And Then Some On The Rhododendrons

Throwaway ranting blog don’t follow please ha (I won’t kick you out but like don’t see why you’d want to)

[graceebooks]

i think some of you don’t understand the incredible truly almost erotic relief of not being expected to decide what’s happening during sex for someone who has to plan and execute literally fucking everything all the fucking time

[pineapplecrushface]

i think many of you don't understand the intense, triumphant feeling of being able to control – and be relied upon, trusted to take care of and be good at – everything during sex, for someone who always feels slightly out of step and incompetent about everything all the time. i might constantly feel like i'm forgetting something important, but not here.

[forestgreenandgray]

Hey do you know what rumination is?

Rumination is probably the most common type of OCD compulsion, but I rarely see anyone talking about it. I've talked to multiple people diagnosed with OCD who didn't even recognize it as a compulsion.

Basically, if you have OCD you have terrible intrusive thoughts. They can be about anything, but common themes are fear of being a bad person, fear of hurting someone, fear of contamination. etc.

Rumination is when you get stuck in a spiral. Rumination is when you spend hours catastrophizing, overthinking, analyzing, telling yourself it's going to be okay.

I'll say it again:

Rumination is a compulsion.

Rumination is a compulsion, and that means you have to stop doing it.

I did ERP (exposure response prevention) for my OCD with a therapist! For 9 months! And it did help, but the idea didn't really click until I found this website a couple years later.

And Oh My God. It made things make so much more sense, and I was able to pull myself out of an episode even though I wasn't in therapy or on meds at the time.

Genuinely if you have OCD, or even if you suspect you have OCD, I'm begging you to read some of these articles.

Like this was genuinely life changing for me.

Here are some of the ones that were most helpful to me:

Defining Rumination

How to Stop Ruminating

ERP Exercises for Compulsive Rumination

What to Do When You're Triggered

[dre759]

I was listening to a robot-read audiobook of A.B Abrams’ Power and Primacy: A History of Western Intervention in the Asia-Pacific earlier today at work.

When I got home I opened up my PDF of the book to grab screenshots from a section that had me seething with fucking anger. It is a part in chapter 2 related to the US decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan.

For the sake of hammering in the point I’ll post the relevant 6 pages even if it’s a bit long.

From pages 55-60 of the 2023 updated edition of the book:

I knew in my mind how atrocious the atomic bombings were in the first place, but I had never internalized how much of a needless inhumane act against humanity this was.

Just… god. Death to America.

[hagiomoto]

Man... I can understand why people don't cook Asian food at home..the amount of spices I have to fork money for to set up a decent pantry....yeesh 😒😒😒 this better last me two years at least

[hagiomoto]

WHOLE SPICES

- Cumin seeds

- Coriander seeds

- Black mustard seeds

- Yellow mustard seeds

- Fennel seeds

- Fenugreek seeds

- Black peppercorns

- White peppercorns

- Green cardamom

- Black cardamom

- Cloves

- Cinnamon sticks

- Cassia bark

- Star anise

- Indian bay leaves

- Dried red chilies

- Kashmiri whole chilies

- Mace

- Nutmeg

- Nigella seeds (kalonji)

- Carom seeds (ajwain)

- Celery seeds

- White sesame seeds

- Black sesame seeds

- Poppy seeds (optional)

GROUND SPICES

- Turmeric powder

- Ground cumin

- Ground coriander

- Kashmiri chili powder

- Cayenne pepper

- Paprika

- Smoked paprika

- Black pepper

- White pepper

- Ground cinnamon

- Ground cardamom

- Ground cloves

- Ground ginger

- Garlic powder

- Onion powder

- Dry mango powder (amchur)

- Asafoetida (hing)

- Curry powder

- Garam masala

- Chaat masala

- Chinese five-spice powder

FRESH HERBS & AROMATICS

- Cilantro (coriander)

- Mint

- Curry leaves

- Thai basil

- Sweet basil

- Holy basil (optional)

