he/him, biologist 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️💜 my saddest yeehaw ever :( (this blog is the result of losing access to an almost 10yo blog *sob*) I blog abt whatever at this point. common themes include: bugs, art, nature, wildlife, and poetry 🌲
I suppose being cis would be nice and all, but it doesn’t quite have the same “I will sieze Destiny by the throat and force it into the shape of my choosing” kind of verve
it’s sooo funny when rude customers encounter employees who can deny them service for the first time.
i was working at a little cafe where I could deny service over bad behavior, harassment etc. & mask mandates had just ended a week before & already people were being weird about me still wearing mine—an N95, the kind shaped kinda like a duckbill.
so this man walked in, looked at me sooo scathingly, laughed at me, and said “damn. never known a woman to choose…practicality over looks.”
And I just said, “oh. you can go, you’re not getting a drink.” And he said, “what???”
I said, “sir, you just walked in at 6 am & called women impractical and me ugly in one sentence.”
And he was so astonished he didn’t even argue he just turned around and left 💀🙏🏻 it was like he suddenly became self aware
One summer I was running ferry rides across a lake so people could see the waterfalls without walking 6 miles when a guy snapped my bra strap as he was boarding the boat. So i immediately threw him off, he started yelling for my manager, my boss cheerfully informed him that, yeah, she’s the captain of the boat and she can kick off anyone she wants. He goes to storm off, looks expectantly at his girlfriend, and she just goes, “Well, I’M not walking six miles, Michael! I’ll meet you back at the car!” and sits right back down!!!!
The expression on his face when he was told that he couldn’t get on the boat, then immediately told that his girlfriend was ditching him? PRICELESS. he just blinked at her and then stormed off like a child. I gave her a free hat and was like maybe rethink this relationship…….
i once had this fucker come up to order a beer. while i pour it he shows me the wanky fucking chemical structure tattoo on his arm and he’s like “hey. you know what this is” i was like “nah sorry” (never cared abt chemistry in school, plus having to look at a some rando’s pretentious tattoo gives me the douche chills). he decides to respond with “heh. you must not read many books”
i immediately stop pouring his beer. i reply: “heh. you must not want this beer.” thirsty boy immediately starts groveling like a worm “please please no i do want the beer im sorry im sorry” believe me when i say it was one of the most pathetic things ive ever witnessed
I genuinely believe that part of why it has become so normalized to be openly callous and evil in politics is that customer service culture has trained affluent people that they can treat everyone they consider beneath them however they want and still be treated kindly.
if it’s okay, I’d like to ask for some advice regarding rehoming. My mom passed away recently and I have “inherited” her dog she impulsively adopted after her elderly dog passed a year ago. She’s a 3/4ish year old small pit mix. She’s very sweet, knows basic commands (sit, stay, how to walk on a leash), loves to play and cuddle with people, but she chases cats and I only live in a 700sqft apartment, so I can’t keep her.
So my question is how do you go about trying to figure out what “type” of home would be best for a dog? Obviously I wouldn’t recommend putting her with cats since she chases, but do you have specific traits you look for in a potential adopter? I’ve never had to rehome a dog before so I feel a little out of my element on what I should be looking for.
thanks in advance!
Oh I totally get it and its overwhelming to be tasked with this kind of thing for the first time. I'm sorry for your loss firstly. secondly I look for a lot of different things about a dog so that I can let people know about... lemme try and write em out. this isn't comprehensive but it's some of the most important ones imo:
how is the dog around food? how is she for meals and how is she for higher value treats like cheese? high value chews? any resource guarding of those things towards people or other dogs? if so, what kind and how does it show up? some resource guarding is totally normal but its important to know how it shows up/under what circumstances so people can be prepared.
how is the dog with other dogs? ever lived with other dogs? did your mom ever take her to places where she interacted with other dogs, like daycare or the dog park? if so, how did she respond to those places? how does she respond to male dogs vs female dogs? big dogs or small dogs? does she show any prey drive indications toward small dogs? is she ok to be walked in spaces where other dogs are? does she respond calmly to seeing other dogs while out on walks etc, or does she bark or lunge or show any other reactivity? and what about people? if you're walking the dog and someone unexpectedly walks around a corner at you, what's her reaction? does she react differently to children than to adults? how?
how is the dog about people in its space, for example, if your mom had visitors over? new people like home nurses etc that she hadn't met before? does she bark and then settle, is she rambunctious and overly friendly, is she cautious and warms up slowly, etc? can unfamiliar dogs enter her space without incident, or is that a no? like if someone had a friend visiting and they brought their dog with them, would this dog be able to accept a new visiting dog without issues?
how is the dog at the vet? in the vet waiting room? will she be upset about being in the waiting room with other strange dogs? does she need any special considerations for vet care such as being muzzled? can she get her nails trimmed easily by her person, paying her a cookie for each nail clipped or just having her put up with it, or does she need to be muzzled or sedated and have it done at the vet or by professionals?
is the dog fully house trained? is she crate trained at all? how is she being left alone? can she be left alone loose in the house safely? does she have any separation anxiety when her people leave? how does it manifest?
