Hoofin' It Spritely

Heated Rivalry also features a trans actress. In one scene, in one episode, the one where Rose is getting her makeup done on set. The actress’s name is Miss Niki Nikita, her character is not given a name. She is given one line, with only one word: “Same.” Trying to track down the name of this actress requires you to dig through the guts of Google search results, and still the main thing that comes up is a reddit post where someone credits her. (Googling “heated rivalry trans woman” still just returns results on Harrison Browne.)

Yeah, you could definitely play a scenario where violence is the morally correct answer for laughs, but you don't have to.

If you wanted to play it straight, one might imagine a game about fighting a fascist state where all of the bosses are The One Good Nazi types with very sympathetic, human reasons for collaborating with the regime – there's the Sad Dad who's only committing mass murder because they're holding his kid hostage, the idealist who genuinely believes they can reform the system from the inside, the moral coward who rationalises their atrocities as harm reduction because if they quit, whoever replaced them would be even worse, etc. – and all of the talky nonviolent options for dealing with them involve compromising the player character's principles.

The final boss is naturally a totally unsympathetic Hitler 2.0 type, but before you can fight him he hits you with the old Mustapha Mond monologue, and if you've let even one of his buddies off the hook, he turns the tables on the conversation-fu trope and persuades the player character to stand down.

as always, it and its partner are homeless and disabled trans women living purely off donations from tumblr as they keep terminating us both every single day, and we still badly need support as we're going to be fully on the streets again in less than a month. please keep reblogging this aid post, and its paypal is here.

please, help however you can. if you know anyone in Seattle, ask for our help? or even just a connection as we have none during this torment

i think the 'transfeminist' space on here is.. unprincipled, for lack of a better word. you will advocate against harassment, against alienation, for the assuming of good faith, etc., but really only for girls who you see as likeable, for girls who are agreeable. you will discuss an element of transmisogyny while being blind to or perpetuating the same pattern in your own spaces.

transfeminism should not be empty words. you are a fucking hypocrite if you consider yourself a part of this movement yet utilize transmisogyny against other transfems.

there is no transfeminism without intersectionality, without principle, without solidarity. humble yourselves. understand your positionality in all of this and where you hold power. stop being a hypocrite and educate yourselves. the amount of racism & ableism left unchecked in these spaces is sickening. put in the fucking work.

The woman who introduced me to transfeminism and who I still hold up many of the transfeminist ideals she taught me, threw me under the bus because when I confronted racism and ableism in our group of transfeminists, she chose white solidarity over commitment to transfeminism.

And shit like this isn’t just happening, it’s COMMON because so many are so desperate for power in a world that takes it from us that they refuse to willingly hold back from using the tools of white supremacy, fascism, empire, against other transfeminists the moment it becomes convenient enough or they hate someone enough.

You have to fucking sit there and actually interrogate your actions and choices as you make them. Yes. This is uncomfortable. Yes, we’re all mentally ill and traumatized. Sometimes we’ll fuck up and lash out or intentionally make choices to harm others, but instead of running from what we have actually done, we MUST be able to take the L and address it when it is brought to us in good faith.

their big eggs are actually that size for a similar reason to human babies having massive heads!! being bigger at birth can be important.

kiwi are trying SO HARD to become mammals. fur-like feathers, whisker-like feathers, little beady eyes, nocturnal, great sense of smell.... that's basically a mammal!! they're well suited for life on the forest floor.

their big eggs work alongside these adaptations to give them a leg up in the bird world. their young hatch already feathered! they're precocial, which means they're born with the ability to open their eyes and move around. like foals.

big egg = more powerful offspring from the get-go. babies don't need to spend precious time vulnerable while they develop on the ground when they've already done all that in the egg!

bar trivia

pontoon boats

in terms of cleanliness, dirty clothes harbor fleas, lice, and bacteria, which can turn a scuffed knee into a septic leg into a cause of death if you’re not careful. in terms of mending, a proverb from the period in question expresses it best: “a stitch in time saves nine.” a small tear or threadbare patch can unravel an entire garment if you don’t mend it early, and in a time when cloth production is so labor intensive and the margins of survival (for ALL classes but ESPECIALLY the working class) are so thin, the added effort of making a whole new coat when you also need to be weaving cloth for the market, mending the fishing nets, and preparing the winter blankets might be the straw that breaks your household’s back.

It also includes these fascinating paragraphs about the role of estrogen in different types of physical activity, directly debunking the widespread notion that estrogen is the weak human's hormone and only does weak human things:

Given the fitness world's persistent touting of the hormone testosterone for athletic success, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that estrogen, which females typically produce more of than males, plays an incredibly important role in athletic performance… The estrogen receptor—the protein that estrogen binds to in order to do its work—is deeply ancient. Joseph Thornton of the University of Chicago and his colleagues have estimated that it is around 1.2 billion to 600 million years old—roughly twice as old as the testosterone receptor. In addition to helping regulate the reproductive system, estrogen influences fine-motor control and memory, enhances the growth and development of neurons, and helps to prevent hardening of the arteries. Important for the purposes of this discussion, estrogen also improves fat metabolism. During exercise, estrogen seems to encourage the body to use stored fat for energy before stored carbohydrates. Fat contains more calories per gram than carbohydrates do, so it burns more slowly, which can delay fatigue during endurance activity. Not only does estrogen encourage fat burning, but it also promotes greater fat storage within muscles… which makes that fat's energy more readily available. Adiponectin, another hormone that is typically present in higher amounts in females than in males, further enhances fat metabolism while sparing carbohydrates for future use, and it protects muscle from breakdown. Anne Friedlander of Stanford University and her colleagues found that females use as much as 70 percent more fat for energy during exercise than males. Estrogen's ability to increase fat metabolism and regulate the body's response to the hormone insulin can help prevent muscle breakdown during intense exercise. Furthermore, estrogen appears to have a stabilizing effect on cell membranes that might otherwise rupture from acute stress brought on by heat and exercise. Ruptured cells release enzymes called creatine kinases, which can damage tissues… Linda Lamont of the University of Rhode Island and her colleagues, as well as Michael Riddell of York University in Canada and his colleagues, found that females experienced less muscle breakdown than males after the same bouts of exercise. Tellingly, in a separate study, Mazen J. Hamadeh of York University and his colleagues found that males supplemented with estrogen suffered less muscle breakdown during cycling than those who didn't receive estrogen supplements.