A 34 year old F/bi/cis/demi/pagan with a baggage of curiosity, depression, wanderlust, anxiety, creativity, and ADHD. This is a collection of randomness depending on what captures my interests - most often Fantasy
wow its really interesting how you can look up literally any condition and it'll say that one of the things you should do to treat it is lose weight. like oh really? always? for every single disorder? that's really interesting, such an interesting coincidence! every condition in the world is caused by being fat? you're sure?
And then you look into the research and find out that fatness is actually just a symptom of the health condition, so weight loss has done jackshit to improve the condition from the beginning.
You learn that fatness is "correlated" with the condition but has no proof of being the cause, like how being poor is "correlated" with ill health because of oppression and lack of healthcare. The number on your bank account doesnt actually cause the ill health, it's the oppression and how society treats poor people that is the cause.
You do even more research and learn that turning a fat person into a thin person is as scientifically possible as climbing mount everest without dying, without a sherpa, and without thousands of dollars. And that constant yo-yo dieting and abusing your body into temporary thinness damages your health. Chasing thinness for 80 years is causing the ill health itself.
You learn how fat people endure a wage gap, starvation, medical abuse and medical neglect that leads to death, are refused access to anorexia recovery resources. You realize how fatphobia intersects with all other forms of oppression and that numerous oppressed groups have high numbers of fat people. You learn how fat people's healthy digestive organs are mutilated by doctors to try to force thinness and only result in vitamin deficiencies, alcoholism, suicide, and other unhealthy shit. You read about the fat people whose deaths are blamed on fatness but actually died by police brutality, by a nurse killing them during Hurricane Katrina to not have to deal with the fat patient during evacuations, by a doctor refusing basic tests and telling the fat person to just lose weight until finally a different doctor five years later does that basic test and has to tell the fat person they had cancer all this time and now only have a week left to live. And yes, all of these examples have happened, are documented, and are just a fraction of the deaths caused by fatphobia.
You keep searching and look at study after study that shows the extreme biases that doctors have against fat patients, biases that affect the healthcare they provide the fat person. You see how sports equipment and exercise clothes are intentionally only made for thin bodies. You learn that fat people are ostracized from sports as early as childhood no matter the fat person's skill level.
You keep digging. You find how fatness is extremely tied to genetics. You read about how the sciences actively refuse to study fat bodies even when fat bodies are donated to science. You look at vaccine trials and realize that not a single fat person was included. You google Plan B and learn that the drug doesnt work well for most fat people because only thin people get considered when making drugs safe for society.
After a while, you go directly to the source and look at weight science research. You realize that almost every single study begins with the conclusion that fatness must be "bad" and "unhealthy," which severely affects the validity and credibility of the study, as well as affecting the results. You find out how every weight loss "success" study is extremely flawed, paid for by weight loss corporations, and intentionally ended after a short amount of time and with a miniscule number of participants because that's the only way to make the study a "success." You find tons of studies that actually show how impossible longterm weight loss is, how there's an "ob*sity paradox" where fat people can actually have better health and longer lifespans than thin people, how dieting is severely damaging to the human body. And yet every study still ends with reassurance that this won't stop weight loss attempts. We just need to find successful ways to lose weight. Surely that's possible. Surely that's helpful. Surely thinness must always be healthy and fatness unhealthy. Both fat and thin people get this health condition that we said is caused by fatness? Doesn't matter, fatness is still the cause!
The US Department of Health and Human Services is investigating the American Psychological Association after increasing complaints of antisemitism within the organization.
According to those within the American Psychological Association, Zionism has been classified as a mental illness and "psychotic" within mandatory courses. These courses also suggested introducing "‘Palestinian liberation struggle’ into the clinical practice of mental health care."
This is, of course, in addition to Jews and Israelis being outright harassed at conferences, including one Jewish therapist who was harassed to the point that security assured her the harasser would be removed. He was not, and is allegedly going to be a speaker at the next conference.
You don't expect this kind of open disregard from a field that should be filled with empathy.
