what the fuck my best friend is currently playing through the mobile game cut the rope, which came out in 2010 and was originally a one time purchase of $1 for iphone and $2 for ipad. it’s now free with constant ads. it costs $10 a month to remove the ads. if you want to play fucking cut the rope without ads you have to fork over 120 usd per year. to play your toilet game without ads. i think we should start enacting greek myth style punishments on these app developers. they have to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity and the boulder is covered with ads and every time it slips out of their grasp and rolls down the hill there’s an unskippable minute of ads beamed directly into their brain as they jog after the fucking boulder

finally finished my bear flag blanket :)

[ID. A crochet blanket of the bear flag (a pride flag with horizontal colors in the order: warm dark brown, orange dark brown, yellow-orange, yellow, tan, grey, black) with bear paws worked along each horizontal stripe. End ID.]

My boss was like “Do you have any idea how much money we’re losing” like who cares, it’s not like they would give it to me otherwise

Have our investors tried making coffee at home and not eating out so much?

once i said butch girls who call themselves dudes and boyfriends are cute and i got put on a blocklist for supporting “invalid identities” which is fucking hilarious. cant a guy dyke it up in peace in the privacy of his own home

was your late mother pushed off a cliff by a gang of roving boydykes?

everyone wants complex female characters until those complexities become unsympathetic or unrelatable to them lol

One thing about researching world around you is that it becomes a bit friendlier once you know it better. If you see a random spider- you get scared. You see plants and consider them just weeds. You look at night sky and see a bunch of stars.

And then, you learn names.

Now, it is an orbweaver, and you consider them a friend. The greenery around is a laurel, or an alium, or osmanthus, and you know which of them to keep away from, and which of them are great herbs for tea. Now, you look up and see a whole parade of Venus, Ursa Major, or Orion. You now know their names, and, if you respect them- they become allies of yours.

i think grossness is a vital aspect of life btw and we all experience it and i think its important to represent in art and i think oversanitization of popular media is 100% our downfall. things are gross and disgusting and yucky and thats life we cannot deny ourselves this

I keep thinking about this in the context of caring for my ageing patients. No one TELLS them, before they’re old, how things are going to change, or why. No one talks about the loss of elastin, and how that doesn’t just affect your skin looking old, but also how it heals. No one warns them that their skin will become paper-thin if they live long enough, incredibly fragile and easy to tear. Just “hurr dur wrinkly!!!”

No one tells them their bowels are going to lose strength and coordination, so it gets more and more difficult to have bowel movements. No one warns them about obstipation, much less bowel obstructions. I have a saying I repeat often in clinic: “Proper pooping prevents problems!” I say it because it makes people chuckle, because it destigmatizes needing to poop. Everyone poops. And it turns out pooping requires both a complex network of nerves to create peristalsis, and stools soft enough to move through the bowels, and I have watched more than one elderly patient die because their bowels stopped working right.

No one talks about hemorrhoids, so I have patients coming in terrified by blood in their stools–and listen, blood in your poop is definitely a good reason to see a doctor; if you’re over 50 and you haven’t had a colonoscopy, get one. It’s the best health screening we have evidence for, in my opinion. Colon cancer is a bitch. But more commonly, people have bloody stools because they have either hemorrhoids that are bleeding or because they have an anal fissure after straining on a hard bowel movement. Do you know what a hemorrhoid is? I didn’t, until I was well into medical school. Everyone has them. They’re venous columns that surround the rectum and anus. Internal ones can bleed; external ones can itch. Most people will get them eventually. Be kind about them.

Everyone is going to have trouble peeing if they live long enough. Men can’t start, women can’t stop. Because people with prostates will often have benign enlargement of the prostate–it’s not cancer, but it gets bigger–and the urethra, the tube that lets urine leave the bladder, goes through the prostate. Bigger prostate = compressed tube, less flow. Meanwhile, people with uteruses have much shorter urethras, which means that when we lose that beautiful collagen and elastic, we also lose it in the two sphincters that help us keep from leaking urine, and so we leak urine. Especially when something triggers an increase in intra-abdominal pressure, like a sneeze or a cough or a laugh.

All these things people are taught to be ashamed of and embarrassed about–they are so common. They’re normal parts of having a human body and doing the things one does with a human body. Poop trouble? Welcome to the club! People have been writing about their cures for constipation for as long as written language has existed. Listen, you are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone. And that means that when someone else has a gross problem, you must be kind to them, because that is going to be you. There will be a day when you have diarrhea, because viral gastroenteritis spreads like wildfire every winter. There will be a day when you cough a huge glob of mucus comes out, because mucus is a natural defense mechanism and kind of miraculous but also nasty. Every gross thing a body can do, yours is likely to do, if not now then later.

Be kind.

No one is saying that you MUST have sex with trans people.

Or fat people

Or disabled people

Or dark-skinned black people

Or or or….

