alarajrogers

[alarajrogers]

@thesoftboiledegg Have you seen this?

At my new job, we have pinball machines, and one of them is a Rick and Morty pinball machine. Morty gives you encouragement, and if you die, Rick says "That fucking sucks." It's hilarious. (There's more things they say, but I don't play pinball so I don't remember.)

[alarajrogers]

Dammit, no. You cannot reliably sex baby chickens!

[alarajrogers]

Pennsylvania has its own cuisine, though. Because of the influence of the PA Dutch.

In New York and in Maryland, pigs in a blanket are as described, or they are full on sausages wrapped in a croissant. There is no sauce or cabbage. That sounds absolutely disgusting to me.

Any foods Americans eat that involve a lot of cabbage either come from Germanic cuisine (which is where the PA Dutch get it) or Asian (egg rolls are absolutely chock full of cabbage.) It was probably a big thing in Britain but for some reason we carry the language from Britain but very little of the food. There are Hungarian dishes full of cabbage but Hungarian is a niche cuisine in most places.

"Every language is valid, regional dialects are a normal and natural part of the evolution of language even on a national scale, the names that other English-speaking countries give things are just as valid as yours" I say to myself through gritted teeth as I listen to Americans describe breakfast foods

[alarajrogers]

Here's what I put:

This entire proposal is stupid.

"Sex offender" is a category that can include a guy who needed to pee and couldn't find a bathroom and got caught trying to pee in an alley, or a woman who turned to prostitution to support her kids. I'd be all in favor of keeping rapists and child molesters from fleeing to other countries, but that's not how the sex offender laws are written. Change this to "violent sex offenses" and I might support that part of it, but as written it's overly broad.

And making people put their biological sex on their passports? How is that going to help identify them? If a trans woman has been on hormones since she was 18 and she has size D cups and an hourglass figure, marking her as male will make it hard for law enforcement to identify her if needed. If a trans man has been bodybuilding and he has been on hormones long enough to grow a shaggy beard, but his passport says F, that would confuse the hell out of everybody. By requiring people to put down their gender, which they can change, rather than their sex, which they can't, you ensure that people's IDs carry the genders that other people can identify them by… which is the only reason to put either gender or sex on identification at all.

---

I read the full text of the thing, which also talked about people having to get a mark that they are on the sex offender registry. Which is stupid for the reasons I put in my above comment.

This is an example of what I call ideological judo. People who would be sympathetic to the idea that people need to identify as their birth sex do not care that this would make life more difficult for trans people. I focused on how much more difficult it would make life for anyone who needs to identify a specific trans person by their passport -- because the majority of trans people dress and behave in a way that is closer to their true gender than their biological sex. I mentioned law enforcement, not because I'm particularly in favor of law enforcement in general as it's done in this country or most others, but because the kind of people who would have agreed with this idea in the first place usually support law enforcement, and the thought that a scary trans woman criminal might get away because everyone is looking for a man based on her passport, but in fact she has big breasts and looks like a woman, might bother them. I also reminded them that many trans people pass, and do they, the people who are creeped out by trans people, want "men" who identify as women to get away from criminal accusations because their passport says they are men but anyone who saw the crime thinks it was a woman who did it? Or vice versa?

These aren't the actual reasons I am personally opposed to this. To be honest I'd prefer no gender markers on any identification at all -- you're supposed to be identifying people from the picture on the ID, not the descriptive characteristics. I don't think it should ever be the state's business what gender you are. (Or sex.) I stand with trans people, and I don't want them to get hassled every time they leave or re-enter the country because their IDs don't match what they look like.

But these people would consider that hassle a bonus, and they don't get how profoundly irrelevant M or F on your license actually is. So instead of making those arguments, I make arguments that would make sense to them.

If I was speaking to a sympathetic audience, I'd have pointed out how the law can redefine marginalized people as sex offenders just because some idiots feel creeped out by them, and that that is why the idea of registering as a sex offender is fatally flawed. Instead I raised the idea of a guy who needs to pee -- probably every guy in the US has peed somewhere inappropriate, sometime, or at least seriously thought about it -- and an "ideal" sex worker, someone who does it for her children. (In retrospect maybe I should have made it more ideal by making it someone who was trafficked and forced into prostitution, but I don't think I can edit now that I've hit submit.)

