Bi The Way...

I dont care if 9/10 of the people who use the wheelchair ramp arent actually in wheelchairs. As long as the 1 person who needs it has access to it.

I dont care if 9/10 people who use the automatic push button on the library door can actually push the door open themselves. As long as the 1 person who the door is too heavy for gets to use it.

I dont care if 9/10 people who buy the can tab opener, or the little guitar clamp that holds the chords for you, or the hand grip that helps you hold chop sticks, don't need any of it and just get it to "be lazy". As long as the one disabled person who needs it gets access to it.

I do not care. Oh my GOD I do not care. As long as there's a disabled person on this planet who the accessibility device will benefit, the accessibility device is necessary.

Also, if you're so worried about people being "lazy" by using accessibility devices, MORE worried than you are about disabled (visibly or not) people not having access to them, you have unchecked ableism you need to work through.

I was homeless. I was homeless as a child and as an adult. That shit sucks believe it or not.

The uncertainty. The ever-present grimy feeling from lack of access to running water. Having nothing to your name. The shame you feel is asking your fellow man for the bare minimum. Just so much shame, man.

"Unhoused" is so clinical. A technical term. Sure, its not incorrect, but it doesn't properly convey the emotional and psychological impact homelessness has on you.

You say "house", I think of a structure.

I have been given new and important information on the distinction between “homeless” and “unhoused”!

The term “unhoused” is useful for those in social work when they have to make the distinction between someone who is say, couchsurfing but still has a roof over their head, and someone who’s sleeping in a tent beneath an underpass. Both are homeless, but one is unhoused.

AND NOW WE KNOW!

You sure?

You sure that this is your non kinky rep of gay men?

You really wanna rest your argument on a guy who looks like he robbed an entire fetish store?

There is no doubt in my mind that if Freddie Mercury were alive today, there would be threads on twitter like “he doesn’t represent me!!!! He’s making the whole community look bad!!! Not all of us are FREAKS like him!!!”

Speaking of better ideas, may I introduce you to Housing First

Housing First is a policy that offers permanent housing as quickly as possible to homeless people, and other supportive services afterward. Begun in 1988 to address the needs of homeless families with children in Los Angeles, California, Housing First was popularized in the following decades and became government policy in the United States and various other countries.

Housing First is an alternative to a system of emergency shelter/transitional housing progressions. Rather than moving homeless individuals through different “levels” of housing, whereby each level moves them closer to “independent housing” (for example: from the streets to a public shelter, and from a public shelter to a transitional housing program, and from there to their own apartment in the community), Housing First moves the homeless individual or household immediately from the streets or homeless shelters into their own accommodation.

Housing First approaches are based on the concept that a homeless individual or household’s first and primary need is to obtain stable housing, and that other issues that may affect the household can and should be addressed once housing is obtained. In contrast, many other programs operate from a model of “housing readiness” — that is, that an individual or household must address other issues that may have led to the episode of homelessness prior to entering housing.

Because it ends up hurting the same people- and those who already have it hardest get hurt the worst- but it’s harder to stomach coming from people who espouse the same values I do, but are willing to quite literally watch our friends die in the name of principle.

I’ve stopped speaking to 5 of my closest “leftist” friends in the past year and a half because they each each reached the point of advocating that people just die instead of exist in an imperfect system. The issues? Healthcare. Student Loans. LGBTQ+ protections. Healthcare again. The American Electoral system.

Yes. There are massive issues at hand. Working our entire lives, we will probably not see them all solved, and the improvements we might see will break or need improving again.

Im actually for that goal (mostly), but guess what—if you tear down a broken system and have nothing to replace it, you have now taken away all of the things in the system that WERE doing some good.

I’m an idealist. A big one. And there are things we can’t comprise on. Human rights are under attack and that needs to be resolved now

But if you wanna get rid of, say, capitalism, you can’t just break the system and think that solves anything.

You don’t think social democracy is enough? Totally fine. It’s better than what we have, a LOT better, so let’s do that and then figure out what’s next.

Idealism is vital to our goals, but we have to be willing to see working within what we have now not as “compromise” but as “steps in the right direction”

All I’m saying is whatever happens, we do still need a functioning society at the end of this.

Sometimes, reform is a good way to lay the groundwork for something better.

The impulse to just…destroy…should always, always be questioned.

And yeah like @lostsometime says—if you go all-in on violence, you can never limit that to just the “right” people. The Allies killed plenty of innocents in WW2 in the name of “justice” and “peace”, hell WW2 only happened because leaders got so hopped up on their “righteous anger” that they completely destroyed Germany via the treaty of Versailles, creating a breeding ground for nationalism and radicalism.

