#this is just a basic way some systems function

[mistakenot4892]

Disclaimer that this is a post mostly motivated by frustration at a cultural trend, not at any individual people/posters. Vagueing to avoid it seeming like a callout but I know how Tumblr is so we'll see I guess. Putting it after a read-more because I think it's going to spiral out of control.

Recent discourse around obnoxious Linux shills chiming in on posts about how difficult it can be to pick up computer literacy these days has made me feel old and tired. I get that people just want computers to Work and they don't want to have to put any extra effort into getting it to Do The Thing, that's not unreasonable, I want the same!

(I also want obnoxious Linux shills to not chip in on my posts (unless I am posting because my Linux has exploded and I need help) so I sympathise with that angle too, 'just use Linux' is not the catch-all solution you think it is my friend.)

But I keep seeing this broad sense of learned helplessness around having to learn about what the computer is actually doing without having your hand held by a massive faceless corporation, and I just feel like it isn't a healthy relationship to have with your tech.

The industry is getting worse and worse in their lack of respect to the consumer every quarter. Microsoft is comfortable pivoting their entire business to push AI on every part of their infrastructure and in every service, in part because their customers aren't going anywhere and won't push back in the numbers that might make a difference. Windows 11 has hidden even more functionality behind layers of streamlining and obfuscation and integrated even more spyware and telemetry that won't tell you shit about what it's doing and that you can't turn off without violating the EULA. They're going to keep pursuing this kind of shit in more and more obvious ways because that's all they can do in the quest for endless year on year growth.

Unfortunately, switching to Linux will force you to learn how to use it. That sucks when it's being pushed as an immediate solution to a specific problem you're having! Not going to deny that. FOSS folks need to realise that 'just pivot your entire day to day workflow to a new suite of tools designed by hobby engineers with really specific chips on their shoulders' does not work as a method of evangelism. But if you approach it more like learning to understand and control your tech, I think maybe it could be a bit more palatable? It's more like a set of techniques and strategies than learning a specific workflow. Once you pick up the basic patterns, you can apply them to the novel problems that inevitably crop up. It's still painful, particularly if you're messing around with audio or graphics drivers, but importantly, you are always the one in control. You might not know how to drive, and the engine might be on fire, but you're not locked in a burning Tesla.

Now that I write this it sounds more like a set of coping mechanisms, but to be honest I do not have a healthy relationship with xorg.conf and probably should seek therapy.

It's a bit of a stretch but I almost feel like a bit of friction with tech is necessary to develop a good relationship with it? Growing up on MS-DOS and earlier versions of Windows has given me a healthy suspicion of any time my computer does something without me telling it to, and if I can't then see what it did, something's very off. If I can't get at the setting and properties panel for something, my immediate inclination is to uninstall it and do without.

And like yeah as a final note, I too find it frustrating when Linux decides to shit itself and the latest relevant thread I can find on the matter is from 2006 and every participant has been Raptured since, but at least threads exist. At least they're not Microsoft Community hellscapes where every second response is a sales rep telling them to open a support ticket. At least there's some transparency and openness around how the operating system is made and how it works. At least you have alternatives if one doesn't do the job for you.

This is long and meandering and probably misses the point of the discourse I'm dragging but I felt obligated to make it. Ubuntu Noble Numbat is pretty good and I haven't had any issues with it out of the box (compared to EndeavourOS becoming a hellscape whenever I wanted my computer to make a sound or render a graphic) so I recommend it. Yay FOSS.

[sophieinwonderland]

R/syscringe just armchair diagnosed a spiritual system with Major Depressive Disorder.

I can't see an ounce of anything that would imply the system has that?

https://www.reddit.com/r/SystemsCringe/s/hynO5ZIkBy

What the fuck is wrong with that subreddit?

Giving the benefit of the doubt, I think they're trying to make a comparison.

It's probably more like "imagine if you said this about depression and yet they say it about DID!"

Still pretty dishonest, since being a system isn't a disorder. And even if u/xXxHuntressxXx believes all systems are disordered, they at least should know the spiritual system isn't actually claiming to have DID here when they describe themselves as a spiritual system.

I also want to mention this though, because I found it amusing.

I would love to hear u/rise_over_run25 explain why imposition is bullshit!

The thing about imposition is that it is, at its core, just vivid imagination. Some tulpamancy guides that teach you how to do this recommend not even starting with tulpas, but with inanimate objects like rocks and marbles.

Can you look in front of you and imagine yourself in the physical world? Can you, in the imagined form wave at the you in the body?

Congrats, that's imposition! You just imposed yourself! Something which any headmate in the system has the power to do, using your shared brain to imagine themselves externally.

I mean, there's a little bit of nuance in this, where some systems will use imposition as a catch-all for any externally-imagined form as I just did, and some only consider it imposition if it reaches a certain threshold of vividness they would classify as hallucinatory.

That might take training of your brain's visualization skills to achieve.

But what I really want to get across, that some people seem to not understand, is that imposition isn't some weird mystical superpower. It's a basic function of the human brain that even singlets can do.

It's also using the same mechanisms as the inner world, just to appear externally instead of in a fully imagined environment.