PUBLIC COMMENTS ARE OPEN FOR GENDER IDENTIFIERS ON US PASSPORTS

Right now, you can submit a comment for consideration on the proposed changes to US Passport law that will include requiring a change from "Gender" to "Sex" on all passports and require that people identify with their sex assigned at birth.

THIS IS THE LAW THAT WOULD BAN TRANS PEOPLE FROM UPDATING THEIR IDENTIFICATION

Please take a moment to click through and submit a comment. This kind of thing is fast, easy, and is one of the many ways to show your support of the trans community to the people that need to know how many of us there are.

[alarajrogers]

Having lived through 50 years of television, I can tell you all that actually modern TV is better than in the past. The number of good, memorable shows coming out now is greater than the number of good, memorable shows coming out historically.

However, bad shows are forgotten if they are historical. (At least after we reached a certain critical mass of television. People remember Gilligan's Island not because it was good but because of how little competition it had.) Modern bad shows, and mediocre shows, and even good-but-not-great shows, are here in your face reminding you of their existence. So what you're seeing is a 60 year collection of the best of all time, vs whatever comes on television right now. And there is a lot more television right now.

So there's more good shit per year today. But it has to compete with all the good shit from 60 years and all the mediocre shit that's out today. So when you think "shows today", the fact that there are so many more shows masks the fact that there are more good ones per year because there are also more crappy ones per year, and when you think "shows in the past", you only remember the good ones.

(Also sometimes people's opinion of particular aspects varies. I've seen many defenses of the filler show. I do not like filler shows. I find them a waste of my time. I prefer the tightly plotted, nothing-goes-to-waste, format of 8 or 10 or 13 episodes a season, to 26 episodes where half of them are completely forgettable. But other people's opinions of this vary.)

[alarajrogers]

Every time I see the Destiel meme.

[alarajrogers]

Uh, grew up in a suburb 90 min from NYC, went there frequently, and this road or one exactly like it was on my trip from my suburban home to my college in Philadelphia, so... am I city or country?

For the record the only reason this would be scary at 2 am is if you are already falling asleep at the wheel and you're terrified you can't stay awake and you will hit a tree. If you're alert this is nothing to worry about.

[alarajrogers]

Things have gotten vastly better for children since women and minorities got rights. Including white boys, who used to be routinely beaten at school, all schools, everywhere, who never received any sort of protection from bullies except the advice to hit first, and who were more likely to grow up illiterate than they are now because boys have always been more likely to have dyslexia.

White men should consider that they used to be white boys, and life for white boys is overall better since women and minorities got rights. Their likelihood of living long enough to become white men has increased and their likelihood of being abused physically has decreased.

There are probably a million other such things but it's simply pure ignorance not to know that giving women and minorities rights did in fact make life better for everyone, not just women and minorities.

Also, women and minorities make up a far greater portion of society than white men alone, so even if things did get worse for white men, which they did not in the main, it still would have been an overall improvement in human quality of life.

And they wonder why women don't like them. Well, except maybe a few "leopards eating faces" women.

[alarajrogers]

Some kinds of consumer insurance contain within them liability insurance, and thus are... tolerable. Car insurance is well regulated and will, usually, fix your car, even if the accident was your fault. Homeowners' insurance regulates that you do things to protect other people from your home's hazards, which is good, and also protects you from being robbed or your house set on fire. Then they'll drop you and it will be hard for you to get more homeowners' insurance, and in that regard they suck and should be better regulated.

The thing that is truly awful is health insurance. Literally every human being who is born needs health care. "Insurance" as a business model does not work if the people buying insurance are not, on average, paying more than the people being covered. By a lot. It's supposed to be a numbers game. Life insurance is about betting on when you will die, not that you will die. Car insurance is about betting that you won't get into an accident. But you will need vaccines and physicals and routine health care even if you're the healthiest person alive, so health insurance basically has to massively overcharge everyone to make any kind of profit. And the bigger the risk pool, the less they have to charge to make a profit, but a big risk pool means a lot of customers which means it's approaching a monopoly and it's not a competitive business.

