subterranean gremlin

[vinelark]

hmm my former landlords are trying to deduct a frankly off the rails amount of money from our security deposit…my time has come once again

[vinelark]

i was chatting with a coworker about this whole saga today and someone nearby popped into the convo to be like “you know, you can use chatgpt to write a demand letter!” and i sort of blinked and went, “okay. i did it myself, though.” and she was like, “yeah but it can tell you what laws and stuff are relevant” and i was like, “i also did research myself.” and she was very well-meaning but she said “chatgpt” like six more times before she left and it was genuinely baffling to me, this insistence on it.

and in the one hand, did i enjoy spending hours researching housing regulations in my state? not especially. drafting this email was stressful. but on the other hand, did i learn a lot by doing that research? yeah, i did. i’m more prepared for my current and future leases. i used some of that info to make decisions about a new renter’s insurance policy. i already told three different people about things i learned that are relevant to their leases that they didn’t know yet. (pro tip: see if you’re supposed to be getting annual interest payments on your security deposit! also look up what specific appliances your landlords must legally provide as of 2026.) i also got to reconnect with my cousin for a bit because her job gave her specific insight on part of the situation, and i’d much rather do that than have a chatbot make shit up for me.

also, i drafted that email with the power of friendship (friends angry on our behalf) and spite (from landlords telling me not to do my research). chatgpt could never.

(we got the money back, by the way 💪)

[chantylay]

Please never use generative AI tools for any kind of legal dispute. It does not know what laws or court cases are. It will make up something that sounds favorable to you, and you will get crushed. There are free resources out there to learn this stuff. And sometimes attorneys will offer free consultations or volunteer at a free legal clinic. OP didn't just do it themselves to do extra work or some shit. This is really the only viable way to do things short of hiring a professional to do it for you.

ChatGPT is not easier or faster in matters like this. It is a shot to the foot.

[doyoulovethewayzeylily]

you'll feel like a total dipshit train wreck and no matter what some girl is gonna see you and think "role model". you can't kill yourself you have to go be clocky in the gas station so a 14 year old can have the trajectory of her life altered forever

[duchessvongooseberg]

as annoying as it is to work fast food, at my previous job one time a kid recognized the theta delta pin on my hat and was so fucking excited because i was the first other therian they had ever encountered offline.

"hey....are you a therian?" "yeah!" "what kind of animal?" "eh, some kinda dog" "😲😀 im like a wolf coyote hybrid" "that's fuckin awesome"

to be weird is to cast lifelines all around you

[doyoulovethewayzeylily]

tags from @k1ntsug1-r0b0t-g1rl

what really drives me nuts is that like. this happens an average of x times per year as a visibly weird person, but we only get made aware of it a small fraction of the time. you can't kill yourself you have to be clocky in the gas station.

[analog-delight]

Being clocky when i was working as a barista was one of my big joys. Being clocky when i was teaching high schoolers how to play the marimba was my reason for being for half a decade. It sucks how scared I am to leave the house I live in now. But I still need to try and be clocky at the grocery store. I wish i had a job to be clocky at. Being visibly me is one of the most radical acts I'm capable of, and I hope that one day we live in a world where it isn't radical at all.

[doyoulovethewayzeylily]

that's exactly what I was feeling when I wrote this. we all find ways to defy our fear, love is an excellent motivator.

[babyjanedough]

Already know I wanna send this to people on June 1

[isuckattechnology]

Audio:

Erika, referencing ebenezer scrooge: You, boy! What day is it?!

Brennan, as a young boy: It's Pride, bitch!

[json-derulo]

I'm not gonna articulate this well, but there's this phenomenon I keep seeing on the left that I'll call "bean soup rhetoric," wherein someone fails to understand that they are not the target audience for a particular message, or just can't conceptualize why a speaker would craft their message differently to resonate with a target audience that doesn't already completely agree with them.

"The 'God Made Trans People' billboard is stupid! God didn't make me! I'm an atheist!" Okay. The billboard sits along a major highway in Kansas. We can deduce that the target audience is not you—it's the centrist evangelical Christians driving along that road who could probably be persuaded to become allies as long as we choose our words carefully and don't make them feel attacked for not already knowing everything about trans rights issues. Another one I see a lot is, "We shouldn't be talking about how right-wing legislation catches [privileged in-group] in the crossfire when [marginalized out-group] suffers far more!" I know. I agree with you. Which is why you and I are not the intended audience of this argument!

