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Birds on a Branch, by Watanabe Shōtei, 1916

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I love this. And it illustrates three important points.

First, while there are rules and protections in place for people with disabilities and medical issues, they are largely ignored and unenforced in favor of laziness and disinterest.

Second, that as soon as ignoring these issues becomes actually inconvenient or gods forbid carries consequences, authority figures "discover" they had the ability to follow the rules all along.

Third, there's no pro-active enforcement - you have to be your own advocate and forcibly push along the system which is supposed to work for you.

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I simultaneously want to visit Alaska, and think it would be awful.

One of the funniest failures of US school system is the fact they are legally obligated to teach us all the states but they never actually show how big Alaska is like I have actually had teachers tell me that Texas is the biggest state. We have all just convinced ourselves that Alaska is that small shrunken down thing on most US maps and the people that know it's the largest state can almost never accurately describe how large it is.

For context here is a picture

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My elvish class consisted of a single one hour course.

Well, one hour in this realm. The survivors all came back speaking fluently in not only Elvish but also Goblin, Troll, and Draconic. Haggard, changed forever, but fluent. We were also allowed to keep any prizes we took in combat.

i took elvish in school and i fucking hated it. the teacher was like 700 years old and he'd like take us on field trips to sit on the banks of babbling brooks and watch the fall of sunlight through the leaves. my friends in spanish class were like conjugating verbs and shit and meanwhile i was in an old-growth forest being overcome with awe at the sight of a majestic stag. like uhh yeah mr autumnheart when are we gonna learn like any grammar "listen to the murmur of the wind in the treetops, and you shall find the grammar you seek" like fuck dude your pedagogy leaves much to be desired

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Do the flames make it go faster?

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I want to see what happens when you vary the oranges.

Two oranges. Three. A mesh bag of oranges. One orange, cut into slices. An empty glass. An identical glass containing the juice of one orange. A glass full of orange juice. With pulp. Without. With vodka. With vodka and galliano. Blood oranges.

Then maybe we could try other citruses.

Honestly I don't like working with oranges here. The citrus family tree is murky, and we don't have a lot of information on fae interactions with tropical fruits. I would have preferred to work with berries native to a specific region in Europe, or possible apples.

*places an orange just outside a fairy ring to see what comes out* science is more of an art than a science

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Ah, but if they're whales, they have a significant advantage over sharks. See, you'd think that being able to breathe water would be better. But there's really just not all that much oxygen in water, and it can't really support a large brain or a very high metabolism. And water-breathers are beholden to the oxygen levels in the water, which can be very low at times.

Air-breathers, while seeming awkward for an aquatic species, can have larger brains, a higher metabolism, and are able to venture into waters which are impassible for anything which uses gills.

Does this mean these whales hunted and killed the megalodons? No, it does not. After all, if those were their primary diet they'd have been larger and specifically adapted to the task. More likely they competed against megs for similar food sources - in the same fashion as both lions and crocodiles eat wildebeests.

He looks like he's laughing w/his teeth showing.

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Well, lately right-wing Americans HAVE been doing precisely that.

They claim that our military is too diverse and inclusive. But they "support" our arned forces*

* offer void if the veteran is female, non-white, LGBT, non-Xtian, suffers from PTSD, or does not support Trump.

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‼️‼️

If you're having trouble keeping up with what's going on in Palestine because of US news coverage of university protests, here are some articles you can read and a video you can watch:

While CNN & all the other mainstream media try to paint the university protests as "pro terrorism" (which they're not, they're literally anti-war protests.) Palestinians are being slaughtered by the minute.

Please don't stop speaking about Palestine.

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I misread that as FLAMINGO sword at first.

And, I mean, a trans lesbian flaming sword is fine and all, but I am not fucking with someone who wields a flamingo as a weapon. It's slightly less badass, but significantly more deranged.

TRANS LESBIAN FLAMING SWORD

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Adapt

This weekend another popular coffee shop in the DC area is closing for good - Radici by Eastern Market. Now, I liked it because unlike Port City Java it wasn't a half-assed Starbucks clone, and it was in my opinion better than Peregrine Espresso.

