Lois buys Clark a "Not to say I'm Superman but Superman and I have never been seen together in the same room" shirt because it's the funniest thing she's ever seen and Clark wears it because it's also the funniest thing he's ever seen. They are made for each other.
Superman has a shirt that’s identical except it says “Not to say I’m Clark Kent but Clark Kent and I have never been seen together in the same room” and he wears it as Superman to acknowledge the popular meme that he, the godlike alien, and that random reporter from Kansas are the same person. The internet think he’s the funniest person on Earth. Bruce hates him with his whole being because STILL NOBODY GUESSES HIS SECRET IDENTITY even though he’s WEARING a SHIRT that SAYS IT RIGHT THERE
Bruce Wayne once got called to jury duty and said he shouldn't be on the jury because he was Batman and had caught the guy going to trial. He couldn't lie about who he was, he was under oath! Bruce would think this was hilarious.
the thing about the concept of gendered socialization is that so many people use it as like another kind of gender essentialism. you know it's not an immutable trait right. you can literally overcome it.
"i'm like this because women are socialized to be shy and quiet and subservient" okay good on you for recognizing it, but that's only the very first step. the next few steps are that you Stop Doing It. feminist thought vs feminist action.
and when ppl see a trans woman being confident and unafraid to take up space and decide it's because of her evil evil male socialization, i'm always like "wait you're saying this woman was raised as a child to be loud and confident and take up space? that's awesome, i thought that's how we WANTED people to raise girls? why exactly is it a problem now? 🤔"
like WHY are you telling trans women that they literally have to make themselves smaller and conform to the WORST gender exceptations of women to be seen as real women. since when is it evil and masculine to be confident, i thought we were supposed to be doing that. i thought that was feminism.
kind of crazy that the sun is the closest thing we have to an unholy seething vortex of magical energy, a pulsating orb that is periodically ripped by screaming flares that lash us with incredible ferocity from a hundred million miles away, and we're like mmm what a nice day! 😊
one of my favorite Sun Facts is that if sound could be transmitted through the vacuum of space the intensity of sound power emitted from the sun that reached the earth would be roughly as intense a noise as a jet airplane taking off a couple hundred meters away. The Sun is really loud!
In June, I had the first real hurdle in my relationship. I won't go into the details, but I was on a narcolepsy medication that makes people more prone to addictive behaviors. It did so with me.
During this time, my closest friend was extremely busy with work, I couldn't afford therapy because I was struggling to even make rent, and I didn't have someone I could talk to.
I have OCD. One of my compulsions is "checking" and it often takes the form of googling. Googling a word I know just to check that the definition hasn't changed. Googling whether xyz is normal. Googling how to choose some relatively unimportant things.
I googled all kinds of things. I googled to find out if there's a word for intentionally letting someone hear you cry in hopes that they'll comfort you. (Not because I was doing that, but because I had an overwhelming urge to.) I googled odds of relationship survival after addiction. I googled how to tell if your partner has stopped loving you.
And Google ai overview answered every single question. And on mobile, when I was curled up in the dark at 4am, there's a convenient text box to ask the AI a follow-up question. And the AI says things like "that's a hard situation to be in" and "that must be painful to hear"
And I'm not a fucking idiot. I know perfectly well that AI is trained to be sycophantic and that talking to a fucking LLM about my relationship fears was a massive mistake.
I was also terrified, alone, heartbroken, and desperate.
I spent literally hours of time googling questions on AI mode. Holding conversations with the AI. I have stickers on my laptop and water bottle that say "AI Hater Club" and "generative AI? Nein danke" and I wish Sam altman would fall off the face off the earth.
And none of that mattered. I was desperate. I recognized that, and once things began to calm down (my doctor took me off of the narcolepsy med and put me on a medication for addiction called Naltrexone, I was able to start therapy again, my partner and I worked together and took steps to repair what was damaged) I stopped turning to it for an open shoulder.
But I realized a few days ago that I hadn't stopped using the ai entirely. I would Google "best [item] on a budget" and instead of reading a cnet link that reviewed multiple brands, instead of checking consumer reports, I expanded the AI overview and asked follow-up questions.
