recharge

hope is a shield and a thing to defend/ an end in itself and a means to an end// (- @mumblesplash)

[bloodraven55]

picked a good day to catch up on witch hat atelier bc damn i needed this right now

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

staying housed: may/june edition

Hey, everyone; I'm sorry to be asking for help again, but it's that time. While I currently have an extremely limited and unreliable source of income to help with covering food and medicine (and I don't know how long that will remain viable), I'm still deep in the red mentally, physically, and financially. I wish I had been able to make this post with more of a runup to the deadline, but my current housing situation is extremely poorly equipped to handle the heat wave this area is experiencing, and I've been battling the resulting illness just to stay conscious a fair amount of the time.

For those who are unfamiliar with my story, more in-depth explanations of what has gone down up to this point are available here. To summarize the important parts:

I am a severely disabled queer trans person with long COVID, living in poverty after escaping a series of abusive living situations involving neglectful caretakers, physical and emotional abuse, financial and sexual exploitation, and domestic violence. The most recent of these, which I escaped earlier this year after a murder attempt which the law did nothing about, was my family who have mostly cut ties with me since.

I have almost no income, and since my escape have been living out of Airbnbs with the help of donations online. I have been trying to get into a more stable housing situation and apply for disability for quite a while now, but have been met with walls and obstacles at every turn; right now I am simply trying to a place where I don't have to lose sleep over where I'm planning to sleep next month, let alone how to pay for it.

My current housing is not safe for me to keep living in, for the reasons I mentioned as well as many others. I can't leave before July 26th, but if I can raise the money to return to my previous Airbnb--which, despite not being perfect, isn't Literally Falling Apart, and has a relatively trustworthy host who likes me and only ended our first tenancy due to a genuine misunderstanding--I will be back in a house with actual functioning A/C and plumbing, where strangers are not constantly cycling in and out in large numbers with little accountability for bad behavior, and where my host is not constantly trying to trick me out of hundreds or thousands of dollars.

I have severe autoimmune-induced nerve damage, including spinal injuries, and cannot drive, use any software not accessible from mobile, hold a steady job, or safely leave the house. I have to be extremely careful about even what position it's safe to lie down in without causing myself further injury, and because of this--combined with long-term abuse, neglect, food insecurity, and illness--I am severely weak and atrophied. I may have at least one abdominal hernia as a result, though jesus christ I really fucking hope not lol

The autoimmune aspect of my condition is extremely heat-sensitive, and my health spirals rapidly when I am too hot for too long. Not only does this cause pain, brain fog, and worsening nerve damage, it makes me prone to severe, dangerous repeat infections that have already caused me lingering lung damage and hearing loss. I am also extremely vulnerable to heat exhaustion and heat stroke, especially with the medication I am on to control the inflammation.

There is a horrendous heat wave going on where I live, and with the timing it will almost certainly segue straight into one of our godawful summers with no reprieve. We're talking regular heat indexes of 96°F with humidity that has not gone below 70% at very minimum for weeks straight. It's really fucking bad, y'all. I am terrified at the idea of being trapped outside when I am already struggling this much indoors.

All of this together is to say that if I am unhoused for even a day or two, I will almost certainly die or suffer serious, permanent injury, including loss or impairment of my ability to walk or use the bathroom unassisted. I do not have the ability to carry my belongings with me, either, so being unhoused for even one day will almost certainly mean losing everything I own and starting over. I absolutely cannot afford to do this. If it happens I am fucked.

The expenses I am currently trying to cover, in order of urgency:

$800 (the amount of this month's rent that I do not currently have, and do not foresee raising by June 10th without help. This is the top priority.)

$800 (first month's rent for the other place, which is due at time of booking. If I wait too long to do this, it may end up booked out from under me for months again.)

