The Parent Friend

Sasha, they/she, 19. Trapped by The Textiles (send help). Queer horror podcasts enjoyer (or just horror podcasts, really) Profile pic by me. Yes, it's my dragon plushie. His name is Wise and he's listening to The Mechanisms. Writer, sometimes, in my dreams. Parent-shaped blob to all my friends. Also the Purse Friend and the Book Fiend. I post stuff at random, consider that your warning.

[fiberartsash]

Decided to change my username because I like Alice but it doesn't quite feel like me. So hey, I'm Sasha (but you can call me Sash), they/them, nineteen, nice to meet you.

[monamoni]

[smacznykisel]

if anyone did this before me please beat me up

[resismedievalmenagerie]

Medieval bats! I love these guys. They're in the bird section, but clearly even the medieval monks are a little confused about this, writing the bat "uses its teeth, which you may not be accustomed to finding in other birds." Translation comes from Willene B Clark, and you can find the bestiary these are featured in here.

[fiberartsash]

@joy-and-whimsy-official

@batseveryday

[fiberartsash]

@batseveryday in case the first one didn't work

[resismedievalmenagerie]

Medieval bats! I love these guys. They're in the bird section, but clearly even the medieval monks are a little confused about this, writing the bat "uses its teeth, which you may not be accustomed to finding in other birds." Translation comes from Willene B Clark, and you can find the bestiary these are featured in here.

[fiberartsash]

@joy-and-whimsy-official

@batseveryday

[sua-sponte-deactivated20200331]

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

[is-the-post-reliable]

RATING: RELIABLE

you can listen to the clip of the 1954 interview here and find him on wikipedia here

[apoemaday]

Onions

by William Matthews

How easily happiness begins by dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter slithers and swirls across the floor of the sauté pan, especially if its errant path crosses a tiny slick of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

This could mean soup or risotto or chutney (from the Sanskrit chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions go limp and then nacreous and then what cookbooks call clear, though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them. It’s true it can make you weep to peel them, to unfurl and to tease from the taut ball first the brittle, caramel-colored and decrepit papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion wrapped around its growing body, for there’s nothing to an onion but skin, and it’s true you can go on weeping as you go on in, through the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on in to the core, to the bud-like, acrid, fibrous skins densely clustered there, stalky and in- complete, and these are the most pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animal comfort that infant humans secrete. This is the best domestic perfume. You sit down to eat with a rumor of onions still on your twice-washed hands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usual endurance. It’s there when you clean up and rinse the wine glasses and make a joke, and you leave the minutest whiff of it on the light switch, later, when you climb the stairs.

[fiberartsash]

I have a job interview tomorrow and it's stress-inducing so I did a mini spa night and now I smell like a full supermarket worth of limes

[winged-mammal]

Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics

Privacy advocates gained access to a powerful tool bought by U.S. law enforcement agencies that can track smartphone locations around the wo

anyway yeah DELETE YOUR FUCKING ADVERTISING IDS

Android:

Settings ➡️ Google ➡️ all services ➡️ Ads ➡️ Delete advertising ID

(may differ slightly depending on android version and manufacturer firmware. you can't just search settings for "advertising ID" of course 🔪)

iOS:

Settings ➡️ privacy ➡️ tracking ➡️ toggle "allow apps to request to track" to OFF

and ALSO settings ➡️ privacy ➡️ Apple advertising ➡️ toggle "personalized ads" to OFF

more details about the process here via the EFF

[calitony]

Settings — privacy — safety check was also useful

[turquoisedata]

How very depressing that Neil Gaiman had trended not even a tiny bit for demonstrating what a fucking horrific person he is.

As a reminder, he's suing Caroline Wallner, one of his accusers, for breaking her NDA. Not for libel. He's saying she shouldn't have told anyone about it, not that she lied.

Neil Gaiman Seeks $500,000 From Accuser Caroline Wallner

The author says Wallner broke her NDA by sharing her story with the media, including with New York Magazine.