Health insurance really only makes sense if it's covering extremely limited possibilities, like insurance for what if I get pregnant, or need an abortion, or get cancer. General health care makes more financial sense for everyone if it's run out of everyone's taxes on a governmental level, where the risk pool is huge, the regulation is at its highest, and there's no profit motive.

Seeing posts saying that insurance companies are inherently bad and adversarial, and I need to point out that insurance companies telling organizations and companies that they’re doing something stupid and at risk of hurting people or the environment and they need to stop or the insurance company will either charge them a lot of money or even stop covering them at all is often the only reason why any precautions are taken.

Torts are where the steel is legally on these types of things, but the insurance companies are how the implications of tort law is communicated.

Like, the church I grew up in only took any precautions against children being molested on site after the insurance company insisted. It’s a bit hard for me to see insurance collectively as all bad all the time after seeing that, when I can point on the doll to where I wasn’t harmed because of insurance.

[alarajrogers]

But you can be hyperfixated on cooking with seasonal squash. Maybe the person in question wasn't really, but I can imagine an autistic samefoodie who gets really, really obsessed with different recipes for seasonal squash, and experiments with them, and eats seasonal squash pretty much every day, and tries things like "render it into spaghetti sauce" and "put it in chili" and "what if we had a zucchini sauce we could put on burgers", and this goes on for like 4 months and then the squash isn't seasonal anymore so they sadly have to quit, and next year they think about cooking seasonal squash again but all their friends are like, bestie, no, you were intolerable

just saw someone say they were "hyperfixated" on cooking with seasonal squash i love that nothing means anything

[alarajrogers]

Adding "The Sorceror of the Wildeeps" by Kai Ashante Wilson even though the ending confused me and felt truncated.

❤️ Black History Month - Queer Books + Black Authors

🦇 Good evening, beloved bookish bats. I hope you're having a wonderful weekend so far! Are you trying to read more queer books this year? More books by diverse authors? Books by black authors, not only for Black History Month, but all year long? Do I have a list for you (now featuring four new slides / 48 new books!).

❓What queer book and/or book featuring black characters have you recently read? Which one is on your tbr?

❤️ The Taking of Jake Livingston - Ryan Douglass ❤️ Mademoiselle Revolution - Zoe Sivak ❤️ Brown Girl Dreaming - Jacqueline Woodson ❤️ Alex Wise vs. the End of the World - Terry J. Benton-Walker ❤️ The Forest Demands its Due - Kosoko Jackson ❤️ Monstrous - Jessica Lewis ❤️ Thank You for Sharing - Rachel Runya Katz ❤️ Salt the Water - Candice Iloh ❤️ Trailer Park Prince - Andre L. Bradley ❤️ Blessings - Chukwuebuka Ibeh ❤️ Escaping Mr. Rochester - L.L. McKinney ❤️ Whenever You’re Ready - Rachel Runya Katz

❤️ Blood Justice - Terry J. Benton-Walker ❤️ Something Kindred - Ciara Burch ❤️ Infinity Alchemist - Kacen Callender ❤️ Vagabonds! - Eloghosa Osunde ❤️ Songs of Irie - Asha Ashanti Bromfield ❤️ Love and Sportsball - Meka James ❤️ Dead Girls Walking - Sami Ellis ❤️ Sleep Like Death - Kalynn Bayron ❤️ Where Shadows Meet - Patrice Caldwell ❤️ Family Meal - Bryan Washington ❤️ Where Sleeping Girls Lie - Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé ❤️ Leather, Lace, and Locs - Anne Shade

❤️ Brooms - Jasmine Walls & Teo DuVall ❤️ Lush Lives - J. Vanessa Lyon ❤️ Second Night Stand - Karelia & Fay Stetz-Waters ❤️ Broughtupsy - Christina Cooke ❤️ Skye Falling - Mia McKenzie ❤️ It’s About Damn Time - Arlan Hamilton & Rachel L. Nelson ❤️ The Color Purple - Alice Walker ❤️ And Then He Sang a Lullaby - Ani Kayode ❤️ Till the Last Beat of My Heart - Louangie Bou-Montes ❤️ Stars in Your Eyes - Kacen Callender ❤️ Prince of the Palisades - Julian Winters ❤️ Icarus - K. Ancrum

