when grown near the sea

∞ Russian ∞ practicing psychologist ∞ radfem ∞ straight, het-partnered ∞ witch of the individual path, with a lot of intersections with Dianic tradition ∞ I get really heated about fiction sometimes ∞ This blog is for reblogs, personal posts are @marfa-boretskaya

[regardstosoulandromance]

the first chapter of mansfield park is so wild because 1) all the adults are mad at a ten year old for being sad that she has to leave her home and live with strangers and 2) the uncle is worried that raising cousins together will cause them to fall in love and the aunt is like “no raising them as siblings will stop this” when that’s exactly what happens

[ladyaldhelm]

HOW TO TURN OFF GOOGLE AI in GMAIL:

Open Gmail in your browser

Click on the Gear Icon ⚙️ in the upper right

In the General Tab, scroll down to "Smart Features" and UNCHECK THE BOX. It is about halfway down.

Then, right below that is Google Workspace smart features. Click on the "Manage Workspace Smart Features" and make sure both toggles are OFF

[ms-demeanor]

I just want to make sure that everyone is aware that even if you turn this off, Google is still scanning all of that information, and from 2004 to 2017 they did it to serve you ads instead of training AI.

Google cheerfully reads your emails and looks at your photos and watches your videos and it always has and always will.

Don't bother turning off Gemini, for the love of fuck please just stop using Google.

(Protonmail is a good free, privacy forward option. Don't bother with Hotmail or Outlook, Microsoft reads your emails too. Also email is inherently insecure don't trust sensitive information to email)

[danikriatura]

Elon is experimenting with brain implants on immigrants detained by ICE and without consent. Elon is experimenting with brain implants on immigrants detained by ICE and without consent. Elon is experimenting with brain implants on immigrants detained by ICE and without consent. Elon is experimenting with brain implants on immigrants detained by ICE and without consent. Elon is experimenting with brain implants on immigrants detained by ICE and without consent.

[glossyfeathers]

"I don’t know with certainty what’s happening in these facilities. I know what the infrastructure looks like. I know what the incentives are. I know what history tells us happens when you combine captive populations with ambitious medical research and deliberately removed oversight."

Who TF Is In My Head? | Part 1: The Neural Network

I’m starting a new series today, and I wish I didn’t have to.

Parts 2 through 4 cover the history of Neuralink

Who TF Is In My Head? | Part 2: Past It’s PRIME

“He’d operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high, a byproduct of youth and proficiency, jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that proje

Who TF Is In My Head | Part 3: Who TF Approved Neuralink?

In Part 2, we left off with Benjamin Rapoport and other co-founders walking away from Neuralink, citing vague concerns about safety.

Who TF Is In My Head?? | Part 4: Where TF Is Patient Four?

I’ve been staring at a GoFundMe page for 6 days now, and I can’t stop thinking about the word “storybook.”

[buffalo-tracks]

We need members of Congress to ask why DOD neurological surgery contracts are flowing through shell companies to civilian hospitals. We need the remaining FDA staff to explain what oversight exists for experimental procedures at military facilities. Because right now, all we have is infrastructure that looks purpose-built for something we’d rather not name. All we have are patterns that keep appearing in different cities but with the same components. All we have are gaps in documentation where accountability should be. And we have Elon Musk’s announced timeline: from 7 brain implants to 1,000 in fifteen months. Sixty patients per month. In a technology that’s experimental, risky, and requires extensive informed consent. Unless it doesn’t.

[tetsuooooooooooo]

[wildgeese98]

Trying to write sex scenes is so aggravating because honestly describing sex is pretty boring. It's mostly just people putting bits of themselves on or inside other people's bits so you run into a lot of "they walked to another room" type problems where you can get caught up in just describing where everyone's limbs and shit are. What really makes smut interesting and hot, in my opinion at least, is sensory description but that's also hard because you'll be sitting there trying to find a new way to say "they were feeling sexual pleasure and it felt pretty good". Then you also have to figure out how to write dialogue that doesn't sound completely ridiculous and hackneyed. Really makes you want to just write "they boned down real good and it was totally hot trust me, it was definitely the kind of thing you'd want to jerk your shit to," and have done with it.

