Some Stuff, Mostly Bother @decaffeinatedsuitcasehauler - Tumblr Blog

Kay I'm really sick of this "masculinity is a prison" bullshit.

I'm a gay trans man, I've found my expression masculinity and defined it for myself. It makes me feel whole in a way femininity never did. I have aspects of femininity sprinkled into my masculinity but my masculinity is still masculinity. If it's not for you it's not for you, you don't have to be masculine if you don't want to be. But stop demonizing an entire form of gender expression and sexuality. You're not being progressive.

Patriarchy is a prison.

Masculinity is beautiful.

beemovieerotica

decaffeinatedsuitcasehauler

I want to commit felonies.

the-big-mood

At Toba aquarium in Japan, after closing time, some clever little otter pups help their grandpa tidy up their toys. As a reward, he gives them ice cubes

creekfiend

just got phone call from my neurologist WHO IS ON VACATION may his name never be erased, basically being like. "ok so your insurance is trying to kill you. I've referred dozens of people to Duke for this and this has never happened. they're being purposefully confusing and sending us all in circles. they keep sending me forms asking ME to agree to pay for your treatment no matter how many times I explain that I am THE REFERRING PHYSICIAN. so here's what you're going to do-" and gave us instructions on what to do when the health insurance corporation is trying to kill you

this is not his job. his job is being my neurologist.

his job is not "call patients after hours while I'm on vacation because I'm afraid if I don't give them this guidance their insurance company might murder them and so even though this isn't my job it feels like a fucking hostage situation"

anyway. he confirmed that the shit my insurance has been pulling for a month and a half is explicitly Trying To Kill The Patient behavior. told us to get everything in writing. sending us a whole packet of every single relevant form and piece of paperwork so we have it all on hand. told us to contact the patient advocate and if that doesn't work, we're going to have to go outside the company entirely and get the state insurance ombudsman involved.

so. that's fun. and a totally productive use of everyone's time and resources. I've had insurance companies be shitty to me but I've never been the Patient They're Explicitly Trying To Kill before. like I've never had them throw this much energy at blocking a procedure this lifesaving. it actually feels even worse than I thought it would!

decaffeinatedsuitcasehauler

I work in public health in a role that's focused on improving low-cost primary care. We talk a lot about improving the quality of care - and also improving job satisfaction for providers.

There's the concept of "pajama time", which is the time doctors spend completing paperwork and other administrative tasks outside of working hours - they come home, have dinner, change into their jammies...and then pull out their laptop and do a couple hours of work.

So, yeah, this is very much a thing, and we're trying to chip away at it. The problem is situations like "my insurance is trying to kill me" are literally true. The way health insurance works in the US means you are likely going to change insurance, and "delay things until it's not our problem" is genuinely a strategy they use. Maybe you'll get a new job with different insurance. Maybe you'll give up. Maybe you'll die.

Obviously, trying to improve job satisfaction for doctors - who by and large care about their patients - within this framework is incredibly hard. The system is designed to make it incredibly time consuming for both patients and doctors.

I don't have anything inspiring or cheerful to add to this, it's just the way our system works.

scarlettohairdye

This is probably a little too much nuance, but whenever I see a "all borders are violence" post (a political position I generally agree with!) I always add a little asterisk that says "*but the border checks that keep you from bringing homegrown produce into big agricultural areas to avoid the transmission of parasites and invasive species are actually fine and if we were more vigilant about that kind of thing maybe we wouldn't have spotted lanternflies in the states."

That doesn't work as well as a slogan, though

bisquid

Things borders should be for:

Biosecurity

Customs management (you do not want people importing a bunch of stuff that doesn't meet your country's safety standards, for example)

Things like that one lake in Europe where three national borders coincide and they built an island specifically so you can run between countries for fun

Things borders shouldn't be for:

Policing who can and can't come into a country

decaffeinatedsuitcasehauler

ACAB always and forever... BUT! Some countries, like Australia, have biosecurity DOGS. These very good boys and girls are trained to sniff out things like produce items and invasive pests, which could potentially cause huge problems for the locale biomes.

Biosecurity is good, and dogs are good, so biosecurity dogs: very good!

mockva

This guy's illusions are great

just-shower-thoughts

I hate that SEPTember OCTOber NOVember and DECember aren’t the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th months.

advanced-procrastination

Whoever fucked this up should be stabbed

maybe-its-jake

Today’s your lucky day

afloweroutofstone

This is the first time in my life when it's actually fair to criticize the President for gas prices. I've spent so many years explaining to people that Presidents have pretty limited influence over the price of oil and that they do not have a magical lower-gas-prices button on their desk, I almost forgot that the President does actually have a raise-gas-prices button on their desk called "start a war with Iran for no reason"

grimsonandclover

On the topic of Tourette's, I'm going to copy and paste something I wrote elsewhere.

