marithlizard

[marithlizard]

Getting a print version of the Onion is a decision I'll never regret

Every one of the 12 "ads" in this version is insulting Musk

[marithlizard]

Pareidolia is believing there’s a meaningful pattern in a random shape, like when you see faces in things.

Parablorbia is projecting your blorbo unto those things.

[marithlizard]

The West Alabama Women's Center keeps sending me such eloquent newsletters that I can't unsubscribe. I was fascinated by the writer's account of one of Trump's publicity events. _Nobody_ wants to listen to this pathetic dictator.

Unfortunately, not everything that is overwhelming us was good. Yesterday, we watched our city get shut down as Homeland Security, Secret Service and local and state police arrived to escort Donald Trump onto the University of Alabama campus, where he proceeded to give an hour long "commencement" address at an event created specifically for him after he informed the college's administration that he wanted to come speak to the graduates. The so-called gradation event - which was created specifically so no student would have to  choose between getting their diploma or being forced to listen to a man who kidnapped and detained one of their grad students and made massive budget cuts to their institution on what should have been one of the best days of their academic lives.

And many, many students chose not to attend. At first, the event was open only to spring graduates (about 6400 students). Then, they began offering each student up to four tickets to give to family to attend with them, and offered staff tickets as well. When that didn't appear to up the numbers enough, eventually EVERY student at UA was invited to attend (yes, all 40,000). Even then, organizers had to shuffle attendees around up until the moment the speeches began in order to get more chairs filled in the camera frame.

I spend the day as a legal observer for a counter-protest, and once the march was done I walked back to my home only accidentally wander into what was meant to be the security staging area for the night. Car after car - all black SUVs with dark tinted windows - spread across the grass. The business along the block all shut down, their parking lots filled with a variety of law enforcement vehicles, officers all out and alert. It was utterly jarring.

But most jarring was the immense expense that went into that vanity production. Hundreds of thousands no doubt spent to accommodate the presidential visit.  And thousands of lost revenues from businesses forced to close on what is normally one of the biggest tourist days of the year - graduation eve.

I think about how much was spent for just those few hours of the President of the United States talking to a 3/4th empty basketball stadium. How it could have kept my clinic operating for at least six months. Possibly even a year.

And how while Trump's audience was much smaller than he hoped, our patient load? It's so much larger. I budgeted for 125 patients a month for the year. Each month in the first quarter we hit nearly 150 instead.

For April, our total was 207.

With this many patients, we have decided we can't avoid adding a fourth provider day - an extra $4000 a month. But we have to make room for the many people who clearly need us.

[marithlizard]

New favorite protest sign spotted via bsky

[marithlizard]

:raises hand: This may all be true but I can personally attest that making phone calls was already a terrible experience (REDACTED) years ago, and if you hate doing it at any age you are valid.

What the “haha millennials can’t even make phone calls” crowd fails to appreciate is that making phone calls is a far more user-hostile and physically uncomfortable experience than it was 15-20 years ago.

[marithlizard]

I'm putting a leather cover on my thread book to make it more durable, and debating a layer of board between the paper and leather for extra rigidity.

[marithlizard]

Keep your priorities straight: post fic.

[marithlizard]

You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?

[marithlizard]

there's something so reassuring about seeing you so openly outspoken in the past few days

there's comfort in a queer protective front

We are all in this together and we have more support than you know. Check this out from today in London:

Theresa's a pretty well known trans woman around here. But when I arrived, the protest was already in all the roads. Busses couldn't go anywhere. The police were trying to kettle but they couldn't do it. In the end, we had to start marching. Legal observers were everywhere, and I watched two chase some CSPOs carrying a camera to intercept. (Big up to legal observers, it's a voluntary role taken to by solicitors, lawyers and barristers, and they are legends.) Trans people and their allies ground the capital city of the UK to a halt.

The media will blackout and minimise today as much as possible. But if you're ever feeling like the LGBT community has no support, I urge you to go to a protest.

I'm reminded of what historian Dominic Sandbrook said if the so-called 1960s sexual revolution in the UK, that it was "in the newspapers not people's bedrooms". That most people remained sexually and socially conservative despite what 60s and 70s media would have you believe. Evidenced in 1983 when a poll reported only 17% of people saw homosexual relationships as acceptable despite it being decriminalised in 1967 (as a product of the belief the state had no right to interfere in people's private lives, not an increase of social acceptance).

But anyway! My point is: the media crafts the narrative it wants in order to sell. It fucking lies about what is really happening and it always has. UK media would have you believe we are "TERF Island", which, ok, we have JKKK Rowling and Maya Forstater (barf), et al, but the British people? Not lost yet.

I never expected to get to thirty. The LGBT community helped me make it, so every year after I owe to them. I may not have all the right phrases, words, attitudes, whatever, but I will throw down in an instant for the community. No quarter. We got this.

[marithlizard]

Validating I'm not the only one whose brain has decided "This space is for being productive, that one is for being a nonfunctional lump. Yes I know we live in that one, what's your point."

Fun ADHD hack is that you're allowed to just go to the library and reserve a study room for a couple of hours and make all your phone calls or whatever adult shit you need to do but can't because your house is for House Stuff and for some reason your brain has designated "phone calls for doctors and other such things" as School Adjacent and therefore refuses to do it in an insufficently academic environment. Like it's free. You can just do that.

[marithlizard]

[marithlizard]

To me the most fun part about fix-its is placing dominoes.

Tragedies often consist of escalating series of actions and circumstances which, in isolation, were not clearly leading to the tragic end but form a chain of cause-and-effect directly towards it in hindsight. In equal but opposite fashion, I love starting with small inoccuous changes to canon that in themselves do not obviously fix everything but start a new chain that leads to a better ending.

It's kind of impossible for fix-its to feel fully natural– the reader by definition knows what the original ending was and that this ending will be happier because the writer wants it to be– but it is possible for them to not feel contrived. A big deus-ex-machina, or a character breaking with their pre-established tragic flaws to suddenly make all the "correct" decisions almost always feels unsatisfying to me.

But a few carefully placed small domino pieces slowly knocking over bigger and bigger tiles until the entire story has radically changed? That's a lot more fun.

It recquires the author to both correctly identify the original chain of cause-and-effect and understand the characters well enough to know how they'd react to different circumstances. Because if the story feels like it's fixing the wrong problem or the characters don't act like themselves the magic is lost. But when it works? When it clicks and the reader sees the domino chain laid out in front of them? It's beautiful.

[marithlizard]

🖤🌹

[marithlizard]

i can no longer take any description of a male protagonist seriously if the writer describes him as ‘brooding’

because i used to think ‘oh, that’s sexy and mysterious, etc’

and now i think of this

once you’ve been loudly cussed out by 2.5 lbs of feathers, that word only ever means one thing

[marithlizard]

[marithlizard]

!!!! I was not expecting them to get to this point so soon :excited fanlizard noises:

Read today's update on kiddcommander.com!

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[marithlizard]

Talking of disability aids, I did get this cool spoon recently which you can use without any grip at all. It has a long handle which can be bent to fit on your arm and once you get it right it's really quite effective.

At the moment it lets me about half a meal without help (apart from putting it on) in certain situations with my arm supported, and I can even use it with my hand splints on

ID two photos showing an adaptive spoon with a long, curled grey handle. In the first Photo it’s is lying on a tray next to a bowl of rice and an adapted mug. In the second it's been around echos wrist while they eat rice sat in bed with their arm supported by a pillow / end ID

( the company I got it from it's called Active hands)