literature.cafe

In August, Goldberg will make the swim with a clear objective in mind: to be the first openly transgender person to swim across Lake Ontario.

The swim is 52 kilometres and will take between 20 to 26 hours. Goldberg knows it's is no easy task, but he’s motivated.

“It's really important for me to be that person who is visible doing this — and for my swim to be a piece of visibility and advocacy so that trans people can look at athletics in general ... and go, ‘Oh, this is for us too,’” Goldberg told TorontoToday.

Goldberg's swim comes at a time where the involvement of transgender people in sports is under attack by some conservative politicians, both in the United States and on home soil.

In April, Goldberg created a GoFundMe page to support his swim and mission for trans visibility. He aims to raise $12,500 to pay for safety boats and an experienced navigation crew, a medical safety team, nutrition and health supplies, weather monitoring services and training support.

Alongside his athletic effort, the page says Goldberg's open water swim will display the "resilience required to navigate the world as a transgender person."

He's hopeful that his swim will "show transgender youth that there are no boundaries to what they can achieve."

All money raised beyond the fundraising goal will go to LGBT YouthLine, a peer support organization for LGBTQ+ youth across Ontario.

Goldberg is a former peer volunteer with the group. He said working with the organization was a big part of his life and gender transition.

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza announced Sunday that the death toll from the war had risen to more than 52,000 people, after hundreds previously listed as missing were confirmed dead.

"An additional 697 martyrs have been added to the cumulative statistics after their data was completed and verified by the committee monitoring missing persons," the health ministry said in a statement, giving the overall toll of 52,243.

Several United Nations agencies that operate in Gaza have said the ministry's data is credible and they are frequently cited by international organisations.

One hospital in the Palestinian territory confirmed the data and elaborated on the process.

"The families of those initially reported missing had informed authorities of their disappearance, but their bodies were subsequently recovered -— either from beneath the rubble or from areas previously inaccessible to medical teams due to the presence of the Israeli army," said Khalil al-Daqran, spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

He said the ministry’s release of the 697 figure came after a "judicial committee" that collects and checks data completed its documentation, "confirming their martyrdom and transferring their status from missing persons to martyrs."

When asked why such a large number was announced simultaneously, the Hamas government's Media Office in Gaza explained that statistics are released periodically.

It is not the first time the health ministry has made such a revision.

"Because the judicial committee issues its report periodically rather than daily. They follow their own procedural protocols, and once their report was finalised, it was officially adopted," Ismail al-Thawabta, director general of the Media Office, told AFP.

With Gaza largely in ruins after more than 18 months of war, the health ministry has struggled to count the death toll.

But neither the Israeli military nor top Israeli officials have denied the scale of the overall toll.

From the those-who-don't-learn-from-history dept.

Artists, writers and intellectuals continued to offer Allende strong support, including Chile’s celebrated poet Pablo Neruda, his friend and adviser. Neruda died just 12 days after the coup, before he could seek refuge in Mexico, prompting the recently confirmed speculation that he had been poisoned.

This is Pinochet’s legacy: layers and layers of horrific secrets that are still being unveiled, which might explain why Dad urged me never to vote for fear of being tracked down.

I had the privilege, then, of laughing off such worries. “Don’t be paranoid, Dad. They don’t keep track of who you voted for here,” I said, explaining secret ballots. He wasn’t convinced.

Suddenly, Dad doesn’t seem so paranoid any more.

==============

This is a first line This is a second line This is the third line.

==============

These all appear on the same line eventhough I wrote them on separate lines

If I add a "enter" after each line, they'll appear on separate lines, but have white spaces in between.

==============

This is the first line

This is the second line

This is the third line.

===============

Now I only add two spaces behind each line and they'll appear just as I wrote them

================

This is the first line.
This is the second line.
This is the third line.

================

Vancouver (AFP) – A driver killed at least nine people when he plowed a vehicle through a crowd at a Filipino cultural celebration in Vancouver, police in the Canadian city said Sunday.

