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[autifishie]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

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[autifishie]

desegregate all sports now. no more gendered sports. its stupid

if you absolutely must, in primarily muscle force-based sports, create competitive classes like in boxing except separated by body comp, not just pure body weight. i mean, if you must. this will eliminate any tiny advantages in muscle mass. some will say basketball should have height classes but frankly some of the NBA's most impressive players were not tall so idk that this actually matters ever

the primary athletic impediment to all women is overwhelmingly cultural and psychological. i have won probably half the physical competitions with cis men that i have engaged in, friendly or otherwise. even without the benefit of a lifetime of people trying to make me throw or hit balls, i have won wrestling matches, sparring matches, funny backyard foam sword fights, video games, equestrian activities, dance, endurance tests of various kinds, etc. i'm small and weak. men think theyre stronger and more skilled than they are, women think the opposite about themselves

humans just arent that differently-sized or -shaped, as a species. we have almost no sexual dimorphism at all compared to the vast majority of other mammals.

animals that have similar levels of sexual dimorphism to humans, for example cats, dogs, and horses, do not generally have competitive events segregated by sex. the dog agility trials dont normally have separate leagues for male and female dogs (gendered competitions exist they're just unusual). because it doesnt matter. there is no kentucky derby 2 just for girl horses. thats not a thing

remove all gendered categories from online shopping websites and universalize clothing and shoe sizing. im sick of having to search two entirely different sections of ebay when im just trying to find a nice velvet loafer in size 39 EU. what the hell is "women's clothing"

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[autifishie]

They stole you from your world when you were but a young girl, and they forged you into a magical weapon that has been feared across the cosmos. Now that the war is over and you’ve won, they send you back to the moment before they captured you. The skills, PTSD, and memories? Those never fade.

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“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).

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Doing good in small everyday mercyful acts, is the bane of all evil.

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Did it. Shared on FB.

BAN ON CONVERSION PRACTICES IN THE EU. GO SIGN IT. DEADLINE IS FUCKING MAY 17. WE'RE STILL MISSING 800.000 signatures. FUCKING DO IT.

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Mandatory voting also means the government has to make sure you CAN vote. It has to provide the means to vote and enough of them so everyone can vote. Mandatory voting is the best protection of your right to vote, imo.

Federal election in six days guys. Time to actually look up the sixteen billion tiny parties and figure out which ones are white power christofascists employed by billionaire mining magnates and which ones aren't.

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Good news, considering metal blades cannot be recycled.

A company making wooden wind turbine blades has successfully tested a 50-meter-long prototype that’s set to debut soon in the Indian and European markets.

Last year, the German firm Voodin successfully demonstrated that their laminated-veneer timber blades could be fabricated, adapted, and installed at a lower cost than existing blades, while maintaining performance.

Now, Voodin has announced a partnership with the Indian wind company Senvion to supply its 4.2-megawatt turbines with these wooden blades for another trial run.

Wind power has accumulated more than a few demerit points for several shortfalls in the overall industry of this fossil-fuel alternative.

Some of these, such as the impact on bird life, are justified, but none more so than the fact that the turbine blades are impossible or nearly impossible to recycle, and that they need to be changed every 25 years.

Wind turbine blades are made from a mixture of glass and carbon fiber heated together with sticky epoxy resin, and these materials can’t be separated once combined, which means they go into landfills or are incinerated when they become too battered to safely operate.

GNN has reported that folks will occasionally find second-life value in these giant panels, for example in Denmark where they are turned into bike shelters. In another instance, they’re being used as pedestrian bridges.

But there are way more wind turbine blades being made every year than pedestrian bridges and bike shelters, making the overall environmental impact of wind power not all green.

“At the end of their lifecycle, most blades are buried in the ground or incinerated. This means that—at this pace—we will end up with 50 million tonnes of blade material waste by 2050,” Voodin Blade Technology’s CEO. Mr. Siekmann said recently. “With our solution, we want to help green energy truly become as green as possible.”

The last 15 years have seen rapid growth in another industry called mass timber. This state-of-the-art manufacturing technique sees panels of lumber heat-pressed, cross-laminated, and glued into a finished product that’s being used to make skyscrapers, airports, and more.

At the end of the day though, mass timber products are still wood, and can be recycled in a variety of ways.

“The blades are not only an innovative technological advancement but a significant leap toward sustainable wind production,” said Siekmann, adding that this isn’t a case of pay more to waste less; the blades cost around 20% less than carbon fiber.

Additionally, the added flexibility of wooden blades should allow for taller towers and longer blades, potentially boosting the output of turbine by accessing higher wind speeds.

Now partnered with Voodin, Senvion will begin feasibility analysis in the next few months, before official testing begins around 2027.

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what really shits me about this whole faux-girlboss space flight whatever is that i have been vegetarian for years, i buy local produce and secondhand clothing, i walk to work and take public transport when i can, i recycle and try to reduce my rubbish, i don’t buy plastic wrap, i have electric appliances and i don’t use my heater/aircon except when i absolutely have to, i always bring a keep cup for when i buy takeaway coffee and i even use fucking shampoo bars to reduce plastic waste!!! my old containers of moisturiser get washed and turned into lunch containers, i clean old candle jars and use them as storage. one day when i can afford it i will buy an electric car, and if i ever own my own place i will use solar panels etc.

i do my absolute best to reduce my impact on the planet by avoiding over consumption and unnecessary waste. i’m by no means perfect, but i am trying.

and this fucking 11 minute space flight bullshit has cancelled all that good out, probably 100 times cancelled it. space flight is meant to be for science, for learning, for the good of humanity. and instead it was a group of billionaires (one of whom has made money suing the elderly and stealing their homes) pouting and posing in front of a camera while the entire earth was behind them.

and i’m meant to cheer them on??? i’m meant to be happy for these hashtag girl bosses who showed that you can be hot in space!!! (yes they DID get oscar de larenta to design “sexy” spacesuits bc standard ones weren’t good enough apparently) bc somehow that is a win for feminism???????? give me a fucking break.

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burning food is an inherited trait

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"Bleed the Sky"

The sky bursts open,

not gently,

not softly,

but like a body breaking,

like something holding on for too long

finally letting go.

The first drop hits—

hot asphalt hisses,

dust rises like ghosts startled awake,

and the earth opens her mouth

like she’s starving.

There’s no beauty here.

No poetry.

Just the raw writhing of water finding cracks,

finding hunger,

finding every place that aches or crumbles or waits.

The rain doesn’t ask permission.

It doesn’t care where it falls—

forest, rooftop, desert, skin.

It pounds against leaves as if to punish them

for turning their faces away,

fills the throats of rivers

until they choke on their own rushing,

slides down windowpanes like tears

too heavy to hold back.

And it keeps going.

There is no tenderness in this.

This is not about grace.

This is about gravity and surrender,

the weight of billions of tiny impacts

stripping the world bare.

And something in you loosens—

against your will,

unraveling in the rhythm,

in the relentless pounding that reminds you of your own breaking,

of the times you couldn’t stop falling.

You stand there,

letting it hit you,

letting it drench everything you thought was safe.

Maybe this is what healing feels like:

not silent, not soft,

not clean.

But messy.

Wet hands in the dirt,

skin soaked,

blurry vision as everything spills.

The rain knows.

It always knows.

It comes to destroy,

and in the destruction

it leaves something you didn’t know you were—

raw, gasping,

and growing.

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[autifishie]

if this 5000 year old tree isn’t too old to realize that its trans neither are you