen

The Rape of Palestine by William A. Cook

Israel Plots Another Palestinian Exodus by Jonathan Cook

Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing by Uri Avnery

Disappearing Palestine by Jonathan Cook

The Problem With Israel by Jeff Halper

Gaza in Crisis by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe

Drying Out the Palestinians

Israel’s Latest Assault on Gaza by Norman Finkelstein

To Gaza I Did Not Go by Gideon Levy

Gaza, the World’s Largest Open-Air Prison by Noam Chomsky

The Most Humane Little Checkpoint by Amira Hass

On BDS

BDS: Winning Justice for the Palestinian People

Why Boycott Israeli Universities?

The Necessity of Cultural Boycott by Ilan Pappe

Companies Supporting Israeli Occupation

On Solutions

Two-State Illusion by Ian S. Lustick

Relative Humanity: The Essential Obstacle to a One-State Solution by Omar Barghouti

Where Now For Palestine? by Jamil Hilal

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I am only alive when the people who fund genocides around the world stamp a seal on a piece of paper

I am alive because they have declared and confirmed that i am not lying about my death

A death which needs their seal too

But not the kind they stamp everyday to fund murders that they then declare real through their legal documents

One seal to welcome me into the glass ceiling

One seal to break me free from it

Two certificates denote my transient existence in time

Declared by another transient power force who are deluded by their immortality

Two certificates to tell the world i did not lie about living

I did not fake my death

Out of greed to continue reaping the

benefits of the glass ceiling

But it doesnt exist because it doesnt have a birth or death certificate

Only a license to kill.

Two certificates to tell the world i did not lie about living

I did not fake my death

Out of yearning to continue exploiting the

benefits of the face of the seal that declares i live that also declares to kill those they deem deserving not of

Certificates and confirmations

Your life is not worth being confirmed.

If your certificate is refused to be sealed,

Your fate is.

A life confined within power structures we rebel against

A proof i need to show if i want to

Receive a vaccination so as to not die

For which i need proof again

A proof i need to show if i want to put a roof above my head

If i want to marry the man i love

Only a man

A proof i need to show if i want a degree

Which is another proof i need if i want a job

Which is another proof i need if i want respect

Which is another proof i am told i need to lead a dignified life

And what is the proof of that life?

my breath does not suffice

I need to be authenticated by old men in power

“Yes, you were born. You are alive”

Only to turn into a statistic when i die.

#poems on tumblr #poetry #writer #genocide #power #government #free will #poem #glass ceiling #civil rights #human rights #right to life

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— Mandy Shunnarah

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A series of poems from Palestine, curated by the poet and translators Fady Joudah and Lena Tuffaha.

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There's a plentiful supply of nature and ecology writers that criticize "Anthropocentrism" and tell readers that we shouldn't consider ourselves more important than other life forms, and then they write things that are like "We evolved to live in Nature in a Natural environment...Long ago humans lived as hunter-gatherers instead of farming and domesticating animals...But when civilization was created, man unnaturally subjugated and modified plants and animals...Bringing them under human control for his own benefit...Man replaces natural ecosystems with artificially created "post-natural" environments...Now humans live in an unnatural environment that is separated from Nature...and i'm like buddy. do you even hear yourself

Since I have access to a bigger library now, I've explored "deep ecology" and "green anarchism" and "Biocentrism" a bit more and what i've seen is still kinda silly. The writers have very thoughtful theory and philosophy of diverse subjects relating to morality, society, power, and liberation, but...they just don't know very much about Nature.

I mean several things by that: first, they're not clear on the boring, practical details of things like food systems and the way construction alters ecosystems, second, they don't try to clearly define what "nature" is, and third, they act like "nature" has a clear definition anyway.

Now nature is pretty much undefinable anyway, a couple possible definitions are "all things that exist, have existed, or are possible in the universe" and "the thing that a forest has that a parking lot doesn't." You can say "biodiversity," but every space has biodiversity, and it's not clear how much biodiversity a space is "supposed" to have, we're just going on vibes. And the vibes are right, in a way; I visited an old-growth forest and it was DIFFERENT than any place i'd ever been in a way that is hard to describe. A flourishing, biodiverse ecosystem is different than a parking lot, a lawn, a monoculture field of corn. They say it's good for your health to be "in nature." What does that mean? At what point does a place become "nature?" How many trees does it have to have?

