birds & rain

it/its | 20s | jacks_long_coat on AO3 [Icon ID: a marker drawing of a pink bunny wearing a blue skirt, suspenders, and bow, leaping up with one arm raised, in front of a rainbow gradient. End ID.]

[fashion-runways]

ROBERT WUN Couture Fall/Winter 2027 pls help me get out of debt donating to: ko-fi.com/fashionrunways or dinahlance-shop.fourthwall.com

[recreationaldivorce]

sex testing isn't making people discover that they're intersex, it's making people intersex. if someone's sex characteristics are imperceptibly different to what sex defines they should have, it wouldn't have placed them in a different social category until both the technology and the drive to test were there. ppl just don't really believe that sex categories are also socially constructed and fluid. things like hormone levels naturally wildly range between people before it gets to a point where someone looks noticeably "different" for their sex—a cafab person with testosterone levels deemed high today would not have been intersex 200 years ago unless they displayed noticeably masculinised features, because nobody would have known anyone's testosterone levels and therefore can't use that as a basis for treating someone differently!

[gendercensus]

The 2026 Gender Census is now open!

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

[avalonjoan]

Love that you’re making it clear exactly what physical demands this job has, but could you possibly, potentially, phrase it differently?

[epicdogymoment]

[ID: text screenshot that says:

Crawling Rarely (Less than 2%)

Reaching Frequently (34-66%)

Gross Manipulation (Handling) Frequently (34-66%)

Fine Manipulation (Fingering) Frequently (34-66%)

Feeling Constantly (67-100%)

/end ID]

[noelledeltarune]

"you can jack off you can eat grapes all else banned" is kind of the post of the summer because literally wtf else are you supposed to do once it’s 30°C outside

[mockva]

[glorioustragedykid]

There's a weird 3 star movie out there ready to change your life forever

[strilondist]

rose doodles

[sumikatt]

I think there’s a really odd gap in general supply chain knowledge in which people scapegoat AI as this new devastating environmental concern, when internet data centers have been an environmental problem before that. The internet already had the infrastructure to support it in 2017, before GPT-1 was released. Data centers are not a new problem. The internet already had a large physical presence, but people didn’t really think much of it until there were new AI-related developments (and then attribute all data centers to being related to generative AI? Where do people think YouTube videos are stored? The literal clouds in the sky?)

A Makeship plushie has a bigger carbon footprint than a thousand LLM queries but it is seen as an acceptable environmental impact, because it has been deemed socially acceptable to contract low wage factories in the Global South to make toys to sell to customers worldwide at a 3000% markup, with all the profits staying in the Global North. Not many people think of that environmental impact

[berkcatton]

#THEFUTUREHASTENTACLES

[dkettchen]

I made a new flyer for my research project 📋

LINK TO THE SURVEY

The survey will be open until at least the end of 2026 if not beyond. Only these 14 measurements are required, all the others are optional:

If you have been on HRT for at least 3 years, have half an hour and a measuring tape, consider taking the survey!

If you don't qualify or don't feel up to participating feel free to share it :)

I will also be at various UK pride events this summer either walking around with a sign handing out flyers or having a stall where people can come get measured in person! Come say hi :)

[dkettchen]

PSA to read our documentation and FAQ if you have questions as they tend to already be covered in there :)

[tractsecretion9]

[ID 1: A flyer with a trans flag and drawing of clothing measurements. Text reads, "The Trans Standard Sizing Project. Making it easier to make clothes for trans people! Trans-led research to develop free & accessible sewing resources. (tinyurl.com/Trans-Standard-Sizing) 3+ years on HRT? We want your measurements! Take our survey! More info: github.com/dkettchen/trans_standard_sizing"

ID 2: A diagram of the 14 required measurements for transfemmes and transmascs with and without top surgery. End IDs.]

[knightofleo]

[alternis]

image text:

Björk: it’s exciting for me that not many women – especially musicians – have documented themselves after 40. As a kid I had Kate Bush or Joni Mitchell to look up to, because they went there and created a feminine universe all of their own. They didn’t just step into a male universe as a guest, and that was really inspiring for me. And then last year Kate Bush came out after 35 years of not performing, and everybody backed her up. It was such a victory. She had been allowed to age like most male singers are allowed to. Bob Dylan can be croaky. With Johnny Cash it’s charming. She still reaches all her high notes and I think it has been really inspiring for a lot of people. I actually had a magical moment during a period when I wasn’t allowed to speak for three weeks, after vocal surgery. I read a Kate Bush biography and listened to all her albums in chronological order, reading the lyrics as I went. Just by chance, I was also doing a big jigsaw puzzle of a map of Iceland at the same time. As I put in the last jigsaw piece, I was listening to the last song (‘Among Angels’) on the last Kate Bush album (50 Words for Snow) and I just started crying. I couldn’t work it out – if it was from joy or sadness or both. I knew she would never have written that song when she was, like, 30. It was coarse and there was some wisdom there that you only acquire later in life. So there was this sensation of time, also having not spoken a word for three weeks, and then also looking at the puzzle with all the place names and little canyons in Iceland that I’ve still never been to – I suddenly realised, ‘Oh my god, I always thought I would eventually go to every single one of them…’ 