(Would highly recommend u/rise_over_run25 read my Headmate Manifestations post where I discuss the relationship between different ways headmates can appear.)

[cambriancrew]

I also want to add that, for most of the novel, the first person point of view character (who has a few different names but is for the most of the book the titular character) is functionally blind, and as someone who is also functionally blind without glasses and is prepared for her vision to progress to the point where even glasses can't fix it anymore, Hawkspar was amazing representation. Yes it was magical blindness, and she did regain enough vision to tell vague shapes apart (which is what I mean by functional blindness - not total blindness, but still not quite able to really see) and it came with terrifying yet useful visions of the future, and yes it was (sorry for spoilers but it's relevant to the discussion) magically healed at the end as was the rest of the people with Hawkspar who like her also had their natural eyes replaced with eyes of stone ... But it never felt like tokenization, and the recovery was earned and necessary to the plot, and overall it just felt like a beautiful representation of what it's like to be functionally blind.

I went until age 14 with uncorrected legal blindness, when my parents were basically forced by the school to get me glasses because even at the front row and peering through a slit between my fingers to see better I still couldn't read the board or see anything clearly more than about 8 inches in front of my face. (Down to about 4 or 5 now.) I got around about as well as the blind main character, able to discern basic shapes but that's about it. Unlike her, I could still see splotches of color, and can still see very close up and obviously now with glasses, but other parts of her blindness felt really spot on.

I want to do as well as she did with blindness, but with plurality - the experience of being many individuals sharing one body and brain. The main characters who become a plural system together will be of magical origin too, and there won't be a magical fix of it back to how things were before, but otherwise I want the experience as revealed in the story to ring true. I want to show the struggles, the joys, the frustrations, the discoveries that make you appreciate each other all the more. I want to show what it's like to have been, or thought you were, one person all your life and now suddenly you're not. I want to show what it's like to have to lean on each other, and to want to not need to. I want to show what it's like to feel like you don't have as much time to be yourself anymore. I want to show the beauty of being able to communicate with each other without words, just emotions and pictures and pure concepts. I want to show the frustration of not having an easy way to express to people around you which one of the system you are. Just like how in Hawkspar Holly Lisle showed functional blindness, I want to write something that shows functional plurality.

And it won't be just those main characters. There's another system in the series, of traumagenic origin. And a wide variety of dragon characters who are also a type of plural - two or three heads, one body, one shared identity, and how some dragons choose this and some do not, and neither choice is lauded above the other. And another human who accidentally creates systemmates in one of her magical experiments. And maybe more, but those for sure.

Functional blindness is rarely seen in fiction, and when it is it's usually the butt of a joke - the character with glasses that make their eyes look ginormous, or Velma Dinkly feeling about on the floor because she can't see well enough to find her glasses without her glasses. (Which is a regular occurrence for me! Thank God for phone cameras now which make it so I can look around and see better.)

Similarly, plurality is almost always shown as either a joke - "Which of your personalities is it this time?" or much MUCH worse, as the reason someone is a murderer. Practically every single police procedural or who-done-it murder mystery since the 80s has had at least one case where the culprit is a plural system, usually one with Dissociative Identity Disorder. There's multiple horror movies with it, most notably and recently Split.

There's a rare few examples of it where it's not a scary thing or a joke: The season 2 Chicago episode Theseus's Ship that had a really well done side plot of a plural system comprised of a host and a tulpa. There's Yu-Gi-Oh, with several characters being systems. There's the game Celeste, where the main character Madeline comes face to face with another entity that's normally inside her called Part of Me, dubbed by the fandom "Badeline", who really isn't all bad at all. There's the book series The Hybrid Chronicles, which I really need to read, about a world where everyone starts out as a system of two but one emerges as the sole person with the other one gone away some time in childhood, and the main characters are a system that decide they don't want either of them to go away.

Anyways. Thanks, Holly. Your words and your example will live on.

One of my favorite authors, Holly Lisle, died recently from cancer. She wasn't my favorite due to her books, though I return time and time again to Hawkspar. She was my favorite due to how she inspired me to write. One thing she did wonderfully in Hawkspar was juggle two different PoVs, one in first person and the other in third, which is how I'm doing the Cord of Three novels. Another thing is that the climax of Hawkspar isn't an epic battle, though there is one near the end. Instead, it's a masterful speech in front of the world's version of the United Nations. One day, I will write a climax as satisfying to me as that speech.

But mostly it was her blog that made me love her as an author. That and her books on writing.

There's a blog post of hers that has been in my favorites for years, and I've come back to it more times than I can count. Its advice has been the best way to recalibrate my motivation for my writing, better than anything else. It's called Writer's Block: Losing and Regaining Writer's Hunger. I do writing dates, rekindle my love of writing through reading books that make me want to write my own, and write things that are outside of my comfort zone just to break free of my internal censor, all on the advice from this post.

Holly, I hope wherever you are now, you see the outpouring of love from your fans and your writing community. You were amazing, and you will be missed dearly.

[thelunastusco]

Hey folks, just for the record, system members often have complex and varying genders that don’t always match the genders of other system members, any potential host/core/”original”, or even just how the system as a whole decided to present bodily.