❤️ The Black Period - Hafizah Augustus Geter ❤️ How Long Til Black Future Month? - N. K. Jemisin ❤️ The Poisons We Drink - Bethany Baptiste ❤️ I Think They Love You - Julian Winters ❤️ Dear Senthuran - Akwaeke Emezi ❤️ Another Brooklyn - Jacqueline Woodson ❤️ D'Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding - Chencia C. Higgins ❤️ So Let Them Burn - Kamilah Cole ❤️ Sister Outsider - Audre Lorde ❤️ Red at the Bone - Jacqueline Woodson ❤️ How to Live Free in a Dangerous World - Shayla Lawson ❤️ I’m So (Not) Over You - Kosoko Jackson

❤️ Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender ❤️ Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta ❤️ Warrior of the Wind by Suyi Davies Okungbowa ❤️ I'm a Wild Seed by Sharon Lee De La Cruz ❤️ Real Life by Brandon Taylor ❤️ Ruthless Pamela Jean by Carol Denise Mitchell ❤️ The Unbroken by C.L. Clark ❤️ Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova ❤️ Skin Deep Magic by Craig Laurance Gidney ❤️ The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi ❤️ That Could Be Enough by Alyssa Cole ❤️ Work for It by Talia Hibbert

❤️ All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson ❤️ The Deep by Rivers Solomon ❤️ How to Be Remy Cameron by Julian Winters ❤️ Running With Lions by Julian Winters ❤️ Right Where I Left You by Julian Winters ❤️ This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story by Kacen Callender ❤️ The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum ❤️ This Is What It Feels Like by Rebecca Barrow ❤️ Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa ❤️ Black Boy Joy by Kwame Mbalia ❤️ Legendborn by Tracy Deonn ❤️ The Wicker King by K. Ancrum

❤️ Pet by Akwaeke Emezi ❤️ You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson ❤️ Once Ghosted, Twice Shy by Alyssa Cole ❤️ Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron ❤️ Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann ❤️ A Spectral Hue by Craig Laurance Gidney ❤️ Power & Magic by Joamette Gil ❤️ The Black Veins by Ashia Monet ❤️ Treasure by Rebekah Weatherspoon ❤️ The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow ❤️ Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James ❤️ Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett

❤️ The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta ❤️ Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee ❤️ A Phoenix First Must Burn (edited) by Patrice Caldwell ❤️ Rise to the Sun by Leah Johnson ❤️ Things We Couldn't Say by Jay Coles ❤️ Black Boy Out of Time by Hari Ziyad ❤️ Darling by K. Ancrum ❤️ The Secrets of Eden by Brandon Goode ❤️ Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé ❤️ Off the Record by Camryn Garrett ❤️ Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers ❤️ The Henna Wars - Adiba Jaigirdar

❤️ How to Dispatch a Human by Stephanie Andrea Allen ❤️ Black Girl, Call Home by Jasmine Mans ❤️ The Essential June Jordan (edited) by Jan Heller Levi and Christoph Keller ❤️ A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark ❤️ A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney ❤️ Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo ❤️ Dread Nation by Justina Ireland ❤️ Punch Me Up to the Gods by Brian Broome ❤️ Masquerade by Anne Shade ❤️ One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite & Maritza Moulite ❤️ Soulstar by C.L. Polk ❤️ 100 Boyfriends by Brontez Purnell

❤️ Hurricane Child by Kacen Callender ❤️ Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby ❤️ A Little Kissing Between Friends - Chencia C. Higgins ❤️ The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi ❤️ If It Makes You Happy by Claire Kann ❤️ Sweethand by N.G. Peltier ❤️ This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron ❤️ Better Off Red by Rebekah Weatherspoon ❤️ Friday I’m in Love by Camryn Garrett ❤️ Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez ❤️ Memorial by Bryan Washington ❤️ Patsy by Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn

❤️ Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon ❤️ How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole ❤️ Yesterday is History by Kosoko Jackosn ❤️ Mouths of Rain (edited) by Briona Simone Jones ❤️ Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia ❤️ Love's Divine by Ava Freeman ❤️ The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr ❤️ Odd One Out by Nic Stone ❤️ Symbiosis by Nicky Drayden ❤️ Thanks a Lot, Universe by Chad Lucas ❤️ The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzsimons ❤️ Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

❤️ Little & Lion by Brandy Colbert ❤️ My Government Means to Kill Me by Rasheed Newson ❤️ Pleasure and Spice by Fiona Zedde ❤️ No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull ❤️ The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus ❤️ Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor ❤️ The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin ❤️ Peaces by Helen Oyeyem ❤️ The Beauty That Remains by Ashley Woodfolk ❤️ Every Body Looking by Candice Iloh ❤️ Bingo Love by Tee Franklin, Jenn St-Onge, Joy San ❤️ The Heart Does Not Bend by Makeda Silvera

❤️ King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender ❤️ By Any Means Necessary by Candice Montgomery ❤️ Busy Ain't the Half of It by Frederick Smith & Chaz Lamar Cruz ❤️ Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo ❤️ Sin Against the Race by Gar McVey-Russell ❤️ Trumpet by Jackie Kay ❤️ Remembrance by Rita Woods ❤️ Daughters of Nri by Reni K. Amayo ❤️ You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour ❤️ The Summer of Everything by Julian Winters ❤️ Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi ❤️ Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyem

[alarajrogers]

If you want to make your whole identity about the shortage of serotonin in your neurological system, well, that's an interesting choice. But if not... depression is a malfunction that blocks your brain from doing what it is supposed to do, what your identity and self would otherwise dictate that it do. Medication doesn't change you, who you are, unless you identify as a person who can't do any of the things you want to do because you can't really want them, you don't have the energy to do them, or they don't make you happy the way they should.

Here is a vastly oversimplified description of one of our current theories of how depression works. There's some evidence that maybe this isn't quite how it goes, but we've been operating on this paradigm since the 90's and it's helped millions of people, so lets go with it for now.

There are three neurotransmitters that most antidepressants work on. You've got many others, but these are the ones they make most depression medication to affect, so we';ll talk about them. Vastly oversimplified: dopamine regulates desire and motivation, norepinephrine regulates energy flow, and serotonin regulates happiness, satisfaction, contentment... probably involved in other moods as well, but for this model, we're talking about happiness. (Not pleasure. That's dopamine and endorphins and oxytocin and I think maybe vasopressin. Just happiness.)

Let's say you're a normal person, no mood disorders, no dysregulation disorders, you don't have ADHD, you don't have fatigue, everything works great. You're not hungry and you're not tired, and you see something you want, or that you want to do. So here's what happens.

First, neurons recognize that that's something you want, based on the gestalt of all your memories and experiences and genetics -- who you are. This is a kind of wanting, but it's more like a precursor to the want most of us feel most of the time that we want things. It's more of a "hey, wouldn't it be nice if" feeling than a full desire. That comes next, though honestly, this is all happening too fast for you to perceive the stages.

Your neurons that recognize you want something release dopamine. Dopamine is the substrate of want. It is willpower and motivation. It's also cravings when levels get too high.

Now you feel the want. It's not a "hey, it would be cool if..." It's "I want that." It sounds like fun. Or it sounds like it would make you happy. You feel this desire. Maybe you see a basketball hoop and you really wanna shoot hoops. Maybe it's a video game icon and you really wanna play that game. Maybe it's triggered by a fleeting memory of riding a roller coaster and you really want to go to an amusement park. Maybe it's something that will objectively make your life better, like, you really want a clean kitchen. You don't want to clean the kitchen but you want the end result very badly.

Next, or maybe at the same time, your brain releases norepinephrine. Norepi controls energy flow -- where the energy resources of your body are going -- and in this case, it's directing energy to your brain and muscles so that you have the energy to do the thing. Remember, in this model, you're well-fed and well-rested and not sick, so there's no good reason for you not to have this energy.