I don’t even really know what I’m trying to say. I guess I’m just saying that if you get comfortable making compromises about collateral damage and human lives in the name of the “greater good”—whether that be through dismissing any proposals for progress because it’s not the desired end result, or because you feel like inflicting pain and harm is somehow the only way to make “real” progress….just understand that you can’t control that any more than you can control the current system. You give permission to cause harm—real harm—you open a Pandora’s box that is going to cause a lot of damage when people start shifting the goalposts of what’s “necessary”

Hint – it's NOT because it makes your bedroom look like a frat boy's first apartment who spent all his money on a giant TV (also on the floor) and a ps5 and one sad mattress on the floor. (Although this is also a good reason, to avoid being that guy, it is not the actually important reason.)

The reason is this:

You will get mold or mildew under your mattress if the mattress doesn't have air circulation happening underneath it. Air circulation is possible when the mattress is lifted up off of the floor with a bed frame, or if you have a floor mattress, when you regularly roll the mattress back up off the floor.

Do not just dump a mattress on the floor and leave it there.

You are a warm sweaty body lying on a mattress at night and all the sweat, moisture, and oils will get trapped between the mattress and your floor if there's no circulation. If you have a floor/tatami style mattress, you actually have to be frequently rolling that back up and moving it for the same reason.

Traditional floor mattresses get put away (taken off the floor) after sleeping, which brings in the necessary air circulation!

don't give yourself a moldy or mildewy mattress – those things are expensive.

The cheapest options are:

buy the cheapest frame you can find when you buy a mattress

or buy the super basic frame that comes with the mattress as a bundle offer

find a used mattress frame somewhere for free or cheap. Facebook marketplace, buy nothing, used furniture stores, estate sales, moving giveaways, whatever.

DIY a mattress frame if you have the time, energy, knowledge, and can find supplie

Buy a floor mattress you are committed to regularly rolling or folding up to provide air circulation

This belongs in this post!!!

Yes!!! GOOD ADDITIONS!!

If you have a bed frame with slats, they should probably be no more than 3-4 inches apart from one another. Like what the tags said, if you don't have enough bars or slats, the weight distribution will be thrown off and make your mattress sag or lump.

Otherwise you probably need a box spring/foundation for your mattress!

For example, the specs on my bedframe that I got on sale and partly with a giftcard

Slat spacing: 3". (Also three middle support legs! Nice).

I have an all natural latex mattress, and I don't use a box spring with this frame. It might be nice to have for the extra height, or I might prioritize also getting one if I was a bigger person (because more body weight or height = more of me to support and to distribute) for mattress longevity.

But I don't need one because the slats are wide and they are fairly close together.

HOWEVER, these kinds of bed frames would need a box spring or box foundation frame under the mattress:

The wood slats are too far apart! The other frames don't have enough supports either.

These gaps look too big, and the bars not wide enough to skip a box/foundation:

Also seconding:

Yes, you do need a mattress protector. Life and body oils happen.

Agreed on "avoid buying a used mattress." For many reasons but also because in some places it's not legal to sell used mattresses and also because the risk of bed bugs is never worth it.

Lastly: if you pay for your bed in installments over time, make sure you ask the furniture/mattress how their financing options work. You want to know if they have to do a hard credit check. You want to know if this shows on credit reports. You want to know if they're opening up a store credit card for you to finance the purchase with a limited introductory APR for a certain number of months before interest goes up, *or* if they are offering a fixed loan for the purchase. And you want to know what the terms of the credit/loan are - what's the interest, how long do you have to pay, and for loans, what will happen if you pay more than the minimum payment. Does the next due date get pushed out when you pay ahead, or do you still have the same minimum due next month regardless? Either way, pay the biggest amount you can each month. This can be a good way to establish positive credit history if you make timely & full or more than minimum payments.

Also: in general if you have disposable income (enough to go beyond "whatever bed is the absolute cheapest"), I do recommend investing in your next mattress purchase. The frame/foundation just need to be functional for what they are, basic and affordable is fine!

But if you have a little extra to spend/can cut back on other fun expenses for a little while, then the mattress itself is way more important and is worth treating as a bigger investment, since it should last you at least 5 years. (Mine should last me up to 15!)

...this is just my weird brain, but basically I compare mattress prices to laptop prices in terms of what I expect for quality, features, durability, etc. below is only my thoughts for when you have money to spend/spare. I'm going to collect the dirt cheap and sometimes free suggestions in another reblog.

