Filling some empty space

2026 - 2025 - 2024 - 2023

in spite of it all, happy 2026 pride.

you can download current and past hi-res versions of these over at my ko-fi (ok to print for personal use): https://ko-fi.com/mxmorgan/shop/freedownloads

you can also snag shirts here which go to various orgs: https://mxmorgan.threadless.com/collections/pride

these get reposted a whole lot from here to reddit to twitter to tiktok and on and on, and i don't personally care whether or not i'm credited. i made these for everyone to use, enjoy, and find meaning in them. i appreciate folks who do credit me, but if able, please at least link to the threadless shop in the previous post - folks can get an official shirt where 90% of earnings go to trans led orgs focused on mental health (which is an important matter in general, but very personal to me) and not from a scam bot site selling AI-churned maga garbage where you probably won't get one anyway. i also suggest downloading the files from my ko-fi - they are free/PWYW and you can use them to make your own shirt, patch, embroidery project, whatever. tips are always nice, cuz i do like a pizza now and then, but never required for download.

#1. You should be able to lay down on the floor (face down or back) and be able to get up without your hands. If you can't? Spend a little bit every day just doing that, laying on the floor and getting up again no hands style, then laying down again (you'd be surprised how fast it wears you out after a few times)

#2. You should be able to get up out of a chair without using your hands or grabbing on to anything. Can't? Fucking start training mother fucker! Just a few uppies every day could save your damn life when you get older!

#3. You should be able to turn your neck to the side without twisting your upper body in the same direction, you should be able to turn your head freely without moving your shoulders, chest or torso! Start looking up loosy goosy neck exercises! It makes such a HUGE difference!

#4. You should be able to motherfucking stand on one foot and keep your balance for longer then 15 seconds. Haha sounds easy right? Thats what I thought when I tried after watching that vid, i was horrified to find how hard it was! I started doing "one leggy style" standing any chance I got, when I'm in line somewhere, when I'm watching a video... just do a few rounds of 10 seconds on each leg for like 5 min every day!

You get older and you think you still have all the same limberness as you did when you were 8, but whens the last fucking time you ran around and played like an 8 year old? You loose that flexibility so subtlety and then one day when you need it? BAM ITS GONE

Gorgeously legged lampposts having a little sit in Upplands Väsby, Sweden

Just out of left frame there's also a bench with another blue lamp post standing next to it, only that this post grew arms and is holding a large umbrella! It gets windy here so it's not super useful, but it's cute and probably helps a little during summer showers. I decided not to photograph it since there was a parent and child sitting there. Here's a photo from a news article:

ingredience:

lemons/limes (this needs to make up the bulk of the fruit being used, like at least 80%)

whatever other fruits or fruit scraps you want, plus any herbs/other flavorings you want to try. by fruit scraps I mean things like cherry pits, apple peels, pineapple cores, strawberry ends, things like that.

granulated white sugar, the coarser the better, 50% by weight of total citrus rinds + 100% by weight of any additional fruit. you'll measure this after you prep the fruit.

water as needed

equipment:

a few nonmetallic mixing bowls

a mesh strainer

a chinoise, ricer or some cheesecloth

a kitchen scale

a citrus juicer or reamer (manual or electric)

a potato masher

juice the citrus through a strainer - saving all rinds -  and refrigerate the juice for the time being. dice the rinds and other fruits if any, keeping the rinds separate. make note of weights, and measure your sugar.

 Place sugar in a large nonmetallic bowl. If using non-citrus fruits and/or any other flavorings, mix them in with the sugar and mash with potato masher. add diced citrus rinds, mix thoroughly, and mash again. cover and let stand at room temperature for at least 4 hours. this allows the sugar to draw out flavors that would otherwise get discarded with the rinds, and the rinds' acids should be enough to dissolve the sugar into a syrup.

