A blog about me and general things that I like which may or may not include the following: many fandom posts, hot people (fictional or real of either gender), fanfiction, guy ferri, shrek, cute snakes, misunderstood but also cute sharks, many many many things from the weird side of the internet, shit that makes me laugh, MINORITY RIGHTS, pretty things to wear, cosplay, cool art, DINOSAURS, science news (pew pew pew), nostalgia, cool facts about stuff, video games, many many memes, PUNS and dad jokes that i would say even though i am not a dad, FEMINISM, caaaaaaaaaats cats cats cats, doggies, animals, canada jokes since i'm allowed as a canadian person EH! encouragement posts for people struggling with difficult stuff! I have been told by many that I'm good at advice for stuff so send me asks and I will try to reply as soon as possible with something interesting depending on what you ask me. Examples include: You: "What is the meaning of life?" Me: "42" You: "My friend has clinical depression and i don't know how to reach them," Me: "Give them space and time to themselves but offer yourself to them if they would like your company (depending on the person) don't say things like "It'll get better, i'm sorry to hear about that" they don't know it will get better and most people aren't looking for sympathy they want to feel like they aren't in a cold pit of hellish darkness where they feel nothing and have no soul anymore. Think of the Dementors from Harry Potter, JK based them on her experience with Depression. Ask them if they need anything but make it clear that they need to verbally ask you when they are ready and tell them that you are never going away no matter how hard they try to push you out of their life, they are not a worthless piece of shit no matter what depression says, their existence matters to you more than they will ever know, if they show signs of being suicidal get the proper help for them right away, counselling and therapy helps and if where you live has a suicide help line (public phone number) call it and get help that way as well." You: Brah babe girl bro, do you believe in ghosts?" Me: "hell yeah i do, i got a big black doggie that haunts my house and makes scary noises. Not sure if friendly or it daydreams of eating my face, i named it Cardinal Boo just in case it a cute spectral puppy buddy."
I remember an interview with a guy that did the camera work for nature documentaries and he said that baleen whales like these guys were the scariest things to shoot because “They’re the size of a train, they can suddenly appear out of nowhere in dark or murky water and they don’t make a goddamn sound. I was absolutely sure that one of them was going to hit me and well, ‘that’s all folks!’. Gave me a lot of perspective on how I handle myself when filming smaller animals now.”
*facepalm* So, given that sex ed in the US is a tire fire:
Vagina-having people have a shorter urethra, which means we’re more prone to UTIs because the bacteria doesn’t have to travel as far to get up into your bladder and cause a problem.
Which means if you’re exposing your bits to bacteria (as with sex), peeing will flush out bacteria in the urethra. (Urine isn’t actually sterile - that’s a myth - but you’re *supposed to* have a little bit of bacteria - that’s how bodies work. But it still flushes things out that shouldn’t be there.)
Oh! You should ALSO pee after you masturbate, especially if it involves penetration with fingers/toys/etc
So I’ve blocked like five transphobes on this post, which I feel should have been relatively uncontroversial.
If you’re one of the people saying “You meant ‘women’”, fuck you. I meant “people who have a vagina, regardless of their gender or lack thereof”, and you can go fuck yourself with a cactus.
And you should pee afterward, so you don’t get a UTI.
Keep this in mind if you recently started having sex again after vaginoplasty. It's a super important habit to get into. Especially if you weren't super careful about it preop.
I always complain about how badly represented the creatures of my local folklore are in art, and how little is publicly available. So I've decided to help with that!
As of right now, all the images in my folklore series are released under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license! This means you can use these images for your projects, as long as it's credited and released under a similar license! These mostly include creatures from Asturias, but also some from beyond. All future instalments of this collection will be released under the same license, too! As of writing, they already snuck into some wikipedia articles on their respective matters ;)
"Americanization" is a real phenomenon, and how non-Americans should be cautious of it is taught in different countries at school. It's taught in Greece and people from other countries told me their elementary or middle school teachers (using the American grades, to make it make sense to the majority on the site) talked to them about it.
It's common sense here, except for USians, so I'll analyze it a bit more for the dominant demographic here. In a globalized setting, the most dominant culture affects the others and sets the trends. The way our language works, how we think, our levels of politeness and intimacy, and our levels of respect. (flash news, they are going down 😂)
I don't want to imply that there is nothing good in the US. There are plenty of positives in the country. It's just that for the rest of the cultures online it's a constant daily fight to not forget our roots, with the degree US media and brands have permeated our lives. In Greece at least we watch more US American media than Greek media nowadays, and many of our shows are rip-offs of USian ones, with little adaptation to Greek reality and culture.
