It's Ian's Secret Blog

shh

[inprnt]

“Self-aware” by Sergio Vallés on INPRNT

[littlealienproducts]

dreaming of you (A5 Cat Art Print) by robinillu

[estro-boi]

we gotta get back to torrent distribution, i just watched someone eat eight grand in bandwidth charges because they ran a direct-download piracy site with local file hosting through cloudflare. torrents were invented literally for this exact reason

[estro-boi]

torrents work like this

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

please learn to torrent

[macleod]

How to Use Torrents (with Pictures) - wikiHow

An expert guide to get started using torrentsTorrents are one of the most popular forms of file sharing on the internet, accounting for over

always use qbittorrent, do not use bitorrent or utorrent.

[bucketofdeltav]

So my beta reader for the Big Fics is an astrophysicist, right. Who is currently also writing a hard sci-fi novel about the exploration of Phobos (more power to them, I cannot with the physics required for that, best I can do is soft sci-fi/fantasy and that reminds me I should finish that story).

Anyway I was bitching about how hard it is to come up with feasible planets in Star Wars because sometimes you need a new planet from scratch and sometimes you need to know more about a planet than the 'has jungles, is probably a moon technically' than Wookieepedia will give you, and they're like 'oh yeah I can do something about that'.

So they've written (in Matlab but they swear it will run as a .exe as well and I may be conscripted to embed it as a web tool at some point) a star system generator.

You input what you know about the planet (ecosystem, population, sun colour, does it have liquid water, does it have a moon or moons, is it a moon or moons, temperature averages, atmosphere, you get me) and it will give you the... everything else about the star system, in obedience to real-universe physics. And if you input nothing you get a randomly generated star system.

And I’m like oh I know people who will be into this with a vengeance, and they're not on Tumblr, so this is me seeing who exactly would be keen on, and I cannot stress this enough, a real-physics comprehensive star system generator.

It's still in the debugging phase (last error fixed: every planet wants to have a population of exactly 5000 regardless of other factors, turned out to be a missing equals sign somewhere), but I'm psyched for this and trying to gauge interest for how high a priority 'make this an accessible web tool' needs to be.

[melyzard]

[elodieunderglass]

@bucketofdeltav says the URL is here: http://tumblr.com/star-system-generator

okay it has its own blog now (@star-system-generator) on Tumblr

Follow @star-system-generator and get more of the good stuff by joining Tumblr today. Dive in!

[vortexsophia-deactivated2022110]

[fleshst4r]

.

we're not going to make it

we will make it

it'll take too long to rebuild ourselves

we will make it

but what if we don't wake up in the morning

we will make it

i don't see a future with me in it

we will make it

we'll give up long before then

we will make it

im scared

i love you. we will make it

Voting ended onApr 11

[animnightmare]

The votes on this post. Oh. A poem in poll form, interactive art, the fact we can see how the other people reading it felt. im. this is really good.

[website-com]

ive heard if its all gone wrong and is fucked beyond repair you can actually use it for banana bread

[movementnudge]

Movement nudge! UN-stiff edition.

X

[sweetoothgirl]

Better Than Toll House Cookie Recipe

[pangur-and-grim]

this is so interesting, because I have OCD and an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation, and those things are 100% related. when my immunosuppressant meds are working, my OCD stops. and when I’m unmedicated it’s like my brain is on fire. the one time I actually saw a doctor for my OCD and went through multiple sessions for it, it was allllll about breaking habits and learning self control, and would you believe it, it didn’t help one bit.

[huckleberryhal]

Grandma Ferret. (X)

[huckleberryhal]

Today’s Grandma Ferret

[borderlinereminders]

Decide 10: A Relationship Tool I Found to be Helpful

A lot of internet advice says “don’t do things you don’t want to do” or “you don’t owe anyone anything.” Technically true, but real relationships are more complicated. Sometimes you’re tired but still willing, sometimes you’re excited, and sometimes you’re just… meh.

That’s why I love the Decide 10 system (from Prototype Thinking on Medium). It makes compromise clearer and more balanced. I saw this talked about on Instagram and looked it up.