- Pandan leaves

- Lemongrass

- Makrut (kaffir) lime leaves

- Vietnamese coriander (optional)

- Dill

- Green onions

- Garlic

- Ginger

- Galangal

- Shallots

- Red onions

- Green chilies

- Bird's eye chilies

- Fresh turmeric root

DRIED HERBS

- Kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves)

- Dried oregano

- Dried basil

- Dried thyme

SWEETENERS

- Palm sugar

- Jaggery

- White sugar

- Brown sugar

- Rock sugar

SEASONINGS

- Sea salt

- Kosher salt

- MSG (optional)

SAUCES & CONDIMENTS

- Light soy sauce

- Dark soy sauce

- Sweet soy sauce (kecap manis)

- Fish sauce

- Oyster sauce

- Shrimp paste (belacan/terasi)

- Tamarind paste

- Coconut milk

- Coconut cream

- Rice vinegar

- Chinese black vinegar

- White vinegar

- Sesame oil

- Neutral cooking oil

- Chili oil

- Sambal oelek/giling

- Sriracha

- Chili crisp

DRIED CHILIES

- Kashmiri chilies

- Byadgi chilies

- Thai dried chilies

- Bird's eye dried chilies

SPICE BLENDS

- Garam masala

- Chaat masala

- Sambar powder

- Rasam powder

- Biryani masala

- Tandoori masala

- Madras curry powder

- Malaysian curry powder

- Thai red curry paste

- Thai green curry paste

- Thai yellow curry paste

- Rendang paste (optional)

- Laksa paste

OPTIONAL SPECIALTY INGREDIENTS

- Sichuan peppercorns

- Long pepper (pippali)

- Black cumin (shahi jeera)

- Stone flower (kalpasi)

- Annatto seeds

- Candlenuts

- Tamarind concentrate

- Dried shrimp

- Dried anchovies

- Banana leaves

- Lotus leaves

[spreadsopotism]

THE MULTIPLE VINEGARS, CHILIS, MASALA AND CURRY POWDERS AND PASTES ARE SO TRUE AND REAL 😭😭😭😭 LIKE, NO, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME AND IF YOU USE ONE OVER THE OTHER

YOU'RE FUCKED

[hagiomoto]

You Get It

[hagiomoto]

two unrelated questions: do you have any good reccs for international news sources? I've only ever been taught about US news sources and like.. occasionally BBC and Al Jazeera and you tend to post about international politics a lot how did you go about obtaining so many cats?

You should sign up to feeder.co and then download their app on the app store. Once you sign up, you can subscribe to these news like I did

I also followed public figures on X to get news on particular topics

I hope this helps.

[janmisali]

any advice for captioning youtube videos? I want to make content eventually (but probably not soon) and your captions are very good! :D

youtube has a feature where you can copy paste text and it'll automatically figure out the timing for subtitles based on that. I do this for every scripted video I make and it almost never needs any manual adjustments. for anyone else making scripted youtube videos I highly recommend doing this

[janmisali]

any time you see a video essay without subtitles you can and should point out the fact that it's extremely easy to turn a video script into a subtitle track for a youtube video. lots of people who make scripted videos seem to think the only options are "no subtitles" or "professional subtitles" but if you have the script it is not hard to turn a script into a transcript and it is even easier to turn a transcript into subtitles

[eightglass]

hi, I was wondering if you could elaborate more on the Libby ripping technique? I’m not super experienced with computers, so it’s kind of hard for me to understand. Can you explain it like I’m five?

Yeah, yeah!

So. Go and borrow a book on libbyapp.com.

Next, go to the "Read With..." menu

Then to "Other Options" and then press "EPUB"

This'll download a .acsm file, which is basically an encrypted .epub.

Now is the hard part: going through the trouble of setting up Calibre and the necessary plugins.

I'm not going to be able to explain it all here, it's wayyy too much for a tumblr post, and there are a lot of online guides, but once you have calibre all set up, make sure you have BOTH the DeACSM plugin and the DeDRM plugin installed. The DeACSM is what will convert the .acsm file into a .epub, and the DeDRM will make it so that the .epub can actually be read.

