Hi! The nameâs Robin, but you can call me Bin, Bug, or Ghost
Hi! Itâs yo ghost, BugBoiBin! I was born and raised in a Fundamentalist Christian home, went ⌠Robin Fick needs your support for Help Bug mo
Iâm a trans kid currently trying to move to a safer home away from my parents. If you have any questions, please donât hesitate to ask, and Iâll get to them as soon as I can! Iâm working on an faq right now
Iâve made a few acnh designs, which you can find using the tag #bug acnh designs (which will be at the bottom of the post) and you can send inspo pics and even commission a design if you want! It might take a few days to get it done, however, pretty busy with moving right now.
I also have a YouTube playlist called âTrans masc Enby vibesâ if you want to give it a listen! Itâs got a lot of songs in there, so you can hear new ones every time and maybe even find a few new artists that you like! Let me know if there are any songs I should add or take out!!!
Iâll be posting updates on my gofundme daily, and I should be able to finish a basic faq tonight. You can check the #gofundme or #update tag if youâre interested in seeing how the journey goes!
Hereâs the first of what I have labeled in my Google Docs as âimma make him kill himselfâ aka me torturing Colt Seavers.
This one is inspired by my art from a bit ago (you can find here) where Colt canât handle the smell of gasoline anymore.
Warnings: aftermath of torture (ofc), dissociation, past murder attempts, past suicide attempt, some slight self harming as a means for emotional regulation, and some internalized problems with being disabled.
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Colt couldnât get out of the car.
He parked right, turned off the engine, opened the door, but could not step out of the car. His feet just wouldnât move past twisting in his seat to jump down. His hand was on the interior door still, ready to use it as a crutch to hoist himself out. But he just sat there.
His wrists itch. Something smelled awful. There was a buzzing in his ear that sounded a lot like someone calling his name.
âColt?â
He turns his head and sees Jody, sitting in the passenger seat. Of course, he knew that.
âYeah, whatâs up?â He clears his throat and pulls his hand back. He scratches at his wrists, suddenly uncomfortable with the hoodie sleeves touching them.
His fingers brush against aging scars and he clenches his jaw.
âAre you going to get some gas?â Jody asks.
Colt blinks and heâs looking at her again. He mustâve spaced out for a second. He swallows, feeling sick. The smell in the air catches in his throat. He pushes up his sleeves a little, but they just slide back down.
âActually, do you mind getting it for me? My, uh, back kinda hurts right now. I donât really feel like standing there waiting.â
He was lying. They talked about his lying. He wasnât supposed to be hiding things from her anymore. That was the whole deal when they got back together. No more big secrets. If either one of them were feeling insecure or hurt by something, they need to communicate it. Colt especially. She was very stern about that.
But if he could disguise one hurt with another, maybe she wonât question it. Then when they get home, he could make up some excuse for feeling gross, maybe not showering yesterday, escape to the bathroom, and have a panic attack. In private. She wonât have to know.
Jody would know. Sheâd at least know something was up. She was too smart and sweet to him. Sheâd know in an instant.
He swallows again. The faint bitter taste in his mouth is really going to make him vomit.
âOkay,â Jody says. She looks at him oddly. She clearly already knows something is up, but isnât saying anything. âIâm going to get something from the shop too while Iâm up. Did you want anything?â
âWater.â He replies far too quickly. âUh, yeah. A water would be nice.â
Jody nods, still not saying anything. She does smile at him, however, and presses a kiss to two fingers to tap against his cheekbone. That gets a small smirk from him, and a flush.
She leaves him there, the door shutting behind her. Colt feels he should shut his door too. Maybe that would help with the smell of the place.
But suddenly with Jody gone, walking around to insert her card and grab the pump, he finds it hard to get his body to move. That causes a stab of fear in his chest, stomach plummeting to the ground.
He shuts his eyes tightly. Stupid choice of words, his dumb internal monologue.
âWhat was that?â
Curse his inability to stop talking to himself too, while heâs at it.
