pearlofmydreams

[pearlofmydreams]

things I expected from watching glass onion with my family: a fun evening with a movie I know we’ll all enjoy

things I did not expect from watching glass onion with my family: my mother going on a 15 minute rant about how much she hates Hugh grant (based on his 15 seconds of screen time) and how Benoit Blanc deserves better, and then my dad defending Hugh Grant because he was holding a sourdough starter and that’s the ‘sign of a caring partner’

[pearlofmydreams]

i love ppl who talk in the tags bc it satisfies my deep desire to know ppl’s opinions on everything without needing to have a conversation with them and ask. even better when it’s a side tangent that barely has anything to do with the post, or a personal anecdote, or a joke. tag talker mutuals you’re my favorite. tag talkers rise up

[pearlofmydreams]

I'd like to be angry right now. may I be angry right now? fuck it, I'm going to be angry right now.

I use my local food bank. I get about half my food each month from them, thus freeing up budget to spend more on the animals in my care. Given the choice, I will always do without rather than making *them* do without.

I have TWENTY full sized milk crates and two large boxes FULL of food to pick up on Tuesday. Not for *me*... for my *animals*.

See, one day while picking up my own stuff from the food bank, one of the volunteers went through a case of fresh produce and removed the squishy cucumbers and zucchini to throw away, and I said, hey, if they're going to throw that out, they can just toss it in a bag and I will take it and feed it to my livestock. The volunteer looked like I had just offered him the key to the city or something.

"Can you come every week?"

So, this is how I now have a deal that the food bank tosses anything that's too expired or too far gone into a box each week, and once a week, I go down and pick up random special treats for my sheep and cows and birds and horse, because none of them care of that box of cereal expired three years ago, or the apples are mushy and half fermented.

USUALLY I have one, maybe two boxes to pick up. But, you see, the local scouts ran a food drive *yesterday*. And so Tuesday, I have TWENTY CRATES and two boxes of shit to pick up. Because it is ALL too expired to give away to humans. ALL OF IT.

Because, apparently, when the locals hear "food drive", what they *understand* is "easy way to clean all the useless shit out of my pantry".

Now, personally, I am grateful for this windfall of free shit for my critters. It's going to take me more than a week to deal with it all, I'm sure, but they *love* expired noodles and buggy cereal and stale stuffing, and anything that's just flat not safe even for them goes into my compost heap rather than a landfill.

But this was supposed to be a food drive for the COMMUNITY, not for my livestock. but apparently poor people (because only poor people use food banks, amirite) should just be grateful for anything, even weevils in their pasta? It's just extra protein after all.

I'm not actually looking forward to spending several days going through every crate individually and checking things, then sorting it and emptying box after box after can after bag into various buckets and totes to feed out, but that's because I'm intrinsically lazy. It's still free food that my livestock *loves*.

BUT. I saw the pictures the scouts posted to facebook, and I saw the pictures the food bank posted to face book, and I feel quite comfortable saying that they are having to send to me AT LEAST a full THIRD of everything that was donated. And that makes me so gods damned mad. (The last food drive, I actually received a box of mac n cheese that expired in 2018. That was a record for me)

Before I came along? All this would have ended up in the food bank's dumpsters, that they pay for. so in that respect, I'm glad that I can do even this much to keep food out of the landfill...

BUT FOOD BANKS ARE NOT DISPOSAL UNITS!

They are not there for you to dump your useless shit on, rather than dealing with it yourself. You're supposed to donate USEABLE SAFE FOOD to the food bank, not the shit you're too lazy to throw away.

So I'm angry on behalf of my local food bank, and my local scouts. All that work... for a literal pallet of *trash*. because poor people deserve whatever they get, apparently.

[pearlofmydreams]

the author's barely disguised lack of socialisation and profound sense of alienation from all other human life

[pearlofmydreams]

the ability to make a Little Thing™ at least once a week is a cornerstone of my mental health

[pearlofmydreams]

My friend insisted she didn't need to rewatch the first Lord of the Rings movie because she still remembered what happened. So I asked her to recap it for me. I'm fucking dying 🤣🤣🤣

Ladies and gentlehobbits, I present to you The Lord of the Rings (according to my friend):

"The world is different. Legends. The ring falls really slowly into the water. The group of travelers and Will Turner find it. Boromir is the magic wizard guy, or he's the elf. Or human. It doesn't matter, he's a minor character. And the movie ends with the one who can't swim in the lake. Also Saruman is the bad one."

