i had a meet n greet with the anaesthesiologist for my top surgery and he said it’s his favourite procedure to work on because everyone who wants it is just so truly happy to be there, and i can’t stop thinking about this career that is 99% attending to various sadnesses miseries and woes and 1% having funny little dudes in dangerfield buttonups throwing themselves on the operating table like YEEHAW LET’S GOOOO

as the anesthesiologist was wheeling me into the OR, i grabbed the nurse's hand as we passed her, and i said, "I'LL BE RIGHT BACK, I'VE GOT TO GET SOMETHING OFF MY CHEST."

my journey to the OR was temporarily delayed because said anesthesiologist was bent at the waist, in hysterics, and took several minutes to collect himself.

* * *

Edit 10/13/22, since this post has broken containment:

Being trans is awesome, but transphobia sucks. If you are trans and need support, you can reach out to:

If you are not in need of support but want to help trans folx, I encourage you to donate your money, time, or other resources to one of the following organizations:

i’m only on reddit for r/Kevin

This thread under the post is the funniest thing I've seen today

the green vase strikes again 💐 24x30 inches, oil on wood

Stay safe, guys

it’s three taps anywhere on the screen on a smartphone!

This is important punks. Deadly important.

‘…and there are many paths to tread.’

Some hand-lettering from 2021. 

[x]

from Drum: Sex in Perspective pub. 1966

[ID: New York. New York City: Scrawled on a poster in the subway: “My mother made me a homosexual.” Comment scribbled underneath: “If I sent her the wool, would your mother make one for me?” /end ID.]

finally someone has something worthwhile to say

i got spanish anon hate for this one btw

watched the stalks of a lavender bush by the bus stop dip and sway from the sheer amount of fat little bumblebees on it and you know what. some things in this world are good

Saddest thing ever is reading an academic paper about a threatened or declining species where you can tell the author is really trying to come up with ways the animal could hypothetically be useful to humans in a desperate attempt to get someone to care. Nobody gives a shit about the animals that “don’t affect” us and it seriously breaks my heart

“No I can’t come out tonight I’m sobbing about this entomologist’s heartfelt plea for someone to care about an endangered moth”

This is how I learn there's a moth whose tiny caterpillars live exclusively off the old shells of dead tortoises.

[Image description: text from a section titled On Being Endangered: An Afterthought that says:

Realizing that a species is imperiled has broad connotations, given that it tells us something about the plight of nature itself. It reminds us of the need to implement conservation measures and to protect the region of which the species is a part. But aside form the broader picture, species have intrinsic worth and are deserving of preservation. Surely an oddity such as C. vicinella cannot simply be allowed to vanish.

We should speak up on behalf of this little moth, not only because by so doing we would bolster conservation efforts now underway in Florida, [highlighting begins] but because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing. [end highlighting]

But is quaintness all that can be said on behalf of this moth? Does this insect not have hidden value beyond its overt appeal? Does not its silk and glue add, potentially, to its worth? Could these products not be unique in ways that could ultimately prove applicable?

End image description]

because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing

I was so inspired by this I made it into a piece of art for a final in one of my courses for storytelling in conservation

It always gets me that the name "Gandalf" literally just means "Wand-Elf" or "Stick-Elf". I'm imagining old Gondorians just being like:

Librarian: I saw that weird guy at the library again today.

Guard 1: What weird guy?

Librarian: The old guy with the beard? Kinda elfy-looking, apart from the beard?

Guard 1: Oh, with the big-ass stick?

Librarian: Yeah, looked like he was carrying an entire tree branch.

Guard 2: Yeah, that's the Stick Elf.

Guard 1: Hell yeah, I fuckin' love the Stick Elf.

Librarian: The "Stick Elf"?

Guard 2: He comes by every few years, usually after some weird book or other.

Librarian: Oh. Yeah, he wanted a treatise on goblin breeding habits.

Guard 2: Like, how they have sex? We have books on that?

Librarian: Yeah, turns out we do. I was as surprised as you are.

