chill stitch bitch

[intactics]

few things anger me more than being told I shouldn't use a perfectly good word with the exact meaning I intend to convey. someone told me not to use "apotheosis" once because some people might have to look up what it means & to this day I hope she chokes

[intactics]

many years ago I was told I was uppity for saying "retrieve" instead of "get." in that moment I found my jihad

[foxes-in-love]

[slavery]

[macbethz]

Fuck I’m at a fencing tournament and literally a minute after I reblogged this my dad told me that he talked to the point people and I’m probably going to win a medal.

[seananmcguire]

BURN BAGEL BURN

[gothiccharmschool]

OH WHY NOT?

[harukami]

I need to follow up to say I reblogged this last night, and this morning I got some of the best news of my life, like, a life dream come true news thing.

Bagel what are your powers

[acabosetotal]

FUCK, I though it was just another lucky meme but LISTEN. Since a week ago I was waiting a phone call to confirm me if I got a job or not in my university. I reblogged this yesterday’s night “just for fun and because I don’t want any bagel to be mad with me”, and today’s afternoon, while I was losing my time as always, the professor I was supposed to work with called me and asked me for my personal information to start working with her.

THE BAGEL POWERS ARE WAY TOO MUCH FOR THIS WORLD

[token-white-friend]

I GOT A JOB THE DAY AFTER MY QUEUE POSTED THIS THE FIRST TIME AND I JUST REALIZED IT WHEN I SAW IT AGAIN HOLY GOD

[noodle-dragon]

The bagel hasn’t let me down yet!

[tentacles-and-coffee]

Let’s see what you can do bagel

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 大梦归离/Fangs of Fortune.

Fangs of Fortune is a 2024 Chinese drama that is ... yeah I'm just going to steal this from MyDramaList: "Adapted from the classic text and the mythology and geography collection "Classic of Mountains and Seas" (山海经)." And I'm stealing that because I don't know if I could tell you the plot. I don't know if it has a plot. Beautiful people do beautiful things slowly. There you go.

You've probably heard people complain about how TV shows now are made for people on their phones. Fangs of Fortune is the first TV show I've seen that was made for people on their phones and watching at 2x speed. It does not expect you to pay attention what's going on. It will flash back to things that happened three minutes ago. It has like fifty virulently catchy pop songs on its soundtrack, and you will hear at least eight of them every episode. The CG is cinema-quality. The costumes are to die for. The comedic timing is flawless. You cannot play a drinking game where you take a shot every time a main character cries, or you will die.

To steal my favorite line from Patrick H. Willems' video on The Greatest Showman, Fangs of Fortune is not the best show. It's not even really a good show. But it is the most show.

So if you are up for a delicious romp of heartbreakingly gorgeous absolute nonsense, a treat for (most of) the senses that demands so little from you, I have five reasons to give this beauty a try.

1. Did you lose your shit over The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity?

I mean, specifically in terms of going nuts over something so beautiful and bisexual that you didn't care when it didn't make sense? Because this is that, but at 1/4 speed and for 36 episodes.

Fangs of Fortune is directed in part by the same guy who directed YYM:DoE, and I say "in part" because this thing has a bunch of directors. It has a bunch of screenwriters. It has so many people working behind the scenes that it has to do the tiny-text horizontal-scroll thing with the end credits. I'm sure there's a four-character idiom out there about too many cooks.

Some people are saying that it's a case of style over substance, and it's me, I'm some people. But damn, that style! The CG is stunning. If you are sick of shitty greenscreen and awkward polygonal models, turn your thirsty eyes to this. It throws most of its CG budget into augmenting what's already on camera, which is a solid approach. Somebody's glowing weird colors or dissolving tragically into sparkles at least once an episode, and the effect is (usually) majestic.

It does a great job of combining real sets and digital elements to build ethereal spaces that feel perfectly impossible. Even the places that are supposed to be in the "real world" are just bizarre. Nobody ever explains why the Demon-Hunting Bureau looks like that. It just does, and it's amazing to look at, that's why.