(oirignal source: link)

[dykeselfcest]

holy shit okay may have found a game-changer for web searches...with duckduckgo it's easy to turn off the ai features permanently, but regardless of engine there's the increasing problem of the search results themselves leading mostly to ai-generated articles on random ghost websites that say a lot without any information, and then the information they do give is contradictory or otherwise just wrong. this is especially a problem for me when trying to search for, e.g., a current list of the best products in a certain category.

finally searched for a solution and there IS in fact a giant hand-curated list of sites containing this content. it can be imported to ublock origin on desktop or mobile, and even can be used on iOS via the ublacklist extension in the safari app. it's updated regularly, and importing via the link as described should allow those updates to go into effect automatically.

i've only tested it a little bit, but after importing the list and repeating my duckduckgo search for backpack recommendations, my top results now lead to websites that appear to be linked to actual organizations in some form, with an "about us" page and the name of a founder and everything. the text is still often a bit wordy and SEO-optimized, but it now has actual recommendations that are relevant to the query. BIG IF TRUE???

please do not start talking about The Definition Of Art on this post, or Whether Human Creations Have Souls. i am very tired.

[dykeselfcest]

once I added this it took me 15 minutes to find a backpack that met my needs and order it with free shipping. I feel reborn

[tractsecretion9]

I started putting this in the tags of the liking (un)popular characters and ships reblog but it's pretty tangentially related so I'll go ahead and make my own post... the important throughline is I'm talking about the cumulative experience of fandom as a whole. But doesn't anyone like it when the sports team changes 🥺 Everyone wants it to stay the same forever and ever, instead of being closely tied to a specific period of time? It feels like people are looking for a single permanent perfect version of something that ideally lasts longer than any individual's career or even lifetime. What if the ship of Theseus was cool and exciting instead of sad and regretful all the time...

[kiwinatorwaffles]

liking popular characters and ships but in a way that’s completely different from the majority of fandom is like being in the middle of the ocean and dying of thirst because the water around you is undrinkable

[kiwinatorwaffles]

liking unpopular characters and ships but in a way that’s completely different from like the 5 other people who like them is like being in a desert and seeing a mirage in the distance but when you approach it the water disappears

[quietwingsinthesky]

noncon romance. is this anything.

[quietwingsinthesky]

Confessions on the brink of death a character accepts out of kindness because it won’t matter soon anyway, but then the other person doesn’t die, the other person expects them to carry through on their promise to love them and gets angry when they try to back out. Blackmail held over someone’s head just to force them to flirt and make romantic advances on another person, so it looks like they wanted this relationship. Talks about marriage and happily ever afters together as a threat. “I love you, I love you, I love you” as a violation that you’re expected to smile at and be grateful for, because you’re supposed to want to be loved. noncon romance.

[quietwingsinthesky]

adding to this: feeling love against your will. love forced on you by some power beyond you. love that you know you wouldn’t feel if you weren’t blessed (cursed) by it. love that you don’t want and is ruining you and that everyone keeps praising you for feeling. love that everyone around you gets mad at you for rejecting anyway. love that’s made so overpowering that it wipes out any semblance of “you” that there is to make way for a thing that will love someone back.

[quietwingsinthesky]

This Post Is Now About Incest. Big Incest™️ Is Forcing You To Think About The Ways In Which Love Can Ruin You. Big Incest™️ Is Forcing You To Consider That Not Being Able To Escape Someone’s Attention Is A Common Factor In Incestuous Abuse. Big-

oh sorry, had it in megaphone mode. anyway. come on now. you can’t come onto my post and be a clown like this. nut up or shut up; the horrors of love being forced on you can cross and blur the lines of platonic, familial, and romantic in ways that should make you uncomfortable to contemplate, not reject the idea wholecloth because it’s suddenly a little too icky for you.

[blueblurbbaskets]

[I.D. set of tags that read: #this with familial relationships...not like. in a proship way. but like...love that hurts you that you can't reject without consequences hmm

End I.D.]

[Plain text: This Post Is Now About Incest. Big Incest™️ Is Forcing You To Think About The Ways In Which Love Can Ruin You. Big Incest™️ Is Forcing You To Consider That Not Being Able To Escape Someone’s Attention Is A Common Factor In Incestuous Abuse. Big-

End Plain Text]

[thewardenisonthecase]

storytelling wise. we need more marriage as horror