PIP PIP

TALLY HOOOOOOOOOOO

[jurassicpeanut]

No bond stronger than a disabled girl and her disabled cat

[maykitz]

the persecution of lefthandedness is insane to think about because it was so intense for so long, in some places still is, without any clear profit motivation. sheer love of the game. as late as the 70s at least they were smacking my stepdad's hands for it with a wooden ruler at school, to this day he's in weird ambidexterity situation where he's not great with either side and notably clumsy due to poor hand-eye coordination. just wtf

[seeingteacupsindragons]

It is fascinating to me that people also think of handedness as an example of bigotry that just...went away. As you note, it...hasn't in some places. I know people who grew up in the mid-late 90s who still had this problem.

But also, and this is really important to keep in mind regarding bigotry that still causes in many ways larger problems, that the structural problems are not actually fixed.

If you go to any computer lab or public library, the mice will be on the right side of the computer. Sometimes they can be moved. Sometimes they can't. Many computer mice are curved to only fit in right hands.

It is impossible to find lefthanded scissors without going to a specialty store, because most scissor makers don't even make them. And it's not just a matter of grip; the slicing side of the blades is obscured if you use righty scissors in your left hand, so your cut is off.

All those signing pads with the little chained styluses? Almost always on the right side, often not even long enough to stretch to the left. Makes signing for lefties extremely difficult.

I caused actual muscular problems in college having to twist around in order to write at right-handed desks in college when there weren't enough lefty desks--and there never were. Some classrooms didn't even have a single one.

I could go on.

But the point is, bigotry isn't just a mindset shift. People can't just decide they're not bothered by that particular difference anymore and everything's fine, because society is still structured and designed to cause problems for marginalized people. And they're never even going to notice all the little ways their life is bent to convenience them that inconveniences others.

[stormsbreadth]

i'm aware that the introvert website might but the wrong audience BUT please tell me your default karaoke song in the tags (for bonus points also tell me the song you WISH you could sing at karaoke but it's too obscure for the karaoke booths to have)

[teaboot]

Huh. That actually makes me wonder how much the "oh cats are such picky eaters" thing is from offering cats food that has something actually wrong with it that's perceptible to cats but not humans. Although even if the food is fine and they just don't like it, that seems... worth respecting and not treating like they're being dumb and annoying? Like, we don't make OURSELVES eat food we don't like all the time if we have a choice, we know it's unpleasant... why inflict that on a little creature who loves you and depends on you...

Yeah I've never really understood the 'oh cats are so picky lol they refuse perfectly good food' deal.

Like damn, the little guy who is fully reliant on you for every aspect of their survival and eats basically the same damn thing every single day doesn't like it anymore because the recipe changed? Should we call the press?

Honestly IME it's been pretty straightforward- new brand makes them puke? Not useful for sustenance, throw it out. The brand he's always fine with it suddenly unacceptable? Either somethings wrong with it or the formula is different and he doesn't feel safe. Not useful, throw it out. Recall announcement? Company revealed to be unsafe? Dangerous ingredients? That' not NUTRITION, why would I buy it?

What's the alternative, anyways? STARVE him until he eats it?? He's my SON

Anyhow Fuck "Meow Mix" SPECIFICALLY, I have seen no other brand that has made so many different cats puke so frequently and consistently, I wouldn't feed that shit to a worm

[lorddeathofmurdermountain]

Also a lot of people really just. Raw dog taking care of a cat. So they'll tell me "my cat never wants to eat or drink >:/" sir you are putting their food immediately next to their water and they are hardwired to avoid that because of cross-contamination. You will literally solve this if you put the water and the food on the opposite sides of the room or the house in worst case and it takes like thirty seconds to Google.

[teaboot]

^^^^^^^ I had this problem with Ollie and I'd never had a cat do that before!!! SUCH an easy fix

[grandiloquentmenhir]

I imagine some of this has to do with people forgetting that cats are tiny little obligate carnivore hyperpredators; if youre out catching rodents and whatnot in a granary, of course you dont eat the weird smelling mouse you found in the corner, you just go out hunting for a fresh one. Obligate carnivores in the wild generally cant afford to waste any energy that could be used for a successful hunt on much else, and especially not on suboptimal or suspicious food, unless theyre starving. When humans put ourselves in the middle of all that, its on us to figure out how to accommodate the kind of little creatures that cats ARE, as opposed to the ones we want or imagine them to be.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

"I'm only criticizing the people who are lazy on purpose" is just not the reassurance people think it is when nearly every disabled person has been accused of not really being disabled and just being lazy on purpose

[starfoozle]

Colleague A at the queer scientist mixer: “….so before I knew I was a lesbian, I was always into bishounen. It’s part of the process —”

Colleague B: “….what’s a bishounen?”

