Also! Stress tolerance is such an important skill that having a learning disability in that area is a major symptom of a whole lot of other disabilities/mental illnesses! Struggling with it is a huge part of life! It sucks!

Am I saying everyone with misophonia needs to listen to chewing noises all day? No. But you need to find ways to tolerate it enough that you don't treat others like shit if they make a mouth noise near you.

No, you don't have to read the fic with your trigger tags. But you do need to be able to handle scrolling past the tags without being upset.

It is hard! But not having it also makes you so so so easy to manipulate. That grandma is racist AF because her mom raised her to be uncomfortable around black people and she never fought that discomfort. Trans people make so many cis people uncomfortable and that discomfort turns into bigotry real fast.

gay throw blanket finished during pride month :) the gradient yarn is SOOOOO so so cool. but also very very small so this thing took a While

Since it's been a while since I sang the praises of my favorite book 'Anarchy Works' by Peter Gelderloos: here's a reminder that there is an easy to read anarchism book out there organized around frequently asked questions and it's online for free with the authors consent. I'll copy-paste them all just to showcase how great it is:

Introduction

Anarchy Would Never Work

What exactly is anarchism?

A note on inspiration

The tricky topic of representation

Recommended Reading

1. Human Nature

Aren’t people naturally selfish?

Aren’t people naturally competitive?

Haven’t humans always been patriarchal?

Aren’t people naturally warlike?

Aren’t domination and authority natural?

A broader sense of self

Recommended Reading

2. Decisions

How will decisions be made?

How will decisions be enforced?

Who will settle disputes?

Meeting in the streets

Recommended Reading

3. Economy

Without wages, what is the incentive to work?

Don’t people need bosses and experts?

Who will take out the trash?

Who will take care of the elderly and disabled?

How will people get healthcare?

What about education?

What about technology?

How will exchange work?

What about people who don’t want to give up a consumerist lifestyle?

What about building and organizing large, spread-out infrastructure?

How will cities work?

What about drought, famine, or other catastrophes?

Meeting our needs without keeping count

Recommended Reading

4. Environment

What’s to stop someone from destroying the environment?

What about global environmental problems, like climate change?

The only way to save the planet

Recommended Reading

5. Crime

Who will protect us without police?

What about gangs and bullies?

What’s to stop someone from killing people?

What about rape, domestic violence, and other forms of harm?

Beyond individual justice

Recommended Reading

6. Revolution

How could people organized horizontally possibly overcome the state?

How do we know revolutionaries won’t become new authorities?

How will communities decide to organize themselves at first?

How will reparations for past oppressions be worked out?

How will a common, anti-authoritarian, ecological ethos come about?

A revolution that is many revolutions

Recommended Reading

7. Neighboring Societies

Could an anarchist society defend itself from an authoritarian neighbor?

What will we do about societies that remain patriarchal or racist?

What will prevent constant warfare and feuding?

Networks not borders

Recommended Reading

8. The Future

Won’t the state just reemerge over time?

What about other problems we can’t foresee?

Making Anarchy Work

Recommended Reading

It Works When We Make It Work

- "Hey, how was your summer? Good, good."

- "Mic'd up. I'm mic'd up. Don't."

- "Have you ever been to Greece? Told Ilya I would ask you."

- "What? No, man, he didn't say that. He said he was gonna get your ass. Yeah, man, he only fucks one ass. Yeah, I mean, I would say fuck you too but--"

- "Heeeey, davai, davai. Great assist. Hah, no, don't come closer, I'm mic'd and you know I don't trust you."

- "The Royal Tiger Towel Paper Towel Power Play. The Royal Tiger Towel Paper Towel Power Play. The Royal--"

- "HEY MATHESON. You ever been to Vegas? I said, you ever been to VEGAS? I hear they let the good hockey players go there in the summer but I feel like you wouldn't know that."

- "FUCK. Hey, ref, what the fuck was that? Oh, you didn't see that? Fuck you. No, you stay there, my husband's gonna talk to you--fuck you, put me in the bin then, this is bullshit--"

- "You have the smelling salts? Yeah. FUCK--"

- "I am mic'd. Remember I am mic'd. Nope, not even in Russian."

- "Oh, yeah, the pickle video was funny. Harris said it got a lot of views, so. Yeah, no, he actually really does love pickles that much."

- "Sinclair, you got something to say? Yeah, I'm better at hide the pickle than you are at hockey. You want to ask another stupid question?"

- "You know, I run a charity too. Oh, I just assumed that you were doing some kind of Make-A-Wish thing out here with your wingers, since it looks like this is your first day on the ice."

- "Oh, hey, look. Jackie and the kids are waving at us. Okay. Okay, Rozanov, that's enough."

- "Mic'd. Mic'd. Mic'd."

- "Hello Hockey Night, welcome to my husband's shoulder pads--" "Fuck OFF, Rozanov."

