#Conference Call Service Providers

[effebot]

Why Does a Business Need Video Conferencing to Be Successful?

Video conferencing is essential to ensuring that everyone in your company is on the same page, whether you have remote employees, offices spread across many locations, or teams of experts that frequently travel.

An online conference where two or more people communicate in real-time via the internet is known as Video conferencing. When utilizing a laptop, smartphone, or meeting room, a webcam combines Video and audio to build a digital face-to-face chat so you can see others' reactions while hearing what they're saying.

Businesses of all sizes may benefit from the ability to unite people, make collaboration simpler, increase efficiency, and save money. If you haven't already, you're undoubtedly considering adopting Video conferencing. Here are some benefits of Conference Call Services for Businesses so you can decide if it's appropriate for you while you consider the options:

Makes communication better

Aids in fostering connections

Reduces costs

Reduces time

Makes collaboration easy

Increases effectiveness

As a competing business, you need Video conferencing to deliver more productivity to your customers. Video conferencing is now the life jacket for every remote working business. So, you should also start using it.

To proceed with reading, just click on this link: - Why does a business need Video conferencing to be successful?

[dsnlchennai]

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[sayruq]

In midtown Manhattan on March 4, Google’s managing director for Israel, Barak Regev, was addressing a conference promoting the Israeli tech industry when a member of the audience stood up in protest. “I am a Google Cloud software engineer, and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance,” shouted the protester, wearing an orange t-shirt emblazoned with a white Google logo. “No tech for apartheid!” The Google worker, a 23-year-old software engineer named Eddie Hatfield, was booed by the audience and quickly bundled out of the room, a video of the event shows. After a pause, Regev addressed the act of protest. “One of the privileges of working in a company which represents democratic values is giving space for different opinions,” he told the crowd. Three days later, Google fired Hatfield. Hatfield is part of a growing movement inside Google that is calling on the company to drop Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract with Israel, jointly held with Amazon. The protest group, called No Tech for Apartheid, now has around 40 Google employees closely involved in organizing, according to members, who say there are hundreds more workers sympathetic to their goals.

[reasonsforhope]

Holy crap, I didn't think Biden would be able to get the Climate Corps established without Congress. This is SUCH fantastic news.

--

"After being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program.

In an announcement Wednesday, the White House said the program will employ more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires.

The climate corps had been proposed in early versions of the sweeping climate law approved last year but was jettisoned amid strong opposition from Republicans and concerns about cost.

Democrats and environmental advocacy groups never gave up on the plan and pushed Biden in recent weeks to issue an executive order authorizing what the White House now calls the American Climate Corps.

“After years of demonstrating and fighting for a Climate Corps, we turned a generational rallying cry into a real jobs program that will put a new generation to work stopping the climate crisis,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, an environmental group that has led the push for a climate corps.

With the new corps “and the historic climate investments won by our broader movement, the path towards a Green New Deal is beginning to become visible,” Prakash said...

...Environmental activists hailed the new jobs program, which is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, created in the 1930s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, as part of the New Deal...

Lawmakers Weigh In

More than 50 Democratic lawmakers, including Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had also encouraged Biden to create a climate corps, saying in a letter on Monday that “the climate crisis demands a whole-of-government response at an unprecedented scale.”

The lawmakers cited deadly heat waves in the Southwest and across the nation, as well as dangerous floods in New England and devastating wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui, among recent examples of climate-related disasters.

Democrats called creation of the climate corps “historic” and the first step toward fulfilling the vision of the Green New Deal.

“Today President Biden listened to the (environmental) movement, and he delivered with an American Climate Corps,” a beaming Markey said at a celebratory news conference outside the Capitol.

“We are starting to turn the green dream into a green reality,” added Ocasio-Cortez, who co-sponsored the Green New Deal legislation with Markey four years ago.

“You all are changing the world,” she told young activists.

Program Details and Grant Deadlines

The initiative will provide job training and service opportunities to work on a wide range of projects, including restoring coastal wetlands to protect communities from storm surges and flooding; clean energy projects such as wind and solar power; managing forests to prevent catastrophic wildfires; and energy efficient solutions to cut energy bills for consumers, the White House said.

Creation of the climate corps comes as the Environmental Protection Agency launches a $4.6 billion grant competition for states, municipalities and tribes to cut climate pollution and advance environmental justice. The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants are funded by the 2022 climate law and are intended to drive community-driven solutions to slow climate change.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the grants will help “communities so they can chart their own paths toward the clean energy future.”

The deadline for states and municipalities to apply is April 1, with grants expected in late 2024. Tribes and territories must apply by May 1, with grants expected by early 2025."

-via Boston.com, September 21, 2023

[ladamedusoif]

Room Service

A Dave York x F!Reader one-shot

Pairing: Dave York x F!Reader

Word count: 2290

Warnings: EXPLICIT 18+ basically PWP; smut central; alcohol consumption; strong language; thigh riding; oral sex (F receiving); fingering; light bondage; unprotected PiV; praise kink; a little aftercare; sweetness among the smut. No physical description of F! Reader beyond her outfit (dress, stockings, high heeled shoes).

Summary: You’ve been summoned to Room 755 of the conference hotel by a man you know only as Dave.

A/N: Does this need explanation? I’m firmly in the Dave York Pit. I had to get this out of my system. Smut is the result.

Please follow my writing blog @ladameecrit and turn on notifications to stay up to date!

The trick with passing unnoticed through the lobby and to the elevators is to walk like you should be there. Dress like you should be there. Don’t give them any reason to think you aren’t actually a guest at this glossy but generic business hotel, the kind of place that makes all of its money on conferences and overnights on company accounts.

The kind of place you’ve been called to before, for exactly the same reason.

Room 755. You have taken a note of it in your phone. You get into the elevator, adjust your belted trench-coat and dress, and check your hair in the mirror before pressing “7”.

He had confirmed he’d be there at this time. A clear schedule for the rest of the day, he said, and he would like to make the most of it.

You walk confidently down the neverending hallway towards the hotel room. A firm knock. You can sense that he’s peeking through the peephole to make sure it’s who he’s expecting. And then it opens.

”Hi there. You found it okay, then?”

”I did.” You step past him into the room, undoing your belt and unbuttoning the coat to reveal the fitted red dress beneath. “So what do I call you? What would you like me to call you?”

He double-locks the door to avoid any unwanted interruption before taking your coat.

“Dave is fine.”

***

Dave offers you a glass of red wine and you sit beside him on the small sofa near the hotel room window. You can feel his eyes roving over your body, taking you in inch by inch. Your high heels. Your stockings. The glimpse of your thighs. The way the dress clings perfectly to your tits.

He sips his wine and licks his lips lasciviously, edging closer to you.

“So you’ve got a free afternoon, Dave?”

He nods.

“Completely free. And I’d like to enjoy it.”

You cross and uncross your legs as you shift your body and lean forward, letting the line of your tits brush ever so slightly off his chest. “That can be arranged. I’d like to enjoy it too, though.”

Dave’s dark eyes sparkle with lust and he grins, eyes locked on your lips. “I won’t have a good time if you don’t.”

You chuckle. “I’ll hold you to that, Dave. Even if I’m the one providing the…service.”

He whines softly, so quietly you almost miss it. But it’s there. You can feel it. Sense how much he wants it. How much he wants you.

“So with that in mind… where would you like me to start?”