When activists say things like “It’s transphobic to say that you aren’t attracted to trans women,” that doesn’t translate to “You absolutely have to find a trans woman right now and bone down!” Instead, what they’re saying is “The only thing that all trans women have in common is that they’re trans women. They all look different, act different, think different, have different bodies and are at different stages of transition. There is no way that you find every single one of them unattractive. To specifically single them out as a group that you dislike is based on stereotypes and bias, not reality.”

It benefits all of us to take the time to examine our internal bias. Recognizing that prejudice and reflecting on it is a good thing. Maybe your sexual or romantic leanings will never change. That’s okay. But let’s not just brush past these things by saying “It’s a preference” when really: these thoughts are based on a culture of discrimination, stereotypes and bigotry. Labeling them as such is a reflection on that culture, not on your love life.

I feel like "DNI if you like X" and "DNI if you post about X" are two entirely different stances, and one is a lot more reasonable than the other.

Because if someone likes something you don't in secret, and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

I feel like when I first started seeing DNIs, the context was always people with stim/kidcore blogs who didn't want daddy dom/kinky little type blogs interacting? Which is understandable: if you have a SFW blog, possibly to cope with CSA trauma through regression, and half of the people who interact with you are posting graphic kink stuff about things you find nonsexually soothing, that could get triggering or even just annoying fast.

I still see remnants of this. But then it spread to other kinds of blogs, and expanded to be about people's beliefs rather than what they posted, and that's when it turned into a purity test.

if you insist that anyone making queer art must be openly, loudly queer, or else it is some form of faking/baiting/etc for clout, you are a bizarre individual and i do not like you

gay sex won’t fix this. it’ll probably make this worse. that being said don’t you want to see how much worse it can get?

When you stop seeing poverty as a deviation from how society is supposed to function and instead see it as the direct consequence of a class stratified society that deprives the poor of democratic control over their own lives you’ll realize there’s nothing “natural” about poverty. It is manmade, in the interests of a select few so they can enrichen themselves off the labor of the global working class. Poverty is a political problem and can only be solved through political solutions. But the ruling class wants to maintain this dynamic so we must be revolutionaries.

I know SEVERAL afab nonbinary people who, as soon as they came out as nonbinary - immediately began dressing in ridiculous hyper-femme outfits they never would have worn before.  A lot of people see this and say shit like “Theyfab” or say they are only nonbinary for attention.  After all, look how femme they are.

But to me, this makes perfect sense.  When you are forced into the category of “woman” against your will, femininity is a chore.  It’s a job that you have.  As soon as you say no, I’m not a woman, suddenly femininity isn’t your job anymore.  It’s not a requirement.  It’s just a fun hobby you can get into.  Or a little treat sometimes.

Something deeply painful is the fact that seasons, especially fall, dont feel the same. Not because of individual maturity but because climate change has impacted the weather patterns so so so much that we cant even experience the same annual shifts that our ancestors have for centuries

I feel displaced, i yearn for the spring, summer, fall, and winter that i can barely remember experiencing

To make things worse, if you’re under 50-60 years old, you can’t even remember what normal seasons were like because you weren’t alive to experience them

In the graph above, you can see how there’s a clear tipping point in the late 1970′s, which is when global temperatures first began to really skyrocket.

I was born in 1997, so about 20 years after this shift occurred. There is an immense difference between the climate now and the climate I remember growing up in, but the way I experienced the seasons in my childhood was already fundamentally different from what the seasons were supposed to be like! My parents were pretty much the last generation to experience a normal climate, and that’s just… incredibly sad

I am processing this information in a normal way devoid of rabid rage and bloodlust i am processing this information in a normal wa-

I’m just old enough to remember the tail end of real seasons. I can’t express how different it is now.

Alright, I need to have a chat with the teenagers that follow me, specifically regarding lying about your age and nsfw content. This isn’t directed at anyone, but I think it’s a convo that needs to be had in general.

I was a teenager once. I get it. Everyone lies about their age online. Maybe not to other people, but I’m sure every minor has clicked a ‘yeah, sure, I’m 18+” button at some point in their lives. I’m not here to shame you for that.

What I am here to say is it is vital that teenagers understand the difference between engaging in sexual content independently (ie, entering a fake birthday to access 18+ content), and lying about your age to engage in sexual activities with others online (joining discord servers/using nsfw channels intended for adults only/lying about your age to talk to nsfw content creators/commissioning nsfw art/etc).

Lying about your age to a website so you can look at porn is one thing. It’s an entirely independent experience, where the only consent that really matters is yours. Nobody has any power over you in this situation, and there’s about no chance of legal consequences.

However, lying about your age to other human beings is extremely different. If you’re engaging in nsfw roleplay with a friend about the same age as you, talking about sex with other teenagers, sharing nsfw fics among friends, that’s one thing. But do not lie about your age to engage in sexual activities/discussions. Not only is something that could have actual legal ramifications, and very serious ones depending on what’ going on, but it’s a violation of the other people’s consent. The moment other real people are involved, you need to be respectful of their boundaries & what is and isn’t appropriate for you to be engaging with. If they say no minors, I don’t care if you’re 17.5, you stay out until you are 18 years old.