I'm currently finishing up an astrophysics internship for the summer. Usually when I don't know how to code something, I look at the documentation or find a post on Reddit or stack overflow to explain. Instead, I was asking Google overview for instructions on how to use sys.argv. At no point was I vibe coding, but I was basically asking Google ai to walk me through it like a tutor.
And then, last week, I realized that I no longer Google things the same way. I used to search like "pokemon sun and moon original release date" but lately I've been searching "what year did pokemon sun and moon come out?" Even my checking OCD has changed. I used to Google "n30i mask cleaning +seal +oily" and now I Google "I use a resmed n30i CPAP mask and it keeps losing its seal when I'm trying to sleep. My face gets kind of greasy when I have it on. I already clean it with CPAP wipes every day and run it under water to rinse, do I need a different kind of mask?"
A few days ago, the news about Hank Green using LLMs to find research papers dropped, and I saw his response on Reddit. I saw the way he talked about the dopamine hit he got from it. And something clicked.
I had to install a different OS launcher on my phone so I could change the search bar widget to Firefox search instead of Google, because that's the only way to ensure I don't get the ai overview when I Google something. It's actually really frustrating because I instinctively search in long rambling questions, which does not work well. But I'm having a hard time going back to how I was.
People who suffer from AI addiction are not idiots, we aren't moral failures, we aren't traitors. We are victims of a predatory system and we need support, not smug superiority aimed in our direction.
Reblogging myself to add that when I first started this post, I was so afraid of the backlash that I was writing the post about my "friend" who came to this realization. Because y'all are fucking disgusting with how you treat people who aren't pure and untainted by the sin of using LLMs.
racist white canadians and europeans want you to believe the slave trade worked like this
it did not. it is public knowledge the slave trade worked like this
and in fighting antiblackness within canada and europe it is so so so important to acknowledge these places's participation in and benefit from the transantlantic slave trade. Slavery is not just the US's dirty past, it is a triangular industry lasting centuries that white people in the united states, canada, and europe benefitted from and continue to benefit from to this day. Slavery was good for white canadians and white europeans. They liked it. they encouraged it. they had slaves, they profited from the slave trade, and they used products grown from US slave labour in every day life. The slavery of Black people would not have been possible on the sheer scale at which it happened if it were not for active, consistent participation from europe and canada.
Mammal in a Sunday Dress explores the uneasy relationship between femininity, civilisation, and the animal body. At first glance, the figure appears modest and withdrawn. Her posture is composed, her gaze seemingly lowered towards her bare feet, recalling the conventions of nineteenth-century portraiture where women were often depicted as passive objects of observation. Yet as the viewer moves closer, the illusion collapses. Her eyes are not lowered at all. She is looking directly back.
The delayed eye contact transforms the encounter. The viewer approaches believing they are safely observing a woman; instead, they realise they have been observed themselves. The work refuses the traditional power dynamic of portraiture, denying the comfort of anonymous spectatorship. Looking becomes a reciprocal act.
For Cox, the painting considers humanity's persistent desire to separate itself from the rest of the animal kingdom. The title quietly undermines this distinction. A "mammal" is not another creature—it is us. The Sunday dress, rich with cultural associations of femininity, morality, and respectability, becomes an attempt to distinguish ourselves from nature. Yet clothing cannot alter biology. Beneath lace and ritual remains the same vulnerable animal body.
The work also reflects on the historical relationship between women and nature. Across art, religion, and philosophy, women have repeatedly been positioned as closer to instinct, emotion, reproduction, and the body itself, while men have been aligned with reason, culture, and civilisation. Mammal in a Sunday Dress does not reject this comparison. Instead, it questions why proximity to nature has so often been treated as something lesser.
Chiaroscuro isolates the figure within darkness, allowing the luminous dress to symbolise the performance of civilisation while the bare feet quietly return the body to the earth. Neither is presented as more truthful than the other. The painting exists in the tension between performance and instinct, refinement and biology.
