Practical Tip For Those Dealing With Wildfire Smoke Now: You Can Make A Very Effective Air Filter For

"nothing is real atoms never touch each other youve never touched anything in your life" ok. well when i pet my dog he is soft and when he licks my hand it is wet and that is far more real to me than whatevers going on at an atomic level

it was for hagar

I never understood why God would tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. It always seemed cruel - but isn’t God supposed to be a loving father and a just ruler? How could telling a righteous man to kill his own child be fair? 

And then you go back and read the story. Abraham, a righteous follower of God, had failed. He and Sarah couldn’t tolerate the presence of their slave Hagar since Isaac had been born. They hated her child Ishmael. (Abraham’s child too, remember. Just as much as Isaac was.) Abraham gave Hagar a death sentence - he sent her out into the desert with her son and left her to die there. To die of thirst, of heat, of exhaustion, of hunger, of fear. 

Yet God saw Hagar. A slave, a foreigner, a mother to an illegitimate child, an imposter - those were human words for her. God looked down and said My Daughter, My Beloved, You Brave and Selfless Mother - I see you. He overturned the sentence Abraham had set and not only provided water to save the lives of Hagar and Ishmael but whispered the same promise in Hagar’s ear that He had whispered in Abraham’s. Maybe He took her to a hill and showed her the stars too. Maybe He sent a soft breeze across the desert to stir the sand and say to Hagar - your children will outnumber these. The God of living water has seen you. 

And then God turned to Abraham and said your turn. Take your son, your beloved son, Abraham, the promise for your future, and take the life from his lungs. You had no remorse to do the same thing to Ishmael - Ishmael, your son. And Abraham felt the sun burning his face and his body faint from thirst and walking through the wilderness, and he felt the pain in his heart at the fear of losing his child. For a moment, he sees through Hagar’s eyes, squinting from the sun and sting of sand. And this time Abraham listens. This time he obeys God - and obedience comes in the form of the sun glinting off a knife, of Isaac’s terrified sobs. God does not need to say this act is justice. No words could make Abraham understand deeper than the terror and grief in his chest. 

Mercy comes for Abraham as it came for Hagar first.       

Ishmael and Isaac are both spared, both protected, both children of the same promise. 

The sacrifice was never just a test. It was not some story to confuse or contradict the character of God.

It was justice for Hagar, justice from the God who sees.                                   

Okay I’m currently furious that migraines are often so blindly easy to treat and I had to find this out myself at the age of 26 when I’ve been to a neurologist since I was 11 lol so I’m about to teach you two neat and fast little tricks to deal with pain!

The first is the sternocleidomastoid muscle, or the SCM muscle.

This big red section is responsible for pain around the eye, cheekbone, and jaw, as well as some temple pain. Literally all you have to do is angle your head down a little, angle it away from the side that hurts, and then you can gently pinch and rub that muscle. I find it best to start at the bottom and travel upwards. The relief is so immediate! You can increase pressure as you feel comfortable doing so.

Here is a short and easy video showing this in action

The second is a fast and easy stretch that soothes your vagus nerve, which is the nerve responsible for calming you down. The vagus nerve, for those unfamiliar, is stimulated by deep breathing such as yawning, sighing, singing, or taking a deep breath to calm your anger in a tense situation.

You can stretch this out by sitting up as straight as possible (this does not have to be perfect to work) and interlacing your fingers. Put your hands on the back of your head with your thumbs going down the sides of your neck and, while keeping your face forward, look all the way to one side with just your eyes. Hold that until you feel the urge to breathe deeply or yawn, or until you can tell there’s a change. Then do the same thing on the other side. When you put your arms down, you should clearly be able to turn your head farther in both directions. If the first session doesn’t get rid of your migraine, rest and repeat as many times as necessary. I even get a little fancy with it and roll my eyes up and down along the outer edge sometimes to stretch as much as I can.

If you need a visual here’s a good video on it. I know some of the language they use seems questionable but this is real and simple science and should not be discarded because it’s been adopted by the trendy wellness crowd!

I seriously cannot believe I didn’t hear a word of this from any doctor in my life. Additionally, if you get frequent recurring migraines, you may want to see a dietician. Migraines can be caused by foods containing histamines, lectin, etc. and can also be caused by high blood pressure in specific situations such as exercise, stress, and even sex.

