#turkey stamp

[tapeskingdom]

vintage stamp washi tape

[gladyourenothere]

“Dear James: Be sure to eat a piece of turkey for me at your Thanksgiving dinner Marie O’Donnall” Brooklyn, NY Postmarked 1911

[blueiskewl]

Ancient Egyptian Amulet Seal Found in Turkey

An enchanted amulet stamp seal, thought to belong to the ancient Egyptians, has been discovered during archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Amastris in the Amasra district of northern Türkiye's Bartın.

The site of the excavation was donated to the Ministry of National Education in 2014 and construction started for the building of a school on the land in 2017 when some remains believed to belong to the Roman period were discovered, upon which the construction works were stopped and the area was taken under protection.

While the archaeological excavations, which were initiated in June under the direction of the Amasra Museum Directorate and under the scientific consultancy of Bartın University, have continued to unearth the historical remains, a unique find was recently encountered.

The amulet, in the form of a pyramidal stamp seal, has a height of 2 centimeters (0.78 inches) and a pyramidal shape of 0.9 centimeters. The amulet features various markings, such as a right hand holding a sword, two wings and letter characters.

Associate professor Fatma Bağdatlı Çam, head of the Archeology Department of the Faculty of Literature at Bartın University, told reporters that the amulet is the first unique artifact found in a Roman structure built from marble, dating back to the second century A.D.

Çam explained that the amulet is an artifact with a square base and pyramidal form at the top and made of obsidian stone.

"We see that there is a figure depicting the god Bes, whom we know from the Egyptian religion, depicted with incised lines at the base of the work. On the upper part of the work, we see that there are letter characters and talismanic words from the ancient Egyptian religion called demotic. The letter characters on the work probably represent this meaning of protection. As a kind of talismanic object, we can define it as an object that a person wears to be protected from evil and diseases or in whatever sense he wants to be protected. We can say that it is the only example of its kind found from the Roman layer in Anatolia during excavations," Çam said.

Çam stated that the discovery of the artifact is an important and exciting development for archaeologists.

"We will investigate what this seal means and whether the person wearing it is a priest, a religious official, or whether someone carries it for health and safety purposes. Perhaps we will find out whether a soldier in the legion brought it here (after) his mission in the east."

[stampsshow]

TR-504917

[catsquishy]

Turkey Vulture Stimboard for @52405!

❤️ | ❤️ | ❤️ ❤️ | 🥩 | ❤️ ❤️ | ❤️ | ❤️

[dedibelyegei]

Török bélyeg! Ráadásul kapszulás! Az 1988-as Egészség bélyegsorozat tagja, az egyetlen álló darab a négyből. Mindegyik darab viszonylag színes ábrákkal és egy rövid gondolattal hívja fel a figyelmet valamilyen egészségügyi alapvetésre. Ezen a jobb oldalon például az olvasható, hogy ne használjunk túl sok/szükségtelen gyógyszert. A bal oldalon pedig ez: Török Köztársaság. A 200 lírás volt a második érték, így néz ki a sorozat:

Az első a bárányhimlő elleni gyermekoltásra bíztat, a harmadik a munkahelyi biztonságot és egészséget propagálja, az utolsó pedig a transzplantációt promózza (?).

A sorozat pecsételve olyan 400-500 forintért megy, postatisztán meg egy ezres körül.

[solitarycam]

Turkey

[wausaupilot]

DNR accepting artwork for 2025 turkey, pheasant and waterfowl stamp contest

Entries must be postmarked by Aug. 1.

MADISON – The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is now accepting artwork entries for the wild turkey, pheasant and waterfowl stamp design contests. The winning designs will appear on the 2025 collection of stamps. Each year, Wisconsin artists compete for an opportunity to have their artwork commemorated on the wild turkey, pheasant and waterfowl stamps. Sales of these three stamps bring…

[cherrysnax]

i ate so many baby carrots.. and I know I’m gonna eat more 😭

[autismserenity]

Someone on Reddit made the mistake of saying, "Teach me how this conflict came about" where I could see it.

Let me teach you too.

The common perception is that Jews came out of nowhere, stole Palestinian homes and kicked Palestinians out of them, and then bombed them for 75 years, until they finally rebelled in the form of Hamas invading Israel and massacring 22 towns in one day.

