Dream Log

I'm: 30+ years old, genderfluid trans lady, pan, and demisexual.

[vintricles]

free my girl she did all that and that’s what makes her such a compellingly complex character. that’s her essence

[lightweaver-naeuri]

After just TEN SESSIONS at the SURGE OF PROGRESSION clinic I went from LOSER BOY considering the HONOR CHASM to HOT GIRL seeking WARDSHIP!

It's never too late to transition, especially with the power of the HEALTHCARE from RADIANTS for TRANSITION. (HRT)

[amarveloustune]

what album is the most important to you? not as in your favorite, but the one that was at the most formative time and is critical to your lore

[kosmogrl]

well

[boamerry]

shiiiit least someone has aim

[innerchildabortionclinic]

Your takes on RSD are dogshit and you’re contributing to the stigma against people who actually experience it, do better

my "take" that it's a trauma reaction and you can learn to deal with it properly in relationships? what's wrong with saying that? I literally can't figure out how this statement could make someone upset...

[innerchildabortionclinic]

[merps]

[ID: Screenshot of a reply from user bocceclub:

personally I feel "people who have faced social rejection their whole lives develop heightened sensitivity to social rejection" is less stigmatizing than "idk you're born like that. your emotions are broken. don't bother trying to improve"

/End ID]

[scenerwiththegreenery]

Learning to cope with my rejection sensitivity literally saved my life and my marriage. Taking it out on others perpetuates a cycle of dysfunction because they don't deserve it any more than you did. It was vital that I learned that transferring my pain just added more pain for everyone involved. I never got the result I was looking for—acceptance—by reacting strongly to perceived rejection. I got the result I wanted and needed by taking a minute and a few breaths and saying, "Hey, when you said X, I interpreted that as Y. Could you clarify what you meant?" Most people are not triggering your rejection sensitivity on purpose. They don't have any way to know what is specifically triggering to you, even if they know you well. The thing about rejection sensitivity is that your mind has learned to see rejection in ambiguity, but that's usually not what people actually meant.

Give people a chance to prove your past experience wrong, and set them up for success by doing the work to dismantle your reactions to ambiguity. Seek clarification when an ambiguous statement lands like rejection. Set boundaries if someone casually jokes about rejection—for example, if your partner/spouse jokes about breaking up or divorcing over small things, you might sit down and explain how that is upsetting and you would like them to stop making that joke. You can be fair to yourself and your previous experiences, and also be fair to the people in your life now and your future experiences.

You have to be the change you wish to see in your life.

I know rejection fucking hurts. My rejection sensitivity was primarily set by my parents, who themselves were very rejection sensitive and took it out on me. They were hurting, but they never figured out how to ask for the validation they needed, how to seek reassurance in fair and appropriate ways, how to question their perception and interpretation of my words and actions. I have been on the receiving end of someone's rejection sensitivity, and it's not fair and it fucking sucks.

So when my spouse brought it to me that I was doing the same thing, it took a while for me to figure out what was going wrong. I did some soul-searching. I listened. I talked to my therapist. I figured out that in ambiguous or uncertain situations, I was projecting my fears onto them. It wasn't fair. They did nothing to deserve that.

So I asked myself how I could be fair to both of us. My solution was simple: I changed my phrasing. Instead of accusations, I made value-neutral statements: "You're going to leave!" became "I'm scared that you might leave. Would you clarify, is that your intention?" I get a direct response and it allows space for reassurance, which is what I really want in that situation. I wasn't safe at previous times in my life. I need to know I'm safe now.

It's hard at first! It feels clumsy and vulnerable. My anxiety increased significantly the first few times I tried this, but it got the results I wanted. Situations that would have escalated into fights, and triggered my rejection sensitivity much more, became conversations where I ended up getting way more reassurance than expected because my spouse explained what they really meant and I was able to see their perspective and truly know they didn't mean to communicate rejection. I just got scared because it was ambiguous and my brain jumped to the worst possible conclusion.

That's value-neutral, to feel scared based on past experience. We learn to see the dangers we've faced in the past. How you feel isn't always in your control. What you do is. You are not helpless to your emotions. You can manage your emotions, and to form healthy relationships and heal the wounds of your past, it is imperative that you do so. You have to separate how you feel from how you act. Focus on the results. Are your actions having the results you want? If not, how can you get the results you want? How can you communicate your pain and fear in a way that is fair to everyone?

Managing your emotions doesn't invalidate them. It just means you're not beholden to react to them. Many of us were not taught emotional regulation when we were young, and our parents never learned it. But you can still learn, and you will be happier and more satisfied with your relationships and interactions when you do.

