Hanne scratches

I’ve been spending some time every afternoon reading in Pirlouit’s Diet Pasture, to keep him company in his exile. Pandolf isn’t very good at sitting quietly with a book so it’s often one of the cats who stays with me, whichever one feels like it, and it got me thinking that donkeys are a lot like cats. They’re both very intelligent and independent-minded animals, and a lot of people dislike them for this reason.

I didn’t realise before I had Pirlouit how many people hate donkeys—I’ve had locals tell me bluntly (and unprompted) that they hate them, someone told me I should have bought a smaller donkey who would have the same negative traits (smart and willful) but be more easily handled (forced to do things)… that one time Pirlouit was injured I needed help to catch him and clean the wound, and some people told me it would be easier to find help if it was a valuable animal, like a horse. A farrier told me he needed to pare Pirlouit’s hooves under a tree so he could tie his halter to a branch above his head to prevent him from looking at what he (the farrier) was doing, “or they’re too difficult”. He doesn’t do this to horses, and wouldn’t even consider giving my donkey a chance before twisting his head uncomfortably like that, even though Pirou’s always been very cooperative with farriers.

In the book I was reading the other day I came across the phrase “the insolent dignity of misunderstood beings” and I thought it suited both of these animals very well.

I love tumblr. I love that tumblr is the best social media site of 2021.

Every other site has spent the last decade perfecting the art of targeted ads. I am a wallet of flesh and blood which must be stripped bare and profiled and picked apart for the maximally efficient way to squeeze profit from my presence. Every other site will fold and morph itself to a shape of my liking - like a fairy tale trickster stealing memories and taking their mold - to lull me into compliance and loosen my coin purse.

Facebook sees me searching fitness equipment and injects my timeline with athletic wear ads. Reddit profiles the subreddits I follow and eagerly promotes a new coding bootcamp or cloud service at every turn. Google overhears me lamenting over my moving to-do list on voice call and fills in my “how much to tip movers” query before I’ve gotten the third word typed out.

Tumblr never even tried.

They could have. The information is there. The basic infrastructure, presumably, exists. Tumblr can recommend me tags based on tags I follow, blogs based on blogs I follow, even posts that for one reason or another may strike my fancy. Tumblr could be - SHOULD be - funneling this framework into advertising, as the only means that free-to-use social media platforms can turn a profit in our capitalistic hellscape.

They just don’t.

Today I saw an ad for treating Hyperhidrosis - a condition, I think, in which a person sweats too much - and I saw it twice, four posts apart, and it is so incredibly benignly impersonally ineptly untargeted toward me compared to all other pinpoint-aimed advertising that I’m endeared to it. Tumblr knows NOTHING about me. 8 years, 51,000 likes, and tumblr has not learned a THING about me.

Advertisements for a mattress? Shitty mobile game ads that don’t make even the slightest pretense at being anything other than a candy crush rip-off? Choose-your-own adventure games either about Royal Espionage or Choosing The Wrong Dress For Your Date with ZERO in-between.

And then this. This here. The culmination, the crown-jewel of tumblr’s nihilistic non-compliance with the state of social media advertising. Any pretense of capitalistic exchange is abandoned at the gas station by the side of the road. This is not a company. This is not a product. This is not anything that fulfills the contract of consumer and seller. 

THIS. THIS IS WHAT TUMBLR HAS TO OFFER INSTEAD.

“Pour vinegar on your bread, fuck you.”

“Put it in the garbage, fuck you.”

“Your wife says you’re a fucking dumbass, fuck you.”

That’s it. That’s the advertisement. You vinegar-breadless cuck. You virgin extraordinaire bereft of bread and garbage can. I am fucking your wife right now in our vinegar-soaked motel bed. She puffs a cigarette which I pulled from the trashcan and we both laugh heartily at her recounts of your immasculine ineptitude. I don’t want your money. I don’t want anything from you. Fuck you. 

