human tire fire

still here, still queer. singularly unlikable. good cook, hates cooking. writer, editor, knitter, spinner, stereotypical middle-aged cat-obsessed dyke. i rarely check my activity here—that's none of my business—but my inbox is probably open. i wrote cooking is terrible: https://books2read.com/cookingisterrible

[mishafletcher]

you know how people are always like, 'someone should write a cookbook that's actually easy'? i wrote it (amazon us link). i actually did it a while ago, but i finally got my shit together enough that it's widely available as both an ebook and a paperback, so i figured i'd mention it again.

you can buy the ebook almost literally anywhere, including on amazon, kobo, indigo, thalia, booktopia, gumroad, and pretty much anywhere else you care to buy ebooks.

you can also buy a print book almost literally anywhere, including amazon, indigo, powells, waterstones, and basically any other bookseller.

this is a book for everybody, anywhere, who has limited, time, energy, or resources to make food. here's what i assumed:

you don't want to spend a bunch of time and energy cooking

you can't afford to eat nothing but takeout

you probably don't have access to Brands, because Brands are expensive and region locked.

you probably don't have a bunch of gadgets—there's no slow cookers or instant pots in this book

that's about it. there are vanishingly few measurements, and when there are, they're both imperial and metric. i'm from the us, but live in australia, and you can purchase 99% of the ingredients mentioned at the nearest supermarket in either country. when i was formatting this for print distribution, i also checked tesco and used my terribly bad german to check rewe to make sure this was as broadly accessible as possible, and they have basically everything, as well.

i wrote it for you. if you have more questions, you can see a couple sample recipes here and the answers to frequently asked questions here. If that's not enough, my ask box is open.

[elierlick]

Let women speak. Edinburgh Pride, 2025.

[freakoutgirl]

"you have to be your first priority" idk man it depends

[freakoutgirl]

I think priorities are always shifting because different situations have different needs. Sometimes you have to be a little selfless, sometimes you have to put yourself first. It dependssss

[freakoutgirl]

Also your first priority should always be blogging

[mockingbird-life]

😂❤️

[theriu]

Truly, the world is a better place for having skilled people who are willing to use their skills in the pursuit of incredible silliness.

[gothiccharmschool]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this is strangely soothing.

[nilkadnaquada-deactivated202307]

Any plan for combating CSA is going to have to reckon with the fact that teenagers are often horny and feel a desire to explore and express their sexuality and if they don't have a safe avenue for that which doesn't involve interacting with adult predators they will find an unsafe one which does

[nilkadnaquada-deactivated202307]

This is not a hypothetical this is not a piece of rhetoric I was a horny teenager who had safe avenues for expressing my sexuality without the involvement of adult predators closed off to me and so I found the unsafe ones

[nilkadnaquada-deactivated202307]

+ if your conception of why CSA is wrong is in any way based on a notion of childhood innocence your actions and rhetoric are contributing to CSA, not fighting it.

The harm that is done to a child when they are sexually abused comes from the fact that they are being placed in a vulnerable situation with a pernicious power dynamic, not from the destruction of some illusory victorian notion of purity

[nilkadnaquada-deactivated202307]

Like idk it's really fucked that for some people the rhetoric of "that 15 year old seduced me, I wasn't the aggressor, I'm not in the wrong" is only wrong because they think 15 year olds are like constitutionally incapable of wanting to seduce someone when that's just like categorically incorrect, when I was 15 I very much actively desired to seduce people and even made attempts at doing it. The reason "that 15 year old seduced me, I wasn't the aggressor, I'm not in the wrong" is wrong is because you as an adult have power over that 15 year old regardless of what they are or aren't trying to do and as such if they are trying to seduce you it is your responsibility to not take actions you know to be wrong. It's not wrong because it's describing some kind of impossible desire that a 15 year old would never have, it's wrong because it's seeking to invert the power dynamics of the situation and place all the contextual agency on the minor while rhetorically disempowering the adult to project an image of innocence. It's just garden variety DARVO, not some kind of Metaphysically Incoherent Assertion.

