Hi! I love queer, trans, and gay people!
Hi! I'm an artist (27 / she) using this blog to distract myself from mundane life. I am unemployed going for a masters degree atm. In the meantime I have an art blog (otterloreart) and my art tag is "my art" I draw people and lots of cartoon animals a la redwall and I take commissions over on my art blog.
"the only difference between a cult and a religion is the scale"
NO. NO IT ISN'T. THIS IS WHAT THE CULTS WANT YOU TO THINK IT IS NOT TRUE. THERE ARE RELIGIONS THAT ARE NOT CULTS AND CULTS THAT ARE NOT RELIGIOUS AND YOU MUST LEARN THE DIFFERENCE
I'm just going to say it - body hair (and beauty standards in general) is truly one of the final frontiers of women's issues in the West. Too many women just love their gilded cage too much. It shocks me how virulently women will defend it. I barely open my mouth and the "well I like how it feels. it just makes me feel cleaner. sensory issues. I do it for me. feminism is about choosing (to conform)." brigade come rushing in by the dozens.
Well I don't like how it feels. I don't feel cleaner without body hair. I don't prefer not having body hair. But who will advocate for women like me, but me? For women who do like hair removal, they are advocated for every time they step out of the house and see 99% of the female population also conforming to that standard, or when they watch a movie and see all the shaved actresses, or view an advertisment, or open a magazine, or watch a music video, or scroll through social media, or walk down the streets without receiving insults and glares for having a completely normal bodily feature.
You genuinely can't even point out that hairlessness is a man-made standard without women losing their shit and acting like they are totally immune to propaganda they've been exposed to from birth. I'm so tired.
HOLY SHIT GUYS, I WAS INSPIRED BY THIS POST TO TRY MAKE THE SONG AND YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE THE SCREAM I SCRUMPT WHEN I DRAGGED THE TRAINING AUDIO OVER THE BACKING TRACK AND IT LINED UP PERFECTLY
when i was a tiny baby queer (aka a 24-year-old), i went to my first pride festival probably three months after i kicked ex-gay therapy to the curb and came out to my parents. being the people they are, my parents came with me. they werenāt really sure about this whole gay thing, but they loved me and wanted me to be safe and happy and wanted to be involved in what was important to me, so they came along. (i also think my mother still might have thought i might get drugged or murdered or beaten by a protester of which there were plenty.)
anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.
i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? whatād you get? so i showed her, and i was like,Ā āIām not sure why itās a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.ā
and my mom, who was some form of ministerās wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks iām joking.
āWhat?ā i say.
āā¦itās a cock and a pussy, Jules,ā she says flatly, and that is the story of how i died at the age of 24 while attending my first pride festival.
unironically i think we need to bring back computer labs because APPARENTLY some people WERENT taught basic computer literacy and internet safety in school
things about computers/the internet i think kids should be formally taught in schools because theyre important to know and the amount of soon to be grown adults i know who know NOTHING about any of these is quite frankly almost all of them (and resources to learn if you dont know these things, because its never to late to get better with computers)
how to troubleshoot by yourself when you have a technical problem
what common file types are
some very basics on how to use ""developer tools"" on your computer (because i cant think of a better way to refer to them) like task manager and command prompt (and their mac equivalents, terminal and activity monitor ofc)
how to read and understand a privacy policy and what your personal data is, as well as what it being collected actually means and steps you can take to keep it private
how to understand terms of service
(hey. if you have trouble with reading legalese and worry about being able to understand these policies anyways, here's a site that gives basic summaries of privacy policies and ToS)
what a cookie actually is
internet privacy and your digital footprint!! seriously i dont know why we stopped teaching people that they shouldnt be putting their entire real identity online in a world where your online actions can ruin you irl
basic safety measures like antivirus software (and why you should use it or if the built in one on windows or mac is enough for you) and backing up your computer (also a mac guide)
common keyboard shortcuts (and on mac)
as an additional note: things i think everyone should know on computers and the internet but schools may bit hesitant to teach about for whatever moral/legal standards schools pretend to operate on
vpns and adblockers! (btw for most of these where you can pay for things im purposefully not recommending any specific software but seriously just use ublock origin for an adblocker)
how to not get a virus while pirating something
what a temporary email is and when to use one
red flags that you shouldn't trust a website (and how to quickly check the security of a site)
what javascript on a website does and how to disable it to get around paywalls
ok one last addition! if you want to take it one level higher, i think learning the very basics of at least one programming language is good for people. it makes computers less scary and it makes you feel very cool, and a lot of people get discouraged about it because it seems overly complicated and hard to learn outside a formal classroom setting, so heres some resources for learning the very basics of python (because i consider it the easiest language to learn and knowing one language will make it easier to learn others)
an online compiler so you dont need to download anything or worry about running code directly on your computer if that makes you nervous
a basic video guide to introduce you to python and walk you through beginner steps
a guide to some syntax and commands you should know (this was literally my lifeline in my first CS class)
some performance tasks to give you things to code to practice and assess yourself
From what I've come to understand, Millennials were the only generation to be taught basic computer literacy in grade school and high school.
My Gen X high school computer exposure was punch card FORTRAN (no, I don't remember any of it) and the bleeding-edge TRS-80 and Apple ][.
(My Boomer sisters didn't even get that much.)