Afterward, mash one last time, then collect the syrup by pressing the macerated mixture through a strainer/chinoise or ricer, or squeeze it through cheesecloth. if you want, this can be saved as a standalone syrup at this point, for use in cocktails or desserts. if not, slowly pour the reserved juice through the solids to to help get the remaining syrup out, and squeeze/press again. do the same thing one more time with warm water (roughly the same amount of water as juice). discard solids (or try making sangria with them!).

taste the mixture and add more water if necessary. a stronger mix is totally fine if you anticipate serving over ice on a hot day, or adding booze, or if there was a lot of non-sour fruit. keep in mind that it will taste a bit less sweet once it's chilled. pour into a pitcher and refrigerate.

citrus oils will float to the top, so stir/shake before serving. love you. enjoy.

some tried and true flavor combos:

straight lemon or lime, or any combination of the two, is of course an untouchable classic

lemon & strawberries (that's pussy babe!)

lemon & orange with a hint of vanilla (creamsiclemonade...?)

lemon & apples or apple peels with cinnamon/ginger/allspice (for late summer)

some cocktail type combos, booze optional:

lemon or lime & berries with basil + gin

lime & mint + white rum

lime & ginger + dark rum

lime & cucumber + gin

lime & orange (berries optional) + tequila

-found an axe formely belonging to a friend who is now in jail

-axe (stolen)

-earrings made out of dentures

-flavored condoms

-a quilt

-hello kitty sweater (stolen from a DIFFERENT ex-friend with a felony charge)

-deer spine

-baseball sized wad of human hair

-""sex apron""

-uranium glass plate

-pile of non-uranium non-car glass

-rollerblades

-complete phantom of the opera cd set

-magic the gathering cards mold-ified into a brick

-lego millennium falcon

-a CUTLASS??? (for "self defense")

-the back bumper of the car

-an entire fucking ant colony

and finally, perhaps the most disturbing,

past couple of weeks have been a wild ride of emotions

What I learned is that there is an inflexible rule about how people interact with systems. If your system would work perfectly if people Just Would, and yet they Don't, then your system is bad and you should feel bad. Systems must be built with an eye toward "will people actually do this"?

Recycling was a thing when I was a child. (The 70's.) In my home in New York State, you could carry recyclables to a recycling center. Nobody did. Now in 2024 Baltimore there is a trash truck that comes every week to pick up my recyclables, and I and my neighbors fill our cans with objects that can be recycled, because a system was developed that was easy for busy people to do, and there's a lot of social pressure to do it -- but the social pressure wouldn't exist if it wasn't easy to do. Only the most crunchy granola people bitched at you if you didn't recycle in 1979, when it required a lot of effort. Now it is considered kind of on par with spitting in the street or leaving a dirty diaper on the diaper changing table in the bathroom instead of throwing it out, if you don't recycle.

@alarajrogers what did you mean by this?

A small thing. If you want to support trans and nonbinary people, then on government forms, if they require gender and you can't get around it, allow "other"; better still, don't require gender. If you're building a medical system, and the patient's gender is M, do not gray out all the "female" problems he might be presenting with on the grounds that a man can't possibly have menstrual problems, be pregnant, or have issues with his uterus; likewise if the patient presents as F, don't make it impossible to enter a diagnosis of prostate cancer for her.

Don't set up validation rules that prevent someone with gender M from having a husband. Better yet, let "husband" and "wife" both be covered by the term "spouse", because that is inclusive of non-binary spouses as well.

Because I'm in IT, I think in terms of IT systems. But there are government systems and insurance systems and financial systems and all sorts of systems out there, that should be set up so that a gay person will be able to navigate it as easily as a straight person, and a straight person will see that the available options don't privilege them at the expense of everyone else... a subtle reminder that no, you're not the center of the universe and gay people exist. Why do you think the right wing fights so hard against there being Spanish on forms that are also in English? You'd think, it doesn't harm anyone using the form for there to be both Spanish and English. But they know, the presence of Spanish reminds English speakers that the world doesn't center around what works for them; other options exist. That's what they want to get rid of, the subtle reminder that someone besides them is important too.