However, I get down to Eastern Market only a few times each year, and it has been long-established that even my coffee habits cannot keep a coffee shop in business.

What I note is, it's closing after being in business for ten years, almost on the dot. And I can think of, offhand, over a dozen small businesses which closed right at the ten year mark.

My suspicion is that when a business closes tells you a lot about why. In my experience, ten years translates to "This is successful enough to stay in business but not enough to hire someone else to run the place and I really miss having weekends and sleep."

Which, you know, legit. It's sad to see a place like that go, but running a business is tough.

Moreover, I think that the post-pandemic world has made it really difficult to run a small business downtown. So many business models relied on office workers coming in during the week, and it has become apparent that we don't need people sitting in office buildings for 40 hours a week to get the work done. Unfortunately, current commercial rent does not reflect that, and I keep seeing businesses close but the space they occupied sitting vacant for months or even years.

I believe that people want to go out, they want to see people and do things. But the current commercial models are wrong, and the people with money would rather let their properties rot than lower rents or consider new ideas.

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This is why I need to make a new table for my espresso machine.

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Replaceable

One thing that is hitting as I am firmly ensconced in middle age, is that many of the things I buy now, I am buying for the rest of my life. Not the big things, not yet - I am definitely not at the "this is the last car I will ever own" or even "this is the house which I will die in" (it could be, but we totally plan to have a retirement home with useful features like "ramps" and "walk in bathtub" and "no fucking stairs").

But if I buy a pot or pan? That's probably going to last for upwards of 50 years. If I build a nice wooden table? I'm going to be putting my coffee cup on the table until I can't have coffee anymore. Hell, unless I start dropping coffee cups on the regular - which could happen - I'm going to be using the same ones when I retire and beyond, as I'm using now.

And no, our stuff isn't who we are. But the decisions we make are. At my age that comes with the realization that many of my simply daily decisions are in fact lifelong commitments, simply because the durability of many daily goods exceed my own prospective durability by a fair degree.

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#I do think this intersects with why most people do not particularly enjoy renting#it's not JUST the lack of autonomy over your surroundings (can you paint the walls a new color? depends on your landlord)#it's also that the inherent impermanence means you don't go around making adjustments to make it a nicer place to live in for yourself#so you're both stuck with all the little ways it's Not Optimal#and also you don't get those little reminders that you Did That Thing from the space you live in#affordable homeownership IS a mental health issue!

I believe you are very correct. Moreover, even as a homeowner, there's a lot of pressure to make your actual home as completely bland as possible in service of future saleability and "curb appeal", because even your home is not allowed to be a safe refuge from endless capitalism and the need to turn us all into Homo economicus with no personal desires and definitely no interests aside from money.

We have So. Very. Many. mental health issues, and so many of them trace back to a system which has managed to manufacture scarcity in an era which has the greatest amount of resources per person in history.

On progress

Here’s something that has done good things for my mental health.

When I go into the bathroom and shut the door. See, when we moved in that door wouldn’t latch. A couple of months ago I grabbed a drill, a dremel tool, and a screwdriver - and I fixed it. It latches now, and every time I shut the door I’m reminded that I made that happen. When I go into the basement and see the exposed rafters - that’s because I took out the awful drop ceiling which used to be there. When I go into the office and walk under the projector screen hanging fromt he ceiling - that’s because I mounted it up there. When I use the laundry sink in the basement - that’s because I installed that thing. When I turn on the under-cabinet lighting - that’s because I installed that lighting. Owning a house means I’m surrounded with daily reminders that I can Do Things. I can affect the environment around me and make it better. And if I could take out that drop ceiling, or build the desk I’m using right now, or fix a door frame… well, I can clean up the back yard, too. I can replace that dodgy ceiling fan and repaint the closet.

All the time I am reminded I can achieve things. Because the work I do on the house matters.

Most people don’t own a house, so that part doesn’t quite scale. But we can make furniture, fix clothing, or just sort a collection of stuff. Point is, I think it helps to have a tangible reminder of real achievement and improvement. That today really is better than yesterday because of something you did.

It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be instagrammable. It just has to matter to you.