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StayAndBeALoser

@letmefallalone

Hi, I'm Sam! I'm bisexual and non-binary, and I use she/they pronouns 🏳️‍🌈. Officially 20 y.o., mentally 5 and 80 simultaneously. I'm just here to like and reblog everything I find important, so prepare for the most random of posts.

im so done with seeing articles about kids and screen time that doesnt mention parent behaviors even once. “kids are always on their phones” so are the parents! which the kids look to for how they should behave! ipad babies didn’t chose to only play on their ipads, thats what their parents gave them!

an anecdotal example: when i was a kid, all my parents would do in their minimal free time was watch tv and then they would be surprised when in my sister and i’s minimal free time we would also only watch tv/play video games. they scolded us for not reading books, but they never read books. they scolded us for not going outside but they never went outside.

“kids are always on their damn phones” my mom is in her 60s and opens up candy crush anytime she’s sitting — it isnt just the kids

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I just saw a story on AO3 tagged "pet p!ay"

TIK TOK MUST BE STOPPED BEFORE IT DESTROYS LANGUAGE

Ok, unless something's going on I'm not aware of (extremely likely), I gotta point out the term "Pet Play" is significantly older than Tik Tok, or most of its userbase for that matter.

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Yeah, I'm not mad about using the term "pet play". That's a perfectly fine term. I'm mad because they didn't use that term: they used "pet p!ay", a censored version

Oh. Oh gawd I missed that. Objection withdrawn, that is objectively terrible.

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To anybody who is new to posting on ao3, if you’re using a tag you have to use the correct spelling of that tag. People aren’t going to type in every version of a censored word to hide or look for your content 

When studies show that underage drinking is harmful, it's banned easily. But when studies show that spanking is harmful, it remains legal and parents still insist on doing it.

Age restrictions on purchasing cigarettes pass easily. But laws prohibiting smoking where children are forced to breathe in secondhand smoke are much harder to pass.

Children under a certain age are prohibited from using most social media websites. But adults are allowed to post videos of their children's meltdowns.

Teenagers need their parents' permission to get body modifications. But parents can get their babies' ears pierced.

Anyone who genuinely wants to protect children would not panic about the children's own choices while ignoring what adults force on them. Anyone who genuinely wants to protect children would not insist that studies on the dangers of children's own choices be fully trusted and obeyed while ignoring and arguing with studies on the dangers of how adults treat children.

But many adults just want to control children, not protect them.

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If ur like me and driving urself crazy trying to find a top surgeon but ur fat then look at transbmi. Its a short list of surgeons with high or no BMI limit (some surgeons are listed as having an unknown limit - be extra wary of them as they dont guarantee a high limit)

I had a friend go thru KU Med, and he said they don't have a BMI requirement for top surgery. However, they do have a (flexible) one for bottom surgery, mostly because having hanging stomach fat on a brand new penis will not be good for said brand new penis. So, despite what their website says, BMI is not a factor for top surgery.

I've had 2 friends go thru KU Med for top surgery, one thru Dr. Ponuru, and one thru Dr. Farmer. Both are fat, both are gnc but binary trans men, both had good results. From everything I've heard, the surgeons are very open/welcoming to nonbinary people as well.

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I cannot stress enough: if you know of a surgeon who you think should be on this list PLEASE contact Elijah Castle, the trans man who runs transbmi. He has a google form linked at the bottom of the page for submissions. I do not run transbmi so i cant add the reccomendations i keep seeing in the notes!

As of April 26th, 2023, that site is no longer being updated; there's a link to a new site run by the FEDUP Collective which appears to have the same information and anything newer.

Hate have say this but

NOT TOUCH OTHER PEOPLE DISABILITY THING PLEASE

Should not even have be please, should be good and know but somehow not.

Person in Aiden class before today *grab* Aiden laptop with AAC and Aiden had *physical* grab back because person start press random button on Aiden AAC.

Then! Person get *mad* because Aiden not want person play with Aiden *voice* like *toy*

This not good, and wish person know more good but guess Aiden have say too.

i remember a couple years ago, i saw on reddit a post where a person had made 3D-printed spikes they could put on their wheelchair and take off as needed.

in the comments, people were complaining about how that was illegal and the damage it could cause to someone.