âNothing, nothing.â He waves Jody off. âJust talking to myself. Back just hurts.â
âDo you need your pillsââ
âTheyâre at home,â he interrupts her, stopping her from finishing. âLetâs just get going. Iâll be fine.â
âOkayâŚâ Jody sounds off. She definitely knows it's more than just his back bothering him. He just hopes she doesnât ask. âIâll be right over there. Itâll be done by the time Iâm back, so justâŚsit tight, okay?â
He gives her a thumbs up and smiles a little when he hears her scoff. Once heâs sure she walked away, he drops.
Colt folds in on himself. He leans across his lap, arms crossed with his elbows firmly planted on his knees. His leg starts bouncing, jostling him slightly, but it doesnât stop him from hiding his face in the crook of his arm. His fists clench, unconsciously rubbing one of his wrists against his knee. He could feel the pulse point pumping at jack rabbit speeds against the scars.
It was that smell. The overtly strong smell of gasoline. It was suffocating. It wasâit was just bringing him back to that night.
He was so afraid that night. The torture was one thing. It hurt, but it was familiar. It was pain he knew well. He can take a punch, a kick, head in the water, taser to the neck, anything. It hurts, it always hurts, but he can take it. He was trained to take it.
Colt wasnât trained to watch two men get dragged off a boat and shot dead in front of him. He wasnât trained to hear that Tom Ryder had tried killing him before, and almost succeeded the first time. He wasnât trained to handle real gasoline getting thrown into real wounds, stinging and soaking through his clothes. Getting in his mouth and his eyes.
He had been shot at, thrown around, pretty much everything you could think of, all that night. It was just something about the gasoline that had his head spinning.
No one really knew this because why would they? Why would they care? But Colt almost died twice from his fall. The first time was when his back had snapped, almost paralyzing him. The excruciating pain, the days in the hospital, the painful weeks of recovery that turned into months, and then years of just more pain. Pain that was never going to go away. The fall itself almost killed him. It very nearly did.
The second time the fall almost killed him is when he was having a horrible pain day and couldnât see himself coming back from it. He knew there wasnât a future without it.
So he took too many pain pills and had to get his stomach pumped.
Tom Ryder almost killed him three times. Once with the fall, once by gasoline, and once by his own stupid decisions. Not including all the shooting, drugging, beating, throwing, drowning, burningâ
Coltâs breathing hitches. The bouncing intensifies. He can hear the sloshing of the gas pump as it fills up his tank.
What heâs trying to say with all this is that heâs been through a lot. Heâs almost died a million times at this point. He doesnât know why a little gasoline is freaking him out this much. Heâs had worse.
But maybe it wasnât just the gasoline. Maybe itâs everything. Itâs been months now. The movie had officially finished reshoots with their new star, editing it all that needs to be done now. They were both back home in LA, Colt spending more time at Jodyâs apartment than his own. They were going on dates regularly, staying up all night talking, shedding tears as they spoke about what to do now. They were starting over, for real this time. No more lies, no more hiding.
Yet Colt was still hiding. He hasnât told Jody everything about those few days. He knew he should, but his mouth would go dry and his heart would pound, and he wouldnât be able to get the words out.
Maybe everything just came crashing down on him with just one whiff of a less-than-secure gas station pump.
He should get up, get his head out of his arms. Jody would be back any second and he canât have her seeing him like this. Heâs tired of worrying her. It hurts more than anything else to see her eyes searching him and speaking to him in that concerned tone.
Still, he knows he canât move. He canât muster anything more than too fast bouncing of his leg.
He swears he can still taste it burning down his throat. He threw up so much after. He barely made it out of the water after the boat crash before he was doubling over and vomiting everything he had unwillingly ingested. There was only a moment for him to worry about the blood he had spit up before he had to move.
Thereâs a click and a jolt where the pump automatically cuts off. It makes him flinch.
Colt feels a hand land on his shoulder and he jumps, quickly sitting up and shoving his hands in between his knees, pressing his wrists together.
He sees Jody and smiles, laughing a little breathlessly.