So you have the energy, you do the thing... and you get the reward. Serotonin makes you feel happy and content. You did the thing, it felt good. Maybe a little dopamine to make you want to do it again, but right now, you are satisfied.

Now, I want you to imagine a comedy sketch where a guy is really hungry at a formal dinner where he's waiting for the food. And the servers lay a plate in front of him, and it's great, he's about to eat, it looks good, he's starving... and then the bussers take his plate away and throw it out before he has a chance to eat it.

Funny, in a comedy sketch. Absolutely devastating, if it happens in your brain.

Because there's a mechanism in your brain called reuptake, and it removes neurotransmitters you're done using. And if you didn't make enough of those neurotransmitters in the first place, or if reuptake is malfunctioning and triggering too early, then the busser is coming by and taking away your serotonin or your dopamine before you were done with it, and now you don't have any.

So you see the thing you want. But no dopamine releases to make you feel the want, so you are unmotivated to do it. Or, you have motivation, but you don't have enough norepi to have the energy to do it. Or, you had motivation and energy so you did it... but it didn't make you happy. There's no serotonin. Nothing will make you happy.

Reuptake inhibitors -- most of them working on serotonin, so they are SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, but my medication in particular is a DNRI, a dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, and there are other combos as well -- prevent the busser from taking your meal before you're done eating it. They ensure that there is sufficient available neurotransmitter for whatever emotion your brain is trying to trigger.

Let me repeat: your brain, full of your experiences and your genes and your memories, is trying to trigger an emotion based on all those things. The gestalt of you, the identity that you are, should be feeling an emotion. That emotion is caused by a neurotransmitter that the you of you is trying to summon. And if it's not there... you will not feel the emotion that your brain has decided you feel. This is interference with the operation of you. This is the process of you being cut off before it can run to natural completion. This is your emotion, based on who you are, being squashed because the chemicals that make you feel the emotion aren't there.

An SSRI cannot make you happy, but it can make it possible for you to be happy if your brain thinks you should be happy. A DNRI cannot make you want something, but it can make it possible for you to feel motivation and energy to do the thing you wanted to do. These medications do not change who you are. They cannot. They don't give you artifical serotonin or dopamine. To the best of my knowledge, this isn't biologically possible yet without sticking electrodes in your brain. That's science fiction. What they do is make sure that the available pool of neurotransmitters your brain draws from to make you feel the emotions that your brain thinks you should feel contain enough neurotransmitters to actually do the job.

The idea that antidepressants change who you are in any way whatsoever is absolute bullshit and needs to die in a fire. Antidepressants work to prevent a brain malfunction that causes interference with the emotions you should be feeling, based on who you are.

They can indeed have side effects. Paxil is known to cause sexual problems, and in teenagers has sometimes triggered the strength and motivation to carry out a suicide plan before it has improved mood enough to remove the desire to die. Prozac made me "anti-depressed"; it made me flat, no strong emotions at all. But there are many, many such medications. My depression manifested more as fatigue and lack of motivation, with the unhappiness coming from the feeling that I can't make myself do anything I want to do, so they gave me a DNRI and I've been on it for 22 years. The first week I took it, it made me a little high, full of energy and driven and needing less sleep, like a stimulant, but that wore off pretty fast and left me closer to normal than I'd been in the four years previous. Other people I know have had good luck with Zoloft or Cymbalta. They all operate in slightly different ways and affect different brain systems variably. Odds are, if you are depressed, one of them will work for you. And it won't change who you are. It will make it possible for you to be more like who you are than you can be with unmedicated depression.

(They are not perfect. I fight with the black dog a lot. They also don't block depressive, negative feelings when the trigger is real and very strong. I was just out of work for six months and over that time period spent most of my time playing video games and surfing Tumblr as my anxiety about my lack of money grew and my lack of energy or motivation deepened. I struggled to look for work as it got worse, which made me even more anxious because I knew, logically, if I didn't find work things would get even worse, but it started to feel so pointless and I felt helpless. So I didn't write, I didn't clean my house, I did look for work but maybe I could have looked harder, I didn't train my skills as much as I wanted... and now I have a job and my energy and motivation are back. If your situation warrants feelings of depression, no prescription can save you. Antidepressant medication is about allowing you to feel what you should be feeling. If what you should be feeling, rationally, is anxiety and unhappiness, they aren't gonna change that.)

