Ooh, shiny!

Pretty, insightful, and/or ridiculous. Internet-old enough to value privacy/pseudonymity.

[sibyllance]

Apparently someone got their car stuck on the light rail tracks at Mt. Baker. For those unfamiliar this is 35 feet up in the air

[officialboredom]

First test flight of a flying car by Mazda partially a success

[tuulikki]

I feel like the Arizona Utah license plate should take some place in our analysis of whatever in the goddam fuck we’re looking at here

[strangehorse]

Is anyone else starting to feel kind of wary about the increasingly common narrative that "women's bodies are so different to men's that modern scientific recommendations do not apply to them"?

Like. There is a significant gap between 'a lot of studies do not take into account variations caused by things like female hormone cycles, which can limit how generalisable they are' and 'medical science does not apply to women', and the latter just seems to create a situation rife for bad faith actors and snake oil salesmen to reassure you that actually, THEY have the answers, because THEY listen to women, and if you simply pay them for their online subscription service-

[strangehorse]

like. female and male bodies are not different species. the traits you consider inherent and unique to Female or Male can often be changed by hormone therapy and other interventions, and many traits fall on a bimodal distribution, not a binary one. you can apply the findings of 'Invisible Women' without implying that female bodies are like, Startouched Special Moon-Tied Nature Creatures that are immune to all known scientific phenomena

[a-book-of-creatures]

Book that was good: I liked it 👍

Book that was bad: this sucked 👎

Book that I wanted to like but which failed to live up to my hopes: I am going to write 10,000+ words explaining exactly why this book wronged me

[a-book-of-creatures]

I don’t know why I’m making it exclusive to books. Any other media too. Sometimes I forget that there are things other than books.

[depsidase]

[claypigeonpottery]

I realized I already have the perfect little dude for phallo scars—so now he’s got a few new scars! I definitely made them pretty wide, but his body hair should show through the pink and make the scars less visible so I wanted to be sure they’d still be seen

plus, scars aren’t always nice and neat so…shrug

[claypigeonpottery]

this guy’s blowing up all of a sudden so I’ll add a couple new pictures!

sold

[creekfiend]

the thing about being traumatized by something that your society doesn't really even consider to be a real thing, particularly when most people struggle to even believe that trauma is real, is that it makes your entire life and self illegible to the people around you. which for a human being is of course compounded trauma. like. you can see me sometimes but you cant read me. i am written in a script you have never heard of. but people do broadly assume that everyone is legible to them, so they just sort of superimpose the alphabet they were taught over you and decide that must be what you are. i think a lot about the study that was like, just moving through the world as a Black person creates trauma, and a lot of that trauma is in the material circumstances that have been imposed on Black people but also? a lot of it, i imagjne, is from the disconnect and alienation that results from a majority of the people in the country in which you live not believing that the material circumstances that created your situation even exist. if they believe that they EVER existed. im sure there's discussions of this from the perspective of racialized people (and if anyone has some links to discussion of this phenomenon from that perspective i would be interested to read them, esp if looking at it from a disability perspective as well,) and it is different just on a community level, i think, than my experience, but it is always an example i think of when i am thinking about this phenomenon. social-relational trauma is so fucking real. and its this endless recursive trauma-mirroring effect internally when no one can actually see and understand your experiences. like. bouncing a laser off one hundrdd mirrors. i've used too many different incoherent analogies now and i think if i keep writing this post a big hook is going to come and yank me offstage

[solarpunk-nightbird]

Heads up from a Southern Californian that it is time to buy any fans and/or KN-95 masks for the summer NOW, before the start of summer and wildfire season!!!

If you wait until your AC goes out to make sure you have enough fans, there will not be fans available for you to buy. If you wait for a wildfire, no one will have KN-95s for you to buy. They will all be sold out, especially as climate change makes summers more and more severe, and fire season longer and longer.

Other tips for keeping cool in extreme heat:

Do not ever leave a child or a pet in the car while it is off. Ever. Not "just for a few minutes," nothing. Kids have died from being trapped in hot cars in temperatures as low as 70 degrees F (21 C)

Especially if you live somewhere that doesn't typically get hot, make sure you own at least 2 tank tops and 2 pairs of shorts if at all possible. Thrift them or search them on Buy Nothing/something similar if you don't have them already. You will want the option

Cotton fabric evaporates moisture quickly and sheds heat fast. Cotton clothes are great for the heat for that reason, and if you're really desperate for relief, get cotton shirts/towels/cloths wet and either wear them or hang them up in front of a fan. The fan will blow the cooler, moist air throughout the room, cooling things down

Open windows and doors on opposite sides of rooms to create airflow

Hydration tablets and electrolyte drinks are magic for dehydration. You need to replace the salts you're sweating out. Salty trail mix is also great for this (you eat it on hiking trails for a reason)

Make sure your pets stay cool! Cold packs inside fabric can be really good for this (and for you!)