Just fucking take a bite out of your soap you piece of shit. Sleep with it and eat it

I don’t even know what this is trying to sell me. Tumblr doesn’t either. The ad doesn’t know either. Did I click on the link? Fucking absolutely. I think it was broken

Long story short, it works like this:

An advertiser (let’s say, Cornetto) wants to show some ads (of ice cream!) on the web, so they book an ad network for some cash.

The ad network goes to an ad exchange and tell them “hey, we need to print 50k Cornetto Soft ads, with this format, can you tell me when you have some space, please?

You are just chilling with your Tumblr app, which decides it’s time to show you an ad. So the app pings the ad exchange and tells them: “hey, we have one spot for an ad of this size”

The ad exchange sends the info to all the ad networks who were interested on this type of ads, and every one of them sends a bid and the ad to print. The bigger bidder gets the spot and prints their ad on your app.

Now, the price for those ad spaces increases exponentially when they include segmentation info. So the bare minimum you get for an ad space is something like “a space of this size, in this app/site, for a system using this language”. From there, a lot of crap about you can be added: with the exception of your name, everything else is fair game: where you are, which sites you have seen, your age, your gender, your friends, the apps you have installed… Facebook options are like a fucked up catalog of human behaviors you can micro-target your ads towards. Of course, if you are advertising something, it’s much more valuable for you an ad spot that can tell you is going to be seen by someone you think is the target of the campaign. So including personal info can make an ad easily 100x or 1000x more expensive.

Everything described happens, literally, in milliseconds, so no human intervention is possible, everything is programmed by folks like me. Folks like me that need to test what they are doing to make sure it actually works in a real life environment.

So we used to have some small real money budget to test things worked as expected. Basically you put a test ad, program it to bid the minimum amount possible (you don’t want to waste your budget and you can get impressions for something as low as 0.001€ if you don’t mind to get the spaces no one wants) and then open an app you know is using the same ad exchange you are using, and start to doomscroll until you get to see your testing ad showing up in the app. Until you get to see it and stop the automatic bidding, another few hundred or thousand totally unrelated folks would have seen it too. And it would have cost your company maybe 0.1€.

Since this is dirt cheap, you launch literally shitposts as an ad. My testing ad to go was a picture of a pony with a button that said “Ride now!” and a link to google.com. if you have seen an ad like that between 2013 to 2015, that’s on me, you are welcome.

Now, of course, the cheaper the ad space, the bigger the chance to get a testing ad from a bored chap that just needs to test the ads their company sells will still be shown after whatever chances they have just done.

So what happens if you have a (hell)site that generates A LOT of traffic, a lot of empty ad spaces, but shares no premium “personal info” segmentation data? The cost of those spaces is going to be the bare bottom, and since there are so many of them, every bid will probably have very few bidders and the price won’t go up. So… Testing shitpost galore!

I need UK journalists to not show 43 degrees is not beach weather like people are gonna die

If you can't afford cold packs (and if you can, stock up on some NOW), get some ziplock bags and freeze them, with wet washcloths or ripped up towel inside. You want them to be ready in the freezer when you need them. Wrap them in a tea towel and put them on your wrists and ankles.

A big bowl of ice water in front of a fan will blow cold air into the room and make a massive difference. Again, if you don't have ice cube trays get some and freeze them *now*, don't wait until you're already in trouble (although I am melting at quarter past nine but my thermoregulation is bollocks so I don't know if that's the heat or just the me). If you can't afford to get any, clean out empty yoghurt pots or Tupperware or whatever you have that can hold water. Even if you end up with a giant ice cube from a lunchbox, it'll help.

Even just opening two windows at a crack will allow some air circulation - I sometimes prop open my bedroom door and leave the bathroom door open, both windows are locked at a crack because of the cats but it creates a nice little line of wind along the landing.

If you're someone who needs something on them to sleep, take your duvet out of the cover and just use the cover.

Remember that water acts as a lens - you do NOT want to wear a wet t shirt in the burning sun. I did this when I was 8 and if I tan on my back you can still see the scars.

