Make Lunch Not War

For those with homes built to keep heat in, not let it out: aluminum foil your windows, shiny side out. Cover the window, tape up the sides, maybe tape cardboard behind it to help insulate from the heat outside and absorb heat that gets through the foil.

Love, a former Californian, whose had to keep houses cool without any electricity.

P.S. this is a method endorsed by FEMA and the Department of Energy, so if you need more than anecdotal evidence, there ya go.

in light of recent events, i want to take a moment to speak to all of the lovely people who are on t, want to be on t, or are considering going on t.

no matter what anyone tells you, please remember: t is not going to turn you into a monster. it’s not going to make you violent. it’s not going to make you hurt people. it’s not going to make you a bad person. it’s not going to make you someone people should be afraid of. it’s not going to make you lose control of yourself in some awful way.

i’m so much happier on t than i ever thought i could be. i went from having incredibly volatile and overwhelming emotions that could take over my entire life pre-t to being calmer, more in control of my emotions, and more frequently happy than i have been in years.

like any hormone, it affects everyone a bit differently. it might not change your emotions that much at all, and you might find that the physical effects are much more prominent for you. it might cause some mood swings for you, and you might have to adjust things to lessen them or find strategies to help you manage them. or, if you’re like me, you might find that it makes your emotions much more livable and makes your mind a much calmer, more pleasant place to be.

either way, i can promise you, it will not make you a monster. testosterone is not evil, it’s not poison, it’s not making good people into bad people or kind people into violent people. it’s just a hormone — morally neutral and totally natural to have in your body — and if you need to give yourself a bit more of it to live your happiest, fullest life? never let anyone make you feel ashamed of that.

i love testosterone. i love my fellow trans men and transmascs and every single trans person on t. i love how we find joy and peace in helping our bodies be more comfortable homes for us. i love you. i love us.

I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got paid to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.

Update: This is literally just a thought exercise to help you be more intentional with how you critique media. I'm not enforcing this as some divine rule that must be followed any time you have an opinion on fiction, and I'm definitely not saying that you have to structure every single sentence in a review to contain zero negative phrases. I'm just saying that I repurposed a rule we had at that specific reviewer to be a helpful tool to check myself when writing critiques now. If you don't want to use the tool, literally no one (especially not me) can or wants to force you to use it. As with all advice, it is a totally reasonable and normal thing to not have use for every piece of it that exists from random strangers on the internet. Use it to whatever extent it helps you or not at all.

my friend asked me to pretend to be her boyfriend because her parents are homophobic af but they ended up hating me so much that they were glad when she said she was gay task failed successfully

okay so

yes

i kissed him on the lips infront of his parents and claimed it was the usual greek greeting between men is that enough for you

Are you…. Are you secretly dating her brother OP?

yes

I wonder why

Show up again to admit to dating the brother, but dress like a typical suburbanite and act like you've never met the parents before. Absolute power move.

asdgfgsjfh im totally doing this

want an update?

ofc you do

but i'm too tired to write all of what happened down right now so instead try to imagine the most awkward situation you've ever been in.

now multiply the awkwardness by 100

first of all i'm just gonna show the difference in what i was wearing

an example of what i would wear as my friend's fake bf:

and as my boyfriend's actual bf:

when my bf and i showed up his dad did such a double take

sooo yeah my bf told his parents he's gay, they looked surprised but told him it was fine... then they shared a look of pure horror (seriously, it was like they had just found out they're in the matrix) and said

"and uh. why is...he here?"

i went and introduced myself like we had never met before and said i was their son's boyfriend

:3

i've never seen two people look more angry before but they weren't gonna say anything because they had other family members over

the family members who had never met me before and therefore knew nothing about the fake relationship thing started asking me what faith i am. i said i was raised protestant, though i'm not very religious now, but that's something i want to change. i had never mentioned anything about being a protestant before and i had said several times that my family was greek orthodox but gaslight gatekeep girlboss

aaaand then the awkwardness began. those were probably the most awkward minutes of my life (we didn't stay for long because i thought the dad was gonna hit me [he probably was. i saw him clenching his fists several times]) and i don't think anyone has ever looked at me with such murderous intent as my bf's parents

update two electric boogaloo ig

i have a girlfriend now🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

Been thinking about making stickers,. What do y’all think?

aaaaa omg a coworker just came to my desk like "oh, you changed your name? me too, look!--" and pointed out her badge and then her ringless hand and gleefully announced, "divorce!!" and we exchanged congratulations and fist bumped djdnsnjs best interaction of my entire transition

STATUS: DIVORCED (POSITIVE)

ideal hangout i invite 2 talkative and funny friends over and listen to them talk to each other

notes are informing me that this is not neurotypical behavior

all of those funeral options like the tree pod or mushroom shroud or urn with seeds that "feeds" the tree are uhhhh, bullshit. unfortunately. if you want to be a tree when you die, be buried in the ground without a francy casket or embalming, and have a tree planted above you. this is the same thing as any of these hypothetical "tree pods" but it's skipping the scammy cash grab companies trying to capitalize on grief with fake ass science.

cremated remains will not "feed" anything, either. they'll probably impede growth, tbh. cremated remains are non-organic. what's left over after a cremation is hollow, dry, brittle bone fragments that someone like me sweeps up and puts in a big metal blender to create the smooth "ashes" one expects. By all means, go ahead and scatter ashes in nature, but don't expect anything to grow from them.

