Main blog with multiple RP-sides

Public libraries purchase and display books based on popularity and demand. The more queer material taken out, the more inclined public libraries are to add more queer material.

This is also a reminder that libraries often carry DVDs and TV shows if you don’t want to physically read a book.

"Maybe not every household needs its own industrial-grade leaf blower."

"Maybe we should accept denser housing and shared infrastructure."

"Maybe private lawns should become community gardens."

all the way to

"You don't get control over your schedule."

"You don't get privacy."

"You don't get to choose your own aesthetics."

"You don't get to decide who has access to your emotional life."

"You don't get to opt out of communal activities."

"You don't get to have tastes that aren't socially approved."

Those are not remotely the same category of thing.

Some people treat all preferences as interchangeable units. They imagine a giant pile labeled "individual desires" and then talk about reducing it by 15%.

But preferences aren't equal.

Wanting three power drills when one shared drill would do is different from wanting control over your schedule.

Wanting a third car is different from wanting a bedroom door that locks.

Wanting a private yacht is different from wanting the ability to listen to music nobody else likes.

Wanting a 10,000-square-foot mansion is different from wanting to spend an evening alone.

The fact that these get lumped together is what makes the discussion so frustrating.

Because someone says, "Well, people will have to make sacrifices."

And I ask, "Okay, what sacrifices?"

And they think I'm being difficult.

No, that's the entire question.

There is a vast difference between "You can't get out-of-season produce on demand, because the resources needed to make that available are unsustainable" and "You can only eat food obtained locally or grown yourself or cooked yourself."

There is a vast difference between "We don't need multiple iterations of the exact same product under different brand names" and "We don't need gluten-free or high-protein or low-fat or vegan or kosher or other specialized food because those things don't' matter."

There is a vast difference between "Fast fashion with oil plastic fabrics made in sweatshops with quasi-slavery conditions needs to be abolished" and "People should only wear handmade bespoke clothing."

There is a vast difference between "Everyone should have the free time and space and resources to pursue hobbies like gardening, canning, cooking, sewing, knitting, and other crafts" and "People should have to rely on small-scale crafting to survive."

"This includes prisoners! They are not suddenly property of the state when they're convicted!" - *a little less cheering*

"And that includes children who are not their parents' property!" - *almost no cheering*

for my Euro pals

Water with salt for electrolyte replacement. Use whatever salt you have, you don't need fancy pink Himalayan salt. Warm water is fine, don't worry about making it cold. Just make sure it isn't hot.

Wet a rag and put it in your freezer for 20 minutes, then wrap it around your neck. As you take one out of the freezer, put another one in.

Run the coldest water you have access to over your wrists every 10 minutes or so. Veins are close to the surface here, and the cool water circulates and lowers your core temp ever so slightly. Do it repeatedly and you'll feel a little cooler over the course of an hour or so.

If you have tile, linoleum or hardwood, that's the place to sleep. If the heat is still oppressive at bedtime, use the rag trick on towels and sleep on those.

Most of your houses are built to keep heat in. If it gets cooler at night, sleep outside. Seriously.

If you have public buildings or transport with air conditioning, seek it out. Examples include shopping centers, movie theaters, libraries, community centers, restaurants, buses, trains, even your car.

Please check on your disabled and elderly neighbors. Also make contact with neighbors who live in upper flats. Invite them with you if you're going into town to find an air conditioned building. Help to heat proof their homes. Share your tips. Have them spend the day in your house if it's cooler.

For kids: playing with water is a great way to keep them occupied and help them stay cool. Kiddie pools, buckets, community pools, splash pads, sprinklers, trips to the lake, etc are all ways to keep your kids and yourself occupied. Never leave children alone while around water. If you need to leave, have another trusted adult take over for you.

Avoid cooking or baking if you can. Ovens and stovetops add a surprising amount of heat to your house. If you have shelf-stable foods or leftovers that don't need heating, now is the time to use them. Save cooking for cooler parts of the day if possible.

incorrect response: write the rest of the story to be as twisty, shocking and counter to expectations as possible, regardless of whether this is a logical or satisfying way for the plot to go

correct response:

(you’re not stupid. I posted this thinking it would amuse a handful of mutuals who all knew the context and that would be about it, so I didn’t think about providing any other explanation. I had no idea it would spread this far.)

I’ll start from the very beginning just to be thorough. so this is Alex Hirsch, creator and head writer of Gravity Falls, a show which had a big focus on mystery, conspiracies, codes and ciphers, etc. the whole plot is kicked off by one of the main characters finding a mysterious old journal in the woods, which detailed all kinds of weird and supernatural things, but then ended abruptly with the author saying they had to hide the journal because they were being watched. the central driving mystery of the show, therefore, was the question of who wrote the journal and what happened to them.

now, the thing about Gravity Falls is that, while it must be said that the writers weren’t always quite as sure of their plans as we tend to like to think they are, it is very much a fair play mystery, with legitimate clues to what was going on. but the writers were caught off guard by how quickly the show attracted a dedicated audience, including a lot of people outside the primary presumed demographic, who started solving the clues faster than expected. so some of the fans were able to correctly guess who the author was before it was revealed in the show, and the theory started spreading. this put the writers in something of a panic, because this was THE mystery that the whole story revolved around, with ¾ of the show building up to the dramatic reveal in the middle of season 2. they wanted it to be a mystery that could be figured out, sure, but they weren’t prepared for people to solve it so far in advance of when it was planned to be revealed, which would have really taken away from the big moment. they weren’t going to change the main story itself, but having been caught unaware by how much attention the fans were paying, they wanted to up the ante and make the mystery more complex to solve going forward–but first they needed to buy some time and throw the fandom off the scent for a little longer.

