Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hlep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you ask for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hlep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hlep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it helps reinforce the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hleper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

pokémon evolution chains we need

Some important additions:

Because it's impossible for me not to chime in I wanted to add that glitch pokemon evolutions in Gen 1 are also just on another level.

I present to you: Every single one of these which is possible to achieve in a Gen 1 game

Could you give me the names of those glitch Pokémon 👀

Oh heck yes

The first one of these is actually a TON of different lines but here are some examples:

Things like to evolve into Clefairy idk

An example of the second:

Many Paths, One destination:

Skipping right to the end

And whatever the heck all this is

Thank you for your time please go fourth and make your game throw up pokemon.

Oh god. Now I want to chart all of them.

Is there a dedicated glitch wiki, or did you pull those from Bulba?

These were from Bulbapedia but there IS a dedicated Glitch pokemon Wiki over here

It's an archive based on Glitch City Labs which was unfortunately shut down in 2020. Still a great resource for learning about any and all things Glitch Pokemon.

Oh my god. A dedicated wiki. It makes me so happy not to have to run into Fandom’s bullshit 😭

Believe it or not, it was even better when it was a dedicated site. I knew the guy who ran it a long time ago through a forum actually. Really cool dude. Sad to see the site go, but it's understandable.

You’re breaking me, man

I'm just so proud to watch another person go off the deep end into this.

This is exactly what I hoped to inspire.

Absolutely deranged.

Is it not a thing of beauty? Is this not exactly what you asked for?

I'm absolutely cackling this is amazing. Thank you for making this, you're doing the lords work.

Anon posts the rare good question on 4Chan.

I saw in the comments that 'no one enforces' the loitering thing, so please know that over 10,000 Americans are accosted by police every year for "loitering", and many of these situations end in injury or death. The crime of "loitering" itself has incredibly racist roots, and today still serve as a blanket excuse to harass marginalized (usually poor and/or Black) communities. (TW in this post for text mentions of anti-Black violence, visuals of arrests)

For example, these two men were arrested while waiting to meet with a real estate broker. A white witness at the Starbucks said staff had no issue with her sitting there for an hour under the exact same conditions, but as soon as PoC came in the staff treated them completely differently:

Sadly, accusations of "loitering" have led to deaths. Amadou Diallo was shot at 41 times while unarmed. His neighbor had called the police on him for "loitering" in his own neighborhood:

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/05/nyregion/officers-in-bronx-fire-41-shots-and-an-unarmed-man-is-killed.html

"Loitering" isn't no big deal, and if you think no one enforces it that only means it has never been weaponized against you. For other people it has been a literal death sentence.

Oh it’s over for you hoes

Bitch you thought

Oh you’re all going down

I'm going to post something and I know it's going to be controversial, but I need everyone to read to the end and see where I'm coming from here. Please read this carefully before you reply, because I know a knee jerk reaction to this will be negative.

We have got to stop saying that killing all sex offenders is okay. We have to stop with the "kill your local rapist uwu" crap.

Look, I'm a survivor. I get hating abusers. I would be fine if my abuser got hit by an eighteen wheeler. But this idea that all sex offenders should be killed is bad.

First, let's look at the original reason behind the Sex Offender Registry (SOR). In 1989, Jacob Wetterling was murdered by a neighbor with a previous conviction for assaulting a child and because computers weren't common yet, cops couldn't easier check on the local pedophiles. The idea was to have a list of local offenders to check when similar crimes appeared. Makes sense, right?

But the SOR didn't stay limited to violent offenders. It expanded to include anyone who committed a sex crime (we'll get to what that means in a second). It also let civilians see who was on it, but not why. It became a way to prevent people from living near schools and denying people jobs. It created a homelessness problem and widespread vigilantism.