It’s almost like different system members are different people.

[vampiringg]

i have got so many worldbuilding ideas my head is going to explode,,,,,

[arolesbianism]

Thinks abt oni pmd au oh so hard. When you get a second chance at a relationship only to re experience drifting apart from them all over again

[absentlyabbie]

seriously, though. i work in higher education, and part of my job is students sending me transcripts. you'd think the ones who have the least idea how to actually do that would be the older ones, and while sure, they definitely struggle with it, i see it most with the younger students. the teens to early 20s crowd.

very, astonishingly often, they don't know how to work with .pdf documents. i get garbage phone screenshots, sometimes inserted into an excel or word file for who knows what reason, but most often it's just a raw .jpg or other image file.

they definitely either don't know how to use a scanner, don't have access to one, or don't even know where they might go for that (staples and other office supply stores sometimes still have these services, but public libraries always have your back, kids.) so when they have a paper transcript and need to send me a copy electronically, it's just terrible photos at bad angles full of thumbs and text-obscuring shadows.

mind bogglingly frequently, i get cell phone photos of computer screens. they don't know how to take a screenshot on a computer. they don't know the function of the Print Screen button on the keyboard. they don't know how to right click a web page, hit "print", and choose "save as PDF" to produce a full and unbroken capture of the entirety of a webpage.

sometimes they'll just copy the text of a transcript and paste it right into the message of an email. that's if they figure out the difference between the body text portion of the email and the subject line, because quite frankly they often don't.

these are people who in most cases have done at least some college work already, but they have absolutely no clue how to utilize the attachment function in an email, and for some reason they don't consider they could google very quickly for instructions or even videos.

i am not taking a shit on gen z/gen alpha here, i'm really not.

what i am is aghast that they've been so massively failed on so many levels. the education system assumed they were "native" to technology and needed to be taught nothing. their parents assumed the same, or assumed the schools would teach them, or don't know how themselves and are too intimidated to figure it out and teach their kids these skills at home.

they spend hours a day on instagram and tiktok and youtube and etc, so they surely know (this is ridiculous to assume!!!) how to draft a formal email and format the text and what part goes where and what all those damn little symbols means, right? SURELY they're already familiar with every file type under the sun and know how to make use of whatever's salient in a pinch, right???

THEY MUST CERTAINLY know, innately, as one knows how to inhale, how to type in business formatting and formal communication style, how to present themselves in a way that gets them taken seriously by formal institutions, how to appear and be competent in basic/standard digital skills. SURELY. Of course. RIGHT!!!!

it's MADDENING, it's insane, and it's frustrating from the receiving end, but even more frustrating knowing they're stumbling blind out there in the digital spaces of grown-up matters, being dismissed, being considered less intelligent, being talked down to, because every adult and system responsible for them just

ASSUMED they should "just know" or "just figure out" these important things no one ever bothered to teach them, or half the time even introduce the concepts of before asking them to do it, on the spot, with high educational or professional stakes.

kids shouldn't have to supplement their own education like this and get sneered and scoffed at if they don't.

[tododeku-or-bust]

What I need for White Americans (ppl in general really, but I'm talking to the U.S.) to understand about Americans of Color is that You don't know Us, but We know YOU.

We've spent generations upon generations of our entire lives learning YOUR social norms, forced to assimilate to YOUR idea of society. We live and learn entirely separate cultures, but we also learn from birth what it means to have to cater to Whiteness in America. It's why I can name so many famous movies with white casts, but most white people didn't even know where "Bye Felicia" came from. It's why I was raised to professionally Code Switch from childhood, but grown white people struggle to even grasp the basics of the grammar of AAVE. It's why people who speak different languages think they have to give up their own mother tongue just to function in this country.

It's why you all are so uncomfortable with the idea of people of color questioning and rejecting what seems "normal" to you- and to be honest, I actually think older white generations are better at admitting this than younger ones. It's because what you know as normal is usually not "normal"- it's White. Whiteness is just as loud as any other presentation of race in this country, you just don't see it that way because everyone else has been forced to maintain your comfort. The entire system is built around it, and you don't even know it.

It's why it frustrates white Americans of some marginalization- queer, disabled, neurodivergent- because you do not have access to the "norm" as it is shown to you. But that frustration- literally everyone of color (who shares those identities btw) lives under that understanding.

Idk, I didn't really have a direction. I just think it's wild how so many conversations require this... Constant Verbal Leveling of the Playing Field simply because Whiteness blinds white people to what things ACTUALLY look like out here.

[paganinpurple]

AO3 Etiquette -UPDATED

Based on both decent and not so decent replies, I have made some changes to my original post below.

It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:

As well as likes, kudos is for when the story was interesting enough to make you finish reading. If it sucked or was badly written, you probably left. If you finished it, you liked it - so kudos.

If you really liked it, you should try to comment. It can be long and detailed or a literal keysmash. Writers don't care, we just love comments.

No critisism unless the author has specifically asked or agreed to hear it (so use your notes to say if you want some constructive feedback). Even constructive critisism is a no-no unless an author note tells you it's okay. No, posting it online is not an open invitation for that. Many people write as a fun hobby or a way to cope with, among other things, insecurity and just want to share. Don't ruin that for them. I've seen so many authors just stop writing coz they can't handle the negative emotions the critism brings, and it's only meant to be a fun thing shared for free (pointing out tagging errors is not included in this).

