The Prince

Hi, my name is Maz. 28, He/They, Heathen. Im writing a book and learning about my religion and sharing all my crafty stuff.

[trans-gothic]

[dat-eyebrows]

@gendernewtral holy shit what??

[gendernewtral]

an update to my insulin pump (a model which is highly recommended by doctors because it has software you can update, unlike other models) would allow my doctor to see more of my medical data because of the way my pump would now function.

i technically had the choice not to update it, but if i didn’t, my insurance company would not cover the cost of fixing or replacing it if something happened to it. they could say that the damage came from not updating the system, even if the damage was completely external.

some of the software updates have been beneficial, and have made my life easier. however, the choice to use these new system has always been made for me. i can’t afford to replace this $3000 device that allows me to live without injecting insulin upwards of five times a day.

disabled people already live in a world that is hypermanaged by people who have absolute control over our health and safety. anyone with a prosthetic, hearing aid, or pacemaker can face the same problem i did if the manufacturer decides they need to exert their presence in our lives more than they already do. the “cyberpunk dystopia” is already here, and if you want to change the ever-growing vice grip of “smart technology,” help disabled activists. we’ve been here all along.

(if you want a short primer on what it’s like to be disabled and rely on technology, read Jillian Weise’s personal essay in Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility).

[nofoxgiven]

TMI under the cut, yapping about period and health stuff to get it out of my head

It is REALLY crazy learning how to deal with a menstrual cycle as a 30 year old. For context I have a whole jumble of medical conditions that my parents ignored, and then I got gas lit by doctors about until maybe the last 5 years or so? Pcos/pmos turned into diabetes, I appear to have scoliosis, we suspect i may have some kind of auto-immune condition or SOMETHING we dont even know where to start with (skin randomly turns red especially on my face, hands and feet itch randomly and intensely, red meat makes me sick, so many random little unconnected symptoms ive ignored for a decade) but anyways secondary amenorrhea (no periods with no obvious cause) was my first sign something was UP with my body and I begged my mom to look into it for years before deciding it was a blessing in disguise since im trans and most likely going to be child free

Turns out getting my diabetes/pcos/pmos under control made them come back 🤡 so now im a full ass adult whose had like... 3 in my life, now having them roughly every 2-3 months and having to navigate how the *fuck* do people do this

I cried for 2 days straight about the dumbest little things and then the headaches and cramps set in and ive discovered though im generally lucky to only experience gender euphoria in my day to day life, this causes me dysphoria, and intensely. Joy.

Im torn. Im tired. I want to be healthy and ive been trying so hard for a few years now to claw that back and every things I do comes with side effects and new types of misery and new diagnoses reminding me my body is not only not the one I wanted but broken, and knowing I made it worse ignoring it for so long. But what was i supposed to do? As a minor my parents wouldnt acknowledge or treat things, and I spent the first decade of my adult life either dirt poor or trapped in abusive controlling partnerships or both

Im thankful im able to start getting the help I need now but sometimes it feels like its too late, sometimes its so exhausting and expensive and hopeless and I just... struggle to convince myself this is all worth it. Im fine I promise, not in danger to myself or from anyone else or anything. Theres just. Ugh. So much. This shit is hard.

[sapphireh3arts]

i know folks are gonna call me a pedo for this one, but i grew up seeing my mom and grandma naked. they had health issues and at times needed care and help showering. and i truly think more kids need to be shown the nonsexual reality of naked women at a young age. there is nothing sexual about my grandmothers breasts, they were simply body parts. more women die of heart attacks because people are too afraid of breasts to do real chest compressions, because they are scared to touch their breasts. the sexualization of our bodies literally kills us. i need people to be more normal about naked bodies and i'm 100% serious.

