Sorry, I could never be a capitalist, I suffer from “wanting humans to have their basic needs met” disorder, where I care about people who aren’t me.

Someone once asked me if, assuming we got universal healthcare, I would be okay with the rise in “healthcare tourism” where people who are sick come to our country to get their medical bills taken care of and life-saving medical treatment cheaper than in their home countries. I was just like, yeah thats fine, I’d actually prefer it if 0 people died from preventable causes kept behind a paywall for no reason.

“even the addicts?” yeah dude did i fucking stutter

Someone should put that on a statue, like along the lines of “bring us your sick, your tired, your hungry…” or something

Dandelion Phantom

What if the reason Danny hates being called Daniel is because it’s not his name and ‘Danny’ is actually short for Dandelion. I mean, Jasmine is also a flower name so. It’s on theme? They match?

I just think it’s funny. One, because Vlad would be horrified to ever call Danny something as “uncultured” as that. And two, dandelions have sort of a living form and a dead form where they turn all white and fluffy like Phantom’s hair. And three, they are hard to eliminate weeds. Like Danny.

Discussions of trans women in sports often focus on elite/professional sports which honestly I find it hard to care about but the more common scenario of “we’re going to legally ban a high school girl from playing sports with her friends because she’s trans” is just profoundly evil

i remember when utah's (republican) governor ended up vetoing a law banning transgender students from playing high school sports when he looked at the numbers, and there were only four trans students in the state playing sports at all. he released a clumsily worded but surprisingly compassionate statement about the decision.

of course, it didn't amount to much. they overrode his veto. it's just so cartoonishly evil. an entire state's political body so desperate to terrorize this one little trans girl.

They have openly admitted that sports bans and puberty blocker bans are how they get their foot in the door with and incrementally strip more rights from trans people.

Terrorizing a small handful of children is not exactly the goal, but it is a stone they'll very gladly step on in their attempts to gradually legislate trans people out of public life and healthcare access.

NEW FISH JUST DROPPED

I KNOW that playing God is morally wrong, but holy HELL, it looks fun.

Why is it playing God? We aren’t violating any natural laws. God set the parameters of the universe to allow these things. There’s nothing wrong with it, there’s no hubris in learning more about how to manipulate the universe around us.

We made a whole-ass fish.

The reason this was accidental BTW is because they used paddlefish eggs as a negative control group for a breeding experiment on sturgeons because the scientists, quite naturally, assumed that they were SO unrelated it would be genetically impossible for them to mate. Like. I cannot stress enough to you how these creatures last related ancestors were

140 MILLION YEARS BACK.

If you don't know how far that is, that's basically the start of the cretaceous. Let me simplify that for you even further. Chimpanzees and humans seperated, what, 5 or 6 million years ago?

This is basically like if humans could hybridise with THESE THINGS.

This is the sort of thing that should be impossible. They used those eggs to be ABSOLUTELY 100% SURE NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN.

And then THEY GOT FISH OUT OF IT.

Like. You can quite clearly understand why they didn't think anything would happen. WE ARE MORE RELATED TO BLUE WHALES THAN THESE THINGS.

THE AMERICAN PADDLEFISH AND THE STURGEON ARE SO COMPLETELY UNRELATED THAT THIS IS NOT PLAYING GOD. IF ANYTHING THIS IS AN ACT OF GOD.

THE SCIENTISTS HAD NO BLAME IN THIS BECAUSE NOTHING LIKE THIS HAD EVER HAPPENED BEFORE

It sort of goes against the rules of genetics a bit.

Oh i forgot to add

THESE THINGS, FOR HYBRIDS, HAD A REALLY HIGH SURVIVAL RATING. LIKE 70% OF THEM SURVIVED.

To put that into perspective, getting a blue whale and a squirrel and trying to hybridise them is more sensible, and that wouldn't produce anything but getting you banned from science. Most animals that aren't plants can barely hybridise two degrees away from each other.

BUT THESE TWO ENTIRELY UNRELATED FISH create PERFECTLY HEALTHY HYBRIDS.

the scientists literally had to do the tests AGAIN just to be like "okay this is real right. This is actually like, not a fluke, this works right" and it worked again. They just Can!

