Fuelled By The Flame

Rose Myrtle Lappet Moth (Trabala vishnou), family Lasiocampidae, Johor, Malaysia

I'm not a small woman. In fact, I'm an absurdly average woman in terms of size. I'm just under 5'5. I'm in the middle of the "healthy" BMI range. I wear a size medium in most clothes. I wear a size 8 shoe. I'm the mediumest woman in the world.

And everything is too fucking big for me.

I test drive a new car. I love it... except that everything is slightly too big. The indicators are just a few millimeters beyond a comfortable resting positions for my hands. The steering wheel is slightly too high - I can't quite see the speedometer behind it. If I adjust my chair high enough to see the speedometer, then I can't reach the pedals. The steering column isn't adjustable. I have this problem in a lot of cars.

I have a desk. I've always found the desk a little uncomfortable, but I blamed it on the cheap thirdhand office chairs I usually buy. So I buy a new office chair. It's very comfortable... and it made me realize that the desk itself is too tall. If the chair is high enough to keep my shoulders and elbows in a comfortable position, then my heels don't touch the ground.

I go hunting for height-adjustable desks. I've always wanted a sit-to-stand desk anyway. Most of them don't go significantly lower than the desk I have. The ones that do are more expensive.

My hand aches when I hold my phone. I specifically bought this phone because it was smaller than the full-size model. They don't even make phones this small anymore. I have a google pixel 3a. The pixel 9a is the same size as the 3 XL. What was "XL" in 2018 is just the size phones are now. My hand hurts.

San looking lovingly at this fish while it is giving me the worst side eye imaginable.

also:

• Around 80% of sweatshop workers are women. Some employers force them to take birth control and pregnancy tests to avoid having to pay for maternity leave. Pregnant women are routinely denied sick leave to visit doctors, terminated from their contracts early, or left without any maternity leave when their short-term contracts are not renewed.

• Women are more likely than men to experience minimum wage violations. According to one study, "30 percent of the women workers in our sample experienced minimum wage violations, compared to 20 percent of the men". [Source: https://www.nelp.org/publication/broken-laws-unprotected-workers-violations-of-employment-and-labor-laws-in-americas-cities/ ]

• Indonesian women employees report that “girls in the factory are harassed by male managers. They come on to the girls, call them into their offices, whisper into their ears, touch them, bribe them with money and threaten them with firing if they don’t have sex with them.” [source: cleanclothes.org]

• "Toilet breaks are monitored, and some workers said they were flat out denied them, even when sick. The same goes for water and lunch breaks, both necessary to stay healthy when working 12+ hour days in a stuffy, overcrowded factory." 20% of women in sweatshops report experiencing sexual violence. [https://iwda.org.au/three-ways-garment-factories-violate-the-rights-of-women-and-how-its-allowed-to-happen/ ]

It's easy not to support this kind of abuse. Do not buy clothes first-hand. Only buy from thrift shops and second-hand apps, or find ethical brands and investigate where and how they make their clothing (hint: if a t-shirt costs $3, it's not ethical). Patch your old clothes. Consider learning basic sewing (it's not as difficult as it seems!)

Theres moreeee, this is so so good.. it makes me emotional realizing that these kids are on the path to being fluent cherokee speakers and will be able to keep the language going.

This family is a part of the little cherokee seeds program, creating new first language Cherokee speakers by paying mothers to just bring their babies and craft and cook and speak cherokee with cherokee elders all day. There are only 1500 first language Cherokee speakers, most of them over 65. They also take donations if you want to help keep them going and doing the extremely important work they do!!

From the 1880s to 1950s, excision was often performed to prevent and treat lesbianism, masturbation, depression, hysteria, and nymphomania. These procedures continued well into the 1970s, and were covered by Blue Cross Blue Shield Insurance until 1977.

"Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first 25 years of eugenics legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At the Sonoma State Home, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia."

– Edwin Black, Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

You only needed an account and you could download countless books and read them offline whenever you wanted. You could write offline and publish and edit whatever and whenever you wanted. There were no ads, no premium no money involved what so ever. It was the reason why I used it, I used to download (well save to my library) 200 fanfics before my summer vacation because I knew I wouldn't have internet and I wanted to entertain myself, I wrote 7 books and published them for fun because I could write and save while offline and then publish them later if I wanted.

When I opened wattpad after a few years I was first met with "upgrade to premium to download and read unlimited books" and then I was met with an ad in between chapters. I didn't continue I deleted my account and haven't even wanted to download it again.