Quick shoutout to everyone whose disability directly conflicts with their passion.

People who love light and color and photography but have extremely sensitive eyes. People who love food but have digestive disorders and intolerances. People who would play every instrument they could get their hands on but lack dexterity and muscle strength to play. People who can’t make themselves focus long enough to study the field they want to be in. People who want to paint and draw and sculpt but can’t coordinate their hands well enough, or cramp up every time they hold a brush/pencil/tool. People across all passions who face a massive barrier to learning because following a set of instructions is difficult when they don’t feel specific enough.

There’s nothing more frustrating than knowing you’d be good at something and that it’s not your fault you can’t prove it. Especially in a world that seems to only recognize top level picture perfect talent at all times. Your passion isn’t negated by not being able to follow it, and neither is your potential. You’re not lazy. Do what you can and fuck ‘em if they think it’s not good enough.

if batman isnt written like this with his kids then u arent writing batman

finally done with the series that's been plaguing my dreams for a month

Adding onto this with my warm take, yes, it's true that cis-straight people will never get how the actual queer experience is like and they do have to do their research if they want to delve deeper into our issues, however, banning them from writing about these topics at all like I've seen some people indirectly claiming feels wrong to me and might be a slippery slope into enforcing allocisheteronormativity in media.

Same thing I say when people ask about disabled characters, just treat us as characters. We're people, we have imperfections and tridimensionality.

@juanathefunkyfish, how does it feel to be the most correct person to add an addition onto this post?

anyone of any identity should be allowed to write/make art about anything—yes, even if it’s about a sensitive identity-topic that they have no lived experience in.

if people want to judge their end product afterwards, and criticize a work for being offensive, by all means! but the criticism must first be directed at the work, and what error has been made in its creation—not on the artist for making the work in the first place.

we can’t disallow straight writers from creating queer characters, or white writers from creating IBPOC characters (etc.), without inadvertently discouraging imaginative empathy, and strangling diverse storytelling.

Yep. If I die tomorrow, and a straight friend grieves me, and they write about this, and some queerer than thou chucklefuck harasses them about writing a dead gay, I will come back to personally haunt them by screaming directly into their ear every time they attempt to have gay sex.

Straight people being sad when gay characters experience bad things is good actually.

gatekeeping who can talk about what, and how they can talk about it, is not only restrictive and likely to reduce the amount of representation we get in media but is also actively dangerous to the physical and emotional safety of marginalised people. the obvious example is when a closeted queer creator is forcibly outed due to harrassment, but the whole concept also has broader repercussions. by insisting that only certain people are allowed to tell certain stories, you cement the dividing walls built to separate different people. you affirm the bigoted stance that "those people" are in meaningful way Other, that things pertaining to them are also Other, and that is the precise thing we're fighting against.

If you were in a fanfic, would you be the pining idiot or the oblivious dumbass?

post it in the tags!!

Aight y'all. Here's a lesson I learned from my wife, and I wish I'd learned it years ago:

Before you buy anything, take 5 minutes to search (preferably with a non-Google search engine like DuckDuckGo) "best [whatever] for [specific purpose if necessary]."

Make sure you look at who the reviews are from; there are a lot of bad spam sites out there, but you can find good lists on reputable sites. However, you'll get some of the best lists on Reddit.

Most of what you'll find at the top of the lists on Amazon (and Walmart) are people who have paid for that spot. You'll still have to use discernment to make sure you're picking a good review site, but I'm not kidding when i say that the last time we had to buy a plunger, I ended up on a thread on a plumber's forum where they were discussing which plunger they keep in their own bathroom. (The overwhelming winner was something called a Toilet Saber, and... it's much easier to use than the usual style of plunger, actually.)

She searches "best potato peeler" and "best pastry blender" and "best standing desk" and it seems so obvious, right, but she does it for literally everything and the average quality of things I own has gone way, way up since I started taking 5 minutes to search "best yoga socks" and "best cuticle trimmers" and then going to buy whatever it is.

Her research skills go into overdrive when it comes to big purchases; she's the one who researched our sublimation printer and found the desk I currently use. If there's an extremely passionate subreddit out there about the thing she wants to buy, she'll find it and then read half a dozen reviews.

I cannot stress enough how much she does this. About. Everything. And how much everything we own is better as a result.

It's amazing, honestly.

Also, check if your library has a Consumer Reports membership! Consumer Reports has quite a bit of useful information and reviews, even without membership. But you might be able to get even more, entirely for free, with a library card.