Mammal in a Sunday Dress ultimately asks a simple but unsettling question: if every layer of culture were stripped away, what would remain? Not a king. Not a saint. Not a gentleman or a lady. Only another mammal, looking back.
i have to ask actually. what happens when you go in someone's inbox and go "omg you should try being a girl i bet you're actually a closeted girl" and it's a trans man. does that ever happen. what then
[Image id: an anonymous ask that reads, "I'm a trans guy who dresses goth and slutty and i get "omg estrogen would save her" like at least once a week. And when I complain about it people tell me I'm being transmisogynistic for not wanting people to misgender me and tell me to detransition. so yeah I don't talk about it but it fucking sucks" /end image id]
This child who came to my house tonight is literally the funniest human being on the planet. She complimented me on having both lollipops and mini Three Musketeers available because "a lot of houses these days don't give you a fruit flavor option." She was very solemn about this.
queer rep goes thru these cycles where every couple of years lgbt people are like "we get no rep in media and the representation we do get is way too sanitized and it feels so fake and flat. wheres the queer characters that are messy and flawed and REAL??"
then someone gets brave and makes a character who is a real bastard and makes all the wrong choices and is maybe even malicious at times and they make this character explicitly queer. and then fans are like "this is what you think of us?? worst representation ever" and the creator gets absolutely lambasted, ESPECIALLY if theyre queer themselves
then everyone else sees this and either thinks its too risky to include a queer character, or wants to make sure they're only doing the good and nice representation with no flaws or mistakes
then queer people are like "we get no rep in media and the representation we do get is way too sanitized and
and no im not blaming queer people for our own lack of representation, or when "representation" exists only to mock us and shame us. I am however saying: stop attacking queer creators for making queer characters who are nuanced and complicated and even ugly or cruel. theyre not reflecting you, their character isnt you. its just their character
I've been meaning to make a post talking about my stroke because y'all got bits and pieces of the recovery but I never actually told the story of HOW it went down and the thing is the type of stroke I had is usually the type young people have and since having mine i've now heard multiple stories of people under 40 having very similar strokes and the scary thing is, is that they didn't get help right away. Because you're young and healthy and sure you feel weird but it'll pass right? but it doesn't, and it gets worse, and by the time you get to the hospital (some people literally take days to go) the deficits are worse and recovery is harder.
so here's a super long post about strokes in general, and mine in particular/what I went through.
So for strokes the signs are abbreviated BE FAST. Balance loss, Eyesight changes, Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, -> Time to call 911.
Had I known those MAYBE I would have figured it out but my symptoms were a little mixed. I was reading (fanfic!) in bed because it was a sunday morning and i had nothing pressing to do and suddenly got dizzy. I put my laptop aside because my eyes were blurring (Eyesight changes - symptom #1), and laid down, thinking it would pass, it didn't, it's a little vague how it progressed because I'd been having headaches and neckpain for about 3 weeks leading up to it so I was like 'idk is this a migraine?' (headaches can be a stroke symptom so symptom #2) but i got nauseous and eventually got up and to my utmost surprise I immediately fell over as if I was the drunkest of frat bros. The room literally spun before my eyes as I fell to the floor (Balance loss - symptom #3). I have had some Nights and I had never been that unsteady before. I crawled my way to the bathroom, threw up (nausea - not a common stroke symptom) , took 800mg of ibuprofen, and crawled back to bed.
if you know anything about ibuprofen you might know it's a mild blood thinner and that's a high dose. I may have inadvertently helped myself with that one. I was just feeling like shit and thinking 'idk this might help'
At this point I still thought we were still in Normal Land. Sure, it was a weird morning, but Surely There Was A Reason. (Yes There Was) Anyway, as I'm lying there willing my body to stop suffering I realize my arm is going numb (stroke symptom #4) and I switch positions, because weird, but it doesn't go away, and I gave it a good little while. I'm on a medication that can make my limbs tingle but it usually just does it to my fingers and it dissipates quickly but this wasn't dissipating, and then I realized one of my legs was also going numb. Then one side of my face is going numb.
(at the time I did not look in the mirror but I had a drooping eyelid - symptom #5)
Those all seem bad. I grab my computer and google 'when to go to the hospital for dizzyness' as that felt like the worst of my problems. and indeed the list I found highlighted that if you are also experiencing loss of balance, blurred vision, nausea, and limb numbness, you should see a doctor. That seems like far too many symptoms to be having all to be listed. I grab my phone (thankfully plugged in and by my bed), and start layering on more clothing because it's about 10 degrees out and i'm in a pajama dress. The very nice man at 911 talks with me and sends an ambulance, I tell him I don't think I can get out the front door of my building on my own and he asks if I can get to MY apartment door to which I say yes and he assures me that's fine they will have keys to my building.