Second, let's discuss what a sex crime is. It's not synonymous with rape or assault. It's not even synonymous with harassment. Sex crimes includes everything from having sex in public, sex work, public urination, and streaking, to violent crimes like assault and rape. Being on the SOR doesn't say what the crime is so there's just as much chance that a person did something stupid as someone being a full blown predator. This doesn't matter to vigilantes. It means that someone who went streaking in college can't live near schools even if they're not a pedophile and have nothing to do with attacking kids.

What is and isn't a sex crime is vague and that can be added to. Kentucky has made drag a sex crime. Florida and Texas made supporting transgender children and giving them medical care into a sex crime. Do we want transgender people to be on the SOR? Are we really threatening to kill those people because they live in the deep south?

Let's not pretend that this hasn't happened. A Tumblr user explained that her wife is on the SOR for hitting on a woman in a bar in the 1990s. She was arrested for soliciting. She wasn't doing that but it didn't matter. Homophobia won. Even after the law was changed and homophobia was officially stricken from the books after the Lawrence ruling, she remained on the registry. That brings me to my next point.

Third, the registry is forever. Yes, I believe that predators will always prey on people and usually can't be reformed, but as I've said, not all of these people are predators. If you get caught for public urination because you're blackout drunk in your twenties, you will be on the registry when you're fifty. Getting off that registry is nearly impossible, even if your conviction is over turned. The woman I mentioned in the previous paragraph attempted to get off the list three times unsuccessfully.

Fourth, there are juveniles on the SOR for "child porn", because they took pictures of themselves. The law is so strict that anyone caught with pictures of nude minors goes on the registry, even if the picture is of themselves and was taken consensually, or was a picture of a partner who was the same age. I think we can agree that sexting as a minor is a bad idea but minors still do it. Putting a sixteen year old on a permanent registry, preventing him from getting jobs or housing, because he took a dick pic is insane. This is the result of zero tolerance laws.

In a similar vein, people on the SOR are often unable to see their own children at schools or hospitals because they're unable to be around kids. That would make sense for someone who is a known pedophile, but it doesn't make sense for anyone who fits any other scenario. Again, we're making it impossible for people who went streaking once to visit their own children in hospitals.

The sex offender registry takes people who have committed a variety of crimes (and some of those shouldn't be crimes to begin with) and paints them all with the same brush. We can't pretend that someone who has sex in public is equivalent to someone who has assaulted multiple people. They're not comparable. The SOR was established to make it easier for police to solve crimes but it's warped into way to brand people and make them easy marks for vigilantes. Saying we should kill everyone on that list is absurd.

This will get worse as more transphobic laws are added. Trans women will be marked as a predators for merely existing. Trans people who use the bathroom might be on a list forever. Parents who love and support their children will be labeled as sex offenders and unable to see not only their kids, but any child.

I know a lot of well intentioned liberals are saying things like "guillotine all sex offenders" and similar things as a way to counteract the lack of support survivors get and the number of people who manage to stay out of jail and offend again and again. I get it. I do. But this rhetoric is very right wing and it encourages the sort of violent attacks that the far right is famous for. The GOP, despite being the hard on crime party, encourages vigilantes. When a person is killed, it's easy to dismiss their murder because they were a sex offender. We saw this with one of Kyle Rittenhouse's victims. Was that man actually a pedophile? I don't know. But his murder should be brought to justice regardless of anything else. Victims don't stop being victims because the victim is a bad person.

This isn't new. Multiple right wing governments, including the US, have labeled political dissidents as perverts to get away with harming them. Just look at the Lavender Scare led by Sen. McCarthy. The public doesn't care if perverts and pedophiles get sent to prisons.

I am not saying we shouldn't punish child abusers, harassers, and rapists. We should. But we have to really consider how flawed our justice system is and how many innocent people are on the SOR before we talk about killing everyone on it.