Guard 1: What'd the Stick Elf need a fuckin' goblin-fuckin' book for?

Librarian: I didn't ask. So you just call him "Stick Elf"?

Guard 2: I mean, he looks kinda elfy and he always has that stick, so, like, yeah.

Guard 1: Dude also has some fuckin' dope pipeweed.

Guard 2: Oh yeah, his pipeweed is awesome.

Librarian: How long has he been coming here?

Guard 2: Oh, for decades. He's, like, super old.

Guard 1: More like fuckin' centuries. Dude's old as balls.

Guard 2: Wait, really?

Guard 1: Yeah, my gran-gran used to talk about him. She loved his pipeweed too.

Librarian: So he's… an immortal pipeweed dealer?

Guard 2: I think he's just, like, a connoisseur. He doesn't sell it or anything. He just always has some really top-notch pipeweed on him.

Archivist: Oh, are we talking about Stick Elf?

Guard 1: Hell yeah we are!

Librarian: You know about the Stick Elf, too?

Archivist: Oh, totally. Stick-Elf's a super chill dude. Gave me some awesome pipeweed when I was maybe 12, and tee-bee-aitch I think I'm still a little buzzed from it.

Guard 1: What'd I tell ya, fuckin' dope pipeweed!

Archivist: Also he's really old.

Guard 1: Old as balls.

Librarian: Yeah, so Éodan and Jenniforomir were telling me.

Archivist: My grandpa used to tell me stories - he said one time he saw Stick Elf enter a smoke-ring contest.

Guard 1: Ooh, I'll bet he kicked fuckin' ass.

Archivist: Apparently the guy made an entire warship out of smoke and it flew around shooting down the other rings.

Librarian: And how much of this "fuckin' dope" pipeweed had your grandfather had by this point?

Guard 1: No no, that's totally plausible. Dude's got weird elf powers and shit for sure.

Archivist: He brought fireworks for the king's birthday one year, too.

Guard 1: Oh fuck, I forgot about those! Fuckin' incredible fireworks! Dragons and knights and glowy trees and shit! I was fuckin' 6 years old or something, they totally blew my mind. Hey Éodan, did you see that shit?

Guard 2: No, I think that's before I lived in Gondor.

Guard 1: Wait, you're not from here?

Guard 2: Oh, no, I grew up in Rohan. We moved here when I was, like, thirteen because my uncle Éojeff said he could get my dad a sweet job. And also that there were houses that didn't smell like horseshit.

Guard 1: Oh shit, are you related to Éojeff and Éosteve who run that æbleskiver stand on Norndîl St?

Guard 2: Yeah, they're my uncles!

Guard 1: Shit, they cook a fuckin' great æbleskiver!

Librarian: Ok, hold up a sec, "Stick Elf" can't possibly be his real name.

Guard 1: Why not?

Librarian: What? You think his parents named him in the hopes that he would carry around a fucking tree when he got older?

Guard 2: Maybe they gave him the tree when he was born!

Archivist: I don't think a baby could carry that stick.

Guard 1: You ever seen a baby hanging onto something? They're hella strong.

Archivist: It's not a strength thing, their hands are tiny. That staff is enormous!

Guard 1: My halberd's bigger 'n I am, I can hold it just fine.

Archivist: You're not a baby.

Librarian: Also why would elf parents name their kid "stick ELF"?! Presumably they know that their kid's going to be an elf!

Archivist: Is he actually an elf? I didn't think they grew beards.

Guard 1: How'd he get old as balls if he's not an elf?

Guard 2: His ears aren't that pointy. Maybe he's just a really old guy? Like, a Numémoriam or something?

Guard 1: Did you just say "Numémoriam"?

Guard 2: Nûnenorman? Munimõrbitan? Y'know, those guys like the king that can get super old.

Guard 1: You mean the fuckin' Númenóreans?

Guard 2: Yeah, the Númenóreums.

Archivist: Even the Númenóreans don't live THAT long.

Guard 1: Plus he carries that fuckin' stick around.

