#Things I learned today

[thehmn]

Was it naive of me to assume I’d never see Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jet Li play a gay couple in an action movie?

[ana-chronista]

Loving the rice pudding controversy right now, because here it's probably the least controversial dish going and it honestly never occurred to me that it might cause such divided reactions.

[bandedironically]

Dickite is a white clay mineral commonly developed by weathering with a crystal habit of compound massive aggregate pseudohexagonal sheets only identifiable by x-ray diffraction.

[quietmack]

Simple Thoughts

In order for the body to heal, it needs to rest. I knew that with exercise and lifting, but never releasing trauma...

[captainlaurence]

How the significance of Talleyrand visiting the Empress at Fontainebleau slipped past me the last three read through is embarrassing.

[booklindworm]

Germans don't say "you're pissing me off"

they say instead "you're pissing me on"

[sjwallin]

More facts

I didn’t know cheetahs meow I’ve always thought they roar my whole life has been a lie

[niohayato]

she annular on my throbber till i chrome…

[fat-manatee-fun]

I just learned when you block someone (on mobile) you can flick that little green box that says their gone. Try it on your local naughty bot today

[performing-personhood]

So there I was, strolling through dyspraxia tumblr and looking for relatable anecdotes to help me in my ongoing quest to answer the age-old question "Do I Have This Or Am I Just Bad At Being Corporeal" as one does

When I was suddenly introduced to the concept of visual novels

And as an old fuck* (complimentary, see also "George Carlin") I was pretty excited

Because Back In My Day™️ (the late 90s) there was, once upon a time for a very hot second there, a genre of video game called the FMV or Full-Motion Video game. This was a stunning new form of computer game animation wherein actual human actors were filmed by real cameras, the footage was converted to what amounted to a bitmap sprite, and inserted into the game world usually as a cutscene. They were all puzzle-based adventure games and they were the fucking tits my dudes. Sometimes you could still risk dying mid-game but that certainly wasn't the norm in my experience.

Like nobody talks about them so culture is slowly forgetting they exist but i remember

(I miss New San Fransisco. Tex Murphy was the fucking man.)

And I was like, fucking finally it's about time the fmv-style adventure game came back, I knew society would be ready one day for engaging games that don't require fast-twitch muscle responses and being shot at for fun

Ayway this is absolutely not what visual novels are. They're like the glorified flash Manga dating-sim games of my youth. Text based but over still imagery.

So that was a disappointment. I'm glad they have a market, obviously, and yay for people liking stuff!

But I guess maybe I'm using this opportunity to make the case for FMV-style adventure games. You younguns go do some research into the Tex Murphy games. Bring back time-limitless adventure puzzlers, where if I get the puzzle wrong it will kill me Indiana Jones style but nobody is actively trying to wax me off the planet's surface. Actually, maybe someone should make one.

We old fucks would play the hell out of it and love to support you.

Okay now get off my lawn.

[errantindy]

The broom method was used by the Navy to detect high pressure steam leaks aboard ships. The high pressure steam could cut a broom stick in half, so the broom stick would be waved down the corridor at the head of a repair party to ensure THEY weren’t cut in half.

[giantkillerjack]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

[plain-text version of this post can be found under the cut]

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

Plain-text version:

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

P.S. Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

[thoughtfulnoise]

I HAVE DISCOVERED….

 Apparently, when the first movie theater opened, it was called a nickelodeon. A NICKELODEON!!!  I thought it was just a name someone pulled out of thin air, when they wanted to create the company for children.

[hammy-fan]

when i suck in my stomach i can see my artery beating

[bongwater20]

STRETCHING

Everyone says it's good for you, common knowledge really. And most of my life I've been pretty flexible so every month or three I'd do a little yoga then forget and a few months later do it again and all was well.

Now I'm old and sometimes my lower back yells FUCK YOU! at me for standing up or picking up my 10 pound dog, so the whole "occasional" part of stretching wasn't doing the trick.

So I have discovered that if you move as many parts of you in a circle as you possibly can at least 5x, you will shockingly find that things hurt way less and it doesn't take much time or effort.

Things to stretch by rotating in a circle:

Head - aim for a gentle, full stretch in all 4 directions for 5 circles, reverse for 5 circles. Then go sit down and feel good about exercising.

Lower Back - put your arms above your head, bend to 90 degrees and rotate just like you did for your head yesterday. Gentle full stretch foward, to the right side, to the back, to the left side. 5 times. Then the other way. All done, go get a smoothie and relax.

Arms - Remember middle school? Hell yeah! Both arms at the same time, 5 small circles forward, 5 small circles back BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! 5 big circles forward, 5 big circles back. WHOOSH! That was a workout! Go take a nap, you've earned it.

Legs, Feet, Hands too. Same principle. Fingers, toes and any other dangly bits might be pushing it, but go for it if you're into that!

I know I wrote this in a joking manner, but I'm dead serious. If you will stretch your major appendages every day - taking less than 5 minutes, it will go a LONG way towards making your body hurt less if you have ordinary aches and pains.

Then when you don't hurt too much, you can maybe do a little more, but that's up to you.

[heart-eyed-bitch]

if you ever wondered if it actually makes a difference when face masks have a fancy silver color or something: it does!!! appearently the pigment is there so u dont look like your face is just covered in cum!!