This is not the first batch of hair found being smuggled at the borders. Many of the hair bundles do not meet the criteria for wig manufacturing. So who took this hair and from where?
The families of women who were given the bodies of their loved ones tell tales of horrors. Signs of torture, mutilated bodies, missing organs.
A lot of these women remain nameless and missing. Where are the Iranian women who protested during January 8 & 9?
The US-Israel decoupling process has begun with Trump's recent comments criticizing Israel's Lebanon operations and his push for a US-Iran deal. This shift is ultimately a good thing for Israel.
It is better this rebalancing happens now under Trump than under a future Democrat who would likely attach heavier conditions or cut support more abruptly. US influence in the Middle East has been declining for over a decade across three administrations. Trump previously slowed some of the worst policy drift, but economic pressures, midterm politics, and the Iran file now outweigh sustained maximum pressure on the IRGC for a decisive outcome. Kicking the can remains standard operating procedure in Washington.
As Middle East power realigns over the next decade, US leverage will continue to shrink. Turkey, the UAE, Iran, and Israel are all positioning to expand their influence.
Israel should not wait passively. It should accelerate decoupling on its own terms by reducing reliance on US aid, approvals, and diplomatic cover. At the same time, it must maintain relentless military pressure on Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iranian proxies—even when that puts it at odds with Washington's current priorities.
Reduced US entanglement removes operational constraints and lets Israel's military superiority translate into actual results. The golden handcuffs loosen substantially and can eventually come off. Strategic autonomy is the prize, and Israel must seize it now.
Video circulating of a FIFA World Cup Match in Los Angeles. A man with an Israeli flag surrounded by security. They demand he surrender his flag. While a man directly behind him proudly unfurls his Palestinian flag. He is left undisturbed. The Israeli flag is confiscated. The Palestinian flag remains. This is antisemitism personified. And a new normal in the United States. 🇺🇸🇮🇱
she is a princess and you are a dragon. she will be married tonight. do not keep standing outside of her room like that, go inside. go get her. that is what proper dragons do.
not that you have ever been a good or proper dragon. when you hatched out of your egg, your eggtooth was too smooth. the other dragons were rough with you, put little holes in your wings.
you were not bold. you were odd. you liked rippling water and the shine of chitin when bugs scuttle and of course the movement of the stars. those were all acceptable interests albeit maybe not traditional. perhaps you had inherited these through some great-great-uncle or something. certainly a dragon may be wise, or clever, if they are not bold.
yes, you have been a great deal of a puzzle to the other dragons. your body is smaller and rather more soft than it ought to be. so speed should have been yours, perhaps - your mother said it would be like fighting a shadow. if a dragon is not aggressive, it may instead be cruel, sly; a backstab. but alas your scales - so iridescent that they almost shine like the moon at night, a glow from within - you are not a shadow, you are a beacon like the flash of a knight's blade. your father has said at least you would make a fine egglayer, a nice mate to a good male. a dragon like you may still be a good mother perhaps; and that is a fine thing to be; although of course it would have been better if you'd been a trove-hoarder instead.
what a dragon must not be is kind.
you have watched her now for six moons. what a good and proper dragon would do is to go inside and to snatch her. a very proper dragon would have kidnapped her many times over, but you will be the delight of your brood to princess-snatch even at all. when you catch her in your jaws and bring her home, they will love you, then. they don't think you're capable of it, but you are, because you're a proper dragon. you can show them that. if you go in, now, right now.
you are rather too glossy to hide in the shadows, so instead you have learned how to appear flat and round, a puddle of light. (how your siblings would mock you! a dragon should be matte, to blend with the night). you dapple your flank with mud. you perch in odd angles atop of trees, scuttle like the bugs you love - hither, tither, frantic.
what you must not do is fly with your wings full-out. alight, you will be limned by the moon's corona. you will be a beacon. you must remember this when (not if) you snatch her.
