Untitled

me: great! time to post to ao3-

ao3 summary box: *exists*

me: 

ao3 summary box:

me:

ao3 summary box: 

Who: Main character(s)

Why: Character goal or desire (stated)

Why: Character need (implied)

When: Inciting Incident

What: Means (that achieves the goal/need)

Where: Place A >> Place B

How: The Plan

Obstacle(s): antagonist or challenge

For example:

Who: Bilbo Baggins, a respectable hobbit of Hobbiton

Why: Treasure, wealth (stated)

Why: Adventure, self-respect (implied)

When: After supper

What: Quest

Where: Hobbiton >> The Lonely Mountain

How: A company of dwarves, a wizard, and an ancient map and key

Main antagonist(s): a dragon

Thus, in less than 100 words:

Bilbo Baggins is a respectable hobbit in Hobbiton, never making any trouble or having any adventures. But when a wizard and a company of dwarves invite themselves to dinner, Bilbo finds himself joining their quest from the shires of Hobbiton to the legendary Lonely Mountain, the home of a long lost treasure, and quite, possibly, a dragon.  

~~~~

So that post may have saved my life and it may have made my treatment a lot easier too.

time to

uk people, make a noise at your MP about Wes Streeting's attempt to kill trans children.

key points, use the links included and feel free to add your own personal take:

+ the cass review has been found to be extremely methodologically flawed: https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/integrity-project_cass-response.pdf

+ there has been a significant increase in deaths from children on the waiting list for gender affirming care since the Bell v Tavistock case: https://x.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1803729360731406489

and b) made the following point in her own, longer email to him:

"The Labour Party was elected on a platform of change; the reduction of chaos and the turning of a new page. Continuing the Tories' tired and desperate transphobia as a means of pandering to a section of society bent on discrimination does not reflect this philosophy."

Definitely include something along those lines!

bf has also written to our local mp including hits such as:

"why has a Labour health secretary not just taken a regressive and discriminatory Tory 'culture war' policy as a good idea, but is seeking to reinforce it? Even the Cass Report, itself a globally criticised paper, did not go so far as to recommend a ban on puberty blockers."

and

"it bears the hallmarks of the previous Tory administration, which sought to demonise trans people and degrade their social care as a means to shift attention away from the rest of their terrible policies."

Again, probably don't c&p this but please feel free to use them as talking points to shape your own letters. A polite "what the fuck do you think you're doing" and "you said no more culture war, what the hell do you call this" would be wonderful. & if you're a parent to a trans child yourself absolutely let rip.

The word and concept of 'normality' were coined, IIRC, by the eugenics movement.

Prior to that, what we had was 'ideal'. The nice thing about 'ideal' is that, while it absolutely can still be applied negatively - you know, like literally everything else - baked into it is the idea that it's an unattainable goal, and that's okay. There is an ideal female figure, but no woman actually has it - you just try to get close by using moisturiser and corsets. There is an ideal level of archery skill, but no archer actually has it - you just get as close as you can by practicing four hours a day every day with a longbow. There is an ideal level of permanent cleanliness in the home, but no one can meet it - you just get as close to it as you can by sweeping daily and deep cleaning once a week (lol I could never). Hell, on that first point, artists trying to sculpt or paint Aphrodite were known through the ages for often using multiple women as models for different body parts, because it's understood that no actual live human will have everything you perfectly want. You are aiming for an ideal. That's what sets a goddess of beauty apart from mere mortals, in fact.

And then along come the eugenicists.

So the thing is, they had a specific ideal, right? White, blond, tall. (More than this, but I'm simplifying.) But they didn't stop at 'ideal', because the centrepoint of eugenics is not "Here's the unreachable goalpost to shoot for", it's "These people are Right and these other people are Wrong." If no one can reach the goal, then no one can be sorted into those two brackets - not neatly and concretely, anyway. So what do they do?

Well; first they invent the field of statistics, actually.

Human beings get grouped by characteristic - skin colour, hair colour, height. They want to show that their Aryan ideal is a unique and perfect group. So, they use a method from astrophysics - the error curve. Basically, you plot all the possible locations of a distant star onto a graph, and it will produce a bell-shaped curve. The data points will cluster most at the top of the bell, as it were, so the probability of that being the star's actual location is highest there. The other data points will vary in distance from this selected location, and this is called the margin of error.

Except eugenicists can't have the word 'error' near this, because they're trying to say that their world view is scientific fact. So they rename it.

The error curve becomes the bell curve.

And the margin of error becomes 'standard deviation'.

Deviation from what? Well, there's the part that was kicked off by this post! They're removing the concept of ideal, remember. They need a replacement. So at this point they turn to architecture and construction, of all things - the norm was a carpenter's square, an instrument used for establishing a perfect right angle. Where a joust should go in relation to another. They coin the word 'normal' from it - the state everyone should be in relative to each other.

