this is a harvest mouse appreciation post

literally the cutest animal ever in history look at this lil fuzz

tiny bean ! friendly bean

they climb on basically everything. probably to get closer to kiss u

if this mouse gets any more disney than this it will probably break out into song

just look at this tiny nugget !!!

harvest mice use their tails for stability while climbing but also to be unnecessarily cute. this deters predators

tiny feet !!!!! tiny toes !

momma with itty puffs

kisses !! 1 hit KO

they are literally too small how dare

harvest mice !!!

harvest mice !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

harv e s t  m i c e  !! ! !!!

thankyou for your time

@neonthebright

OH

It's time we decolonize the Cascadian volcanoes

If we can say Denali instead of Mt. McKinley then we can say Lawetlat'la instead of Mt. St Helens. The mountain is named Tahoma, not Rainier. Naming a mountain after Jefferson doesn't erase its true name of Seekseekqua.

One name tells of the thousand years indigenous history and culture of the tribes who live there. The other name tells me nothing but colonialism.

Mt. Baker: Kulshan

Glacier Peak: Dahkobed

Mt. Rainier: Tahoma

Mt. St. Helens: Lawetlat'la

Mt. Adams: Klickitat

Mt. Hood: Wy'east

Mt. Jefferson: Seekseekqua

Three Sisters: Klah Klahne

BRB, adding "look up the indigenous names of Colorado mountains" to my to do list, because you're 100% right.

Great Idea! Does anyone have a rec for a pronunciation guide? I've got reading disorders and I would like to say these right.

It'll be a bit before I find time to research the Colorado ones, but I'll be sure to tag you!

Last time I attempted to do this research, I discovered that since Colorado was largely occupied by nomadic groups, a lot of the mountains had more than one name.

But, as a cool starting point, I did find this article about geotagging places with indigenous names.

What a fantastic resource! Thank you for sharing.

Tbh just wash your hands and don't eat poop (also don't lick your birds). Healthy birds are unlikely to be carrying anything that'll make you ill, very, very few illnesses that poultry carry can be transferred to humans.

When it comes to bacterial issues the main concern is feces. Chickens don't shower or wash their beaks or feet before interacting with us, so it's up to you to wash your hands and clean surfaces indoors that they may come into contact with if inside.

I've grown up out in a very rural area, so my immune system is pretty well adapted to what exists out here, but I'm also immuno-compromised. I am...a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to how I interact with my birds. I'm usually good about washing my hands, but I'm sure I've forgotten to on a few occasions. I often press my face into their feathers and smooch my birds. Basically I'm not as careful as I could be, but I've still never contracted an illness that could be contributed to my poultry.

My sibling, however, has. It wasn't serious, and we actually have no idea if it came from the birds or not, it was a common bacteria that could have been picked up anywhere, but poultry are a common vector. They were okay, mostly tummy troubles.

In short, can you get sick from handling poultry closely? Yes, it's possible. Literally anything that can transmit bacteria can possibly make you sick.

Are you likely it get seriously ill from handling poultry? No, not really.

Just try not to let them jump on your face, and remember to wash your hands thoroughly after a cuddle session.

half of this website should learn this

Shut the fuck up

spiraling bc the world seems bad....here are some uplifting headlines

the thing about writing fantasy stories is that language is so based on history that it can be hard to decide how far suspension of disbelief can carry you word-choice wise - what do you call a french braid in a world with no france? can a queen ann neckline be described if there was no queen ann? where do you draw the line? can you use the word platonic if plato never existed? can you name a character chris in a land without christianity? can you even say ‘bungalow’ in a world where there was no indian language for the word to originate from? is there a single word in any language that doesn’t have a story behind it? to be accurate a fantasy story would be written in a fantasy language but who has the time for that

Tolkien had the time apparently

LIsten. Linguistics Georg, who invented over 10,000 conlangs each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted. 