She doesnât look as pleased to see him. âColt, whatâs wrong? Youâreâyouâre shaking.â
âJody, um,â his voice is tight and itâs painful to get out. He swallows, but that makes him gag at the phantom taste in his mouth. He ignores it. âHey! Howâs it going?â
âColt,â Jodyâs voice turns dangerously serious. She says her next words firmly and without any wiggle room. âWhat is wrong?â
He breathes a little heavier. His wrists hurt. He quickly pulls them from where he was pinning them together between his legs. Instead, his hands rub up and down his thighs. He doesnât look at Jody. Picking a dried oil spill on the ground to his left, he stares at that instead.
âMmâŚâ he hums shortly. It comes out cracked and broken. Then he shakes his head. Thatâs all he could do.
The guilt suddenly hits him now. He shouldâve told her everything. He should have told her about the burning alive thing. Maybe then they wouldnât be in this mess. Or maybe she would know what to do without him having to talk about it. He doesnât want to talk about it.
âColtâColt, would you look at me, please?â Jody calls for his attention and heâs vaguely aware that sheâs been talking to him for a minute now. He doesnât know how he forgot.
He does look at her, but he doesnât feel like heâs really seeing her. Everything is fuzzy in his head. Thereâs a film over his eyes that makes everything blurry and doubled. He has to force himself to focus on her, but it doesnât last long.
âCan you talk to me?â She asks.
âI justââ Colt breaks off with a grunt. He shifts in his seat, the thumping of his boot against the edge of the carâs frame was distracting his words, but not enough to distract from theâ âIt just really smells. Like a lot. Like gasoline.â
âLike gasoline?â Jody repeats. He could imagine her in his head, raising perfectly tweezed eyebrows at him. He would be able to see that right in front of him if he could just focus. âWell, we are at a gas station. That would do it.â
âThatâll do it!â Colt mimics her and suddenly it hurts to keep breathing it in.
His inhale cuts short. He squeezes his eyes shut and rubs his shaking legs over and over again, reminding himself that heâs perfectly capable of moving them. The scars on his wrists burn from the friction. Shit, he was making this worse.
âWell itâs all done,â Jody says and thereâs something weird in her voice. âWe can head home now.â
Colt perks up a little at that. He forces on a smile. âYeah, yeah. That sounds perfect.â
âCan you drive?â
âWhat?â
âCan you drive like this, Colt?â
âLike what?â
Jody doesnât say anything, but he could tell by the tense silence that she is not impressed with him. Heâs sure if his eyes werenât closed, heâd see it too.
Why were his eyes still closed?
He opens them, but for some reason that just makes him face the dried spots of gas staining the ground. He wasnât looking at Jody, he was looking at his dirty, torn up jeans and the indents on his wrists. They burn against his sleeves. They arenât zip tied together anymore, but it feels just the same.
He growls and pushes up his sleeves all the way to his elbows. He had more scars from doing reckless crap. Even more from those few days. Yet, the only ones that bug him now are the rubbed raw indents on his wrists.
Colt only gets a second to scratch at them before much smaller and softer hands interrupt him.
âNo, no, donât hurt yourself!â Jody scolds him, easily pulling his hand from his wrist without any fight. âYou could justâhere, get out.â
Colt frowns. He still canât really focus on her. âWhat?â
âOut of the car,â she orders. âOut! Iâm driving us back to your apartment. Clearly, something is wrong.â
Heâs pulled carefully out of the car. He refuses to admit it out loud, but he always liked it when Jody would manhandle him around. It made him feel breakable and precious, two things he never was. Except, of course, when he is fragile like thisâlegs wobbling and almost kneeling over as soon as his feet hit the groundâitâs the worst feeling in the world.
He feels that urge to push Jody away, straighten up, force himself to stop shaking. Smile, give her a thumbs up, move on. Like nothing ever happened.
Sheâs gentle with him as she leads him over the front to the other side of his truck, and opens the passenger door for him. Her touch is firm as she guides him to take a step up and into the seat. Both her hands leave him for a mere second, coming back quickly to touch his trembling knee and reaching up to soothe his cheek.
Colt melts right there. He doesnât know why he fights it. He wants to be treated gently like this by her.