Something that is so painful to me is when people write "Human activities" as a cause of biodiversity loss. This is an act of cowardice. WHICH human activities? Name them.

A lot of nature and ecology writings treat humans like they have an anti-biodiversity force field that emanates from them. They write like lands on Earth are each contested between two inversely proportional forces, "Nature" and "Humans."

Without any more information, this is ethereal bullshit on par with crystals having energies. I am totally perplexed at the lack of curiosity about the specific causes and details of "human impacts." The division of habitats by so many roads and relentless speeding of cars with no way for wildlife to cross...the dumping of massive amounts of poison into soils and water...the wounding and disturbance of topsoil...these are the "human activities," but we can imagine a world without such destruction, and we can create that world.

Too many essays and papers talking about Nature non-specifically, an Idea of Nature, a Concept that everyone just intuitively knows. Nature is...you know...wildness! and trees! and...well, you know, NATURE!

And we do know! When we step out into the parking lot surrounded by low, squarish buildings and blaring signs and the stink of car exhaust, we know that something is very wrong with this place! Even we find these horrible un-places harsh and unwelcoming.

But it is very hard to imagine something different, because the other type of place, the place that is beautiful and soothes the spirit and is full of life, is by definition the place where humans only go to visit, the complete opposite and inverse of a place where humans work and live! Wherever humans live, shop, eat, fulfill their daily needs, that place is Not Nature.

The huge mistake, is that we believe that it is necessary to have places that are Not Nature. We believe that for humans to exist, areas must be set aside where the very concept of Nature is utterly obliterated.

From this imaginary and dismal point of view, we have to carefully confine our own lives to places that are utterly poisoned, sterilized, made into a hostile wasteland, and leave all the rest of the living biosphere to itself in pristine preserves.

And in this imaginary and dismal point of view, the one that divides Earth into Nature and Humans, it is okay to poison and to sterilize and to destroy, because humans must live SOMEWHERE, therefore Nature must be utterly excluded from at least SOME of Earth.

BUT...WHAT IF EVERYWHERE IS NATURE? What if the dandelions in the cracks of the pavement, the lichens growing on the park bench, the wildflowers on the side of the road, the sparrows in the parking lot—what if they are all Nature just as much as anything else? What if they too are sacred? What if it is our responsibility to see the connectedness of all life and to care for all ecosystems, however broken and hurt they may be?

What if Nature is not distant and abstract, untouched in some pristine place, but always reaching out, digging into the crumbled concrete and gravel and compacted ground, clawing to return to us and bring us back home?

It does not take away from the value of the old-growth forest or the unplowed prairie if we open our eyes and see even the scraggliest patch of overgrown weeds for the powerful manifestation of Nature it truly is.

Nature is not a place or a thing. Nature is the Movement, the Endless Happening, constantly alive throughout all life, the way of all things being family, the way of all things taking care of each other, the way of all life being constantly transformed through one another. You breathe the breath of the trees of your home, you drink the water of the streams of your home, you eat the sunlight that falls on your home, grown in the soil where all things go to be transformed through death into a new form of life, fed by the mycorrhizal network, pollinated by the bees, wasps, flies, and moths, nourished by the bone, blood and manure of beasts, and ultimately the fertile river valleys where agriculture first began, were replenished by the rich silt that washed down the river, which came from the forests in the mountains that shed their leaves to make a feast for a million decomposing critters, which is how the rich soil is made.

In this way they all take care of you, and in return you are asked to Live—to take care of them in return, to live as part of the great family of everything alive, to live, to live

What are human activities...? Deforestation? Mining? Spraying pesticides? Building housing developments? But is that all? Are we inherently a "bad" and "destructive" species, or is our ability to acquire and pass down knowledge, use tools and novel behaviors, alter our surroundings, shape ecosystems, adapt our lifestyles almost infinitely, and persist in almost any environment, simply incredibly powerful for good or for evil?

