For years I've heard that those booby mousepads are actually really good for a person with carpal tunnel syndrome but didn't decide to test that knowledge because I don't want to buy a booby mousepad that would make me some sort of sex pervert, I was raised Catholic I'm a good boy not a sex pervert. But earlier this year I bought a Gigan body pillow as a joke only to find out body pillows are actually really comfortable sleep aids, so... so I bought one... I bought a booby mousepad.

...and my wrist feels so much better when I'm using it.

How many other comforts and aids have I forsaken because they're embarrassingly horny? How many discomforts have I endured purely out of a societal shame about expressing anything sexual? This world is fucked man.

For those curious why exactly this is, it's because booby mousepads are pretty much the only ergonomic mousepads which still use silicone gel. Basically everything else has switched to either air-filled memory foam or a cured silicone rubber – like the kind used in silicone bakeware – because it's not prone to springing leaks and oozing everywhere; unfortunately, it also doesn't work nearly as well.

(In theory, if you're not a fan of boobs you could get a silicone gel wrist pad without the booby design. In practice, good fucking luck; consumer fraud is rampant in non-prescription medical and assistive devices, and the overwhelming majority of non-booby mousepads which claim to use silicone gel are straight up lying – what you actually receive if you order one will be air-filled memory foam or solid rubber at least 80% of time, regardless of what the product description says.)

The EU is doing a big survey for LGBTQ people who live in the EU about how it is for them right now. That's the kind of survey that's used for official reports and for laws so it's super important that it has as many people taking it as possible. You can take it in every EU language. (You can change the language in the top right corner) Share it with your friends!

https://www.lgbtiqsurvey.eu/lgbtiq

My latest cartoon for New Scientist

If you use Zoom, be aware that they’ve decided they’re going to use your input (from both free and paid accounts) to train their new AI tools. And there’s apparently no way to opt out of this. :/

So here are some open source alternatives.

47 more free and helpful things, that everyone can take advantage of

Music

Art

Games

Knowledge

Cooking

Work, or relax

Boredom

Just for fun

And lastly...

Earlier post

They’re also shooting for 100% renewable plastic sources by 2030! All of the soft plant/leaf elements in sets right now and going forward are made out of bioplastic made from sugarcane, and they’re working on getting the regular hard plastic bricks out of that, too.

They’ve done it, actually! The full bricks are in the prototype stage now, and are expected to be 100% biodegradable without the need for a commercial compost facility. It’s very cool. Right now they’re testing the durability and playability of the bricks and seeing what needs to be revised/reworked on their final model.

So its that easy huh

Of course it is

Actually, this isn’t “easy” and is huge news. You see, Lego is absolutely meticulous about their quality control. Their standards for manufacturing are stupidly high, as are their safety requirements. You know that distinctive “click” when you pop two Lego bricks apart? They engineered that. That sound is so distinctive that it can be used to tell genuine Lego bricks from counterfeits and it’s a sound that would be based on shape and material.

Furthermore, one of the hard requirements for a Lego brick is that it must be compatible with any other Lego brick. If I buy a set today and pull a set from the 1980s? Those bricks would fit together perfectly. This requires a huge amount of precision engineering and controls on manufacturing quality. (I can’t remember the source, but I’ve at least heard that once the brick molds wear to a certain point, they’re pulled from the line and either melted down or turned into construction material for Lego HQ. Point being, no one is getting their hands on a worn Lego mold)

Recycled and non-petroleum plastics are different from other plastic. The chemistry is different. The timing and process to use them is different. This has been a reason why more companies haven’t moved to them, because there’s a drop in quality for material (so they claim).

What Lego just did is completely obliterate that argument. The corporation with some of the strictest quality control requirements for plastic just kicked the basic foundation of the “bad quality” argument out from under it, because if they feel confident enough to guarantee the same experience as using a brick from over 40 years ago, if they are confident enough that they can meet their own metrics at a huge industrial scale….

Nobody else has any excuse.

Steve: 1

Secret Service: 0

For those who don’t know, Steve Jackson Games was raided by the Secret Service in 1990, and all copies of the then-upcoming GURPS Cyberpunk were confiscated. Though this was bad for the company financially (they were set back months on a major project, and had to do layoffs), it did lend a certain air of pizazz to their product.

They ended up suing the government, and won. This was the first high-profile case for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which successfully sued on behalf of the company, winning around $300,000 in the case.

The full story is here: http://www.sjgames.com/SS/

New chapter of the Regency Murder Fic!

Don't let the fact that you've not done something before be the thing that stops you from trying it!

Okay so this is entirely amazing but as it’s Disability Pride Month I want to point out something he says here that might easily get missed:

“You can even do [target archery] sitting down.”

SITTING DOWN.

His form when he does it looks like you might have to transfer from a wheelchair to a non-wheeled chair (MIGHT—I am not a wheelchair user, it’s possible angled wheels would let you do this just fine), but he does indeed do it sitting down.

If you can build enough upper body strength to safely create 22 pounds of draw, you can do archery as a person who uses a wheelchair.

Go release your inner Legolas.

Archery can be done in a wheelchair and from the looks of it you don’t need a custom chair.

Also it is a Paralympic sport:

There we go, the answer to “might” is “will.”

TODAY WE ROLL FOR THE ROHIRRIM.

ARCHERY FUCK YEAH!!!!

As a target archer, YES YOU CAN DO IT SITTING IN A WHEELCHAIR! I also am nearsighted like you would not believe and I can still shoot a bow and hit a target. Have limited mobility? Well just let your fellow archers now and we can take turns retrieving arrows for you. No big deal.

….please never change your username, there is nothing more hilarious or apt than a Middle Earth orc replying to somebody yelling about answering Rohan’s call for aid on a post that actually has basically nothing to do with LOTR.

I know someone who is in a wheelchair and they are on a national archery team. Not the paralympic team, normal-ass competitive archery.

They have a special cushion for their wheelchair, I think, and there are specific rules (I think the bow is not allowed to touch your chair? Something like that.), but it's a completely normal wheelchair and they are a normal participant in the sport.

Archery is AMAZING!

The Newsroom (2014, season 3, episode 3)

Stolen from Reddit.

Chocolate chip but chocolate chip cookie dough is my favourite. I also had this banana fudge ice cream once that was really good.