Your fingers find the sturdy muscle of his thigh, trailing over the grey fabric of his dress pants and nudging closer and closer to his crotch.

Dave gasps as he reaches for you, leaning in for a kiss.

“Tell me, Dave. I’m at your service.”

”Get on my leg. My…fuck, get on my thigh.”

You break the kiss and stand up to hitch the skirt of your dress up, exposing the lacy tops of the stay-up stockings you’ve chosen for today. He instantly reaches for your thighs, squeezing the flesh as he pulls you towards him.

“Get on my fucking thigh, baby.”

You straddle his firm, thick leg and wrap your arms around his neck. Dave’s dark eyes are burning, now; the lusty sparkle replaced by wanton desire and need. He puts his hands on your hips and starts to move them for you, dragging over and back.

“Ride like this.”

You nod obediently and kiss him deeply as you start to move, crying out at the sensitivity of your swollen clit and pussy dragging over the fabric. Dave never takes his eyes off you, occasionally grabbing your ass firmly or reaching for your tits.

“Fuck, Dave, feels so fucking good. Wanna get off on you like this.”

He begins to suck at your neck, making you moan loudly with pleasure and sending a wave of wetness to your core as you fuck his thigh faster and harder.

“Let me hear you, baby. C’mon. I want to hear you.”

You give him what he wants. It’s his time, after all. You grip his shoulders and ride his leg like a woman possessed until you come on him with a roar. Even before you’ve lifted yourself off him, you know there’s going to be a wet patch.

“Good girl.” He pulls you to him, still sitting on the sofa, and presses his face to your belly. His long, clever fingers work their way under the folds of your pulled-up dress and find the lace trim of your panties, tugging down the fabric over your ass and thighs. He takes you in, encouraging you to part your legs slightly, before he buries his face against your pussy, bending and tilting his head just so in order to sweep his tongue through your soaking folds.

”Taste good, Dave?”

He nods, lapping up your wetness like it’s his last meal. “Fucking delicious. Fucking delicious little pussy, so fucking sweet and wet for me.”

When he breaks away you see your own slick glistening over his perfect mouth and the tip of that beautiful nose. You lean in and kiss him deeply.

“Tasting yourself?”

You nod. “With a little of you mixed in.”

He laughs, low and purposeful. “Get on the bed. Keep the dress on.”

***

He kneels at the foot of the bed, looking up at you sitting pretty above him.

“Like butter wouldn’t melt.”

You huff a laugh. “Appearances are deceptive, you know.”

His broad hands start to caress your thighs, slipping over and back against the silky nylon stockings and hitching up your dress a little further with each pass.

He hisses at the sight of your flesh, the tops of your thighs bare above the stockings, the promise of your wet, warm, perfect cunt primed and ready for him.

“Lie back.”

You follow his orders. Dave’s hands move down to the bend of your knees as he tugs your body forward until his nose is rubbing gently off your pussy. You whine with anticipation, thighs pressed against his cheeks. He’s clean shaven, but with enough stubble to tease and titillate your sensitive skin.

“What do you want to do to me, Dave? I was here for you, not the other way around.”

He chuckles and presses his tongue flat against you, sending your hips bucking upwards. “I want to eat you out until you’ve come twice more. And then I want to fuck you until you come again around my cock.” He traces a slow circle over your swollen clit with the tip of his tongue, pulling a cry of need from your throat.

“Does that sound okay to you?”

You nod, desperate for his mouth to be back on you.

“Words.”

“That sounds fucking perfect to me, Dave.”

He looks up at you for a moment, hips and pussy exposed for him, dress hitched around your waist, black stockings emphasising the flesh of your thighs. His hardening cock twitches in his pants, and he undoes the belt and tugs down the zipper before focusing again on you.

And then he pauses.

“You okay?”

He stands up and walks around to the side of the bed, belt in hand. “Arms above your head, baby.”

You don’t break his penetrating gaze as you follow his instructions, stretching your arms out above you. A mewl of pleasure and submission escapes your lips as he wraps his belt around your wrists: not too tightly, he checks; just enough to keep your hands together.

Dave settles back between your thighs, taking a final look at your prone form before licking a long, slow stripe through the lips of your pussy. Your hips buck and writhe at the sensation, the feeling intensified by the restraints on your wrists.

He chuckles as he comes back for more, and he makes good his promise. You come for a second time as he’s sucking on your clit, for a third time as he’s flicking the tip of his tongue over the swollen bud while his fingers work you from the inside, expertly finding and massaging the perfect spot until he has you wrung out, boneless; slick covering his clean-shaven face and coating your inner thighs.

He lies beside you, naked now, shirt and dress pants discarded, and undoes the belt from around your wrists before pulling you tight to him, enveloping you in a kiss that sets your body aflame. Dave carefully helps you sit up and unzips your dress before easing it off you, pausing to admire you stretched out before him in your bra and stockings.

His broad palm follows the curves of your hips and belly, eyebrows furrowed as he studies your body from head to toe.

“You said you’d fuck me until I came again.”

Dave’s eyes sparkle as he chuckles, a smile spreading across his handsome face. “I did.”

“And…?”

“And…how would you like it?”

You sit up and caress his face, placing gentle kisses on his nose and forehead, before moving into position on all fours.

“Like this, I think. Does this work for you?” You can’t resist offering him a little wiggle of your ass, and you smirk with satisfaction when you hear Dave moan in response behind you.

He shifts into place, hands squeezing your ass and stroking your back before slowly sinking into your pussy with a long, low whine of pleasure. “It works fucking perfectly, baby.”

The angle is just right, and the combination of his rhythm, the feel of his cock massaging your most sensitive places, and his fingers seeking out your clit has you careening over the edge before long. Your ecstatic cries are muffled, thankfully, by the duvet and pillows as he tilts you forward and fucks you until your cunt flutters, delighted, around him.

He pulls out and watches you flop onto the mattress, chest rising and falling as you come down from your high.

“Good?”

“That’s…fuck. That’s one way of putting it.”

You reach for his cock, hard and ready, and languidly stroke it with one hand as you move to straddle him.

“Your turn.” He grins up at you. “Arms above your head.” He obeys, and you reach for his belt to return the favour before sinking down onto him, pussy still throbbing and sensitive from your own orgasms.

“Do you want to come for me?”

Your hips roll over and over in a perfect, steady rhythm that has Dave panting and moaning with every pass.

“Y-y-yes. Want to come.”

Pick up the pace, a little. He whines.

“Good boy, you’re so close.” You watch the flicker of excitement in his eyes at your praise, and take satisfaction in how well you can read him. “So good, baby. Good, good boy.”

You lean back a little, cupping his balls with one hand while the other reaches for his, bound and stretched above his head. Your fingers intertwine as you watch him edge closer and closer to release, pleasure written all over his face.

“Tell me when you want to come, Dave.”

He’s bucking up against you now, desperate for it, eyes closed and mouth open as his breath hitches and stutters.

“Now…need to come now. Now, baby.”

You purr the words into his ear.

“Come.”

He lets go with a roar, coming hard inside you until he has nothing left to give. Both spent, you flop back beside him on the bed, fingers tracing over the rivulets of perspiration on his beautiful, strong body.

Gently, you remove the belt, examining his wrists for any friction or pressure marks. He does the same in turn, turning your hands over gently as he studies the skin.

“I’ve got some skin balm stuff in the bathroom, if you’d like.” He kisses your palm with a kind of delicate care that belies the man who’d been begging to come just moments before.

