#thow in more diversity in there too

[labyrinthprops]

Got suggested to do this after the Gorillaz illustration and I just had to.

[emwhyarentyouwriting]

These issues are important, so I'll add more information (and some personal salt).

I saw this article earlier today, of course, it does infuriate me. My family is relatively pro-Trump, bleeding-out-hell, my entire hometown, and I found myself neutral. But this? This ENSURES I reject my vote from his clammy grasp.

The FtM writing this segment only wants to write, exercise, drink tea and overthink. Somehow it seems, my simple identity as transgender has gotten really popular with the republican party. I cannot fully understand why a politician would target trans people, unless it's all for power and nothing else, because they're doing it.

Are you simply angry we won't lie complacent to your subjective ideas? Your party does not allow other subjection inside, therefore, an echo-chamber of dangerous subjective norms. It's as if they're stuck on Windows 98 and refuse updates and the computer implodes. Just as they refuse to consider progression, and the government is already a compartmentalized and rather candidly uneducated bunch. Which will probably implode.

Trump "advocated" in education too. Let's break this one down specifically:

On the surface, perhaps to the average American, this does not seem too egregious. Celebration of the roles of mothers and fathers? Cool, right? NO. LOOK CLOSER.

It's perfectly okay and recommended to have celebratory attitudes toward (good) parents and their efforts, definitely. I have no issue with this in particular.

However, This phrase indirectly silences LGBTQIA+ people as official parents or family members. He speaks to celebrate nuclear families and nothing else. Does that mean this also indirectly looks down on single parents, polyamorous, etcetera types of families?

Are their families, and LGBTQIA+ families, suddenly not to be celebrated, only because they stray from a single cultural ideal?

Others' ways of life is indeed part of American culture, American melting pot culture, to be exact. If you're a politician who is ashamed to see diversity of all kinds, America is not the place for you to be in power.

Inhibit the free, and the brave will (eventually) force you out. Just saying...

The United States has genuinely amazing things and people, and

IT WOULD BE A SHAME FOR ORANGE MAN TO FURTHER THOW THE PLACE INTO SOME REAL-LIFE FLAMING PLINKO . It starts with trans people, ends with the end of us.

It's never been about "protecting kids," and it's always been about wanting to mandating trans people out of existence.

No fact check will stop this. No Twitter snark or late night tv host will stop this. No debate in the marketplace of ideas will stop this.

The Right has shown they will work for 50 years relentlessly pushing to eliminate people's right to have autonomy over their own bodies with their single minded pursuit to attack abortion and birth control. They won't stop. They've picked us as a target, and we trans people are, what, 2% of the population compared to 51% of the population who need these kind of reproductive services? We don't have the numbers to fight this on our own. We're about to be overwhelmed by this.

Please, I am begging you, we need help!

[taki118]

Why I’m Loving Rise of TMNT

Look everyone is entitle to their own opinions but I for one love the shit out of the new TMNT, it might honestly be my favorite iteration and this is why

1.) The Animation

I think Rise of TMNT is the most animated animated series out right now over here in the west. And it’s not just the action sequences, every scene is jam pack with unique character animations or shot compositions, to the point where sometimes you cant really pick a place to look. It honestly reminds me of a Studio MadHouse or Gainex anime  with how much they jam in and how they do it. A lot of the shows out now skimp on the little things so much that you are just waiting for the action scenes to see some actual animation at play yet here is Rise of TMNT just thowing that at the most mundane parts of the show cause this is an animated show and they are gonna make the most of it damnitt

2.) The Family Dynamic

Yeah yeah I know what you’re thinking, TMNT always has a good family dynamic but like look I’ve watched all the other series and while they all had a close bond they felt more like close friends or close team, this one they FEEL like brothers. They fight, they argue, they impress each other, try to one up each, and do anything for each other.

There were so many bits of dialgoue in this show that made me think of my siblings and how we act. Also this is the first version to my knowledge that has the turtles calling Splinter Dad instead of master

3.) Splinter

Ok so I did not think I’d come to love this Splinter as much as I do but here we are. 

