Meandering Muse

UK work guidance has a minimum safe temperature for employees at work, but not a maximum one.

SIGN BOTH!!!

I've started a graph for the UK parliament petition here. The deadline is 16th December 2026, and you can sign if you're a UK resident (regardless of citizenship) or a UK citizen (regardless of current nation of residence).

Sign here.

And abusive shit can be a lot of things. It can be a bigoted boss that resents their very presence at work. It can be a romantic partner that speaks only in violence and control. It can be a family member that refuses to acknowledge boundaries and feels entitled to their everything.

Abuse has a multitude of shapes and it takes a lot of courage for someone who is enduring it, to not only acknowledge it for what it is, but to reach out and TELL someone. They might not even be at the stage where they're asking for help, they just want someone to look at their reality, the true reality of it, and acknowledge that... yeah that's abuse.

And if you, yourself, have never experienced abuse - first of all, I am so glad, genuinely, that you've been blessed with such good luck - you might find the next steps in your friend's process to be deeply upsetting. Annoying, even. Because you say "yes, that's abuse" and they reply "okay" and then immediately go back to it. Even after you helpfully point out that they need to get the fuck out of there.

They keep going back.

And you're going to look at their actions and the conversations you've had and you're going to come to the conclusion that they're enabling the abuse. That they are actively participating in it, by not getting out as soon as they recognized the abuse for what it was.

And you're going to look at your friend and feel the urge to tell them that they need to stop "tolerating" it, because they have agency and they're clearly partaking in the abuse, by consistently coming back. Your friend might have even shared with you that the abusive situation has forced them to act in ways that, to your discerning eye, sound abusive themselves, which combined with their refusal to drop everything and go, means you might end up tempted to label your friend as a toxic person inherently, and decide to end the friendship entirely.

I am here looking at you in the eye to tell you all of that is the devil talking.

All of it.

While I understand the temptation to give "agency back" to survivors of abuse, no victim of abuse is ever complicit/enabling/participant in their abuse. Because they didn't choose to be abused. They didn't sign up for it. They didn't cause it. If you're wondering, we have a name for this urge people keep failing to repress, no matter how unsightly it is whenever they express it: blaming the victim.

So don't do that.

But also don't just tell a victim of abuse that they should leave and then be exasperated when they don't do so immediately. Do you understand what it means to leave? I suspect you don't.

Go check out HealingByTheNumebrs on Youtube, here on a very convenient playlist for you. Dr. Ruth chronicles HER own escape out of a 10 year abusive marriage. She talks about WHY she decides to leave, and then goes day by day on a 7 month journey to put together a reenactment of her escape plan.

It should help you understand why "just leave!" is not helpful. It's not even advice. It's borderline cruel, even. Are YOU offering to help them along with your loud proclamations that they should go? Are you opening your home to them, to have a place to GO? Are you offering to pay for costs?

Telling someone to leave is easy, particularly when you're not offering to help someone figure out how.

So please. PLEASE. If someone confides in you, do not listen to the devil, listen to your friend. Actually listen to them. And the be a fucking friend, and honor the trust placed in you by not being a fucking repugnant shitstain that betrays that trust immediately and starts parroting the devil's bullshit.

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT 03.06 | "Montreal"

1. social

2. narrative

and if none is provided to us we will make our own out of dirt and sticks

OP: Why couldn’t traditional Chinese Yinpiao银票/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大明宝钞，渐越)

Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960–1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.

Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.

This mechanism is known as qifeng骑缝 (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BC), this idea evolved into hufu虎符/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.

The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetong合同" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960–1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912).

Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaozi交子) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohao票行 (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.

This is a century-long lie. You hung her portrait over our coffins in New Orleans. It's sick. You're sick.

We're unnatural beings! And this-- this is the half-human soul that you conveniently whip out whenever you want to win an argument!

What argument you got for fucking your mother? It's sickness. Maybe the source of all your sickness. But my god! Seek a professional!

Now, I can't tell you that you should, for example, leave a comment about your concern for the way Grok has been promoting white nationalist beliefs, but public comments in the regulatory process are a key step and they shape what comes next. If the regulatory agency doesn't fully consider the comments and form a reasonable response to the ones it disagrees with, that can form the basis for overturning a regulation in court.