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@LeonaLionheart7 💔 So Sorry for your loss, RIP to him ❤️‍🩹

The UK used to have starter jobs everywhere. Bars, retail, waiting jobs, high streets hiring constantly. You could walk into a shop or bar and start next week. Now 300 people are applying for one Tesco shift.

@B94Jimmy That’s Sweet of you to remember x I’ve kept quiet because of Skyla ❤️‍🩹 I’ll celebrate soon

@21Charbie happy late birthday 🎂

This how the Covid hysteria ( NOT COVID) gave me cancer and changed my life forever.... In January of 2020 I had a sore throat that wouldn't go away. I went to my GP and she said it was probably allergies. So, I believed her. The pain came and went off and on. In February 2020, I went back because of pain and it was making me very anxious. She said, she didn't see anything and still thought it was allergies. By March, I could barely eat, the pain was killing me. She gave me medication for anxiety (I can't even remember what it was) and directed me to an ENT. By this time, everything was being shut down. That doctor scoped my throat. He said I had polyps but they were probably because I project my voice. Okay, that made sense because it's true. He flat out told me that they were not cancerous 100%. He said I could not have a PET Scan because with the "Covid guidelines" in place it was considered "elective" and couldn't be done. He said to come back in September for another check. In my mind I had seen three different doctors so they must be right. They couldn't do anything else anyway (Following the Covid guidelines) I was living in excruciating pain for months and on pain meds. In May, I fell (From pain meds) at home, alone, and shattered my ankle, lol (Not really funny, but I was like WTF) In the hospital I go, surgery, and now in a wheelchair 😂 I couldn't go to a residential rehab because it was only for stroke and heart attack people ( Per Covid guidelines) I'm not making this shit up, lol. I told the doctors at the hospital about my throat as well. It's like " You'll be fine" lol. I'm on a walker and at times still in a wheelchair because I'm still recovering BTW when it was September and time to go back and get scoped again at my ENT. He scoped me and said, "I'm referring you to an Oncologist, I think you have cancer" I SHIT YOU NOT that's what he said. I went to (Which is still my Oncologist, whose amazing) He did a PET, results were Stage 4 incurable Squamous Cell Carcinoma spread to Lymphnodes in neck. So yes, I remember the Covid restrictions. It almost killed me. To all the people pushing for another Pandemic, eat shit! Unless it's Ebola spreading like wildfire, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT AND I DON'T CARE. I beat Cancer against all odds and I'm very grateful. Many people died from the Covid restrictions. We can't ever allow that again. Thanks for listening 🩷

Back in 2021, I met a lady who told me about this app where blind people could video call volunteers whenever they needed help with something. Out of curiosity, I downloaded it and signed up. I still remember how surreal it felt the first time I got a call. Someone was simply trying to decide what to wear and needed me to tell them if the colors matched. Another person needed help checking something on their TV screen. And there I was, in my room in Nigeria, helping complete strangers from different parts of the world through a random video call. It wasn’t paid or anything. It was just volunteering. But I remember being so fascinated by the idea that technology could connect people in such a deeply human way. For a few minutes, you literally became someone else’s eyes. Till today, that remains one of the most beautiful things I’ve experienced online.

A donkey skin sells in Kenya for $130. Boiled into a Chinese beauty product called ejiao, it becomes part of an $8 billion industry. Almost 6 million donkeys are killed every year to feed it. The finished products are sold on Amazon. Ejiao is a kind of gelatin made by simmering donkey skin for hours. It's mixed into face creams, anti-aging pills, candies, and tonics. Even China's own health regulator has admitted ejiao is just boiled donkey skin. No clinical trials show that it works. But a hit Chinese TV drama called Empress in the Palace put it back in fashion around 2012. The country's growing middle class started taking it for anemia, fatigue, miscarriage, even premature aging. Donkeys can't reproduce that fast. A female donkey is pregnant for 12 full months and has just one foal at a time. She doesn't start breeding until age two or three. So when Chinese demand exploded, China's own donkey population collapsed from 11 million in 1992 to under 2 million by 2020. The hunt then went global. Africa has roughly 33 million donkeys, two-thirds of the world's supply. Botswana's donkey population has halved since 2016. In Kenya, government-approved slaughterhouses killed about half the country's donkeys in three years. According to The Donkey Sanctuary, 41% of African donkey owners surveyed had at least one animal stolen. Donkeys are walked for weeks across borders, denied food and water, until they collapse. They're hit on the head with sledgehammers. Their throats are slit. Some are still breathing when they're skinned. A 2017 PETA investigation in China found foals as young as 5 months old killed this way. Up to one in five donkeys dies before reaching the slaughterhouse. In February 2024, all 55 African Union countries voted to ban the trade for 15 years across the continent. China is Africa's biggest trading partner. The continent banned this trade anyway. The Donkey Sanctuary still projects demand will hit 6.8 million skins a year by 2027. Within weeks of the ban, donkey theft spiked across Africa. The trade went underground. Chinese companies are now in talks to set up donkey farms in Pakistan instead. A donkey in rural Africa is often a family's only way to fetch water, carry goods to market, and send kids to school. When it gets stolen overnight, the women and children become the donkey. They walk further with heavier loads. The girls drop out of school first. The donkey in this photo is leaning against a wall because it's exhausted. The industry on its back is worth $8 billion.

