#NonFiction

[boostinglashi]

Please share/reblog, and maybe donate if you can. DM @/virovac if want to be removed   @anarcho-smarmyism @bundibird @yokohama-crackhouse @rooh-tawaka-blog @visoremi @undertastic-dork @gerbildine @hurtz-whale @stellarfalls @ak1w1i @sugas6thtooth @captain-of-the-roses @elenrayart @suara-rakyat-blog @necromancelena @cold-open @maeumsim @toriel-2 @scavenger-toll @olliveen @midnightcthulhu @jewfrogs @entryn17 @000marie198 @hoofpeet @petewentzisblack1312 @scodoz @shencomix @newtlesbian @angelicguy @the-big-iron-official @the-nyanguard-party @chussy @chingaderita @thenewgothictwice @star-and-space @riding-with-the-wildhunt @triptrippy @zahai @the-random-internaut @ydic74the @wakimakiplus @capcricornpropaganda @butchxenomorph @theinturnetexplorer @MelancholyMist @SecretGardenVibes @tododeku @etherealvision @serendipity-gifs

2. April. 2017 🥺💔👶🏻

Hello the fake world

I'm Shahad 30y from Gaza.

A Mother of a child she waited for 9y for, and the war took him away from me.💔

This is what I would have given my child… warmth, security, and a world worthy of his innocence. I would have told him bedtime stories, sung to him when he cried, and held him in my arms as if I held the entire universe. I would have woven soft dreams for him and built him a future free of fear and hunger.

But war stole him before I saw him, before I heard his first cry, before he felt my love. It snatched him from my womb, from my heart, from my life, mercilessly. They didn't give him a chance to live, and they didn't give me a chance to be a mother.

Now, there's nothing but the emptiness in my womb, the sound of his screams that no one heard, and my hand that reached out to hold him but found nothingness.

This is what I wrote in my Facebook diary eight years ago:

Every word I write is an attempt to save myself from drowning in seas of sadness. Perhaps these letters will ease the pain... even a little.

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #502 )✅️ & @bilal-salah0

GAZA 🇵🇸🍉🌿

[theoptia]

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters

Text ID: You give dreams to my night, songs to my morning, aims to my day, and sun-wishes to my red dusk. You give without end. And I kneel and hold my arms up to receive your grace.

[70sscifiart]

The Psychology of Gambling, 1977, cover design by Alan Aldridge

[thoughtfulfangirling]

"Some twelve thousand muskets were double-loaded, and half of those more than triple. One rifle even had twenty-three balls in the barrel — which is absurd. These soldiers had been thoroughly drilled by their officers. Muskets, they all knew, were designed to discharge one ball at a time. So what were they doing? Only much later did historians figure it out: loading a gun is the perfect excuse not to shoot it. And if it happened to be loaded already, well, you just loaded it again. And again.

— Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman

[virovac]

“The artillery hit them, killing nearly 100 people. This isn't aid. They treat us like they're hunting rats.

I was saying we were living a nightmare... but it seems like a joke.

To this extent, our blood is cheap. Aren't we human beings?!

This is my cousin, a young man who is not yet twenty years old. He was killed by hunger.

Please, I don't want to lose my brother and my husband. We will buy flour even if it costs a million dollars, and not go to death. That's why I need your support.. Leave a small donation if you can.🫶🤦🏼‍♂️”

Life here is always teetering on the edge of nothingness…! 💔

Today, I arrived at my family’s home in Dair Al Balah with my husband. Barely moments had passed since we stepped inside when a massive explosion thundered nearby. It was terrifyingly close... as if the earth itself shook beneath our feet as if we were living through a real earthquake.

But worse than the sound of the explosion were the shards that followed…

A tiny piece of shrapnel flew right past my young nephew.. the same child you might remember if you’ve followed my posts… the one who once cried over a piece of candy.

What a strange life this is.

A fragment so small it could be missed by the eye, yet it almost took his life. Only a few centimeters.. maybe even less.. separated it from his fragile body. I saw smoke rising from it… it was still burning, intensely hot, as if just one more degree would’ve melted it completely.

Hours later, I went out to take care of something, and by coincidence, I passed by the area that had been struck. I couldn’t believe what I saw. A place once full of life and people had become nothing but rubble. Complete destruction. A living, breathing heart silenced in an instant.

And the truly terrifying part?

This location was in the middle of a densely populated area.

Thankfully and by "Allah mercy" a warning had been issued beforehand. People had a moment, however brief, to escape. If not for that, the massacre would have been unimaginable.

We survived today… and many others did too.

But the chilling truth still hangs in the air:

Life here constantly sways on the edge of nothingness.

And do you want to know the strangest part?

Everyone tells us that coming back home is a foolish, even insane decision…

But I swear to you, there is no safe place in this entire strip.

We are all standing at the edge of the abyss

The abyss of farewell.

A farewell to a life that was never truly given to us as it should have been.

VETTED ✅️ by @gazavetters (#502) & VETTED ✅️ by @bilal-sala7 (#3)

[longreads]

In the new issue of our sister publication, The Atavist Magazine, Allegra Rosenberg writes about a doomed expedition to Antarctica—and the untold love story of two crew members who survived the journey.