Boss makes a thousand and I make a dime that's why I browse on company time. Lol

It really is pretty dramatic how almost every article about how trans people are placing unreasonable demands on society focuses primarily on transfeminine people and almost every article about how trans people are poor delusional victims of the medical-industrial complex focuses primarily on transmasculine people.

This point felt less obvious back when there wasn’t a book called The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.

a what now?

I … did not realize that was actually real.

It sure is. When you search transgender on Amazon it is the first result! I’ve actually been going through the horror of annotating and reviewing it (worry not, I pirated it. I would rather die then give Abigail shier money). It’s won several rewards and is one of the best selling books in the western world. It is the book that popularized “ROGD” (Rapid Onset Gender Dyphoria) a term used to prevent trans masculine people and trans men from receiving trans and medical care and is often used to back anti-transition laws in both the united states and the United Kingdom (and likley many other places).

Wait, y’all are only finding out about this book now? It’s been like a year sjjdnd

Yeah, that fucking thing is like the TERF Bible. It’s the same thing I was talking about in my other post just now. The main title is ‘Irreversible Damage,’ and it promotes the idea that the medical-industrial complex is preying upon girls and young women (they infantilize teenage girls and young adult women a LOT in this book btw), especially neurodiverse girls/young women, and that transmascs cannot be trusted to make our own medical decisions and should be “protected from ourselves.” The concept of ROGD is specifically applied here to transmasc teenagers & college-age young women. The TERFs are REAL mad that they can’t control their sons/children in college, because those adults can make their own choices now.

This is actually a really good bit of coverage of it (if only part 1 of 2, I don’t think part 2 is up yet) from a scientifically critical, trans-affirming perspective, if you’d like to know what the TERFs are aiming at transmascs these days without actually having to like

read that shit

because it’s fucking horrible.

And like, I absolutely recommend reading that article, because this shit permeates the discussion about trans ppl, especially in the UK and on Twitter.

That Book was recently (like, this past week) included in an American Bookseller’s Association promotional ‘white box’ sent to independent booksellers in the US, and trans ppl and our allies got understandably really pissed that a book of unscientific, nasty-ass anti-transmasc propaganda that’s been out for a year is like… in a promo box. So they took the ABA to task for it.

The ABA put out an apology (full of passive language, like these things just happened rather than that someone did these things, which is pretty fucking rich for a bookseller’s association, like they thought that the kind of extremely literate people who run independent bookstores wouldn’t notice) and so like… the book is receiving renewed attention from the same sort of First Amendment transphobes who love to screech about censorship when their favorite bits of propaganda get pushback. You’ll probably see a lot more of the ideas this book pushes in the near future.

So, like, yeah. It exists, and people are talking about it a lot, so knowing what kind of garbage is in it and what we’re up against?

Unfortunately necessary, IMO.

Also, I need to underline that this book specifically also attacks transmasculine non-binary people, not just trans men. They don’t really see any difference between us.

A big part of these arguments involves denying agency to autistic people as well

Yeah, I said that. :) “especially neurodiverse… ”

It’s not just autistic people being denied agency in their arguments - they also discuss transmascs with anxiety and depression pretty often as ppl who just “aren’t capable” of making medical decisions - but they sure have some opinions about us autistic trans folx.

Anyway, that’s why I used the word I did.

It’s also worth noting that, unlike other times TERFs have pushed this narrative, Irreversible Damage places most (all?) of the blame for “seducing” people’s “daughters” onto transmascs, especially transmasc YouTubers. I’ve seen a bunch of people being like “oh TERFs always do this, they claim that trans women are predators who are pied piper-ing kids” and, no. That is not the case in this book. It’s a major change in TERF tactics, probably in response to the increasing visibility of trans men, and we need to name it for what it is because otherwise we give people the wrong understanding of how TERFs are operating in the current moment.

you’re going to love again, find a job again, create art again, do what you love again, feel powerful again. you’re going to be back on track. i don’t know when, but you are going to feel like yourself again, eventually. this isn’t the end. hang in there.

