alessandriana

[alessandriana]

me, an hour ago: "fuck, the stove is on! what do we do?" [immediately does all the wrong things]

PSA: What NOT to do when you smell gas

In this situation, we got home to a smell of gas throughout the house and discovered our gas stove was on without a flame. it was only a tiny stream, and everything turned out fine, but here's a brief list of everything we did wrong:

NOTE: this is for if you smell significant amounts of gas, not a blanket list for all possible gas situations. (If you aren't aware, the propane/natural gas used in houses smells vaguely like sulfer, or rotten eggs - this is an additive, since it has no natural smell. It's a very recognizable smell, once you've smelled it once. It's not the same smell as gasoline.)

1. If your stove has an electrical/spark ignition, do NOT turn it off.

Spark ignitions often spark when turning on *and* off. Spark + Gas = Boom. Boom is bad. Avoid boom.

Instead, turn off the gas at the source, i.e. the physical valve at the meter. There may be a smaller valve near the stove. If you don't know where the shutoff is, the fire department will find it.

2. Do NOT turn on (or off) vents or fans.

In fact, don't flip any electrical switches - that includes lights, plugging in or unplugging appliances, etc. These cause sparks. Spark + Gas = Boom.

Also, don't start your car. obviously.

3. Do NOT open windows

counterintuitive, I know. This is mostly because you want to prioritize your exit, but it's also to keep the fumes from spreading outside, where you should be waiting for the ~professionals~ to come handle it.

4. DO take all people and pets outside.

Do this very first!! (one thing we actually did right - go us!)

This is obviously because you don't want to go boom, but you also don't want to suffocate. Gas is poison!

NOTE: the gas from your stove is probably propane (natural gas); carbon monoxide is what you get when propane burns, which is why your kitchen needs to be well-ventilated and the stove shouldn't be left burning for long periods of time, but the natural gas itself is *also* potentially deadly. Carbon monoxide detectors dont detect natural gas, so that's what the odorous additive is for.

Inhaling natural gas causes nausea, headaches, dizziness, and makes you just generally woozy, and eventually causes you to lose consciousness and potentially suffocate, just like carbon monoxide does. We don't want that.

5. DO call the fire department/emergency line

They'll check for other leaks, shut gas off if needed, then test for air quality and eventually clear your house for reentry. It takes like 1-2 hours for the gas to dissipate, generally.

Yay, you survived! Congrats!!

NOTE: if you find the stove has been left on with a flame, or it's on with no flame but you don't smell gas, then you should be safe to just open windows and turn on vents and fans to air it out.

idk, this was actually pretty scary, especially when we realized how much of our immediate response was wrong and could have turned a dangerous situation into a real disaster.

tl;dr: If you smell gas when you shouldn't be smelling gas, just get all the people and animals outside, shut off the gas line, and call the fire department or gas company. don't fuck around with gas. you're not overreacting, you're taking the proper safety measures.

[alessandriana]

me: yeah I'm pretty close to finishing this fic

the fic:

[alessandriana]

New discourse: it's actually predatory to date someone with a different star sign than you, because the differences in your personalities means you'll never be able to have exactly the same life experiences, thus leaving a knowledge and power gap between the two of you which will inevitably lead to an abusive relationship!

also if you're a Sag and you're dating a Taurus, that means you're secretly seeking a May-December relationship, which is age gap coded!

[alessandriana]

chronically online losers banded together on reddit tiktok and twitter to side with a man who turned out to be a sexual abuser and a manipulative asshole and gleefully participated in an orchestrated smear campaign against a woman who was a victim of harassment? what?! who would have ever thought this could happen! again!

[alessandriana]

The Nigerian Job (1.01) The First Contact Job (5.03)

[alessandriana]

Banging on the walls chanting "OPEN ENROLLMENT FOR ACA THRU JAN 15" like some deranged town crier. Election results aside, you have options to access healthcare as a RIGHT through the ACA. NO one can dismantle the Affordable Care Act in less than 4 years, so SIGN UP! GET YOUR CARE! USE THE SYSTEM!

You have options RIGHT NOW that will be stable thru the next year, the one after that, and I'd be shocked to see them shrink even the year after that. That means RIGHT NOW you can get signed up for next year to gain 100% covered preventative care (your annual check ups, pap smears, dental cleaning, vision check). You have the option to get checked and screened as you need, do NOT be dissuaded from exploring ACA choices. They are SOLID, LEGISLATED, and WORK BEST WHEN PEOPLE USE THEM.

I can't change most things around me, BUT I CAN tell everyone I know that THEY CAN GET LIFE SAVING CARE. THEY CAN GET PRESCRIPTIONS. THEY CAN GET PREGNANCY CARE. THEY CAN GET CANCER CARE. AND THEY WILL GET THAT CARE!!!!!!

SIGN UP BY DECEMBER 15, 2024 FOR COVERAGE TO BEGIN ON JANUARY 1, 2025. ENROLLMENT AFTER 12/15/24 WILL HAVE COVERAGE BEGINNING FEBRUARY 1, 2025.