See here’s the thing about Splinter the wise old mysterious master thing has been done over and over and theres not a lot new you can do with it. But a dead beat dad who’d kind of an ass but does actually care about his sons now that’s new and has a lot of places it can go. Is SPlinter a mutated human or a mutated rat? Is he actually a ninja master or just an old fanboy? We don’t know and wont until the show lets us and its honestly really fun to watch him play off the turtles.

3.) April O’Neil

Ok so this April feels like a natural fit for the turtles. See every other version of APril has needed a reason for hanging around a bunch of mutated turtles, a news reporter looking for a scoop, a missing father and possibly mutated herself but this one? Nothing. But her personality just makes it all feel so natural. There’s been no explaination for why this girl chooses to hang with the turtles she just does cause she’s as wild and fun loving as these guys. If the show were to say she just stumbled on them and decided to hangout I’d believe it. And thats kinda great.

4.) The Personalities 

This is the most diverse group of personalities the turles have ever had and I fucking love it. Raph isn’t just the tough guy with a secret soft side, he’s a well meaning action junkie who gets in over his head. Leo isnt the reliable leader he’s a show off that wants whats best for his brothers, Mikey isnt the party dude he’s a free sprited artistic type, and Donnie isnt just the brains he’s a delightful combo of mad scientist and drama nerd. Even if their desgins werent distinct these personalites would still shine through (along with the great character animations)

5.) The Rise 

I’ve seen a lot of people complaining that the turtles are took weak, too inexperienced, that they don’t know what they’re doing and I’m just like well thats the point. It’s a story about them rising in ablities.

A problem I had with the 2012 series was how the stakes had to keep being raised to crazy proportions cause the turtles where at a high level at the start and for the most part won all their battles cause the 2012 show had serious problem with arc passing. This show though? The turtles lose sometimes, or win despite themselves, their learning and coming into their own which is refresehing as most series depicts them a ninja fighting machine from the start. 

What I’m getting at is give Rise of TMNT a shot. It’s a wonderfully animated, unique take on the TMNT franchise that has a lot of potential for a great ride. 

[carygarman980]

Why Wheels? A Case for Movable Tiny Houses

The term “tiny house on wheels” can be a source of considerable misunderstanding. Ease of mobility is all too closely related to the transiency bringing up creepy connotations for many the traditional home dweller. Also, any structure on wheels is often seen as only temporary. Recreational vehicles are only intended for short term stays; right?

Tens of thousands of people live full-time in RVs and travel trailers despite the “recreational” classification. Does that mean the quality of materials and construction is up to snuff with residential building codes? Nope. Does it mean they are automatically unsafe? Nope. Unfortunately, there are too many RVs with toxic materials, like formaldehyde that cause an array of upper respiratory symptoms, trigger asthma, and breathing problems. In the custom RV world, including widely popular school bus conversions, the quality of materials sky-rockets. In my opinion, these kinds of homes on wheels should be accepted as dwellings. While easily accepted at RV parks and mobile home communities, finding your own land with no restrictions can be legally limiting. And people living in RVs or manufactured houses, are all too often considered “trailer trash.”

Historically, poor Americans moved into mobile homes because they couldn’t afford middle-class suburban homes. And because of this, basically, having less material wealth, these folks have been looked down upon from the start. Poverty is a complex issue, including institutional aspects. Additionally, there are many side effects from the lack of access to opportunities. It is understandably tough to wrap your head around what causes it and how it affects personal development. I reject the idea that poverty is directly related to personal failings.

Fear seems to be at the core of the stigma around the topic, from fear of the unknown. Also there’s the fear of people taking resources away from you, safety concerns, and negative impacts on property values. All of this plays a significant factor in the misconceptions around tiny housing in general. Living smaller, or in less expensive structures of any kind, is an intentional choice by many Americans. It’s a way to help tiny dwellers pursue his or her financial and lifestyle goals. Though, it is true that RVs and mobile homes are historically not durable long-term, even the most expensive motor-homes, or as homey as a modern tiny house.

