Oh my god! For years I’ve had this idea for a stupid joke where a guy is trying to impress a women by talking about alpha and beta males and her thinking he’s talking about omegaverse stuff, and I just overheard a conversation exactly like that on the bus!

By the tone of her voice I’m pretty sure she was trying to make a joke because she assumed he knew about alpha/beta/omega fanfics but he wasn’t getting it and I’m not sure if she was really committed to the bit or if she just couldn’t fathom that he wouldn’t know it’s a fanfiction trope but she never explained that to him and by the time I (sadly) had to get off he was asking if omega men are trans or something.

I’m so grateful that the one time my headphones ran out of battery on the bus I got to overhear this glorious conversation!

We’re getting closer to autumn and when I bike to work I see more and more seemingly abandoned bikes parked on the side of the road, but then I notice a man and a child who’s still wearing their school bag working together to pick apples, or a man still wearing his high visibility work clothes who’s putting raspberries in a wrinkled plastic bag, or an old woman who’s gingerly collecting mushrooms and putting them straight into the basket on her bike because she brought nothing else.

All of these people clearly didn’t plan to go foraging but just happened to spot something on their commute, and it made me wonder what people do in countries that doesn’t have much of a bike culture. Like, I get why Norwegians don’t bike as much as Danes. Taking a stroll in most towns is plenty of work with those mountains (seriously, if you ever wanted proof that fat doesn’t mean out of shape, watch fat Norwegians walk up and down those inner-city mountainsides like it’s nothing)

So my question is just, if you like to forage but don’t bike which means you can’t just stop when you spot something yummy in the bushes, what do you do exactly? Do you make a trip of it and drive to a forest? Because here that’s considered hardcore foraging for nature nerds here, even though most people do casual foraging. Or is foraging mostly done when you go for a walk and randomly spot a berry bush? Because a lot of my casual foraging is done when I walk my dogs.

What do you think matters more? A creator’s intentions or the consumer’s interpretation of the product?

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately because I have an idea for a comic I really want to make and a lot of the fantastical characters are written from my own intersex experience of sex and gender but after sharing the story with trans people I was made aware that they read the characters as allegories for being trans and felt some aspects were problematic, but they aren’t problematic if you read them as intersex.

None of the characters are one to one with being either intersex or trans which is why people interpreted them differently. They do things like easily switching between male and female without changing their pronouns, or are either born or deliberately permanently transform their bodies to intersex with some using fixed pronouns while others doesn’t really care about what pronouns people use for them. Only one character so far is consistently referred to as they because they were specifically created to be intersex and they haven’t developed a gender identity yet and it’s left up in the air if they ever will or if they truly feel like a they.

Again, this is written from an intersex perspective where biological sex is more fluid than gender for a lot of the characters because that’s something I personally want to explore, but at the same time I’m not interested in spending a lot of time and resources on it if I constantly have to explain or defend it because people read it as a trans story and think I’m being mean and insensitive.

And this worry stems from how often I see people say “It doesn’t matter what the author’s intentions were. If people get this message from it that’s what matters” and people are far more aware of trans people than intersex people so I can understand why they would assume it’s a trans story (and admittedly the character who changes their sex to intersex comes pretty close but they don’t do it for gender reasons) but it would also make it very unpleasant for me if people think my experiences as an intersex person matters less than other people’s view of my experience.

It also has some other themes like insecurity, trying to be a better person and trying to work both within and outside of the expectations people have for you, but I feel those are more universal experiences that people can get behind without having my intentions spelled out for them.

A very handy dandy trick for when you feel nauseous is to drink something acidic. Ginger tea is usually brought up but lemon juice works just as well.

This has led to situations where I’m desperately trying to hide that I’m drinking straight out of one of these in public

Me: It’s getting dark. We should probably draw the curtains.

Housemates: Why?

Me: Because someone could be out there looking at us and we wouldn’t know.

Housemates: Pff! Who walks around in the dark like that?

Me: ……ME!!! I walk around in the dark and I meet people all the time! Draw the damn curtains!

My two zodiacs. I’m well aware that it’s silly to consider Ophiuchus the 13th zodiac because the sun pass through other constellations that aren’t considered “secret zodiacs” but as one of the people who would be an Ophiuchus how could I not?