The DeACSM plugin is available on the Get New Plugins feature from within calibre, but since removing DRM is technically messing with the law, you have to manually download and install the DeDRM plugin.

Here is one guide, here is another for setting up the DeACSM plugin, you can search google to find more help, idk. It's been a while since I set it up, so I don't remember all the details. The MobileRead forums are AMAZING for this sort of thing.

Once it's all set up though, you should be able to select the .acsm file from the Add Books menu on Calibre, and it'll go through all the conversion automatically, so the book will end up on Calibre as a plain epub.

Yeah it's quite the process! I'm sorry I don't know enough to go into all the detail, but I hope this can get you on the right path! Calibre is an amazing program if you want to organise hundreds of ebooks and manage all the conversions and metadata, but for casual use like this? Yeah, it can be quite intimidating.

[the-tired-tenor]

So uh….some dude apparently recreated Adobe Photoshop feature-for-feature, for FREE, and it runs in your browser.

Anyway, fuck Adobe, and enjoy!

[adv3nturelust]

Give credit to the 30-year-old who worked on this for free and offers this service for free!

[marsh-mallow-adopts]

WHAT?!

[triona-tribblescore]

I study graphic design and my tutor recommended and used this in his classes at art college last year, it’s so good it has SO many features for free, I really recommend it, even if you’re just trying to learn the basics of PS, such a wonderful thing <3

[naamahdarling]

I use this and it’s fucken great. No bullshit. Really works. Sometimes the world is kind.

[hagiomoto]

Hello Ann, I'd like to start studying politics, especially communism, but I don't know where to begin. Do you have any recommendations?

Important note: I love your style, sister! I hope you have a wonderful day.⁦ฅ⁠^⁠•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠^⁠ฅ⁩⁦(⁠ ⁠/⁠^⁠ω⁠^⁠)⁠/⁠♪⁠♪⁩

Aah, that's too bad....I'm too lazy and selfish to compile you a whole reading list about this.

But I think @marxistlesbianist has a few reading lists on her blog if I'm not mistaken

[katelyn-danger]

The Manifesto is a good place to start. Capital is much longer, but in my opinion the most important concept to understand is Commodity Fetishism. The way money obscures the relationships between you and the people who make the stuff you consume.

From there, you can either choose to study how capitalism shaped the development of colonial nations. Howard Zinn and Michael Parenti are good authors to start with. Or, you can study how capitalism shaped the development of colonized nations. I like Open Veins of Latin America and The Wretched of the Earth to start.

If pre-history and first nations history interests you, The Dawn of Everything was particularly illuminating to me. It's important to understand that there are other ways to structure society, and that we've been living full, rich lives before capitalism. It really hammers home the absurdity of capitalism.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by all of the rape and murder and exploitation, Bookchin's writing on Social Ecology are helpful to paint a picture of a utopian vision of the future in which we live as stewards of nature. Pedagogy of the Oppressed also helped me develop a better framework for educating people, both on communism and in general.

If you're more philosophical, I cannot recommend Anti-Oedipus enough, even though I found it dense and annoyingly french. I read it in tandem with The Body Keeps the Score, which has its criticisms, but mostly was informative on the rigid, systemic nature of psychology.

I'm sure there's other books, but I haven't read them. Studying communism is a lifelong pursuit. It's taken me years to read all of these, and some of them I've only read most of, before life got in the way and I had to stop. Some people might try and stop you from reading a book because it has flaws or outdated ideas. Those books are still important to read, they just also require you to read other books after them. You must strongly *strongly* consider the effects that capitalism had on countries that we would call the "third world", especially South America, Africa, and India. Some communists are only concerned with Europe, WWII, the Soviet Union, and China. You must too read about the Zapatistas and Rojava.

Good luck! And take your time. Diversify your media sources. You'll get there.

[saturniandragon]

A new method for bypassing face scan age verifications.