First of all, what better way to demonstrate a contrast to anthropocentrism...than to compare the impact of humans alone to the impact of an ENTIRE KINGDOM OF LIFE, the fungi????? Of course all of Fungi are more important than one single species??? Wtf?!?!?

But also, we should not convince ourselves of our own insignificance and worthlessness to the biosphere, because in the same way that individual self-loathing can be a way to avoid the hard work of loving oneself and advocating for the love one deserves, collective self-loathing as a species is a way of avoiding the responsibility we have to other life forms.

How can this author not think of a single role Humans play in the ecosystem?? What species plants trees, saves seeds, documents rare plants, rescues injured animals and heals them, raises orphaned chicks, manages controlled burns, digs ponds, thoughtfully harvests in anticipation of future seasons, mercifully culls in understanding of suffering that cannot be fixed? What species writes a new chapter in the genome of the American Chestnut so it can be saved from extinction? What species mends the broken kakapo egg with sticky tape? What species addresses their own habitat with that fondest name of Home?

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Palestine Masterlist 

Introduction to Palestine: 

Decolonize Palestine:

Palestine 101

Rainbow washing 

Frequently asked questions 

Myths 

IMEU (Institute for Middle East Understanding):

Quick Facts - The Palestinian Nakba 

The Nakba and Palestinian Refugees 

The Gaza Strip

The Palestinian catastrophe (Al-Nakba)

Al-Nakba (documentary)

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (book)

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (book)

Nakba Day: What happened in Palestine in 1948? (Article)

The Nakba did not start or end in 1948 (Article)

Donations and charities: 

Al-Shabaka

Electronic Intifada 

Adalah Justice Project 

IMEU Fundraiser 

Medical Aid for Palestinians 

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund 

Addameer

Muslim Aid

Palestine Red Crescent

Gaza Mutual Aid Patreon

Books:

A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine

The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge

Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean

The Balfour Declaration: Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine

Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique

From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948

Captive Revolution - Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System

Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History

Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of The Palestinians 1876-1948

The Battle for Justice in Palestine Paperback

Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom

Palestine Rising: How I survived the 1948 Deir Yasin Massacre

The Transformation of Palestine: Essays on the Origin and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer, and the Palestinians 1949-1996

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood

A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples

Where Now for Palestine?: The Demise of the Two-State Solution

Terrorist Assemblages - Homonationalism in Queer Times

Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East

The one-state solution: A breakthrough for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock

The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians

Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians

The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

Ten myths about Israel

Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, New and Revised Edition

Israel and its Palestinian Citizens - Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State

Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy

Greater than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine

Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History

Palestinian Culture:

Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture

Palestinian Costume

Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution

Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora

Embroidering Identities: A Century of Palestinian Clothing (Oriental Institute Museum Publications)

The Palestinian Table (Authentic Palestinian Recipes)

Falastin: A Cookbook

Palestine on a Plate: Memories from My Mother’s Kitchen

Palestinian Social Customs and Traditions

Palestinian Culture before the Nakba

Tatreez & Tea (Website)

The Traditional Clothing of Palestine

The Palestinian thobe: A creative expression of national identity

Embroidering Identities:A Century of Palestinian Clothing

Palestine Traditional Costumes

Palestine Family 

Palestinian Costume

Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, v5: Volume 5: Central and Southwest Asia

Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

Documentaries, Films, and Video Essays:

Jenin, Jenin

Born in Gaza

GAZA 

Wedding in Galilee 

Omar

5 Broken Cameras

OBAIDA

Indigeneity, Indigenous Liberation, and Settler Colonialism (not entirely about Palestine, but an important watch for indigenous struggles worldwide - including Palestine)

Edward Said - Reflections on Exile and Other Essays

Palestine Remix: 

AL NAKBA

Gaza Lives On

Gaza we are coming

Lost cities of Palestine 

Stories from the Intifada 

Last Shepherds of the Valley

Voices from Gaza

Muhammad Smiry

Najla Shawa

Nour Naim

Wael Al dahdouh

Motaz Azaiza

Ghassan Abu Sitta

Refaat Alareer

Plestia Alaqad

Bisan Owda

Ebrahem Ateef

Mohammed Zaanoun

Doaa Mohammad

Hind Khoudary

Palestinian Voices, Organizations, and News 

Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS)

Defense for Children in Palestine

Palestine Legal 

Palestine Action

Palestine Action US

United Nations relief and works for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA)

National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)

Times of Gaza

Middle East Eye

Middle East Monitor

Mohammed El-Kurd

Muna El-Kurd 

Electronic Intifada 

Dr. Yara Hawari (suspended on X 10/25/2023)

Mariam Barghouti

Omar Ghraieb

Steven Salaita

Noura Erakat

The Palestinian Museum N.G.