âI love you,â he tells her, and it hasnât been nearly long enough in their new relationship for him to be saying this to her, especially when he hasnât been respecting her like she deserves. Heâs been hiding this from her, he has no right to say this now. âI do. I really do love you.â
Jody smiles at him and itâs the first thing he sees again, past the scars and the stains that cover him. She steps up onto the frame of the truck and leans in to give him a kiss. One that he returns just as softly and overflowing with passion.
She pulls away, but still with a smile. âI love you too. Donât think this will get you out of the conversation, though. Once you are feeling better, we are talking about this. Everything.â
Colt thinks about each attempt on his life, all those that were pathetic, reckless, and stupid. He thinks about pain pills and scars on his wrists and the taste of gasoline.
He doesnât want Jody to be privy to that part of him, but he knows she should be anyway. He nods and sighs.
âEverything.â He agrees.
He holds his hands carefully in his lap as Jody heads back around to the driverâs side. She pulls herself in and works on adjusting the seat. She asks for the keys, inserts them, and starts the car, ready to head back home.
I am in elementary school. I have discovered something in myself that is different from my peers. I have no words to express this feeling, so I instead live in discomfort for years and years and believe it to be normal.
I am in seventh grade. I have lost my entire friend group because a rumor was spread that because I am queer, I must be a creep. My last sleepover with those friends was spent sitting in the same room as them while they texted each other talking shit about me.
I am in seventh grade. I have endured homophobic bullying from snarky comments to food being thrown at me in the cafeteria, and today finally swing back. I get one of the bullies on the floor and the teacher breaks us up. I get in trouble for fighting while she continues to bully me. Nothing is done about the bullying when I speak up about it.
I am in seventh grade. I am being outed to my entire classroom by the people I share a table with. They are walking to every single desk and telling each classmate I am queer. I watch as every head turns to look at me in disgust. I am completely alienated from that class and spend my days working alone.
I am fourteen or fifteen. The discomfort I have lived with my entire life finally has a name: dysphoria. I have come out to my family as trans. I am in my room alone on my birthday, crying because every card has "girl" on it.
I am fourteen or fifteen. I get a tone with a family member because I am tired of her excuses for continuously misgendering me. Her husband corners me outside and threatens to hit me if I ever talk back to her again, and tells me my identity is made up. My family sides with him.
I am fifteen and sixteen. I wish I could die instead of living in stagnancy.
I am seventeen. My country is passing law after law to restrict my community. Trans people are going missing and being murdered, and their lights are snuffed without so much as a whimper. I am disgusted and afraid and grieving alongside my trans brothers, sisters, and siblings.
I am twenty. I do not speak to much of my family anymore, my mother has only ever called me my birth name, and I have lost every single friend I ever had except one, and had to rebuild myself and my circle from the ground up. Family holidays are hollow. I have self harm scars permanently etched on my skin, purple half-moons under my eyes that are like stains at this point, and I will never forget how I have been treated and what I have endured. My heart breaks knowing millions out there experience the same things and worse.
I am twenty. I am crying in my boyfriend's arms about not feeling like a real man. I am hearing him reassure me that he sees me for me and he loves me as the man I am. My small friend group strictly calls me by my chosen name and pronouns. I am in love, I have more support than ever, and for once, I'm starting to feel glad I'm alive, glad that I held on. For once, I have hope.
I am twenty. It is pride month and I am hearing the same complaints over and over again. And I am not apologizing for existing a little more brightly this month. We have all fucking earned it.
âI just need to learn how to seem more normal and theyâll leave me alone,â she thought, lacking any ability to understand why the boys they said were her peers seemed to hate her from the moment they met her
Patriarchal society teaches boys to hate girls and believe it or not being a girl involuntarily sorted into boys spaces can very often mean being seen as an acceptable (and even deserving) target for that prejudice
âHello yes the boys you keep forcing me to be around keep attacking me on sight and the girls I find myself relating to and drifting towards have already learned that âboysâ are dangerous, which I donât disagree with, but as a result theyâre keeping their distance out of fear that Iâm the exact sort of predator Iâm trying to find refuge from, may I have some basic human kindness and connection, please?â
âThatâs extremely selfish of you have you considered that maybe you deserve to be abused?â
âI had not! Iâll just internalize that now since itâs the only consistent message that anyone is sendingâ
I literally cannot stress enough the constant societal forces that work 24/7 to make even an unrealized trans girl think that her existence is fundamentally wrong and she deserves to be punished for it
Before I knew it was about gender I still knew that there was something âdefectiveâ about me that justified the bullying and the harassment and the total lack of empathy from the people who billed themselves as figures of authority
Google says all music uploaded to YouTube is legally theirs to use to train AI on
Google says YouTubeâs terms of service grant a âbroad licenseâ for AI models to be trained on music uploaded to the platform in response to
Tl;DR:
Google is saying that any music uploaded to YouTube is legally theirs to use in AI training.
