#and im being CONSERVATIVE in my estimates

[meanderfall]

a number of part-time workers have been complaining about hearing christmas songs all the time, since about mid-november.

i've barely even noticed. i'm immune this year. and it's not because i've worked retail so long i've gotten used to it. it's because i went through something so much worse this summer.

i had to listen to THIS song, at least 5 times a day because they played it almost every hour, sometimes TWICE within the same hour, 5 days a week, for like 4 months probably. maybe more.

after that, i will gladly listen to the same 5 to 10 christmas songs at work. because you know what? at least they change. and they're easily a million times better than that crap.

[jarring]

hi tumblr how have you been im well thanks. moved in with bae its awesome we live in a really cute place. just got on a waitlist for top surgery conservative estimates state that in roughly two and a half years ill actually go under the knife. celebrating a yearandahalf working in the archive being a ray johnson subject expert. getting to travel for work a bit which is cool. discovered my new least favorite american city (pittsburgh) and all my wisdom teeth grew in straight. going back to italy to see my whole family in the fall that’s going to be awesome. bringing darby with me so they can meet everyone. i think we’ll stop in london on the way back too. luca moved out btw into a full time care facility which was really scary but he actually really likes it and i think at 28 its good to not live with your parents. and its not an institution type place its a beautiful five bedroom house in the country he lives with three other guys with similar diagnoses and two full time live in caretakers about 40 minutes away from where my folks live. my sister is 18 now and shes beautiful and extremely heterosexual and a nurse.

[kuwajima]

I see writers do different perspectives so im curious as to urs

Do u see Zenitsu as the shameless pervert type or the woman respecter type

I’m personally the latter but I’ve seen different ways he’s written

I love this question! Also sorry if there are typos, I’m replying to this at work lol

I don’t think he’s a pervert. The anime certainly plays up his “creepiness” towards girls but overall he doesn’t really exhibit really perverted traits. I think he likes girls a lot, is easily manipulated by girls, and lacks a lot of social skills that would allow an average person to not act like that.

I think the main reason I don’t think he’s a pervert is because Zenitsu’s behavior doesn’t seem to be sexually driven. Not that he isn’t sexually attracted to women (he’s a teenager boy and clearly likes girls) but he’s very specifically looking for a wife and to live a normal life. We know he was taken advantage of by girls over and over again (presumably at an incredibly young age!) with seemingly no reward on his end (he didn’t even hold their hands!) and yet he kept doing it! This happened multiple times before Jigoro found him! On a conservative estimation, that’s 7 “girlfriends” by age 14, but honestly I think Jigoro rescued him at a younger age (there’s no way he learned all that and also got struck by lighting. There had to be some down time…also I’m writing a fic about that down time lol)

Anyway, I get the impression that Zenitsu believes he is expected to get married and thinks that it will resolve a lot of his internal problems if he can behave like a normal person and live a normal life. But as an orphan, he doesn’t really understand what a typical family or married couple looks like, it’s all based on perception or stories. Zenitsu craves affection and stability and honestly, why wouldn’t marriage be the best way to achieve that? I think a lot of the behavior is because he doesn’t really understand how he’s supposed to act and doesn’t realize how is is coming across in the moment. Zenitsu knows people don’t like him, but also doesn’t seem to be able to stop his reactions. Despite being perhaps the most socialized of his friend group, although he understands what is considered polite or acceptable he can’t actually adhere to those guidelines himself. Sorry, this is now a tangent about my perception of Zenitsu’s behavioral issues. I actually did touch on this in the second chapter of my Zenitsu character study! Jigoro asks why Zenitsu wants a girlfriend and he answers in a childish way about wanting to hold her hand and live in a house with her.

He does respect women though. He has a beef with Daki because she hurt a girl! There are also zero scenes of him ogling women while undercover at a literal brothel (he does get flustered when they first arrive to the city, but again it doesn’t seem like he’s sexually excited, he’s flustered about seeing beautiful girls and runs off because he’s overwhelmed) which they easily could have added if they wanted to. But they didn’t, because he’s overall very respectful towards girls. Especially after deciding that he likes Nezuko (who he likes because she is pretty and because Tanjiro describes her as being kind, kinder than any girl Zenitsu has “dated.”) In the light novel, he also fully respects when a girl he thought was into him was clearly involved in someone else. He understands that he misinterpreted her behavior towards him and wishes her the best in her relationship. He doesn’t seem to hold any ill will towards his ex-girlfriend either. The anime has him attempting to flirt with Aoi occasionally (although she is canonically the only type of girl Zenitsu doesn’t like) which I think it intended for laughs but idk if it’s very effective. He really does seem singularly focused on Nezuko in the manga (and according to the light novels, there are plenty of Corp Members who fantasize about having another Corp Member as their girlfriend, to the point that it doesn’t seem weird that he talks about Nezuko “waiting for him,” although the other members don’t think she’s a real girl at all)

IN SUMMARY I think Zenitsu likes girls in a perfectly normal, affection-starved teenage way, but he lacks emotional regulation which makes him seem off-putting. But he’s not perverted, he’s just enthusiastic and we’re used to having perverted anime men in shonen and just expect him to fall into that category despite his behavior not really matching that trope.