Who are the Ringwraiths? "The Ringwraiths want Gollum to have the ring."

And who is Gollum? "He uh... the 'precious' guy. The shriveled guy."

Who is Gandalf? "He's the wizard guy who dies when he fights and runs down some stairs. And he changes colors."

Who's Sauron? "He's the opponent of Gandalf. He's a wizard like Harry."

Rivendell? "Where a group of good people live. Which good people is up for debate." (She didn't ask us this last bit, she stated it.)

Who lives in Rivendell? "Men."

No.

"Dwarves."

No.

"Elves?"

Yes.

"No they don't live there."

Where do dwarves live? "Hobbiton."

Who is Galadriel? "Galadriel is part of legend, he is not around any more."

Who's Arwen? "A really impactful character. She had magic powers."

Who is Bilbo? "He is the one who is holding the ring when the movie sped up a lot because they kept saying 'ring'. Bilbo is the author in the office."

What's Moria? "The opposite of Mordor."

What is the green dragon? "A dragon. A race. A group?"

Who are the Uruk-hai? "Bad people. That's all you need to know."

Who is Peter Jackson? "Knock off Percy Jackson."

[pearlofmydreams]

I'm up to the "I dunno maybe children working 13 hour shifts is bad, guys" part of Capital and it feels important to inform people that haven't read it yet that capitalists in the 19th century were not by any means wringing their hands and twirling their mustaches about employing children to squeeze out profits, they were hiring "experts" to write newspaper articles for them, explaining how "well, the socialists have these big demands about an 8-hour work day, and taking Saturdays off, but it's actually just so complicated, it's too complicated for most people to understand, we just NEED to hire children for night shifts because the stamina of their strong, youthful bodies is the only way we can survive as a business! It's science, you see. Economics doesn't work like that, just ask our economics professors at Oxford. You CAN'T turn a profit only working people 8 hours! Trust the experts, they know. It's just so complicated..."

That exact infuriating cadence that you read in New York Times articles, in the Atlantic Monthly, in the WaPo and all the other bourgeois rags where "everything is so complicated, and it's actually a lot more complicated than you think.." that has been around since the beginning. It is nothing new. So the next time you see some op-ed from Matt Yglesias or any of those other guys huffing their own farts about how "complicated" everything is, and how "unrealistic" a 30-hour work week is, remember that Marx was dealing with that exact class of "intellectuals" "explaining" how working 13 hours at age 10 was "vital" to the "moral fibre" of those poor kids.

[pearlofmydreams]

[pearlofmydreams]

talking about impenetrable accents/dialect just reminded me. when I was in Milan a couple of years back I was staying in this little rathole hotel and I had the biggest fucking migraine, so I was like non c'è problema I'll just go buy painkillers. of course every pharmacy on the map in a three block radius was closed, so my stupid ass just starts wandering around trying to figure out on the fly if you can get OTC from supermarkets in italy.

I walk into this little everything store (to my foreign eyes the kind of place that back home could sell you a bunch of carrots, a 6-pack of beer, pantyhose, bleach and a screwdriver set) and I see some household basics in the back but not what I need. with the confidence of a person who is only in the city for 3 days because he got bored and packed a bag and booked the cheapest flight available the week before (<= MENTAL ILLNESS), I was like no worries I know some italian, I can just ask.

I grab a bottle of water, walk up to the counter, and I'm like Ciao, hai il paracetamolo? And the guy is like che, and I'm like paracetamolo. Per la mia testa. And he's like che?

