let the record show that 1. i am NOT the actor josh peck and 2. yes i AM gay thank you........(pic unrelated)

tag yourself

do people not know josh peck by name anymore omg

Customer: YOU FOOL DMV: CONFRONTATIONAL Verdict: DENIED

I think the most fun part of monsters inc is boo calling sulley “kitty” and mike wazowski by full government name

Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people

Who are the Shompen?

The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.

Why is there risk of genocide?

India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".

Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”

The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.

This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.

The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).

And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.

Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”

On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”

How to help

The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:

From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.

Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.

Sources:

PLEASE DON'T SKIP!

Please consider SHARING or DONATING, thank you! ❤️🍉

Day 258, still alive.🇵🇸🍉

June 21, 2024 - Namibia's high court has declared the "sodomy law" that criminalised gay sex unconstitutional!

Namibia inherited the apartheid-era law banning “sodomy” and “unnatural offences” when it gained independence from South Africa in 1990. [link]

Hey, guys? Make peace with yellow teeth. I'm so serious right now.

Every time I visit my parents anymore, they always take time to comment on my appearance and how much it's changed, for better or worse. I could easily turn this into a fat-positivity post, or nonbinary-positivity, glasses, hair, ect. But the one thing I don't think I've ever seen any positive talk about are yellow teeth.

My teeth are stained yellow. I doubt they will ever be white, and to be honest? I don't care.

I don't have cavities. I brush. I pick between them at least once or twice a day to keep them clean. And yet they remain yellow.

I cannot tell you the sheer amount of damage this can cause a person, especially if they keep constantly getting told to brush their teeth every time they visit family. Like... I do. There's nothing I can do about this. And I don't really want to.

The only reason I feel any compulsion to whiten them is out of embarrassment when other people look at me weird for smiling at them. And how fucked up is that. I have taught myself subconsciously to suppress any joy or happiness I get when I'm around other people for fear that they'll see my teeth.

If you see how I draw myself, it's always with white teeth, even though that's not true. The only time I've ever seen yellow teeth in cartoons, it's always for the slobby character that doesn't take care of themself.

I didn't even realize how much it was damaging me until today, when I caught myself forcing back a smile at work.

Obviously, remember to brush your teeth and keep them healthy. This is not a post about letting yourself fall into disrepair. But if someone has less-than-white teeth, then... okay? And?

I think we should just stop judging people for their appearances in general. People come as they are. That's all they need to do. Who cares what fucking color their goddamn teeth are.

Addendum to this post because the people in the notes are absolutely correct:

Make peace with crooked teeth.

Make peace with sideways teeth.

Make peace with missing teeth.

Make peace with deformed teeth.

Make peace with teeth that DO have cavities in them.

Make peace with rotting teeth.

Make peace with damaged teeth.

I think a big part of why this has gone un-talked about for so long is just because having yellow teeth is associated with damaged teeth in some way, and thus indicative of a person's day-to-day life. But, just like with everything else, this is NOT TRUE.

Missing teeth does not automatically mean that person gets into a lot of fights or was bullied. It could just mean that that tooth got removed.

Not everyone can afford braces, and for some people, they can be more harmful than helpful.

Some people's teeth are hard to maintain, and they get cavities VERY easily. This doesn't mean they don't try their best to take care of themselves.

Everything has nuance. Let's stop boxing everything in "good" and "bad" categories based on what beauty companies want us to be, yeah?

Photographed by Patrick Robert, February 1988.

snoopy of the day

me cause im always finding out

Kirby Super Star Ultra (Nintendo DS, 2008) Sleep