Archpaladin Z

sleep apnea is more common in people who are fat.

society decided for some reason that this meant that being fat causes sleep apnea. its often difficult to get referrals for sleep apnea treatment if you are fat, because some PCPs will tell you try losing weight first.

turns out!! having untreated sleep apnea causes weight gain in a not-insignificant number of people. it also makes it fucking impossible for many people to lose weight.

my husband worked out the same amount before he got a cpap as he does now. there have been no major diet changes either. yet he has been losing weight -- and gaining muscle tone -- consistently since he started using a cpap in january.

also, his blood pressure -- which was high, which docs blamed on his weight/diet -- went down significantly within one month of starting cpap treatment, before his weight changed significantly.

ANYWAYS. this is getting long. two final thoughts.

- I Want To Strangle Medical Fatphobia With My Bare Fucking Hands

Image © @tredlocity​

[Melusine is a French mermaid/fairy/dragon, who’s a surprisingly big deal considering her relative obscurity in the modern era. Multiple royal families throughout Europe claimed to be her descendants, including some big hitters like the House of Luxembourg and the House of Anjou. She was a major figure in the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern Era, inspiring poetry, art and heraldry. Martin Luther and Paracelsus wrote about her. She’s even the Starbucks mascot!

Melusine is often depicted as an ordinary mermaid, but there are two major alternate takes out there. Sometimes she’s depicted with the lower half of a dragon, not a fish, with wings and claws. Sometimes she has two tails, like the Starbucks logo. I wanted my melusine to combine these two designs, but could find nothing to my liking that had both of them. So I commissioned some art, and I think that @tredlocity​ did an excellent job.]

Melusine CR 14 LN Dragon This humanoid woman has green, scaly skin and draconic wings. From the waist down, she has two finned tails instead of legs. She wears a crown on her head.

Melusines are powerful draconic sorcerers of mermaid-like character, and they are so rare that many people think of them as a unique creature. Melusines live their lives in long alternating arcs, sometimes hiding from the world in a distant glen or ocean, and sometimes disguising themselves as humanoids in order to live among them. They desire to raise families and experience love, but have to abandon these families before their monstrous nature is found out. Most melusines make their partners swear oaths to allow them some alone time in their natural form (a weekly bath is common), and a melusine will leave if this oath is violated. Even so, melusines often watch over their humanoid children and their descendents and will intervene in their behalf if they are sorely pressed.

Melusines prefer to fight with magic rather than with claws or weapons, and few of them hide their magical powers even in humanoid guise. No two melusines have the same array of spells, but all of them radiate protective auras to support their allies and can scream to create both a powerful wave of sonic energy and deep grief in whoever survives. Most melusines carry a weapon appropriate for a mage or noblewoman, such as a dagger or crossbow, but if they are forced into melee, they can transform into the full majesty of a dragon. Some melusines are talented enough liars that they can still maintain the secret of their monstrous nature even after that transformation, begging it off as another spell effect.

All melusines are female in their natural form, but occasionally take male or another gender’s guise while shapeshifting. They are cross-fertile with all humanoids and with dragons. A melusine’s child with a humanoid will be the species of the humanoid parent, although they may have some faintly draconic characteristic (such as oddly colored eyes or hair, or even scaly patches). Many of these children grow up to become sorcerers, with a variety of bloodlines reflecting the melusine’s hybrid nature and magical gifts. One hypothesis for the origin of spellscales is that they are the child of a draconic sorcerer and a melusine, and some spellscales boast that a melusine is one of their ancestors. The child of a melusine and a true dragon will be another melusine—this occasionally happens by accident, as a melusine and a shapeshifted dragon court each other while both keeping their identities secret.

canon is what happens in the text. e.g. merlin tries to poison morgana

a headcanon is a fact that you have personally made up as an elaboration of canon. it is your invention. e.g. i think morgana and gwen had a teenage lesbian situationship before the events of canon. or, i think modern morgana would love evanesence.

an interpretation is how one reads the existing text. it is not an invented fact nor is it a headcanon, it is a reading. e.g. i think merlin tries to poison morgana out of misplaced self-hatred. or, i think that one line was delivered with suppressed malice and shows a nuanced relationship.

fanon is the general fandom’s accepted headcanons and interpretations that elaborate or recontextualize canon. e.g. merlin is a badass waif and morgana is a bitch.