[grawly]

every time I think about Dilbert I think about this comic and how the question being asked is Not Stupid and its answer is genuinely interesting and arguably very important information anyone using a computer should know

[officecyborg]

[bonivers]

“why do you have a gap in your resume” idk why is there a gap in your staff. worry about that

[narutwitter]

[jadeblueafterglow]

more leftists should be vegan. veganism and leftism operate on the same beliefs. social justice, no exploitation of labor, autonomy, environmental concern, intersectionality, an equal and just living etc. leftist praxis should include veganism

[moniquill]

Indigenously: no.

Animal welfare and animal rights are different things; it is good and normal for humans to be slightly anthropocentric while acknowledging our role within the greater ecosystem. Factory farming should indeed be dismantled- I want all animals harvested for food/leather/fur/bones/organs to have full and rich lives with as little suffering as possible before they're harvested. But it is not anti-leftist to live as a predator within the ecosystem. It is not more wrong for humans to eat salmon than it is for bears and eagles to do so.

[trans-girl-nausicaa]

i used to work in a vegan restaurant and it had basically all the same labor and management problems as the other restaurants i worked at that served meat. obviously. because it was a business in a capitalist system so obviously theres an economic incentive to pay workers the bare minimum and charge customers the maximum you can get away with.

in fact, the restaurant used the vegan identity and environmentalism as fuel for their marketing in quite cynical ways. at the same time they had a deal with Whole Foods (implicated in prison labor allegations btw) to source ingredients, meaning that there were transcontinentally shipped produce lol. for example we used frozen blueberries that were product of Chile. for a restaurant in the pacific northwest region in the united states of america. there are blueberry farms in oregon, washington, etc. But it’s cheaper to exploit south american farms than get local blueberries i guess. (which still by and large exploit the labor of migrant farmworkers from mexico and south and central america, but i digress)

i was vegetarian at the time and i had a lot of deep conversations with my coworkers and manager and the conclusion i came away with is that veganism is merely a cultural practice and is not inherently “leftist” in any way. if you consider human lives equal to animal lives i think that is not compatible with a clear-sighted materialist analysis of the world we live in. its practically a religious belief. which, like, okay, you can be religious, you can have irrational beliefs, but that’s not what “”””leftism”””” is about. that’s not really what any socialist or communist theory is about. it could be syncretized with socialist theory, but it would always merely be an ill-fitting addendum.

[fanfckery]

I was going to put this in tags but no.

Cashews that make vegan cheese are extremely dangerous to harvest due to the fact they mist be harvested by hand and the fruit has corrosive enzymes. Most workers end up with scars from chemical burns.

Almond farms were linked to the declining bee population due to the number of bees needed to pollinate the plants. Most bee keepers were lucky to get half their hives back after farms rented them.

We all know about how much of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed to make way for soy farms.

Agave is a main food source for many bats, but no, harvesting excess honey from bees that over produce it is the problem. If bees regularly have a large surplus of honey they swarm, the hive splits and some leave to start a new hive. Problem is that most bees don't survive this process because it makes them vulnerable to other environmental factors. So encouraging farming and over consumption of agave and stopping the consumption of honey, you're actually harming two different populations of pollinators.

"Vegan leather" is mostly plastic, which breaks down and sheds microplasics. Contributing to the ever growing landfill and contaminated water supply issues we have. Meanwhile cow hide is a natural byproduct from the meat industry, and real leather can last decades if taken care of. A single cow can feed 2 families of 4 for a year, and that leather can go towards making belts, boots, gloves and jackets that last decades.

If you want to actually support ethical food production and animal welfare do your research on where your food comes from. Look into local farms and their practices.

[beef-estrogenoff-deactivated-de]

"this suicidal person is so stupid for believing nobody will miss them. i remember people i haven't talked to in years lol"

ok but are you present in their life enough for them to realize that?

[beef-estrogenoff-deactivated-de]

we can all say after the fact that we cared for our friend who committed or disappeared or whatever. we can even mean it when we say it. we can think about them. but did we ever act on it? did we ever even make them feel like we were there? "nobody would care if i disappeared" is not a literal phrase. of course they know that people would care. what the phrase conveys is a deep sense of alienation that can't be mended by implying stupidity on their part.

