rayatii

[rayatii]

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER, 1.04 — The Warriors of Kyoshi, Zuko & Sokka

#avatar the last airbender #atla #classic moment

[rayatii]

Reblog if you didn’t write My Immortal

We’re going to find the author by process of elimination.

[rayatii]

[rayatii]

Funniest thing about the "chai tea" meaning "tea tea" to me is that I'm Czech and the Czech word for tea is "čaj" which is pronounced "chai" and you know what we actually - no joke - call chai tea?

"chai čaj"

We literally call it chai chai we DO call it tea tea we literally pronounce it chai chai it's a thing

#same energy as people calling the sahara the ‘sahara desert’ #sahara/sa7ra’ (صحراء) means ‘desert’ #so sahara desert literally translates to ‘desert desert’ #(arabic speakers call it ‘the big desert’)

[rayatii]

There is still hope. Say it out loud. Palestine will be free. The Palestinian people will celebrate their culture and heritage with each other. We will love and be loved. Do not fall into the trap of despair.

[rayatii]

okay what did i miss

(yes some of these overlap and some are suppositions. for example if parchment is always used for ephemera, rough drafts, notes, and never re-used or re-purposed, we can also assume that the author is unaware of wax tablets as a concept)

[rayatii]

[rayatii]

Hey guys, I have a priority fundraiser rotation for you:

Fadi & Shahed: 2,044 USD out of 62.5k

Sana'a & Sujood: 12,016 £ out of 50k

Mahmoud Qassas: 9,994$ out of 200k

Ezzideen Shehab: 10,296€ out of 32.5k.

Hussam Aburamadan: 16,374€ out of 148k.

Hamdi Hijazi: 1,511$ out of 25k.

Suheir Hojok: 16,897 AUD out of 70k.

Madleen Abu Jayyab: 29,005$ out of 70k.

I have personally verified every one of these campaigns listed here.

As Mona's campaign nears completion I'm preparing for you this list so we can show these families the same amazing and unbelievable support we showed Mona and her family.

Version date: April 25th 2024.

[rayatii]

im starting to think you guys dont like it when stories make you feel things

[rayatii]

i love when characters don't get to die

[rayatii]

Love it when a character gets everything they've ever wanted, and then feels empty, melancholic, and wishes to go back to the time when he didn't have it all.

Bonus points if they lose every one of their friends in the process, save for one, and then they crawl back to them and they give them a second chance

[rayatii]

If I can’t be weird with you then wtf

[rayatii]

disturb me, update me, tell me how was your day, I really like your life, I like your notifications

#i fucking love my mutuals

[rayatii]

i must not get mad at mischaracterization of blorbo online. getting mad at mischaracterization of blorbo online is the mind-killer. getting mad at mischaracterization of blorbo online is the little-death that brings total obliteration. how many times am i going to type this long fucking phrase. oh wait copy paste. i forgor

[rayatii]

JVL Introduction

The Presidents of three leading US universities were falsely accused of condoning anti-Semitism on their campuses in a highly partisan ambush in front of US congressional hearing in December. Now the Columbia President, Minouche Shafik, is being summoned and 23 of her Jewish faculty are urging her not to give in to attempts to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism and to defend academic freedom at her campus.

They strongly contest assertions that antisemitism is rife at Columbia. They accept that many students are unsettled by the intensity of debate around the Gaza catastrophe but being uncomfortable is far from being discriminated against or threatened.

They deplore the recent actions of the University’s management to use disciplinary processes to clamp down on protest and see this as an abandonment of Columbia’s record of confronting smears and slanders levelled against staff and students and committing to free inquiry and robust disagreement.

MC

This article was originally published by Columbia Spectator on Wed 10 Apr 2024. Read the original here. Jewish faculty reject the weaponization of antisemitism

by 23 Columbia and Barnard faculty, Columbia Spectator

Dear President Shafik,

We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in anticipation of your appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, where you are expected to answer questions about antisemitism on campus. Based on the committee’s previous hearings, we are gravely concerned about the false narratives that frame these proceedings to entrap witnesses. We urge you, as the University president, to defend our shared commitment to universities as sites of learning, critical thinking, and knowledge production against this new McCarthyism.

