Latest Posts by thecouragetobekind - Page 2
@prokopetz
made me think of you
I love it soooo much!!!!
SOB LOOK AT 'EM!
I am so so happy you like it! I hope these lil owlbear butts (or as my spouse calls them- "Hoot-Hoot Patoots") support your wrist wonderfully!
"it's okay, i can peel back the layers of you until i find the soft and gentle core of you you've had to work so hard to hide"? no. no, it's okay, i know you're hollow; i'm here anyway. you don't have to pretend it isn't masks the whole way down. whatever face you want to wear, i still love you. i don't need you to be good or unflinching or the antonym of violence. if i did, i wouldn't be here. i wouldn't ask that of you.
Ship trope I'd love to see more of: "Are we in love? I mean, yeah, probably, but that's a problem for future us. Right now we're just trying to make it through the Plot."
Update:
My hysterectomy will be laparoscopic. I knew this from the beginning but did not realize until my most recent consultation that this means they will pull the uterus out in small pieces.
So no glass uterus in my future as my surgeon and I agree that, “It’s for art tho” is not a good enough reason to cut a huge whole though my abdominal wall and muscles.
And it’s also not worth the paperwork and hassle to get the shredded remains of my uterus back from the hospital. Although I do have another 3 months to think of something I might do with them.
The heart project was also never going to involve a human heart, btw.
Eventually I'm going to need some hearts and uteri for my glass art. I can't source the organs from dissection kits or anything like that because you don't want to 'cook' formaldehyde or other preservation chemicals. And I had no idea where I could get uteri from. Thanks to that goat bone ask I realized I can source from butchers / farmers in my area. I think my ask is weirder! Super thanks to you and goat bone anon!
This ask is DEFINITELY WEIRDER but congrats on realizing where you can get some fresh organs, weirdo!!!
I actually had no idea my screen reader wasn't picking up the fonts. The entire post was comprehensible to me and it wasn't until I went to reblog that I saw the big section of fancy font and was like "????" so then I went over the smaller sections and nope. Silent.
Had no idea I was missing out! So weird!
Why does this happen???
OPEN LETTER TO FANFICTION WRITERS ON ACCESSIBILITY; PLEASE READ.
first of all, thank you for spending your time, seldom acknowledged and definitely deserving of a compensation you are not receiving, to entertain us. i’m speaking on behalf of more than just blind readers, but everyone. you’re sick as hell.
i’ve summoned you to provide some information you may not already know. i know a lot of you like fonts. especially those who cross post their work on wattpad. i admire any and all acts of aestheticism to a degree, and can understand the desire to use them. (blind folk, sorry y’all. momma’s making a point.) 𝔰𝔱𝔲𝔣𝔣 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰, it’s cute. 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐟𝐟 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 is a little cuter to me, if i had to choose. or maybe 𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓁𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈?
now, sighted folk: if you’re on mobile, i implore you to participate in a little exercise for me. select this text and scroll through all the copy/paste/define/‘search the web’ options until you get to the speak portion. if you need to change a setting for your phone to do so, would you mind? i’d really appreciate it.
please make your phone read aloud part of my post, and be sure to include any bits with those super cute fonts. 𝕚’𝕝𝕝 𝕥𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕠𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕖𝕟𝕕 𝕠𝕗 𝕞𝕪 𝕡𝕝𝕖𝕒, 𝕣𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖. 𝕚 𝕙𝕠𝕡𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕚𝕤 𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕤𝕝𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕔𝕠𝕣𝕣𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕝𝕪, 𝕚 𝕕𝕠𝕟’𝕥 𝕨𝕒𝕟𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕠𝕟 𝕥𝕠 𝕓𝕖 𝕤𝕢𝕦𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕕 𝕓𝕪 𝕥𝕪𝕡𝕠𝕤 𝕚 𝕔𝕒𝕟’𝕥 𝕤𝕖𝕖.
whether you participated and discovered it for yourself or you thought this was a crock of shit you’d rather not sniff, i’ll tell you! screen readers cannot dictate words using those fonts. at least, on a majority of devices. not mine, or any of my mutuals elsewhere.
you do not have to change your behavior on my behalf, but please be aware that fonts limit access to your work.
blind readers do exist, i exist, and i am bound by the same feelings of dogged longing that make other sad horny bitches read angsty, smutty, father-wounded nonsense.
thanks for making it this far. i really hope my sincerity is being conveyed, reading makes me so happy and i’m not the only person on this app who relies on accessibility settings more often than not. do with this information what you will, and have the day you deserve!
I do like the scorn the opening sentence has for the concept of being "perfectly normal." That's a strong opening for both a children's book and a book about magic.
(Tragically the series doesn't live up to the expectations this sets.)
It also implies The Dursley's go around calling themselves "perfectly normal". Which. It's just not something I can imagine one neighbor saying or another, or Mrs. Dursley mentioning during book club over tea, or the topic coming up in casual conversation. Ever.
The phrasing doesn't come off as non-literal. I get tripped up in the specificity of the action. To whom do they say they are, "perfectly normal, thank you very much."
Does anyone doubt this? We are not actually shown how Harry's magic effects to Dursley's reputation growing up.