“I’m fine.” Your eyes meet his, lost in the chocolate warmth of his hazy, post-coital gaze. “You want some, though?”

Dave shakes his head and pulls you to him for a kiss.

***

You weren’t supposed to fall asleep. You blink awake an hour later, naked under the hotel covers, Dave snoring lightly beside you.

“Dave. Dave.”

He mumbles as he warily opens one eye, turning to face you.

“Hi.”

“I fell asleep. Shit.”

His mouth meets yours before dropping to your breasts as he absentmindedly sucks on your nipples.

“‘S okay, though. Right? You were going to stay anyway.”

You feel the strong muscles of his forearms, fingertips following the pattern of the freckles speckled across his golden skin.

“You want me to stay, Dave?”

He furrows his brow. “That was the plan, wasn’t it? Did you bring your bag?”

“I did. Left it in the car, though, just to - I dunno. Add to the atmosphere, I guess.”

Dave chuckles as he pulls you in again, his laugh resonating through your two bodies as they press together: warm, soft skin on skin; the dew of post-sex perspiration still fresh.

“Well, it fucking worked, baby.” He kisses your forehead affectionately and caresses your cheek. “And the kids didn’t mind going to Mai’s?”

You grin. “A long weekend at their cool single aunt’s house with a pool in the backyard? I didn’t see them for dust.”

He lies back and laughs. You nuzzle into his side, admiring the glint and gleam of your wedding band as you rest your left hand on Dave’s tummy.

A tell-tale rumble interrupts the blissed-out, post-coital mood.

“Hungry, are we, Mr York?”

Your husband smiles at you like a mischievous kid. “Worked up an appetite, baby.”

“Then let’s call room service. We’re not done here.”

(MDNI banner by @cafekitsune)

[zvaigzdelasas]

The Communist Party’s main theoretical journal has laid out a new ideological framework for the financial system that emphasizes the primacy of China’s top leader and Marxist principles. [...]

The Communist Party issued a detailed ideological statement on Friday in Qiushi, the party’s main official theoretical journal, that made clear that it expected banks, pension funds, insurers and other financial organizations in China to follow Marxist principles [...]

The Qiushi paper, which was being closely studied by bankers and economists in China, could cut against efforts by Beijing to show that the economy is open to investment even as it places a heavier hand on business.

Barry Naughton, an economist at the University of California at San Diego who has long studied China’s transition to a market economy, said that the document signaled that the finance sector would be subject to ever-tighter oversight and forced to serve government policies more actively.

“The financial sector will not be expected to push for market-oriented reforms or even necessarily maximize profit,” he said. “As a program for the financial sector, it is ambitious, disappointing and somewhat ominous.”[...]

“Politics will for sure further dictate China’s finance, effectively moving China even closer to how it was before the reforms started in 1978,” said Chen Zhiwu, a finance professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Some of the policy targets set forth in the essay would not be unusual as regulatory goals in the West. For example, it calls for banks to emphasize financial services for the “real economy,” which the party has long interpreted to include ample financing for the country’s industrial base.

But it also calls for a strong role in finance for [...] Marxist ideology generally. That follows a pattern that emerged for other sectors during the national congress of China’s Communist Party a year ago, but has been less apparent in finance — until now. [...]

Moody’s, the credit rating agency, announced on Tuesday that it was lowering its credit outlook for the Chinese government to negative. It had previously assigned a stable outlook for the country’s credit rating, which remains at A1, near the top of the ratings scale. [...]

Qiushi is the main journal providing pronouncements on China’s current ideology, which is known as Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. The statement on Friday said that Mr. Xi’s speech to the financial conference, “is a valuable ideological crystallization formed by our party’s unremitting exploration of the path of financial development with Chinese characteristics.” [...]

“Politics affects all important areas, and economic or financial issues are themselves political issues,” he said. Indeed, Communist Party control over finance comes up repeatedly in the Qiushi statement. “We must unswervingly adhere to the centralized and unified leadership of the party Central Committee over financial work, uphold and strengthen the party’s overall leadership over financial work,” it said.

5 Dec 23

[mariacallous]

On Tuesday, New Hampshire attorney general John Formella said that a Texas-based telecom company was behind the reportedly AI-generated robocalls impersonating President Joe Biden that went out ahead of the state’s presidential primary last month.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Formella announced that he had identified Life Corporation and its owner, Walter Monk, as the source behind the thousands of calls and that his office issued a cease-and-desist letter to the company and had opened a criminal investigation into the matter. The Federal Communications Commission sent its own cease-and-desist letters to Life Corporation, as well as another Texas company, Lingo Telecom, the alleged voice service provider of the calls.

“Ensuring public confidence in the electoral process is vital,” Formella said at the Tuesday press conference. “We're providing this update and information today to assure the public that we take this seriously and that this is one of our most important priorities. We are also providing this update and information to send a strong message of deterrence to any person or entity who would attempt to undermine our elections through AI or other means.”

Formella said that anywhere from 5,000 to 25,000 of these robocalls were placed ahead of the New Hampshire primary that mimicked Biden and discouraged voters from voting. “Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday,” the robocall said.

In January, WIRED reported that two teams of researchers had determined that the call was created with voice-cloning software from the AI startup Eleven Labs. The company declined to take responsibility for the Biden clone, telling WIRED that it was “dedicated to preventing the misuse of audio AI tools.”

Last week, the FCC put out a new proposal to ban robocalls that use AI-generated voices by updating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a 1991 law that regulates telemarketers. The FCC has used the TCPA in the past to go after junk callers, including conservative activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman. In 2021, the FCC fined the pair more than $5 million for violating the law after they placed calls threatening to release the personal information of voters if they voted by mail in the 2020 election.

“Consumers deserve to know that the person on the other end of the line is exactly who they claim to be,” FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement on Tuesday.

[trans-axolotl]

key takeaways from psych abolition discussions at the anarchist healthcare conference 2023:

Psych wards and asylums have not always existed, and we can tear down and create alternatives! As much as the system wants us to believe this is our only option for providing care and support for madness, that is simply not true and there are multiple historical examples of successful deinstitutionalization. We talked a lot about the Basaglia method and the application of that in Italy and Brazil.

Successful resistance within psych wards has required solidarity from both workers and patients. Patients are often understandably very mistrustful of the professionals who have perpetrated violence against us, and psych professionals need to actively work to build trust, collaborate in sharing the burden of risk that currently patients are the only ones holding, actively value patients lives above their job security, and must actively interrogate the power dynamics they are currently operating within. One area to start building solidarity can be around the ways that psych workers like behavioral techs are often underpaid, overworked, and exploited by upper management, and that many psych workers go into the field because they have their own experience with mental health. There needs to be much more room for patients to express our anger, rage, and distrust, and still be respected by psych professionals who want to organize with us.

This quote from Basaglia and the Democratic Psychiatry movement in Italy: " The debate about whether to work inside or outside institutions, inside or outside, presupposes that inside and outside exist as clearly separate and antagonistic positions. Inside and outside are created as opposite and completely separate poles by a social system that is based on divisions at all levels. If we accept this premise, we are already playing into the hands of administrators."

What resistance in psych wards can look like! We talked about everything from organized protests, group refusal to comply with treatment activities, individual noncompliance, breaking people out, trying to advocate through the approved means like ethics committees and patient advocates, sneaking in contraband, creating intentional peer support within those spaces, and also some more complex and nuance conversations around the fact that when all ability to access privacy and bodily autonomy is taken away, many patients will turn to self harm as a form of enforcing bodily autonomy.