Yeah, it's real damaging, you're the victim. Not the person who you just tried to push and pretty much physically assault. /sarc

Aids like AAC and mobility aids are often seen as an extension of a person, a part of their body for them. As Aiden said in their post, the computer they use for AAC is their voice. A cane might be one of your legs. Hearing aids are one's ears and glasses could be your eyes.

Fellow abled-bodied people, I am begging you, please respect the bodies of disabled people as we do other abled-bodied people.

im so tired im ready to die

People who are like "I can still tell it's fake!" are missing the points:

  • It's been like a year since AI art has started being taken seriously and within that time it's overcome hands. technology improves faster than you think and with it improving this fast the future has endless potential to do even more with it.
  • not everyone has the time to check stuff with photoshop.
  • that includes older people and less tech-savvy people who will see a picture of something racist with a news article title and think this is real. Old people on Facebook will see something weird and take it for true
  • of course the same stuff about AI art taking jobs and stuff, but I already went over that in another post
  • Children. There were already a small group of pedophiles using AI art to generate children. this technology is fucking rotten.

the future is awful

The term and concept of "rent lowering gunshots" has seeped into my mental vocabulary, and I've welcomed it there. Something I'm up to is gross and weird? Good, keeps the rent low. Keeps judgy people out. Post weird shit on your blog, do weird shit to your hair, be as fucky as your heart ever wants to be. If you're not the one making the profit, make yourself unprofitable. The aposematism of brightly coloured creatures is there to warn predators, not friends.

You have no moral obligation to make yourself palatable for those who would consume you.

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If your post is a screenshot of text, rather than copying and pasting the text itself such that a screenreader can handle it, I'm not reblogging your post.

I know there are boundary cases where the visual formatting is an important part of the effect (though, y'all, you should still be including a text description at that point).

But some of you are out here screenshotting articles and long Facebook posts, and that's just egregious.

I’m not trying to get into an argument, and you can of course do whatever you want with your own blog, but there are genuinely colliding accessibility concerns in play here. For some people it’s genuinely onerous to type out text descriptions and transcriptions, whether it’s because of chronic pain concerns, mobility issues, fatigue, etc. - and they’re not always the ones who took the screenshots, so copy-and-paste isn’t always an option. And “well, if you can’t type out a transcript/description, you’re not allowed to post” doesn’t seem like a particularly good solution!

Again, do what you want with your own blog. You’re not going to reblog images without descriptions or transcripts - that’s fine, it’s your prerogative. But - I’m not implying you’ve done or are doing this - I’ve seen this go from “I’m not reblogging images without descriptions” to “you’re a bad person if you post an image without a description”, and I’m trying to nip that in the bud.

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Competing accommodation needs are a thing. Over on Mastodon, there are periodic rounds of “If you don’t include alt text on an image you’re a bad person!” and “If you don’t CW for <seven thousand different possible things> you don’t care about anyone but yourself, you monster!”, and, y’know.

Remember the whole Spoon Theory thing?

How one of the big defining metaphors that showed up for certain types of disability--especially chronic pain or chronic fatigue, but not just those--is that doing stuff takes up limited resources?

Remembering lists of what to CW takes a mental toll. Adding the extra text is extra time and typing and thought. Hell, reading the CWs on Mastodon and deciding what to open or not can be a mental load on some people.

There is no perfect system that accommodates everyone. That’s just not how it works. Most people do their best. But consider if you look at someone and think “They’re not doing their best, because they’re not doing what I think is most important!”, there’s a pretty good chance they’re balancing different needs and goals than you are.

No perfect people. No perfect systems. That’s the human condition.

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Reblogging because people have good and nuanced points.

This is actually why I don't do image descriptions, funnily enough - for me personally and my stupid brain, I loathe them and find them hostile to my ability to read the post (ADHD incompatible, apparently). I've nothing against people adding them to my posts, mind, but on my personal blog, I choose not to use them.

I try to add alt text to make up for it. Though that's become harder as well now that a massive distracting ALT box gets stamped on the lower left

(I have a similar issue with subtitles, too. I cannot focus on the show/film if it's subtitled, I just spend the whole time reading and not watching the rest of the screen. I'll happily do it if I'm watching with someone who needs the subtitles, but it does impair my experience)

Either way, though, you set your own rules for this stuff, and it's entirely fair to choose to only reblog described images on your own blog

Just wanted to share a tip for transcribing images of text. In Chrome on web, you can right-click and do "search image with Google". Then click on "text", "select all text" and "copy text".

