#From Gym to Street

[newsera]

Fashionable Activewear: From Gym to Street, Blurring the Boundaries : Newsera21 -

 The rise of athleisure has reshaped how we approach fashion, offering a seamless blend of comfort, functionality, and style. Today, activewear is not just about performance.

[girderednerve]

The French capital faces an unprecedented emergency housing crisis. Paris’ homelessness hotline — the 115 — receives roughly 13,500 calls every day, but only 10 percent of callers are able to get emergency housing. Every evening at 6 p.m., dozens of unhoused people flock to the Hôtel de Ville in central Paris, where the charity Utopia 56 helps match them with Parisians who have a spare bed — but the association is overwhelmed by demand. Meanwhile, evictions of informal living spaces in the Île-de-France region — which includes Paris and its suburbs — doubled over the past four years. The number of unhoused people increased by about 500 in the past year.

The approach of the Olympic Games has exacerbated these trends. Statistics from civil rights groups show a troubling rise in evictions over the past year as the city has prepared for the global event that will bring 14 million tourists to Paris starting in late July. While official numbers on displacement are hard to come by, the Observatory on Evictions from Informal Living Spaces, a research group, counted 138 expulsions in the Île-de-France between April 2023 and May 2024, affecting roughly 12,545 people, an increase of about 40 percent compared with two years prior. A government spokesperson, Christophe Noël du Payrat, told the New York Times that authorities had evicted roughly 5,000 people in the past year, most of them single men.

For this story, I spoke with more than a dozen unhoused or precariously housed Paris residents, as well as charity workers, researchers and public officials. The upcoming Olympics, they all suggested, have provided Paris a neat deadline for accelerating processes of urban renewal — and displacement — that were already underway in an effort to sanitize the city for tourists. The Games, which the International Olympic Committee have hailed as a “new model” that is at once “ambitious, spectacular, open to all, but also more responsible, more sustainable, more supportive and more inclusive,” could have been an opportunity to address chronic homelessness, they lamented. Instead, the city started ramping up evictions.

[kibibarel]

Good luck on this fine Popplio comm day today Kibi! 🦭

it's 95 degrees out today and there is only one (1) Pokestop within walking distance at my new place

[adore-gregor]

🙄🫠

[eternal-night-owl]

TW: ED (ish) thoughts

One of my coworkers was super nice and got us coffee and donut holes today. At first it didn't bother me but then I started feeling bloated throughout the day and now I'm feeling anxious about weighing myself tomorrow. I didn't even go over my calorie limit but I'm still terrified that I put on weight since I last checked, especially since it's been happening steadily even though I've been being *more* careful if anything.

I might just end up putting it off until the next day because I don't want to see a higher number and freak out.

[gayspock]

i havent been to the gym since i moved out & i wanna get active again but fr -_- i feel like everything is too much faff, too expensive or something that will bore me to tearssssss

[crystalprofessor]

headcanon; rewriting an old one I lost in the purge. (It actually does still exist on my headcanon sideblog but it's old and stinky so we're replacing it anyway.) Battling! League Rules, Pokemon Moves, and Street Battling!

All battles fall into one of two categories: League, which is anything officially regulated by the League itself, and Street, what we as players of pokémon would refer to as random trainer encounters. At least, that's the surface level definition of it. In actuality, Street Battling is more of a subculture within pokémon trainers.

"Street Battling" as a term was coined around when the modern Pokémon League and Gym System was first established, but as it encompasses basically all battles prior to that point, it goes without saying that it had existed for about as long as people have been doing competitive pokémon battling. In fact, the League—or at least the Gym and Championship system, which we'll just assume is what I mean when I say 'League' from here on out—was sort of established in response to Street Battling.

As competitive battling became more and more popular among trainers and organized competition began to take off, the League was born out of a necessity to regulate it, mainly to mitigate possible damage and injuries to participants. These standards have changed a lot since the old days, but broadly, what they define are the limits of a battlefield, definitions of what constitutes a "legal" move, restrictions on how many pokémon could battle at a time, what counts as a pokémon being incapable of battle, and so forth. You know, sports stuff. A lot of that is self explanatory, so we're gonna focus on the one that sounds the most confusing: Moves.

"Abby, don't pokémon just Inherently Know Moves?" Well, yeah, sure, but that's abstraction for the sake of a video game. (Pokémon but with Nintendogs rules where you have to reinforce what you mean by "vine whip" by saying it into the crappy little speaker repeatedly and praying your bulbasaur understands would probably get old fast.) In reality, trainers have to... well, train their pokémon. They're all capable of doing those things, obviously, but the exact conditions and circumstances under which they use them are the matter of League regulation. Basically: you can use your bulbasaur's vines to whack the other guy's pokémon, and that's a legal move called Vine Whip, but you can't use them as a tripwire. Using Ice Beam to attack another pokémon directly is fine, but using it to create a slippery surface? Illegal until relatively recently. It also puts some limits on how intense certain moves are allowed to be, such as Earthquake, in the interest of making sure spectators and trainers don't come to any harm. (Fun fact! 'Dig' was not a legal move for a surprisingly long time. It was pretty controversial when it was finally added, but nowadays you wouldn't know as it's basically a staple.)

