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Cleansed ♡

The day I met my solemate

Dude…. Bro…… What if we Just became Narrative Foils For Eachother Bro……… had a lot of like…..Tension because of the Symbolism in our Character Arcs that becomes clear when Contrasted against each other bro……

Today I learned

Need to make

8-foot giant squid pillow.

You’ll need:

2 yards of felt

1 yard of patterned fabric (I suggest a polka dot-type pattern so it looks like suction cups)

1 medium piece of black felt, 1 medium piece of white felt (for the eyes)

white thread, black thread and thread of the same color as the felt you’re using

pins

about 5 lbs. of stuffing

a couple big sheets of paper to draw your pattern

First, you need to draw out your patterns. Here’s a basic template to get you started, although most of the measurements are reasonably fudgeable. If in the likely event you don’t have any four-foot-long pieces of paper lying around, just tape a few pieces together.

Once you’ve drawn out your eight patterns, it’s time to cut the fabric. Pin the pattern to the fabric, laid flat, and cut out the following, leaving a half an inch or so of extra fabric around the edge of the pattern:

FOR THE ARMS: 8 felt and 8 fabric cutouts of piece 1

FOR THE, UH, LONGER ARMS: 2 felt and 2 fabric cutouts of piece 2

FOR THE BODY: 2 felt cutouts of piece 3

FOR THE FIN: 4 felt cutouts of piece 4

FOR THE HEAD: 1 felt cutouts of piece 6

FOR THE EYES: 2 white felt cutouts of piece 7 and 2 black felt cutouts of piece 8

So now you’ve got all your pieces ready, it’s time to start sewing them together. I did mine by hand because my sewing machine is busted and I get a kind of Zen buzz from sewing by hand, but if you have a non-busted one I recommend that you use it as it will be MUCH EASIER. You’re going to be sewing everything with the nice side of the fabric facing in, then turning it inside out to stuff it.

THE ARMS: (To make a quilted pattern that looks like suckers, see this other post). Pin together one patterned fabric piece 1 and one felt piece 1 (with the nice sides facing the inside). Sew down around the U-shape and back up, leaving the top open. Then turn the arm inside out, stuff it (it’s easiest to do both of these things if you sort of scrunch it up like you’re trying to put on a pair of tights, excuse the non-dude-friendly reference) and sew the top closed. Do the same for the other seven arms and rejoice in the fact that this is the most tedious part. Same deal with the two long arms, they’re just harder to stuff.

THE FINS: Pin together two of your piece 4s and sew together the curvy outer edge. Turn the piece inside out, so the seam you just sewed is on the inside, and start sewing up the other side, stuffing gradually as you go along. You should end up with a triangle-ish puffy thing. Repeat for the other two piece 4s.

THE BODY: Put down one piece 3, then place the two fins you have down with the point up and the curvy side pointing in, then make a sandwich by putting the other piece 3 down on top. Pin it all together and sew around the edges with the two fins still inside, as shown. Turn it inside out and move on to…

THE HEAD: So take piece 6 and the ten arms you’ve already done. Lay the arms, fabric side facing you, out with the arms’ top seams in a line half an inch from the top of piece 6. The order should be arm arm arm arm BIG ARM arm arm arm arm BIG ARM. The legs should be almost entirely covering piece 6. Pin them in place and sew a straight line through the individual legs seams to attach the legs to piece 6.

When you pick up the other side of piece 6, you now have something resembling a really weird untied hula skirt. Sew together the two 9-inch ends of piece 6 with the fabric side of the arms on the outside, and keep it inside out for the moment.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: Fit the open end of the body through the arms (still fabric side facing out) and pull the edge all the way through the felt cylinder so it’s even with the edge that DOESN’T have arms attached to it. Sew around the diameters of the head cylinder and the body cylinder to attach them, then pull the legs down over the head and you’re almost done!

Stuff the body, then seal it off by sewing piece 5 over the open end (even if you do have a functional sewing machine, you’ll probably have to do this part by hand).

THE EYES: Sew the black circles on the white circles and whipstitch the eyes onto the head. You do this last because you can’t tell where they’re going to end up on the end product if you put them on before stuffing the body.

Has anyone ever been in this building?

November 4, 2020

Mr. Schmidt: I recall a time when my garage was broken into, Mr. Speaker. They stole my truck, and more importantly, more expensively, they stole the accordion that I was storing in that truck. Determining the value of a truck is rather straightforward. There’s a well-established process for assessing what the value is. Now, I could tell you that the value of that truck that was stolen was probably about $60 because it had a full tank of gas, but determining the value of that accordion was not a simple matter, because there isn’t a well-established process for determining the replacement value of an accordion. The insurance company wanted me to get a certified accordion assessor to evaluate the value of this accordion. Let me tell you that no such thing exists, at least not in Canada. I couldn’t find one. I had to go back and forth for months with this insurance company to determine a fair value of the accordion. It took way too long to settle that process, and we didn’t come to a resolution that was agreeable to me. I’m sure it was agreeable to the insurance company because they sure didn’t have to pay out the amount of money that I felt that I was entitled to.

