Love is stored in the kitsune

14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."

and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.

so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.

on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.

the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.

Fantastic article!! The guys looking for it were fish researchers who saw it one time, knew instantly it was an undescribed species, and then tried for nearly 20 years to find and document it!

It's a type of ghost pipefish, related to seahorses, and it floats around coral reefs looking like a piece of algae and hunting unsuspecting prey

They are, of course, named after Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street!

Later on it the project, they got citizen science involved, and people across the Pacific started reporting sightings of snuffy fish from all over!

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

I wanna tell you all about my mom. I know this is a sentence used against transmascs, and im a trans man, so I wanna use my voice to tell you about my mom.

My mom is a cis woman, a gender nonconforming woman. (I had to teach her gnc recently actually, because she couldn’t find a term that she felt accurate.)

My mom has always hung out with mostly guys, she can fix cars, we half-joke (because its true) that every time she breaks up with a man they steal her toolbox (they do). We’re going to negate her current relationship because my stepdad is a feminist who adores her, but not all of her exes where like that.

My mom has faced SO MUCH misogyny over her clothing, her makeup, her hobbies. When she was building her tiny model car, her ex would drunkly rant how thats a “boys hobby” and “she shouldn’t be doing that”. Her and my dad used to renovate houses when they were married, Dad would plaster, and mom would plaster alongside him. While also fixing doors and windows, and floors, and ceilings, and painting the damn thing. When she goes to autoparts stores, or car lots, they always talk to her like shes stupid. Recently shes been bringing her husband, so the associate will ramble his ear off, and when theyre finally done, her husband turns to her and goes “babe I don’t know a thing hes talking about, what do you suggest?” because theyre both just so pissed off about it.

Don’t get me wrong, my moms for the girls too! She’ll give her enemy a tampon type of person. But the girls turn their backs on her, quite frequently. Mom used to have a friend, a male friend, who would go to the bar with her. I knew him well. They’re not friends anymore because he used her hobbies and interests to try to sleep with her. He would always try to change her too. Mom likes cooking, so he would try to push her away from things like watching fantasy TV (he thought that was a more ‘male’ genre) or fixing up the house for things like cooking and cleaning.

And so when I came out as trans, it was a really hard time for my mom. She understands now, and shes a HUGE HUGE ally and advocate for me, and I couldn’t fathom having a more supportive mother, but she was really confused. Mom was worried I wanted to transition because the misogyny gnc/masculine women face. I didn’t shave, I liked playing with knives and multitools, when I did makeup it was always more Kiss/Marilyn Manson style, when my sisters did a Marilyn Monroe.

I remember her driving us home from the clothing shop I came out to her in, and the talk we had. She asked me if I was confused, and I said I was sure. She said that I could just be a tomboy, like her. That it didn’t matter what everyone else said about being a masculine woman. Having talked later as adults, she thought I thought the only option for the type of masculinity I have was to be a man. She was so scared for me and my safety because of how punished masculinity is in women.

So now, as I’m 23, and its 2025, Mom is still the gender nonconforming woman she always has been. Mom taught me how to fish, how to use a hatchet, knife safety, and how to cook and sew. I’m a man who picks up heavy things for her now that shes too disabled too, who wears makeup and nail polish with my denim cutoffs and binder, who still has to call my mommy when I can’t get this screw to screw in right mom, I dont know your tips and tricks.

And masculine women can exist alongside trans men. My mom goes to my hormone appointments with me to make sure these doctors are listening to me, she yells at me when I take my shots late, she picks up my hormones if I’m at work. Mom takes me to Pride every year, and god rest the soul of any transphobes that cross my mothers path. My moms for the girls and the gays, the he’s and the they’s, the its and the lesbians and everyone between. Mom will fix you dinner and your car, and we give her gifts on fathers day too because she was Mom and Dad growing up.

Annoyance,

Agreement,