Queer writer for queer things.

I'm Alex, 31, they/them, nonbinary queer.

[fallen-in-love-suggestion]

You deserve to be understood, to have a partner you can rely on no matter what. You deserve to be loved unconditionally.

[ironmordis]

Sketch is done ✨

[danmangan]

things that are enjoyable:

showers

things that are not enjoyable:

getting in the shower

getting out of the shower

[gorillaz-and-cupcakes-fan-deact]

[inthefallofasparrow]

Not like that film was a one-off either.

[mxtomituck]

I would like to add The Birdcage (1996) to this list of drag queen movies (mind you, it's based on a French stage play from 1973).

Which starred Nathan Lane as a drag queen just two years after he had voice Pumba in "The Lion King":

And we ESPECIALLY need to remember Victor Victoria from 1982 (during the REAGAN administration) which is SET IN THE 1930S and stars everyone's favorite curtain-sewing nanny as a struggling soprano who decides to pretend to be a boy doing drag (DOUBLE THE DRAG FOR YOUR MONEY). I mean look at this photo:

Count Victor Grazinski isn't putting up with your transphobia (or you being a dick to Robert Preston).

Unfortunately, the representation of drag and female impersonation (as it was often called pre-Stonewall) is scant in mainstream American cinema due to the Hayes Code. There are definitely more, but these are biggest, "family-friendly" names I can think who have starred in major motion pictures as drag performers.

[asparklethatisblue]

can I add another?

Some Like It Hot (1959), it got in trouble with censors and still went ahead, but it featured a lot of Gender and a character getting really into this whole “being a girl for real” thing, as well as the implication of a a gay engagement being on the table

but like? It has Marilyn Monroe in it and banger music and it’s a classic! I only know from my mother bringing it up and also a tiny bit of exposure to russian tv channels, but I think it was also popular in the Soviet Union? So she’d seen it as a child and loved it so much she watched it with me when I was also just a child.

(not to mention big traditions of children’s theatre with drag performance)

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Elon Musk's Cybertruck found to be more dangerous than infamous Ford Pinto: report

A new report has come to a disturbing conclusion for Elon Musk's Tesla Cybertruck — the model is far more dangerous than even the infamously

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♂️

[beautifullovebread]

More dangerous than the Pinto....an economy car....I would be hanging my head in shame

[db-1986]

The Cybertruck, an electric vehicle with no liquid fuel on board, has more fire fatalities then the Ford Pinto. The car famous for exploding into a ball of fire if hit in the rear.

How do you fuck something up that bad?

[frodo-baggins]

not to go all cringe on main but fictional characters have genuinely helped me through some of the worst shit in my life n i’ll forever be grateful to fiction for giving me comfort when i’ve needed it most

[the-prophesied-disco-gay]

Literally sobbing. A judge, a US judge defended us. A judge brought up intersex people, using the term intersex, to *defend* us by not allowing our erasure. I'm having a lot of feelings right now

[the-prophesied-disco-gay]

Literally sobbing. A judge, a US judge defended us. A judge brought up intersex people, uaing the term intersex, to *defend* us by not allowing our erasure. I'm having a lot of feelings right now

[gaynfl-moved]

Former Minnesota Vikings punter, Chris Kluwe, who was blacklisted from the league for standing up for marriage equality, speaks at a city council meeting where he calls Trump a Nazi. He is subsequently arrested and carried out by police.

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

I just want to clarify a few things, because I have a feeling some people may share this without watching the video in full and/or getting further details from related news articles:

Kluwe was there to specifically protest the installation of a [massively cringe] pro-Trump plaque. Per ABC News: "Kluwe, a Huntington Beach resident, was protesting the council's decision to place a plaque commemorating the public library's anniversary. The plaque included the words "Magical Alluring Galvanizing Adventurous," an apparent nod to President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again slogan."

Kluwe was not just arbitrarily hauled off by cops for speaking out against Trump. If you watch the video until the end, you'll hear him announce his intentions to engage in the "time-honoured American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience." From there, he defiantly approaches the stage where the seven [aforementioned cringe, right-wing lunatic] Huntington Beach City Council members are all sitting, knowing full well that he is about to be arrested and charged with disrupting an assembly.

Thanks to this deliberate act of protest, some of Trump's 24/7 news blitz will now be interrupted by images of a former NFL player being carted away by a gaggle of dour looking cops:

(this is a good thing, if that's not clear; I feel like too many people have forgotten about the tactical use of arrests by activists, especially during the Civil Rights era, to highlight injustice or disrupt a media narrative)

Anyway, kudos to Mr Kluwe for this, I hope more public figures will follow suit.

