Alison is a lie.

(I actually really hate lies) (But anything I try to write about myself ends up feeling forced & inauthentic) (Intro sections are the bane of my existence, please make them stop) Frequent topics of this blog include: lgbtqia+ stuff, polyamory, autism spectrum, asexuality spectrum, gender identity, neurodivergence, mental illness, disability, chronic pain, feminism, racism, ableism, other social justice things, various fandoms, writing/roleplaying, singing, cute animals, being over 30 (bc I am), jokes I probably need explained to me, and aggressively boring personal posts.

[alisonleeh]

Idk if it’s the cancer or the medications but my dad is barely eating, sleeping most of the day, and no longer recognizing things he's normally familiar with (he asked me what tres leches cake was, we literally had it on my birthday a few months ago, that's just one example)

speaking of birthdays, his is in a couple weeks and all the birthday cards at the store are like "it's your special day, live it up, do all your favorite things!"

Idk. I'm just sad.

[bethfuller]

does anyone have that unsettling oil painting of a dark window with a sheet leading out into the darkness? it did the rounds on tumblr a while ago and i need itttt

[bethfuller]

YES THANK YOU

Dragan Bibin, Dead of Night

[1989nihil]

@lee-and-other-things​

i don’t… see a dog???  👀

[captainhaterade]

Litmus test for “is the brightness on your phone too low for art appreciation”

[alisonleeh]

I'm so upset, I got myself a nice big space heater which I researched for days before investing in during black Friday, it seemed like it was going to be perfect and actually... I hate it. Then I got my birthday gift from my parents which was a nice new vacuum that I also spent hours upon hours researching until I narrowed it down to the perfect one... And I hate it too. And my parents already got rid of the packaging (they were kind enough to put it together & charge it up for me) so I can't even return it. Not that I want to tell my mom how heavy and bulky and difficult it is to use when it was supposed to be the opposite. I should've just gotten a lightweight generic vacuum for less than half the price and at least if that sucked I'd be like, makes sense. I just feel so defeated.

[taigacryptid]

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox or librewolf (open-source fork of firefox) instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega instead of google drive

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

get free stuff with the help of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH, r/piracy and r/roms

use trakt (for shows and movies), letterboxd (just movies), or TMB instead of IMDB (owned by amazon).

use storygraph instead of goodreads (owned by amazon).

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause, ecosia, or ocean hero to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, or tuta instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use project gutenberg for free public domain books, and librivox for public domain books and audiobooks

use the seal app (android only) to download video and audio

use ellipsus instead of microsoft word or google docs

use mastodon instead of twitter

use peertube to create a network of small video hosting providers (disclaimer: not a 1:1 alternative to youtube)

use threema and signal for encrypted communication, on mobile and desktop

use qwant and startpage for secure internet browsers

use syncthing to securely transfer files between devices

learn how to jailbreak your kindle/ereader if you have one (wiki and video walkthrough)

use riseup’s email and VPN for secure communication (aimed towards activists)

use cryptpad and collabora instead of the microsoft office suite

use google takeout to export the data on your google account

use library extension to look for books on online stores and find them at your library

remove paywalls with removepaywalls

install the open-source adblocker ublock origin

install sponsorblock to skip sponsored segments on youtube videos

use bookfinder to look for the cheapest available listings of books, including textbooks

learn a language through mango (duolingo laid off some of its employees and now relies on AI translations) for free with a library card or through your school

edit photos with photopea

edit pdfs with foxit and sumatrapdf

download music with doubledouble

take notes offline and collaborate securely with obsidian

for android tv, use smarttube and cloudstream (ad-free, open-source)

change your OS to linux

changelog:

removed ground news (uses AI to summarize articles)

removed unroll.me (sells your data)

removed proton mail and drive (AI assistant feature, claims of CEO Andy Yen supporting Trump, please DM if you have proof I can add here)

removed NCH suite (only has very basic free features, puts watermark on anything saved)

notes:

this post blew up while I wasn’t looking (the end of my semester was hellish, and i recently came back from a 3-week family vacation). thanks so much for all the suggestions! <3

i included Ecosia because of their financial transparency. It’s physically impossible that they plant a tree for every search, but their profits still go towards projects including reforestation and solar energy. i view their actions as a net-positive