$150 (replacing the cushion of grocery money I've been lucky enough to build up for this month, which is currently earmarked for rent)

$190 (rent for the remainder of my stay in the current place, due July 10th)

$800 (rent for my second month at the other place; I am really hoping I won't be expected to start paying this before I've even arrived for the first month, but all my efforts to figure out how the fuck the payment scheduling works have failed, so better safe than sorry. May be due July 10th)

$130 (the rest of my grocery money for this month, which I may or may not be able to cover myself especially since I may have to start paying my own phone bill soon)

Every donation helps, and I am so unbelievably thankful to everyone who has helped me get this far. As hard as this year has been, and as hard as this summer will be if I live through it, I am alive because of you all, and for the very first time in my 30 years of life I am not actively being abused. I am struggling but I am still fighting, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to keep working toward a better life for myself instead of dying on the street.

pypl: manymogs

Current Goal: $800/$800

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

Rent for this month has been covered! Thank you all so so much, I would be out on the street two weeks from now without you all. ;;;_;;;

The bad news is that someone has booked another month out from under me at the other place at the last second. 🥲 The good news is that a) we're very close to making the goal for first month's rent at that place, b) it turns out that they will indeed not start charging more payments for that place after the first one until October, and c) once it has been booked I shouldn't have to worry about searching for places again until May of next year at the earliest.

The place I'm in currently is, to put it mildly, a hellhole full of mice with a locked thermostat and plumbing that is painful to use and has already flooded my room once. I really do not want to know how bad it will be during winter, please help me get out of here 🥲

-

Goal list, restructured again in order of urgency:

$890 (first month's rent at other place)

$950 (next month's rent at current place, now that I'll be staying here longer; I won't have an exact number until I extend my stay with the host, but this is the safest amount to assume it will be. Due July 10th)

$150 (to replace the grocery/medicine money I'm putting into the upcoming rent payment)

-

pypl: manymogs

Current Goal: $890/$890

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

First month's rent for the other place has been covered! The next goal is to cover next month's rent where I'm staying currently.

I've found another place nearby with much better reviews for the same cost; if I can raise rent for that place before someone else books the gap, I will be able to get out of this house two months earlier than otherwise, and spend two of the hottest months of the year in a less dangerous environment while I'm waiting for the longer stay to become available. If worst comes to worst, I can use that money to extend my stay here instead.

Thank you all so, so much for your help so far, every bit makes a difference and it will be so much easier to get on my feet when I'm not constantly stressing out about having to potentially arrange yet another place to stay in a few weeks.

Edit: Traction on this has been slowing down, and while I'm incredibly grateful for the assistance I've gotten so far, I do still need help; to that end, if you donate and send me a screenshot of having done so, I will send you a doodle of your choice in return. I have limited spoons and equipment for this, so the results may not be fancy and for that I apologize, but I need to get out of here sooner than later and I'm happy to give back what I can to make that happen.

-

pypl: manymogs

Current Goal: $230/$950

[odyver]

alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?

under 18, AI is a net positive

under 18, AI is a net negative

18-29, AI is a net positive

18-29, AI is a net negative

30-45, AI is a net positive

30-45, AI is a net negative

46-60, AI is a net positive

46-60, AI is a net negative

over 60, AI is a net postive

over 60, AI is a net negative

Remaining time: 1 day 12 hours

[odyver]

Question 2/3

How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?

Frequently (multiple times per month)

Often (multiple times per year)

Occasionally (a couple times per year)

Rarely (once every couple of years)

Never :(

Remaining time: 1 day 12 hours

[odyver]

Question 3/3

If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?

under 18, more inclined

under 18, less inclined

18-29, more inclined

18-29, less inclined

30-45, more inclined

30-45, less inclined

46-60, more inclined

46-60, less inclined

over 60, more inclined

over 60, less inclined

Remaining time: 1 day 12 hours

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

🫶

[elethart]

Finally some quality content in my portfolio

[inkskinned]

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’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[inkskinned]

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.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

[fforsythiaaa]

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.