So for those who don't know what the original fishes look like, this is an American Paddlefish:

And this is a Russian Sturgeon:

So honestly, saying the hybrid is "weird looking" is a bit fort de café when you see its parents. I think the sturddlefish looks cute.

"these creatures last related ancestors were 140 million years back"

(glances at fish)

Yeah that's exactly what I thought you'd look like, you Mesozoic fuck

You gotta love all the pinnipeds to love the seal.

He keeps saying he’s ‘just’ stretching

He keeps saying he’s ‘just’ stretching

Me for the last 15 years: Starting a timer when you have to wait for something or stand in line can be helpful, because no matter how impatient you feel you can check the timer and remind yourself it has not been several eternities and has in fact only been five minutes.

Me setting a timer when I got to bag claim just now: I'm so clever! I will now be reminded that it's only been five minutes and bag claim usually takes about twenty!

Me looking at the timer thoughtfully: ...another Very Neurotypical Moment With Sam, it appears.

FTR it was 17 minutes from "arriving at the bag claim" to claiming my bag, so right on time.

Someone tagged this post "#it’s all fun n games until baggage check takes over an hour" which is 100% legit; a common sentiment in notes is that sometimes you don't want to know how long something has taken. But that is one of the reasons I started doing the stopwatch thing in the first place!

On the one hand, timing something is about reminding myself "No, it's only been five minutes," but it is ALSO about knowing when something is taking way longer than it should.

If I'm put into an exam room in a doctor's office, I start a timer. Because I have been forgotten about in a doctor's office before, I get nervous that I'll just be sat in there forever, and the timer tells me "No, they haven't forgotten you, it's only been 10 minutes." But it also tells me if I have been there longer than appropriate (generally more than 40 minutes) so that I know when it's justifiable to flag down a nurse to find out what's going on.

At bag claim, because I know it usually takes about 20 minutes to get my bag, I don't get concerned until the timer passes the 20 minute mark without any bags appearing. At that point I know I need to take off my headphones and start paying attention -- looking at signage, maybe asking someone if I'm at the right carousel. Maybe don't worry yet, but start double-checking. Perhaps the delay is unavoidable and it'll just be an hour, but at least, having asked, I KNOW it'll be an hour, and the timer will tell me when the hour is past and I should maybe check in again.

Now, if the bags do start showing up before 20 minutes but my bag hasn't shown up by the 40 minute mark, I know that again it's time to put my head on a swivel, and at the 50 minute mark it's time to go speak to someone in the baggage claim office. This has more than once helped me locate my bag when it's accidentally been sent to the wrong part of the airport. There is no point at which, without the timer, I would go "man this is taking a long time" and then actually go ask, because I wouldn't actually know how long it had been.

The timer both prevents me from worrying before I need to and tells me when to start worrying -- essentially, because I'm both perpetually impatient and also infinitely patient, I've outsourced my patience to a stopwatch. And because I time a lot of things, I now know the average time a lot of things take, which helps me calibrate my concerns appropriately. Ten minutes is a long time to wait for a burger from McDonalds, but it's actually on the short end of the time it takes to get a burger from Shake Shack. It's not a long time to be on hold with the HR office of my old employer, but it's longer than I'd usually be on hold with my pharmacy. Et cetera.

I know I say this all the time but I still find it hilarious that I didn't know I had ADHD until I was forty years old.

just want to add that I've started timing myself doing everyday chores and tasks and having a more realistic, personalized idea of how long things take has helped a lot with my time blindness.

I only just started, and it's not yet habitual, so there's only a small bit of info, but it's already made it easier to avoid rushing or getting stuck in waiting mode because it takes out a lot of the guesswork.

And it lets me have grace for myself when something is really taking it out of me. I'm right, this *is* taking forever and it isn't usually this hard, so what's going on? Do I need to rest? Eat? Did I forget my meds? Am I overwhelmed? Etc.

I feel like a scientist gathering and applying data.

Showers on typical days only take "about ten minutes" (me, 2025), therefore, I CAN shower before my appointment that's two hours away.

