Tame birds sing of freedom wild birds fly

[Part 1 here] [Website/More Comics]

Hans Christian Andersen's the Little Mermaid: Part II.

For Mermay this year, I picked up where I left off adapting the original Little Mermaid fairytale last year. The world below the water is painted like black & white shadow puppets, while the world above the water is painted like stained glass. The shadow puppets call back to old fairytale storytelling traditions and the work of Lotte Reiniger, while the stained glass imagery reflects how the original story associates the world on land with churches and holiness and the question of who gets to have a "human soul."

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.

if you've made replies on posts there is now a tab on your blog showing every post youve replied to and your reply.

if this is not what you want, either go to your blog and click comments and disable it from there or just go to your individual blogs setting pages. just change it from blue to grey if you dont want everyone to see your replies AND the post you're replying to

PLEASE BE ADVISED that it is set to disabled for blogs that have not made any replies but it will turn ON if you reply with that blog in the future.! i just tested it with my main, which was greyed out but it turned on the moment i left a test reply

so couple of clarifications. comments are disabled as default for primary blogs that have their likes disabled. they are seemingly enabled for all other blogs that have replied to posts

Obi and Leia + these little moments

+ this big one

And other writers be like: But it turned out good, right? I hope so. Writing can be so hard sometimes.

And then some more writers pitch in with: Wait, you actually write?

And normal people are sitting there like: If writing is so hard, why do you do it?

And writers be like: That’s not how it works. We don’t call the writing. The writing calls us. Sometimes it’s hell, but the writing demon summoned us to be the writers, and we cannot refuse the call.

But the writers are also like : I refuse the call every other day.

short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.

now, about caffeine: stimulants work differently in adhd brains. Some doctors believe it is because people w/ adhd do not produce or retain high enough levels of dopamine. Thus, the theory is that stimulants bring an adhd brain closer to 'standard' arousal levels (arousal, here, meaning 'excitement' in general and not sexual arousal).

Important to note: for most people, caffeine literally makes them unable to be tired. Iirc, it blocks melatonin receptors.

If you drink caffeine and get more tired, or if it has literally 'no' effect, your brain is goofing up somewhere. It should literally actually make you more alert and awake. People aren't exaggerating or making up the symptoms commonly associated with caffeine- neurotypical people get caffeine jitters, become more alert, and literally cannot feel tired with large enough doses of caffeine.

1: if you relate to ADHD posts, you ain't gotta get a diagnosis to use the tips and tricks ppl have posted to help with ADHD

2: if you do have access to a health professional and feel comfortable asking for a new prescription, you don't need a diagnosis to be prescribed non-stimulant ADHD medicine, like strattera or other dopamine-reuptake-inhibitors. hell, if your doctor is cool enough they might get you stimulants without a diagnosis (though there is currently a shortage in the USA, so ymmv)

3. my biggest catch-all tip for ppl w/ ADHD is this: Do it the way you want/need to do it. whatever 'it' is.

If you need to take the cabinet/pantry doors off so you can see what's in there, do it. If you need to store your vegetables in the front of the fridge and not the vegetable drawer so you actually see them before they wilt, do it. If you need music playing to focus on homework, do it. If you need to keep snacks at your desk so you actually remember to eat, do it. If you need to set 16 reminders per day to get your work done, do it. Do it scared, do it wrong. You don't even have to do your best. 30% is better than 0%.

If you care about Animal Cruelty in Factory Farms, you need to get legislation passed. It must become a crime to mistreat animals in those ways, and when malfeasances occurs, the onus of responsibility for those crimes must fall upon wealthy shoulders. That, also, requires legislation. It requires regulations, and regulators.

The largest source of Microplastics is wear and tear on automobile tires. It doesn’t matter what brand of shampoo you buy. It doesn’t matter which company you support with your dollar. The issue of Public Transit is too large-scale to be handled at anything less than the municipal level.

It’s not enough to just not participate in society

If you want the world to Change, you must leverage the mechanisms of political power.