The historical reality is that Jews have lived there continuously for at least 3500 years.

There are areas, like Meggido iirc, with archeological evidence of continuous habitation for 7,000 years, but Jewish culture as we recognize it today didn't develop until probably halfway through that.

Ethnic Jews are the indigenous people of this area.

Indigeneity means a group was originally there, before any colonization happened, and that it has retained a cultural connection to the land. History plus culture.

That's what Jews have: even when the diaspora became larger than the number of Jews in Israel, the yearning to return to that homeland was a daily part of Jewish prayer and ritual.

The Jewish community in Israel was crushed pretty violently by the Roman Empire in 135 CE, but it was still substantial, sometimes even the majority population there, for almost a thousand years.

The 600s CE brought the advent of Islam and the Arab Empire, expanding out from Saudi Arabia into Israel and beyond. It was largely a region where Jews were second-class citizens. But it was still WAY better than the way Christian Europe treated Jews.

From the 700s-900s, the area saw repeated civil wars, plagues, and earthquakes.

Then the Crusades came, with waves of Christians making "pilgrimages to the Holy Land" and trying to conquer it from Muslims and Jews, who they slaughtered and enslaved.

Israel became pretty well depopulated after all that. It was a very rough time to live there. (And for the curious, I'm calling it Israel because that's what it had been for centuries, until the Romans erased the name and the country.)

By the 1800s, the TOTAL population of what's now Israel and Palestine had varied from 150,000 - 275,000 for centuries. It was very rural, very sparsely populated, on top of being mostly desert.

In the 1880s, Jews started buying land and moving back to their indigenous homeland. As tends to happen, immigration brought new projects and opportunities, which led to more immigration - not only from Jews, but from the Arab world as well.

Unfortunately, there was an antisemitic minority spearheaded by Amin al-Husseini. Who was very well-connected, rich, and from a politically powerful family.

Al-Husseini had enthusiastically participated in the Armenian Genocide under the Ottoman Empire. Then the Empire fell in World War One, and the League of Nations had to figure out what to do with its land.

Mostly, if an area was essentially operating as a country (e.g. Turkey), the League of Nations let it be one. In areas that weren't ready for self-rule, it appointed France or Britain to help them get there.

In recognition of the increased Jewish population in their traditional, indigenous homeland, it declared that that homeland would again become Israel.

As in, the region was casually called Palestine because that was the lay term for "the Holy Land." It had not been a country since Israel was stamped out; only a region of a series of different empires. And the Mandate For Palestine said it was establishing "a national home of the Jewish people" there, in recognition of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

Britain was appointed to help the Arab and Jewish communities there develop systems of self-government, and then to work together to govern the region overall.

At least, that was the plan.

Al-Husseini, who was deeply antisemitic, did not like this plan.

And, extra-unfortunately, the British response to al-Husseini inciting violent anti-Jewish riots was to put him in a leadership role over Arab Palestine.

They thought it would calm him down and perhaps satisfy him.

They were very wrong.

He went on to become a huge Hitler fanboy, and then a Nazi war criminal. He co-created the Muslim Brotherhood - which Hamas is part of - with fellow fascist fanboy Hassan al-Banna.

He got Nazi Party funding for armed Muslim Brotherhood militias to attack Jews and the Brits in the late 30s, convincing Britain to agree to limit Jewish immigration at the time when it was most desperately needed.

He started using the militias again in 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide the mandated land into a Jewish homeland and a Palestinian one.

Al-Husseini wouldn't stand for a two-state solution. He was determined to tolerate no more than the subdued, small Jewish minority of second-class citizens that he remembered from his childhood.

As armed militias increasingly ran riot, the Arab middle and upper classes increasingly left. About 100,000 left the country before May 1948, when Britain was to pull out, leaving Israel and Palestine to declare their independence.

The surrounding nations didn't want war. They largely accepted the two-state solution.

But al-Husseini lobbied HARD. And by mobilizing the Muslim Brotherhood to provide "destabilizing mass demonstrations and a murderous campaign of intimidation," he got the Arab League nations to agree to invade, en masse, as soon as Britain left.

