indw:
If you are like me and don’t like talking on the phone, here’s a really easy way to get a message to your members of Congress! It’s called ResistBot. Text ‘Resist’ to 50409 and follow the instructions. It’s really simple, and quick! I did it in about 10 minutes, but it could take 5 for some people. I sent a fax to each of my Senators, and tomorrow ResistBot is going to text me a reminder to send a fax to my Representatives!
Quick google came up with teen vogue article talking about resistbot. http://www.teenvogue.com/story/resistbot-faxes-texts-to-senators
It works great!
SIGNAL BOOST
Tag: to remember
Things I Try to Remember When I’m Nervous About Writing
1. Write what you want to read.
2. There is no problem with a story so great that it cannot be fixed in revision. Keep going.
3. If your story is as uncreative as you think it is, you wouldn’t want to write it so badly. You want to write it because there’s a unique spin on it you have never seen, and want to express. Many people may write similar stories, but it’s the details that make it personal. You may not know it now, but there is someone who is looking for exactly what you’re writing. If you don’t finish it, they’ll never see it.
4. You can write something amazing and still be met with silence. There are myriad reasons for this that have nothing to do with the quality of what you produce.
4.1 It’s okay to repeat post your work if no one has seen it.
4.2 It’s okay to post your work in multiple places.
5. You don’t have to agree with every criticism (but take it gracefully anyway).
6. Most writers are scared of the same things you are.
7. Don’t judge your works in progress against the archives of finished, polished stories other writers have put together. Archives are Internet portfolios and generally don’t show all the multitude of failures, incomplete, and draft-form works those writers are also struggling with. They aren’t perfect and you don’t have to be, either. Keep working and you will have a portfolio of your own.
8. Don’t be afraid to share your ideas with other writers. It’s not annoying as long as you’re not self-important about it. Be humble and gracious, and others will reciprocate.
8.1 You can’t write as well in a vacuum; the more people know that you are working on something, and what, the more support you will get for that work. Starting a dialogue before you post something will make it more likely people will read it when you do post it.
9. It’s okay to take breaks. If the ideas just aren’t coming, go do something else for a while.
10. Be kind to yourself. Don’t call yourself names. You are not stupid, or uncreative, or boring. You wouldn’t call other people those things, so don’t do it to yourself.
I don’t know if these are helpful to other people, but they are helpful to me, so just in case, here they are!
keep creating your art!!
acts of bravery that go underappreciated:
– taking medication/seeing a professional
– bringing up something that makes you anxious and talking through it
– admitting you made a mistake
– sending a message first
– apologizing
– standing up for yourselffeel free to add on!
Tips for writing an essay with executive dysfunction: do this.
Write out bits and pieces of the essay. When you get to a part you can’t/”don’t want to” write, put it in bold brackets. Get as much done as you can and come back in a half an hour or so!
If the executive function is still bothering you, take it one bracket at a time. Don’t delete the bracket until you’re done “filling it in,” so to speak. If you need to take more breaks or hop to the next bracket, you can do that too! Similarly, if you have a thought you want to get down but you aren’t sure how to word it, put it in bold brackets as well!
It may not “cure” the executive dysfunction or procrastination problems, but it makes writing the essay more like putting shapes in holes of the same shape. It can be a pain, but the process is a bit more streamlined and user-friendly.
I know this may not work for everyone, but as someone who has really bad executive dysfunction and problems focusing (thank you, ADHD!) this works REALLY well for me! I hope by sharing it it can help other people (with and without executive dysfunction/adhd) too! o/
Yesssssssss
A Guide to Making Up Diseases (as Explained by a Biologist)
So listen up y’all, nothing drives me crazier as both a writer and a scientist than seeing alien diseases that make no fuckin’ sense in a human body.
If you’re talking about alien diseases in a non-human character, you can ignore all this.
But as far as alien diseases in humans go, please remember:
DISEASE SYMPTOMS ARE AN IMMUNE RESPONSE.
Fever? A response to help your immune cells function faster and more efficiently to destroy invaders.
Sore/scratchy throat? An immune response. Diseases that latch onto the epithelium of the throat (the common cold, the flu) replicate there, and your body is like “uh no fuckin’ thanks” and starts to slough off those cells in order to stop the replication of new virus in its tracks. So when it feels like your throat is dying? guess what it literally is. And the white spots you see with more severe bacterial infections are pus accumulation, which is basically dead white blood cells, and the pus is a nice and disgusting way of getting that shit outta here.
(No one really knows why soreness and malaise happens, but some scientists guess that it’s a byproduct of immune response, and others suspect that it’s your body’s way of telling you to take it easy)
headache? usually sinus pressure (or dehydration, which isn’t an immune response but causes headaches by reducing blood volume and causing a general ruckus in your body, can be an unfortunate side effect of a fever) caused by mucous which is an immune response to flush that nasty viral shit outta your face.
