narendur

[narendur]

No but it is crazy how dementia will sometimes cause complete personality shifts. Kind level-headed people becoming vitriolic and violent and evil ass people becoming docile and amiable. “Why is nobody visiting this sweet little old lady at this memory unit?” idk. Maybe when she could still form thoughts they were all hateful as fuck.

It’s horrendous to watch a love one who was so kind to you slowly become more and more aggressive and lose themself but it is so bizarre to watch an abusive troublesome loved one become a sweet well-behaved grandpa. Part of you holding onto that hate and part of you seeing the sick old man who is just confused and quiet and polite.

[narendur]

generative AI literally makes me feel like a boomer. people start talking about how it can be good to help you brainstorm ideas and i’m like oh you’re letting a computer do the hard work and thinking for you???

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(x)

[narendur]

Gandalf in The Hobbit: You are Took and that makes you absolutely suited for adventure!

Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring: Who the FUCK let the Took come on this adventure?

[narendur]

If you could go back in time and explain to Edward Kelley how lead is actually transmuted into gold, what terms would you put it in?

"The base elements of the world are made from a trinity of sub-particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons in specific stable ratios. Lead can be transmuted into gold by launching protons at least until it becomes gold, but this process requires an enormous amount of time and force, several thousand times the force of the largest canons England is able to produce. Additionally, the gold produced in this process is disequilibrious. Like an overfull wine glass, it will quickly lose the extra protons and transmute itself back into lead."

[narendur]

if you just register for a dysautonomia international medical conference. and you just let the videos play. and you even just half pay attention. you will gain the ability to change and save other people's lives.

so many chronically ill people only get diagnosed when someone other than their doctors say, "hey, have you heard of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome? it is really common, treatable, but it only shows up on specific tests."

or "hey, I know you have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, have you had autonomic testing or testing for non length dependent small fiber neuropathy? 30-40% of people with fibromyalgia have small fiber neuropathy, and a lot of that is the non length dependent pattern, which not a lot of doctors know about."

or "hey, you know how you have weird allergy issues? have you ever heard of mast cell activation syndrome? around 17% of people have mast cell issues, and they can cause debilitating symptoms all over the body until treated."

there are so many debilitating chronic illnesses that are EXTREMELY treatable, but only show up on specific tests. a lot of people with these conditions test as 'healthy' otherwise. and so fucking many of these kinds of conditions are presented at dysautonomia international in presentations that are easy to understand.

these medical conditions are everywhere, and have been around forever. and covid-19 has multiplied how many people have these, around the world.

everyone has an autonomic nervous system, and it breaks very easily. dysautonomia can happen alongside countless other medical conditions. every chronically ill person needs to be asking themselves if they might have some form of autonomic dysfunction. because chances are pretty good that they do.

[narendur]

You can survive almost anything through the right combination of:

Bitching and moaning

Hater-ology

Doing a goofy little bit about it

Having a buddy say "that's so fucked up" at intermittent points (you can also be your own buddy)

Destroying the cursed amulet you carry everywhere, why do you even have that thing

[narendur]

it does still make me insane specifically how many queer people lovingly embrace astrology. I went to a poetry workshop yesterday that was genuinely quite good but also included an option to disclose astrology designations during introductions and so many people broke out some variation of "I'm a [x] sum but I have a [y] placement and it SHOWS" girl no it doesn't. that's meaningless correlation you completely invented the causation

[narendur]

The equivalent of Antarctic research stations but in fantasy worlds like for example there’s an evil terrible region of rotting and nightmares but like nine miles from the edge there’s a very ugly little building optimistically called Observation Center 1 and it’s full of normal humans just vibing. for like 90% of the year they can’t leave because that’s Death Fog Season but it balances out because they can study the ghost migrations and also hear the whalesong-like calls of The Unspeakable Ones asking you to come outside for a game of checkers but thankfully the checkers set is kept locked up to slow down anyone that gets tempted