About 600,000 Arabs fled to those countries during the ensuing war.

Jews couldn't seek refuge there; in fact, most of those countries either exiled their Jews directly, confiscating their property first, or else made Jewish life unlivable and exploited them for underpaid or slave labor for years first.

By the time the smoke cleared and a peace treaty was signed, most of the Arab Palestinian community had fled; there was no Arab Palestinian leadership; many of the refugees' homes and businesses had left had been destroyed in the war; and Israel had been flooded with nearly a million refugees from the Arab League countries and the Holocaust - even more people than had fled the war.

That was the Nakba. The one that gets portrayed as "750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled!" in the hope that you'll assume they were expelled en masse, their beautiful intact homes all stolen.

Egypt had taken what's now the Gaza Strip in that war, and Jordan took what's now the West Bank - expelling or killing all the Jews in it first.

(Ironically, Jordan was originally supposed to be part of Israel. Britain, inexplicably, cut off what would have been 75% of its land to create Jordan.

Even more inexplicably, nobody ever talks about it. I've never seen anyone complain that Jordan was stolen from Palestinians. Possibly because Jordan is also the only country that gave Palestinian refugees full citizenship, and it's about half Palestinian now.

Israel is nearly 25% Arab Palestinians with full citizenship and equal rights, so it's not all that different -- but the fundamental difference of living in a country where the majority is Jewish, not Muslim, probably runs pretty deep.)

Anyway: that's why Palestine is Gaza and the West Bank, rather than being some contiguous chunk of land. Or being the land set aside by the U.N. in 1947.

Because Arab countries took that land in 1948, and treated them as essentially separate for 20 years.

Israel got them back, along with the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, in the next war: 1967, when Egypt committed an act of war by taking control of the waterways and barring Israel from them. It gave the Sinai back to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace accords between Egypt and Israel.

Israel tried to give back the Gaza Strip at the same time. Egypt refused.

Palestine finally declared independence in 1988.

But Hamas formed at about the same time. Probably in response, in fact. Hamas is fundamentally opposed to peace negotiations with Israel.

Again: Hamas is part of a group founded by Nazis.

Hamas has its own charter. It explains that Jews are "the enemy," because they control the drug trade, have been behind every major war, control the media, control the United Nations, etc. Basic Nazi rhetoric.

It has gotten adept at masking that rhetoric for the West. But to friendlier audiences, its leaders have consistently said things like, "People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels.  Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels."

(Palestinians were outraged by this speech. Palestinians, by and large, absolutely loathe Hamas.

It's just that it's not the same to say that to locals, as it is to say it where major global powers who oppose this crap can hear you.)

Hamas has stated from the beginning that its mission is to violently destroy Israel and take over the land.

It has received $100M in military funding annually, from Iran, for several years. Because Iran has been building a network of fascist, antisemitic groups across the Middle East, in a blatant attempt to control more and more of it: Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen.

Iran has been run by a very far-right, deeply antisemitic dictatorship for decades now, which pretty openly wants to take down both Israel and the U.S.

Last year, Iran increased Hamas's funding to $350M.

The "proof of concept" invasion of Israel that Hamas pulled off on October 7th more than justifies a much bigger investment.

Hamas has publicly stated its intention to attack "again and again and again," until Israel has been violently destroyed.

That is how this conflict came about.

A Nazi group seized power in Gaza in 2007 by violently kicking the Palestinian government out, and began running it as a dictatorship, using it to build money and power in preparations for exactly this.

And people find it shockingly easy to believe its own hype about being "the Palestinian resistance."

As well as its propaganda that Israel is not actually targeting Hamas: it's just using a literal Nazi invasion and massacre as an excuse to randomly commit genocide of the fraction of Palestine it physically left 20 years ago.

Despite the fact that Palestinians in Gaza have been protesting HAMAS throughout the war.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Iowa's starvation strategy

I don’t really buy that “the cruelty is the point.” I’m a materialist. Money talks, bullshit walks. When billionaires fund unimaginably cruel policies, I think the cruelty is a tactic, a way to get the turkeys to vote for Christmas. After all, policies that grow the fortune of the 1% at the expense of the rest of us have a natural 99% disapproval rating.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/19/whats-wrong-with-iowa/#replicable-cruelty

So when some monstrous new law or policy comes down the pike, it’s best understood as a way of getting frightened, angry — and often hateful — people to vote for policies that will actively harm them, by claiming that they will harm others — brown and Black people, women, queers, and the “undeserving” poor.

