spicing up conversations by saying 'you really believe in that' at the most basic inane things

like this

I was trying to bore my 4 y.o. grandsone to sleep last night by counting slowly outloud 1 to 200. Around 170 he asks "are you just making stuff up?"

"Very approachable. Unlike landmines."

i think everyone is entitled to complain about UI changes, but if you weren’t here when the reblog button was at the top of the post we can’t be in conversation

“oh it’s so different and awful and functions like an actual social media site now” correct. your pain is nothing compared to those who had to overwrite the muscle memory of scrolling back up to the top of the post to reblog

actually @staff you have the opportunity to be the funniest motherfuckers on the planet if your next UI change is to put the reblog button back on the top of the posts

post cancelled because google informs me this was over a decade ago and i am not okay

I've decided to use the term "convenience food" instead of "junk food."

I think it's more honest, and less loaded. It's all food, some of it is more appropriate when you don't have the spoons left for food prep. It takes slightly more energy to peel a banana than to open a bag of chips.

We try to save the convenience food for days when we need something easy, so eat a banana.

ENNH! WRONG ANSWER

All food fuels your body. If it contains calories, it is fuel. Some foods are denser fuels, some foods have nice additional benefits, but all foods fuel you.

Some foods are really good for building muscle, or supporting your bone health, or giving you energy. Some foods are really good at tasting nice. All of them fuel your body.

Good food/bad food is just puritan dichotomous thinking in service of the Shame Industrial Complex- let's get those "should" hooks intob everything you enjoy.

Food is fuel. Your relationship with it is personal. Almost all dichotomies oversimplify beyond utility.

So, I had to do a bunch of therapy as a kid because I had anorexia. My dietician drilled into me "food has no moral value. there's no such thing as Good Food or Bad Food; if it's edible and you're not allergic to it, then it has a use in your diet, even if that use is just 'enjoy eating it'. Enjoyment is part of your diet and happiness is a vital nutrient." Basically, even if ice cream "isn't healthy," if it helps you feel better after a shitty day then it's fulfilling one of your basic needs: happiness. So eat the fucking ice cream and feel better. ENJOYMENT IS PART OF YOUR DIET AND HAPPINESS IS A NUTRIENT

Moderation, in all things. Eat too many carrots and you can die too.

my disordered eating experience is that the only true junk food is the food I can’t bring myself to eat. nothing you actually swallow is wasted (unless you have a more specific situation). sugars, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, the body can turn it all into Being Alive. virtue? not so much.

isn't it wild that warden-commander invoked the right of conscription on anders with direct permission of the queen/king of ferelden and templars still didn't leave him be. isn't it wild that some of them were willing to drink darkspawn blood and bound themselves to another order just to get to him even though he was proven to be under warden-commander's protection. isn't it wild that the wardens had always been a golden ticket for mages who tried to get away from the circle and it was working perfectly fine for everyone else and then in his case it just didn't

IT IS. Absolutely.

But. I think it has to do with who was involved. Specifically the Warden, not Anders but the Hero of Ferelden. Yes, there’s some of a personal grudge in play against Anders himself during Awakening, but later, I think the extreme measures are political. It’s about who let Anders into the Wardens and what it means.

(Ended up going on way longer than I meant and my thoughts aren’t totally sorted so tucking this under a read more.)

the progressive removal of usb ports, headphone jacks, etc. is desexualization. a computer is a woman and she wants you to penetrate her

Everyone please stop what you’re doing and look at this Roman glass mouse

Thinking about when I worked at a shitty restaurant + one night it was just me + 3 other women on closing shift, so some guy came in the back and waved a knife around, presumably for money but I’m not actually certain, bc he was met with the bartender holding a much bigger knife, a tiny teenager wielding a cast iron pan, an elderly woman holding up a crockpot of clearly boiling water, and me, turning on the meat slicer with eye contact for maximum effect. He left, but the moral of the story is not girl power or whatever, it’s just. Why the fuck would you threaten a room full of underpaid and sleep-deprived blue-collar workers surrounded by lethal weapons.