Read the instructions for sunscreen carefully, and use the highest spf you can find. Reapply as per the instructions. If you get burned, Malibu do an amazing aloe-based spray on after sun, I got mine from Savers for 3 quid and it lasts ages. I keep it and any other after sun in the fridge, which means it's incredibly lovely to put on. Aloe is magic for burns so definitely gravitate towards that if you can. My son got badly burned (he's ginger, he went to an outdoor pool and they forgot to give him sunscreen) and he's had 2 helpings of it and you wouldn't believe how much better he is (he couldn't even really wear a shirt).

Make sure your pets have plenty of fresh cold water to drink, and if they usually have dry food consider giving them some wet food for one of their meals (cats are notoriously not always great drinkers but wet food will get them some liquid). Keep the curtains and/or blinds closed in south-facing rooms. I have blackout curtains in the front room and the front bedroom (my son's) and they make a MASSIVE difference to the heat. Make sure pets have access to these cooler spaces if you can create them.

Keep oven/hob use to a minimum if you can. I like making a massive pot of something that can be reheated in the microwave if necessary - the oven especially adds a lot of heat. Or get some wraps and ham and cheese and eat those.

Cordial or fruit juice can be better than water if you're sweating a lot. Cordial is cheap as chips. Salty snacks are also good.

That temperature is absolutely murder, even moreso with humidity.

1- fans in windows: fans in the shadier side of the house put them in windows so they pull air in. Fans on the hot side of the house put them so they push air out of the house. Create a cross breeze so you can disrupt convection.

2- cooking: if you have something like a crockpot that’ll reduce the heat output from cooking, and you can do stuff overnight so it’s when the house is cooler. If you put it by one of the fans pushing air out of the house that’ll reduce the heat buildup in your home. If you have a BBQ I’d recommend using it just to keep all the heat from cooking outdoors.

3- there’s a way to create a door or window air conditioning unit. You take a sheet of cardboard, cut holes in it and secure the necks of plastic bottles into the holes with tape. Place the bottle big side of the “funnels” outside. When the wind pushes the air into the funnels, the compression effect cools the air blowing into your home. Pro Tip: make sure that the little “chimneys” in the corrugation of the cardboard are going side to side and not up and down. If it’s going up and down, they will trap heat as the cardboard warms and funnel it up and out into your rooms. I’ve clocked regular brown cardboard putting off 65.5°C it’s great for improvised heating in winter but counterproductive here.

4- light cotton or linen layers of clothing especially looser clothing is gonna serve you best. Multiple layers so you can regulate better, loose so you get some ventilation as it swishes when you move. Cover as much skin as possible. It’ll help protect you from the sun and the cotton will hold your sweat a bit and help with regulating the evaporation to keep you cool.

Parent: why can’t you do your homework?

Kid: I don’t know!!

Parent: okay. I’m going to list some options, and you pick the one you think is closest to what you feel, okay?

Kid: mhm!

Parent: is it because you haven’t finished what you were doing before? Or does the homework feel to big to do? Do you not understand what you’re supposed to do for homework?

___

“What is the budget for this role?”

Memorize it. Internalize it. Practice it like a martial artist with their 10,000 or whatever punches. You need to be able to rattle it off in a moment of panic and that moment of panic is when they ask your salary expectations. Do not be the first person to name a number if you can at all avoid it. You’re gonna drop this baby like the Reverse Uno card you’ve been waiting the whole game to play and you’re going to drop it before even thinking about answering that question first.

Not once has it backfired. No one has gotten angry or offended. Bonus points if you can frame it as you not wanting to waste their time either (makes you sound more senior than you might feel, might not work for someone looking for their very first job but hey still worth a shot).

Every interviewer I’ve tossed this at has been gratified and clear and quoted a number, the only exceptions were when the interview was more exploratory (didn’t have a specific role when we spoke) or they needed to ask a different hiring manager and even then both apologized profusely for not quoting me the number first.

Every single time it has been more money than I would have asked for. Sometimes literally double what I was making before, in calls where the recruiter reached out to me first. I was aghast. As a millennial who got screwed every which way by the recession and still has ptsd over it, finding out what I’m “worth” in this current labor shortage was mind boggling.