It does have a whiff of "tho doth protest too much" since they can't simply be "proud to be perfectly normal". Instead they have to assert (but to whom???) that they are "perfectly normal". They know and are infuriated that they are not.
It's a good set up for the conflict between the Dursley's and Harry, and the idea of an opening that immediately characterizes these antagonists as loving normality and "fitting in" is one I do very much like. But it's not quite there yet.
It needs a few more passes to hit just right.
B-, maybe C+
Anyway,
If anyone does have a recommendation for an urban fantasy book where the protagonist is in someone magically different and surrounded by family which is hostile to their very existence because of that difference I've been itching to read one.
Of, and of course, the protagonist should be explicitly queer because *gestures at previous paragraph*, obviously.
Oh fuck off
I'm absolutely loving the discussionsection on this SCP. The original article was a too dense for me to wrap my head around understand.
So far this one is my favorite.
"[...] Of course from his perspective, he's just walking across the hall away from these statues that just toppled over. He's got no idea whats happened or how long he's been in there or what all these strange light blurs are everywhere…
Best thing to do would probably be to clear a path/build a tunnel away from him, through the horizon, into space. That way he gets shot into space and takes most of the energy with him."
The Foundation also sent a team in to correct the cause of the non gravitational singularity (the statues which existed incorrectly in the time continuum falling over) without having noticed the guy stuck near the center of it.
Now they're sending in more teams to tell the first group NOT to do that because it will collapse the singularity.
From the outside perspective the man is also blue shifted, so in all the comments he's referred to as the Blue Man.
My favourite stupid world-ending SCP object is the one that's literally just a hallway where time is stopped, except time isn't really stopped, it's just slowed way, way down, and the Foundation's Science Math™ indicates that when the effect collapses, everything that's in the hallway will return to normal spacetime preserving relative velocity – meaning this random guy who happened to be walking down the hallway when time stopped is going to come shooting out of it at half the speed of light and promptly explode.
I had a seizure in response to dental epinephrine. That provided some solid insight into the fact my body was already reacting horribly to my natural adrenaline / epinephrine. I freaked my poor, poor dentist out so badly.
So I go to the dentist and the appointment I had was not the appointment that I thought I was going to have (normal maintenance vs deep clean) so i warned the dentist "hey heads up I burn through dental anesthetics super quick and also I'd like to use as little as possible because putting the dental anesthetics in my body is the most painful part of the process unless I'm having a root canal or something" and she's like "Hmm. Okay. Is it just the injection site?" and I was like "no, it will feel like burning on the opposite side of my face and in my nose and eyes and stuff." And she was like "Hmm. Do you turn really red when this happens?" And I was like "I don't know, I can't really see myself when it happens." And she was like "are you willing to experiment with this a little?" And I was like "sure, no worries" and she injected me with one anesthetic and it hurt like a motherfucker and she and the assistant both went "OOOH" and she was like "Yeah you got really red right away let's try the other," and it was the same thing and then she was like "okay I think this is the one that will work" and it hurt a little bit but it was fucking NOTHING compared to the comprehensive full stabbing burning facial pain from the others and long story short the dentist was like "You're reacting to the epinephrine in these other anesthetics," which I guess is fairly common for people who have autoimmune disorders.
So I guess this is to say: If you get spreading, burning, stabbing pain when you are being injected with local anesthetics it's not supposed to do that and you should say something.
Follow My Leader by James B Garfield is a book from my childhood I am very fond of. It's for ages 8 - 12. I haven't reread it as an adult so I don't know how it stands up.
It is about a boy who goes blind when he is playing with fire crackers with his friends. It follows him from his injury, to going through life skills camp, to getting a guide dog, and eventually dealing with a bully.
It was first published in 1957, 33 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed into law. "The Braille Technology Timeline" doesn't start until 1971.
Despite this, I find myself thinking that if every child had read this book growing up there would be a lot (edit: LESS, forgot LESS) of internet bullshit along the lines of, “buT hOw Do yOU uSe a cEll pHonE iF yOu’Re bLinD”.
There have always been allies who care about people with disabilities, and, alongside them, have worked to improve access and accommodations as society presses forward. Blind people do not live cruel and unfulfilling lives trapped at home and deprived of the world and technology. The attitude that they do comes from a failure to see the support systems, including friends and family, which have been present from the beginning.
And that's my justification for continuing to deeply love and strongly recommend this book from 66 years ago.
The Disability Library
I love books, I love literature, and I love this blog, but it's only been recently that I've really been given the option to explore disabled literature, and I hate that. When I was a kid, all I wanted was to be able to read about characters like me, and now as an adult, all I want is to be able to read a book that takes us seriously.
And so, friends, Romans, countrymen, I present, a special disability and chronic illness booklist, compiled by myself and through the contributions of wonderful members from this site!
As always, if there are any at all that you want me to add, please just say. I'm always looking for more!