Guard 2: Wait, what does the stick have to do with it?

Guard 1: That's an elf thing. Y'know, trees and shit? Very elfy.

Librarian: Ok, look, but his parents naming him "Stick Elf" would be weird whether or not he's an elf. In fact, it's even weirder if he's not - what human names their kid "elf"?

Archivist: Huh. Yeah, you're right, he probably does have another name.

Guard 2: Yeah, I guess so.

Librarian: He's been coming here for decades and nobody's ever asked his real name?

Archivist: I dunno what to tell you, he's Stick Elf. Even his library card just says 'Stick Elf'.

Guard 1: Fuck yeah, the Stick Elf!

Guard 2: Maybe we could, like, ask him his name sometime?

Guard 1: Hey, look, Elrond's over there. He's old as balls too, maybe he knows?

Guard 2: Oh, we shouldn't interru-

Guard 1: HEY ELROND, YOU'RE OLD AS BALLS, RIGHT? WHAT'S THAT OLD ELF WITH THE STICK'S NAME?

Elrond (coming over): Do you mean an old man cloaked all in grey and blue, leaning on a rough-cut staff, who came to the great library this day?

Guard 1: Yeah, the Stick-Elf!

Guard 2: (Sorry to bother you, sir...)

Librarian: He's got to have a real name besides 'the Stick Elf', right?

Elrond: Indeed, for no elf is he. You speak of the wizard Olórin, wisest of the Maiar, older even than Eä itself. Many are his names in many countries: Tharkûn among the Dwarves; Incánus to the south; Mithrandir he is called among my people, the Grey Pilgrim.

Librarian: Oh.

Elrond: And here in the North he is called Stick-Elf.

Librarian: Oh.

Guard 1: Fuck yeah!

Stop posting workplace conversations on main

I think cis people should also be their gender of choice. Like, if you're a man, you should get to really enjoy being a man- have fun with it! If you're a woman, take the parts of womanhood that really deeply make you happy. If being a little androgynous or ambiguous or hidden is the part that really makes you happy, you don't have to be trans for that. If you wanna lean really hard into being femme or masc- do it! You have one life in your body, do what makes you happy. Ditch the stuff you don't like.

My sinister queer agenda is I think that everyone should be the gender they like in the way they like it.

dog tip: it's called a play bow and they do it because they think you're playing, or want you to play, usually to play chase/tag/keepaway. if you need to catch your dog for safety reasons or to leave the dog park or something, get their attention, do the same sort of stance at them, and then run away. 99% of dogs will chase you, and then you can safely grab them

That's a good tip! I work with dogs and one of the first things you learn is when a dog slips their leash you never chase them, it's much better to move away from them. Chase them and they'll run. Move away and they're likely to move with you. Of course when they make it a game they can be nearly impossible to catch a hold of.

Some dogs are more prone to this make-you-caatch-them-to-leave-the-dog-park game than others ... since my dog is mostly husky, i knew he'd try it, and i knew that's not how i wanted to spend my time with him. (almost every single husky owner i've ever met has had trouble catching their dog to leave the dog park)

The first thing i did was never move toward him when it was time to leave. When he was a puppy, when it was time to leave the park I would call him as i walked away, toward the little double gate.

Since i worked recall with him extensively, this worked well. Additionally, i never tried to get a hold of his collar until we were in the little space between the gates, where he couldn't get away from me even if he tried.

All i was doing was controlling his experience. My goal was that in his lifetime, me wanting to go, NEVER ONCE turned into a fun game of catch me if you can. EVERY time i tried to get a hold of his collar, i was able to. Not because i was super athletic (nobody is more athletic than an active dog) but because i never tried to unless i was positive i could. So in his experience, i was able to grab him 100% of the time i made the attempt.

But i knew the day was coming. So i planned what i would do. I've found that when raising/training dogs, knowing ahead of time what you will do if/when they don't do what you want them to makes a HUGE difference. You'll always be calm, never desperate, have an air of confidence, they never pick up on you feeling like they are outsmarting you, you just decide ahead of time "this is what i want them to do, and if they don't do it, i will do this about it" Keeps you calm and in control of yourself, and they can sense that.