PrivacyPuppet — Interactive 3D Avatar

Real-time interactive 3D human avatar with face tracking, blinking, and jaw animation. Built by PrivacyPuppet.

Interactive 3D avatar viewer with real-time head tracking, jaw animation, and idle breathing. Built with Next.js, React Three Fiber, and Thr

This should work on any web browser.

Use your mouse to control the head angle. Press M to toggle mouth open/close.

Don't forget to press I in order to hide your cursor and the surrounding UI elements.

It may or may not work on all sites, but worth a try.

Stay safe.

[vergess]

(That's an uppercase i to hide the UI, not a lower case L)

[tobermoriansass]

every single conversation abt ip on here devolves into a bunch of people being really anxious that someone is going to take away their hypothetical income from them for their creativity and like, that is already happening. that is literally happening. how do you think publishers like penguin, harper collins, macmillan et al got big and stay big? how do you think publishers like elsevier et al maintain such a stranglehold and charge such amounts? do you even know how individual IP rights operate these days, especially when you're licensing them to a company? have you read a contract ever in your life? have you had to work on preparing a contract ever in your life? do you think your much vaunted, precious authors have the rights to reprint their books whenever if they realise their publishers are fucking them over? don't make me fucking laugh. at the very least please pull your heads out of your asses and read helen dewitt's extensive chronicling of her run-ins with the publishing industry as is. god knows you can pick up the biography or collected/published letters of almost any author* across time and encounter a section with their run-ins and struggles with their publishers, either because they're not being given enough royalties, or because they're writing to contract and need to give their publishers a book by a specific deadline, or a specific kind of book, even when circumstances & health issues are conspiring against them. do you think copyright gives them any control over their lives, or any sort of creative control? don't be so naive - and nevermind the fact that it is basically impossible to have a career in writing these days and that the rare few who do are writing extremely formulaic genre fiction written to, again, insane deadlines that are punishing for any sort of creative work. stop being naive!!!! take an actual look and reckon at what the actual circumstances and conditions are for producing art! it is not good! copyright is not going to save you! it is panacea at best! you will literally do better campaigning for universal basic income over championing the cause of copyright!

*off the top of my head just based on the biographies & other primary sources i've read: agatha christie, aldous huxley, jrr tolkien, georgette heyer

[tobermoriansass]

mind you, this is only in publishing/writing. the conditions are not that much better in other domains. music? most artists are being fucked over by their record companies cutting deals with spotify that leave them getting very little revenue while not actually owning their own masters. visual arts? a handful of artists will break through each year and it depends heavily on your ability to network and attend extremely expensive art events, from what i know of. but maybe you can get lucky working in highly exploitative conditions in a well-known artist's studio where you produce works that are sold under their name :) can't say i know much about television or film, but my impression is that its not that much better (perhaps the greatest evidence in favour of this is the way the number of working working class actors in the uk has nearly dropped completely off and nearly all of them are privately educated in one way or the other). so genuinely who do you think the so called ip law is protecting right now? bc right now from where i'm sitting, it is protecting literally those with the greatest amount of money and purchasing power, on both sides of the cultural production and cultural distribution divides. which as you might imagine is anathema to any kind of genuine creative culture.

[noelle-ism]

i stopped giving a shit about "legit" purchases of digital products after i spent $80 on the entire Dark Horse collection of Trigun/Trigun Maximum ebook mangas, learning that I only got access to reading them through a proprietary website ereader function, couldn't download them, and couldn't get a refund, and then literally only a year later, getting an e-mail stating that Dark Horse was shutting down that part of their company and I wouldn't even be able to read them anymore. Fuck that

[noelle-ism]

Pirate shit. Don't feel bad for it. It's not "your fault" that artists, independent or otherwise, can't make a living. You downloading an album or ebook for free isn't the cause of the problem. The cause is capitalism, plain and simple, and pirating is a lucky loophole that companies are still trying to stomp out.