Updated: 12/08/2023
Articles
The Drifting Language of Architectural Accessibility in Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, Essaka Joshua, 2012
Early Modern Literature and Disability Studies, Allison P. Hobgood, David Houston Wood, 2017
Making Do with What You Don't Have: Disabled Black Motherhood in Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, Anna Hinton, 2018
Necropolitics, Achille Mbeme, 2003 OR Necropolitics, Achille Mbeme, 2019
Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts, Zygmunt Bauman, 2004
Witchcraft and deformity in early modern English Literature, Scott Eaton, 2020
Books
Fiction:
10 Things I Can See From Here, Carrie Mac
Akata Witch, (Series), Nnedi Okorafor
A Mango-Shaped Hole, Wendy Mass
An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon
A Shot in the Dark, Victoria Lee
A Snicker of Magic, Natalie Lloyd
A Song of Ice and Fire, (series), George R. R. Martin
A Time to Dance, Padma Venkatraman
Bath Haus, P. J. Vernon
Beasts of Prey, (Series), Ayana Gray
Black Bird, Blue Road, Sofiya Pasternack
Cafe con Lychee, Emery Lee
Cinder, (Series), Marissa Meyer
Clean, Amy Reed
Connection Error, (Series), Annabeth Albert
Crazy, Benjamin Lebert
Crooked Kingdom, (Series), Leigh Bardugo
Dear Fang, With Love, Rufi Thorpe
The Degenerates, J. Albert Mann
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Emily R. Austin
The Extraordinaries, (Series), T. J. Klune
The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict, (Series), Trenton Lee Stewart
The Final Girl Support Group, Grady Hendrix
Forever Is Now, Mariama J. Lockington
Fortune Favours the Dead, (Series), Stephen Spotswood
Fresh, Margot Wood
Harmony, London Price
Highly Illogical Behaviour, John Corey Whaley
Honey Girl, Morgan Rogers
How to Become a Planet, Nicole Melleby
I Am Not Alone, Francisco X. Stork
The Immeasurable Depth of You, Maria Ingrande Mora
In the Ring, Sierra Isley
Iron Widow, (Series), Xiran Jay Zhao
Izzy at the End of the World, K. A. Reynolds
Josee, the Tiger and the Fish, (short story) (anthology), Seiko Tanabe
Just by Looking at Him, Ryan O'Connell
Lakelore, Anna-Marie McLemore
Learning Curves, (Series), Ceillie Simkiss
Let's Call It a Doomsday, Katie Henry
The Library of the Dead, (Series), TL Huchu
Long Macchiatos and Monsters, Alison Evans
Love from A to Z, (Series), S.K. Ali
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
The No-Girlfriend Rule, Christen Randall
Noor, Nnedi Okorafor
One For All, Lillie Lainoff
On the Edge of Gone, Corinne Duyvis
Out of My Mind, Sharon M. Draper
Parable of the Sower, (Series), Octavia E. Butler
Parable of the Talents, (Series), Octavia E. Butler
Percy Jackson & the Olympians, (series), Rick Riordan
Pomegranate, Helen Elaine Lee
The Pursuit Of..., (Series), Courtney Milan
The Quiet and the Loud, Helena Fox
Roll with It, (Series), Jamie Sumner
Russian Doll, (Series), Cristelle Comby
Scar of the Bamboo Leaf, Sieni A.M
Six of Crows, (Series) Leigh Bardugo
Sizzle Reel, Carlyn Greenwald
The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Kowal
The Stagsblood Prince, (Series), Gideon E. Wood
Stars in Your Eyes, Kacen Callender [Expected release: Oct 2023]
The Storm Runner, (Series), J. C. Cervantes
The Theft of Sunlight, (Series), Intisar Khanani
Throwaway Girls, Andrea Contos
Top Ten, Katie Cotugno
Torch, Lyn Miller-Lachmann
Treasure, Rebekah Weatherspoon
Verona Comics, Jennifer Dugan
We Are the Ants, (Series), Shaun David Hutchinson
The Weight of Our Sky, Hanna Alkaf
The Whispering Dark, Kelly Andrew
Wicked Sweet, Chelsea M. Cameron
Wonder, (Series), R. J. Palacio
Wrong to Need You, (Series), Alisha Rai
Ziggy, Stardust and Me, James Brandon
Graphic Novels:
Constellations, Kate Glasheen
The Golden Hour, Niki Smith
Magazines: Anthologies and Articles:
Beneath Ceaseless Skies #175: Grandmother-nai-Leylit's Cloth of Winds, (Article), R. B. Lemburg
Uncanny #24: Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, (Anthology), edited by: Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Dominik Parisien et al.
Uncanny #30: Disabled People Destroy Fantasy, (Anthology), edited by: Nicolette Barischoff, Lisa M. Bradley, Katharine Duckett
Manga:
Perfect World, (Series), Rie Aruga
Non-Fiction:
Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education, Jay Timothy Dolmage
A Disability History of the United States, Kim E, Nielsen
The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes beyond Access, David Gissen
Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ableism, Elsa Sjunneson
Black Disability Politics, Sami Schalk
Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, Eli Clare
The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability, Barker, Clare and Stuart Murray, editors.