Contrary to popular belief, doing a quick tidy takes "less than half an hour" (me, 2026) and will not take the better part of a day. I don't need to dread or put it off because I can start a 20min episode and I'll be done before the credits roll.

The proposed estimate of "10-30 miserable minutes in the cold when the warm blankets are right there" (time blindness and depression, 2024), is erroneous, and based on pre-medicated data. As tempting as it is to go straight back to bed after peeing, my research shows that brushing teeth, including "prep and cleanup," rarely takes more than four minutes and may even improve morale and momentum when getting up for the day.

This is awesome and hey guess what: you ARE a scientist gathering and applying data!

I'm super proud of you and everyone who is working to keep their lives together in the face of disability and the general horrors of the world right now. Keep up the great work! And if things slip a little that's ok too. None of us are perfect. Just keep taking notes...for SCIENCE!

BREAKING: 21-year-old protester, Kaden Rummler, was shot point-blank in the face by ICE. he just spoke about how he’s blind for life and almost died:

“I will be blind for life. I have fractures in my skull that they can't fix. They pulled a piece of plastic the size of a nickel out of my eye. I had shards of metal, glass, and plastic behind my eye and in my skull. They said it was a miracle I survived.”

What the hell is wrong with these people?

GoFundMe for Kaden Rummler, the young trans man blinded by ICE agents this week.

Fundraiser for K R by Sarah Gallimore : Help ICE Protestor After being shot by Feds

Link to the Guide at Project Gutenberg can be found here

A Wikisource entry can be found here.

Mirrors can be found here, here, here, here and here.

Gosh it would be a shame if this got even MORE visibility.

Whoops my cursor slipped.

honestly the main reason i care about harm reduction is that i believe addicts are deserving of life. "what if they don't get clean?" they still deserve to live. "what if they don't contribute?" they still deserve to live. "what if they 'abuse' the system?" they still deserve to live.

addicts deserve to live by virtue of them being human. nothing will change that. nobody deserves to die of an overdose.

I thinks folks expressing incredulity at the quality of the writing and composition in Calvin and Hobbes are often missing the context that Bill Watterson is arguably the most influential sequential artist of his generation. Like, this is a guy who once told the editors of nationally syndicated newspapers to go fuck themselves when they wanted to mess with his panel layouts, and not only did he keep his job, he got his way. He could have had literally any gig he wanted, and he chose to be the Sunday funnies guy because that's what made him happy. He's basically the Weird Al of sequential art.

Watterson considers comics to be as true an art form as painting and films and literature, capable of reaching just as high as any other medium. Calvin and Hobbes isn't accidentally high art. Watterson made it what it is on purpose. And when he was done, he stopped. No movie, no spinoff, no reboot. He considers the comic to be its completed form, in exactly the medium it is supposed to be. He believed in comics in a way few others ever have, and he fought tooth and nail for the right to take his own work, jokes and all, seriously.

Huh. Been reading more Julia Serrano (Y'know, Whipping Girl and all that) and this is an interesting little excerpt from a new essay.

every day, a brave warrior comes into the transandrophobia tag intent on becoming the first centrist in the war on transmasculinity

"Well I think we should just give ISFF a chance to defend herself"

"I think that we should definitely listen to Plaidos and other trans women about their arguments against the term"

one issue i have with many anti-transmasculinity discussions on here, is the way anti-transmasculinity (or whatever term is currently in circulation) gets conflated with the oppression of other marginalized men, especially in conversations about structural power.

it is generally true that marginalized men often oppress the women in their communities. black women, for example, experience some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence, and most perpetrators are black men. practices like FGM exist in african countries, where african men mutilate the bodies of little african girls. across many marginalized groups, we can point to clear, well-documented examples of sex- and gender-based subjugation, including instances where marginalized men collude with white supremacy against marginalized women (go look up “weavechimp,” then search it on twitter to see who primarily is using it).

so, when it comes to intersectional and black feminism—which transfeminism was nurtured by—it isn’t hard to avoid any other form sex/gender-class analysis and say: “trans men oppress trans women! that’s basic intersectional feminism!”

but this ignores the actual positionality of trans men. it hallucinates when it comes to transmasculinity. it relies on extrapolating from movements where that framework does apply, and where (cis) men’s liberation does not depend on feminist politic, so men are excluded from feminist analysis by default.