[queermania]

PLEASEBPLEASE PLEASE WHAT IS YOUR CYBERTRUCK QUESTION

oh! right! okay so the scenario is this: you meet someone who is as perfect as another human being can be for you. your politics and values align. your interests align in whatever way works best for you. the chemistry is off the charts. the way they smell is the best thing you've ever smelled. you want the same things out of life. your friends/family love them and their friends/family love you. your lifestyles are perfectly compatible. they are, if such a thing existed, your soulmate. they also, however, drive a cybertruck. by choice. they feel the same way about elon musk as you do but they just "think cybertrucks are neat" *casual shrug*

is that a deal breaker for you?

no

no but i would never get in the truck myself

yes

Voting ended onMay 22

no nuance/see results button. if this doesn't apply to you in any way (you're already in a monogamous relationship, you're aro/ace, etc.) do your best to imagine or just sit this one out. i don't want to skew the results with nuance.

[thepollingstation]

Are you confident you are the only person alive with your full name?

yes

no

other

Voting ended onMay 21

[ros-sauce]

People who live/have lived in an apartment complex. Which is better to live in

Ground floor

Not ground floor

Nuance?

What's an apartment/results

Voting ended onMay 20

Because I feel like there's a right answer but every time I say it people look at me like I've lost it lolol

[annmcn]

I like ground floor and no stairs now. As to privacy, there are these wonderful blinds called top down, bottom up. They do exactly what they say, and have different amounts of light filtering. I can have a space at the bottom for my cats to see outside, cover the windows where people walking by could see in, and open the top for sunlight and air.

Not my window -- from a vendor site.

[nonegenderleftpain]

For me there's nuance - I prefer the ground floor with no stairs because I am disabled. However, I live in fairly rural Indiana for a quarter of the year, and very rural Ohio for the other 8 months, and it is very common to get ants in poorly-sealed ground floor apartments. After waking up in the middle of the night with ants all over me MORE THAN ONCE, I never want to live on the ground floor again. Not as long as I can still crawl up the stairs (and I am not joking).

We also got bedbugs once because we had a corner unit on the ground floor in an area where they're common, and the landlord refused to seal the baseboards, even after pest control told them it was the only way to prevent ants and bedbugs from returning. They "didn't want to have to unseal them if they wanted to change the floors," which clearly had not been done since the Bush administration. This would have been much less of an issue on an upper floor. (They also refused to inform the other units that we had bedbugs despite them hiding in the damn outlets between units, so I went around personally and put fliers on everyone's doors. The apartment office was VERY angry with me.)

So I guess the answer is if it's an urban area with few swarming pest species, I prefer ground floor apartments if they're well-sealed and pre-treated. But if I see a hint of an ant I'm calling the National Guard.

[twunkish-cleric]

The fact that there are gods with disabilities makes me so emotional. Hephaestus, Tyr, Hodr, Odin and other disabled deities just prove that being disabled is a vital part of the human experience, not a deviation from it, and that concept alone is so moving. Just like there are deities for specific human experiences like fertility or war, there are also deities with disabilities, which just proves that we have just as much of a place on this earth as mothers and warriors do. The idea of that has genuinely pulled me through some hard times.

[samanthamulder]

beautiful blue skies and golden sunshine all along the way

[nopizzaaftermidnight]

[nopizzaaftermidnight]

June 26, 2014

What the heck! As of this reblog, this comic has 21 notes. Apparently a little reblog chain happened, but I don’t really remember noticing. Much higher numbers than my usual 0 or 1. My first taste of success, and I totally missed it!

[nopizzaaftermidnight]

honestly, if I had a comic take off I wouldn’t mind this one. I still like the joke.

[konoko]

[narutwitter]

[probuccalfat]

i know i’ve talked about this before but it’s really insane when you were passively suicidal for two decades and out of the blue you catch yourself saying shit like “i’ve been trying to eat a lot of fibre because i don’t want to risk colorectal cancer in my 40s” like okay … 40s are part of the plan now?