(Final disclosure, I’ve been working office jobs for 10 years. This advice might not work for everyone. Many it will work for already know it. But boy howdy, has it been working to levels that have me absolutely floored.)

If you’re nervous about them (not yknow. allergic. let’s not intentionally misinterpret what I’m saying) ignore them. And I do mean IGNORE. Don’t react.

Also, are you watering or generally handling a source of liquid and they won’t leave you alone? Share some at a distance from yourself. Hell are you eating and they want some? Share it.

Honestly if people treated them with the calmness and affection they show bees they’d have better experiences.

all of the above advice works 100%. wasps and bees and all stinging critters are very very unlikely to sting you if you stay calm and move slowly. they are VERY LIKELY to sting you if you move quickly and jerkily, and are guaranteed to try to sting you if you attempt to kill them. they are not hunting you, they are not stupid, they know you are the size of a skyscraper. they will ONLY sting you if they believe you are trying to hurt or kill them.

many species of wasps, and especially yellowjackets, are solitary or social predators/scavengers. they are extremely intelligent, and aware of you as a fellow creature, whatever that may mean to their bug intelligence.

they are not mindless computers, they are more like little cats or wolves. and they are just doing what it takes to make a living on god’s gay earth: looking for food and water for their children 

This is exactly why I made this post—not that I expect everyone to fall head over heels in love with these creatures but to see their importance beyond the cultural knee-jerk reaction because of the reductive view we’ve cultivated of them.

I’m also not saying that they’re never somewhat unpredictable and that they’ll never hurt you—just like any other creature they have the capacity too. It’s just very much increased when the reaction to them is to flail and swat and scream.

Thank you guys for your thoughtful additions to this post I appreciate beyond words. Pls continue to carry this level of care and education as our friends wake for winter and start flying around again!

The Slayer, they called me then. The Monster of Sentan. I’d killed nineteen people… I remember that number because I was so furious that they stopped me so close to my goal of twenty-one. And I didn’t just kill ordinary people, no, but the Chosen of the Gods. The Great and Good. They were terrified of me. So they locked me away, to die forgotten.

It had been a little less than a hundred years when the king died without heir, and a civil war tore the country apart. When the fighting was all over, the losers were dragged down to the deepest cells under the castle, and the new king and his soldiers stopped and stared at me. “Who… who is this?” he asked, frowning. “Some victim of the usurper?”

People like cooks and jailers and scrubbers don’t change as easily as kings. The same man who’d been bringing me my meals since there was still brown in his hair and beard shuffled forward, hunched and grey now. “No, yer majesty,” he said humbly. “That be a special prisoner, from before the old king died.”

“Special? Special how?” He frowned, moving closer to my cell. “The old king died more than ten years ago. This woman must have been a child then. What could she have done to - “

“Don’t get too close, yer majesty,” the old man said sharply. “That’s the Monster of Sentan… an’ she bites.”

That was true. I do bite.

this is capitalism in it’s final form

First, it’s not that new.

Did you know that there was a time in U.S. history—which is by definition recent history—when a corporation was generally intended to have some sort of public interest that they served? I mean, that’s the whole point of allowing corporations to form. Corporations are recognized by the commonwealth or state, and this recognition is not a right but a privilege, in exchange for which the state (representing the people) is allowed to ask, “So what does this do for everyone else?”

The way the economy is now is a direct result of a shift away from this thinking and to one where a corporation is an entity unto itself whose first, last, and only concern is an ever-increasing stream of profits. What you’re calling “benevolent capitalism” isn’t benevolent at all. It’s a pure profit/loss calculation designed to distract from—not even paper over or stick a band-aid on—the problems capitalism creates. And the fact that you’re here championing it as “benevolent capitalism” is a sign of how ell it’s working.

Let’s take Toms, as one example. The shoe that’s a cause. Buy a pair of trendy shoes, and a pair of trendy shoes will be given away to someone somewhere in the world who can’t afford them.

