Odd little things

Just me, posting and reposting stuff. 40s, female presenting genderfluid, pan.

[mangled-by-disuse]

in happier pride news i actually found this deeply heartwarming

that's solidarity baybeeee

[lgbtlaughs]

Further context: Durham city council (Reform UK) cut funding and support for Pride. The Durham Miner's Association and other trade unions raised enough money for Durham Pride 2026 to go ahead - a direct call back to when Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) raised money for mining communities when Margaret Thatcher seized union funding during the miner strikes of 1984-85.

At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.

Stephen Guy, the chair of the Durham Miners’ Association, said that when it became apparent Durham Pride was under threat, he took it upon himself to “encourage the trade union movement to step up and do the right thing, and stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT+ community […] They not only raised funds for us, but came to our communities, uplifted our spirits when they were down, and showed their solidarity.”

[json-derulo]

‘Bigger and better than ever’: how Durham Pride beat Reform’s funding axe with help from the miners

Solidarity between LGBTQ+ people and unions has saved an event denied ‘a single penny’ of council money

[soulren]

“Ghosts are real” I can see how you could believe that

“Ghosts aren’t real” it’s very fair and rational that you believe that

“Ghosts aren’t real anymore” I’m about to hear a poem or very sad story

“Ghosts aren’t real yet” the fuck are you going to do

[stillnaomi]

using violence to liberate people from sweatshops, unsafe mines, and grinding poverty isn't the same as using violence to impose those things on people. the idea that violence is morally repugnant regardless of context is a belief that every oppressor throughout history would love for the oppressed to hold

[reading-writing-revolution]

[why-yes-i-am-an-adult]

This monument in Kazakhstan makes me so emotional.

5 people linked hands to save the dog, but there are only 4 in the statue...

so you can be the fifth

[mywingsareonwheels]

Shout out to fellow dyspraxic adults (diagnosed or self-diagnosed), both those who are also autistic and/or have ADHD, and those who do not.

Dyspraxia gets a bit forgotten about sometimes in posts about neurodiversity, but a) adults can absolutely be dyspraxic! b) it's just as much a neurodivergence as ADHD, autism, etc., c) we're mostly pretty great, d) the symptom overlap between dyspraxia and each of ADHD & autism is considerable, as is the comorbidity between all three. It's not just about struggling with fine motor control sometimes!

(I've never been properly assessed for any neurodivergence; if I ever am and have a sufficiently sensible assessor, I'll be fascinated to see which of the three if any I don't get diagnosed with. Probably none. ;-) )

[rohirric-hunter]

We laugh at how The Art of War is basically just, "An army can't fight if the soldiers aren't eating," but I'm reading this document about conservation of ancient yew trees and it legitimately says, "You should never fill the center of a hollow yew with concrete," so I think that probably making blatantly obvious statements is just the bane of being a specialist in anything

[v-spicata]

Ah yeah, that's actually not so bizarre when you know the reasons behind it. Still extremely wrong but understandable at least.

So yew trees are weird. They are extremely long lived with basically no known upper limit to their age. They do this by simply being extremely good at not dying like other trees do.

When a normal tree gets to an old age what usually happens is a fungus gets into their heartwood and takes hold. Their internal, dead wood rots away and they hollow out, lose structural support and collapse. Depending on the species this process can take decades or a good few centuries or so.

While yew trees do hollow out in this way they simply keep going afterwards. A ring shaped yew tree with most of its trunk missing is actually just middle aged and the most ancient yews get even weirder than that.

Wikipedia has this image of a Scottish yew where the start of this hollowing process can be seen. To be clear - for most tree species this would already have been fatal.

The thing is seeing a very old yew in this condition looks wrong to a tree surgeon, it's like the tree is constantly on the verge of death. So, if it's a well loved tree you try and do what you can to stop it from falling apart entirely.

A hundred years ago people tried all sorts of things like chaining up branches and also, yes, plugging the hollowed trunk with concrete. We know better nowadays.

Funnily enough there are even yews that survived this treatment and are still alive today.

This is a picture of the Tisbury yew in 1998 from the Ancient Yew Group, barely a minute ago from the tree's perspective.

Yews are fascinating plants with roots in European culture as ancient as the trees themselves. A few individual specimen trees are even estimated to be around five thousand years old - literally prehistoric in age.

Oh also they do weird things with sex as well sometimes. One of the oldest UK trees, the Fortingall yew appears to partially be turning from male to female on one side. It'll be interesting to see what becomes of it in the next few centuries of its life.

Sorry if this is all stuff you already know, I couldn't resist a chance to infodump about one of my favourite species.