This show has a plot in the way a classic Saturday morning cartoon has a plot, which is to say, it's a series of tangentially connected fetch quests where good guys thwart the plots of various bad guys. It expects that you are watching this because our heroes are incredibly loveable and you want to see them bounce homoerotically off each other, with no hope of other, more substantive material. You are here for our friends Cunty Hou Minghao, Flute Girl, Sad Boy, Lesbian Legolas, Dr. Baby, and Guy Fieri as they face down such villains as Goth Tree, Slutty Merman, and Two Words: More Puppets.

Now, you can react to this knowledge in one of two ways. One, you can be real upset that all this time, money, effort, and obvious talent went into making something that has all the intellectual heft of cotton candy. Two, you can embrace the spectacle of it, developing a near-Buddhist sense of non-attachment, where you love it for what it is and do not let yourself be troubled by what it isn't. If you are inclined to option one, watching this will just make you angry. If you can do option two, you'll have a blast.

2. I want that boy half-naked and in distress

Do you like beautiful shirtless men with weird things glued to them? You do? Great, this is perfect for you.

Okay, I know I'm overselling the shirtlessness. Mostly everybody's pretty modestly covered the whole way through. However, couple of those boys just have their tits out at beat one, and a bunch more get some costume changes with really slutty necklines. Even better, when their special demon powers activate, they get all kinds of face and body paint to show that they're demoning out. Some of them also get weird horn- and antler-style things glued to their heads! The costume department is there just having the best time adhering things to these handsome gentlemen.

It's such a funny contrast to the (very few) times the show tries to do sexy women, where it's like ... uh, what makes girl sexy? Do we give her a short skirt? Sure! That'll probably do it. Behold, sexy girl! And you're like, show, that is a pretty girl, but I don't know if I'd call that a sexy girl. But the show can't hear you, because it's already ripping Li Lun's shirt off for his next scene.

Alas that the most distressed boy of the bunch is a never-nude. Like, there is one shot where he gets the collar of his robe pulled midly open, and I was frankly scandalized. Zhuo Yichen is the most buttoned-up you can possibly be in an outfit that has no buttons. If you were doing the aforementioned drinking game only for every time he cries, you would still give yourself alcohol poisoning.

(Also, this is, like, the second thing Tian Jiarui has ever done? I'm glad to see he's got lots of stuff lined up going forward, because that boy has got some real talent.)

Regardless! This is a show that likes to make the boys cry no matter what they're wearing or how silly their wigs are. It has whump both emotional and physical, and it's going to dole suffering out on every character it can, regardless of gender. It's just that it seems to relish the manpain in particular. The camera lingers on the male characters as perfect tears roll directly from the center of their lower eyelids, down their flawless alabaster cheeks. Somebody told the production team that this is what the girlies want to see, and I hope no one ever disabuses them of that notion.

3. Holy cow the costumes

It's time for a fashion show!

And I wish I had better pictures for you here, or indeed throughout the rest of this post, but I'm having so much trouble finding actual posted shots or screenshots. Because Hou Minghao is such a big name, there's literally nearly 10,000 images to comb through on MyDramaList, and I swear 9900 of them are blurry cell phone creepshots taken at weird angles and distances.

It's such a shame that these images are about as good as it gets, too, because the costumes are really spectacular. I spend like half of every scene distracted by what amazing new thing someone is wearing. (And it's fine, because the show will recap it all for me shortly!) These don't have the bright colors of the outfits in the Blood of Youth, but what they lack in saturation, they make up for in embroidery and beading and layers and weird fabrics and textures and ... look, it's all just amazing. Even the plainer-looking all-black and all-white outfits, once you zoom in enough, are meticulously detailed. I was stunned by the number of ensembles that continued to work beautifully even when partly or completely soaking wet.

