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odin is like “when thor was born the sun shone bright upon his beautiful face. i found loki on the sidewalk outside a taco bell”

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DNI lists on this website are fucking insane

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like it's crazy seeing lgbt autistic people of color (<- or any combination of these things) on here casually talking about how Degenerates need to stay away from their blogs. in your paranoia regarding swathes of completely imagined & invented pedophiles roving the website just waiting for a chance to get their hands all over your blog, you have accidentally started talking exactly like a nazi. and to be clear im saying this about blogs ran by people well into their twenties i'm not going on about this after seeing, like, some random 14yo saying it or whatever. crazy

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Stop ignoring the existence of black trans men.

Stop making black trans men have to jump through additional hoops to be gendered correctly.

Stop calling black trans men studs.

Stop ignoring the fact that black trans men are automatically seen as a threat if they pass as a cis man.

Stop wanting black trans men to give up their blackness to appease you and make you more comfortable.

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the primal urge to devour forbidden potato fruit

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Sewing Machines & Planned Obsolescence

I've got these two sewing machines, made about 100 years apart. An old treadle machine from around 1920-1930, that I pulled out of the trash on a rainy day, and a new Brother sewing machine from around 2020.

I've always known planned obsolescence was a thing, but I never knew just how insidious it was till I started looking at these two side by side.

I wasn't feeling hopeful at first that I'd actually be able to fix the old one, I found it in the trash at 2 am in a thunderstorm. It was rusty, dusty, soggy, squeaky, missing parts, and 100 years old.

How do you even find specialized parts 100 years later? Well, easily, it turns out. The manufacturers at the time didn't just make parts backwards compatible to be consistent across the years, but also interchangeable across brands! Imagine that today, being able to grab a part from an old iPhone to fix your Android.

Anyway, 6 months into having them both, I can confidently say that my busted up trash machine is far better than my new one, or any consumer-grade sewing machine on the market.

Old Machine Guts

The old machine? Can sew through a pile of leather thicker than my fingers like it's nothing. (it's actually terrifying and I treat it like a power tool - I'll never sew drunk on that thing because I'm genuinely afraid it'd sew through a finger!) At high speeds, it's well balanced and doesn't shake. The parts are all metal, attached by standard flathead screws, designed to be simple and strong, and easily reachable behind large access doors. The tools I need to work on it? A screwdriver and oil. Lost my screwdriver? That's OK, a knife works too.

New Machine Guts

The new machine's skipping stitches now that the plastic parts are starting to wear out. It's always throwing software errors, and it damn near shakes itself apart at top speed. Look at it's innards - I could barely fit a boriscope camera that's about as thick as spaghetti in there let alone my fingers. Very little is attached with standard screws.

And it's infuriating. I'm an engineer - there's no damn reason to make high-wear parts out of plastic. Or put them in places they can't be reached to replace. There's no reason to make your mechanism so unbalanced it's reaching the point of failure before reaching it's own design speed. (Oh yeah there is, it's corporate greed)

100 years, and your standard home sewing machine has gone from a beast of a machine that can be pulled out of the literal waterlogged trash and repaired - to a machine that eats itself if you sew anything but delicate fast-fashion fabrics that are also designed to fall apart in a few years.

Looking for something modern built to the standard that was set 100 years ago? I'd be looking at industrial machines that are going for thousands of dollars... Used on craigslist. I don't even want to know what they'd cost new.

We have the technology and knowledge to manufacture "old" sewing machines still. Hell, even better, sewing machines with the mechanical design quality of the old ones, but with more modern features. It would be so easy - at a technical level to start building things well again. Hell, it's easier to fabricate something sturdy than engineer something to fail at just the right time. (I have half a mind to see if any of my meche friends with machine shops want to help me fabricate an actually good modern machine lol)

We need to push for right-to-repair laws, and legislation against planned obsolescence. Because it's honestly shocking how corporate greed has downright sabotaged good design. They're selling us utter shit, and expecting us to come back for more every financial quarter? I'm over it.

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Things I wish I had read in "beginner" sewing tutorials/people had told me before I started getting into sewing

You have to hem *everything* eventually. Hemming isn't optional. (If you don't hem your cloth, it will start to fray. There are exceptions to this, like felt, but most cloth will.)

The type of cloth you choose for your project matters very much. Your clothing won't "fall right" if it's not the kind of stretchy/heavy/stiff as the one the tutorial assumes you will use.

Some types of cloth are very chill about fraying, some are very much not. Linen doesn't really give a fuck as long as you don't, like, throw it into the washing machine unhemmed (see below), whereas brocade yearns for entropy so, so much.

On that note: if you get new cloth: 1. hem its borders (or use a ripple stitch) 2. throw it in the washing machine on the setting that you plan to wash it going forward 3. iron it. You'll regret it, if you don't do it. If you don't hem, it'll thread. If you don't wash beforehand, the finished piece might warp in the first wash. If you don't iron it, it won't be nice and flat and all of your measuring and sewing will be off.