This is a discussion about how to make systems work in some way other than If People Would Just, making them easier to promote the result you want, so I'm not sure how you even got "the onus is on gay people to be more palatable", and I get the feeling you don't understand the context of the discussion. I am not even sure how you could devise a system that incorporates "gay people should make themselves more palatable" because that sounds exactly like a thing that People Should Just... meaning, you're relying on humans to behave in the exact specific way you need them to for your system to work, and the whole point of this conversation is that doing that dooms your system to fail. Gay people will never Just Make Themselves More Palatable To Straights, as a cohort, so if your system for getting gay people to be better accepted relies on If Gay People Would Just, your system will fail.

Also. Controversially, and contrary to my point above….dont try to reassure them if they tell you they want to die. Don’t try to list off the reasons they should stay, cause they’ll just double down on why they don’t want to or feel like they can’t. Agree with them, to a fault. People who want to die want to euthanize themselves, effectively. They want to not suffer. That’s the goal. Causing more suffering or trying to be emotionally manipulative doesn’t do shit.

So agree, from that premise. “Oh, I see. How kind of you, to want to end your own suffering. No, truly, it IS a kindness. Do we not call it so when we put our pets to sleep, or let grandma die with dignity on hospice? You are trying to offer yourself that grace, and that is about the kindest thing I think anyone could do for themselves.”

I have repeated some version of the above to most the friends I’ve had call me at 3am, clinging to one last thread of hope and desperation to be seen. I have acknowledged this desperation, too, with more mixed results… depends on the person and what attachment they had to me.

But EVERY SINGLE PERSON I have told this has had an epiphanous reaction, a realization that if they can do that much kindness for themselves, then maybe they can be open to other kinds of self-compassion too. Like letting themselves rest. Like letting themselves be human.

On the record, I did not learn this from therapy, but lived experience. I WISH someone had told me that, and I didn’t need to put those pieces together by trial and error and, yes, being put on a very unhelpful lockdown to divest me of even more autonomy and control of my life…which did the very opposite of help.

Anyways. Three things usually are at the root of most suicide attempts:

1. Feeling overwhelmed, too much going on in life or you don’t have the mental or physical energy to make decisions or think clearly and critically

2. Feeling helpless to control yourself, your life, or your environment. Often tied to the first, but not always.

3. Lack of social bonds. Which is why social attention doesn’t work for long. As my husband puts it, “You need the oxytocin, gremble.” Oxytocin is THE bonding hormone. Every human alive makes it. Some don’t have receptors capable of receiving it, or that don’t process it correctly (psychopathy, and to an extent, sociopathy/ASPD, NPD, certain types of Dementia, and Schizophrenia) but every human brain produces it.

The last one is probably the most significant one, or at least has the largest margin of predictability in terms of outcome. I can’t find the damn study because google is being stupid about it (is it just me or have they gotten worse about burying scientific data lately?) But people with one or more significant social bonds are not only less likely to commit suicide, but they’re far FAR more likely to choose less “violently lethal” methods like guns or jumping in front of a train.

I dug into that research after looking at a facebook reel that mentioned that women attempt to comit suicide more often than men do (true) but are less likely to succeed because they choose “softer” methods. (Also true). But something about that didn’t quite add up to me, (nor the implication that women just don’t have access to those violent ends…literally 90% of the hunters and handgun owners I know are women) so I looked into it, and the truth was simply that women are more likely to have pets, children, or significant others when they do attempt. Men that commit suicide successfully overwhelmingly come from single-parent homes, are 20-40, and live alone, with a close follow up on 40-60 year old men that are recently divorced or separated. There was no data on that for the type of work they did, but blue-collar men are far more likely to commit suicide than white collar ones and that’s been true for a very long time.

Point is.

This is also why arguing that it is selfish and using guilt is so terrible. Great.

I'm not saying this was always an accurate assessment of the situation, but here's what I felt every time; You want me alive so you can use me. Fucking fantastic. Glad to be your pet, your toy, your comfort object, your duty you're being so good at fulfilling, your need not to feel pain even if I'm hurting worse, your favorite thing. In the short run, guilt can work sometimes. And it can for sure work if it's a thought that the person naturally and organically. But it feels like shit, long run. If you are suicidal and someone comes at you with guilt, you aren't the priority, are you? Them losing something is. Their pain over yours, always. That's the mindset of (at least some) suicidal people.

