minor pedantry

Your telling me shen “won’t shut up about demons” yuan would not be BEGGING his husband to transform into his most demonic form.

Don’t overlook paternity leave because it’s a hugely important feminist issue

Celebrating fatherhood with official paternity leave policies challenges traditional gender roles and empowers parents in the workplace. It’s one of those rare issues where men’s rights activists and feminists can find common ground with a mutually beneficial cause. It even has an impact on LGBTQ equality.

- It’s important for LGBT+ parents who don’t fit the cis-hetero mold of one mother and one father.

- It’s an important feminist issue for reducing the second shift: when only one parent gets adequate parental leave, it’s only natural for a pattern to develop that the only parent who got adequate parental leave takes on the lion’s share of childcare. However, if both parents get adequate parental leave, then it’s more likely for a pattern to develop of sharing childcare duties. This is obviously massively important for reducing how much women’s careers are affected by having children.

- If the mother has post-partum health issues (anything from recovering from a C-section or other physical traumas, to post-partum depression and/or anxiety) it’s incredibly unfair to expect her partner to just go back to work immediately instead of allowing her partner to stay home and help with childcare duties. When someone is recovering from having a baby, it can be really important for their partner to stay home to help care for them and the baby.

However, one important point I haven’t seen brought up in why equal paid parental is so important for social equality is how important it is for reducing hiring discrimination.

By that I mean, when a country has *only* guaranteed maternity leave, but either no paternity leave (or really short paternity leave of a few weeks like the U.K. has), this is only going to raise the risk of hiring discrimination against women.

So if a company is choosing between two candidates for a position: one is a young woman and the other is a young man, if the country this company is in has a maternity leave policy of several months or more, but paternity leave is either just a few weeks (or completely non-existent), the company will look at the woman as riskier and less reliable to hire than the man.

So equal paid parental leave leads to more equality in the job market, because it means companies are less likely to see women as riskier and less reliable to hire. If everyone, not just women, has the same length of parental leave, everyone runs the same risk of needing to go on leave for the same amount of time.

Also, because this is incredibly important to Bond for some reason, she needs to be an incredibly predatory, womanizing lesbian. Some perfectly happy married straight woman needs to become gay by the end of the movie.

When I returned home from my mission, I had gone from being 6’2” and 145 lbs to being 6’2” and 220 lbs. It turns out that I loved Mexican food, and, without other healthier outlets for my feelings, I ate to console myself and destress after what was, essentially, a 14-hour workday. This was fine to me while in the field because my heft was useful - I could help people carry heavy things, I could protect myself from dangerous companions, and I had enough energy to work. In truth, even at my heaviest I could still walk for miles and miles and miles without stopping. I could still proselyte for hours without needing more than a few minutes to rest every now and then. But when I came home, I came home to a family of insanely passionate athletes with thyroid disorders. My dad used to run thousands of miles a year. He does Jiu Jitsu and boxing weekly and lifts weights often. My mom runs marathons. I had a cousin who could slow his heart rate to like 30 BPM while sitting because he ran so far and so much. And even though I had actually gained a bit more physical ability, I felt ashamed and uncomfortable. I kept saying I wanted to lose weight, I kept trying diets that I’d give up on after a week, or getting into some kind of sport, or even just the good ol’ fashioned “counting calories,” but I never seemed to be able to make it stick, and it bothered me. Or at least, I thought it did, until one day I was talking to my brother, @inbabylontheywept, and I told him the same thing I’d been saying for over a year: “I want to lose weight!” And despite typically having the emotional wherewithal of a recently microwaved guinea pig, I was met with the mind blowing response of “No you don’t. If you did, you’d have done it already. You just want to want to lose weight.”

And I sat on that for a bit, partially because I was not yet accustomed to my baby brother being so wise, but partially because it left me with the huge, lingering question: “What do I want?” At the time, I think what I wanted was to fit in with the familial norm, but when I actually thought about it I actually kinda already did. My parents are extremely body positive, and had never pressured me or asked me to lose weight. In fact, my dad even expressed some jealousy about how easy it was for me to bulk up. I wanted to fit in to an idea I had, but as soon as I let go of that idea, that image, I found I was actually pretty happy with where I was at, in part because it served me. And this is what lies at the core of sexy vs hot, at least in my definition of these terms: sexy is practical, it’s tangible, and it can be imperfect in appearance and still do what it needs to do. Hot, on the other hand, only requires that something look or sound good, nice, or appealing. Hot can get us approval from others, since we like to praise things that look good, but hot does not always serve us. In fact, sometimes hotness actually demands we serve it.