Rather than being concerned with the safety and well-being of Jewish students on campuses, the committee is leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of “woke indoctrination.” Its opportunistic use of antisemitism in a moment of crisis is expanding and strengthening longstanding efforts to undermine educational institutions. After launching attacks on public universities from Florida to South Dakota, this campaign has opened a new front against private institutions.

The prospect of Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of congress with a history of espousing white nationalist politics, calling university presidents to account for alleged antisemitism on their campuses reveals these proceedings as disingenuous political theater.

In the face of these coordinated attacks on higher education, universities must insist on their freedom to research and teach inconvenient truths. This includes historical injustices and the contemporary structures that perpetuate them, regardless of whether these facts are politically inexpedient for certain interest groups.

To be sure, antisemitism is a grave concern that should be scrutinized alongside racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. These hateful ideologies exist everywhere and we would be ignorant to believe that they don’t exist at Columbia. When antisemitism rears its head, it should be swiftly denounced, and its perpetrators held to account. However, it is absurd to claim that antisemitism—“discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,” according to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition—is rampant on Columbia’s campus. To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term.

Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity. This conflation betrays a woefully inaccurate understanding—and disingenuous misrepresentation—of Jewish history, identity, and politics. It erases more than a century of debates among Jews themselves about the nature of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, including Israel’s status as a Jewish nation-state. It dismisses the experiences of the post-Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews who work, study, and live on our campus.

The political passions that arise from conflict in the Middle East may deeply unsettle students, faculty, and staff with opposing views. But feeling uncomfortable is not the same thing as being threatened or discriminated against. Free expression, which is fundamental to both academic inquiry and democracy, necessarily entails exposure to views that may be deeply disconcerting. We can support students who feel real and valid discomfort toward protests advocating for Palestinian liberation while also stating clearly and firmly that this discomfort is not an issue of safety.

As faculty, we dedicate ourselves and our classrooms to keeping every student safe from real harm, harassment, and discrimination. We commit to helping them learn to experience discomfort and even confrontation as part of the process of skill and knowledge acquisition—and to help them realize that ideas we oppose can be contested without being suppressed.

By exacting discipline, inviting police presence, and broadly surveilling its students for minor offenses, the University is betraying its educational mission. It has pursued drastic measures against students, including disciplinary proceedings and probation, for infractions like allegedly attending an unauthorized protest, or moving barricades to drape a flag on a statue. Real harassment and physical intimidation and violence on campus must be confronted seriously and its perpetrators held accountable. At the same time, the University should refrain whenever possible from using discipline and surveillance as means of addressing less serious harms, and should never use punitive measures to address conflicts over ideas and the feelings of discomfort that result. Where the University once embraced and defended students’ political expression, it now suppresses and disciplines it.

The University’s recent policies represent a dramatic change from historical practice, and the consequences are ruinous to our community and its principles. In the past, Columbia has periodically confronted attacks against pro-Palestinian speech, ranging from the vile slanders against Professor Edward Said to the reckless accusations from the David Project. But where for decades the University stood firm against smear campaigns targeting its professors, it has now voluntarily accepted the job of censoring its faculty in and outside the classroom.

Columbia’s commitment to free inquiry and robust disagreement is what makes it a world-class institution. Limiting academic freedom when it comes to questions of Israel and Palestine paves the way for limitations on other contested topics, from climate science to the history of slavery. What’s more, students must have the freedom to dissent, to make mistakes, to offend without intent, and to learn to repair harm done if necessary. Free expression is not only crucial to student development and education outside the classroom; the tradition of student protest has also played a vital role in American democracy. Columbia should be proud of having participated in nationwide student organizing that helped secure civil rights and reproductive rights and helped bring an end to the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.