[narendur]

A good rule of thumb whenever a non-fiction author has "Dr." or "Phd" next to their name on the cover is to check if:

Their doctorate is real and from an accredited institution

Their doctorate is relevant to the subject matter of the book

[narendur]

[narendur]

You know for the first 18-ish years of your life everyone your age is mostly doing the same things and then all of a sudden every year for the rest of your life somebody your age is getting divorced while somebody else just learned what a leaf is and you have no idea what’s going on or what you’re supposed to be doing

[narendur]

Taxonomy is awesome I love being asked "what kingdom are algae in" and screaming

[narendur]

everyone needs a creative outlet to stick a creative fork into

[narendur]

So I know you have that post w the big list of black woman authors, and at least a couple times people have added authors that are in fact Not women, so I was curious… do you have a list of black non-binary authors you’d recommend?

yeah absolutely!

obviously my #1 ride or die is Akwaeke Emezi, although I do want to be conscientious to emphasize that while Emezi does use the word transgender to describe themself their self-concept is also deeply tied to the specifically Igbo concept of ogbanje, which they wrote about here. their first novel, Freshwater, is a work of autofiction that delves deep into that part of their life, but all of their work is gorgeous! they've got a a gorgeous novel called the Death of Vivek Oji about a family trying to make sense of a mysterious son's mysterious death, a wiiild romance novel called You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty, a sort of grimy, dark thriller set in Lagos called Little Rot, a heart-shattering memoir called Dear Senthuran, and even some YA novels. they've also been teasing a high fantasy series for YEARS and god, I am ready. being an Akwaeke Emezi stan is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Eloghosa Osunde is a visual artist and friend of Emezi's. their debut novel, Vagabonds!, contains multiple overlapping stories of queer lives in Nigeria, with the titular vagabonds doing their best to live beyond the notice of the laws that criminalize queerness. they've got another novel, which I believe is called Necessary Fictions, coming out this year and I'm super excited for it.

C.L. Polk is the author of one of my very favorite fantasy/mystery trilogies, which begins with Witchmark. the setting is a sort of a gaslamp fantasy set in not!England, and each book has a new main character pursuing a delightfully queer love story and also organizing against societal ills. these books said FUCK the patriarchy and MEANT IT.

Rivers Solomon writes resonant, eerie genre fiction; of faer books that I've read, one is called The Deep and explores the collective grief of mermaids who are descended from enslaved Africans who jumped off of slave ships in the Atlantic, and Sorrowland follows a queer, pregnant teenager's escape from a Black separatist cult that honestly reminds me a lot of Octavia Butler's work.

I actually JUST listened to a brand new novel by Bob the Drag Queen (yes, she's nonbinary!) called Live in Concert: Harriet Tubman, which takes the zany premise of Harriet Tubman miraculously coming back to life (Do Not worry about it) and deciding to drop a mixtape with the help of a washed up gay producer and turns it into something really heartfelt. it's a little messy, but it did make me almost cry several times. I strongly recommend listening to it narrated by Mx. the Drag Queen to really get the full effect.

also on the memoir front, I have GOT to shout out George M. Johnson's memoir All Boys Aren't Blue, one of the MOST consistently banned and challenged books in America baby!!! and all because it deals with real shit like sexual violence, the pressures of masculinity, and a child realizing they may not be growing up to be the boy they're expected to be. it's really moving, I can't wait to pass my copy to my nephew when he's the right age to take it in.

[narendur]

going to the convenience store spending half an hour in the snack aisle imagining eating some of them in great detail then going home empty-handed

[narendur]

I do enjoy it when a game is clearly trying to use a wildly inappropriate pre-built game engine for what it wants to do, but I don't see why RPG Maker should have all the fun. Do grid-based tactical combat in Inform. Write a rhythm game in Twine. Implement that precision puzzle platformer in Ren'Py. You know you want to.