For example: a man who makes $50k/year and can do so every year is sexy. Not always fun to look at - there may be nights spent in the office, days where he comes home dirty or stinky, times where work is stressful, but he can DO something. A millionaire with no life skills is hot. Fun to look at, but not really fun to be a part of. A man with a huge penis, massive muscles, and no care for a partner’s sexual pleasure can be hot, but not sexy. You don’t get anything from it in practice, just in theory. A man with a small penis, weak muscles, and a tongue that can make you forget human speech is sexy. You can get something real from it, and you can get it reliably.

A political theory that seems idyllic, but which cannot be practically implemented, is hot but not sexy. Trickle down economics, for example, is hot. It sounds good - a handful of people pay fewer taxes and instead use that money to fulfill a civic duty to provide for their community. Practically, though, it means Jeff Bezos pays less in taxes than a nurse or a teacher. It’s hot, but useless.

Food stamps, on the other hand, are sexy. They provide people with a real tangible benefit. While someday, sometime, Zuckerberg may decide to spend his billions to buy farms that produce free food for everyone, or Musk may decide to end homelessness, in reality giving them this much control over societal resources is impractical. Worse still, it puts us at the mercy of someone who has, to date, never done more than cause a problem. Is it hot to think of being rescued by someone who puts all the work in on our behalf? Yes! Will it happen? Not anytime soon. Food stamps, however, are tangible. They put food on your table while your wife recovers from childbirth, they feed your neighbor while he looks for a new job, they feed the medical student who will one day save the life of someone you love and care about. But it requires acknowledging the ugly truth that we cannot simply trust people to act in the benefit of society, that we have to take steps to make it happen.

Is paying for food - a universal human need - fun to think about? No, obviously not. Is struggling through hard times on limited government assistance the goal? Not really, no. But does it have a tangible effect on people’s lives? Yeah, yeah duh. So it’s sexy.

Differentiating between hot and sexy is crucial to most people’s functioning. Putting a 12x magnification scope on a Ruger 10/22 is hot, but putting a red dot scope on it is better for such a short-range gun, so it’s sexy. The sports car that costs $100k and requires another $25k/year in maintenance may seem nice, but the ability to reliably drive a used $10k car is sexy. Picking a prestigious career path is hot, but if you fucking hate it then it is not sexy because it won’t work for you. Instead, you have to work for it.

People pleasing, compulsions, avoidance, procrastination, are all hot. They give you something in return for your effort, but they give you little in comparison to the effort. Setting boundaries, resisting a compulsion, and doing the thing now instead of later, is sexy. It’s dirty, it’s messy, it doesn’t always look clean and neat and effortless, but it gives you a practical, tangible benefit. The benefit of delaying homework is temporary and usually impractical - it’s hot. The benefit of doing homework is lasting and usually practical - it’s sexy.

It’s also important to remember that some things can be both. Being able to bench 300 lbs and run 5 miles makes it easier to carry groceries, lift heavy objects at work, and fuck the bad thoughts out of your partner’s head? That can be hot and sexy. Being able to make a nice, hot meal that gives you energy and nutrition? That can be hot and sexy. But never let it be forgotten that sexy does not have to be hot - only functional. Is keeping your meds on the counter for guests to see hot? Not to most people. But if it helps you remember to take them, then it’s sexy, and that’s what matters most.

This is, at face level, a bizarre rant, but hear me out: So many people judge themselves for not being hot, and don’t give themselves credit for being sexy. If you feel that your body isn’t *hot,* please ask yourself what it can do. The thin lips that kiss your lover good morning? Sexy. The patchy beard that absorbs your friend’s tears? Sexy. The hairy legs that carry you through life? Sexy. The belly that digests the food that gives you energy? Sexy.

This works for other things about the body too. The wheelchair that gets you to your friend’s house? Sexy. The headphones that let you go to the mall without having a sensory meltdown? Sexy. The CPAP machine that lets you sleep through the night so you have energy in the morning? Sexy.

Even in a more abstract sense, it still works. The stigmatized job that pays your bills? Sexy. The extra semester you take to make it easier to pass a challenging class? Sexy. The cheap beat-up car you use to go from your job to your home? Sexy. The decision to change your major to something more enjoyable and sustainable for you? Sexy. Asking a friend for help? Sexy. Telling your neighbor to turn down the TV volume that’s been keeping you up at night? Sexy. Proposing with a ring you can afford instead of paying for the expensive (and hot) diamonds? That’s sexy too.