Here's some of the members-only benefits I get through my library:

Also, just in general, it is a good idea to check which services your library offers beyond book loans (and to check again occasionally, or to subscribe to the library newsletter, so you can know when new services are added). Lots of libraries offer a "library of things"; that can be useful both for items you only need temporarily and for trying out a certain product before you go and buy your own.

Oh, that's very cool! I didn't know that was a thing libraries might offer, and if I did know it once upon a time, I'd forgotten.

I love it when there's a couple but then there's a third guy who's also there and he's part of it but not like romantically he's just a part of the couple but like....platonically

Kitty stomp

One of my closest friends I aroace, and he's talked to me about the experience of being made to feel like he's missing out on something or getting left behind in a way when his loved ones enter romantic relationships. But it really hit home for me how much he deals with and expects this recently when I started dating someone new after being single for a few months and I wanted to share.

During the months I was single, we got a lot closer and we both relied on each other more to have our needs for love fulfilled. For example, we both have physical touch as a primary love language, so we did a lot of platonic physical affection and cuddling. We became main supports in each other's lives even more than before. But the day I told my friend about my new partner and my friend met him, he seemed to kind of instantly back off a bit. He and my partner get along really, really well too. He mentioned that he didnt expect my partner and I to make the hour drive to visit him as often because "it's not like the nature of y'alls relationship". I'm having difficulty explaining, but it was apparent that my friend expected to be taking a back seat to this new relationship in my life despite the fact that I know my friend way better and that broke my heart a bit. I immediately thought, how many times has he had to deal with that? How many beloved friends has he lost to this situation? That must be so horrible to go through! I still very much consider him one of my closest supports and while I know it would never be a necessary choice I would absolutely choose him over a partner I haven't had nearly as much time with. I really want to find a way to tell him that he isn't any less of a priority to me just because I'm not single anymore and I think it's important for us alloromantics to remind our aro and aroace friends of things like that. It's even more important to stick to that statement and show them we mean it.

My aroace friends, you deserve people in your life that prioritize you and engage in the kinds of intimacy you need. You deserve just as much closeness and love as anyone else and you will find it if thats what you want. You don't deserve being put on the back burner when your loved ones get into new romantic relationships and it's really shitty that so many people do that.

Other people have probably made this post, but I wanted to shout out the author's note from Seanan McGuire's latest Wayward Children book.

There has been some discourse about including "trigger warnings" in books but I think this one is perfectly done. It doesn't spoil anything, it just gives those who need it a heads up on what's coming. If anything it actually makes the introduction of the book better in a horrible kind of way, because it builds the tension knowing something bad is coming. Especially as it quickly becomes clear what that something bad is going to be.

I often see posts about curating your own online experience that make the point, “content creators aren’t your parents.” And, yes, that is absolutely true! And I try not to be like “as a parent,“ but as a parent…

EVEN PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE READING/VIEWING BEHAVIOR. NOT filter everything ahead of time for their kid.

When my kiddo was 5, his pediatrician was asking him the usual Well Child Visit questions (“What are your favorite foods? What do you do to get your body moving? Do you know what to do if you get lost in a public place?” Etc.) and she asked, “What do you do if you see something on TV that scares or upsets you?”

I piped up like, “Oh, he doesn’t watch TV without one of us in the room,” which was true at the time and is still largely true now. She said, “Yes, but that won’t always be the case, so make sure you’re talking to him about what to do if he sees something that upsets him.”

So we started talking to him about that, and the answer is simple: “Turn it off or leave the room, and talk to someone you trust about what you saw and what you’re feeling.”

The answer is NOT “Ask your parents to make sure you never see anything upsetting again,” because that’s just not possible — and ultimately that would be doing the kid a disservice, since sooner or later he’s going to be out in the world where we can’t control what he watches or reads. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to make sure he’s watching/reading age-appropriate stuff, it just means that’s not the only safeguard he has — and that’s a good thing.

So yes, content creators aren’t your parents and aren’t responsible for making sure you never see anything you don’t like — but also, your own parents should have taught you what to do when that happens. So if they didn’t, take it from me, your internet mom:

Turn it off.

Walk away.

Talk to someone you trust about how you’re feeling.