Tics are never voluntary or intentional. They are not our "Secret" or subconscious thoughts or feelings. Tics love to happen at the worst times because they fucking suck, and the whole community can attest to this. Coprolalia, tics centered around curse words, sexual themes, or even racial slurs, is a thing and occurs in 10% of people with Tourette's (though, despite only being 10%, it is focused on the most because of how controversial it is).

That being said: If your tics hurt someone or a community, you apologize. If your tic makes you punch someone, you apologize. If your tics make you say a racial slur to two black actors on stage, you apologize (profusely).

No, they are not voluntary, but even so, someone ended up hurt. It is not abelist to apologize or to expect someone to apologize for a hurtful tic. It is abelist, however, to call coprolalia tics fake or intentional, or any tics fake or intentional, because they are not. Place the blame on the individual for not apologizing, not the community as a whole that lives with a disability that makes us social pariahs.

The BAFTAs should have censored the word (instead of doing that, they censored "Free Palestine") and issued an apology, and so should the advocate who said it. They did not. THAT'S the issue, because of them, now two communities are hurt. And during Black History Month of all times. Black people have the right to be hurt and upset. Nobody responsible has done the right thing whatsoever.

A tic affects those with and without the disorder, and until there is some sort of cure, they always will. The least we can do when we cause harm is apologize.

guerrillatech

kendrysaneela

This is why I love the “Covid is faked” conspiracies. Like really?? You think the WHOLE WORLD is working together THAT EFFICIENTLY?? Even the countries that hate each other? Wow cheers for the optimism

geijutsu1

Look up the manhattan project you dipshits

sashibunbun

You mean the project where the only reason there was any secrecy was that none of the people had any part of the wide reaching project (Oppenheimer, Einstein, and all the others were pretty much kept way away from eachother) and was almost brought down as a secret in the group by one of the guys being an amateur safe cracker? That Manhattan Project?

The one where everybody near Los Alamos knew that something big was happening, because they were actively hiring during the War?

The one that had so many close calls to they’re working on some kind of bomb that by the time the war was over you had people involved blabbing, to the point the Rosenbergs happened?

THAT Manhattan Project?

dixkens

The Manhattan project, the one that the editor of a science fiction magazine (I think it was Astounding) figured out was happening because all the physicists who subscribed suddenly changed their addresses to Los Alamos?

That Manhattan project?

anarchopuppy

We’re talking about the Manhattan project that Kodak had clearance to know about (and even got advanced warnings about tests) because they figured it out when radioactive fallout from the tests contaminated their x-ray film? That one?

bogleech

And that was still just one government using the fullest extent of their power to try and keep just one secret in a time before cellular phone cameras or the internet. Imagine thinking multiple, rival governments agreed to fake a virus to fool just some of their citizens into staying home from work, while also agreeing to pay billions of dollars to compensate them for it.

decaffeinatedsuitcasehauler

In the 1940s Santa Fe NM was a bit of a backwater, not near anything of note, with a population of about 20k.

Then in late 1942 into 1943 people started coming to town. They didn't look like the normal folks who came to Santa Fe. Most of them were men. And for reasons the locals didn't understand they all went to the same storefront address on East Palace Ave and then...left?

Also as time went on an awful lot of mail came into that address on East Palace. Like a volume of mail you'd expect for a village of hundreds or thousands of people!

In time the good people of Santa Fe got used to it. There's no actual train station in town, and people would come in via car or bus, or get a ride from the train station in nearby Lamy. If these people looked a bit lost, like they weren't sure where they were going; if they looked like an out-of-place young scientist or engineer who, say, had been plucked out of grad school to join a secret national defense project - locals knew, and would direct them to that address on East Palace avenue.

They did not necessarily know exact what they were doing up on the hill at Los Alamos but they most certainly knew that there was secret government research going on.

viola-yaps

wait.

does this mean all of htn john was talking in a new zealand accent???

ALL OF IT??

i need to process this

katakaluptastrophy

Since Harrow doesn't comment on John's accent, you have to assume it sounds normal to her. Which could mean that *everyone* we meet in the Houses is speaking with a New Zealand accent...

clockedtomb

I would suggest in 10,000 years they've probably done some interesting vowel shifts and would be virtually unintelligible to us.

katakaluptastrophy

You'd think! To avoid getting too grumpy about this, I like to pretend that all the Houses actually speak daughter languages of House proper, like the Romance languages from Latin, but the gathered scions are speaking the ancient language of religion and politics while together, and thus are all also able to read the 10,000 year old notes they find around the place with ease...