The Capacity Contract: Intellectual Disability and the Question of Citizenship, Stacy Clifford Simplican
Capitalism and Disability, Martha Russel
Care work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Catatonia, Shutdown and Breakdown in Autism: A Psycho-Ecological Approach, Dr Amitta Shah
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays, Esme Weijun Wang
Crip Kinship, Shayda Kafai
Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips and Recipes for the Disabled Cook, Jules Sherred
Culture – Theory – Disability: Encounters between Disability Studies and Cultural Studies, Anne Waldschmidt, Hanjo Berressem, Moritz Ingwersen
Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition, Liat Ben-Moshe
Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally, Emily Ladau
Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Disability Pride: Dispatches from a Post-ADA World, Ben Mattlin
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From the Twenty-First Century, Alice Wong
Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability and Making Space, Amanda Leduc
Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation, Eli Clare
Feminist Queer Crip, Alison Kafer
The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
It's Just Nerves: Notes on a Disability, Kelly Davio
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
Language Deprivation & Deaf Mental Health, Neil S. Glickman, Wyatte C. Hall
The Minority body: A Theory of Disability, Elizabeth Barnes
My Body and Other Crumbling Empires: Lessons for Healing in a World That Is Sick, Lyndsey Medford
No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s-1930s, Sarah F. Rose
Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment, James I. Charlton
The Pedagogy of Pathologization Dis/abled Girls of Color in the School-prison Nexus, Subini Ancy Annamma
Physical Disability in British Romantic Literature, Essaka Joshua
QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology, Raymond Luczak, Editor.
The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability, Jasbir K. Puar
Sitting Pretty, (memoir), Rebecca Taussig
Sounds Like Home: Growing Up Black & Deaf in the South, Mary Herring Wright
Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness: How to Stay Sane and Live One Step Ahead of Your Symptoms, Ilana Jacqueline
The Things We Don't Say: An Anthology of Chronic Illness Truths, Julie Morgenlender
Unmasking Autism, Devon Price
The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe, Ellen Clifford
Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life, (memoir) (essays) Alice Wong
Picture Books:
Small Knight and the Anxiety Monster, Manka Kasha
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With an extra special thank you to @parafoxicalk @craftybookworms @lunod @galaxyaroace @shub-s @trans-axolotl @suspicious-whumping-egg @ya-world-challenge @fictionalgirlsworld @rubyjewelqueen @some-weird-queer-writer @jacensolodjo @cherry-sys @dralthon for your absolutely fantastic contributions!
They could fix Flint’s pipes with that much money and maybe also end world hunger IDK
ChatGPT is running out of money because they haven't actually figured out how to make money with the plagiarism engine they created.
Like to charge, reblog to cast.
Branka is part Newfound land, and I often say her favorite dogs are people.
She’ll walk by dog’s barking and lunging at her on the other side of the street and just give them a glance. She notices a person watching her, she looks at me (to see if I’m paying attention), then looks at the person, wags her tail, and does it again. I ask her, “Want to say ‘hi’? And we go say ‘hi’.”
This doesn’t happens as much anymore now she has cataracts. But she’s thrilled to death when I walk her over to someone she hasn’t yet noticed.
The best doggy
So glad to see the weight loss encouragement in literally the most unexpected place. It’s been a difficult battle but ever pound loss reduces my pain. I want being pain free to be possible and I’m pursuing every possible solution.
I get variations on this comment on my post about history misinformation all the time: "why does it matter?" Why does it matter that people believe falsehoods about history? Why does it matter if people spread history misinformation? Why does it matter if people on tumblr believe that those bronze dodecahedra were used for knitting, or that Persephone had a daughter named Mespyrian? It's not the kind of misinformation that actually hurts people, like anti-vaxx propaganda or climate change denial. It doesn't hurt anyone to believe something false about the past.
Which, one, thanks for letting me know on my post that you think my job doesn't matter and what I do is pointless, if it doesn't really matter if we know the truth or make up lies about history because lies don't hurt anyone. But two, there are lots of reasons that it matters.
It encourages us to distrust historians when they talk about other aspects of history. You might think it's harmless to believe that Pharaoh Hatshepsut was trans. It's less harmless when you're espousing that the Holocaust wasn't really about Jews because the Nazis "came for trans people first." You might think it's harmless to believe that the French royalty of Versailles pooped and urinated on the floor of the palace all the time, because they were asshole rich people anyway, who cares, we hate the rich here; it's rather less harmless when you decide that the USSR was the communist ideal and Good, Actually, and that reports of its genocidal oppression are actually lies.
It encourages anti-intellectualism in other areas of scholarship. Deciding based on your own gut that the experts don't know what they're talking about and are either too stupid to realize the truth, or maliciously hiding the truth, is how you get to anti-vaxxers and climate change denial. It is also how you come to discount housing-first solutions for homelessness or the idea that long-term sustained weight loss is both biologically unlikely and health-wise unnecessary for the majority of fat people - because they conflict with what you feel should be true. Believing what you want to be true about history, because you want to believe it, and discounting fact-based corrections because you don't want them to be true, can then bleed over into how you approach other sociological and scientific topics.