Rashes? an inflammatory response. Your lymphocytes see a thing they don’t like and they’re like “hEY NOW” and release a bunch of chemicals that tell the cells that are supposed to kill it to come do that. Those chemicals cause inflammation, which causes redness, heat, and swelling. They itch because histamine is a bitch.
fatigue? your body is doing a lot–give it a break!
here is a fact:
during the Spanish 1918 Plague, a very strange age group succumbed to the illness. The very young and very old were fine, but people who were seemingly healthy and in the prime of life (young adults) did not survive. This is because that virus triggered an immune response called a cytokine storm, which basically killed everything in sight and caused horrific symptoms like tissue death, vasodilation and bleeding–basically a MASSIVE inflammatory response that lead to organ damage and death. Those with the strongest immune systems took the worst beating by their own immune responses, while those with weaker immune systems were fine.
So when you’re thinking of an alien disease, think through the immune response.
Where does this virus attack? Look up viruses that also attack there and understand what the immune system would do about it.
Understand symptoms that usually travel together–joint pain and fever,
So please, please: no purple and green spotted diseases. No diseases that cause glamorous fainting spells and nothing else. No mystical eye-color/hair-color changing diseases. If you want these things to happen, use magic or some shit or alien physiology, but when it’s humans, it doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense.
This has been a rant and I apologize for that.
How to write fic for Black characters: a guide for non-Black fans
- Don’t characterize a Black character as sassy or thuggish, especially when the character in question is can be described in literally ten thousand other ways..
- Don’t describe Black characters as chocolate, coffee, or any sort of food item.
- Don’t highlight the race of Black characters (ie, “the dark man” or “the brown woman”) if you don’t highlight the race of white characters.
- Think very carefully about that antebellum slavery or Jim Crow AU fic as a backdrop for your romance.
- If you’re not fluent with AAVE, don’t use it to try to look cool or edgy. You look corny as hell.
- Don’t use Black characters as a prop for the non-Black characters you’re actually interested in.
- Keep “unpopular opinions” about racism, Black Lives Matter, and other issues pertinent to Black folks out the mouths of Black characters. We know what the fuck you’re doing with that and need to stop.
- Don’t assume a Black character likes or hates a certain food, music, or piece of pop culture.
- You can make a Black character’s race pertinent without doing it like this.
- Be extremely careful about insinuating that one or more of a Black character’s physical features are dirty, unclean, or ugly.
Feel free to add more.
Adding more…
- Be wary of making Black characters seem animalistic, uncivilized, or subhuman in comparison to white characters. Watch out for: comparing us to monkeys, gorillas, chimpanzees, apes, and other animals.
- Words like Negroid, colored/colured, Negro, and the n-word do not belong in the mouths of contemporary characters you want to portray as sympathetic.
- Not all Black people are African American.
- Africa is not a country but the second-largest continent on earth with some 54 different countries with thousands of ethnic groups and 1,500 to 3,000 languages and dialects.
- Resist the urge to make a Black character seem uneducated and ignorant compared to white characters.
- Capitalizing Black shows that you recognize that the word unifying people of African descent, particularly the diaspora, should be described using a proper noun.
- Please, say “Black people,” not “blacks.”
- Give Black characters the same psychological and moral complexity as white men are given by default.
- Make sure that you don’t write a Black character as happily subservient to a white character.
- Understand and show that you understand that Black characters don’t exist to be the caretakers of white characters.
And more…
- Do your own homework instead of expecting, asking, or demanding Black fans to do it.
- Before approaching that Black person you admire so much for being so articulate about race issues (this is sarcasm) to beta read your work: 1) make sure it’s something they’ve expressed interest in doing, and 2) you offer something in return for their time and expertise.
- Be prepared for fans to have issues with what you came up with and open to suggestions.
- Having only one Black character in a story that takes place in a huge city, country, or galaxy looks weird. Really, really weird. Scary weird.
- Don’t use a Black character’s death to motivate a white character.
- Portray Black characters with complex and multifaceted identities. We are more than just Black. We are also women, LGBT, Jewish, disabled, neurodivergent, immigrants, etc.
- There is a huge chasm between hypersexual and desexualized.
- Remember: what’s progressive for a white character is not necessarily progressive for a Black one.
Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta King, posted this on her Facebook page.
Reblog this to save several million lives.
I upset myself because I didn’t realize that Dr King was so recent that his daughter is still alive, and using facebook.
He’s not a Fucking Dread Wizardlord, for Gods’ Sake.