Most efficient place for a cold, wet towel to cool you down is the sides of your neck, your hands, and the soles of your feet (but NEVER put ice against your bare skin!)

Don't really expect anything of yourself between 1pm and 4pm - that is the hottest part of the day, and so it's the time you need to be the most chill (ba-dum tss). Movement creates heat (hence why you shiver, hence why exercising warms you up), so try to do as little as possible, and especially try to save errands and exercise until dusk

Many places now have heat shelters. Look them up in your area. The public library is often a spot for these, and if not, still a really good and FREE place to stay all day with AC

Plants cool things down. Standing on the grass will leave you measurably cooler than standing on the asphalt two feet away. Stay on plants, stay in the shade, and do what you can to add plants and green spaces to your area, to help keep it cool

If you live in a wildfire hotspot, try your best to get an air filter or air purifier now, because there will be none left by the time you need one

If you do end up near a wildfire zone: any smoke you can smell is smoke that can affect your lungs. Leave the house as little as possible. Duct tape the seams around windows and exterior doors to help keep out the smoke. And pack a go bag (change of clothes, toiletries, important documents, medications, spare food and water, essentials for pets or kids)

My qualifications: Lived in California their whole life, most of it in Los Angeles, and half my adult life living in buildings without AC. One time I went to a baseball game in 117 degree weather (47 C) and genuinely had a good time. I know things about keeping cool

[asphodelimago]

Heatstroke makes you worse at handling heat. The cells that handle your thermoregulation are literally getting cooked. Do not tough it out. Every time you get heatstroke, it causes damage.

Know what heat exhaustion and heatstroke look like, and how quickly you are at risk. Particularly if you are chronically ill, have/had long covid, or are taking certain medications, you may get heat exhaustion really fast. (I've gotten it in literally 15 minutes flat. It does not need to take very long - if you're beet red and have a pounding headache, that may be heatstroke, take it fucking seriously.)

If you do have known issues with heat tolerance, consider carrying around a thermometer on hot days. Check your temperature if you start feeling "off", or routinely while in the heat. If you're running a fever, you're either sick or have heat illness, get the fuck out of the heat. (Be aware that for oral temperature, you need to have not eaten/drank anything in the last 15 minutes. Armpit will do in a pinch. I am not sure how well infrared works if you're in the "clammy" stage of heat exhaustion.)

If you already have heat exhaustion or heatstroke, fans and wet towels may not cool you down sufficiently. Cold drinks, icepacks, or a cold shower/bath are faster in an emergency - they cool you directly, rather than using sweat/evaporation to cool your skin. If you have limited resources to cool yourself, focusing on pulse points/big veins can help, like putting an ice pack on your neck or the inside of your wrist. Think like a vampire.

Cotton can be ok, but linen is better if you can get it. Polyester and other synthetics are typically fucking hot, avoid, avoid. Check your clothing labels - even "obviously" cotton things like t-shirts may actually be 50%+ polyester.

An adult human can only absorb about 1L of liquid per hour. Staying hydrated in extreme heat can be very difficult, because you may be losing more than 1L per hour. Using a timer to make sure you remember to drink can help.

If water suddenly tastes disgusting, check your electrolytes. Having emergency Gatorade (or similar) on hand can be helpful, because not only does it have electrolytes, but it tastes gross and sweet and chemical to most people who aren't low on electrolytes. No shade toward people who inexplicably like Gatorade on its own merits - but if it suddenly starts tasting way better than usual, take that as a sign. The rate at which people lose electrolytes through sweat varies wildly by person, even without chronic illness in the mix.

Know what discomfort and heat-related illness look like for your pets. Providing cool water and cool places to lay down is helpful. Panting is bad, but many animals are uncomfortable well before that point. (Mine usually start laying around on the coolest ground available and refusing to play around 80F. They are, however, extremely fluffy cats.)

Know what discomfort and heat-related illness look like for anyone you're responsible for, especially children and elderly people, who are more vulnerable.