The Filipino community had gathered in Vancouver's Sunset on Fraser neighborhood on Saturday evening when festivalgoers were hit.

"We can confirm nine people have died after a man drove through a crowd at last night's Lapu Lapu Festival," Vancouver police said on X.

The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada's election.

Police said they have arrested a "lone suspect" -- a 30-year-old man from Vancouver who was known to them -- and were not treating the incident as an "act of terrorism."

An AFP reporter saw police officers at the scene, with parts of the festival venue cordoned off.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was "devastated" by the "horrific events."

"I offer my deepest condolences to the loved ones of those killed and injured, to the Filipino Canadian community, and to everyone in Vancouver," he wrote on X.

Footage posted online and verified by AFP shows a black SUV with a damaged hood parked on a street littered with debris, meters from first aiders tending to people lying on the ground.

Eyewitness Dale Selipe told the Vancouver Sun that she saw injured children on the street after the vehicle rammed into the crowd.

"We are still finding the words to express the deep heartbreak brought on by this senseless tragedy," community group Filipino BC, the organizer of the Saturday event, said in an Instagram statement.

"We are focused on supporting our community right now, in addition to experiencing this trauma." 'Bodies everywhere'

Festival security guard Jen Idaba-Castaneto told local news site Vancouver Is Awesome that she saw "bodies everywhere."

"You don't know who to help, here or there," she said.

The Philippine consulate in Vancouver said in a Facebook statement it "expresses its deep concern and sympathies to the victims of the horrific incident."

British Columbia premier David Eby said he was "shocked & heartbroken" by the news, while city mayor Ken Sim said "our thoughts are with all those affected and with Vancouver's Filipino community during this incredibly difficult time."

Saturday's event featured a parade, a film screening, dancing and a concert, with two members of the Black Eyed Peas featured on the lineup published by the organizers.

Lapu Lapu Day is celebrated in the Philippines in remembrance of Indigenous chief Lapulapu, who led his men to defeat Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in battle in 1521.

Canadians go to the polls Monday after a frenetic election race where candidates have wooed voters on issues including rising living costs and tackling US President Donald Trump's tariffs.

Carney is favored to win after assuring voters he can stand up to Washington's barrage of sweeping tariffs.

MARSEILLE: French police started a hunt for a man suspected of killing a Muslim worshipper inside a mosque in the south of the country on Friday and then filming the dying victim on a mobile phone and shouting insults at Islam.

The alleged perpetrator sent the video he had filmed with his phone, showing the victim writhing in agony, to another person, who then shared it on a social media platform before deleting it.

cross-posted from: https://gregtech.eu/post/11282076

"The time has now come to bring these chapters to a close. My life from this point onward has been so public that there is hardly anything about it that people do not know. Moreover, since 1921 I have worked in such close association with the Congress leaders that I can hardly describe any episode in my life since then without referring to my relations with them. For though Shraddhanandji, the Deshabandhu, Hakim Saheb and Lalaji are no more with us today, we have the good luck to have a host of other veteran Congress leaders still living and working in our midst. The history of the Congress, since the great changes in it that I have described above, is still in the making. And my principal experiments during the past seven years have all been made through the Congress. A reference to my relations with the leaders would therefore be unavoidable, if I set about describing my experiments further. And this I may not do, at any rate for the present, if only from a sense of propriety. Lastly, my conclusions from my current experiments can hardly as yet be regarded as decisive. It therefore seems to me to be my plain duty to close this narrative here. In fact my pen instinctively refuses to proceed further.

It is not without a wrench that I have to take leave of the reader. I set high value on my experiments. I do not know whether I have been able to do justice to them. I can only say that I have spared no pains to give a faithful narrative. To describe truth, as it has appeared to me, and in the exact manner in which I have arrived at it, has been my ceaseless effort. The exercise has given me ineffable [too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words] mental peace, because it has been my fond hope that it might bring faith in Truth and Ahimsa (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa) to waverers [a person who is unable to make a decision or choice].