I’ve never written something like this, but 40 feels like a milestone worth taking a moment for. I never thought about myself at forty when I was fifteen or twenty-one. Thirty already felt like enough to worry about. Then 30 came and went, and it turned out that I loved being in my thirties. I loved the day that I realized I’d stopped looking around for an adultier adult when I had an issue, because I could solve it. I loved being able to recommend an optometrist and having a favorite cocktail. I loved going on vacations and getting promoted and getting married to the love of my life. I loved trusting myself to make good decisions.

And now I’m turning forty. I dreaded my 30s when I was 22, and then they happened to me and I loved them. So I am approaching my 40s with the hope and belief that they are going to surprise me just as much.

Most of the time, when I tell people I’m turning 40, and they say “ha ha you mean 39 again?” and I say “No, you don’t get it, I’m excited about 40.” They think I’m crazy, but the beauty of having lived on this earth for forty years is that I don’t care what they think. I have stopped pretending that I don’t like mayonnaise or that I can sit through Will Ferrell movies. I don’t have to laugh and agree with them on this, either.

I think I’m writing this because I want to leave a marker on the trail. Maybe for myself to come back to if I get lost, maybe for you as you head this way so you don’t get lost. I don’t know.

But here goes.

I am more capable of accepting ambiguity in my life that I ever thought was possible when I was young. I don’t need to know everything. It’s okay that I will never know what motivated someone to be rude to me or whether they even realized that they were. It’s okay that there is no single correct way of governing society or doing the dishes. I believe there are multiple possible answers to a lot of questions in this world. I can accept the premise of the Trolley Problem. I can accept “it depends” as an answer. It’s not always comfortable but I can do it.

I really do have to pick my battles. I really do have to have to choose a hill to die on and then let the rest of it go. Exhausted and defensive is not a good lifestyle and it doesn’t accomplish anything to live like that.

I am getting better at minding my own business. I love changing the subject when people start to gossip. It does not enrich my life to know that an ex’s divorce was messy or that two celebrities are feuding or dating or whatever it is they’re doing. I’m so much happier not knowing. I want to fill the limited space in my mind up with remembering my friend’s favorite book, and the rules for this board game I am playing with them. I have let go of the idea that someone’s ugliest moment or trait is their “true” self and that I need to know what they are doing behind closed doors. I want to focus on my true self.

I love myself more without labels. I do not need to find a hyper-specific explanation of my unique experience with gender and sexuality to feel good about myself or believe that my experience is real and true. “Queer” is a beautiful word for what I am and I’m very happy with it.

I can accept my body without loving my body. I can stop punishing it for not being what I wanted. I can stop punishing my mind for somehow failing to make my body into something else, as if self-discipline could overwrite genetics. I can focus on what will help us last out the rest of this life together in relative comfort. We don’t have to be in love; it’s not a requirement. We just have to coexist. I’m getting better at that.

I still believe that people are wonderful. That’s the one thing that I believed at fifteen and twenty-two and thirty, and I still do. Even as I write this, I question it, worry that I am not being honest, because the pandemic years have shaken me to my core. What I know now is that it’s an act of faith. I look at the wild world full of weird around me and I choose to be happy. I will never stop thinking about that Michael Jackson shrine in that park in Berlin that I walked past in 2016. I will never stop being delighted by the existence of acapella groups. I will never stop thinking about the four different people who stopped to ask me if I was all right recently, when I got light-headed and sat down on the curb for a few minutes on my way home. Someone always jumps in to help the passengers with walkers or strollers get safely off the bus, and sometimes that someone is me. Strangers ask me if they can pet my dog when I take her on walks, and they leave with a smile on their face, and the world is just full of love. No matter how scary it gets out there, I still believe that.

I am getting better at remembering that it all passes. The stress and the sadness and the anger feel so overwhelming when they come, and I used to let them control me and make me believe I wouldn’t ever get out from under them. But I did. Then I did it again. And now, when it happens, I know that I have been stressed and sad and angry before, and it went away last time, too. It doesn’t make it hurt less, but I can sit with it quietly. I can remember that it will feel different soon, and I don’t have to punish myself for feeling it. It doesn’t make me a bad person to have a bad day. It will pass me by, and soon I will be having coffee with my wife and my friends and we are going to laugh a lot. It’s going to be great.

Your character is forced to go on the next mission despite barely recovering from the last one.

Don’t look back

Keep your eyes on the goal ✨

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

I made this transparent PNG the night he died in preparation for one of the many ways I was going to memorialize him--a surface rug in his likeness that I planned on laying directly in the line of his favourite sunbeam. And I uploaded that PNG here, because this is the website where people post their cats.

I was not expecting the reception I got. Many people have pointed out that this post has more reblogs than likes, and how insane that is in 2025 when reblog culture is at an all time low. I didn't even talk about the fact that Burger passed away in the original post, it wasn't a tearjerker reblog bait or anything like that. People just loved Burger that much, in the same way I fell in love with him at first sight. He was such an ugly kitten.

Anyways, it's really special to me that so many people have reblogged my best friend. I made this PNG to memorialize him in a completely different way, and you all wound up doing just that in ways I never even imagined.

Thank you. Wherever he is, I know the sun is shining.