I was absolutely wasted when I watched this and it deadass brought me to tears, I love it
Noticed a couple folks in my tags mentioning that they wanted to learn or wished they knew how to crochet amigurumi. So here’s a quick and dirty little how-to guide with resources I threw together? Hope it helps!
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again but it is absolutely an example of civilizational inadequacy that only deaf people know ASL
“oh we shouldn’t teach children this language, it will only come in handy if they [checks notes] ever have to talk in a situation where it’s noisy or they need to be quiet”
My mom learned it because she figured she’ll go deaf when she gets old
My family went holiday SCUBA diving once, and a couple of Deaf guys were in the group. I was really little and I spent most of the briefing overcome with the realization that while the rest of us were going to have regulators in our mouths and be underwater fairly soon, they were going to be able to do all the same stuff and keep talking.
The only reason some form of sign language is not a standard skill is ableism, as far as I can tell.
For anyone interested in learning, Bill Vicars has full lessons of ASL on youtube that were used in my college level classes.
https://www.youtube.com/user/billvicars
and here’s the link to the website he puts in his videos:
Update: you guys this is an amazing resource for learning asl. Bill Vicars is an incredible teacher. His videos are of him teaching a student in a classroom, using the learned vocabulary to have conversations.
Not only is the conversation format immersive and helpful for learning the grammar, but the students make common mistakes which he corrects, mistakes I wouldn’t have otherwise know I was making.
He also emphasizes learning ASL in the way it’s actually used by the Deaf community and not the rigid structure that some ASL teachers impose in their classrooms
His lesson plans include learning about the Deaf community, which is an important aspect of learning ASL. Knowing how to communicate in ASL without the knowledge of the culture behind it leaves out a lot of nuances and explanations for the way ASL is.
Lastly, his lessons are just a lot of fun to watch. He is patient, entertaining, and funny. This good natured enthusiasm is contagious and learning feels like a privilege and not a chore
And it’s all FREE. Seriously. If you’ve ever wanted to learn ASL
If you're applying for office jobs and you're lying about being proficient in Excel (which you always should bc nobody knows anything and google is free) a handy video to give you the basics on Excel's functionality is Joel Sposky's You Suck at Excel Video. It's about an hour long and gives you enough background info to know what people are talking about when referring to Excel, and from there you can do your own further research. There are also handy little guides and notes people have taken on the presentation that go over the highlights here and here <3
What with the heatwaves, the fires, and the billionaires on their private jets, I've been seeing more climate doomism on here than usual. I get it. Everything feels terrible. And it can be so frustrating to see stuff about personal carbon impact when you're already washing your laundry on cold cycles, biking to work, eating less meat, etc., and meanwhile the US Senate is killing energy initiatives.
But if you have climate anxiety, I HIGHLY recommend subscribing to a carbon-negative project. My carbon subscriptions help me sleep at night. They have been my antidote to feeling helpless.
Some quick math. In the US, there are 74.5 million Netflix subscribers. And in 2020, the US had CO2 emission averages of 14.2 tonnes annually per capita.
So, if every US American with a Netflix subscription took out a subscription that offset their emissions, that'd be 1.06 billion tonnes annually: over 3% of total global emissions (34b tonnes). And that's just if a subsection of the US population did this.
Obviously this is an oversimplification. Carbon offsets are admittedly more expensive than Netflix. Also, offsetting usually works by funding projects elsewhere to reduce global emissions, so it's overall less efficient than, I don't know, the US getting its shit together and funding public transit, which would cut emissions at the source.
But the point remains: collectivism does exist, and we CAN do something about the emissions that we're unavoidably responsible for.
Enter these services, all of which do carbon offsets that are effective, additional, verifiable, and permanent.
To finish off with some good news: the US has joined China and Europe in hitting the 5% tipping point for electric car adoption, the costs of renewable energy have cratered, and China is set to hit its emissions peak earlier than anticipated (huge for the world's largest emitter).
Hang in there.
please feel free to share this post!
All of these books are queer, but they all have back blurbs that don’t say they’re queer. While this can be a pain if I’m scouting for queer SFF, it can come in handy for people in a situation where they don’t want to be reading queer books openly.
Please do note that I don’t have hard copies of the books on hand so it’s possible that an author quote or something mentions one being queer (I feel like this isn’t super likely, but I don’t want to rule it out). Some might also have author biographies mentioning that the author is queer. Also, some may be shelved as LGBT on Goodreads or categorized as queer on Amazon. So if you’re planning on asking for any of these as holiday gifts, I would suggest going to the Amazon page or where ever your relative is likely to buy it from and double check that it’s something you’d be comfortable with sharing openly.
I wish I had more pansexual books, but the ones I know of tend to mention queerness in the back description.
With the exception of The Spy with the Red Balloon, these are all books I have read or are currently reading. If you want to recommend others, feel free to do so in the replies!
You can find my other queer book recommendations here.
Links to the queer books database (or Goodreads if the book hasn’t been added yet) are available below the cut. You can find information on content warnings there.
Edit 6/26/20: I no longer recommend Ancestral Night or The Stone in the Skull by Elizabeth Bear.
Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)
40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)
Excellent basic crochet video series
Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)
Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)
How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)
Another drawing character faces video
Literally my favorite art pose hack
Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??