[animentality]

[jabberding0]

Pottery troubles

[salt-cedar]

not to sound like boomer but most of them are actually filming or essentially multitasking troubles

[sourwoodmoon]

Random musings on The Goddess Movements and How it looks Nowadays.

The Fledgling beginnings of The Goddess Movement proper could be traced back roughly to the 1960s. It was conceived as an alternative to Abrahamic religions, namely in the west, who place emphasis on God as Father, God as Savior and God as the perfect and only ruler of the Universe. Many western women, even as the world marched forward towards a more "secular" era, felt it was of extreme use to fill that void with *something* worthwhile. They felt the need to express that The Creative Principle of The Universe and Life itself was female, that it was a Creatix. This thus marked the beginning of what would then begin to be known as "The Goddess Movement" in the West. It intertwined with Second Wave Feminism, unsurprisingly, due to it's need to reject male centered thought form, even in esoteric spaces, and for taking many cues from Femininism itself about the sovereignty of Women and the need to dismantle male hierarchies and male led policies. The two witches that solidified the Movement, Z Budapest and Starhawk, defended the use of the Witch as a powerful psychological tool for feminists to use to tap into their own power and to claim it after centuries of repression and demonization of this seemingly innate female power, even leading to the creation of the Political movement known as W.I.T.C.H (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, ), largely active in the 1960s as well. The Goddess Movement took a life onto itself and became somewhat separate from the rest of The Neopagan movements, largely due to its explicit ties with feminism and often times exclusive focus on The Goddess in lieu of a dual worship of a male Principle along with a goddess.

The Goddess Movement nowadays can feel very...uncertain. It seemed to have lost much of the early impulse of it's creators, seemingly becoming an almost "Niche" onto itself. In my view, I think this has largely to do with the rise of Third Wave Feminism and it's deemphasizing of caring about Natal Female over Trans Indentified Males and the general "care" put into inserting and welcoming male leftists in the Movement, compared to more radical/ second wave branches that uphold the belief men shouldn't be at all entrusted into the Movement or that their thoughts and opinions should be of no influence in the Movement. The Goddess Movement itself is not centralized whatsoever, it mostly focuses itself on general tenants, such as recognizing the corruption of the Divine Feminine, The Need to Revival it, the Need to decolonize Patriarchal Thought, The Need of Woman and Goddess centered Female political action, thusly often times leaving people without a strict guideline of how to approach the Movement, compared to even other forms of Neopagan thought; that one could consider more "Mainstream" as well and thus easier to access. My guilt free and uninhibited access to a solely Divine Female Spirituality only began with my involvement with more old fashioned/ "hardcore" feminist thought and philosophy, after all, and became how I chiefly interacted with what was left of radical feminist thought nowadays. It's easy to become disillusioned nowadays with the commodification of both Feminism and much of spirituality nowadays, who oftentimes is used as another way to pacify women into not rocking the boat. Many a witch sneer at what they perceived to be the threat of "Disagreeable women", with no thought of how ironic it is and how in olden times they'd be condemning their sister to the pyre and calling her a "witch", just like her executioners.

What to do to keep the Movement Alive? It's one of those answers that's open ended. The Naïvety of youth paired with the overly positive thinking that males have, in the short while feminism has existed, changed the way they perceive us or act, usually seems to have no cure but age and experience, with life, society, male nature itself, which will leave many witches beginning to consider if what Men have told them about themselves, other witches, feminists and so on, to be all that's cracked up to be. The Goddess consistently comes when one goes through the dark night of the soul and needs to be planted back into the dark moist soil of her womb, then shed back into a brand new woman,that perhaps isn't as easily dazzled by Male delusions as before. One who's on this path needs to remind herself that there's no shame in exclusively loving herself, other women or the Goddess as that's simply loving "Womanity" itself. It's healthy to explore the "What Ifs", namely if you're a radical feminist who's spiritual herself but does not wish to cast her energy and love into anti-humanist institutions that have hunted us, hurt us and subjugate us. It's not Anti-feminist or Bioessentialist or dim-witted to acknowledge and embrace The Goddess in any way because an embodied witch is naturally pro-women and pro-feminist and will act accordingly and won't need to be cajouled to care about her and other women's well-being because she already does, compared perhaps with more conservative or religious women still attempting to relief themselves of "the sin" of being born women in a patriarchal world.

