Thank the Maker I'm Gay

We are normal and can be trusted with large amounts of money

ITS NOT DEMONS GUYS I PROMISE

After 🦋

magic system where “dark magic” and “light magic” are literal terms - dark magic consumes photons, making an area around the spell visibly darker, sometimes to an Extreme extent, and light magic releases photons.

because of this most dark mages tend to work in very brightly-lit areas (either artificial light or outside in the daytime) to fuel their spells and wear and use lightly coloured clothes and tools so that they’re easier to see in the dimness their spells create, whereas light mages wear heavy, sometimes leaden robes (depending on the work being done) and the magical equivalent of welding masks to protect themselves from what can be an extreme amount of light, and sometimes other kinds of electromagnet radiation!

needless to say this is incredibly confusing for anyone unfamiliar with the culture

due to the fact that both magics react with basically all of the electromagnetic spectrum - not just the visible light part of it - dark magic is enormously useful for radiation protection (uv-eating spellwork as sunscreen, anyone?), but also has the slightly uncomfortable effect of eating infared as well - which does have the effect of making areas around powerful or prolonged dark magic uncomfortably chilly.

nothing that a nice fur coat or enchanted light-magic IR-emitting lamps can't fix!

okay this is some truly genius world-building

I saw this on FB today and I wanna try and express something about it. Like, you know the curbcutter effect? Where when curbcuts are put in it benefits everyone (bicyclists, people with baby strollers etc) and not just disabled people?

There is also whatever the opposite of the curbcutter effect is. And this is that.

This isn't just anti-adhd/autism propaganda... this is anti-child propaganda.

Kids have developmentally appropriate ways that they need to move their bodies and express themselves and sitting perfectly still staring straight ahead is not natural or good for ANY CHILD.

Don't get me wrong, I was punished unduly as a kid for being neurodivergent (and other types of kid will ALSO be punished unduly for it... Black kids come to mind) and thus UNABLE to perform this -- but even the kids who ARE able to perform this type of behavior are not SERVED WELL by it. They don't benefit from it.

This is bad for everyone.

The idea that bc some kids may be capable of complying with unfair expectations, those expectations don't hurt them... is a dangerous idea. Compliance isn't thriving. Expectation of compliance isn't fair treatment.

The image above expresses the attitude towards children I grew up with, in a fairly conservative United States suburb in the 1990′s. Expectations for children’s behavior were strict, and when children failed to meet them, their parents were blamed publicly and privately, to a traumatizing degree. 

When I went to the Kids R Us, Toys R Us, even the supermarket I constantly heard parents yelling and nagging at their kids over virtually nothing, and telling them not to cry. Kids had their own segregated food (unhealthy, tasteless fast food and pizza), clothing, and activities (full of plastic junk toys and meaningless crafts that would get thrown out the day they were made). 

Parenting advice was everywhere, in grocery checkout aisles and doctor’s waiting rooms, with the format “push button, receive behavior” and the goal of making kids do what you wanted easily, without conflict. It drove my mom frantic that it never worked for neurodivergent kids like hers. 

In school, we had to get permission to go to the bathroom. I’ll never forget nearly wetting myself for a half an hour waiting for the kids with the passes to return. I learned that even my most basic basic bodily needs were unimportant and unacceptable.

No one seemed to think kids were actual people, and the segregation and contempt pissed me off even when I was young enough to use a kid’s menu. The anger and hurt are still there, under the surface.

And yes, I was one of those kids who couldn’t focus on busywork or stand in line for a long time. I’d wander off to dance or draw or I’d just let my imagination wander, “zoning out.” It’s the same old story everyone in neurodivergent communities hears ad infinitum. 

Meanwhile, I was told, and I believed, that school was designed for all the other kids, who seemed to do what was expected without struggle. Many of them even seemed content with school and life. It made me feel even worse about myself. I didn’t understand that they were suffering, too, until I saw my generation and then Gen Z going through the resulting mental health crisis.

Somehow, I never realized that strict expectations that require kids to go against their own needs, that teach kids their basic needs don’t matter, are a reverse curb cut effect.

Yes. All kids deserve better.

Neurodivergent ones are just the canary in the coal mine. Things that hurt neurodivergent kids, tend to be bad for everyone.

