When I was a kid, there was a fancy ice cream shop that my mother liked, that we went to sometimes. It did elaborate sundaes and things like that, and they were pretty good.

And then they had the Tremor, which was a five-scoop sundae, and the Earthquake, which was an eight-scoop sundae. They were intended to be shared, but I always wanted to get one for myself, and eat it. My mother, somewhat reasonably, never let me. (She did one time let me order a Tremor and split it with my cousin, and I was really excited.)

But the whole time I was thinking, when I'm an adult I'll be able to just come here and order an Earthquake for myself and eat it. As an adult, no one will be able to stop me.

The shop closed down when I was seventeen.

I'm sure I could find an ice cream shop, somewhere, that will serve me an eight-scoop sundae. I could even make one myself. But it wouldn't be the same.

The other tragedy, of course, is that now I wouldn't even enjoy it.

There was a point when I would have. I kept my teenage-boy appetites into my mid twenties, and as a 25-year-old I'd have happily demolished an eight-scoop sundae.

But I'm thirty-seven years old now. I still have a healthy appetite, but that means I get two or three scoops when my friends get one. I could enjoy a nice three-scoop banana split, if that were my big treat for the week.

I could still eat eight scoops of ice cream, if I wanted to. I could finish an Earthquake. But by the end it would be a grim, determined slog, proving that I'm capable of massive feats of overeating.

And there's no fucking point to that.

...is eating two or three scoops of ice cream more healthy than eating one?

it’s more likely than you think.

And another pair of gloves. I'm quite pleased with these ones.

Back to the 1760's Diderot pattern cuff shape this time, and I wanted to try adding some decoration, so I painted art nouveau swirlies around the cuffs using leather dye. (Which is of course not historically accurate, but art nouveau and mid 18th century menswear go together so, so well.) My inspiration was a motif from an 1898 book, which I found on pinterest, and I re-drew it a few times until I had a version that I liked and that fit the glove.

I wasn't sure how to go about transferring the design accurately to the leather, so I ended up making a stencil and tracing it using a very fine tipped pen, then colouring it in with the dye. The dye was very easy to paint with, but putting it in a little dish made it dry out and thicken extremely fast, which was not so good. For the second glove I put the dye in a porcelain thimble, which was better, but next time I'll try to find something even smaller with even less exposed surface area to put the dye in. Or I could perhaps try leather paint instead. I'll have to hold off on wearing these until I've gotten some sort of finishing coating to protect the dye, because it's unfortunately smudged a bit from handling. I did do a sample specifically to test for this and it didn't smudge, but in the sewing up process the gloves got touched quite a bit more than the sample, alas. And it may be partly due to the aforementioned drying out and thickening, which left more dye on the surface.

The leather is lambskin from ItalianSkins on etsy, and they're sewn up using silk yarn that my mother gave me. (With a regular needle again, because the only leather needles I have are too big.)

Update: I bought some goop and painted on two thin coats and now the dye isn't smudging anymore and I can wear them. At first I just put it on the dyed portion, but that made it waterproof and slightly shinier than the rest, which looked uneven, so on the second coat I put them on and painted the entire glove.

The texture isn't as nice now. It's a bit stiffer, makes squeaking sounds, doesn't breathe anymore, and the colour of the leather is a bit blotchy, especially in a couple places where too much of it soaked into the seams. Ah well. That last problem wouldn't have happened if I'd known before cutting & sewing that the dye would smudge, and could have sealed all the pieces while they were flat.

I will definitely make more gloves with this design, and next time I'll use leather paint.

Non autistic actors playing autistic characters suck as depictions of autism because they are playing an autistic character, rather than autistic character who is masking as a neurotypical

in the same way when trying to act drunk for a play, you would want to act like your trying to be sober, because effort into acting sober is what drunk people are doing

in that same way when playing an autistic character there is a whole second level of who is this character masking themself to be

actors pretending to be autistic should have to do the method acting thing and actually go about their lives acting the way they think autistic people behave. then they should write down the exact point where they desperately want to STOP acting like that. then they should sit on that piece of paper and think about it really hard.

Finalists of the 2023 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

i’ve never successfully made pancakes ever in my life so im going to liveblog that experience now. #chef ❤️

how tge fuck do i do this

COOKING LIVEBLOG OVER THIS PANCAKE MIX EXPIRED IN APRIL

well actually. counterpoint. mama aint raise no bitch . and i am so houngry

i have a tiny pan so i’m gonna make One Big Cake instead of little ones. let’s see if i can do this without burning my house down or getting food poisoning

measurements are for the weak. it’s Okay if it’s soupy….❤️

this may be the grossest thing i’ve ever made. maybe mixing the batter together with only a butter knife was a bad idea

WHY IS IT BREATHING.