I really hope the woman who did all the costuming (who also did it for YYM:DoE, if you liked that) gets even more work off the back of this, because she deserves it. Shout out also to her wig team, too, as this is hands-down the best-wigged c-drama I've ever seen. And the hairstyles! Those are some complicated hairstyles, and they look great. It just all looks great. Yeah. Damn.

4. I mean, yeah, it's kinda gay

What's that, you say? You want another of my dopey little diagrams where I outline the shipping potential? Don't mind if I do!

Fangs of Fortune ran as part of iQiyi's "Love On" series, and pretty much every other drama in that series is billed upfront as being the love story of a single (straight) couple. This show is not. In fact, the heterosexuality throughout is so tepid, I would believe it if you told me that the director was forced to include a romance. In fact, I would believe it extra if you told me the director was forced to include a love triangle, but beefed it on purpose out of protest.

This show does heterosexuality like you're listening to a Martian explain straight people. It's like, okay, here is boy and here is girl, and now they love one another to death. Why? Because boy and girl, obviously! There are multiple instances in the show of some man/woman doing something batshit insane for their professed undying love of a random woman/man, and I am struggling to recall a single one that didn't make me go her/him, though?

And I'm not saying that you couldn't convince me. I'm saying that the show has repeatedly handed me a loaf of bread, a block of cheese, and a live pig, and said, here's your sandwich! And before I can point out that that is at best an idea of a sandwich, the show has already scampered off and dissolved into a cloud of CG sparklies.

But you're not here because you wanted a straight love story. (And if you are? Legend of Fei, Hyena, The Rebel, My Absolute Boyfriend. You're welcome.) You're here for the homos.

As I've said before, media with perfunctory heterosexuality often have the best queer ships, because they only take straight romances for granted, while actually spending time justifying everything else. Putting a man and a woman in the same room is the same thing as creating a love story, right? But when you get to friendships, rivalries, and other forms of devotion, you have to put in the work to make those interesting. Maybe the show doesn't give you reasons that they love one another, but it gives you reasons that they like one another, and honestly that's a lot more than most of the straights get.

As the chart would indicate, these two goobers are the central gaybos. It starts out like this: Zhuo Yichen (the buttoned-up one from point 2) has a special sparkly magical girl sword he doesn't know how to use. Zhu Yan (cunty Hou Minghao) is a demon who wants to die. So they make a bet: If Zhu Yan will teach Zhuo Yichen how to use the sword, Zhuo Yichen will kill Zhu Yan. Zhuo Yichen thinks this is great because he fucking hates Zhu Yan. Expect him to be tsundere about this for at least half the show's runtime. It's not like he likes your handsome well-dressed demon ass or anything, baka.

If anything, their relationship makes it clear how absolutely perfunctory the Contractually Mandated Heterosexuality™ is. It's doing the c-drama thing where it can't actually acknowledge that the gays are gays, so it runs a just-guys-bein'-soulmatesbros m/m relationship parallel to an openly romantic m/f relationship, hoping you notice the similarities. The problem is, when one of those m's in each relationship is the same guy, it draws attention to how phoned-in the straightness is. A hinge like that isn't necessarily the kiss of death (see the gloriously bisexual Nirvana in Fire), but if there's any comp to your het, the contrast will make it painfully apparent.

Which is not to say there's no good m/f pairings in the show. They're just the ones that are, for one reason or another, also weird. The demonic duo up there, for instance, never kiss or express any sexual desire for one another, and they definitely don't refer to one another romantically, but their relationship is still absolutely intimate and sensual. What the hell is going on there? Your guess is as good as mine! And that's why it's great! It's complicated and weird, and not just the boilerplate one-size-fits-all bread-cheese-pig sandwich idea the canonical hets get. Once you are queerly freed from the shackles of heteronormativity, you can do anything.

I'm also just putting this out here: If you like a show where beautiful people get real weird about their dead brothers, you have found what you were looking for. Why would I mention this here? No reason.