[nilkadnaquada-deactivated202307]

Like idk I feel like it should be pretty easy to point out what's wrong with the logic of "the child told me to commit rape so I did" without inventing a rationale about how children are constitutionally incapable of formulating the idea of telling someone to commit rape

[nilkadnaquada-deactivated202307]

This absurd notion of childhood innocence serves only to put minors in more danger by denying the basic facts of how they experience and interact with the world while simultaneously functioning as a justification for depriving them of useful and necessary information that they could use to protect themselves from predators if they were allowed to have it. When you deny children information about how the world works with regards to sexuality, and deny yourself information about how children work with regards to sexuality, you are putting both yourself and children in a position of having to build a plan on faulty information and you shouldn't be surprised when the house you build this way crumbles under a stiff breeze.

[selenekallanwriter]

John Oliver gets it, as usual. AI Slop is one of the best episodes of Last Week Tonight I've seen so far. Gen AI is theft. Those who use it are not authors or artists, they're grifters profiting from real creatives.

[armengoldira]

[mswyrr]

What Happens When Young People Actually Read “Disturbing” Books

Something is missing from the debate over educationally suitable literature

[mikkeneko]

[thebellekeys]

"i do not dream of labour" is one of the worst pseudo-marxist taglines that western leftists have co-opted because when you ask them what they do dream of, they say traveling, studying, and creating art. broski, who's flying the plane to take you to prague? who's the security at the library with the texts you're studying? who are the clerks in the museum showcasing your art? like bro, you do dream of labour. you just dream of someone else doing it so you don't have to! you merely want to outsource the labour and make it invisible.

[draw-blog]

On Shopping While Fat 2: Son of Fat

[voltaspistol]

[whyenn-reader]

Not to go "if you have ADHD just go for a run" or anything, but I am so serious if you have ADHD you should regularly go outside, no headphones no phone no nothing and just stand and observe for a while until you've had enough. Not until you get bored, until you've had enough. Drink your coffee without watching tiktok. Have a bath without music. Turn down the volume in your headphones. I cannot overstate how much learning to be bored is cruicial with ADHD. Life is not just about pleasure, no matter what your dysregulated dopamine system thinks, and when you teach your brain to be okay with being bored, then boring tasks stop feeling like torture. By letting yourself be bored you are yoinking your system out of the high/low binary and allow for the highs to feel like actual highs and not just anything that isn't low. I am so serious go literally touch grass. Listen to the sounds in your flat. Stimulate your body the way it was designed. It lowers anxiety and makes you feel like you're real and best of all it's completely free

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I really wish more ADHD mental health care told you WHY things like this matter to our quality of life.

The Hyperactivity in Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is NOT about being physically hyperactive, it's about having a "hyperactive central nervous system" because it's a form of inheritable dysautonomia. The problem with disautonomia, especially the ADHD kind, is that it makes boredom flag to your nervous system as a THREAT, triggering hyperactive and maladaptive central nervous system processes like fight or flight.

But dysautonomia kills you that way. Literally, part of the reason our average life spand increase on stimulents is that it helps manage risk-taking impulsivity that can get us killed by accident, but the other part is that stimulents can regulate a hyperactive CNS such that it is functionally (while impacted by the stimulent) NOT dysregulated anymore. And PHYSIOLOGICALLY that is essential because the physical outcomes of dysautonomia can reduce your life span by YEARS if not decades through self-perpetuating hypervigelence, endocrine disruption, and adrenal fatigue.

So when the ADHD brain goes stimulation-seeking and a doctor tells you to practice mindfulness, it feels like being told "hey go stand in a functioning boiler until you can stop thinking" rather than WHAT IT IS which is the process of re-teaching your body what is and isn't safe.

Standing outside making mindful, non-interpretive/moralized observation of the world helps your brain and body re-acclimate to the idea that absence of that frantic "busy" feeling isn't a threat or a risk to your safety, and gradually reduces the level of distress that just hanging out somewhere triggers for you.

Learning WHY this stuff was being suggested and understanding what it was actually supposed to do went a long way towards changing my relationship with my ADHD. I am FAR more functional now, far less prone to shame spirals and rejection sensitivity, hell, I can **sit physically still for near on an hour at a time** now without feeling like I'm going to crawl out of my skin.

So yeah. Go outside. Let the world narrow around you and take deep breaths until it stops feeling claustrophobic or like you need to climb walls. Learn how to let little sensations become big ones like the way the heat of the sun on your skin starts as a gentle warming and be omes a unique collection of sensory moments depending on how it lands on you. Listen for sounds under sounds and let them fade in and out as you move your focus from one sound to the next. Enjoy. Move on. Rinse and repeat.

When you no longer feel like the world is actively killing you, it's a lot easier to navigate it.