[hypokeimena]

#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)

[hummingbird-hunter]

Hello leftist american. Controversial opinion incoming: rainbow capitalism is good actually. Not even in a way that it shows public opinion of queer people yes all that but like in general. "Oh the companies don't care about gays they just want to take your money" yeah no shit they're companies. Their job is to make money. And if they don't take money from queer audiences they're gonna switch to homophobic audiences. Rainbows on businesses don't just reflect the views of society, they uphold them by showing that being pro-queer isn't a social (or business) suicide and thus letting queer acceptance grow. Like yes obviously if a business puts rainbows on store windows but then donates their profits to Gay Conversion Torment Nexus or whatever then it's bad obviously though considering that doesn't stop y'all from earing at chick fil a it looks to me like y'all think the problem is with rainbows and not the homophobia. Like man I'm ukrainian i fucking love when apps change their icon to a rainbow in June or when a store has a rainbow or some shit because that was Not fucking Common at all and is only getting more normal now in the last few years. But you freaks decided that rainbows in stores were bad so now instead of rainbows there are confederate flags. That's all folks

[curioscurio]

My favorite Star Trek Captains as Troubled Bird Memes

[wingkink]

btw it's so fucking stupid you can be anxious physically in your body even after you've decided mentally you don't care. I'm supposed to be in charge here

[meyerlansky]

just. please know. that giffing scenes like that is a fucking nightmare labor of love.

to wit:

bottom's the raw capture, middle's just flat curve correction to make the footage visible, top is the final coloring with /counts seven adjustment layers to add back in Literally Anything But Yellow

every giffer i know does it out of love for the game, but for the record it's not... easy. it's not just slapping the footage in a cap grabber and posting whatever it spits out. "professional" lighting and color grading has only gotten waaay murkier and flatter in the fifteen years i've been giffing on here, so uh. don't repost gifs, please!

[infiniteeight8]

I thought the bottom was a black bar. I didn't even realize that was footage.

Everyone say thank you to your neighbourhood GIF maker! Giffers are so important to the fannish ecosystem, but to so many people the amount of work involved invisible.

[forestgreenandgray]

Hey do you know what rumination is?

Rumination is probably the most common type of OCD compulsion, but I rarely see anyone talking about it. I've talked to multiple people diagnosed with OCD who didn't even recognize it as a compulsion.

Basically, if you have OCD you have terrible intrusive thoughts. They can be about anything, but common themes are fear of being a bad person, fear of hurting someone, fear of contamination. etc.

Rumination is when you get stuck in a spiral. Rumination is when you spend hours catastrophizing, overthinking, analyzing, telling yourself it's going to be okay.

I'll say it again:

Rumination is a compulsion.

Rumination is a compulsion, and that means you have to stop doing it.

I did ERP (exposure response prevention) for my OCD with a therapist! For 9 months! And it did help, but the idea didn't really click until I found this website a couple years later.

And Oh My God. It made things make so much more sense, and I was able to pull myself out of an episode even though I wasn't in therapy or on meds at the time.

Genuinely if you have OCD, or even if you suspect you have OCD, I'm begging you to read some of these articles.

Like this was genuinely life changing for me.

Here are some of the ones that were most helpful to me:

Defining Rumination

How to Stop Ruminating

ERP Exercises for Compulsive Rumination

What to Do When You're Triggered

[voyage-of-the-porn-spreader]

tgis is so fucking funny to me. they accidentally Rock Lee'd a retired racehorse

[voyage-of-the-porn-spreader]

imagine youre a fat horse and your new neighbour is a personal trainer

[voyage-of-the-porn-spreader]

horse that reads Marcus Aurelius

[voyage-of-the-porn-spreader]

I was wrong. they didnt rock lee him. this horse is literally Gai. and i wish he was my dad

[sahlofolina]

there's this specific grief that comes with being trans and hearing another trans person has died. because no matter how far away they were, it never feels distant, it feels communal. cellular. like someone reached into the wiring of your own body and cut a thread. trans people learn early on in their journey - often even before they begin transitioning - that survival is treated like a political statement. joy is political. transition is political. getting to exist long enough to become boring is political.

and now mourning is political, too.

i'm so sorry, murry foust. i keep thinking about how tired you must have been. how tired all of us are. how humiliating it is that even when we die alone, people still laugh and debate whether we deserved to live a happy, dignified life at all.

there are trans kids online right now learning your name – and the names of juniper blessing, lucas redbeard knapp, aleanna belcher, and davonta curtis – through grief. through fear. through that horrible, familiar ache of "that could've been me." and i hate that this is part of our inheritance from one another. not just chosen family and resilience and beauty – but memorials. vigils. apology letters to ghosts.

you deserved better. you deserved to grow old and live a happy, fulfilled life. all of us do. i promise we will keep fighting for our community to have a better future and we'll carry our lost siblings the whole way through.