Support and patronize your local libraries; they're an invaluable resource for anyone without A/C in this fucking world, in addition to all the other great work they do.

Oh, and if you happen to be in California specifically, there's a web tool to help tell you how worried to be, and lists some resources and local cool centers. Might be handy. https://calheatscore.calepa.ca.gov/

[bluebelly-sun-serpentine]

All signs are pointing to a pretty strong ENSO event this year, which, in combo with the low snowpack but decent amount of rain (so decent amount of growth) may make for a bad fire season. Be prepared. All the advice here seems fairly good to me, but I’m going to add that if you’re taping windows and exterior doors to keep out smoke you still need to be airing each room out occasionally if you don’t want to have issues with CO2 - the way we managed this in the 2020 fires was to periodically leave a window slightly open in one room (with the rest of the place sealed), then close it back down and turn an air purifier on in that room on the highest setting. If you’re really serious about air quality you ideally want to have more than one air purifier so that you can run stuff simultaneously (something outside the door to the room currently being ventilated, for instance). We also had to tape up our fireplace (we used plastic sheeting and masking tape) because like many fireplaces it was not sealed.

Plan and get your go bag together before the bad fires start - you can always add to it once things get more critical but there’s some basic shit you can put in there now so you don’t have to think about it when thinking is more stressful. I always have a go bag at least partly packed because we live in a high fire-risk area that’s basically right on top of a fault. If you have an extra supply of your necessary meds, put them in there too. My important docs, extra keys, some key mementos, and a first aid kit live in that fireproof, waterproof bag year round. During red flag warnings or actual nearby fires I put more in the bag or I put the bag in a bigger bag with other necessaries. I have family that lost their homes in previous fire seasons: make dupes of your favorite photos or copies of notes from loved ones now and put them in your bag. If you have one of a kind items you cherish but that aren’t in regular use - heirloom jewelry, handmade gifts, whatever - and they’re small enough, just store them there. If you have important digital files make a backup and put the drive in your bag. People often forget these things in the panic to save themselves, their pets, and the things they use in their day-to-day lives, but some things are not replaceable and you’d be surprised which losses cause the most pain long-term or inflame your grief.

Have an evacuation plan set up before fire season starts. I know exactly where and with whom we’re going to stay if we have to evacuate. If they also have to evacuate (in 2020 we were both under evac warnings because the lightning complex fires hit so many different places over a huge geographical area) we have a backup plan with someone else.

Re masking: not every mask is created equal. Wildfire smoke is really toxic - so is smoke from structure fires - and a surgical mask is not going to protect you. You want a well-fitted N95, and you want to wear it anytime you are outside or in a place without proper filtration. Ear loop masks/KN95s tend to be a lot less reliable/less likely to provide a good fit, but if that’s the only thing you can get it’s better than nothing. Do not exercise in wildfire smoke. You should be wearing a mask even if you’re just walking around the block. If the air in your home is appropriately filtered, exercise at home. Otherwise, just wait for the smoke to clear before restarting your routine. Even an AQI of 50-80 (a lot lower than you’d see with wildfires) is not something you should be exercising in without a mask. You do not need to go on that run. You DO need to check the AQI even if it doesn’t look particularly smoky - it can be quite bad even if it doesn’t look it. If you are directly in the path of a nearby plume and the AQI is in the 300-600 range just chill out. You shouldn’t really be going out even with a mask if you don’t have a really pressing reason. The ash is toxic and you don’t want that shit on your skin or clothes. I know we all need to get groceries and go to work but it’s all cumulative, so think about the ways you can minimize your exposure.

You may see firefighters going about without appropriate PPE but it’s not because they know something you don’t - they’re just embedded in a culture of terminal machismo and a lot of them die of lung and throat cancer because they don’t want to wear the equipment. My uncle spent just a few years as a volunteer firefighter working on wildfires in his early 20s and those couple of years bought him a lifetime of battling different cancers (starting in his mid-late 20s). A lot of people who stay longer don’t even get that lifetime - they die pretty young because putting the mask on felt to them like some “pussy shit” or an inconvenience on top of all the other gear weighing them down.

Mask up! I mean I’m gonna advise you do that well before fire season to protect yourself and the people around you from viral illness, but definitely mask up when the AQI is high.