Pro-oligarch policies don’t win democratic support — but policies that inflict harm a ginned-up group of enemies might. Oligarchs need frightened, hateful people to vote for policies that will secure and expand the power of the rich. Cruelty is the tactic. Power is the strategy. The point isn’t cruelty, it’s power:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/25/roe-v-wade-v-abortion/#no-i-in-uterus

But that doesn’t change the fact that the policies are cruel indeed. Take Iowa, whose billionaire-backed far-right legislature is on a tear, a killing spree that includes active collaboration with rapists, through a law that denies abortion care to survivors of rape and forces them to bear and care for their rapists’ babies:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/us/politics/iowa-kamala-harris-abortion.html

The forced birth movement is part of the wider far-right tactic of standing up for imaginary children (e.g. “the unborn,” fictional victims of Hollywood pedo cabals), and utterly abandons real children: poor kids who can’t afford school lunches, kids in cages, kids victimized by youth pastors, kids forced into child labor, etc.

So Iowa isn’t just a forced birth state, it’s a state where children are now to be starved, literally. The state legislature has just authorized an $18m project to kick people off of SNAP (aka food stamps). 270,000 people in Iowa rely on SNAP: elderly people, disabled people, and parents who can’t feed their kids.

Writing in the Washington Post, Kyle Swenson profiles some of these Iowans, like an elderly woman who visited Lisa Spitler’s food pantry for help and said that state officials had told her that she was only eligible for $23/month in assistance:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/16/iowa-snap-restrictions-food-stamps/

That’s because Iowa governor KimReynolds signed a bill cutting the additional SNAP aid — federally funded, and free to the state taxpayers of Iowa — that had been made available during the lockdown. Since then, food pantries have been left to paper over the cracks in the system, as Iowans begin to starve.

Before the pandemic, Spitler’s food pantry saw 30 new families a month. Now it’s 100 — and growing. Many of these families have been kicked off of SNAP because they failed to complete useless and confusing paperwork, or did so but missed the short deadlines now imposed by the state. For example, people with permanent disabilities and elderly people who no longer work must continuously file new paperwork confirming that their income hasn’t changed. Their income never changes.

SNAP recipients often work, borrow from relations, and visit food pantries, and still can’t make ends meet, like Amy Cunningham, a 31 year old mother of four in Charlton. She works at a Subway, has tapped her relatives for all they can afford, and relies on her $594/month in SNAP to keep her kids from going hungry. She missed her notice of an annual review and was kicked off the program. Getting kicked off took an instant. Getting reinstated took a starving eternity.

Iowa has a budget surplus of $1.91B. This doesn’t stop ghouls like Iowa House speaker Pat Grassley (a born-rich nepobaby whose grandpa is Senator Chuck Grassley) from claiming that the cuts were a necessity: “[SNAP is] growing within the budget, and are putting pressure on us being able to fund other priorities.”

Grassley’s caucus passed legislation on Jan 30 to kick people off of SNAP if their combined assets, including their work vehicle, total to more than $15,000. SNAP recipients will be subject to invasive means-testing and verification, which will raise the cost of administering SNAP from $2.2m to $18m. Anyone who gets flagged by the system has 10 days to respond or they’ll be kicked off of SNAP.

The state GOP justifies this by claiming that SNAP has an “error rate” of 11.81%. But that “error rate” includes people who were kicked off SNAP erroneously, a circumstance that is much more common than fraud, which is almost nonexistent in SNAP programs. Iowa’s error rate is in line with the national average.

Iowa’s pro-starvation law was authored by a conservative dark-money “think tank” based in Florida: the Opportunity Solutions Project, the lobbying arm of Foundation For Government Accountability, run by Tarren Bragdon, a Maine politician with a knack for getting money from the Koch Network and the DeVos family for projects that punish, humiliate and kill marginalized people. The Iowa bill mirrors provisions passed in Kentucky, Kansas, Wisconsin and elsewhere — and goes beyond them.

