絶望な｜女

No friction, no flame; no struggle no progress

No sweat

How many times do we have to win

'Til you realise we have not lost yet?

The reason that this comparison is inaccurate is because humans have the ability to use reason and make logical choices, but cats don’t. Humans see a car coming and wait until the street is clear to cross. Cats don’t. Humans know not to eat strange food on the ground. Cats don’t. Humans can look up which plants are toxic and avoid them. Cats can’t. Humans don’t eat raw rabbits and rodents that may carry disease. Cats do. Humans who hunt follow laws that prevent them from killing endangered species (besides shitty poachers). Cats don’t.

A far more accurate comparison would be a cat and a toddler. They lack the ability to recognize danger and don’t have the ability to reason that an adult does. I’m sure a toddler would have a great time roaming around the neighborhood, but no one is going to argue in favor of that. People can understand that doing that is irresponsible and dangerous. But no sane person is going to lock their toddler inside and provide them with nothing to do; no one is saying we should do that for cats either. Play with them. Provide cat trees. Rotate their toys. Give them puzzle feeders. And if you want them to go outside you can leash train them. Or build a catio. The options aren’t let them roam vs. never provide them with entertainment. If it is unbearable to entertain and care for a cat that is kept indoors, you probably shouldn’t own a cat.

Would you let your dog roam? Or your bird? How about your rabbit? I’m sure all of these animals would have a great time running (or flying) around the neighborhood, but we generally recognize that this is a bad idea. It’s no different for cats. We are caretakers for our animals, so it is up to us to use our big brains to make logical choices about what they should or shouldn’t do. We have the ability to understand the risks associated with free roaming. Cats don’t. We can weigh risks and benefits before making a decision. Cats can’t.

I’ve seen two cats who were roadkill, multiple poisoned rats that make easy prey, gardens full of poisonous (to cats) plants, and a cat at the vet who survived his arm being mauled by a fox through a catio. Yet people still do it. I’m in a small village, no idea how much worse in a bigger place it would be.

It is entirely cultural. Sadly, it also means people don’t tend to play with their pets and let them free roam as their only enrichment. So they baulk at how “bored” a cat would be indoors. Forgetting it’s not just kittens who need playtime. You are seen as a “weirdo” for harness/lead training a cat here, which I don’t agree with obviously.

Most rescues will not let you adopt a cat if you do not let it be indoor-outdoor. They will even check up on your garden to see it’s safety (like a cat can’t jump a fence lol). Charities do this, too.

I still keep my cat indoors only. My step mum thought I was being cruel until I explained to her the dangers of a cat outside.

Across the pond in New Zealand ONE SINGLE CAT drove an entire species to extinction. There are still arseholes over there but they’re generally even stricter than we are here in Oz.

making bucky a politician is one of the most insane choices the MCU has ever made but you know what. sure. i'm here for it

X Men Red if the writers weren’t cowards.

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

:| :| :|

They are, I am certain, intentionally programmed that way because the user is supposed to see “errors” coming up every time they write anything and conclude that they Need the AI. That they CAN’T write without the AI. “Look how many things it fixed — I made so many mistakes — I never would have caught all this without the AI.” So they keep using it, because otherwise all their documents will be full of “errors” that they or their human proofreaders all “missed”.

I do a live “fuck Grammarly” demo near the beginning of each semester, where I give it a paragraph from a published work and point out all the mistakes it claims are there, very few if any of which are genuine mistakes of any kind. It also displays that “grammarly score”, which tends to be aggressively low, especially if the text is at all interesting or original — “let’s see what it thinks of some of the stuff you were assigned in high school English as examples of Great Works… ooh, Edgar Allan Poe gets a C, he should learn how to write.”

And, of course, any time you tell it to rewrite something, it can’t come back with “this is already good actually, you don’t need a subscription to Grammarly at all” — if given a text that is already perfectly fine, it will just randomly swap out various words for synonyms. Because it always has to Do Something. If the program makes no changes, you might decide you don’t need it. But if you’re not a confident writer, if Grammarly tells you this synonym is “better”, you’re likely to believe it.

by the way, just so everyone knows what not to do, shift+r reblogs a post instantly

“Camilla, we did it right, didn’t we?” Palamedes said, and now Nona knew he wasn’t speaking to anyone else in the universe. “We had something very nearly perfect…the perfect friendship, the perfect love. I cannot imagine reaching the end of this life and having any regrets, so long as I have been allowed to experience being your adept.”

Camilla: @skeleshancreative

Three for the gleam of a jewel, or a smile.

Naberius the Third is @gideoncav

Coronabeth Tridentarius is @skeleshancreative

Ianthe Tridentarius is @avomarquis

Learning about the history of the queer community does more than make you a better community member. It also just makes life seem less overwhelming. In a world where your feelings of powerlessness benefit the powerful, seeking historical precedent for being the underdog has worth.

Learning the stories of queer anti-fascists making zines to scare off Nazis is fun (Claude Cahun). Exploring the history of a radical newspaper that somehow turned into a cultural touchstone is a drama-filled journey and often so funny (The Village Voice). Reading queer peoples' diaries is generally a wild ride (Vaslav Nijinsky).

The reason so many people are drawn to these stories is not just because they are morally important, it's because they capture attention. They are interesting, and weird, and sometimes hilarious.

Queer history is important, of course. But it's also pleasurable, and understanding that is often the best motivation to start learning. As someone who is constantly researching this subject, the self-pitying cries of "but no one taught us this!" is getting a bit old.