ok it’s mostly solid now. mostly. do i own a spatula

guys should a pancake have hills and valleys like it’s on a children’s geography map

oh. i fucked this thing up bad didn’t i

over the loop of absolute territory - ken ashcorp i can hear my breakfast screaming out for help. oh well❤️

i need you all to understand this quite literally does not constitute as a pancake. it is a pile of slop in a pan. it looks like raw cookie dough covered in spiderwebs

well it’s ok. this is. it’s fine. this is fine guys this is how innovations are made. i’m the first person in the world to make scrambled pancake. It’s Ok

now why does it smell like the inside of a buffalo wild wings

I JUST BURNT MY FINEGR AAUAPQWPW AAAYAUAHHHHGGHHHH

noo….. Noooo thank you i think i’m good. me and god have seen enough

ITS BEEN LIKE 15 MINUTES AND ITS STILL RAW. WHY DOES THE WORLD HATE ME

this pan can never be used for anything ever again it is lathered in the brown remains of whatever soul this thing had before i made it

my new method is to hydraulic press whatever concoction i’ve made with the spatula as hard as possible in order for it to actually cook. now that’s not to say it’s working at all but it’s the only option i’ve got

burnt myself again i think that’s a sign i need to stop. gordon ramsey is fucking sweating and rolling over in bed right now he can feel what i’m doing to this pancake

it smells like burnt popcorn and broken dreams. it is not cooked at all. it resembles the shape of a small undiscovered third world country. And you’ll never believe where it’s going (in my mouth)

it looks like chernobyl 2 went off in this fucking pan i need to bury it

asked people to rate my pancake. reporting back with results soon

The reviews are in. now time for the taste test❤️

drumroll please

It’s bad ❤️

pancake finished. my left hand won’t stop shaking i’m sure that’s unrelated. anyways time to either scrape the fuck out of this pan or throw it in the back yard

oh no.

goodnight sweet prince

all of you are being so mean to my healthy baby boy in the reblogs. anyways 10 thousand notes and i reveal him to the world

hello everyone. i would just post the image here and nothing else but that’s fucking boring and i need to LARP as a founding father for a second. so here’s a preamble that would make john adams weep

it has been many moons (10 days) since i first posted about my cooking adventures and my only regret is that i didn’t set the note goal higher. to both my fans and my haters i want you all to read this message before you see my fucked up icky yucky raw radiation son. there is an explanation as to why he was made this way and that explanation is simple. i am like a modern day icarus. my impatient hubris blinds me to both the english language and normal human thought processes. if he were a modern day teenager who both remembered nothing from hell’s kitchen and didn’t care enough to read, you'd be looking right at him. i am a pioneer of the wicked and depraved. my beautiful mind knows no bounds. i am an inventor of all things inedible and disgusting. i’m like the oppenheimer of breakfast. that being said i am also an idiot so here’s the pancake everyone you’ve earned it

i like the taste of raw batter so it was actually delicious. i lied about it being bad

I know I’m being an insufferable worldbuilding nerd here, but my basic metric for evaluating media with very inhuman protagonists is “how easily can one offer a complete and coherent account of this media’s plot without ever mentioning the fact that the protagonist is, for example, a talking car?”. The harder it is, the higher it scores.

@hewwbwazew I would LOVE to read this holy shit

@territorialoak​ I hope you don’t mind me adding your tags here, that story is just too good and I’m Obsessed

also @gilgamemesh​ I feel like this is your vibe too

babe. be real with me. if i were a plain little rock on a beach would you pick me up and turn me over in your hand and marvel over how wonderfully ordinary i am. like really take the time to ponder how there isn't necessarily anything special about me but that the very deed of choosing me out of countless other rocks raises me to a precious, almost sacred level of irreplaceability that is only accessible through the act of being seen and loved?

Reminds me of this poem I wrote. I'm glad my feelings are not my own.

Via @Ed_Solomon at Twitter. Here's a clearer copy, in case (as a result of the looming Twitpocalypse) the original goes missing.

Transcript put down as literally as I can when I can't write a post in the round...

1 Story:

ACT 1

ACT 2

Bless the translator on this post

don’t know what parent of an autistic child needs to hear this but as long as they’re not harming anyone your kid’s stimming is not a “problem behaviour”

in our house we have a few categories of stimming behavior.

1. the no category. this is for things that are unsafe. hurting self (head banging, scratching), hurting others, chewing on choking hazards. i know this is excluded in OP’s post, but i’m putting it on my list because if you parent an autistic child and deal with this, you have to be aware that a key to off-limits stimming is redirection. stimming satisfies an important physical and neurological need for the autistic brain, and that behavior is sensory-seeking. if you must say no, please also offer options or help redirecting to appropriate outlets for pressure, motion, rhythm, chewing, etc.

2. the shared space category. listen, i get that a lot of people are assholes about things that aren’t hurting them. that’s not what this category is for. but we have a household with multiple autistic individuals and a work from home situation. “shared space” is the code phrase we use for “please take this stimming to a different location.” sometimes, aural stims like repetitive noises or physical stims like pacing can be legitimately distracting to other people in a room (or car!). in the case of other autistic people, it might even feel painful or mentally consuming. this category is no-judgment “please move to another location to continue stimming this way.” it’s not bad, it’s not wrong, you aren’t being shamed– just do your best to respect others and their needs or comfort, and leave the communal area or lower your volume.

