最悪の場合は

Happy clown marriages to clownicule

This is Linda, 60

Alexis, 64

Helena, 63

Kendrah, 72 (!!)

Tasha, 65

I exist in mostly progressive spaces. Mostly queer and trans spaces outside of work. The likelihood that someone uses my pronouns that I make aggressively clear and plain to see at any given time? I've had maybe 4 to 6 people including close friends and family members use my pronouns in my lifetime, where I have used these pronouns for over a decade.

The fact that they are neopronouns does not make me any less misgendered than if someone was not using he or she. For a span of a couple years, I gave up and added a set of binary pronouns for people to use so I would at least have control over how I was misgendered. That patently should not be the choice I should have to make. Instead I get they them most of the time which is just as misgendering/degendering as it would be if I were a binary trans person. If people don't know my pronouns? Fair enough. When I have explicitly told them to their faces what they are when they asked me and they proceeded to internalise that as "those aren't he or she, just use they"? No different than constantly calling a trans woman or man they constantly.

The idea that people should just expect to me misgendered if their pronouns are "weird" or new to someone really reads to me like someone going to a clocky binary trans woman and saying "but it's so difficult to call someone who looks like a man she and her". like the idea of respecting people's gender even if they might not look like what you expect a man/woman to look like is genuinely new to many people and will take some effort. It is treated as an expected effort to respect trans people that everyone adjusts small aspects of their cooncepption of the world around them (eg women can be x, men can look like you, etc etc). it is largely agreed upon to be a reasonable ask. The idea that that effort is just too much for people to undertake is just blatant transphobia. it shouldn't be tolerated for nonbinary people any more than binary trans people

There's generally going to be rooms dedicated to and build for warmth, the living quarters, both for nobles and their servants. This will be the central living tower, or parts of it called a Kemenate (literally 'room with a stove'), the great hall and work spaces around the kitchen. You can put the Kemenate on top of the hall to catch the big fires' and daily living's heat through the wooden floor, but you often can't put wooden stuff on top of the kitchens (that's a fire risk). If you have the money and space, you build a whole separate comfy place for living because you don't have to stay in the most defensible part of the castle all the time. These separate living buildings are also called Kemenate and are often build from wood, cob, brick etc.

People used to wear much more clothes indoors, including while sleeping, and those clothes were much thicker and sturdier than what we largely wear today. Every time you think of how cold those stone walls are, think about everyone wearing a linen shift + two-ish layers of wool on all body parts except hands and head + stockings and shoes + some kind of head-covering. In Ye Old Middle Ages, women are probably wearing a wimple, which is kind of like a modern Hijab in terms of coverage. People wear shifts, socks, and a head-covering to bed.

I think people used to radiators also really underestimate how much a large open fire/tiled stove heats up a room. Also, middle and northern Europe (as well as parts of Northern China) had and to this day have beds and benches build into tiled and cob stoves. Those fuck.

Beds are enclosed so you stay warm in them, either by curtains, in wall niches or with wood. There's also a type of bed that's inside a chest (like a coffin) so you can stuff your stuff inside during the day and put down the lid to use it as a bench. That's also another reason for people to always sleep in groups. Depending on the era, one of the jobs of a lady's maid or a retainer might literally be warming their master's bed. In early times and among servants, people also sleep in large groups in rooms together in general even outside a farming context, often with animals like pet dogs, too, which further warms everything up.

Walls are not bare, cold stone, but covered with a layer of plaster or cob, tiles or wooden panels, sometimes layered, and believe me, this makes such a difference. Source: I lived in a Ye Olde German Farmhouse with 70 cm thick stone walls and flag stone floor and all that converted to modern flats for a while.

On top of that you hang tapestries on the wall, which are not like modern printed cloth but basically wall rugs, sometimes several inches thick, and rugs or rushes (like a light cover of hay) on the floor on top of stone, tile, wooden panelling or a cob floor cover that goes over the heave flag stone. Pillows and blankets on all sitting surfaces, often on top of panelling (in the case of benches build into the stone). The roof of a room is also tiled, panelled or plastered. Upper stories will generally have wooden floors. Stories in a tower heat each other upwards, so the nicer rooms are further up.

The inner stone walls of a castle, even if stone and very thick, will heat up a few degrees in comparison to the outside walls if the castle is continually heated/lived in, and also trap heat inside, and this will make a difference. Inner walls might also be thinner and made of wood, cob or brick. You're defending against the outside, after all.

You put stuff in the windows. Holy shit. Screens of wood, horn, cloth or leather/hide, often treated for extra insulation. Why are these fantasy castles all so drafty.

So, in spanish (so almost a fourth of the world, cause all Latín américa speaks it) we don't have "gramatacly correct" neutral pronouns, we literally use gendered pronouns for objects for crying out loud.