Do not comment to ask the author to write/update something else. It's tacky and off-putting and will probably have the opposite effect than the one you want.

There is no algorithm, it's an archive. Use the search and filter function to add/remove the pairings/characters/tropes etc. you want to read about and it will find you the fics that fit the bill.

For this to work, writers must tag and rate stories. This avoids readers finding the wrong things and missing the stuff they want. I don't care how cringy that trope is in your eyes - it gets tagged.

The tag exception is if you don't want to tag a million things or spoil your story, you can rate it as "chose not to use warnings," and maybe tag the bare minimum.

Don't censor tags. How can someone exclude a tag if the word isn't typed out correctly? There are no content bans for terms so don't censor them.

If the tags are mostly content/trigger warnings, especially if they are things considered very fucked up or graphic, you might want to use "dead dove - do not eat" to ensure people know that you're not messing around with tags and what they get is exactly what you've warned them about.

Character A/Character B means a ROMANTIC or SEXUAL relationship of some kind. Character A&Character B is PLATONIC, like friendship or family.

Nothing is banned. This is an rule because banning one thing is a slipperly slope to banning another and another, until nothing is allowed anymore. Do not expect anyone to censor for you. Because of the tags system, you are responsible for your own reading experience.

People can create new chapters and sequels/fic series any time after they "complete" a story. So it's considered perfectly normal to subscribe, even to a finished story. You can even subscribe to the author instead just to cover your bases.

Do not repost stories or change the publishing date without an extremely good reason (like a complete top to bottom rewrite or an exchange youve written for going public). It's an archive, not social media. No one cares what's the most recent, only what fits their tag needs.

Instead of deleting a story you wrote if you hate it - consider making it anonymous or orphaning it so others can still enjoy it, without it being connected to your name anymore. If you still want to delete it, fair enough.

It's come to my attention that metaworks ARE allowed on AO3, which is something I wasn't aware of. So if you do post an essay or theory, please tag it as such so others can choose to search for it or exclude it. Art is also allowed.

The only reason this archive works is because NON ONE PROFITS. Do not link to your ko-fi or patreon or mention monetary gain in any way or you violate the terms and risk having your account removed. If anyone does link, it leaves the archive open to people claiming it's for profit and having the whole thing removed.

I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.

I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.

[lovelyrotter]

fellow fictives my babes my darlings i am BEGGING YOU to stop tagging your very personal stuff with ships relating to your fictive-shape and then start talking about whether or not you ''condone'' these ships entirely purely based on your personal comfort as if youre talking about law. do what you want with your own irl body and relationships. you are not part of shipping. you are a real person. i am BEGGING YOU PERSONALLY to not partake in the crossing of these lines

[barnbridges]

andy barbour and bunny corcoran are both the same autistic child, except low vs high support needs. read as andy would beat his ass at the playground.

[56kilobits]

very tired of what i'd call, idk, recreational prescriptivist content. in my younger years i'd had to tell off men who, just for example here, functionally couldn't cook but watched a lot of alton brown videos and had very exact opinions on the correct way something should be done. "why are you annoyed? i'm just telling you the right way to do it" and so on. obviously it's not just men who do this - apparently there is a right way to do wall decor, which is coincidentally 1:1 with the last 10 years of interior design trends. i'm not sure what it is about video content but it encourages a genre of basically turning hobbies/interests that used to be heavily based on personal taste and turning it into a perfectly ordered system of laws. & you can't say shit these days about "well i like it this way" without some guy in your ear whose engagement with his hobbies stops right before actually doing them telling you it's wrong because an "expert" told him so. i put bad keycaps on my keyboard because i like them better

[autistichalsin]

I hate that I have to give this PSA at all- that I do is a failure on the part of multiple governmental organizations. But it is important.

COVID damages a lot more than you think. It damages more than your lungs, and does more than give you digestive issues. And sometimes, those issues can last well after you get better, even if you're not a person you would otherwise think of as being sick with long COVID.

If you only remember these two things, please just remember that:

COVID can and does damage your heart.

COVID can and does damage your nervous system, particularly your brain.

If you have had COVID in the last 18 months, you are at a highly elevated risk of sudden cardiac death compared to someone who hasn't. In the first three weeks after getting sick, your odds of dying from a heart-related event are 81 times that of an uninfected person, and five times higher in the following 18 months. You are also at a higher risk of of developing nonfatal heart disease; 40% likelier. (Source for all claims in this paragraph)

If you develop ANY cardiac symptoms at all after getting COVID- heart palpitations, blood pressure issues, fatigue, fainting, getting out of breath easier than is normal for you- you need to see a doctor as soon as possible, and you need to tell them you've recently had COVID. You have long COVID until proven otherwise.

Similarly, your risk of neurological disorders remains heightened over a year after getting COVID; approximately 40% higher. (Source) This manifests in more ways than I have time to list, but includes a vastly higher risk of dementia of all types (doctors are particularly seeing this with the under-45 group that was previously extremely rare), memory disorders, sensory issues (like persisting loss or distortion of taste and smell), mental health issues like anxiety or depression, and even more.

