Interstellar By Matt Walker Via Flickr: It’s Been A While Since I’ve Posted A Milky Way Shot On Flickr,

The video camera is plugged into the VCR, allowing it to record itself being poked and prodded.

GIF’d version of Vide-Uhhh! (2005)

One under-appreciated breed of fic writer are the ones who hyperfocus on logistics to the exclusion of all canon shortcuts, and thus usually strike upon an awesome way to flesh out the worldbuilding or characters.

Like, I’m not necessarily talking realism here since often it’s still pretty far from realistic, but more like, “someone has to be running spies in this fantasy kingdom, and we’ve seen the whole royal court, so which background character is it? How does that change these three major interactions?” Or “real life historical nobility did in fact have some things to do that were like jobs, how does this human disaster cope with running an estate?” Or “there’s no reason for a sci-fi robot detective to know how to whitewater kayak, where’d she learn?” Or “if this guy is serving the emperor directly he has to be way high up in the space empire servant hierarchy, why is he doing this menial task for someone else? What’s his motive? Does he perhaps have the secret space telepathy?”

Anyway I’m always DELIGHTED to find a fic or writer who asks these questions because the fics themselves are universally bangers.

"Star Trek Deep Space Nine already did this in the 90's. It's not as special or original as you think." I say loudly to be heard over the din of the sportsbar where a baseball game is playing on a TV.

In my own little 'I can help *this* one' scream into the universe, I've been de-stringing the feet of the pigeons that live in the park across from my office.

Pigeons (rock doves) are feral, and they live in our cities. With our rubbish. They get string (human hair, fishing line, threads, etc) wrapped around their feet when they do their little circling dance, or from their nests, and they can't get it off themselves. So they limp along as best they can, for as long as they can. They're pretty tough little guys! If you start to look, you'll probably notice a lot of them are missing toes or have strictures holding their feet in painful positions. Some even have both feet bound together.

But the good news is - it's actually SUPER easy to help them!

This little guy had thread around one foot, and wire and nylon line around the other. I removed it on my lunch break on Monday, and now he's already walking easier and won't be losing any more toes.

The photo is from the next day, because he came back to hang out again without hesitation. They're very friendly.

People really hate pigeons, which is a bit unfair considering we are the ones who brought them in to our cities in the first place. If you want to make a world of difference to some lives that don't get a lot of love any more, check out the below for everything you need to know.

Stringfoot Pigeon Help

What is stringfoot?

What is stringfoot? A brief overview.

the only time it was actually funny and entertaining when a "ship" was "confirmed" by someone who worked on the show was when someone asked rene auberjonois at a panel what the nature of quark and odo's relationship was and he replied "sexual." without elaboration

what if we pronounced testosterone like minestrone

answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:

tl;dr:

israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.

with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.

the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.

as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.

the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.

ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.

and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.

all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!

long answers under the cut!

if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks

not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices

i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.

unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.

this was posted on abc a few days ago

it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.

even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.

with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.