So, back during the post pandemic years (I think 2023? I don't remember) there was a movement to push the pronouns "elle" for nb pronouns, the most remembers installment being a person saying to their Google meet class "I'm not Your classmate [femenine], I'm Your classmate [neutral]" in a voice most people deemed obnoxious

This led to a complete smear campaing, with people citing reasone why the pronouns were not "gramatacly valid", stitching that one Rick puking clip with the "compañere" audio and people talking about how adding e at the end of words was gonna confuse kids. It all culminated (at least in Argentina) with a governor making it ilegal to have the pronoun in oficial documents and making it completly invalid in legal settings. Some people (incluiding myself) still use it in prívate, but is almost imposible to actually use it in public, having most people simply choosing to use "any/all" to avoid ridicule

This is without Even mentioning that people were scandalizing over xenogendered just a month or two ago (incluiding almost all of the few people that were actually in support with the neutral pronouns thing), but I won't be diving into it as i'm not xenogender and I feel it would be unfair since I havent seen or lived Even close to half of it

I'm sharing this all here Even if is in English cause i feel is incredible important to show the blatant exorsexim that is still present in the grabd majority of the south continent

The last one (acquired sometime in 2012) finally died, so it was time for a replacement. The new model 105 is the cheapest one they make but by golly it's an upgrade in every conceivable way.

However.

The startup/unpacking procedure has changed. Where, before, you just charged the thing for 8 hours then turned it on... now you gotta configure it:

download the app

create an account & login

connect Roomba to the app/internet

use the app to configure Roomba

use the app to designate "forbidden" areas

use the app to schedule Roomba's start/stop times

Etcetera. Upon unboxing it I was >this< close to returning it, because nowhere was it stated on the web store that the app was REQUIRED to utilize the small floor cleaning robot.

But then I had an idea.

I set New Roomba down and pressed the Power button, without installing any apps or connecting it to wifi. And you know what?

IT STARTED CLEANING

It bumbled around the house mapping everything itself and did a marvelous job, without my having to do any of the recommended crap in the Quick Startup instructions. And without configuring its wifi there's no way it's sending data to iRobot's servers. Yayy.

I have installed exactly none of these apps, and have connected exactly zero of these appliances to the wifi.

They all work fine.

Like seriously 99% of my dishwasher cycles are "auto" and the remaining 1% are "express", neither of which I need an app for. Allegedly the app can tell me when the dishwasher needs more rinse aid but so does the little red light on the display. Which is handier than the app because the rinse aid lives in the cabinet next to the dishwasher and so when I see the little light I fill the rinse aid and am done, instead of an alert on my phone stressing me out everywhere and impinging on my brain.

The washer? 95% of what I was is cold water on the colors cycle. The rest is towels in hot water or delicates in cold water. Sometimes I get fancy and delay the towels an hour so it's not competing with the dishwasher or the shower for hot water. None of that needs the app. Allegedly the app can tell me when the washer is done but so can a timer I set to the wash time handily displayed when I start the washer, and that doesn't send any data to the manufacturer.

Honestly I don't even know what the stove app does because I can do fancy things like "turn the oven on in 3 hours" without it.

Yes, it is incredibly shitty that these all have apps now and that some features are app-only and that we are all pushed to give up more and more of our control and privacy in order to feed the gaping maw of corporate "profit". HOWEVER. Sometimes you can still just not.

its a take from the perspective that trans men are "vulnerable" is some vague abstract generalized way, not in a way which would behoove anyone to adjust their behavior or take action on their behalf. its the erasure of erasure; the assumption is that trans men probably have enough resources and support anyways, which could not be farther from the truth. some local communities may have more transmasc-focused resources, but many others do not. transmasculine people are left out of vital conversations, are excluded from vital resources, are ignored and forgotten when they are abused and killed.

it treats transmasc erasure as something which is passive in itself and which can be solved passively. which is erasure itself in action. i do not really give a fuck about "who has it worse," it is not about that. it is about the fact that if YOU do not make an ACTIVE EFFORT to advocate for transmascs, to make transmasc suffering and oppression visible and legible, it will not happen. it simply will not happen.

erasure is an active force. we all internalize transmasculine erasure and we can all easily contribute to it; we are expected to contribute to it. trans men&mascs cannot afford the model of "well we only need to raise awareness for the most vulnerable" because our vulnerability is defined by being ignored.

or trans men like Sophie Lederer, who was only 19 when he was arrested for "talking silly and claiming to be a boy" in the early 20th century, and the only other thing I know about him is that he spent the rest of his life, over a decade, institutionalized for his transmasculinity. god only fucking knows what was done to him in those years by his wardens.

>we save people from fires

>fires can kill anyone, including queer people

>we also save queer people from fires