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EVEN PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE READING/VIEWING BEHAVIOR. NOT filter everything ahead of time for their kid.

When my kiddo was 5, his pediatrician was asking him the usual Well Child Visit questions (“What are your favorite foods? What do you do to get your body moving? Do you know what to do if you get lost in a public place?” Etc.) and she asked, “What do you do if you see something on TV that scares or upsets you?”

I piped up like, “Oh, he doesn’t watch TV without one of us in the room,” which was true at the time and is still largely true now. She said, “Yes, but that won’t always be the case, so make sure you’re talking to him about what to do if he sees something that upsets him.”

So we started talking to him about that, and the answer is simple: “Turn it off or leave the room, and talk to someone you trust about what you saw and what you’re feeling.”

The answer is NOT “Ask your parents to make sure you never see anything upsetting again,” because that’s just not possible — and ultimately that would be doing the kid a disservice, since sooner or later he’s going to be out in the world where we can’t control what he watches or reads. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to make sure he’s watching/reading age-appropriate stuff, it just means that’s not the only safeguard he has — and that’s a good thing.

So yes, content creators aren’t your parents and aren’t responsible for making sure you never see anything you don’t like — but also, your own parents should have taught you what to do when that happens. So if they didn’t, take it from me, your internet mom:

Turn it off.

Walk away.

Talk to someone you trust about how you’re feeling.

Little fox, you're very brave. With the wind howling through the trees onto your fur reminding you of the wild you came from, you've made it through anything life has thrown at you thus far, and I know you'll keep pushing on. Your paws know the speed at which to carry you, and your teeth know how to protect you from the biggest of foes. Your heart knows love, for yourself and your kin, and together those things are all you need. You'll run far and fast through your troubles, putting them in their places. Your tail will be bushy and full of warmth on the coldest of nights. You will be alright, I just know it, little fox. You'll make your own future, and it will be full of love and peace.

Transgender community, please please please do NOT use this product! It will kill you if used, please do not use it whatsoever.

Wanted to share this information here, and hopefully you all can share it more broadly. Fair warning, it's very dark:

With many states cracking down on transgender healthcare and attempting to strip away trans people's right to their medicine, there's a lot of people looking for ways to get their hormones. And unfortunately scammers and much worse are trying to exploit that.

You may have seen ads for a product called I Can't Believe It's Not Estrogen, marketed as basically a natural herbal hormone replacement.

It is not. It's a substance called ashwagandha, which increases production of the body's original hormones, NOT those brought on by HRT. As in, if you're transfeminine, this will massively ramp up your body's testosterone production. It will do the inverse for transmasculine people, of course, but it's being marketed toward transfemmes at the moment.

It will also just outright kill you. The dose involved will cause serotonin syndrome in as little as a month if you're taking it daily like the ads recommend. That's lethal.

The ads for this product use an Al-generated image of a trans woman as their "founder", and link back to a Twitter account that used to be called "Trans Are Traitors". The business address is even faked, as it's for the Iceland Phallological Museum.

It's a honeypot, meant to get the names and addresses and financial information of transgender women, damage their transition process, and ultimately literally poison them.

Do not buy them, and warn anyone who you think might. DIY HRT is much safer if you're in a place where you can't get it from a medical professional."

Seen a couple posts on the dashboard lately about writing with ADHD. So, for the ADHD and neurodivergent folks who like writing but struggle sometimes… check out StimuWrite.

You can set it to make little sounds as you type (or leave them off), and emojis pop up in the corner. You can change the background, dark and light themes, set your word goal, and it gives you a percentage and total word count at the bottom. Though it’s more meant for getting a draft written up, so it doesn’t have spell check or anything like that. You’re meant to just copy and past what you write here into Google Docs or Word or Scrivener or whatever else you use and go from there. Honestly love it when I’m struggling to get words down, though. And apparently there’s an update now for StimuWrite 2?👀