He doesn't need the money. He's risking the Streisand effect. He is punishing Caroline, he's trying to intimidate other victims who have signed NDAs to scare them into continued silence.

He is no friend to women, to the LGBTQIA+ community, to anyone quite frankly unless he thinks they are of value to him.

Share the story. Put it on Facebook and bluesky and whatever else you're on. Make it clear what a horrifying person he is. Tell your friends. He's paying Edendale a fortune to try and cover this up. Make this hard for him. Make it cost him money.

[champagnemoon]

body positivity has largely failed because people started arguing for attractiveness and romantic prospects instead of respect and dignity

[carewitchproject]

this is truly the best summary of what all of this SHOULD be about

[bitzitz]

comic about grace passing away and reflecting on it with rocky and adrian (with inspo from carl sagan)

[sunflowersosa]

Nigerian Pride 🏳️‍🌈🇳🇬

I meant to have this out yesterday. Happy belated pride. :)

[sunflowersosa]

I'm glad you all like the Nigeria Pride post!

Originally, I went in worried the opposite would happen. Growing up, I've been taught that Nigeria, the country, is homophobic. (I was born in America.) But over time, I learned that there's tons of other queer Nigerians; some are out, and some are in the closet 😭.

I'm also not used to this much attention, lol

Thank you all!

[the-jellicle-duelist]

i am about to bestow upon you the secret butter technique. i am sorry, but it is french. i am sorry again, this only works with cow butter. i am certain plant based butters wouldn’t work, and alternative animal butters may or may not work

has this ever been you: you have a nicely steamed vegetable, or maybe you want to make the best butter noodles, but you know that if you put butter on those it’ll just melt and you end with kind of greasy noodles or vegetables? don’t you wish it was instead a luscious buttery glaze?

introducing: beurre monté

you will take a small sauce pan, and begin heating it with 1-2 tablespoons of water (use very little water) and bring it to a hard simmer or boil

turn the heat down slightly, and add Butter. how much? however much you dare. (start with 3-4 tablespoons and go from there)

you are going to either whisk Aggressively or you can pick up the saucepan, still holding it over the heat, and swirl aggressively so the butter is skating around the sides of the pan

done correctly, you will have liquid butter that is still emulsified. you have made Butter Sauce. season it with a little salt, and toss whatever you want in it.

if you’re butter splits, i’m sorry. you didn’t agitate it enough to maintain the emulsion, and now you have melted butter.

you can use this knowledge to make other sauces by swapping out the water for another liquid. white wine becomes beurre blanc. red wine is beurre rogue.

you want to CUM? sweat minced shallot in a tiny bit of butter, add white wine and cook it out until it’s reduced by about half. then whisk butter in hard. a few flecks of minced thyme or fennel frond stirred thru, and you eat that with a nice seared fish? or scallop? or even shrimp? wow. you will Nut

your boxed mac and cheese game can also be elevated by cooking your pasta and making a beurre monté first, tossing your pasta in that and adding the cheese packet. wow. hey; you’ll cum

go forth now with this butter secret

[the-jellicle-duelist]

five notes?? this is why i don’t tell you all anything

[enthyrea]

love the transmasc grace hc but something abt him always referring to himself as grace and wearing a skirt in the first ten minutes of the movie… transfem realness. let her out

[deltao18]

Bloom

[ninanation]

Come to think of it, it really is insane that my entire country is burning alive and literally no one in the rest of the world cares. Thousands of Indians are dying every day from the heat, it's 45+ degrees in multiple areas, the government couldn't give two fucks, we're getting severe warnings and red alerts, and not a soul outside of South Asia is speaking about it because why would you ever care about brown people

[ninanation]

please keep talking about how Becky from Maryland doesn't like the rising gas prices. It's clearly the more pressing issue.

[creacher-art]

USA folks, that is a consistent temperature range hitting 113°. Death Valley temperatures. In Banda, it hovered between 116°-118° (47°-48° C) for a week straight.

This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:

ActionAid India

SEEDS India

GlobalGiving

Raise India (Project Tapan)