...Also, I know this never could have happened, but damn, there's so much I wish the show had done with demon gender in particular. It's almost disingenuous to call the aforementioned demon pair m/f, because they're not a man and a woman -- they're a bull demon and a bird demon, respectively. Another demon is a shapeshifter who'll shift into people regardless of gender. Yet another demon can possess people and will possess and pretend to be anyone, again regardless of gender. And that's all even before you get into the demons that are unsexable objects, like a tree and a bone.

It's the perfect contrast to short-lived humans, who are running a pretty rigid cishet society, and in roll these 30,000-year-old demons from the Wilderness who are like, gender? I hardly knew 'er! Or at least it could be the perfect contrast, if the show had the ability to do anything substantive with it. As it is, please enjoy the unrealized promise. I know I do.

caveat #1: They do my girl dirty

I loved Wen Xiao from the moment she was introduced. I was particularly excited about this savvy, self-reliant character after seeing her obviously talented actor, Chen Duling, play a complete nothingburger of an ex-girlfriend in Mysterious Lotus Casebook. But Wen Xiao comes right out of the gate all self-possessed, clever, refined, and willing to shank a dude when necessary -- a real steel femme, like my beloved Wu Chuchu from Legend of Fei.

Oh, and a real big lesbian. Like, huge.

Well, she never quite stops dyking it up. But as soon as the show decides it's time for Man Plot About Men (ft. Straight Romance), it flat-out doesn't know how to do that without playing up the main girl's purity and vulnerability and super-duper-specialness, which means that 90% of Wen Xiao's job becomes to cry sadly while boys do things to her, for her, and around her.

And that is bullshit, because that 10% she gets to keep doing is so cool. There is one particular feat of endurance she pulls off that is incredibly baller, though you'd never know it from how the show downplays it like she was just on a nice vacation, now let's never mention it again. She is hands-down the sharpest and most capable person in the room when she's allowed to be. Guess how often she's allowed to be.

Anyway, Wen Xiao, you're great, I love you, we're wearing matching pride pins, fujo out and make your boyfriends kiss, it's good for them.

5. Baby boy. Baby.

As Bai Jiu, Lester Lin walks away with this whole series.

This little pumpkin is my favorite character. Bai Jiu's the youngest member of the Demon-Hunting Teen Girl Squad, the one who has a crush on every boy. Recruited for his doctoring skills, he is a complete fraidy-cat who keeps being pitched into peril by a bunch of people who think it's funny to hear him holler about it.

You are also watching him just on the cusp of a real sharp adolescent gay awakening. Puberty is poised to hit this boy like a rainbow-painted truck.

Truly, shout out to my boy Lester. He was twelve when this was filmed, and not only does he hold his own, he straight-up out-acts plenty of his much more seasoned co-stars. Put him in scenes up against some real big c-drama names, and he doesn't even break a sweat. He's so funny and talented at physical comedy, which the show puts to great use. Then something very big happens to Bai Jiu later in the series, and Lester gets to act his face off about that, too.

Also, I'm trying to not sound like a creep here, but that boy is just beautiful. He looks like he walked out of a Renaissance painting of some adolescent saint. He will grow up to be either stunningly conventionally beautiful or compellingly kinda funny-looking, there are no middle sliders here.

...And seriously, don't call the Pedo Police on me (which I fear is going to happen every time I even slightly acknowledge that humans don't just magically flip a sexuality switch from OFF to ON the day they legally turn eighteen), but I really like seeing a story about a person right on the edge between childhood and teenagerness, who is clearly having a huge crush on an older person, and that older person is completely safe and full of nonsexual affection for the younger person, so the younger person has room to experience this whole tangled mass of maybe-sexual-maybe-romantic-maybe-just-admiration feelings without being threatened or shamed. While I don't think this is ever ever ever something the director could admit to including on purpose (see earlier Pedo Police comment), I would be shocked if it weren't at least partly intentional.