[a-totally-reasonable-username]

I'm wishing a very Happy Pride Month to all the queer people who:

are disabled

are chronically ill

can't celebrate for health reasons

disability gets in the way of their gender representation

disability got in the way of a relationship

don't have anyone to celebrate with

have homophobic caretakers

Happy Pride Month to all disabled queer people

[tieflingkisser]

[louisegluckpdf]

they won't tell you this in therapy but sometimes the best way to stop catastrophizing/anxiety is to interrupt your spiraling with "girl what the hell are you talking about"

[ytpreviews]

It's not a cure but you have no idea how many times this image has helped me with my OCD

[notgreatthanks]

This tag has been more effective than any meds I’ve ever taken

[janmisali]

pick whatever option the person you're following who reblogged this post didn't pick. if they didn't say in the tags what they picked or if you're seeing the original post and not a reblog, pick at random instead.

first option

second option

Remaining time: 3 days 22 hours

[mathysphere]

An Incomplete List of Fonts I Would Like to Digitize Someday

All from the Antique Pattern Library

This twisty one

This pleasantly-flourished simple one. it's quirky.

I have no clue how one would include backstitching in a font, but it would look so good

This Art Deco set, from a pamphlet where it shares space with both the most stunning animal illustrations you've ever seen and also the world's most baffling, hideous borders

This one has a lowercase set, too. In a modern context this reads more as a retro game font than a cross-stitch one.

these would look INSANE stitched. more of a monogram font than one for sentences, but who cares. I could figure out some lowercases and this would absolutely COOK

Love the weight of this one. Gothic, fun, but not large enough to be unwieldy.

The first twisty font is better, I think. but if I had infinite time I'd do this one too

A very respectable twist on a classic sampler font. could get a lot of mileage out of this one

hot take but I think with a good lowercase set this one would also be good for a lot of things-- party in the capitals, but keep the lowercase legible.

a very respectable font. you could file your taxes with this one.

their bulbous forms entrance me. I REALLY like that 'H'

Another set that really should only be for monograms... but some part of me wants to believe I could make a proper font around these

LOVE the 'A', like the others. really dig that the original artist included a lowercase set, too

Bonus Monograms I like:

Blue Floral | Thick Line Red Floral | Right Angles

[holliano]

I bought a quarterly needlepoint magazine from 1991 today for $1 at an op shop, and there’s a four page spread about a woman who completely faithfully remakes samplers from the 1600s and the part that blows me away is that she was keeping women in history alive.

The original sampler maker was a teenaged girl called Loara she’s the only one known of seven siblings in that family. She was born approximately 1632 and had passed before her father had in 1656 which they know because it was mentioned in his will.

So in the 1630-40s a girl made a sampler, in 1991 a woman had put in years of research before recreating the sampler as Loara had 350 years earlier , and I’m reading about it in 2024.

Embroidery keeps women alive in history, and it’s part of why I love samplers so much.

Here’s a quote from samplers that I think about often:

[tiktoks-i-enjoyed]

The art of mindless embroidery.

by @ toolbburs (no pronouns in bio).

[marisatomay]

This Pride I hope that all of you never ever forget that no amount of sanitizing your sex life or sanding down of your LGBT edges will make bigots accept you. So, don’t debase yourself by capitulating an inch to them, especially in ways that throw your fellow community members under the bus.

[marisatomay]

You are a degenerate faggot in the eyes of bigots whether you’re wearing a nice button down and slacks with combed hair or leather daddy kink gear. So stand with the freaks who will stand with you until the end—long after the bigots have abandoned you despite your claims to be “one of the good ones.”

[guineapiggies]

Via mrs_larissa_domogalla

[tj-crochets]

My grandma just called and, among other things, said “You have hips. That’s good! Men like hips!” and then she interrupted herself to say “Women like hips. People of your preferred gender like hips. I can never remember”  And I was like “Thanks grandma! My preferred gender is none of them, no thanks.” and she was like “Okay, no one will comment on your hips!” very self satisfied, like “aha, I have figured it out” I think like half her grandkids are some variety of not-straight and she can’t always remember which is which but she is the epitome of like “she’s a little confused, but she’s got the spirit!”

[tj-crochets]

Update: I gave it some thought and my estimate was wrong. Of the grandkids that are out, it’s 1/3, not ½

[tj-crochets]

I told my grandma that I’d told my friends about what she said and that some of y’all had said you wished she was your grandma, and she said “Well, you can never have too many grandkids!”  So like…consider her your honorary grandma* I guess? *if you want an honorary grandma, that is

[tj-crochets]

Update on my grandma: I told her my hair was standing up, but instead of straight line it was diagonal and she said “That’s okay, you’ve never been straight!” and then laughed so hard at her own joke I thought she was going to drop the phone

[tj-crochets]

Happy almost pride month! Have my confused-but-supportive grandma!

[tj-crochets]

An update: my grandma just called me to ask if I knew it was pride month

[tj-crochets]

Happy pride month!!

[crabussy]

trans women and trans men and nonbinary people and everyone else being friends and holding each other close and falling in love and thinking of each other. I'm making this my future. let's all be okay together