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the other elves welcoming Legolas in Valinor

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twitter is hell but i really hope it doesn’t actually die because this is in contention for the funniest thing i’ve ever read in my life

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I don't give a shit if this is the thing that finally gets me banned, I was going through my old selfie tag and got literally sick with rage. I have over 50 of these screenshots and that's not even close to all of them.

FUCK this site, FUCK it's treatment of trans women, FUCK staff, FUCK their transphobic moderation, and FUCK Matt Mullenweg

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6/7/2025

The National guard is being deployed to Los Angeles to support ICE.

Mask up. Black bloc. White citizens to the front.

ICE and the LAPD have been firing rubber bullets directly at protesters and utilizing weapons like tear gas.

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greta thunberg and 11 others on the flotilla carrying aid to gaza have been kidnapped by the israeli government in international waters.

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Basil Kienast (@cottagecraft.apothecary)

We have three delightful soaps for you to enjoy this summer: Summer Solstice, infused with St. John's Wort, is the epitome of summer with a bright, sweet, citrus scent. Athena is a tribute to the goddess herself; a European Sea Salt Bar with an herbal olive scent. And finally, Waning Crescent; an Oat Milk Soap with a rich, caramel scent inspired by warm summer nights. Which one will you try first?

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🏚️ From Rubble to Renewal — Help Mohamed Rebuild a Home Full of Hope 🌿

In the blink of an eye, the life we knew disappeared.

My name is Mohamed, and I’m writing this with a heart full of sorrow—but also a quiet flame of hope. Our family home, a place that held generations of memories, was reduced to rubble in an instant. The rooms that once echoed with laughter, the walls that witnessed our stories, and the garden where we dreamed of better days—all of it is gone.

And yet, we are still here.

Still standing. Still believing. Still dreaming.

Before the war, our home wasn’t just a structure—it was everything. It was the heartbeat of our family. We shared countless dinners around a modest table, whispered goodnight to one another across quiet rooms, and celebrated the small joys that made life meaningful. It was a place of love, of safety, of tradition.

Losing it has left a deep wound in our lives. But what we haven’t lost is our will to rebuild.

We are determined not to let destruction be the end of our story. We want to rebuild our home not just with bricks and wood, but with faith, with dignity, and with your support.

I know there are countless stories in the world that deserve to be heard, and I humbly ask that you take a moment to hear ours. We are turning to this community, to the kindness of strangers, because we believe in the power of people coming together to lift one another out of despair.

Your support—whether it’s a donation, a share, or even just a moment of your time—can help lay the first stone of our new beginning.

💛 Every dollar brings us one step closer to safety. 🧱 Every share gives our story a voice. 🌱 Every gesture, no matter how small, is a reminder that compassion can grow even in the harshest soil.

We are not asking for charity. We are asking for a chance. A chance to rebuild our lives, to give our children a roof under which they can dream again, and to find peace after so much pain.

✅️ Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #609 ) ✅️

Please, if you feel moved by our story, consider helping us build something new from what’s been lost. Your kindness will be felt not just in concrete and wood—but in every smile, every warm night, and every future moment of joy that your support helps make possible.

From the deepest part of my heart—thank you. For your time, your love, and your belief in us. We will never forget it.

With all my gratitude, – Mohamed

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📸 This is not just a newspaper cover. This is our reality in Gaza.

This powerful image was published by The Independent on May 11, 2025. It shows the faces of hungry and terrified Palestinian children — the result of a brutal blockade and forced starvation.

The headline reads: "For all their sakes, end the deafening silence on Gaza now." But the silence continues ........

💔 I am a father of three children. We live every day under the shadow of hunger and fear. There is no food, no clean water, no safe place — only the constant struggle to keep my children alive.

The siege has taken away our jobs, our homes, our futures. I am doing everything I can to find food for my kids, to give them something — anything — to eat.

Please, if you are reading this: don’t be silent. 🎯 Your donation could mean a meal for my children. 🛑 Your support could save their lives.

🙏 Even $5 can make a difference. 📢 Share this message if you can’t donate.

Please Donate now:👇👇 👇

🤝 But don’t look away. We need you now more than ever.

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My name is Mohamed, I’m 37 years old, and I’m originally from Gaza. I left home in 2015 seeking safety and a better life. Since then, I’ve worked hard to build something stable here in Belgium—but recent events have left me overwhelmed, heartbroken, and in urgent need of help.

In late 2023, during the ongoing war in Gaza, I lost my mother. Around the same time, we also lost our family home—just like so many other Palestinian families. My sister and her five young children were left with nothing, stuck in a war zone, terrified and vulnerable. Their father is missing, and they had no one else but me.

In January 2024, just before the Rafah border was fully closed, I managed to get them out and into temporary safety in Egypt. It was a race against time, and I used everything I had—and more—to make it happen. They now live in a small apartment in Cairo. I am the only person supporting them.

I’ve been covering their food, rent, school expenses, clothing, medical needs—everything. The children are still young, and I consider them my own. They are the last close family I have left, and I cannot turn away from them.