I’m always a bit disappointed by depictions of Sagittarius. People focus too much on the bow and arrow when the main trait of the zodiac is that of an adventurer or explorer. Always “on the hunt” for knowledge and has a strong need for freedom so you can join them if you want but they’ll go with or without you.

As of now Ophiuchus is less defined. Some of the most common traits associated with the zodiac is a passionate defiance of authority, questioning and breaking societal norms, creativity, wisdom forged by accepting others, and healing.

I’m not one of the people who believes in zodiacs but I understand why they’re popular in art and fiction. It’s a bunch of interesting characters, both mentally and physically, free to be used and reinterpretationed.

Trollbeads is a Danish jewelry company best known for their expensive glass and silver beads. They’re the sort of jewelry you’re supposed to buy or give as a gift for special occasions. I admittedly have a soft spot for them because it’s the only place I can get silver pendants depicting trolls and other Nordic folklore creatures and recently they’ve been advertising pretty aggressively to me because I bought their chihuahua bead.

They especially want me to buy this bead.

It’s a male troll standing on a classic Danish designer chair according to the description. Only I had to visit their store to see it from this angle. Every ad I get looks like THIS

I don’t even know what sort of “special occasion” this would be for other than to show you appreciate your bottom/top.

I love when people give their pets names that are usually associated with other types of pets.

My favorites so far: the English bulldog named Mittens, Félix the Havanese, Kitty the German shepherd, and cats named Spot and Maren (a very stereotypical name for a cow in Denmark, both named that way because they have spots)

Though my absolute favorite naming convention is to simply give them human names. It started when my mom named our huge gray tomcat Kurt. Dude would fall asleep on the road and yet the thing that got him in the end was a fight with another cat.

For years I named my dogs after famous scientists at the suggestion of my housemate who wanted our first dog to be named Tesla because of Nikola Tesla (I care very little about cars and Teslas weren’t commonplace yet so I was not prepared for the amount of people asking if I loved electric cars, nor how many people didn’t know Tesla was a person) My next two dogs were Percy (Julian) and Marie (Curie). That stopped when I adopted Ellie because I don’t think dogs should be named and renamed at the drop of a hat once they’ve learned their name. Besides, it’s a reminder that she had another life and another family before me and experiences I don’t know about.

Buuut I might have to name my next dog Kitty if they’re a puppy.

What are flip flops called in your language because in every language I’ve seen they’re named after the sound they make or some variant of it.

In Denmark they’re called klip klap.

What’s a simple but reliable video editing app for iPads? All I need is the ability for smooth, gradual transition between video clips and overlaying two tracks of sound (one for voice and one for my own choice of music)

I don’t think I ever feel more like I’m living in the future than when I’m walking my dogs across some grass in my neighborhood and one of the robot lawnmowers owned by our housing association rolls by and we have to sidestep a bit to avoid it but the dogs mostly ignore it and we continue on our way.

I was born well before the internet and smartphones but there’s just something about seeing a little machine roughly the size of my dogs so perfectly part of the landscape that animals aren’t even afraid of it. They’re so sensitive to touch now I’ve seen it bump into a hedgehog and stop.

Of all our innovations it was a little robot buzzing around in the grass that got me.

I get a lot of comments and tags on my exercise post along the lines of “I have ADHD how do I motivate myself?”

As someone with raging ADHD myself here’s what I do for literally anything that I might not have a super strong passion for but need to get done.

It’s all about keeping my mind occupied and interested in something. Doesn’t have to be the actual task. As long as my brain is being stimulated by something else I can do pretty much anything that doesn’t require me to be super focused on what I’m doing. Podcasts and audiobooks are perfect for this. It has to be about something I’m interested in because if I’m not I’ll start looking at my phone to seek dopamine somewhere else because lord knows I’m not getting it from the task at hand. But a good podcast about folklore, high strangeness, pop culture or scientific subject in my ears and I’ll be done in no time.

Not saying it’s going to work for all of you but you should definitely try it out if you haven’t or if you tried but it didn’t work try looking for a podcast/audiobook you actually like instead of going with something other people told you to listen to.