Please don't be afraid of buying furniture, guys. I know that in the age of Amazon and every other online drop-ship company like Article, Joybird, etc, it can seem like a MAJOR fucking rip, but it, much like laptops mentioned above, are really something where you do get what you pay for. Of course everything has a plateau, but generally speaking a $300 mattress is not going to last as long as a $1300 mattress or be as comfortable.

ALSO WHICH I DID NOT MENTION ABOVE:

Make sure you are going to see the mattress you want to purchase in person if at all possible. Even IKEA has mattresses you can lay on and try out. High-end "new luxury" brands like Purple tend to have the highest return rates BECAUSE people buy them sight unseen and then when they get it, they hate it, feel like they've wasted their money, and the whole vicious cycle continues.

Furniture and mattresses are also an excellent opportunity to BUY LOCAL!!! In many cases the Big Box Stores are encouraged to turn and burn their customers as much as possible so that they can meet extremely high sales quotas. Generally, if the company you're buying from is worth its salt, you'll have a better experience somewhere smaller. (Mine in particular puts specific emphasis on getting to know our customers, because we are fixtures in our communities and people remember buying from us, or their parents, or their grandparents.)

I didn't think to look for that route when buying my most recent ("I can afford to save for an investment") adult mattress! Sad. They might exist near me, but they might also be big chain mattress stores. Not sure.

Mostly I scoured reddit and read Naplab reviews and basically ADHD indecision spiralled a bit. Haha! My very first #adult mattress was definitely not as nice, and I've definitely had cheaper mattresses and even shit dorm mattress before. and I super want to emphasize that obviously the investment mattress consideration is a privilege of having like...any extra income that doesn't go towards food and shelter that you can save to make a big purchase once every 5-10 years. (Just because I know people on this website will be upset if I don't clarify this).

Oh also: in the US three day weekend mattress sales are usually still decent or even very good discounts!! I've only ever bought during mattress holiday weekend sales lol.

FWIW (for anyone curious) I did buy an online mattress. I basically got really into reading about problems people had with fiberglass in their mattresses, or foam off gassing smells, and I knew I wanted breathable (natural fiber) casing. So I went hunting for sustainable/eco friendly natural latex mattresses.

Ended up with the queen size Awara by Resident natural hybrid luxury mattress — GOLS and FSC certified natural Dunlop latex, organic new Zealand wool, & bamboo rayon-poly blend cover, individual wrapped coils, and fiberglass-free. Pulled up my email receipt and full price it was $1,699 — bought on sale for $1,049, not including the bundle I also got with cover protector, pillows, and pillow cases/fitted sheet/top sheet. (Slats frame I bought separately.) It also has handles on every side for rotating.

Anyways I am happy with it! It was definitely a risk to purchase sight unseen!! but I felt better about doing that with an organic latex hybrid mattress than a gel, foam, or memory foam mattress. (I guess my logic was that if I truly hated it I could buy a gel or memory foam topper.) Aside from looking for something no-VOC and potentially more sustainable, the fact that latex is supposed to last longer was a big factor in switching from regular memory foam/gel/hybrid type mattresses for me.

My Awara doesn't do this, BUT the other cool thing I saw in other latex mattresses was that a lot of them are just like, three or so layers inside of the mattress casing and you can sometimes rearrange those layers for different firmness or just replace a single layer if it degraded more than the others or you want a different firmness level eventually.

Shikifuton are folded up every day, and rotated/flipped every 1-2 weeks to prevent lumpiness.

The dehumidifier sheet call out is cool!! I found a little diagram of them lol:

People talk about how you can’t see stars in the city and yeah, that’s true, but their concept of “seeing stars” is being able to make out orion’s belt.

So, so few people have see the sky in all its glory and it’s not sad. It’s a fucking crime. Seeing a perfectly dark night, no clouds, not a hint of light pollution? That’s a fucking religious experience.

The sky the vast vast majority of us grew up with is not the sky that inspired us to look up. It is not the sky that inspired constellations. You can’t even see most constellations.

Your ancestors looked at the night sky and said “surely, that is where the gods must live.” And you might be lucky if you can see hardly more than a handful of stars.

When we were on a field trip to the middle of the red sea, I remember us all crowding at the end of the boat that didn’t have lights and just lying on our backs and staring

When you see a properly dark starscape

You understand why people wrote poems and made up legends and built rockets and said heaven’s in the sky

You think of the night sky like fairy lights on black velvet, but it’s not it’s not it’s like, like, dust in sunlight, like - I can’t find the words.

