#there's more advice

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

I'm helping a friend find a laptop on a budget, here is some general advice that might apply to anyone else looking:

1. I don't trust used SSDs. SSDs have a limited number of write operations when they are manufactured. Under normal use you probably won't run into these limits, but there are things you can do that make it a lot easier to run into them, and with used devices you never know what previous owners were doing.

2. Don't be afraid of APUs, the Nintendo Switch and the Steam Deck both use Radeon APUs. Intel's APUs are also getting better, but they don't have decades of experience making video cards.

3. There are three important numbers associated with CPUs (there are a bunch more, but there are three that are easy to look for), single core clock speed, number of cores, and power draw. Single core clock speed should be the average speed of a single core (this should be lower than the boost speed, probably somewhere around 2Ghz with a boost into 3 or 4). Number of cores is what both Intel and Radeon have been pouring money into to speed up applications. Applications that multi-thread well can take advantage of these cores to run operations simultaneously. Video and photo editing tend to multi-thread very well. Games are hit or miss. The power draw will tell you how long your cpu can sustain the boost clock speed. The lower the power draw, the less time it will boost for (but the better your battery life will be).

4. Modern Windows is memory greedy. It uses between 4 and 6GB unless you go into the settings and turn off some things. 8GB gives you enough memory to use the Internet, use a word processor, and that's about all. You can do more than that and the system will use a paging file to store the contents of your memory on your hard drive, this works, but you will feel a hang while your system writes or reads from the page file. If you want to minimize this, look for 12 or 16GB if you can. Never buy a Windows 10 or 11 machine with only 4GB of RAM.

5. If you can, and are buying a laptop, buy one with a user removable battery. This makes it easier to replace, and if your battery swells, you can use your computer without the battery (plugged in) until it can be replaced.

[captainjonnitkessler]

>Join a union

>Hear people constantly complaining that the current union leadership is super corrupt, it's all just the same ten guys making all the decisions in secret and nobody else in the union ever gets to know what's going on

>Go to the monthly union meetings that are completely open to all 1200 union members

>The only attendees are the same ten guys every month, giving detailed reports about everything that's going on

[kaspermoon]

nothing feels better than seeing your weight go down

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The girls are back (from the grave)

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[queermasculine]

"go outside and touch grass" but about intimacy. go outside (to a lesbo club night). touch the skin of another dyke. you'll feel better

[royaltea000]

he could not control the class 😔

[sunshikilo]

wanderer's adventures in sumeru

THANK YOU FOR 70 FOLLOWERS BY THE WAY!! some news, i made an offical art twitter account! 🥳 its @/marsunshi and i linked it, right now im focused on genshin there and will be a lot more active, but im still going to try and post mcsm content here because i have Many wips ^^ i also have my ao3 linked there and i have a few drafts of mcsm works that i might post at some point..who knows

[baldursyourgate]

Sooo Minthara's VA does audiobooks too right? I've been listening to some sample clips on audible 😶

[beansnpeets]

Thinking about human behaviour compared to animal behaviour again.

It's funny to hear people (the older gens) complaining that "kids these days are lazy, they don't wanna work, etc." What do we get for busting our asses? There is no reward. Many will never own homes. Many are unemployed, trying to find work, and nobody will hire them because they don't have a million years experience and a masters degree OR they want people to work for minimum wage??? People are giving up because there is no reward. Why would we do all this for nothing?

Same as a dog that won't recall when you haven't reinforced it with a reward. Your dog isn't going to do what you tell it to if there is no incentive. No, your dog SHOULDN'T listen just because you're boss and it should respect you. That isn't how it works. They don't think that way. And honestly neither do people.

When we went hiking Sprocket wasn't always taking treats gently from me when I recalled her or she checked in and I rewarded and my one friend told me to stop giving her treats. I told him I won't work for free so why should she. And he said "I do things for free all the time because I want to do them," and I didn't say it then, but I wish I had, but if you like doing it, that's the incentive. It's a self-rewarding behaviour. Just like anything else a dog does, like chasing a squirrel or sniffing things or getting into the trash. Heeling instead of going off to sniff stuff or recalling off of something they want to chase is something you have to reinforce. You have to give them something better so they make the choice you want them to make. They won't make it just because they *respect* you. They won't willingly recall off of exciting prey out of RESPECT. You need to give them a tangible reward for that. You cannot possibly expect your dog to listen just because and then punish them for disobeying you.

Yeah, Sprocket bit my fingers a couple times. The one time pretty hard. But she was excited. She knows how to take gently and I reminded her and she tried very hard to be gentle most of the time. I wasn't going to stop rewarding her for checking in with me and recalling while we were off leash hiking in the woods. I want her to know that coming back to me is good and in the event of an emergency I would like her to not blow me off.