Sewing's first virtue is diligence, followed closely by patience. Measure three times before cutting. Check the symmetry every once in a while. If you can't concentrate anymore, stop. Yes, even if you're almost done.

The order in which you sew your garment's parts matters very much. Stick to the plan, but think ahead.

You'll probably be fine if you sew something on wrong - you can undo it with a seam ripper (get a seam ripper, they're cheap!)

You can use chalk to draw and write on the cloth.

Pick something made out of rectangles for your first project.

I recommend making something out of linen as a beginner project. It's nearly indestructible, barely threads and folds very neatly.

Collars are going to suck.

The sewing machine can't hurt you (probably). There is a guard for a reason and while the needle is very scary at first, if you do it right, your hands will be away from it at least 5 cm at any given time. Also the spoils of learning machine sewing are not to be underestimated. You will be SO fast.

I believe that's all - feel free to add unto it.

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Please fucking lie to your employer. Like they don’t need to know your mental health issues or what drugs you do. Ffs

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My adaptation of the God of Arepo short story, which was originally up at ShortBox Comics Fair for charity. You can get a copy of the DRM-free ebook here for free - and I'd encourage you to donate to Mighty Writers or The Ministry of Stories in exchange.

Again it's an honour to be drawing one of my favourite short stories ever. Thank you so much for the original authors for creating this story; and for everyone who bought a copy and donated to the above non-profits.

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A lot of this shit about people getting mad at the terms TME and TMA strikes me as bullshit. Like yes of course transmisogyny effects more than trans women specifically but this feels like getting mad at a disabled person for pointing out that there’s a difference between being generally negatively effected by ableism and being a target of it. Like yes it sucks that there’s no elevator in this multi story building when you have to carry heavy groceries upstairs but the building is practically unusable for a person with crutches or a wheelchair for a reason. In a similar vein yes it sucks for me personally that femininity is punished in men no matter what, but there’s maybe a difference in how society treats a fat gay guy who wears nail polish and a woman who on every level is seen as a dangerous and duplicitous and a uniquely untrustworthy person for simply existing and people work very hard to refuse to see her or treat her as a “real” woman.

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About Gaza Funds

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how do you tell if a boy likes you?

U just gotta ask 'em, man. Boys are stupid as shit, I'm not even kidding.

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do lesbians deserve rights

I think so, but perhaps a different set of rights than mine. Like maybe lesbians are allowed to own semiautomatic rifles, but they can’t drink my Diet Coke, or something

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did anyone else feel the timeline split or was that just me

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Please THINK about your activism before you do it.

A good example is that the library I work at is having a horrible time getting people access to books on Palestine because someone keeps coming in and moving Palestinian books to every single display or prominent location. What this doesn't do is increase the amount of people who check out these books. What it does do is make it extremely hard for us as librarians to find the books for people who have requested them and extremely hard for patrons who are looking them up in our catalogue and now can't locate them.

I've literally had to apologize to patrons and sent them home while I put the book on hold for them so we can spend a day or two tracking it down.

We have had a dedicated display on Palestine already but it's our standard operation to change the displays to new themes each month because the library as a facility must remain politically neutral on all topics. We just provide information with as few barriers, biases, and agendas as physically humanly possible. Please don't let fucking that up be part of your agenda or you're just as bad as the radical right wings we are dealing with right now too.

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Getting Started

Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar True Love Edition by Mamize

You will need:

This specific, patched version of the game.

A DS emulator, I use DeSmuME.

Once you have these items downloaded, simply open DeSmuME and then File > Open your game file.

Want to patch your own DS games? Here’s how it’s done:

You will need…

A clean ROM file. I downloaded Mamize’s True Love Edition patch. Here is a link to Mamize’s original post, containing the raw patch files, which I converted to .xdelta files.

An archive (.rar) extractor, if you don’t already have one. I use WinRAR.

The xDelta UI rom patcher.

Instructions

Download WinRAR if you do not already have a .rar archive extractor.

Use WinRAR, or your program of choice, to extract the game’s archive, xDeltaUI.rar, and DeSmuME’s archive.

Open your newly extracted xDeltaUI folder and run xDeltaUI.exe. In one prompt, browse and select Mamize’s .xdelta patch file. In the other prompt, browse and select the .nds game file. Then click “Patch”. The output, patched game will be in the same location as the original.

Finally, run DeSmuME and begin the game by navigating to File > Open ROM…

* Please note that this version has no text or minimap sprite edits– this means at the beginning of the game you must select the opposite choice of the gender you want to play. 

* Other edits are currently a work in progress. If you would like to help with the effort, please message me for details.

* If anyone is interested, it is also possible to play the patched version on DS (with a flashcart), 3DS (with a flashcart or CFW), or a tablet (with a DS emulator). If you have any questions please message @8-bitflowers :)

Enjoy, and happy farming!