Concerned citizen

[queerautism]

I had to deal with the police in my house this evening, after a mob of a dozen people showed up outside our home saying they were looking for a pedophile at this address. I recognised a middle aged woman who had showed up at our door yesterday morning pretending to be confused and looking for a different street, and there was also a man who this morning had attempted to deliver a parcel to a male name we had never heard before. They became hostile and they were clearly convinced that man was here, when it's just me and Dave living here. We said we were calling the police and closed the door. They told us to go ahead and that they had already called the police.

While we waited, we could hear them yelling absolutely horrible stuff, laughing, telling each other 'he's in there' and asking 'him' to come out.

The police arrived and talked to them first. Then they came in to talk to us and look all through our house to check for this man. Since I have 'masc' features and a 'male' legal name it was very clear I was their only possible suspect. It was horrible to have 4 - 5 policemen in my small entrance hallway looking at me like I'm the potential child predator they're looking for. I was just sitting on the stairs, shaking, because standing up was way too difficult.

I only had PIP letters and such to prove my identity. I have no ID really. A decade old spanish passport with a female name didn't seem like it would help matters, even if I knew where it was.

We had to wait for the police to get a ladder, to go check our attic was empty. We've never even opened it since moving here at the beginning of the year, since we can't reach it and the rental agreement says we aren't allowed to access it anyway, for safety.

We also had to wait for them to bring a fingerprint scanner to check my fingerprints did not match those of the man they were looking for. Which they obviously didn't.

Apparently the people outside were getting messages from someone claiming to be at our address, and claiming to be watching what was happening outside, but the police could clearly see we both were not on our phones the entire time we were talking to them, at the same time the people outside continued to receive messages.

They talked to the people outside and made them leave, then they left too. Said to call them back if anyone shows up again. I truly hope they don't.

I'm so fucking stressed obviously. I was already crashing after I had to push through to do my appointment earlier today, and I got through this thanks to pure adrenaline, which I am going to be paying dearly for. My health is going to be garbage for weeks because of this, my baseline is absolutely shot. I wanna cry so bad but I'm dissociating too hard to do it.

[queerautism]

Thank you for the support everyone. I really appreciate it. I'm feeling super sick and just overall horrible, but at least we haven't had any further incidents so far. Hopefully it'll stay that way.

I genuinely think this was a bunch of racist white British people who have fallen for the "muslim grooming rape gangs" bullshit, and thought they were doing some discount 'to catch a predator' style operation while probably just being mocked by a random online troll, who didn't care who else they got involved and potentially hurt. It's genuinely sickening all around.

[bogleech]

"uh ohhhhhh!!!!" - a oyster when this happens ill bet

[bogleech]

It's just that theyll grow on anything solid and they have flotation bladders to keep them upright, like a lot of seaweed, so when they get big enough they can float away with whatever they're growing on, like small rocks or broken coral. But they got called oyster thiefs because you notice this phenomenon most if your livelihood depends on farming creatures that are also roughly similar to small rocks.

[poondragoon]

Ochrophytes stole my oyster harvest. Can't have shit in Cornwall 😤

[homunculus-argument]

What are you supposed to do when you're the type of bored where you don't want to do anything but there's nothing you can do about it either? It's 4 pm and there's five hours of day left and I don't want to sit through them.

[scribblesandknots]

Something you want to have done but don't actually want to do? I used to use this logic to get stuff done when I was severely depressed in college: I didn't want to do *anything*, so I might as well do homework. Tomorrow would look a lot better if I did homework than if I did nothing.

Or sleep.

[homunculus-argument]

Oh shit you're right. The dishes.

[homunculus-argument]

Ah yeah that fixed it. Loaded the dishwasher, washed up the handful of stuff that doesn't go there, collected the trash and beverage recycling from my sitting region, and did up my meds organiser. Now much happier to do absolutely nothing.

[systlin]

So my sister wants to start sewing more, because

a. She’s 5′ 11″ and can never find pants long enough for her legs or shirts long enough for her arms.

b. She hates synthetic fibers as much as I do and it’s difficult to find natural fiber clothes that aren’t made of cotton

c. She’s a biologist and would physically fistfight microplastics if given half a chance

So her gift from mom and dad for her birthday was a sewing machine. Not a super expensive one but a good solid serviceable one.