And leave the person who created the thing that upset you alone.

me normally: i love!! acquiring objects!!

me packing: who the FUCK acquired this many OBJECTS

torture the blonde man some more

You can see the video here where an asshole with a "My pronouns are find/Jesus" shirt asks if this guy supports LGBTQ rights or economic stability, and this king up here^ just keeps repeating, "Why can't you have both? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't have to pick one. I refuse the question." Conservatives have absolutely nothing but whataboutism, and when people don't play their game, they have no comeback. Good on this guy for refusing to go along with the bullshit question

I think people are just joking around, but the thing is that a lot of people will fall into the right's "DEBATE ME BRO" trap and wind up in heated arguments, and people lose sight that sometimes it really is a lot more effective at shutting down their arguments to just not engage at all

.. I feel like another big reason this is a thing/joke/question at all is the implication that this guy doesn't """look like""" someone who would support queer rights or refuse to debate conservatives and like

We can agree that's a shitty conclusion to leap to from appearances, right? Yeah? 😕

I mean, I just loved this guy absolutely refusing to entertain the bullshit question, and I would've gotten a kick out of this video regardless of his appearance because of how casual and amused he was about the whole thing. One of the people in the screenshots above said this:

So I don't think everyone was making fun of his appearance

One of the classes psych nurses take while prepping for the art of conversation therapy deals in some detail with keeping conversation healthy and useful for all involved; partly by making sure everyone understands that some tactics are inherently invalid and will not be supported.

The splendidly noncooperative gent up there is demonstrating one such technique. One of our instructors said to us, "One weapon that toxically argumentative people like to use on you—usually to prevent any really fruitful conversation—is based in the idea that each time you refuse to accept their statement or argument, you have to do it in different words, or for different reasons. Who made that up? You don't have to."

I remember a lot of us in that class looking at each in shocked realization, as none of us had ever really taken that particular tactic apart before. "It's perfectly legit to just give such a person the same answer over and over again," our instructor said. "Or to flatly refuse their gambit without giving a reason. Their tactic is based around trying to force you to give them fresh material by which they can get their hooks into you—prove you wrong, or suck you in. But nothing says you have to give them what they want. So don't. Also, just saying the same thing over and over will often get them to reveal where they're vulnerable."

...This approach is also part of some assertiveness-training courses. I seem to remember having run across it in Manuel Smith's When I Say No, I Feel Guilty, which is about as close as you can get to an AT course in a single book. ...There I think it's referred to as "assertive persistence", and there's a specific technique called Broken Record that's almost too enjoyable once you have an excuse to get into it with somebody. :)

ETA for @weareallfromearth : Just to clarify (and I apologize that the following wasn't immediately clear from my initial phrasing): My instructor in the above-mentioned class wasn't talking specifically about psychiatric clients. She was talking about everybody. The "How You're Supposed To Argue" rules are societally widespread, and only rarely dissected. (And hardly ever by those who enjoy exploiting the "rules" for their own purposes.)

In psych practice, naturally the understanding is that a professional is going to give their clients all the room necessary to argue with them fruitfully about things—most especially including what's going on in their heads. However, you also need to have some approach to fall back on when a client's whole purpose is to keep you at a distance and never allow you to engage, when the entire purpose of engagement in the first place is to help them start learning how to successfully deal with what's going on with them. Usually my clients would insist that that's what they were in the clinic for. If they're derailing that process, they need at the very least to be aware of it, so that together we can find some approach that works better, and switch to that.

Well now I can correctly moonwalk away from uncomfortable situations

Because everyone deserves to know how to do a mean moonwalk.

guYS THIS IS IMPORTANT

I definitely reblogged this sitting down not getting up to do the moonwalk at all

@hellsite-hall-of-fame @heritageposts

Burt Glinn

There's an adhd hack which I wanna describe but it's going to sound sort of fake and sort of like I'm saying "just do the thing" which I'm not.

Basically it can be impossible to start doing the thing, but once you've started it, it's actually fine right? It's just FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to start it, especially because you don't want to do it.

So I've got this way where I start it "without meaning to" a bit like if you were standing on the edge of the cliff and unable to make yourself jump off but... but you can jerk your body violently-- then you're falling and you don't really get a say in the matter any more.

A good example of this is not wanting to make a call. So you'd sit there and plan what you want to rehearse and hit the button when you're ready... or not, because actually you'd put the phone down and run off to do literally anything else.

So instead, I just hit call really fast, with no actual intention to make the call. Oh shit I really don't want to but now it's ringing and oh shit someone picked up and now we're already rolling and it'd be worse to hang up than to just talk--

I do the same thing with timers and work tasks where I've trained my brain to only be 'winning' the 'game' when the 15m timer is running so now if I hit the timer I'm like 'oh shit work started and I'm LOSING' and I'll jump up to do exactly 15 minutes of work... Only now I've already started and I might as well keep going, right?

Turning tasks into "reactions" not "actions"-- And reacting is way easier.

It's kind of setting the "poor impulse control" part of ADHD against the "Procrastination" part and making them fight.