This was to try to throw out a copyright case where the victims were trying to sue YouTube for allegedly using their music to train their AI
full discussion
âA new court filing claims that when indie artists upload music to YouTube, they grant a "broad license" that covers the AI initiatives of parent company Google.â
âGoogle says in a new court filing that YouTubeâs terms of service grant a âbroad licenseâ for artificial intelligence models to be trained on music uploaded directly to the platform.â
âThis argument came in Googleâs Monday (June 8) motion to dismiss copyright infringement litigation filed earlier this year by a group of independent artists, songwriters and producers.
The lawsuit claims that Lyria 3, the AI music model launched by Google in February, was trained on songs ripped from YouTube without compensating artists.â
âThe case is among dozens that have accused AI companies of illegally training their models on copyrighted sound, text and images in recent years.
In most of these lawsuits â including ones brought by the major record labels against AI music generators Suno and Udio â tech companies have argued that the so-called fair use principle of copyright law allows them to create transformative works without licensing the training data.â
Instead of making a fair use argument, Google is saying âthey actually do have a license to train AI with the songs uploaded to YouTube by these indie artists.â
Google says thereâs no evidence for Google using their specific works, but also that they have the right to use
the motion cites a clause in YouTubeâs terms of service that states, âBy providing content to the service, you grant to YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable license to use that content (including to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works, display and perform it) in connection with the service and YouTubeâs (and its successorsâ and affiliatesâ) business.â
âif Googleâs argument is accepted by the court, the company would be legally permitted to train AI models on and otherwise utilize that content for âderivative works.â However,
the situation might be different for music distributed through YouTube pursuant to licensing agreements with labels and publishers.â
Music usually has licensing that protects them from copyright issues
Also, âpartnerâ is just a good word? It implies an equal relationship where both of your work together in pursuit of something, whether that be life goals or just having fun together.
This is literally what people are talking about when they say AI will be used to mainstream widely held bigotry. LLMs are trained on frequency and probability -> straight relationships are more well represented in the dataset -> straight pronouns and terms become the "correct" normal.
This is a form of backdoor bigotry from both normative facts (there are more straight than gay relationships) and well represented bigoted beliefs (men are superior to women).
Combine this with the mass of people inclined to believe (and being encouraged to believe) that if AI says and does something it must be correct
Finally done this after a couple days! I love drawing movie stills.
When I initially started this I hadn't seen any art of Grace as the sun with planets orbiting him, now I see so many!!! It's an obvious idea so I was wondering why no one had done it. People had LOL. Anyway, here he is <3
I tried very hard to make the constellations Canis Major and Vulpecula (Greater Hound and Little Fox) (accidentally said that the constellation was Sirius whoops.)
Hot tip for future parents: you actually have to guide your kid to adulthood. Feeding them and waiting for them to grow up is not enough since they are not house plants. A little more thought and care is required.
for those lacking certain "adulting" skills, especially things around the house, check out:
mom, how do i...?
and dad, how do i...?