I would also argue that he cannot be a shameless pervert because he clearly feels a lot of shame, very often lol

[reorientation]

I'm sure it wouldn't surprise you to know that I haven't even had my first kiss yet either... im like... completely inexperienced. all ive ever had are my fantasies about what kissing and sex is like.. and we now see how thats turning out...

- lesbian virgin anon

(Previously)

You know, while I'm obviously aware that a fair number of my followers are virgins, sometimes I wonder if I can really appreciate what that means.

I mean, I'm a 30 year old man. I lost my virginity over a decade ago. At a conservative estimate, I've come inside a girl a thousand times. This is not to portray myself as some kind of unstoppable fuck machine; I've just spent a lot of time in relationships, and kept them interesting.

But it makes it harder to put myself in the position of someone who's never felt the heat of someone's body joining with theirs - much less the primal heat of the moment when a man fills a woman with his seed. It's easy to forget there was a time I didn't know what it felt like at all.

I'll tell you this, little virgin: it's not what you feel when you imagine it. You can give yourself pleasure by touching your own pussy, and you can have intense fantasies when you're alone. But there's something different in another person's touch, something deep and strong and animal, something which you've never felt.

And there's something I don't feel, but you will... that your little fantasies aren't safely in your head anymore. That there's someone on top of you, far stronger than you, and you're truly at his mercy.

But you've never even been kissed. You haven't had the slightest glimpse of the depth of these feelings. And you're still being remade, just by the fantasy of it.

What do you think will be left of you, sweet little virgin, the first time you feel a man come inside?

[qazastra]

16, 23, 49 <333

16. your bias(es)' best look(s)?

if i were to actually methodically choose my fav looks of everyone i would be here HOURS so im just picking looks i really like. also i only did rie last time lets just do like everyone now why not

really something to be said for this junji. but i LOVED dopamine and skinz hair and also whenever he's styled like a lesbian which is (conservative estimate) half the time.

very much love rie's stars for the '24 sg!!!! he looks so pale though please help me

insane image of yuta here. you know what else was crazy was that rugby shirt and glasses look from walk but i cant find a pic rn

ok i still copy this eye makeup sometimes i LOVEEE it (purple shimmer on the inner corner??? okaaaayyy?????!??!?!) and that hair is so cool thank you taeyong for that...

KIM LIP......... sorry to everyone for being predictable. this stopped me in my tracks first time i saw

i cant find a good pic of pink yangyang OR golden age yy rn just know he's out there. same with miya gwsn just in general i dont have that many pics of her on my blog so i got nothin. thank yuo for listening

23. your favorite choreographies?

cherry bomb when loona did it

watch it tbz they r simply so smooth with the HIII HELLOOOOO

7th sense nct u

libido i LOVEEEE a good prop. also mill's verse omg!! and most everything else

tear drop sf9... taeyang...

more that i am forgetting. i used to have a list somewhere but it's been years and i forgor

49. your favorite kpop songs from this year (2024)?

it was getting long so i just made a playlist coming soon. but out of those,

MY GIRL A.C.E SOTY FOR REAL. 100% SURE ABOUT THIS.

dopamine onlyoneof

virtual angel artms

ape taeyong

diorama yves

(I THINK those r my top 5. impossible riize likely would have replaced ape but well. well) (also idk HOW ape got here it was not my fav at first but it's just so. idk it's good. his pony's lonely in the parking lot)