We express our support for the University and for higher education against the attacks likely to be leveled against them at the upcoming congressional hearing. We object to the weaponization of antisemitism. And we advocate for a campus where all students, Jewish, Palestinian, and all others, can learn and thrive in a climate of open, honest inquiry and rigorous debate.

Many members of our University community share our perspective, but they have not yet been heard. Columbia students, staff, alumni, and faculty can sign here to show your support for this letter’s message.

Sincerely,Debbie Becher, Barnard College Helen Benedict, Columbia Journalism School Susan Bernofsky, School of the Arts Elizabeth Bernstein, Barnard College Nina Berman, Columbia Journalism School Amy Chazkel, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Yinon Cohen, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Nora Gross, Barnard College Keith Gessen, Columbia Journalism School Jack Halberstam, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Sarah Haley, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Michael Harris, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Jennifer S. Hirsch, Mailman School of Public Health Marianne Hirsch, Faculty of Arts & Sciences (Emerita) Joseph A. Howley, Faculty of Arts & Sciences David Lurie, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Nara Milanich, Barnard College D. Max Moerman, Barnard College Manijeh Moradian, Barnard College Sheldon Pollock, Faculty of Arts & Sciences (Emeritus) Bruce Robbins, Faculty of Arts & Sciences James Schamus, School of the Arts Alisa Solomon, Columbia Journalism School

The 23 authors of this letter are Jewish faculty members of Barnard College and Columbia University. This letter derives from a much longer one by these same 23 faculty sent to President Shafik on April 5.

[rayatii]

i do think it’s a really fun feature that operas have birthdays. i know that everything can have a birthday if you know how to look at things but i love that every march 6 i see people saying happy birthday la traviata!! and every october 29 i see jokes about how of course don giovanni the opera is a scorpio (although i think don giovanni the character should have been born in may). there’s something so kind about it

#L’ELISIR IS EXACTLY ONE DAY BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY #(but it’s really a summer opera tho) #opera

[rayatii]

The student protests for Palestine have been an amazing show of solidarity and support and seeing thr way that so many young people are willing to stand up for their values is admirable when so many others stay silent. But this is all to say that we are entering a pattern of glorifying these white “martyrs” from the global west to put all of this effort and resources and media coverage into instead of the actual cause they are fighting for.

I saw the same thing happen with Aaron Bushnell, when his self immolation was being talked about more than the actual genocide in Gaza (which went against everything he said he was self immolating for in the first place).

And again this happened with the prisoner from the US who worked 136 hours just to be able to donate his $17 check to Palestine aid efforts. In response to this, people wanted to help him and ended up raising over $100,000 in a gofundme for him. This feels almost satirical, as every gofundme to help Gazans evacuate Palestine and get to safety has a goal of less than $100,000 and most of them are not even close to reaching it.

And now, there are more and more posts on how to get aid to the college student encampments, and the “urgency” of getting enough bail funds for the students who have been arrested during them. Talking about Palestine itself and getting resources to Palestine has almost been put on the back burner in favour of making all Palestine related news about college students in the United States.

It think it is valuable to recognise the selflessness and importance of these protests, and getting these students resources but what is MORE important, and what these people are truly fighting for, and protesting, and make a statement about is PALESTINE. We have unsurprisingly reached the point where there are people who care much more about the white people fighting for the cause from the comfort of living in the global west than they care about the Palestinians undergoing a genocide in Gaza. It’s become almost blatant racism, the way people begin to drop everything the second a white/usamerican person does something in regards to helping Palestine, but will not put the same effort into a Palestinian IN Gaza who is telling their story or asking for help. I respect anyone who has done absolutely anything to help Palestine, but I hope people are starting to see the pattern of how the media gravitates towards the “white saviour/perfect martyr” instead of the first hand accounts coming from those in Gaza.

Anyway FIND A GOFUNDME AND DONATE TO HELP FAMILIES IN GAZA ESCAPE GENOCIDE