Greek chorus of other queer scientists who are all 30 or 40 years old: [simultaneously jump in to offer assorted definitions of androgynous prettyboy anime guys, at increasing volume]

Colleague B, hopefully, after a lengthy and considerate pause: “…oh, like Hisoka? From HunterXHunter?”

Greek chorus of other queer scientists who are all 30 or 40 years old: “UH….. NOT QUITE,,,”

[grandiloquentmenhir]

Realized I wanted somewhere to write down my thoughts on stuff Im thinking about/reading at the very least since I dont really have a consistent person to talk to about it, and my ability to talk out loud to myself has been severely curtailed for the past few months. Before I would do this kind of rambling on cohost (RIP), or at least write it out of my system without posting. Oh well, tumblr’s supposed to be dying too, whats one more transient record of existence. Anyway long-winded diatribe probably below. Really, probably dont read this.

Ive recently been binge-reading girls love manga like my life depended on it; not entirely sure why, other than it feels like the same kind of sensation when you see a green leafy vegetable and suddenly NEED to eat a mountain of it, maybe Ive just been severely lacking in Yuri Vitamins or something. I figured out I was way more into romance manga/anime than I ever thought I was a couple years ago, but I wonder if that’s just because its a way to vicariously experience a lot of things I can’t access right now in my own life; not romance itself, necessarily, I talk to my boyfriend on the phone a lot, but to advance a romance plot you usually need certain elements, namely an environment where characters routinely meet up with people outside of their immediate family, and have regular access to things like cafes, shops, and outdoor spaces for informal encounters. Since covid started and I was needed to take care of my grandparents, my own access to that kinda stuff has been basically nil, and annoyingly my tolerance for it has dropped a lot too. But I didnt really want to write all this just to mope.

All that said, Im still not sure why I zeroed in on yuri specifically; I also read a few straight romances when this weird fugue kicked off, but I really dont empathize much with most male protagonists. Even when theyre not just the unrealistic (to me) slightly-horny-everyman type I just dont really recognize a lot of the tropes involved as anything relevant to my own experiences. Maybe its that I can empathize a lot more with the feeling that my own affection isnt something I can just put out in the world, when it hasnt been asked for? I feel like that sense, that romantic feelings and a desire for intimacy are things you need to keep firmly under control and internal so that they dont hurt anyone, and the sad feeling that they might never be shared unless someone walked up and deliberately pulled them out, is grappled with a lot more in yuri than in straight romances, maybe; that resonates a lot more with my own experiences than any feeling of “wow, that persons so X, I want to get closer to them”.

Christ, this is maudlin. Im trying not to feel silly writing all that down, I didnt really want to talk about myself so much. I guess this is what diaries are for, but what am I gonna do, put all this in the Notes app? Email myself? I guess the whole point is I dont want to keep this stuff a secret, even if there isnt anybody who wants to know it—OK thats more than enough of that.

Ive ended up reading a LOT of yuri, for whatever reason, and while plenty of it is middling-to-uninteresting theres a LOT of good stories out there. The Guy I Had a Crush On Was Actually A Girl (still cant get that title right, henceforth Green Yuri) is amazing, of course, and Ive seen a lot of gushing for Bloom Into You which I read and enjoyed; I generally dont go much for school settings, though, because past a certain point theres only so much Sports Day Into Summer Break Into School Festival Into Winter Break Into Graduation a body can take. Ive found that HS stories are also sometimes susceptible to what Ive decided to call the Yuri Gas Leak Problem, wherein its revealed that an increasingly-improbable portion of the cast are lesbians or exploring lesbian relationships all at once, to the extent that one begins to question whether heterosexual attraction or even male humans exist in the setting at all; this isnt always a problem (its not like you can have too much yuri), and its often just funny to notice, but it can sometimes overwhelm the suspension of disbelief and pull me out of the actual story.

All That being said, Yuri Is My Job deserves some special mention for depicting some of the most Out There funky little lesbians who nevertheless portray a lot of real and relatable angst about how to square the harsh realities of the world with the freedom and exploration afforded by role-play, and doesnt shy away from some of the really ugly ways that emotion and reality interact. (And arguably YIMJ is more workplace drama than school life drama anyway, but they are still mostly high schoolers so whatever).

