What's this button do--?

Source: ayumioyabun

I cannot stress this enough; PLEASE unmute :')

I'm part of a wood carving club and there are a lot of dads who are dripping with adhd/autism vibes who's special interest is wood carving. One of the master skill level carvers who we'll call... Jim was working on a figure of a super heroine, who was frankly outrageously bodacious. Several women in the club are uncomfortable with this. They tell me they wish he wouldn't carve stuff like that at the club. This is understandable. I felt a bit uneasy too. I ask if they told him, and they say no.

This goes on for months. He's at a point where he's carving the folds of her skin tight suit. It's shockingly impressive. A real Giovanni Strazza with wood here. Many of the women in the club, (also boomers) have stopped talking to him because they're offended.

One afternoon I see a woman we'll call Karen approach him and have this conversation Her: Wow that is really starting to look like actual fabric. Him: Thanks! It's been a really fun challenge. Her: I bet! She sure is - a lot- huh? Him: Yeah a lot of these comic book characters are really outrageously proportioned! Her: They really are! You know, when I was carving a sign that was political in a way i knew would offend some people here, I just felt so much more comfortable carving it at home. Him: *nodding* Her: Okay? Him: Yeah I get that. Her: Yeah. Okay. Good luck with her!" *she walks off and he looks a little confused.* Next week at the meet up Jims working on it again and Karen's furious. Says to me "He said he wouldn't bring it back! So RUDE." So I go up to him and we have this conversation. Me: Hey Jim Him: Hey Neala Me: Some of the ladies around here are feeling a little uncomfortable with the figure you're carving because of her massive cartoon titties. Him: Ah shit, really? I thought they just thought it was funny. Me: Yeah folks laugh a lot when they're uncomfortable and trying to hide it. Him: Mm, yeah and I can never tell which laugh is which. Me: Me either Him: Well I won't work on this here anymore. I have other projects to do. Me: Hey thanks! I wanna see it when you're done tho so take a pic for me, okay? Him: Haha sure! I go sit down. Karen is shocked. Jim puts the figure away and works on a carving of a crane instead. He is not upset.

A week later I over hear Karen telling her friend I screamed at Jim last week.

Another event at the same club. All names fake. Even mine but u only know me by the fake name so

A carver who does a lot of work for the group comes in with a stunning leather bag. When I say a lot of work for the group, I mean a LOT a lot. He plans out monthly projects, makes the blanks for them and shows the rest of the club how to do the carvings. Lets call him Harold.

So I'm gushing over the bags, and so are a few others. He tells us he made these bags himself and that he's really gotten into leather working over the last year. Jim is complementary of the bags, and teasingly says "Woodcarving and now Leather? You know what they say? Jack of all trades, Master of none!"

Now this quote takes on a different meaning coming from someone who is literally a master skill level carver ways it to someone who is not. But he says it in a jokey way. Clearly meant to playfully rib. Thing is, I see the tightness in Harolds eyes when Jim says this. Having Adhd myself, I also hobby hop a lot and know how it feels to be teased about it. Maybe I was projecting as i flashed back to every time someone had told me to "Just stick with" something.

I say, "Go on Jim, finnish the poem!" In a playful way. Jim laughs and shrugs and says he didn't know there was more. I quote the whole thing, "Jack of all trades master of none but still always better than a master of one." Everyone laughs in a good-natured way, Harold visibly relaxes.

Later, Jim tells me i hurt his feelings. He says it felt like i was belittling him for only being good at one thing. I apologize and explain that he had inadvertently hurt my feelings and that I suspected he had hurt Harold's because it felt like he was saying we weren't good at anything because we have multiple hobbies.

He apologized and said he was feeling a little jealous that Harold is good at so many things, and all he's good at is woodcarving. He also went on to say that if Harold entered any of his carvings into any competitions, he would probably have the same rank as him. Harold just didn't do competitions.

At this point Harold overheard and thanked Jim for what he had said, and told him that he didn't enter competitions because as soon as he started doing that with the goal of achieving a certain rank the hobby stopped being fun for him and he no longer wanted to do it and internally I was like "Ahhh i also have pathologic demand avoidance! Me too."

And everything is fine now.

Nature documentary voice "Here we see the interaction between the autistic adult, who has had one special interest that has lasted his whole life, and some Adhd adults, who have collected many special interests over their lives. They are accidentally hurting one anothers feelings about it."