[vaspider]

He did not know he would be arrested for "disrupting an assembly," because the cops didn't know why they were arresting him. He figured he would be hauled out, but he said the cops "threw him in a cell while they figured out what to charge him with."

That is a fact that any good lawyer will look at and cackle wildly, because of the words "pretextual arrest." (Basically, if you don't know what you're charging someone with, if you don't CLEARLY KNOW what law they're breaking, you can't -- or aren't supposed to be able to, anyway -- just "arrest someone and figure out what they did wrong later.")

So that's genuinely delightful to me.

(My wife laughed SO HARD when I read an article about this to her last night. Kluwe is well-loved. He's just Like This, and this sort of Like This goes over well with a lot of Minnesotans.)

[deadnow-deactivated20250507]

Microdosing friendship by liking each other's posts and sending a single dm back and forth every 6 months.

[vaspider]

So… I got a notification from the State Department at like 8 PM Pacific that my passport was approved, and I was quietly thankful and stunned bc my legal gender in Oregon is listed as X, or undeclared, and that's what's on my passport. I'm pretty sure someone(s) worked late to get the X passports done today.

I was already really grateful to whoever in the Seattle Passport Office worked late to get these things processed on the last Friday before That Man gets back into office... and then I got a notification that my passport shipped at fucking midnight Pacific and whoever got that shit out the door so it couldn't be picked up on Monday and like, denied and shredded?

They're my fucking hero.

[vaspider]

So... I heard from a friend of 20+ years who works for the State Department who confirmed to me in so many words that they can assure me, without specifics, that "all of the suppositions you have made here are true."

So... yep. Passport folx at the State Department really did work incredibly long hours this week just... shoveling every passport out the door (and prioritizing the ones that might be A Problem come Monday) and yes, they did On Purpose make sure that all of them weren't just DONE but MAILED and out the door and in the hands of the USPS so that they can't be told to pull those passports back and deny/destroy them.

This also means they got the OK for the mountains of overtime from the Biden administration to get that done.

This is what I mean when I say that the Good Work is often not glamorous and that we have to prioritize things which actively and immediately better the lives of our siblings. The State Department worker who was still in the office last night at midnight Pacific time stuffing my passport into an Express Mail envelope and making sure that it was in the hands of USPS has done more liberatory work for the trans movement than 100 people endlessly auditing the language others use to describe their lives ever will.

These next years are gonna be real hard. Find something tangible to do for yourself and others, however small, and do it as hard as you can.

[thepioden]

On Friday, 1/17, we got deluged at work with Borrower Defense to Repayment approvals. Five huge populations, back to back - and the other servicers got the same. For those who don't know, Borrower Defense to Repayment is a program that will discharge federal student loans for borrowers who were defrauded by their schools; it's one of the major avenues the Biden administration has been using to forgive mountains to debt, even while the more expansive forgiveness measures got stalled out in court.

The Department of Education pulled the same thing as the State Department, getting those approvals out to the servicers at the eleventh hour to begin discharging. Under Betsy DeVos, Borrower Defense to Repayment was stalled out for four years. This is the Biden Administration's last gasp at Student Loan Forgiveness, and they SLAMMED it

[bloodbending]

can’t believe tiktok is actually getting banned, twitter is infested with bots and brainworm-infested musk bots, facebook is king of QAnon, instagram caught the plague from facebook and is dying a slow death in real time… and as the dust settles… only Miss Tumblr is left standing… failing upwards once again

[curliestofcrowns]

where's that speed skating gif

[scarygodmother]

[elvisomar]

[thememedaddy]

[guooey]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[herpsandbirds]

Any unusual or downright weird lizards I can obsess over for a bit?

I think I have 5 weird (cool) lizards for you...

Mexican Mole Lizard (Bipes biporus), family Bipedidae, endemic to the Baja California peninsula of Mexico

photographs by Mike Pingleton & Carl J Franklin

Earless Monitor Lizard (Lanthanotus borneensis), family Lanthanotidae, endemic to Borneo

ENDANGERED.

Semi-aquatic.

Closely related to the true monitor lizard in the family Varanidae.

The only member of its family.

They do have inner ears, and are capable of hearing, despite the lack of ear openings and tympana.

photographs by Chien C. Lee & Reptiles4all

Red Worm Lizard aka White-bellied Worm Lizard (Amphisbaena alba), family Amphisbaenidae, foun din much of South America

photographs by Diogo B. Provete & Jose Gabriel Wildlife

Secret Toadhead Agama (Phrynocephalus mystaceus), defensive display, family Agamidae, found in found in Iran, North Afghanistan, Eastern Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan

photograph by Milan Zygmunt Photographer

Mossy Leaf-tailed Gecko (Uroplatus sikorae), family Gekkonidae, Madagascar

photograph by Inglourious Reptiles