How we think about history informs how we think about the present. A lot of people want certain things to be true - this famous person from history was gay or trans, this sexist story was actually feminist in its origin - because we want proof that gay people, trans people, and women deserve to be respected, and this gives evidence to prove we once were and deserve to be. But let me tell you a different story: on Thanksgiving of 2016, I was at a family friend's house and listening to their drunk conservative relative rant, and he told me, confidently, that the Roman Empire fell because they instituted universal healthcare, which was proof that Obama was destroying America. Of course that's nonsense. But projecting what we think is true about the world back onto history, and then using that as recursive proof that that is how the world is... is shoddy scholarship, and gets used for topics you don't agree with just as much as the ones you do. We should not be encouraging this, because our politics should be informed by the truth and material reality, not how we wish the past proved us right.
It frequently reinforces "Good vs. Bad" dichotomies that are at best unhelpful and at worst victim-blaming. A very common thread of historical misinformation on tumblr is about the innocence or benevolence of oppressed groups, slandered by oppressors who were far worse. This very frequently has truth to it - but makes the lies hard to separate out. It often simplifies the narrative, and implies that the reason that colonialism and oppression were bad was because the victims were Good and didn't deserve it... not because colonialism and oppression are bad. You see this sometimes with radical feminist mother goddess Neolithic feminist utopia stuff, but you also see it a lot regarding Native American and African history. I have seen people earnestly argue that Aztecs did not practice human sacrifice, that that was a lie made up by the Spanish to slander them. That is not true. Human sacrifice was part of Aztec, Maya, and many Central American war/religious practices. They are significantly more complex than often presented, and came from a captive-based system of warfare that significantly reduced the number of people who got killed in war compared to European styles of war that primarily killed people on the battlefield rather than taking them captive for sacrifice... but the human sacrifice was real and did happen. This can often come off with the implications of a 'noble savage' or an 'innocent victim' that implies that the bad things the Spanish conquistadors did were bad because the victims were innocent or good. This is a very easy trap to fall into; if the victims were good, they didn't deserve it. Right? This logic is dangerous when you are presented with a person or group who did something bad... you're caught in a bind. Did they deserve their injustice or oppression because they did something bad? This kind of logic drives a lot of transphobia, homophobia, racism, and defenses of Kyle Rittenhouse today. The answer to a colonialist logic of "The Aztecs deserved to be conquered because they did human sacrifice and that's bad" is not "The Aztecs didn't do human sacrifice actually, that's just Spanish propaganda" (which is a lie) it should be "We Americans do human sacrifice all the god damn time with our forever wars in the Middle East, we just don't call it that. We use bullets and bombs rather than obsidian knives but we kill way, way more people in the name of our country. What does that make us? Maybe genocide is not okay regardless of if you think the people are weird and scary." It becomes hard to square your ethics of the Innocent Victim and Lying Perpetrator when you see real, complicated, individual-level and group-level interactions, where no group is made up of members who are all completely pure and good, and they don't deserve to be oppressed anyway.
It makes you an unwitting tool of the oppressor. The favorite, favorite allegation transphobes level at trans people, and conservatives at queer people, is that we're lying to push the Gay Agenda. We're liars or deluded fools. If you say something about queer or trans history that's easy to debunk as false, you have permanently hurt your credibility - and the cause of queer history. It makes you easy to write off as a liar or a deluded fool who needs misinformation to make your case. If you say Louisa May Alcott was trans, that's easy to counter with "there is literally no evidence of that, and lots of evidence that she was fine being a woman," and instantly tanks your credibility going forward, so when you then say James Barry was trans and push back against a novel or biopic that treats James Barry as a woman, you get "you don't know what you're talking about, didn't you say Louisa May Alcott was trans too?" TERFs love to call trans people liars - do not hand them ammunition, not even a single bullet. Make sure you can back up what you say with facts and evidence. This is true of homophobes, of racists, of sexists. Be confident of your facts, and have facts to give to the hopeful and questioning learners who you are relating this story to, or the bigots who you are telling off, because misinformation can only hurt you and your cause.
It makes the queer, female, POC, or other marginalized listeners hurt, sad, and betrayed when something they thought was a reflection of their own experiences turns out not to be real. This is a good response to a performance art piece purporting to tell a real story of gay WWI soldiers, until the author revealed it as fiction. Why would you want to set yourself up for disappointment like that? Why would you want to risk inflicting that disappointment and betrayal on anyone else?
It makes it harder to learn the actual truth.
Historical misinformation has consequences, and those consequences are best avoided - by checking your facts, citing your sources, and taking the time and effort to make sure you are actually telling the truth.
Okay, but you forgot to mention if it worked. Did it work?
I didn’t realise this until adulthood but handmade birthday piñatas are the apex of parental devotion. I spent the week cooking for my ravenous teenage cousins and felt a bit crestfallen at times that I was spending so long making something that was going to disappear within minutes—but with piñatas it’s so much worse, they exist to be savagely maimed. Year after year my father asked his kids what shape they wanted this year’s piñatas to be and he spent weeks painstakingly making them in the basement after work, only to watch a bunch of oversugared bat-wielding kids gleefully destroy them in less than 10 minutes.
