Laina Has Too Much Spare Time, but make it tumblr

No one, *ever*, tried to persuade me to transition.

recently finished reading @rosesutherlandwrites' novel 'a sweet sting of salt,' and given that it was everything I have been looking for in a) historically-set queer fiction b) selkie stories c) just. A book in general at that very moment, I felt like I ought to draw some fanart...

obviously at first the fire alarm sent them scrambling for cover, but he started slowly by giving them treats whenever it went off, when someone burned food or forgot to open the fireplace flu. he then progressed to calling them to the door to offer treats immediately after the alarm went off. and it actually wasn't too long before the cats voluntarily started going to the door upon hearing the alarm.

The downside is, when I had a baby, every time it cried he'd barrel into the room to let me know. Even if I was already in the room. And if I couldn't make The Sound stop (because an infant works differently than an oven timer), he'd start biting me urgently. 😅

Confused, but doing his best:

I know that debunking these myths about corsets "evil patriarchal torture devices" is something you're known for, so I hope its OK to ask for your opinion on the Mutter skeletons. Is there any truth to the claim that the skeleton on the left has been damaged by corset-wearing?

oh geez this again. yeah there's more to it than that

the long and short of it is that assumptions of "corset deformity" in skeletons often don't control for other possibilities- rickets, injuries during the person's life that healed strangely, etc. because they usually...just can't. anatomical skeletons from eras when corsets were widely used don't generally come with the person's entire medical history; very few if any researchers have ever gotten permission to interact with the bodies of women from those eras about whom we have a lot of info, because those women are slumbering peacefully under their marble angels and "sacred to the memory of" stones. study skeletons are generally those of the extremely poor, criminals, people who went unidentified in death, inmates of disreputable charity hospitals and mental health facilities, enslaved people (depending on the sub-era), and so on

compounding the difficulty further, even if you DO know who an individual body was and what their life was like, you might still not have a full medical history- or at least not full enough for a modern medical professional to make a call like that

it's very unlikely that you'd ever have enough information to know for certain that a specific skeletal deformity was due to corseting rather than any other factor

on top of that, the question, I feel, should not be "do corsets move ribs?" (yes, the floating ones- but those are meant to move; pregnancy also does that) but "so what?"

lots of things human beings do to our bodies alter them from a 100% natural state. would the bottoms of your feet be as soft if you never wore shoes? would your teeth be as straight if you never had braces? many humans put HOLES in their EARS just to hang ornaments from! other places, too! and yet none of that alarms us, even if the alteration is permanent, because it doesn't impact one's ability to live one's life

sure, tightlacing on a regular basis could probably make it hard to do some things, and corsets- like all clothing -change the way you move in certain capacities. but images like this wouldn't exist if every woman wearing a corset in any way at all was crippled by skeletal deformation:

so the question you should ask yourself when you see a claim based on a skeleton that it's of a Victorian woman deformed by corseting are:

do we have any way of being SURE that her bones were altered by her corset and no other factor?

if they WERE shifted around by her corset...was that actually the horrifying debilitating deformity people are claiming?

(and if it's those early 20th century x-ray corset photos, add "do we have any way of knowing if this was a typical use-case for this woman?" and the answer is "no, the photographer neglected to note that down")

Let's Crochet a Labubu, from Kevin Yee @kevinyeedotcom on TikTok.

Finding out that Bram Stoker was in a sexless marriage and that scholars believe that he very likely was closeted gay puts the entire book into perspective as to WHY it reads EXACTLY like a self insert wattpad Dracula kidnap fic:

Actually as shitty as the existence of AI psychosis is, the implications of it are FUCKING MIND-BOGGLING in actually a really revolutionary way.

("WTF are you talking about?" / "What do we currently know about AI psychosis?": x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x)

Paywall free, via Futurism, June 28, 2025

Like, as someone who works professionally editing mental health books, the existence of AI psychosis almost certainly completely upends our understandings of how mental health disorders work. And their causes.

There's a non-zero chance the discovery/existence of AI psychosis is like. going to be/lead to more or less the mental health equivalent of inventing germ theory.

Like, we went from only sort of beginning to suspect to having actual, literal, indisputable proof that you can go from not having a psychotic disorder to having a psychotic disorder literally just from talking too much to a very aggrandizing source and/or echo chamber

THAT SEVERELY UPENDS OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE DEVELOPMENT AND ORIGINS OF MENTAL HEALTH DISORDERS

**Note: I am using "psychotic" and "psychotic disorders" in their technical definition here, which is simply "involves experiencing breaks from reality." Because, contrary to all the stigma and misinformation, that's the literal/actual definition (x, x, x)

And like, obviously, in at least many cases, there would be/often are genetic, environmental, or trauma factors that are putting their thumbs on the scale there. But we know for a fact that a number of people who have developed AI psychosis do not have a previous record of mental health issues.

But the tipping factor for at least dozens of people, we now know for a fact, was talking to an AI chatbot. And we have a complete record of what was said for almost every single one of those cases, because, among other things, OpenAI / ChatGPT is now LEGALLY REQUIRED to preserve ALL CHAT TRANSCRIPTS, even if users delete them, until the court says otherwise (x, x, x).

(Which will be, by the way, years, at a minimum - that may have started with a copyright lawsuit, but there will be so many other AI lawsuits and investigations, including about AI psychosis, in the EU if not the US - this will go on for a while)

Anyway, yeah, good news in the long term for the understanding and treatment of mental health disorders

In the short term, seriously, please don't use chatbots for at least another couple of years, as a safety precaution

At least until they've sorted this shit out and (HOPEFULLY) figured out how to make this shit stop happening (and then, hopefully, actually implemented those changes).

ChatGPT has encouraged/convinced people to commit suicide. When I looked it up, I was searching for a particular incident, only to find a new article about an apparently different suicide that had happened.

WE’RE GETTING ANIMORPHS RE-RELEASE WITH BEAUTIFUL NEW COVERS!!!!

So traditionally we add an 'e' for every person

So Crees technically refers to two people

Creees would be a group of three, Creeeeees would be six etc

Makes it easy to tell how many people are being talked about

What are books to you?

Here’s the landmark essay “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” by Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, written in 1990.

Posters are available to at my shop.