Anyone who doesn't fit properly in the bell curve now is 'deviating from the norm'. And thus we suddenly get the word 'deviant' in its modern use - if you're queer, disabled, a POC, a woman who wants the right to vote, etc - you are now a deviant.

The irony is that they then had to abandon the bell curve anyway - most people in the world are not white, blond and tall. But that was okay, because by then they'd established the concept of 'normal' and so just shifted it where they wanted it.

So yes, to conclude, fascists and eugenicists made that word, and they are very much still using it now, in the modern day, for its original purpose. "Society has a right to standards and norms" is very literally a eugenics talking point, and we should probably start trying to swing our thinking back to 'ideal'.

Removed/checked all links to make sure everything is working (03/03/23). Hope they help!

Sejda - Free online PDF editor.

Supercook - Have ingredients but no idea what to make? Put them in here and it’ll give you recipe ideas.

Still Tasty - Trying the above but unsure about whether that sauce in the fridge is still edible? Check here first.

Archive.ph - Paywall bypass. Like 12ft below but appears to work far better and across more sites in my testing. I’d recommend trying this one first as I had more success with it.

12ft – Hate paywalls? Try this site out.

Where Is This - Want to know where a picture was taken, this site can help.

TOS/DR - Terms of service, didn’t read. Gives you a summary of terms of service plus gives each site a privacy rating.

OneLook - Reverse dictionary for when you know the description of the word but can’t for the life of you remember the actual word.

My Abandonware - Brilliant site for free, legal games. Has games from 1978 up to present day across pc and console. You’ll be surprised by some of the games on there, some absolute gems.

Project Gutenberg – Always ends up on these type of lists and for very good reason. All works that are copyright free in one place.

Ninite – New PC? Install all of your programs in one go with no bloat or unnecessary crap.

PatchMyPC - Alternative to ninite with over 300 app options to keep upto date. Free for home users.

Unchecky – Tired of software trying to install additional unwanted programs? This will stop it completely by unchecking the necessary boxes when you install.

Sci-Hub – Research papers galore! Check here before shelling out money. And if it’s not here, try the next link in our list.

LibGen – Lots of free PDFs relate primarily to the sciences.

Zotero – A free and easy to use program to collect, organize, cite and share research.

Car Complaints – Buying a used car? Check out what other owners of the same model have to say about it first.

CamelCamelCamel – Check the historical prices of items on Amazon and set alerts for when prices drop.

Have I Been Pawned – Still the king when it comes to checking if your online accounts have been released in a data breach. Also able to sign up for email alerts if you’ve ever a victim of a breach.

I Have No TV - A collection of documentaries for you to while away the time. Completely free.

Radio Garden – Think Google Earth but wherever you zoom, you get the radio station of that place.

Just The Recipe – Paste in the url and get just the recipe as a result. No life story or adverts.

Tineye – An Amazing reverse image search tool.

My 90s TV – Simulates 90’s TV using YouTube videos. Also has My80sTV, My70sTV, My60sTV and for the younger ones out there, My00sTV. Lose yourself in nostalgia.

Foto Forensics – Free image analysis tools.

Old Games Download – A repository of games from the 90’s and early 2000’s. Get your fix of nostalgia here.

Online OCR – Convert pictures of text into actual text and output it in the format you need.

Remove Background – An amazingly quick and accurate way to remove backgrounds from your pictures.

Twoseven – Allows you to sync videos from providers such as Netflix, Youtube, Disney+ etc and watch them with your friends. Ad free and also has the ability to do real time video and text chat.

Terms of Service, Didn’t Read – Get a quick summary of Terms of service plus a privacy rating.

Coolors – Struggling to get a good combination of colors? This site will generate color palettes for you.

This To That – Need to glue two things together? This’ll help.

Photopea – A free online alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Does everything in your browser.

BitWarden – Free open source password manager.

Just Beam It - Peer to peer file transfer. Drop the file in on one end, click create link and send to whoever. Leave your pc on that page while they download. Because of how it works there are no file limits. It’s genuinely amazing. Best file transfer system I have ever used.

Atlas Obscura – Travelling to a new place? Find out the hidden treasures you should go to with Atlas Obscura.

ID Ransomware – Ever get ransomware on your computer? Use this to see if the virus infecting your pc has been cracked yet or not. Potentially saving you money. You can also sign up for email notifications if your particular problem hasn’t been cracked yet.

Way Back Machine – The Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites and loads more.

Rome2Rio – Directions from anywhere to anywhere by bus, train, plane, car and ferry.

Splitter – Seperate different audio tracks audio. Allowing you to split out music from the words for example.

myNoise – Gives you beautiful noises to match your mood. Increase your productivity, calm down and need help sleeping? All here for you.

DeepL – Best language translation tool on the web.

Forvo – Alternatively, if you need to hear a local speaking a word, this is the site for you.