I also learned casting, took up sculpting again, most recently learned how to make music, began learning how to make video games, took up swimming every summer, wrote new short fiction, started streaming games now and then, got a job one year at an insect zoo, became too busy to continue that but still help them with events, I learned how to cook better and I’m relearning to animate.

Updating my website and my poor webcomic is still slow as dirt, but the former is because I think making html articles just isnt as fun now that I can do so much more than sit at the same computer for 8 hours a day.

The latter is because the webcomic requires drawing and drawing is still a bit arduous, plus I feel very anxious about nearing the comic’s possible end. Its next update is one extra huge one though, so there’s that.

me when someone says 'i love animals, but i hate pigeons/rats/spiders etc'

As far as I can tell the reasons that this happens are:

The interpretation of disability accommodation as wokeness - a lot of the same people who are shitty about food limitations are also shitty about sign language interpreters and ramp requirements (also building regulations relating to the latter) because they view any accommodation as capitulation to a group they think should "suck it up and deal with it" (quietly exist without named or obvious accommodations). The conversations around peanut-free or milk-free classrooms to accommodate children with allergies are similarly unhinged and possibly more horrifying.

Conflating specialty diets as a result of proximity in the popular consciousness - you're a lot more likely to see something described as "vegan + gluten free" or to see vegan/vegetarian/g-free options grouped on menus than you are to see keto/vegan/gfree options so the "lefty" animal-free diets get grouped with gluten-free (it's also interesting that there are right-wing diets, and I wonder how many of these people remember when you used to be able to find "atkins-friendly" symbols on casual dining restaurant menus)

Gluten free diets became a fad fifteen years ago; tons of people read "Wheat Belly" and stopped eating wheat as a weight loss hack and when they went back to eating wheat because it's actually pretty difficult to get around a major staple grain they didn't experience any negative consequences; people saw this and basically think that it's a trend, that people are faking medically necessary diets as part of a fad. When questioned about this they always go "but, I mean, it's okay if you REALLY need to skip the wheat because you have a condition but most people are doing it because it's popular" when g-free diets haven't been a major trend for quite a while now. TO BE QUITE FAIR, I think that things like "Gluten Aware" cookies and beer and such, which contain a little gluten but not NO gluten contribute to this perception (these have annoyed me forever for two reasons: 1. They make people without celiac think that a little gluten is fine for people with celiac, which it is not; 2. fucking commit, companies. *I* want the cookies and beer and it's deeply annoying that these business will go to the lengths to create products with minimal gluten but won't actually make g-free foods - this is often because of the risk of cross contamination, they won't claim to make g-free things because they won't work with a dedicated g-free facility)

Anyway, in conclusion: it sucks, I'm sorry.

US specific:

Is your ham made with vinegar? Does your ham have the generic word "spices" on the ingredient list? Does your ham include "smoke flavoring"? Does your ham include caramel coloring?

Because malt vinegar has gluten in it. "Spices" may include wheat products in a mix. Smoke flavoring may be made with barley flour. Caramel coloring may be made with wheat or barley syrup.

If the label says "gluten free" that means that the "spices," caramel coloring, vinegar, and smoke flavor are certified to contain 20ppm or less of gluten.

If the ham is cured in any way, it may include gluten. If the ham was marinated, it probably includes gluten. If the ham was prepared in a facility that processes wheat in any way, it might be cross contaminated with gluten.