If you cannot understand the horror of being forced to stay alive because of what other people want or believe or are uncomfortable with, until you understand how soul-wrenchingly horrible it feels to be told you have to stay when doing so just means you have to see them suffering over your misery, which makes you feel like you have to stifle and hide everything so they aren't Big Sad (which is extra unpleasant when their Big Sad comes with a side of them being willing to call the cops) and stifling it only makes it worse, you can't fully get it. It makes you feel utterly disrespected and ignored and not understood and like they aren't listening at all.

I'm not saying suicidality isn't often riddled with thought distortions, it often super is, just that you cannot snap them out of it in the ways people seem to like to try.

I don't have an answer for what TO do. I just don't. But I do know it doesn't involve attaching a threat to every last line defense offered to me, or discouraging me from talking to other people in a bad place about it because the Bad Selfish Action might be made too tempting by someone understanding and not spending all their effort trying to get me to not do it instead of really hearing me.

Don't force someone into inpatient. Those places are trauma factories and genuinely statistically result in more suicides and often in total cessation in attempts to seek help that might actually help.

(Kandinsky)

You cannot "well but I'M not referring to that kind of art, I only mean Dirty Pictures" your way out of this. You are being harmful and need to stop, not rationalise why it's okay for YOU to be doing it. You need to understand

censorship violates the universal human right of free expression and freedom of speech.

fiction is not reality. Fictional characters are not real people.

if someone SAYS a work of fiction inspired them to do bad things, that is not the work of fiction's fault. The person who did bad things is STILL at fault, because they have free will and must be assumed to understand the consequences of their actions.

discomfort is not harm. If a piece of art makes you uncomfortable, that's actually fine. That's the POINT of certain pieces of art. You need to learn to tolerate discomfort.

It is not in fact the government's job to enforce a set of morals on people. That violates people's universal human right to freedom of religion and creed.

So Oreos! Truly a 100+ year old institution (although we can argue about whether Hydrox came first/are better but that's not what this is about). Oreo was manufacturing using pretty modern equipment very early on right here in beautiful Manhattan in the old Nabisco factory that is now Chelsea Market. But an unfortunate issue with mass producing millions of very thin, very fragile crisp cookies is breakage. A lot of the wafers (the chocolate part) will crack or crumble before reaching the end of the production line. The machinery can be adjusted to reduce breakage but the nature of the wafer means breakage will never be zero. Sometimes the cookie gets to the sandwiching stage & filled with the creme before it cracks, but more often it breaks before then. That's why you have some bits with creme and some without.

So what does a cookie company do with all the broken pieces? The dough is already cooked at that point so it can't be reused to form more cookies. So Oreo comes up with a plan: develop recipes and alternative uses so they can sell the crushed cookies, too. This happens a lot in manufacturing! Leftover bits are repurposed for other products to reduce waste and cost. Probably the most famous example is animal feed; the husks and rinds and cast-offs from human food production often get processed into animal food.

Sadly this means most commercial Oreo dust is a pre-crushed situation. I grew up working in my family's restaurant and the Oreo pieces would arrive in sealed plastic bag inside a big box. We'd use them for pie crusts and dessert toppings. Being a sneaky lil shit, I'd sometimes dip a soup spoon into the Oreo dust and take one big, chocolatey bite as a snack. No need to crush them by hand.

The contents of the dammsugare* usually consists of crumbs from the factory production of various other pastries. I can't swear that all manufacturers do it that way, but at least the major actor on the scene - Delicato - does it that way.

But this isn't just a little fun fact about how a pastry manufacturer reduces cookie waste, oh no. Sometime during the 2010s, some dammsugar-enjoyers pointed out online that in late December through January, the dammsugare tasted much more gingerbready than during other times of the year. Some liked it, some didn't.

This was of course due to the factory making loads of gingerbread - pepparkakor - in November and December, which made it into the dammsugare. Delicato saw an opportunity and started to hoover up the gingerbread crumbs separately and made seasonal gingerbread-rolls! They're delicious.

❦ how much self-control do i have with things that i know are bad for me, but tend to indulge in?