If you want your body to return to nature after death, go for a green burial or an at-sea burial. there are many dedicated green burial sites in the world, and one also has the option of simply being buried in a more traditional cemetery that allows for simple wicker caskets w/o a vault around them, and the body left unembalmed. If the tree thing is really your jam, go for burial in a dedicated green cemetery that allows your family to plant a sapling above you, or if it is available where you live have your body composted and use the soil to grow plants.

tldr; there are options for green funerals out there, and options for "becoming a tree," but I would not recommend going anywhere near products offering this such as tree pods, etc. as they are expensive scams preying on people's grief for their dumb start up. get composted or green buried 💚🌲 source: I'm a mortuary scientist and provider of both traditional funerals/cremations & green burial/at-sea burial.

Probably popular opinion: homework sucks. When I was eight, after spending six hours at school, I should have had some time to play, read and watch cartoons. I shouldn't have had to spend most afternoons crying after three hours of homework and then on top of that having to study for whatever tests I had. I was eight and sleep deprived. Like fuck off.

And if you asked for less, they gave you more. If you struggled, because of problems focusing or whatever you had, that was on you.

This post brought back post homework problems I’ve always had.

I always got extra math homework because I wasn't good at it and struggled with basic math so I had to practice more. Years later it turns out I have dyscalculia. Imagine how well that extra homework served me except to make me cry.

Spaniard here. Idk if it was different for any other Spanish people around here but when I was eight, every day I got something like:

Every day, something like that. Plus all the work I couldn't do at school as well because how the fuck do you expect me to do so much in the half an hour you are giving me. So sometimes those 5 math problems turned into 8, those 8 English exercises turned into 12 and stuff like that. Plus I had to study for tests on top of it all.

So yeah, not American but it's pretty much hell here as well. At least it was for me.

cosmic horror (god loves you too much and keeps resurrecting you)

cosmic soap opera (god loves your boyfriend too much and everytime you die it basically breaks him so god has to resurrect you even though he's really annoyed about it)

The Daily Times, New Philadelphia, Ohio, July 9, 1924

whoever wrote this paper has the funniest phrasing possible

happy turtle bit off a cop’s toe in the hudson river day for those who celebrate

Loitering is so fucking stupid to get in trouble for. God gifts us the ability to just hang out around places and you have the audacity to say I can’t. I’ll kill you bro I’ll fucking kill you

it should be illegal for landlords to charge for in building laundry

it should be illegal for landlords

Gay Denial (2009) 

Pencil on Paper

March 6th, 2009

Dear Journal,

I found out what lesbian means today, Ella told me at recess. It’s unfair because girls are so much prettier than guys. It’s like comparing a flower to an old shoe. But I’m not a lesbian, almost 99% of my friends are guys.

Shakespeare could only aspire to this level of dramatic irony.

i wish i could see this picture for the first time again

Every time I see some gamerbro edit of a female video game character to make her 'prettier', I always see something I have mentally dubbed Cockroach Wife Syndrome (in honor of the guy who accidentally conditioned himself to only be aroused by a fantasy of his cockroach wife Ogtha).

That is to say, there is a certain subset of gamerbro who interacts so rarely with real women, that his primary touchstone for how women look is fiction: often video games and anime. So when a video game woman looks too realistic--too close to having traits that one might find in real flesh and blood women--this is foreign to them. This is unattractive. They have been jacking it to hentai and blender animation porn for too many years, and have inadvertently conditioned themselves to only be sexually aroused by the exaggerated cartoonish traits of animated women.

So now every time I see one such edit, I can't help but think. My. What a coincidence you've made her look more like an anime waifu. Truly dedicated to your cockroach wife.

You can’t just breeze over something like “the guy who accidentally conditioned himself to only be aroused by a fantasy of his cockroach wife Ogtha” without at least linking a 20 minute video breakdown of this man’s descent into madness.

Oh is Ogtha not common knowledge? Eight years ago this was posted on reddit:

Two years ago, we got this update on the life of this roachfucker:

TLDR it's a guy who became obsessed with human-sized roaches with human intelligence after reading Kafka in high school, an obsession which eventually came to monopolize his romantic interests (and has sporadically had catastrophic impacts on his life ever since).

what the fuck happened to my post

in conversation about white people who go to Japan and expect their knowledge of anime to culturally carry them, I was once posed with “it’s like if there was a Japanese guy who was obsessed with spongebob and came over here and thought he could get by just communicating in spongebob quotes.” This is a false equivalence because if such a man existed we would crown him king. We’d love him. Americans would fucking love that. sometimes I get sad that this isn’t a real guy I can invite to a party.