hence, Alex’s plan as described above. they whipped up a fake shot that appears to give away the identity of the author as being another character in the show, put it on a screen in the studio as if it was a real animation frame, took a picture of it, and ‘leaked’ it online. it was initially decided to be a hoax (albeit, I think, presumed to be a hoax originating from outside the production team), until Alex posted this tweet:

…before quickly deleting it (though not so quickly that it didn’t get seen, of course).

it worked well enough to distract most people for a while, and wasn’t revealed as a hoax until a year later, when an episode aired that definitively proved that the supposed screenshot could never have happened, at which point Alex owned up to the whole thing as seen in the tweet above. by then the episode with the real reveal wasn’t far off, and while people did still work it out ahead of time, it was more of an “OH MY GOD I KNEW IT!” moment than a “booooooring, we’ve known that for ages” moment, which of course was what the writers wanted all along.

personally I find this a fascinating approach to dealing with the problem of spoilers, because it doesn’t affect the story itself at all; if you watch Gravity Falls today–or if you were watching it when it aired without any significant contact with the fandom–you’d never know about it. ultimately, the problem the writers were facing wasn’t that some people might guess the answer to the mystery–they never wanted to make it completely impossible to predict–so much as it was that they hadn’t designed the story to stand up to so many people working on the puzzle together, which resulted in a sort of total output of puzzle-solving ability that far outstripped the capability of any one solo human being. so their solution is something that’s very much targeted toward delaying that group problem-solving, without actually affecting the experience of any individual person watching the show.

plus, it’s very in keeping with the overall tone of the show.

don’t:

change the ending

do:

talk to your coworkers about this. remember that the "taking advice from everyone except the experts" thing cuts both ways. you can be the non-expert guy at work who isnt an expert and gives someone advice they decide to follow based on vibes, but your advice can be the right advice instead. this is something we can all do.

You do not have to be Irish to speak Irish.

Once you're out of school, there is no grammar police and most people are just excited to have someone to speak Irish with.

Incorporating Irish words into your day when you're not fluent (I have to go to the leithreas, throw it in the bruscar, that's a gorgeous gúna) is an act of decolonisation.

Helping people to understand the language is an act of love.

Text of tweet under the cut because it is loooong.

But... Stochastic Parrots.

My orthodontist tells me I can make an appointment with the surgeon. I call the surgeon. They tell me I need a new referral. I call the orthodontist. They do a referral. I call the surgeon. Referral didn't come through. They tell me about their special unique system we have to use. I call the ortho again and walk them through the referral. I call the surgeon. They say the referral was missing some details so they have to do it again. I call the ortho.

The insurance company calls me about repair shops. I give them the name of the repair shop which I already gave them yesterday. They say they're not in their system but I can use them, but I have to call the repair shop to ask them to contact the insurance company. I call the repair shop and they say the insurance company is supposed to email them.

as a nonbinary person, i feel safer around transgender men than cisgender women who way too often

have a very surface level understanding of gendered marginalisation thinking it's only tied to womanhood

end up treating nonbinary people in those spaces as either women or invaders

have shown time and time again that the name is merely a lip service and these spaces are almost always "cisgender women and afab nonbinary people i think are women"

it immediately tells nonbinary people that:

you don't really understand "nonbinary" means as you aren't aware that nonbinary people can be men, and in fact many nonbinary women are also men

you think that nonbinary people are inherently closer to women than to men, and more specifically, you think that the lived experiences and perspectives and feelings of nonbinary people as a group are close enough the experiences/perspectives/feelings of cis women

that space will probably be anywhere from uncomfortable to actively hostile and unsafe to any nonbinary person who either insists on their manhood or is perceived by others as too close to being a man

sometimes, i'd rather people just be openly exorsexist rather than doing this infuriating bullshit where they want to seem nonbinary-inclusive, but clearly think the extent of nonbinary allyship is just using they/them pronouns for someone.

to be real dramatic about it, its actively unsafe for nonbinary people to not have any spaces of our own that are actually dedicated to nonbinary experience, especially with exorsexism. its unhealthy for us to constantly be shoved off into spaces dominated by cis and/or binary women, to have to be subjected to exorsexism by the people who almost always make up the majority of the space, to be constantly reminded that your "inclusion" is second-class. it was not healthy for me as a young multigender person to be in such spaces specifically because this "women and nonbinary people, but no men!" attitude led me to repress my own manhood deeply, for years. because i was seeing so many people talk about how if you are even 1% man, you can't be a lesbian or be in really any woman-oriented spaces and if you want to be, its you being a privileged male predator. which is not only exorsexism, its also something which alienates me as a woman from other women, as cisfeminists never relate to me as a fellow woman when they see me as a nonbinary person who is also sometimes a man.

fun fact: for decades children were beaten for speaking welsh in school, even in areas where english was barely spoken, because the government decided in 1847 that the language made people lazy and immoral

fun fact: welsh orthography is actually easy to read if you take your head out of your arse for one minute and learn our alphabet - just like french, or spanish, or korean, because surprise! languages use different spelling systems that are not based on english. novel, i know - and in the 18th century, travelling schools were able to teach people to read and write welsh in a matter of months, so that wales enjoyed a literate majority, a rare thing in europe at the time