geekinthelowlands

[geekinthelowlands]

!!!!!!!

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[geekinthelowlands]

Whenever I post about how gluten sticks to certain types of material my notes/inbox either fills up with a bunch of people with celiac going "motherFUCKER" or a lot of non-gluten-intolerant people realizing they've been unknowingly poisioning heir friends and family members.

So, yeah, certain types of materials can harbor "hidden" gluten, especially if they are older or have scratches.

It might not be an issue for the person in your life, depending on their sensitivity, but if you want to cook or bake for someone who is gluten-free for medical reasons, it's advisable to have dedicated cookware for them that doesn't get used for anything else.

I don't have celiac, but my husband and I have our own pots and pans and utensils that live on opposite sides of the kitchen because my reaction is mast cell-based and gives me anaphylaxis with enough exposure. Which is another reason to take people seriously when they say they're gluten-free.

And just to be clear, you should always take gluten-free diets seriously. I don't care if you knew someone who did it for a fad or to lose weight. People's preferences should demand respect in of themselves, but there are those of us out here for whom exposure can be lethal, either in the long term or the short term.

So, yeah. Be kind. And always ask before you touch anything in our kitchen, please. I've had expensive pans ruined for me because someone thought they were doing me a kindness by doing my dishes with a sponge they'd just used to clean a bread pan with 🫠

[geekinthelowlands]

So let's talk about this for a minute.

First of all, how do you think Pride events fund themselves and stay free for attendees? O.o Vendor fees aren't all of it - a lot of money comes from sponsors - but like... we paid $1300 to vend at Seattle Pride this year. That's the money that pays the people who work to make Pride happen. That is not free. Pride as an event does not just magically happen. A lot of people work really hard to make Pride happen and to clean up after it.

We're a small trans-owned company and 100% of our employees are trans & queer. We jokingly refer to Pride as "Gay Christmas". The money we make during Pride means we stay open, Pride events get vendor fees, and our employees get paid for the rest of the year. This company does not exist without Pride events. The only reason we survived as a company during COVID is because my wife has a stable, good IT job.

This shit isn't free to do. It does not just magically happen. Performers need to get paid. Tech crew needs to get paid. Equipment needs to be rented for performers. Stages need to be rented. Electrical services need to be paid for so food can happen. Ice and water cost money. Trash pickup costs money.

A lot of people volunteer and donate, but festivals and big community events? They cost money, and the money we pay to be able to vend is part of how Pride events happen. Without that, small queer businesses like @nerdykeppie don't survive and the only people putting their money in to make this happen, AND MONEY NEEDS TO CHANGE HANDS FOR EVENTS TO HAPPEN, are Smirnoff and fucking Wells Fargo.

For fuck's sake. Y'all want small queer businesses, but you really don't want us to actually survive, do you?

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People do not see masculinity as being as fluid and complex and nuanced as femininity and it’s annoying as hell. Because of patriarchy’s stranglehold on masculinity and radfem theory’s stranglehold on queer spaces, people really think with their whole heart that only femininity is subversive or experimental, or frankly, queer, and that masculinity is only a power grab and nothing more. Embarrassing!

[geekinthelowlands]

Aro Books For Pride

Something I've noticed through the years, is that straight and queer people alike often have a tendency to forget about a specific queer identity: aromanticism.

Sometimes it's misunderstood, sometimes it's confused with asexuality, and sometimes it's ignored and/or erased.

This pride month, 23 authors have come together to gather their works and offer them at a discounted price to celebrate aromantic representation from all over the spectrum.

Whether it's to read them during pride month or the rest of the year, by buying this bundle you can get yourself tons of books while also  supporting indie authors directly during a time when every little bit of support and community counts more than anything.

Get 23 books for $15, or get all 36 books for $20.

NOTE: this is a bundle that also incudes 18+ content intended for an adult audience.

If this is your first time hearing of the term aromanticism, or if you've heard about it before but are confused about what exactly it is and/or how it differs from asexuality, here's lots of cool resources (and also, my own beginner guide I made some time ago).

[geekinthelowlands]

"Bread and Roses" from the film "Pride"

“Hearts starve as well as bodies Give us bread but give us roses”

[geekinthelowlands]

Humans are average at everything

And that makes other species crazy

"You swim well for your limb configuration but you will never be as fast in water as a Majoriranji."

Mo agreed with a nod. "They have fins, it's an unfair contest really."