There's a company out there called "Gluten Free Water" that makes water in plastic bottles, poking fun at the idea that too many things have a gluten free label. I fucking hate that company. Because that company is functionally saying "lol, people are so sensitive and over the top about this, let's be a little silly and laugh about how crazy people can be with their 'gluten free' nonsense."

Did you know that there are sustainable food containers and straws that contain wheat? And that you don't have to label them? There are definitely people with celiac who have been sickened by biodegradable plastic straws in their "obviously water is gluten free there's no risk here" water.

"It's over-labeled so it looks trendy" just means you don't know how foods are made or what foods contain gluten. Gluten is ridiculously common in foods in general, and also in packaged meats.

Your ham has to say gluten free because it distinguishes it from the hams that do contain gluten, which is a fucking lot of them. And you're annoyed that your ham has to say gluten free and I'm annoyed that I'm standing in the grocery store calling a ham company to figure out where they source their caramel coloring so I can figure out if the damned ham is safe to eat.

"lol, oats don't have wheat in them, are people so stupid that they have to be told what is and isn't wheat? why does this oatmeal have a gluten free label?" Cross contamination; gluten free oats are not grown near wheat and are not processed in facilities that process wheat.

"lol, rice doesn't have wheat in it, why is this rice labeled gluten free, all rice is gluten free" Cross contamination; the rice isn't processed on equipment that processes wheat.

"lol why does this turkey breast say gluten free, it's just fucking turkey" read the ingredients on your "just" turkey, lots of packaged meat is packed in broth, some of which contains modified food starch, which may contain wheat.

"lol why are these strawberries labeled gluten free? they're fucking strawberries" WAX, BUDDY. SOME FRUITS ARE COATED IN PRESERVATIVE WAX FILMS BY THE MANUFACTURER AND SOME OF THOSE FUCKING FILMS CONTAIN GLUTEN.

I think that part of the reason that people are so irritated by g-free labels is because it exposes them to just how vast and alienating their food systems are.

"Ham should just be meat from a pig, maybe with sugar and salt; what on earth is happening that there might be wheat in that process? Nothing in that process should involve wheat." And then you might have to think about it for a second, might have to wonder what "sugar" and "salt" mean when someone is producing a million hams to be delivered thousands of miles away. It's not just sugar and salt; it's preservatives and nitrates and batch cooking and getting corn syrup instead of sugar and getting smoke flavoring instead of smoking the ham and turning your "whole food" into all the ingredients that make up the ingredients that make up the ingredients.

A "gluten free" label says "you can eat this" to somebody with celiac disease, who has already pounded their skull against the shittiness of the medical system and the food system.

But to someone who doesn't have to worry that their food is going to disable them, a "gluten free" sticker on ham takes a known quantity and turns their sandwich into a hyperobject that contains animal agriculture and industrial additive production and shipping pollution and the ongoing assault on regulation.

If it doesn't have the label, you can just eat your lunch. If it does have the label, you are haunted by the specter of RFK junior imploding the FDA.

I can tell when companies are cost cutting because they start using corn sugar or maize starch as a bulking sweetener and it makes me incredibly fucking ill. Are they kind enough to put a "new recipe" label on it? Sometimes! Only fucking sometimes. A bunch of times I discover it when my stomach is trying to exist my body in aggressive, stabby maneuvers. It sucks.

And people will literally laugh at it and pretend it's no problem that they don't know why every yoghurt in the shop has cornflour in it rather than real fruit. Or their meat is all preserved with corn to make it look good for longer.

People have no idea what is in their food unless they have to have.

She literally clocked the change in the label — it wasn't marked as changed, she just noticed that the "gf" label was gone — and that was enough for her to flip the jar over and check.

I gotta say that the most infuriating recipe change I've had to deal with was when a company started using "barley syrup" instead of their previous HFCS, which is how I suddenly started sweating and whimpering from drinking frozen lemonade.