[nyantara]

things that would exist if intellectual property wasn't a thing

so much cheap generic medication. reverse engineering compounds would be even more financially profitable.

fewer people dead of vaccine preventable illnesses in the global south bc the greatest barrier to distributing some vaccines like hpv is their ip

plant seeds and grafts that come from the plants instead of licensing them. don't invest so much in preventing cross contamination. more localised experimental breeding.

library of the world: every book and journal article in the world could be digitised and be searchable for every person in the world to read regardless of where they live. cheap reprint runs and local translations everywhere.

an online interface where every citation could actually lead to the text in question

freedom from the hell that is DRM software

everytime someone reverse engineered your shitty proprietary software we would all be freed from it instead of them getting DMCA'd

so much hardware would be opened up & therefore made so much cooler.

so many more songs that riff off and sample and interpolate shit from this decade instead of like 70 years ago and more analysis of music that didn't keep getting nuked off the internet

preserving movies and tv shows and games as long as someone, somewhere has the desire to host them

just go publish your fanfic/art/vid as is instead of all us pretending it isn't fanwork or begging the corporation for mercy / licensing

a world without ip lawyers. im getting chills just imagining it.

[nocakeno]

#there cant simply be no more IP we need acrive anti-IP enforcement #or else companies will still enforce various paywalls and implement DRM a bit differently on their own #same w medical formulas and tech we need active anti-patent anti-privatization enforcement or theyll find a way to withhold it for profit #IP laws are one of the tools of capitalism and colonialism #when increasing capital is the way the entire system works and benefits them #they will always find a way even if you get rid of IP #this isnt to say its useless this IS to say be more anti-IP now and then keep aiming higher

tags via foxpunk

[nyantara]

this is true, but right now to break DRM is super mega illegal and setting up shadow libraries sends you to jail, for life. people who hack video games get sent to jail. reverse engineering is illegal as fuck.

if we enforced anti privatisation that would look like forced licensing by nation states, like you discovered a drug? now make the formula and its manufacture public. its much more complicated. simply abolishing the threat of IP litigation protects the people who make the ongoing IP regime bearable and encourage more people to be involved in efforts to liberate intellectual property secrets.

[greater-than-the-sword]

You could literally have all of this if IP were just severely limited instead of being abolished.

Because I want to point out that the total abolition of IP would also mean that major corporate publishers of every kind of media can start distributing work from any small artist or author that gets popular, stealing their work and their audience and their money and making big budget films or merchandise from their ideas without paying them.

That is the kind of thing that IP is supposed to prevent.

You can fix a very large number of the problems with IP just by:

A) follow the actual constitution of the United states to the letter when it says you can't patent any natural process. Reproduction of living organisms is a natural process. Also abolish drug patents.

B) place software under patent instead of copyright, where it belongs. (This fixes right to repair stuff.)

C) severely limit copyright duration.

D) Nerf the ability of a corporation (as opposed to an individual) to hold any sort of copyright, although I'm not 100% sure what that would look like.

E) Pass laws encoding the nature of fair use in such a manner that it makes it extremely difficult to prosecute derivative works.

[nyantara]

me: imagine library of the world, it would free so much knowledge and revolutionise science and scientific literacy, free universities from paying predatory journal access prices, make art and literature from other countries so much easer to access.

you: well idc about that why don't we return to india in the 1970s (india didn't respect global drug patents till usa threatened sanctions)

look i barely respect the legitimacy of private property, much less property that you don't lose access to when you share or reproduce it. genuinely a fake category of property made up by a class of psychological landlords, terrorising our lives and pretending that their ideas solely belong to them when all ideas only really exist in the context of a society and its various artistic/scientific/intellectual influences. artists can continue to be commissioned to create work, they just can't profit from it post facto. same for corporations in this universe tbc.

tell me why the text of a novel deserves special protection to be licensed and deserve a potential share of the profits of a corporation selling a book long after their work was done but not the labour of a worker who cleans the printing press?

[dragon-in-a-fez]

hey parents: there is literally no non-abusive reason a person would want the ability to read someone’s emails, track their location, and go through their calls and text messages without their knowledge or consent.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

I want to address the person who tagged this “what if they’re missing??”