Somebody make me a votive candle for Bai Jiu, Patron Saint of Your First Gay Crush That Will Go Nowhere But You Will Remember Fondly (And Kind Of Sheepishly) For The Rest Of Your Life.

caveat #2: You can just ... sort of stop watching

This show should have been a Saturday morning cartoon, by which I mean, it should have been able to continue indefinitely. Our ragtag pack of intrepid heroes should have been allowed to continue having weird encounters with beautiful demons, spending 3-5 episodes on solving each fun new problem before gamboling on to the next adventure. It should never, ever have been forced to sustain a plot.

The start of the series is exciting and compelling! The end is ... not. We're talking horror-movie levels of having a great premise and no idea how to stick the landing. The end is not actively malicious and/or stupid (see: My Roommate is a Detective, Psych-Hunter), and there are good moments to be found there. But it's mostly just five pounds of gold pretending it can fill a fifty-pound bag.

So here's my advice: Watch until you don't feel like watching anymore, and then stop. If you find yourself wandering off from the series, let yourself wander. If you get sidetracked around episode twenty-something, then catch yourself thinking a month later, hey, maybe I should pick that up again, nah, don't. Whatever imagination adventures you have for this crew, just go with those. However you think the series should have ended, let that be the ending that stays with you in your heart. There's a reason that like a quarter of the Fangs of Fortune stuff on AO3 has some kind of AU tag.

(If you want my advice on when to tap out, just make sure you make it through the multi-shift shapeshifter scene in the brothel. You'll know what I mean when you get there. It's fantastic, and it is also kind of the last can't-miss moment I remember.)

And if you do decide you want to make it to the end? Hooray! You'll get to see some real gay-ass moments, to say nothing of some powerful costuming and makeup choices. Don't feel bad if you start incrementally speeding up the playback as less and less happens. Make sure you don't miss the 'Extra' bit after the last episode. I'll see you on AO3 in the Post-Canon tag.

Want to sink your teeth into it?

iQiyi all the way, baby. This is their creation, so this is their exclusive. You can watch the first five episodes without a subscription if you want a taste.

Fangs of Fortune is, at the end of the day, an incredibly flawed, generally fun, astonishingly beautiful piece of work. The fact that the actors clearly all like one another in real life absolutely carries over into the chemistry of all their interactions. At no point did my eyes ever not have anything spectacular to focus on. For all my (sometimes large) moments of disappointment and criticism, I truly did have a good time with it. It is, hands-down, the most show.

And speaking of the actors, omg, all the million scenes over the credits with everybody dancing and goofing around, I love them all.

[chillstitchbitch]

from right hand continental style to left hand english style! no need to turn the work!

I practiced this method of reverse knitting ever since I watched a video about entrelac knitting. it's because I hate purling!

[chillstitchbitch]

I don't truly hate purling. it's just a bit harder on the left hand in continental style knitting. I'd avoid it where possible.

there are three more advantages to backward knitting

1. for lace patterns where even rows are all purls, the lace work stays in sight. more chances of spotting mistakes.

2. more consistent tension. purls have a different tension than knits. they're looser and have to be pulled harder. pulling harder in the continental purl is hard on my hand. if purls can be turned into knits, I can be more consistent with tension.

3. (this one I paraphrase from a comment on embroidery/cross-stitch subreddit.) for larger works where turning becomes an event, it's better to utilize anything that helps avoid turning the work. saves time and effort.

with all that said, due to a recent fair isle project, I have learned forward and backward knitting with one yarn on each hand! please enjoy this 3 second gif of me doing a backward knit with my right hand.

it was actually easy once I've figured it out! notice I don't lift my right index finger much.

learning backward knitting is exactly like learning to knit. it's hard but it clicks in with practice.

try it out and spread the sorcery. 😄

[purr-in-ink]

Wich cat are you today? 🐾🤍

🐾Monsieur le Flouf keychain🐾

[chillstitchbitch]

I just finished this book sleeve as a treat. I love how it turned out.

got this idea from instagram

the stitches catch on the sharp edges though. I should put some lining in.

