Me, on the welcome desk in the library: Good morning, how are you today?

Customer: I have welcomed Jesus into my heart and so I am well today and every day.

Me, a little unnerved: Okay then! Is there something I can help you with?

Customer, digging around in his bag and pulling out an iPhone in a box: Unfortunately, Jesus can't help me with this fucking phone, so I came to the library.

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Click one

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X X

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test

edit: DO NOT VOTE BASED ON THE VIBES OF THE FLUIDS 😭

my heart goes out to all the black trans women who feel used. who dont have any friends. who dont feel seen. who aren't allowed to be angry. who have hit their limits. who feel bitter. who dont like their transition. who make porn to survive. who aren't allowed to be tender. who have to box in their blackness. who dont like sex. who dont know others like them. who have been abused. who are forgotten. who havent been believed. who are "too fat". who are poor. who cant transition. who are in danger. who cant hope anymore. who need drugs. who are disabled. who are "too dark/light". who dont have families. who get fetishized. who aren't represented. who arent with us.

i love you. more than i could possibly express. im tired too. always have been. but i love you i love you i love you i love you. so much

What’s up just a reminder that the Hula Girl stereotype can go to hell and is in part responsible for Hawai’i being the tourist destination and getting invaded by rich white people, and for Hawaiian culture being disrespected and appropriated

Here’s a few sources on the topic:

How America’s Obsession With Hula Girls Almost Wrecked Hawai’i (the site is weird but the research is legitimate, gives a good overview of the issue and references a lot of sources that are harder to get your hands on read: books)

“Pop” Goes Hawai’i: The Twentieth Century Origins of Tourism in Hawai’i and the Impact of U.S. Pop Culture on Women in the Islands of Aloha (this one is very long but a really good read)

Misperceptions of the “Hula Girl” (this one is a personal essay but it’s an entry in the University of Hawai’i’s academic newspaper)

It’s honestly shocking how fast cis women will jump to reject something that benefits them just because it also benefits trans people.

Like, the checkboxes that ask what organs you have without asking your gender? Fantastic for trans folks because they can tell the doctor what anatomy to be concerned about without misgendering themselves. Also fantastic for cis women who’ve had surgeries like hysterectomies who would probably rather not have the doctor blame every medical issue on something uterus related. Maybe I want insurance to cover my Pap smears but also maybe a lot of cis women who don’t even have uteruses would like the hospital to just give them the treatment they need without completely pointless pregnancy tests.

No one is afraid of the word woman. We just think accuracy would benefit everyone here.

Stuff about having monocular vision that people don’t know (in my experience)

1. You only ever sit on one side of a room. (Especially if you’re in class) If you’re blind in your left eye like me, you sit to the left of the room so your right eye has the greatest scope, and there’s not much to your left to look at.

2. Harder time seeing past obstacles. People with two eye vision have the perception of both their eyes blend together for one image. Without this, you only have one eye, so you’re don’t get to see past obstacles the same way. For example if something is blocked for your right eye and not for your left, you can still see it through your left. For people with monocular vision this isn’t possible.

3. People don’t walk on the side of your blind eye. It may just be me, but because I’m blind in my left eye I tend to accidentally bump into people if they’re on my left. So when people walk beside me I naturally go so they’re to my right, or they do, without it being discussed.

4. 3D movies are headaches. Even though we’ve progressed past the red-blue type glasses, 3D just doesn’t work well for monocular vision. (And you know those fun optical illusions? A lot of them don’t work at all- nothing happens!)

5. Things like grabbing a pencil without looking at it are extremely difficult. (Due to lack of depth perception, you have a hard time discerning where things are in 3D space). This also stretches to having bad posture and balance. Meanwhile, things that are flat are relatively easy.

6. You turn your head when you’re looking at something, so your good eye is focused on it. This includes tilting your head at worksheets, TVs, and computer screens- and also people.

7. Seeing in the dark is also much harder, because people rely on their depth perception for it, and without that stuff gets real hard

8. The headaches. Most people with blindness don’t experience total blindness, but instead low vision, where their vision is not able to be used in a way that’s helpful. Your brain tries to merge the images, or use your bad eye to see something in the peripheral. This just makes your head hurt. Much like people who need time to adjust to having glasses due to the headache, getting headaches is common because your vision is always at odds.

9. More susceptible to eye damage. Since you’re not overly aware of your bad eye, you may not notice if the sun is shining directly at it. I tend to squint with my bad eye whenever I’m outside, without thinking about it. Additionally, you’re more wary of anything that could damage your good eye. It’s the only one, so you gotta be careful with it.

10. Also, it makes things really, really weird if there’s a bright light from one side but not from another. There are often after images that float in my vision.

11. Looking at things that are moving can be hard. I can focus on an object, but if a camera is panning in some direction without being focused on one thing in particular, I just stop being able to make sense of what I’m seeing. It becomes very jarring.

12. Sometimes it’s not that your eye necessarily has anything wrong with it, but that your optic nerve isn’t fully connected. So the eye may be healthy, but your brain shut it off, and the connection between the light coming in your eye, and the way the brain interprets it, never fully formed. Funnily enough, I’ve heard that this can cause the connection between your good eye and your brain to be stronger, as it is with mine. For some people it’s the opposite, and it makes both of their eyes worse. Peoples experiences can really differ.

Two Friends Discuss Angels

There's a 45 minute explainer video on my Patreon if people want to learn more

part of why i recognize little to no difference between so-called "recreational" vs "medical" drug use is because i recognize stress as a medical issue. mind-body dualism has us all convinced that stress is an ephemeral emotion that doesn't affect our bodies, but like daily stress, particularly if you're also disabled in some way, just Will Kill You. it can destroy your organs, overclock your brain, weaken your immune system... the effects of prolonged and consistent stress are underresearched (because then we'd have to question how we allocate labor. lmao), but they're there. if you use weed every day for no reason other than you need to force yourself to relax chemically so you can have fun and take your mind off stress, that is indistinguishable from medical use to me, having discarded mind-body dualism.

Here’s a link to a petition to protect Native American land in NC from a gas station chain which poses immense environmental threats, has violated workers rights, and will destroy land with historical significance to natives. My ancestors traveled the trading path they plan to build over. Please sign if you have a moment

It's okay if it takes a little longer than you thought.

how do manatees even survive as a species if they're way too peaceful. somehow nothing wants to eat them. not gators or sharks or whales

it's quite simple, they're their ecosystem's version of a megafauna grazing mammal! they're simply too large for most predators to bother. they are, in fact, fucking huge.

see, manatees don't actually live out in the open ocean. they live in rivers, estuaries, and shallow seagrass bays like this:

so the thing is, large macropredator sharks and superpredators like killer whales don't go here! they stay out in open deep water, so they never really cross paths with manatees in the first place.

there ARE sharks here, but they're small! adult manatees are completely out of their prey size range, and they're more interested in fish anyway.

alligators do live here also, but even a very large alligator can't really dream of preying on an adult manatee! again, they're simply too big.

so, yeah. this is just another case of "this mammal is able to get away with being a gentle giant by simply growing too large for any predator in its area to touch" and I think that's beautiful.

its like you dont even want to sell your life to a corporation

   —  Anna Akhmatova, "The Sentence," from The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

[text ID: Today I have so much to do: / I must kill memory once and for all, / I must turn my soul to stone, / I must learn to live again—]