The law was wildly unpopular, but it passed anyway. It’s part of the GOP’s push for massive increases in government spending and bureaucracy — but only when those increases go to punishing poor people, policing poor people, jailing poor people, and spying on poor people. It’s truly amazing that the “party of small government” would increase bureaucratic spending to administer SNAP by 800% — and do it with a straight face.

In his essay “The Utopia of Rules,” David Graeber (Rest in Power) described this pathology: just a couple decades ago, the right told us that our biggest threat was Soviet expansion, which would end the “American way of life” and replace it with a dismal world where you spent endless hours filling in pointless forms, endured hunger and substandard housing, and shopped at identical stores that all carried the same goods:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/

A society that can’t feed, house and educate its residents is a failed state. America’s inability to do politics without giving corporations a fat and undeserved share is immiserating an ever-larger share of its people. Federally, SNAP is under huge stress, thanks to the “public-private partnership” at the root of a badly needed “digital overhaul” of the program.

Writing for The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein describes how the USDA changed SNAP rules to let people pay with SNAP for groceries ordered online, as a way to deal with the growing problem of food deserts in poor and rural communities:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-04-19-retail-surveils-food-stamp-users/

It’s a good idea — in theory. But it was sabotaged from the start: first, the proposed rule was altered to ban paying for delivery costs with SNAP, meaning that anyone who ordered food online would have to use scarce cash reserves to pay delivery fees. Then, the USDA declined to negotiate discounts on behalf of the 40 million SNAP users. Finally, the SNAP ecommerce rules don’t include any privacy protections, which will be a bonanza for shadowy data-brokers, who’ll mine SNAP recipients’ data to create marketing lists for scammers, predatory lenders, and other bottom-feeder:

https://www.democraticmedia.org/sites/default/files/field/public-files/2020/cdd_snap_report_ff.pdf

The GOP’s best weapon in this war is statistical illiteracy. While racist, sexist and queerphobic policies mean that marginalized people are more likely than white people to be poor, America’s large population of white people — including elderly white people who are the immovable core of the GOP base — means that policies that target poor people inevitably inflict vast harms on the GOP’s most devoted followers.

Getting these turkeys to vote for Christmas is a sound investment for the ultra-rich, who claim a larger share of the American pie every year. The rich may or may not be racist, or sexist, or queerphobic — some of them surely are — but the reason they pour money into campaigns to stoke divisions among working people isn’t because they get off on hatred. The hatred is a tactic. The cruelty is a tactic. The strategic goal is wealth and power.

Tomorrow (Apr 21), I’m speaking in Chicago at the Stigler Center’s Antitrust and Competition Conference. This weekend (Apr 22/23), I’m at the LA Times Festival of Books.

[Image ID: The Iowa state-house. On the right side of the steps is an engraved drawing of Oliver Twist, holding out his porridge bowl. On the left side is the cook, denying him an extra portion. Peeking out from behind the dome is a business-man in a suit with a dollar-sign-emblazoned money-bag for a head.]

Image: Iqkotze (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iowa_State_Capitol_April_2010.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[axyer]

"(FUCK YOU YOU AQUAMARINE ANGRY LITTLE SHIT!)"

Atop the tall podium, rinsed in an iridescent, golden hue, a celestial rim washing down each corner; trimmed by a dusty silver, shivering with a pearly shine.

"[WHAT DID I DO, HUH? EXACTLY WHAT? DID I STAND WRONG? DID MY EYESIGHT MAKE YOU JEALOUS? AM I OFFENDING YOU WITH MY ABILITY TO SHUT UP?]"

The audience, cornered in the nooks of their seats, twitched and bowed at the rancorous uproar.

"(WELL IIIIIII'M SORRY, I HAD TO CARRY US ALLLLLL THE WAY HERE, YOU GODDAMN CUCK!)"

"Guys…" A well-heighted man, head the shape and hue of a noble planet. "You both won, you don't have to–"

"[WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'CARRY', YOU TURKEY-BRAINED BODY ODOUR-FRAGRANTED PURPLE MASS OF DEPRESSED RODENTS?]" Mind tightly roared from the crease of his lips, whipping his brand new sun trophy onto the podium; a hard, metallic clatter snapping into the flooring. "[IF IT WEREN'T FOR ME, WE WOULDN'T EVEN HAVE INFORMATION OUT THERE ABOUT OUR RIGHTS TO THIS SEAT!]"