[theragamuffininitiative]

Source:

Keep Android Open

Advocating for Android as a free, open platform for everyone to build apps on.

Among the many reasons I am clawing my life back from Google.

[daysleftofsecondterm]

1,022 days left

[teratocybernetics]

you shouldn't have to but if you're feeling brave/brimming with spite:

GrapheneOS: the private and secure mobile OS

GrapheneOS is a security and privacy focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility.

LineageOS Android Distribution

both have lists of supported devices and instructions, and it's relatively easy if you're already switching devices, unlocking the bootloader is the riskiest step as some phone manufacturers lock those down in shitty ways (more to get angry with; that's your fucking phone!)

[ilikeit-art]

Have you ever wondered how tech technicians recover data from faulty flash and memory whose data cannot be recovered by normal methods.

[myothertardisisonthemun]

this is necromancy

[oodles-of-boodle]

This, right here?

THIS is a magic circle and NOTHING you can tell me will convince me otherwise.

[teaboot]

I was too busy laughing to take a picture but my son answered the door last night ready for an adventure 😭😭😭

[copperbadge]

For a second I thought this was a cat mail carrier and was blithely prepared to accept "receiving my mail from a cat" as a call to adventure.

[chillstitchbitch]

A dear friend asked if I can make her a scarf. I immediately said, "sure!"

This was the basis photo:

I couldn't find any eight petal sunflower granny square pattern so I stuck to the easily found 12 petal one

Sunflower Granny Square (free crochet pattern) * Moms and Crafters

Crochet a bright and sunny sunflower granny square with this free crochet pattern that's written out in a beginner-friendly format!

I had Monaco 5 ply yarn in my friend's preferred colors. I wanted to make bigger squares. Skip the next paragraph if you like but TL;DR: bigger squares means less work.

Each of this granny square's three rounds is a different color which mean yarn ENDS which mean weaving in ends which is so much work for each end. That's going to be six ends to hide for each square. Just.. the less squares the better. Imagine if I worked with 6cm-a-side square and I had to cover 42 cm on one short side of the bandana triangle. That's 7 squares along one side. To fill the area that's 21 squares. 126 ends is a nightmare, not even counting the half triangles yet. Just no. (6 squares + 4 triangles) x 6 ends is much more manageable.

So to make thicker yarn for bigger squares, I first tried the Navajo Technique with my favorite 5mm Daiso hook.. Look it up if you don't know what that technique is. This effectively lets me work with 3 yarn held together at a time. I finished it (6 squares and 4 triangles seamed togther into one big triangle) with 3 yarn held together. It was so heavy and stiff, not nice to wear.

I unraveled the whole thing and worked with only 2 yarn held together pulling from the ends using same 5.0 hook. Re-used yarn means many joins. the Magic Knot helps so much so the joins are less obvious. The resulting big triangle felt better to wear as a bandana so I kept with it.

I blocked it. it wasn't dry after a day indoors so some sun exposure for half a day ensured it's completely dry.

I thought it needed a crochet border along the long side. The border can do with an extension so the bandana gets equipped with something to make tying the ends together easier. (Please don't mind the mess on my desk. and my foot 😆)

I actually lost in the yarn chicken game 😅. See if you can spot the difference. I even pointed where I started with different yarn.

You see? Monaco 5 ply 2 strands became Monaco 3 ply 4 strands. (That's Navajo technique 3 strands with one end and one more strand with the other end of the 3 ply ball.) I'm lucky I had a 3 ply ball with the same color.

Then I also thought: why not border along the shorter sides too. I have the whole Monaco 3 ply ball to finish it with.

And here is the finished product! All ends woven in and trimmed.

I haven't had the chance to give it to her yet since we meet up so rarely, but she likes it!