[whyenn-reader]

S++ tier addition to the post, thank you tumblr user butts bouncing on the beltway

[thefugitivesaint]

Michael Manomivibul, 'The Hunter's Wife', ''Spectrum'', #20, 2013

[weaver-z]

I'm going to say it. The (word in parentheses) meme is way better for tone indication than tone indicators

[weaver-z]

[anarch0possum]

[eridan-ampora]

[omgcoffeecoffeecoffee]

global north academics just do not want to discuss the privileges of passports. i can bring it up and there will be total silence and then a change of topic. 

[omgcoffeecoffeecoffee]

@itsafckingsnickersbar Hi! Thank you for the opportunity for me to rant about one of my favourite thins to rant about, lol. So, the thing about passports and citizenship is that it (i) determines who can study what, how, where, and when – and who cannot do specific things. For example: a lot of South Asian scholars without global north passports cannot do archival research on South Asian histories because a lot of archives are located (colonialism, ahem) in the UK.

(ii) So then when scholarship by South Asian scholars is evaluated through peer review by global north scholars, this is always pointed out as a lack or gap – when there are very real structural reasons why global south scholars can’t use particular sources (archives) and can’t use particular methods (historical).

(iii) If you don’t have a global north passport, then you spend a lot of time, energy, money on visa applications, including going to consulates or having to be in your country of origin to apply for specific visas. That’s time, energy, money that you can’t spend on research or teaching.

(iv) Citizenship rules govern which fellowships different scholars (including graduate students) are eligible for or not, and how many hours of you can work as, for example, a teaching assistant or research assistant.

(v) If you’re on a visa then you have a very specific time in that particular country which means that, for example, if you’re an anthropologist, you can’t do as extensive ethnographic work as scholars with global north passports.

(vi) If a scholar with an American passport wants to study a phenomenon in Pakistan, there is no structural issues of access – but if a scholar with a Pakistani passport wants to study a phenomenon in the France or Spain, that choice might not be possible. So your entire project of research might be determined by what passport you hold.

(vii) Global north universities very rarely offer visa sponsorship for global south scholars, and very rarely offer enough funding (like honoraria) to cover international flights. So if conferences aren’t hosted online or in a country global south scholars can visit, then they are effectively shut out of transnational scholarly dialogue and presentation.

(viii) Historically, the global south has been where global north scholars go to do their fieldwork (anthropology wouldn’t exist as a discipline without colonialism) (there are wonderful anti colonial anthropologists but that’s precisely because they know the histories of their discipline) or use as a case study (yes, I mean you, political science) instead of a place where not only do fellow scholars exist but as a place that you can theorize from. For example: theorizing the enduring legacies of the cold war from South Korea and Pakistan and Argentina, instead of centering the continental settler US.  So, in terms of the ethics of knowledge production, I think we need to understand who/where/what becomes an object of study – & passports are part of the structures (including empires) that make these frameworks and relations of study possible and perpetuated (the geopolitics of knowledge, as it were).

[dicaeopolis]

astronomy club sent up a weather balloon w a gopro in it last friday. put in three packs of fruit snacks so they could have a giggle over eating fruit snacks that had been to space.

balloon went up into inner space, about 90,000 feet. came down right near the dinosaur park. a few physics teachers drive out to get it, crack it open on the way home to start watching the footage.

fruit snacks are missing.

multiple sources confirm that fruit snacks were put in balloon and sealed in with duct tape. physics teachers check entire balloon. no fruit snacks.

physics teachers watch footage. all 7 hours of it. right in the middle of footage, there are about 8 minutes of visual and audio static when balloon is in orbit. no other interference with balloon recorded.

conclusions: ???????

[spaceyalien]

aliens stole yo fruit snacks

[daisenseiben]

I’ve been a UFO enthusiast for 2/3rds of my life and this is the most convincing alien encounters story I have ever heard.

[should-be-sleeping]

[dicaeopolis]

Happy just-over-ten-years to this post. Early in its life, it was viewed by a seventeen-year-old aspiring astronomer who DESPISED it, thought it was the dumbest Space Post ever, got mad every time it crossed her dash. But this wasn’t anybody I knew, and she did the mature thing and didn’t send any hate mail about it, and went off and got her whole entire astrophysics degree without me ever finding out. So how do I know about this person’s deep dislike for this post? BECAUSE. I have, at press time, been sleeping next to her for three and a half years

[nevver]

Prismatics, Gundula Blumi