Despite being a STEM major, I never touched a computer during my first ill-fated stab at college in the 1980s; at that point, computers were still for dedicated computer science majors, or were expensive toys that didn't do much. Returning to school a decade later got me access to some very thorough computer and library science classes that provided systematic rigor to what I'd learned messing around on my own on a 286 DOS machine.
By my understanding, in the 1990s, most of the information that @dreamsy990 provides above was fairly common curricula in US primary and secondary education.
(On the other claw, I had several Millennial classmates in fairly advanced courses in the late '90s who had to be slowly coached through things like "open a folder on your computer" before we could actually start learning the software.)
Things changed around the turn of the century, though -- not just because "No Child Left Behind" disrupted the entire US educational system, but because there was an assumption that "this is the first generation that grew up with computers, so they must instinctively know How This Stuff Works."
Unfortunately, that ignored the fact that the tech industry, through both operating system design and the advent of device-based apps, spent those years deliberately obfuscating "How This Stuff Works."
@dreamsy990 also noted:
seriously i dont know why we stopped teaching people that they shouldnt be putting their entire real identity online in a world where your online actions can ruin you irl
Simple: the commercialization and monetization of the Internet relied upon people buying into the Panopticon. As I said back in the days of the Nym Wars: They needed toĀ make you easier to track.Ā They neededĀ to make you a product.
When Facebook's CEO claimed that "the social Web can't exist until you are your real self online", I replied:
The logical fallacy, of course, is the conflation of "real self" with "legal name". You can't be your "real self" if you're always wondering, "what would my family think of this? What if my boss Googles me?"
IĀ amĀ my "real self" online, and my "social Web" is woven among those who know me as "Athelind" and "Your Obedient Serpent".
That other name?
That's not my "real self", Ms. Sandberg.
That's myĀ banking information, and I know why you want it.
My grandma just called and, among other things, saidĀ āYou have hips. Thatās good! Men like hips!ā and then she interrupted herself to sayĀ āWomen like hips. People of your preferred gender like hips. I can never rememberāĀ
And I was likeĀ āThanks grandma! My preferred gender is none of them, no thanks.ā and she was likeĀ āOkay, no one will comment on your hips!ā very self satisfied, likeĀ āaha, I have figured it outā
I think like half her grandkids are some variety of not-straight and she canāt always remember which is which but she is the epitome of like āsheās a little confused, but sheās got the spirit!ā
I told my grandma that Iād told my friends about what she said and that some of yāall had said you wished she was your grandma, and she saidĀ āWell, you can never have too many grandkids!āĀ
So likeā¦consider her your honorary grandma* I guess?
*if you want an honorary grandma, that is
Update on my grandma: I told her my hair was standing up, but instead of straight line it was diagonal and she saidĀ āThatās okay, youāve never been straight!ā and then laughed so hard at her own joke I thought she was going to drop the phone
Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:
SHRIMP COCKTAIL:
banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol
generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is
#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro
And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!
POMEGRANATES:
zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple
thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute
sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.
FRUIT TREES:
zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''
salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE
baander: #cranberry trees
DOUGH/BATTER:
maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre
livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles
lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY
Some other topics:
ANIMALS:
catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear
piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave
pluto-lichen: horses
misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like
pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially
SEX:
dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.
dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like āI mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it worksā
SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:
thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad
shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze
sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon
alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices
dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.
the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes
typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy
draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices
11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note
fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is
emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#š¤£š¤£š¤£
NON-FOOD STUFF:
red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.
bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket
nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English
sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp
danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author
meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does
vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'
leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake
fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?
dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic
msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate
shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September
baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird
twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)
waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up
violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours
purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.
It would be kind of fun to have a medical dramamedy show where people (patients and people in the medical field) could submit their craziest experiences with the medical system and those plotlines and patient stories could be dramatized and woven into a cohesive narrative with any additional profits from the show going to pay off medical debt.
Plotline A: Patient is suffering from a near fatal case of hypothermia after passing out in the snow drunk and laying there all night until his 13 year old nephew discovered him in the morning, said 13 year old managed to transport his druncle to the hospital on a snowmobile but the rest of the family cannot make it there due to road conditions.
Plotline B: A live rat fell through the ceiling halfway through an emergency appendectomy, causing the surgeon to startle and rupture the patientās appendix. Infectious disease is very interested in the situation due to the risk of zoonotic infection. The hospitalās legal department is also very interested in the situation.
OK FUN FACT i also thought this picture was hilarious when i encountered it a few months ago, so i was curious how it ended up on wikipedia
it turns out the uploader is in fact the woman in the photo (she's uploaded a few other pictures of herself to other articles) and she ran an extremely web 1.0 site on the topic of bondage
this was apparently a long-standing fantasy of hers and she in fact did an entire video plus accompanying photoshoot about it, which was run in a bondage magazine in the 90s and did in fact take place on an abandoned train track. they committed to the bit hard enough that there's even a shot of the sinister villain looming over her with a big document labeled DEED and a pen
the best part is that according to this page, there were two "villains" involved (the woman's two partners, apparently), and the other one was dressed as a gorilla. sadly there are no images of the gorilla kidnapper because that sounds like. even funnier.
anyway i thought this whole thing was kinda cute, lol