[sanguinechaos]

cant believe i was so fucking delusional about Flamebringer and Enforcer interacting in some way that it came into existence

actually can we talk about that

listen i already Hortus de Escapismo would be a treat because its a Laterano related event and it involves my wife. actually he got an alter even i knew it i KNEW IT I WAS AN EXALTER TRUTHER AS SOON AS I SAW THAT BOUJEE WINCHESTER 1887 MY FUCKING WIFE IS HOME MY WIFE

and then they dropped the operator records for the Notarial Hall trio and for anyone who has not read those yet tl;dr from somewhat dubiously google translated chinese text:

in Insiders oprecs theres almost an all out brawl over a family heirloom donut recipe. its so funny to me that we all made fun of him cause his halo looked like a donut and he really is Donut Man™

actually his personal donut recipe is so sweet and greasy that the doctor nearly chokes to death on it. im pretty sure if you eat it you can physically feel your arteries popping shut

apparently he likes sweets so much because when they picked him off the streets in some small town bordering siracusa and brought him to laterano they gave him some candy and it just left such an impact on him

do all of you have dead parents is that like a requirement

he has donut pajamas

Executor oprec is kinda cute honestly. this guy is autistic. he has joined the war on autism on the side of the autism. anyway what we learned is that apparently his lack of empathy (as in the sanktas 6th sense) is something hes had from birth and not in fact due to his job as an executor

and also he has always had a black halo and wings. according to the manhua they also dropped his entire extended family has black halo/wings it has absolutely fuck all to do with him being willing to kill sankta if his job necessitates it its just genetic

he doesnt actually have that much of a problem recognizing what people are feeling, its more that he has trouble piecing together cause and effect or what those emotions mean to people. and his parents (before their tragic demise) taught him to like draw shapes on paper matching different emotions to parse it? cute

anyway the other executor that was on a mission with him when he was still a rookie bites the dust and Executor takes it so so so seriously and fucking tries to eat 100 scoops of ice cream because his senpai made a joke and he was just like "okay so that can count as a last will and testament i guess" like babe. babe. he applied for executive gelato funding

and they leave us hanging but i genuinely wonder how many he managed to eat before he probably vomited and couldnt see gelato for the next 3 months

Federico Giallo? no. Federico Gelato

also hes only around ~25 as of Exalter

Enforcer goes around asking various sarkaz about Kazdel cause obviously hes intending to go look for Cecelias dad with her

actual live reaction as soon as i saw 炎客 BEYONCE?! FLAMEBRINGER?!

Flamebringer is a wanted criminal the Notarial Hall has his mugshot on the office notice board (which tells me that there is NO WAY that Executor doesnt KNOW him or about him please i am so delulu rn Lowlight i fucking beg you let them interact kiss. violently suck face, even. "Dino wasnt this a 炎见 post?" if you were paying attention to my Twitter youd know i really like 葬炎见 in that exact order but ill take any combination of just two of them) and also he absolutely does not give a shit he just keeps watering the plants while Enfocer talks at him

Enforcer gets slammed against a wall and maybe choked a little unbelievable and Flamebringer is like "go bug someone else, blood is not for watering flowers" like oof ouch the edge on this guy

Mudmud helps Enfocer in the end tho :)

also he might be like 19 while my conservative estimate was at least 25 i THOUGHT the Notarial staff had law degrees now i get why everyone in Guide Ahead was like "waow, so young :o and already an executor!"

[grantihare]

update on mordred: he needs a femoral head ostectomy, which (as far as i understand) will just remove the broken bit and heal much easier than getting him the pins in his bone. none of the veterinary hospitals the er recommended are open today, so i wont have a real quote or know when i can get him fixed up until i can make the calls tomorrow, but the er vet said it can be between 3-5k. google is a little more conservative with it being 1.5-3k, so im going with 3k as our estimate right now.

were very, very lucky that the er visit came out to just below what we were able to cover with help from family, but that means were pretty much wiped. well be applying for care credit once we have our cost estimate, and therell be a donation post properly made then as well.

mordred has painkillers and were making him a little "safehouse" where nimue cant bother him out of a dog crate borrowed from my mom. hell have everything he needs in there. its the best we can do until everything reopens tomorrow, but it still feels like its not enough.

if anyone has any tips on making it more comfortable for him in there, id deeply appreciate it. we live in whats essentially a studio and it means that the crate is the only way to eliminate high surfaces for him, which the vet recommended to help keep him as pain free as possible. hes got food and water, his own low litterbox, and a big soft bed in there. hes basically unable to move, so suggestions to keep him from being bored to death would be amazing.

