Knit Me A River

[Erin Adelaide] [24 years] [boat pronouns: it/she] [asexual ♥️♠️🏳️‍🌈bambi lesbian] icon by whimsy-flags | My personal archive of stuff I care about, semi-meticulously tagged | My accounts on AO3 are LadyYetLiving and BlushingDragon, and I sometimes talk about and reblog posts about writing on my sideblog @blushingdragonwrites

[sharkchunks]

Hour and a half. Still on hold. Thanks Social Security, can’t wait for my dad to lose it anyway now that scotus just handed it to musk’s lackeys.

[sharkchunks]

This is what they expect 90 year olds with dementia to handle to stay alive. The music keeps switching to a voice that sounds like someone answered every few minutes, but it’s just an automated “use our website” thing. Needless to say we tried that and the office, which told us to call during these, their least busy hours.

[sharkchunks]

The happy ending is we finally got a human and she helped and was very kind considering how many people likely yell at her for the wait. Thank you D for being there and suffering through to help us. Appreciate you truly!

[knittasticacelesbian]

As a paralegal who handles Social Security benefit claims, I can say something about this! The number up there is the National Toll Free number for Social Security customer service, and when I have to call them as my last resort I usually dial right when I get to work at 8 a.m. EST and end up on holds just a bit shorter than an hour. That's how bad it is. It is also my experience that the workers at the 800 number ARE some of the kindest and attentive people I've ever been on the phone with, and I'm so glad OP's dad was helped in the end.

But there's another possible solution in some cases: Most SSA field offices have their own phone number to call. Using this website to locate your local field office by zip code, the individual office phone number will be included with the address, fax number, and hours of operation. If you recently got any letters from SSA, your local office address and phone number should be included there too. I will get ahold of an employee of the specific office much, much sooner than the 800, and--rare but its happened--they might even be the employee assigned to process the claim I'm calling in about.

Unfortunately, these numbers have a built-in timer of about 16 minutes of hold-time, after which you get a automated voice saying all their agents are tied up and to try calling at a later time. Which is a huge frustration to hear when you placed your call at 3:30 or similar, so again calling as early as possible yields best results.

And yes, it is abominable that they expect the elderly, those with mental/intellectual disabilities, or their caregivers to endure this kind of thing whenever they need to so much as update their mailing address. Which, unless you or your loved one have a mySocialSecurity account, mail is the main way SSA contacts beneficiaries or claimants about any issues with their benefits with phone calls as a rare alternative. The account option is nice but its completely unintuitive or unfamiliar to many of the intended user base, which just feeds back into the long hold times.

[pennyplainknits]

Just because I've seen this pop up on the first of July, a reminder that different countries mark events at different times.

In the UK, Disability History Month isn't in July. It's in November/December and the theme this year is Disability, Politics, and Democracy.

July is South Asian Heritage Month in the UK! Due to colonialism and immigration, roughly 1 in 14 people in the UK have some South Asian heritage, and our stories have been intertwined for centuries. If you're in the UK, check out events near you!

[pomgore]

i love learning about animals ive literally never seen or heard of before. what amazing diversity of life on this planet earth. what the hell is a japanese serow

[pomgore]

goat dog

[vividciggy]

Off-hand knuckle knives appreciation post

[finderheart]

I can't believe it took me this long to post these I finished this like nine months ago

An idea I had for Blood of Eden propaganda/recruitment posters featuring some of our favorite guys - combo of digital-print cyberpunk graphic design style with oldschool Saturday Morning Post covers like you'd see Leyendecker paintings on

I was gonna post these ahead of tabling at a small con and selling prints of them but ended up not tabling because turns out grad school is hard

maybe next year... figured tumblr would like though

[curseofmeatthawsmoth]

[simplyghosting]

Me, pointing to the mirror: Do NOT become The Joker about this. This isn’t even a Condiment Man situation.

