Pride Kitties!

I like the video (especially the puppies!), and I can definitely see where they’re going with emulating sexy girl videos.  However, in addition to having a much wider variety of cuteness, most of these guys are waaaaay overdressed for a sexy girl video.

This post on the desexualisation of men made me think of this Charli XCX video.

Charli XCX directed this with Sarah McColgan, and asked the boys in question to do “all the sexy things that girls usually do in videos”. They include Riz Ahmed (this is the source of those gifs of him with a big pink teddy bear), Stormzy, Josh Ostrovsky (aka thefatjewish), Tom Daley, Jay Park and more - full list here. It is pink and fluffy and female gaze-y, and everybody looks happy.

It also has a much, much more inclusive idea of cuteness than sexy girl videos, and doesn’t dehumanise its subjects. Which is lovely, but underlines that when men are treated as objects of desire, they’re much more likely to keep a sense of agency.

Also, I’ve been seeing more FedEx/UPS shipments where the final leg is actually done by USPS.  Apparently, it is more cost effective for FedEx/UPS to outsource part of their shipping to a competitor, even if they can do most of the distance more cheaply themselves.  So if the Postal Service goes under, would we have to pay even more for shipping, or would we just have to pick it up in a centralized location instead of actually getting packages delivered to our doors?

Go, dragon girl, go!

Leafy sea dragon mermaid! [swoon]  (Ok, they’re all cool, but I have a soft spot for leafy sea dragons.)

5/15 mermaid design challenge i made for myself (also happens to be during #mermay)

so far: goldfish, lionfish, leafy sea dragon, deepsea predator, and red octopus

i will post here when another 5 are done, meanwhile you can see each one & WIPs on my twitter if you want

edit: basically i realized way too late that u cant see anything of the details so i added 100% closeups for each one like i did on twitter ///shrug

I’m convinced that this is Antler Guy and Neighbor Steve’s favorite show.  They never miss an episode and spend the entire last season with a box of tissues on the couch between them.

An old and homely grandmother accidentally summons a demon. She mistakes him for her gothic-phase teenage grandson and takes care of him. The demon decides to stay at his new home.

My co-isolation sweetie and I ordered dinner from a local restaurant that does very good Middle Eastern food.  It was delicious, and I have enough leftover gyro meat and hummus to have it again later in the week!  I may even have enough to scramble some with eggs for a third meal.  Yummmm.

Let’s take a positivity break!

Reblog and add something you saw or worked on today. It doesn’t have to be big. If you finished a 10,000 word fic, great, but if you remembered to drink some water or watched an awesome sunset, also great.

Life is scary right now, but there’s also still a lot to love, and we could use the reminder.

Discriminating against people based on their religion, ethnicity, skin color, or anything else is just as wrong in the QUILTBAG community as it is anywhere else.  The ways some members of a religion use it to justify doing terrible things to other people is horrible, whether that’s Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, atheism, or anything else.  However, that does not mean that the religion itself is horrible, or that all of its followers should be blamed for those people’s actions. 

anyway here’s your reminder that lgbt muslims exist and islamophobia shouldnt be tolerated within lgbt communities!

shout out to lgbt muslims living in places where our identities are still criminalised. 

This explains the situation of e-books in libraries much better than I did.  It’s incredibly frustrating for librarians, most of whom just want to connect people with books!

It’s been an increasing source of frustration for many library users: waiting weeks, sometimes months to get to the top of the waiting list for a popular eBook or e-Audiobook.

Why does it take so long? After all, it’s not a physical object, it’s a digital file that lives in the “cloud”, why can’t multiple people access it simultaneously instead of only one at a time? Barring that, why doesn’t the library just buy more copies so that the waiting list is shorter? Getting people access to books and information is what libraries are all about, but the struggle for acquiring lendable e-content is very real, and it’s getting harder all the time. Why? What’s the big hairy deal? For that answer, you have to look to the “Big 5” Publishers, who are responsible for close to 80% of trade book sales. 

Publishers have been extremely wary about allowing library users virtual access to their books. After all, digital copies of books never wear out or have to be replaced, and are more vulnerable to unauthorized copying (“pirating”). Publshers were afraid if they allowed libraries access to their books digitally, they would be losing money. Individual publishers came up with their own sets of rules for libraries to access their e-content, and they have been tweaked many times since 2006.

In addition, the prices libraries must pay for ebooks and e-audiobooks is very high. Libraries must pay up to 4X the retail price for digital versions of books (which only one user can have access to at a time).  Meeting the library patron’s needs for downloadable content is a very expensive enterprise, indeed! Take a look at this comparison of the prices for various versions of the same book:

It becomes easy to see that acquiring ebooks for public use is a very expensive endeavor…

Read more on The Cheshire Library Blog.

So cute!

Transparent Jellyfish Pride! 

You can buy these as shirts or stickers without the watermark on my Redbubble! 

EDIT: I forgot to add the Pan Jellyfish!! It’s added ;v;)b

Every time I see news about a new piece of hate legislation, I want to curl up and cry.  I don’t know if my life-entwined partner will ever be able to visit my family in Kansas again, especially since we have to go through Missouri and/or Iowa to get there.

It’s scary how many states went from “moderate risk in 2 years” to “worst active anti-trans laws” between December 2022 and May 2023.  Most of these laws will be challenged, and many may be overturned.  How many people are going to die in the meantime though?  Even when laws are struck down by the courts, will people ever feel safe there again?  How long until those laws are replaced by new ones that are just as bad but more subtle, or until people don’t have the energy and money to keep fighting against them?

open.substack.com

May Anti-Trans Legislative Risk Map

The map of anti-trans risk has polarized into two Americas - one where trans people have full legal protections, and one where they are pers

When we moved to Oregon in 2019, we always planned eventually to move back "home" to Pennsylvania, the state where, before that, I'd spent all but a year of my life since we moved there in '88.

Today, I'm going to have a conversation with my partners. I think we just have to assume I -- we -- can't go home.

Maybe ever.

Pennsylvania itself is in a low-risk category within two years, but it could easily -- well I know it -- swing into red if the next election cycle breaks another way.

That's not the kind of place where you buy the house that you intend them to "take you out of toes first," as I joked with my wives when we last talked about our plans.

That's what these laws mean to people like me. They mean "the state you consider home might become actively hostile to you within the next 5 years, so you can't plan to buy a home there." They mean "you shouldn't even board a plane that has a likelihood of having a layover in Florida, and you're definitely not going to repeat your 2019 drive across the country, one of the best and worst experiences of your life and the most time you've gotten to spend with your brother in one week since you graduated from high school." They mean half the states in this country are actively hostile to you, legally speaking, in a way you thought was finally behind you.

Sometime soon, I'm going to call my mother and tell her that we're not planning on moving back.

I don't have a clever closing line for this. I'm just sad.