____
you found her because of the lake. this lake in particular was your favorite - nestled deep in the woods, between two mountains. it is very quiet; there is nothing to horde there so no other dragon bothers you. a gentle waterfall spills over into a deep cove, and there are many mossy caves you've spent your afternoons napping in. while it is not proper for a dragon to prefer such things, you like to lay in rolling tenure just under the water. you have become excellent at holding your breath, can do it for hours. it is the easiest way to appear as a patch of sunlight.
she was not sunlight. she was the night's joy. the dark press of water. her face at first concealed by many diaphanous layers. her breathing quick and quiet.
she had pulled them back to drink from her water flask. and there she had been: a princess. your first very-real princess. right there, only the reach of a single talon from you. if you had simply lunged then, you would have been able to take her easily, in one single movement.
but you did not take her.
she had startled you a bit; you'd been daydreaming about music, which you'd just discovered, and rather liked. you'd heard it from a little house while you snuck in and stole their sheep.
but you knew the sound of fear, of being followed. you'd been chased too many times, you knew what it looked like. the rapid jolt of fear.
you smelled her then; cinnamon and onyx, and perhaps that was what had blinded you. perhaps your mouth was just watering. whatever the case, you waited until she had fled back into the forest; and then you waited a bit longer. in her wake, a garrison of men, their hands rough.
oh. so they were not knights. they were just men chasing a young woman through the woods. perhaps they did not even know a real princess had been running from them. well, that was a relief. you are not good at fighting with knights, who have swords instead of cudgels. these were just men, so you rose from the water in the quiet way you'd learned from the fish. they did not hear you coming.
and besides. proper dragons do violence so well.
___
once you had smelled her you could find her, although such things have always been easier for you than for the others. you spend a great deal of time studying things - it allows you to analyze them. you have tried to explain to the other dragons that sometimes it is best to slow down, but of course no dragon should be slow.
at first you did not understand the confusion of the people's umwelt. they relied so much on their communication (only words and actions!) and what they could see with their eyes. you and the other dragons did not use these as much; but you liked prying out the little sonic differences between hello that means "i like you" and hello that means "i don't like you."
so it took you a while to learn that you were responsible for what had happened to her. men had gone missing, and even bad men going missing makes a big fuss. (you know that if it had been girls missing, it would be okay. many proper dragons steal girls because it will not bring a knight to their door). for a while she had been trapped on the palace grounds. it was determined that it was no longer safe for her to be just a princess, she must undergo some human transformation and become a wife.
even so. you had gone looking for her (only to study, of course, so you may know how to snatch her best). but that night you saw her descending from the window of a castle, quick and agile, moving like a whisper, clad almost entirely in black. you could see her quite well of course, although you were not seeing her; but instead her heat and her smell and her sound and all the other sensory noise all humans give off.
you followed her, keeping yourself in a cloud so you appeared as if mist. she stole off into the woods. you were interested in that, and watched her scuttle - although of course you could have taken her then, you wanted to study your prey as best as you could. she did not seem to do much in the woods, only run around cry into her little hands.
she appeared to be looking for something. she did not get far that first night; scurried back to her bed. over and over this happened - she would run as far as she could, only to go back again. it seemed rather boring to you, but of course you had been free your whole life.
and then one night - finally, she arrived at the lake. she sank to her knees then, her hands pressing into the water. her head tilted to the sky. her dark hair spilling in a caught breath behind her.
this is how you heard her voice for the first time. when she came again the next night, she did so more quickly, more assured. straight to the lake, as if it had called her.
she had skipped a pebble over the surface of the water. this action was dangerous, because it almost hit the sail of your wing. you had structured yourself very finely to look like a rockslide.