[curiousscallop]

poem i foubd in a book at work recently that im completely obsessed with

[robotmango]

it’s ninety-nine degrees outside, four fuck-thousand percent humidity, and my husband was like, “i’m gonna go for a bike ride.” and i was like “why. no. why. don’t put us on the news like that. local fool collapses on unnecessary journey. don’t do it.” so he says he doesn’t want to “hide in the house” because the sun is shining. bruh. honeybruh. “the sun is shining” does not cover it. its hot outside. its motherfucking hot as fuck outside. our outdoor plants have been crying into their hands all week. whole cars are melting into the sewer. our fucking patio umbrella developed sentience to ask me for lemonade this morning

[awed-frog]

@robotmango, you need to work for the weather forecast - this was both hilarious and so vivid it made me stand up and get some iced tea.

[robotmango]

this is a great idea, thank you. here goes. my audition tape for the weather channel. dearly beloved. we are gathered here today to have a fucking funeral for the outdoors. it had a good run, with all its creeks and clouds and shit. pretty great. now it’s ten-thirty at night but still ninety-two asshole-sweating degrees and humid as fuck. everything is hot and slimy, like being a “borrower” that got trapped inside a bottle of shampoo and then accidentally microwaved. you can see on my doppler radar that nothing is moving around out there because everything is probably dead. the only alive thing is the mosquito currently trying to drill a hole in my leg. no surprise that all the shitbag mosquitos are fine, since the thermostat of hell is always at the devil’s preferred temperature. this forecast has gotten away from me a little, but in conclusion fuck the sun

[scarylullabies]

I think I’ve reblogged this before, but “the thermostat of hell is always at the devil’s preferred temperature” is fucking poetry

[piranesiandtheother-deactivated]

ninety nine???? thats IT????????? buddy here in the 7th circle of h*ck, California, we get up to at LEAST 110 degrees every single gosh darned summer.  the bugs seek revenge.  the sun wreaks havoc on the mere mortals it surveys.   every plant has turned brown in its thirst for water.  the very air itself has been sucked dry of every drip of moisture it ever had.  

ninety nine degrees.  you weak fool.

[robotmango]

well since you asked so politely, let’s talk about something very important vis a vis weather-hotness that you clearly ain’t ever heard of, called

humidity

oh alas, you say. oh papa, whatever shall i do, it is ever so hotte and drye in california. the very air hath been sucked of all its moisturey droplets and whatnot.* one hundredy and tennith desiccated degrees!

*(yo, drought is serious. i am pretty obviously not making fun of that.)

alright. let’s check it out. here’s a random california city, right about now:

thirty-two percent. and here’s a random mid-atlantic city located somewhere in the wet fleshy crease behind a demon’s knee*:

*(confession: i do not live in dc, but several years ago i spent three weeks steaming like a tinned ham in arlington in august. none of the pants i took with me could ever keep a crease again.)

huh! funny thing! “see, dc’s actually seven degrees COOLER,” you say, because you’ve obviously never gone outside and taken a deep lungful of wet sock trash air in your life. and now for added bliss, here’s what early wednesday morning’s gonna be like for these poor clowns:

that’s right! eighty-two percent humidity! the point at which showers no longer matter, because you’re all caught in God’s grease trap! just stressed human eels miserably slip slidin’ their way through a damp melty bathwater-flavored hellscape that feels like it’s actively sous viding their top layer of skin! a hundred thousand people packed into public transit breathing air that feels like deepthroating swamp thing! and you wanna talk to me about fuckin california!

[cue science voice]: human bodies cool through evaporation, a process by which the body sweats and sweet invisible angels towel us off, whisking away our unwanted moisture into the air and literally chilling us out. (it’s also why air conditioned air feels so fucking deliciously refreshing: it’s not just being cooled, it’s being conditioned, aka, dehumidified. it’s cool dry air.) but. if the air is already made out of fucking chowder and can’t absorb shit then guess what the fuck our bodies can’t do.

so is this weak fool gonna remain indoors and hydrated through this only medium-hot but fuckoff-humid season? you bet your dried out ass.

[maximumsunshine]

This is poetry.

[thebibliosphere]

I fucking laughed till I cried so hard I had to take my glasses off. Jesus Christ that’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen all week.