It might need some formatting tweaks, but it's 90% accurate, even with handwriting, and is a hell of a lot easier than writing everything out by hand.

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Oh my God, this is fantastic.

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Your friendly reminder to not spend money on gacha.

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if your response to this post is "too late for me" i want you to sit down and think very, very hard about your life. Because maybe you said it jokingly, and it IS a joke, then good for you, but if you actually do spend significant amounts of money for a jpeg you're not even sure you're going to get, you might have a gambling addiction and that is a serious problem not a joke or a meme.

and on a similar note, keep in mind that people who do spend money this way need support, not ridicule. these types of games are specifically designed to engage existing addictive tendencies and to create them in vulnerable people. addicts aren't stupid or irresponsible, and the root causes of addiction are often genetic and traumatic, so please be compassionate, not dismissive

TV Executives: “if the strike goes in, you won’t get new episodes of your favorite shows! You won’t get new movies you were looking forward to! Isn’t that terrible, what the writers are doing to you?”

Me: Bitch, that might have been an effective threat in 2007, but we have since survived a Covid shutdown and discovered ways to amuse ourselves while we waited, we can outwait this shit, too. I got a pile of shows saved I haven’t even watched yet, and a Mt. TBR waiting for me.

Compensate (and respect) your writers for their work, assholes.

It's just hilarious that they're trying to pull this whole "but your favorite shows!" nonsense.

Oh, you mean the shows you cancel after the third season no matter how good they're doing to avoid paying writers residuals? The shows that get produced and then never aired because you found a nice tax writeoff? The shows whose writing suffers because the writers' room got six weeks to write before getting booted and making the showrunner adapt all their scripts? The shows you straight up pulled from your streaming service to scam their crews out of rewatch money?

I will happily sacrifice my shows for the writers that gave them to me, no questions needed, but if anyone tries to say that the blatantly terrible way streaming treats its writers is somehow beneficial to shows, remind them of Infinity Train and Batgirl. That's the ideal they're pushing towards if someone doesn't say no, and we should be thankful that the writers are doing that for us.

Just look the executives in the eye and say "You already cancelled my favorite show, you bitch."

I have very strong opinions on this subject, and I'm curious how others feel.

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Hi, public librarian (lower case l, no degree) here, please don't.

We're already, in general, severely underfunded. Shocker, the capitalist hellscape we're stuck isn't great about allocating county budget to such a socialist outlet.

When you write in the margins, that's considered damage, and we just do not have the funding to replace every book we have to weed for damage.

Use sticky notes. Please. Write your margin notes on sticky notes in the book. You can even keep your place that way. But please please please don't write in the books, don't crack the spines, and don't dog ear them. That's just going to force us to weed them, and we can't always replace them.

It feels taboo as a childfree person to admit this but I actually do have concerns about who is going to take care of me when I'm old. The elder care system in our nation relies A LOT on the unpaid care labor of adult children. I just don't think that's a good reason to have kids.

"But you'll have more money!" does not completely put this to rest for me. Neither does "Buy care insurance!" Even if I can afford direct personal care, who is going to advocate for me to get it? Who is going to navigate bureaucracy for me when I'm 80?

"If you do have kids, there's no GUARANTEE that they'll take care of you when your old!" That's true, but doesn't solve my problem.

I think childfree people get very defensive about this question because its used as a kind of "gotcha!" against us, but I actually do not feel we can afford to be in denial about this reality. Based on current trends of more people in their 30s stating they intend to be permanently childfree, we are going to see a huge wave of childfree adults hitting the eldercare system at once in a few decades. Childfree people in their 30s should be advocating around eldercare NOW.

Years on the internet and somehow i still click on comments sections with the insanely optimistic idea that I'll learn something new instead of being subjected to the dumbest motherfuckers online typing like their sole purpose in life is to make me want to end mine

"Wow, what an interesting post! I want to see what sort of fascinating discourse is being generated by the idea posited by the original poster" <- Me, operating under levels of delusion yet unexplained by modern science

Remember kids, Nazis don't deserve their kneecaps.

