YumAntimatter

If you are in the USA and need help with literally anything please call 211. It’s United Way and if you talk to them on the phone they have more ways to help you than if you just look online.

My friend recently became more severely disabled and she doesn’t have a bed. She’s been sleeping on the floor and it’s been ok enough until now that her illness has escalated. She’s on SSDI and doesn’t have the money to buy a bed, even the highly discounted ones at St Vincent De Paul (which has extremely affordable beds and mattresses if you have a few bucks) so she calls 211 and they hook her up with two different organizations that can get her a bed and she will finally be sleeping in a bed by the weekend.

If you just look through their website you won’t find a free bed but if you call them you will. 211 from anywhere in the USA.

For the "crime" of not wanting to be tracked/have ads pissed into your eyeballs 24/7.

Even if you've paid for the "privilege" of the latter.

IF YOU USE A DESKTOP PC OR LAPTOP, TRY INVIDIOUS

https://invidious.io/

My parents threw away all of these things (even the vacuum cleaners and the dryer) when they got too dirty to function, because no one even told them THAT they could be cleaned. Cost them thousands of dollars over the years.

All I'm saying is that cleaning is not intuitive, and not knowing how to clean is not a moral failing, but it is something you can learn.

I like this video because it does a great job of introducing the basic foundations of house cleaning (and because he doesn't use bleach, which is a common allergy in addition to being awful to inhale). He also talks a little about how to clean a vacuum. And why you shouldn't put grease from your pots and pans down the sink drain. I also love that he mentions that different houses and different people have different needs and different versions of what clean and cleaning looks like.

This is another video from the same guy about cleaning and depression. This advice, especially at the beginning, can feel really really difficult and oppressive to hear. However, I find that it's generally pretty solid. But I'm autistic and so is he, so that gets a massive Your Mileage May Vary stamp on it.

I have a favorite part of this video. It's from 10:52 to 12:36. I think we could all use to hear that. There's a HEFTY pause after that one. I promise the narration does come back.

This is a pair of videos about how to correctly load and use a dish washer.

The first one is a quick 1 minute 30 second overview on loading. I can't find the exact video I'm looking for, so consider this a substitute for that. If I can find the one I'm looking for, I'll swap it in.

Here's a blog post about scrubbing brushes and how to clean them.

And a video for all cleaning tools, including scrub brushes. This video does use bleach. I'll try to find some alternatives to that.

How to clean a top loader (without the removable agitator thing). This should be done every 1-3 months depending on you unit, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

How to clean a top loader (with the removable agitator thing). This should be done every month, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

This video is for pet owners.

These carpet brushes are a LIFE SAVER if you have dogs. This thing allows me to go from vacuuming about 4 square feet before my vacuum is full to vacuuming half the living room (I don't vacuum often enough. You should vacuum weekly, and I just can't.). I have to unclog the vacuum less often. It fluffs up some of the flat spots in the carpet. And I also use the brush to shampoo my rugs in the spring.

A spot cleaner (or a carpet cleaner with a spot cleaner attachment) is another life saver, ESPECIALLY if you can afford to splurge on a heated one. I see them at Goodwill or at yard sales occasionally, and they're worth picking up. The shark one in the video is great too.

It's America's Housekeeping Book (1941). Available for free download on the Internet Archive. (Large PDF file at the link here).

The LISTS y'all. The step by step lists. The emphasis on efficiency and arranging spaces for the least resistance possible. The basic concept of "take a tray or basket into a room when you are tidying up so you can put things that belong elsewhere on it and take them out LATER in ONE GO".

i am pretty sure that the belief that you could solve problems with the death note is the problem that you cannot solve with the death note.

anyway, i commented about this in a chat, and someone said they would try to use the death note to eradicate diseases, and probably get killed by the shinigami for doing it wrong, which would at least solve the shinigami's problem

i think i see how this plays out

my friend: writes "Cyclospora Cayetenensis is killed by a team of highly skilled medical researchers"