These can manifest in a lot of ways. But if you experience new anxiety or depression, new behavioral issues (particularly for those under the age of 18), if you suddenly can't focus anymore or can't remember things anymore (ESPECIALLY words, COVID has been noted to cause extreme difficulty with word recall), if you have tremors, if you're tired all the time, if you have "brain fog", if you have trouble sleeping, I could go on... again. You have long COVID until proven otherwise. EVEN IF you aren't "that sick". Even if you have energy to do things and can mostly function but you just aren't doing well in school/at work anymore because you can't remember the things your teacher/professor is talking about/the new work protocols your boss went over with you.

If you hop over to the subreddits for teachers or professors, you will notice a lot of them noting their students don't remember basic things the teachers have been pressing for an entire semester, or that students can't sit long enough to focus through a movie. And sure, some of that is cell phones reducing attention span, or students just not paying attention- but they just can't seem to pick up the pieces there that they are seeing long-term sequelae (that is, a different illness arising from COVID infection) in their students. It is everywhere, but few people are connecting the dots.

Similarly, there is a huge wave of pilots being unable to pass their physicals and losing their licenses, or making mistakes due to brain fog (in some cases even leading to crashes) or falling victim to sudden cardiac death in the middle of a flight.

EVERYONE is at risk from this. No one is talking about this. I don't kn- well, actually, no, I do know exactly why, I just don't like it. People want to make COVID the new flu, but it just isn't. It is not and never will be the flu. And we are willingly inflicting cardiomyopathy and dementia and all sorts of awful things on people in the name of regaining a sense of normalcy that is gone, but ironically would be closer to returning if we had accepted for a while that things WEREN'T normal and acted accordingly. But that chance is gone now, COVID is never going away because people couldn't bother, but they still can't admit it, they can't face the consequences of their actions, so instead we're getting this attempted coverup of the real long-terms dangers of COVID that even "young and healthy" people have.

But pretending things are normal doesn't make sick people healthy. So instead, try to educate folks, because there is a very high chance you or someone you know is sick right now, due to COVID infections they had months ago, and doesn't know it because people are pretending COVID is just the flu but with tummy upset and a disrupted sense of taste/smell.

People NEED to know what the actual dangers are.

ALSO, sidenote: if you are masking, and ask your medical team to mask, and they respond by starting to suggest you are experiencing "COVID anxiety", find a new provider. Immediately. Don't even continue the appointment. They are not interested in helping you.

Signed, your friendly neighborhood epidemiologist.

[wilwheaton]

The GOP wonders why young people (and others) don't want to vote for them. Some wise scribe assembled this list.

1.) Your Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” strategy of tax breaks for billionaires that you continue to employ to this day has widened the gap between rich and poor so much that most of them will never be able to own a home, much less earn a living wage.

2.) You refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour (since 2009). Even if it had just kept up with inflation, it would be $27 now. You’re forcing people of all ages but especially young people to work multiple jobs just to afford basic necessities.

3.) You fundamentally oppose and want to kill democracy; have done everything in your power to restrict access to the ballot box, particularly in areas with demographics that tend to vote Democratic (like young people and POC). You staged a fucking coup the last time you lost.

4.) You have abused your disproportionate senate control over the last three decades to pack the courts with religious extremists and idealogues, including SCOTUS—which has rolled back rights for women in ways that do nothing but kill more women and children and expand poverty.

5.) You refuse to enact common sense gun control laws to curb mass shootings like universal background checks and banning assault weapons; subjecting their entire generation to school shootings and drills that are traumatizing in and of themselves. You are owned by the NRA.

6.) You are unequivocally against combatting climate change to the extent that it’s as if you’ve made it your personal mission to ensure they inherit a planet that is beyond the point of no return in terms of remaining habitable for the human race beyond the next few generations.

7.) You oppose all programs that provide assistance to those who need it most. Your governors refused to expand Medicaid even during A PANDEMIC. You are against free school lunches, despite it being the only meal that millions of children can count on to actually receive each day

8.) You are banning books, defunding libraries, barring subject matter, and whitewashing history even more in a fascistic attempt to keep them ignorant of the systemic racism that this nation was literally founded upon and continues to this day in every action your party takes.

9.) You oppose universal healthcare and are still trying to repeal the ACA and rip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and replace it with nothing. You are against lowering the cost of insulin and prescription drugs that millions need simply to LIVE/FUNCTION in society.

10.) You embrace white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other groups that are defined by their intractable racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance. You conspired with these groups on January 6th to try to overthrow the U.S. government via domestic terrorism that KILLED PEOPLE.

11.) You oppose every bill aimed at making life better for our nation’s youth; from education to extracurricular and financial/nutritional assistance programs. You say you want to “protect the children” while you elect/nominate pedophiles and attack trans youth and drag queens.

12.) You pretend to be offended by “anti-semitism” while literally supporting, electing, and speaking at events organized by Nazis. You pretend to hate “cancel culture” despite the fact that you invented it and it’s basically all you do.