And if you end up feeling like someone new and unfamiliar, that's okay! As long as that new person is happier than you are now, not being your "old self" is okay!!

A panphobe claimed “multiple historical bi activists are against pansexuality” and used Lani Ka’ahumanu as an example. They cited a quote from her book, said “she pointed out the problem loud and clear” but “pro-pans aren’t ready for that conversation” and ended with “listen to bisexual elders” and “protect bisexual history”.

As someone who actually read her book and knows a bit about her activism, this made me too angry to ignore it.

This is the cited quote from Lani Ka’ahumanu and Loraine Hutchins’ book Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out:

Left out is that pansexuality is not being criticized in that quote. How resource glossaries define pansexual and bisexual is being criticized. Specifically Exploring the Dimensions of Human Sexuality and Trans Bodies, Trans Selves.

Left out is that the following paragraph states:

Left out is that these quotes are in the same chapter:

Left out is that Lani Ka’ahumanu said this in 2016:

Left out is that Lani Ka’ahumanu cofounded the Bay Area Bisexual Network, which published Anything That Moves, the pan inclusive magazine that the Bi Manifesto came from. The group has since been renamed to the Bay Area Bi+ & Pan Network.

Left out is that the bisexual community has a large, long history of supporting and including pan/mspec identities, one that far surpasses any pan/mspecphobic bisexual individuals.

Lani Ka’ahumanu supports pansexuality (and other mspec identities) and self-identification, believes there’s a place for all of our labels, and encourages people to grow as the terminology for sexuality grows.

But panphobes are taking the words of an almost 80 year old mixed race bisexual activist wildly out of context in order to use her as a tool in a hate campaign against a sexuality she supports.

So, tell me. Who really needs to listen to bisexual elders? Who does bisexual history really need to be protected from?

I've actually met Lani Ka'ahumanu, and the idea that she would be against calling yourself pan is hilarious.

Y'all. The bi movement was started by hippies. LITERALLY NONE of your ~bisexual elders~ give a fuck what any of you call yourselves. Not a single one.

The very strongest negative opinion I've ever seen from 70s-80s bi activists on "just calling yourself bi," was a piece in an '80s bi newsletter that kind of grumbled about how a ton of people don't use ANY label, because calling yourself bi comes with so much stigma.

That's it. That's actually the only one.

In fact, the reason that I've met Lani in person is that she lives in a part of Northern California that's at Big Fire Risk, so she stores her boxes of bi archival materials somewhere safer during fire season each year. And somehow I get to keep them for her this year, AND LOOK through them!

Which I started doing today.

Turns out that the Wellington, New Zealand Bi Women's Group - which still exists! - organized the first National NZ Bisexual Conference in 1990. And wrote up this report about it afterward.

At the "What Does Bisexuality Mean To Me?" workshop, "many agreed that finding the right words and language to describe ourselves could be a positive experience."

(Or, of course, today, it could be a horrible experience where people in your own community feel free to shit on you for using words they don't like.)

"Words like gynandrous, gender-bender, polymorphously perverse, and pansexual were suggested as possible alternatives to bisexual."

Emphasis mine. Please note that they were suggesting these as alternative words people might personally use, not proposing One New Term To Rule Them All.

Also note that these terms were very heavily about gender, and probably reflected the fact that the bi community has always included a LOT of nonbinary people.

(And if you look at large-scale studies now that separate bi and pan people out, the pan people are almost all under the trans umbrella.)

Likewise, at the "Bisexual Politics" workshop, the notes afterward repeatedly emphasized "wanting to ensure the bisexual community stays non-exclusive."

This bullshit tug-of-war over terms is a huge departure from bi culture, bi politics, and bi history, and it needs to stop.

The entire concept that SOME people don't get shat upon enough by our oppressors, and we need to make them feel as excluded and alienated as possible because they're BAD and/or DON'T BELONG, needs to GO.