>realizes I wasn't keeping the victim's face in mind while writing their name

>applies to a microbio degree program

>looks directly at the cyclospora through my lab microscope while writing in the death note

>yet another nothing happens

>realizes the names we assign to organisms are probably not their names for death note purposes

>gets shinigami eyes to learn cyclospora's real name

>looks in the microscope again

>doesn't see anything

>confronts my shoulder shinigami about ripping me off

>"why the fuck would parasites have names anon"

>I'm thousands of dollars deep in student loans and lost half my lifespan for nothing

Not all of the advice in every book is going to help; there are some aspects of grief I doubt any book can actually help with. But the recommendations are successful, I'd guess, because a) reading can occupy your mind when you're grieving (and you might as well read about grief because you're not going to be distracted from it), b) learning something new helps people feel more in control of their life & environment and can offer a sense of hope, c) even if the recipient never reads any of the books, being given a book list is a way to say "I care about you and want to help" which is a good message to send. From my own grief experience I also think it's especially powerful to hear "I went through something similar to you and this is what helped me" - it's proof there's life on the other side.

Anyway, 2 more book recs for 2 quite different end-of-life outcomes, which I think you should ideally read before any of your loved ones die so you can actually use the information (also, honestly? Very helpful writing research):

Final Journeys and Final Gifts by Maggie Callanan -- a hospice nurse's guide to the kinds of decisions, conflicts, and sometimes puzzling behavior and experiences encountered when a loved one is in palliative care. Journeys is the more broadly practical book (from the 'writing research' perspective, it also offers some great examples of conflict, memorable scenes, and psychology insights); Gifts looks particularly at spiritual experiences at the end of life, including end of life visions (which happen to all kinds of people and can be a good thing to be prepared for regardless of your own spiritual beliefs). If Gifts proves fascinating, a more recent book on the subject of end of life experiences is Death is But a Dream.

It's very good, and was prescient for a lot of the early days of the covid pandemic. I found myself returning to it often in the first couple of years because of how steadfast it was in its hopefulness.

Last year she wrote a novelette, "The Year Without Sunshine," which attacks a similar problem in a similar way; instead of pandemic, this one is about the aftereffects of a distant nuke or a massive volcano explosion (it doesn't say), which has churned a great deal of dust into the air, causing massive damage to society and agriculture. The story covers one neighborhood, pulling together to keep each other alive--not through violence, but through lawn potatoes and message pinboards and bicycle-powered oxygen concentrators.

But my disappointing conclusion is that I don't think there is any good option here. I know the names you may think of: Haldeman? Schlesinger? Haig? Agnew even? None fit. Nixon and Kissinger just used and managed each other quite effectively.

Katara: BOY???? HOT BOY?????? HOT TEENAGE BOY?????????

Zuko: *speaks*

And then it hit me.

Iroh: *sitting in a teahouse at a paisho table* Iroh, deadpan: I must capture the last airbender.  Iroh: It is the only way to make sure the powe rof the Avatar won’t be turned on the Fire Nation. Iroh: Only then will I be redeemed in the eyes of the Fire Lord for my failure at Ba Sing Se. Iroh: … Iroh: Anyway, it’s your turn.

he was the eldest son of fire lord sozin, who knew the avatar was the greatest threat to the fire nation, but also knew the new one would be a firebender and he couldn’t exactly merc his own people, now could he? but he always planned to order a convenient little assassination on whoever the new avatar turned out to be and in the meantime took out the air temples so that avatar couldn’t learn the next element in the cycle. of course, when it turns out to be his son, sozin, stellar dad that he is, thinks “if you want something done right” and shoots a fire blast at his firstborn.

zuko enters the avatar state, blows up half the palace, etc etc as one does, gets a nasty scar for his trouble, and escapes, hence why he was hanging out far enough south to necessitate katara and sokka cracking open a cold boy a century later.

all this is to say 1. i think it’s a good way to maintain zuko’s background and characterization in an au like this and 2. it leads to a secret second roleswap

Poetry, then, as that which is left unsaid.

“My, what a cool and lovely autumn.”