I don't know what to do with my life

Remember when Lil Nas X beautifully explored his sexuality, seduced and killed the devil to the banger of all time, and instead of cheering on this openly gay and proud Black artist for his artistry and fighting back against respectability politics, suddenly said respectability politics was all the Queerest Place on the Internet cared about? Hm. Wonder what happened there.

apparently the murder happened in 2023 after doing some research but the murderer has been found not guilty.

The store owner got his gun out, and he and his son started chasing the 14-year-old boy, because they FALSELY believed he stole FOUR BOTTLES OF WATER.

The boy who was being CHASED WITH A GUN FOR NO REASON did carry a gun, and it would have been very much justified to actually take it out (because he feared for his life since he was being CHASED WITH A GUN FOR NO REASON), but witnesses never saw it in his hands, and at no point did he actually point it at his two pursuers. He had his back towards them the entire time because he was FLEEING.

The kid stumbled and fell, dropping his gun in the process. The gun was only ever seen on the ground next to his body, it probably fell from his waistband or pocket or whatever, not his hands. And since it was dropped, he did not have it on him AT ALL when he was murdered. He was SHOT IN THE BACK WHILE LYING UNARMED ON THE GROUND.

The sheriff's report written in 2023 said that this was "not a bias-motivated incident" even though there is literally zero ambiguity that this man was just itching to shoot a Black kid. There is no other explanation for why you would take your gun out and chase him more than 100 yards over a vague, weak, unfounded suspicion that he might have stolen four (4) bottles of water. In and of itself, the train of thought "this Black kid was holding four bottles of water at some point, and now he's leaving the store, clearly there's no chance that he simply put them back, he must have stolen them" is already racist as hell. But the cops say "well there's absolutely no indication that shooting an unarmed 14-year-old Black boy because you falsely suspected him of stealing a few dollars worth of water was motivated by bias" because of fucking course they do.

Grace was put into coma by the people who cared about him. They (especially Yáo being Yáo) probably double-triple-quadruple checked everything. They watched him sleep for those first few days — I doubt they went into coma immediately after leaving Earth's orbit. They probably talked to him, assuring him that he'll be okay.

Ilyukhina's coma procedure was probably supervised by Yáo. He made sure that everything was in order, but — he is just one man and he is not a doctor. There was much more room for mistakes.

When Yáo went to sleep, he was alone. He had to rely on the technology completely.

At minimum about 4.5 thousand people liked this without reblogging it.

Progress.

I'm a gardener and so are the majority of people I spend time around. If you are mowing 3+ times a week and regularly spending money on fertilizer, soil tests, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, you have chosen the most expensive, time consuming thing you could possibly do with your yard. Unless you are a farmer as your livelihood, NOTHING else you could grow is that high maintenance. Nothing.

Most turfgrasses are invasive species. I said it.

The practice of "nuking" your lawn (killing everything in it and "starting over")...If you have a so-called "weed problem" this is probably the worst thing you can do.

Listen to me very carefully: "Weed" seeds are everywhere. There is, at all times, a supply of seeds lying dormant in the soil, waiting for the right conditions to sprout. (It's called the "soil seed bank" and you can look it up.) They are capable of "waiting" for years, even decades. Furthermore, most "weed" species spread by wind, meaning you can't physically eliminate them from an outdoor area unless you...surround your entire yard with an incredibly fine mesh netting and never leave, I guess.

Heavy management will make your "weed" problem progressively worse and worse because those plants are specifically adapted to colonize barren areas that recently underwent disastrous events that killed off most life.

Basically all plants are adapted to live in the company of other organisms, and suffer when there are no other plants around. "Weeds" with deep taproots penetrate into and aerate the soil. Clover puts nitrogen in the ground that other plants need. Low ground covers keep the soil moist and stop the sun from baking your grass to a crisp.

The plant "taking over" your lawn is probably not killing your grass. Your grass is dying and it's being replaced by something more suited to the environment. This is supposed to happen.

Monocultures are notoriously susceptible to disease and mass die-offs. "Oh no a big patch of my lawn is dying!" Yeah, that happens when you plant monocultures. You set yourself up for this.