Recently, I underwent knee surgery, which left me unable to work. At the same time, my debts have grown from trying to keep everyone afloat. I’ve never asked for help like this before, but right now I don’t see another option.

My dream is to bring my sister and her five children here to Belgium, where they can finally have safety, education, and the future they deserve. But the process is costly, and I simply cannot manage it alone anymore.

For safety reasons, I am not sharing my full name publicly. But I hope my words reflect the truth and urgency of this situation.

Your support will help me:

- Repay the urgent debts I’ve taken on to get them to safety

- Cover their ongoing living and school expenses in Egypt

- Afford the legal and relocation costs of reuniting them with me in Belgium

I know many are struggling, and I don’t ask this lightly. But any support—whether it’s a donation, a share, or a kind word—means the world to me and the children I’m fighting for.

Thank you for reading my story, and for standing with us in this time of need.

Fundraiser link

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After a long hiatus, we are finally coming back! On June 1st, Cottage Craft is reopening with a new, refined line of products.

If you're unfamiliar with us, we are a Black Queer Witch owned business that creates handmade soaps and body care items designed to uplift the spirit and make life a little more joyful!

We know very well that you don't always have the time or energy to pamper yourself, whether you're living with an illness or just have a busy schedule, and that is why the core of our brand is offering indulgent body care that you can fit into your everyday routine.

We also know that in the current climate, it's difficult to justify buying even the little luxuries, so we hope that you can continue to support us by sharing our products with your friends and family if supporting us financially is outside of your means at the moment.

We're really excited about the future of Cottage Craft, and hope you stick with us for many more years to come!

Please spread so we can have a successful relaunch!

(you can also find us on instagram!)

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After a long hiatus, we are finally coming back! On June 1st, Cottage Craft is reopening with a new, refined line of products.

If you're unfamiliar with us, we are a Black Queer Witch owned business that creates handmade soaps and body care items designed to uplift the spirit and make life a little more joyful!

We know very well that you don't always have the time or energy to pamper yourself, whether you're living with an illness or just have a busy schedule, and that is why the core of our brand is offering indulgent body care that you can fit into your everyday routine.

We also know that in the current climate, it's difficult to justify buying even the little luxuries, so we hope that you can continue to support us by sharing our products with your friends and family if supporting us financially is outside of your means at the moment.

We're really excited about the future of Cottage Craft, and hope you stick with us for many more years to come!

Please spread so we can have a successful relaunch!

(you can also find us on instagram!)

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On the issue of the ‘q slur’...

So, yesterday, I got into a rather stupid internet argument with someone who was peddling what seemed to me to be a rather insidious narrative about slur-reclamation. Someone in the ensuing notes raised a point which I thought was interesting, and worrying, and probably needed to be addressed in it’s own post. So here we go:

The word ‘queer’ itself seems to be especially touchy for many, so let me begin to address this by way of analogy.

Instead of talking about “queer”, let’s start by talking about “Jew” - a word which I believe is very similar in its usage in some significant ways.

Now, the word “Jew” has been used as a derogatory term for literally hundreds of years. It is used both as a noun (eg. “That guy ripped me off - what a dirty Jew”) and as a verb (eg. “That guy really Jew-ed me”). These usages are deeply, fundamentally, horrifically offensive, and should be used under no circumstances, ever. And yet, I myself have heard both, even as recently as this past year, even in an urban location with plenty of Jews, in a social situation where people should have known better. In short – the word “Jew”, as it is used by certain antisemites, is – quite unambiguously – a slur. Not a dead slur, not a former slur – and active, living slur that most Jews will at some point in their life encounter in a context where the term is being used to denigrate them and their religion. 

Now here’s the thing, though: I’m a Jew. I call myself a Jew. I prefer that all non-Jews call me a Jew – so do most Jews I know. “Jew” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Judaism, the same way that “Muslim” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Islam, and “Christian” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Christianity. 

In fact, almost all of the terms that non-Jews use to avoid saying “Jew” (eg. “a member of the Jewish persuasion”, “a follower of the Jewish faith”, “coming from a Jewish family”, “identifying as part of the Jewish religion”, etc) are deeply offensive, because these terms imply to us that the speaker sees the term “Jew” (and by extension, what that term stands for) as a dirty word.

“BUT WAIT” – I hear you say – “didn’t you just say that Jew is used as a slur?!?”

Yes. Yes, I did. And also, it is fundamentally offensive not to call us that, because it is our name and our identity.

Let me back up a little bit, and bring you into the world of one of those 2000s PSAs about not using “that’s so gay”. Think of some word that is your identity – something which you consider to be a fundamental and intrinsic part of yourself. It could be “female” or “male”, or “Black” or “white”, “tall” or “short”, “Atheist” or “Mormon” or “Evangelical” – you name it.

Now imagine that people started using that term as a slur.

“What a female thing to do!” they might say. “That teacher doesn’t know anything, he’s so female!”

Or maybe, “Yikes, look at that idiot who’s driving like an atheist. It’s so embarrassing!”

Or perhaps, “Oh gross, that music is so Black, turn it off!”

Now, what would you say if the same groups of people who had been saying those things for years turned around and avoided using those words to describe anything other than an insult?

