Random bullshit go

Go on, be hawkish about Palestine, I'm sure a foreign war is going to be the top of centrist voters' minds when electing a president. It's not like your supposed voting base has been extremely vocal about how much they dislike America's involvement or anything. But sure, Democrats lost because they were too woke, yeah let's just blame our own party for participating in the culture war that the Republicans engineered.

If your doctor is fixated on your weight that is a RED FLAG. Yes even if you do have health problems, because here's something nobody wants to acknowledge: weight loss is not a proven treatment plan for any health condition, because it cannot be sustained. Upwards of 95% of intentional weight loss attempts fail and actually result in more weight gain long term. Not to mention weight cycling damages your metabolism and causes or worsens many of the same issues associated with high weight.

Intermittent Fasting, namely only eating during specific, arbitrary time frames and completely restricting everything other than water the rest, so starving yourself.

Eating on smaller plates so I feel like I ate more than I did.

Stop eating all fruit because it's sweet.

Eat only spinach, fish, and blueberries.

Keto, despite that being a specific diet for kids with epilepsy that is usually only successful under the strict and constant guidance of a dietician. I was not referred to a dietician by the doctor who suggested it.

Low-carb in general which is, at it's core, starving yourself.

Stop eating so much fried food. Without asking me what I was eating already which was, incidentally, not primarily fried foods.

To be happy about my colon cancer scare because the severe, painful, chronic diarrhea was great for helping me lose weight.

Most doctors don't know anything about nutrition at all. The doctor who tried to get me to do intermittent fasting? After going gluten free I told her I was worried about not getting enough folic acid and iron as I know a lot of grains are fortified with those and I won't be getting that supplemented in my diet like that anymore, and asked if she had any advice, and IN FRONT OF ME JUST GOOGLED WHAT FOODS HAVE FOLIC ACID AND IRON IN THEM and then told me as long as I eat veggies I should be fine. A woman who just told me to starve myself didn't even know what foods have folic acid or iron in them off the top of her head.

And even nutritionists aren't safe, my second one ended up being my last because she admitted she said she had no idea how to help me because she "just microwaves some lettuce with cheese" and that's a meal for her and me doing things like *checks notes* eating at chipotle was confusing.

Doctors will just fucking give you eating disorder advice and pretend because they have a degree it's fine but fr, see a registered dietician, those guys are the only ones actually qualified to give you advice on what you eat outside of gastroenterologists and allergists.

if you are making something featuring multiple flags and you put in the asexual flag, you better put in the aromantic flag.

if you put in the aroace flag, you better put in the aroallo flag.

^ the aromantic flag

^ the aroallo (aromantic allosexual) flag

& just btw, aromantic erasure is so bad that on pubmed, many of the very few studies that have looked into aspec people specifically, categorize us as a type of asexuality. from this study:

Our findings highlight that aromantic people wish for aromanticism not to be considered a part of asexuality—a practice that has dominated contemporary literature (Antonsen et al. 2020; Carvalho & Rodrigues, 2022; Clark & Zimmerman, 2022; Hall & Knox, 2022; Zheng & Su, 2018). Many participants clarified the distinction between their sexual identity and romantic identity and highlighted that though they may be connected for some, they should be considered independently as unique contributors to an individual’s identity and experience. This aligns with a previous aromantic community survey that showed 72% of the sample did not identify with asexual terminology (AUREA, 2021a). In combination with our findings, this suggests that a tendency to conflate and describe these identities as the same or linked may be to the disadvantage of a significant portion of the aromantic community.

this is why it is so important to include aromantic people as our own group and to specifically include non-asexual aromantics. i hope y'all can understand how frustrating it is to be erased through a group that is already erased.

asexual representation is sparse? all aromantic rep is asexual and most of the time people don't even bother to remember that "aromantic" is its own thing. i can't count how many times i've seen a character talk about not experiencing romantic attraction, only for people to go "wow asexual rep!" even though sexual attraction was never brought up.

asexual community & resources are sparse? when i try to look up groups for aromantics, i get resources on "ace & aro groups" that are literally all asexual-focused. at best asexual-focused with a mention of aromantic people. which isn't really helpful when you are aroallo and don't really want or need a group that is clearly meant for alloro asexuals and aroaces.

asexual history is sparse? i've literally never seen anything even trying to talk about aromantic history. the most impactful thing on aro history is that one tumblr post talking about a woman at a nursing home who heard the term and realized her best friend was likely aro. see above with the character situation as well.

my point here is not "aros have it worse than aces" because we are both aspec and both get fucked over by the same forces and in fact, a LOT of asexual aromantics are also very frustrated by aromantic erasure! i've even heard some people talk about not identifying as strongly as asexual, even though it fits them, because they feel their aro identity is more important to them but gets constantly erased by their asexuality.

my point is that it is so fucking disheartening to be aro even in queer spaces that are trying to be asexual-inclusive, even in supposedly aspec spaces, because it swiftly becomes apparent that people see your entire identity as just a footnote for asexuality. so many people never even realize they are aro because they aren't asexual and don't realize that you can be aro but not ace. i dealt with some really intense arophobia as a teen after realizing i was aro, feeling broken and alone. it hit much harder than any internalized homophobia or transphobia did for me at the time. i did not meet another person who identified as aromantic irl until this year. any resources and community that i had as a queer teen, as a trans teen, did not exist for me as an aro teen and does not exist for me as an aro adult, really.

and big problem is that, because people think of aromanticism as just a footnote of asexuality, they implicitly assume that more asexual rep, more asexual resources, more asexual visibility will automatically serve aromantics too. and when it doesn't work like that, aro people continue to suffer as a result.

I'm not dating or married or related to anyone I live with, and our household of four adults can't get any kind of financial or food or housing aid because we count as three separate households despite our semi-blended finances and living together for a decade. There are laws that have been proposed (at least, I don't know if any passed) that limit housing to nuclear families.

Captions cover the spot on the screen you put the information I need

The dialogue is captioned but not the song you have playing that the dialogue is responding to

You only captioned the person on the screen, not the person off screen who is also talking

No captioning of critical sound effects (alarms, bells, dogs barking, etc)

Speakers are not labelled at moments where it is not clear on the screen who is talking.

Captions cover the spot on the screen that you put the information I need!

Other d/Deaf people welcome to add.

They dont day it when its the cia backing regime change.

But like. Functionally it serves as a way for live experience testing to be done on a game. It’s a way to dial it in on what people want, and on how to best make the game.

This means that, stars above, you don’t need to fucking review bomb it the second there’s a problem, you have avenues for giving feedback, stop saying the game is doomed because there’s been one bad update ffs

you have to be kinder to people who are slow processors.

you have to be kinder to people who don't understand your jokes.

you have to be kinder to people who forget important dates.

you have to be kinder to people with cognitive decline.

you have to be kinder to people who were always this way, too.