Examples of situations where it is never okay to lie or mislead anyone about your age online include:

I know that adult websites have basically trained teenagers to just say they’re 18 and move on, but it is vital that teenagers understand that it is never okay to lie about your age when directly engaging in any kind of sexual activity. Knowing people’s age is a vital part of consent, and if an adult is found to have been engaging in sexual activity with a minor, they could face life long legal consequences. Not only that, but a basic facet of consent is clear, honest communication. If you are lying to a partner, then you do not have consent. Lying about your age is a huge violation of consent.

That’s not to say you can never mention sex around adults online. There are times and places where you may be asking for advice, or even just making jokes about sex or whatever. That’s all well and good, so long as everyone is on the same page. It’s on adults to make sure that we are behaving appropriately around minors online, and make sure that we’re setting boundaries in those relationships. But it’s on minors to communicate that they are minors, and respect those boundaries that are set.

So, tl;dr,

Lying about your age to access a porn site is fine. Lying about your age to engage in sexual situations/adult-only spaces where other real human beings are involved is not.

I remember being at a con ages ago and witnessing a minor and her friend DEMANDING access to 18+ material in the Artist Gallery, saying that she’d seen much worse on the internet so the artists were being both unfair AND stupid not letting her view it. They said you’re right, we can’t prevent you from looking at smut on the internet, so feel free to go back to your room and do that

I think that anecdote perfectly demonstrates the point of disconnect:

The 2 teens demanded to see the nsfw material on the grounds that they’d seen worse, they could handle it.

Teenagers who do these things think that “don’t lie about your age” is about their protection. And they object bc they feel that they are perfectly safe doing it.

But it’s not about them. It’s about the people they are lying to.

If this is you, please realize: This is not a case of adults trying to baby you. It’s not about whether anyone thinks you can handle it. It’s about the fact that they don’t want it. These adults are protecting their own boundaries, not trying to set yours.

also, I know a lot of you are cool illegalist mfs who know that ethics are more important than what the law says, but in addition to the ethical issues already mentioned, there very much are also severe legal consequences for adults who unknowingly engage in sexual stuff with minors online. the burden of proof to show that you didn’t actually know the person was a minor is very high, and just the fact that the minor lied is often not enough to defend against a guilty verdict since most things are a crime whether or not you knew you were breaking the law.

if you lie to an adult about your age and then e.g. enter into a sexual relationship with them, send them nudes, etc, that person could be charged with statutory rape, sexual assault of a minor, possession of child pornography, child endangerment, sex trafficking if they helped you travel across state lines to come see them, or a whole host of other crimes federal and state governments have passed to crack down on child sexual abuse - the consent of a minor is meaningless in the eyes of the law, even if you’re a very mature 17.5 year old, and the federal age of majority is 18 regardless of what your state laws say. they could get serious jail time and be on the sex offender registry for life, and subsequently be subjected to job and housing discrimination (no one wants to rent to or hire a “child molester”).

the carceral state is CONSTANTLY trying to paint queers as pedophiles and sex deviants in order to exclude us from public life and I KNOW that directly means that lying about your age is probably much more common for queer kids because you want to know and learn about a community that is so often hidden behind NSFW filters out of a belief that it’s “adult,” but lying to OTHER QUEER PEOPLE and getting them in trouble makes it so so easy for the people who hate us to play up that narrative and get people killed over it.

The “age of maturity” number is a bit random, but the concept it’s trying to capture—maturity—is a real thing. Minors who lie about their age and violate the consent of others demonstrate exactly why we have the concept of minority/majority in the first place: they’re not mature enough to be treated like adults. Throwing a fit about it, like toddlers in a supermarket, just proves that some minors absolutely must be treated like the children they still are, because adulthood requires respect for others’ boundaries and for the word “no.”

Some things you can do right now to help dismantle fatphobia-

Don’t use fat as a negative word or thin as a good one.

Don’t engage in pro-diet talk. 

Don’t make assumptions about people based on their weight. 

Stop assuming fat people are unhealthy.

Don’t hold up “health” as the be all of everything- esp when it means “not fat”.

Stop using the word “obesity”- size is not a disease.

Don’t concern troll fat people.

Acknowledge that fat people get eating disorders too.

Demand an end the bullying of fat kids- which means an end to the fear mongering around “childhood obesity”.

Demand positive fat representation in media. 

Don’t tell fat jokes or laugh at them. 

Hold your faves responsible for their fatphobia. 

Boost the voices of fat activists. 

Support fat artists & creators.

Support & defend the fat women who speak out about fatphobia & get attacked ALL the time. 

BELIEVE FAT PEOPLE.

There are things EVERYONE can do to move the needle on fatphobia. You can start doing them NOW.