Baby Dyke

-Go with my mood. As good as Say Nothing or The Balkan Express might be, I may not be in the right mood or mindset to engage with them and instead might be more inclined towards Well Met or Much Ado About Nothing.

-Go with my interest. If something is making me want to read Normal People, I’m not going to “save” it for after I’m done with Anna Karenina because I’m only [x] left, I’m going to switch, because Anna Karenina is longer than Normal People and I might be able to knock the latter out quicker and go back to the former.

-Get away from my computer and phone. If I read at my desk, I inevitably turn to my laptop to focus on or do something else, even if I don’t need to. Or in bed, my phone is within arm’s reach. So I close my laptop and/or walk away from it, and I flip my phone over so that I don’t see it light up or give me a notification.

-Stash books wherever. I’ve got books in my office/guest room, my bookshelves in my living room, the books in my kitchen, books in my bedroom, and books in my bathroom. I always have at least one book in my bag when I’m out and about doing stuff (if I don’t also pick up a book at whichever store I’m at or make an additional stop to get a book though already having a book, during covid especially, means I don’t go other than where I need to go for things). So when I get up and go into the kitchen to make a new cup of tea or grab a snack or whatever, I’ve got books there, if I’m not carrying one with me.

-Fight the inclination to limit yourself. I struggle with this in many areas of life for reasons we don’t have time to unpack, but for the longest time I would either only get books in specific topics or areas and/or I would try to “balance” and think “I’ve already gotten the 5 politics and current events books in the last few months, I need to now only focus on [x].” It’s bullshit. If getting 7 romance novels is what you feel like and you know you’re going to enjoy them, do it. The Sun Also Rises isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

-Spend time when you have time. On the weekends, especially during covid, I usually have more time to do stuff, even with having saved up chores and errands to do the rest of the week. So I make sure to pick up whichever books I can during that time and go with them then. I also save certain books for then - if I know I’m going to enjoy The Education of an Idealist but I’m not going to be able to focus on it like I want M-F, come Sat it’s the first thing I pick up when I’m reading.

-Reading books and how many don’t say anything about you as a person, except that you somehow read [x] books. I think the idea that if you “only” read [x] books in [x] time period it means [x] about you is one of the things that’s such a buzzkill and weird to embrace, and bookish tumblr does that a lot, in addition to other things. Some people aren’t able to devote much time or energy or resources to reading and getting books beyond [x] amount, and the point of reading is to enjoy and to learn.

No shirt, no bra, completely bare torso, just like cis men are allowed to

It's about desexualizing breasts and "female presenting nipples" and not being criminalized for our bodies if we want to go topless because it's a million damn degrees out. This was a popular growing movement that was still widely known a decade ago!

* yes, I’ve had it and been sequestered

* yes I’ve had it but I haven’t been sequestered

* I’ve been called for it but I was never assigned to a trial

* I’ve never been called for jury duty (even though I’m eligible)

* not eligible for jury duty/my country doesn’t have jury duty

* it’s complicated

* see results

Via mastodon(aka the fediverse)

Slug Steppers 🐾

because it's genuinely insane the things i've heard americans say 'america doesn't have' when it's just factually incorrect.

for some perspective: during my longest move i did by-car in the u.s., i drove ~3,000 miles. That's ~4,800 km. It took nearly 50 hours drive-times alone. Meaning, if I could have driven without stopping once, it would have taken nearly 50 hours. Of course I split that up over several days.

Driving that same distance here, If there's a ferry+road from Rabat (in Morocco) to Kyiv (Ukraine), I could take it and keep on going another several hours.

So you can understand how silly it is for someone from the u.s. to be asked to answer a question on behalf of the entirety of the u.s.—geographically, culturally, etc.

So now that we've said all that, I need you to know that I listened to a guy from Idaho tell an Irish person today, "yeah, we just don't really get snails much in America."