❦ how do i respond to someone who is different from me or whose ideals and beliefs i don't agree with or understand?

❦ how do i deal with being misperceived or misunderstood?

❦ how do i respond when someone judges me, makes fun of me, or calls me names?

❦ how do i deal with other people's mistakes and unpleasant behavior?

❦ how do i deal with people who have hurt me in the past?

❦ how do i spend my free time?

❦ how do i deal with negative people?

❦ how do i deal with stressful situations? do i tend to worry a lot? what else do i do?

❦ how do i deal with inconvenient life situations?

❦ how do i respond to situations that i have no control over?

❦ how do i deal with negativity in my environment?

❦ how do i deal with challenges in my life?

❦ how do i respond to situations that force me to get out of my comfort zone?

❦ how motivated am i to change my life for the better?

❦ how much do i follow through on what i preach and talk about?

❦ how do i deal with uncertainty, the unknown or a future event that i have no control over?

❦ how do i respond to obstacles, hardships, and "bad" things that happen in my life?

❦ how do i respond when i don't get what i want?

❦ how fulfilling is my everyday life?

❦ how do i respond to new ideas and new ways of thinking?

❦ how do i respond to bad or inconvenient news?

❦ how do i deal with the violence, hate, and suffering in the world?

❦ how do i recharge, rejuvenate, and replenish my energy?

❦ how much do i prioritize spending time and energy on myself and on my passions?

❦ how do i deal with change? new job, new house, new lifestyle, new people, new rules, new technology...do i tend to avoid it, welcome it, fear it, like it, complain about it, stress out about it, worry about it?

❦ how do i deal with emotional pain?

❦ how do i respond when plans change or plans get cancelled without my say so?

❦ how do i respond when i make a mistake or when i fail at something?

The MC is a girl who we’ll call Sue. Sue is a Good Girl™, Sue is Not Like Other Girls™, she is pale and awkward and a virgin and has somehow managed to find herself a Bad Boy™ for a boyfriend. We’ll call him Dickhead.

Now Dickhead as previously stated is a bit of dick, he tries to pressure Sue into sex because he knows she is The One™ but he loves her really so it’s okay. Except it’s not okay because Sue is a Good Girl™ and holding out till marriage which he’s fine with except he’s got such a bad case of blue balls that one night walking home an attractive stranger lures him into an alley with the words “hey stud” and he follows, dick out before she’s even finished her sentence. Well turns out that was a mistake for Dickhead because she’s a vampire, but not just any vampire, a Dick Biting Vampire. So what started out as a skeevy blow job behind a club that he’ll feel bad about in the morning, turns into him being bitten on the dick and drained of his life essence and left for dead. Except DBV fucked up and now he’s a vampire. Are you still with me? Good, cause it’s about to get weirder.

Realizing he is now an abomination, Dickhead flees, becoming a creature of the night and feeding on animals rather than humans to repent for being such an asshole in life. Sue meanwhile is heartbroken, but carries on valiantly with her life and goes to bed each night crying for the loss of her One True Love™ who she would do anything to bring back. Well guess what Sue, Dickhead never really left you! He’s been “instinctively protecting her from rapists” by hiding out on her roof and fighting hobos who try to get to her open window via the fire escape for months now. Because that’s not fucking terrifying at all.

Upon learning of his predicament and how it happened, Sue can do nothing but blame herself. Oh if only she’d let him touch her secret places, then perhaps all of this could be avoided! Meanwhile Dickhead is having another dilemma of his own, realizing too late that his vampire powers have given him super senses and now he can smell her blood and he can’t decide whether he wants to get with her or eat her. And I don’t mean in the French sense. But he is strong! And over comes his base manly vampire instincts and neither rapes not kills her. Hurrah! And this is so romantic that Sue gives it up, but not before she launches into a theory about how in all fairy tales, True Love saves the day, so maybe her magical pure vagina that has never been touched by anyone, not even her, can bring him back to life. So Dickhead being a dickhead agrees and rips her clothes off, but not before he takes one last moment to marvel at the beauty of her purity, because he will never again look on her again and know she is Pure.