And recently she asked “So where do I GET wool or linen and thread that isn’t polyester” and mom was like ‘go ask your sister’

And I, of course, crashed into the group text like “GET A PEN I HAVE WEBSITES FOR U” and honestly I’m thrilled about this

[systlin]

“Where did u get all this”

“Bets, u know I’m a 15th degree blackbelt of buying shit on the internet”

“oh yeah tru”

[hermesmuse]

Op can may we inquire about the website list

[systlin]

Linen; https://www.graylinelinen.com/

cotton and Silk thread; https://redrockthreads.com/

Linen thread and wool fabric; https://burnleyandtrowbridge.com/ (they’ve got wool stuffs and worsted wool fabric for $15 a yard! I just got three yards of navy worsted wool I’m making a constellation winter skirt from)

More linen thread and wool; https://wmboothdraper.com/ (just ordered wool broadcloth to make a coat)

Silk fabric (THE best place to get silk lining fabrics and raw silk fabric):https://www.dharmatrading.com/

A varying assortment of wool and silk and cotton and even some leather, use coupon code  spring2020 for 50% off your full order, worked yesterday when I bought some stuff there; https://metrotextilesnyc.com/

Wool. You want wool coating for under $20 a yard? Sure you do. It’s here. Not a huge variety of colors, most are black or brown, but hey https://www.fashionfabricsclub.com/Catalog?refinementIds=4096748&Keyword=wool&pageSize=16

[wingedtyger]

I don’t know a lot about sewing, but I want to make or have my mom make some linen pants & shirts for when I’m watering, because it gets to 105 here and we have mosquitos so I need to be covered. What type of linen do I buy? Also, linen pajama shorts, yes/no?

(I’ve been wearing my renfaire pants which are a linen mix, I think. But the frikking mosquitos that hide in the tomatoes get my arms)

[systlin]

Medium weight is what I’d go with.

And linen pajama shorts is a HARD yes.

[beggars-opera]

Renaissance Fabrics is good for all sorts of things

Mood doesn’t specialize in natural fabrics but they do have basically every fabric ever made so

[the-merry-otter]

For wools, I cannot recommend Woolsome enough! They’re a bit more expensive then the above links, but they have a spectacular range of colours and weights, as well as diamond pattern and herringbone weaves. They also have a range of linens, though not as extensive.

Woolsome

Historical fabrics for re-enactors

[justgarb]

Tiedtohistory.com has sheer voile linen

The Linen Lab has a variety of weaves, weights, and colors available

Period Fabric has a variety of wools, but switch to the full website if you’re on mobile

[queer-adhd]

Might see if i can swing a paid afternoon off to talk to my therapist tbh. Like I feel like I can probably get away with that

[queer-adhd]

Messaging her like 'hi! Think I should have an appointment soonish when are you available :)' as if that's probably very reassuring to a therapist and does not raise more concerns -_-

[yardsards]

was doing a first aid course and it kept talking about how when applying first aid to a child you have to ask the PARENT for consent and how the child's consent is not enough unless you cannot reach the parent. and then immediately after there was a unit on shaken baby syndrome, and then mentioned abuse as a common source of children getting injured. and they didn't see the irony there. i later asked the instructor what to do about parental consent if the medical emergency was from the parent abusing the child and she was like "you still need to obtain parental consent. you can report the abuse though" not even acknowledging how fucked the whole system is. i hate it here. youth rights now

[my0clonic-jerk]

[cardassiangoodreads]

Genuinely, one of the measures that's stopped book banning the most when districts implement it, is having the would-be banners fill out a form that demonstrates if they've read the book or not. Like where they have the summarize the plot and characters and do a mini book report and give a review. It stops them in their tracks. This is why in my high school, every time someone wanted to ban a book it ended up going nowhere. There was one where a conservative student wanted to ban the manga "Legal Drug" for having a marijuana leaf on the cover, then got the form that required them to actually read and either balked, or read it and realized it was not pro-drug at all. (The other one that reduces book bans even further is "requiring the would-be banner to be affiliated with this actual school in some way, either by being a student, faculty/staff or a parent of a child at the school" because the vast majority of bans are "activists" with no affiliation with the school who just travel around trying to do this in districts all over the U.S. IIRC a few years ago someone crunched the numbers and just 51 parents were responsible for all the book bans that year nationally. 51! In a country with 50 states, with over 300 million people total!)

