going on HRT is a serious decision you should make with the utmost gravity. people might think you're cool, badass even. You might find yourself happy with your life, approaching the world with newfound wisdom one way or another. It might be what you want. It might get you off. It might just be a cool story to tell people. I, myself, found the initial experience was like I had sleepwalked through a nightmare for a quarter century - and for the first time, not just the first time I could remember but actually the first time, I was awake, and the sun was shining, and the world was beautiful. So obviously all of those are risks
Conservative beauty standards are back with a vengeance which means it's especially important to go out this summer with bellies out and bodies unshaved. Also be unapologetically disabled with mobility aids and wearable medical devices and stim toys and ear defenders and all that stuff. You need it. People need to see it. Everyone needs to be reminded that life is unquestioningly more enjoyable when you're not living inside an arbitrary set of rules created by people who are offended by all the wrong things.
Back when I was still in high school while visiting my grandparents out of state, my mom took me to a quilt show where there was this one appliqué wall hanging piece that haunts me to this day. It was of a girl who’d gotten her kite stuck in a tree, and had the vibes of an Edward Gorey piece, all black and white except for the kite, which was red.
And the damn thing was reversible. If a piece of material was black with white spots on one side, the other would be white with black stripes. The dude who made the piece said he had to go to material shops across 4 different states to make the concept work. Understandably, he wasn’t interested in selling at that time, so I snapped a few crappy pictures on my pre-smart phone cellphone.
Except my phone unexpectedly broke shortly thereafter, and I lost those pictures forever. It’s been like 15 years, and I still think of that little wall hanging quilt and feel a little sad that I’ll never see it again.
Anyway, quilts are art and too many people sleep on that artistry without really understanding the work that goes into making them
my cat is completely obsessed with watching the bathroom sink drain and I have started calling this "her shows." as in when I'm in the bathroom and she meows and runs up I'll be like "oh you want to watch your shows?" and run the faucet for an extra few seconds so it fills a little. she will then sit there at the edge of the sink for ages totally entraptured by the drain. blorbo from her sink
A planned community in Arizona has used time-honored Mediterranean strategies to keep temperatures down and attitudes high. Western civiliza
"A planned community in Arizona has used time-honored Mediterranean strategies to keep temperatures down and attitudes high.
Western civilization has grown remarkably climate conscious over the last 20 years, but not when it comes to building, civic planning, and especially zoning. Perhaps the interiors of buildings are becoming more climate adapted, and in some cases the facades as well, but in a way that’s a little like inventing a freezer designed to keep ice cream frozen while sitting next to a fire.
Wooden or concrete boxes arranged side-by-side across leveled ground with sprawling, largely treeless gardens and concrete sidewalks alongside wide, blacktop roads is simply a culture of construction that has to be abandoned if living in a world of 2°C or higher annual temperatures [or, hopefully, less than that, but nonetheless likely over 1.5°C] is to be tolerable.
Fortunately for Arizonans, change may have finally arrived in the form of a carless, planned community that looks and feels like a Greek island village.
In the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, Culdesac has arisen as a 17-acre mixed-use neighborhood from the ground up to stay cool and local, taking the concept of the 15-minute city, where anything a resident might need is only 15 minutes away, and putting a Mediterranean spin on it.
Buildings are tall, thick, and totally white. The residential areas look like they were built atop of the ashes of the Phoenix zoning code burnt in effigy. Crammed together, they create narrow streets and alleys that are almost constantly shaded, through which wind is channeled and accelerated in passing.
Windows open towards each other, allowing wind that enters one building to exit into another, while the total lack of asphalt means that the ground temperatures are a staggering 50-60°F lower than pavements beyond the limits of Culdesac.
No privately-owned cars are allowed to enter the neighborhood, in which electric bikes, robotic mini taxis, and light rail shuttle people around town, to downtown Phoenix, or out to the airport.
The street life is lively—there are no cars to bisect movement between the 21 different businesses and eateries, among which is a James Beard Award-winning Mexican restaurant, DIY ceramic business, and some stores run out of apartments—a big no-no under Phoenix zoning laws.
“Once you pull the cars out,” Architect Daniel Parolek who designed Culdesac, told BBC, “there’s so much more opportunity to make a vibrant, thriving community.”
His inspiration was sun-soaked locales like Italy, Greece, and Croatia, where town centers were designed before the automobile and before air conditioning.
Technically speaking, the entire Culdesac neighborhood is one apartment complex, but the paseos, or little alleyways, open up into plazas of open space exactly liked one would expect in a little village in the Cyclades.
