Jaybird

My blog of random things.

[hypermobilesolutions]

A common story among women with POTS: “I thought I had anxiety for years.”

Autonomic symptoms can mimic anxiety — but the underlying cause may be circulatory.

With POTS, the pattern often looks like: 1. You stand or stay upright 2. Blood vessels don’t constrict effectively 3. Blood pools in the lower body 4. Heart rate rises to compensate 5. You feel shaky, dizzy, or short of breath

Your brain interprets these sensations as danger, which can trigger real anxiety on top of the physical response.

Clues POTS may be involved: • Symptoms improve lying down • Heat worsens episodes • Hydration and salt help • Fatigue accompanies symptoms

Understanding this distinction shifts care toward autonomic support, pacing, and stability — not just anxiety management.

If this resonates, you’re not dramatic. Your body may be responding to physiology that hasn’t been recognized yet.

Comment 💙 if this helped you feel seen.

[cal3ris]

is this gonna get me fired you think

[flowercrowncrip]

This disability pride month I would like the community to understand that Sometimes wheelchairs aren’t freedom.

Sometimes using a wheelchair means you can no longer get to the places that used to be important to you, and not because of man-made inaccessibility. I have sat with someone as they cried because they could no longer visit the place they had scattered a loved one’s ashes because not even the most expensive wheelchair in the world could handle the terrain. As much as I wanted to, my wheelchair meant that I couldn’t position myself in a way that would allow me to give them a proper hug. In that moment, our wheelchairs felt more like heavy weights than freedom.

And sometimes wheelchairs are like the legs of someone who can walk but would maybe benefit from a wheelchair themselves. Sometimes wheelchairs are exhausting and painful and you’re counting down the time before you’re able to be lifted into bed. Sure, like painful legs, you can do more with them than without, but constantly performing gratitude for something that hurts you is exhausting. And again, not because you need a better wheelchair, but because those are the limits of your body and the technology that exists.

Yes it’s important to challenge the idea that wheelchairs are always a tragedy. And yes, there are lots of people who have a positive relationship with their chair. But for a lot of people, including me, the pressure to love your wheelchair and see it as freedom is painful and feels like it erases huge amounts of my experiences with disability.

[rogers-carter]

steve rogers + the avengers (2012) suit

[schnoobums]

THE MASK OF ZORRO (1998) dir. Martin Campbell

[drbased]

Why was everybody raving about Weapons like it's any good

Spoilers under the cut but if you're a killjoy feminist like me you'll have no respect for this film

This film was literally just 'crazy witch lady is stealing and corrupting children with her dark magic'. She has this crazy stupid makeup on when we first see her and like, all I could think of is, oh, we're supposed to mock this woman. She might be evil and powerful but she looks comically stupid. When the children eventually turn on her at the end she's all old and losing her hair and all I could think of was all the other horror movies where an old woman is considered scary by default. And then the children literally rip her to shreds in an incredibly gory scene - I always side-eye extreme violence to women esp. female villains in media, there's always something low-key voyeuristic/revenge fantasy about it for the audience. I think it's implied that she was going to use these children as weapons to like, restore her health or something? That combined with the makeup just reminded me of all those stories where an old woman is trying to remain young/steal someone's youth. And she literally did steal a bunch of children - not only that, she stole them from a much younger female teacher. The metaphor is only just obfuscated.

Funnily enough the scene where I properly checked out was when Alex saw both his parents completely still, he only yelled 'dad!' and splashed the water on his dad's face. And then when she made them stab themselves with forks, he once again only yelled 'dad!' and tried to stop his dad. His mum was just a non-entity I suppose, who gives a shit, right? Also the dad of Matthew was the one who was all obsessed with finding his kid, not the mum - once again, she was just... around, living her life. Films like this are such a dumbass power fantasy for men who don't know their kid's birthday.

Yeah this film was misogynistic trash. If anyone has a more nuanced take I'm willing to consider it, but I was not impressed.

[jaybird1306]

Thank you! I felt like I was going crazy thinking these exact same things when I saw it!

[an0neemouse]

The grief of losing your health is so real and unless you've experienced it, it's really hard to understand.

[immunetoallbadthings]

I think it's kind of pathetic that accessibility speech to text censors out most swear words as if people with disabilities were toddlers. No we are not toddlers, we are people who deserve to hear shit that isn't censored. We're tired of this ableism.