The entire point of rhetoric is to win over someone who doesn't already fully agree with you. In this case, let's say that someone is Jennifer, the moderate center-right mom in your neighborhood who doesn't really know or care about transgender issues but would be absolutely horrified by the idea of her teenage daughter having to submit to an invasive inspection of her body just to be allowed to play soccer. Tell her, "Banning trans students from sports will inevitably subject all student athletes to invasive gender-policing," or "Legal restrictions on gender-affirming care will make it harder for you to access the hormone replacement therapy you take to treat menopause symptoms," and she is more likely to question her existing beliefs and listen to the rest of what you have to say than if you lead with leftist talking points that she already has a calcified opinion about or which she thinks do not personally affect her.

Tailoring the argument to the things she already cares about does not mean we're forgetting that she has more privilege than most—entirely the opposite, in fact. A privileged ally can be extremely valuable. Jennifer votes in every election. And so do all the other ladies at her book club, and church, and in the PTA, and those folks listen to Jennifer. There's a reason both parties were courting suburban women so hard in the last election cycle! If we can find common ground with her on this, if we can get her calling her representatives and talking to her friends and phone-banking and door-knocking and making a stink, that's how the needle starts to move. If I can convince her to take her support away from the candidates who are actively restricting my rights and throw it toward those who want to restore and expand those rights...then I'm sorry, but Jennifer is a more valuable ally to me than the people who agree that the legal boundaries of gender ought to be abolished altogether but refuse to actually do anything except complain online about how both sides are equally bad because the right is trying to force everyone to drink the cyanide kool-aid while the left keeps serving bean soup and they don't like bean soup

[catasters]

[sighinastorm]

Amazing photograph taken in the fraction of a second where the target doesn’t even know he’s being tackled yet. Idiot.

[specialagentartemis]

Aro and ace activism is housing reform, is well-funded public housing, is an expansion of affordable housing, is allowing single people to get affordable and public housing, is rent controls to make it possible for single people to be able to afford to live alone on a single salary.

Aro and ace activism is healthcare reform, so that no one needs to rely on a spouse for health insurance, so that healthcare is available to everybody regardless of income, so that no one’s lived experiences or basic dignity are dismissed or overridden by doctors

Aro and ace activism is well-funded and expansive public transit, so that you don’t need to have someone on hand to drive you places if you are incapacitated, so that you don’t have to pay for an ambulance if you need to get to the hospital quickly

Aro and ace activism is disability and elder care services, so that no one needs a spouse to care for them, so that no one needs children to care for them, so that marriage is not a bind for disabled people, so that people on disability who want to and can live alone can

Aro and ace activism is community-building, it’s public events, it’s free social activities, it’s mutual aid, it’s activities that bring community members together without socializing relying on just a romantic partner

Aro and ace activism is developing a culture of believing when people tell you who they are and what they want rather than assuming you know them better than they know themselves

Aro and ace activism means a better world for people without “normative” desires or “normative” social support, which means a better world for everybody

[statisticalcats2]

There are gonna be people who won't like hearing this but if you want to live in a world where mixed marriages, families, and adoptions (particularly POC adopting outside their "race") aren't maligned and discriminated against, then you have got to get more chill about seeing someone partaking in something cultural that you don't think fits the "race" you perceive them as.

[statisticalcats2]

It's a vague memory now, it was a vague memory even at the time I made this post, but I think what sparked this was remembering stupid comments I saw about a Chinese-American cookbook that were complaining about it being written by a white woman and then I looked the white woman up and the briefest research showed she was adopted as a child into a Chinese-American family and just....

*pinches nose*

Fellas, is it cultural appropriation to inherit your family's culture but you don't pass the blood quantum test?

All of you are literally just racist. You've come full-circle. You're working under the belief that people are supposed to "keep to their own kind" and that means the socially invented concept of "race", and "race mixing" of any sort is unnatural.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

What discussing Cultural Appropriation was supposed to be about: why does Cheryl get to wear Dreads to work but Tyrone doesn’t?

What it became: Segregation 2 electric boogaloo

[closet-keys]

when thinking about how oppression works, on a structural level, my guiding principle is that I must spend at least as much time looking down as I do looking up.

what do I mean by this? here's an example. when my surgery is delayed multiple times, I spend a little time looking up (there is only one surgeon in the entire area who will perform this surgery on trans people, so every trans person's surgical timeline is bottle-necked and delayed by months every time he goes to a conference or takes a vacation or experiences an injury. in other words, if I was cis, I would not encounter this difficulty in accessing surgery). and then I spend time looking down (due to nonstop harassment and legal threats, this practice now only treats adults and will no longer perform surgeries on minors. in other words, my access to surgery is predicated on adult privilege I have at the direct expense of trans youth's lack of access).

if you do not build a habit around thinking in this way, you will become the person Audre Lorde describes as "so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman's face." If we are seeking to dismantle structures of oppression, rather than to simply use and climb them, then we absolutely must make a practice of looking in both directions, especially when we feel like we're on the bottom.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

re ehrc guidance. which is not legally binding.

