akhuna

[akhuna]

Last stretch before I can print and hand in my PhD thesis next week ... there is still some last minute stuff to do. The man helps, because he is just the best husband! ♥ Today, it was a little over six and a half (6.5) hours! More tomorrow.

[akhuna]

Rose

[akhuna]

Gladiolus

[akhuna]

The thing is, even if you were lucky and your parents taught you how to clean, they probably didn't teach you how to clean the stuff you clean stuff with, like brushes, mops, sponges, rags, and so on. Or how to clean your cleaning appliances, like a dish washer, clothes washing machine, and clothes dryer and its ducts (if you have a ducted dryer), or a carpet cleaner, vacuum, Or how to clean up clean messes, like spilled bleach or detergent.

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'm going to reblog this post with resources for learning how to clean things and how to clean cleaning things (I'm not at my desk at the moment). If you have any favorites, please feel free to add them in too!

[akhuna]

people on TikTok don’t realize fic binding didn’t begin with idiots selling mass printed fanfiction on TikTok-Shop. They think it started as a negative thing ON TIKTOK😭it started on tumblr years ago as a way to appreciate authors!! It was never about selling fics, we’re AGAINST THAT HERE and always have been. I am so tired of the way TikTok rewrites fandom culture.

[akhuna]

Kedi (2016) dir. Ceyda Torun

[akhuna]

I love Brennan's commitment to reminding you that he was hideously bullied for being a fucking weird nerd, ESPECIALLY when you're watching content about how outrageously successful and beloved he is now for being a fucking weird nerd.

Dita Von Teese was so right, you really can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world and there's still going to be somebody who hates peaches. And depending on the social dynamics of your school, there may be a few high-status people who hate peaches who can bring enough people on board to make your life a living hell.

Brennan was bullied so badly that he had to be pulled out of school and homeschooled. Those kids hated his ass! And look at him now. What more proof do you need that being surrounded by people who want to kill you during your school years doesn't say fucking anything about how loveable you are or what your life will be like as an adult.

[akhuna]

You know, some of my favorite fics are abandoned.  And yeah, I wish they weren't  abandoned, but it doesn’t change the fact that I love them.  I certainly don’t wish they’d never been written.  Just saying, for those of us with dangling fics we guilt ourselves over.  It’s still better that you wrote what you wrote.

[akhuna]

don't come at me for categorization, I used botanical definitions per Wikipedia.

[akhuna]

[akhuna]

Changing people's minds on major things is actually a very long and difficult process for both parties. I didn't actually believe that pedestrian-centric city design would be better for people that drive cars until I spent almost a year living without a car and watched hours of youtube videos explaining the issue to me. Turns out that traffic actually does go down and driving does become more pleasant if you make it harder to drive a car and easier to walk. I just straight-up refused to believe that for years. Because people just talked about it like it was obvious. But it wasn't. Because I had spent my whole life in a car-centric city going around in a car and also I was an English major in college who did not study urban planning. You can't expect me to change my entire mindset around transportation all at once. I did reach a eureka moment like two weeks ago but that was after like three years of getting exposed to these ideas periodically and living without a car for 11 months.

And yeah this post is about my big dumb animal brain accepting the science behind narrow roads and the evils of certain types of zoning laws, but it's also about stuff in general. If you don't know why someone isn't changing their mind on something, it's probably because the information they're getting hasn't reached a critical mass in their monkey brain yet. Whenever you hear stories about people changing their minds on things or leaving a certain ideology the story never goes "A person on the internet did a slam dunk on me and then I changed my mind."

It's usually a long process that happens over the course of months or years. Seeds planted here and there that coalesce eventually into a new thought or ideology over the course of years or snap together or send someone down a new path after a certain event. Same with me about pedestrian-centric cities. For me the tipping point was finding this video, which isn't necessarily super special or the best and the guy who runs the channel, in my opinion, isn't the most qualified or the most sympathetic towards every city in every situation, but it was the feather that tipped the scales in my brain to "Oh, wait. Maybe everything I thought I knew about how cities work is wrong actually." But that video alone didn't change my mind. With the amount of stuff and people that have gradually and gently been giving me information over the past couple years, something else was bound to eventually change my mind.