Call him Donald; that honestly pisses him off more than anything else. The idea that ANYONE would take such liberty with him, that ANYONE would identify him as who he IS rather than as his Brand, infuriates the man endlessly, as Clinton showed repeatedly on national television. Avoiding his name gives him more importance and power over us than he deserves.
After a particularly exhausting (read annoying) conversation with an old friend, I can’t help but have a few reflections on the idea of laziness as it has been used to describe poor people. Besides the fact that the way it has been crafted and wielded is historically ableist and racist, when it does comes up the rationale of its proponents never holds water anyway.
Defined on its own terms it falls flat on its face.
“Laziness: unwilling to work or use energy.”
Which requires less work and energy: Able-bodied people of some financial means writing a check for charity, or the most vulnerable people in society building alternative systems of support and mutual aid with/for each other with virtually no safety net?
Which requires less work and energy: Accepting the spoonfed, carefully curated narrative of mainstream media with little to no resistance, or opting to dig deeper than soundbites and holding the complexity of how oppression impacts groups and individuals?
Which requires less work and energy: Resigning oneself to the idea that swaths of people choose not to work and prefer a meager food stipend, or breaking down the myths about poverty and poor people created by a system which benefits from exploitation?
Which requires less work and energy: Writing people off because they aren’t as “successful” as you are, or contextualizing individuals’ life stories, their challenges, caring about them, and mobilizing resources to help them reach their fullest potential?
Which requires less work and energy: Following the pre-scripted path of every temporarily embarrassed millionaire (get rich or die trying), or forgoing fortune, risking financial and emotional instability, risking health and life for the possibility of an equitable world?
Seems like a no brainer to me. Fuck anybody who says poor people are lazy and aren’t out here trying. If you’re so insulated that you can’t see people struggling to escape poverty, you’re the problem. Get off your ass and help or do the rest of us a favor and shut the fuck up.
just because it “fits” doesnt mean its comfortable or sustainable stopppppppp this shit
There are two main factors at play when someone says that a condom is too small: (1) the band size is too small & (2) the condom is not sustainable
The band is at the base of the condom. It’s latex is made thicker here than the shaft and is, therefore, less elastic. The band keeps the condom secure so it does not come off mid-insertion and so penial fluids do not leak from the condom. To do this, the band has to keep a very tight grip on the base of the penis. This is the main complaint from people using condoms too small for them. The shaft’s plastic can stretch comfortably, but the band is not so lenient and uncomfortably or painfully squeezes the base of the penis.
Condoms in use experience a lot of friction. For a condom’s shaft or band to be stretched farther than it was intended weakens the latex. The band and shaft are then at risk of being broken from the friction. It fitting does not mean it is sustainable.
If your partner says a condom is too small, believe them and cease from doing anything that requires a condom. If your partner says a condom is too small but is trying to pressure you into unprotected sex, kick them out the door.
Thaaaank you please read the above they make large and XXL condoms for a reason and it’s not to stoke men’s egos
A former… friend suggested I try a size or two larger, and yes, they do work.
Yep. At first, I thought that condoms were supposed to be that tight. I’d seen those “condoms can fit on a two liter bottle so quit your complaining,” I had no basis for comparison because dudes don’t talk about that shit, and no one wants to be that “HURR HURR GUESS I NEED A MAGNUM XL” guy.
Now wear that condom on your arm for a while. Ten minutes at least. Still got sensation in your arm?
One of the many failures of sex ed in this country is the notion that there’s only two types of condom, “fits everyone except those elephant-trunk-cock freaks” and “for elephant-trunk-cock freaks or lying braggarts” (and yes, there’s implicit shame in the idea of people needing non-”regular”-sized condoms and the genesis for such is pretty likely rooted in some really nasty viewpoints about certain groups of people but I’m digressing).
But penises come in a LOT of dimensions, and not all of them fit right in a “normal” condom. You don’t need to have a monster down there for a condom to be legitimately painful and/or break mid-act. This can leave a lot of people legitimately unawares that it doesn’t have to be like this. (I was, early on.)
Condom too tight? That’s a real problem for the reasons pointed out above. But it’s a solvable one at most drug stores, which generally have a broader (ha ha) selection than your Walmarts or Targets. Or suck it up (ha ha) and go to an “adult boutique” (a proper one) where they’re likely to have even more options and let’s be real here the people working at these aren’t gonna give you Looks over condom selection. Or shop at said boutiques online if you REALLY need to avoid the in-person thing.
And if you think you’re gonna be doing things requiring condoms, HAVE YOUR OWN. Yes, even if you personally don’t have a penis. Buy a box of large-size as well just in case.
And don’t let anyone give you guff over it, and don’t let anyone pressure you into unprotected sex because of condom size.
just moving along like everyone else 