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Reference Material

@otatma / otatma.tumblr.com

this blog is 18+ only (for unrelenting political rage and ongoing mental health problems). tech and gaming nerd. uncommodifiable. ≥40, neurodivergent, enby, they/them
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Last week I accidentally took an edible at 10x my usual dose. I say “accidentally” but it was really more of a “my friend held it out to my face and I impulsively swallowed it like a python”, which was technically on purpose but still an accident in that my squamate instincts acted faster than my ability to assess the situation and ask myself if I really wanted to get Atreides high or not.

Anyway. I was painting the wall when it hit. My friend heard me make a noise and asked what was wrong—I explained that I had just fallen through several portals. I realized that painting the wall fulfilled my entire hierarchy of needs, and was absolutely sure that I was on track to escaping the cycle of samsara if I just kept at it a little longer. I was thwarted on my journey towards nirvana only by the fact that I ran out of paint.

Seeking a surrogate act of humble service through which I might be redeemed and made human, I turned to unwashed dishes in the sink and took up the holy weapon of the sponge. I was partway through cleaning the blender when it REALLY hit.

You ever clean a blender? It’s a shockingly intimate act. They are complex tools. One of the most complicated denizens of the kitchen. Glass and steel and rubber and plastic. Fuck! They’ve got gaskets. You can’t just scrub ‘em and rinse them down like any other piece of shit dish. You’ve got to dissemble them piece by piece, groove by sensitive groove, taking care to lavish the spinning blades with cautious attention. There’s something sensual about it. Something strangely vulnerable.

As I stood there, turning the pieces over in my hands, I thought about all the things we ask of blenders. They don’t have an easy job. They are hard laborers taking on a thankless task. I have used them so roughly in my haste for high-density smoothies, pushing them to their limits and occasionally breaking them. I remembered the smell of acrid smoke and decaying rubber that filled the kitchen in the break room the last time I tried to make a smoothie at work—the motor overtaxed and melted, the gasket cracked and brittle. Strawberry slurry leaked out of it like the blood of a slain animal.

Was this blender built to last? Or was it doomed to an early grave in some distant landfill by the genetic disorder of planned obsolescence? I didn’t know, and was far too high to make an educated guess. But I knew that whatever care and tenderness and empathy I put into it, the more respect for the partnership of man and machine, the better it would perform for me.

This thought filled me with a surge of affection. However long its lifespan, I wanted it to be filled with dignity and love and understanding. I thought: I bet no one has hugged this blender before. And so I lifted it from its base.

A blender is roughly the size and shape of a human baby. Cradling one in your arms satisfies a primal need. A month ago I was permitted to hold an infant for the first time in my life, an experience which was physically and psychologically healing. I felt an echo of that satisfaction holding my friend the blender, and the thought of parting with it felt even more ridiculous than bringing it with me to hang out on my friend’s bed.

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Closest match: Magallana gigas genome assembly, chromosome: 2 Common name: Pacific Oyster

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ashe-delta

I can be trusted with fangs. I can be trusted with claws. I can be trusted with wings. I can be trusted with a tail. I can be trusted with horns. I can be trusted with cybernetics. I can be trusted with a form I wasn't born into. Give it. Give it to me

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imagine if you will, a fairly dry survival crafting game in which you live in a bunker and must periodically venture out to scavenge food, set up turrets for attacking monsters, etc

now, your computer inside the bunker has a game-inside-a-game on it which is a charming farming sim of undeniably greater quality and scope than the survival game you're playing. therefore, the object of the game becomes to keep your bunker secure so you can play the farming game more.

now, once you achieve the highest rating in the farming game, a secret shop inside it unlocks, and one of the novelty items you can purchase is a game console, giving you access to games-inside-a-game-inside-a-game. most of the games for it are typical mobile shovelware, but one of them is a highly polished, extremely brutal precision platformer with amazing level design and production values exceeding that of the survival game and farming sim combined.

it is only at this point that the purpose of this entire contrivance becomes clear: to create the most deranged speedrun community the world has ever seen.

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This is breaking containment into the TERF enclosures which I very much expected, but I will happily shout from the rooftops that furry porn artists are more productive and beneficial to society than JKR’s incessant whining on the elon musk dick riding app about how much she hates trans people

1439 votes but 288 reblogs because the TERFs are afraid of the truth so they're just linking it directly to each other lmao

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ms-demeanor

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.

So I told my dentist about this post and it turns out she has a tumblr.

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I, of mostly sound body and spirit, request that if I’m ever to die, someone post a new work on my AO3 that says “sorry, she died, ongoing stories postponed forever” because don’t I want my fanfic buddies to think I ghosted them. Amen or whatever you say in a will.

This was written as a joke, but for those who don't know, this is an actual optional service that AO3 provides called Fannish Next of Kin.

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Sometimes I worry that I love too easily.

Then I remember it costs nothing to be filled with love, and my love requires no reciprocity. It is something I tend to in my heart. Like a little garden, shared with others if they want, but otherwise enjoyed by me alone.

I keep loving.

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knitmeapony

In the law, there's this idea called the "last clear chance" doctrine.

If you are in an accident, and you had the last clear chance to avoid the accident, then you are, at least in some portion, responsible for the accident.

For instance, if you are driving and a car pulls out in front of you, and you could've slammed on the brake but do not, you're responsible for that, even if the turn the other car made was illegal. Moreover, you might be held partially responsible for the other person's injuries, depending on how things work in your location.

This is even true if you can merely mitigate the damage. If you have a chance to limit the damage -- again, let's say you don't brake and the result is a collision at 40MPH instead of 10MPH -- the additional damage you cause could be considered your fault.

To me, this seems very applicable to voting.

The two parties in the US are going to put a couple of candidates up in the next few months. Both of them might be dangerous. But in the end, everyone who can vote is going to have one last, clear chance to avoid, or at least mitigate, damage.

It sucks that both parties are out there driving like maniacs.

But the fact of the matter is, they've put us in this position. And if you don't put on the brakes -- that is, at least mitigate damage -- you are responsible for the additional damage caused.

In the national elections, a choice not to vote for Biden is a choice not to brake when some jerk pulls into your lane. And if there's an accident and a lot of damage -- to voting rights in general, to reproductive rights, to the health and safety and life of trans and other queer people, to education, to the environment -- then you are responsible for not attempting mitigation.

You have the last clear chance to minimize danger and damage. And while you can yell until you're blue in the face that the Democratic party put you in that position in the first place by not running another candidate, you are still responsible even if you try to abdicate that responsibility.