[apolloendymion]

thinking again about vampirism as disability

[apolloendymion]

what if you slept all day and woke at night, lonely and frustrated. what if you couldn't go to social events, or even mundane public spaces like stores. what if you couldn't see the sun. what if you couldn't go to the pool, or the beach, or the creek. what if you couldn't eat what everyone else is eating. what if you couldn't eat at all. what if your basic needs came at the cost of your loved ones' quality of life. what if you became agitated, confused, maybe even violent if your needs weren't met. what if people blamed your behavior on demons, or worse, your own inherent evil. what if people saw you as a threat to your own community. what if the default response to your suffering was either indifference or violence. what if people thought you were better off dead, that you no longer count as human, that they're doing you a favor by letting you disappear. what if people assumed you must somehow deserve all of this. what about that.

[crabussy]

every time a trans man who does not want to be called a twink gets called a twink I will personally go out into the world and rend 1 parked car to shreds with my teeth. cut it out

[crabussy]

walk with me for a moment. let's think for a sec. I'm not upset but I do want people to understand. do you think assigning a label associated with feminine features, hairlessness, skinniness/lack of muscle tone, and high pitched voices is something that most trans men would feel comfortable being associated with? why or why not?

[crabussy]

of COURSE there are trans men who don't mind it, or trans men who actively enjoy being called a twink. but I am not hairless by choice. I WANT fat and muscles and body hair and a deep voice. and a lot of trans men that get called twinks DO HAVE THESE THINGS, yet they get called "twink" anyway. why do you think that might be?

it's okay if you've done this in the past. maybe just check in before you call your friend or acquaintance something with so many specific, potentially disheartening associations!

[crabussy]

I wonder if the inverse occurs with trans women getting called "butch" too. because there are many wonderful butch trans women!!! but if you call trans women "butches" for traits like short hair or body hair despite otherwise feminine presentation, maybe think about why that is? is she really a butch? or is that just her body? just ask first!

nonbinary people too. are they really "masc presenting" or is that just their body? are they really "fem presenting" or is that just their body? let's all try to be a bit more cognisant of the language we use to describe the trans people in our lives, yeah? [: it's worth thinking about. don't worry yourself into a hole about it, of course! but it's something to check every now and then.

[strongcat]

no need to wonder, it definitely does happen to trans women. and honestly for some time i felt kind of pressured to identify as butch bc being a lesbian it seemed like the only way to get other lesbians to accept my body as it is. but that literally is just my body

[dawn4ngel]

[bbcwhereareyou]

[punchholesinthesky]

[tlirsgender]

Do you think it's like a rite of passage for every new generation of xmen to momentarily feel like it's kind of fucked up to be trying to kick the shit out of a senior citizen until magneto crumples someone into a cube like a trash compactor in front of them and they're just like Oh Ok

[tlirsgender]

On the one hand I'm sure everyone else is very heavily emphasizing that magneto is Theee big bad of all time and so on and so forth the whole time the new ones are training but also. Like. Imagine you're the new new new mutants or whatever and somebody manages to actually knock magneto over and he stays on the ground for a second and you're kind of looking at each other like. Guys isn't he *really* old what if we just killed magneto & then the entire city starts shaking while he's getting back on his feet & you're like ohhh he's just REALLY ANGRY now. Ok :) oh that's bad :/ oh shit. Uh oh

[tlirsgender]

[ID: tags from @transguyhawkeye that read, "#having a panic attack over whether you just broke magnetos hip meanwhile he just separated wolverine into recycling and organics for the #third time this week" /end ID]

[corrya]

How it feels watching your tumblr mutuals engage in discourse about fandoms you've never heard of

[assaultmystic-archive]

whats cool about being trans is my parents are totally right. i did kill their beautiful son. im the thing that animates his corpse in an ever more convincing parody of a happy girl. i devoured him from the inside out and now there is nothing left of him and he is dead dead dead and there is only me, with my hollow eyes and dark eyeliner and long hair, and my big smile. my limp, effeminate gestures belie the marionetting of the boy they loved. my fagginess is his death. already his body becomes a fitter home for my parasitism in full; the tits, the hips, the thighs. sorry about your kid. thanks for the biomass <3

[mybisexualwife]

[hexjulia]

wanting to vent a bit/being worried about privacy will have you posting like i'm dealing with issues and problems. situations have happened to me. and there are emotions i'm experiencing about this. or not. gotta keep 'em on their toes.

[worldwright]

yeah im aromantic yeah i think marriage is stupid but even i can understand the appeal of committed two-person relationships. being able to say that this person is your First Other, that when you think of people other than yourself they're the one you think of first. and knowing that you are their First Other, as well. there's a comfort to that