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: june 14th 2025

[mismedleym]

recollections

[mrporg]

[warmfigure]

i am massively overdue for a very very good week where not a single bad thing happens and everything is easy

[unlettered-heathen]

reblog to give prev a very good week where not a single bad thing happens and everything is easy

[junglejim4322]

Something that I have noticed is I know almost nobody my age that goes to a food pantry. I know people who regularly run out of money for food and in general have to eat an unsuitable diet because that’s what they can afford and they still don’t go to a food bank, im not sure if it’s because they’re embarrassed or maybe if you didn’t grow up going you don’t know much about it but if you’re financially struggling I really recommend it. And look into other options for food assistance too like community fridges and gardens and other programs that can assist you, where I live Salvation Army pays for an allotted amount of grocery delivery for low income people every month, in the summer farmers take excess produce to the library to be taken by anyone who needs it, etc. There are a LOT of resources for free food that you can look into especially if you are literally not eating because of your financial situation

[junglejim4322]

Btw if you have dietary restrictions you can often let them know and in many cases they’ll prioritize certain items for you

[realmarysue]

Global map of community fridges

Urban Harvest - global foraging maps

Food Not Bombs Global Chapter Locations (mostly vegan!)

USA - Find your local food bank

USA - Meals on Wheels free or reduced cost food delivery (age usually 60+, check your specific area's eligibility

[aleph-none]

Map of US food banks that can accommodate gluten-free

[junglejim4322]

Good thing to have on hand in the midst of food stamps issues

[alisonleeh]

My dad had to call 911 this morning because he literally couldn't get out of bed, he spent the whole day at the ER only to be told "your tests were fine so go home"

He was able to walk by then at least but he must have fallen at some point because there are blood stains in his bathroom now apparently (I just heard my mom tell him not to try to clean them up)

And I can't talk about any of this on FB because I'm not sure his extended family even knows about his cancer?

[alisonleeh]

Some day I’ll stop getting out of control anxious every time both my cats want to be in bed with me, but today is not that day

I just wish they would solve their problems without constantly putting me in the middle 😭 but they're cats so they can't help it

(I think being in a triad really messed me up y’all)

[alisonleeh]

My dad's side effects from his cancer meds are getting really bad, and he recently learned that there is no end point of "yay the cancer is gone" where he can stop taking them, he has to be on them for the rest of his life (if he wants to continue living). So that's fun

Also my hip has been in excruciating pain lately for no apparent reason and so of course my brain is telling me I have hip cancer

[alisonleeh]

So my dad decided to stop taking the medication. He's still getting a transfusion that doesn't cause as many side effects but they have no idea if that will keep the cancer at bay by itself

[manrippedapartbydogs]

Thank you Ken! Very cool.

[alisonleeh]

My dad's side effects from his cancer meds are getting really bad, and he recently learned that there is no end point of "yay the cancer is gone" where he can stop taking them, he has to be on them for the rest of his life (if he wants to continue living). So that's fun

Also my hip has been in excruciating pain lately for no apparent reason and so of course my brain is telling me I have hip cancer

[without-ado]

Pallas's Cats (x)

[reasonsforhope]

Stop romanticizing the 1990s. The data shows today is better.

Nostalgia is lying to you about how good things were.

"Nostalgia bias has become a bigger and bigger part of our politics, thanks in part to President Donald Trump’s largely successful ability to leverage a collective longing for a supposedly better past. (After all, it’s called “Make America Great Again,” not “Make America Great.”) But it’s hardly the domain of one party: A 2023 survey from Pew found that nearly six in 10 respondents said that life in the US 50 years ago was better for people like them than it is today.

Fifty years ago was the 1970s, and it doesn’t take too much historical research to see how that decade doesn’t match up to our happy memories... But what about a more recent, seemingly actually better decade? One that’s suddenly surfing a wave of pop-culture nostalgia? A decade like…the 1990s?

One 2024 survey from CivicScience found that the 1990s were the single decade respondents felt most nostalgic for (while the most recent decade, the 2010s, finished dead last). Nor, to my surprise, is this just the product of aging Gen X-ers pining for their flannel-clad youth — another survey found that over a third of Gen Z-ers were nostalgic for the 1990s, despite the fact most of them had not yet been born then, while 61 percent of millennials felt the same way.