I mentioned this to him and he said he remembered researching tarantula anatomy for the giant spider piñata I asked for when I was 4, trying to make the fangs the right shape and to cut the crepe paper into very thin ribbons so the thing would look appropriately fuzzy, and I was like “and I don’t even remember it because I was four!! spending so long building a beautiful object only so your kids will have fun destroying it, knowing they won’t even remember it, is such a selfless endeavour” and he said “my other motivation was that you said you wanted the spider to look real & scary so the kids at your birthday party would be terrified of it and you’d get to scoop up all the candy and I wanted to support your slyness & ambition”
Heeyyyyy!
I use that when flame working glass
(while going through some casual photos:)
How You Pull Ivy Off The Wall
(I was outside in front of the house one morning, trying to pull this effing tenacious crap off, and breaking my nails... and then I thought: "Why am I doing this? I'm a nurse. We have a tool for this kind of bullshit.")
...And lo and behold, we do. :)
ETA per @maybeasunflower's questions:
(a) What makes the gynecological clamps better? They were sort of spoon-shaped at the ends, with little grabby teeth on the insides of the "spoons". You could grab much more of an ivy stem with them. My regrets that I can't summon up their proper name from the depths of time. ...Must make a run up to the surgical supply place in Dublin and see if they've got any.
(b) Which rotation in your nurse training gave you the skills to remove ivy with Foley clamps? Med-surg. Debridement: i.e. debriding someone who's fallen off a motorcycle at speed onto gravel while not wearing leathers or other protective garments. Getting the deeply-embedded gravel out of the damaged tissue requires a very similar skillset. Fortunately, when working with ivy one needs to have far less concern about handling the process in such a way as to cause minimum pain to the substrate you're removing it from. The wall doesn't care. :)
I went to University in the middle of a large city. There were was a lot of tension between the residents who lived right next to the campus and the students as well as the school as a whole.
Landlords were buying up peoples homes and converting them into apartments to rent out to the student population, displacing families and rapidly changing the make up of the area.
Students called the residents ‘the locals’, or, when they were complaining about how, ‘they just didn’t get college culture’, ‘the natives’. Yikes. Add on the residents were majority black and the students were majority white and it’s a Big Ol’ Fucking Yikes.
Moved to the suburbs and my dad was encouraging me to talk to the people I saw while walking the block and to in general ‘go native’. Oh boy that took me aback.
But even outside of the racial and economic tensions in an area, each neighborhood has it’s own little culture.
If you want to know anything about the area you go to my next door neighbor. He’s lived here 52 year and can tell you how long ago a project in your house was completed and if he thinks the people who did it would have done a good job.
If you lost your dog there’s a woman on our block who is always willing to help you out.
We have a block wide yard sale every other year.
Hey I'm sort of curious. I haven't read the book, but I'm a fan of the show and was genuinely disappointed that the phrase "going Native" had an exclusively negative connotation when I watched. Idk if this occurred to you or not, but that's pretty blatant racism. It's especially tone deaf considering this is a show about angels and demons - which have been a tool to commit genocide against us for upwards of 500 years.
Why not just use "human"? It's accurate and doesn't frame an entire demographic as inherently bad or undesireable.
Not trying to garner any ill will, it just rlly bummed me out bc I'm Native and it's an identity I wear with great pride bc ppl have tried countless times to rip it away from me. To see it treated with such disdain was very hurtful.
I understand your concerns, and do not wish to minimise them, or your hurt. Obviously the phrase has colonial roots. However, it's a lower case N, and isn't intended to talk about Native Americans. When the angels talk about Aziraphale "going native", this is the meaning they are using. It may be negative for the grumpy angels, but it's positive for humanity and for Aziraphale and Crowley.
From Mirriam Webster online:
go native
idiom
: to start to behave or live like the local people
After a few weeks, she was comfortable enough to go native and wear shorts to work.
Example Sentences
Recent Examples:
But dogs that go native make bad guards, hunting companions, and friends.—David Grimm, Science | AAAS, 29 Oct. 2020
Let your yard go native: The Cuyahoga Soil & Water Conservation District is offering seven native plant kits for sale that are adapted to the local climate and do not require excess watering or fertilizer once they are established.—Joan Rusek, cleveland, 6 July 2020
Feel free to elaborate further in the tags, especially if you picked Option 3 because as a professor myself it MYSTIFIES me that there are students who do that! (Also, unless it is just the Culture at your school or something, you should not do that. For future reference)
Please tell me more about the teacups. They pretty
I've become a vendor at an antique fair and needless to say I'm experiencing levels of autism previously unknown to man. I'm using my Encyclopedic knowledge of teacups beam on you
"can i identify as aro even if-" you can do whatever you want forever👍
I think Joy did a great job explaining but I’d like to chime in.
I was bullied a lot in school, from Elementary til High School graduation, by both my teachers and peers.
I got into physical fights, I was iced out, called names, sexually harassed. But also my bullies tried to turn the teachers -- who already saw me as a dumb, difficult, non-compliant student -- against me by saying I was the one being a bully.
I don’t recall how often it actually worked. One memorable time the boys accused me of scratching them on purpose playing capture the flag and I had to see the principle. They targeted me because I was the only girl who actually liked to play the game. I sweaty and gross and was sneered at for it. But I was also really good. The best kids told me to stop trying because I’d never be as good as them.
