Assorted art n' stuff

Hi y'all! 

For about a year now this news has been officially [redacted], but now it's free. My debut YA novel, BORDERLINE, was acquired by Union Square Kids, an imprint of Hatchette Book Group, and is scheduled to hit shelves next summer 2027. Also they mentioned my blog in the official announcement, as you can see, which is hilarious. Anyway. 

I'm really excited to have a book out in the world soon! BORDERLINE was actually kind of built by the blog, considering my beta readers were all followers who volunteered. (Beta readers: expect a separate email). So many people have been so kind about my work here, my future work, and this whole process, so THANK YOU, first and foremost. 

If you've liked what I do here, it would mean the world to me to have your continued support! Tell your online friends, tell your real life friends, tell your library, etc etc! My instagram will shortly be transforming into an author page, so if the mood strikes you, please give me a follow @lilia.vc ! This alone would be an enormous, enormous help. 

Finally, if you have any questions please send them my way! Thanks again, keep writing, and as always, stay weird. 

If you are getting gender affirming surgery, especially if it’s your first major surgery, PLEASE be aware that you can become SEVERELY depressed afterwards ESPECIALLY if you have a history of depression or suicidal ideation.

Post op depression is a natural reaction to the crazy mix of hormones your body goes through after major surgery as well as the stress and anxiety of recovery. Think of it like an adrenaline crash, but dragged out longer.

For me it kicked in about 6 weeks after top surgery and the worst of it lasted until about 10 weeks post op. EVERYTHING felt IMPOSSIBLE. None of the skills I’d been practicing worked. I thought everything was going to be bad forever. I didn’t attempt, but I was in the hospital. If it wasn’t for my support system I probably would have attempted.

This is not regret, but it can feel like it. I remain happy about my results to this day (going on six years later).

This is not you failing to maintain your mental health, but it can make you feel like a failure.

Things are not hopeless, but through the haze of this depression they can feel hopeless.

It can be terrifyingly sudden or it can sneak up on you. I didn’t even realize what was going on until after the depression finally passed and my mental health went back to normal.

I am writing this post because nobody told me about this before my top surgery. I was caught completely off guard. For my subsequent surgeries being aware has made all the difference. Being able to treat those symptoms as an expected and normal part of the healing journey has made them far easier to deal with. Because even when my emotions go to dark places I *know* they will pass. I have been able to tell the bad thoughts to take a bad seat and focus on healing.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

Edit: AI here is referring to generative AI, rather than closed models or custom made LLMs trained on internal datasets

Edit" "tumblr is not the best place to do data collection" "most biased sample group" yup. cool. good.

the kodkod

the flat headed cat

the pampas cat

the andean mountain cat

the jaguarundi

“But Tumblr user severalowls, that’s just an Ocelot!”

No, you fool! You Buffoon! The Margay has mastered something generations of cats have only dreamed of! Getting down out of trees:

The Margay has reversible ankles, and uses them to do some pretty sweet tricks (And also hunt down monkeys, birds and other tree-dwelling critters in their otherwise safe treetop homes.)

Warning to anyone using Linktree.

From the 5th July, they'll be feeding all imagery you use on your landing page into DALL-E by OpenAI.

Carrd.co. Free alt with paid features.

Bento.app Currently free, integrated with bluesky

Everlink.tools Closest to Linktree, has some paid features.