There’s a regular at the fabric superstore. She’s at least 80 years old, and she just got back into sewing after giving it up for 40 years. We’ll call her Irma.

I love Irma.

Irma is constantly surprised by the newfangled sewing gadgets our store sells. Today she bought some extra-fine glass-head pins and a magnetic pincushion. As I’m ringing her purchases up, she tells me very seriously, “did you know, if you’re careful, you can sew RIGHT OVER those pins? You don’t need to take them out!”

I told her that I liked that you can’t accidentally melt the head of the glass pins with your iron, and she nodded. “They used to all be like that, but times changed.”

I love old sewing machines and asked what kind of machine she has, and she goes, “Oh, it’s an old Singer Featherweight that my husband bought me when we were first married. It’s probably not worth anything anymore, but the thing sews fine. Have you seen the ones those girls over there–” indicating the sewing machine sub-store in my location “–have? Those things go in every direction and the needle always comes to the top when you stop sewing! Imagine how handy that is!”

I mention that I used to sew on my grandmother’s Featherweight but now there’s a intra-family war about who owns Grandma’s Featherweight and so no one gets to use it. It’s genuinely the best portable straight-stitch machine I’ve ever used.

I warn her to never let anyone tell her that Featherweight isn’t worth something. “I know, I miss my husband and it’s always going to have a place in my heart, just like your grandma’s.”

“I mean, Irma, there’s that, but they’re also worth a really notable amount of money. The Singer Featherweight is really financially valuable. I almost never see them for sale around here for less than about $400, and that’s in bad condition.”

“It’s a good thing my husband’s dead, honey, because if you told him that he managed to buy a sewing machine that’s worth more in 2021 than he bought it for in 1950, well, he’d be so smug that I just wouldn’t be able to tolerate driving home with him.”

For anyone who hasn't seen them before, Hidden Search Operators are handy tricks you can use when you're either searching or filtering AO3.

summary: string is a generic way of explaining that you can search AO3 for a specific word that appears in a summary. You can do this from the search bar in the header, from the Any Field box at the top of the Advanced Search form, or from the Search Within Results box at the bottom of the filter menu.

Examples:

You need to put quotation marks around your search term if it is more than one word. The quotes make sure that the site searches for those two words together.

The other two operators listed work best in the Search Within Results box.

expected_number_of_chapters: 1 will return results where every fic has only 1 chapter currently posted.

You can use expected_number_of_chapters: -1 if you want results where every fic has more than 1 chapter currently posted.

otp:true will return results where there is only 1 relationship tag on the fic. If you want results where there are 2+ relationship tags (and no fics with only 1 relationship tag) then you can use otp:false

I mean, there is a secret way to filter for primary ship if that's what you're looking for?

You need to install a userscript in your browser, so if you're a mobile user you'll want to use Firefox instead of Chrome (Chrome doesn't allow users to install scripts in the mobile version of the app).

The script is called AO3 Only Show Primary Pairing and what it does is filter out fics that don't have your indicated ship as the first (or only) relationship tagged.

If you've never installed a userscript before, click or tap on the ? in green next to where it says Install this script. That'll take you through the process of doing it for the first time.

The code itself is commented, so you should be able to to just drop your info into it. They give you an example ship in the relationship field and you can add in characters as well (or instead) if you prefer.

You can also adjust how many tags it looks at. Default, it just looks at the first 1 but if you want it to look at the first 2 or 3, you can just adjust the numbers.

To anyone wondering if it's worth it to tear down fascist posters or whatever. I spent a few months last year engaged in silent battle with another student at my school who was putting anti trans stickers up everywhere. I had it down to a system where every night I would walk the five block radius they went up in, and tear down all the ones I could reach, and use a stick to put duct tape over the others. Like, within hours of the stickers going up, I would have already purged the whole zone. I knew the basic schedule of whoever put them up based on when and where the stickers appeared. I probably could have found them in person if I'd wanted to. And I told all my classmates and friends what the stickers looked like and got them to rip them down too. And after a few months of this, the stickers slowed, and then stopped forever.

My point is, a lot of this fashy or right wing stuff is one local weirdo. And if you pay attention, and do a little light organizing with your friends, you can basically make their efforts into a giant sisyphisean exercise in misery. You control your streets!

Remember: It costs money to keep printing those stickers, but ripping them down is free.

