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This conversation is funnier hearing just one half of it.

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Hate how lighting a candle does wonders to my mood. Like wowwww. Grug like fire? Grug not sad anymore because Fire in Cave? Wow. Real predictable of Grug.

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The healthcare strike in Portland, Oregon is in its third week with no clear end in sight. Front-line caregivers with the Providence Healthcare System negotiating union contracts at multiple hospitals that would improve employee working conditions and protect legally-mandated nurse:patient ratios so nurses don't get assigned an unmanageable and unsafe number of patients per shift. There's been some progress with negotiations, and the governor of the state is putting pressure on both sides to end the strike soon, but Providence continues to hold out on key issues.

As a float pool nurse, every shift I go to whatever floor is understaffed. In nearly every unit I've been to, there have been patients who still be in the ICU, getting one to one care. But because we don't have enough critical care staff, we transfer them to lower levels of care so that even sicker patients can get beds. This is not safe for patients or staff. And it's not just medical safety. It takes time to talk out a problem instead of calling security, or to help someone with severe mobility issues go to the bathroom, or to sit with someone crying. The kind of care that makes you feel like a person, not just a patient, takes time. The more patients I have per shift, the less time I have for each of them.

A strike is our strongest negotiating tactic. And as long as we're on strike, we're not getting paid. The longer you don't get paid, the harder it is to not cross the picket line. We're already out two paychecks so far. A lot of people cannot afford to lose that much income. As the primary income earner for our household: GOD I would love to make money again. That is what Providence is banking on. They're losing a TON of money during this strike, but they've got deeper pockets than their workers. They are betting that they can survive the strike longer than the union can.

You can support the strike by donating to the Oregon Nurses Association's hardship fund which provides money to caregivers so they don't have to scab. (I'll put a link in a reblog I'll make right after posting this.) There's also a public petition you can sign that I'll also link. And if you're in the Portland area, we've got picket lines at like nine different places at any given point. Even just awareness is helpful. Providence wants people to be angry at the striking healthcare workers, not them.

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Taste is the most important factor in nutrition.

Because you get the most nutrients from the foods you'll actually eat.

So add cheese, oil, spices, vinegar, sauces, etc. Try them roasted or sauteed or pureed, etc.

The actual secret to eating lots of fruits and veggies and other nutrient dense foods is:

Make them taste good. That's literally it.

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this isn't a project I work on super regularly but I was pleased with how the character acting turned out here and wanted to share

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as people are gearing up for gardening and might be doing it for the first time, psa that if you're filling up raised beds of any significant size, it's almost definitely going to be cheaper to buy soil in bulk from a nursery/landscaping place than to buy it bag by bag from a store.

learn from my mistakes and inspect the soil first (mine has more clay and small stones than i would prefer, but it's still fine), but i paid like. a third of what i would have had to if i had bought it bag by bag from a store.

go forth and plants, friends.

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Whgskl. Okay.

PSA to all you fantasy writers because I have just had a truly frustrating twenty minutes talking to someone about this: it’s okay to put mobility aids in your novel and have them just be ordinary.

Like. Super okay.

I don’t give a shit if it’s high fantasy, low fantasy or somewhere between the lovechild of Tolkein meets My Immortal. It’s okay to use mobility devices in your narrative. It’s okay to use the word “wheelchair”. You don’t have to remake the fucking wheel. It’s already been done for you.

And no, it doesn’t detract from the “realism” of your fictional universe in which you get to set the standard for realism. Please don’t try to use that as a reason for not using these things.

There is no reason to lock the disabled people in your narrative into towers because “that’s the way it was”, least of all in your novel about dragons and mermaids and other made up creatures. There is no historical realism here. You are in charge. You get to decide what that means.

Also:

“Depiction of Chinese philosopher Confucius in a wheelchair, dating to ca. 1680. The artist may have been thinking of methods of transport common in his own day.”

“The earliest records of wheeled furniture are an inscription found on a stone slate in China and a child’s bed depicted in a frieze on a Greek vase, both dating between the 6th and 5th century BCE.[2][3][4][5]The first records of wheeled seats being used for transporting disabled people date to three centuries later in China; the Chinese used early wheelbarrows to move people as well as heavy objects. A distinction between the two functions was not made for another several hundred years, around 525 CE, when images of wheeled chairs made specifically to carry people begin to occur in Chinese art.[5]”

“In 1655, Stephan Farffler, a 22 year old paraplegic watchmaker, built the world’s first self-propelling chair on a three-wheel chassis using a system of cranks and cogwheels.[6][3] However, the device had an appearance of a hand bike more than a wheelchair since the design included hand cranks mounted at the front wheel.[2]

The invalid carriage or Bath chair brought the technology into more common use from around 1760.[7]

In 1887, wheelchairs (“rolling chairs”) were introduced to Atlantic City so invalid tourists could rent them to enjoy the Boardwalk. Soon, many healthy tourists also rented the decorated “rolling chairs” and servants to push them as a show of decadence and treatment they could never experience at home.[8]

In 1933 Harry C. Jennings, Sr. and his disabled friend Herbert Everest, both mechanical engineers, invented the first lightweight, steel, folding, portable wheelchair.[9] Everest had previously broken his back in a mining accident. Everest and Jennings saw the business potential of the invention and went on to become the first mass-market manufacturers of wheelchairs. Their “X-brace” design is still in common use, albeit with updated materials and other improvements. The X-brace idea came to Harry from the men’s folding “camp chairs / stools”, rotated 90 degrees, that Harry and Herbert used in the outdoors and at the mines.[citation needed]

“But Joy, how do I describe this contraption in a fantasy setting that wont make it seem out of place?”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince FancyPants McElferson propelled forwards using his arms to direct the motion of the chair.”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince EvenFancierPants McElferson used to get about, pushed along by one of his companions or one of his many attending servants.”

“But it’s a high realm magical fantas—”

“It was a floating chair, the hum of magical energy keeping it off the ground casting a faint glow against the cobblestones as {CHARACTER} guided it round with expert ease, gliding back and forth.”

“But it’s a stempunk nov—”

“Unlike other wheelchairs he’d seen before, this one appeared to be self propelling, powered by the gasket of steam at the back, and directed by the use of a rudder like toggle in the front.”

Give. Disabled. Characters. In. Fantasy. Novels. Mobility. Aids.

If you can spend 60 pages telling me the history of your world in innate detail down to the formation of how magical rocks were formed, you can god damn write three lines in passing about a wheelchair.

Signed, your editor who doesn’t have time for this ableist fantasy realm shit.

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Quick reminder that it's always morally correct to punch nazis.

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Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!

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this is a typo in a textbook written by the professor of this class, it cost me $105, i will be sharing with the world

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was thinking about that one blind professor post earlier today and how well it applied to the aptly named Team Dark

(really 'Team Dark' just sounds a lot cooler than 'Team Saves-On-Electricity')

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im sure someone already made a post about it but i came across a ublock origin add-on that blacklists around 950 AI websites and disables AI overview ☝️ so u can be free from seeing AI in your search

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me if you gave me a burger

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