Stereocaulon dactylophyllum

Finger-scale foam lichen

I found a this lichen's thallus described as "evanescent." So like, it needs to be woken up inside? But can't wake up? I have no idea what that word actually means. *googling* it means the basal thallus grows smaller and smaller until it disappears completely. In this case, it elongates upwards into the pseudopodetia. Cool! So when mature, S. dactylophyllum forms clusters of gray-white or green white branching, coral-like or finger like pseudopodetia covered in phyllocladia (those round bumpy structures). It has terminal apothecia (at the ends of the pseudopodetia) that start out flat, but grow more rounded and bulbous with age, and are red-brown to brown-black in color. S. dactylophyllum grows on siliceous rock in mountainous habitats in the northern hemisphere. Stereocaulon lichens are often called snow lichens or foam-snow lichens because I guess they look like that fake foam snow you can spray on your Christmas tree, so it seemed fitting to share this time of year. Enjoy any current holidays you may be celebrating, and if you don't celebrate any holidays at the moment, you can always celebrate lichens!

images: source | source

Fourteen and raped.

Caught in a time, caught in a world where it was impossible to tell anyone.

Caught between the sharp edge of a stone and the long walk of an aisle.

Save your honor.

Save your fathers pride.

Die by the communities hand, stone flung by fingers just grateful to be on the other side -

Or the slow death. Your honor restored by submission to the one who violated you.

His bride.

Prodded again by his tool until you are weeping, undone in ways as drastic as the stone, but invisible nonetheless.

I wonder if she wept when her blood didn't come.

When silence wasn't enough to hide what had happened.

Was the idea itself a God-gift? Sprung from divine intervention?

No; it was the imagination of a little girl who found a labyrinths path to deliverance.

Did she struggle with the blaspheme of it?

Did she even still believe, after what she had endured?

She was not the first little girl abandoned by God.

But she would be the first to call him back.

Claim Divine power.

Feverent cry, half rage half prayer:

'If you deem make me a mother, then I will be the Mother of God.'

And so the story came to her.

"An angel came unto me," she claimed, warping the truth of the demon man who came into her, "he said the child born from my virgin womb will be called holy, Son of God!"

Did her betrothed quake in her God power? Or did he suspect? Joseph obeyed God, whether or not he knew her to be his own wife.

Refugee. Liar. Saint.

They fled and the child was born.

No room in the inn, but room in her heart.

"Bastard boy," did she whisper lovingly, conspiratorily, amongst the frankincense and myrrh, "my gift to you will be the Kingdom of Heaven."

A quiet child. Did she want a quiet life? Yet her survival was dependent on the tale.

How old was he when she let him inherit the story?

Did she wonder who he would have been if she had not molded him to her lie?

Hunted messiah. Pauper prophet.

The disciples came.

The miracles followed.

And none knew the first of the miracles; a story from a little girls lips, a Savior unto her own self.

Did Mary swap the water for the wine? Did Mary procur the loaves of bread, the fish?

Did she watch with awe or anger as he claimed each feat for his own self?

Is this not always the mothers way; to offer their broken backs to their sons.

When it went downhill, I can picture how she trembled. She could see the end of the labyrinth, I'm sure. She knew a truth that could undo the inevitable end.

Mary kept her silence.

Even if she had spoke, what is a woman's word against the Son of God.

So her story marched on, and she watched her son get caught up in a Holy War of her own creation.

Upon his execution, he cried out "Father, why hath thou forsaken me?"

Did she want to tell him the truth?

Tell him of the evils his true father performed long ago that led to his birth?

Or did she hear his plea to God, "Father, why hath thou forsaken me?", and weep alongside him, a woman forsaken by God long ago, and wonder "me too, me too."

Or did she think to herself, "Son, it was your Mother who hath forsaken you. Forgive me. It was the only way."

first of all, i’m going to ignore the horrid misgendering for the moment but can you PLEASE explain how the fuck psychological therapy is supposed to help.? and this is coming from an aspiring psychologist. 

sitting around and talking is not going to make me feel better. binding will make me feel better. maybe its not healthy, but goddamn it do you think seeing my chest in a mirror and throwing up is any healthier???? 

“Damning dysphoric women to a life with spinal pain and problems”

so you would prefer damning dysphoric people to a life with mental pain and problems - if they even have very long of a life at all?

every single day, for what three years now? i have dreamed of the day i will be able to get top surgery. perhaps i am physically healthy, but i am certainly not mentally healthy. relieving my dysphoria through altering my body is the only thing that will help me. if somebody else can relieve their dysphoria through changing their perspective and perception of their body and not physically changing anything? great! wonderful! happy to see it works for them. but you do NOT get to assume that is the magical solution for all trans people. 

 i can’t access a binder because of my home situation, so do you want to know what i used to do? i binded with ace tape. (only stopped because my mother caught me). i was NOT ignorant about the common damage binding that way either - although many people are, so many don’t know of the risks of binding regardless of which form, which is really sad  but i digress. I knew perfectly well that it would cause damage. but i was so overwhelmed that i binded unsafey anyway.  in that moment i realized i would literally rather have permanent physical damage done than have to deal with my dysphoria any longer.

and before that, i tried to suppress my dysphoria. i tried to pretend that i just was rejecting my femininity because of the way the world perceived women - that’s what you think AFAB people are doing right? that suppression was horrible for me. it has left me with scars that i now have to be reminded of every damn time i see myself. a permanent reminder. and i tried to suppress in the first place because i read and was influenced by posts like this. you may have indirectly caused this for who knows how many others. are you happy with that? oh yes of course you are. because it stops people from getting back problems right? <3 <3 <3 how noble of you. 

so 1) instead of only commenting on how awful binders are can you consider they are much better alternatives to other ways people bind. even though they do cause damage it is important for people to be educated about them and they often fix a lot more damage (mentally) than they cause (physically). 