Ways that professionals can act as accomplices, by refusing to sign psych holds, refusing to force meds, enabling peer support, breaking their hospital policies, letting patients get away with things, advocating for policies like cell phones in units, calling ethics consults. Also the idea of deliscensure, where therapists will go to school, get licensed, and then let that license expire and offer services under "life coaching," which has different legal responsibilities and creates less entanglement with the state and mandatory reporting.

The idea that coercion exists on so many levels in the psych system, from outpatient to inpatient. "involuntary holds" are not the only type of involuntary treatment that happens. Someone had a really good point that choosing between coercive and violent inpatient systems or being forced to have zero support on the outside is also not a choice free from coercion, and that any discussion of involuntary treatment needs to have a really broad understanding of how coercion and choice plays into treatment in so many levels.

Brainstorming what inside/outside organizing might look like in terms of how we as community outside institutions support people currently incarcerated. Some ideas included bringing in regular care packages with fun items for patients and also items like hair care products, especially for textured hair since psych wards rarely provide any hair care products for Black hair, and sneaking in contact info to local organizations and collectives, sneaking in radical zines about mental health support topics/psych abolition/harm reduction by giving them covers of approved topics on things like CBT, mainstream mental health, etc. Having hotlines for immediate mobilization for psych incarceration. Utilizing the wisdom and knowledge from people who are regularly in and out of hospitals, who might have a lot more long term knowledge of how a psych facility functions than staff who have a lot of turnover. Really listening to patients and peers and getting creative about how to reach people and remind them that they're not forgotten. We really grappled with how to do this type of organizing when considering that psych wards are often very transient spaces where people are there for only 5ish days, and how to set up structures that can offer support to people their first time they enter a psych facility. A lot of our conversations also looked at successful inside/outside organizing happening in prisons, and people felt like that would be a really good direction to go into.

Building our community capacity to deal with crisis, and also depathologizing crisis! We talked about how often people label others' experiences as crisis without actually seeing how the person feels about it, and how white supremacy culture really encourages this on a societal level, especially in terms of what public situations bystanders will call the cops/crisis hotlines. In order to build networks of community care, we need to get comfortable with crisis, and look at how crisis exists in context, instead of just labeling things as symptoms and disorders. Healing cannot exist in isolation, and alongside things like emotional and therapeutic support, access to substances, we need to consider how to integrate material support for things like housing, food, medical care, fighting against oppression, access to job security, things like that. We also need to address how to expand access to community spaces, especially when considering people who feel isolated from in person community and don't have support networks to rely on.

overall this conference was just a really cool convergence of mad people, psych professional allies, people working with harm reduction and alternative crisis teams and just a million different contexts! happy to expand more on any of these points I've listed above.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 10/10/2023

by dry volume, this post is 80% talking about gallery walls. tl;dr : do not buy or hang up things you do not like in a vague attempt to make your house look more grownup ONLY put up things you love, mat your art to give it visual room to breathe.

listening

had a playlist of the james bond theme songs on while i was deep cleaning my kitchen and the line "YOU GOT TO GIVE THE OTHER FELLA HELL!!! " from SPECIFICALLY the guns 'n roses cover of live and let die (even though the playlist had the correct mccartney version) has been THOROUGHLY stuck in my brain for forty eight hours.

-

reading

academic transphobia to follow:

an anti-reading section, for once. Retraction Watch (site that tracks academic paper retractions and major academic beef like when someone is stripped of tenure for fraud, formerly my beloved) published an op-ed by an anthropologist TERF who is Big Mad she got called out by her professional association for trying to submit a conference talk that amounted to hate speech against her trans colleagues in the name of the stupid fucking largely disproven sexing skeletons thing. the comments have devolved into the professor sock puppeting anyone who goes "hey RW why did you platform this?"

would be very interested to hear from RW about how a retracted conference talk has the same impact on the scientific community as a retracted paper, but we'll fucking see. i think RW provides an important service to the scientific community (they are the most indepth and thorough tracker of retractions, more so than the actual publishers) but this is a fucking weird move

-

watching

rewatched Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988, dir. Zemeckis) for fic research. GOD this movie is fucking good. it performs a minor animation miracle every thirty seconds.

-

playing

nothing to report

-

making

by popular demand (four people), some thoughts about gallery walls. some discourse on the method, if you will. i went with a gallery wall bc i like the look and i had an extremely large blank wall to fill bc this apartment is slightly too big for me. the string lights remind me very much of my dorm rooms but cool lamps have been few and far between down here.

how to get art (and why/caveats)

i honestly don't have a ton of direct collecting advice here other than "have you tried going to a lot of thrift stores". i cheat bc both my parents were architects who collected art, everyone in my family dabbles in fine art, and my sister has her bachelors in art history. so i am awash in paper, constantly. i grew up with a set of flatfiles and a closet full of spare frames. i recognize most people do not grow up like this.

with that caveat out of the way, how do i actually get my art? usually one piece at a time over a very long period of time. there's a postcard on my gallery wall i got in 2009. this is a game you will be playing for the rest of your life as you discover things you like and your tastes evolve.

it is VITAL that you love every piece on your walls. no filler ikea canvases unless you actually like them. the instant you start thinking "oh i need a landscape to look Grownup" you have to strangle that thought in the cradle. there are no rules, especially in art. put whatever the fuck you want up on your walls with no regard for the public's taste.

i feel like "i should buy and put up more art" is something that often falls into a vague Grownup Improvement Goal (like budgeting) bc it is an Grownup Improvement Goal and not bc they actually want to buy and put up more art. fortunately for everyone, you do not have to buy or put up Morally or Socially Improving art that will impress some vague category of grownups, bc we don't fucking live in victorian times.

most importantly you do not need to spend much (or in some cases any) money to put things on your walls. getting the effect you want (fancy washi tape, matching frames) may take some money, but using the printer at work and stealing some scotch tape is free.

how to get art (actual advice this time)

i feel a little silly typing this all out but i really like reading other chewsdayposters' processes, and it is really helpful for me a lot of the time to have someone say: actually there is this complete other way of doing something you have never considered bc u did not grow up with it

i ask you: do you have a stack of sentimental papers somewhere in your home? congrats you have some frameable items. a thing does not need to be Fine Art to be in a frame to go on the wall and make you happy. tape up a birthday card. put a quilt up on your wall. pushpin a label from a jar of pickled herring bc it reminds you of your grandma. frame a beloved tshirt. this is a martha stewart ass statement but things that are not traditional paper art on your walls will add variety and whimsy to your home.

other places for art that are not thrift/estate/yard sales:

i do believe that making your own art, including a $3 paint-by-numbers kit, will fix something in your brain. it's very similar to how i personally have to go stand with my feet in a body of water twice a year or THE SLUDGE smothers my brain

your favorite weird indie bands are almost certainly selling posters on bandcamp even if they're not currently on tour

i like the artists' co-op justseeds for art that deals with "social, environmental, and political engagement" like my beloved "fuck space tourism" poster

start a "good lines" or equivalent "art i like" tag on here and buy prints when u have the money. even if artists here don't have a shop open or don't have the specific piece u want as a print, ask if u can throw them an appropriate amount of money on venmo or something and get it printed locally or online. ive had good luck with vistaprint and they have rolling sales

do you like a piece of art in the public domain, like something from a museum? print it out. put it in a frame. no it's not as nice as a professional print but it's free if you do it at work and now it's on your wall

fuck around on wikimedia commons and the internet archive. i particularly love pulp magazine covers and little illustrative insets for out of date astronomy books

non- and semi-consumable supplies

if u put $25 into supplies u can use for many many other projects (i assume you probably have some of the following list), you can make any frame nice and save approximately a gajillion dollars.