^ there are tons of other resources but these two will teach you some personal hygiene, home or apartment repairs, easy recipes and basic cleaning techniques, even how to schedule doctor's appointments
if youre a renter i cannot recommend the trans handyma'am enough, mercury is a lifesaver, and her channel and accounts are always accepting new questions
there are so many resources, a lot that you dont have to even ask for, just know how to look 𩷠much love
happy pride! remember that being a transgender is everything but fiction. there are so many real historical figures from every century about whose transgenderism we aren't even aware of
on this picture i drew Alexandr Andreevich Alexandrov - cavalry officer of the russian imperial army that participated in napoleonic wars. people persistently keep on misgendering mispronounsing deadnaming and calling him a crossdresser although alexandrov clearly stated that he didn't want to be called by his deadname and being treated like anything but a man. that's an interesting historical figure and i wanted to draw attention to his person. i can't tell everything about him in only one post so i recomend you to read about alexandrov by yourself
also be proud of yourself and remember that you're valid! đłď¸âđđłď¸ââ§ď¸
A lot of younger people have no idea what aging actually looks and feels like, and the reasons behind it. That ignorance is so dangerous. If you donât want to âbe old,â you arenât talking about a number of years. I have patients in their late 80s who could still handily beat me in a raceâone couple still runs marathons together, in their late 80sâand I lost someone who was in her early 60s to COPD last year. What you want is not youth, it is health.
If you want to still be able to enjoy doing things in your 60s and 70s and 80s and even 90s, what you want to do, right now, is quit smoking, get some activity on a regular basis (a couple of walks a week is WAY better for you than nothing; increasing from 1 hour a day of cardio to 1.5 will buy you very little), and eat some plants. Thatâs it. No magic to it. No secret weird tricks. Donât poison yourself, move around so your body doesnât forget how, and eat plants.
If you have trouble moving around now because of mobility limitations, bad news: you still need to move around, not because itâs immoral not to, but because thatâs still the best advice we have. I highly recommend looking up the Sit and Be Fit series; it is freely available and has exercises that can be done in a chair, which are suitable for people with limited mobility or poor balance. POTS sufferers, Iâm looking at you.
If you have trouble eating plants because of dietary issues (they cause gas, etc.) or just because theyâre bitter (super taster with texture issues here!), bad news. You still want to find a way to get some plants into your body on a regular basis. I know. It sucks. The only way I can do it is restaurantsâthey can make salads taste like food. I can also tolerate some bagged salads. On bad weeks, the OCD with contamination focus gets so bad I just canât. However, canned beans always seem âsafe,â and they taste a bit like candy, so theyâre a good fallback.
If you smoke and you have tried quitting a million times and youâre just not ready to, bad news. You still need to quit. Your body needs you to try and keep trying. Your brain needs it, too. Damaging small blood vessels racks up cumulative damage over time that your body can start trying to reverse as soon as you quit. I know itâs insanely, absurdly addictive. You still need to.
You cannot rules lawyer your way past your bodyâs basic needs. It needs food, sleep, activity, and the absence of poison. Those are both small things and big asks. You cannot sustain a routine based on punishment, so donât punish your body. Find ways to include these things that are enjoyable and rewarding instead. Experiment. There is no reason not to experimentâyou donât have to know instantly whatâs going to work for you and what wonât, you just need to be willing to try things and make changes when things arenât working for you.
You will still age. Your body will stop making collagen and elastin. Tissues you can see and tissues you canât see will both sag. Cushioning tissues under your skin will get thinner. Youâll bruise more easily. Skin will tear more easily. Accumulated sun damage will start to show more and more. Joints will begin to show arthritis. Tendons and ligaments will get weaker and get injured more easily, as will muscles. Bones will lose mass and get easier to break. Youâll get tired more easily.
But you know what makes the difference between being dead, or as good as, in your 60s vs your 90s? Activity, plants, and quitting smoking. And donât do meth. Saw a 58-year-old guy this week who is going to have a heart attack if he doesnât quit whatever stimulant heâs on. I pretended to believe it was just the cigarettes, and maybe it is, but meth and cocaine will kill you quicker. Stop poisoning yourself.
Baby steps; take it one step at a time; you donât need to have everything figured out right now. But you do need to be working on figuring things out.
You will be unsurprised to learn that someone already accused me of ableism for suggesting that people not smoke, move regularly in ways their body can tolerate, and eat plants.
Do NONE of you eat canned beans with maple and ham? This is at every Safeway on Earth as far as I can tell, and if you hate most vegetables, these are a lot sweeter because of, you know, the added sugar. Eat candied plantsâglazed Brussels sprouts, candied yamsâif you canât stand the regular kind.
