in previous years when I was working in Virginia’s legislative field, one of the big things I and the orgs I was working with were pushing for were the passing of constitutional amendments to ensure the rights to same sex marriage, reproductive healthcare including abortion, and voting within the state of Virginia.
these amendments are important because within our current state constitution same sex marriage is banned (this ban is made unlawful due to the federal ruling, but would be automatically reinstated if the federal ruling is overturned), reproductive healthcare is left unprotected, and people with felony convictions automatically lose their civil rights with no easy or guaranteed way to regain them (note that this law was explicitly made with racist intentions).
although we’ve been pushing for these new constitutional amendments for a long time, it wasn’t until this year’s general assembly that lawmakers had the ability to pass them, due to us shifting into full democratic control thanks to a successful election this past November. that is to say: this week all three of these constitutional amendments passed the Virginia general assembly!
however this doesn’t finalize them yet. they’ll be added to the November 2026 ballot, and will be finalized once Virginians vote yes on them. if you live in Virginia and have the right to vote, please educate yourself on the 2026 ballot and make a plan to vote! by updating our constitution, we can make this state safer for marginalized people.
Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
Might I add:
The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed
The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child
The human who died of radiation poisoning after repairing the spaceship
The adventures of a space roomba
Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)
I don’t know a snappy description but the my nemesis cynthia story certainly lives in my head
hilariously, these are almost all in my fic tag. so, a compiled list from the notes (and some extras):
Does anyone know where to find the one with the Antichrist raised by loving mother and their family has been raising antichrists so they turn out good for generations?
Okay, the one about raising the Antichrist and a bunch more, because tumblr storytime is brilliant:
one of the most depressing things to explain to people just starting transition is that there’s a 60/40 chance their doctors are either genuinely ignorant about their care needs or else they genuinely want their trans patients to go on a menopause crash-out dose so they go insane from imbalanced hormone levels, think “transitioning is actually making me worse and unhappier,” and quit. and both of these doctors will prescribe you 150mg spiro and 1mg oral estradiol and say things like “most transgender women actually prefer to not use progesterone supplements”
It’s okay! Here’s all I know about progesterone, as dumbed down as possible:
First of all, Progesterone DOES have some side effects like increased libido & drowsiness, so docs usually recommend:
Start with 100mg til you figure out how it affects you
Most tgirls i know move their dose up to 200mg+ eventually
Only use micronized progesterone (the soft gelcaps), NOT progestin (the pressed pills).
Every doctor will prescribe progesterone “FOR ORAL USE ONLY”, but it absorbs better if taken rectally.
Side effects are also different between oral & rectal dosing
It’s more fun to take rectally imo :p
Progesterone will raise your t levels, so be aware & adjust your E dose accordingly
Hope this helps!
Also shout-out to Transfeminine Science if you’re interested in looking at the research yourself:
dreamed that kindergarten nap was called sleep class and everybody went to sleep including the teacher. if you were awake it would get a little bit foggy outside and grey and cloudy, and these guys would start approaching the classroom from behind the tree line (forgive my shitty phone drawing)
and they were at least a story tall, some of them were taller, you could see their legs over the trees. they would approach very slowly. this one (the one i drew) had a name for some reason, his name is kick.
before i was totally awake my brain conjured a meme of a bunch of these guys approaching from the treeline and a child watching from the window with the caption “when you the only one awake in sleep class 😂😳😏”
ok this is TERRIFYINGLY close to what i saw in my head while i was sleeping thank you.
OP: Look at the ‘fire-butterfly’ we managed to film. The picture really doesn’t do its beauty justice. (cr 鸟王艾雅康，观鸟景jhin，生态摄影阿博特，毕强，Sjxxphotograph，Fische，鱼摆摆，Shanalotte，冰鹡鸰）
I love this Chinese guy who is so excited to show everyone this really cool bird. This is why the internet was created, so we could show strangers on the other side of the world cool things we know about. Xie xie <3333333
I’ve had a hard time articulating to people just how fundamental spinning used to be in people’s lives, and how eerie it is that it’s vanished so entirely. It occurred to me today that it’s a bit like if in the future all food was made by machine, and people forgot what farming and cooking were. Not just that they forgot how to do it; they had never heard of it.