13.) Every word you utter is a lie. You are the party of treason, hypocrisy, crime, and authoritarianism. You want to entrench rule by your aging minority because you know that you have nothing to offer young voters and they will never support you for all these reasons and more.

14.) You’re so hostile to even the notion of helping us overcome the mountain of debt that millions of us are forced to take on just to pay for our post K-12 education that you are suing to try to prevent a small fraction of us from getting even $10,000 in loan forgiveness.

15.) You opened the floodgates of money into politics via Citizens United; allowing our entire system of government to become a cesspool of corruption, crime, and greed. You are supposed to represent the American people whose taxes pay your salary but instead cater to rich donors.

16.) You respond to elected representatives standing in solidarity with their constituents to protest the ONGOING SLAUGHTER of children in schools via shootings by EXPELLING THEM FROM OFFICE & respond to your lack of popularity among young people by trying to raise the voting age.

17.) You impeach Democratic presidents over lying about a BJ but refuse to impeach (then vote twice to acquit) a guy whose entire “administration” was an international crime syndicate being run out of the WH who incited an insurrection to have you killed.

18.) You steal Supreme Court seats from democrats to prevent the only black POTUS we’ve ever had from appointing one and invent fake precedents that you later ignore all to take fundamental rights from Americans; and even your “legitimate” appointments consist of people like THIS (sub-thread refuting CJ Roberts criticisms of people attacking SCOTUS' legitimacy).

19.) You support mass incarceration even for innocuous offenses or execution by cop for POC while doing nothing but protect rich white criminals who engage in such things as tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, rape/sexual assault, falsifying business records, etc.

20.) You are the reason we can’t pass:—Universal background checks—An assault weapons ban—The ‘For the People/Freedom to vote’ Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act—The ERA & Equality Act—The Climate Action Now Act—The (Stopping) Violence Against Women Act—SCOTUS expansion.

21.) You do not seek office to govern, represent, or serve the American people. You seek power solely for its own sake so you can impose your narrow-minded puritanical will on others at the expense of their most fundamental rights and freedoms like voting and bodily autonomy.

22.) Ok, last one. You are trying to eliminate social security and Medicare that tens of millions of our parents rely on and paid into their entire lives. And you did everything to maximize preventable deaths from COVID leaving millions of us in mourning.

Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/e8DBZLH

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

Basically, it’s discovered that to help stabilize Danielle, aka Ellie, it’d be best to have her be smaller. She refused to be turned into a kid by Frostbite/her own power ability, when Danny remembered the shrink ray his parents made. The side effect is that they’re kind of stuck as humans when they’re that small—they can use some ghost powers, but basically, it’s a weird side effect of the shrink ray. That’s canon, by the fucking way, lmao

Anyways, so Ellie agrees, and Danny will shrink himself with the ray to her size to help her out when needed/when she wants company her size, with Jazz, Sam, and Tucker occasionally helping out. Sam buys one of those really ornate Victorian dollhouses, with wooden everything, and Danny does some… renovations… so that it no longer opens and is a proper house. There’s still some oddities because it’s a dollhouse originally, but it was easier and faster to give her a home. One of the first additions was a water/wastewater system, followed like two hours later by an electrical system. Since it was so small, Danny was able to do it fairly quickly in his big size, occasionally going small and using the small window for using his powers to double check on things.

The water system had to be refilled every week, unless hooked up to a plumbing system in a house, which Danny made some outlets for in Jazz’s room—it was easier and had significantly less questions/didn’t stand out as much if placed in Jazz’s room. They usually did it every three days, though, as the plug-in process was still a bit… hinky. The tanks for holding the water were in the ‘basement’, which was mostly inaccessible from the inside of the dollhouse but basically looked like a big stand the dollhouse stayed on. Like someone ripped a full house out of the ground WITH the basement attached. There was a small access hallway down some stairs in the house for the clean water system, though.

The electric system was fairly simple, as it didn’t cost much energy to light a dollhouse and heat/cool water. There was an AC unit, Ellie’s request, but it hardly was used and was fairly efficient just due to pure size. It was fueled by ecto batteries, which Danny made sure had a few rechargability options—just because it was efficient energy didn’t mean it didn’t ever need recharging. There was a very small ecto filter, but due to its relative small size, was easy to clean and was fairly stable, so they had a whole closet of them just chilling out, both filled and empty. The battery itself could be charged by ecto sources, Danny’s own blood, or ambient ectoplasm gained by using something that looked like a solar panel and a satellite dish had a child that the batter could be placed in. The hookup also allowed for like… normal D cell batteries.

They would buy dollhouse furniture, and occasionally just buy the big version then shrink it down. Ellie had a huge old house to herself, basically, might as well go ham. And she had a fun time with the designer doll clothes Sam liked to get, although the cheap doll clothes from the store were also fun. Best option was just buying normal clothes and shrinking them, but using things that were already small or just making stuff using normal sized objects was fun.

At some point, though, the Fenton siblings decide to go on a trip. Ellie begs to be taken along, and Jazz agrees—there’s a doll showcase in Gotham, and Jazz wanted to see if anything caught Ellie’s interest. Danny, having a room in the dollhouse himself, also went along. Might as well make it a sibling’s trip, right?