Terminology

To create clarity in our tiny structure terminology, I think it’s essential to avoid mixing up terms relating to temporary shelter and full-time dwellings. A tiny house is a fully-functional dwelling with a kitchen, bathroom, sleeping areas. If a structure lacks these items, then the term “tiny shelter” (or micro shelter) should be used. When we confuse these two terms, it waters down the meaning of a tiny house as a full-time home. My intention is not to look down upon tiny shelter for the homeless. Our country desperately needs to create more shelter and housing for those experiencing homelessness, or at risk, and it’s incredibly important. To best win the support of our communities of a tiny house project or regulation, we need to be clear with our terms and intentions.

A tiny house or tiny house community has permanence, and we as advocates can stress the quality-built nature. A tiny shelter or tiny shelter community implies transitional and temporary. SquareOne Villages provides an excellent example. They created Opportunity Village Eugene as a micro-transitional community for those experiencing homelessness. Some residents have transitioned to their new, beautiful Emerald Village, a low-cost permanent tiny home community.

Tiny houses on wheels are a hybrid structure. They bring together the mobility of travel trailer with the durable materials and construction techniques of a traditional house, making it entirely suitable for year round living. A well-built THOW is highly insulated, sturdy, and customizable, from initial build to future home renovations. In general, they tend to be heavier and less nimble on the road, though not always the case.

Avoiding restrictive codes was the original intention behind modern moveable tiny houses. But they quickly became attractive to many as a mobile asset. Whatever life changes arise, you can take your tiny home investment with you. Notably, we frequently traveling tiny house dwellers are only a small subset of the overall movement. The vast majority of movable tiny house dwellers only move one to three times ever

Benefits of a Movable Tiny House

In my opinion, it is crucial to educate people about the value of a movable house. The term “movable tiny house” has a broader meaning than “tiny house on wheels.” It distances the concept from the looked down upon “wheels” term and “transient” implication. The fact is a movable tiny house provides a highly valuable opportunity for communities needing to increase housing supply. Increased housing stock is proven to help with affordability. Housing diversity leads to healthy, more equitable communities.

The BIG benefit of movable home over a foundation-based house is this: starting right now, TODAY, we can place them in countless backyards, or on properties with a primary structure. Starting right now, TODAY, we can place them in numerous backyards, or on properties with a primary structure. A kind of instant development that requires fewer infrastructure needs, translating into reduced costs and resources, for all involved–city, primary homeowner and tiny house dweller. Tiny houses and accessory dwellings of all kinds can add value to a property, not lower it.

The idea is that the presence of ADUs on the properties of your neighbors makes the whole environment denser and more urban, and thereby less desirable — which could affect the value of your property, even if you don’t have an ADU yourself. Is there any evidence for ADU effects on neighborhood property values, for good or bad?  The short answer is no.

AccessoryDwellings.org

A movable tiny house is an investment in yourself, to achieve your goals of owning your first home, starting a risky new business or saving up to buy a larger home for your growing family. Do not underestimate the value of a house that can be easily relocated. We need to talk about more than just the flexibility this allows one to move from place to place as desired, BUT the significant cost and time savings. As a tiny homeowner experiences a big life change, like a new job in another city or state, he or she can relocate with their home.

These are all movable tiny houses benefits that need to be clearly expressed to our policymakers and neighbors. The good news is slowly but surely, more and more cities are accepting movable tiny houses. Read all about San Luis Obispo’s newly approved zoning ordinance, allowing for movable tiny houses as accessory dwelling units, in my recent post. It just went into effect. Hundreds of tiny houses could be legally placed in backyards across the city!

What are other benefits of movable tiny homes? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

by Alexis Stephens, Tiny House Blog contributorM

My partner, Christian and I are traveling tiny house dwellers. Together we’ve been on the road three and a half years for our documentary and community education project, Tiny House Expedition. We live, breathe, dream the tiny home community every day. This is our life and our true passion project. We are very grateful to be able to experience this inspiring movement in such an intimate way and to be able to share our exploration with all of you.