"Nacbaqurs climb cliffs better than humans."

"Longer limbs, more fingers, that's no surprise. I know some elite climbers who could keep up but mostly ture enough."

"Chexits run much faster."

"Ah," Mo raised a finger. "They run on four legs, different configuration, unfair comparison. "

"My point is still valid. And you don't fly either."

"Mmm, no," Mo stopped to consider that one. "I don't think we have a winged ancestor. I have been sky diving, though, so I'm sure we missed out there."

"Sky diving? No, I have no wish to know. My question is this, why are you so feared? You cannot swim like a Majoriranji, or climb like a Nacbaqur, or run like a Chexit. Can you do anything special? Why should anyone be scared of humans?"

"Is that why you captured us? That's what you want to know?" Mo smiled as he leaned back in his chair. He had been afraid. Now he was amused.

He knew rescue was on the way. Just before the invaders managed to grab him and the other researchers, they were able to send a distress call. The Earth Alliance took attacks on their people seriously, they knew swift responses discouraged casual piracy.

"Okay, you'll probably be dead soon anyway so I'll give you a freebie. We're not the fastest swimmers, but most of us can swim and dive, and we can all hold our breath. We're not the fastest climbers, but our ancestors lived in trees, tall canopy plants, we can all climb. We're not the fastest runners, but we're not bad in a sprint, and we'll still be going hours after your fancy fast runners have collapsed and died of exhaustion. We don't have to be the best at one thing when we can be pretty good at just about everything."

[geekinthelowlands]

DANDELION | overcoming hardship, healing, resilience, hope

I had the pleasure of painting the illustrious Dorian for @daflowerzine 🌼 leftover sales are still happening!

[geekinthelowlands]

There is no gay liberation without trans liberation

[geekinthelowlands]

What they don't tell you about writing is that as you write, you discover scenes and entire plots that you hadn't accounted for that need to be written. So you can spend two hours writing and editing only to realise you're further away from the finish line than you thought you were when you started

[geekinthelowlands]

I understand that vaccines are proven to work and are a great advancement in our medicine, and also that homeopathic remedies don't work, but don't they work on the same principal? Why does one work and the other doesnt?

They do not work on the same principle.

I can see how vaccines look like a "like treats like" situation, but in homeopathy "like treats like" is a kind of magical thinking.

Let's take an example from Chicken Pox, a virus for which there is an effective vaccine and for which there is a common homeopathic treatment.

Chicken pox infects people once, and it is extremely rare to get a second case because once you have had it, your body forms persistent antibodies against the varicella-zoster virus. When I was a kid, they didn't have a vaccine for this, so kids mostly got chicken pox once and it ran around whole schools and that was it. It's a virus that is fairly minor in children, though it can cause dangerously high fevers. Adults who get chicken pox typically get much sicker than children who get it, and it can lead to permanent harms like infertility in adults who get it. Because it can be so dangerous, we don't want people to risk getting it, so we vaccinate.

The way the vaccine works is that it takes a weakened form of the virus and introduces that into the body of a person with a healthy immune system. The immune system responds and the person who got the vaccine may get some minor symptoms, like a headache or a slight fever, but it will be nowhere near as severe as getting actual chicken pox would be. Because the immune system was exposed to the virus and responded, it now has antibodies against the virus that recognize the virus and respond immediately before it can start replicating in the body. If a person who has either previously had chicken pox or who has been vaccinated against it is exposed to the chicken pox virus, their body uses those antibodies to react to the virus and protect against a systemic infection.

Are you familiar with Star Trek? It's kind of like the Borg. You can't use the same attack pattern against the Borg multiple times because if you do, they'll recognize the pattern and will be able to defend against it. The virus is the attacker, and your immune system is the Borg. It knows what it's looking for and won't let anything get through its defenses.

Homeopathic remedies don't seek to prevent illness or provoke an immune response, they seek to cancel out something that is happening in the body.

For chicken pox, which produces itchy red bumps, homeopaths use Rhus Tox - a dilution of poison ivy, a plant that causes itchy red bumps if you encounter it in nature. The Rhus Tox didn't cause the chicken pox, it's not given to prevent the virus, it's from a plant that is completely unrelated to the virus that happens to produce some of the same symptoms as the virus when you touch it.

They don't even think that the Rhus Tox will provoke an immune response from your body like actually touching poison ivy would, they're attempting to use an unrelated compound (that is so diluted that it isn't even present in the preparation) in place of your immune system to attack the itchy red bumps.