"(ARE YOU KIDDING? EVERY CHONNY JASH FAN LOVES ME! I'VE GOT FUCKING APOLOGISTS! YOU'VE GOT PEOPLE WHO FRAME YOU AS THE NARRATIVE'S VILLAIN 'COS YOU SUCK THAT BAD!)"

"[YEAH, AND WHO WAS THE ONE WHO SET UP YOUR KEYBOARDS? AND TRANSLATED SHEET MUSIC INTO SOMETHING YOUR SORRY ASS COULD UNDERSTAND? AND–]"

"(SHUT–)"

"[AND FIGURED OUT HOW TO SET UP YOUR STUPID FUCKING AIR-CONDITIONER, BECAUSE–]"

"(I PAY FOR YOUR PAINKILLER PRESCRIPTION!)"

"['(OHHHHH, I CAN'T FOCUS IN THE HEAT! BUT I WEAR BAGGY HOODIES AND TWO-LAYERED PYJAMAS AND)–']"

"(AT LEAST I DON'T EAT MY GOLDFISHES!)"

"[AT LEAST I DON'T PLAY FNAF SONGS ON THE PIANO AT FOUR IN THE GODDAMN MORNING!]"

"(I WROTE THE BEST SONGS FOR OUR ALBUM! WITHOUT ME, OUR STORY OF HOW WE SUFFERED (MOSTLY BECAUSE OF YOU) WOULD'VE NEVER BEEN KNOWN!)"

"[NAME ONE PERSON WHO USES GOOD DAY AS AUDIO!]"

Words torn from mouth and crashing into each timorous ear surrounding the two, pronounced in a very ired, Australian tongue.

Arms furiously stretched and swung and feet stamped to enunciate visible outrage.

"Yeesh, Moon… I always thought our relationship was bad, but it seems like sun and moons across the universe can get so much worse…" Sun shivered, a quick tug on his coarse yet metallic collar, punctuated by a swift glance to his lunar counterpart. "Over where we're from, we have to deal with living in a giant animatronic mall and occasionally the works of cross-dimensional madness. But over there, it seems to me they really need to learn a lesson about getting along!"

"I could take them in a fight with a small dresser tied to my dominant hand." Moon stared, unblinking, body as stiff as a long rock.

The other contestants watched as the words were rocked and tossed in a staggering hatred.

At one point, Heart's wings had enlarged to mimic that of a threatened bird inflating its stance to appear larger; Mind's chest hummed with the overwork of his fans.

Suns and moons from all sorts of solar systems stationed across the multiverse watched in horror.

Two of them were those guys from Nimona, but I don't know dick about shit about Nimona so you gotta use your imagination for that one.

"Right right, you two have your trophy, just…" The celestial staff member disarmingly motioned their hands, gazing down at the two halves. "What are you going to do with your prize money?"

"(Oh, I'm probably gonna use it on an invasive wildflower and a seven hundred AUD life-sized Lopunny plush.)"

"[To pay off my severe prescription zolmitriptan debt that I'm four months behind on because I spent half my yearly salary on a car that I ended up crashing because of a migraine.]"

Happy tiny niche fandom winning against FNaF and Nimona for all who celebrate

Reblogs > Likes

[astralnymphh]

CAN WE PLS GET A SNEAK PEAK OF STUFF U UP

okayy okayy I'll give you like.. two excerpts of my favorite lines so far ౨ৎ

A baser mind– I mimic regret while telling you this– tumbles far from the garden of Eden and slips away into a daunting realm, the underworld. By under, I mean downstairs, below the button, the internals. Ellie, straight up, served hot, was just bursting with hormones. The tender meat oozing with buttery slick melt fell short in maintaining the contact of those chartreuse eyes, instead suffering the envy of them rooted to your thighs beneath the oak.

Noses immerse themselves in salty goodness, eyes feast before gobs could, rolling molars gnaw turkey off the tines of forks, but her, her cunts' the only organ thinking right now.

Especially while seated adjacent to you, her clit was throbbing past the hard material of her jeans.