Introduction to flying small aircrafts
French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding
Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)
Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)
Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)
Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:
Calculus 1 (full semester class)
Learn basic statistics (free textbook)
Introduction to college physics (free textbook)
Introduction to accounting (free textbook)
Learn a language:
Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)
Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)
I often think that those on the ace spectrum are amongst the most misunderstood in the LGBTQ+ community. Asexuality is an absence of sexual attraction but that doesn’t necessarily mean an absence of romantic attraction. There are also people who identify as aromantic but who do experience sexual attraction. The ace spectrum has what is known as a ‘gray area’ which includes sub-identities such as demisexuality, a sexual attraction only to people with whom one has an emotional connection. I think that the ace spectrum is one of the clearest indicators that sexual and romantic orientations are completely different things and therefore they don’t actually have to match up within the same person. For a while now, I’ve been considering the fact that my own sexual and romantic orientations do not quite match. I’m pretty sure I’m actually heteromantic bisexual and I honestly only have the relatively recent dismantling and separation of sexual and romantic attraction, largely spearheaded by the exposure and discussion of the ace spectrum, to thank for the realisation of that possibility. Anyways, here are a few books with characters who fall somewhere under the ace umbrella. -Love, Alex x
1. Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann.
When Alice comes out as asexual, her girlfriend dumps her and she swears off dating for good but then handsome Takumi enters her life and she can’t seem to ignore the rom-com level of feels. It’s funny, cute and so thoroughly readable with a very relatable protagonist, making it a fantastic book for normalising asexuality.
2. Before I Let Go by Marieke Nijkamp.
When Corey’s best friend Kyra dies, she realises that their small Alaskan town is behaving very strangely and keeping secrets. I’ll admit that this book doesn’t have particularly high ratings on Goodreads and that’s probably because it promises to be more atmospheric and eerie than it is. However, Corey’s asexuality isn’t a driving factor of the plot -she simply is, which I find wonderfully refreshing. She is also questioning which I think will provide a window for people who are still figuring things out.
3. The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow.
Ellie and Morris live in a dystopian world, devoid of emotional and creative expression, but they both risk their lives for their love of the forbidden arts. This is a wonderfully unique sci-fi with both main characters displaying demisexuality. It’s definitely one for bookworms and pop culture nerds who would die to protect creativity and emotional freedom.
4. How To Be A Normal Person by T. J. Klune.
Gus is an eccentric soul and he’s fine with not fitting in until he meets asexual bohemian Casey and he vows to become as normal as possible. It’s funny, heartwarming and incredibly queer with an array of fantastic side characters. This is a great book for learning more about the ace spectrum and a lovely positive depiction of a loving, respectful ace relationship.
5. Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire.
When children return from other worlds, they are forever changed and Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children is there for them until they can fall back through their door. These whimsical novellas are brimming with diverse queer characters and this first instalment is narrated by asexual teen Nancy. The clear distinctions between asexuality and aromanticism are talked about but I love how identity and sexuality is never a plot point or defining characteristic in these stories.
6. Upside Down by N. R. Walker.
When recently dumped Hennessey moves to a new town, he sets up a support and social group for LGBT+ people, which is where he meets socially awkward Jordan. There is a lot of asexual education without being too preachy and I learnt so much from this very sugary gay romance. If you like a bit of tension or drama, it’s probably not for you but if you’re looking for an easy, funny, cute read, pick it up!
7. Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman.
When her sister dies, Rumi is sent to live with her aunt in Hawaii where she makes some unlikely friends and eventually finds the courage to return to the music that she and her sister loved so dearly. Rumi is asexual and aromantic and she’s terrified that she’ll never find anyone who understands her like her sister did. As you might expect, this book is devastating but so beautiful.
8. Loveless by Alice Oseman.
When Georgia starts university, she’s sure that her love life will finally begin but she is about to learn what true love really entails. Loveless isn’t actually released until next month but it’s a HIGHLY anticipated book charting an asexual aromantic’s learning and self-acceptance as well as being a true celebration of platonic love. Pre-order it now!
Ace rep is VERY important. I was in my 50s before I realized that “asexual” was even an OPTION.
I support it a lot because it was bad enough being in my 20s before I saw any really good rep of a bisexual woman. I don’t want that happening to others, ya know.
If you're celebrating Biden's win, consider celebrating by donating to a bail fund, planned parenthood, or the Navajo Water project.
Your action to help the marginalized shouldnt end at presidential candidates and voting.
To add some more:
Critical Resistance, working to dismantle the prison industrial complex and abolish the police
The Queer Detainee Empowerment Project
Sunrise Movement, a youth-led political campaign pushing the Green New Deal and climate legislation
Industrial Workers of the World. Unions.
And of course it’s always a good day to venmo, paypal, or cashapp black, indigenous and other POC in your community, or donate to your community mutual aid fund.
The International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund (and you can get some rad stickers and other merch from it too)
RIP Medical Debt - this one’s cool, they buy medical debt in the same way debt collectors do (for much much less than the value of the debt) and then simply forgive it. What that means is every dollar you donate erases $100 of debt. You can’t ask for a better value than that
Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th
No guys you don’t understand.
The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.
So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.
This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.
That’s not sad, that’s awesome.
*this is different from the first song ever played on mars (Reach For The Stars by Will.I.Am) which happened the year before, singing is different from playing
This is humanity
Happy Birthday, Curiousity.