Ellie can be full size for small chunks of time, which they did while exploring the expo. They found some cool things to add, and some doll clothes Ellie was far too interested in trying on, as well as some to force on Danny later. He sighed, but like—that’s his little cousin-sister, he’d put up with it. After all, he learned how to plumb an entire (miniature) house in two days when she refused to move in until it had a fully functional bathroom, so.

Anyways!

They have a fun time, and sure, lugging the relatively giant dollhouse was a PAIN, but it was Ellie’s home, and some stabilizing tech made it relatively safe to move without risking everything freaking breaking. They load everything in again, and the dollhouse is now restocked with clothes, tiny furniture, and a lot of shrunken supplies—some foods are just hard to work with full size, and are easier to shrink, okay? Also soap, paper goods, pencils and pens, books, etc. Jazz loads the thing into her car, and Danny offers to stay with Ellie in the dollhouse—so Jazz gets them in, and shrinks them down, holding onto the shrink ray in the meantime.

All is going relatively well in Gotham traffic until there’s a rogue attack.

Go figure.

Jazz ends up unconscious, and Danny and Ellie can’t do anything before the rogue is taken care of and a paramedic team comes up. They hide back in the dollhouse, listening as the medics say she seems to be okay, just unconscious. A relief, but now they’re taking Jazz away. Fenton luck states she’s one of the few actually injured. The Bat Brigade comes by, and Batman notices that there’s a wallet for one Danny Fenton. Red Robin confirms that Jazz was likely here with at least two other people, based on the ticket stubs for the expo. However, there is a strange lack of social media presence, Danny doesn’t have a photo ID, and there’s no way of knowing for SURE that it was just Danny with her, if it was just two other people, or if Danny was in the car with her. Still, as they can’t find him but DO have his sister and his wallet, they assume he might be missing, possibly kidnapped.

The Gotham PD of course take in the car, although it’s pretty trashed. Knowing well and good that the dollhouse and such things are actually quite expensive, Commissioner Gordon mentions that it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Batman to maybe hold onto the Fenton’s things that *aren’t* related to the investigation.

Batman just takes everything. Including a rather peculiar looking gun that seems to have sustained some damage during the attack and car crash.

Gordon sighs. Figures.

So, Danny and Ellie end up in Wayne Manor. Most of the things end up in the Batcave, but Alfred insists that they place the doll things upstairs in the manor proper—the cave isn’t *that* damp, but doll things are small and delicate. So, upstairs they go.

At first, it’s fine. Danny and Ellie are fine in the dollhouse, and it’ll be at least a week before any of the systems NEED to be worked with.

Then Ellie ends up with a massive migraine. She gets them, on occasion, a sort of growing pain. Usually, they just shrink some medicine for her as she needs it, because she’s like—twelve. While they did have some medicine that had been pre-shrunk, when they were stocking up in Gotham, it turns out pain medicine was more expensive there. Not by much, but they figured—they’ll just stock up in Amity Park, they’ll be there in two days.

Haha. Nope.

So, Danny finally has to venture out. He lucks into finding the first aid kit—why there was one in the main living room, he’s not sure—and is currently working on trying to get open the blister packet of an ibuprofen when Alfred finds him.

Alfred stares at this tiny boy with a tiny make-shift knife trying to get into… over the counter pain medication.

Danny stares at this butler guy who had very gently cleaned the outside and noted the strange fact that the dollhouse did not open.

Danny waves at Alfred.

Alfred waves a tiny finger back.

“Hello,” Alfred says softly, which is fantastic because loud noises could get painful—part of the reason for Ellie’s headache was an argument between Tim and Damian. “How do you do?”

Danny hesitates, before he makes an exaggerated so-so gesture.

“You understand me?”

Danny nods—it’s rare for people to understand what he’s saying when he’s 5 inches tall.

“How wonderful,” Alfred smiles. “And how can I help our young guest tonight?”

Danny gestures to the blister packet.

“Pain medication? Isn’t that a little bit large for you.”

The teen thinks for a second on how to communicate. He points to the pill, then makes a slight show of pretending to grind something, like a mortar and pestle.

Thankfully, Alfred got the idea. “Would it be easier if I ground it up for you?”

Danny takes a moment to think before accepting with an enthusiastic nod.

“Very well,” Alfred says, taking the blister packet in one hand. He then hold his other out, palm up, like a platform. “Would you like to come with me?”

Danny ‘his survival instincts died when he did’ Fenton gets into Alfred’s hand.

Alfred grinds up the pill into a fine powder. Danny hands him a tiny bottle—still large in Danny’s hands, as it was not a shrunk bottle—that he had tied around his waist. Alfred fills it, and hands it back.

“I assume you came from the tiny house we have in our living room?”

Danny again nods. Alfred takes him there, setting him down outside the front door. Danny bows, and sure it’s Japanese as hell, and he’s white as all get out, but it’s a generally understood gesture of thanks. He hopes.

Alfred understands it just fine. “I bid you goodnight, then. Perhaps we will talk more, when you are feeling better?”

Danny hesitates, again, but he nods. Alfred had been nice enough, so far.