3. the you do you category. it doesn’t matter that nobody else is doing this to feel comfortable or happy– you aren’t hurting anyone else, you aren’t being disruptive in a space other people are using together. go for it.

and in every single category, anger has no place in redirecting a stim. not even the no category. stimming isn’t malicious, there’s no actual moral requirement to be “less weird” or “like everyone else.” even reminders like “you aren’t the only person in this room and that’s very loud” don’t need anger. stims aren’t done at anyone. they’re just the body expressing a kind of neurological hunger, and whether the answer is “enjoy that!” or “this isn’t safe for you to eat (ie, do)” fury doesn’t help.

oh shit this is a REALLY helpful way to conceptualize stimming and competing needs.

I love this so much.

Let people grow.

When I was younger I was very right-wing. I mean…very right-wing. I won’t go into detail, because I’m very deeply ashamed of it, but whatever you’re imagining, it’s probably at least that bad. I’ve taken out a lot of pain on others; I’ve acted in ignorance and waved hate like a flag; I’ve said and did things that hurt a lot of people.

There are artefacts of my past selves online – some of which I’ve locked down and keep around to remind me of my past sins, some of which I’ve scrubbed out, some of which are out of my grasp. If I were ever to become famous, people could find shit on me that would turn your stomach.

But that’s not me anymore. I’ve learned so much in the last ten years. I’ve become more open to seeing things through others’ eyes, and reforged my anger to turn on those who harm others rather than on those who simply want to exist. I’ve learned patience and compassion. I’ve learned how to recognise my privileges and listen to others’ perspectives. I’ve learned to stand up for others, how to hear, how to help, how to correct myself. And I learned some startling shit about myself along the way – with all due irony, some of the things I used to lash out at others for are intrinsic parts of myself.

You wouldn’t know what I am now from what I was then. You wouldn’t know what I was then from what I am now.

It distresses me deeply to think of someone dredging up my dark, awful past and treating me as though that furiously hateful person is still me. It distresses me to see others dredging up the past for anyone who has made efforts to become a better person, out of some sick obsession with proving they’re “problematic.”

Purity culture tells you that once someone says or does something, they can never go back on it. That’s a goddamn lie. While it’s true that some remain unrepentant and never change their ways and continue to harm others, it’s important to allow everyone the chance to learn from their mistakes. Saying something ignorant isn’t murder. Please stop treating it that way. Let people grow.

Still call it out and question it ….

Bruh. No. Listen. Call out what people do now, absolutely. If they haven’t changed, call them out on their record. This post is explicitly not about people who HAVEN’T changed. What this post IS saying is, if someone is making an effort to be a good person, don’t go digging around in their past for evidence that they were once for what they’re now against, or once against what they’re now for, as “proof” of what they “really think,” because people’s opinions and beliefs can change. 

The obsession with finding shit in someone’s past and then claiming that a questionable or even sordid past negates all possibility of a good present needs to become extinct. Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.

If someone has changed for the better, don’t harass them about what they were like before they fuckin’ changed. That’s shitty and it needs to stop.

We can’t change the world if we decide people can’t change.

Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.

We really need to start asking where this purity bullshit came from. I’m not  Christian and was not raised Christian but there has been a lot evidence that much of gold star activism and purity culture originated in of evangelical youth movements and then infiltrated progressive left-wing and center-left politics when those youth left their churches but failed to leave behind the black-n-white puritanical “you’re going to hell if you stray one inch from the righteous path” style of thinking they were taught.

I distinctly remember some conversations I had in the late 00s and very early 2010s with long time social justice activists who were baffled and disturbed by the new crop of youth activists who were practicing something that was decidedly NOT social justice despite stealing that phrase from us.

In the decade and a half that has passed since then, all of this gold-star activism and purity culture has done exactly what I predicted back then: empowered the far-right while sowing division everywhere.

Folks. This shit needs to stop.

People who have changed for the better are incredibly precious to me. They’ve had a harder fight than I have in many ways, and I admire them greatly for the work they’ve done and how far they’ve come. We may not always see eye-to-eye, but I am very grateful they are here, because they remind me of two things:

First, the evidence that people are not doomed to be one way forever, but can become better than they were. That means that there is an actual, tangible goal to standing up for our rights: That, even if we can’t change everyone’s mind, we might someday be able to change enough minds that we can be safe.

And second, that if I ever mess up, that it won’t be the end; there will still be a path back for me to being the kind of person I want to be.

It is inherently fun and sexy to say statements that swap the traditional genders of pronouns and terms mid-statement, such as: "I'm going to make him my wife" "She's my boyfriend" "Who says a guy can't be a pretty princess?" "That girl's the coolest dude I've ever met" "She's a madman who has to be stopped" "It's not his fault he's a material girl" Gender is a set of watercolors and the prettiest shades come from mixing the paints together.

Please refer to me this way

Women are my favorite guy

Found you.

When I was a kid, I used to look out into the distance and imagine colossal creatures towering over the mountains, too big to possibly notice a tiny human like me.

One day, my grandpa saw me staring out and took me aside.

"Never do that again." he said. "They might look back."

[Winx] come get your glitter girlies ✨