Even ignoring the quantity of workers or weaponry, I think there’s something special about specifically

here's I Hate You in action

thanks @bmoharrisbankofficial but unfortunately i can’t focus on the very important message here because i’m too busy being confused by the fact that apparently if you send an ask with only one letter tumblr will bold that letter in the “asked you” notification text?? why the fuck would that be the case

fascinating

what the fuck is the backend of this site like

The code is alive and wants to be friends with us

how does tumblr even work do you just like talk to yourself until people are like "i like this one"

this is actually exactly how it works

I find adding frogs helps. Like here, behold, a frog tum.

Something I love about Tumblr that you don’t really get on Reddit, is the brief flashes of fandoms I’m entirely unfamiliar with, like some large beast in the undergrowth.

Right now, it’s The Locked Tomb. Never even HEARD of it before coming here, but I see impressions of it everywhere. It’s like, teenagers wearing skeletons? Or something?

Do I dare seek it out? Will it wear MY skeleton?

the end of The Big Short isn’t fucking around

Good time to have this on people’s dashes again

Every Doctor Who Companion

The biggest male privilege I have so far encountered is going to the doctor.

I lived as a woman for 35 years. I have a lifetime of chronic health issues including chronic pain, chronic fatigue, respiratory issues, and neurodivergence (autistic + ADHD). There's so much wrong with my body and brain that I have never dared to make a single list of it to show a doctor because I was so sure I would be sent directly to a psychologist specializing in hypochondria (sorry, "anxiety") without getting a single test done.

And I was right. Anytime I ever tried to bring up even one of my health issues, every doctor's initial reaction was, at best, to look at me with doubt. A raised eyebrow. A seemingly casual, offhand question about whether I'd ever been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Even female doctors!

We're not talking about super rare symptoms here either. Joint pain. Chronic joint pain since I was about 19 years old. Back pain. Trouble breathing. Allergy-like reactions to things that aren't typically allergens. Headaches. Brain fog. Severe insomnia. Sensitivity to cold and heat.

There's a lot more going on than that, but those were the things I thought I might be able to at least get some acknowledgement of. Some tests, at least. But 90% of the time I was told to go home, rest, take a few days off work, take some benzos (which they'd throw at me without hesitation), just chill out a bit, you'll be fine. Anxiety can cause all kinds of odd symptoms.

Anyone female-presenting reading this is surely nodding along. Yup, that's just how doctors are.

Except...

I started transitioning about 2.5 years ago. At this point I have a beard, male pattern baldness, a deep voice, and a flat chest. All of my doctors know that I'm trans because I still haven't managed to get all the paperwork legally changed, but when they look at me, even if they knew me as female at first, they see a man.

I knew men didn't face the same hurdles when it came to health care, but I had no idea it was this different.

The last time I saw my GP (a man, fairly young, 30s or so), I mentioned chronic pain, and he was concerned to see that it wasn't represented in my file. Previous doctors hadn't even bothered to write it down. He pushed his next appointment back to spend nearly an hour with me going through my entire body while I described every type of chronic pain I had, how long I'd had it, what causes I was aware of. He asked me if I had any theories as to why I had so much pain and looked at me with concerned expectation, hoping I might have a starting point for him. He immediately drew up referrals for pain specialists (a profession I didn't even know existed till that moment) and physical therapy. He said depending on how it goes, he may need to help me get on some degree of disability assistance from the government, since I obviously shouldn't be trying to work full-time under these circumstances.

Never a glimmer of doubt in his eye. Never did he so much as mention the word "anxiety".

There's also my psychiatrist. He diagnosed me with ADHD last year (meeting me as a man from the start, though he knew I was trans). He never doubted my symptoms or medical history. He also took my pain and sleep issues seriously from the start and has been trying to help me find medications to help both those things while I go through the long process of seeing other specialists. I've had bad reactions to almost everything I've tried, because that's what always happens. Sometimes it seems like I'm allergic to the whole world.