So I'm going to go over this in a few brief points:

Vaccines are preventative ONLY, they are not a treatment for illness or symptoms of an illness

Vaccines work by introducing your immune system to a partial, weakened, or dead virus so that your immune system can form antibodies against that virus and prevent that virus from replicating in your body when it is later exposed to a whole/strong/live virus.

Different vaccines have different levels of effectiveness and produce different lengths of immunity; this is for a number of reasons, but if you get a measles shot as a kid you may only ever need one booster, while you need a flu shot every year and a tetanus shot every decade. All of them work the same way, though: they show your immune system what a virus looks like so that your immune system can kill the virus.

That is why immune compromised people sometimes can't be vaccinated, or why vaccines don't work as well for them or may need higher doses or more boosters. Because they don't have a healthy immune system, weakened viruses like the ones in the chickenpox virus might be too strong for their immune system to fight, and even if it doesn't get them sick, their bodies may not be able to produce enough effective antibodies to protect them from the virus in the future. That's part of why it's important for as many people to be vaccinated as possible; the more people who are vaccinated, the harder it is for viruses to spread, and vulnerable people like immune compromised people or babies too young for vaccination won't be exposed to deadly viruses.

Homeopathy, on the other hand, aims to treat symptoms of an illness that a person is already experiencing.

Homeopathic treatments do not aim to provoke an immune response, they aim to cancel out a symptom with a cure.

Dilution is a very important part of homeopathy, with homeopaths claiming that the more diluted a preparation is the stronger it is. This is simply incorrect; I don't know how to make a more logical explanation of that, it is just wrong that less of a substance causes more of a response.

Homeopathy says "like treats like" and that may seem like using a vaccine with a weak virus to prevent infection from a strong virus, but their version of "like" is different - Rhus Tox (poison ivy) is supposed to be "like" chicken pox because both cause itching. Rhus tox is also supposed to treat PCOS, erectile dysfunction, uterine prolapse, sunken eyes, nausea, and backache. "Like" can have an extremely broad meaning in homeopathy, which should be cause for suspicion.

Here's a paper that compared the immune response of college students given homeopathic "vaccines" against a control group and against a group of students who were given standard medical vaccines. The control group and the homeopathic group both did not have an immune response in titer tests, while the vaccination group did have an immune response, demonstrating that they had protection from the vaccinated viruses. It's a pretty good demonstration both of how effective homeopathy is (not at all) as well as how to set up a fair and ethical study to look at the effectiveness of different kinds of treatments.

[geekinthelowlands]

The real thing with ADHD is not "I forgot", but that forgetting is this ongoing process. I remembered! And then I forgot.

At ten this (hypothetical) morning I remembered that I have a meeting at six. And then from 11 through 3 I worked on other stuff and had zero thoughts about that meeting. Maybe even thought about what I was gonna do with my evening at home. Got attached to the idea of taking the time to make a good dinner, maybe play some video games.

And then at three I said, "Oh! Fuck!" and remembered again, hopefully long enough to set an alarm. And then I went to the bathroom and remembered that I need to clean the counter and spent twenty minutes cleaning the bathroom and went to get a snack and then at five I said, "OH! FUCK!" and had to scramble to dress like a real adult and get out the door.

It isn't one clean forgetting. It's a constant process of forgetting and then, with an exhausting adrenaline spike, remembering. And then forgetting. Baby, I can forget the same thing more times in a day than you ever forgot your parents' anniversary.

[geekinthelowlands]

Calisthenics for Beginners (2023)

You can learn almost any exercise by building up with easier variations! Here are some examples.

Note: this is a short version of a 26-minute long video called "Home Workout for Beginners (2023)" on our YouTube channel. If you want more details, please check out that video or the Hybrid Routine page: https://www.hybridcalisthenics.com/routine I tried to fit what I can into a short video.

Also, yes my knees go in a bit more than I'd like during my intro jump when I stand up 😅. The one later is better.

We're going to try to schedule a large backlog of videos to post daily for a while! If anything seems out of order, that might be why. Follow for more - have a wonderful day!

Free Hybrid Calisthenics Fitness App (beta) - based on this video's philosophy

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[geekinthelowlands]

i just met an actual wizard on the train and im grieving because i know i’ll never meet anyone that cool for the rest of my life

[geekinthelowlands]

An MRI Machine, Earth