Danny heads in, quickly measuring out the medicine—shrunk pressure plates and scales and weights made what it was measuring relative—to him the weights on the hand balance scale felt the same weight. Ellie got her medicine, and they both went back to sleep.

He told her in the morning what happened. Ellie was strangely gung-ho about meeting this butler guy, and so—when no one else was around—, she and Danny went onto the tiny balcony as Alfred came in to dust.

“Oh my,” he said. “There’s two of you, now. Should I expect more?”

Both of them did an exaggerated ‘no’ dance.

“Very well, I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself. I’m Alfred Pennyworth, the family butler. Welcome to Wayne Manor.”

[headspace-hotel]

Many people, especially USAmericans, are very resistant to knowing the plants and living according to the ways of the plants. They lash out with a mix of arrogance and fear: "Don't you know what bad things would happen if we lived a different way? There is a REASON for living this way. Would you have us go Back—backward to the time without vaccines or antibiotics????"

Ah, yes, the two immutable categories that all proposals for change fit into: Backward Change and Forward Change! Either we must invent a a futuristic, entirely new solution with SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY that further industrializes and increases the productivity of our world, or we must give up vaccines and antibiotics and become starving illiterate medieval peasants.

Every human practice anywhere on Earth that has declined, stopped, or become displaced by another practice, was clearly objectively worse than whatever replaced it. You see, the only possible reason a way of life could decline or disappear is that it sucked and had it coming anyway!!! Pre-industrial human history is worthless except as a cautionary tale about how miserable we would all be without *checks notes* factories, fossil fuels and colonialism. Obviously!

Anyway, who do you think benefits from the idea that pesticide-dependent, corporate-controlled industrialized monoculture farming liberates us all from spending our short, painful lives as filthy, miserable peasants toiling in the fields?

First of all, I think it's silly to act like farming is a uniquely awful way to live. I can't believe I have to say this, but the awful part of being a medieval peasant was the oppression and poverty, not the fact that harvesting wheat is a lot of work and cows are stinky. Same goes for farm labor in the modern USA: the bad part is that most people working farms are undocumented migrant workers that are getting treated like garbage and who can't complain about it because their boss will rat them out to ICE.

Work is just work. Any work has dignity when the people doing it are paid properly and not being abused. Abuse and human trafficking is rampant in agriculture, but industrialization and consolidation of small farms into gigantic corporate owned farms sure as hell isn't making it better.

Is working on a farm somehow more miserable than working in a factory, a fast food restaurant, or a retail store? Give me a break. "At least I'm not doing physical labor in the sun," you say, at your job where you're forced to stand on concrete for 8 hours and develop chronic pain by age 24.

When you read about small farmers going out of business because of huge corporations, none of them are going "Yay! Now that Giant Corporation has swallowed up all the farms in the area, we can all enjoy the luxurious privileges of the industrial era, like working RETAIL!" What you do see a lot of is farmers bitterly grieving the loss of their way of life.

And also, the fact is, sustainable forms of polyculture farming that create a functional ecosystem made up of many different useful and edible plants are actually way MORE efficient at producing food than a monoculture. The reason we don't do it as much, is that it can't be industrialized where everything is harvested with machines.

Some places folks are starting to get the idea and planting two crops together in alternating rows, letting the mutualistic relationship between plants boost the yields of both, but indigenous people in many parts of the world have been doing this stuff basically forever. I read about a style of agroforestry from Central America that has TWENTY crops all together on the same field.

Our modern system of farming is necessary for feeding the world? Bullshit! Our technology is very powerful and useful, but our harmful monocultures, dangerous pesticides, and wasteful usage of land and resources are making the system very inefficient and severely degrading nature's ability to provide for us.

What is needed, is a SYNTHESIS of the power and insights of technology and science, with the ancient wisdom and knowledge gained by closely and carefully observing Nature. We do not need to reject one, to embrace the other! They should be friends!

Our system thinks land is only used for one thing at a time. Even our science often thinks this way. A corn field has the purpose of producing corn, and no other purpose, so all other plants in the corn must be killed, and it must be a monoculture of only corn.

But this means that the symbiosis between different plants that help each other is destroyed, so we must pollute the earth with fertilizers that wash into bodies of water and cause eutrophication, where algae explode in number and turn the water to green goo. Nature always has variety and diversity with many plants sharing the same space. It supports much more animal life (we are animals!) this way. The Three Sisters" are the perfect example of mutualism between plants being used in an agricultural environment. The planting of corn, beans, and squash together has been traditionally used clear across the North American continent.

And in North America, the weeds we have here are mostly edible plants too. Some of them were even domesticated themselves! Imagine a garden where every weed that pops up is also an edible or otherwise useful crop, and therefore a welcomed friend! So when weeds like Amaranth and Sunflower pop up in your field, that should not be a cause for alarm, but rather the system of symbiosis working as it should.

A field of one single crop is limited in how much it can produce, because one crop fits into a single niche in what should be a whole ecosystem, and worse, it requires artificial inputs to make up for what the rest of the plant community would normally provide. The field with twenty crops does not produce the same amount as the monoculture field divided in twenty ways, but instead produces much more while being a habitat for wild animals, because each plant has its own niche.