Solarpunk Gnome

Find me at solarpunkstation.com or on Mastodon at sunbeam.city/@solarpunkgnome

[transcarcinization]

there are a lot of similar experiences between being nonbinary and being an atheist, mostly being forced into conversations where you have to be 100% polite and respectful of the other person’s worldview even though to you it sounds like absolute cuckoo bananas, and then they look you in the eyes and go ‘you’re fucking cuckoo bananas’

[transcarcinization]

i do actually respect and like both people with genders and religious people. sometimes i don’t understand things but we are all so wildly different and i have seen gender and religion bring light and joy into people’s lives, and i love that they mean those things for other people. i will probably never actually ‘get’ it but i don’t have to…. i know how to mind my business

HOWEVER this same energy is very RARELY returned to ME!!!!!!

[transcarcinization]

oh definitely that as well! 🤝

[feefal]

Haaah… I’m working on a piece revolving around Dead internet theory, but I’m feeling stuck. Do people even know what dead internet theory is?? Its a conspiracy theory that online interaction is being replaced by bots, feeding off one another (eventually leading to an internet landscape consisting mostly of AI)

Anyway, if anyone has any ideas for this one - let me know!

[thepioden]

I'm developing a curiosity and interest in fiber arts, someone please stop me before it's too late

[mumblesplash]

scurvy has got to have one of the biggest disease/treatment coolness gaps of all time. like yeah too much time at sea will afflict you with a curse where your body starts unraveling and old wounds come back to haunt you like vengeful ghosts. unless☝️you eat a lemon

[kata4a]

[storybookprincess]

so a very long time ago, my dad worked with an arson investigator

this guy was often one of the first people on the scene following a suspected arson, once emergency services had done what they needed to do. at times, there were also civilians on the periphery. often, they were freaking out, and understandably so; their home or workplace had just, quite literally, gone up in smoke

this investigator wouldn’t try to calm them down. he wouldn’t comfort them or be a shoulder to cry on.

instead, he’d walk up to the person most visibly losing their shit, hand them a fire extinguisher, and say “hey, can you keep an eye out for any other fires, and if you see one, can you put it out with this?”

of course, there was no actual risk of another fire. he wouldn’t be on the scene investigating if there was even a chance that the fire wasn’t completely put out. but the bystander didn’t need to know that

because that person, without fail, would immediately pull it together, take the fire extinguisher, and stand guard. they were, at least temporarily, calm enough for this investigator to do this job

my dad has told me the parable of the fire extinguisher a hundred times, and i think about it a lot. i think about what it says about people and crises. i think about what it says about the grounding power of having a purpose. and i think about the importance of letting someone help me through something, even if that help is just going to be another casserole to throw into the freezer, because useless or not, that fire extinguisher might be the only thing holding them together

[schizoauthoress]

Today I learned that Van Halen have that rider in their contract about “a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed” in order to know at a glance if the promoter read the entire contract.  And the reason they do THAT is because they once had a stage collapse because a promoter hadn’t read the proper way to set up all the specific technical stuff.

So if the band goes in the dressing room or catering and sees brown M&Ms, they know they have to double-check the stage setup for safety.

[darkfrog24]

I heard about this on Freakonomics Radio.  Turns out the bit about no brown M&Ms is HUGE, in BIG font, bold, underlined and quotated like they’re on the Group W Bench.

The band was all, “We have fifty-pound lights hanging over our heads and fire being shot out of cannons.  We had to know whether they read our safety regs so we didn’t flamebroil any roadies.”

[gobbochune-deactivated20241018]

interesting how this has become a meme in the music industry about divas. i’ve always heard jokes that amount to “this stuck up celebrity hates the green gummy bears!! they’re refusing to perform just for that???” and its reading stuff like this that i realise how that joke might have come about. people get grumpy that the band refuses to play but cant admit its because THEY’RE incompetent, so they make it all about the M&Ms. another example of artists using a creative method to ensure they have a perfectly reasonable request fulfilled that is then bastardised by lazy people who wanna make money off them. 

[thesylverlining]

…this is like the music industry version of hearing the truth behind the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit

[sainamoonshine]

This is also why a lot of book reviewers / editors / agents will have some unique thing listed in their submission requirements, ranging from « you must have this specific word in your subject line » to « you must add a cat emoji at the bottom of your email ». Because that’s a way for them to know if the person emailling them has actually read the requirements and isn’t just blindly emailing them the one specific genre of book they listed as a hard no.

[ramblesamongstardust]

I understand the "I will die for you" ship dynamic, but what about the "I will not let you die, I will not let myself die- we will, at any cost, survive" kind of couple?

[stuck-in-jelly]

One of my favorite stories to tell about myself from when I was a kid is the story how my grandma’s “Catching Fairies” game was banned because of me

So when I was really little my grandma had this game she made up, she’d give me and all my cousins jars and containers and tell us that in her garden there were fairies but they were smart and tricky so they disguised themselves as caterpillars and butterflies and as grasshoppers and worms.

Whoever caught the most ‘Fairies’ won but we had to set them all free because they tended to the garden

One summer day my brothers were at the age they were dreading ‘girly’ stuff so I was playing alone

At this point I had met all the fairies in the garden and I was getting bored without any competition and with finding the same old fairies

But then just as I was begrudgingly heading back to my grandma with the same fairies as usual I found a new fairy!

I thought she was so beautiful! She was resting on the sparkly thread in the leaves and her black body gleamed in the sunlight, she had long legs and a cool red spot on her back

Excited I coaxed her onto my hand and was so giddy I found a new one! I rushed back to the farm house to show my Grandma and Dad, gently carrying my new friend.