[gallusrostromegalus]

As someone who lives in a high desert and has had a few Ohioan summers inflicted on me-

I will GLADLY take 105 and the 5% or less humidity I had in Durango, wherein the outer layer of my entire epidermis dried and split like the scorched earth out in the parking lot, leaving me looking like I’d been assaulted by an SFX artist high on 5 hour energy-blasted Monster whilst napping but it was REEEEEEAAL and every movement caused me to split like a tectonic plate and Ooze some unmentionable substance, than EVER be subjected to humidity over 80% again.

[anistarrose]

my futile wish is for people to understand that "sex scenes in movies/TV don't have to serve the plot and can genuinely just be for pleasure" and "sex-repulsed people are allowed to complain about how rare it is for media made for adults like them to be something they can enjoy completely" are both true statements. unfortunately society hates both sex and people who don't like sex, so everyone gets far too defensive about any sex or lack thereof in fiction to actually have this conversation

[systlin]

Getting down on my knees and thanking the humans who invented dishwashers and washing machines.

[ihonestlydontknowwhattocallthis]

InsNe that dishwashers are more efficient and easier than just washing them manually but they also use less water. It’s a win win situation

[systlin]

They ALSO sterilize dishes, due to operating at a far higher temperature than human hands could ever tolerate. It's a win every way.

[systlin]

Made this post about 15 minutes after the repair guy who fixed the pump on my dishwasher packed up his tools and left, as the dishwasher was whirring along doing my dishes from that morning.

He said the exact same thing, which I did not know before that, so spreading this knowledge.

[sixty-silver-wishes]

sorry america but you’ve been really mean. and I don’t want to go to your birthday party in two days

[sixty-silver-wishes]

so this post has blown up; turns out a lot of people feel the same way I do. If you're feeling conflicted or upset over 4th of July, I've compiled a list of educational resources and charities, both regarding US and international issues, which you can look into if you'd like. Issues here include humanitarian aid to Gaza, Ukraine, and the Caribbean, as well as reproductive, LGBT, BIPOC, and disability rights in the US.

[sixty-silver-wishes]

woke up and saw people were reblogging this again. anyway, yeah. america is still being really mean and I do not want to go to its birthday party today

if you would like to spite the really mean people even more today, consider donating to raices con voz. they're a student-led organization in los angeles, who deliver food and essential supplies to immigrant families who can't leave their homes due to the ICE raids. More information about them here

EDIT: Had to fix the link! please reblog this version instead

[sixty-silver-wishes]

another year of not wanting to go to america's birthday party in two days. because it's really mean. so we should help the people that america is being really mean to

in keeping with tradition, here is a link to unicef's fund for emergency health supplies and services for survivors of the venezuela earthquakes.

here is another link for manos in action, an organization that delivers supplies, such as food and childcare items, to latin american immigrants in central florida. I've participated in one of their local food drives; they're great. if you're not local to central florida, you can always donate money.

the other links are still available too, so feel free to check those out!

[unamccormack]

Hey una hope you're having a nice day! I've been wanting to get into startrek literature, do you have any recs for where to start? Thx :)

Gosh, that's a huge question! I might ask folks reading this to make recommendations as to the best place to start.

You won't go wrong with Diane Duane, Vonda McIntyre, and Barbara Hambly. Kirsten Beyer for Voyager. Andrew Robinson's A Stitch in Time for Garak.

Here's a flow chart that will guide you through the "relaunch" novels, i.e. the books published from the early 2000s onwards which are continuations of the main shows. It builds up to a massive interlinking set of stories. You don't have to read all of them, you can just pick a show and follow those stories through. (I think that chart is more or less up-to-date though I don't think it includes the books that end that whole run of Trek novels, the Coda trilogy.)

[beautyofsorrow]

At last, my time has come. Annoyingly long essay under the cut because I've read 200 of these things and none of my IRLs can match my freak so I have 15+ years and a twelve-sheet spreadsheet of opinions stored up.

First of all, I will start by saying what I say when someone asks me which Star Trek show they should watch first: It depends on what you want out of the experience. The person who loves DS9 is not always going to adore TNG, and the person who adores SNW might bounce hard off TOS. The same is true with the novels (though, if you are reading Star Trek novels, I assume you are a hardcore fan and have more of a tolerance for poking around in stuff you might not enjoy in order to find the stuff you do enjoy).

