the literal worst

who the fuck knows man

[dragon-in-a-fez]

if I see one more "why age verification is bad" post that doesn't even bother to mention that locking young people out of huge sections of the public sphere - literally the stated goal and primary impact of this shit - is wrong in and of itself I will simply start hitting people with bricks

[dragon-in-a-fez]

yes yes biometric data privacy blah blah adults can hypothetically by harmed by this too. what about the immediate and deliberate and not at all hypothetical harm to youth. why are you acting like a potential data leak about what your face looks like, which if it ever happened would at least be generally recognised as a problem, is a more serious issue than cutting millions of people off from information and community and public expression which is happening right now in the open with large scale support

[dragon-in-a-fez]

it's got the stench of fucking "banned books week" on it. thousands of adults congratulating themselves for reading books literally no one is trying to stop them from reading while doing nothing to improve access for the young people who are the ones actually having those books made off-limits to them.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

[normal person voice] as we all know, the public sphere consists largely of strip clubs and pools of glowing green acid

[assortedinsanities]

Given these 3 options I would draw the line at strip clubs, just personally. As I'm in a country with some youth rights, you can be at the club here at 14 years old (with restrictions), as I believe you should be.

I understand that all of these are supposed to sound as ridiculous as exposing children to chemical leaks, but it's really a cultural thing. Some places do actually treat teenagers a little bit like humans. Excluding them from everything is a culturally and religiously motivated choice, not some universal truth about how to raise people.

[assortedinsanities]

Also: actually yes. Removing someone from public life for their identity is as close as you can get to actual evil.

[pisshandkerchief]

if you can accept that there will be trans men who look virtually indistinguishable from cis women, than you can accept that there will be trans women who look virtually indistinguishable from cis men. either by choice or by circumstance. and if you can't respect them the same as you would anybody else, you need to examine why that is

[victusinveritas]

[teaboot]

I don't think anything will ever better represent my experience of being a child better than one time in like 2nd grade when I told a teacher's assistant, "I'm not stupid, you're being very condescending, please let me do my math worksheet myself" and she immediately replied, "That's a really big word, do you know what it means?"

[0fficelady]

Collection

[hollowedskin]

My whole life I've known that you must leave at least one mistake in your knitting or crochet or tapestry, because spirits/demons can get lost in the perfection of the stitches and be unable to find their way out.

If you don't want a haunted scarf, you have to leave a mistake as an exit point.

[syntax-forest]

This is beautiful but I can't help but think that at least one of these originated with like, someone who fucked up their knitting and managed to convince everyone else it was intentional.

[hollowedskin]

I'm almost certain this is what happened. Because whenever I am close to finishing a crochet project, especially something in the round where each row is more work than the last, and I find a mistake in the last row as I'm stitching into it

The closer I am to finishing and not wanting to undo 2h worth of work to change that one single into a double, the more likely I am to go "well. That's the demons stitch then isn't it", and leave it be.

The demon stitch absolutely gives my ocd toxic perfectionism a loophole to allow something to remain a mistake, which is why I choose to believe in it.

[ave-aria]

oh, haha. a loophole.

[batsandboba]

do not start gambling. go outside and locate a bug. now post it on inaturalist. bam. nature's gacha game

[rems-rambles]

[foxglovedforest]

The kids are aight

[hotvampireadjacent]

[bogeyworman]

Ways words change:

Broadening- when a word becomes more encompassing. Eg. 'Dog' used to refer to a specific breed.

Narrowing- when a word becomes less encompassing. Eg 'Meat' used to refer to any food, and 'deer' referred to any animal. 'Girl' used to be gender neutral for any young person.

Amelioration- when a word becomes more positive. Eg. 'Terrific' used to mean "terror inspiring", and 'nice' meant "foolish".

Perjoration- when a word becomes more negative. Eg, 'awful' used to mean "awe inspiring", similar to "awesome".