…

The Speaker: Perhaps I might recommend to the hon. member that he reach out to former member Richard Starke for some advice on the price of accordions. I know he was very passionate about that.

Medical School Interviews

Across the UK hopeful medics will have sent off their applications and are eagerly awaiting for an interview. Considering I was in the same position a literal year ago I thought I would share some advice for the interviews. Unfortunately, I can’t disclose what interview questions I got but I can give some general tips that really helped me. 

First, I thought I would give some background to my application. I applied to 4 medical schools that were all MMI so the advice I am about to give is more geared towards MMI style interviews. I was very fortunate to get 3 interviews and 3 offers for medicine.

Look at the Medical Schools website. Each medical school tends to outline the qualities they are looking for at interview on their website. Think of specific examples for each quality and practice how you have used/developed said quality and why this would make you a good doctor.

Stay away from Student Room. The number of people that told me to stay away from student room was enormous and yet I still ignored them and checked. All it does is scare you and makes you panic. It’s not worth the stress at all. Just focus on your application and nobody else’s. 

Be professional. Medical schools really value professionalism and teach it throughout medical school. However, there is the expectation for you to have a certain level of professionalism before you enter medical school. Little things such as what you wear can make a big impact. For example, guys tended to wear suits at the interview however it isn’t necessary to as long as you are dressed smart then it is okay. Arrive on time. It looks really bad if you arrive late to your interview and you will also probably be really stressed as well which won’t help at all. If you are going to be late ring the medical school well in advance.

Some interviewers may be mean. I wish someone had told me this. Interviewers are there to test certain skills and therefore may be appear to be really brutal to you. Remember, that is what they are there for, stay calm and prove to them that you can handle it. This is essential as not every patient is going to be compliant and they need to test that you are able to cope with it.

Stay up to date with the news. When I had my interviews, the junior doctor contract was very hot in the news so I read around the topic. However, medical schools expect that of you and will probably not test you about that as it doesn’t really show anything that makes you stand out. But keeping up to date with scientific advancements in the medical field will put you in good stead.

Be honest. I think this is probably the most important tip I have. If you do not know something, then tell them that you don’t know it. The person asking will probably have a lot of expertise on the subject and will be able to tell when you are waffling. A lot of the time they are trying to see if you are brave enough to say you do not know rather than seeing if you actually do know something on that topic. Remember that a responsible doctor is one that stays within their limits and admits that they do not know something. If you are quite competent on the subject, then do talk about it however do not feel pressured to have a conversation with them about it. 

So there are all my general tips! I just want to finish with saying that please don’t worry if you mess up a station. MMIs typically have 7/8 stations, you are judged on all the stations not just one, so take a deep breath and smash the other ones. If anyone has any questions regarding interviews just send me a message.

Good luck to everyone applying! 

Watercolour magic

Dusan Djukaric

Not related to the issue of legislation, but this write up is done poorly (if I'm reading it correctly) the data was taken from a survey of a total of n=1,036 respondents, and the data related to who answered they actually moved states can be seen below. As we can see these numbers are actually very very small. I don't think you can "blow up" that data to then reflect the larger population. The headline gives an extremely large number, which is an extrapolation of data from a relatively small pool of the estimated hundreds of thousands, as the respondents (as can be seen below) who valued that choice aren't even the size of an average college class. I'd need to run more statistical analysis for how bad the skew is in moving from this sample size, but it's quite problematic at least in my research experience. The main issue comes when we break down the raw numbers, with it being only a few respondents who have actually verified indeed they have moved, while the title of the article implies we have reports indicating hundreds of thousands.

I think it is always helpful to make sure we frame headlines in ways that are truthful, a much better claim would be to see this is the number that "may have fled/will flee", as the original wording makes it sound like they actually tracked that count which doesn't seem to be the case.

Approximately 130,000 - 260,000 Americans have been forced to flee their homes because of legislation criminalizing trans existence.

open.substack.com

US Internal Refugee Crisis: 130-260k Trans People Have Already Fled

A growing refugee crisis is occurring in the United States, and it is getting very little coverage. I highlight the growing migration crisis

That’s 8% of transgender Americans. An additional 43% of transgender Americans are seriously considering moving due to laws criminalizing our existence and healthcare.

“So many people are completely helpless to get out, even with all the bumps and roadblocks, the fact is I'm still one of the lucky ones.” Said Sheena, a trans woman who fled from from Florida.

“it's evident that the United States is in the throes of a swelling crisis of internally displaced political refugees. Over a million people, themselves contemplating relocation in the coming months, remain in a state of apprehensive vigilance, awaiting the potential signal that they too must bid farewell to their homes.”

Via Erin Reed, a professional policy tracker of transgender legislation. June 13, 2023.