The people who are convicted of violent sex crimes, the ones that do the most harm, also don't deserve to be on a public registry

The SOR is making people homeless because even if there are no zoning restrictions or they can find a place to live with restrictions, it's hard to find a place to rent. It's hard to find a job. No house no job, hard to do your check ins, hard to pay for your new license or whatever other fees they throw at you. Fail to show up or pay? Back to jail for you. Restrictions like these just perpetuate the prison system

I agree with everything said about how there are bullshit reasons people get put on these lists and people may even be innocent of any actual crime and still get on here

But action against "kill all rapists" mindsets needs to include the type of people you don't have any sympathy for

This is also true. The existence of the SOR assumes that people can never change and doesn't allow for change.

Restrictive probations are pretty much a way for the state to get money. That's true for pretty much all probation.

Can one of the insane Florida men y’all have please fucking maul DeSantis to death

They need to cook up some kind of alligator mutant man and feed him a vodka redbull and just release him in that motherfucker’s house and let it rock and roll

I want DeSantis to experience the kind of death where people in the front row need a splash guard. I want contractors to have to dig out holes inside of bricks and marble to recover parts. People are gonna be hacking him up all day, twenty different outfits ruined and a plastic-lined coffin so it doesn't leak. There's gonna be a crater and a lot of jobs for window washers and huge lines at the car wash OK?

I am not nor have I ever been in Florida but I will volunteer to become the the alligator mutant man. I wanna become a fucked up science experiment and I wanna bite

It's okay to do things slowly.

It's okay if doing the dishes takes you an hour.

It's okay if walking to the store and back takes up your whole morning.

It's okay if it takes you a year to finish a book.

It's okay if you need a moment to think between every step of a task.

It's okay if you need to sit down while getting dressed.

It's okay to eat slowly.

It's okay if you need things explained to you multiple times.

It's okay to be slow in any way whatsoever.

This is so fun try it

Also if you finish reblog with your kill count

I've been reading Cripping Intersex by Celeste Orr and one concept that I think is absolutely crucial and one of the best resources I've found for understanding my own experiences as an intersex person is the term Compulsory Dyadism.

Dr. Orr coins the term: "I propose the expression 'compulsory dyadism' to describe the instituted cultural mandate that people cannot violate the sex dyad, have intersex traits, or 'house the spectre of intersex' (Sparrow 2013, 29). Said spectre must be, according to the mandate, exorcised. However, trying to definitively cast out the spectre via curative violence always fails. The spectre always returns: a new intersex baby is born; one learns that they have intersex traits in adulthood; and/or medical procedures cannot cast out the spectre fully, as evidenced by life-long medical interventions, routines, or patienthood status. And the effects of compulsory dyadism haunt in the form of disabilities, scars, memories, trauma, and medical regimens (e.g., HRT routines). Compulsory dyadism, therefore, is not simply an event or a set of instituted policies but is an ongoing exorcising process and structure of pathologization, curative violence, erasure, trauma, and oppression." (Orr 19-20).

They continue on in their book to explore compulsory dyadism as it shows up in medical interventions, racializing intersex + sports sex testing, and eugenic and prenatal interventions on intersex fetuses. This term makes so much sense to me and puts words to an experience I've been struggling to comprehend--how can it be that so many endosex* people express such revulsion and fear of intersex bodies and traits, yet at the same time don't even know that intersex people exist? Why is it that people understand when I refer to my body in the terms used by freak shows, call myself a hermaphrodite, remember bearded ladies and laugh at interphobic jokes--yet do not even know that intersex people are as common as redheads? Understanding the term compulsory dyadism elucidates this for me. Endosex people might not comprehend what intersex actually is or know anything about our advocacy, but they do grow up in a cultural environment that indoctrinates them into false ideas about the sex binary and cultivates a fear of anything that lies outside of it.