Theres a lot of really good workplace/adult romcoms as well of course, which I appreciate because theres much more leeway to break up the pacing and setting (especially with letting confession/dating be PART of the story, not just the climax to it), and its refreshing to see characters struggling with their emotions like adults do, or at least failing to do so and dealing with the outcomes of that; not to mention adult/workplace romances are more likely to address the reality of both internalized and externalized homophobia and the scrutiny that same-sex relationships are placed under in society, and where queer communities still manage to exist in and around that society. Doughnuts Under A Crescent Moon and After Hours both stuck out for me here, as well as Ayaka Is In Love With Hiroko and Alcohol and Ogre Girls. The Two Of Them Are Pretty Much Like This unfolds from a cute little 4 panel slice of life into something really heartwarming and touching, and deserves recognition for being one of the few manga Ive read that portrays an actual (closeted) trans girl character without falling back on stereotypes or “hes a crossdresser” rhetoric.

Given everything Ive said so far, I was pretty surprised that the best thing Ive read through all this was a slow-burn romcom drama set in high school, but Amayo no Tsuki/The Moon On a Rainy Night really is just that fucking good. God damn. Its so refreshing to have a protagonist who already KNOWS she likes girls, and it feels so much more realistic and crushing to see Saki actually struggle with internalized homophobia and closeting beyond the standard “but we’re both girls” cluelessness that plagues most yuri protags, while she tries to process her feelings for Kanon and untangle them from the fear that she’s just using Kanon’s disability as a self-congratulatory crutch. Its clear that a lot of time and care has gone into researching d/Deaf/HoH experiences to make Kanon feel realistic and portray her with respect and dignity, without shying away from the fact that she experiences and interacts with the world differently from others; and moreover so much care has gone into showing how KANON’s emotions change as she and Saki get closer, and how she’s slowly able to open up to others thanks to the trust she places in Saki’s kindness. True to the metaphor of the title there’s so much work put into making the presence of hidden emotions and situations FELT, rather than shown, and I keep being reminded as I read how important it is to put care into imagining others as complexly as we imagine ourselves. Im finding myself rereading it already, and I keep putting Claire de Lune on repeat while I do so. Just an amazing work of fiction even leaving aside its place in the genre.

Anyway, Ive written way more than Id care to read myself, and Im not really sure how to end this. Im glad I was able to get my thoughts down somewhere, if only to make me feel less restless about it. Uhhhh. Read Amayo no Tsuki, watch the anime thats apparently coming out in the next few months (!!), yuri’s pretty cool even if I still feel a little weird about reading so much of it in such a short span of time, and Im trying not to feel like a creep for doing so. People sure do have so many feelings all of the time. Be nice to each other.

[prokopetz]

Carcinisation is fun, but it's just one example of an odd recurring pattern in parallel evolution. Humans probably will not become crabs; mammals have their own patterns which incongruously recur across unrelated clades. I believe the inheritors of humanity will evolve long, sticky tongues which enable them to feed on burrowing insects.

[cheese24k]

[ceramicpuppyclown]

reblog for easter

[winemom-culture]

forget april fools day its almost time for the best video on this entire fuckin planet

[scabrrielle]

sunglasses. no sun. it’s cloudy: overcast. 

[prokopetz]

I don't disagree with the observation that a lot of folks in tabletop roleplaying spaces don't believe that game design is real (i.e., in the sense that they believe any GM should be able to achieve any experience of play using any system, and refuse to recognise that rules are opinionated about what sort of games they want to produce), but I feel like putting that at the forefront is confusing the symptom for the disease. A lot of folks in tabletop roleplaying spaces don't believe game design is real because they don't believe that games are real.

I've talked in the past about how Hasbro's efforts to deceptively market Dungeons & Dragons as universal entry-level game have fostered a culture of play in which any appearance that D&D isn't a universal entry-level game is regarded as evidence that you have a "bad GM", and how, in order to avoid being a "bad GM", it's necessary to treat it as a normal part of the GM's responsibilities to constantly monitor the outputs of the rules and quickly paper over any gaps between the game the rules want to produce and the game the group wants to play, like a cartoon train conductor frantically constructing the very tracks along which the train they're conducting is riding.

The trouble is that most players aren't stupid, and readily see through the act. They (correctly!) observe that the particulars of the rules don't actually seem to matter all that much, because most of the desired experience of play is the product of the GM's constant interventions, rather than the product of interpreting the outputs of the rules – but instead of identifying this as a problem, they conclude (again, quite reasonably, as they've probably never seen it done differently) that this is what tabletop roleplaying is. The GM merely pretends to be moderating a game; in truth, they're a pantomime-leader whose job is to maintain the illusion that we're playing a game with rules, when in fact what we're really doing is guided improv theatre.