Here’s how it works when it comes to activities (I used a different method for an emotional need, which I talk about in example 3).

Each person rates from 1–10 how much they want to do something.

You both reveal your numbers.

If the total is 10 or higher, you do it. If it’s lower, you renegotiate, postpone, or skip it.

Example 1: This is often used to decide whether to do a specific activity, but it can also be used to decide between two. You’re deciding between Taco Bell and Burger King for dinner.

Your partner rates Taco Bell 5, Burger King 8.

You rate Taco Bell 7, Burger King 4.

Totals:

Taco Bell = 12

Burger King = 12

Both hit the 10 threshold, so either works but you can see Burger King matters more to them than Taco Bell matters to you. So maybe a compromise is you go to Burger King that night and Taco Bell another.

Example 2: Compromise in Action

Let’s say someone rates something a 9 and you’re only a 3. The math adds up to 12, but beyond the numbers, it shows this thing is really important to them. In a close relationship, you might decide to stretch for them. Not because you owe it, but because you care. And often, they’ll stretch for you too.

The opposite can be true as well. Maybe you say something is a 1, but they rate it an 8. Seeing your low number might help them realize, “This isn’t worth draining you for. I can let it go this time.” That’s care, too.

Example 3: An Emotional Need

Today I was feeling sad. I told my friend I was a 6 on the “sad scale” and asked what her capacity was for calling. I clarified it wasn’t emergent. I was just sad.

She told me she was at about a 4 on capacity. She was tired and normally wouldn’t call tonight, but since I was at a 6, she wanted to support me. We agreed she’d call in two hours when she had privacy. She added that if I’d said it was emergent, she would have called right away, privacy or not.

That was me applying the concept in a different way. It was honesty about where we’re both at, balanced with flexibility.

The original Decide 10 article talks about adding numbers together for activities. With emotional needs, it worked a bit differently for me. My “6” was about how much support I needed, while my friend’s "4" was about her capacity to give support. Instead of adding the numbers, we compared them and found a compromise. She couldn’t call immediately, but she could call in two hours.

That’s the point of the scale. It is not rigid math, it’s a framework for honest communication.

Why this helps (especially if you have BPD):

No mind-reading. You don’t have to guess how much they care.

Saying “I’m a 3 on this” communicates low capacity without it sounding like rejection.

You can see when one person feels strongly and the other doesn’t. This makes compromise less painful.

It balances give-and-take instead of one person always “winning.”

Important to remember:

Use it for everyday decisions and non-emergency emotional check-ins. Don’t force it in crisis moments.

Numbers can change. A “2” today might be a “7” tomorrow.

The point isn’t the math. It's the honesty and balance it creates.

This is just one tool, but I think it’s a great way to practice boundaries, compromise, and clarity. Things that can be especially tricky when you live with BPD.

[zomboivex]

Honestly I want to give this a try and implement it in my life to a degree.

[traumasurvivors]

I really like it! It's been helpful to me for asking for help honestly. I was able to reach out to my friend today because I felt I could trust her to give me an honest answer on her capacity and we could figure it out from there.

It's also been super helpful for my husband and me when we're struggling with dinner, or what to do for date night. I think it helps things not feel so black and white to me.

[naamahdarling]

Gonna try this out!

[maureen2musings]

Stoat in his winter coat, Kodiak, Alaska

krisluckphoto

[diserbillyti]

tbh I find it kind of hard to take selectively pro-cop or pro-psychiatry leftists all that seriously, especially when their leftism is very "comfort-based feminism" flavoured.

So, it is actually pretty dangerous to leave the house and be in public while seriously psychosocially disabled. Cops routinely assault people for shit like "acting strange," and the common line when they do so is "well I thought he was high on something." They are almost always cleared in court and seldom if ever even suspended with pay for being like this.

I was once slammed to the ground, pinned, handcuffed, dragged to the station and almost charged because I mistakenly thought I had the legal right to use a bus while schizophrenic.

See, I was pacing around talking to myself, as one does, and some nearby white woman called the cops on me. You MUST understand, there is always a Nearby White Woman. I wasn't threatening anybody, getting up in anybody's business, nothing like that, I was a fair distance from everybody else. I know because she fucking filmed me the whole time she was waiting for the cops to arrive lol.