(I have been since informed they love to chop down doors but no, I could get that far)
I wait by my door laying down on the ground and they arrive pretty quickly. They see to me in the hallway, which is more of a lobby in my building and the only place with room for me to lie down (I cannot stand unassisted at this point) they ask me a bunch of questions, take vitals, and ask me where I would like to be taken. Me, having never had to go to the fucking hospital in an emergency before, simply go 'wherever is close' because I again, I am having a stroke and do not have the wherewithal to think through these things.
A big firefighter helps me down the stairs (it's only a half flight and I still almost did not make it) and we get underway.
At the hospital they wheel me into triage and I mostly lie there gratefully and answer some questions and respond to some tests (grip strength, following a pen with my eyes, that sort of thing) and then I hear what is great when you've been at urgent care for two hours but what is Very Bad when you just arrived in an ambulance and that's 'She's next'. I jumped the line for a CT scan and an MRI. I was there less than ten minutes before I was actively being scanned. honestly closer to five.
my active symptoms seem to have been worse than some of the stories I've heard, not being able to walk AT ALL in particular, although some other are pretty equal (Footless Jo on youtube had a stroke around the same time I did of the same type and has discussed hers, she delayed going in despite the severity for a variety of reasons and it sounds like her recovery has been difficult) My recovery was pretty easy because i was actively being cared for and on blood thinners right away. I was pretty out of it in the beginning, but I was only in the hospital for 6 days and then in a rehab for another 4 to relearn how to walk and balance, then i was released unto the world and just spent time going to physical therapy and recovering for awhile. I was out of work for about 8 weeks total. I basically had the best outcome for a stroke. I recovered almost fully back to 100% (I'm about 2% less sure footed than I used to be, but it's rarely noticeable), my face still feels a little weird but has markedly improved so I live in hope it will eventually get back to normal. It massively sucked. But strokes can fuck you up for life and I came out a weird medical story to tell and have to take some extra medication now/precautions to take (i cannot do certain types of yoga, no weightlifting, no push ups, no going on rollercoasters.... things that could strain my neck essentially) but overall I escaped very lucky.
For anyone who has ever had covid before, please be sure you are aware of stroke symptoms. Each successive infection raises the risk in a pretty major way, and a lot of people are dying young due to not knowing these signs or being afraid to act on them. Please take care of yourselves.
Worth mentioning that a very good reason to take Paxlovid if you get covid isn't just to stay out of the hospital short-term, but to reduce the covid-induced massive jump in your cardiac event risk for the next two years - this is honestly the main reason I would rec younger folks take Paxlovid if they get covid.
Repeating those stroke signs so folks don't miss them behind the cut:
Balance loss,
Eyesight changes,
Face drooping,
Arm weakness,
Speech difficulty, ->
Time to call 911.
I should say that even if you're not having a stroke, some of the symptoms of stroke are symptoms of something called Bell's Palsy. This can be fucking terrifying (hey guess who has/had it), needs quick treatment in order to minimize your discomfort and the chances you'll accidentally hurt yourself, and it has aftereffects which can be lifelong. It is not known what causes Bell's Palsy but it is thought that it can be brought on by stress and/or a viral infection. (Yet another reason to try to avoid getting Long Covid, I guess.)
In my case, I woke up from a nap that I took after I had spent like 3 hours fighting with Medicaid over getting my painkillers authorized a week after my hysterectomy (ha ha) and suddenly half of my face just would not fucking work. Like, I couldn't close my fucking eye. I walked into my wife's office and calmly said, "I think I may be having a stroke." Then we went straight to the ER as soon as I had put on pants, basically.
I wasn't having a stroke, but I did need to be treated with steroids and take a bunch of precautions so that my eye didn't get damaged (I had to have an eyepatch on, and I fucking hated it), and even now, I have to be careful how I move the muscles in my face when I'm shaving, because certain facial expressions can cause the muscles in my jaw to spasm really painfully.
-insert somethng witty here-.... @valkearyn - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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