So anyway, the day came, one day when he was about a year old. I called him as i walked toward the gate, and he came as usual, but then halfway to me, he stopped and acted, you know, that way dogs act when they decide you'll have to catch them first.

But i knew what i was going to do. So i just left. I left him at the dog park, and I walked across the street, and i sat down on the curb in between two cars where he couldn't see me but i could lean out a little and see him in the dog park.

I called the person i was supposed to meet and told them i'd be a little late, and then i sat there.

First Badger acted like a kid who doesn't come in off the playground when the end of recess bell rings. He ran around playful and full of himself.

But after about ten minutes, he began to act a little worried. I waited another five minutes to let him really feel it, until i could tell he was actually concerned, then I walked up to the gate and called him.

He never tried it again.

I wasn't being needlessly cruel. My life is often somewhat chaotic, and my dog goes a lot of places with me in a lot of circumstances. I needed him to understand that if i HAD to leave, and I was telling him he had to go, the risk he was taking was getting left behind (not that i would but then Not Leaving Him In Danger became the barrel he would have me over and he'd have no way to know that's what he was using to hold me hostage, and possibly keeping us both in danger)

Basically, it was no game to be played, so it was my responsibility to make sure i never let him think it could be a game. Even if it would have been fun for me also a time or two. We have plenty of other games to play.

It was similar to the vacuum cleaner. The first time people get out the vacuum and their puppy does little growls and mock charges, it is SO tempting to laugh at how cute it is and have fun provoking your puppy. But that's how you get a dog that tries to attack the vacuum every time you clean the house.

The first time i saw ten week old Badger growl at the vacuum, i left it running while i sat down with my back to it ignoring it and called him over to work on other training with him like the vacuum was super unimportant. And that's how you get a dog that doesn't care about the vacuum. You do have to trade those first few times of teasing your dog and watching the cute little show. But you get a lifetime of the behavior you actually want.

Anyway, Badger has never once hit me with a play bow when i need to leash him, because i've never let him think it's a game we can play.

I'm convinced Mythbusters needs a reboot. Misinformation or mythinformation if you will, is at an all time high. We NEED the show that promotes critical thinking to come back. It doesn't need the same cast, in fact I think it would be better with some fresh faces. Imagine all the good it would do if you could just show your crazy uncle the Mythbusters reboot episode that debunks his anti-vaxx conspiracy in an easily digestible and entertaining format.

This a a reminder to not fall victim to the sunk-cost fallacy. Just because you invested time and energy into something, does not mean you should indefinitely waste more time and energy on it, if you decide it’s not what you want anymore. This goes for anything, from books, to relationships, to jobs, to hobbies, etc.

If it’s not serving you anymore, move on.

This is honestly one of the places I find Marie Kondo's advice most helpful. I stop, look at the thing I've spent time and money on only to realize I dislike, and I say, "Thank you for teaching me something about myself and my preferences. I think I've learned this particular lesson and we can part ways now."

And then I don't feel like I "wasted" things or made a mistake. I just tried one path of learning about myself, learned something, and now it's time for a different path. Works a lot better for my brain.

The time Marie Kondo said "you can thank a a shirt you've never worn for teaching you about your taste", thereby making it NOT A WASTE literally rewired my whole brain. Acknowledge the thing and move forward, even if that means leaving the thing behind.

By the way people always ask how I ended up with main character syndrome and the answer (to the extent that I consider that a valid description of me) is do shit that seems fun.

I saw Whip It in 2009 and it looked fucking rad so I traded my friend a leather jacket for some skates and started practicing skating around the hockey rink nearby with a different buddy. One day when he wasn't there I was skating around the rink by myself and a bunch of people trooped onto the thing but they didn't have skates on so I just kept sprinting until someone yelled at me to come sit the fuck down.