[kittyit]

who has FEMALES USE COOPERATION AS A WEAPON. image

[kittyit]

[kittyit]

[mossghoul]

Most interesting scientific facts I learned reading Starre Vartan's 'The Stronger Sex - What Science Tells us about the Female Body'.

I don't have page numbers because I read an epub version taken from a PDF that was all over the place.

Women's muscles are significantly less subject to fatigue in tests of isometric muscle endurance (i.e. when lifting lower weights, women can do more reps than men, and can also hold these weights in a static position for longer).

Women's muscles take up oxygen about 30% faster than men's which "scientifically speaking, indicates a superior aerobic system"

Women have a higher proportion og "slow twitch" muscle fibres which are good for endurance exercise and confer a health advantage when it comes to diabetes by increasing insulin sensitivity.

After an hour of exercise at the same level of intensity, women's muscles burn more fat (and less carbs) when compared to men's. This keeps women going in endurance exercises.

Menstrual blood contains mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Remnant cells in the uterine lining that heal the uterus each month without scars could also contain stem cells. This could contribute to endometriosis because during menstruation, some menstrual fluid travels up through the fallopian tubes and into the peritoneal cavity. If this fluid carries stem cells associated with the endometrium, it could explain how endometrial cells grow outside the uterus.

In the 1920s, there was debate about whether menstrual blood could harm plants and animals. It was discussed as a "menotoxin" into the mid 20th century and in 1936, research was published about whether menotoxin caused a child's asthma.

Male bodies have 50-100% higher fasting blood glucose levels, and men clear glucose 15% slower than women. Glucose uptake in men can be up to 50% slower. This is one reason why men are more than twice as likely to develop diabetes as women.

Estrogen comes from two sources: the ovaries and the subcutaneous fat on the hips and buttocks. Once a female body goes through menopause, the hip/buttock fat becomes the only source of estrogen, which is important for maintaining bone strength

During pregnancy, the body's energy use increases to 2.2x the basal metabolic rate which is close to the limit of what the human body can handle.

Female small intestines are significantly longer than males, which might explain how women are better able to withstand life stressors like starvation or disease.

Sex hormones influence the gut microbiome, and the microbiome impacts how sex hormones are metabolised. Similarly, vigorous exercise is helpful for gut microbial diversity.

Women's bodies devote more energy to continually educating their b-cells (antibodies) and therefore produce the best-fitting antibodies and fighting infections more effectively than males.

Female sex hormones strengthen the immune system and testosterone suppresses it.

Women have stronger immune systems into old age, allowing them to fight off diseases better than older men, although this ability does decline over time.

[sourwoodstar]

Women should get in touch with witchcraft again so we can hex every male who's ever been misogynistic

[mybeingthere]

Known as The Westbury Quilt, this stunning hand embroidered and appliqued red and white quilt was made by 6 women from the Hampson family between 1900-03 in Tasmania, Australia.

It is one of the more important colonial quilts in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, and was featured in their “A Century of Quilts” exhibition in Canberra.

Although technically more of a coverlet, as it is not quilted, this quilt has 52 stitched blocks – embroidered with proverbs and sayings, and intertwined with blocks depicting favourite farm animals, complete with pet names! It’s a joyful quilt, with its bright red fabric, and funny (laugh out loud at times) sayings, and a big happy embroidered floral border.

It is likely that this quilt was intended as a raffle prize at the time, due to the embroidery on the block above, but the quilt was exhibited by Mary Hampson at the Westbury Agricultural Show in 1904 and again at another in 1906.

[perfectcleavage]

Mass Effect is one of my favorite franchises of all time, but it can be so difficult at times to reckon with the fact that as a female gamer, they were simply not made with me in mind. And, ultimately, it suffers for it.