[bluebelly-sun-serpentine]

Watch Duty absolutely does do more than just SoCal - they’re expanding coverage as fast as they can and trying to build relationships with as many orgs as possible to expand that coverage not just geographically but technically as well. You can use the app to track firefighting aircraft, get timely updates on evacuation warnings and orders, track wind direction and see updated fire perimeters, watch fire cams, check AQI, and set it to notify you of any new fire in your area. They have live humans working as reporters monitoring fire and police frequencies and often have more up-to-date info than local news stations, and are a better resource for updates on firefighting progress than twitter used to be (a lot of fire departments and cal fire units stupidly provide most of their online updates through walled sites like twitter and facebook, and WatchDuty is a much better - less dystopian - way of getting that vital info).

I’d also recommend Daniel Swain’s Weather West youtube channel and blog for context and updates on extreme weather events (both during fire season or big atmospheric river events). He’s both a meteorologist and a climate scientist and I will attest that on several occasions watching his live office hours during fires has allowed me to give advance warning and really useful info to family members in threatened areas. If there’s a big fire event going on in the USA’s west he will most likely be live doing explainers both through his youtube channel and to the many outlets channels that rely on his analysis.

[postmanic]

a comic about aac

Happy AAC Awareness Month!

next comic

[semiplural]

Prev's tags (@the-dream-archives): > I would love to use this if I wasn't scared of being judged

People are going to judge you anyway. People will judge you for literally anything. Bad hair day? Shirt they don't like? Sitting weird? Doing literally nothing but standing there? Someone out there will be judgy about it, but most of the time, that judgy stranger is in your head, not out there. People, on average, are kinder than you'd expect.

Do you want to let the imaginary judge control your every move? Do you want to suffer for their benefit? Does listening to them actually help you live a life that you find rewarding, happy, and comfortable, or does it push you further away from yourself? If the judge didn't exist, what would you let yourself do? Why are you letting the judge stop you? Is that reason actually worth it?

(And if the judge is literal: what are they afraid would happen if they let you do it? What can you do to help them feel safe and respect their needs so they can respect yours in turn?)

But yes, some people will judge you overtly. Some might even be mean to your face. It sucks, it hurts, it's scary. But it's also one thing: honest. That person is telling you exactly what they think. That's a gift. They've just let you know, "this person is not my friend." It tells you that they're not worth your time, and you can disregard their opinion and move on with whatever makes you happy/comfortable/alive.

You're right if a jerk makes you angry or upset or uneasy. That means it's time to ditch them and go find someone kinder (and if you can't, then it's a cue to either find a way out or derail them off the hate- we once got a homophobe off our case by insistently talking about home aquarium care until they ran with the topic change).

But, most importantly: You'll never find the people who love you as you are if you spend all your time trying to be perfectly palatable. Hiding and people pleasing and burying yourself and your needs away doesn't attract the kind of friends who will change your life for the better. That attracts people who see you trying to please them and use it at your expense. And it destroys you from the inside out in the process.

Give your people a chance to see you.

[alanaisalive]

The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

[iguanamouth]

oh shit

[throughshadow-to-the-edgeofnight]

[alanaisalive]

As the OP of this post, I’m going to threaten that if this gets to one million notes by the 10 year anniversary on 1 June 2026, one year from today, I will get a lower back tattoo of the loch ness bear monster.

[homunculus-argument]

It's the 2nd of may as I'm writing this, and just in case anyone needs to hear this:

Brushing your teeth 3-4 times a year is still better than nothing. If you promised yourself that you'd do better this year and already fell off the wagon in january, go do it now, even if you can't manage it every day.

Once a week is better than never. Once a month is better than never. Hell, once a year is better than never. If you can't do perfect, better than nothing is better than nothing. Go brush your teeth.

[batbetbitbotbut]

To the best of my layperson understanding: tooth decay is cumulative. This means tooth protection is cumulative as well. (Insert disclaimer against overbrushing here.) Each time you brush your teeth or use mouthwash, your oral health gets a little bit better, your teeth get a little bit happier compared to how they would have been. It's the first time you've done it in months? It still helps! If you do it today and then don't do it for months, it still matters that you did it today.

All of this also goes for skin damage and wearing sunscreen. Protect your skin sometimes, it's better than never.

[doomhamster]

-nods fervently- When my mental health takes a dip, dental hygiene is often among the first things to go, and I've had frequent inflammations of the gums as a result. The kind of thing that makes them bleed and can lead to losing teeth, long term - BUT it only takes a couple of days in a row of brushing properly for my gums to recover! And then even if I fall off the wagon again a week later, my poor abused mouth is starting from a better position.

