thepastisaroadmap

[thepastisaroadmap]

As we head into multiple viral outbreaks including potentially H5N1, I am begging people to think carefully about how they talk about these viruses. It has been exhausting since the start of COVID hearing people talk about "only people with pre existing conditions" as if that makes everything okay. I am worth something, we are worth something, our lives matter.

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One thing they don’t tell you about sewing is that it is actually ironing

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constantly making airy offhand comments to my preferred younger son about how he’s next in line for the throne after his brother but he still hasn’t killed my detested firstborn for me. kids these days have no fucking initiative.

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Putting a bloody lace handkerchief in my back pocket to indicate that I'm into Victorian tuberculosis roleplay.

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has anyone figured out how much art you need to make to make your mental illness go away

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having a freeze response to stress is so funny in the context of normal adult stressors. millions of years of evolution are trying to tell me that the email will not find me if i stay very still and do nothing

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“stereowire, did you really spend three days on basically an art history dad joke about sebastian stan as winter soldier as saint sebastian”

MAYBE. what’s it to you.

(psst hey kids wanna print)

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i'm loving the whole "interrogate your disgust response" thing but i do think it bears saying that disgust isn't necessarily anathema to enjoyment of something and overcoming it isn't a necessary condition to being able to partake. sometimes the disgust is part of the fun.

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[ID: part of the timeline showing vanilla extract was created in 1847. End ID]

I just discovered foodtimeline.org, which is exactly what it sounds like: centuries worth of information about FOOD.  If you are writing something historical and you want a starting point for figuring out what people should be eating, this might be a good place?

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dinner

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btw if you feel like you totally don't fit inside of the masculine-feminine binary, you don't have to accept that, either. you can live outside of the masc/fem binary, just like the man/woman, male/female, etc. binaries. some people just arent masculine or feminine and that's okay. some people are both masculine and feminine and that's okay. some people experience fluidity between the two. some people are something else entirely and that's okay.

if neither of them describe you, you don't have to be masculine or feminine. that is a binary one can step outside of as well

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scurvy has got to have one of the biggest disease/treatment coolness gaps of all time. like yeah too much time at sea will afflict you with a curse where your body starts unraveling and old wounds come back to haunt you like vengeful ghosts. unless☝��you eat a lemon

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I copy pasted parts of this but I do hand letter everything, because while I'm trying to work easier as I'm chronically ill, I am still chronically stupid

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Putting books on hold at the library has the same thrill of ordering books online, but with the added benefit of not losing any money over titles I might not enjoy.

10/10 would recommend.

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"Hermaphrodite" has been used since the 1200s to describe intersex human beings, often in the context of routine infanticide of children born with ambiguous external genitalia. For quite literally centuries the word was used as something to describe monsters that ought to be ritually drowned or have their genitalia crudely removed. Intersex people were thought to be anything from omens of societal degradation to literal demons in many many cultures around the world. In more modern times, hermaphroditism was a medical diagnosis for intersex anatomy, which (to this day) is "treated" via invasive nonconsensual surgery with no care for the function of the intersex person's body and a sole focus on cosmetically appearing one of the two societally acceptable ways for genitalia to look. Though, they don't call us hermaphrodites anymore, they call us people with "DSDs" (Disorders of Sexual Development). There are no laws prohibiting cosmetic surgeries on intersex children, including newborns. To a perisex world our conformity is more important than our consent, our health, and our lives.

Anyway, the scientific community thought this would be a great word to use to describe snail reproduction for some fucking reason, and redefined it to refer only to cosexual animal species and insist its use against intersex people is only the fault of individual bigots and not literally the original use of the term. Effectively erasing our history and perpetuating the use of a slur. There's a reason that if you Google "Hermaphrodite", photos of human beings come up, not slugs.

(This was originally a reply but it makes a good stand-alone post too)

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"The destiny of a great kingdom rests on the shoulders of a young man" - wdym rests? He got crushed, absolutely flattened. Destiny turned that man into a pancake