That’s not genuine benevolence. That’s selling you, the consumer, on the idea that you can be benevolent by buying shoes, that the act of purchasing these shoes is an act of charity. The reality is that their model is an inefficient means of addressing the problems on the ground that shoelessness represents, and severely disrupts the local economies of the locations selected for benevolence.

(Imagine what it does to the local shoemakers, for instance.)

The supposed act of charity is just a value add to convince you to spend your money on these shoes instead of some other shoes. It’s no different than putting a prize in a box of cereal.

Heck, you want to see how malevolent this is?

Go ask a multinational corporation that makes shoes or other garments to double the wages of their workers. They’ll tell you they can’t afford it, that it’s not possible, that consumers won’t stand for it, that you’ll drive them out of business and then no one will have wages.

But the fact that a company can give away one item for every item sold shows you what a lie this is. A one-for-one giving model represents double the cost of labor and materials for each unit that is sold for revenue. Doubling wages would only double the labor.

So why are companies willing to give their products away (and throw them away, destroy unused industry with bleach and razors to render them unsalvageable, et cetera) but they’re not willing to pay their workers more?

Because capitalism is the opposite of benevolence.

“Charity” is by definition exemplary, above and beyond, extraordinary, extra. “Charity” is not something that people are entitled to. You give people a shirt or shoes or some food and call it charity, and you’re setting up an expectation that you can and will control the stream of largesse in the future, and anything and everything you give should be considered a boon from on high.

On the other hand, once you start paying your workers a higher wage, you’re creating an expectation. You’re admitting that their labor is more valuable to you than you were previously willing to admit, and it’s hard to walk that back.

Plus, when people have enough money for their basic needs, they’re smarter and stronger and warier and more comfortable with pushing back instead of being steamrolled over. They have time and money to pursue education. They can save money up and maybe move away. They can escape from the system that depends on a steady flow of forced or near-forced labor.

So companies will do charitable “buy one, give one” and marketing “buy one, get one” even though these things by definition double the overhead per unit, but they won’t do anything that makes a lasting difference in the standard of living for the people.

Capitalism has redefined the world so that the baseline of ethics is “How much money can we make?” and every little good deed over and above that is saintly.

I also say “thanks for the update” or “thanks for the head’s up!”

“I really appreciate the head’s up!” also a classic

If I haven’t gotten back to someone in a swift enough period (i.e. one work day max) I say “thank you for your patience. after some consideration, I have decided…”

don’t apologize for piddly things! 

Thank you for waiting for me > sorry for being late

Thank you for helping me/for your time/for listening to me > sorry for bothering you

Thanking someone when they do you a favour > apologizing for your existence

Ed, who has been rather enjoying floating on the edge of wakefulness in the glow of the early Caribbean sun, burrows a little deeper into the crook under Stede's chin.

"You what?"

"I'd chosen our names," Stede repeats. "For our new life. Like you asked."

There's enough distance now between this moment right here and that night on the beach that it doesn't feel like pressing on an open wound anymore. It's been healing, though there are a few bits of shrapnel still left underneath. Stede's soft lavender-scented skin against his helps with that, though.

"Oh yeah? And who would we have been in our alternate lives in China then?"

There's a beat of silence, and then: "John and William."

Ed snorts. "John and William? Pretty sure I told you to pick something cool. Those are not cool names, Mr Bonnet."

"Well, I was going for elusiveness," Stede says, affronted. "Would you have rather been… I don't know, Robert Incognito?"

Ed's propped up on his elbow now, smiling down at the slight pout on Stede's face, the sunrise-gold of his hair, and fuck he never tires of waking up to this.

"Better," he says. "Come on, something big!"

Stede purses his lips. "Mmm… Sir George Monatgue-FitzGerald."

Ed laughs. "God that's terrible, I love it."

"Fifth Duke of Berkshire," Stede continues, smiling.

"Jesus, it got worse."

"Second Earl of Granville."

"Just awful."

"Of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council."

"The fuck does that even mean?"

"...the third."