[ceanothusspinosus]

Yes! For a good chunk of my life, I just never got to good gum health. Gums inflamed, flossing hurt, dental cleanings hellish, etc, you know the deal. Sometime in the last decade, I managed to stick with regular-ish brushing and flossing for long enough for them to actually really improve. Since then, it’s been kind of off and on, this year more off than on.

And still! Had a dental implant put in yesterday. A couple of weeks ago I was like oh hell, my mouth really shouldn’t be this scuzzy and inflamed for surgery. A week and a bit of daily flossing and brushing was enough to get my gums down to “maybe a bit cranky.” Shockingly fast turnaround. Seems to work more like getting back in shape than exercise as a real beginner.

[datasoong47]

[creekfiend]

I wanted to make a bonsai kitten recovery post that outlines some of the stuff that I've been doing. Because I don't think that you need to ✨see a therapist✨ to start dealing with a lot of this stuff and I get really frustrated when that is the answer that everyone is constantly giving. Firstly a disclaimer, because I know what website I am on: this is a guide for things that have worked for me! I am not everyone and if there are things on here that do not work for you or even that you think are stupid, that is fine, but please do not make it my problem. If you are reading it and you're like "that sounds like it would actually be detrimental to my specific mental health because of my specific issues" then please disregard it. Use your critical thinking skills and do what you think is right for you!

My second disclaimer is that I didn't make any of this up myself; most of these are collected from various places either in therapeutic guide books or various websites about emotional regulation etc. Some of it is stuff that I have extrapolated from those places based on experience with what works for me or does not work for me. A lot of the way that I treat myself when I need to get my body and brain into a place where I can think about stuff productively is actually directly from gentle parenting guides, because frankly cptsd recovery stuff is very often like parenting a toddler. And the toddler is you. ALL THAT SAID,

The first skill that I had to get good at, that many of the other skills depend on, is to learn how to understand when I am Reacting to something. If I am Reacting it is extremely likely that that's going to only escalate the situation and make it much worse. I HAVE to be able to tell if I am Reacting emotionally to something in a way that is coming from a place of fear and panic. This is important because it involves not being prescriptive about your emotions. You could be Reacting to something that you do not logically feel is at all justified in making you feel that way and that doesn't matter! You can't be doing math equations to try to come to the answer of how you SHOULD be feeling; you have to be observing your mind and body to see how you factually ARE feeling and then respond to THAT. This can be really hard to learn how to do especially if you were abused as a child. (If you cannot think of yourself as someone who is abused as a child perhaps it would help to think of yourself as someone who simply was not taught various emotional regulation skills for mysterious reasons that have nothing to do with your parents' inadequacies.) I need to be able to glance inward and see what the physiological reaction that I'm having is and identify whether or not I feel like this is the biggest emergency in the world that needs to be addressed right now immediately! That is a sure sign that Mr Fight and Mr Flight are in the building and it is bad to make declarative statements or important decisions when that is the case. So, I have to work on dismissing them first. That is literally the first step to any of this. One of my friends calls this "fire mittens," which is to say, if you are wearing mittens that are on fire and you try to touch stuff, the stuff will also become on fire. You have to put the fire out first before you can touch other things.

Once I have determined that I am indeed Reacting and in a physiological state of fear, I have a document in my notes app that is a "what to do when you are in fight or flight mode" guide and it has several helpful things that I will try to outline here.

Firstly, the really important thing for me for trying to get back into an emotional state where I'm capable of making decisions and being thoughtful is to feel safe and comfortable. So I actually have some stuff in my document that is straight up just like "go in the blankie nest. put on this specific music album. light this specific scented candle." etc. You might want to have a specific food or drink that is comforting to you or some other sort of stim toy that helps you regulate. If there's any calming medication or supplements for anxiety that you take as needed, now is also the time to do that. Physical sensory grounding is really important for this. This is probably especially true if, like me, you are neurodivergent, but I think it is also true for everyone because we are animals! And you can't just think about it, you have to actually do it. Which sounds obvious but is the thing that has often tripped me up in the past. Once you start getting into the habit of actually physically doing this it DOES become easier though.