Oh, this is true, but you arenât familiar with how lazy I am. I will work 36 hours straight for WORKâIâve done it before and god willing I will never have to do it againâbut cooking or preparing food has never been something Iâve devoted time to. (Partly because of hours and demands of work.) I wasnât taught to cook because (explanation of my mother) and I didnât even scramble eggs until I was 19, and then I set them on fire the first time I tried. I gave myself nutritional deficiencies twice during residency. The prospect of having to know whatâs in my crisper AND use it before it goes bad despite the attentional difficulties, when my contamination OCD focus is already very bad, and KNOW when itâs gone bad when my only reference point is my also extremely OCD father, is untenable. I donât enjoy cooking or making salads, and theyâre pretty affordable at local places (in the sticks), so for me the math maths. However, it is definitely a good idea to learn to prepare salads and those of you with less baggage than me should definitely give it a shot! Salads can and should taste good! Raspberry vinaigrette and some candied walnuts or pecans plus some blue cheese crumbles = good shit. Who cares what plants you put it on. Except not iceberg lettuce.
I once saw it observed on Tumblr that adding good tasting things you like to a salad you're making does not cancel out the nutrition in the vegetable matter
(might've been OP. sounds like the kind of thing you post)
That wasnât me, but I co-sign it 100%. Iâd rather have patients eating salads that are completely covered in those âhigh fat!!!!â salad dressings that news programs love to freak out about than not eating plants. Do what you need to do to the plant to make it enjoyable to eat. Caramelize your onions. Put hollandaise sauce on your asparagus. Glaze your Brussels sprouts. Make! Life! Worth! Living! And make it possible to keep living it.
Penitence as a lifestyle is both unnecessary and often actively harmful.
Julie Hunterâs movement_with_me on Instagram is a great resource for low-energy movement/exercise strategy. Julie was bedbound with ME/CFS following a COVID infection, and she used her experience as an athletic coach to figure out ways to reintroduce tiny doses of movement into her schedule, interspersed with purposeful rest, in such an effective way that she is now effectively cured and has returned to her pre-COVID baseline. She offers paid personalized movement coaching, wherein she creates a flexible multi-week schedule for clients to follow. Her Instagram account is a totally free treasure trove of advice, and if you scroll back a ways youâll find videos demonstrating very simple starter exercises with a range of adaptations for different levels of ability.
Justin Agustin has an Instagram account and a YouTube channel full of âgentle functional exercises for everyday life,â including lots of workouts for beginners, seniors, and people living very sedentary lives. Many of his videos demonstrate techniques for beginners alongside a more advanced option, and he heavily stresses to only do what you are able to instead of pushing yourself further and potentially getting hurt. There are also paid versions of his work â a website and an app â with monthly challenges and a nutrition guide (and possibly more, but I havenât used the paid version so idk).
And a guided flexibility recommendation!
David Thurinâs movementbydavid account on Instagram is all about gaining and maintaining flexibility through both active and passive stretching. He is incredibly flexible now, but he frequently mentions that it didnât come naturally to him: He has consistently put time and effort into becoming more flexible, and you can do it too! Being flexible helps prevent injury, and, like fitness, is something you have to work to maintain and will lose if you donât put in that work. Also like fitness, itâs something you can get better at, even starting from scratch.
All three of these people emphasize that you can follow their videos without special equipment, using things you probably already have (like a chair, a wall, a counter, and weights like a water bottle or can of food).
If you have access to an oven, I can't recommend enough just cutting whatever veggies you like into bite sized chunks, drizzling some olive oil over them on a sheet pan, adding generous salt and pepper, and chucking it in the oven at 400 for 15-20 minutes. Carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, brussles sprouts, broccoli, asparagus, its all delicious this way and takes zero babying. You can eat it standing up at the stove straight off the sheet pan if you don't wanna do more dishes. Chuck some meat on there too, or pop some beans in the microwave and you've got a full meal, and if you have a big pan you can easily cook enough for four people at a go this way. Leftovers are good cold and can be eaten straight out of the fridge.
