"Sys how is your decent into fiber arts hell going"
Glad you asked. I have arrived at 'modern flax is Bullshit compared to what we had in historical textiles, the flax widely available for handspinning is basically the tow that would be discarded from textile creation and used with tar to caulk ships back in the day'
This naturally led me down a hole of 'why is the staple length of this stuff a bullshit 6 inches' and the answer is 'we have bred modern flax more for the oil than the fiber because cotton usurped the place of everyday textile thanks to slavery and the cotton gin'
Anyway, THIS led me to a rabbit hole that culminated in me finding flax seed bred for proper 30 inch tall plants for fiber, sold by some fellow minded nerds on a website that has not been updated since 1998 and you have to email them to buy anything.
I FAILED YOU ALL here is the site. You can also buy flax fiber from them. The PROPER shit, not the hot garbage ass tow fiber sold as flax top for handspinners.
'machine combing shortens the flax fibers by several inches'
This right here is part of why modern linen is a pale shadow of historical linen. Legitimately it cannot be properly replicated by machines. It HAS to be made by human hands if you want the best quality.
there’s ZERO fat hoes in nyc. this is insane. We Need to do something about this east coast SkinnyFat Reich. Maybe kidnapping feeders from Portland and introducing them to the Poly ecosystem?
“A coalition of organizations that work with marginalized communities in Lebanon such as migrant workers are raising funds to provide support and assistance (food, medical supplies, pads, diapers) to the various communities. Please share and donate.”
EMERGENCY RESPONSE COALITION: VOICES OF THE UNSEEN As the indiscriminate attacks in Lebanon continue with over 120,000 (Statistics by OCHA)
As of June 2026, Voices of the Unseen are still raising money.
March 2026 update:
Campaign Story: Starting at 42,000 USD (raised in the last war), Voices of the Unseen begins again.... Following the devastating events of 1 March, 2026, and the subsequent heavy bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs and South Lebanon in the early hours of 2 March, we are witnessing a terrifyingly familiar cycle of violence. At least 31 people have been martyred and 149 wounded in just the last few hours. Thousands more fleeing their homes under new evacuation orders. The recent escalation has pushed Lebanon back to the brink of a full scale war.
In 2024, we saw firsthand the systemic failure of the state. As bombs fell, the state offered no safety net for those most vulnerable:
Migrant Workers: Still trapped under the Kafala system a form of modern day slavery, many are being abandoned by employers fleeing the violence, left without papers or safe passage.
Syrian Refugees: Already displaced by over a decade of war, we are once again facing the trauma of being uprooted with nowhere left to run.
Palestinians: Facing an ongoing struggle for survival as the violence in Lebanon mirrors the aggression they have endured for 78 years.
Marginalised Lebanese: Families in the South, Bekaa, and Beirut are losing their livelihoods and homes, watching their society be torn apart once more.
When the state failed, organisers from these communities built critical safety nets. This was done with your help. Last year, we raised $42,000 (USD) that went directly to community organisers from these communities. Now, we must do it again. Our current efforts are being channelled through a core group of trusted community groups: Tres Marias, Reman, Syrian Eyes and DoWAN. We are building community led solutions to a systemic collapse. We are calling for immediate financial and in kind donations to support emergency housing, healthcare access and basic survival needs.
My dad was a public defender when I was a child and he would have to drive all over the district to visit various defendants in various jails which I thought was very interesting and I liked to hear about his experiences in various jails and how different they all were. He drove me to school every day and sometimes I’d skip in and tell my classmates “My dad is going to the jail in [TOWN/CITY] today!” mind you, I went to public school in a not very nice little town so my teacher’s first thought wasn’t lawyer, she had other students with incarcerated parents. This was also occurring in the south where everyone is nosy as fuck so she eventually called my mother, presumably to scope out why her husband was a jail bird and if the chargers were relevant to me and my education in any way. My mom had to explain that my dad wasn’t an inmate who kept getting transferred and that going to jail is his job.
She worded it more like “Your child keeps telling his classmates that his father is going to jail, I wanted to touch bases and see if everything is alright at home.” you know, pretend concern for my social wellbeing. But I know she was just nosy and my mom picked up on that immediately.
clinical medicine is simple, basically the way it works is 99.999% of doctors don't know anything at all, so they only treat the 10–15 most common problems in their specialty. this might sound bad, but actually it's better, because 99.999% of patients don't have any complex medical problems anyway, which we know because they've never been diagnosed with anything except the 10–15 most common problems in the relevant specialty, because in order to be evaluated for something else they would have to be referred to one of the 0.001% of doctors who occasionally know something about some other condition, but they can't get that referral because they obviously don't need it because they've only been diagnosed with simple problems that the other 99.999% of doctors evaluate. so as U can see it's really about ensuring every patient gets the best possible care.
The thing is you can have a grassy lawn or even a golf course without it being an ecological disaster, you just have to a: be cool about having the occasional non-grass plant in the mix and b: be willing to live in a climate that supports grass without irrigation.
I always thought that golf as a sport should be adapted to the local native landscape. I think this will encourage regional pride when local golfers completely trounce visitors at Swamp Golf, Desert Golf, Forest Golf, etc. Rich tourists will be pressured to travel extensively to experience all forms of golf, instead of staying in their backyard country club golf courses. Internet discourse will probably somehow get worse but I think this is a small price to pay.
Thinking about the whole "there is no platonic explanation for this" thing and how it doesn't account for intense platonic situationships and anyways I think we should start saying "there is no casual explanation for this" bc really what we're talking about is the way the characters in question are Obsessed with each other
given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
I personally love the one where the kid set down their juicebox and came back later/next day thrilled to see it still there, took a sip but it was 0% juice, 100% live ants.
I think about it all the time. Whenever I'm having a bad day I'm like, "At least I didn't slurp up a mouthful of ants." Instantly feel at least a little better.
I personally love the one where the kid set down their juicebox and came back later/next day thrilled to see it still there, took a sip but it was 0% juice, 100% live ants.
I think about it all the time. Whenever I'm having a bad day I'm like, "At least I didn't slurp up a mouthful of ants." Instantly feel at least a little better.
they gotta put all their eggs in the "male socialization" basket cause some trans women don't even have the body parts they fearmonger about but they still want to control them
like at this point in the like... 10+ years trans women have been a go-to wedge issue, everyone knows how chromosomes don't necessarily determine phenotype, everyone knows bottom surgery exists, everyone knows intersex people exist, everyone knows some people don't even produce gametes at all, everyone knows we don't stop calling cis women women after a hysterectomy or sterilization
the well of bioessentialist arguments is starting to run dry cause everyone knows the facts that disprove them. so they've had to greatly exaggerate how socialization works and how immutable it is cause what the hell else are they gonna do, lol
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.
There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.
Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.
I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.
—
I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
