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I know we are all used to hear bad news from the USA or UK when it comes to trans rights but this time Germany wants to play in the same league.

Our idiots at home ministry came up with the fucking idea to start a register for all transgender and nonbinary people which would mean every person working at some public position could always at any given time see your assigned gender at birth, your deadname, your address and who knows what else.

We had been there in the past. Hitler Germany called it the "Travestite Law" back then. Our politicians didn't learn.

We all know this is unacceptable.

Please, if you are German, sign it. If you are not, spread it wide and far.

This had been stopped once a few years ago. It needs to be stopped again.

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smoking that shit that makes you cry about the horrors of car-centric infrastructure

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threatening divorce (!!) over the woostache

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Every time I read one of those age gap posts the age where you're still helpless and being taken advantage of gets higher and higher, like 26 years old is too young to interact with older people what the fuck? I have lots of friends who were/are well into doing a PhD at this point. My dad had me at 26 years old. You're a whole grown ass person participating in society, you can vote and join politics, you can work, you can live in your own.

This smolbeanification has to stop, it's frankly embarrassing.

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some of my favorite online resources for nautical/maritime/age of sail things - this is a longish post full of links and i spent a bit of time putting it together from my various bookmarks and collections!! please enjoy!

this blog (christine demerchant) and its many lists of terms and informative pages, for example: sails & rigs & sailing, hull & construction terms, anchors & anchorage, types of boats & ships, points of sail - at the bottom of every page there is a list of books on the topic as well!! this blog is INVALUABLE and has basically everything, and if it doesn't have something it certainly has a link to another blog or a book that has what you need. there's also lot of interesting articles about the author's adventures in making her own sails and building boats and experimenting with sailing. the site is a little difficult to navigate but the information on it is incredible and all very experience-based!!

there's also this blog (roland's model ship building) which is SUCH a delight - it is mostly model ships as the name would suggest but it is an incredibly close look at the little complicated parts of ships and a great resource for the more "how does this look" aspect if a little less "how does this work". my favorite page is the process of building model HMS surprise - it's SO fascinating and even just a quick look through makes visualizing and understanding the physics of it all easier. this in particular is a very good drawing resource for tall ships!

the ever-famous shipindex.org is a completely invaluable resource as well. pretty much anything you want to know about a specific ship can be found here, or at least it makes a spectacular jumping-off point!

another famous resource is falconer's marine dictionary, or: "A New Universal Dictionary of the Marine; Being a Copious Explanation of the Technical Terms and Phrases Usually Employed in the Construction, Equipment, Machinery, Movements, and Military, as Well as Naval, Operations of Ships: with Such Parts of Astronomy, and Navigation, as Will be Found Useful to Practical Navigators" by william falconer and expanded by william burney - the whole text is here online but it can be a little hard to read and understand so i would supplement with the other resources here!

there is also the oxford companion to ships and the sea which i do not have a copy of nor do i have online access to the full text, BUT you can search and find keywords and it will show you excerpts which is surprisingly helpful!! especially good if you don't have time to read the whole dictionary trying to find one specific term.

in the same vein is the oxford encyclopedia of maritime history - same deal as the above and i do not have access to the full text but this is SO useful for looking up specific people and places and ships and battles and such!!! there's TONS of information in this one.

also, a super interesting primary source: digital collections of midshipmen's letters and journals in the united states naval academy!! these are hefty, each link contains a ton of stuff:

Richard Mueller Nixon Letters (1926-1930)

Henry Mylin Keiffer Scrapbook (1907-1911) (one of my favorites of all time, absolutely worth at least a cursory glance)

John Porter Merrell Johnston Letters (1932-1937)

William Frederick Durand U.S.S. Mayflower journal of practice cruise (1879)

Roscoe C. Bulmer Journal (1894-1896)

Josiah G. Beckwith Letters (1853-1855)

this is not my whole collection but it is a fantastic set of jumping-off points and i tried to include the widest & most general databases that i could. if you have a great online resource to add please let me know, and if you have book recommendations i would appreciate those too!!!

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So there's gossip about some version of kinktober over on twitter adding a bunch of nonsensical rules this year, and I am fascinated. Studying this like a bug.

Like, what the hell.

(context link)

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the semantic drift of the term "liminal" genuinely pisses me off and i know its petty. LIMINAL IS A TRANSITIONAL STAGE BETWEEN TWO STATES- OR. IF WE WANT TO WIDEN THE BOUNDARY HERE. IT COULD BE ON THE VERY EDGE OF BECOMING SOMETHING ELSE. just because something is abandoned doesn't mean its liminal. in fact, that shopping mall was MORE liminal when it was dying off and shutting down outlets every month than it is 5 years later when the space is fully abandoned.

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Monstrous Regiment fellows for Ari ♥

Carborundum, Polly ‘Ozzer’ Perks, Maladict, Igor, ‘Shufti’ Manickle ♥

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so i just went to my friend's production of ghost quartet and i got to use the percussion instruments in four friends AND in the wind and rain and the one they gave me in the wind and rain was a great comet egg shaker and i didn't realize until the lights went up and then i was like !!!!!!!!!!!!!

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well yeah i have a pet hydra and it only has one head. i'm not going to cut its head off just to make it look cooler, you asshole. that's seriously unethical. and i'm not letting you cut its head off either. if you really want a hydra with multiple heads, you should go for a rescue- but if you want your pet to look cooler at the cost of its physical health, maybe you shouldn't get any kind of pet at all. no, the hydra's not for guarding my evil tower, it's my pet. have you ever heard of a pet? like a puppy or a kitty? you think i can't defend my evil tower by my self?

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ATTENTION DAVE MALLOY FANATICS

this is definitley not a playlist of malloysical boots .... nuh uh .....

(it is definitley a playlist of malloysical boots )

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Tea Gown, 1880

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its so awesome that you can straight up write fanfiction in your head to help yourself fall asleep and it doesnt even have to be good or something anyone would ever want to read. even yourself

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had a dream where this bird showed up and when i woke up i was like hey that's not a real bird so i drew it. stock photo human outline for scale:

anyway in my dream i merlined it and it was called a Weather-Goosed Lymph Crane (i think my dream meant nymph (cause it was small) instead of lymph but it said lymph) which was a kind of Ragdoll Crane.

neither of those are real kinds of cranes and frankly it didn't look much like a crane since it had like no neck whatsoever but i guess the legs??

also it wasn't a water bird it lived in a forest

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many drivers do not want to hear this but it is actually never reasonable to get mad at someone for driving the speed limit. laws dont decide what is moral or what is safe but nobody on the road will ever be Obligated to break the law for your convenience and being pissed off at someone for what you consider to be the unforgivable crime of Not Speeding is an insane stance to have regardless of pretty much any possible context

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an early twenties girl asked if she could vape in my car and i said no and she was like 'wow.. thank you for communicating and being honest...'