They took away plastic bags and straws just to turn around and allow the 1% to get rich on AI data centers that consume a small nations worth of water and electricity evry single day

I can’t believe we used to throw toilet paper and eggs at houses and now we can’t afford toilet paper, eggs or a house.

Happy International Workers’ Day! Together and Strong.

In 1919, James Cowan Smith gave £55,000 to the National Galleries of Scotland on one condition: a portrait of his dog Callum had to remain permanently on display. It is still exhibited today.

Keith is a three-year-old Anglo-Nubian goat in a field in Devon. Keith has opened 7 gates, occupied a barn roof for 11 consecutive days, cleared an entire knotweed stand worth £4,000 to remove chemically, eaten Steve's bindweed, been in the churchyard twice, been in the road an estimated 14 times, eaten the water heater instructions, been in Dave's kitchen (standing there, not eating anything, just standing), and filed the structural details of every fence on the farm into a memory that has never once been cleared. He has done all of this while also being the single most cost-effective conservation intervention on the property. These are not separate facts. They are the same fact. Keith does not distinguish between the work and the escape. The escape is work. The work is escape. The fence is a project. The project is completed. The project leads to the next project. The knotweed leads to the churchyard. The churchyard leads to the road. The road leads back to the east ditch. The east ditch was cleared in one season. There is a man named Steve who has filed twenty-nine formal complaints about Keith. Steve's bindweed is gone. Steve does not yet understand that these are the same story. Dave has £387 in gate receipts, a positive net outcome column on every row since entry seventeen, a churchyard booking for next month, and a corner post with a 4mm flex that Keith has known about since Margot's visit and has not yet acted on. Not yet. Keith is not done. Keith is never done. Keith is ten thousand years of Zagros Mountain goat compressed into a Devon field, and the fence between him and the rest of the world has always been a negotiating position rather than a boundary. Be ungovernable. Do the work. Leave the field better than you found it. The knotweed is at 6%. Keith is thinking.

I don’t care if someone works in an office, a warehouse, a restaurant, or cleans floors. If you give 40 hours of your life every week, you should be able to pay rent, buy groceries, cover your bills, and still have enough left to breathe a little. That shouldn’t be some dream. It should be normal. The fact that so many people work full-time and still live stressed, behind, and one emergency away from disaster tells you this system is failing the people who keep it running.

As the weather is getting hotter, make sure to ask your Evri delivery driver if he'd like a bottle of cold water. When he says yes, dropkick it over a fence into your neighbour's rose bush and tell him you've left it in a designated safe space.

A "dove release" at a wedding or funeral is a death sentence for the birds. The white "doves" sold for releases aren't doves. They're domestic pigeons bred to be small and white, and they have no survival skills outside a coop. DIY releasers often buy white Ringneck Doves or King Pigeons, which have zero ability to navigate home. Nearly all of them die. Even professional releases with trained homing pigeons kill birds. Hawks take them in the air. Cars hit them when they land exhausted. They collide with windows. They get lost and starve. Rehabbers pull them in with broken wings, broken legs, raging trichomoniasis, and bodies so emaciated the birds can barely stand. One rehabber described treating a white pigeon from a release whose throat infection had hardened so completely it distorted the shape of his skull. There is no version of this tradition where the birds "fly away and live happily ever after." That's the marketing story. The reality is that you paid to traumatize and usually kill a domestic animal for a 15-second photo moment. If someone you know is planning a dove release for a wedding, funeral, or celebration, tell them. Bubbles, sparklers, dried flower petals, or ribbon throws all photograph beautifully and don't kill anything. The birds are not props, they are live animals that need proper care.

the best thing you can do for yourself is actively increase your surface area for luck to hit you. go outside, try new cafes, museums, events, take a new route home, speak to people, ask questions, side quest. the more you do, the more serendipity and synchronicity will find you.

My therapist told me, “Women who grew up in broken and dysfunctional homes don’t always have big dreams. They only dream of having a home no one can take away and a person who won’t abandon them.”

Work. Work. Work. Stay hydrated. Go to the dentist. 10,000 steps. “What’s for dinner?” Insurance. Drink water. Pay a bill. Pay a bill. Smile. Credit Score. Check engine light. Go get gas. ALLERGIES! TAXES! STUDENT LOANS! Phone storage full. Email. Email. Apple $12.99. Apple $9.99. Subscriptions. Subscription. Overdraft. Laundry. Fold. Text. Text. Text. Clean the house. “I haven’t seen you in a while.” Doctors appoinment. Hair appoinment. Nail appointment. RENT. WAR! GOVERNMENT! POLITICS! THE PRESIDENT!!