Ironically, the gender gap in the ME trilogy especially apparent when I recommend the games to a male friend. I finally talk them into playing it, and they will, more often than not, have absolutely nothing at all to say about the female characters (or lack thereof). Wandering through the games, you're bombarded with a diverse universe full of unique-looking aliens- but male aliens. Asari are the only female aliens you meet beyond Tali and a couple other female Quarians, until ME3, where we get Eve and Nyreen in the Omega DLC. Which means for two (and a half, let's be honest) games in the franchise, every Turian, Salarian, Krogan, Batrarian, Drell, Hanar, Vorcha, Elcor, and Volus is a male. But what is even more striking than this atrocious worldbuilding oversight is that, handing the games to your average male fan, they barely notice. It escapes them entirely as something worth mentioning. They don't perceive the empty echoes of the female voices we aren't hearing, of the other halves of alien populations completely unrepresented. It's as if the default setting of the world, fictional and not, is male.

Asari- the primary female voices in the game- are poorly written. We know this. An entire race of biotic-wielding, technologically-advanced aliens with lifespans in the centuries and incredibly rich culture and technology, and the most we see of them in the entire trilogy is as strippers and occasional mercenaries. Liara, Samara, Aria and Benezia break this mold, but not without their own flavors of sexualization. After all, Benezia still dies in what is akin to Turian fetishwear under the control of Saren. Her favorite color was yellow, remember?

But beyond Asari strippers, skin-tight Cerberus uniforms, and comically sexualized robots- all valid topics, but talked to death at this point- I truly believe the most astounding, hollow, and disheartening result of this casual misogyny is the Krogan.

The storyline of the Krogan cannot be emancipated from the concept of birth. An entire species near-sterilized, a war crime excused away for the greater good. The Krogan story IS the Genophage, and the horrifying explanations used by those in power to excuse atrocity. And for two entire games, not once are we ever shown what the Genophage has done to Krogan women. Not societally, physiologically, or psychologically. They are conveniently segregated away in briefly-mentioned "female camps," while the men discuss the horrors of a war crime that affects birthing rates. It takes until the final installment of the series to show you one female Krogan (who didn't even get her own model, they just covered her so you wouldn't notice) and to mention the absolutely devastating toll that a cultural pandemic of stillbirths, abuse, and chronic infertility-caused sickness can have on a population. Eve is a fantastic character. Truly. But after two whole games of the Genophage being such a critical cultural touchstone for so much of the galaxy, and so many player choices depending on it, it's incredibly difficult for this omission of perspective to be remedied by a few nuanced lines in the med bay.

On the other hand, I think about the Rachni a lot. The so-called ancient enemy of the Krogan people, the foe that led to them being uplifted by the Salarians (and then, ultimately, discarded by them) in the first place. A massive amount of pre-game lore is devoted to a culture that, interestingly enough, speaks to the player through a queen. In fact, the Rachni queen is one of the first female alien NPCs you encounter in the entire trilogy. And as you encounter her, she speaks of songs of mourning. Not for her, but for her children.

You are offered the chance to spare her twice, once in ME1 and again in ME3. Both times, she has been used for her control of her hive, her children, and the potential army that can be bred out of her. Given the choice to free or kill her, many argue she's too dangerous to be kept alive, her species too volatile to be left to reproduce unchecked. An eerily familiar narrative, echoed by the Krogan, creating very poignant foil to me. A species struggling to give birth, and another, their supposed enemy, constantly being taken advantage of for it. It is a struggle of mothers, being commodified by men, and everyone is losing.

I wonder what narrative depths this series could have discovered in the tragedies of the Krogan and the rich cultures of other alien civilizations if they had considered, even for a second, that female voices could support a story where male voices simply cannot. What would we have learned about Salarian women, and their opinions on fertilization regulations favoring male offspring? About Turian women in the line of duty and their place in the hierarchy? Does the Batarian caste system have a bias on the basis of sex?