People on Tumblr yelling about abolishing the car, if anything, slowed down me changing my mind. Every time I saw a person saying that driving cars is stupid and that cars are bad I took a step back into my old way of thinking in defense. Because I grew up only ever using a car to get around. Rhetoric like that felt like a direct attack on my family, who I know to be loving people who care about other human beings and who drive cars literally everywhere.

And you might say, posts and videos like that aren't actually an attack on people that drive or have to drive. Okay then. Why are they phrased like that? Because that makes you feel good? Because you're angry? Alright, your anger at how it's currently impossible to get around if you don't own a car and how people who don't actually want to drive are being forced to drive is reasonable. And now I understand why it exists. I'm kind of angry too now that I get how this stuff works. However, is calling the people you're trying to convince stupid to their face and immediately bombarding them with your most radical ideas that might be completely detached from their reality and how they understand the world really the most productive way to channel your anger?

What about a guy with a knee problem that lives in rural Appalachia? Do you think he is gonna be convinced by your angry rants about bike lanes? No. He lives on a mountain that he can't climb or bike up because he's disabled and has only ever known getting around in a car. What about a person who overheats easily living in a suburb in the middle of the desert? Do you think she is inspired by your green lush pictures of trolleys running through parks in The Netherlands? No. If she leaves her house for too long without ice water she could literally die and you're going on about getting rid of, in her mind, the only thing that lets her go to the grocery store and not faint.

And again, this post is about my inability to comprehend walkable cities, but it's also about everything else you might ever want to convince someone of. The way you talk about things with your in-group that knows exactly what you're talking about should not be the same way you talk about that thing with people that you're genuinely trying to convince of something.

[akhuna]

[akhuna]

I love Brennan's commitment to reminding you that he was hideously bullied for being a fucking weird nerd, ESPECIALLY when you're watching content about how outrageously successful and beloved he is now for being a fucking weird nerd.

Dita Von Teese was so right, you really can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world and there's still going to be somebody who hates peaches. And depending on the social dynamics of your school, there may be a few high-status people who hate peaches who can bring enough people on board to make your life a living hell.

Brennan was bullied so badly that he had to be pulled out of school and homeschooled. Those kids hated his ass! And look at him now. What more proof do you need that being surrounded by people who want to kill you during your school years doesn't say fucking anything about how loveable you are or what your life will be like as an adult.

[akhuna]

[akhuna]

Do you remember what you spent 2020 doing?

[akhuna]

It recently came up in conversation with my toddler that some birds can talk, and this has caused her great concern.

See, we were talking about how movies are pretend and how in real life, animals don’t talk. I mentioned that there are some birds who talk a little bit, but not like the animals in movies, and she just looked at me like “???”

So I informed her that some kinds of parrots can copy sounds that people make, and can learn how to say words. I thought this would give her a giggle, as fun new facts often do, but she was just deeply perplexed and a little worried about this.

“Birds can talk?” “Do they ask questions?” “What do they say?” Why do they talk?” “Do chickens talk?” “What about Blue Jays?” “Why do some birds talk?” “How do they talk?” “Birds TALK???”

We showed her a video of a parrot doing the “Hello, pretty bird, give a kiss” thing, and she was dead silent the whole time, hugging her comfort pillow with her knees to her chest. We asked if she wanted us to turn it off, and she shook her head. But we also asked if she wanted to see another one, and she shook her head even harder.

I don’t know why it has distressed her so greatly to learn that some birds can mimic human speech; but then again, I don’t know why it doesn’t distress the rest of us more to know that some birds can mimic human speech.

I keep thinking about that post that’s like “The first person to hear a parrot talk was probably Not Okay.” Because that’s exactly what happened. She had never been introduced to the concept, and her entire worldview got SHOOK.

[akhuna]

imagine the most meanspirited, unlikeable, rude, bitter, self centered, negative person you can think of. not a rapist, not a murderer, not an abuser. just a charmless, tactless, dyed in the wool asshole you wouldn't want to spend two seconds with. now assume they get sick, not with the flu, but with a long term, serious illness that limits their ability to provide for themself. a society in which that person is left to die alone because nobody likes them on a personal level is a failed society.