Ed buries his face into Stede's shoulder. "There's three of us? Fucking hell."

Stede plants a kiss into the crown of Ed's head. "That more along the lines of what you wanted?"

Ed lifts his head to kiss Stede on the lips, all soft and fuzzy round the edges from sleep. "Something like that," he says against Stede's mouth.

They spend the next short while like that, sleep-warm kisses in a tangle of legs and silk sheets, until Ed pulls back to look at Stede properly.

"So. What were you really thinking?"

Stede gives that stupid little half smirk he does when he thinks he's being coy.

"Ah, it's stupid."

Ed smiles and tenderly clasps one of Stede's hands between his own.

"I'm sure it is," he says. "Which is why I'm gonna need to hear it."

After a second or two of perfunctory resistance, Stede sighs.

"Edward and Gaveston."

"Edward?! Fuck, Stede, I think we were better off with John and William."

"No, not you Edward," Stede says, rolling his eyes. "King Edward. The second. It's… it's a play."

Stede is looking away now, and Ed suddenly feels like he's holding a wisp of smoke.

"Gaveston is not of noble birth, but wins the King's heart and is given titles and land and all sorts. The King's advisors aren't too happy about it and urge him to exile Gaveston. One nobleman asks him, 'why should you love him, whom the world hates so?' And Edward simply replies, 'because he loves me more than all the world.'"

The words settle achingly in Ed's chest, like a stone, and god Stede is always doing this, just saying things that flay him open and leave him for dead.

"I guess I had hoped to be that brave," Stede says, eyes shining, "to stand by the man I love."

Ed gathers him in close, breathes into the tangled mess of his hair.

"Hey it's alright," he says, and he means it, really means it. "You made it."

There's a sniffle in reply. "I suppose so."

"It's for the best really. There is no fucking way I would have called you Edward."

Hi! Wanted to share an important experience I had recently that I think you should know about, especially if you’re a fellow petite trans guy or similar!

I just got an awesome gynecologist who works with all sorts of people, including trans guys and such. She made me feel very safe, comfortable, and heard! One of the things she asked me during my visit was if I had anyone in my family who has/had Osteoporosis - a condition that makes your bones weak and brittle.

I had no idea why that would even matter, but both of my mom’s parents did, and I found out later that my mom has Osteopenia (sort of a halfway point between healthy bones and Osteoporosis). My doctor nodded and then explained that since 1) Osteoporosis runs in my family, 2) I am a trans guy taking weekly testosterone, and 3) I am petite at 5′0″ and 100-110 lbs, I should get a bone density scan done. Huh??? Why???

Did you know that estrogen actually protects your bones by suppressing reabsorption of the bone itself?? It works with the osteoblasts needed to create new bone! She explained that those of us with smaller bodies naturally have less hormones, and thus less estrogen to begin with, and when you start taking testosterone for a long time, it stops the estrogen, which stops protecting your bones. Damn!!!!

Now, because studies on trans bodies, especially over long periods of time, are in a growing field, we become part of the data. There’s not a lot to read on the subject yet, just like the similarities between being on testosterone and going through menopause. 

My doctor looked at me in all my confusion and said, 

“I bring all this up because I have a couple of trans male patients who have developed Osteoporosis by the time they’re 30.”

Let that sink in. (I’m almost 26.)

The scan took all of 5 minutes, completely harmless, got to keep all my clothes on. A few days later and I get a result that my pelvic bones are fine, but that my spine has “MINOR Osteopenia” and that I should do the following things to prevent worsening:

Take Vitamin D3

Take Calcium (preferably with food, but supplements are okay too)

Do weight-bearing exercises (“In regard to weightbearing exercises, we think the best is walking and/or running, hiking, and yoga. Swimming or biking is not recommended as a weightbearing exercise.”)

While this looks like a simple “eat better, get more sunshine, exercise more!” bit, (which I guess it sort of is??) it’s also… a little scary? Research on trans bodies has never before led me to this possible conclusion, and I wanted to make sure other people knew about this possibility as well, so they can ask their doctors questions to stay healthy!!