good utility knife and extra blades

hammer

tape measure

level (comes with most command hook packs, you can also use your phone)

stepstool, sturdy chair, or patient tall person

assorted nails (you can buy a little tackle box with assorted nails from most big box stores)

little squeezy tube of DryDex spackle ($5) and putty knife or honestly old credit card to fill in nail holes when you move out

OR command strips and hooks

matboard that is white on one side and black on the other (~$8 at big box craft stores). you can use this to cut your own mats and/or replace a kind of weird back on an otherwise good frame

most printer paper these days is acid free. steal some from your workplace.

assorted small brushes

little thing of acrylic paint in whatever color you want your frames to be (~$1.50 ea). you can also spray paint your frames for a different finish but i don't have the space or patience in this apartment

sandpaper or sacrificial emery board

i would further recommend a little set of letter size desktop drawers/mini flatfiles like this to keep all the small stuff you want to frame in one place. i have sentimental art i don't want to frame in one drawer and things i do want to frame in the other. this has been very good for my brain bc it's all safely and flatly contained out of sight, and it's easy to flick through a stack of things i already love when i need one more small thing or one warmer thing to fill a gap

frames

the good news for us is that frames and art are a fucking bitch to move and people frequently give them away. your local discount and thrift stores are going to be fucking awash in small frames 8.5"x11" and under for under $3 each. when you are thrifting or estate saling or yard saling or generally gallivanting about on a weekend, pay little attention to any art actually in a frame. is the frame in okay shape? can you repaint it without too much trouble? will it clean up all right? does it have the glass? can you insert the glass from a different frame into the one you actually want without any thrift store employees noticing?

for weird sizes above 8.5x11 and outside poster size that cannot be easily found at thrift stores, the big box craft stores here in america have roughly quarterly frame sales and frequent coupons. do NOT get your shit professionally framed at michaels bc they upcharge by about 3x compared to other local framers (both on the east coast and here in tx).

i went through two periods of seriously buying frames (last year of high school and the year i moved into the original lair, when/where i thought i was going to stay for a few years) and ive swapped in out and between those dozen or so total. once you have built up a little stock of frames that fit the general sizes of art you tend to collect, ur pretty good for a while. the only new "frame" i bought for my gallery wall was a little floating shelf.

mats

the absolute biggest fucking thing u can do to make your art look nicer is mat that bitch, which gives it room to breathe. if your art does not have a built in border or a lot of white space (see 9, 12, and 13 in the gallery wall below, as well as 8 which has a ton of negative space with the car door), you need a frame bigger than your art. you can google the suggested proportions yourself or decide with your heart.

i am a big fan of a very slapdash floating mat, which means cutting a piece of printer paper to size or flipping around the paper that tells you what size the frame is and slapping your art right on top of that, sometimes with a lick of gluestick to keep it in place. generally a floating mat means a sort of 3D matting technique but we don't have time for that. do not do this printer paper technique long-term with a particularly beloved or expensive piece of art.

u can also buy pre-cut mats at Michaels or Joann’s for not too too many dollars, or cut your own with the acid-free matboard ($10 for a poster board sized piece) and a new utility knife blade and a steady hand. or, if you're lucky, it comes with the frame.

gallery wall specific advice

there aren't any rules. actual galleries and museums tend to put the center of a piece or group of pieces at 57" from the floor. you may want to fuck around with that depending on your own height, the space you have, and the pieces you own.

a gallery wall does not need to be 24 pieces like this one. it can be any number.

this is the first one i have done mostly by myself and it is the most color-restricted one i have ever put up. it is also the one with the most successful repeating motif (circles). usually i grab the art i want most to go together and send pics to my art historian sister who will then arrange it for me and say shit like “do you have another small blue thing for the top left” or “do you have two pieces that are warmer and larger” or "different frame for the middle left"

look at a lot of other gallery walls. personally i like the ones that have non-framed and non-square things in them. ideally mine would have photographs and taxidermy in it for maximum weirdness. but u cannot go wrong with a grid, or all horizontal pieces, or all vertical pieces. for a full wall puzzle piece like this, u do not generally want an american southwest four corners meeting situation. stagger it. lay everything out on the floor and move it around eighteen times (this is the worst part). the gallery wall as a whole does not have to be perfectly aligned to the ceiling or the back of your couch or what have you. it can be sort of an organic blob shape along the top and bottom edges.

my wall

this soothing blue and green wall with wood tone pops has pieces from almost half my life. it skews later in college/recent acquisitions, as i sharpened my taste for limited-number prints and had a car to go to thrift stores with, but that’s just how this specific wall came together

the list below should tell you what each piece is, how much i paid for it (and the cost of the frame if applicable), and when i got it. this wall has most of the Nice Art in my collection that is signed/numbered/in some way slightly fancier bc it is the wall i stare at when on my couch.

embroidered Scorpio constellation hoop, birthday gift from my sister (free, came with hoop, i used some makerspace felt and batting to properly back and finish it much later so free with my tuition), nov 2016

numbered and signed print of an italianate cityscape, $5 and came with the frame and mat from an estate sale, i put a new back on it with scrap matboard so the back of the print wasn't just naked, fall 2021

signed print of a new england landscape, came with the frame and the mat but is stained right over the signature :( $2.50 from salvation army, one of the last things i bought in spring 2023 before i moved

signed original multimedia on board collage by my sister from her like second ever gallery show, $69 in winter 2022 for the art, the frame was from a free pile i gave a new acid free back with scrap matboard. that was such a good free pile i got a huge pile of frames from that

magazine page (idk which one either) i saved in high school (i graduated in 2013) or very early college, frame was from a free pile by the side of the road in summer 2021 and repainted with some white acrylic paint. it is float matted with printer paper. maybe a dollar for the paint? i definitely did not buy the magazine

this is an out of print poster by one of my favorite living artists (Josh McPhee) so i emailed him and asked if i could get it printed myself if i threw him $25 and he said yes. i think it cost $22 to get it printed professionally, the frame is basics by studio decor ($20 for a 2-pack) (i spent so much money and time on this one bc i wanted a very specific look for a very specific space in my kitchen in the old apartment), feb 22

signed numbered woodcut by Roger Peet ($20 in august 2020), another studiobasics frame that was i think $8 in summer 2022. float matted with acid free matboard and not printer paper.

gigantic fuckoff unsigned unlabeled poster i bought bc she reminds me of the Barnes & Noble murals, $10 at goodwill (came with the frame, half off) sep 2023

star chart from the US Naval Observatory that was on a free shelf at Amherst College when i was taking a class there in fall 2018, another studiobasics frame (idk when i bought this one) so under $10. float mount on acid free printer paper.

plaster frog mirror from an estate sale in spring 2021, i do not remember how much i paid for it but it was not more than $5

oh goddamnit this is a new block so of course it restarted the numbering. fatal off by a power of ten error, very typical for astronomy. poster from a show i went to in college spring 2015, do not remember when i bought this sub-$10 studiobasics frame either, float mount on acid free printer paper.