Then old mate in the uniform comes right up, hand on his gun. "What have you taken? What have you taken?" The thing is, psychosis often comes with disorganized speech, and he's interpreting my answer as evidence that I'm high. Uh oh.

Then for forty eight hours I'm in the psych ward. Blood tests, invasive questions. Explain to me why Dr. Densecunt had to ask me about my sexuality. Explain to me why Dr. Densecunt is asking me if I masturbate. Explain to me why even after a blood test came back clearing me Dr. Densecunt is asking me about if I'm on The Substances. Explain to me why Dr. Densecunt is refusing to call my family when I tell him to. They have no idea where I am. My grandma's losing her mind. Explain to me why Dr. Densecunt's answer to "when can I leave?" is "when we're confident you're safe," as we're the only demographic it's legal to hold captive indefinitely without the violation of any crime on suspicion alone.

You don't see schizophrenics outside unless we're homeless because you are a danger to us, Heather. Our safety depends on your comfort, Heather, and you are never fucking comfy, Heather.

And the thing is, I tell this story in leftist circles, and some fucking Melany, some Susan, some Cassandra or her wannabe boyfriend Mark always slithers out to tell me that I need to be sympathetic becuase wh wh what if she had trauma.

What if the sight of a disabled man fifteen feet away from her existing in public really triggered her tr tr tr trauma. Her mental health, defined as her comfort, is more important than your mental health, defined as a right to exist in public spaces, because you are ontologically a threat. Does this actually keep Heather safe? Fuck no it doesn't. Mate, the shit they do to disabled and especially schizophrenic women. You call the pork patrol on a schizophrenic woman, you have almost guaranteed she's going to be sexually assaulted, but what's worse? A disabled woman's rape, or Heather being expected to share a fucking sidewalk. Goddamn

You cannot be serious with viewing either disabled men as automatically a threat to you, or the police as existing to protect women. Exhausting. One day I will kill god for allowing the creation of the true crime podcast

[kickedfromthecommune]

I'm mostly confused about the anti-psychiatry aspect of the post. There aren't any redeemable qualities in the police, but voluntary commitments and psychiatrists seem to just need more oversight/funding/education.

[diserbillyti]

Antipsychiatry is not a rejection of the concept of mental health treatment and support. It is not the call for a destruction of medical literature or research, either, though many practices engaged in (ie. involuntary study of patients who are considered wards of the state and therefore have their consent assumed by treating psychiatrists) are of course on the radar for most antipsychiatry people.

Antipsychiatry is broadly not concerned with voluntary commitment and treatment provided it is actually voluntary and not coercive, that is, "submit to blood tests to prove you're on antipsychotics or have your disability support pension cut off" style "voluntary."

Rather, antipsychiatry is generally a rejection of the coercive elements thereof, such as the legal power of involuntary commitment without much oversight as to systemic release.

I strongly recommend reading Judi Chamberlin's On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System (1978). This is the foundational text of the antipsychiatry movement, sometimes better understood as the psychiatric survivor movement.

As for education:

Psychiatrists are quite literally the most "educated" in the academic sense on the issue of cognitive disabilities. They also form what is considered the authoritative body on the subject. Expecting them to "become more educated" is, to an extent, expecting the police to investigate themselves when they commit a crime. Other forms of disability treatment and support exist (with their own systemic power issues that the antipsychiatry movement is concerned with), but psychiatry as a field tends to be privileged in legal and policy reforms, creating a feedback loop.

When you are involuntarily committed under most systems in the US, Australia, NZ, the UK, yada yada, you usually need a psychiatrist to assess you and sign you out. If they decide for whatever reason that you do not meet their often less-scientific-than-you-think personal criteria of wellness, they will not release you. Their position is medically and legally prioritized over that of their less educated peers because they are considered by the system that recognizes these things as at the peak. There's no one with more degrees in the field.

Nevertheless, there are observable disparities in, for instance, how long black patients are kept in the ward vs. white patients which evidences that real discrimination exists in the administering of psychiatric treatment, or whether they're likely to be subject to involuntary commitment at all.