Feel free to leave suggestions for podcasts/audiobooks in the comments for people about subjects you like to listen to. Someone might share your taste.

For folklore and strangeness podcasts I like Loremen, One Strange Thing, Uncanny, We Can Be Weirdos, Let’s Get Haunted, Radio Rental and What Magic is This.

Pop culture: I Hate It But I Love It, How Did This Get Made, Mostly Nitpicking, The Villain Was Right, The Weekly Planet and Talk From Superheroes.

Science: 99% Invisible, Articles of Interest, Ragusea Podcast, If Books Could Kill and Sawbones.

They showed Hot Fuzz on tv last night and for the first time in 16 years I noticed that Nicolas’ little cottage at the end has a garden overflowing with flowers while the other gardens nearby just have plain old lawns. He didn’t just love peace lilies. I can only imagine what the inside of his house looks like.

It also just occurred to me that the reason why Walker explains Doris’ sex jokes is because he’s the translator of the group.

Also also, it’s funny how some people got offended because the movie depicts cops as the good guys but it’s implied that things aren’t necessarily better now with Nicolas in charge of the village. Joyce calls him a fascist and he’s repeatedly called out for punishing minor criminals too harshly and at the very end he’s seen wearing black gloves like a movie villain, speeding off to take care of some rabble rousers.

So yeah, the people went from being under the thumb of Frank who let people get away with almost anything so long as they didn’t tarnish the image of the village, to Nicolas who will drop kick you for shoplifting a chocolate bar. It’s not hard to imagine a sequel where another young newcomer who comes from a minority group has to take down Nicolas and Danny all these years later.

It’s a smart movie y’all.

Playing around with brushes. As someone who loves traditional media but gets too frustrated when I can’t fix my mistakes these sorts of brushes are godsend. They force you to use them like you would real watercolour and ink by building layer on layer but I can quickly go “Oh no” and go back.

Sissi loves hugs ❤️

How could I let people convince me rain ponchos are embarrassing? They’re the best damn rain-wear I’ve ever owned! They’re actually waterproof unlike a lot of raincoats and they’re easy to roll up and cram into almost any bag AND you can fit anything you don’t want to get wet under them! They’re essentially for a Scandinavian summer where the weather is forever changing! (Admittedly I had to sew the edges together to keep it from blowing around too much but that was a small price to pay) The Asians next door know what’s up!

I was talking with my housemate about how to be more physically active if you’re not used to it at all because everywhere you’re told to start a training routine where you push yourself a little every day, and while that may seem easy for some people it can be really fucking daunting if you start from zero.

As someone who comes from a very physically active family that doesn’t exercise just for the sake of exercising but do things like walk to the grocery store and bike to work, here’s my advice that has always worked for me:

Go super duper easy on yourself.

If you want to walk more start by walking for 3 or 5 minutes. The shortest possible walk you feel you’re capable of. A trip around the block or across the yard. You don’t need to sweat or get your blood pumping. Just a short stroll. The hardest part is to convince yourself to set aside 5 minutes every day to go on this short walk but nothing else about it should be hard. Do it every day and one day you’ll realize that you don’t want to go home just yet. It’s very important that you don’t think “I want to pressure myself to walk further” but rather “I haven’t spent all my walking energy yet. I have more walk in me” and only then do you lengthen the walk. I repeat, at no point should it be exhausting or difficult because even when it feels easy your body will be building muscle and stamina and it will eventually feel too easy and you’ll naturally want to crank it back up to easy again.

If you’re not used to being physically active it might not make a ton of sense when I say that you’ll have more walking energy left but trust me, you’ll get it when you get there.

I grew up with going on evening walks with my parents and passed that on to other housemates who didn’t get it at first but are now going on walks long after they moved somewhere else. Because once you get the hang of it you’ll realize how calming it is on the brain to move the body even if the body isn’t exhausted afterwards.

And it of course helps to entertain yourself especially in the beginning. My housemate started out listening to audiobooks and podcasts but eventually realized Pokémon Go was the best motivator. Whatever you feel like you want to do on your 5 minute easy stroll.