signed poster from my roommate-at-the-time’s cousin’s band in fall 2014 (i can’t actually find the receipt but i did find an email from her cousin letting me know he shipped me and my roommate’s orders together lol) let’s say $20, another sub-$10 studiobasics frame of mysterious provenance.

moon map out of an old science book in high school, let’s be generous and say $10 for both the book and the frame (another studiobasics)

numbered but unsigned new year’s print from a local-ish print shop in massachusetts, $12 at savers with the frame, fall 2022

cover of a very fragile vintage paperback copy of raymond c/handler’s The Long G/oodbye i acquired in high school (could not have been more than a dollar or two), with a frame and mat that came in an ikea multipack my dad bought me in high school bc i had a set of l/ackadaisy miniposters i wanted to hang, looks like the closest modern equivalent is the EDSBRUCK, a single will run you about $12 today

postcard inherited from my grandpa’s collection of loose paraphernalia in 2010 (free but at what cost etc), frame is a studiobasics that come in a pack of 6 for $20 (less if you have a coupon) so let’s round down a smidge and say $3. don’t remember when i bought this frame either, it is matted with real matboard bc the postcard and the back of the frame are so thin

“my heart is a fish” cross stitch (a reference to the imperial radch trilogy of books) i made this and did not date it but i know i blogged about it on here at some point between 2014-2018, i remember having to buy five colors of thread but owned the hoop already, again back and finished it properly much later with maskerspace batting and felt, let’s say $5 not counting my time

postcard from @believerindaydreams last winter in another studiobasics frame and float mounted with acid free matboard.

tiny moon mirror from salvation army in early spring 2015, under $5

CD mirror from Vapor95 ($125? preorder in fall 2021), came with velcro command strips which was very nice of them

a $300 original multimedia collage (the first one my sister ever made, when she was in middle school) i bought in spring 2021 from her first show, sitting on a $5 acrylic shelf from five below i bought last month

22-24 are national geographic maps, 50c each at an estate sale last month, had to buy $7 worth of binder clips and pushpins to put them up bc i don’t fucking know what box they’re in and didn’t have time to rip the whole closet of boxes im ignoring apart

a slightly longer tl;dr: do not buy or hang up things you do not like in a vague attempt to make your house look more grownup ONLY put up things you love, thrift and repaint your frames if possible but you can get very cheap studiobasics ones if you want them all to match, acid-free mat your art for preservation and to give it room to breathe, keep a little drawer or box of stuff you love and might want to frame

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[justinspoliticalcorner]

Madison Pauly and Henry Carnell at Mother Jones:

The conversion therapists met last November at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip. Behind the closed doors and drawn blinds of a Hampton Inn conference room, a middle-aged woman wearing white stockings and a Virgin Mary blue dress issued a call to arms to the 20-some people in attendance. “In our current culture, in which children are being indoctrinated with transgender belief from the moment they’re out of the womb, if we are confronted with a gender-confused child, you must help,” declared Michelle Cretella, a board member of the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity. “We must do something.” Cretella was delivering a keynote speech at the first in-person conference in four years of the Alliance, which describes itself as a “professional and scientific organization” with “Judeo-Christian values.” Its purpose: to defend and promote the practice of conversion therapy by licensed counselors.

Not that they’d call what they do “conversion therapy.” That term lacks a precise definition, but it is used colloquially to describe attempts to shift a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. In the 1960s, some psychologists tried to make gay men straight by pairing aversive stimuli, like electric shocks or chemically induced nausea, with images of gay porn—techniques that ran the risk of causing serious psychological damage even as they failed to change participants’ sexual orientation, researchers eventually concluded. Today, “conversion therapy” generally takes the form of verbal counseling. Participants are typically conservative Christians who engage voluntarily—motivated by internalized stigma, family pressure, and the belief that their feelings are incompatible with their faith. Others are children, brought into therapy by their parents.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has concluded that conversion therapy lacks “sufficient bases in scientific principles” and that people who have undergone it are “significantly more likely to experience suicidality and depression.” Similarly, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, published a report concluding that “none of the existing research supports the premise that mental or behavioral health interventions can alter gender identity or sexual orientation. Interventions aimed at a fixed outcome, such as gender conformity or heterosexual orientation…are coercive, can be harmful, and should not be part of behavioral health treatment.”

Accordingly, the Alliance and the ideas it promotes have been relegated to the scientific and political fringes. In the 2010s, as acceptance of gay rights grew rapidly, 18 states and dozens of local governments passed laws forbidding mental health professionals from attempting conversion therapy on minors. Yet by 2020, a new front had opened in the war against LGBTQ people. Republican state legislatures started passing laws targeting transgender and nonbinary children at school—restricting their access to bathrooms, barring them from participating in sports, and stopping educators from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity. The most intense attacks have banned doctors from providing the treatments for gender dysphoria backed by all major US medical associations. Nearly 114,000 trans youth live in states where access to puberty blockers and hormone therapy has been wiped out.

Last year, I received leaked emails illustrating how these laws are crafted and pushed by a network of anti-trans activists and powerful Christian-right organizations. The Alliance is deeply enmeshed in this constellation of actors. Although small, with an annual budget of under $200,000, it provides both unsubstantiated arguments suggesting LGBTQ identities are changeable and a network of licensed counselors to lend their credibility to these efforts. Among the collaborators were David Pickup, the Alliance’s president-elect; Laura Haynes, an Alliance advocate; and Cretella, the former executive director of an anti-trans pediatrics group who described gender-affirming medical care at the Las Vegas conference as “evil” and part of a “New World Order.” (“I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” she assured attendees. “I’m just someone who has been in the battle of the culture of life versus the culture of death long enough to see the big picture.”) All three have testified before state legislatures against gender-affirming care. When a US senator introduced a pair of bills to restrict trans youth health care in 2021, his press release quoted Cretella calling gender-affirming treatments “eugenics.”

[...]

If the Las Vegas conference made one thing clear, it’s that conversion therapy is alive and well, even in places where it’s been banned. One counselor told me he makes it a habit not to document his treatment plans in writing to avoid getting in trouble and simply treats “family dynamics” in states with conversion therapy bans. In a 2015 survey of more than 27,000 trans adults, nearly 1 in 7 said that a professional, such as a therapist, doctor, or religious adviser, had tried to make them not transgender; about half of respondents said they were minors at the time. By applying this rate to population estimates, the Williams Institute at UCLA projects that more than 135,000 trans adults nationwide have experienced some form of conversion therapy.

Despite the data, lawmakers frequently don’t believe that conversion therapy is still happening in their community, says Casey Pick, director of law and policy at the Trevor Project, the LGBTQ suicide prevention group. “We’re constantly running up against this misconception that this is an artifact of the past,” she says. So, five years ago, the Trevor Project began scouring psychologists’ websites and books, records of public testimony, and known conversion therapy referral services, looking for counselors who said they could alter someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation. As the research stretched on, Pick noticed webpages being revised to reflect changing times. “We saw many folks who seemed to leave the industry entirely,” she says. “But others changed their website, changed their keywords, [from] talking about creating ex-gays to talking about ex-trans.” Last December, Pick’s team published their report documenting active conversion therapists. They found more than 600 were licensed health care professionals and an additional 716 were clergy, lay ministers, or other unlicensed religious counselors.