"Lemonade is always gluten-free, it's stupid for them to label that shit!"

lmao ok bud

1) Don't go around asking people that first question

2) Do you have a trustworthy figure you can talk to? Whether a peer or professional, someone who is both able to listen and provide non-judgmental feedback?

If it's recent then not enough time has passed for you to have processed it and ignoring it is the perfect way to ensure you don't even start. If you're out of immediate danger I'd start trying to log how you feel somehow. Write it down, talk to a trustworthy person, etc. How do you feel physically? Elevated heart rate, tension, etc? How do you feel emotionally, scared, angry, empty, etc?

Don't force yourself to recount the events if doing so will only make you feel worse. Fidelity of memory is only useful for court cases. Talking about how you immediately feel-- physically, emotionally, etc-- can help ground you and establish a baseline for how you're feeling since in the aftermath of a traumatic thing it is very easy to slip into a depersonalized state.

If I'm being completely honest, I just don't think I'm the right person to ask about it because, while I do have a bunch of thoughts about the underlying political implications of the gameplay structure of dungeon games, I'm not particularly inclined to try to fix them.

I have accepted that a lot of the elements of dungeon games whose underlying implications I find to be ideologically questionable are the exact same elements that make dungeon games fun for me from a gameplay perspective. The entire shtick of PCs in a dungeon game is essentially "get rich by plundering Uncivilized places and bringing that wealth back to Civilized places", and some of the most fun gameplay happens when you lean into that job description. The entire dichotomy between "wilderness" vs. "civilization" where Civilized places are small havens of safety in a sea of untamed wilderness, which is dangerous and unexplored and waiting for brave adventurers to plunder it and extract wealth from it which they then bring back to a Civilized place is like. Dripping with settler-colonial implications no matter how you slice it, and yet it makes for a very satisfying baked-in gameplay loop.

Simply put, a lot of the things that make dungeon games fun for me as *games* come from things that, at the core, don't align with my real-world politics, and will never align with them even if I were to try to spend all my creative efforts trying to hammer them into that shape. And I'm fine with that. It's not even like dungeon games are unique in that regard. You could say the same about like. The vast majority of shooters. Or survival crafting games. Or like almost every single action movie I have ever enjoyed. I choose to simply acknowledge this and sit with that discomfort rather than spending my creative efforts trying to square that particular circle.

One of the things I find the most fun about dungeon games is when a dungeon is inhabited by at least two groups with conflicting goals, because of its potential for dynamic, emergent situations. But this is a gameplay element that kind of inherently requires the places that the PCs break into in search of treasure to be already inhabited by sapient creatures.

If I'm being completely honest, I just don't think I'm the right person to ask about it because, while I do have a bunch of thoughts about the underlying political implications of the gameplay structure of dungeon games, I'm not particularly inclined to try to fix them.

I have accepted that a lot of the elements of dungeon games whose underlying implications I find to be ideologically questionable are the exact same elements that make dungeon games fun for me from a gameplay perspective. The entire shtick of PCs in a dungeon game is essentially "get rich by plundering Uncivilized places and bringing that wealth back to Civilized places", and some of the most fun gameplay happens when you lean into that job description. The entire dichotomy between "wilderness" vs. "civilization" where Civilized places are small havens of safety in a sea of untamed wilderness, which is dangerous and unexplored and waiting for brave adventurers to plunder it and extract wealth from it which they then bring back to a Civilized place is like. Dripping with settler-colonial implications no matter how you slice it, and yet it makes for a very satisfying baked-in gameplay loop.

Simply put, a lot of the things that make dungeon games fun for me as *games* come from things that, at the core, don't align with my real-world politics, and will never align with them even if I were to try to spend all my creative efforts trying to hammer them into that shape. And I'm fine with that. It's not even like dungeon games are unique in that regard. You could say the same about like. The vast majority of shooters. Or survival crafting games. Or like almost every single action movie I have ever enjoyed. I choose to simply acknowledge this and sit with that discomfort rather than spending my creative efforts trying to square that particular circle.