[uncanny-tranny]

One of my biggest pieces of advice for those taking injectable hormones is to make sure you're injecting at the right angle

For intramuscular (IM), you inject at a 90° angle.

For subcutaneous (SQ), you inject at a 45° angle.

Here is a graphic depicting what the angle of your injection should look like:

An image description is provided in the ALT text.

[chalkrub]

saw some mangy dog on the outskirts of town

[reasonsforhope]

You don't need to believe that people as a whole are good or well-intentioned to be an optimist about fixing climate change.

A lot of the time, it's enough to trust in this: people hate being screwed over. And even more than that, they hate feeling screwed over.

Climate change is actively screwing over almost every single person on this planet, whether they know it or not. We just need to keep making sure that people do know that they're getting screwed over, along with all their loved ones, and who's doing it.

Spite and righteous anger will honestly do a lot of the rest.

[bunnieswithknives]

I feel bad for neglecting Hazel so much, I do have many thoughts about her.. and also a mermaid au that im probably not going to do anything with

[scarlettohairdye]

PSA to printed zine makers

As a 37 year old who's been running a sole proprietorship for the last 10+ years, I just want everyone who is planning to run a fandom project that involves accepting money for printing & shipping costs to know that you're actually running a small business and you need to plan for taxes. It doesn't matter if you don't make any profit: that is business income and the IRS will see it as such if you get audited.

If you only take enough money in to cover the cost of printing & shipping then you can write that off as a business expense and probably not pay taxes on it, But in order for that to fly you actually have to do business accounting, especially if you're doing it at scale. Like, you can probably skate by without reporting a $500 project; I absolutely would not fucking risk it with a $5000 project.

Back when I was producing shows there were years when I was where I made $20k in ticket sales only to turn around and immediately pay $18k to my performers. I only made $2k for myself, but I had to report the entire $20k, because it was ALL INCOME. (I only paid taxes on the $2000, because that's how writing off expenses works!)

Yeah this is boring grownup shit and I'm getting my boring grownup fingers all over your fun fandom, but boring grownups doing boring grownup things are the reason fandom spaces exist at all (paying for servers is deeply boring), and I'm way more fun than an audit

[renonv]

okay but like the way you draw him and write him, roma has kind of perfect dad energy so now I'm picturing an au where he adopts a broke college student or smth lmao

ANONNN YOU DOG YOU POSSESSED ME and for the past few days I’ve been thinking and rotating this in my head… Romano adopting a broke college student au…. WORD VOMIT AHEAD HELP:

An 18 year old Elise who just lost everything as soon as she arrived in Rome, is about to give up and somehow go home, only to have her life change as a 30 something year old Romano tripped over her while taking out trash from the family restaurant he co-runs with his brother (who lately has been too busy w his personal life to truly help him!!).

After, Romano offers Elise to stay in Feliciano’s old room, and a job as a server at the restaurant. She happily agrees to stay until she gets back up on her feet.

The only thing is… Elise is not broke 😭 at this moment of time, yes she is, but she’s actually a recent runaway… she comes from a very wealthy Swiss family that only consists of her loving, yet overly protective brother. She wanted to experience life, and in order to do so, she had to run away because asking Basch didn’t work out 🤼‍♂️ many times

So now Elise’s adventure truly begins as she finally gets to live out a normal life, working her first job, making friends, and learning important life lessons from her new dad Mr. Romano (as he also learns a few new things from her as well 🫵)

Oh, and the entire time she’s in Rome, she unknowingly has to avoid being found by a team of private investigators that her Brother hired to find her (they are doing a shit job) ((having her phone stolen really saved her)).

[crimeronan]

i've seen a couple people in the notes of this very good post about fictional polyamory by @thebibliosphere say things along the lines of "oh, i've been doing it wrong :(" or "how do i know if i did this right??" or "i should probably give up and start over, i wrote this badly :(" and. no!!!!

(i AM seeing far MORE people say "oh, this clarified and helped me so much, i think i know how to fix issues i've been having with my own story" which. YES!!!!)

listen. if you're a monogamous person who's writing a polyamorous relationship, and you've been focusing mainly on The Triad and All Three Together All The Time as the endgame, that's literally fine. that's a perfectly acceptable and strong starting point for your plotting, imo. you do not need to give up on a story that you've started like this.

but the things discussed in the post Can and Should improve your execution!

you can keep the same plot beats and overall relationship arc 100%. polyamorous relationships are infinite in their formations, every one is unique. "basically a monogamous romance but with three people" Does exist, as a relationship type. you're not hashtag Misrepresenting (TM) poly people with it

BUT i do think it will help to read up on some poly people talking about how their relationships Differ from monogamous ones.

so i have outlined some basic important concepts about polyamory.