Psychiatrists themselves, in the pursuit of becoming better educated (and watching the watchmen, I suppose?) document this.

PsychiatryOnline.org is the platform for all American Psychiatric Association Publishing journals, DSM, and bestselling textbooks, as well a

This reflects disparities in diagnostic rates and the treatment processes of early psychosis and other stigmatized conditions or symptoms.

There is a notable disparity between the observed prevalence of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders in racialized persons in the United States

So, who is to educate them? Us? Their profession has historically not been receptive to actually listening to patients, and even if they did, they have all the power in that relationship. YOU can't send THEM to the wellness jail until they start acting how you want, but mate that's the core of their field when it comes to you.

You will find the same in psychology, the various pseudoscience garbage fields Americans collectivize as "therapy," so on and so forth, but psychiatry is where this is at its most serious.

A last couple thoughts here:

Often when discussing antipsychiatry people think what's being said is "I want all medicine to disappear from the Earth." Not the case. Plenty of people do benefit from psychiatric services. Antipsychiatry generally is an opposition to the coercive and legal power psychiatry holds. For instance, any conversation you have with a psychiatrist is one in which they have the legal power to have you held and committed, and yet you are legally required to speak to them for access to the pills you need when it comes to stigmatized conditions. This affects recovery outcomes; you are consciously in danger whenever you're after the Abilify you need to keep food on the table and rent in your landlord's hands. How is this beneficial to your chill and sentiment de facilité.

The "antipsychiatry" movement has been home to fucked grifters since COVID19 started. Well, it's been home to grifters much longer than that, frankly, but COVID19 brought out the absolute worst. As such, it's become very difficult to find actual relevant literature and the real movement in amid all of the essential oils and "autism cure diet" hustlers, the bad AI-written self-help slop on Amazon, all that. Basically, it's a movement that's been astroturfed by assholes, and as such there's a common misunderstanding that "antipsychiatry" means "never take your meds, no one should have mental health care, no one can have treatment ever, being in psychosis is your natural state and always beneficial." Not the case.

tl;dr I'm not saying treatment shouldn't exist. I'm saying compelled treatment, a mental health crisis being responded to by police, being committed and held against my will and forced through blood tests etc., being asked invasive questions with the coercive threat that I will be kept longer if I don't answer, and being cut off from my primary caregivers, are all the elements of "psychiatry" that the antipsychiatry movement opposes, hence its relevance here.

[strange-aeons]

I made this fake omegaverse biology textbook to pretend to quote from in my next video. There's been a lot of interest in what the content of such a book would be so i thought i would dedicate a post to the REAL quote sources (which are cited on screen in the video as well). My unofficial omegaverse anthology:

“Alphas, Betas, Omegas: A Primer” by norabombay

https://archiveofourown.org/works/403644/chapters/665489

“A/B/O: Adventures in Fake Science.” by Hells Bartender (Firebog)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/4299357/chapters/98032621

“The nonnies made them do it!” by netweight

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022303/chapters/2033841

“Pon Farr, Mpreg, Bonds, and the Rise of the Omegaverse” by Kristina Busse

https://kristinabusse.com/pdf/Busse, Kristina - Pon Farr Mpreg, Bonds, and the Rise of the Omegaverse (in Fic 2013).pdf

“Dogfuck rapeworld: Omegaverse fanfiction as a critical tool in analyzing the impact of social power structures on intimate relationships and sexual consent.” by Milena Popova

https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/OutputFile/864007

“Between BL and Slash: Danmei Fiction, Transcultural Mediation, and Changing Gender Norms in Contemporary China” by Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang

https://www.academia.edu/43260023/Queer_Transfigurations_Boys_Love_Media_in_Asia

[crystalis]

There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:

仁智懷德聖虞唐，

貞志篤終誓穹蒼，

欽所感想妄淫荒，

心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:

Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,

zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,

qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,

xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:

傷慘懷慕增憂心，

荒淫妄想感所欽，

蒼穹誓終篤志貞，

唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:

Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,

huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,

cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,

táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:

蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:

- A love letter (expressing personal longing)

- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)

- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)

- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)

- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.

[beemovieerotica]