So, in short, the league defined a number of "legal" moves usable in official battles, mainly defined by the capabilities of pokémon native to whatever region they were regulating, so on and so forth. It was pretty rudimentary in the early days, honestly, and so it didn't really take off much at first. At least not until the League started cracking down a bit more on enforcing these regulations outside of official battles in order to normalize them. Trainers battling outside of League Facilities could be hit with strikes on their trainer cards or even fines and jail time depending on the "severity". You know, like how jaywalking was a made up crime to make cars the norm. There is something to be said for the reduction of injuries after these practices became standard, but most experts nowadays agree it was pretty excessive.

Anyway, moving on, the League Standard would eventually become the accepted norm and very rarely would you see trainers deviating from them. One vs. one battles, with a restricted selection of usable moves, limitations on how much you could alter the battlefield, and predetermined boundaries for battling within. Which, in turn, made the league way more popular, because—duh, everybody already knows the rules! It lowered the barrier to entry and made the Gym Battle a standard challenge.

But you know who hates being told what to do? That's right, punk-ass teens! Well, alright, the trainers who popularized the modern Street Battle format were not, in fact, all teens, but it was associated with that sort of counterculture in the same way skateboarding was for a long time. Trainers who were frustrated with the restrictive and oftentimes repetitive nature of League Battles would host unsanctioned tournaments with looser rules (in varying degrees), oftentimes hosted in "non-standard" battlefields, such as densely forested areas, steep cliffs, back streets, and other areas with more obstacles and challenges than the League Standard open battlefield. This counterculture of "Street Trainers," as they were called, became pretty popular, even as League regulations loosened somewhat with the advancement of research and technology.

Street Battling remains a pretty popular trainer subculture and has been able to make the move to be less "underground" in the years since it originated. While the image associated with it still tends to be reckless teens breaking the rules for fun, the Street Battle scene is actually most popular with very experienced trainers looking to shake the "meta" of what does and doesn't work in League Battles and get to test the limits of their pokémons' abilities and their own skills as a trainer. Formats like double, triple, and rotation battles were officially added to most leagues after being popularized by the Street Battling community, and several facilities, like the Battle Towers, were established by the league in an interest of catering to such trainers.

Now, most Street Battle rules are completely determined by the individuals organizing tournaments, preferences of the trainers involved, the actual limitations of where they are, etc.—but there are two pretty universally accepted rules that the community abides by.

First—don't do anything that'll get you arrested and/or killed, stupid. You'd think it would go without saying, but some people need reminding. Causing any major property damage (that you'll get caught for), trespassing in actively dangerous locations (such as active construction sites), and doing any permanent harm to the other party are all examples of taboos that most seasoned street trainers will give you the boot for. (Trespassing on the whole can be a bit controversial, but most will ignore it as long as the location is confirmed to be safe. Nobody's really going to get mad for hosting your tournament in the empty husk of an old shopping mall or something as long as you keep it subtle enough that nobody's getting caught.)

Second—the only League regulation that is universally abided by is the definition of a "faint," the point at which a pokémon is no longer fit to battle. This is because the League Standard is, 100%, a pretty thoroughly-researched safety regulation. While most pokémon can, in theory, continue battling beyond the point of a faint, they absolutely should not as it risks severe and permanent harm. This is one that, if you break, you will almost certainly immediately be ejected from the group and not welcomed back. Trainers who do this are more or less blacklisted from local Street Battling communities.

[funfactory-moved]

i need to start going to the gym again so bad but the mental block of “idk how long this is going to take me and how to plan my day around it so it makes me stressed” is soooo hard to get over <3

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[monstrousmaws]

I play Pokémon go and there’s a gym right across the street from my house, so obviously, it’s my gym. If you aren’t team Yellow you can’t put your Pokémon there because it’s mine. Obviously people ignore that and conquer it anyway because they are rude, so I keep having to kick them out because it’s mine and they’re being rude and stealing it

[prolibytherium]

Absolute magical moment driving home. Going down a dark parkway. See something moving on the side of the road so I slow down. Two 20-something dudes in weirdly matching tank tops and gym shorts carrying a dead deer along the side of the road, one guy holding the front legs the other guy moving the back. Not just like moving it out of the street, they were fully walking to destinations unknown with deer corpse in tow. No vehicles parked anywhere along the road. No fucking idea what they were doing with it. Both dudes looking directly into the headlights with blank expressions. One guy had sunglasses on his forehead. Dead deer eyeshine catching the light. “In Your Eyes” Peter Gabriel blasting from my car the whole time which isn't directly relevant but really added to the experience.