"three months." her voice was like her: it was deep and smooth and dark, a low violin string. "they want me to marry that bastard in three months."
and then she cried into her hands again, and the sound of it almost broke you.
you followed her maybe more than a proper dragon should, after this. more than just back to the castle and her bed. you hid along her daily walks and watched her in the throne room and saw her out riding horses. she was good with dogs and nice to her people and very much a proper princess, although you had heard it said a proper princess ought not to slip out at night and run around barefoot through the woods.
you discovered she is terrible with directions. you have often had to make a path more clear so she could get home again. she cannot hunt better than an egg; you have had to kill fish and push them subtly up to the shore.
but she appears to love the lake as much as you do. you have seen her read by candlelight (how foolish. the entire woods saw her each time). you have seen her build little paper boats to float along the surface. you have seen her strip her many layers and dive in, have seen her lay with her belly to the sky, floating like she is suspended by the hands of darkness itself.
oh. so she loves the stars, as well, then.
__
you must go in. she will be married tonight. that is a human thing, but you have since learned what it has meant. she will go to somewhere else, and you will not see her again, maybe ever. and then how will you be a proper dragon? go!
you have made yourself in the form of a gargoyle, hiding in the white stone. you can see into her room; and the tapestries that seem unlike her. everything in her room is very bright, which is bad for a proper dragon. there are many knights in the hallways and in their rooms, and their smell is itchy and repugnant to you.
her dress is white, which does not seem like her. you have only seen her wear black. she is sitting at some kind of desk, and she is crying again. she smells of cinnamon still, but moreso of grief. you can feel the heartbreak in her as if it was inside of you.
you cannot watch her cry anymore. you have watched too often without moving. that is shameful.
you nose the door open. you can move quiet, because you are not very big. she is within a cave of you, then a wingtip, and then she is standing up, looking into your eyes.
"it's you." her hand on your jaw is warm. "i thought i was imagining you, you know. i turned around that day. i saw what you did to those men. i have been looking for you since. i told everyone that i had an angel to protect me. they locked me in here anyway."
you are not an angel, you are a dragon. you have to keep your wings locked tight or you would explode the walls of this place. it makes you feel big, suddenly. you are not used to that sensation. you do not like to be locked in a tower. you believe maybe the princess does not like to be locked in a tower either.
you take her in your jaws. she is very small, and does not resist you. although you are not a strong flyer, you must take off in a single push. any other movement would be too slow. you must also hold your breath so you do not smell her, the clove and cinnamon and little bird of hope. your mouth would water and you would drop her.
against the full moon, you do the thing that is impossible. you stretch yourself out all the way, a bold and beaming arrow, and you fly. you can hear them cry about you now, loudly. a banner that would strike pride even into your father: dragon. dragon. dragon.
on the eve of her wedding, you snatch the princess from her tower.
an arrow whisks for you, and then dozens, and then hundreds. you are not afraid of pain. you have learned long ago how to fly with holes in your wings. you hold her very gently still, and you push past the smell of your blood.
in the night you are a star. someone somewhere could look up and see you and make a wish.
there will be another lake, you decide. you can find another lake. somewhere very, very far from here. however long you must fly, however long you must hold your breath: you will take her home, because you are a proper dragon.
___
sometimes they come for her, your treasure. you have built her a little castle here, deep in the forests off the map. and of course for you: a silver round lake like the shift of her iris. you bring her books and she brings you bugs to study. you let her saddle you, and together you ride through the clouds and fog banks. she is a shadow on your back; a warm and velvet thing. she makes you music and lives the way she should; free in the night like a promise.
but they do come. you have stolen a real princess, and they do not want her to be a princess. they want to make her into a brood mother, or into bait, or into prey. they always look into the caves first; into the places proper dragons stay. they are real knights, not just men with sticks. they are loud and their smell still makes you itch.
but she has made you brave now, and cunning. if a dragon is not big, it should be cunning. and since you are a proper dragon, and since your treasure is your most precious thing, you lay in wait.
let them come. you will let the light drip off of you, and then you will pour through them.
afterwards, your princess will tell you a story around the fire. she will patch your wounds as she did that first time. she will sing to you.
and in that moment, neither of you will be a title nor a story. she will just be herself, and you will just be you.
If I may, I want to add the issues MEXICO is having. At least some of them.
México City was "modernized" to be appealing to tourists, not functional to people living on it. We have a housing crisis, gentrification issues, several problems with public transportation, and the government has tiptoed around those to prioritize appearances.