The stars are everywhere, like sugar, like glitter, like dust. You can’t find the constellations at first, not because you can’t recognise them, but because there’s so many stars you can’t pick out the familiar line of Orion’s belt. The North star has gone from bright familiarity to almost vanishing among a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million other lights. The milky way is a line of light arcing across the sky like a moon-trail on water only infinitely, infinitely bigger.

And for the first time in your life you’ll understand why people call it a dome, because it is, it’s three dimensional in exactly the way a city skyscape isn’t.

You’ll understand why Luthien Tinúviel danced under starlight, not moonlight, why people in a time before we knew the earth was round still looked up and wondered and built telescopes and dreamed about the stars.

The stars are endless and ancient and infinite and you will stand with your head craned back and your rucksack forgotten at your feet and you’ll feel like you’re falling upwards into that great bright sky like it’s calling you home and you’ll wonder how you ever thought the stars were beautiful before tonight when all you’d ever seen were the naked empty skyscapes of your home. And you’ll cry and you’ll spend the rest of your time there gazing up and wondering and imagining what it would be like to stand among those bright silver flecks

I’d often set an alarm to wake me in the middle of the night, so it was as dark as possible and my eyes as dark-adapted as they could get, and starlight alone was enough to guide me

Self-Portrait of the Astronomer as a Young Nerd

But seriously, grow up. Even if you only want to read books meant for teens and young adults, there are others that are so much more mature, don't contribute to transphobic organisations, and are set in arguably more interesting worlds. My favourite examples are the Chronicles of Narnia and the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness (the Wolf Brother books). While both are aimed at a younger audience, they are still very easy to enjoy as an adult (I'm only 19, but still legally an adult, and these are my two favourite book series), and they have such great world building.

Because it is so, so important here that the man who tells Juror 10 to sit down and shut up is, at least broadly speaking, on his side. Juror 4 is one of the two other jurors at this point who does in fact also think the kid is guilty. These two and Juror 3 are the last three hold outs, now that the tide has shifted towards Jurors 8 & 9 and their not guilty vote. And of those three, Juror 4 is the loadbearing wall of the argument. He’s the only one there still voting guilty because he has not been convinced there’s evidence for reasonable doubt. The other two are arguing out of personal bias, but Juror 4 is just calmly and steadfastly arguing the actual evidence.

And that is, so very much, the thesis of the movie. That when lives are in the balance, when someone might die as a result of your decisions, you can’t base things on your personal beliefs, you have to try and find the actual truth of the matter. (Or, as in this case, determined that you cannot  sufficiently determine that truth, not enough to justify risking someone’s life over it). And that goes both ways. You can’t be arguing to kill some kid out of racist bile, but at the same time you can’t just be switching your vote on a dime to whoever’s currently winning because you want to go home in time for a game, either (Juror 7). There’s a kid’s life at stake here. Juror 4, the inclusion of Juror 4, is what gives the debate actual credence in both directions, an honest man who is arguing for what he thinks the evidence has actually shown, largely without personal bias. When sufficient evidence for the opposing viewpoint is presented to him, he accepts it and changes his vote.

And that is where the case is won. The tide shifts steadily over the course of the movie, from 11-1 guilty all the way to unanimous not-guilty, but Juror 4, the second to last guilty vote, is where the case is actually won. Juror 3, the last guilty vote, is not played as a serious argument that the accused actually is guilty, but as a tragic illustration of the more personal and subtle biases that can cripple us. Unlike 10’s overt, spewing racism, which is coldly and icily shut down, 3’s personal tragedy, his broken relationship with his son that is shaping his views, is treated with pity and sympathy, but ultimately overruled as a legitimate reason to vote to kill a stranger.

Honestly, I love this movie. It is so artificial in so many ways, each character carefully chosen and curated to illustrate so many different specific failings, both as individual people and as components of a justice system, but it also does ring so very true. These characters were specifically crafted to enable this thesis, but they also are so well-rounded and so real. Which gives the thesis real weight. It’s not a strawman argument. The ‘heroes’ are multifaceted, and so are their opponents. Every man on this jury has reasons for their vote, and those reasons are explored and argued and tested, so that the shift from guilty to not guilty over the course of the story feels natural.

And also … It just hits better when 4 is the one to shut him down. And the way he does it, too. All these other men, these good men, just walk away and stay silent, which does show their utter discomfort and disdain, freezing 10 out, but also doesn’t shut him down the same way. They walk away, not him. But 4, who is still ostensibly on his side and voting the same way as him, does not get up. Does not walk away. He stays seated, stays holding court, hears him all the way out, and then passes judgement as fucking icily and viciously as possible.