One of my rules is that if I want to respond to something but I am in fight or flight mode, I don't get to respond to it for at least 24 hours. I'm only allowed to respond once I've gotten myself out of fear mode. If it is some kind of comment on Facebook that has set me off, often this means that 24 hours later I realize that I actually don't want to get into it to begin with, which is great. If it's something that is pretty serious and interpersonal with a friend, sometimes that means I have to communicate to them that I'm going to take a while to process it and then get back to them. IMPORTANT: You CANNOT do this passive aggressively or else it undermines the whole thing. You can't phrase it in a way that will make your friends think that you are guilt tripping them for "making" you feel a way. It is VERY tempting to do this when you are in the first stages of trying to form this habit and you simply need to resist the urge because it will render this step worthless. I know. It sucks.

If I am feeling fearful and insecure about friends or loved ones, I also usually try to spend some time thinking about the people that I love and care about. Because often this stuff manifest for me as insecurity that the people that I care about do not care about me, or that they think that I'm being annoying, or that they are secretly thinking mean things about me. It's obviously not good for me to constantly be imagining that the people in my life who I care about are actually avatars of my own insecurity who are here to tell me that I'm secretly fundamentally unlovable! But crucially also it's ALSO not fair to those people to imagine them as that. They are not that guy, they are their own complex human beings with their own lives and experiences and interiority. So sometimes I do thought exercises where I will imagine my friends or loved ones doing things in their everyday lives and I will think about them as people and I will think about the things that they like to do and the things that they say and the places that they go, and I will try to imagine them fondly in those circumstances. This helps to remind me that they are just people and that the scary puppet wearing their faces is not real. To this end I sometimes will have a document of screenshots of things that they have said to me that I can use to reality check myself. I personally find reality checks to be essential for a lot of this. Things can feel true when they are not true at all. Things can feel wrong when they are actually true. The point of most of these exercises is to gently remind myself that those feelings are normal for me to be having, but that I do not need to let them dictate my responses.

It is crucial throughout all of this that you are nice to yourself. You can't talk to yourself in a mean way while you're doing this, or you will not get to a point where you are feeling safe enough to react from a place of not-fear. You can't make yourself feel ashamed or defensive for your emotional reactions. This is the particular area where I find gentle parenting protocols helpful. You HAVE to be patient with yourself.

Ok that's all for now bc I ran out of steam but I will try to think of more to add on another day maybe. Godspeed everyone

[blackberryvignette]

Pip is amazing and smart and I have a lot of the same bonzai kitten problems so here's my thoughts:

If you did come across these feelings from childhood trauma, a good sign you are having a Reaction is that you suddenly feel young. When I'm being reactive I feel like a lost, hurt child. Bc I was a lost, hurt child, and my brain is asking that child what to do.

The child does not know what to do. That is a human baby who is scared and lonely. The child needs a hug and to be told to come back after a nap. I often am in places that I can't go do a proper calm down, so I've also taught myself how to put it away for later.

This is really useful at work. My manager give me polite feedback that makes me reactive? I feel that young feeling hit, a tell the kid "I'll be with u in a few minutes" , I thank my manager, and then I go drink some water and take a break if I can. Maybe vent in a notepad.

I happen to be a bonzai kitten who has a bad tendency to "circle the drain" aka, I get thoughts that spin and spin and spin and won't flush. This is what notepad venting or private-ish blog is for. Spit the thoughts out. Once they leave my head, I can revisit them later if I need to. (I won't). But no longer am I worried I'll forget some crucial and likely kinda dumb thought.

I remind myself often that those I love are not avatars of those who hurt me. They would be very upset if they knew I thought that way. So I reassure myself, once I'm in a place to do so WITHOUT making it sound like I doubt them. This is important. You cannot stick ur insecurities on them. You can say "hey my brain is bad, can u tell me something nice?" It's very tempting to say that you feel like they want to be mean to you, but that is mean.

And in the end. Don't spend so much energy on trying to get better that all you do is study yourself and your motives and dissect your brain. Be kind to yourself. Let yourself be selfish. Take things you want. Ask for help and favors. Don't assume responsibility for everything. Relax, and exist. In the moment. The current one. Not all the painful previous ones.

[creekfiend]

yesssss the last point is very important!!!!! do FUN THINGS THAT YOU ENJOY!!!!

[grison-in-space]

you know, I think a lot about this in the context of dog training, too: my limbic system is like a dog in my head, and a lot of the things that work to support and shape the reactions of the dogs outside my head also work for the one that lives inside me. I have been doing a fair bit of support and work on canine reactivity lately, and there's... a surprising amount of carryover.