I’m not sure if I was able to point this out to the principle or if there was anything else sus. I had my nails inspected and was told I could cut them shorter / more often but that I didn’t have to, the length they were was fine.
I see so, so, so much of the internet as an extension of this. Argument bait, the hate terms which were the precursor to transmisandry got, of course, the hate transmisandry is currently getting, there’s more but I’m drawing a blank. It can get way, way worse than switching bully and offender.
This is the building blocks to worse behavior. And I completely understand why Joy would want to shut it down before it can even get a start.
Ultimately, dog piling doesn’t do anything. We can support / commiserate with Joy or anyone else dealing with bullshit without having to know the identity of a meaningless stranger.
I'm not going to reply publicly because I'd inevitably get accused of bullying for failing to protect the sender from the consequences of their actions when my followers got a hold of them.
But if you're going to send me a message along the lines of "I like your novel, but I ran it through a filter, and you use too many adverbs, you should consider using less" I hope you know I'm killing you with my mind.
Just mentally holding you underwater until the thrashing stops.
Hope that helps.
Image converted to text under the cut:
Please stop
I am begging, BEGGING you, whoever you are, to stop writing these. About ten years ago the titles were funny, and the twitter account was funny, and the lore around the clearly fictional Chuck Tingle was funny, but around the time Trump was elected, they turned into increasingly deranged, uninformed and mediocre political diatribes masquerading as whatever the hell this is supposed to be. Literature? Satire? I think the author is going for satire, but unfortunately these books are not satire. They're not funny, they're not clever, they're not subtle, and they're not nuanced. And they're not funny. Did I mention that?
This one is particularly hellacious, because it's clearly just the author getting frustrated about something and thinking "Time to write a Chuck Tingle book to tell everyone how I feel about this subject!" The creators of South Park occasionally do something similar, but their show is actually witty and relevant, unlike this hot garbage. The only thing funny about this book, if it can even be called a book, is that it very obviously and embarrassingly reveals the author for who she is (I'm going out on a limb and guessing "Chuck Tingle" is female). Because although obviously a bisexual in a heterosexual relationship is still bisexual, nobody who is actually gay OR bisexual will disagree that there is a huge influx of functionally straight people opting into being "queer" (I hate that word) out of guilt for being part of the majority, or the desire to partake in the fetish of victimhood that has permeated our society in the past ten years, or maybe they're just trying to be cooler than they are. They're mostly straight women. Wild guess here: "Chuck Tingle" is one of them, and is mad that she was called out at some point for doing exactly that.
In any case: Chuck Tingle, go away. Go away and put down your pen and call it a day and close this tired, unfunny, embarrassing chapter of your life. And get some counseling or something.
all time funniest review. someone please check on the scoundrels they are very riled over our joy
the audiobook for NOT POUNDED BY BI ERASURE BECAUSE MY CURRENT HETERO-PRESENTING RELATIONSHIP DOES NOT INVALIDATE MY QUEERNESS is available here
This podcaster’s tried Meta’s version of this
https://www.relay.fm/cortex/140
And it actually wasn’t a disaster.
My favorite part of the very dumb "Apple Vision Pro" ad is this little scene:
Because, if we take this seriously for a moment, let's imagine what would actually be happening in the scene. The two woman are clearly supposed to be in a video call, dancing with each other from far away. Sweet!
Except, the woman in blue isn't wearing a headset. She is clearly using a laptop or a phone or some other camera, which is why we, and the woman in orange, can see her body and face.
So what would this scene look like from the woman in blue's perspective? Well, if the headset is a single product, the camera must be on or inside the headset so, at best, this is what she sees:
Yeah, this technology will really improve video calls! I can't wait!
Joyless buzzkill dropping in with a hot take here but i fucking hate the ron desantis is an omega meme. At what point while photoshopping a politician producing anal lubrication do you recognize calling real people submissive and breedable in the hopes that it impacts their google search rankings is sexual harassment?
Is this the same show where I guy almost lost is finger?
OK. OKAY. YOU GUYS.
I am LOVING the fucking chocolate guy’s netflix show! It’s FANTASTIC! Anf hold on to your fucking boots y’all cause it’s actually not what I was expecting at all!
Do you miss the gentleness of the Great British Bake-Off? THIS SHOW IS SO KIND AND GENTLE! For fuck’s sake, NO ONE GETS KICKED OFF! No. No, Listen to this! When they lose the first challenge (a pastry one), the punishment is… They get private lessons with Amaury to help improve what brought their scores down instead of competing in the second chocolate challenge.
When the one black lady contestant messed up the first challenge I was super bummed and like, OF COURSE. But NO. She got lessons! She struggled! she worked hard! and she won a later challenge! GROWTH MY DUDES! They are there TO LEARN and GROW and Maybe Win a Big Prize!
They ALL get to stay and keep doing their best! and at the end the one who did the best overall is the one who gets the money prize!