Also if any of these are incorrect pls lemme know

i didnt see anyone saying any of this is wrong in the notes so im gonna reblog-

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additional helpful resource:

this is the anti-defamation league’s hate symbol database. it’s massive and includes details about what symbols mean and where you might see them.

i’m a tattoo artist and use this all the time when i see a symbol i don’t recognize—better safe than sorry. it’s saved me from working with white supremacists a few times.

cyborg-sevalle

You want some real legitimate advice about mental health? Stop being mean to yourself.

Like, when you wanna say mean shit about yourself either internally or externally, work to learn how to step back a moment and remind yourself that what you are doing is a form of self-harm and not a fair or legitimate judgement on you as a person, and furthermore is not productive to your survival or well-being.

Even if you fuck something up, you can resolve to do better in the future, you can tell yourself that you’re going to make this a learning experience, and even if you’ve made the same mistake 50 times already, telling yourself you’ll get it right someday if you just keep trying will always do you better than calling yourself an idiot and beating yourself up for not being able to get it right.

Take it from me, a lot of mental health shit is a product of your environment and personal history, and therefore you really don’t have the control over it that you need to get by without others’ help, but one thing you can have some control over is whether you’re going to be a friend to yourself or just another enemy, and if you want to survive, you’ve gotta strive to be in your own corner as best you can.

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Started a discord server a couple of years back, and one of the rules is you can’t be mean to yourself. You don’t have to be nice to yourself, you just can’t be mean. If someone says something self-deprecating, they THEN have to say 3 nice things about themselves to make up for it. This was a steep and harsh learning curve because I can tell you NO ONE wanted to publicly say 3 nice things about themselves a second time (but also, hilariously, everyone else was very eager to inflict making their friends say nice things about themselves, because pretty much everyone wants their friends to be nice to themselves… Go ahead and think about that a minute and try to remember that you are that friend for others, and that they want you to be kind to you, too)

And… Actually it worked. It didn’t work just in the server either, multiple people admitted they caught themselves doing it in real life, and put themselves through saying the nice things to themselves about themselves. And you know, the server is a lovely place to be, these days. Watching people be kind to themselves had a great influence. Not being constantly exposed to people you like saying mean things about themselves actually makes it more pleasant to be there. More people voluntarily praise each other and themselves, and creativity and community remain plentiful. It’s contagious.

I stopped being mean to myself after seeing a post here which communicated the harm it can do, when you say something mean about yourself and then people who like or may look up to you hear it. When you’re a writer or something and you say you’re bad or that something you made is crap, any reader or writer or other creative doing the same thing as you that thinks you’re better at it than they are is being told (in their minds) that they’re worse and their creation is worse crap. That’s not a message I ever want to send, that is not a cruelty I ever intended to inflict even unwittingly. So I stopped.

And holy SHIT does it make a difference. Not even being nice, but just not being actively mean to yourself. Make a pact with some friends if you’re having a hard time stopping on your own. The first time you have to claw your way through saying nice things about yourself in front of someone else after they pointed it out to you will change you.

One of the lessons I learned in my twenties was about the topic of boundaries. Growing up, I was taught that boundaries meant someone didn't love you. That someone who loved you would do anything for you no matter what.

Being taught this made things so hard for me as a young adult because I'd feel rejected when friends put up boundaries with me. I'd feel defensive, and like it was wrong. I also wouldn't put up boundaries with others and I'd overwhelm myself and exhaust myself to the point of burn out.

I have since come to learn that boundaries are actually a way to foster healthy relationships. I put up boundaries because I love someone so that I can have a long-term relationship with them.

I'm mostly sharing this as a reminder that your loved ones having boundaries does not mean they don't care about you. And on the other end of this, you are absolutely allowed to have boundaries and it's so valid and good to have them.

y'all not to doxx myself too hard but irl i have spent some time in my life in mental health recovery, and i am here to tell anyone who needs to hear it that people with multiples & schizophrenia & psychosis & BPD are fun and interesting and lovable people and my friends

i knew somebody in recovery who had a system of 12 personalities that he drew out in a nested chart for me. they did not remember each other's experiences. and it was cool! i could talk with one alter and then catch up another alter later about what we talked about! it was fun!

i knew a girl with psychosis who heard voices in static and running water but didn't want to get rid of them cause they never said anything distressing and they were familiar and comfortable. that's awesome! how cool is the variance of human experience??

hey to the person who tagged this "of course there are exceptions" make your own post you stigmatizing bitch the mad community are my homies and nobody wants your stank ass