 2) putting mental health aside if you’re going to acknowledge physical health problems from binding you should also acknowledge health issues from NOT binding. one example, poor posture. me and all my trans friends suffer from this. and it does cause serious problems when you’re older right? I already have back pain almost every day because again since i don’t have a binder, i slump over to hide my chest. 

and 3). i don’t think you understand that 

If your kids think that they’re trans

Let them take puberty blockers

It’s completely reversible

Puberty is not

For years, Sharissa Derricott, 30, had no idea why her body seemed to be failing. At 21, a surgeon replaced her deteriorated jaw joint. She’s been diagnosed with degenerative disc disease and fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition. Her teeth are shedding enamel and cracking.

None of it made sense to her until she discovered a community of women online who describe similar symptoms and have one thing in common: All had taken a drug called Lupron.

Thousands of parents chose to inject their daughters with the drug, which was approved to shut down puberty in young girls but also is commonly used off-label to help short kids grow taller.

The drug’s pediatric version comes with few warnings about long-term side effects. It is also used in adults to fight prostate cancer or relieve uterine pain and the Food and Drug Administration has warnings on the drug’s adult labels about a variety of side effects.

More than 10,000 adverse event reports filed with the FDA reflect the experiences of women who’ve taken Lupron. The reports describe everything from brittle bones to faulty joints.

In interviews and in online forums, women who took the drug as young girls or initiated a daughter’s treatment described harsh side effects that have been well-documented in adults.

Women who used Lupron a decade or more ago to delay puberty or grow taller described the short-term side effects listed on the pediatric label: pain at the injection site, mood swings and headaches. Yet they also described conditions that usually affect people much later in life. A 20-year-old from South Carolina was diagnosed with osteopenia, a thinning of the bones, while a 25 year-old from Pennsylvania has osteoporosis and a cracked spine. A 26 year-old in Massachusetts needed a total hip replacement. A 25-year-old in Wisconsin, like Derricott, has chronic pain and degenerative disc disease.

I gotcha! Here's a method I found really worked for me, same issues.

1) Stop masturbating for like a month. Just go cold turkey.

2) Come back and masturbate to nothing but the sensation and physical feelings. Focus on your body. Be intensely mindful of every feeling.

3) If your brain goes to unhealthy fantasies, stop masturbating. Do something else for a second. Play on your phone, or watch an episode of TV. When the thoughts have passed, begin masturbating to the sensations again. Rinse and repeat until orgasm. The idea is to orgasm to sensation only.

4) Rinse and repeat this for a month or so. Just orgamsing to sensation. This is easiest with a vibrator. Never indulge the unhealthy fantasy.

5) After you're in the habit, and sensation alone does it for you, return to erotica. Choose something healthy. That doesn't mean it has to be loving couple has candlelit missionary! But something free of violence, and harm. You should be able to get turned on by this, and orgasm to it!

I wrote a post a while back about how some people are very good at getting away with doing intentionally creepy things by passing themselves off as just ~awkward~.

Recently, I noticed a particular pattern that plays out. While creeps can be any gender, there’s a gendered pattern by which creepy men get other men to help them be creepy:

A guy runs over the boundaries of women constantly

He makes them very uncomfortable and creeped out

But he doesn’t do that to guys, and

He doesn’t talk to guys about it in an unambiguous way, and

When he does it in front of guys, he finds a way to make it look deniable

And then some women complain to a man, maybe even a man in charge who is supposed to be responsible for preventing abuse in a space

and he has no idea what they are talking about, since he’s never the target or witness

And he’s had a lot of pleasant interactions with that guy

So he sympathizes with him, and thinks he must mean well but be have trouble with social skills

And then takes no action to get him to stop or to protect women

And so the group stays a place that is safe for predatory men, but not for the women they target

For example:

Mary, Jill, and Susan: Bill, Bob’s been making all of us really uncomfortable. He’s been sitting way too close, making innuendo after everything we say, and making excuses to touch us.

Bill: Wow, I’m surprised to hear that. Bob’s a nice guy, but he’s a little awkward. I’m sure he doesn’t mean anything by it. I’m not comfortable accusing him of something so serious from my position of authority.

What went wrong here?

Bill assumed that, if Bob was actually doing something wrong, he would have noticed.

Bill didn’t think he needed to listen to the women who were telling him about Bob’s creepy actions. He didn’t take seriously the possibility that they were right. 

Bill assumed that women who were uncomfortable with Bob must be at fault; that they must be judging him too harshly or not understanding his awkwardness

Bill told women that he didn’t think that several women complaining about a guy was sufficient reason to think something was wrong

Bill assumed that innocently awkward men should not be confronted about inadvertantly creepy things they do, but rather women should shut up and let them be creepy

A rule of thumb for men:

If several women come to you saying that a man is being creepy towards them, assume that they are seeing something you aren’t

Listen to them about what they tell you

If you like the guy and have no idea what they’re talking about, that means that what he is doing is *not* innocent awkwardness.

If it was innocent awkwardness, he wouldn’t know how to hide it from other men

Men who are actually just awkward and bad at understanding boundaries also make *other men* uncomfortable

If a man is only making women uncomfortable but not men, that probably means he’s doing it on purpose

Take that possibility seriously, and listen to what women tell you about men

‘’If a man is only making women uncomfortable but not men, that probably means he’s doing it on purpose’’

This is so much truth. This is the KERNEL of truth. the BEACON of truth.

when I saw the video this morning i cried.

@loboflaco you can fuck right off.