Devious fingers– they found their way, quick. Fingers such as hers, waxy and pale, rigid and calloused, stamping up your hip and giving firm pressure to the bone. Knuckles flushed of pigment, they dig around the crest, nudging you slightly.

"Seriously?" you spit through grit teeth, wiggling your hips in reaction.

Ellie harks your mutter, tugging those smug corners into a cocky smile as her nervy nature would plant her in, naughty–toothed smile, "Huuh?" that bastard coos, "what's wrong babe?"

"You dickhead."

"Me, dickhead?"

"Yes, you, dickhead."

[toptierteaser]

Fatboy Sorting

There are many challenges that the Administration at Fatty Camp must address over the course of time, not least among them repairing all the busted bunkbeds and broken exercise equipment, sewing patches into the uniforms their fatboys bust out of...and of course, keeping up with the rampant, ravenous appetites of their Campers as they binge and gorge and stuff themselves endlessly out of house and home...

But among the most pressing challenges--as well as the most popular amongst the Coaches at Fatty Camp--is the Sorting. You see, with all the various types and sizes and flavors of fatboy at Fatty Camp, it is imperative that the Administration does a fine job of sorting its piggies into subcamps, assigning each to a Bunk specific to their blubbery and chub, to their gluttony and girth...and to ensure each of them is put on a diet and workout regimen and under the guidance of a couple Coaches which can "best fit their ample needs."

It starts with size, of course. With the measuring, the prodding of embarrassed fatty after embarrassed fatty onto the scales, a taunting jock wrapping his measuring tape around each quivering pork chop as he shouts out the numbers, as they are flashed on the screen before every fitty and fatty alike! And then, with a firm pat on the ample tukis, a prod of the juicy love handle, and a good shake of the protruding gut, each fatty is sent waddling to their freshly-assigned line, where a sticker in the shape of a bear or a pig or a turkey or a hippo...or even a whale...is stamped onto their fat, widened ass and on the front of their rising, riding shirt.

It's embarrassing, of course, but what better way to put each fatty into his place?

Of course, it doesn't begin and end with the sorting based on size, on weight, on the circumference of each Camper's chest and stomach and ass...no. The REAL sorting begins when each panting, juicy camper is run through a series of tests. An obstacle course through which the Coaches poke and tease and prod each Camper to watch his struggling, ballooning body jiggle as he pathetically attempts to complete it. Of course, each fatboy thinks they’re being tested based on physical aptitude alone. And they are. But on top of the observations by their Coaches and the Directors to see who can do the monkey bars or the wall climb, they are also being watched. Who among them will beg for release? Who will struggle through the line of tires, only to get his fat hips stuck on the second-to-last, to squeal and call out for help? Who will run out of breath on the treadmill? Who will become distracted by the lone cupcake placed on the trap door and yelp as his fat ass falls through? Who will be embarrassed as he swings down the line of monkey bars, aware that his obese ass is jiggling like crazy? Who will be totally oblivious that his shirt has completely ridden up? Which porker will be delusional enough to try the tube slide only to get stuck, wriggling, begging, and pleading, halfway through?

For the Coaches, it’s one of their favorite parts of the Sorting. For the Campers, it’s one of the most embarrassing.

When the Campers have been duly sorted again…the whiners from the oblivious-porker from the determined fatboys who aren’t SO chubby just yet, but who will be well on their ways to obesity within a few months of bingeing…each is sent to the Fitting Room. There, another test awaits. The routine outfitting of the porky, chubby campers. They find themselves on benches, ordered to strip to their briefs and forced to waddle over to the clothing that awaits them. without sizes, the fatties do their best, racing and wrestling each other for the roomiest clothes that can fit their obese bodies. and the Coaches have themselves a fine time watching their piggies struggle, huffing and puffing, cheeks reddening as they force themselves into the bright pink booty-shorts, the humiliating striped shirts that chafe between their rubbing thunder thighs or wedge up their enormous butts or don’t even come close—no matter how hard they tug—to covering their ballooning bellies and exposed bellybuttons! Each, looking like a packed sausage, the Campers grunt as they struggle to lean down, yank socks over their chubby toes and wrestle with their bellies to tie their shoes. Huffing and sweating by the end of their ordeal as they look around at one another’s bodies, puffing out like pastry from the too-tight clothes…

And then the eating bell rings.