[vaperarmand]

Oh lmao theatre school kid here. Cult like space w sleep deprivation, weird intimacy exercises, stuff happened. Apart from actual romantic showmances were the Weird ones where our orientations didn’t mix so we couldn’t just fuck about how obsessed we were w each other. (I’m a kinsey 6 so this happened frequently) I did (platonically) attempt to conceive human life w one friend years after school ended, but the weirder one was being so in mutual obsession w this one guy, we’d have to drive for HOURS every single night after rehearsal talking because we couldn’t leave each other alone, got drunk on a family member’s grave together once. Guy he was seeing at the time wrote me a really beautiful love letter. Like again, platonic but also a strange and different thing like a spore of mold that only grows in black box theaters. INTENSE, always. Everyone was in at least three or four of these before graduation and that’s a conservative estimate. I don’t think my experiences are unique I think that’s just what theatre school is like.

im so. this is so. asdjbsdjfbhjbdfjhbdsf. this is literally everything i wanted to hear. thank you. as a band and debate kid my weird high school relationship dynamics were only theater adjacent although i want to say that the stuff going on in my theater department was more exclusively nasty rather than psychosexual in this way. or if it was psychosexual it was in the way of like. almost everyone in my circle was gay and closeted as hell so we were all just Doing Our Best.

anyway i do believe you've summed up the shennant dynamic completely because they are at the end of the day two theater kids who want to be bisexual so they could fuck each other. reflecting.

[figureinthedistance]

I think one of the things about evil im finding increasingly important to remain aware of is there is no tipping point like once someone has passed the threshold into evil no moral concerns will be persuasive to stop them from doing further evil. Not to speak authoritatively about morality this is just how im thinking recently. For different reasons but many related to the genocide of palestinians like there has never been any reason for israel to restrain or slow its violence there has never been any reason for its allies to roll back their complicity. Even as things keep getting worse and more horrific anyone capable of doing what was being done in october is capable of doing what is being done now. there is no moral compass that would allow one and not the other. Naively im still kind of surprised. All the genocide denial in the media and im still shocked the lancet conservatively estimating 8% of gazas population has been killed received no coverage. and I keep expecting certain individuals who support israel to at some point be pushed too far. Basically im just trying to erase the reaction "i knew you were evil just not that evil" from my repertoire. Anyone evil is that evil.

[mejomonster]

One thing I DO admire about like bodice ripper light historical romances? U can finish reading them in a day

[obm-avenquire]

oh i think about this CONSTANTLY. part of my endless difficulty with om is the timeline, tbh!! we know that the war must have happened a While Ago since (chapter 16 spoilers) lilith died long enough ago that tracing back the generations to mc was difficult and considered time consuming to barbatos, so i think we can assume at the absolute LEAST 4 generations which i think is a pretty conservative estimate (especially when considering that it was hard to tell mc even had any angel genes/soul bits/whatever in them, and the devs needed to make sure to dilute the relation hard enough that romance with the brothers wasnt made even weirder) which would place things back by around 100 years assuming the kids were always had in early 20s.

given the celestial realms (and the devildom, but more the celestial realms) seemingly mostly absent relationship with technology, i think its safe to say that the war wouldve mostly been fought with weapons closer to things like spears (since raphael still uses those), catapults and swords and so on and so forth. maybe cannonballs or more technologically advanced things, albeit powered and created through magic rather than mechanisms. fashion and uniforms im under the impression hasnt changed much in a long time, given that the brothers angel forms are considered normal to current celestial realm fashion UNLESS what we see simeon and luke and raphael be more equivalent to a formal/traditional wear/uniform as they are technically ambassadors, which means that we have no fucking clue really since traditional clothing in the human world alone can often go back to 100′s of years old designs, so theres no telling how far something might go back for beings that live near forever

THAT BEING SAID. there is nothing to say that the mentions of “time working different for demons” not being much more literal than we might assume! rather than living for exceedingly long times, i don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible for the three realms to be, well, different realms, that each operate under their own rules of time and logic - which is why plants can grow fine in a place like the devildom without a sun, and why no one seems to age. if time is just going incredibly slowly, whos to say it hasn’t close to stopped? maybe that’s why it’s always night in the devildom and day in the celestial realm? that could also offer a partial explanation to solomons longevity - sure he had the whole potion thing, but maybe spending time outside of the human realm means that he just. hasn’t aged for the time he was away. this also gives logic as to why there might not be any issue with mc being taken away for a year or so for school - time just...won’t pass for humans, relatively, and they could come back like..the next day or some equivalent. (which technically is pushing the other direction time wise, but it’s magic the rules arent exactly set in stone)