That being said, it's helpful to know what you're looking for before you dive head first into 60 years of tie-in literature spanning hundreds and hundreds of books. Personally, I like my sci-fi to have minimal space battles, great character moments, and imaginatively alien worldbuilding, so my recommendations are going to skew toward novels that contain those. If you're more into the hard sci-fi and/or space battles and/or alien-of-the-week plots, take my recommendations with a grain of salt and DuckDuckGo some "best of" lists to supplement them (here are two to get you started).

Generally speaking, I would recommend entering the tie-in fiction universe by way of your favorite series (provided it has books). TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY all have numbered and unnumbered novels, while ENT, DISCO, PIC, and SNW are all unnumbered (ENT is an edge case and shouldn't really be lumped in with those others, but I'll get to that eventually). There are also truly staggering amounts of OC/backstory/spin-off/tie-in fiction exclusive material housed in series like New Frontier, S.C.E, and Titan, so if you love the Star Trek universe but aren't necessarily attached to a specific set of characters, these are great offshoots to explore.

The numbered novels usually do not need to be read in order unless they're part of a mini- or cross-series arc; they tend to be stand-alone and don't do anything to disrupt canon (a lot of the TNG, DS9, and VOY novels were published during the shows' runs so they literally couldn't disrupt canon). There are some really good books in these lines and some really bad books also and a lot of three stars fine books in between, so if you strike gold on your first try don't get discouraged if the next one you read is garbage. It happens. There's another amazing book just around the corner, I promise.

If I were to over-simplify it, I'd say that the quality of the numbered novels falls off the further they go on (early TOS numbered novels have some astonishingly creative worldbuilding, especially before TPTB got really tight-fisted about what could and couldn't go in licensed fiction; meanwhile, pick up a Voyager numbered novel and you're almost certain to have a bad time) BUT THAT IS NOT A HARD AND FAST RULE. For example, Andrew Robinson's A Stitch in Time (DS9 #27) is widely regarded to be one of the best Trek books ever written, and I would love to second that opinion but unfortunately I can't get my hands on a physical copy for less than $100 and don't read ebooks, so I'll continue to pine.

A key component to enjoying numbered novels is to read them out of order. Jump series. Fuck around. Find an author you like and follow them through their tie-in lit career and lose your mind because you can't talk about how good these books are because no one in your circle of friends knows what the hell you're talking about.

Some personal favorites to get you started: Uhura's Song by Janet Kagan (TOS #21), The Three-Minute Universe by Barbara Paul (TOS #41), Doctor's Orders by Diane Duane (TOS #50), Q-in-Law by Peter David (TNG #18), Emissary by J.M. Dillard (DS9 #1--YES the novelization of the pilot, YES it's just as good), and literally anything by Vonda McIntyre (the Star Trek II-IV novelizations are my favorite, but TOS #2: Entropy Effect is also awesome).

Unnumbered novels can be set pre-, post-, or firmly during canon (or sometimes all 3). Sometimes they are standalone, sometimes they are trilogies or duologies, sometimes they're co-written by William Shatner and you have a great time poking fun at his very specific vision of Kirk (read the Odyssey trilogy, I beg you, it's ridiculous and so fun). Similar to the numbered line, TOS has the most titles, then TNG, DS9, and VOY. Some personal favorites are the Millennium trilogy (DS9), the Legacies trilogy (TOS), String Theory: Cohesion (VOY), Section 31: Shadow (VOY), Imzadi (TNG), The Captain's Oath (TOS), and Revenant (DS9).

If you're more of a post-canon enjoyer, the relaunch novels are your friend. These began with S.D. Perry's Avatar duology in 2001 and stretched all the way to the Coda trilogy in 2021. There is a totally awesome and overwhelming flowchart to guide you through it (be sure to click the image to enlarge), though you will not -- and I cannot stress this enough -- be able to read it all. I've been working on this sucker for 7 years and I've only barely scratched the surface. Pretty much every Trek series pre-DISCO gets pulled into the mix at one point or another, and there are an ungodly number of crossovers, but TNG, DS9, and VOY all have individual offshoots that occasionally weave in and out of each other (the Destiny trilogy, for example, is a bonkers-ambitious ENT/TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY crossover that does a lot of stuff you might hate and a lot of stuff you might love). I highly recommend starting with the DS9 novels as they, in my humble opinion, are the shining star of the relaunch 'verse.