Metaphorical extension- when a word takes on a new meaning based on (you guessed it) metaphor. Eg. 'broadcasting' meant "scattering seeds".

Metonymy- when a word becomes associated with something close in space/time. Eg. 'Jaw' started off referring to the cheek.

Meanings can also get stronger or weaker over time. "Decimate" originally (and technically) means to kill one in ten. Now it's used to mean to destroy entirely. Additionally, words can be converted ("verbed" or "nouned" are both examples of nouns getting verbed).

'Ratio' as used by Merriam Webster is an example of metaphorical extension and noun-to-verb conversion.

[mybeingthere]

Diné Weaver Venancio Aragón

"From researching historic twill patterns in museum collections to dyeing wool with Kool-Aid, Diné (Navajo) weaver and instructor Venancio Aragón interlocks research and experimentation to expand the visual and technical vocabularies of Diné weaving. Working on the Diné upright loom, Aragón is part of a generation of Diné weavers who reinterpret ancestral knowledge through experimentation, carrying the medium forward on their own terms. As he stated in our interview with him, “I am not a purist.”

Based in Farmington, New Mexico, Aragón is trained in cultural anthropology and Native American and Indigenous studies, currently teaching at Diné College, the Navajo Nation’s tribal college. Before transitioning to full-time weaving and teaching, Aragón worked as an interpretive park ranger at the Mesa Verde, Aztec Ruins, Bandelier, and Petroglyph National Monuments, where he led tours and developed public education initiatives. He was born to the Tó’aheedlíinii (The Water Flow Together People) clan and born for the Naakaii (Mexican people). His maternal grandfather is of the Tsénahabiłnii (Sleeping Rock) clan, and his paternal grandfather is of the Naakaii (Mexican people)."

https://hyperallergic.com/dine-weaver-venancio-aragon.../...

[cosmicretreat]

[cartoonscientist]

I mean, I do like spiders

what?

[exeggcute]

one of my favorite this american life segments of late is about the people who played orchestra pit for phantom of the opera on broadway and how, like, a sizeable majority of them had literally been playing the show since it opened in 1988 (on broadway. I know it opened in 86 on the west end, you random pedants, but I am specifically talking about broadway musicians) because their contracts stipulated that they'd have jobs throughout the show's entire run... but nobody anticipated that phantom would become the longest-running broadway show of all time.

and none of these people wanted to walk away from a guaranteed job, so very few of them ever quit. they just kept doing the same show eight nights a week... for twenty or thirty years... and by the time it finally closed last year most of these musicians (who had been working together for DECADES) hated each other and really really fucking loathed phantom. I can't stop thinking about it. it's indescribably hellish to imagine but also the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.

[exeggcute]

can you imagine.

[bisexualshakespeare]

[ID: excerpt from an article reading: One of my favorite stories, which should drive anyone who has every played in a band crazy-- there’s this bassoon player who has sat next to the same clarinet player since 1988. She’s convinced he plays half a note4 flat on every note he’s every played. He denies this. /]

[cleverlittlefox]

[cleverlittlefox]

[cleverlittlefox]

[desolendate]

im literally in tears what the fuck

[pussypopstar]

I'm, above all else, a tangentgirl. always saying shit like "sidenote," "oh also," "by the way,"

[gendercensus]

The 2026 Gender Census is now open!

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

PS: You can see some regularly-updated statistics about incoming data here, with lots of demography and graphs to peruse!

PPS: Image credits, bark and grass.

[i-got-a-penis-yall]

What conservatives are DESPERATELY trying to keep from you is that they are too late. You can live a happy, successful life as a trans person now.

I don’t even mean some vague notion of “trans joy” I mean you can make it. You can be a young trans person who grows into a middle aged trans person who gets to be a wrinkly old trans person.

Even if you didn’t get to be a trans kid more and more kids are getting to be trans. They exist right now! They will also grow up to be trans adults and we get to be the ones to show them what that looks like. We get to pave the path that SO many people fought to forage