[on a minor time related complaint, in a certain flashback scene i remember it being mentioned that lillith belphegor and beelzebub were often asked to get manga from the human realm for levi, which always irritated me because unless obey me is set like...a century or more in the future, that physically wouldnt be possible, since manga as we know it and comics in general didnt really exist until the last century or two, and given the aforementioned generational thing with lilith, it...just isn’t possible. and if it’s set in the future, then simeons book series is EVEN more confusing, even if you ignore how simeon wrote things into the books that parraleled real world events that he should have had no clue about, tsl is canonically said to have 135 volumes, with the ones covered in the early chapters being only the first 7. even if we ignore that thats a stupid number of full length novels to be in a series, levi specifically mentions a 1990s theatrical adaptation and a 2015 movie. meaning that we are at least past that point and it would mean this series has been running for over a century which just wouldnt make sense given that simeon is still writing, and i dont think people would be that accepting of an author managing to continue for that long EVEN IF it’s numerous people/generations operating under the same pseudonym.]

travel i think is just the equivalent of a series of bubbles. each bubble is a realm which covers it’s own playing field, so the human world covers our known universe, but there’s occasional crossover or the possibilities for portals to be opened up to each world. the train going from the devildom to the human world is just the equivalent of driving through a train tunnel with magic as far as im concerned. i choose to treat the individual realms as the equivalent of minecraft portals. each area has its own atmosphere and nature and so on and so forth! seperate dimensions in their own right. given that the characters all make mention of needing to breathe at some point or another, i think its safe to assume that they arent in the equivalent of the centre of the earth (devildom) or up in the sky/space (celestial realm) since they also generally seem to work under similar gravity, rules of pressure and weight and so on and so forth, though again with magic in the mix its absolutely anyones guess

Open questions I have on obey me bc it's all i think about ever

What year/decade did the 3 world's war happen??

This determines the uniforms and weapons, levi for an example was an admiral

Was he sending ships across oceans? Submarines? Planes? Or was it old fucking cannon ball ships ?????? What oceans?? And this comes w the next question

Are the 3 worlds apart? Are they in the same solar system? R they universes apart? How does that happen?????? How can there be 3 worlds w atmosphere and life in the same solar system (if the same)? And we traveled by TRAIN to the human world once, how the fuck does that happen?????? Space train stations?? What???

If they're connected it be more like a big world but w very distinguished continents, but that doesn't make sense since there r DIFFERENT CONSTALATIONS IN EACH OF THE 3 WORLDS

But that means they're different solar systems?? How do we travel between them like that???????

[wolfmarrow]

Ok, fuck it

I tossed around the idea of making this post for a while but wasn't sure because I don't like posting personal stuff on the internet, I see like 6 posts like this a day anyway, and im just not a fan of asking for help. Call me crazy.

But for the sake of trying or whatever...covering all my bases I guess.

I'm trying to get out of my house, its my number one priority and I am working two jobs to try and save up, stashing my tips, I also opened commissions but I've only gotten about 3 since being opened around the time quarantine started and that might even be a generous estimate.

Why am I doing this? Because im an LGBT+ identifying person (whatever you wanna call it because im not interested in sharing my identity) and I live with my father who is beyond brain washed by extremely conservative media. Not going to go into details for shock value, because he can be beyond awful but thats the jist of it.

We can't be in the same room together without getting into a screaming match. If I ignore him he pokes fun at me until I have to acknowledge him. Its lose lose for me.

The house is dirty (which i routinely am blamed for even though maybe 20% of the stuff in the house actually belongs to me.), there are fleas and rats that they refuse to do anything about (had to buy their dogs and cats flea and tick treatment which put me out 200 dollars at the time which I wasn't paid back for.)

I dont have outside family im close with to live with so getting my own place is the only option at this point.

Which leads me to my final point.

Here's my Ko-Fi, if anyone is interested in dropping some spare change or whatever I would be very greatful.

I still don’t know how to use Ko-Fi btw lmao but I’m working on it. Was gonna link my paypal but it said my full legal name so how about nah

[middle-eastern-queen]

I know Turkish teen shows aren't like American ones where they're constantly showing the teens hooking up, but it does feel realistic to expect rich kids with no parental oversight to be hooking up in Duy Beni with the pregnancy plot line. In the west we over estimate how conservative back home is because we are sometimes limited to our parents stories from 20+ years ago.

Hey hon! Thanks for the ask!