"Pennell left a trove of letters and diaries behind, but they sat largely unconsulted for a century. The romance hidden inside them was a gift waiting for the right moment to be discovered."

Read the introduction, “The Romance History Forgot,” on Longreads.

[atavist]

His mother got duped by a man who claimed to love her—so he headed to Nigeria to find the con artist who broke her heart.   The Romance Scammer on My Sofa. The latest incredible true story from The Atavist.

[mikedawwwson]

What Are You Going Through

Published in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, 4/2/23

[ordinaryheavenn]

the serviceberry - robin wall kimmerer

[mournfulroses]

Claudia Rankine, from her book titled Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🍉 Queer Palestinian Books for Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈

🍉 Want to add a bit more diversity to your TBR? Consider reading one of these queer books by Palestinian authors for Pride Month!

🏳️‍🌈 Fiction 🍉 The Skin and Its Girl - Sarah Cypher 🍉 You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat 🍉 Belladonna - Anbara Salam 🍉 A Map of Home - Randa Jarrar 🍉 Muneera and the Moon - 🍉 Guapa - Saleem Haddad 🍉 The Ordeal of Being Known - Malia Rose 🍉 The Philistine - Leila Marshy 🍉 Hazardous Spirits - Anbara Salam 🍉 From Whole Cloth - Sonia Sulaiman

🏳️‍🌈 Graphic Novels 🍉 Mis(h)adra - Iasmin Omar Ata 🍉 Where Black Stars Rise - Nadia Shammas & Marie Enger 🍉 Confetti Realms - Nadia Shammas 🍉 Nayra and the Djinn - Iasmin Omar Ata 🍉 My Mama's Magic - Amina Awad 🍉 Squire - Nadia Shammas & Sara Alfageeh

🏳️‍🌈 Non-Fiction/Memoirs 🍉 Are You This? Or Are You This? - Madian Al Jazerah 🍉 Love is an Ex-Country - Randa Jarrar 🍉 This Arab is Queer - (ed) Elias Jahshan 🍉 Decolonial Queering in Palestine - Walaa Alqaisiya 🍉 Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique - Sa'ed Atshan 🍉 Between Banat - Mejdulene Bernard Shomali

🏳️‍🌈 Poetry 🍉 To All the Yellow Flowers - Raya Tuffaha 🍉 The Specimen's Apology - George Abraham & Leila Abdelrazaq 🍉 Birthright - George Abraham 🍉 The Twenty-Ninth Year - Hala Alyan 🍉 Blood Orange - Yaffa AS 🍉 Who is Owed Springtime - Rasha Abdulhadi 🍉 Shell Houses - Rasha Abdulhadi 🍉 Halal If You Hear Me - (ed) Fatimah Asghar & Safia Elhillo

🍉 None of us are free until all of us are free. 🏳️‍🌈

[theoptia]

Simone de Beauvoir, from Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 1, 1926-27

Text ID: I observe how much I have matured since last year despite my belief that I was losing myself, how something strong was born from the painful experiences survived and from the numerous minutes that I believed were wasted.

[stone-cold-groove]

Your summer reading list: An Introduction to Cybernetics. W. Ross Ashby - 1963.

[sophieakatz]

It’s here! I’m honored to have an essay in this brand new journal, The Jewish Asexuality Anthology. What a wonderful opportunity to explore some of my experiences with this particular overlap of identities - an overlap I share with ten other writers featured here. Get a copy of your own at the Linktree in my bio, and check out @jewishaceanthology for more information.

[jeypawlik]

Stuff I Finished 2024

I did this back in 2022: https://jpawlik.com/blog/01/20/8470/ I had a good time recording what I'd read, watched, etc. but 2024 just got too busy to finish it all! I didn't want to not post the art I did do however. [ID: Traditionally drawn black and white illustrations of books that Jey finished: Tiger Tiger, Welcome Back Alice, Terry Pratchett: The BBC Radio Drama Collection, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me). Traditionally drawn black and white illustrations of books and shows that Jey finished: Straight, House in the Cerulean Sea, Nettle and Bone, Lupin the third Part 1 Traditionally drawn black and white illustrations of books and games that Jey finished: Snufkin: Melody of Moominvally, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Eniale and Dewiela Traditionally drawn black and white illustrations of books, shows, comics, and games that Jey finished: The Sherlock Holmes Collection, Delicious in Dungeon (the manga). Under that is a long list of various other books that Jey finished: Don't want you like a best friend, the truth, pixels of you, night watch, monstrous regiment, going postal, kochab, the hobbit, I'm so glad we had this time together, art and fea, thud!, lord of the rings fellowship of the ring, botanical folktales of england, scanning negatives and slides, lord of the rings the two towers, yokohama kaidashi kikou, adventure time, lord of the rings return of the king, making money, fionna and cake, you're the problem it's you, the christmas swap, the christmas train, legend of zelda echoes of wisdom, laid back camp, the holiday trap. /end ID]