[alessandriana]

Visiting the CLAMP Exhibition in Tokyo to celebrate 35 years of the legendary manga collective

From July 3rd to September 23rd of 2024, The National Art Center in Tokyo held the CLAMP Exhibition, a major exhibition dedicated to the famous manga artist collective, showcasing around 800 original manuscripts in one of the largest exhibition spaces in Japan. In 2024 CLAMP are celebrating their 35th anniversary as professional manga artists and this exhibition is a culmination of that milestone.

CLAMP is a creative group of four women who have produced a range of iconic manga across a variety of demographics, from shoujo to seinen. Some of their most notable works include Tokyo Babylon, X, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, Chobits, Tsubasa – RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE – and xxxHolic. They started as a larger group of 12 women in the late 1980s producing doujinshis of popular works such as Saint Seiya and Captain Tsubasa. They made their professional debut in 1989 on the pages of the third edition of South magazine (Shinsokan) with their original story RG Veda. By that time, the collective had shrunk to six members, eventually leading to its ultimate formation with its four current members: Igarashi Satsuki, Ohkawa Nanase, Nekoi, and Mokona.

The idea to hold a dedicated CLAMP exhibition first came about in September 2019 from one of CLAMP’s main publishers, Kodansha, after the successful run of the Cardcaptor Sakura Exhibition – the Enchanted Museum exhibition at the Mori Arts Center Gallery, which would later travel to other cities in Japan and Asia. Soon after, other publishers and companies related to CLAMP and their works formed a committee and started planning the exhibition. It took five years of planning but, according to one of the exhibition producers from Kodansha, from the very beginning there was a desire to do the exhibition at The National Art Center, a grand museum with spacious, eight-meters high ceiling exhibition rooms that have hosted exhibitions of legendary artists such as Salvador Dali, Caravaggio, and Monet. As far as I’ve been able to discover, this is the first time the Center has put on an exhibition of this scale focusing on women artists.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

[alessandriana]

You know you've fucked up when you go to a doctor and the thing you have wrong with you has been named after an occupation that isn't a thing anymore. Like imagine a doctor looking at you and going "yeah you've got ox-drawn ploughman's disease. We don't even test for that anymore. Yeah the reason you've never heard of it is because the last known case was in 1927 and happened to some guy who was like 98 years old and didn't believe in modern medicine of the time. What the fuck have you been up to."

[alessandriana]

'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine (Megan Twohey and Mike McIntire and Julie Tate, The New York Times, Dec 21 2024)

"Last summer, as the release of “It Ends With Us” approached, Justin Baldoni, the director and a star of the film, and Jamey Heath, the lead producer, hired a crisis public relations expert.

During shooting, Blake Lively, the co-star, had complained that the men had repeatedly violated physical boundaries and made sexual and other inappropriate comments to her.

Their studio, Wayfarer, agreed to provide a full-time intimacy coordinator, bring in an outside producer and put other safeguards on set.

In a side letter to Ms. Lively’s contract, signed by Mr. Heath, the studio also agreed not to retaliate against the actress.

But by August, the two men, who had positioned themselves as feminist allies in the #MeToo era, expressed fears that her allegations would become public and taint them, according to a legal complaint that she filed Friday.

It claims that their P.R. effort had an explicit goal: to harm Ms. Lively’s reputation instead.

Her filing includes excerpts from thousands of pages of text messages and emails that she obtained through a subpoena.

These and other documents were reviewed by The New York Times. (…)

Mr. Baldoni was best known for the CW satirical romantic dramedy “Jane the Virgin.”

Wayfarer provided the resources for bigger ambitions. It was bankrolled by the billionaire Steve Sarowitz, who is co-chair of the studio with Mr. Baldoni.

They and Mr. Heath, the chief executive, are all deeply involved with the Baha’i religious organization, which promotes unity, peace and gender equality.

Mr. Baldoni has presented himself as an ally to women, writing books, co-hosting a podcast with Mr. Heath and giving talks on toxic masculinity. (…)

She claimed Mr. Baldoni had improvised unwanted kissing and discussed his sex life, including encounters in which he said he may not have received consent.

Mr. Heath had shown her a video of his wife naked, she said, and he had watched Ms. Lively in her trailer when she was topless and having body makeup removed, despite her asking him to look away.

She said that both men repeatedly entered her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding. (…)

As the film release neared, Ms. Lively and other cast members informed Sony and Wayfarer that they would not do any appearances alongside Mr. Baldoni.

So did Ms. Hoover, the author, who had her own dissatisfactions with him and had become more upset after he told her about Ms. Lively’s allegations, according to text messages from Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath.

By the first week of August, Wayfarer and Mr. Baldoni had retained Ms. Nathan, who had worked with high-profile clients including Mr. Depp, whose ex-wife, Amber Heard, accused him of physical abuse. (…)

Three days later, Mr. Baldoni texted Ms. Abel, flagging a social media thread that accused another celebrity of bullying behavior and had generated 19 million views. “This is what we would need,” he wrote.