According to Pick, some conversion therapists have embraced a new label for what they do: “gender exploratory therapy.” It’s a term that Cretella used to describe the approach she recommended, and unlike the other euphemisms thrown around at the conference, this has gained traction. In 2021, a group of therapists, who ranged from conflicted about medical interventions for kids with gender dysphoria to skeptical of the very concept of transgender identity, formed the Gender Exploratory Therapy Association (GETA) to promote an approach they characterize as neither conversion nor affirmation.

Some current and former leaders of the group, which claims a membership of 300 mental health providers, have been involved in influential organizations lobbying against gender-affirming care across the world, such as the Ireland-based Genspect and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, a nonprofit registered in Idaho. They’ve notched some big wins: In November 2023, the UK Council for Psychotherapy—the nation’s top professional association—declared that it was fine for counselors to take GETA’s “exploratory” approach to gender. This April, a long-awaited review of gender-related care for youth in England’s National Health Service endorsed exploratory therapy, according to Alex Keuroghlian, an associate psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School. And in the United States, in cases in which families of trans children have sued states for banning gender-affirming care, the state often calls expert witnesses who endorse “exploratory” psychotherapy as their preferred alternative treatment.

After all, the idea of “exploring” one’s gender identity sounds benign. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which issues guidelines on gender-­affirming treatment, recommends that clinicians working with teens “facilitate the exploration and expression of gender openly and respectfully so that no one particular identity is favored.” Yet, as with mindfulness, “that term has now been hijacked by folks on the other side,” says Judith Glassgold, a clinical psychologist who chaired the APA task force that in 2009 documented the lack of science behind conversion therapy.

GETA’s guidelines instruct therapists to dig deep into “the entire landscape of the young person’s life and subjective experience,” probing all possible reasons they might identify as transgender. The catch, says Glassgold, is that “exploration” means “trying to find negative reasons why someone’s diverse.” Last year, SAMHSA issued a report saying that “approaches that discourage youth from identifying as transgender or gender-diverse, and/or from expressing their gender identity” are sometimes “misleadingly referred to as ‘exploratory therapy.’” These approaches are “harmful and never appropriate,” the report concluded.

Mother Jones has a detailed report on a new form of the medically discredited practice known as conversion therapy called gender exploratory therapy. Gender exploratory therapy is the practice of making a person revert to their gender assigned at birth, which is essentially forced detransition by another name.

Read the full story at Mother Jones.

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8. Online Courses: Create and sell online courses on platforms like Udemy or Teachable.

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26. Digital Marketing: Provide digital marketing services like SEO, PPC, or social media management.

27. Online Gaming: Stream your gaming sessions on platforms like Twitch and monetize through ads and donations.

28. Virtual Assistant Coaching: If you have experience as a VA, offer coaching services to aspiring virtual assistants.

29. Online Research: Conduct research for businesses or individuals in need of specific information.

30. Online Real Estate: Invest in virtual real estate, such as domain names or digital properties, and sell them for a profit.

Remember that success in making money online often requires dedication, patience, and the ability to adapt to changing trends. It's essential to research and choose the opportunities that align with your skills, interests, and long-term goals.

[george-the-good]

King George VI - Christmas Message (1943)

Once again, from our home in England, the Queen and I send our Christmas greetings and good wishes to each one of you, all the world over. Some of you may hear me on board your ships, in your aircraft, or as you wait for battle in the jungles of the Pacific Islands or on the Italian peaks. Some of you may listen to me as you rest from your work, or as you lie sick or wounded in hospital. To many of you, my words will come as you sit in the quiet of your homes. But, wherever you may be, today of all days in the year, your thoughts will be in distant places and your hearts with those you love. I hope that my words, spoken to them and to you, may be the bond that joins us all in one company for a few moments on this Christmas Day.

With this thought in my mind, I wish to all who are on service good luck and a stout heart; to those who wait for them to return, proud memories and high hopes to keep you strong; to all children, here and in the lands beyond the seas, a day of real happiness.

I send these words of Christmas greeting to all of you who dwell within the family of the British Commonwealth and Empire. I know you would wish me to send a message of hope to our gallant allies who fight with us, and to all who, in the loneliness of exile or the horror of invasion, look forward to our coming victory.

In this year almost passed, many things have happened, under God’s providence, to make us thankful for His mercies. The generous strength of the United States of America, the tremendous deeds of Russia, the endurance of China under her long ordeal, the fighting spirit of France re-born, and the flower of the manhood and womanhood of many lands that share the burdens of our forward march - all these have played their part in the brightening of our fortunes on sea, on land, and in the air.

Since I last spoke to you many things have changed. But the spirit of our people has not changed. As we were not downcast by defeat, we are not unduly exalted by victory. While we have bright visions of the future we have no easy dreams of the days that lie close at hand. We know that much hard working and hard fighting, and perhaps harder working and harder fighting than ever before, are necessary for victory. We shall not rest from our task until it is nobly ended. Meanwhile, within these islands, we have tried to be worthy of our fathers; we have tried to carry into the dawn the steadfastness and courage vouchsafed to us when we stood alone in the darkness.

This is not the time for a chronicle of our progress. But there is one landmark in the sombre, world-embracing battlefield which I hope and I trust may endure. Wherever their duty has called our men and women, they have gained new friends and come to know old friends better. They have learnt to share the burdens, and to read the hearts, of their neighbours; they have laid the foundations of new friendships between nations, and strengthened old ones formed long ago. As a result, there is springing up in every country fresh hope that out of comradeship in sacrifice shall come power to restore, and power to build anew.

I saw proof of this when I visited North Africa in the summer. I saw many thousands of men of the United Nations, united in action, in heart and mind and purpose. The only rivalry between them was in the service of a great cause; their only aim was the defeat of a common enemy.

In the same spirit of unity, men of diverse races have come together in the council chamber and round the conference-table: some to meet the stern, immediate demands of war itself; others to heal the wounds that war deals to all humanity - to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, mend the broken, and succour the poor. So, as we see the clouds breaking on this Christmas Day, we should take comfort from our faith that out of desolation shall rise a new hope, and out of strife be born a new brotherhood.

From this ancient and beloved festival that we are keeping, sacred as it is to home and all that home means, we can draw strength to face the future of a world riven by a tempest such as it has never yet endured. In the words of a Scottish writer of our day: ‘No experience can be too strange and no task too formidable, if a man can link it up with what he knows and loves.’¹

---

1. From Memory Hold-the-Door, by John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir)

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇳🇵🇸 🚨 UNITED NATIONS WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME WARNS GAZANS FACE IMMEDIATE STARVATION

The United Nations' World Food Programme warned Friday that Palestinian civilians living in the Gaza Strip face immediate starvation and dehydration as the Israeli Occupation continues operations targeting Gaza.

The comments come as part of a United Nations World Food Programme press conference held on Friday morning.

"Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are becoming more desperate everyday in the search for bread and other essential foods," World Food Programme Senior Spokesperson for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, Abeer Etefa said.

Etefa told the press conference, "We are already starting to see cases of dehydration and malnutrition which is increasing rapidly and by the day. So Gaza actually risks sliding into hunger heavily without fuel and a rapid surge in food supplies."

According to Etefa, only 10% of necessary food supplies are entering the Gaza Strip at this time, and she told the conference that Gaza is facing a major food gap.

"So 2.2 million people, that's nearly the entire population of Gaza are now in need of food assistance," the spokesperson warned.