The issue isn't it being realistic. Cause trust me I know and you are right. The issue is the media normalizing these things and promoting them as "it happens!". There's a difference between things happening vs media normalizing and promoting it to the public so it reaches more people. These kind of things may pass in the west, but in my personal opinion, I want cultures to be perserved and not westernized. And these types of media representations westernize these cultures, becauae the origin of these things is usally always "American Netflix shows do it so should we!" Its not an authentic representation of society, its lets act like THEM (the west). So yes, rich kids do do these things in reality. But that doesn't mean the media, who is responsible for culture, needs to promote and normalize it. Cause that basically wipes out custom and tradition and morals and values of society. In the West the philosophy is if it happens, show it! While in the East, theres a hard belief that not everything needs to be heard, shown or shared. Some things are personal, private and sacred and should remain as such for the sake of the bigger society at large. It's a more collective understanding. There is a public belief that everyone respects, and a personal belief in which you can practice in the privacy of your own home. The public one needs to be upheald as its what culture is. What you do in the privacy of your house, abd what your personal beliefs and actions are in life is no ones business but your own (such as getting pregnant in high school). So those things, because they're personal actions and not publicly accepted aspect of culture, dont usually make it to media. So my issue isnt it being unrealistic, cause youre right it does happen. My issue is the MEDIA, who is responsible for culture, normalizing and promoting such behaviours to the public in mass, and acting like its accepted and part of the cultural value system. When its not. That's the issue, in my opinion, that is. And im gonna end it with my favorite sentence In my blog, "this ain't america" 🤣🤣🤣

Also, it's not just this show. A lot of dizi's recently have had this issue with a variety of different topics, which is concerning. Cause once values, cultures and tradition is completely thrown out the window, what separates Dizi's from American Netflix shows then? It'll just be another American show but with a different language. Look at the state of Turkish Web Dramas right now. It's a mess. Hell, lets look at the state of kdrama's... even those have certain concerning trends showing up. You can't just wipe culture and values that go back thousands of years cause "oooh a 16 year old abroad likes to watch a show and they'll give us more money if we add these things in it to appeal to them!" You know? 🤷‍♀️

Again, this is only my opinion. But as a multicultural person that I am (Iranian, Turkish/Azeri AND Canadian), preserving cultures is important to me. It's what shapes the identity and value system of a lot of people and its a guide to how to act and what to do in life. So to just throw it out over some show, so you can sell it better in the West while ignoring the ramifications that it will have domestically (normalizing behaviours that arent part of the value system) is very wrong from where I stand. But that's just me. ❤️

[gendernewtral]

Like five times a day is even bad lol why use a 3000 machine when you can just do it yourself

i usually don’t answer dumb shit like this, but i think it’s worth it to explain what being a diabetic is really like. this got long because im pissed off, so here’s a readmore.

(im going to assume you meant to say “isn’t,” but were so furious at me for being disabled that you rushed through the sentence. off to a good start there.) 

five times a day is a very conservative estimate, based on one injection for basal insulin, three for meals, and one for a snack. in practice, it’s more like ten or twelve- the five i listed, maybe two more snacks (or if you’re me, coffee after breakfast), and then corrections for high blood sugar. looking at my pump, i gave myself the equivalent of fourteen injections yesterday. oh yeah, my pump keeps a very good record of my blood sugar and insulin usage, something that helps me manage my health (and shouldn’t be available to anyone else just because it’s recorded- hence the fucking post). 

there are several kinds of insulin pumps, but for the sake of this idiot ask, ill only talk about mine. my pump has an infusion site that infuses insulin under the skin, directly into fat. i change it every three days, which means i only need to inject anything into my body every three days. it’s small enough to fit in my pocket, and light enough to be hung on pants or shorts that don’t have pockets. it’s always attached to me (unless i’m going in water, it isn’t waterproof) so i can’t forget to bring insulin with me when i go somewhere. when i need insulin, i have it in my pocket. my pump calculates the amount of insulin i need for carbohydrates based on data i give it. it displays how much insulin is active in my body so i can account for that when making my calculations. it corrects blood sugar automatically, following my instructions. 

furtherfuckingmore, basal insulin is used to make up for the constant insulin the body would normally produce. a healthy pancreas releases insulin when it is needed to process food, but also releases a certain baseline level constantly. diabetics using pens or syringes inject a long-time insulin once a day to meet this. pump users have this basal insulin infused throughout the day. when i used pens, my basal insulin dose would usually plummet my sugar levels and require me to counteract it. by usually, i mean three or four times a week. my insulin pump keeps that from happening and in fact, my pump is able to adjust for my blood sugar levels and increase or decrease the basal amount as needed. insulin infusions are generally better absorbed than injections. injected insulin can take longer to work than infused insulin, which means you have to be careful with timing or risk high blood sugar. 

the injection process can take at least thirty seconds. some people, like me, choose to inject into their thigh or lower abdomen, which means finding a private place every time you need to inject. eating at a restaurant? you have to calculate the amount needed and inject about fifteen minutes before eating, since injections take more time to be absorbed than infusions. do this while you’re standing in a small bathroom stall, trying not to drop your sterile medical equipment and $500 bottle of insulin. remember to do this every single time you eat, or you’ll have to give yourself more injections to correct for high blood sugar. 

okay, so you should understand the importance of pumps now, right? maybe you don’t, because you had the audacity to tell a disabled person to ‘do something themself’ with absolutely no understanding of what you are saying, and what those words actually fucking mean. let’s go through my day, comparing using a pump to using syringes, and see if you can fucking follow along.