For example: that fight-or-flight reflex, the sympathetic nervous system, has a directly opposing parasympathetic nervous system. As Pip helpfully lays out here, you can help yourself regulate your emotional reactions by stimulating that parasympathetic nervous system response. We call it the "rest-and-digest" response when we're talking about it, yeah?

Well. You can help stimulate that rest reaction in a couple of ways. Your stress response and your digestive response are intimately tied in opposing ways--even the glucocorticoid hormones that encode stress in the short to medium term are also intensely metabolic hormones that help coordinate hunger, digestion, and insulin function. So one of the easiest things I do when I'm trying to teach a dog to calm down and self-regulate its big emotions is try to get that dog eating--and, if possible, to get that dog tasting its food; to get rhythmic licking or chewing happening, to keep the dog from swallowing a treat so quickly it coughs it back up again in a moment. When we activate hedonic sensory input--that is, when we focus on sensations that bring us pleasure and enjoyment--we stimulate that parasympathetic response.

When I'm working with the dog in my head, I use M&Ms as my reward and I suck on them or let them melt in my mouth. The longer the yummy taste is in your mouth, the better it works. You could probably also chew gum if you liked--hey, it's a common coping mechanism for a reason!--or lick ice cream (another favorite of mine), or do any number of other pleasant things. Find something you genuinely enjoy, and spend some time practicing focusing on that sensation and centering it in your mind. Food works for a lot of people, but if you're too amped up to take food--and that fight or flight sympathetic reaction actively makes food less appealing--you can use other calming inputs, too. Smell works well if you have a reliably comforting scent on tap (and it'll stimulate appetite well, too), and so does touch, and so does rhythmic movement. Pip's right: sensory grounding works well on neurodivergent people because it works well on all animals!

[takingoffmyshoes]

they told me not to get lost in the weeds, but these are lush, beautiful, and ecologically necessary native plants so it's probably fine

[skygenders]

There is something sooo deeply American going on with Seattle Children’s Hospital that I think would brick the minds of everyone outside of the United States.

[skygenders]

The CHILDRENS hospital has to restrict helipad landings because of noise complaints from the wealthy home owners living next to it. Only the most urgent patients can land directly at the hospital. While the other kids have to land a mile away and are taken to the hospital via ambulance. Which is an unnecessary risk to the child’s life and also makes the families pay for the helicopter AND ambulance.

[skygenders]

Seattle Children’s says Laurelhurst noise concerns burdens lifesaving care for children

The hospital says some limits on helipad access add pressure when children need lifesaving care.

Apparently this has been going on for decades and is only getting traction because a pilot complained on Twitter.

[unadulteratedkr]

Update!!!

Laurelhurst Community Council Will Support Ending Policy that Reduces Helicopter Landings at Seattle Children’s Hospital - The Stranger

On Friday, the day before a planned protest in the neighborhood, Seattle Children’s Hospital and the Laurelhurst Community Council released

Public pressure WORKS!!!!!

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Hey, so this may be a weird place to put this, but if your college or school uses Canvas, it was likely affected by the recent data breach. As of right now, the most likely personal information swept up in this hack is names and email addresses. Login and financial information were not included in the breach (as far as we know).

Right now, as a student you should beware of phishing attempts. Do not click on links seeking your login or financial information. Do not respond to emails about financial aid until verifying the email is legitimate first. Call your school or go speak to an admin in person if you have to. Report any suspicious emails to your school's IT department.

[automata-systemata-hydromata]

Want to add that mirrored sites are a very likely avenue of attack here. If you receive a legitimate-seeming e-mail telling you that you have to log in to a given account and take some action, navigate to the website for that account through your browser and do NOT click the link. It's fairly easy to create a perfect simulacrum of a website and only redirect you to the legitimate website after obtaining your login credentials in order to avoid arousing suspicion

Be especially wary of e-mails claiming to be from Canvas, as it's the one site the hackers can guarantee you use and are expecting communication from

[artemisarticles]

resources for weavers: yarn, design tools and books

educational series, part 1 of 3

resources for weavers: archives, museums and inspiration

educational series, part 2 of 3

resources for weavers: education and residencies

educational series, part 3 of 3

[symdog]

"no you can't control the computer because uh that would be user unfriendly" <- shit they expect us to believe

[acekoral]

"The user doesn't know what they are doing, but luckily we are smart and can make all the decisions for them" <- voice of an operating system that kills its own firewall for no reason and doesn't tell anyone for months until you ask it where the firewall is