Google Trusted Contacts.

that’s it, that’s the answer.

what this does is allow you to set up a list of people who are able to request your location. when they do so, you have five minutes to either refuse or grant the request. if you don’t respond within five minutes, the request is automatically accepted, in case you’re hurt or otherwise unable to get to your phone. your trusted contacts can also see how recently you used your device.

in other words: if someone genuinely wants to know if you’re okay, they can check the app and see that you’ve used your phone five minutes ago, and that can be the end of it. if they want to be doubly sure, or it says you haven’t used your phone recently, they can request your location. if you want them to know where you are, or you can’t answer, they’ll have your exact location within five minutes. if you don’t want them to know where you are, you click deny, and they still see that you got the request and responded to it, meaning, again, they know you’re okay. this is safety with accountability: you can’t track someone’s location without their consent unless they fail to respond to the notification, and you can’t do it without them knowing about it.

if you want to track a friend or loved one for genuine safety reasons, set this up. it gives you all the access you need if your concern is actually for the other person’s well-being, rather than a desire for control. (it’s not out for iOS yet, but Google says that’s coming soon).

(also: don’t be the jackass that makes a rule that someone has to accept all your location requests because that makes you just as bad as the people who install tracking shit covertly.)

[vashtijoy]

It’s not abusive in any way for a parent to want to know where their underage child is and who they’re talking to, and saying so is a foul misuse of the term “abuse”.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

anyway like I said there is literally no non-abusive reason a person would want the ability to read someone’s emails, track their location, and go through their calls and text messages without their knowledge or consent

[vashtijoy]

I’m glad you live in a world where adults don’t groom kids on the net, or by calling them or sending them text messages.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

I live in this world:

a world where parents are an order of magnitude more dangerous to children than “adults grooming them on the internet”, and giving parents unchecked powers of surveillance is for that reason alone more likely to put kids at risk than to keep them safe.

I live in this world:

a world where the psychologically debilitating effects of surveillance are well-established and well-known, yet adults do everything in their power to invade young people’s privacy and then ask dumbass questions like “why are kids so anxious?” and come up with answers like “it’s probably because of selfies”

I live in this world:

a world where invasion of privacy is recognized as an integral part of emotional abuse, but parents still get away with it because “they’re just doing it to keep them safe uwu~”, despite the fact that this is the same line the goddamn NSA gives us and most of us don’t take that sack of lies from them.

tldr, I live in a world where you’re not just wrong, you’re promoting attitudes that are actively harmful and you need to sit down, shut up, and listen when people are trying to educate you about issues of justice and safety.

[hafizevna]

Hello! I was wondering if you knew any organizations where I could donate to help people in Donbass and Luhansk or any other place which are under Ukraine's fascist army's attack. I was trying to find them on my own but couldn't really find anything. Sorry if this is a bother, I know you and your family are facing unimaginably hard times. I hope you and your family are safe and I hope this war will be over soon.

Food for Life Donetsk

Russian Red Cross

#WeAreTogether

Wings of Life

Assistance to women and children in the LPR and DPR

Children of Donbass (Russian Children’s Fund)

I have frankly no idea how useful, if at all, these are if you are not in possession of Russian cards, but these are the ones that I know of, have a good day!

[hafizevna]

I semi-regularly get asks and messages from other Russians asking how to help compatriots in Donbass, and apart from donating to individual victim campaigns, I still heavily indorse this list

[komsomolka]

i wanna list a bunch of yt channels discussing newest geopolitical events on regular:

breakthrough news

the cradle

geopolitical economy report

dialogue works

glenn diesen

duran

alexander mercouris

danny haiphong

rachel blevins

neutrality studies

carl zha

world affairs in context

radhika desai

they all differentiate in ideological positionings but one thing they have in common is critical stance on usa hegemony. hope it will be useful for someone!

[shed-n-shine]

Why this got me boppin at my desk tho lol

[nanaluvbug]

i saw this video and had to draw her check out afrococoapuffs, she’s amazing!