Thank you for pointing this out, OP.

I saw this on FB today and I wanna try and express something about it. Like, you know the curbcutter effect? Where when curbcuts are put in it benefits everyone (bicyclists, people with baby strollers etc) and not just disabled people?

There is also whatever the opposite of the curbcutter effect is. And this is that.

This isn't just anti-adhd/autism propaganda... this is anti-child propaganda.

Kids have developmentally appropriate ways that they need to move their bodies and express themselves and sitting perfectly still staring straight ahead is not natural or good for ANY CHILD.

Don't get me wrong, I was punished unduly as a kid for being neurodivergent (and other types of kid will ALSO be punished unduly for it... Black kids come to mind) and thus UNABLE to perform this -- but even the kids who ARE able to perform this type of behavior are not SERVED WELL by it. They don't benefit from it.

This is bad for everyone.

The idea that bc some kids may be capable of complying with unfair expectations, those expectations don't hurt them... is a dangerous idea. Compliance isn't thriving. Expectation of compliance isn't fair treatment.

The image above expresses the attitude towards children I grew up with, in a fairly conservative United States suburb in the 1990′s. Expectations for children’s behavior were strict, and when children failed to meet them, their parents were blamed publicly and privately, to a traumatizing degree. 

When I went to the Kids R Us, Toys R Us, even the supermarket I constantly heard parents yelling and nagging at their kids over virtually nothing, and telling them not to cry. Kids had their own segregated food (unhealthy, tasteless fast food and pizza), clothing, and activities (full of plastic junk toys and meaningless crafts that would get thrown out the day they were made). 

Parenting advice was everywhere, in grocery checkout aisles and doctor’s waiting rooms, with the format “push button, receive behavior” and the goal of making kids do what you wanted easily, without conflict. It drove my mom frantic that it never worked for neurodivergent kids like hers. 

In school, we had to get permission to go to the bathroom. I’ll never forget nearly wetting myself for a half an hour waiting for the kids with the passes to return. I learned that even my most basic basic bodily needs were unimportant and unacceptable.

No one seemed to think kids were actual people, and the segregation and contempt pissed me off even when I was young enough to use a kid’s menu. The anger and hurt are still there, under the surface.

And yes, I was one of those kids who couldn’t focus on busywork or stand in line for a long time. I’d wander off to dance or draw or I’d just let my imagination wander, “zoning out.” It’s the same old story everyone in neurodivergent communities hears ad infinitum. 

Meanwhile, I was told, and I believed, that school was designed for all the other kids, who seemed to do what was expected without struggle. Many of them even seemed content with school and life. It made me feel even worse about myself. I didn’t understand that they were suffering, too, until I saw my generation and then Gen Z going through the resulting mental health crisis.

Somehow, I never realized that strict expectations that require kids to go against their own needs, that teach kids their basic needs don’t matter, are a reverse curb cut effect.

Yes. All kids deserve better.

Neurodivergent ones are just the canary in the coal mine. Things that hurt neurodivergent kids, tend to be bad for everyone.

Thank you for pointing this out, OP.

(Cis/trans)women aren’t the only ones that can get breast cancer, either.

Please boost this version 👆

I've acquired a creature that stares at you no matter which direction you look at it from

I’m hypnotized 

so like. obviously it's an immensely tragic route to take but sometimes it's just so satisfying for a story to go "there's no happy ending this time. resistance is futile in this scenario. the 'good guys' can't win. this is a pointless last stand. so for their final act, our beloved characters are going to rock the antagonist's shit so fucking hard it makes you stare at a wall struggling to process what just happened and how you feel about it for hours afterwards."

i simply think that sometimes it's the best possible narrative decision to allow characters to become supernovas, imploding on themselves but taking as much with them as possible. "you can't save anyone" "maybe not, but i can hurt you". fuck yes. if you can't beat them, tear them apart.