[silvergryphonart]

From the perspective of an outsider whose close friend is working hard on doing this, I love being asked to clarify! I take it as an expression of trust, and a sign of how important our friendship must be: holy shit, someone I am accidentally hurting knows and trusts that I wouldn’t do that on purpose, and is willingly expressing vulnerability to give me a chance to fix it before it becomes a problem. That takes guts.

[superlazernovaa]

A reminder

[3liza]

this was in the tags of a very funny screenshot and i didnt want to derail there, so i will make a new post: dishwashers manufactured after 2013 take MUCH less water than washing dishes by hand. it seems counterintuitive but it is provably true and has been tested extensively. if you are washing dishes by hand as a way to lower utility bills you are shooting yourself in the foot. dishwashers also sterilize dishes and in general are much much much much cleaner than hand washing, which becomes extra important if you live with anyone who has immune issues, long covid, cancer, etc. if you tried to hand wash your dishes with the temperature possible inside a dishwasher you would get serious burns. it's not physically possible to hand wash dishes and get them cleaner (as in, the amount of bacteria and other contaminants on the surface) than you can with a dishwasher. its almost like an autoclave in there

also do not use sponges to clean things but thats a different post

oh my god i went looking for the sponge bacteria post and found these tags. everyone on this website needs to pay attention in school when they teach you about germ theory. i personally know four people who became permanently crippled from getting basic bacterial food poisoning once. bacteria does in fact make you drop dead, but more often it just makes you permanently ill for the rest of your life. i know "hygiene hypothesis" (being too clean makes you sicker in the long run) was big for a while in the 2000s but its been mostly debunked

it's obvious and inarguable that having a dishwasher at all is a first world thing, and only the wealthy or lucky members of the first world. it's a luxury. what im trying to say is that if you have access to one of these luxury machines, please use it. i run into so many people who have dishwashers and dont use them and then backpat themselves about water saving and cleanliness, both of which are measurably worse with handwashing. its not virtuous or practical or efficient to wash dishes by hand if you have a functional dishwasher.

questions of "laziness" etc can be referred to other discussions of disability vs protestantism and wont be addressed here. but i will mention that i know a few people who have to hand wash and have been able to use a barstool to make being at the sink for long periods of time easier.

[ralfmaximus]

Yep! Modern dishwashers use sensors to detect filth in the water and adjust their cycles accordingly. If your dishes are extra dirty it'll use more water and more time washing. But still less than you, a human, would.

Also, you don't need to rinse the dishes off before loading. That just wastes more water. Modern dishwashers use bladed impellers (basically a mini garbage disposer) that chops up organic stuff on its way down the drain. So as long as you're not tossing bones or huge chunks of food in there, it can cope with normal amounts of detritus. If you've got an absolutely filthy load of dishes, you can toss a 2nd detergent pod into the cutlery basket as a pre-washing treat.

Bonus tip: run the sink's hot water for a second prior to starting the dishwasher. As soon as the water turns hot, fire it up. This primes the hot water line for the dishwasher, helping tremendously with the pre-wash.

[3liza]

thank you for bringing up the rinsing thing. washing your dishes twice by rinsing them just wastes a bunch of water. all you have to do is scrape the big chunks of stuff that cant be chopped or melted into the trash. a dishwasher will basically boil off any food material that is water and heat soluble

@croaksac linked to this excellent Technology Connections video about dishwashers in another reblog chain, here it is

[adaloveslace]

biggest qol upgrade we made when we got this apartment was tearing out one of the cupboards to put in a dishwasher. no regrets ever. your sink is dangerous and so is mine. when i hand wash the baby bottles (they can go in the dishwasher but i’ve got a separate steriliser for them and i need them all the time so this is just quicker) they stay in their special basin just for them that gets cleaned and dried with kitchen paper every time

[moonshinemagpie]

okay so I finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs, and here are my takeaways, because it was AMAZING and I can't believe all US students aren't required to read it in school:

shows how slavery actually worked in nuanced ways i'd never thought much about

example: Jacobs's grandmother would work making goods like crackers and preserves after she was done with her work day (so imagine boiling jars at like 3 a.m.) so that she could sell them in the local market

through this her grandmother actually earned enough money, over many years, to buy herself and earn her freedom

BUT her "mistress" needed to borrow money from her. :)))) Yeah. Seriously. And never paid her back, and there was obviously no legal recourse for your "owner" stealing your life's savings, so all those years of laboring to buy her freedom were just ****ing wasted. like.

But also! Her grandmother met a lot of white women by selling them her homemade goods, and she cultivated so much good will in the community that she was able to essentially peer pressure the family that "owned" her into freeing her when she was elderly (because otherwise her so-called owners' white neighbors would have judged them for being total assholes, which they were)

She was free and lived in her own home, but she had to watch her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all continue to be enslaved. She tried to buy her family but their "owners" wouldn't allow it.