Madres Buscadoras, groups of mothers that search for their missing family members, have been ignored and criminalized by the president, attacked by cops guarding the stadium, alongside other protesters like farmers, teachers and students. Students and reporters were arrested without explanation, threatened with violence (women with sexual violence) and then released.
Adding to this, the number of missing people in the country is 133,000. Twice the capacity of the Azteca Stadium. Families tried to raise awareness by pasting posters with the faces of their missing people around the stadium. The governor of Ciudad de México sent workers to take them down.
To avoid "showing a bad picture of the country" streets around the stadium are being closed, hours before the games, in order to deter protestors. People living in this area (like myself) are unable to move freely.
Our president, Claudia Sheimbaum, on one of the morning reports, said México is happiness, said we don't have issues, criminalized the protestors and said they want to show a bad picture of México. Avatar fans actually compared the report to this same scene, the "There's no war in Ba Sing Se" scene.
The World Cup, FIFA, and the government are trying to silence our struggles. Don't stop talking about the issues with the World Cup and the way the countries (at least USA and México) are dealing with it. Please.
i am an american who has never once seen eurovision in my life but im listening to the music from it just for fun and like. the way people are so violently hateful towards israelis is already insane racist xenophobic antisemitism but something i keep thinking: literally every other country that has ever been in that competition has done the same or, in most cases, WORSE than whatever israel has done.
like ok spain is boycotting? spain who colonized entire continents? ethnically cleansed indigenous people for centuries? had the fucking inquisition? spain the country that burned jews alive???
ok what about germany lol??? if you really hate jews and the holocaust isnt a bad enough thing that germany did then maybe consider their colonialism and violence in africa???
portugal who did the same shit as spain????????
turkiye has been in it, what about the armenian genocide? what about their current policy of violence against kurds??
sweden??? sweden's treatment of Sami?? Norway?? Finland???
the united fucking kingdom????
Australia?????
FRANCE?????? ITALY??????
fucking POLAND?????????
zero consistency. yet literally every comment or review on a song by an israeli musician is "this is slop", "this is hasbara", "this is meant to normalize apartheid and colonialism and genocide", "this is as garbage as all israeli art ever is garbage and so is their food and culture and everything"
You will have people that will go "they're silencing criticism of israel" and then when you look inside *their* criticism of Israel and its supporting; jews in Colorado being firebombed (yes, real thing a branch of SJP did recently), jews in the UK being stabbed for existing whilst jewish (yes, real thing a popular antizionist blog did recently), supporting synagogues in Australia being firebombed (yes, yet another real thing that happened on video) and harassing the survivors of the Bondi terrorist attack (yes, real thing reported in the news too), etc etc etc
I really empathize with this kind of thought process, and it also worries me a fair amount. I'm not sure what yall are being given by way of tools to understand what "listen to your body" actually means on a practical level, but here are some introductory tools for this my mother and other caregivers have taught me over my lifetime:
Sensations, feelings, and embodiment experiences are biofeedback - communication from your body to your mind and back about what you may need in order to continue functioning as best you are able. While these are not direct 1:1 communications (e.g. "I feel tired all the time so I'm going to go lay down and nap until that stops") they will still communicate information (e.g. "I feel tired all the time so I must not have the embodiment resources I need to be doing what I'm doing all day, I should see what I need more of such as fuel [food/nutrition], maintenance [rest or decompression], or repair [medical or mental health treatments and other care]")
When I'm tired, my first go-to is food, specifically either a sugar or a carbohydrate, some water, and then giving it 20min. If I feel better, I try to eat a carb and a protein to cap it off and then continue about my business! If I do NOT feel better, or am still tired after, I will try to do something that makes me feel joy or pleasant sensations. Hot bubble bath! A chocolate bar! A puzzle break, or some time in the garden or playing with my dogs. A cute text to my wife. A chapter of my current book. Just something to switch up my headspace and do something I enjoy. This is "decompression" for me, and typically does the trick if food doesn't. If even that fails, I go for sleep/rest, and if even that isn't working out, I start assessing my medical needs. Am I sick? In pain? Overstressed? Address that and accept my limitations until that's done. Do tasks in no more than 15min chunks wherever possible to keep from getting overloaded until the problem is resolved
Do regular biofeedback checks! I do four each day. Once each when I wake up and when I go to bed, once at 2pm, and once at 9pm. I'll also run them quickly in my head when I'm feeling off in some way. Helps me notice needs I may have missed before. It's nothing too fancy! I try to focus on breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, and just noticing things like pain, tension, discomfort, tiredness, confusion, etc. These are things that can tell me I may be missing a need as well.