Palestine Museum US

Artists for Palestine UK 

Eye on Palestine (suspended on Instagram 10/25/2023)

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Hey, so I live on unceded Chinook land. The Chinook never formally gave up the land around the mouth of the Columbia or Willapa Bay. They began getting hit hard by European diseases in the late 1700s, before Lewis and Clark ever arrived, and eventually the survivors of those communities in what is now south Pacific County headed further north up Willapa Bay to relatives up there.

When European settlers showed up in larger numbers in the mid-1800s, they assumed the land wasn't being used, so they took over pretty much everything; you still have descendants of some of these settlers who have large parcels of land here, to say nothing of all the timber interests in the area that control thousands more acres throughout the Willapa Hills.

The Chinook Indian Nation received federal recognition in 2001, but it was rescinded a year and a half later due to complaints from the Quinault Indian Nation. Since then, the Chinook have been unable to access much-needed resources from the U.S. government such as health care, housing and utilities. Federally recognized tribes receive these benefits and more, and many also have reservations; it is absolutely not an ideal situation nor is it anywhere near making up for the violent removal of indigenous people from their ancestral lands. But even these resources would have helped the Chinook a great deal over the past two decades, to include during the COVID pandemic.

The above petition is to urge the state of Washington to turn the old Naselle Youth Camp over to the Chinook Indian Nation. It would be a much larger and more stable headquarters, particularly as their current one is at risk from sea level rise and a potential earthquake and tsunami in the Cascadia Subduction Zone (which is a when situation, not an if.) Again, the NYC wouldn't undo all of the injustices over the past couple centuries and more, but it would be a step in the right direction on the part of Washington's government.

Even if you are not a resident of Washington, please show your support by signing this petition. U.S. folks can also contact their elected officials asking them to support the recognition of the Chinook Indian Nation.

Finally, here's a really good article outlining the history of Chinook recognition. And you can learn more about the Chinook's work toward recognition and how to help at http://www.chinookjustice.org.

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I get so fed up when i keep hearing my teachers, across school and college, talk about how the human brain is the most developed in the world and how humans are above all animals because of our very unique prefrontal context which gives us the ability to think, something that other animals don't have. Every time i hear my literature or Psychology teachers mention this i always ask: but how do we know? How do we know that animals don't think? How do we know that OUR way of thinking is the ONLY way of thinking? How do we know that the prefrontal cortex is the only precursor for thought? How do we know that other animals don't have their own systems and philosophies or, maybe a whole other system that we can't even perceive of, given our very ideas of systems and philosophies is self contained within the limited scopes of our thoughts that human brain allows us as a species to sense and perceive. What if other animals SENSE in different ways to begin with?

So tired of anthropocentric views of intelligence.

You probably know that humans can experience “phantom limbs,” but did you know that the limbs of an octopus can have a “phantom body”? If you cut off an octopus’ tentacle, it will try to feed a mouth that is no longer there. A severed octopus tentacle also curls up when it’s exposed to negative stimuli like acid. Essentially, if an octopus dies and its tentacle is cut off, the tentacle can outlive the original animal by a whole hour. 

Octopi have as many as 130 million neurons, but the vast majority are located in their limbs, not their brains. Their mind is “distributed.” That is fundamentally unlike the human mind. We have muscle memory, but our arms can’t move completely independently of our brains.

What does this mean for octopus consciousness? Well… we don’t know. There’s no way to observe or deduce via experiment what it’s like to be a particular animal. We can see how they behave, but we won’t ever see the world through their eyes. Science can study what is outside, but not what’s inside. So, animal consciousness isn’t really the domain of science. 

