everyone please read this and share if you can.

Brazil is going through one of the worst climatic crisis ever seen.

i live in the southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul. we have been suffering from extreme, nonstop rainstorms for a week now. the rivers are flooding, reaching 4-6 meters above their natural level. people are being rescued by helicopters, neighborhoods are being evacuated. entire cities are slowly but surely becoming submerged in water. 60 people missing and counting. 32 deaths and counting.

and this is not new. last november also had a flood like this one. 50 dead, many material losses. it happened again this january, with thousands being left without power or water for days.

three catastrophical disasters within less than a year. three disasters only a few months apart.

this is not natural.

unsustainable agricultural practices and politics led to this. a complete disregard for nature led to this. greed led to this. always greed.

when it comes to the climate crisis, i cannot stress this enough: we need to act now if we still want to live. disasters like this are going to happen more often and they're going to be much, much worse. this flood is being considered the worst climatic catastrophe in the history of my state. i don't know how long it will take for another bigger one to happen and take its place. i just know it will be sooner than it should.

links to donate (if you can't donate, sharing already helps a lot):

link for non-brazilians (paybox)

link for brazilians

pix assufrgs

will update more links later. in the meantime, pray for us.

For the most part, my approach to prescribing hormones is “sure,” but I will note that the one thing I lean HARD on patients about is smoking. If you’re transgender, and you’re on hormones, the number one thing we want to protect is your cardiovascular health. That’s frankly the number one thing I want to protect in all my patients, but anyone taking exogenous hormones is at higher baseline risk. And the best thing you can do for your heart is DON’T SMOKE. It’s a bitch to quit, and I didn’t even smoke much or long before I quit in my late teens, and I STILL didn’t enjoy quitting and had smoking dreams for years. It’s harder to quit than just about anything else up to and including crack and heroin, and that’s coming from a patient of mine who recently passed in her early 60s who’d done all of those things—for years and years—but eventually was able to quit everything except smoking. And that killed her. She developed severe COPD and eventually called to say her blood oxygen saturation was dipping into the 70s, which is incompatible with life. She was lucid enough to decline medical care, including refusing to call 911 or go to the ER. A week later, after both I and one of our outreach nurses had contacted her to ask her to please go to the ER, I got a notification that she’d been found dead. She had been so frustrated that she wasn’t a candidate for a lung transplant.

One of my oldest trans patients is in her late 50s. She’s had blood clots that went to the lungs. Repeatedly. Smoking raises that risk. Estrogen raises that risk. She’s a veteran with PTSD; of course she smoked.

These aren’t theoretical. These are humans I’ve cared for over years of their lives. I have been rooting for them—my beloved former addict, who spoke without shame about her years of homelessness and drug use in the city; my queer elders, who are slowly trading in their motorcycles for power scooters. I want everyone to live their fullest, best life.

Smoking doesn’t fit into that. Please don’t smoke. I don’t want you to die like that—not now and not later. I want you to have the future that you may not be able to see yet, but exists.

Since I moved home as an out queer, word got out, and there’s a whole apartment complex of lesbians in their 60s to their 80s who come see me—sitting next to their wives in the office, nagging about blood pressure meds, tattling about not having gotten the shingles shot they said they would. To be clear, when I was growing up in town, I knew no lesbians. Not one. I knew one gay kid in my class, which eventually turned into two. We were it. To see these women living decades with their wives and being able to squabble like any couple in my office over who was supposed to bring their home blood pressure cuff in for us to check it… it means the world to me.

In addition to the fact that it kills you and the people around you, you should quit because Big Tobacco are smug, queer-hating assholes who named their campaign to hook gays “Operation SCUM” and, cross my heart, I am not shitting you. They also made the playbook used by Big Oil and antivaxx conspiracy theorists.

So, just a reminder that spite is a great reason to quit smoking.

Also, I keep hearing people RAVE about the book The Easy Way to Quit Smoking by Allen Carr. You can do this - other people have done this! There’s help out there. And spite.