And of course there's nothing wrong with guided improv theatre – it's a fine pastime, and one I've enjoyed myself on many occasions. However, it does put folks who really do want to play a game in a bind, because now there's this insurmountable communication barrier. You can say "I want to play a game, and these are the rules of that game", and receive what seems to be enthusiastic agreement with that premise; however, a significant portion of the people expressing that agreement think they're participating in a bit of kayfabe, like very dedicated professional wrestlers who stay in character even outside the ring.

Critically, nobody is necessarily acting in bad faith in this equation. The folks who don't bother to learn the rules because they think games aren't real mostly aren't fucking with you on purpose; they honestly thought they were yes-anding your improv prompt by pretending to care about the mechanics of play, and when they discover that you really do expect them to do all that fiddly dice math, from their perspective it genuinely looks like you were the one misleading them. It's just a fucked up culture of play garbling all the signals in both directions.

(Note that, while I've identified Hasbro's deceptive marketing as the ultimate source of this culture of play, indie RPGs are hardly innocent of perpetuating it. You only need cast a critical eye on the "Rule Zero" sections of many popular indie games to notice that their authors are all in on the idea that games aren't real!)

[prokopetz]

#ohhhh this is really good analysis #also i think large scale super professional actual play podcasts n shit are a big part of this #cuz imo that was a Lot of peoples main engagement with ttrpgs back in the day (about a decade ago) #and a lot of people thats still their Main TTRPG Experience #and like. those tend to be even less Game Like than the average dnd campaign #like a lot of that shit is in fact. scripted. and made to be more cinematic for the audience etc (via @st4rshiptr00per)

Yeah, big name "actual play" podcasts that pretend they're not scripted and workshopped to hell are a big contributing factor, though I wouldn't classify them as distinct from Hasbro's marketing apparatus so much as one of the most visible arms of that apparatus. The fact that Hasbro isn't paying them directly doesn't mean they aren't serving the brand.

(The weird part is that I get the impression that some of them don't even know it. Sometimes it seems like Brennan Lee Mulligan genuinely doesn't realise that best practices for running a game of Dungeons & Dragons as a kind of performance art for a paying audience are very different from best practices for running a game of Dungeons & Dragons for your three buddies in the GM's dining room.)

[fatt-twitter-updates]

This weekend(ish!), on Sunday 15th and Monday 16th, we’re going to be hosting ICEBREAKER, a two day fundraising marathon on Twitch to raise money for the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota’s Immigrant Rapid Response Fund!

Read more here!

www.patreon.com/posts/150448441

A Fundraising Marathon for the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund! | Friends at the Table

Get more from Friends at the Table on Patreon

4:13 PM PST, February 10, 2026 (Source)

[kirbyddd]

Despite its flaws, there has never been a more beautiful and faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work

[liz-and-the-blue-bird]

I’ve been waiting all year to post this.

[powerfulwizard]

I had a dream last night that I ran away from fascists and ended up at this farm that was full of this weird but very large prehistoric animal that was like a fluffy Tapir and I want to know if it actually exists. It was about the size of a Dairy Cow.

[powerfulwizard]

Like this but with big fluffy hair with white streaks

[powerfulwizard]

Oh my god

[bebsi-cola]

honestly the impact of frustration is seriously underestimated. like as an emotion i think it's not seen as intense as anger or despair or even joy or excitement. and yet being frustrated is the quickest route to meltdown. for me at least. there's something about how it's just got nowhere to go that makes it so overwhelming and unpleasant. and it gives you just contradictory responses to the situation can do you keep trying, do you get angry, do you cry and get upset do you throw up like what

[the-sacred-now]

My teachers called frustration "a mild term for anger and helplessness combined." Those are not minor feelings on their own, I'm not sure why people speak as though they soften each other when it's more of a coke and mentos situation.

[grandiloquentmenhir]

So Ive got type 1 narcolepsy, your classic flavor with cataplexy (a fancy term for sudden, spontaneous loss of muscle tone, or in other words, whole-body floppiness). Cataplexy can have a lot of triggers, but some of the most well-known are strong, sudden emotional swings: surprise, rage, excitement, even laughter for some people. One of MY most common triggers is frustration, which is especially fun when the frustration is being caused by failure to do a task that suddenly being floppy makes exponentially harder.