MORE IMPORTANTLY though, i've broken down some questions that you can answer throughout the writing process to strengthen your individual dyad relationships, your individual characterization, & your characters' individual feelings/experiences. this is a writing resource have fun

future kitkat butting in to say i spent over two hours writing this and it definitely needs a readmore. it is also NOT comprehensive. but everything should be pretty simple to follow! feel free to reblog if you find it helpful yourself or just want to reward me for how gotdan long this took KSLDKFJKDL.

i've grabbed quick links for a couple of the important concepts, some have SEO pitches in them but the info largely seems to be good. (if i missed anything Egregiously Gross on these sites i should be able to update the links with better ones later, since they're under the readmore.)

sidenote: this is NOT meant to be overwhelming, despite the length. if you can't read all of this, that's Okay. you do not need to give up on your writing.

here we go:

compersion!

compersion is a BIG thing in a lot of polyamorous relationships. it's joy derived from seeing two (or more) of your partners happy together, or joy derived from seeing your partner happy with someone else.

compersion is really important as a concept because it highlights that every individual relationship within a polycule is different -- and that that's a GOOD thing. it's sort of the inverse of jealousy.

by the "inverse of jealousy," i mean that instead of feeling left out and upset and possessive, you feel happy/joyous/content.

i can use personal experience as an example: it's a Relief for me when my partners receive joy/support/sex/romance/etc that i can't (or prefer not to) give them. and i love seeing my partners make each other laugh and be silly together.

it's 100% okay for a poly triad not to be together 100% of the time, it doesn't mean that the third member is being left out or not treated equally when two people do things alone together.

(i have individual dates with my partners all the time! PLUS larger 3-and-4-person date nights.)

if the third member DOES feel jealous or left out, then the polycule can have a conversation to figure out what needs/wants aren't being met, and solve that. this happens semi-regularly in my polycule, as it will happen in any relationship (including monogamous ones)! it's just part of being an adult, sometimes you have to talk about feelings.

metamours!

a metamour is someone who is dating your partner, but ISN'T dating you. this may not be relevant for people writing closed three-person romantic sexual triads, but it's a super helpful term to know.

the linked article also lists different types of metamour relationships with some fun phrasing i hadn't heard before. the tl;dr is: sometimes you'll be domestic cohabitation friends, sometimes you'll be buddies with your own friendship, sometimes you might not interact much outside of parties, every relationship is different.

there's no one-size-fits-all requirement for metamour relationships. sometimes polyamorous people will end up dating their metamour after a while (has happened to me), sometimes polyamorous people will break up with one partner for normal life reasons, but remain friendly metamours.

the goal of polyamory is NOT for EVERYONE to fall in love. it is 100% okay if this happens in your story, it happens in real life too! but it is also 100% okay for characters to be metamours without ever becoming "more than friends."

(sidenote: try to kill any internalized "more than" that you have when it comes to friendship. friends are just as important and special and vital as partners.)

of course there are a million ways for messiness to occur with metamours within a complex polycule, exactly like with close-knit platonic friend groups. however this post is not about that! there's enough "here's how polyamory can go wrong" stuff out there already, so i'm focusing on the positives here :)

open versus closed polyamorous relationships!

i'm struggling to find an online article that reflects my experience without directly contradicting at least SOME stuff. so i'll give a quick rundown

google has a bunch of conflicting definitions of open relationships and whether open relationships are different from polyamory. the general consensus seems to be that an open relationship prioritizes one partnership (often a marriage), but that each partner can have extraneous flings or long-term commitments (most often sexual in nature).

this is not typically how i use the term wrt polyamory. the poly concept is pretty simple. a closed polyamorous relationship is one with boundaries like a monogamous one. there are multiple partners in the polycule, but they are not interested in having anybody new join said polycule.

an open polyamorous relationship tends to be more flexible -- it just means that IF someone in the polycule develops mutual feelings for a new person, it's fine for them to become part of said polycule if they want to! the relationship/person is open to newcomers.

some groups will need to negotiate this all together, others will just go "haha, you kids have fun." just depends on the individuals!

with open AND closed polyamorous relationships, the most important thing is making sure that there's respectful communication and that everyone is on the same page. but there's no one-size-fits-all way to do that.

i wish i could give you guys a prescriptive "You Must Do It This Way" guide, but that's.... basically the opposite of what polyamory is about, HAHA.

feelings for multiple people!

i was gonna tack this on to the previous section but decided it warranted its own lil bit.