If your goals basically amount to "after The Revolution everything will be great because people will all have the Good Ethics and work together in my Perfect System and the Evil People with Bad Morals and Bad Behaviour who are making this world bad will be gone (killed/imprisoned/exiled/all converted to agree with us when they see our Perfect System)" then that's just fascism. I hate to say it but you've put a gay socialist hat on fascism.

The MAGA people are still gonna be around in your Perfect System and a very large proportion of them are still gonna be Like That. We can discourage antisocial behaviour through laws and education and changing cultural norms, but if plans for future society involve [group I'm opposed to] magically not being part of it so the Good People can Do Things Right, well.

✨No Bad Guys Here✨ - how do you want to enforce that.

Honestly, I think this concept of The Revolution is to some leftists what Armageddon is to some Christians: an easy excuse to not try and grapple with difficult problems like hunger or poverty or injustice or climate, because any day now the Great Reckoning will come and wipe the slate clean.

#well you see america was founded on [original sin] which makes it irredeemable and any effort to improve it ultimately pointless#the only hope for salvation is to wait for [armageddon] to destroy it and cast down the unrighteous so the rest of us can [reach paradise]#voting for example is an act of interacting with and investing in this world which is too evil and tenporary to be worth it#not when The Great Reckoning is on its way to wipe the slate clean

@blujayonthewing you can't leave these in the tags

When animal becomes bro

hey hi hello so as the US goes through this ~ hostile government takeover ~ Trump signed an executive order last week to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). On Thursday (3/20) DOGE attempted to quietly raid IMLS but staff there posted to reddit and the unwanted media attention led them to put a pause on the takeover, for now. Trump replaced the director of IMLS with Keith Sonderling, who very openly stated that his goals are to "promote patriotism" and "American exceptionalism". We worry grants will be more dependent on whether your institution supports DEI [or anyone who isn't a white hetero cis amab].

A lot of libraries depend on IMLS grants! If they go away we will lose librarians and libraries may close, or at least significantly decrease their services. This will affect funding for technology classes, free resources for the blind, summer reading, databases, free internet access assistance, and interlibrary loans among other things. As the administration also targets social security, immigration, and other safety nets, libraries are attempting to fill the gap for the public, and things will get much harder without reliable funding.

This is also IN ADDITION to the administration calling book bans "fake" and some states attempting to pass laws to criminalize librarians, with fears in the library world that they will also try to make it a federal crime to promote or otherwise provide access to "inappropriate materials" which have included books that promote "gender ideology" or basically any character that isn't a white heterosexual cis amab. That is one of the cornerstones of Project 2025. This IMLS takeover will only make things worse, and make it harder for people to access information.

Personally, we have been told by our director to be very careful and not talk about this while at work because of fears of retaliation, we have had several calls from the public to remove books with gay characters (we didn't), and as an adult services librarian, I am already seeing an impact on databases I help the public use. Medline Plus, the only free and easy-to-use medical encyclopedia for the public I have been able to find, is a US government website and already has warnings above certain pages about the "harms of gender ideology". This warning can be seen above pages on health disparities and abortion.

If you're so inclined and live in the US, the ALA put together a portal that makes it easy to email your reps with a script. You can find the portal here. I would also recommend investing in your local library, post on social media what services you use, sign up for a library card and see how many resources you can access for free. Many state library associations collect user stories of libraries so they can show their stakeholders they matter. Like my library, it is likely that staff have been warned not to discuss this at work because of fears of retaliation, so try not to talk to librarians about this at work.

General advocacy page:

Article from NPR about the takeover:

What happens if IMLS goes away:

A report on how much museums give back to the US economy:

An interactive map of what IMLS funds in the US:

Hat tip @eldriwolf !

fuck it, i'm curious. reblog and tag with the first fictional death to ever rewrite your brain chemistry and/or make you cry like a baby. mine was ares from the underland chronicles (who, for context, was a giant bat.) to this day i will weep if i think too hard about it. okay, go.

Bro absolutely COOKED with this.

hey it's probably a really good idea to download a copy of your Master Promissory Note since most of them stipulate that your loans are *specifically owed to the Department of Education* and if you intend to dispute the debt in the wake of the DoE dissolving that will be really good to have

log in and then go to My Documents and download a copy of it. i'm serious. if trump dissolves the DoE entirely it may make the debt uncollectable depending on exactly how they do it, and he's too stupid to listen to lawyers that tell him when he's breaking the law. worst case you have an extra PDF on your computer. best case your student loans go away because you signed a contract to pay DoE and no one else. go download a copy.