[roseband]

...

[gor3sigil]

Before starting T, when I socially transitionned, I was surrounded by radical feminists who saw masculinity as gross and inherently evil, something to avoid, something to make fun of, something to destroy. The other transmascs in my friend group, sometimes, told me that they didn’t knew if they really were non-binary or if they just were scared shitless of saying “I am a man”. Because they saw this as a betrayal to their younger self who had been SAd and abused.

I saw many of my masc friends and trans men around me hate themselves, not outing themselves as men because it would imply so so much, it was like opening the Pandora Box. Even when we were just together, talking about our masculinity was always coated with bits like “I know we’re the privileged ones but…”, “I don’t want to sound like I have it bad but…”, “Women obviously have it worse, but last time…” and we were talking about terrible traumas we experienced while taking all the precautions in the world in the case the walls were a crowd of people in disguise waiting to get us if we didn’t downplay the violence we faced, or like crying and being upset and being traumatized and afraid and scared and to say it out loud would make us throw up the needles we were forced to swallow every second of every day living in our skin.

Most of us weren’t on T yet, some of us were catcalled every day and harassed in the streets or in abusive relationships nobody seemed to care to help them get out of because they were “strong enough” to do it by themselves.

I was using the gender swap face app and cried for ours when I saw my father looking back at me through the screen. The idea of transforming, of shedding into a body that would deprive me of love, tenderness, and safety, was absolutely terrifying. I knew I couldn’t stay in this body any longer because it wasn’t mine, but I also knew that if I was going to look like my dad, my brother, my abusers, it would be so much worse.

5 years later and I’m almost 2 years on T, and almost 2 months post top surgery.

I ditched my previous group of friends. I was bullied out of my local trans community. But let me tell you how free I am.

I was scared that T would break my singing voice: it made it sound more alive than ever.

I was scared that T would make me less attractive: it made me find myself hot for the first time in my life.

I was scared that T would make me gain weight: it did. But the weight I put on is not the weight I used to put on by binging and eating my body until I forgot that it even existed. It’s the weight of my body belonging to me, little by little. The wolf hunger for life.

I won’t tell you the same story I see everywhere, the one that goes “I started going to the gym 8 times a week, I put on some muscles, I started a diet and now I look like an action film actor”, in fact if you took pictures of me from 5 years ago vs now I’d just have more acne, I’d have longer hair and still look like I don’t know what to do with myself when I take selfies.

But the sparkle in my eyes, my smile, tell the whole story way better than this long ass stream of words could ever.

I want to say some things that I wish someone told me before starting medically transitionning.

It’s okay to take your time. It’s your body, it’s your journey, if you don’t feel comfortable taking full doses and want to go slow, the only voice you need to listen to is your own. Do what feels right.

If you feel overwhelmed, it’s okay to take a break, it’s okay to ask for support.

Trans people are holy. Everyone is. You didn’t lose your angel wings when you came out because you want to be masculine. You are not excluded from the joy of existence, from being proud of yourself, from being sad, from being scared, from being angry. The emotions and feelings you allowed yourself to feel while processing what you experienced when you grew up as a girl and was seen as a woman are still as valid as before. Nobody can take that from you. If someone tries to, don’t let them.

It’s perfectly normal to grieve some things you were and had before you started to transition, like your high soprano voice or even your chest. Hatching is painful. You can find comfort in things that don’t feel right, so making the decision to change can be incredibly scary and weird and you deserve to be heard and supported through this. Wanting top surgery doesn’t make the surgery less intense, less terrifying, less painful to recover from. When it becomes too much you have the right to take a break and take some deep breaths before going on.

You don’t have to have a radical, 180° change for your transition to be acceptable or valid or worthy of praise. Look at how far you’ve come already. It doesn’t have to show, you’re not made to be a spectacle, you’re human and it is your journey.

Oh, and last thing, you know when some people say “Oh this trans person has to grow out of the cringy phase where you think that you can write essays about being trans or transitionning or just their experience because it’s weird” ? If you ever hear this or see this online, remember all the people whose writing you read and, even if they were not professional writers, helped you more than any theorists did ? If you want to write, do it. It won’t be a waste. It can help people. Or it won’t, and even then, if it helped you, that’s enough.

Love every of my trans siblings, take care of yourselves. You deserve the world.

[husbo-venus]

oooooooooo I have had ENOUGH of these grindr boys

[phagodyke]

ahh.. I have tickets for a small music festival tmr which I went to last year + had a whale of a time but this year theres only like 2 artists I wanted to see but they released the schedule a couple days ago and neither are playing before 9:30pm. since I don't live local anymore I'd have to leave to travel back home around that time or I'd miss the last train... and there's not rly anywhere I can crash overnight there (and I was planning on going alone anyway like I did last year). so I think im gonna have to let this one pass me by :-(

[angryborzois]

left school early during a storm that was an adventure