As we near the end of aromantic awareness week, I offer up my spicy takes as your friendly neighborhood aroace:

If you’ve ever identified with aromanticism, then hats off to you fellow traveler. You are seen, you are respected, and you are loved. Have a nice end to your week y’all.

tbh I really dislike how aphobia tends to be discussed whenever there's some kind of incident that makes it visible to general society. The most common response seems to be some variation of "why would anyone hate asexual/aromantic people, they aren't even doing anything" and it just always sits wrong with me. It paints such a passive picture of our existence and feels like a comment influenced by the level of invisibility that aspec people have in society. Why would you be annoyed by someone who is practically invisible? Just go back to ignoring their existence, it's easy!

But despite the invisibility, aspec people are actually doing quite a lot of things that will piss off queerphobic, right-wing and religious people (and hell, even left-wing people). And the most obvious point is that we are actively not performing heterosexuality the way they want us to. People who's entire world view is "cis men and women should be in monogamous, heterosexual marriage and have (white) babies" are not going to lean back and say "oh but those asexuals and aromantics are fine". They will also hate our guts, and they will come up with all sorts of reasons, including insinuating we're all secretly into bestiality, or mentally ill, or not human, or attention seeking children. It's just plain old queerphobia, and like all queerphobia, there's no inherent logic to it which you can worm your way out of by "not doing anything".

And like, there's a lot more that aspec people do which people hate. Raising awareness about amatonormativity? People feel attacked, they hate it. Asexual people having sex? Or not having sex? People hate it! Aromantic people being in (seemingly) romantic relationships? People fucking hate it! Aromantic people having sex? Ohh people hate that!!

I guess the existence of aphobia can be confusing when you haven't spent much time thinking about asexuality and aromanticism, but in the end, these are identities that aren't heteronormative and they will be hit with the same or similar bigotry as any other queer identity. I just get tired of this response after seeing it recycled for 10 years without ever seeming to go any further.

The other edge to this kind of "but they're not doing anything!" argument is that it implies that other people who are targeted and discriminated against are "doing something" that makes them targets, and that the default state of things is 'everybody minding their own business' until someone does something to anger them.

A member of a discriminated against group doesn't have to do anything to anger bigots. Bigotry is not passive. It's always quite active in searching for an excuse.

The Aquarium's first animal 🐈💙

Thank you for all the Topaz love! This social media manager didn't get to meet him personally, but he is an icon of our Aquarium. I'm so glad you all got to know him through this video too. 💙

I want to be the first person on the moon to shoot a sniper rifle at earth and hit a wasp nest.  my whole life so far is leading up to that moment

I know everyone’s seen this a million times, but it’s still SICK.

The origins of the mission status: sick image

We are receiving unconfirmed reports that it is bedtime. Citizens are advised to get into their pajamas and remain on high alert

if tumblr shuts down you can find me on tumblr. ill still be here. they cant make me leave

a few days ago I started my college class with "goldfish have long memories, Einstein never failed math in school, and the brain does not stop developing at 25, these are all things people just repeated until they sounded true, so let's talk about media literacy" and I could tell I had broken every brain in the room

fuuuuck that is my circus. are those…? yep… those are my monkeys….. goddammit.

i did not have sk turning into a dictatorship in my 2025 bingo

small update

so the annulment was agreed upon by both parties unanimously (out of the 190 members present) in a record time of 18 seconds which i hope shows that even the ruling party knows this shit is unacceptable

and the opposition has drafted? submitted? an impeachment during korean daytime but now the ruling party is saying they're going to stay out of it + in order for the impeachment to pass they need at least 8 votes from the ruling party

so like...okay! you know he's an unstable nutjob but you're not going to actually back it up i guess

HAPPY PRESIDENTIAL ARREST DAY TO EVERYONE IN SOUTH KOREA

update: he still hasn't been convicted OR impeached

sending my korean mutuals ides of march energy

HAPPY IMPEACHMENT DAY TO EVERYONE IN SOUTH KOREA

@copperbadge

Veni, vidi, yolavi. Approved.

would it have cost extra to steal this post in color or what

one of my worst writing sins is abusing my power to create compound words. i cannot write the sentence "The sun shone as bright as honey that afternoon." no. that's boring. "The sun was honey-bright that afternoon" however? yes. that sentence is dope as fuck. i do not care if "honey-bright" is a word in the english dictionary. i do not care if the sentence is grammatically correct. i will not change. i will not correct my erred ways. the laws of the english language are mine.

Sometimes English remembers that it used to be a Germanic language and whispers to us that we need to use more kennings