its not over ‘til I yield my time

Everything, Mary Oliver

The Breathing, Denise Levertov

A Prayer by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski

Like a Small Café, That’s Love by Mahmoud Darwish (translated by Mohammad Shaheen)

Having a Coke with You by Frank O’Hara

Eating Together by Li-Young Lee

The Orange by Wendy Cope

The Quiet Machine, Ada Limón

To Go Mad, Paruyr Sevak

Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled with Shrieks by Christopher Citro

Hammond B3 Organ Cistern, Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Peace XVIII, Khalil Gibran

Your Unripe Love, Paruyr Sevak (from “Anthology of Armenian poetry")

Here and Now by Peter Balakian

Ich finde dich (I find you) by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

I Want to Write Something So Simply by Mary Oliver

What's Not to Love by Brendan Constantine

Where does such tenderness come from? by Marina Tsvetaeva

You Are Tired (I Think) by E. E. Cummings

Living With the News by W.S.Merwin

I’m so glad you asked! Let me list off what I’ve got for you:

Books I personally recommend:

- The New Topping Book and The New Bottoming Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy

If you’re having kinky sex at all, you need to read at least one of these two books. Point blank. They’ll teach you the very basics of negotiating properly (which is critical!), and help you identify what you are and aren’t into.

- Mindfucking Mindfully, by Sir Ezra Where this book really shines isn’t actually in helping you “mindfuck” people, it’s in taking a close look at how to do so ethically. It’s a great answer to the question “how do I get someone to consent to something and still surprise and shock them with it?”

- Real Service by Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny This is a slightly niche pick but there simply isn’t a better book on the subject. It’s written from a 24/7 M/s perspective, which is not what I do, but the book itself is an indispensable guide to giving and receiving service. The phrase “if the Master doesn’t want it, it isn’t service” will be burned into my psyche for quite some time. I love this book a lot. Maybe my favorite out of all of these.

- Enough To Make You Blush: Exploring Erotic Humiliation, by Princess Kali This one’s high on my reading list; I’ve heard it recommended by a number of people whose opinions on these things I trust.

- Pretty Much Anything Midori Has Ever Done Midori is a great resource for this stuff - I haven’t personally read much of her work, but she’s a well known sex educator and great at what she does. She’s known for bondage, but has a lot of range beyond that.

- This Negotiations Worksheet from Bex Talks Sex This is what I default to using a lot of the time for negotiations. Forget BDSMtest, you don’t need that, it’s no good. Just look through this worksheet’s wordbank with your partner. Big fan especially of the “how do you want to feel?” section.

Books I can kind of recommend:

- The Ultimate Guide to Kink, edited by Tristan Taormino This book is weird. There’s a lot of good info for experienced players, but some of what’s written here skeeves me out. I think if I had a top that thought the way some of the tops in here think, they would not be topping me for long. But there’s some good techniques and so on to pick up that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I liked the distinction one of the authors makes between being sadistic in the sense of inflicting pain and being sadistic in the sense of doing something your sub doesn’t “enjoy.”

- The Ritual of Dominance and Submission, by David English Man, this book fucking sucks. The writing and editing are garbage, and the fear and protocol play described need way more careful negotiation than he ever lets on, let alone recommends. This is some 50 Shades bullshit. The only time I recommend this book is to tops like me who tend to be very affirming to their partners and need a guide on how to really scare them - when their partner consents and when you negotiate it, which this book sucks at teaching you. Really good content on fear, punishment, and protocol play, really terrible presentation of the topic though. Don’t read this if you don’t already know what you’re doing.

- Paradigms of Power, by Raven Kaldera I love this book. Great book. Very focused on 24/7 M/s play though, and, being an anthology, some chapters are better than others. If you can’t read something and pick out what is and isn’t for you, don’t bother. But some really great inspiration, and generally pretty well written. Big fan of the discussion of leather throughout the book.

interview link

Unfortunately the original concept (which was just about MCR) had to be scrapped bc it didn't fully fit my assignment brief but MCR still got pretty well used so. Here

Awesome Tapes from Africa

which is, well, what it says on the tin. Some stuff is free to download, some stuff is available to purchase, some stuff is both.

Just on the first page, we have:

Arthur — Vuvuzela  Dance Remixes Vol. 3 — S’Bamu [South Africa]

Nahawa Doumbia — La Grande Cantatrice Malienne Vol 1  [Mali]

Asnakech Worku — Asnakech (featuring Hailu Mergia) [Ethiopia]

Khalifa Gueye — Ruba [Senegal]

The site started as just a guy digitizing music from cassette tapes that you couldn’t find anywhere outside street markets in various African cities, and now it’s an actual record label that works with African musicians… and also a guy digitizing tapes.

Officer Goodman deserves recognition for his amazing bravery and selflessness. Because of him, Congress was evacuated safely and no lawmakers were assassinated on that terrible day. He risked everything to save others, and he is a hero.

“For anyone who isn’t on Tiktok, I wanted to share a story.

1 week ago, a Tiktok user with Parkinson's posted a video expressing anger over how tiny the pills for treating Parkinson's are because it makes them really difficult to pick up when someone has something like, you know, Parkinson’s.

4 Days ago a guy who directs country music videos for a living, and was previously most famous on Tiktok for knowing obscure facts about Snapple, taught himself how to use Fusion 360 (a design and modeling tool) so he could design a pill bottle that solves the problem.

Problem was though that he didn’t own a 3D printer so he posted a video of his design and offered to share schematics with anyone who wanted to test it and or improve upon it. All schematics are open source.

3 days ago, dozens of engineers and 3D printer enthusiasts have begun working on the project and started refining and tweaking to get tolerances where they needed to be and ensuring that it actually met the needs of those it was being designed for.

13 hours ago, there is a working prototype, it has “less plastic than your average McDonald’s toy, and should be prices as such”. The original design has gotten a patent attorney to ensure it remains open source and the patent itself will be donated to the Michael J. Fox foundation.

In the mean time, for anytime who needs one now and doesn’t want to wait intil the manufacturing in scale begins, they can get one at cost from the engineers printing them at home.

(Edit: I have a put a link to the link tree for Brian Alldridge, the guy who first designed the bottle, in the comments. The first 2 entries are links to info on the bottle.)”

And so far, studies look promising! It’s not a cure, but it’s a fabulous start!