Good addition! Quit smoking to stand against capitalism!

HI harm reduction for anyone who just picked up the habit and feel very black and white about everything! Or anyone feeling too black and white and going well I guess I'll die then who cares! Harm reduction here

- smoke less! Make arbitrary rules about when you get to smoke. Tie smoking to some thing you hate to do but need to get done. Like, I only get to smoke when I do (thing I gotta do). Or I only get to smoke... when I am dressed for the day and have left the house. Whatever works from where you're starting. No smoking indoors, whatever, only 1 cigarette after work, make shit up

- If you're doing the "i only smoke when I drink" or "I only smoke socially" and it's becoming hanging out w smokers more often or drinking more often -> switch it up w prior thing new rules. I only smoke... alone. I don't smoke... with coffee. Whatever. Smoking w other smokers IMO only leads to more smoking don't do that for either of you

- Get your space smelling less of cigarettes. Like, wash your clothes all of em, designate one item your smoking jacket or whatever. Basically work to overcome the olfactory fatigue so you can actually smell how much you stink. I swear this one works even if you currently feel that you like the smell

- if you JUST STARTED, but your mental health is so shit that you don't have it in you not to smoke, moderate as well as you can to stave off the actual addiction part. Like, switch to lower nicotine cigarette brands (lights don't mean less, google this one). Don't smoke every day. Go every other. Make that your hard line - not every day. Give future you a better chance at kicking it

- In any context of this any starting point, supporting yourself through other avenues will help. Quality sleep, nutrition, exercise, mental health care, whatever all the basics anything achievable for you do those things if you can

- Substitute treats. Pick other things to treat yourself. Food, tv, bed rot, whatever. Let your id have other stuff that's not smoking

Ok im done this is all just. Idk stuff I wish I'd known decades ago that I hope can help others. There can be more to it than just quitting or not quitting if you feel stuck or hopeless in it cheers on the nebulous other

It’s also worth noting that people get discouraged by repeated attempts to quit, but the people who succeed at quitting and making it stick? Are people who have on average tried many, many times! Don’t beat yourself up if you struggle. The struggle is not weakness, it’s where the success comes from.

Something that I've heard helps from long term smokers who still get cravings is, if you have tied smoking to taking breaks and having time to just hang out outside or whatever, to just designate time where you think "fuck I want a cigarette" to just go stand outside in a place you'd normally wanna smoke and let your mind rest. Maybe bring coffee or snacks or something to make a ritual out of it, but just give yourself a cigarette or two's worth of time to do nothing and look outside

Excuse me while I sneeze 30 times in a row…

IS THAT POLLEN???????????????????????????????????????

magic spell

I cast “allergies bad enough to delete you from existence”

everyone in the notes either has allergies or is a whore

I’m so sorry but in the nicest way possible do yall actually read books or just read words??? Cause I’ve been seeing that trend of people not understanding how “snarled” and “eyes darkened” and “eyes softened” etc. was used in a book and like…

Genuinely, do yall just not have imagination?? Or not understand figurative language??? Also eyes do literally darken and soften have you not lived a life??? How do you read with no imagination? Is this how you get through so many books in one month - you simply don’t take the time the understand the words as they are read?

I have been so confused by this discourse. I gobbled up the 90s fantasy doorstoppers and these sorts of expressions were such mainstays that they've never tripped me up.

I remember a reader was annoyed by my use of the phrase "the column of her throat" once and I suddenly realised not everyone reads copious amounts of fanfic or historical romance growing up, either. I always loved that phrase: "column of [her/his/their] throat." It makes you imagine marble smoothness. Annoying if overused, sure, but a well-placed one is evocative.

They're simply shorthand for various creative expressions or nice images. Darkened: dangerous or horny. Softened: fondness, vulnerability. Snarled: animalistic anger (v. useful if you're writing a dragon character in human form). Writers need to have physical reactions and emotional beats for rhythm, pace, and flow, no? If you say the emotions too straightforwardly, the writer gets dinged for "telling, not showing."