And to demonstrate the amount of this exposure, a 22-year-old Greek asked me the other day "if something happens we call 911, right?" This might have literally cost them their life, in a dangerous situation! Because all the movies and songs they consumed (not an unusual thing for the Greek youth) were what they knew. And I found a similar comment in this comment thread.
Lots of Americans in the notes failing to understand this post. It's not about not liking the US. It's not about you feeling ashamed or guilty for being American. It's not about you.
It's about American media drowning out native language media all over the world, and workplaces requiring the English language in your repertoire more and more. It's about proper translations and foreign language dubbing of films disappearing because "everyone speaks/should speak English anyway." All of this is leading to the deterioration of native speaker groups of languages worldwide.
In my country, Dutch language courses can't find enough people who want to study the language, while English language courses are overflowing with people who want to study the language. There is even widespread distaste for the Dutch language for being crude or sounding rough or what have you. That's our native language!!! That is our culture in its purest form!!! That is knowledge we inherit from our parents as they did from theirs!!! That is how we learned fairytales and folk stories and myths!!! That is the language that shapes our communication and our way of thinking!!! To hate your native language is to hate yourself at the deepest level.
And yet it's so normalised. Droves of foreigners living in the Netherlands will never learn a word of Dutch, because "everyone speaks English anyway." We are the world's leaders in non-native understanding of English, but it comes at a cost. A grave cost we will continue to pay.
If you're looking to support your non-American friends in any way that is not performatively shouting "I hate being an American" into the void, first of all, unlearn that hatred of yourself and your culture. You are of no help self-flagellating, and there is a difference between holding your country accountable for its issues, and denying yourself your culture because your country is doing and has done bad things.
(I am not going to get into arguments about whether or not US American culture exists. It does, and if you think differently you are welcome to change your mind.)
Secondly, learn about other countries. Learn a bit of Chinese. Take an interest in the Italian political system. Ask your friends about their countries' folklore. Watch documentaries about art from Nigeria. Absorb information that is not fed to you by American media.
And thirdly, quit expecting your non-American friends to communicate in a way that appeals to you. The French and Dutch will always seem rude to you because our way of communicating is far more direct than the way you communicate. People from other cultures may seem vague to you because their way of communicating is far more indirect, and you're not used to that either. Quit being frustrated when you don't get what we mean exactly. Quit assuming we mean the absolute worst thing you could imagine just because you didn't get what we meant the first time. Ask us to explain if you need us to, and learn to accept that we are different from you.
We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It's your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.
We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It's your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.
i love pitting classically trained magic users against self-taught magic users in sci-fi/fantasy but it shouldn’t be snobbish disdain for them it should be terror
“What do you mean I don’t have to burn half my blood to create a fireball?”
“Why can you teleport more than once without vomiting? WTF is ‘quantum displacement awareness’???”
“You know HOW many spells? HOW? ... What do you mean ‘my spell book’?”
“Ooooh, you’re just summoning water portions from the Plane of Water... Lol I thought I HAD to combine hydrogen and oxygen molecules to generate water in small amounts. That’s so much easier then what I was doing!”
Steve Dain (1940 – 2007) was an FTM who transitioned in the late 70's and lost his teaching job, he was a gym teacher in Union City. Although the court would eventually decide in his favor, and allow him to go back to teaching, he was not able to find a school that would hire him.
"Later, I would meet Steve Dain. Steve had been Lou Sullivan's hero. In those days, most trans men in the Bay Area went off on a pilgrimage to meet him as we entered medical transition. Lou had met with Steve years before when he began his transition, and Jamison Green would meet him a short time before I did. It was nearly a ritual, a rite of passage to meet with Steve. There were no trans men that we knew of who had come before him. Steve was nearby and our most visible example, and someone who each one of us hoped would confer wisdom, and a kind of blessing or validation. I think we all were a bit awestruck. And, Steve didn't let us down. I know he didn't let me down. I still remember meeting him in Union City, he picked me up and I was taken with his easy and total masculinity. He was hirsute, and handsome, confident and kind. He was sensitive to each question I asked and his answers would influence me for the entirety of my transition." -Max Wolf Valerio (quote from his blog) (photos by Mariette Pathy Allen 1980s)