But the anti-pan stuff is especially ridiculous, and that's saying something. It's not even "oh, you're making us look foolish in front of our oppressors," "you're not really queer," or "the labels and/or pronouns you use harm others in some unprovable way!" It's "I decided that everyone who uses this label does it because they think bad things about trans and/or bi people!"

Just purely making things up, making up rationalizations for them, and then saying all of them loud and long enough that a bunch of people join in.

Please read this!

+

Sometimes, what we percieve as problematic truly is necessary for a better understanding of others.

Oh

We don’t talk enough about the systemic health effects of casual fatphobia and how much they fucking skew the data to the point where we literally cannot know how much outcomes are actually related to fatness and how much they are related to society not being designed for fat people, like literal design.

My best friend cannot find a bra.

She’s fat. We won’t get into the ~why~ here because it honestly wouldn’t matter whether it was “all her fault” or whether it was a result of outside forces like genes and such, she still deserves a goddamn fucking bra that fits.

And she cannot find a bra.

She’s short and fat, and Fat Bras are usually full cup, but because she’s short the full cups are usually too tall, or the armbands around them are too tall, to the point where what’ll fit around her chest and over her boobs will also dig up into her arms or have such high coverage that she literally cannot wear a shirt with a neckline high enough. Any bra that goes out enough goes too high.

This affects her ability to find clothing, impacting her ability to go outside sometimes, because she has this tiny selection of bras and she constantly has to wash them and when they’re gone she has no idea when she’ll next be able to find another unicorn bra. They appear in a flash usually in startups that die soon after, and COVID has killed most the small businesses remaining where she had even a hint of a chance of finding a fitting bra.

So she wears bras that don’t fit. Or she doesn’t leave the house. One gives her back pain. The other is, obviously, not very active. She likes to be active.

If she brings it up, people suggest breast reduction surgery.

But the thing is, with a good bra, she does not get back pain.

But if it’s that hard to find a good bra, they say, wouldn’t a reduction just be easier?

Wouldn’t it be easier for you to chop off part of your flesh, they say, then for us to cut fabric and underwire to more sizes? As if that is normal. As if that isn’t horrifying.

It’s not just bras. It’s chairs. It’s benches. It’s goddamn shoes. It’s seatbelts. It’s exercise equipment - I just got an exercise bike for Christmas. I had to shop around to find an affordable one that was also rated to take my level of fat. If I were 100 pounds heavier, which some people are? I don’t think any equipment would have existed in a price range that any working person could expect to afford. I don’t think most people even look at the weight ratings on chairs and couches and furniture. Once you start? They are lower than you think. There are absolutely 100% people you love in your life - whether really tall men or just average kinda overweight fat people - who should not be using the things they are using. Who are not getting support from their mattress, their footwear, their office chair. It might be you! You might be thinking “but I am average size!”, but the amount of furniture out there that’s only weighted to about 200lbs? Or 175??? It’s SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU REALIZE. Get into the Proper Fat? The 350lb, 400lb, 500lb fat? There’s virtually nothing.

Seatbelts are not tested for fat bodies and seatbelt extenders aren’t regulated.

We know about the problems with too small a blood pressure cuff. With too low a medicine dose. With no MRI a really fat body can fit in for a thousand miles.

We know, from multiple studies on multiple oppressed communities, that social bias by itself, with zero other compounding factors, can give people worse health outcomes.

Now add up

+ one of the social biases with the least pushback even from the educated liberal set with

+ having a world that is literally not made for you. Where you cannot get clothes, furniture, or transportation in a way that will actually accommodate you,

+ where society is constantly blaming you for this. And even if you somehow (and if you know how, please tell me) manage to retain some sense of self worth and optimism and determination despite all that

+ that’s not gonna magically give you access to the daily supplies a person needs in their home and out in public that’ll make living safe and healthy life literally physically possible.