When they use phrases like “spinning yarns” for telling stories or “heckling a performer” without understanding where they come from, I imagine a scene in the future where someone uses the phrase “stir the pot” to mean “cause a disagreement” and I say, did you know a pot used to be a container for heating food, and stirring was a way of combining different components of food together? “Wow, you’re full of weird facts! How do you even know that?”
When I say I spin and people say “What, like you do exercise bikes? Is that a kind of dancing? What’s drafting? What’s a hackle?” it’s like if I started talking about my cooking hobby and my friend asked “What’s salt? Also, what’s cooking?” Well, you see, there are a lot of stages to food preparation, starting with planting crops, and cooking is one of the later stages. Salt is a chemical used in cooking which mostly alters the flavor of the food but can also be used for other things, like drawing out moisture…
“Wow, that sounds so complicated. You must have done a lot of research. You’re so good at cooking!” I’m really not. In the past, children started learning about cooking as early as age five (“Isn’t that child labor?”), and many people cooked every day their whole lives (“Man, people worked so hard back then.”). And that’s just an average person, not to mention people called “chefs” who did it professionally. I go to the historic preservation center to use their stove once or twice a week, and I started learning a couple years ago. So what I know is less sophisticated than what some children could do back in the day.
“Can you make me a snickers bar?” No, that would be pretty hard. I just make sandwiches mostly. Sometimes I do scrambled eggs. “Oh, I would’ve thought a snickers bar would be way more basic than eggs. They seem so simple!”
Haven’t you ever wondered where food comes from? I ask them. When you were a kid, did you ever pick apart the different colored bits in your food and wonder what it was made of? “No, I never really thought about it.” Did you know rice balls are called that because they’re made from part of a plant called rice? “Oh haha, that’s so weird. I thought ‘rice’ was just an adjective for anything that was soft and white.”
People always ask me why I took up spinning. Isn’t it weird that there are things we take so much for granted that we don’t even notice when they’re gone? Isn’t it strange that something which has been part of humanity all across the planet since the Neanderthals is being forgotten in our generation? Isn’t it funny that when knowledge dies, it leaves behind a ghost, just like a person? Don’t you want to commune with it?
THIS. I’m writing a thesis on weaving and looms throughout history (mostly focused on the Middle Ages in Europe) and it is absolutely WILD how so many people take fabric and clothing for granted.
Fabric production is one of the earliest technologies that humans have invented, right up there with agriculture. Different kinds of spindles and weaving weights are frequently found at Neolithic sites. Flax has probably been spun and woven into linen since at least 30,000 years ago (based on finds of dyed flax fibres). Not three thousand. Thirty. Thousand. Years. Ago.
After you’ve spun your yarn (which I find really difficult, but one day I will spin an even string) you can dye it (you can also dye your fibres before spinning them or dye your fabric after it’s been woven), a process that takes a lot of knowledge about how chemicals of dyes (both natural and synthetic) interact and how to achieve your preferred outcome. After this you still don’t have a piece of fabric though. You can either use a technique like crocheting, knitting, needlebinding… to make your cloth OR you can weave it.
There are so so SO many different kinds of looms: backstrap looms, vertical warp-weigted looms, horizontal looms, tapestry looms, drawlooms, pegged looms… Neolithic vertical (often warp-weighted) looms are already quite complex, often with multiple heddles creating multiple sheds to create a pattern. They only become more complicated throughout the ages, with the Jacquard loom contributing to the base ideas of computer programming.
AND THEN, when you finally have your cloth, you still have to construct and sew a whole garment! This again asks skill and knowledge about how fabrics interact, how they are constructed, what their properties are, which fabrics best to use for which purpose… I still can’t quite wrap my head around how sewing machines work, but I know they are incredible so please look into those if you’re interested.
After all of this there are still many places a garment could go. Embroidery could be added, it could be painted or printed, it might need buttons (decorative or functional) and trims. The possibilities are literally endless.
Up until the 19th century almost everyone had knowledge about textiles. They would know which textiles to wear in summer or winter, which textiles to use for which purposes. If they couldn’t weave or sew themselves, they would at least know how it worked and how a garment was constructed. Sewing happened in almost every household.
Our clothing is based on incredible technology, developed over THOUSANDS of years. And most of us don’t even think about it.