Here comes a reward. Or so each fatty thinks, as his ass bumps into his neighbors, fighting each other to claw the way through the doors to the cafeteria. They race, pushing and shoving each other’s overfed bodies to get to the buffet first. nearly bending over, ass up in the air as they race to fill their plates, knowing how quickly food could be taken away from them. Knowing how hungry they are, having exerted themselves during the ten-minute obstacle course and clothing try on; An unusually-EXHAUSTING day for Fatty Camp. They pack themselves in, love-handle-to-love-handle, asscheek-to-asscheek, overblown-belly-to-overblown-belly, on the benches at the tables, which groan in pain beneath the collective girth. Stuffing themselves to the brim on all their favorite foods, unaware that the Coaches and Admin are watching. Unaware that they’re being documented like pigs. Which one likes which foods? Which will eat himself until the button on his camp shorts pops? Which will feed himself until he can hardly move?

It's an easy way to do the final sorting. As, from behind the one-way-glass teams of doctors and Coaches and Counselors take notes, laughing as they sort each of you fatasses into your group.

Oh, the PLANS they have in store for you!

How they go about their sorting. Placing the exjocks—the former football players turned butterball, the swimmers and runners who let themselves go, the wrestlers who never cut again after high school or college. Even their own, the Coaches who couldn’t keep up with their diets and exercise requirements. How much fun they will have, taunting you, reminding you of your skinnier, fitter days when you were hot stuff and an athlete. When you were one of them…

The ‘helpless fatties,’ they’ll categorize differently. Penning you in the bunks where they know you desperately want to lose the weight, though they’ll do everything in their power to sabotage your diets, to fill your overeating urges. Treating you like the adorable piglets you are…

And the gainers. Oh, what they’ll do with you! Knowing how easy you are to control. How you would od anything to be fed, to grow, to avoid exercise. How they will hold that—literally, holding cupcakes and donuts—over your heads, just to watch you beg and whimper and plead.

How much fun they’ll have, when the sorting has been finished and you accept the kind of fatboy you are!

[eretzyisrael]

by Julia Steinberg

Within the first minute of scrolling under a search for “Zionism” on TikTok, I saw a “Zionism Explained” video with over 125,000 views. It said that Jews are forbidden by God to have their own state, completely ignoring the fact that the State of Israel is secular. “How did this start? Let’s go back to 1897,” the video instructs. But Jewish history in Israel started thousands of years ago, not in 1897. 

When I searched “history” on TikTok, a woman with the “cute freckles and lashes” filter told me and over 80,000 viewers that, in “the biggest plot twist of the century,” Jews are using their ancestors’ “tragedy to justify and inflict another Holocaust.”

That explainer video is why, when I went to a pro-Palestine rally at Stanford on Wednesday and asked a fellow student what she meant when she chanted “from the river to the sea,” she said that, after admitting she wasn’t knowledgeable about the issue, Palestine must be free from the Tigris River (in Iraq) to the Black Sea (north of Turkey). This student, though she has no sense of geography, is actually chanting for the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea to no longer contain the state of Israel. It is an eliminationist slogan.

I saw a similar message at an off-campus café recently when I walked by a girl whose laptop bore a newly applied sticker with the words “By Any Means Necessary” stamped over an outline of Israel. It’s been less than three weeks since October 7 and already these glib stickers plugging genocide, aimed at my generation, are proliferating. 

A new axis of evil—Big Tech, social media companies, and China—has taken the once-fringe position that Jews are undeserving of a homeland, and is now pushing the idea of their mass slaughter via shoddy animation and beautiful women hosting “explainer” videos. And it’s trickling down onto t-shirts and “cute” laptop stickers. 

It’s cool to promote hate.

My Jewish parents, whose hearts break to hear about what I go through at college, did everything they could so that my brother and I would reject this simplistic, horrible way of thinking. But they can’t change that my little brother’s high school also teaches ideology with T-charts. I doubt his teachers or classmates care to understand that no T-chart can account for why he and his Jewish friends feel sick when they see slogans calling for their deaths.