Bold Of You To Assume I Dont Eat Soup Through A Straw

Jewish Journal

Beverly Hills Persian Synagogue Vandalized Over Shabbat | Jewish Journal

UPDATE: Dec 14, 3 p.m. At around 2 p.m. the Beverly Hills Police Department (BHPD) held a press conference outside Nessah Synagogue and issu

(if youre jewish, the following four photos of the vandalism might be upsetting to see, just as a warning.)

Help bring Indigenous horses home!

Hi all!

My friend is Ojibwe and a dedicated Indigenous researcher and activist. She recently has discovered a number of Ojibwe ponies (also known as the Lac La Croix pony) for sale by a white-owned farm. 

This is really important because these ponies are very important to the Ojibwe – these ponies are also the only known Indigenous-developed breed of horse in Canada, and there are only 200 left in the world. 

[Image: A girl sitting on an Ojibwe pony and hugging its neck. Image credit to Broadview.]

The fact that there are 200 left at all is incredible at all, because in 1977, Canada took the last known four ponies away to be destroyed, and they were rescued by an Ojibwe man living in Minnesota. 

Read more about the history here.

My friend is arranging to have five of these horses brought back home to the Ojibwe, and her elders are already planning a welcome ceremony for these horses. If anyone has anything to spare, it would be a huge help to bring them home. 

Donate here!

Alternately, you can get the horses a gift from their wishlist! 

Tim, powerpoint clicker in hand: Hey everyone. Today Damian pushed me, so I’m starting a kickstarter to put him down.

Everyone: …

Tim: The benefits of killing him would mean I’d get pushed way less 🤷‍♂️

If you need a place to talk about your pain, or simply want to connect with people like you and talk about video games, your craft, your favorite book. Come on over!

We have game nights, movie nights, exchanges, giveaways, a book club.

It’s a comfortable place to relax and connect with friends around the world who know what it’s like.

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I’ve seen the Ursula K LeGuin quote about capitalism going around, but to really appreciate it you have to know the context.

The year is 2014. She has been given a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Awards. Neil Gaiman puts it on her neck in front of a crowd of booksellers who bankrolled the event, and it’s time to make a standard “thank you for this award, insert story here, something about diversity, blah blah blah” speech. She starts off doing just that, thanking her friends and fellow authors. All is well.

Then this old lady from Oregon looks her audience of executives dead in the eye, and says “Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.”

She rails against the reduction of her art to a commodity produced only for profit. She denounces publishers who overcharge libraries for their products and censor writers in favor of something “more profitable”. She specifically denounces Amazon and its business practices, knowing full well that her audience is filled with Amazon employees. And to cap it off, she warns them: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”

Ursula K LeGuin got up in front of an audience of some of the most powerful people in publishing, was expected to give a trite and politically safe argument about literature, and instead told them directly “Your empire will fall. And I will help it along.”

now since tumblr apparently loves to support non-american authors, but is surprisingly mum about this, imma tell you.

you see, everybody's favorite evil corp, Amazon, bought Indian publishing house Westland some six years ago. Now Westland is a very famous and reputed publishing house in India, and has put forth some of the best titles the country has seen. It didn't shy away from controversial and uncomfortable topics, and some of its books quite vocally criticise the current government, which has been responsible for the current state of india as a pseudo-democratic, pseudo-secular, economically ruined country, the most notable one being The Price of the Modi years by Aakar Patel. It also produced Amish Tripathi's pathbreaking Shiva Trilogy.

Now here's the thing that got me nuts.

AMAZON. SHUT. IT. DOWN. A WEEK AGO.

JUST OUT OF THE BLUE, IT IS CLOSING DOWN WESTLAND FOREVER. NOBODY KNOWS WHAT IS TO COME OF THE HUNDREDS OF TITLES PUBLISHED BY IT, OR OF THE AUTHORS ITS CONTRACTED, OR THE PEOPLE EMPLOYED BY IT.

It has triggered a buying surge in India, as people go on shopping spress to get their hands on the titles they want from this house. Short on supply and high on demand, bookstores across India are showing solidarity and moving surplus books around.

here you go with a few links that i think sum up the problem quite nicely, and please guys. just. please support westland.

here they talk about how this is becoming a trend with global corps.

here they talk about the future of indian publishing houses.

this one talks about a bleak future for literature and how it feels like we're living in a dystopian novel

spread this around. jeff bezos continues to be evil, and will be. he is quite literally, irredeemable.