From birth, compulsory dyadism affects every one of us, whether you're intersex or not. Intersex people carry the heaviest burden and often the most visible wounds that compulsory dyadism inflicts, as shown through often the very literal scars of violent, "curative" surgery, but the whole process of sex assignment at birth is a manifestation of compulsory dyadism. Ideas entrenched in the medical system that assign gender to the hormones testosterone and estrogen although neither of those hormones have anything to do with gender, a society that starts selling hair removal products to girls at puberty, and the historical legacy of things like sexual inversion theory are all manifestations of compulsory dyadism. For intersex people, facing compulsory dyadism often means that we are subjected to curative violence, institutionalized medical malpractice that sometimes includes aspects of ritualized sexual abuse, and means that we are left "haunted by, for instance, traumatic memories, acquires body-mind disabilities, an ability that was taken, or a 'paradoxical nostalgia....for all the futures that were lost' (Fisher 2013,45)." (Orr 26).

Compulsory dyadism works in tandem with concepts like compulsory able-bodiedness and compulsory heterosexuality to create mindsets and systems that tie together ideas to suggest that the only "normal" body is a cisgender one that meets capitalist standards of function, is capable of heterosexual sex and reproduction, and has chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, reproductive system, and sex traits that all line up. Part of compulsory dyadism is convincing the public that this is the only way for a body to function, erasing intersex people both by excluding us from public perception and by actively utilizing curative violence as a way to actively erasure intersex traits from our body. Compulsory dyadism works by getting both the endosex and intersex public to buy into the idea that intersex doesn't exist, and if it does exist then it needs to be treated as a freakshow, either exploiting us to put us on display as an aberration or by delegating us to the medical freakshow of experimentation and violence.

Until we all start to fully understand the many, many ways that compulsory dyadism is showing up in our lives, I don't think we're going to be able to achieve true intersex liberation. And in fact, I think many causes are tied into intersex liberation and affected by compulsory dyadism in ways that endosex people don't understand. Take the intense revulsion that some trans people express about the thought of medical transition, for example. Although transitioning does not make people intersex and never will, and the only way to be intersex is to have an intersex variation, I think that compulsory dyadism affects a lot more of that rhetoric than is expressed. The disgust I see some people talking about when they think about medical transition causing them to live in a body that has XX chromosomes, a vagina, but also more hair, a larger clitoris--I think a lot of this rhetoric is born in compulsory dyadism that teaches us to view anything that steps outside the sex dyad with intense fear and violence. I'm thinking about transphobic legislation blocking medical transition and how there's intersex exceptions in almost every one of those bills, and how having an understanding of compulsory dyadism would actually help us understand the ways in which our struggles overlap and choose to build meaningful solidarity, instead of just sitting together by default.

I have so much more to say about this topic, and will probably continue to write about it for a while, but I want to end by just saying: I think this is going to be one of the most important concepts for intersex advocacy going into the next decade. With all due respect and much love to intersex activists both current and present,I think that it's time for a new strategy, not one where we medicalize ourselves and distance ourselves from queer liberation, not one where we sort of just end up as an add on to LGBTQ community by default, not even one where we use a human rights framework, nonprofits, and try to negotiate with the government. I agree with so much of what Dr. Orr says in Cripping Intersex and I think the intersex and/as/is/with disability framework, along with these foundational ideas for understanding our own oppression with the language of compulsory dyadism and curative violence, are providing us with the tools to start laying a foundation for a truly liberatory mode of intersex community building and liberation.

*Endosex means not intersex

Endosex people, please feel free to reblog!

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.

i've discovered btw that referring to animals and objects with neopronouns and other uncommon pronoun sets is a great way to learn how to use them better. a telephone isn't going to care if you use ze/hir for hir. a dog won't notice if you start using ey/em for em. go for it, it helps

I think a lot of people spent their childhoods being very deliberately forced out of their comfort zones by parents / teachers / whomever in a way that was just deeply unpleasant and degrading and so, when they reach young adulthood and are finally allowed real control over their lives, become set on only doing things they know they're comfortable with forever. that's a really important thing to be able to do, especially if you're so used to having your boundaries routinely ignored that you aren't even certain what you like vs what you can bear, so I absolutely see why a person would have a negative reaction to being told that discomfort is good: it can very easily sound like being told that all that work they've been doing to prioritze their needs for the first time ever is Bad and Selfish, actually. and to that I will say two things:

one: as long as you aren't hurting or, like, being a dick to anyone, just staying in your comfort zone isn't an immoral action. if you just want to read one type of book (or just fanfiction), or just eat one type of food, or just watch one type of movie, or not go to new types of social events, you aren't being a bad person for that, and if people say that, they are soundly wrong and just trying to get a self-righteousness kick.