“Listen to me. Listen.”

“I have. Now sit down and don’t open your mouth again.”

Listen to me. Because the argument is always that you’re not listening, you’re not understanding, you’re not letting them speak. But he did. He sat. He listened. He let him get it all out. And then he told him as icily and politely as possible to shut up and never talk again. You’ve said your piece, and it was bullshit. Every man in this room knows it’s bullshit. So sit down, and shut up, because you’re not qualified to be here or have any part in this decision-making process any longer. We’re here to decide if this specific young man committed this specific crime, and your disgusting fantasy bullshit has nothing to do with any of that.

The whole room freezes him out, but it’s someone who was supposed to be on his side that completely and savagely shuts him down.

And it also … the first two to stand and walk away are Jurors 11 and 9. 11 is a naturalised citizen himself, an immigrant, and he’s the first to stand, but he also … he can’t argue back against the flow of bile. Not successfully. He knows it won’t be listened to, coming from him. And 9 is a sweet old man who has argued quietly and successfully for this kid, but he’s not able to stand up to this. He’s the one 10 actually strikes at a little bit, that jab in the back, ‘where are you going?’. Because 10 knows 11 is an easier target. He’s a sweet old man who’s not going to fight back, not directly. A lot of the rest of the men, they stand up in solidarity with those two, to protect them and follow their lead, but none of them argue back. Not even Juror 8, our stalwart hero. Possibly because he knows that arguing with this kind of entrenched worldview just won’t work, but still. It’s noticeable that he doesn’t fight.

And 4 doesn’t fight either, technically. He’s just unmoved. He just sits there, and lets the bile flow over him, taking advantage of the fact that it can’t affect him, and that he’s the one, owing to his vote, that 10 turns to for approval, and he just icily locks him the fuck down. Giving him the same stone wall experience that other people get trying to argue with him. There was no one else there who could have given him quite the same experience of being quite so tiny and pathetic and unimportant and disgusting. The others have personal reasons to fight him, and he could feel justified fighting back (which is possibly another reason why 8 didn’t argue). But 4 has been just a pure wall of ice and intellect and logic, arguing calmly and rationally with anyone and everyone who’s said something he doesn’t agree with, regardless of their cause, and 10 knows just to look at him that anything he says will be torn apart. 4 is the only one who could have given him that experience, that sensation that his worldview is just flatly and factually wrong, and boy is he being judged for it.

Juror 4 is definitely one of my favourite characters. He really is. But one of the things that makes this such a good movie is that all of them, all 12 jurors, are loadbearing to the plot and argument of the movie in some way or another. All of them are illustrations of a point, windows onto certain viewpoints, their flaws, their weaknesses, their sympathetic (or otherwise) causes, and their consequences when lives are on the line.

I love Juror 7 because he makes so much sense, a man who just doesn’t want to be here, who just wants to get out and get back to his life, and who’s voting guilty or not guilty not out of any conviction but just to agree with whatever has the most votes so he can get out faster, and it makes so much sense, and it’s sympathetic, because we’ve all been there, it’s sweltering, we’re stuck in a room of shouting people, and we just want to do whatever we have to do to get the hell out of there. And then the movie, through Juror 8 and 11, gently points out that he was going to kill a kid, or at least lay the vote that would get a kid killed, just because he wanted to get out in time for a ball game. Because how many people do things every day, unwittingly or unthinkingly, that have terrible consequences for someone else, just because they’re tired and frustrated and they have somewhere to be, and it’s remote, it’s distant, they won’t ever have to watch those consequences? If you handed Juror 7 a loaded pistol and told him to shoot that kid in open court, of course he’d drop the gun in horror. Most people aren’t killers, not like that. But without Juror 8 to stand and fight, 7’s apathy would have helped kill that kid as surely as squeezing the trigger.

It’s such a good movie. It has such a clear and firm grasp on its argument, and it is set up and characterised so well and so clearly to guide the audience calmly and naturally through that argument. It’s structured so well. The bulk of the movie aside from a couple starting/ending scenes is just 12 characters in a single room, arguing one point exhaustively to conclusion. And it works. It works so goddamn well.

Let me put it this way. I really like the ocean. However I don’t think it’s a good thing for the ocean to flood inland destroying ecosystems and villages because some of the natural hills that kept it at bay have been mined away. Me building a dam to keep the ocean away to bring back some of the natural barrier that was lost isn’t me trying to destroy the ocean. It’s me keeping the ocean out of my goddamned ecosystem where it isn’t meant to be anyways.