As collective memory goes, these were years of steady economic and productivity growth, of reduced existential threat thanks to the end of the Cold War, and of really, really good movies. Compare that to today’s fears of AI-driven economic disruption, the renewed threat of nuclear conflict, and the general death of the movies.

But look closely, and you’ll realize that our memories of the 1990s are fatally blurred by nostalgia. Here are four reasons why the 1990s weren’t as good as the present day.

1) A far more violent country

I’ve written before about how Americans have this stubborn habit of believing the crime is getting worse even when it’s actually getting better. But holy cow, was America violent and murderous in the 1990s!

In 1991, the highest violent crime rate in US history was recorded, with 758.2 incidents per 100,000 people. And it didn’t get better for a while — 1992 holds the record for the most violent crimes in a single year, while 1993 had the highest number of murders nationally.

Compare that to 2024, when the violent crime rate fell to 359.1, the lowest in 20 years and less than half the rate of 1991, while the homicide rate this year [2025] may well hit the lowest level ever. And while the 1990s as a decade saw a historic drop in crime, the violent crime rate in 1999 was 524.7 per 100,000 — still well above last year’s level.

2) A much poorer world

At the start of the 1990s, nearly 40 percent of the entire world was in a state of extreme poverty, living on $2.15 or less a day. What that meant in reality was that for almost half the world, life was lived on the edge of grinding subsistence, much as it had been for centuries, with seemingly little chance for change. In China, for instance, some two-thirds of the population was in extreme poverty. The idea that the world’s largest nation would ever become rich would have been laughable.

Today, as I’ve written before, that picture has utterly changed. Just 8.5 percent of the world’s now much larger population lives in extreme poverty, which translates to over a billion people escaping near-total destitution. While you might want to go back in time to the 1990s, I can almost guarantee that none of them would...

3) A nearly unchecked HIV pandemic

There are countless ways in which health statistics globally have improved since the 1990s — the child mortality rate alone has fallen by 61 percent since 1990 — but the most striking one to me is HIV.

At the dawn of the 1990s the HIV epidemic looked unbeatable: The US lost 31,196 people to AIDS in 1990, and by 1995 it was the leading killer of Americans aged 25-44. Global AIDS deaths were racing toward the 2-million-a-year mark, and even when the first truly effective multi-drug cocktail debuted in 1996, it reached only a tiny share of patients globally.

Today the picture has flipped. About 30.7 million people — 77 percent of everyone with HIV — receive treatment, and global AIDS deaths have fallen to around 630,000. In 2022 there were fewer than 20,000 AIDS deaths in the US, and many cities are realistically aiming to zero out cases and deaths in the near future. There’s even real hope for an effective vaccine.

4) A less tolerant, less educated population

Though it might not seem like it in our highly polarized present moment, a number of important social attitudes have flipped since the Clinton years. When Gallup first asked in 1996, just 27 percent of Americans backed legal same-sex marriage; support now sits at 71 percent, and it has been legal throughout the country since 2015. In 1991, fewer than half of adults approved of Black-white marriages, yet by 2021 that share had rocketed to 94 percent. Together these shifts mark a dramatic expansion of everyday acceptance for LGBTQ people, interracial families, and other forms of diversity.

Opportunity gaps, while far from closed, have narrowed. Women earn about 84 cents for every dollar a man does today, up from roughly 76 cents in 1998. College attainment has surged: Only about 20 percent of adults held a bachelor’s degree in 1990, versus nearly 39 percent of women and 36 percent of men in 2022.

As decades go, the 1990s did have a lot going for them, though as someone who was in their late teens and early 20s during much of them — precisely the ages we’re most nostalgic for — you can’t take my word for it. And our current moment has no shortage of problems, including some that 30 years ago we would have considered dead and buried. But don’t let your inaccurate memories of the past distort your ability to see how far we’ve come."

-via Vox, August 12, 2025. Paywall free link here.

[brightlotusmoon]

[catfindr]

[escuerzoresucitado]

Jaguars swimming

[handmedownpocketpussy]

may i offer you a tank of dinguses in this trying time?

[manyblinkinglights]

That. That's the face. If you make THAT FACE hard enough and correctly, kind of pulling a long face while squinching up as well, you will valve your nostrils shut hands-free. Watertight.

[roach-works]

i love that they all just churn each other under while paddling