[tjalexandernyc]

Laws like this indeed do a lot to stop fascist book censorship. They can also help legally protect librarians from getting fired or harassed for keeping books on the shelves! Some states like Rhode Island have already passed these laws. If you're in a blue state, look up whether you have laws like this on the books. MAYBE your state is trying to get one passed right now, like New York's Freedom to Read bill. call your state elected officials to voice support for it.

[savannahsdrabbles]

It’s always my favorite character

[just-a-space-rabbit]

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

You have to make them suffer or people freak out. Whenever I write a story where things are pretty chill, the discord is full of people tearing their hair out looking for the Secret Fucked Up Part that's festering beneath the surface and will erupt at any moment.

[pigeonwhumps]

I mean tbf Derin that's bc you have a Reputation

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I don't understand why! My stories aren't even all that fucked up! They're very stock standard scifi!

[behindnightmaresanddreams]

I haven't even read the stories yet and even I know that spaceship is probably fucked up somehow.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Only in a normal way!

[casgirl]

I’m not gonna lie very little has been going according to keikaku these days

[bacontoktok]

[cellarspider]

May I present to you Wheel Running In the Wild, a published research paper that delights me to no end:

This paper intended to test whether would mice would run on a wheel if they found one, to try and determine if this was a natural behavior or a stress response in captivity. They put a wheel in a protected little box with a camera that took pictures any time the wheel turned, and tallied up how often it was used by what.

Mice were, happily, the most common users of the wheel, and their patterns of use indicated they were doing so voluntarily once they figured it out.

But the second most common users.

Those were slugs.

[captain-price-returns]

[horsefigureoftheday]

Nova's tips for beating the heatwave:

1. Check that you have good access to shade trees, a shelter custom made to fit you and all your friends, and plenty of good airflow

2. Find the hottest, sunniest, and least windy part of you pasture and lay down

3. Make sure you look as much as possible like you have died of heatstroke

4. Get your friends in on it

[prince-of-goths]

A horse's biggest purpose in life is to make you think they died

[sexnoise]

Reblog if you honestly have NEVER sent anon hate.

[mamahartbigg]

It pains me that only 14,000 people can honestly reblog this

[cutecipher]

the file indexing can wrap it up on the storage server anytime now *looks

[cutecipher]

really seems like its indexing the inside of all my tarred file backups

[cutecipher]

if it is like ultimately thats good because ill be able to find stuff i didnt know i had archived but come on

[teaboot]

Too bad the prophet Cassandra never met Odysseus

[teaboot]

They say if she made a prophecy Nobody would believe her

[edgar-allan-possum]

I’ve gotta say, that is exactly the kind of stupid thing that probably would circumvent a curse.

[elidyce]

Cassandra: YOU ARE ALL GOING TO REGRET THIS SO MUCH YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW. 

Odysseus: Regret it why?

Cassandra: You won’t believe me if I tell you. If I prophecy, nobody believes me. That is my curse.

Odysseus: … I’m Nobody. Fill me in. 

*A couple of months later* 

Odysseus: HELLO PENELOPE, I AM HERE PRECISELY ON TIME AND NOT YEARS LATE incidentally I rescued and adopted a Trojan seer while I was away, she’s great, got me home really fast, Cassandra this is your new mother who’s not going to treat you like shit. 

Penelope: … I’m going to need more details, but okay, sure. 

Cassandra: *in tears* I love you, new family. 

[cipheramnesia]

Cassandra: Penelope, I’ve had another vision.

Penelope, sighs: Go tell your father.

[val-the-bun]

[sankta-wraith]

the original? on my dash?

[whetstonefires]

I do have a piece of writing advice, actually.

See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.

But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.

I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.

The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.

Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.

[fairyysoup]

reading this post be like

[vrabia]

today i learned that the finnish word for ‘hazardous waste’ is ongelmajäte, which can also translate as ‘problematic garbage’ and my roommate and i immediately agreed this is a word that belongs on tumblr.

[callmebliss]

Your fave is ongelmajäte

[you-had-me-at-e-flat-major]

in german it’s Sondermüll which means special trash and that too belongs on tumblr

[pyrebomb]

One man’s ongelmajäte is another man’s sondermüll.