Ms. Nathan soon floated proposals to hire contractors to dominate social media through “full social account take downs,” by starting “threads of theories” and generally working to “change narrative.”

“All of this will be most importantly untraceable,” she wrote. (…)

When Ms. Abel wrote to her Aug. 4 that “I’m having reckless thoughts of wanting to plant pieces this week of how horrible Blake is to work with. Just to get ahead of it,” Ms. Nathan replied that she had spoken off the record to an editor at The Daily Mail.

“She’s ready when we are,” Ms. Nathan wrote.

A flurry of articles followed the Hollywood Reporter piece. Many made it seem as if the only rift was over creative control.

Some journalists had gotten wind of complaints about Mr. Baldoni’s behavior, but none of the most serious ones were published.

“He doesn’t realise how lucky he is right now,” Ms. Nathan texted Ms. Abel. (…)

It is unclear exactly how Mr. Wallace operated.

There are references in emails to “social manipulation” and “proactive fan posting,” and text messages cite efforts to “boost” and “amplify” online content that was favorable to Mr. Baldoni or critical of Ms. Lively.

“We are crushing it on Reddit,” Mr. Wallace told Ms. Nathan, according to a text she sent Ms. Abel on Aug. 9.

The next day, one of Ms. Nathan’s employees texted, “We’ve started to see shift on social, due largely to Jed and his team’s efforts to shift the narrative.”

Ms. Nathan wrote to Ms. Abel: “And socials are really really ramping up. In his favour, she must be furious. It’s actually sad because it just shows you have people really want to hate on women.” (…)

On Aug. 16, Ms. Nathan shared the Daily Mail article headlined “Is Blake Lively set to be CANCELLED?” with references to ‘hard to watch’ videos and a ‘tone deaf’ promotional Q. and A.

“Wow. You really outdid yourself with this piece,” Ms. Abel responded.

“That’s why you hired me right?” Ms. Nathan replied. “I’m the best.”"

[alessandriana]

This is specifically about automated, real-time location tracking on your phone (or other device), not texting, calling, or verbally giving them an update.

[alessandriana]

can people please stop filming the entire fucking world around them for public consumption? and especially random fucking strangers who you did not ask???

I work at a park and man the front desk. and I'm photographed and filmed a lot. I'm talking easily 20+ times per day. most of the times, it's parents filming me swearing in their kids as junior rangers. which. they're intending to film their kids. what they get is me and the back of their kids' heads.

there's this recurring problem that like. people forget we're real people? like yeah you're filming your kid, but you're filming me interacting with your kid. I could count the amount of times someone has asked me permission to do this in the past year on one hand. and sometimes that's after they already start filming.

Like, I'm not an actor. I did not agree to this. You could be a dick and make the argument that I'm a public figure, but I'm not. This is not a persona and my uniform is not a costume. I'm a person trying to do my job and help people and teach them about science and history. And you know what makes it harder to do that? The knowledge that anything I say or do could end up shared with thousands of people. The fact that if I fuck up the wording of this kid's junior ranger pledge, or I sneeze, or make some basic mistake, it's not just a funny or embarrassing moment for me and this one family. It could end up on tiktok.

And okay, those are the people intending to film their own kids and not thinking or caring about the collateral. What's worse is the people who film everything. A few times a week some guy walks into the visitor center, phone already horizontal in front of their face, narrating what they're doing and seeing. They come up to the desk and ask me questions, phone in my face. They take wide establishing shots of the visitor center and every visitor in it. None of us agreed to this! None of these people consented to be in your youtube video! We are not the fucking set dressing of whatever travel instagram story you're making!

I don't know where I'm going with this. This is really only the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes people ask us to repeat what we just did - swear in their kid, or explain a detail, or hand them a fucking map - so they can get a second take, and they're already filming so if we say no we look like the asshole. Sometimes we're asked innocuous things like to point out a landmark, and next week there's a photo of us in the 15,000 member Rangers Pointing at Things facebook group (yep, real thing). One time my entire 45 minute evening program was filmed without my permission and I was informed after the fact. This happens all the time, and I'm giving park ranger examples, but this happens to so many people in service work or public positions every single fucking day.

I guess just, next time you go to film in a public space, take a second. Think about who you're about to film, if they agreed to that, what might happen if a video of them went viral. there's a reason I'm not out as trans at work. And then, maybe. don't. or at least fucking ask.

[alessandriana]

northern hemisphere babes we made it to the longest night of the year. we made it. for the next 6 months, every day will give us a little more daylight than the last. let's go. take my hand. climb out of the darkness with me

[alessandriana]

eyes + art

[alessandriana]

I made a little natsume watercolor painting for my students :)

[alessandriana]

[alessandriana]

Chapter 5 of the MDZS manga English translation

Please consider supporting the official release at cmoa.jp!

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4

mangadex link