Obviously, there is nothing that can be done about the erasure and treatment of women in a game series over a decade old. But, I do believe it can be used as an example going forward to show how cultural and environmental storytelling is genuinely made worse by the oversight of female voices. All that to say, I love this universe and these games. Sometimes, it's just difficult to remember that we were only given half a galaxy to truly appreciate.

[forthegothicheroine]

Romantasy sounds like it should be a virtue name. These are my righteous and godly daughters, Charity, Modesty, and Romantasy.

[louisegluckpdf]

reading nabokov is maddening because his writing is so playful and evocative and effortless and english isn't even his first language. he's doing things in a second language most people could spend their lives trying and failing to replicate in their first language. makes me feel like this

[louisegluckpdf]

"my very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when i was three" like come ON how did you write the funniest sentence ever by adding a two word parenthetical. leave something for the rest of us

[captain-stretch-nuts]

Mercury, Venus, (uh oh) Pearth, Mars (phew), Djupiter (never mind), Faturn ⁉️, Luranus (kinda French actually), Pneptune

[sevdrag]

I got to “Faturn” and burst into horribly loud laughter I’m now crying over this in bed fucking Faturn

[rosettyller]

Bill, released 10 years ago today, 18th September, 2015.

[teaboot]

I've discovered the worst game in human history. I call it Dog Toy Or Sex Toy, who wants in

[autisticexpression]

How would this even be challenging? Are there dick-shaped chew toys?

[teaboot]

Round One

[timugamaileilani]

Dog toy

[teaboot]

Wrong! That is the Cloud 9 Novelties Silicone Mushroom Massager in Teal.

Round Two:

[trannykong]

D-dog...toy?

[worldheritagepostorganization]

World Heritage Post

[swan2swan]

The fear in the second one is like someone realizing that the Russian Roulette game is being played with Real Bullets

[juliensorelapologist]

i don't like pop literature analysis of Wuthering Heights that are like. oh you shouldn't romanticize Heathcliff and Cathy relationship it's like dark romance it sells you a negative view of what love should be about whatver. first of all "not romanticize" i'm sorry my reading of this gothic novel isn't pure enough for you. second! heathcliff is nooot a fucking dark brooding mysterious love interest. the only person to see him this way is Isabella and she's uh pretty clearly wrong and the narrative doesn't shy away from telling you this.

he is! catherine's! childhood friend! she doesn't see him as a handsome mysterious stranger she sees him as her other half and as someone who was there for her and loved her when she was a kid running around and being dirty and improper and deeply disliked by everyone in her house including her father for daring to not live up to the gendered excpectations of what she should be. and she misses being that kid so so so bad, and she hates married life and she wants to go back home even though home was awful and abusive and she ran away from it because at leaaaast she was allowed to be herself there. and heathcliff is home.

and heathcliff isn't obsessed by Cathy the way people describe him she's not a thing to own. she's the only person to have ever loved him apart from his dad for like a few years. she's the only one that doesn't constantly dehumanize him or wait for him to turn into the savage beast they all think he is. he's deeply alienated from the society he grows up in because of his skin color and she! doesn't! care!

sure sure their love is bad for them and those around but you know why it is that way? not because they're toxic or whatever (i mean sure, in part, but) but because they're not fucking allowed to love each others. because god knows and Heathcliff knows and Cathy knows they could never get married. because the only way for Catherine to hope to help him is to marry a nice guy she kind of likes because as a woman she's powerless because even if Heathcliff comes back a gentleman he's only ever be perceived as a crook! because even if he owns "Wuthering Heights" he's "cheated Hareton out of his birthright", because Heathcliff doesn't and will never have a birthright!!

like. Heathcliff is a pretty terrible person. Cathy is sometimes unkind. i wouldn't want that relationship. but you know. if they weren't operating under the rules of the Racist Patriarchal Crushing Machine, they'd maybe get to be kinder to others and each others and themselves! They're not at fault for wanting to be with each others actually it's not a great woke reading to go "wellll they should have moved on and accepted their respective shitty fucking place in society". i'm glad you've moved on from being attracted to insane dangerous men, but then also iiiii think you're missing some themes. maybe.

[his-own-kingdom-deactivated2026]

YES!!

Amen to all of this!