Love the spirit of this, but they will probably use a debt assignment to legally transfer the debt to a new entity.

Investopedia has an article about the practice here: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/debtassignment.asp

Always a good idea to have a copy of your note, though! And the proper transfer process is described in the FDCPA (an act of congress), so if the new debt owner fails to provide appropriate notice, you may have relief options there. (Potentially dependent on the CFPB continuing to function, which it….might not…)

~not legal advice, just work experience in finance~

I stated this elsewhere but the Higher Education Act has specific language about when debt is allowed to be sold - they can't just sell it at any time for any reason, and all the terms of the Act would still apply to the loan since in most cases the MPN stipulates as much (since the actual terms of a promissory note can't be altered without consent even if the payee changes). Specifically, they cannot sell the debt if it "result[s] in any cost to the Federal Government". Reassigning the loans to another agency would incur a massive cost since that agency would have to hire new personnel and build new infrastructure, eliminating the possibility of a sale within the government, and a sale to a private third party would made debt validation very tricky for that party since FERPA would prevent disclosure of a borrower's SSN, student ID number (ergo, the account number), and the itemization of the debt without written consent, meaning in that scenario the borrower could most likely* refuse this disclosure, dispute the debt, and win pretty easily.

*not a lawyer

the bottom line, if they attempt to reassign your loans anywhere... REQUEST DEBT VALIDATION BEFORE PAYING A CENT.

Some of you are going to have to realize really fast that posting on social media about your acts of resistance, or the acts of resistance of your workplace/student group, or things you're planning, or even about charitable actions like volunteering, is a stupid idea in the kind of climate where such acts are increasingly incredibly necessary. And that therefore you cannot and should not assume that someone is apathetic or not doing anything important based on their social media activity. And that some acts require secrecy to be effective and people might only be able to safely talk about them years later, if ever.

And then get off your high fucking horse about how people aren't doing anything, how no one is currently firebombing a Walmart, how "white women who say things like 'joy is an act of resistance' take no other acts of resistance" etc. I promise that right now many ordinary people you will never know about are taking actions that seem small on their own but will lessen harm in significant and tangible ways, and that those people are doing more good than anyone whose main revolutionary actions are snarkily complaining online. This is not the time to be tallying social media points and using them to judge each other.

Get out. #Tesla #TSLA

Elon is so leveraged, that if TSLA is worth $120 per share, he is penniless.

The con game is over. The company never evolved. Elon deserves his fate.

Get desperate Musk out of politics.

I’m doing the dishes

it’s a warm spring day

I watch out the window as my neighbours wiener dog wanders out into the garden in its little blue bandana

I stop, mesmerised.

It’s sniffing flowers — carnations, I think — for quite some time until it becomes excited by a bird overhead and bounces around to chase it’s shadow

the dog returns to the sunlit spot by the flowers and flops over, belly up, to bask in the warm light

“I want to be that dog” I say to myself. “I want to share with the world the peaceful joy that dog must be feeling right now.”

I try to take a picture; my zoom is not enough. I get weird and grab my pigeon-watching binoculars to get a better zoom, line my phone camera up with the lens. And I take one single, illicit, sleepy dog picture.

I hope the ends justified the means.

I bet that dog is having a really nice day.

I want to try so many little hobbies. Candle making, soap making, basket weaving, wood carving, book binding, baking, weaving, I want to try them all.

I almost made a post about this the other day (unless i actually did and totally forgot) but there’s so many

I was going to make a list, but then i realized this is a good time to share this book

Making Stuff and Doing things is a whole collection of old punk DIY zines about making and doing just about anything, even things you probably never knew you wanted to do.

Book binding? In there.

Making bowls from old vinyl records? I made a whole ton for my brother’s grad party last year.

Basics of guitar? Making rubber stamps? Silk screening? Composting? Homemade beer, root beer, and wine? Soymilk?? Quill pens??? All in there.

Since it’s more punk, it doesn’t have a ton of the folksy, cottage vibes/hobbies, but it’s all about being resourceful and sustainable, which they both have in common.

If i ever need to do anything I’m not sure of, I double check this book to see if there’s anything in there. It’s one of the only books on diy I’ve ever needed.

You can download the entire book as a PDF in the link above.

not to be all i told you so about ancestry tests but 23 and me went bankrupt and can now legally sell human genetic information to the highest bidder, as per their privacy policy which was signed by approx. 15 million test takers

im still mind blown that people really readily submitted their dna so they could be classed by ethnicity on paper permanently. like yeah theres no way this could go badly huh