1. wake up

if my sugar is high from some overnight thing (a frequent occurrence) i type the correction i need into my pump, which is right next to me or attached to my pajamas, and i get up to carry on with my day. 

or: i walk to my desk and get out an insulin pen. i find a needle cap for it, and screw it on, possibly fucking up and needing to grab a new one. i test it out, making sure it’ll actually deliver insulin, and if it won’t i go get a new pen. i might not be able to use that one anymore. once the pen is working, i have to find a place on my body where i haven’t injected recently, clean it with alcohol or risk infection, and give myself an injection. i don’t really notice the pain anymore, but it hurts. it itches. with fifteen minutes wasted, i finally get ready. 

2. eat breakfast 

i decide what i want to eat, and put the carbohydrate amount into my pump, which automatically calculates the correct insulin dose based on the carb count and my current sugar. i set it to infuse and make my coffee. it beeps after ten seconds or so to let me know the dose was fully delivered. i can see the exact amount of insulin in my body on the screen. i eat, and notice afterwards that my sugar is going up, and then i don’t do anything, because my pump will automatically adjust to prevent a serious high.

or: i decide what i want to eat, and calculate the injection amount based on the carb count and my current sugar levels, and what i might be doing later and how it will affect my sugar (because ill need to inject more if im wrong now, or i might go low) and then i go through the injection process. go back to my bedroom from the kitchen, and repeat what i did fifteen minutes ago. now, i have to wait until i think all of the insulin is where it should be, but i have no way of knowing whether it’s actually active or not. this takes at least ten minutes, and if i don’t wait, my sugar will go high. eventually i eat, and if im lucky, my sugar stays steady. i am not often lucky. 

3. watching tv 

my sugar fluctuates a little because i had a snack earlier, but i can keep chilling and watching doctor who because my pump will catch it, or i can fix it in ten seconds by typing some numbers on a screen. maybe ill get some water if it’s going a little high. 

or: my sugar fluctuates a little because i had a snack earlier, so i go back to my bedroom to calculate the correction. i have to guess what the right amount is because i have no idea how much basal insulin is active. i guess wrong, and my sugar drops. i spend an hour treating it and recovering from the heart palpitations, dizziness, confusion, muscle weakness, and extreme anxiety. had i not treated that low correctly, i would have died. yes, low enough blood sugar is almost always fatal. an emergency medication called glucagon exists because deadly lows happen so often. 

4. i go do literally anything

im walking downtown and notice my sugar is going a little high. i stop for a second, program my pump, and keep doing whatever the fuck i was doing, because it’s completely unobtrusive. 

or: im walking downtown and notice my sugar is going a little high. i stop, look around for a store with a public bathroom, and end up walking a block before i find one. i have me/cfs, and walking that far means im going to have a PEM crash when i get home. once i find a bathroom, i try and balance my bag on the sink, and end up needing to open new supplies when i drop them on the floor. 

pumps seem infinitely better, right? for a lot of people, they are. but for other people, they feel as if they have less control over their body when they rely on a computer to manage their insulin. they don’t want the kind of supervision that comes with a machine logging all of their health data. they don’t want to be subject to the whims of the corporation that makes the device. i understand that completely. that’s the tradeoff people are forced to make for privacy. it isn’t an easy choice. there are diabetics who are forced away from technological advances that would greatly improve their lives because they want to control what others know about them. 

i am willing to sacrifice my privacy for my health, and that is the most dystopian sentence i could write. life wouldn’t be impossible without my pump, but as you should be able to fucking see by now, it massively improves my life. this comes at the cost of my medical providers and my fucking insurance company accessing my health data. 

when i got my learner’s permit, i had to have paperwork signed by my doctors saying my blood sugar is well managed. my endocrinologist pulled my pump data from the app she manages and decided that my basal rate was too high. she adjusted it in my pump. i couldn’t do anything about it, or i would not get my permit. after i got my permit, i adjusted the basal rate myself and stopped the process that uploads my pump data. i was told at my next appointment that i needed to upload my data or be considered noncompliant with diabetes management.  

it would take too long to get into the whole thing, but yes. the extreme cost of insulin pumps is another reason why many people can’t use them. beyond the cost of the actual machine, the supplies are expensive too. my insurance covers my pump and supplies, but only this pump. if i wanted to use one of the lower tech ones that don’t have the data integration my doctors can access, i would be paying for it all out of pocket. another reason why people choose to go without pumps. 