If any of this information helps you I’d love to hear it btw! It’s so so fast and easy to do. Good luck!

PLEASE WATCH AND REBLOG - DON'T JUST LIKE - THANK YOU

BISAN IS AFRAID THIS MAY BE HER LAST VIDEO. THE OCCUPATION IS PLANNING TO INVADE NASSER HOSPITAL IN KHAN YUNIS, THE LAST FUNCTIONING HOSPITAL IN THE GAZA STRIP.

SHE WANTS PEOPLE TO SHARE THIS. PLEASE, PLEASE REBLOG.

There's one charity that I haven't seen shared here personally, and that's Care for Gaza.

They're shared a lot on twitter as a reputable on-the-ground relief source. You can donate to their gofundme to help their efforts here.

“Safe zone” was always a lie. I hope this is clear to everyone. “Evacuate to the safe zone” always meant “consolidate for slaughter” and that is exactly what is happening now

i've said this before but i suppose it bears repeating and clarification. it is arabs and palestinians who have suffered the most under islamist rule. we (middle easterners, revolutionaries, religious minorities, gender and sexual minorities) as people, understand what hamas represents better than israelis do, better than anyone does. we understand what the entire spectrum from political islam to outright jihadist extremism does. we understand dictatorship. we understand theocracy. we understand fascism.

the repression israel has created is so absolute, has destroyed civil, diplomatic, intellectual and peaceful avenues so absolutely, that it leaves no avenues for anyone to condemn hamas anymore. even the representative of hamas's ideological and political opponents, the PLO (which oversees the West Bank), is openly frustrated at the request to condemn hamas. and it's not because he sympathizes with them. he has absolutely no political, personal, ideological or economic reason to.

israel has bombed gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021, each and every time with the declared intention of targeting hamas and instead murdering civilians en masse. everyone familiar with israel understands that 'hamas' is meaningless, that israel has no real interest in defeating them (and that defeating militant resistance to an occupation with military force is not possible), that they went so far as to fund them as their choice of preferred enemy. when palestinians hear 'hamas' they correctly understand that israel intends to kill everyone. it is, to use the lingua franca of this period, a dogwhistle. on october 7th, israelis were horrified to see this dogwhistle suddenly become an actual whistle, but nothing else changed except for the intensity and savagery of their attacks on gaza. instead, the more they say hamas, the more they murder civilians en masse, just as they always have. everyone in gaza has said "this is not new, just worse." they have always understood that they are the target. no amount of condemning hamas, being a good palestinian, a good civilian, or even a newborn will change that.

this includes all of hamas's ideological opponents and so-called victims as well. peace activists, intellectuals, palestinian christians, and queer palestinians alike are not condemning hamas right now. they can't because they are busy fighting for their lives and homes against the israeli occupation. if you understood the personal toll this takes on them, if you understood how deeply their trauma runs, you would understand just how evil the israeli narrative on hamas is for all palestinians.

if you want a plurality of palestinian opinion, get rid of the israeli apartheid state. if you want tolerance, get rid of the israeli apartheid state. if you want israelis to be safe in their homes from the threat of hamas militants, get rid of the israeli apartheid state.

the truth is, there is a base and deeply evil racism at the core of asking to condemn hamas, especially by those who would never condemn israel or the violence it requires to maintain itself. it presumes that they have the right to ask for a condemnation of child murder, without ever giving an apology for child murder or the promise to stop murdering children. ghassan kanafani once called this "a conversation between the sword and the neck."

it is absurdity in full display, a macabre delight in impunity disguised as moral superiority. more than treating every palestinian as a terrorist in interrogation, more than its dehumanization and islamophobia, it is at its core asking "do you agree our children are more important than yours?"

and lest you forget, Israel's current minister of national security has already said it directly. as he famously once told arab-israeli reporter mohammad magadli, “Sorry Mohammad, my right to life precedes yours, that is the reality.”

in many ways, that's far more honest than asking "do you condemn hamas?"

https://twitter.com/isabelunraveled

hrrrggghhhh......philosophy of art......praxis.........the idea that a certain level of complexity or a certain kind of technical skill is what qualifies something as art is bullshit.............so you have to think that way about your own art too you have to be consistent.........you have to choose how you refer to your art thoughtfully to reflect this or it will never sink into your brain..............save me jacob geller video essay "Who's Afraid of Modern Art" ............