I’m not trying to convince anyone to love something they hate. And I certainly don’t want anyone to walk away from this with the idea that some simple platitudes can take away the entire crushing weight of judgement and mockery from others. I’m only asking that you ask yourself what you gain by changing your life for the benefit of looking better to someone who will never spend a day in your skin. I’m asking you to consider if the cost of making your appearance more appealing is worth the opportunity cost. If it is, fine, great, you’ve done a full analysis of things and still know what you want, but if it doesn’t, then ask yourself: WTF? What’s the function? If the function is insufficient to compensate for the cost, then do you ever really want to do it? Or do you just wish you wanted to do it? If you let go of the belief that you have to do things in a way that looks good, aesthetic, or clean, what are you left with? And is it worth it? Terry Pratchett said it well when he wrote that style is what people remember. We want things to look hot. But he also put it well when he said society is just two missed meals and a bad night’s sleep away from falling apart. We NEED things to be practical, to be reliable, to be sexy.

I know there has to be a better way for me to have said this. I’m even reasonably certain that someone, somewhere, has already said it better. But I also wanted to share ideas, questions, and skills that could make a real impact in your own lives. I wanted to invite people to reflect on what they really want to have, to possess, to sink their fingers into. Because when the lights are off and the crowds are gone, you’re left with what you have, what you really, tangibly, practically have, not just what it looks like you have to someone else. That is the difference between an ugly truth and a pretty lie. It’s the difference between a savior and a whited sepulcher. It’s the difference between an empty mansion and a full home. I wish this post was hotter, I really do, but if it gets the point across now then it’s sexy and I am OK with that. For those reading this, I hope that, if nothing else, this gives you something to think about, and if I’m being honest with myself I hope it helps you give yourself permission to let your life work for you instead of having to work for it.

what do I mean by this? here's an example. when my surgery is delayed multiple times, I spend a little time looking up (there is only one surgeon in the entire area who will perform this surgery on trans people, so every trans person's surgical timeline is bottle-necked and delayed by months every time he goes to a conference or takes a vacation or experiences an injury. in other words, if I was cis, I would not encounter this difficulty in accessing surgery). and then I spend time looking down (due to nonstop harassment and legal threats, this practice now only treats adults and will no longer perform surgeries on minors. in other words, my access to surgery is predicated on adult privilege I have at the direct expense of trans youth's lack of access).

When I tell you that the urge to go edit some of RTM hit me like a truck last night, god.......

#but hang on. if SXY disappeared AFTER the battle then where was she DURING the battle????#girl they're killing your man! @parkersgeorg

Already imprisoned by the OPM, and then supposedly she disappeared after the battle, from the way Wu Chen tells it at first in the Zhao Hua Monastery scene:

As a deeply proud person, Benefactor Su couldn’t accept this, and she was even less willing to tolerate the dubious looks of outsiders. So the Old Palace Master brewed her a drug that was harmful to demons. After drinking it, she left Huan Hua Palace, and from then on, no one knew what became of her…

But the confusing part about her imprisonment is twofold: how long was she there, and how far along in her pregnancy was she already? Because the way it's framed, it gives a TINY window for OPM discovering their romance and then having TLJ sealed.

cutting for my usual yapping length:

And to make sense of the timeline...I'm sure somewhere in Airplane's wide world of kinks there's a pregnancy acceleration plant or artifact. Maybe she really wasn't very far along when she took the poison, but she realized she wouldn't last long enough to deliver the baby if she waited for the natural progression, so she purposefully grabbed the Pregnancy Accelerator. That could also be part of the explanation for why she was in such bad shape, if the Pregnancy Accelerator is tough on the body.

When I tell you that the urge to go edit some of RTM hit me like a truck last night, god.......