"People are barely able to have a meal a day. Food options are limited to canned food, if it is actually available, bread is a rare luxury and aid trucks are trickling into Gaza, but even the small amounts of food and water that make it over the border are barely able to be transported to where it needs to go as roads have been damaged or fuel is in very short supply."

Etefa went on to say that the existing food systems inside the besieged Gaza Strip are collapsing and food production has come to a complete halt since the events of October 7th.

"Fisherman cannot access the sea, Farmers cannot reach their farms, and the last bakery that the World Food Programme has been working with has closed its doors because of the shortage of fuel," Etefa explained.

"Shops have run out of food supplies, the bakeries are unable to operate because of the fuel, shortage of clean water or because they have sustained damage, and the last mill that was also operating to make... the wheat flour that's needed for baking bread has been hit [in an Israeli strike] and has stopped operating."

Etefa goes on to explain how all these problems have led to bread shortages, which she called the "last staple food for people in Gaza" and pointed to the lack of electricity supply as one of the main culprits for the desperation of the situation.

Etefa goes on to explain how perishable food items are not available, nor are they really an option due to the lack of electricity and fuel which prevents refrigeration.

According to Etefa, at the beginning of the conflict, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), working alongside its partner agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), partnered with 23 bakeries at the start of the conflict and have been providing bread for over 200'000 Gazans every morning.

"This is now over," Etefa stated plainly, "because all of the 23 bakeries are now out of service."

According to the spokesperson, at the start of the war there had been over 130 bakeries in Gaza, with more than 11 having been targeted in Israeli Occupation strikes, including one which had been contracted by the WFP, while the rest are effectively closed due to shortages of fuel.

"In general, 25% of the shops in Gaza, those ones that have been contracted by WFP remain open and others have run out of essential food items," the spokesperson explained.

"But even the ones that remain open have very limited supplies in the stores, the local markets have shut down completely, small quantities of food can be found, but they are being sold at alarmingly inflated prices and are of little use without fuel and cooking gas."

This means that most Palestinians living in Gaza are surviving on less than one meal a day, and the lucky ones may have a meal that includes canned food, however, many people have resorted to consuming raw onions and eggplants, as well as other foods that are normally cooked.

Etafa explains how it is impossible for the light trickle of Humanitarian Aid being allowed to enter Gaza by the occupation to make up for the complete halt of commercial operations in the Gaza Strip.

Etefa mentioned that since October 21st, the first day the Occupation allowed aid through the Raffah border crossing, 1'129 trucks loaded with aid have been allowed into Gaza.

However, of those 1'129 trucks carrying aid, only 147 of them were carrying food supplies.

"The volume remains very inadequate," Etefa told the audience.

According to the WFP spokesperson, since the Raffah border crossing was opened for emergency aid, more than 400 trucks were crossing into Gaza each day. However, now that number has been reduced to closer to 100 per day, and of those 100 trucks, only an estimated 10% contain food imports.

"That means that the food that has entered Gaza so far is only enough to meet 7% of the people's daily minimum of the caloric needs," Spokesperson Etefa explained.

"With winter fast approaching and the unsafe and overcrowded shelters, the lack of clean water, people are facing the immediate possibility of starvation," a stunning comment from the spokesperson.

According to WFP Spokesperson Abeer Etefa, aid has so far been delivered to around 764'000 people in Gaza and the West Bank, including food parcels and electronic vouchers, and assisted another 500'000 staying in UN shelters with bread, canned tuna fish, and date bars.

Another 520'000 people were provided with electronic vouchers at the beginning of the crisis, however the vouchers have become worthless as food, water and fuel have virtually disappeared over the last week and nothing remains in the shops for civilians to purchase.

Though, according to Etefa, the World Food Programme intends on scaling up operations in Gaza in the coming days with a goal of reaching 1 million people with aid by December.

However, for that to happen, the Israeli Occupation would have to allow many more trucks with Humanitarian Aid through the Raffah border crossing and other areas of access to Gaza.

"We need more than just one crossing point," Etefa told the audience.

"We need the safe access of Humanitarian Aid workers to distribute assistance and for the civilians to have safe access to the assistance, fuel for trucks, fuel for bakeries; so that we can continue to provide this staple food commodity and to be operational and, of course, connectivity to facilitate delivery of assistance, and the ability to rotate staff in and out of Gaza so that we can beef up our capacity on the ground and give relied to the people who have been working for the last few weeks tirelessly."

In a blunt assessment of the situation, Etefa said, "There is no way to meet the current hunger needs with the current situation."

"The collapse of food supply chains is catastrophic, it's a catastrophic turning point in an already very bad situation," Etefa concludes.

"Gaza was not an easy place to live before the 7th of October, and if the situation was difficult before this conflict, it's now disastrous."

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[allthecanadianpolitics]

As the Quebec Liberal Party tries to rebound from a devastating blow in the last two provincial elections, the official opposition is proposing the rights of the English-speaking community be enshrined in a new Quebec constitution.

The proposal is from a report by a committee that studied the relaunch of the party after speaking with Liberal party members on its path forward.

Specifically, the committee, co-chaired by Liberal MNA Madwa-Nika Cadet, called for the first-ever Quebec constitution to "enshrine the rights of English-speaking Quebecers, guaranteeing their existing rights to English-language services and control of their educational and health institutions."

"It would provide additional guarantees that the rights and freedoms of cultural and linguistic minorities would be respected by the Quebec government," according to the document, which was obtained by CTV News Wednesday evening.

The Liberals are set to unveil the party's new vision at a press conference in Montreal on Thursday. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[foster-the-world]

Notes to self

Note to self - Don't get to excited about services being provided to your child until the services are provided. They aren't having any luck finding an additional in school OT 30 minute, 2x speech and 7 hours of a SEIT. Blah. Did the PT eval last night and assume he will get assigned another 2xPT. The administrator said PT is the easiest to find so maybe he'll get that? His teachers need the break/support and I need a special ed expert.

He was acting up for his PT eval - and his baseline is amped up so acting up is something to see. I would have expected an evaluator to be used to kids like him but even he seemed shook. Maybe PT evaluators are more used to kids who don't move as much because they are developmentally behind??? Not sure. He kept saying "wow, wow, he's a lot, he has a lot of energy, he doesn't stop, etc, etc." with awe in his voice. In the end he said he can do all of the skills but due to his extra energy will be assigned PT for "safety issues." It was easy stuff - jumping, standing on one foot, walking up stairs, running. The thing he has trouble with is catching a ball because he can't stand still. He was also impressed with how fast he can run. He's very speedy for a kid who bumps into the wall and falls down constantly. Safety issues make sense because I got another call from the school nurse today. Skinned knee. At least weekly calls of this nature. Which is somewhat normal for a 3yo but also extra....

Finally had his parent teacher conference today. She said she loves him, he's very intelligent, often the first one to answer questions, remembers everything, has a ton of potential, on and on. Very good to hear. She said she can tell I worry and told me not to. She's a very sweet women. Big props to teachers and love and appreciate all kids - even the ones who require extra work. At some point it came up how the school put two additional assistants in the class with the purpose of taking him and one other kid out when they get too antsy. The recent trend to wrestle with the kid who also has too much energy is not great. I'm glad they have an assistant that can take him out but also feel bad he's taking up the schools resources. If he had a SEIT then they wouldn't have to.

Yesterday he told me he had a big secret for me - it was how seeds are used to make trees. It was so damn cute. She said he got really excited when he found a seed in his orange after the tree growing lesson.