Which is really just to say that if you want some anecdotal confirmation for the intensity of frustration as an emotion, there it is; its strong enough to make my pathologically orexin-starved brain forget to hold the marionette strings on my arms and legs properly, which (especially when Im properly medicated) is no small feat.

[covid-safer-hotties]

I want to ask you this in good faith-- at what point do you think we can "stop worrying" about covid? Is there a particular statistical benchmark or qualitative indicator that you believe will show the covid pandemic is over?

I'm curious because you've responded to multiple people pointing out that the death toll & long covid metrics are lower than ever essentially saying that isn't enough to stop caring. So in your view, what is?

The benchmarks professionals have listed throughout the pandemic have yet to be met. If we could hit a single one, that would sure be nice. I'd stop worrying about covid if we could hit about 20,000 infections a week during a seasonal peak with reasonalble vaccine uptake (~70٪ or higher) of a vaccine that provides both mucosal and sterilizing immunity at reasonable levels. We're averaging around 20,000 infections a day in the 3-4 valleys we get a year right now, and that's without widespread wastewater testing from coast to coast and extremely low lab testing, so we know that those cases are an undercount. Not even 18% of Americans got the latest booster this fall, and the current vaccines neither induce mucosal immunity nor provide decent levels of sterilizing immunity (vaccinated people can act as unwitting asymptotic carriers of the virus) and (especially mRNA) vaccine efficacy drops rapidly after an antibody titre peak at around 2 months post vaccination. Current expert estimates for xmas day show us hitting more than 1,000,000 infections a day. A million infections a day would only take the national level into the CDC's new "medium" category. It's higher than both the Alpha and Beta waves. Of they were pandemic, so is this one. To act otherwise is to bury one's head in the sand and go "LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" and that is our current public health response. Even if covid's death rate remains ~1%, that's 1% of a minimum ~20,000 a day even when we're not in a peak. One in five of each of those cases will develop lingering viral disease that mirrors HIV in its viral persistence and immune damage. If any of these things I mentioned can be reasonalbly addressed and substantially lessened, and these waves stop happening globally every 2 to 4 months, we'll stop being in a pandemic. If the government stops stifling data collection and acting like public health is a personal choice, I'll relax just a bit, because then I could actually do a risk assessment and trust that my community has mitigations in place like air filtration, masked staff, daily tests for staff, etc.

The death toll isn't the only metric to look at, and those deaths shouldn't be dismissed just because we're no longer stuffing corpses into reefer trailers. Each infection is a threat to someone's life and health in the long term, and we're refusing to look at that reality and adapt. Ignorance and bluster are not a public health response, and y'all should be pissed that's what the government is doing, not going out for mimosas even though "I've had a 'really bad cold for 5 days'."

The effects are cumulative and ever growing. To act like those effects just dissappear or don't matter is eugenics.

[reasonsforhope]

20,000 Pounds of Trash Removed From Pacific Garbage Patch: ‘Holy mother of god. It worked!’

The man who won't rest until the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is cleaned up has successfully tested his system for doing so.

““The Great Pacific Garbage Patch can now be cleaned,” announced Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, the wonderkid inventor who’s spent a decade inventing systems for waterborne litter collection.

Recent tests on his Ocean Cleanup rig called System 002, invented to tackle the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic pollution, were a success, leading Slat to predict that most of the oceanic garbage patches could be removed by 2040.

Intersections of ocean currents have created the massive floating islands of plastic trash—five slow-moving whirlpools that pull litter from thousands of miles away into a single radius.

The largest one sits between California and Hawaii, and 27-year-old Slat has been designing and testing his systems out there, launching from San Francisco since 2013.

GNN has reported on his original design for the floating device, but his engineering team improved upon it. System 002, nicknamed “Jenny,” successfully netted 9,000 kilograms, or around 20,000 pounds in its first trial.

It’s carbon-neutral, able to capture microplastics as small as 1 millimeter in diameter, and was designed to pose absolutely no threat to wildlife thanks to its wide capture area, slow motion, alerts, and camera monitors that allow operators to spy any overly-curious marine life…

Slat estimates ten Jennies could clean half the garbage patch in five years, and if 10 Jennies were deployed to the five major ocean gyres, then 90% of all floating plastic could be removed by 2040.” -via Good News Network, 10/19/21

[spectroscopic-binary]

Recent update from this org: they’ve launched System 03 (in 2023) and have gone on over 100 expeditions and collected over 1 million pounds of trash! They also are working on cleaning up rivers :)

Oceans | The Ocean Cleanup

We are cleaning up ocean plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Learn more about the technology used and the cleanup progress here.