Modern Trek lit functions quite differently from the 80s/90s lit and entirely differently from the relaunch novels; for one thing, the mass market paperback has died an undignified death (RIP) and there's Canon to contend with once more. Furthermore, we're in a weird pop-cultural late-stage capitalism space where things that were once firmly viewed as "beta canon" are being treated as essential pieces of Canon despite them requiring a significantly larger amount of time and money to invest in. I shan't dispense an opinion on that because that's not what I'm here to talk about, it's just an interesting bit of context.

Tl;dr, Trek novels these days are a different beast. Still quite fun though.

Beginning with the 2020 PIC novel The Last Best Hope by Una McCormack, the post-canon litverse "reset" to adhere to onscreen events. Despite the vibe shift, I have quite enjoyed the books I've read in this new era of Trek lit. I've mainly focused on PIC and SNW and really haven't read a bad novel from any of them. Of PIC, Second Self and Rogue Elements were my favorites; of SNW, Asylum by Una McCormack holds my whole heart, but really all four have been awesome (Ring of Fire does stray into s3 territory, so if you are as tired of the Chock/La'ock stuff as I am, beware) (still didn't detract from my overall enjoyment that much though). The Lower Decks tie-in fiction is exclusively comics/graphic novels and I cannot recommend them highly enough. SO damn fun. (Comics are a bitch to navigate but the trade paperbacks linked here and here are easy entry points.)

I have not read many DISCO novels, but The Enterprise War by John Jackson Miller was a wonderful prelude to SNW s1 and Desperate Hours by David Mack was a fun DISCO/SNW crossover. (The DISCO novels are a fascinating microcosm of the shift from beta to semi-prime canon and as a result occupy a strangely liminal space that's really fun if you like to see what happens when established canon knocks up against still-forming canon before the tectonic plates have settled in place.)

ALL OF THAT TO SAY, for everyone there is a Star Trek novel and for every Star Trek novel there is someone. You can wade as deep as you want or hang out in the shallows, it is totally up to you. I've been reading these books for 16 years and still haven't gotten to some of the most famous, but that's just part of the pleasure. Some resources I have relied on heavily in my endeavors are:

Memory Alpha's novel index

Memory Beta

The Relaunch Novelverse Flowchart

Trekcore and Memory Alpha (for upcoming publications)

[unamccormack]

Incredible post and an absolutely brilliant intro for anyone thinking of dipping into Star Trek books but intimidated by how many there are.

[dueseaworthiness]

[stitchposts]

Hey if you're coming to Washington DC for the Fourth of July: don't

We're having our turn in the heat wave and reports from the National Mall are brutal already this week. That screenshot is today's forecast (courtesy of the Capital Weather Gang) and tomorrow and Saturday are confidently going to be worse than this is.

The national Mall has no shade on the grass and you will be exposed to the sun constantly while also experiencing extremely high humidity. You will not be allowed a bag over a certain size to enter the mall and it has to be clear. You cannot have an insulated water bottle, it has to be clear. Reports are that there are two entrances to the area so you'll have to wait in line to even get in. I cannot find a number on how many cooling stations there are, except that it's "few" to "none" depending on what accounts I read online. Vendors are allegedly charging more than the posted prices and seem to be unprepared for actual crowds - these are the official vendors not the scam food trucks that park all around the edges of the mall. And that's the extent of the planning done because it was not a priority to make sure attendees don't pass out.

My local friends and I have reached a consensus that tourists are going to get extremely sick and none of us know what the EMT response or planning is on the mall this year. People are going to die.

Please stay out of this. It's not worth your health. Get your relatives and family to stop. I can give you recs for so many DC museums and things to do if you want to make the most of your trip. Any other local can too.

[wyrhtart]

king of approving when you stand your ground

[gefdreamsofthesea]

I feel like I need to repeat myself.

We have lost enough good people already this year, it's time for a bad person to die to balance the scales.