Time shifting

––

I wanted this but the original poster is transphobic

This is called the "analog loophole" and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. They can encrypt and copy-protect all they want, but eventually the file has to be sent to a speaker and/or screen, and it has to get there in a human-readable form because that's the whole dang point

The simplest way to exploit the analog loophole is just pointing a camera at a screen or a microphone at a speaker, but direct recording is also always possible and always will be. Anything that can be displayed can be saved and displayed again

"Oh, you kissed me just to kiss me Not to take me home It was simple, it was sweetness It was good to know You look perfect, you look different I don't wonder about your indifference If I said you could never touch me You'd come over and say I looked lovely"

- We'll Never Have Sex by Leith Ross

I'm gonna be thinking about this all day

If you deadname someone in the death note it kills you

In one of the Death Note live action movies (I think it was Light Up the New World), a man changes his name after harboring guilt about past crimes and trying to atone (not even answering to that name). He's only killed after his new name gets put in the book, since he shed his old name.

Man wasn't trans, but if the logic applied to him, logic should apply to trans people too!

This rule implies that birth names are not necessarily the names given to you at birth.

That means you can change your name or consider yourself to have a new name and the death note recognizes it.

Death Note is an ally.

Diversity win! this Death Note kills trans people but doesn’t deadname them!

It's not "everyone" acting like it's normal. The majority of people know something's wrong they just don't have the tools to fix it. Maybe a plurality don't know that the problem is capitalism, they blame it on something else, but they're still aware there's a problem. "Everyone" is just too exhausted from working 4 jobs, 50 hours a week to scream into the void in their spare time.

guess I gotta pull out this bad boy again huh

So I go to the dentist and the appointment I had was not the appointment that I thought I was going to have (normal maintenance vs deep clean) so i warned the dentist "hey heads up I burn through dental anesthetics super quick and also I'd like to use as little as possible because putting the dental anesthetics in my body is the most painful part of the process unless I'm having a root canal or something" and she's like "Hmm. Okay. Is it just the injection site?" and I was like "no, it will feel like burning on the opposite side of my face and in my nose and eyes and stuff." And she was like "Hmm. Do you turn really red when this happens?" And I was like "I don't know, I can't really see myself when it happens." And she was like "are you willing to experiment with this a little?" And I was like "sure, no worries" and she injected me with one anesthetic and it hurt like a motherfucker and she and the assistant both went "OOOH" and she was like "Yeah you got really red right away let's try the other," and it was the same thing and then she was like "okay I think this is the one that will work" and it hurt a little bit but it was fucking NOTHING compared to the comprehensive full stabbing burning facial pain from the others and long story short the dentist was like "You're reacting to the epinephrine in these other anesthetics," which I guess is fairly common for people who have autoimmune disorders.

So I guess this is to say: If you get spreading, burning, stabbing pain when you are being injected with local anesthetics it's not supposed to do that and you should say something.

I was just explaining how I saw “To Wong Fu,” in the theaters as a 17 year old with a bunch of highschool friends and absolutely nobody was scandalized. This drag panic is entirely orchestrated and much ado about nothing.

I mean, somebody’s going to mention Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, or Flip Wilson as Geraldine, but way back in the fifties, Milton Berle was on Texaco Star Theater and your grandparents or great-grandparents loved it.

A reminder that drag is old. It's so old it's ridiculous. Drag has been done in theater since the beginning of theater. And sometimes those characters are supposed to be another gender [Peter Pan is usually played by a small adult woman, and Edna Turnblad from Hairspray is famously a woman's role that's supposed to be cast with a drag queen]. Sometimes it's just a part of the show. [Some Like It Hot, where the two male characters are disguised as women to hide from the mob, and one ends the movie with a wealthy man] Drag queens as a trope have always been sassy, world-weary, and absolutely confident in themselves and their ability to attract men. Hell, sometimes the joke is that they're [deliberately] making a straight male character uncomfortable and we're supposed to be laughing at the straight male's discomfort. Law & Order has shown drag queens for decades with asshole detectives referring to them as "ma'am" when they're in drag even as they're trying to avoid the sequins.

This rhetoric is frightening because of how quickly the neo-fascist movements in the US have managed to get it to take hold.

birds have truly mastered feathers like what do you Mean they can be shiny. how fucking cool is that

glossy ibis

european starling

greater blue eared starling

nicobar pigeon

purple martin

glowing puffleg

violet backed starling

+ special shoutout to rob garren and his purple poultry project. he is breeding his chickens to be very shiny and very purple

a few additions from aotearoa; kererū!

tūī!

takahē!

@todaysbird