two: trying new things because you want to expand yourself feels a hell of a lot different than trying new things because you're being forced to. you'll feel better about trying new foods if you know you have a back up familiar one in case you can't stomach the new one, it's easier to read new books if you can experiment with audio versions or reading it in little five-page chunks by yourself, you can breathe a lot easier going somewhere new if you aren't chained there for three hours because your parent is your ride home, etc.

tl;dr: new things are good. I get why you might not want to try new things, and that's fine, but it's also more comfortable to try new things as an adult with your own agency so, yeah, what have you got to lose by trying a weird old art film?

It's really important to recognize that the negative reaction you might have to being forced into something new might make your reaction much worse than if you had the no-pressure option to explore it on your own. I always try new foods when no one is around, or only some few close friends I trust on that level, because I feel judged for being a picky eater - even if people aren't *actually* judging me, I feel judged anyways and the pressure makes the whole experience unpleasant and I'm less likely to enjoy the food

It's also important to recognize that sometimes, newness, in and of itself, can trigger a disgust reaction. For this reason, when i'm genuinely trying some new food/drink, I take a small bite/sip or two to get over the initial "this is new and new is bad ew ew ew" reaction, and then take the next bite/sip to actually evaluate how I feel about the flavor/texture/etc. Even when i don't end up liking the food, this often takes a food I'd be super grossed out by and moves it closer to the "eh i simply don't like it" category.

i found out years ago that i can hack my brain into liking a new food simply by getting mildly drunk and horfing it down with some friends. the warmth and happiness of being around people i like somehow reprograms my preferences to like whatever food i was eating at a time.

this isn’t to say this will work for everyone, or even most people! i just mean to say that in adulthood, when you have control over yourself, your body, and your company, you can often find out how to expand your own horizons in a fun and controlled way. experiments are much less costly, and failure is easier to shrug off. i’ve added dozens of previously inaccessible foods to my list of things i like now, from mushrooms to coffee, and it’s really improved my life.

being forced outside your comfort zone is a miserable and useless thing that happens to you a lot as a kid. but learning to step outside your comfort zone on your own, as an adult, is a valuable skill to learn that will pay off for the rest of your life.

New Things to Beware on the Internet

On May 3rd, Google released 8 new top-level domains (TLDs) -- these are new values like .com, .org, .biz, domain names. These new TLDs were made available for public registration via any domain registrar on May 10th.

Usually, this should be a cool info, move on with your life and largely ignore it moment.

Except a couple of these new domain names are common file type extensions: ".zip" and ".mov".

This means typing out a file name could resolve into a link that takes you to one of these new URLs, whether it's in an email, on your tumblr blog post, a tweet, or in file explorer on your desktop.

What was previously plain text could now resolve as link and go to a malicious website where people are expecting to go to a file and therefore download malware without realizing it.

Folk monitoring these new domain registrations are already seeing some clearly malicious actors registering and setting this up. Some are squatting the domain names trying to point out what a bad idea this was. Some already trying to steal your login in credentials and personal info.

This is what we're seeing only 12 days into the domains being available. Only 5 days being publicly available.

What can you do? For now, be very careful where you type in .zip or .mov, watch what website URLs you're on, don't enable automatic downloads, be very careful when visiting any site on these new domains, and do not type in file names without spaces or other interrupters.

I'm seeing security officers for companies talking about wholesale blocking .zip and .mov domains from within the company's internet, and that's probably wise.

Be cautious out there.

I really want to reiterate how this can go wrong frequently and fast, folks.