Maybe a higher percentage of the population than I thought has aphantasia? Or have reading tastes really changed that much in the last few years?

idk who needs to hear this but when your english teacher asks you to explain why an author chose to use a specific metaphor or literary device, it’s not because you won’t be able to function in real-world society without the essential knowledge of gatsby’s green light or whatever, it’s because that process develops your abilities to parse a text for meaning and fill in gaps in information by yourself, and if you’re wondering what happens when you DON’T develop an adult level of reading comprehension, look no further than the dizzying array of examples right here on tumblr dot com

this post went from 600 to 2400 notes in the time it took me to write 3 emails. i’m already terrified for what’s going to happen in there

k but also, as an addendum, the reason we study literary analysis is because everything an author writes has meaning, whether it was intentional or not, and their biases and agendas are often reflected in their choice of language and literary devices and so forth! and that ties directly into being able to identify, for example, the racist and antisemitic dogwhistles often employed by the right wing, or the subconscious word choices that can unintentionally illustrate someone’s bias or blind spot. LANGUAGE HAS WEIGHT AND MEANING! the way we communicate is a reflection of our inner selves, and that’s true regardless of whether it’s a short story or a novel or a blog post or a tweet. instead of taking a piece of writing at face value and stopping there, assuming that there is no deeper meaning or thought behind the words on the page, ask yourself these two questions instead:

1. what is the author trying to say? 2. what does the author maybe not realize they’re saying?

because the most interesting reading of any piece of literature, imho, usually occupies the space in between those questions.

Also, sometimes it has hidden meaning relating to how art was funded.  For example, Dickens never met an adjective he didn’t like because he was paid by the word.  Dumas included long and pointless dialogue because he was paid by the line.  Even stuff that was purposely included for dumbass reasons can teach us about the world the author lived in.

1920

thanks for the light

I was just trying to figure out how procreate works but then the op brainworms got to me and 35 hours later here we are! can you tell I miss home-cooked meals :')

(no reposts; reblogs appreciated)

even if you did the barest minimum research, the Wikipedia page for chronic fatigue syndrome is so sad. it’s like “this is what we diagnose people with when we can’t find anything else wrong with them. but it’s definitely something physical because there are visible neurological changes seen in neuroimaging and weirdness with the immune system. full recovery rates are less than 5%. the most common treatment is CBT which ignores the fact it is a physical illness and tells sick people they’ll get better if they just stop thinking about being sick.”

that is cognitive behavioral therapy, not cock and ball torture

Maybe we should try that next...

also at the end when they ask you "any questions?" and you can't think of anything: ask about parking. even if you don't have a car.

I have an interview today in a couple hours, how did the algorithm know I needed this

Btw when they ask if you have questions some actual good options are stuff like “what’s a typical day like in this role” or “is this job open because someone is leaving or is this a new position”

Yes we need more chaste twee baby gay romances like heartstopper and yes we also need more shows where men fuck raw to express their love for one another like Élite and yes we need more toxic gays having hate sex like Interview with the Vampire and yes we need more incidental gay characters like the dads in cartoons like Owl House.

It's not a competition! It's a hoard and I'm like a gay little Smaug.

the normalization of porn in mainstream media is a weird take to have

Normalization of gay desire and yes, even gay sex, is paramount to gay liberation actually.

this is about when you specificially recognised yourself as being queer, not the crush you had on elizabeth swan as a kid and didn't understand. been thinking abt this a lot recently and wanted to ask tumblr. i can predict the results but i'm still interested. please tell me the specific age in tags!

direct action 😂😂😂

the working class hero we need

people who don't wear glasses don't get the added benefit of taking off your HD eyesight for a while. just. fuck it! i'm done. 240p vision time

I've seen enough.

so my tumblr app is doing this fun thing where it just shows me empty posts sometimes, because why not. and this one just really worked for me.