Enslaved people celebrated Christmas. they feasted, and men went around caroling as a way to ask white people in the community for money.

But Christmas made enslaved people incredibly anxious because New Years was a common time for them to be sold, so mothers giving their children homemade dolls on Christmas might, in just a few days' time, be separated from their children forever

over and over again, families were deliberately ripped apart in just the one community that Harriet Jacobs lived in. so many parents kept from their children. just insane to think of that happening everywhere across the slave states for almost 200 years

Harriet Jacobs was kept from marrying a free Black man she loved because her "owner" wouldn't let her

Jacobs also shows numerous ways slavery made white people powerless

for example: a white politician had some kind of relationship with her outside of marriage, obviously very questionably consensual (she didn't hate him but couldn't have safely said no), and she had 2 children by him--but he wasn't her "master," so her "master" was allowed to legally "own" his children, even though he was an influential and wealthy man and tried for years to buy his children's freedom

she also gives examples of white men raping Black women and, when the Black women gave birth to children who resembled their "masters," the wives of those "masters" would be devastated--like, their husbands were (from their POV) cheating on them, committing violent sexual acts in their own house, and the wives couldn't do anything about it (except take out their anger on the enslaved women who were already rape victims)

just to emphasize: rape was LEGALLY INCENTIVIZED BY US LAW LESS THAN 200 YEARS AGO. It was a legal decision that made children slaves like their mothers were, meaning that a slaveowner who was a serial rapist would "own" more "property" and be better off financially than a man who would not commit rape.

also so many examples of white people promising to free the enslaved but then dying too soon, or marrying a spouse who wouldn't allow it, or going bankrupt and deciding to sell the enslaved person as a last resort instead

A lot of white people who seemed to feel that they would make morally better decisions if not for the fact that they were suffering financially and needed the enslaved to give them some kind of net worth; reminds me of people who buy Shein and other slave-made products because they just "can"t" afford fairly traded stuff

but also there were white people who helped Harriet Jacobs, including a ship captain whose brother was a slavetrader, but he himself felt slavery was wrong, so he agreed to sail Harriet to a free state; later, her white employer did everything she could to help Harriet when Harriet was being hunted by her "owner"

^so clearly the excuse that "people were just racist back then" doesn't hold any water; there were plenty of folks who found it just as insane and wrongminded as we do now

Harriet Jacobs making it to the "free" north and being surprised that she wasn't legally entitled to sit first-class on the train. Again: segregation wasn't this natural thing that seemed normal to people in the 1800s. it was weird and fucked up and it felt weird and fucked up!

Also how valued literacy skills were for the enslaved! Just one example: Harriet Jacobs at one point needed to trick the "slaveowner" who was hunting her into thinking she was in New York, and she used an NYC newspaper to research the names of streets and avenues so that she could send him a letter from a fake New York address

I don't wanna give away the book, because even though it's an autobiography, it has a strangely thrilling plot. But these were some of the points that made a big impression on me.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also inspired the first novel written by a Black American woman, Frances Harper, who penned Iola Leroy. And Iola Leroy, in turn, helped inspire books by writers like Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Harriet Jacob is also credited in Colson Whitehead's acknowledgments page for informing the plot of The Underground Railroad. so this book is a pivotal work in the US literary canon and, again, it's weird that we don't all read it as a matter of course.

(also P.S. it's free on project gutenberg and i personally read it [also free] on the app Serial Reader)

[moonshinemagpie]

update!!!!

So Harriet Jacobs's brother was named John Swanson Jacobs, and in her memoir she's like "btw my brother ran away too." But we don't learn a lot about him.

Well, guess what? John Swanson Jacobs wrote a memoir, too. And it was rediscovered. Recently. It was published in full for the first time since 1850 last year, in 2024.

Harriet and John Jacobs both ran away, but they lived very different lives. Harriet Jacobs took a more "typical" path for a Black abolitionist of her era: She asked a white abolitionist to take the credit for her book, since otherwise it wasn't going to get published/read (it was only proven in the 21st century that Harriet herself wrote it).

But John Swanson Jacobs?

He gave all of America the middle finger, became a sailor, traveled the world (the Caribbean, England, Russia, Ukraine, Thailand, India, all over), then ended up in Australia and got his memoir published in a newspaper in Sydney, where he didn't need white people's "permission" to publish it, didn't have to accept the indignity of having a white editor, and didn't need to pretend that he wasn't really the author of his own book.