[originaldetectivesheep]

The Thirty and One Nights' Momentary Diversion - On the Graveyard Shift

Tonight's story goes out to all the other ground-down, worn-out on-call 'resources' out there who've ever had to put down their fork, tie their boots up again, and go back to work on a problem the customer should've been able to solve themselves -- please don't do this in real life.

On The Graveyard Shift

Dan rolled his beer in his hands, thinking.  He was still new, just at the end of his first week, barely done with his basic training, still not all the way through the syntax doc for Jokol Communications' proprietary scripting language, so he felt kind of weird about bringing it up, but it was Friday, and nearly everyone was packed into the kitchen, drinking; maybe this was how they did it back in Sweden too, and this wasn't just about taking some time to blow off steam and team-bond, but to make him less uncomfortable.  If that was how it was, it was working – two of the Lagunitas cans had definitely loosened him up, and it was just a question, right?  What was the harm in asking?

"I'm sorry if this is, like, weird," he said, kind of cutting in on the end of James' story about the truck his cousin had just bottomed out for the second time, "but I think I know everyone in the office by now – but I still don't think I know who has that office behind me.  Are they just on vacation this week?"

It was an innocent question, but it was like if he'd asked if anyone was up to shoot a bunch of heroin over the weekend.  Karen looked away and bit her lip; Yichuen slammed down the last of his Pacifico all at once and almost jogged around the refrigerator to pitch it in the trash and split; Allen shot a look over at Janak, who crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows to the sky like he was goddamn sure not touching this with a ten-foot pole.  Debbie was suddenly very interested in something on her phone, and Siba took a call or 'took a call' as an excuse to get the hell out.  Dan was left just looking around, stunned dead, not sure what the hell he'd done to kill the conversation or what he was supposed to do from here.  What the heck was this even?  And if this got back to Pierre or Ravi – would they like fire him on his trial period for screwing up the office chemistry?  What had he done?

At last, Brian spun around in the one rolly chair, looking him dead in the eye, knuckles tight around the neck of his Fat Tire.  "That office, don't worry about it.  Don't talk about it too much – it's nothing to worry about."

"But –" Dan was looking around, not sure what the hell to make of this, because it was sure as shit that everyone else at Jokol was worried about it or something.

"You live in Medford, right?  Meet me at P.J.'s in Teele tomorrow for the game; I'll explain it more there.  It's kind of wicked long, and I want to go home – I just come off on-call, and it's not healthy to stick around work longer than you have to."  He slugged the last bit out of the bottom of his beer and clunked it into the recycling bin.  "That's that; if you're gonna hang around to dry out, find something else to talk about – something lighter than that, huh? Isn't the Walking Dead starting up again?"  Janak threw out a reference in response, and Dan sat dumb as Brian left and his co-workers started discussing zombie dismemberment – as something lighter than whatever was the matter with that office that they weren't supposed to talk about.

Dan had no idea what 'game' Brian was going to be at P.J. O'Toole's for, and was surprised to find him already parked at the bar, most of an Irish breakfast gone and a second Guinness, at least, half-empty in front of him when he came into the bar at eleven.  He tried to contain his shock, but while Brian definitely noticed, he snorted like he didn't care, and motioned at a seat.  "Took you damn long enough; it's good that the second game's Chelsea kicking the shit out of West Brom, I won't be missing anything while we talk." He picked up a last forkful of beans, and Dan slid gingerly into a chair, looking uneasily at the Guinness that the dreadlocked Brazilian bartender set in front of him, apparently certain that anyone who was friends with Brian would be all about thowing down stouts first thing in the morning.

Dan picked up his beer and took a tentative sip.  "Then – right, about the office.  I'm sorry if I, like said something wrong back there – it's only my first week, and I don't really know anything yet.  Is there like something wrong with it?"

Brian arched an eyebrow over his beer.  "That office?  Yeah, it's cursed.  That's why it's empty – and people don't like to talk about it."