A malicious actor sets up a page with an auto-downloader squatting on a domain name that matches a common zip file name like photos DOT zip. This website is set up to start an auto downloader upon being visited, downloading a zip file with the same name as the URL which contains malicious software (virus, worm, keylogger, etc).

Scenario.

Someone you know well sends you an email or text with promised photos attached. The email even reads something like this.

Because .zip is now a TLD, that plain text is automatically formatted into a link to malicious actor's website without them having to send you anything.

Folk with family with iPhones or iPads that are sent multiple photos in one go might be familiar with iCloud's tendency to automatically compile them into zip file for the sender and less savvy tech users have trouble NOT doing that.

These same less savvy users, or even just someone just not thinking in the moment, will click that .zip link, not realizing it isn't the the same as clicking on the promised attachment.

They download a file that matches the name they expected. They open it because they were expecting that file and it's from a trusted source. Except the file they downloaded isn't the one that was sent by their trusted source and now they have malware.

Another Scenario.

An IT person tries to send you an email with instructions on how to resolve a problem with a commonly used filename like install-repair DOT zip or to install new software like microsoft-office DOT zip.

The email may start with instructions of where to go get the legitimate file to do the install or repair, but now a line later in the instructions is also has a link to a .zip URL. A user, already frazzled by IT problems, may click it to ensure they have the right file. Again, they download malicious code from a squatting website or it prompts them with a fake login and now the squatting website has stolen their login credentials for a legitimate site. All due to an expected email from a trusted source.

Above you can see microsoft-office DOT zip is already out there with a fake Microsoft login screen waiting to steal your credentials.

These risks are already out there now because the TLD has been activated.

Plain text on old post are already being resolved into links to the new websites.

Here you can see a tweet from 2021, long before .zip was a domain name, now resolves that plan text into a clickable link. You'll start seeing this everywhere, and malicious actors do not have to lift a finger to send it to you.

Yes, a lot of users aren't going to click that, but a lot of folk will. Whomever is squatting on photos DOT zip domain name has made a one time payment to have access to anyone that ever sees that file name typed out.

In an example of an existing squatter site, clientdocs DOT zip is exactly one such pre-setup .zip domain name that initiates an automatic download. This one may be harmless, but the set ups are already out there and waiting to catch folk.

It's an unnecessary and risky can of worms that's been opened up.

Holy Unforced Errors, Batman.

my mom is reading conspiracy stuff aloud off facebook again and I just heard "my fear is that microchipping pets will cause them to turn against their owners during the tribulation"

So my in laws work in the dog business and I now horrifically curious if my mother in law has heard similar bonkers ideas. I know there's definitely people out there with strong opinions about neutering pets.. (there's even an industry for fake dog testicles so if you HAVE to neuter your dog you can get prosthetics put in) and I wouldn't be suprised if they overlapped

W...why would you give your dog prosthetic testicles? Do people think dogs have enough insight into biology to see testicles as the source of their sense of "masculinity?" Do they think dogs HAVE a sense of masculinity??

There is unfortunately a surprising amount of people out there who legitimately think neutering dogs, especially male dogs, is another form of basically force feminization and that yes, male dogs do know and mourn the loss of their nuts.

The guy who invented basically fake dog nuts is a wild story btw that I highly recommend reading.

This is the worst thing i've ever googled.

I know I have a post on here criticizing pearl-clutching over the use of the word "trauma" but I think trauma is kind of a strong word here. If anyone experiences trauma, it would be the dog...right?

SWEET LORD what a sentence

WHAT?? WHO THINKS THIS WAY??? YOU CAN'T JUST SAY THAT LIKE IT'S AN UNDERSTANDABLE THOUGHT

People were tagging me in this post for the conspiracy stuff and I made the mistake of not reading the comments. I was gonna make a whole post about how fear of chip implants has its roots in the satanic panic, but whatever is happening here is far more insane.

