queermunist

Okay so I knew we had a holiday on Easter weekend at my job and I assumed we'd have Good Friday off, since that's what literally every other job I've had has done and since it's a semi-holiday.

Nope, we got Monday off. April fools! 😂

So now I just burned two attendance points because I was a no-call-no-show and lost out on holiday pay.

Death to America.

Did you know soy sauce Top Ramen is vegan? Maruchan isn't so don't get em confused!

The greens are raw sweet peas and green onion.

SUSAN ABULHAWA: I want to say that the reality on the ground is infinitely worse than the worst videos and photos that we’re seeing in the West. There is a — you know, beyond people being buried alive en masse in their homes, their bodies being shredded to pieces, these kinds of videos and images that people are seeing — beyond that, there is this daily massive degradation of life. It is a total denigration of a whole society, that was once high-functioning and proud and has basically been reduced to the most primal of ambitions, you know, being able to get enough water for the day or flour to bake bread. And this is even in Rafah.

And the people in Rafah will tell you that they feel privileged because they’re not starving to death, while their families in the north, the ones that they can reach, because Israel has basically cut off 99% of communication — what remains are basically communications by people who have, you know, set up some ingenious ways to keep internet in the north. But most people in the north have no idea what’s happening. As a matter of fact, at one point — I’m sure you all know Bisan Owda, who is on Facebook. She explained to me she often goes up to the border between Khan Younis and the middle area in the north where you can’t go beyond, and she explained to me that an aid truck, that sort of pushed its way through but was eventually fired on, had — people came up and ran up, thinking that the war was over and people were returning to the north. So, most people in the north are in total darkness and hunger and really have no way of communicating, no way of figuring out where to get food.

And, you know, what we’re hearing on the ground is surreal. It’s dystopic. What I witnessed personally in Rafah and in some of the middle areas is incomprehensible. And I will call it a holocaust — and I don’t use that word lightly. But it is absolutely that.

I recommend listening to the whole thing, but this is the most harrowing part for me. The death toll is likely a massive undercount and, if the Zionists have their way, we will never be allowed to know the truth.

I've been slowly adding more and more veggies through experimentation, but now I'm at the point where I either need to use bigger tortillas or just be more picky about which veggies I want 😅 this is the configuration I'm using right now, though in the summer I like to use avacado instead of sauce.

I heat the tortillas in a pan with a light coat of walnut oil and black pepper and assemble my fixins in the pan itself.

Sauce is also homemade! I save all the vinegar from pickled jalapenos and then mix that with equal parts coconut oil in a heated pan, then combine it with whatever seasoning I'm feeling like during that batch (rn I'm using nooche, though sometimes I go for an onion sauce or mustard). It's not super precise so there's no recipe, I've just got a feel from experimentation.

Also the fake-on bits are actually a cheap local veriety I've found. Basically just smoke and salt flavored crunchy soy chips.

Once I'm done, I pack up my chopped veggies to do this again in a couple days. I usually make four at a time every two days, and these are my pre-shift and mid-shift work meals. Served with a thicc pea protein chocolate drink.

And you all told me the blue maga border bill that Republicans rejected was 4d chess.

Kidney beans and rice with taco seasoning, caramelized onion and garlic, and I found out I can get dried habaneros near me! Definitely growing those this year, I forgot how good they are (haven't had any since before the pandemic 🥲 )

Also that Perrona sauce is... okay. It's really sweat, throws off everything. Also not nearly as spicy as I was hoping! It's a cool color, you can't really tell but it's actually green, but it just didn't hurt me the way I like 😌

Pintos and white rice seasoned with cumin, cayenne, garlic, nooch, salt, msg, walnut oil, and then served with taco fixins on hard shells 💪

🥵

I used to think I didn't really like beans, but when I got an airfryer I decided to see what they'd be like if I cooked them differently. Amazing~✨

Smaller beans become a delicious crunchy topping or filling, highly recommended, but what's really interesting is those huge butter beans. They're disturbingly similar to chicken breast when cooked this way, so I cooked up some white rice, cut up some ice cold broccoli, and fried up some butter beans 8 minutes with walnut oil at 400^o^ F

And that's it! Super simple but so so sooo good.

In Khan Younis, many of those taking flight on Monday were already displaced from other areas. Abu Mohammed told Reuters it was now the third time he had been forced to flee since abandoning his home in Gaza City in the north.

"Why did they eject us from our homes in Gaza (City) if they planned to kill us here?" he said.

At a home in Khan Younis that was struck overnight, flames licked the collapsed masonry and grey smoke billowed out from the rubble. A child's stuffed toy of a sheep lay in a pile of dust. Boys were picking through the wreckage. Next door, Nesrine Abdelmoty stood amid damaged furniture in the rented room where she lives with her divorced daughter and two-year-old baby.

"We were sleeping at 5 a.m. when we felt things collapse, everything went upside down," she told Reuters. "They told (people) to move from the north to Khan Younis, since the south is safer. And now, they've bombed Khan Younis. Even Khan Younis is not safe now, and even if we move to Rafah, Rafah is not safe as well. Where do they want us to go?"

The end of the article jumped out at me:

The Palestinian health ministry said 40 patients died on Tuesday, after five days without the fuel needed to power generators that fed dialysis machines and other vital medical equipment. The hospital had also run out of clean water, and doctors said they were subsisting on dates to survive as food supplies dwindled to nothing.

Corpses were piled in front of the hospital, with staff too terrified to move between buildings. The UN’s office for humanitarian affairs said staff at al-Shifa, for decades the linchpin of Gaza’s medical system, had begun preparations for a mass grave to entomb 180 bodies in front of the facility, as there was no way for them to leave in order to bury the dead.

Of particular note:

The Association of American Railroads, which represents freight railway operators, said its members have been hiring in recent years to address staffing needs and recognize employees' desire for better scheduling. The group said the number of overtime hours worked by BMWE union members increased to 4.7 hours per week in 2022, compared to 4 hours in 2016.

Cory Ludwig, who works as a machine operator repairing railway tracks in Iowa, said he’s been working Saturdays and some Sundays along with 10- to 12-hour shifts since September. Recently, he worked 13 days without a day off. With the mandatory Saturday work, he’s had to rely on friends and relatives to take care of his five-year-old and nine-year-old kids. He said the overtime demands have increased as he’s seen the number of workers assigned to his crew go down.

“You fall asleep and then you wake up in the morning and you go right back to work. It can really break a person down, it gets really wearing on a person after a while,” Ludwig said. “With less people trying to do the same amount of work, working long hours, working multiple weeks in a row without one day off, you get irritated and you get burnt out.”

Recently one of the union’s members had been working 22 hours straight when he fell asleep on the job, an error that could have put his colleagues’ lives at risk but also could have been avoided had the employee had a rest period, said Ballew. Another member was recently disciplined for refusing to work through his scheduled days off on short notice so he could care for a family member having health issues, Ballew said.

“The stress it puts on marriages and parenting and the things you leave behind for your spouse to deal with or the things you miss, that kind of stress builds up,” said Ballew. “In the rail industry, we have noticed recently a spat of suicides and I can’t help but think there is a correlation there.”

Thank God Biden stopped the railroad strike!

I swear if I hear another fucker say that the railroad workers got everything they wanted because Biden helped them negotiate I'll lose it.

Good thing I voted for the lesser evil in 2020! Gosh if I had stuck to principles we'd have had a genocide or something 😒