I skated over and accidentally did a very cool looking turn stop that was actually me attempting to not eat shit and surprising the hell out of myself by stopping instead of face-planting and the guy who yelled (the league coach) was like "wait you aren't on one of our teams who the fuck are you?" and I was like "Skatie Perry" and that got a cackle out of a few of the girls and they asked me what league I was with and I said I wasn't, I was learning to skate and thought the name sounded cool. The coach asked if I wanted to play with them and I said sure so he gave me a release, told me to meet at the park on Saturday and yelled at me to get a helmet.

It was fun to go skate with my friend even when I didn't figure I'd ever try to join a league, it was fun to go to practice and end up doing so many squats the first day that I threw up from exertion and the whole league laughed at me, it was fun to go to shitty bars and mudwrestle and sell seven dollar jello shots to try to get money together to get the league off the ground.

Similarly it was fun to go to hacker meetups and to apply for jobs at the weird coffee shops and to start a magazine with a bunch of lit nerds and go to the shooting range with a weird giant and stand up on stage and scream into a mic because I was angry.

I get a lot of asks from people who want to know how to lead an interesting life and the answer is to find things and be interested in them and do those things (even if it's scary and people are laughing at you, even if you're intimidated by the guns at the range, even if you can't afford to get the magazine printed, even if you can't play an instrument well).

saying ao3 needs to censor certain content is like saying a museum can't have still life art that includes strawberries because you don't like them.

these are not real strawberries. you do not have to, and in fact cannot, eat them. no one with a strawberry allergy will be harmed by looking at them. no migrant workers were exploited in the picking of these strawberries. there were no questionable farming practices or negative environmental impacts from growing or transporting them.

because - and i cannot stress this enough - they are not real strawberries.

if you don't like strawberries, you don't have to look at the paintings. in fact, you can get a map of the museum that lists what works are in what rooms and just. not go in there. if you see one by mistake, you can look away. just keep walking. there's plenty of other stuff to see.

yes, real strawberries can cause real quantifiable harm to real people.

but again. these are not real strawberries.

you may have whatever feelings you like about strawberries, and so can i. you can draw and write about whatever fruit floats your boat, and so can i, even if that happens to be strawberries. and we can hang our art side by side in the same gallery, provided you understand that my strawberries are not about you (and your kumquats are, shocker, not about me) and that - and this is true - neither are real.

and when the fascists break down the doors and grab all the strawberry paintings and heap them in the street and set them on fire, please know that they are coming for your kumquats next.

so if you want a place where you can show off your beautiful kumquat art safely, you're gonna have to tolerate having some strawberries in the next room.

and that's okay. because the strawberries aren't real.

AO3 is great for writers. They can post whatever they want and no one can do anything to make them stop.

On the other hand, this is actually terrible for readers. Finding even a single one-shot worth reading can mean wading through literally thousands of postings of really bad porn for the most degenerate niche fetishes on the internet. Frankly, I would call AO3 practically unusable for anyone that just wants to browse fanfiction. Outside of word of mouth or curated recommendation/bookmark lists finding anything worth reading is simply not worth the trouble.

What Archive of Our Own demonstrates is that without filters 99% of what people produce is simply shit.

I have not had any problems filtering out the "really bad porn" at AO3.

Of course, some of that is probably a matter of taste. I like the really good porn, and some people are going to disagree with me about what that is.

But I use filters extensively.

I still have to scroll past some things I don't care for. But I have rules for that - if there's spelling or grammar errors in the summary that make me flinch, I skip the story. If I can't read the intro without getting distracted by bad punctuation, it doesn't matter how great the plot and characterization are; I won't enjoy the story.

My to-read list is longer than I have time for.

Saying A03 is bad for readers because you have to scroll through a bunch of things you don't like unless you use filters is like saying a bike is a poor form of transportation because you have to carry it everywhere unless you have wheels.

The filters are the goddamn point. The whole concept is built around tagging and filtering.

A03 put you in charge of your user experience. And it takes ten seconds or less to filter out E rated fics if that's not your bag.