90s movies: Psychopharmacology is as good as a lobotomy. If you take pills to treat your mental illness it will literally murder your imaginary friends and you will become a boring, lotus-eating conformist drone.

Me after taking my meds: drives the scenic route home to see if there are any geese on the pond and does a little dance in line at the grocery store and comes home to throw everything​ in my fridge into a stew pot because I can finally taste food again while singing songs at my birds in which I replace all the instances of "she" with "Cheese" and doing a Dolly Parton impression on the phone to my sister

[alarajrogers]

Honestly, I want to see more superheroes whose power comes with disabling downsides, specifically for this reason.

Like, Daredevil can be taken out by loud noise, but comics aren't consistent about it. I'd like to see a superhero with a great sense of smell who is constantly getting migraines or being nauseated and unable to eat because there are so many bad smells in the world. Someone with x-ray vision who is constantly bumping into things because they aren't at all clear on exactly where the edges of things start. A telepath who is incredibly distractible because they keep picking up new random people's thoughts and it drowns out their own.

Because sometimes, autism can be a superpower. But more often, it's disabling. It turns out the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind is exiled, disbelieved, gaslit, or just miserable and lonely, far more often than he becomes king.

One issue I have with autism being called a superpower is that people will take that and use it as a reason to not accommodate us.

If you see your autism as a superpower that's awesome! I don't want you to change just because other people misuse your views.

[alarajrogers]

Oh, he's absolutely a trash fire who no one should listen to, but people on the right do listen to him, and the GOP listens to people on the right.

Sometimes teaming up with a supervillain to stop the world destroying asteroid is the right thing to do, but that doesn't make the supervillain a good guy and it doesn't mean you're gonna stop fighting him after the asteroid's been destroyed.

Just read this and softly whispered “what the fuck?”

[alarajrogers]

I don't know of a single group whose life expectancy is under 30 years unless it's, like, "children with progeria" or "teenagers with life threatening cancer"

"30 years old isn't old man" what privilege do you live in where your life expectancy is far past 30 years

This post blindsided me so bad I spent a full minute staring at it in shock

[alarajrogers]

I kinda wish I knew how I pulled it off, but my answer to "Well, the world disagrees with you" was always "Then the world is wrong."

Nowadays I see how that can lead to absolutely terrifying distortions of reality, cf the entire right wing of American politics, but as a child, being told that nobody had a problem with X meant nothing at all. "Well, I do, and I'm not nobody, so you're wrong." My experiences are not subject to peer review. If I feel something, I feel it, and if you tell me I don't, you're wrong.

And no one got to call me hysterical because I cultivated this ultra-rational, I see through your bullshit, your opinion is wrong because I have facts x y and z on my side, persona. I did my best to control and hide my emotions. I was right, and you're just being dumb. You don't get to tell me I'm wrong about how I feel just because you're an adult; I am the expert in how I feel and you are being irrational to believe otherwise.

Being autistic damaged me in a lot of ways but it didn't hurt my sense of the validity of my opinions. That made me judgemental in ways it took years to unlearn, but it made me immune to gaslighting or peer pressure.

growing up autistic / growing up gaslit

I.

this is the first lesson you learn: you are always wrong.

there is no electric hum buzzing through the air. there is no stinging bite to the sweetness of the mango. there is no bitter metallic tang to the water.

there is no cruelty in their laughter, no ambiguity in the instructions, no reason to be upset. there is no bitter aftertaste to your sweet tea, nothing scratchy about your blanket.

the lamps glow steadily. they do not falter.

II.

this is the second lesson you learn: you are never right.

you are childish, gullible, overly prone to tears. you are pedantic, combative, deliberately obtuse. you are lazy, unreliable, never on time.

you’re always making up excuses, rudely interrupting, stepping on people’s shoes. you’re always trying to get attention, never thinking about anyone else, selfish through and through.

it’s you that’s the problem. the lamps are fine.