Dan's face flattened out, unbelieving.  "Cursed?  Cursed?  Like –"

"Like whoever takes it leaves.  The last guy Pierre sat in there was this guy Rich, a cold-call sales rep. He got zero hits in two weeks in the office and quit out of depression.  Before him there was a project manager called Wade – he made all kinds of shit undeliverable promises and nearly fucked us out of our biggest customer, so he had to go. Before him it was one of a couple Chrises – and that's the other curse, if you don't know it, that there isn't ever more than one person with the same name at this company, so if there's two, one's got to go.  They put the good Chris who was on track for the architect position in the office, and he got a better offer from Tetradyne and quit two weeks in, so we were stuck with the bad Chris who boat-anchored the support team for three months until Piotr caught him abusing sick time and canned him. One or two of these might have been an accident: all of them, one after the other, it's got to be a curse."  Brian took a deep drink from his beer.  Dan's head was swimming, and he hadn't hardly drunk anything yet.

"But – cursed – it can't always have been cursed – the place is just, like, a normal office building.  Was it that way from the start, like when you moved in?" As weird as this was already, asking about previous tenants doing voodoo rituals in the office was just borrowing trouble, and he couldn't be sure that Brian wasn't just lying to him.

Brian looked unexpectedly reflective, elbows on the bar.  "I don't know.  It was before my time, but probably not much.  Go look up the Employee of the Quarter plaque, if you can find it – last I saw it was covering a hole in the kitchen wall over the fridge, because the brass doesn't want to make a big deal of it.  That plaque's got two names on it, two quarters only, and it stops in 2007 Q2 for a reason.

"The second name, Merzahd, he's the one who was in support before me.  He got on the plaque for doing three weeks of 24-hour call in a row, and he quit the month after he got the award.  Burnout.  Burnout gets you.  The first name is the guy he replaced, a guy called Warren.  He did the same stuff, met the same fate – as far as I've gotten anyone to tell me.  Merzahd, people have him on LinkedIn, they sort of know what he's doing; Warren, he finished up his back to back to back and had some stupid hand-holder prod ticket at five on a Friday and he just lost it.  He finished the case and got it Pending Close, but he grabbed up one of the permanent markers – not even the whiteboard ones – and chalked up FUCK THIS SHIT on the back wall of that office in foot-high black letters, left his security badge on his laptop, and just walked the hell out.  Nobody ever heard from him again, and when the janitors found what he'd written on Monday, they had to chisel it off the wall and repaint – there was no getting that off."

Dan stopped and blinked, beer hanging in midair.  "So – then –"

"Yeah, that's about the shape of it," Brian said, plugging back the rest of his Guinness and signaling for another.  "Hell hath no fury like a support engineer at the end of his rope, and you're new yet, and in Services – you don't know that over by us we make suicide jokes to whistle past the graveyard.  Whisper it, but like as not Warren got sick to fucking death of the fucking customers and killed himself, and he's haunting that office with frustration and despair down to this day."  He picked up his new beer and took a long pull off it without letting the head settle, ignoring Dan's horror-wide eyes and hanging jaw.

"But – but – but –"

"But it's a crazy story, and there's no ghosts and no curses?"  Brian cocked an eyebrow back over his beer, leaning away.  "Sure, fine; believe whatever you like.  As long as you don't get posted up in that office, and as long as you keep the door closed, you'll be fine.  Probably.  I mean, I've been here ten years and change, and I haven't heard about it getting out and jumping on anyone outside. Well.  Yet."  He leaned back, glugging away at his beer, and Dan looked down at his hands.  Maybe Brian was putting him on, the grizzled old veteran hazing the wet-behind-the-ears newbie.  Maybe – or maybe every single person in the office wasn't in on the hazing plot and there was really something weird through the glass behind his cube.  Maybe Jokol was really cursed.  Maybe.  Whatever.  He couldn't deal with this, not like this right now – but maybe the Guinness would help.  Dan leaned back, eyes closed, and tried to get all of the beer down in a single swallow.

[poorwhayfairingstranger]

Awww look there getting along

Got suggested to do this after the Gorillaz illustration and I just had to.