As is always the case, philosophers have attempted to do what scientists cannot. The philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith has a really great way of explaining what’s at stake: “Octopuses let us ask which features of our minds can we expect to be universal whenever intelligence arises in the universe, and which are unique to us.”  There’s a decent chance you’ve seen a popular Tumblr post about Umwelt Theory—the idea that animals have access to senses that we do not. Smells too refined for our noses, pitches too high for our ears, colors outside the range of our eyes. But the inner worlds of animals might be even stranger than that. The postmortem movement of octopus limbs suggests that some animal minds might be fundamentally different from ours. Simply put, it’s not just that some animals have access to sensations that we will never feel. They might have access to types of thoughts that we will never be able to think.

[apparentlyiwritesometimes]

I recently finished reading The Stationery Shop of Tehran.

And if you're someone who loved Khaled Hosseini's books, you're going to devour this. Here are things I loved about the book.

What the book is about, for context:

The Stationery Shop of Tehran narrates the love story of young Roya, our protagonist, and Bahman, separated due to the political turmoil in the 1960s. A stationery shop run by Mr Fakhri- a key character- becomes both a literary and a romantic oasis for Roya. But fate, of the characters and their country, has different plans for them. But roya never escapes the clutches of the events that panned out in the coup of 1953, and the people in her life it cost her.

Things I liked:

[spoilers ahead]

1. I love the cover.

2. Iranian-American author, the cultural dissonance in the writing is very intriguing to read.

3. Unextraordinary, regular characters with no control over how their lives panned out.

4. guilt as a theme is leveraged in the most realistic way i've come across in most media i've consumed so far.

5. Keenly observant portrayal of youth idealism and how it progresses when juxtaposed with political trauma and upheaval in one's life.

often youth idealism is shown as EITHER delusion from the lack of wisdom that comes from growing up, OR how excruciatingly necessary it is for the world to change. here it's portrayed as realistic as it gets. after a point you just get exhausted with an idealistic hope for your politics. when it affects your life, the life of the person you love and the life you could have had with whom you love, you gradually stop caring. it's less of a "oh look how much i gave for my country and now look how much it took away from me. therefore from today onwards i swear against any activism, the politics don't deserve me it's more a, cut to twenty years later, "hey what do you think about x conflict that's happening in your country rn", "idk man do you want some tea or not" if that makes sense. that seemed organic and real to me especially with the character's nature.

6. Extremely nuanced portrayal of class trauma and the effect of class, transcending classes and how it juxtaposes with mental health.

The portrayal of bahman's mother's mental illness is really about as accurate as it gets. the impact it has on bahman, Roya, everybody else around him. the mother itself is i think one of the most brilliantly written characters there can be. you see her as a victim of her class and how she transcends her poverty and its curses when she marries rich and how later on in life she goes out of her way to subject all the pain she went through due to her class, on to people that are "now below her." despite having gone through it herself. i fucking loved reading that. there's no natural sense of philanthropy that suddenly seeps in after you've been fucked over all your life because of the class you're born into (and why should there be? not only do we subject people to trauma due to where they're born into but we also expect them to a. overcome it b. overcome it to a point where they help others overcome it too c. transcend all boundaries and push for it to happen more and more as well. as though they owe themselves a historic transformation from the settings we've subjected them to.) once she gets more power, given everything unimaginable she's endured even after that (and in a way still because of that), when she gets the chance she derives pleasure from subjecting the same class burden onto others now. tormentingly at that. even if it's against her own son's best interest. she loves watching making people suffer and it's very. very raw and real to a point where you empathize with her despite the fact that she's the reason the one thing you wanted to happen in this book, roya and bahman living happily ever after, did not happen and the one thing that roya and bahman wanted was not only taken away from them but haunts them for the rest of their life. but "haunt" is not the right term. because it's not that dramatic. and that's another reason why i loved the writing.

In all, it's a refreshingly personal and nuanced portrayal of the things in hand. Would 10/10 recommend.

#book review #bookrecommendation #marjankamali #thestationeryshopoftehran #khaledhosseini #thekiterunner #athousandsplendidsuns #khaledhosseinifans #persianliterature #iran #iranianwriters #iranianauthors #iran revolution #iranianliterature