the issue is not the exclusion of marginalized cis men from conversations about sex-gender liberation. the issue is the lack of material analysis of trans male oppression, because if you think about this stuff for more than a few minutes, that entire thing falls apart.

there is no cis man who can be forced to get pregnant and then denied an abortion. there is no cis man who can be legally or socially compelled to wear a hijab. statistically, trans men are more vulnerable to rape and sexual assault than any other group, but especially cis men. trans male liberation is uniquely intertwined with feminist liberation politic, because trans men are directly subjected to misogynistic systems in ways cis men are not. this is why extrapolation does not work.

like, black femicide is overwhelmingly perpetrated by black cis men. east asian cis men have created entire online networks dedicated to sexually degrading, harassing, and blackmailing women in their lives. in MENA, cis men murder women in the name of “honour.” these are concrete examples of marginalized men exercising patriarchal power over women in their communities. there is no trans analogue to this.

trans men are not killing trans women at disproportionate rates. trans men are not disproportionately raping or abusing trans women. trans men do not have traditions of trans female genital mutilation, trans female breast ironing, or trans female foot binding. trans men are not subjecting trans women to forced marriages, bride burnings, lobotomies, acid attacks, or honour killings. there is no trans female coverture, where trans men absorb the existences of their female counterparts. trans men do not dominate medical institutions and deny trans women care. there is no historical or contemporary system that could reasonably be described as a “trans male patriarchy.”

in fact, when we examine these same misogynistic practices, we find that trans men are often subjected to them, and have never facillitated them. trans men are killed in the name of honour. trans men experience FGM. trans men face extremely high rates of sexual and domestic violence.trans men are forced into marriages, compelled to wear hijabs, denied medical care, and left in pain. these are not abstractions. trans men face the direct consequences of transgressing the feminine role in society.

the people who disproportionately enact violence against trans women are not trans men. they are cis men. the people who disproportionately enact violence against trans men are also cis men (and a sizeable number of cis women).

the capacity of trans men to collaborate with patriarchy is not unique or exceptional. what is distinctive is how violence against trans men, and collusion against them, is minimized precisely because they are framed as beneficiaries rather than as targets of misogyny.

so no, anti-transmasculinity is not analogous to the oppression of marginalized cis men as a group, trans men are not simply "cis men with vaginas." transmasculinity is it's own experience, and anti-transmasculinity must be understood in it's own context. treating it as anything different obscures the ways trans men are positioned within misogyny and patriarchy, and it ultimately undermines both feminist analysis and analyses about anti-transmasculinity specifically, because it becomes clear that all these essays, these books, these academic articles about transmasculinity—are all based in daydreams, or imagined examples of "what should be true," rather than material analysis, a.k.a., "what is actually true."

It is apparently a hot take on the internet, to acknowledge trans men are not cis men just because both are men. The experience of transmasculinity and/or trans manhood is not the same as our cis counterparts.

(You cannot fucking tell me that the way an autistic cis man and autistic trans man are treated are the same. (This isn't directed at u OP. I'm just drawing an example from my own life.))

That doesn't suddenly mean trans men aren't men, but it means both we, and other trans people, can't have 1:1 mapping of cis dynamics between each other.

Honestly, I don't think any trans person has the means to oppress another trans person because there just isn't a majority trans nation out there, unlike a majority nation of racialized people as you've mentioned. Sure we can be discriminatory, just like cis queer people can also discriminate against their siblings. Both happen without getting to fully (or at all) reap the benefits that a nonqueer normative patriarchy offers to conformant people, since being queer isn't conformant.

I would also say that the majority of violence trans people face, is at the hands of cis people because there is simply way more of them in the world, it also doesn't tie to them being cis, that's unrelated.

And your (general you not op, idk op's life) lived experience of trans on trans violence is still important and valid at the same time, we can't pretend like the majority of violence trans people face is from other trans people.

I hope nobody asks me to elaborate on the last two chunks above because I both feel it's clear enough but also my comparison will be a wild Pokemon encounter table to make it easier because I'm tired of people misunderstanding me.