If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health start a bra company. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health mandate changes to seatbelt requirements. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health have a variety of chairs in your waiting room with at least some being properly Fat Rated. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health, make it easier for fat people to be active by making exercise equipment that fits them, swimwear that’ll actually stay on them, athletic shoes that can bear them. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health ask they be included in more medical trials. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health, promote fat visibility and fat people loving their bodies - because hating yourself has literally never been good for anyone’s health.

If you’re using “concern for health” as a shield to allow you to judge and criticize strangers, you don’t give a fuck about anyone’s health. You’re just an asshole who prefers a veneer of respectability when you bully people. You’re hateful and we can see right through you.

But fatphobia isn’t just bullying. It isn’t just judgment from strangers. It isn’t just medical neglect and medical bias. Even if we could wave a wand and make all that go away, my best friend still wouldn’t have a bra that fits, people still wouldn’t have a chair that supports them, a seatbelt that protects them. It’s literally engineered in. And it slowly kills people day by day by day.

some of you don't see ableism as a real issue and it shows

like I see ableism everywhere, even in feminist spheres. I see people throwing around "crazy" "psycho" "narcissist". i see so called feminists saying the r slur WAY too easily.

we're completely left out of environmental conversations or just dismissed (see: the straw ban). we're collateral damage in their eyes.

I've seen a skinny woman get abuse and hate for posting a selfie of her in her wheelchair and tagging it as "body positive", told she was "hijacking the movement".

black disabled or mentally ill (like schizophrenia) people die, and i see people excusing it as "how was he acting?" as if being mentally ill is a fucking death sentence!

disabled women are more at risk for abuse, especially at the hands of carers, and its glossed over! nobody ever talks about it!

abled feminists call us inspirational. the government only cares about us when we can do something for it, like playing in an elite basketball team (like my husband used to. the second he stopped, he stopped getting aid).

shit, you guys need to take ableism more seriously. stop dismissing us. we matter.

joe biden sitting at his little desk turning the crank that makes gas price go up, laughing like a devil-man

going wild, eyes glowing red, alternately mashing the buttons labeled "make one (1) kid trans" and "create new gender"

unfriendly reminder that “febfems” are not welcome here

as in, “”female-exclusive”” bisexual radfems. so just to recap:

bi women who have a preference for women? amazing!

bi women who only date other women? absolutely stunning!

cis bisexual TERFs who shape their whole identities around bioessentialist ideas of what it means to be a woman? nope! please do not interact with this blog under any circumstances.

@ the TERFs getting pissy in the notes:

it doesn’t matter if “febfems” are “inclusive of trans and nonbinary AFABs”

if your label insists on referring to trans men and AFAB nonbinary people as “female”, it is NOT and never will be trans or nonbinary inclusive. so cut the bullshit lmao

for the record, even if the label WAS inclusive of trans women and transfeminine nonbinary people, it’s still transphobic to generalize trans men, unaligned nonbinary people, and transmasculine nonbinary people as “female”

Help me get my visa!

Hello friends! I'm financially stretched very thin at the moment and still can't find work, but my lease ends in mid-August and I need to find a new place ASAP and more importantly sort out my visa. If you like what I do here and would like to support Tastes of Tamriel, here's how!

For those of you who don't know, I'm currently completing my MA in Social Anthropology in the UK at the moment, and graduate in just a couple of months. I need to raise £1324 to pay for the visa and NHS surcharge because screw international students apparently. Anyway, while I continue to scour the country for a job, it would be amazing if you could spare a Ko-Fi to help me out!

Thanks in advance for any donations, and if you can't spare the change I would really appreciate the reblogs too! All my love and gratitude. Eat well, stay safe, wash your hands. ~Tal

21% of the goal reached already! Please help me out if you can, I can't find work and my dissertation is killing me :( This blog is my last hope lol. ~Tal

Sitting at 27%, but have gotten some terrible news that means I may not be able to graduate because I can't afford it. Life is currently really hard and I could really use all the help I can get. If you can't donate, please do share, every little bit counts! Sorry to whine, things are pretty grim here and I really don't know where else to turn. ~Tal