#but hang on. if SXY disappeared AFTER the battle then where was she DURING the battle????#girl they're killing your man! @parkersgeorg

Already imprisoned by the OPM, and then supposedly she disappeared after the battle, from the way Wu Chen tells it at first in the Zhao Hua Monastery scene:

As a deeply proud person, Benefactor Su couldn’t accept this, and she was even less willing to tolerate the dubious looks of outsiders. So the Old Palace Master brewed her a drug that was harmful to demons. After drinking it, she left Huan Hua Palace, and from then on, no one knew what became of her…

But the confusing part about her imprisonment is twofold: how long was she there, and how far along in her pregnancy was she already? Because the way it's framed, it gives a TINY window for OPM discovering their romance and then having TLJ sealed.

cutting for my usual yapping length:

And to make sense of the timeline...I'm sure somewhere in Airplane's wide world of kinks there's a pregnancy acceleration plant or artifact. Maybe she really wasn't very far along when she took the poison, but she realized she wouldn't last long enough to deliver the baby if she waited for the natural progression, so she purposefully grabbed the Pregnancy Accelerator. That could also be part of the explanation for why she was in such bad shape, if the Pregnancy Accelerator is tough on the body.

so three things happen the summer after ozai is defeated and appa starts shedding in earnest again

aang starts spinning and selling yarn because that’s What You Do and he’s clinging REAL HARD to every possible air nomad tradition because, well, who else will remember these things?

toph hears about this and scruffs him before he can sell too much because she’s a merchants daughter and holy shit aang do you understand what you’re selling?? yarn from the last known sky bison! the avatar’s own spirit guide!! spun by the avatars own hand!!!! what are you doing aang!!!!!! she has to drag katara in at this point because aang is real unhappy with the idea that his normal flying bison yarn of, uh, questionable quality is being sold to exclusive high class weavers so they can make shawls for filthy rich nobles for baaaaaank just on the basis of his name. this isn’t how the monks did it :/ and he doesn’t WANT a lot of money anyway! he’s a monk!! he only asks for what he needs to survive!! anyway katara manages to talk toph around to donating most of the money to reconstruction efforts, charities, and orphanages and convinces aang that having an emergency fund is a good thing and he should keep something. aang accidentally ends up with a reasonably full bank account and is really confused about how that happened, why it’s there, and what he’s supposed to do with it

there is a real weird period of time where it’s In Fashion for high noble ladies to have shawls and scarves dyed the same color as aangs clothes (because that’s how you know it’s made with special avatar yarn!) or have images of appa woven into them (can you imagine a shawl that’s just a full length body shot of appa?? amazing) and all the earth kingdom nobility are just rocking green and orange like nbd. weaving decorative shawls with slubby yarn becomes really in fashion, too, because aang is not great at spinning. he’s 13 and it’s boring, ok?

BONUS sokka is just. so mad. you could have been making bank with appa the whole time we were scrambling around the planet aang? do you realize how much more food we could have had? how many more hot baths?? how could you betray me like this

i bet sky bison yarn is really strong but probably not super soft - we see in the show that the fibers are really long, which lends itself well to strong yarns that can stand up to a lot of wear and tear (silk yarn is INCREDIBLE when it comes to being hard-wearing, and that’s mostly because silk is basically an INFINITELY LONG FIBER). But because it’s so long and comes from such a large animal, it’s probably really coarse and thick.

I’m imagining most of those high-class ladies would be wearing at least one layer underneath their shawls, because bison yarn is probably pretty itchy if you’re used to high quality wool, silk, or fine linen. Especially bison yarn spun by a 13yo who doesn’t really like spinning.

unless of course the air nomads bred their bison specifically for soft fur, but generally when you’re breeding for stuff like that, you need different breeds for different purposes. appa’s pretty clearly a long-distance riding bison, which would probably have been a different breed than whichever ones would have been bred for soft fur. most species of domesticated animal that are dual+ purpose (i.e. meat/milk/wool/transportation) have breeds that can only do one or two of those well, and the others not as great.

the air nomads obviously would not have been breeding for meat, because vegetarians. For long distance travel and a nomadic lifestyle I bet they would have wanted a travel/milk dual purpose breed, but because they can regulate their body temperature with airbending, soft warm yarn might not have been a high priority for that breed.

I *do* spin on a drop spindle, tho, and the biggest problem with stopping and starting often is keeping the single the same width, but you have the same problem stopping and starting ANY kind of spinning project. In some ways, a drop spindle makes it easier to control that than a regular spinning wheel - you have a lot more control over the fiber and the yarn you’re spinning, so you can be more precise. My drop spindle yarns tend to be very regular and compact, while my spinning wheel yarns are more varied and lofty.

And wouldn’t the process from start to finish be a good lesson in great fullness? Like how long it takes from baby bison to clothes

Also, to the person who said Sky Bisons would only shed about seven pounds a year, I would like to counter that idea with the fact that Appa is GARGANTUAN. He has enough room on his saddle to carry literally six or seven children and their equipment on his back without much complaint, of which these children are not too much smaller than adults. An ox or an Alpaca or a normal Bison are tiny compared to Appa.