“Oh, so I see you’re a member of the female persuasion!”

“Is he… a follower of the atheist beliefs? Like does he identify as part of the community of atheist-aligned individuals?”

“So, as a Black-ish identified person yourself – excuse me, as a person who comes from a Black-ish family…”

Here’s the fundamental problem with treating all words that are used as slurs the same, without any regard for how they are used and how they developed – not all slurs are the same.

No one, and I mean no one (except maybe for a small handful of angsty teens who are deliberately making a point of being edgy) self-identifies as a kike. In contrast, essentially all Jews self-identify as Jews. And when non-Jews get weird about that identity on the grounds that “Jew is used as a slur”, despite the fact that it is the name that the Jewish community as a whole resoundingly identifies with, what they are basically saying is that they think that the slur usage is more important than the Jewish community self-identification usage. They are saying, in essence, “we think that your name should be a slur.” 

Now, at the top I said that the word “Jew” and the word “queer” had some significant similarities in terms of their usage, and I think that’s pretty apparent if you look at what people in those communities are saying about those terms. When American Jews were being actively threatened by neo-Nazis in the 70s, the slogan of choice was “For every Jew a .22!″. When the American Queer community was marching in the 90s in protest of systemic anti-queer violence, the slogan of choice was “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” Clearly, these are terms that are used by the communities themselves, in reference to themselves. Clearly, these terms are more than simply slurs.

But while there are useful similarities between how the terms “Jew” and “Queer” are used by bigots and by their own communities, I’d also like to point out that there is pretty substantial and important difference:

Unlike for “queer”, there is no organized group of Jewish antisemites who are using the catchphrase “Jew is a slur!” in order to selectively silence and disenfranchise Jews who are part of minority groups within Judaism. 

This is the real rub with the term queer – no one was campaigning about it being a slur until less than a decade ago. No one was saying that you needed to warn for the word queer when queer people were establishing the academic discipline of queer studies. No one was ‘think of the children”-ing the umbrella term when queer activists were literally marching for their lives. Go back to even 2010 and the term “q slur” would have been basically unparseable – if I saw someone tag something “q slur”, like most queer people I would have wracked my brains trying to figure out what slur even started with q, and if I learned that it was supposed to be “queer”, my default assumption would be that the post was made by a well-meaning but extremely clueless straight person.

I literally remember this shift – and I remember who started it. Exclusionists didn’t like the fact that queer was an umbrella term. Terfs (or radfems as they like to be called now) didn’t like that queer history included trans history; biphobes and aphobes didn’t like that the queer community was also a community to bisexuals and asexuals. And so what could they possibly say, to drive people away from the term that was protecting the sorts of queer people that they wanted to exclude?

Well, naturally, they turned to “queer is a slur.”

And here’s the thing – queer is a slur, just like Jew is a slur, and no one is denying that. And that fact makes “queer is a slur so don’t use it” a very convincing argument on the surface: 1) queer is still often used as a slur, and 2) you shouldn’t ever use slurs without carefully tagging and warning people about them (and better yet, you should never use them at all), and so therefore 3) you need to tag for “the q slur” and you need to warn people not to call the community “the queer community” or it’s members “queer people” or its study “queer studies” – because it’s a slur!

But the crucial step that’s missing here is exactly the same one above, for the word “Jew” – and that step is that not all slurs are the same. When a term is both used as a slur and used as a self-identity term, then favoring the slur meaning instead of the identity meaning is picking the side of the slur-users over the disadvantaged group! 

If you say or tag “q slur” you are sending the message, whether you realize it or not, that people who use “queer” as a slur are more right about its meaning than those who use it as their identity. Tagging for “queer” is one thing. People can filter for “queer” if it triggers them, just like people can filter for anything else. Not everyone has to personally use the term queer, or like the term queer. But there is no circumstance where the term “q slur” does not indicate that you think queer is more of a slur than of an accurate description of a community.

If I, as a Jew, ever came across a post where someone had warned for innocent, positive, non-antisemitic content relating to Judaism with the tag “J slur”, I would be incensed. So would any Jew. The act of tagging a post “J slur” is in and of itself antisemitic and offensive.

Queer people are allowed to feel the same about “q slur”. It is not a neutral warning term – it is an attack on our identity.

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Oh oh! Do you have other ideas/plans for merch? Like clothing, hoodies, etc?? A Wally Darling inspired hoodie would look super fire 🔥

Hello! Thank you so much for asking!!

Yes, we have already begun planning what will arrive next! (Clothes have been on the table, although I can't say much beyond that!) However- It can only come to fruition if we are successful with this first shop run! With that said, the final day for the shop before it is taken down will be May 10th at 11:59 PM PST!

If we are successful with our sales and if the shop proves to be popular, we will be able to re-open with our original four plushes (Wally, Barnaby, Julie, and Frank) as evergreen products (Meaning they will not go away!) and with more on the way! (Not just plushes either!)

Thank you for your ask!

It was the final one of our big Q&A Ask-travaganza!

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Support Welcome Home through Ko-fi or our Merch shop!

https://welcomehome.shop/