But sadly, Nona says Cam and Pal only know one language.

oh-jod-dammit

I'd argue, in addition to the whole theme that necromancy is stagnation, there's another massive factor we often don't give enough credit for House still very much being English and the common accent still being Kiwi:

John and the Lyctors are STILL AROUND. (Or like. Just John and Pyrrha now, but that's been a change in the last year.)

That's one factor real life has never emulated. We know John hates change, but specifically, why would HE adapt if linguistics started to drift. So you've got God and his immortal Saints all talking a specific way, because it's how they've always talked, and a relatively small but not insignificant number of Cohort officials working with them directly. Of course those soldiers are going to talk how God talks, and if God raises an eyebrow and says "why are you pronouncing it like that?" they're going to stop. The ones that get to go home, after retirement or for visits, are going to tell the people around them, "Hey, God told me directly it's supposed to be like this." There's also some form of across-space long distance audio via stele (John ordering the last person to graduate Trentham to make static noises) and it's likely his Lyctoral letters weren't the _only_ ones he ever sent to House heads, so both spoken and written language from God would be experienced by more people than met him directly.

It helps that no House's population has ever been above a few million, too, so that's less people to keep informed. It still wouldn't surprise me if there's some new slang used exclusively House-side and the heirs just talk a bit more proper or something, but drift that would be unintelligible to us would either rely on John changing with it or... maybe not become unintelligible to him, of course there's the possibility he'd hear it happen gradually to a point he could understand even if he wasn't speaking like that. But even if he didn't correct anyone, I still suspect a theocracy this intense would adhere to God's standard. That makes a big difference when God and his old besties are physically here!

decaffeinatedsuitcasehauler

Okay so I'm American but I've lived in NZ, and NtN punched me in the face with this within like the first two pages.

Because the characters talk about going to "the dairy", a shop, which in my experience is quite common in NZ English and unusual or unheard of literally everywhere else. I have also lived in Australia and the UK and have never heard anyone outside NZ refer to a small convenience store as such, and I have heard it in NZ.

And so within a few pages I was like, okay. EITHER Muir somehow fumbled this and it didn't get caught (extremely unlikely) OR it's an intentional choice and, somehow, this is a post-apocalyptic future in which New Zealand - New Zealand! - became the dominant surviving culture which ALSO feels EXTREMELY unlikely? Don't get me wrong I absolutely love the country, kiwis are generally wonderful people, but, like, they're not a global power in the same way that the US or China or India is (including not having nukes).

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth #new zealand #new York bodega supremacy over all other convenience store terminology

targetedknowledge

officialfoxsquadron

something about leia organa that is still revolutionary in 2025 is that her capability as a leader is never mocked, diminished, or somehow otherwise belittled because of her gender. the narrative and every character around her takes her role as a leader of the alliance completely seriously. no one has to make a qualifier that “she’s a strong leader But….” whereas many stories (including star wars stories!) feel the need to contextualize women leaders as “women in a man’s world” who have to constantly navigate patriarchy, rather than leaders who deal with complex problems and who make decisions that affect those around them. no one ever discounts leia because of her gender. she explodes onto the screen as a capable leader and no one questions it

0fficelady

a-book-of-creatures

Made some stickers for when you just gotta express yourself with a failed cake

#ReactionCakes

peachybeesplease

ok ok so much happened in/around the network effect murderbot locking itself in the bathroom scene but. I'm obsessed with the tiny detail that mb really really likes showers. it actively decides to not take one bc that would calm it down which means showers are a luxury it does indulge in sometimes! it's identifying more and more things that it actively enjoys doing and ways it likes doing them! it struggles a lot throughout the series with identifying what it wants in a large-scale existential long-term way, but this shows that it's establishing and expanding its smaller-scale and personal desires that primarily bring it comfort! I hope art makes it all sorts of fancy soaps

decaffeinatedsuitcasehauler

Identifying "I enjoy this thing and it will make me feel better BUT I'm not ready to give up feeling BAD right now" is so annoyingly relatable tbh.

suburbanrot

do you guys wanna get up early and get pastries and eat them in the park and lay in the grass for a while and then go for a long walk to an antique centre and wander round and hold things up and say "this is you 🫵" and then watch classic who and parallel play by working on our individual writing/art projects for the rest of the day with intermittent drink/snack breaks and none of us ever have to look at microsoft outlook or receive an email ever again