My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth. And if every page of these chapters does not proclaim to the reader that the only means for the realization of Truth is Ahimsa, I shall deem all my labour in writing these chapters to have been in vain. And, even though my efforts in this behalf may prove fruitless, let the readers know that the vehicle, not the great principle, is at fault. After all, however sincere my strivings after Ahimsa may have been, they have still been imperfect and inadequate. The little fleeting glimpses, therefore, that I have been able to have of Truth can hardly convey an idea of the indescribable lustre of Truth, a million times more intense than that of the sun we daily see with our eyes. In fact what I have caught is only the faintest glimmer of that mighty effulgence [radiant splendor: brilliance]. But this much I can say with assurance, as a result of all my experiments, that a perfect vision of Truth can only follow a complete realization of Ahimsa.

To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face, one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself [Matt 7:12 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7&version=ESV), Matt 5:43]. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.

Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification; without self-purification the observance of the law of Ahimsa must remain an empty dream; God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification therefore must mean purification in all the walks of life. And purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one's surroundings.

But the path of self-purification is hard and steep [Matt 7:13 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7&version=ESV)]. To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I know that I have not in me as yet that triple purity, in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it. That is why the world's praise fails to move me, indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms. Ever since my return to India I have had experiences of the dormant passions lying hidden within me. The knowledge of them has made me feel humiliated though not defeated. The experiences and experiments have sustained me and given me great joy. But I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.

In bidding farewell to the reader, for the time being at any rate, I ask him to join with me in prayer to the God of Truth that He may grant me the boon [a thing that is helpful or beneficial] of Ahimsa in mind, word and deed." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story Of My Experiments With Truth, the final chapter: Farewell

Hey guys!

Similar to my other post, I've created a small widget-style page for converting from one thread brand to another!

https://clickstitch.app/tools/thread-brand-converter

📅 Up-to-date

I’ve written a script that will retrieve all threads listed on the brand websites to ensure new ones are available.

Currently a total of 1683 threads exist, split as:

• DMC: 665
• Anchor: 484
• Madeira: 379
• Kreinik: 155

But there are many more so these will come in the future!

🎯 Accuracy

All stored threads are compared, and the thread with the closest RGB value is chosen per brand.

🎇 Modern

A search engine for threads, it will find the closest match to whatever thread brand/code/description you enter!

Hopefully it’s useful, what other brands would you like to see?

Any bugs or suggestions let me know! Best way is via Discord: https://clickstitch.app/discord

@nostupidquestions What's the significance of/context behind this quote?
"Flight Simulator II is a flight simulator released by subLOGIC in 1986 for the Amiga 1000. This game came out before the Amiga 500 was released in 1987. Let that sink in. Because barely anyone understood Amiga hardware in 1986." - https://lilura1.blogspot.com/2022/02/Flight-Simulator-2-Amiga-1986-subLOGIC-Chris-Green.html
I assume it's a huge feat of engineering right there but why and what's the significance?

There's something about that sound thats so amazing to me, it makes me think of a giant using giant bottles as wind instruments or organ or somethint

Shawn must be loving these tariffs.

A South Korean soldier at the inter-Korean border accidentally fired a machine gun toward North Korea last week, prompting the military to air broadcasts to notify the North of the mistake, military officials said Sunday.

The accident happened at around 6:00 a.m. Wednesday when the soldier mistakenly fired a single round from the K6 heavy machine gun from a guard post inside the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas in Cheorwon County, about 70 kilometers north of Seoul, according to the officials.

Source

The death toll from a powerful explosion at Iran's biggest port of Bandar Abbas has risen to at least 28, with more than 700 people injured, state media reported on Sunday, as firefighters worked to fully extinguish the fire.

Saturday's blast took place in the Shahid Rajaee section of the port, Iran's biggest container hub, shattering windows for several kilometres around, tearing metal strips off shipping containers and badly damaging goods inside, state media said.

The incident occurred as Iran held a third round of nuclear talks with the United States in Oman.