Look at this lovely line up! they make COOL LOOKING FANCY THINGS! Amaury tells us how he does some of the fancy things he does! They OFFER TO HELP EACH OTHER WHEN THEY FINISH EARLY AND GET PROPS FOR THAT! (not taunted for not using their own time better). The set up even kinda makes the one who is like, I’m in it to win it, is the villain and doing bad. The rest who are like, I’m here to learn and grow and maybe make friends! AUGH YOU GUYS!
Amaury is soft spoken and kind, and has a pretty voice and a pretty smile and that’s nice to watch too. The chefs are talented and artistic and they actually give the THE TIME to make nice things! It’s not “Wham out some half-assed garbage in 2 hours so we can shotgun the production and laugh at your garbage” like most cooking shows nowadays. NO! 14 hour challenges! They’re still hard, but they get to actually make cool stuff! fancy stuff! Stuff I want to look at and cheer for them!
The episodes average 38 min and aren’t a huge time commitment, the first episode being the longest one, and there are only 8 total so it’s not like you have to really get in for the long haul. \
WATCH IT! Pump it! we need more cooking shows like this and less that are sad and mean!
I’d like to point out one way to support the need to mark up books while reading is to give away weeded books (such as 9 out of 10 of the year old James Patterson's) to the people in question. My mom’s picked up many interesting books at library weeding sales (including a reusable grocery bag’s worth for $10). I would happily let people with the print disability you describe have first dibs to the books in question. I’m sure many other’s would as well.
They won’t be able to read best seller’s immediately but sometimes life’s like that. I’m dyslexic and my ability to read-read instead of listen-read is EXTREMELY limited.
I recently read most of “Make, Sew, Mend” by Bernadette Banner and it took me three months.
I need someone to read comic books to me.
I’ve thrifted many books I’ve already read and have the audio book as well in order to annotate them. And so far I just... haven’t.
I bought a set of children’s poetry books two years ago now and haven’t read a single one cover to cover.
There are many niche book’s I’d like to read but won’t get the chance.
So... when I say, “sometimes life’s like that”, my life is like that. My needs are not greater than someone else’s needs. Neither is my right to books.
One of the reasons that I personally think the answer, "because it's not yours" is not a good enough reason on its own to the question of "why is it bad to mark up library books," is because of the first "yes" answer I suggested in the poll. There are some people who are not effectively able to read books unless they can mark them - underline, circle, star, take notes, etc. This is probably an extremely small percentage of people, but I know for a fact that they do exist. And the suggestions of taking notes on post-its or a separate piece of paper won't work for them, because they will need to mark up the book in order to effectively parse it.
Now, I still don't think it is ok for individuals in that situation to take notes in a library book. Those markings still damage the book, and they will interfere with other people's ability to read to book. As far as I'm concerned, that is a case of competing accessible needs where unfortunately the result is that some people just aren't able to access a certain resource in a way that they need to.
But I do think it's important to recognize that such a competing need exists, and that certain people will be prevented from fully accessing a community resource because they can't mark up library books. And if you stop the analysis with, "because it's not yours," you can't account for those people and their experience and needs.
Hey!
I have some flavor of dysautonomia and had psychogenic non epileptic seizures related to the fear and adrenaline rush caused by fainting.
Focusing on my breathing, mostly in the sense of following guided meditation was a really good way to immediately make me feel floaty, distant, unfocused and then to faint.
When I'm out of breath from exercise (like walking the dog, carrying laundry) I don't notice I'm panting at all. I do have to fight that floating away feeling but it's not my biggest complaint about my body during such activity.
Very interesting?
Every time a medical professional tells me to do breathing exercises and then measures my blood pressure they freak out because I'll go from like 110/60 to 170/110 in five minutes and I keep telling them that the slow-count breathing just makes me feel dizzy and like I have to pant to make up for it after the fact.
Writing this post has been miserable because even looking at the word "breathing" this many times has made me feel like I can't catch my breath but when I walk away for a couple minutes and stop thinking about inhaling and exhaling I know I'm going to feel fine again.
I fucking hate it when that four square breathing gif circulates or when I get an ad for a relaxation game on Duolingo, that shit breaks my lungs/brain for minimum twenty minutes every time.
I was looking for someone mentioning what style of dance this was! It looks like swing but slower than I’m used to seeing it.
If I was 1.) able bodied and 2.) able to afford the admission I’d go to my local swing dance group. It’s so fun and versatile!
Posting faggot and queer like 2am gunshots to keep property values on my blog low and scare away assimilationist LGBTs who want to replace my empty lot full of native wildflowers with a 5-over-1 because they're too traumatized by their upbringing to accept the reality of our diverse marginalized community
Also the original tweet never specifies straight or cisgender women. So. You know.
glad this guy is getting absolutely owned in the replies of this sexist and completely ahistorical tweet
do you ever read a ‘callout post’ where the summary on top is like ‘they EAT BABIES and RUN A COFFEE SHOP FOR MURDERERS and they HATE GAY PEOPLE’ and then you scroll down and actually read the post and it’s like, they posted about lamb chops once, they work at starbucks and one time someone who killed someone had a coffee at that starbucks, and they made a ‘fruit (derogatory)’ joke once