On the positive side, Neuticles have made it easier for people to neuter male pets when their partners are resistant to the idea. Schedule surgery when resistant partner is out of town for a while, have Neuticles implanted, remove cone of shame before resistant partner gets home.

I

To be entirely honest I believe it is impossible for a relationship to require secret stealth neutering of dog via realistic prosthetic testicles and contain no other dysfunctions. There is no possible scenario in which this is an isolated exception to a general trend of well-adjusted sanity and reasonableness, instead of the narrowest window into an entire world of crazy.

Setting aside the extreme saneism in the last comment, the idea behind it is one I fully agree with. Like, at absolute minimum, if you have to hide your dog's essential health care from your partner, you two have such wildly different worldviews that you should not be caring for a living animal together.

Ok but I do also want to point out that another relevant factor here is show dogs. In pretty much every show dog organization's rulebook that I know of, show dogs are required to be un-neutered and have normal, functioning reproductive systems. And that's not generally an issue, but it becomes an issue if your dog has some sort of reproductive condition like, say, cryptorchidism, which is considered a major fault and is not allowed in the show ring, or develops testicular cancer and needs them nuts removed, etc. So some less scrupulous owners who have dogs with these conditions may have these fake testicles surgically implanted so they can still show their dogs.

Of course, this is incredibly against the rules, but I would not be surprised if that was the actual initial reason these fake dog testicles were invented, and the "preserve your dog's manhood" justification was made up after the fact to dodge accusations of helping people cheat in the show ring, and a bunch of hapless dickhead dog owners bought into the lie in reflection of their own fragile sense of masculinity. Grifters gonna grift, yo.

hey you!

yeah, you who has trouble swallowing pills.

When I was about 23, I finally had someone teach me a trick that worked.  Put the pill in your mouth, take a sip of liquid to hold in your mouth.  Toss your head back dramatically so the pill and liquid roll to the back of your tongue.  While your head is still back like you’re doing a Pepsi commercial, take another drink and swallow.

You’re welcome.

Unless it didn’t work for you in which case, back to crushing them up with two spoons.  Sorry about that.

I don’t mean to derail this post, but I always get wary about wholesale recommendations to crush what you can’t swallow because there are some medications that cannot under any circumstance be crushed. I’ve seen the fallout from pills that got crushed that should never be crushed, and it in some of those cases it was life-threatening.

Luckily, when I went to pharmacy school we had a whole class on the topic of swallowing pills! Pharmacists see patients of all ages and abilities, and throughout life a person’s ability to swallow can change drastically, so we discussed the various means of addressing this need in our patients.

The above advice to fling your pills back with a mouthful of water is legit advice. Just don’t choke! Maybe not the best option for kids or accident-prone adults.

For young patients who are just learning the trick of swallowing pills, or adults who never caught on to the knack, there’s a method of starting out small because there can be a lot of anxiety around the activity that can make the experience even worse. Think super low stakes, no pressure. Go to the baking aisle and get the smallest sprinkle you can find, so tiny it will dissolve on the tongue as soon as it’s in your mouth. If you have to break a sprinkle in half or into quarters, so be it. Let the candy sprinkle be as small as you need it to be so that it isn’t scary. Even if the sprinkle dissolves, swallow anyways to get used to the sensation of swallowing on command for this purpose. Then find a bigger kind of sprinkle and repeat process. Find a slightly bigger sprinkle again, repeat process. Do this over a period of days to weeks to simply get used to the sensation to swallowing on command in a situation with absolutely nothing at stake except sprinkles. You can work your way up to those decorative sprinkle balls for cakes - I’ve seen some that are straight up pill-sized. I’ve worked with kids who are just learning the process and adults who have anxiety around the issue of pill swallowing, and using the sprinkle method has had decent success, though it’s not perfect, not everyone builds their way up, and it does take days to weeks to build the confidence/swallowing-on-command reflex.