[malinaa]

what if we all explode

[derring-do]

This very production of Orpheus & Eurydice is now available to stream, free, for the month of June.

[grymmoires]

[inexplicably-gaining-followers]

This stupid exchange between friends has become a cultural icon.

[the-haiku-bot]

This stupid exchange

between friends has become a

cultural icon.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[headspace-hotel]

I feel that "lawn care" as promoted in the USA can be considered some kind of pseudoscience.

It doesn't have the conspiracy-theory-adjacent qualities of virtually every other "pseudoscience," which makes me hesitant to call it that, but the theory and method of it is still full of totally unsupported junk.

[headspace-hotel]

Where do I start?

I'm a gardener and so are the majority of people I spend time around. If you are mowing 3+ times a week and regularly spending money on fertilizer, soil tests, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, you have chosen the most expensive, time consuming thing you could possibly do with your yard. Unless you are a farmer as your livelihood, NOTHING else you could grow is that high maintenance. Nothing.

Most turfgrasses are invasive species. I said it.

The practice of "nuking" your lawn (killing everything in it and "starting over")...If you have a so-called "weed problem" this is probably the worst thing you can do.

Listen to me very carefully: "Weed" seeds are everywhere. There is, at all times, a supply of seeds lying dormant in the soil, waiting for the right conditions to sprout. (It's called the "soil seed bank" and you can look it up.) They are capable of "waiting" for years, even decades. Furthermore, most "weed" species spread by wind, meaning you can't physically eliminate them from an outdoor area unless you...surround your entire yard with an incredibly fine mesh netting and never leave, I guess.

Heavy management will make your "weed" problem progressively worse and worse because those plants are specifically adapted to colonize barren areas that recently underwent disastrous events that killed off most life.

Basically all plants are adapted to live in the company of other organisms, and suffer when there are no other plants around. "Weeds" with deep taproots penetrate into and aerate the soil. Clover puts nitrogen in the ground that other plants need. Low ground covers keep the soil moist and stop the sun from baking your grass to a crisp.

The plant "taking over" your lawn is probably not killing your grass. Your grass is dying and it's being replaced by something more suited to the environment. This is supposed to happen.

Monocultures are notoriously susceptible to disease and mass die-offs. "Oh no a big patch of my lawn is dying!" Yeah, that happens when you plant monocultures. You set yourself up for this.

"Why is there a bare patch in my yard/why won't grass grow well here?" Because in nature, each plant has a relatively narrow range of conditions it likes to grow in, so other plants it might otherwise compete with can stick to their preferred conditions and nobody has to compete directly. Win-win. Not all parts of your yard have the exact same amount of sun, moisture, etc. Expecting the plant life to look the same is unrealistic.

Let me make this very clear: It is fully impossible to "solve" the problem of plants popping up in your yard that aren't your one favored variety of grass. You will be buying herbicides for the rest of your life, and it will get worse, not better, because willy-nilly use of herbicides is leading to plants developing herbicide resistance faster than we can come up with new herbicides.

[headspace-hotel]

@kidpixdeluxe-4

From my limited knowledge of ecology, "but this is what natives have been saying for YEARS" basically sums up literally all work that has been done with ecology in north america

[convexcave]

ok so instead of going on my usual the earth is doomed spiral I started looking into solar punk solutions and stumbled across the practice of permaculture & found a free 50 video series from the university of oregon on it if anyone else would like to learn abt ways we can actually start restoring earths whole deal

Permaculture Design Course - Oregon State University Ecampus

Permaculture Design Course - Oregon State University Ecampus

[anarchistmemedistro]

The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies of Ecological Revolution from Below : Peter Gelderloos : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : I

Are alternative energies and Green New Deals enough to deliver environmental justice? Peter Gelderloos argues that international governmenta

The Solutions are Already Here, Chapter One, A Wide-Angle View

Podcast Episode · Audible Anarchism · 11/01/2025 · 2h 14m

Agroecology - Wikipedia

[wispthicket]

Another cool resource with information on sustainable waste management and other environmental pursuits! https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/

This is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes goes offline