How is she on a leash? will she wear a harness/how sensitive is she to having gear put on her? does she pull at all? does she do ok in a "gets walked" type of situation for her potty breaks rather than a "fenced yard" situation?
how much stimulation and exercise does she need to "fill her cup"? all dogs need some, but some need more than others, and they can benefit from different kinds of exercise/enrichment/play and that is helpful information for new owner to know.
is she loud? how often and under what circumstances does she bark?
ordinarily I would also ask about how she is with cats but you've already answered that one.
its ok if you don't have the answer to all of these things!!! but they're all things that if you do know them it will allow you to give any potential adopters a really nice clear picture of what living with the dog is like, which will make things easier for everyone :) if you aren't familiar with stuff like dog body language I can tell you what to look for that will help you understand her reactions if they're subtle. i hope this helps and good luck to you and to her! hope you can easily find her a soft landing place
It's spring now which means the kids in my city have started drawing hopscotches on the sidewalk and as a rule I do every hopscotch I see because 1. Use it or lose it (ability to scotch) and 2. If a child got down on the hardscrabble streets of Boston Massachusetts to draw a scotch the least I can do is use it, but in doing the hopscotches, I've learned that about 50% of them are the typical 8-10 step scotch and the other 50% are. Somewhat avant-garde. And of course I'm not vetting the entire scotch before I start it so sometimes it's like haha 8 steps woo! Childlike whimsy! And sometimes they're 20 steps or 30 or they've got a section with three squares instead of two where you have to do a little Charleston to step on all three, or, memorably, FORTY one foot squares. A full BLOCK of jumping on one foot but I'm no quitter so once I've started Jigsaw Junior's fuckin hopscotch gauntlet I'm there til the end just a daily pot smoker in her thirties jumping kasa-obake style through an affluent suburb while some little proto-kennedy watches from his bedroom window rubbing his sadistic little third grade hands together and cackling. It's amazing. I love spring.
Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”
Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.
trans women and trans men and nonbinary people and everyone else being friends and holding each other close and falling in love and thinking of each other. I'm making this my future. let's all be okay together
Most animals have a fundamentally different experience of the world than we do, so the possibility of friendship between insects is a difficult thing to judge.
I think we can safely rule out friendship between cicadas and all the species of wasps that want to eat them. That still leaves tens of thousands of species of wasps that have no direct ecological relationship with cicadas, in what we will call the "kind of maybe plausible friendship zone". I think their friendship might go something like this:
wasp: *cleans wing with foot*
cicada:
wasp: *sniffs air with antenna*
cicada:
wasp:
cicada: Å̷͉̕Å̷̳͝A̷̫̭̒Ả̷̢̺̓A̵̢͒̏A̴̛̬̿Ä̴̯A̵̰̓̆A̷͈̔ͅÄ̵̡́ͅA̷̟̬̓A̷̭̓Å̸͔ͅA̷̘̰͐A̶̦͝Ȁ̸̦̝A̸̻͆A̷̬̽͊A̸̠͊A̴̮̎A̷̗̬͒̋Ǎ̴̰̳Ǎ̶̛͇A̷̩̣͗͌A̴̮͘ͅÃ̴ͅÀ̵̫
wasp: big shake :0 !!!
cicada:
wasp: *checks underside of leaf for aphids*
cicada: *falls off leaf*
The thing is nobody at pride is evaluating you to determine if you’re queer enough to be there because they’re too busy thinking “it’s so hot out” and “why is this lemonade 12 dollars?”
I know the midterm election is not until November 3, 2026, however I want everyone to be prepared and not say that they "didn't know" or "couldn't figure it out". This is a guide for everything you need to know about voting in the U.S. in the next major election - the 2026 midterm. I will be updating as needed. If you have a question about voting, registration, or anything else please send me an ask or message. State specific deadlines and info listed under the cut! Even if you have a super unique situation, I will absolutely research it for you!
Every seat in the House of Representatives is up for election!
What district am I in?
Who is my current rep?
What is the house of reps?
Critical House races
Governor races
Is my state having a governor election?
Senate races
Is there a senate race for my state?
What is the senate?
Who are my current senators?
Critical Senate races
General voting info
REGISTER TO VOTE
Already registered? Double check your registration has been accepted and validated
What are the deadlines for registering to vote for my state?
State specific rules for registering to vote
I need to change something on my registration
Who is eligible to vote? - anyone who is a U.S. citizen and over the age of 18
I have been convicted of a felony, can I vote?
I am a student who attends school a different state than where I am registered to vote -> resource linked here
How do I vote if I am in the military?
How can I vote (by mail, in person, etc)?
How does voting by mail work?
Can I register to vote online, or do I have to register in person?
How does voting in person work?
Where is my polling place?
Does my state offer early voting?
Does my state offer same day voter registration?
Do I need an ID to vote?
How do I vote if I am unhoused?
Will my ballot be invalidated if I take a photo of it, or post a photo of my ballot on social media?
I've mailed in my ballot, how can I check that it's been received?
What are the deadlines for mailing my ballot?
Can I vote if I am living overseas/in another country?
Does my work have to give me time off to allow me to vote?
I have a disability, what accessibility resources are there?
I need to report an issue or abuse regarding my ballot or voting experience
When are the results of the election announced?
Resources for non English speakers
I am homebound, and need assistance with mailing or filling out my ballot
Does it matter what party I put on my voter registration?
I am going through, or have gone through, DV/stalking/harassment, and I am worried about my address showing up on public voter registries
Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.
At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.
At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.
“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.
The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.
I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.
I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.
I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht.
i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.
i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.
as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.
disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.
at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.
i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.
i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.
“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”
we justifiably give Biden a lot of shit but I think "at least 3" is the funniest possible response to some right wing dipshit asking you how many genders there are
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