If the sprinkle method is not for you, alternative formulations could be your thing. There are many medications that have alternative formulations to pills, such as liquid suspensions, chewables, orally dissolving tablets, sublingual/buccal tablets or films, capsules that can be opened, nasal sprays, suppositories, patches, creams/ointments, injectables, etc… I’ve worked with compounding pharmacies that specialize in creating alternative formulations like lozenges and lollipops for kids who were in no way capable of pill-swallowing. It may be worth it to ask if there is an alternative formulation to the medication you are taking if swallowing is an absolute no-go for you.

When I work with certain geriatric populations who can still swallow food but may have lost the coordination to swallow pills, putting the pill in a soft, easily-swallowable food can help them immensely with coordinating the swallowing reflex. Same thing can apply to anyone else whose issue is just trying to coordinate the swallowing reflex around something as small as a pill. Various examples of food that I see used in hospital are puddings, jams, and apple sauce. Other soft foods like mashed potato or spray cheese in a can also work, if savoury options are needed. Just be sure to ask your pharmacist if the medication you are dealing with needs to be taken on an empty stomach or not, because if the medication requires an empty stomach, then this is not the method for you. Luckily, there are more medications in the world that can be taken with food than are are without food, so your chances are good that this method will work.

That all being said, I’ve dealt with hundreds of different kinds of medications, and a lot of them can be crushed if you absolutely need to do so. For everyone’s safety, I would recommend asking a pharmacist if it is safe to crush your medication before doing so.

Some reasons why a pill can’t be crushed can include: coated for time-release reasons or so the pill dissolves in specific segments of your digestive tract. Other pills need to be swallowed whole because the medication itself is super irritating and can burn your throat or you could accidentally aspirate into your lungs. Most pills are the most vile-tasting shit you’ll ever encounter in your life and some are so disgusting that they’re film-coated literally so you don’t throw up from the taste.

With that all in mind, I dearly apologize to OP for the pill-swallowing ramble. This is probably not what you imagined when you shared your post. I am proud of you for finding the right trick that addresses your pill swallowing need; I hope that perhaps someone else might find your trick helpful, or may find something helpful in my advice.

This is a helpful page describing several kinds of pills that can't be crushed, for various reasons:

Look, with very few exceptions no one sets out with the intention of being a shitty abusive parent. A lot of shitty parents think they're doing it right. A lot of shitty parents think they're doing their best. A lot of shitty parents think that abusive shit they do is not really abusive and for the greater good of their child.

A lot of shitty parents love their kids, and would die for them, but they can still be abusive and shitty parents because they do shit they learned from their parents and don't pause a moment to think they may be doing it wrong because "I love my kid, abusive parents don't love their kids, so I can't be an Abusive Parent, not me, I'm good". A lot of shitty parents have their good moments, their good sides, and their kids can love them for it and then be doubly hurt when the good moment ends and things are shitty again.

Shitty parents are complicated people, the kids they raise are complicated people, and human relationships as a whole are a complex hot mess. There is not one right or wrong way to respond to abuse or choose how to handle the relationship to a shitty parent. No we don't wanna hear how you'd personally handle it in our shoes. You're not in our shoes. STFU.

BTW this is not some weird defense of shitty and abusive parents but for Christ's sake, this attitude that Shitty Parents - either real or fictional - are monsters out of a scary story who are contractually obliged to be shitty 100% of the time, all around, in every aspect of their lives, is actually harmful. It's untrue. It's stupid. It will lead kids of Shitty Parents to think that well, THEIR parents are not 100% evil and dastardly all the time, therefore they're not Actually Abusive, I must be exaggerating.

Shitty parents are not old school Disney villains breaking into song about how they love to do evil deeds to hurt their own children. They're people. Learn to tell the two things apart, for fuck's sake.

Seattle Public Library is doing this awesome program called Books Unbanned that allows teens and young adults (ages 13-26) access to their collection of e-books and e-audiobooks from anywhere in the USA. All you need to do is fill out a simple form and you get their Books Unbanned card. Please share this information far and wide. I know they're not the only ones to have done this, but the more the merrier!