I was actually trying to say that if muskox shed seven pounds we could use that to extrapolate how much appa shed if he shed proportionate to his size, not that appa would only shed seven pounds

ok, adhd rabbit hole time because I just looked up the average size of muskoxen and the approximate size of appa and, uh. apparently muskoxen are 900lbs full grown and appa is ten tons. over TWENTY TIMES THE SIZE OF A MUSKOX. obvs that’s doesn’t actually tell us anything about appas actual height and length but that’s the only solid number the show gives us and thirty pounds of underfur is starting to seem pretty conservative. it might be closer to 120lbs???

An Overview of Tibetan Weaving

Tibetan Rugs - Wikipedia

According to the first article, there are five types of traditional Tibetan wool-based fabrics that vary in coarseness. Tibetan rugs are special in that they are created using knotting techniques unique to the Tibetan culture, distinct from the surrounding Indian and Chinese rug-making traditions.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

The substance I was addicted to was heroin. While I was actively addicted, it absolutely came before everything else. My life shrank around it. I kept using despite very real, very obvious negative consequences. If you’re looking for something that fits the “compulsion + harm + loss of control” model, that was it.

But what’s always sat strangely with me is what happened when that context changed.

Once my abusive relationship ended and I was no longer in an environment where it was readily available, it was shockingly easy to stop. I’m not saying it was physically comfortable. My body was pretty pissed off for a while. But psychologically, it just didn’t have the same hold anymore. I wasn’t spending my days white-knuckling cravings or constantly thinking about it. It dropped out of my life in a way that, according to the 12-step model, is not really supposed to happen.

And that’s where my issue with that framework starts.

Because 12-step ideology tends to assume that if you have ever had that kind of relationship with one substance, it reveals something fundamental and permanent about you. That you now have a generalized “addictive nature” that will attach itself to other substances or behaviors if you’re not constantly managing it. That you are, in some essential way, always on the verge of transferring that pattern onto something else.

And that just hasn’t been true for me.

I was a near-daily cannabis user for years. When it started consistently making me feel physically uncomfortable instead of good, I stopped. No drawn-out battle, no existential crisis, just “this isn’t giving me what I liked about it anymore” and I moved on.

I drink occasionally, in social or celebratory contexts, and I genuinely find alcohol kind of boring outside of that. It doesn’t have much pull for me.

I tried gambling once, got annoyed at how tedious and overstimulating it felt, and left the casino in under an hour. I have not felt remotely compelled to revisit that experience.

I use the internet a lot, and I play a handful of video games, but I can also go on a camping trip with no signal and be completely fine, unless you want to try and find something pathological about nature photography, in which case you can blow it out your ass. If anything, I generally enjoy the change of pace. There’s no sense of panic or withdrawal or “I need to get back to my computer/consoles immediately.”

So when I hear the idea that addiction is this broad, transferable trait that will latch onto anything with quick reward or low friction, I just don’t see it reflected in my own life.

What does make sense, looking back, is context.

When I was using heroin, I was in an abusive relationship. My environment was unstable, stressful, and honestly pretty bleak. The substance didn’t just exist in a vacuum. It fit into a specific set of conditions where it functioned as relief, escape, and regulation.

When those conditions changed, the behavior changed with them.

That doesn’t mean there was no dependency. There obviously was. It doesn’t mean there were no consequences. There very much were. My grades suffered. I dropped out of college. I lost my apartment because staying out of withdrawal and numbing out from the abuse felt more important than paying rent.

But it does suggest that what we call “addiction” might not always be this permanent, identity-level trait that needs to be managed forever. Sometimes it looks a lot more like a relationship between a person, a substance, and a specific environment.

When that’s the case, then a framework that assumes universality - “if this happened once, it will always be waiting to happen again, with anything” - is going to miss a lot of variation.

I’m not saying 12-step programs can’t help people. Clearly they can, or they likely wouldn’t exist in the way they do. But I do think they’re often treated as the model of addiction rather than a model that fits some people and not others, and when your experience doesn’t match that model, many people who swear by them will assume that you are misunderstanding yourself, in denial, or “not taking it seriously enough.” This paternalistic attitude only serves to make me even more skeptical of the framework.

For me, what mattered wasn’t declaring myself permanently “addictive” or treating every pleasurable behavior as a potential threat.

What mattered was getting out of the environment where that pattern made sense in the first place.