He called it The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots, referring to the 600,000 slaveowners living in the US.

Like, whoa.

The historian who discovered his memoir,,and wrote a biography on him, describes him as a man with "apocalyptic intelligence."

It is so cool that this book exists. And it kinda sucks because I just know if it'd come out in 2020 people would have been all over it, but I haven't seen it in any bookstores. I got my library to stock it; maybe you can request it at your library, too.

The new edition is annotated by Jonathan D. S. Schroeder, the historian who found Jacobs's memoir in an 1850 Australian newspaper. He recommends--and I do too--reading Harriet and John Swanson Jacobs's memoirs back-to-back, and the annotations in Six Hundred Thousand Despots highlight parts where the siblings' books corroborate or differ from each other's accounts, something I'm personally enjoying a lot.

The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots

Lost on the other side of the world since 1855, the story of John Swanson Jacobs finally returns to America. This comprehensive edition incl

So yeah. Our only extant fugitive slave narrative written by a world-traveling sailor who told all of America to fuck off and went to live his life. Very very cool book. 10/10 recommend.

[kvothes]

so true

[lesbianredpanda]

Official Wednesday post

[westiec]

It's Tuesday

[shopwitchvamp]

Happy "Not Only Is It Not Friday, It's Not Even Thursday, Official Wednesday, It's Tuesday" Monday, everyone

[askyea-poesy]

Wanna make a monster? Take the parts of yourself that make you uncomfortable-your weaknesses, bad thoughts, vanities, and hungers—and pretend they're across the room. It's too ugly to be human. It's too ugly to be you. Children are afraid of the dark because they have nothing real to work with. Adults are afraid of themselves.

Richard Siken

[blinkeasy]

Same time next week at the Devil's Sacrament? Okay, sweet. See you then.

[vriskakinnieaynrand]

atoms are made of positive parts, negative parts, and neutral parts. the positive parts are attracted to the negative parts and repelled by each other, like magnets. but there's a second force that attracts positive and neutral parts to each other. to have an atom, you need the two forces that govern the parts of the atom to attain celestial harmony, which means you need enough neutral parts to make the positive parts stick together in the middle.

sometimes an atom is permissible but celestially disharmonious, usually because it's too big. there's also an occult diagram that determines which forms of atom are harmonious, but it's usually because it's too big. when this happens, the angels take offense and break it apart. this makes atoms that aren't celestially harmonious into smaller atoms that are, and is where balloon gas comes from: the form of balloon gas is particularly favored by God.

that's all well and good, as such things go. there are rocks that make balloon gas because God thinks their atoms are too big. that's fine. we can use it for balloons. but there's another type of celestial disharmony, caused by a secret third force that does this, where a neutral part of an atom can break into a positive part, a negative part, and a secret third thing called an "anti neutrino", and the atom gets bigger. you can't use this to make explosions, that's a third thing, but you can use it to light exit signs. you probably can't use it to turn base metals into gold either; that's a fourth thing, which is maybe the opposite of the third.

it's really hard to make gold because there's only one kind that isn't so celestially disharmonious that it curses you to death with beams. we wouldn't like gold if it cursed us to death with beams. it does curse us to death, of course, but the harmonious kind doesn't do it with beams.

[catmask]

i do think that a lot of people mistaking moral ocd for having a moral compass is understandable but also a bit funny. why does your moral compass involve fearing the invisible watchful specter who may be judging your every move lest you make your intentions clear at every turn and over explain your actions. you dont have to answer this question

[catmask]

catholicism 2

[catmask]

do you think the person who is asking you 'so you think all (demographic) are evil and should die?' is asking you a question with the intent to have a conversation or just wants to inflict as much psychic damage on you as physically possible. and do you think developing a jaded and cynical witty response system to this is actually the answer or is it removing the means through which random people online can torture you for their amusement. you do not need to answer this question to me

[catmask]

its true that there are times you need to feel bad because you have made a mistake and that discomfort makes you want to change. but you really have to think if you feel bad and fearful all the time are you changing because you actually genuinely believe in it and want to do it or are you scared of punishment

and how could fear of punishment be used to someones advantage. and how does a system that relies on punishment keep the dogs snapping lest they be the next one used for feed

[vinny-vox]

Why are you lgbtq+? wrong answers only GO

[pishifuzul]

the elided second half of "don't call a girl butch just because she's not all the way feminine how you expect" is that that doesn't mean the immediate and sole alternative is fem(me). my goodness. there is so much space outside the butch/femme map.

[talenelat]

People who think Lirin would be transphobic make me laugh. Do you really think he would be upset about Kal coming out as a woman? He'd be more upset that Kal didn't come out sooner and be excused from military duty.