"Why is there a bare patch in my yard/why won't grass grow well here?" Because in nature, each plant has a relatively narrow range of conditions it likes to grow in, so other plants it might otherwise compete with can stick to their preferred conditions and nobody has to compete directly. Win-win. Not all parts of your yard have the exact same amount of sun, moisture, etc. Expecting the plant life to look the same is unrealistic.

grace having rocky review his math to ensure he's got his rations measured out right, that he's correctly calculated the rate of taumoeba growth, that the human food to synthetic food ratio is proportional in relationship to both. grace explains the symptoms of starvation and vitamin deficiency so rocky doesn't get scared and think something's gone wrong. lets him know there's nothing he can do, nothing he can fix. that the rations will keep him alive but only keep him alive, and that's the plan. keeps it clinical, textbook, for both their sake.

grace teaching rocky about cabin fever and touch starvation and the effects of human isolation. lets him know what to expect, what behavioral and personality changes might happen, that it won't just be his body that rots from the inside out, and that's the plan too.

grace showing rocky the gun and the lethal injection kits, tells him humans try to kill themselves when they get like this, that grace doesn't want to kill himself now but in the future he may want to, and that rocky has to keep him from doing so. put out airlock question? the lethal injections kits can be reverse engineered by eridian doctors to make human medicine, grace will need it in the future. and the gun can be reverse engineered by eridian scientists to keep erid safe, earth might not want to be friends. passing them through the flexible barrier, telling rocky to hide them and don't reveal them until they get to erid, no matter what he says or does. better take the ropes for good measure, don't give these to him unless he has to do a space walk.

rocky helpless but to watch as grace can do less and less and less, until he spends all his time curled up in the holochamber wearing layers of his dead crewmate's clothes. rocky building walls up around the platform so grace can make a nest of pillows and blankets and clothing, keeping himself warm, watching videos of other humans, crying at random for reasons he either doesn't know or can't explain or refuses to say.

rocky desperately trying to be enough companionship for him. their language barrier makes it difficult, even with their mutual study during the years when grace was sharp. like the taumoeba, it's only just enough to keep grace alive. the xenon barrier allowing only enough touch, enough warmth, to keep grace grounded and no more.

rocky plagued with thoughts of what grace would have done if he'd not come back for him. how would the return trip to earth have been? would he have stayed awake, allowing himself to go crazy and risking suicide, or would he have put himself back under, completely alone with not even a corpse to give the impression of safety, and still risked death from a malfunctioning life support system? grace has the worst of both worlds now. companionship so close but not close enough, a barely satisfied need for conversation, a barely satisfied need for touch, and rocky's needs making it so grace can't go into a coma for the trip. disgust disgust disgust.

rocky building the first version of the form-fitting suit while grace is asleep, which is often. he doesn't want to get his hopes up in case it doesn't work, but rocky will do everything he can to make it work. and when it finally does work and he hugs grace for the first time, grace doesn't let go for a long, long time. rocky isn't used to being so still, so immobilized. he could pick grace up and move him but grace seems better, more like himself, being held and warm and looking at pictures of people.

cloth mother in the form of a basking rock.

grace doesn't want to ask rocky for anymore than he's given, always laughs off his tears and tells him he doesn't have to do this, doesn't have to stay, can do his own thing, do whatever he wants, don't worry about it. but rocky can't. what else is he supposed to want to do but lay there in the nest next to him, limbs draped over him so grace is weighed down but not crushed, reaching up to pet through his hair, wipe his tears, listen to his breathing and his heart beat, and whatever nonsensical meandering conversation his brain tries to drum up. his stomach doesn't growl anymore.

rocky's in hell. this trip has been hell. what did he do to deserve to be tortured in this way? first his crew and now grace - there will be 23 corpses after all if rocky fails this. he can't fail this. and even if he does fail this he can't even kill himself, he has to get the taumoeba back to erid, teach them how to use it, get home to adrian.

Say it with your full chest, no matter how shitty it looks:

I made a little zine based on my experiences growing up with and figuring out I had clitoral hypoplasia, and the relief I felt when I realized I’m not alone.