And then, just a few days ago, the most shocking thing happened. I'd been wondering for a while if I might have a mast cell condition like MCAS, having read a lot of informative posts by @thebibliosphere which sounded a little too relatable. Another friend suggested it might explain some of my problems, so I decided to mention it to the psychiatrist, fully prepared to laugh it off. Yeah, a friend thinks I might have it, I'm not convinced though.

His response? That's an interesting theory. It would be difficult to test for especially in this country, but that's no reason not to try treatments and see if they are helpful. He adjusted his medication recommendations immediately based on this suggestion. He's researching an elimination diet to diagnose my food sensitivities.

I casually mentioned MCAS, something routinely dismissed by doctors with female patients, and he instantly took the possibility seriously.

That's it. I've reached peak male privilege. There is nothing else that could happen that could be more insane than that.

I literally keep having to hold myself back from apologizing or hedging or trying to frame my theories as someone else's idea lest I be dismissed as a hypochondriac. I told the doctor I'd like to make a big list of every health issue I have, diagnosed and undiagnosed, every theory I've been given or come up with myself, and every medication I've tried and my reactions to it - something I've never done because I knew for a fact no doctor would take me seriously if they saw such a list all at once. He said it was a good idea and could be very helpful.

Female-presenting people are of course not going to be surprised by any of this, but in my experience, male-presenting people often are. When you've never had a doctor scoff at you, laugh at you, literally say "I won't consider that possibility until you've been cleared by a psychologist" for the most mundane of health problems, it might be hard to imagine just how demoralizing it is. How scary it becomes going to the doctor. How you can internalize the idea that you're just imagining things, making a big deal out of nothing.

Now that I'm visibly a man, all of my doctors are suddenly very concerned about the fact that I've been simply living like this for nearly four decades with no help. And I know how many women will have to go their whole lives never getting that help simply because of sexism in the medical field.

If you know a doctor, show them this story. Even if they are female. Even if they consider themselves leftists and feminists and allies. Ask them to really, truly, deep down, consider whether they really treat their male and female patients the same. Suggest that the next time they hear a valid complaint from a male patient, imagine they were a woman and consider whether you'd take it seriously. The next time they hear a frivolous-sounding complaint from a female patient, imagine they were a man and consider whether it would sound more credible.

It's hard to unlearn these biases. But it simply has to be done. I've lived both sides of this issue. And every doctor insists they treat their male and female patients the same. But some of the doctors astonished that I didn't get better care in the past are the same doctors who dismissed me before.

I'm glad I'm getting the care I need, even if it is several decades late. And I'm angry that it took so long. And I'm furious that most female-presenting people will never have this chance.

Good for this person. This is exactly what you do. Screw the job.

I had a job that made me work an all nighter, 30 hours straight, over Thanksgiving. I resigned that Monday and it was one of the most satisfying decisions I’ve ever made.

Part 3:

Please pay attention to all the manipulation tactics this boss uses, because they’re pulling out every trick in the book.

This is like a 101 course in how employers use guilt trips to coerce you into putting up with their bullshit. This is precisely why you should never trust those employers who insist that they’re “like a family.” They are not. It’s just a ruse so that your boss can neg you into putting your job ahead of your actual life.

Happy Feet is the story of an lil autistic dude who stimmed so good he caused a reformation in the church

came back wrong but its from the perspective of the person who came back

Seeing pictures of yourself -the real you, the one people miss, the one people look for in your eyes- is like staring into a foggy mirror. The parts are there, you think, but the details are lost.

Someone who loves you makes you breakfast. You thank him and eat it despite the fact the eggs are too crisp on the sides and missing much needed salt. He says its how you like it, but that just makes that angry, unfettered itch in the back of your brain grow stronger.

How I used to like it, you want to say, how I used to be.

You grip your butter knife harder and light catches the polished metal. The glimpse you catch of yourself in the cutlery looks nothing like the photo on the mantle.