[radlymona]

Uhh Australia is not 90% White. That’s way offbase I’m sorry. It’s probably closer to about 65-70% but it’s harder to determine since we don’t strictly note race in any census. We note ethnicity which is why I referred to it above.

In cities, the most important part of the referendum because they make up most of the states’ voting population (and you need a majority of states to win a referendum) this percentage drops even further. Again hard to determine exactly, but the percentage of White peoples in Sydney is something like 55%. And guess where a large portion of White Australians live in Sydney? In the aforementioned purple section. The ones who actually voted yes. The reason they voted Yes isn’t necessarily because they have White Guilt (though I’m sure it’s part of it) but because White Australians tend to be more educated at the tertiary level. This means that they actually learned about Australian settler colonialism without any whitewashing.

If that’s not enough, Sydney and Melbourne which combined are about 45% of the country’s entire population, are two of the worlds most diverse cities. The former has the third largest foreign-born population in the world and the latter has the fifth-largest foreign-born population. So yes, I do think there’s some reason to consider this population an important demographic.

Furthermore, Western Sydney electorates are considered our own version of “swing states” because of how important they are in elections. It’s not a majority white part of the city (with 2.6 million people alone). As anyone who has ever stepped foot in Western Sydney would know.

The point of this is my entire comment was that this is ignored demographic by leftists because it’s convenient, Ignoring around 30-35% of your voting base is stupid. Im not saying this was the deciding factor but it was a major one.

Further reading on the importance of Western Sydney in elections:

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/102855090

An excerpt: Migrant and culturally diverse communities, [No] campaigners said, are key to their success.

The No campaign knew that this population is overwhelmingly socially conservative and has considerable electoral power. The Yes campaign was hesitant to admit that.

Also as the article highlights, the massive cost of living crisis is hitting the working-class immigrant population the hardest. Having a referendum when the homeless rate and food insecurity has never been higher was a massive miscalculation. As much as I desperately wanted the Referendum to succeed, I think it not being delayed until unemployment and inflation had decreased enough was not the right move. It's why the No Vote was as high as it was (60%) whereas earlier in the year it was estimated it would have been closer to an even split.

the fact that indigenous people of australia are being treated as lesser at a political level in their own native country and this continues to be the case bc their colonisers don’t want that to change is disheartening.

[latinashepard]

Yeah im a latino in the US and while I'm glad that me and my family have been lucky enough to get vaccinated(due to being in a conservative state where the white people don't want it so there is a surplus for us to have gotten fully vaccinated even BEFORE the country opened it up to all adults and not just high risk people) i know for a fact that elsewhere is worse. Granted my extended family live in other countries so I've gotten accounts of how it is there from them but still, its ridiculous to joke around and put each vaccine as having a different trait or being a different team. It definitely very much is the white people that joke around about it by far, of course other people do too but just by the nature of how they have that privilege(let alone any others for being wealthy, straight, etc...) even the people that are progressive and liberal don't have the same social consciousness to KEEP seeing whats wrong and that there are no quick solutions to anything let alone something as major as a global pandemic. Those "what vaccine is what hp house" type posts or stuff similar have possed me off to no end but the ones that have me seeing red are the ones where people are just so ready for the summer to have everything go back to normal as if our own antivax/mask people problem is not gonna cause more outbreaks instantly. Also like you said other countries not knowing when or IF they will get the vaccine, and then being able to distribute it to its people. Last I had seen they expect the earliest that the last neglected and poorer countries will get widespread vaccine distribution will be by 2024, and thats a conservative estimate. It's infuriating seeing how people that could be on your side of trying to do good immediately go to making jokes when they won't be personly affected anymore(at least in their very selfish and narrow pov)

yes it’s something to be happy about! everyone out there in the us should register and get their vaccine asap bc i hear it’s free and well, free stuff in the us isn’t an everyday thing haha. i think you put it in better words than me! it feels weird to joke and assign traits and teams to vaccines made by literal corporations, yep.

i actually came by the original meme because a poc i follow reblogged it but yeah i agree the insensitive people usually come from the whiter middle class side, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re liberal or not. well actually, they usually are liberal. it’s something y’all should work on but that’s none of my business.

anyways, this isn’t an oppresion olympics or anything, i just thought the meme fit and then was asked about it so i responded honestly.