[beautifulscreaminglady]

[suddenlysprite]

Moving house tomorrow

[theoneofwhomisblue]

Be careful, I've heard they're heavy

[eggshellsareneat]

Not mine, mine is a

[lumpatronics]

SERVICE DOG PSA

So today I tripped. Fell flat on my face, it was awful but ultimately harmless. My service dog, however, is trained to go get an adult if I have a seizure, and he assumed this was a seizure (were training him to do more to care for me, but we didn’t learn I had epilepsy until a year after we got him)

I went after him after I had dusten off my jeans and my ego, and I found him trying to get the attention of a very annoyed woman. She was swatting him away and telling him to go away. So I feel like I need to make this heads up

If a service dog without a person approaches you, it means the person is down and in need of help

Don’t get scared, don’t get annoyed, follow the dog! If it had been an emergency situation, I could have vomited and choked, I could have hit my head, I could have had so many things happen to me. We’re going to update his training so if the first person doesn’t cooperate, he moves on, but seriously guys. If what’s-his-face could understand that lassie wanted him to go to the well, you can figure out that a dog in a vest proclaiming it a service dog wants you to follow him

[thetenderpassion]

[estro-boi]

Please make art. You don't have to bare your soul or make a masterpiece, you can be silly and you can be derivative if you want. You don't even have to show it to anyone. Just please make something, it's so good for you

[wat3rm370n]

Friends don’t let friends get addicted to chatbots and throw good money away on garbage subscriptions that run counter to their values.

Ketan Joshi - Linkedin - June 2026 I’m hearing more and more of climate, sustainability and environment orgs with expensive Anthropic or Google AI subscriptions. Anthropic and Google are both relying on data centre capacity from xAI, a company running illegal gas plants to power this obscene, Bitcoin-style energy waste. To be blunt: I don’t think the climate movement has ever been so direct a participant in illegal fossil fuel infrastructure expansion. Truly, I don’t think there’s any precedent for what is happening here. These organisations are choosing to subscribe to a new form of software so bloated with inefficiency that companies like Anthropic and Google cannot continue without desperately turning to illegally built fossil fuel plants that need to be propped up by fascist governments - very specifically a shocking example of environmental racism, too. It bothers me a lot. I think it’s a nightmare of moral and purpose collapse.

I’d be really mad if I found out I donated to one of these orgs and they were throwing good money away on ai slop.

[animentality]

[bushpropaganda]

unrealistic male beauty standards: power, strength, protector, big strong man, superhero, literal god

unrealistic female beauty standards: weak, prey, helpless, porn star, sex object, sex symbol, sex doll, fetish, porn, jerk off material

damn it seems only one sex is held to a standard of outright dehumanization purposefully created by their oppressors who only see them as walking objects to masturbate to. gyns which is one worse im stumped here

[the-rad-menace]

It's such lazy writing to have a male character who is a massive, unlikable asshole but people put up with him because he's skilled/a genius. And then when he expresses even the smallest amount of kindness or deference towards another character, they expect the audience to be like, 🤯😱💯🎉.

And of course, all the other characters secretly love and care about the guy who is constantly calling them stupid and inept. Oh, he's mean to others because he doesn't like himself? 🙄 Is he going to change his behavior in any substantial way once he realizes that? No.

The smartest men I've known personally have generally been empathetic, patient, ready to learn what they can from others, and willing to admit when they don't know things. (I've only met a handful of men like this in my entire life.) The ones who think they get to play the asshole genius are usually so astonishingly ignorant on so many fronts it's difficult to even accept what they have to say about their supposed areas of expertise.

[emeritusprofessorofnothing]

Oh, you're so smart, so super smart but too dumb to realize that being shitty to people is a bad idea? Oh ok.

[amnhnyc]

Cutie… patootie... agouti? You might know the capybara, but what about its distant cousin the red-rumped agouti (Dasyprocta leporina)? This wide-ranging mammal can be found in forests throughout northern South America including Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela. Though smaller than its more famous relative, this hefty rodent can weigh up to 13 lbs (5.9 kg). It dines on a diet of fruit, nuts, and seeds. Like a squirrel, the agouti will bury surplus food to save for a later date. But sometimes this critter forgets to come back for its stash, spreading seeds throughout its habitat as a result. 

Photo: Robin Gwen Agarwal, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist 

[shamebats]

Half the people on the internet for some reason