[theliteraryarchitect-deactivate]

I don’t know who needs to hear this but it’s okay for writing to be a HOBBY that you do because you enjoy, and that you don’t want to do when you’re not enjoying it. No one’s up in the business of knitters telling them they have to be willing to SUFFER and SWEAT or they’ll NEVER FINISH THAT SWEATER and they can’t expect good things to come to them. I don’t know why our current culture around writing is so intense, but I’m here to support your casual, relaxing writing habit. If people can glue pompoms together or knit a scarf or watch hours of streaming shows with their spare time there’s absolutely no reason writers can’t waste time writing just for pleasure, without any expectation that they’re going to Achieve something Amazing and Important or make a bunch of money or whatever.

[theliteraryarchitect-deactivate]

I stand corrected: According to a great many who have piped up in the comments, apparently people ARE up in the business of knitters. What the hell. Get out of the business of knitters, people. May we all enjoy our hobbies without pressure to professionalize.

[the-wanton-house-wife-deactivat]

[teathattast]

[gluten-free-pussy]

WHAT

[theshockinglyeloquentdog]

Pusheen is married?!?

[lilkearnsie]

PUSHEEN HAS BABIES?!?!?

[grimauxiliatrixofficial]

Queen Of Keeping Personal And Professional Lives Seperate

[mortimermcmirestinks]

SINCE WHEN IS PUSHEEN A GIRL

[foulfowledfool]

an absolute queen. her birthday is febuary 18th

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

she's Irish

[helloitsbees]

everyone say happy birthday pusheen

[chillstitchbitch]

Happy Birthday, Pusheen!

[batbetbitbotbut]

I learnt to spin in the rural Andes of Peru. I was five years old and already alarmingly behind the curve. [...] It took me over three years to become an adequate spinner. The year I was eight, my spinning was considered acceptable in quality by Andean standards (if slowly produced). Andean weavers require one type of yarn, fine and strong and smooth - and they are exacting judges, so this was no small feat. By this age, most girls in my peer group were spinning yarn for the family's weaving supply. Others had shown particular gifts for spinning and produced yarns for some of the town's finest weavers. The rest of us, the merely adequate young spinners, regarded these girls with mild awe. Although it might sound like we'd spent our childhoods being sternly schooled in how to spin (and we had), our textile activities were our primary social outlet. We went out in the Inca ruins to pasture sheep, taking our spinning and weaving with us. We raced up and down hills and terraces, played tag, and gossiped. Spinning was one more game, even though we knew it was an important life skill. Those girls who were fast, perfect spinners at that age were like the girls who could sing or dance or run the fastest, only spinning was more important than that. And we were competitive: we challenged each other to improve, constantly. By this time we were fearless with our spindles, which were never out of our hands unless we were weaving or eating. We spun while running, jumping, chasing sheep. We would pass spindles to each other while walking, talking, and spinning on them; we spun off the sides of Inca terraces, hearts pounding while the other girls watched, joking, chattering, saying, "You can't do it! It's going to break! You'll be chasing that spindle all the way down the hill!" The really good spinners never had to chase their spindles. As for me, it was a good thing I was one of the faster kids, because I chased my spindle a lot. With these games and challenges and the strict standards of our elders, even the completely average spinners among us became capable of production spinning. It was simply part of our lifestyle, as commonplace and essential as tying shoes or talking on the phone are in the industrialized world.

Abby Franquemont, Respect the Spindle

[mbrainspaz]

idk what neurodivergent young adult needs to hear this but you are NOT supposed to give 100% at your job. I've gotten more promotions and raises since I started giving 40-60%, which my evil CEO uncle informed me is what bosses actually expect when they say 110%. My mental health has improved tremendously. I've spent 2 out of 5 workdays secretly writing my novel for the last 2 years and I've never been more respected and appreciated. Also--when you see glaring wasteful errors in the company's operating systems, say absolutely nothing! Embrace inefficiency. It is your friend in this capitalist hellscape.

[catchymemes]