This is where I would have said 'aspirina' except I can't take aspirin for medical reasons, or 'antidolorifico' except I don't know that word and I've got no phone data for google translate and also I'm stupid. So in my fucked up leith-glasgow-italian accent I'm like paaa-ra-cetta-mollll-ooo. He's like ohhh bene, bene, and he calls another guy out of the back and asks him to go get something. Other guy then walks out of the store into the street, and before I can be like hey, che la fuck, he comes back and hands me a huge bundle of herbs.

At this point I'm like okay this entire interaction has been a bust, but these guys have been very nice and patient and they're both smiling happily at me because they've been of service, so I'm like ahh perfetto, grazie, pay them a couple of euros and leave.

EVENTUALLY I find a pharmacy that's open, and my head is fucking killing me, and my phone still isn't connecting, and now I have this small shrubbery poking out of my coat pocket, so I don't even bother looking around the shelves. I just walk straight to the counter and I'm like uhh ciao, scusi. And hearing my nightmare of an accent the guy answers in english and I'm like thank christ, do you please have paracetamol. Not aspirin, I can't take aspirin. And he's like yeah yeah hold on, goes into the back, comes out with what I need.

Only when he comes out he gives me this look, and then he starts laughing. And then he pretends he's not laughing and rings me up and I pay, and as I'm leaving I can see him losing it. But I don't care, my head is going to explode, I'm going back to the rathole to close the blinds and fall comatose for four hours.

When I get back to my hotel room I take off my coat and remember the huge bouquet of herbs in my pocket. They smell amazing, and I'm like I'm pretty sure this is parsley in which case I can just get some tomatoes and mozzarella later and make it work. but since I have no idea what that interaction was, I want to make sure. I bring out my phone to get a visual reference of what parsley leaves look like, and because I was using it for google translate earlier I put 'parsley' in the wrong box like a dope and translate it to italian.

prezzemolo

I wish I could have been the pharmacist in the moment he looked at my tired pissed off anglophone ass, heard me say 'paracetamol' in my fucked up accent, and turned around saw what was in my pocket. I'd have lost my shit too.

[pearlofmydreams]

[ID: an illustration of stylized rainbow wolves running to the left, overlapping one another with translucent color. End.]

Playing with colors and tangents

[pearlofmydreams]

[pearlofmydreams]

the trick for enjoying a new video game is avoiding the internet’s opinion on it 

[pearlofmydreams]

trump dies of congestive heart failure before being sworn in charge to like cast to reblog

[pearlofmydreams]

[pearlofmydreams]

MASKING MYTHS BUSTED: “Masking = Acting NT.”

FALSE.

Autistic masking does not necessarily mean “pretending to be allistic/neurotypical," although you’d definitely be forgiven for thinking it does.

Non-autistic researchers have been referring to it as “camouflaging” for years, framing it as an intentional choice to suppress autistic traits and replace them with allistic ones in order to “blend in.” Doing an internet search on the term will return several similar results.

But now, Autistic researchers are in the game, and their take is much more nuanced and comprehensive than that. (Funny how that happens, isn’t it?)

They’ve found that:

- It CAN be intentional but is often subconscious and involuntary 

- It is a protective response to trauma and feeling unsafe 

- It is often about suppressing more than just autistic traits 

- It is about identity management and being able to predict how people will treat you, not just “blending in”

Some people will lean into being “the bad kid” because they know that’s what people expect of them. Some people will even act “more autistic” because they know that’s what people expect of them. Others still will do things to attract attention in controllable, more “acceptable” ways to avoid attracting attention in unsafe, more stigmatizing ways. Not because they WANT to be that way, but because it lets them predict people’s responses better, which feels safer.

Also, there are Autistic people who can’t “pass” for non-autistic no matter how hard they try. That doesn’t mean they’re not masking. They may actually be working hard to suppress A LOT, they just can’t do everything to neuronormative standards.

None of these people will be accused of “blending in,” yet they are still masking their hearts out. When we assume they are not, we miss all the harm that masking is causing them. But they are suppressing themselves and suffering the consequences of that just as much as any Autistic person whose mask successfully says, “Hey, I’m just like you!”

(For more on this, please see the work of Dr. Amy Pearson and Kieran Rose.)

[pearlofmydreams]

[pearlofmydreams]

Happy Doctor Who Day to those who celebrate!