III.

this is the third lesson you learn: you must always give in.

mother knows best. father knows best. doctor knows best. teacher knows best. this is the proper path. do not go astray.

listen to your elders, respect your betters, accept what’s given to you as your due. bow to the wisdom of experience, the education of the professional, the clarity of an external point of view.

what do you know about lamps, anyway?

[alarajrogers]

I hate "tomatoes aren't vegetables, they are fruits" because it's mixing two definitions of fruit without any acknowledgement. It's like a wordplay joke, but people mean it seriously, which prevents it from being funny. It's the equivalent of "How do you stop fish from smelling?" "Cut off their noses", except we all recognize that that one is a joke.

The axis "fruit, seed, leaf, root, stem" refers to the parts of a plant. The tomato we eat is the fruit of the tomato plant. The carrot we eat is the root of the carrot plant. The arugula we eat is the leaf of the arugula plant.

The axis "vegetable, fruit" measures the savory vs sweet nature of the edible plant part we're referring to. A tomato is not sweet like a strawberry; it is closer to the savory side of the spectrum, though sweeter than most other savory plants we eat. So it is a vegetable. A pumpkin is often thought of as a fruit even though it is savory because in the US it is almost always eaten as part of a sweet baked good like pumpkin pie; we rarely eat straight-up pumpkin. A strawberry, biologically, isn't really a fruit unless a corporation is a person -- it's an agglomeration of many, many fruits. The sweet fleshy part is actually a biomass that holds the actual fruits -- which we consider "seeds", but they are in fact a protective mass around an actual seed, which is very tiny. But in terms of the vegetable, fruit axis, a strawberry is a fruit and a tomato is a vegetable.

There are also herbs and spices. And things like sugar cane, a sweet plant stem that is not at all like a fruit, but it's sweet, so it's not a vegetable either. Sugar cane probably comes closest to being a grain -- starchy plant matter we use to make baked goods with rather than eating it straight, although we do eat rice and barley straight and we consider them both grains so what the fuck. Herbs are plant leaves and stems we eat for flavor, not nutrition -- although you can make a mint salad, no one does -- and spices are usually bulbs, seeds and roots we eat for flavor rather than nutrition, though there are exceptions. Cinnamon is a bark. Celery is a stem that is commonly used for flavor, but it's considered a vegetable because it's big enough that you can eat it straight up. The line between "vegetable" and "herb" seems to be mostly about size -- is it big enough you could eat a bunch of them as a meal, or would you have to eat so many that's not feasible? -- as well as flavor, considering that parsley, an herb, has no flavor. Most spices are ground, whereas herbs mostly just need to be chopped and dried, but you can grind an herb if you want.

The point is. A tomato is a fruit if we're talking about the parts of a plant. If we're talking about its role when we eat it, it's a vegetable.

And mushrooms count as vegetables despite not even being plants because they were grandfathered in from the days before we knew fungi weren't plants. If we found a sweet bulbous fungus we'd probably call it a fruit. Fungi aren't even plants but they get to be vegetables because they are sessile, they just sit there and grow, and we don't need to feed them. They are pulling nutrients out of their growth medium rather than making nutrients themselves out of sunlight and water and carbon dioxide, but to pre-scientific humans, they're getting all their nutrients as they sit there and grow so they're plants. Thus, culinarily they are vegetables even though biologically they're not even plants.

So "A tomato is not a vegetable, it's a fruit" is doing the same kind of thing as "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana", but people actually mean it and take it seriously. It's not a joke. That drives me nuts.

Honestly bizarre that tomatoes get all the flack for “not being a vegetable” because they're technically a fruit when:

A) There are a ton of fruits that get categorised as vegetables. Like this also applies to pumpkins, squashes and cucumbers.

B) The fucking mushrooms are standing there at the back of the crowd in this witch trial, trying to look inconspicuous because they somehow got into the vegetable club with no fucking controversy despite the fact that they're not even plants.