I think a lot of us hear "listen to your body" and think "take my body's cues at face value", but it's usually goint to look more like noticing patterns in how you feel before and after meeting certain basic needs like food, rest, medical care, emotional security, etc. That helps you learn what your body is saying when it feels like that. There can be common responses! Like agitation (excitement, anxiety, anger, fear, stress, etc) will often look like shortened breath or a tightened chest, stomach aches or nausea, light headedness or sudden clamminess, irritability/reactivity, difficulty directing focus. But it will still have cues unique to you as well! My agitation cues also include pain due to a health condition, so when I find myself in a lot of pain, I will often respond to myself as if I am agitated in some way, and I'm usually right to! That won't be true for everyone, but many of us will have little variations like that and learning yourself is a lifelong process.
There's this thing I never realized I did when I was doing it that I like to think of as "Ownership of Space"
And it's that thing where you mentally place yourself as the second, auxiliary party to someone else that you consider to be "In Charge" of whatever space or occupation or responsibility you are assigned to
And when you are IN that mindset, it *feels* like you're being responsible. It *feels* like you're being respectful, and helpful, and contributing to the load.
But what you don't SEE- because it *feels* like deference- is that the other person who you're seeing as The Authority you report to- by being assigned that role, has also been assigned the invisible load of BEING YOUR MANAGER.
This is by FAR most commonly seen in husband-and-wife relationships, where the man says, "just tell me what I can do to HELP- you don't have to do it all by yourself, but it's like you won't even tell me when you NEED help. You just do everything and then get mad at me for not doing it first. I can help clean. I can help with the kids. I can help"
But I also see it- and am guilty myself of doing it- at work, at school, in public- that mental, "this is THEIR space, and i will be respectful and helpful to THEM"- without realizing that subservience in this manner isn't actually a good thing. That it actually shifts the burden of responsibility to the other person. That aspect was totally invisible to me.
I didn't understand that when I was told, "if you see something that needs to be done, just DO it", or, "take the initiative", what they ACTUALLY meant was, "I am not above you", or "you have equal say in what kind of environment you want to live or work in", or "I do not want full control over what happens here, I do not want to order you around, I do not want to be in charge, what I WANT is to co-command WITH you"
Being in The Assigned Authority position NOW, that is all so much clearer.
I am the senior member of my team at work, and now, every time I train a newbie, every time I finish catching them up to speed and giving them a list of everything that needs to be done, my next big hurdle seems to always be, "now take pride in the space when I'm not around". "Now don't assume I'll tell you when something is due or what orders to plan things in".
Now, having been on both sides of the struggle, I can appreciate the sticking points here
TO THE PERSON "IN CHARGE": The person deferring to you doesn't understand the invisible labor you're doing. They genuinely believe you know more, you WANT more, you see things they don't, and that they are being respectful and good by staying out of your way and waiting on your orders. THAT is the bit that's not clicking.
TO THE PERSON "WANTING TO HELP": "Help" implies that you are providing assistance to a problem that belongs to somebody else. Stop thinking like that. Understand that the problem belongs to BOTH of you equally, and consider what kind of shared space you BOTH want. What is your SHARED GOAL? Not THEIR goal, but a goal that belongs to you too. Own your space.
This is not a Commander-Lieutenant problem. This is a Partnership problem.