But when my Dad and Grandma turned around to see what fairy I caught I saw the color drain from their faces and both of them freeze, I could tell something was wrong but didn’t understand

My dad congratulated me and asked me if he could see the pretty fairy, I let him but felt a little nervous seeing how terrified he looked as she moved into his hands from mine.

Slowly he walked back towards the door, my grandma clutching my shoulders then my dad LAUNCHED the fairy back into the garden which I thought was rather rude

Then we had a nice long talk about Black Widow spiders

[stuck-in-jelly]

Artistic recreation of my life flashing before my father’s eyes

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

I got blood inside my phone charging port and now it only works 50% of the time

[thefiresontheheight]

get yellow bile in there next to balance the humors of the phone

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

you. I like the way you think. put on this little outfit I want to make you my royal advisor.

[translatingpostsinfrenchcanadian]

chaumas-deactivated20240115

J'ai du sang dans l'chargeur de mon téléphone pi asteur y marche juste 50% du temps

thefiresontheheight

met d'la bile jaune dedans après pour balancer l'humeur de ton téléphone

chaumas-deactivated20240115

toi. J'aime ta façon d'penser. met s'te p'tit costume la pi t'es mon conseiller royal.

[misericordiia]

"what are your pronouns?" well im mixed, she/her on my mothers side and he/him on my fathers side, either works

[enki2]

[mar64ds]

made a picture i will use a lot

[elierlick]

Trans women protesting outside Scottish Parliament.

I love it when trans women protest topless. If they're arrested, the state must admit they're women. If they aren't, it shows the glaring contradictions of labeling trans women as legally male. It helps their cause either way.

[scribefindegil]

Everyone is so weird about people who cry easily. Fellas, is it evil and manipulative to *checks notes* have an involuntary stress response?

[bluishorange]

actually a coworker of mine said something interesting about this. I was saying that I truly can’t help how easily I cry, and I hate when people assume I do it on purpose.

and he paused for a second and then said, “when you’ve been taught from a young age that crying is weak and you should train yourself never to cry for any reason, you assume that everyone else has trained themselves too, so anyone who cries has to be doing it on purpose. it took me a long time to realize that wasn’t true.”

listen we’re never gonna run out of ways the patriarchy hurts all of us.

[queerism1969]

[headspace-hotel]

kentuckygender is when you aren't a girl but you still are somehow a horse girl

[answeringmysister]

[tinybro]

so we have a conversational safeword in my group of friends and it’s great, idk why more people don’t do this. whenever someone wants a subject to be dropped immediately no questions asked we just say “spleen” and we stop immediately and it’s a really good way to avoid crossing the line between teasing friends and genuinely upsetting them by accident, or stopping debates from turning into actual arguments

[the-hopeful-lark]

Wait but no this is actually a brilliant idea. 

[imakegoodlifechoices]

When I was a little baby high school student, I used to do the Living Chessboard at our local Renaissance Faire. We always used “forsooth” to indicate if someone was actually injured and needed to quickly end a choreographed fight. It was also very useful when doing little street improvisations because if someone tried to stop you, you could say “forsooth good sir, I must leave.” and they knew you couldn’t do a scene right then. We all used it in real life too, to say “no really” and it was amazing because there was a word used in a casual setting that meant “I’m not playing, I need you do listen to me.” So if someone tried to pick me up or tickle me, I could say “forsooth stop.” And I was instantly obeyed. I had “forsooth” long before I learned what a safeword was, and having a non-sexual safeword for everyday use amongst a circle of friends was the best thing ever. It made me feel very safe and listened to, even as a tiny 14 year old. Because let’s be honest, 14 year old me was teeny tiny and adorable and it’s easy to coo at kids when they say “no don’t pick me up!” but to have a word that every single person respected to mean “whatever I say after this MUST be listened to” was amazing. It gave me a definitive voice when it would have been easy to dismiss me.

So basically having platonic safewords is awesome and I’m all for it.

[briarpatch-kids]

Not to be like, "If I can do it, so can you!!" Inspiration Porn-y Bullshit about my 5k, but like... it would be awesome if you used this as a Sign and started going out and getting a little bit of "safe for you specifically" exercise that makes you feel good and may even help a little with pain. At any rate, the "I had a good workout" pain feels different and better than "I hurt because my disability hurts" pain and its nice sometimes lol.

I started out in a manual wheelchair going around my house once a day, then started going to a walking path and slowly worked my way up to a mile distance, then two, then three. You can race in a wheelchair alongside runners on foot in local races, thats what I do. Think like, "The Great Bumfucksville Peach Run" or whatever. Those kinds of races. Some of them even have a 1 mile run thats way more doable for beginners and people with less stamina.

The important part is that the exercise is safe FOR YOU, and you aren't harming yourself in the long term with it. My doctor recommends for me to go to the point of fatigue but to avoid exhaustion. I take this as stopping when I go "should I do another lap or should I stop here?" instead of going till I can't go any further. It took me like... 6+ months to do my first 5k and about a month to get back into it after a 2 year break, your times may vary depending on condition, fitness, disability, and equipment.

For reference, if this post breaks containment, I have mitochondrial myopathy (think CFS + Muscular Dystrophy) and use a CRT powerchair and face mask ventilator in daily life. I'm in the severe disability category so I'm not just talking out my ass. This was actually very hard for me and I'm proud as hell. 5ks are difficult even for able bodied people.

IMPORTANT EDIT!!!!

Make sure you know what your baseline fatigue feels like and what it feels like when you're about to work yourself into a flare-up!!! That's the only way you can exercise SAFELY with a fatigue heavy disability! Stop BEFORE you reach "flare up" fatigue and dont restart until you reach your baseline again! This is not medical advice, just advice from someone who has worked themself into a flare before doing this.