If you’ve only vomited once by now, I applaud your resolve.

So they hop on the good foot and do the nasty, except she is literally so pure in spirit, her flesh burns his. And I quote you from memory because these words are burned into my soul: “her breasts bit into his hands, like crucifix nail nipples tearing at his flesh, but he did not care because he loved her so and couldn’t stop”

This phrase haunts me. I dread that it will be the last thing I think about on my death bed and my last words will literally be “god fucking dammit” as I die, carrying that mental image with me into the afterlife. My own solace is in knowing that I inflicted it on other people too, like @ahzuri who is somehow still with me after all these years.

When the magical burning sex fails to heal him and leaves her bruised, battered and broken with “a dainty blue bells of bruises around her secret flower” (I am genuinely quoting this, I could never make something as horrendous as this up without being on acid) Dickhead leaves. Yeah. Off he fucks, leaving her to the mercy of the hobos at her window, and into the night to be the true monster he really is. But wait, there’s more. Remember the dick biting vampire? Well turns out she has figured out she made him into a vampire and has also been stalking HIM and is totally jealous of Sue, so tries to kill her. But again Sues Purity saves her, because sex before marriage which was done out of True Love is not a sin, so she is still a spiritual virgin and I’ll be honest, I started drinking heavily at this point and it’s all a bit of a blur.

A fight ensues some pages later after Dickhead returns, realizing the mistake he has made. And he rescues Sue from the Dick Biter, but not before he assaults Dick Biter, and calls her a slut for luring innocent men into alleys cuts her heart out by cutting her breasts off, at which point i screamed “THAT’S NOT HOW YOU REACH THE HEART” and my brain short circuited completely and I have no idea how it ends because I realized there was 30 pages left and my soul couldn’t take it. I emailed the chief editor like ?????!!!!!!????!!!!!! and the book was immediately pulled from the work line and the author dismissed from the publishing house. Turns out she was a friend of a friend and that was how she got the manuscript past our entry levels for requirement.

That was on top of the prior abusive emails she sent demanding to know why I’d changed things in her perfect manuscript. Like, y'know, grammatical errors and typos. Or her batshit concepts of human anatomy.

I also regret to inform everyone in the notes discovering this for the first time and wanting to believe this was satire, it was actually Christian Erotica (which is actually a very profitable sub-category of the genre).

This was a wholly sincere attempt at writing scintillating sex.

One of the most important characters in Lord of the Rings is someone you like and trust. You quote him often, remember him fondly, and rely on his word.

You don't know his name. Fanart is nonexistent; there’s no Ao3 tag, no breakout film portrayal, no Amazon money-milking series for this character. You know his voice, have memorised his words; you've probably never read any meta about him.

I'll bet I’m the only person you've seen on Tumblr who really talks about That Fucking Guy, and I hate that man with a cold academic passion. (I also love him. He's my blorbo. He could be yours.)

I think you shouldn't trust him as much as you do.

Here is why.

“Leonardo would love this.”

“I should go see if Malik has need of me.”

“I should go back to Davenport and check on everyone.”

He spent years with them, he cared for them. Do you think he ever sees a white feather and thinks about his mom Maria? Does he ever look at a plane and feel joyous laughter bubble up because

“Leonardo, look at what they’ve done! Flying machines just like you built!”

Does he smell a new tea Shaun buys and for a moment go “Malik would like this.”

And everytime it happens he has to remind himself that they’re not there.

Oh the grief he would feel at each moment. They’re dead, they’ve been dead for centuries and yet he feels like he just lost them. And he did, because just a month ago he was sitting on a bench with Leonardo talking about weapons. It wasn’t that long ago that Malik cursed him for drawing too much attention to him. It was even sooner that he watched two of his friends get married.

And oh, doesn’t that grief feel stolen? It’s such a raw feeling. An emotion that burrows in your chest. It makes your head feel too heavy for your shoulders and your throat feel like it’s closing. But it’s not his is it?

He grieves for friends and family who don’t even know he exists. He never met them, and wouldn’t that make it so much worse? The feeling of wrongness makes grief so much more powerful does it not?