Because no one has to jump in a car to get from place to place, people run into each other, sparking conversations, relations, and breaking through the counterintuitive phenomenon of big city loneliness, which in Phoenix hits particularly hard.
“Culdesac Tempe has shown that people do want to live car-free in the US, even in a metro area like Phoenix that’s often seen as the poster child for car dependency,” says Erin Boyd, Culdesac’s government relations and external affairs lead. “This success has shifted the conversation around what’s possible in American development.”
I’d die on the hill that “stranger danger” is a deeply unhelpful mentality to have. “Ooooh everyone is out to get me they’re all gonna perpetrate harm that’s actually more likely to come from someone I already know. I better never talk to anyone in my community who I don’t already know, just to be safe. I’m sure there are no other biases interwoven with this mentality” like oh my god human traffickers do not just randomly spawn in every parking lot. You don’t have to go solo hitchhiking across the country but you also don’t have to live in fear that every guy on the street is the knife man who’s gonna get you. Like have situational awareness, yeah. But most of the time the guy on the street is not knife man he’s actually just a guy on the street and he’s probably pretty chill, and you’re driving yourself crazy by living in a constant state of unnecessary fear.
Like always safety comes first, especially if you’re in a marginalized group more likely to be targeted by random people around you. But that’s different from stranger danger. I might even say that stranger danger is something that contributes to marginalized groups getting targeted by random people. Which strangers do you find distrust worthy? Why? Does vague distrust justify harmful actions in the name of self defense? Stranger danger draws everyone away from more important issues of safety (underlying bigotries, systemic injustices, abuse in the home, etc) and towards an amorphous boogeyman that has no solution, because it’s not the real cause or culprit.
Chat, is it considered “abusive roommate behavior” to release a raccoon into the living space after you have asked your roommate for months to please clean up their messes (they do not pay any of the mortgage)
For context, when I used to live alone I would do something called “Princess Time” where I would do an initial sweep (to remove any significant hazards) and then I would release a raccoon into the living area and clean. This helped because I would 1) feel like a princess and 2) the raccoon would bring attention to things my ADHD brain had decided to ignore and I’d quickly clean that stuff up.
So like, if I’m expected to clean the house now, I will be doing it in the way that is most effective for me. And anything that has not been cleaned up after months of having sit-down talks and sending reminders and being promised things will change, might be deemed “trash” by the trash panda and thrown away.
We haven’t done since we moved into the house, because I didn’t want to cause my roommate or their cats destress or have their things destroyed by a raccoon
I am a raccoon biologist and one of the few people in the state allowed to take in captive bred raccoons that had been possessed illegally. The raccoon in the photos is Moonshine, but she is currently at the animal sanctuary where I work as I had been quarantining multiple new intakes from an abuse case. I still have two males (Rum Tum Tugger and Electra) left in my home enclosure as we are getting them neutered and then hopefully sending them to an AZA accredited zoo.
I wanna make things very clear that underneath all the whimsy, I am a trained professional.
okay, we managed to get through the “you can be gay and not have sex” part, and im feeling charitable and i wanna talk about the “do crime” part
so many responses of “its nice that you’re privileged enough to be able to steal from Target willy nilly!” and that’s not at all what this is about. like, yeah, shoplifting and loitering and graffiti and breaking the rules is, obviously, part of “do crime”. but they’re not parts you have to do.
would you help someone get an abortion where it was illegal?
would you help a trans friend get healthcare that had been criminalized?
would you shelter someone fleeing persecution, even if the law said not to?
would you help a gay couple stay together when the state decided their relationship was unlawful?
instead, would you report someone else for breaking the law? will you snitch on your hungry neighbors for stealing food? on your homeless neighbors for sleeping where they’re able?
would you break laws to protect someone you love? a community you love? yourself?
1) Vaping is confirmed to cause cancer. Vaping coats the lungs with toxic substances, such as heavy metals and benzene, which are known to cause cancer
2) Many vapes contain diacetyl, which, when inhaled causes popcorn lung, or scarring of the lung
3) Ultrafine particles, when being inhaled, can be lodged in the trachea (not good!)
4) Ultrafine particles can also constrict the arteries in the lungs potentially causing A HEART ATTACK
5) Vaping is relatively new. Not much studies have been done in comparison to tobacco. Plus, the vaping companies are powerful people. There is a large chance that they are purposely downplaying and even burying any evidence that vaping is harmful - just like the tobacco companies before them. They do not care about you, or your health, or the truth. They only care for money
Please I’m begging yall as an asthmatic, your fruit-flavored vapor will still give people around you who are smoke-sensitive attacks. So will weed. Don’t do it inside; if you’re at a bus stop or something try to not stand right next to people or move downwind of them if you can.
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