a defining feature (....i'm told?) of monogamous relationships is that a monogamous person only has feelings for One individual at a time. they only want a relationship with one individual at a time. or, if they DO have feelings for multiple people simultaneously, they're still only comfortable dating one person at a time & being exclusive with that one person.

this is perfectly fine!

the poly experience is generally different from this. but once again..... polyamorous people all have different individual perspectives on this.

for me, i have never been able to draw hard boxes around romantic vs sexual vs platonic relationships, & i love many people at once. my personal polycule lacks many strict definitions beyond "these are my chosen people, i want to forge a life with them indefinitely, whatever shape that life takes"

some poly people feel explicit romantic or sexual attraction to multiple people at once, some poly people feel almost no romantic or sexual attraction at all. i'd say that MOST poly people feel different things for different partners, which is not a bad thing!

some poly people are even monogamous-leaning -- they have just chosen one romantic partner who is themselves part of a larger polycule. (so this monogamous-leaning person has at least one metamour!)

or alternatively, they might have one romantic partner AND a qpr, or other ways of defining relationships. (this is a factor in my own polycule!)

i made this its own point because if you're writing a straightforward triad, this is unlikely to come up in the story itself -- but it's worth thinking about how your characters develop/handle feelings outside of their partnerships.

like, is this sort of a soulmateship, 'these are the only ones for me' type deal? in which they won't fall in love with anyone else, and can be fairly certain of that?

that's pretty close to typical monogamous standards but you Can make it work. just be thoughtful with it

alternatively, can you see any of these characters falling in love Again after the happily-ever-after? and how would the triad approach it, if so? what would they all need to talk about beforehand, and what feelings would everybody have about the situation?

it's worth considering these questions even if the hypothetical will never feature in your actual canon, because knowing the answers to these questions will help you understand all of the individuals & their relationship(s) MUCH better.

i've been typing this for nearly two hours and there's a lot more i COULD say because... there's just a lot to say. i'll close out with some quick questions that you can ask yourself when developing the dyad dynamics within your triad

first, take a page and create a separate section for each individual dyad. then answer these questions for every pair:

how does each pair act when alone?

how do they act differently alone compared to when they're with their third partner?

are there any elements of this dyad (romantic, sexual, financial, domestic, etc) that these two people DON'T have with the third partner?

if so, what are they?

are there any boundaries or hard limits within this dyad that aren't shared with the third partner?

if so, what are they?

partner 3 goes out of town alone for a few weeks. what are the remaining two doing in their absence?

(doesn't have to be anything special, it's just to get a sense of how the two interact on a day-by-day basis without the third there)

what is something that each partner in the dyad admires about the other -- that they DON'T necessarily see in the third partner?

what problem do These Two Specifically need to solve in the story before their relationship will work?

how is that problem DIFFERENT from the problems being solved within the other two dyads?

doing this for ALL THREE dyads is VITAL imo. that way, you develop complex and nuanced and different relationships that all have unique dynamics.

those questions should be enough to get you started, i hope

then After you've charted the differences in relationships, you can start to jot down similarities in the overarching triad. what does one person admire in Both of their partners? what are activities that all three like to do together? what are boundaries or discussions that all three share?

but the main goal is to figure out how to Differentiate each relationship!

a polycule is only as strong as the individual relationships within it. if two people are struggling with their own relationship, adding a third person won't fix that.

(UNLESS the third person is the catalyst for those two to, like, Actually Communicate And Work Their Shit Out. i just mean that the old adage of "maybe if we just add a third-" works about as well to fix a miserable non-communicative marriage as, uh, "maybe if we have a baby-")

AND FINALLY.

if you're not sure whether your poly romance reads organically to poly people, you can hire a sensitivity reader with poly experience. if you can't afford that, you can read up on polyamorous resources like a glossary of terms & articles actually written by poly people. (and stories written by poly people!)

you can also just.... ask poly people questions, if they're open to it. i like talking about polyamory and my own relationships so you're welcome to send asks if u want, i just can't guarantee i'll answer bc my energy levels fluctuate a lot and i don't always have time.

polyamorous people are in an uphill battle for positive representation right now & so the LAST thing i want to see is authors giving up on their stories bc they're worried about getting things Wrong. well-meaning and positive stories that treat this kind of love as normal, healthy, & aspirational are So So So Needed. even if you guys end up with some funky-feeling details.

seriously, if you're monogamous then you probably don't have a full idea of Just How Nasty a lot of people can get about polyamory. i wish it DIDN'T mean so much for you guys to want to write nice stories about us, but it does mean a lot. and it means a lot that you want to do it WELL.

in conclusion. this is not a prescriptive guide, it's just a way to raise questions. and also, you all are doing FINE.